Compromise IS American, And That's the Problem

James Wagner, the president of Emory University, wrote an editorial on how compromise is a good thing, is fundamental to how the US operates, is a higher order for a good cause. It's important, he states, for getting by, for learning how to negotiate, and for political discourse.

He outlines this all in his Letter from the President, “As American as … Compromise.”

He's wrong about pretty much everything. Citizens and students don't become better and wiser citizens and students through compromise. We do through listening and experience and higher ordered thinking and going through the wringer of experience and critical thinking and listening again and again. And we learn through history, especially history of the marginalized. And we make connections and we consider again and again how these connections are relevant to not just ourselves but those inside and outside our neighborhoods, those who work for us, those who make our products, those who are in our prisons, those the majority society consider less-thans.

And we repent where we need to repent. We recognize the evil and the grave mistakes that we as a society and a people have done and in many ways continue to do and we take that evil seriously in order to exorcise it from our collective and individual actions.

But James Wagoner demonstrates that White America has yet to repent. Has yet to listen or make connections or consider history or the present through non-privileged perspectives. Has yet to consider amends because it hasn't made a conscious choice yet to repent of the very horrible sins that made it phenomenally rich.

To much of White America, the three-fifths compromise was a necessity in order "to form a more perfect union." The ultimate compromise on slavery - which allowed it to operate mercilessly for generations and allowed its primary stakeholders undue influence in US politics - wasn't appalling, wasn't a sign that the United States was based more on slavery and destruction of human beings and families than on its alleged "freedom." No. According to Wagoner (and many textbooks from my own childhood), the need to bring the two opposing sides together for the lofty goal of making a United States was a "higher aspiration."

Higher, apparently, to minds in the 21st Century, than an unequivocal call for the end of any form of slavery, than for an end to the slave trade or the end to considering human beings as chattel.

Compromise may sometimes be a negotiable we have to work through. But consider what there is to negotiate. The so-called "Third Way" isn't necessarily a better way because it's more expedient. In the case of the Three-Fifths Compromise, the lives of millions of African and Black slaves were disregarded and then monetized for political "purity" of white folks. That's not a good thing. Not back then. Not now. In the case of the so-called Fiscal Cliff, the lives of millions of poor people hang in the balance of a highly politicized scandal of American-styled "justice."

It is a great evil that rich, white men can claim the stakes for everyone else and then dress up their card game as a noble pursuit.

Insert tired Frenchie joke here.

The underclass is not something to "balance" or compromise on, are not tokens, are not poker chips.

NOTE:
With his response/clarification, Wagner apologizes for his insensitivity, makes some profound statements that gave me pause to think that he would retract his earlier statement, but then doubles down on the "higher aspirations" language and reprints the original.

Why not just admit it was a complete failure? Are the "chattel" not worth it?

Ashes of Pride

It was somewhat weird and unsettling, going out of my way to find someone from my church who I've never met before on a street corner I haven't been to since Lord Knows When, in what is generally referred to as Lakeview but commonly as Boystown, to have this stranger, in the middle of this busy intersection in the middle of rush hour in a gay neighborhood, recite cryptic Middle Eastern poetry at me while he wipes my forehead with his dirty thumb print of ash.

Newspaper financial ashes - Remsphoto 

It was somewhat unsettling to have to bend down, and stop for just a few seconds in the midst of the bustle. To accept this sign, one vertical swipe and one horizontal one that I have never, ever received before - it is a bit unsettling. This sign of mortality, this badge of identity in a once-persecuted community, touches me and shakes me up way down to the back of my spine.

I know my religion is the majority religion - but I also live in a place where this tradition of marking myself is rarely seen - certainly not by white males. It is the yearly ritual of the "superstitious", of ethnic minorities who are already branded by the color of their skin. And I rode on the train and people looked at me odd - as if I exploded on my head. And then I recalled that I am a tall, white, curly-haired male with soot etchings on my head. And then I recalled that I couldn't help but stare at the markings on other passengers just a few minutes earlier.

And it's all unsettling.

As it should be. I'm used to unsettling things happening to me that are out of my control. I'm used to winging it - and a bit too used to worrying about money and work. But I needed someone or something to touch - physically - my soul. And unnerve it, just so that I may feel that I still have one.

And I do.

And that, remarkably, is very settling.

The Full Force of the Kingdom of God

Some of you standing here are going to see... the Kingdom of God arrive in full force.

Mark 9 (The Message)

They did. Some of those within earshot of Jesus witnessed the Kingdom after Jesus' death and resurrection, after the Spirit came upon them. As Jesus ascended into the heavens, the disciples began not just to travel together (which they did do, too), or fight amongst each other (ditto that), or share some things in common.

In the second chapter of Acts, we have the scene at the Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes upon the gathered disciples like something out of Joseph Campbell influenced scifi/fantasy, sans centaurs. They start speaking in other languages like they took Rosetta Stone courses via the Matrix. They share the Kingdom Message, a new king, a new way of living, a new life. The Jesus Movement grows exponentially.

The Kingdom of God comes upon them.

And most of these people live fully together, sharing everything out of abundance and need.

This euphoric moment doesn't last forever, however - especially as it becomes insular rather than expanding. But it is then that we got a glimpse of pure heaven on earth. Something we Christians long to recreate - and for brief, fleeting moments, we succeed in pockets.

Something that I'd argue non-Christians also long for. We see glimpses and pushes for it in socialism, in the various Spring and Occupy movements - the idea that we are all in this together, that we share not just earth, but her goodness. That we can indeed fight against the corrupting influence of impericism and its resultant death culture.

This was Jesus' way. His movement. And he alluded to how to get there just before, at the end of chapter 8:

Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Self-sacrifice.

The Arawak Indians understood this long before Columbus and his anti-Christ Christian men - informed more by the fledgling imperialism of European nationalism than by the teachings and life of Jesus - killed them off. All of them. Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

"Yet though he slay me, thus shall I share with him..."

May we Christians demonstrate what it means to live in the self-sacrificial and other-centered Kingdom, even in the face of the self-centered and other-sacrificial empire.

Legion and the Pigs

Today's rumination is on Mark chapter 5

They arrived on the other side of the sea in the country of the Gerasenes. As Jesus got out of the boat, a madman from the cemetery came up to him. He lived there among the tombs and graves. No one could restrain him—he couldn't be chained, couldn't be tied down. He had been tied up many times with chains and ropes, but he broke the chains, snapped the ropes. No one was strong enough to tame him. Night and day he roamed through the graves and the hills, screaming out and slashing himself with sharp stones.

This man was hurting, to say the least.

When he saw Jesus a long way off, he ran and bowed in worship before him—then bellowed in protest, "What business do you have, Jesus, Son of the High God, messing with me? I swear to God, don't give me a hard time!" (Jesus had just commanded the tormenting evil spirit, "Out! Get out of the man!")

And he's conflicted by his demons.

Jesus asked him, "Tell me your name."

He replied, "My name is Mob. I'm a rioting mob." Then he desperately begged Jesus not to banish them from the country.

DemonS. A mob of them, taking on this one poor dude. In other translations, he refers to himself as "Legion."

But here's where it gets a bit murcky. The demons know that Jesus wants to rescue the man. And that he's going to do it. So they ask for some mercy in how he does it. He grants their wish, but it doesn't end up as they had hoped. There's a lesson in that too, I'm sure.

That the bad impulses, the easy-way-out isn't necessarily the best way. And that evil gets its cummenpance, even when it seems to get everything it wants.

A large herd of pigs was browsing and rooting on a nearby hill. The demons begged him, "Send us to the pigs so we can live in them." Jesus gave the order. But it was even worse for the pigs than for the man. Crazed, they stampeded over a cliff into the sea and drowned.

I'm not an animal rights activist by any means, but what's done to the pigs here is unsettling. I recognize I'm imposing a fairly modernistic perspective back to an ancient text, but even in the Old Testament there were passages about treating your dogs well. It's perfectly fine to ask, "Was this a proper response? Could there have been an alternative way to ve the man without killing so many pigs - and in the process hurting the local economy?"



Those tending the pigs, scared to death, bolted and told their story in town and country.

They freaked. They're day workers and they witnessed their livelihoods going off a cliff. I'd have freaked too!

Everyone wanted to see what had happened. They came up to Jesus and saw the madman sitting there wearing decent clothes and making sense, no longer a walking madhouse of a man.

Those who had seen it told the others what had happened to the demon-possessed man and the pigs. At first they were in awe...

Wait for it... wait for it...

—and then they were upset, upset over the drowned pigs. They demanded that Jesus leave and not come back.

Now, here's my question. And maybe this will shed some light on the cunnundrum here.

Jesus, being an observant Jew, really didn't care for pigs, did he?

In what other passages in the Gospels was Jesus confronted with pigs? How did he view them then?

In one sense I'm truly curious. I understand that pigs are considered unclean by the Abramic faiths well, the other two), but this seems to be an honest issue of actual contemptuous disregard for the pigs lives as well as disregard for the economic well-being of a town that needed that pig money.

Shrewd Advice

Be wary of the shrewd advice that tells you how to get ahead in the world on your own. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes.

- Mark 4 (The Message)

The poor tend to know this. Out of spirit, we share, knowing that we usually get back when it is necessary and when we least expect it. And often a hundred-fold. It's a communal, involuntary insurance.

And it leaves us being gracious for what we have in terms of not just property, but family.

But sometimes we give out of our poverty and we're hurt for it.

A fellow, a neighbor, a stranger, a cousin, burns us. Steals from us when we house him. Lies to us about her kid's hunger or medical needs. Jimmy bums loose squares, always promising to pay back and never delivering. Some real nice lady does a business transaction with us but she runs into some problems and in an effort to speed up the process, we end up losing thousands of dollars that we don't have. Roy comes over for dinner every other day but then starts mocking the food and service.

It's easy to forget. To become stingy at this point. To take on the work and personality of the world around us.

Let's not. Let's not succumb to use the tools of the mean-spirited. He is in solidarity with no one; he cannot even trust himself. He dies alone and miserable, and lives alone and miserable.

Let us be continuously generous, for then we live as free men and women. Our wages may be restricted, our generosity even trampled on, but when we abandon our sisters and brothers in their time of need, when we refuse to share in the bounty of our meager harvest, we break the bonds of humanity, of friendship, of family, of our own very selves.

Share. It will be given back to us. A thousand-fold.

Calling Evil for What It Is: Refusing to Help

Yesterday's Lenten reading was in Mark 3, where Jesus finds himself in the awkward position of defending his healing and feeding habits during the Holy Day. And in this, Jesus asks a simple question:

What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?

(The Message)

What kind of action is truly holy? What kind of action is actually religious?

This brings us to austerity. Austerity is sanctions against the poor and assistance to the rich. Maybe that sounds disengenuous to some readers. But it is what it is: Leaving the poor, the elderly, the sick, and those with the least amount of help with little-to-no help. Under austerity, workers, seniors, and the working poor lose assistance, benefits, or sometimes even wages under the guise of state poverty. The state cannot afford to continue to sustain such lavish payouts, austerity advocates proclaim.

Yet on the other hand... Austerity gives humongous tax breaks to those who can most afford to pay their taxes. These corporations and extraordinarily wealthy people make their riches through the infrastructure afforded them by a free state. Yet the Austerians defend them and decry the leeching poor.

Yes, it's backwards. This that benefit the most are "heroes" and those exploited for the profits of the heroes are lazy parasites. Ayn Randism all over again.

Austerians claim that the way to help the poor is to hurt them into self-reliance. "Give a man a fish," begins their favorite proverb, "and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime."

This is agreeable on the surface. Those of us who have had to or presently rely on some form of government aid would love to be able to make it by our own means. We do not want to rely on someone else's assistance and often feel worse for it. So getting help to provide for our own selves by our own means is something we tend to desire.

But that's not happening. Certainly not within Austeria.

- In Austeria, educational funding for the poor - already tremendously deficient - has been drastically reduced for profit. And despite what the Austerians are declaring, they themselves are not teaching the poor.

- In Austeria, the poor do not have access to the good water with the good, healthy fish. Those lakes and streams have been closed off - with high and wide electric fences, pinching dobermans, security guards with bees coming out of their mouths, moats filled with living fire.. Austerians claim that this is necessary. Their argument is that only the rich know how to properly care for the best resources. Somehow, we believe this nonsense.

- In Austeria, the waters that are available to the poor are tremendously polluted, dangerous, and filthy. The fish are limping along, gasping, gills cluttered with waste, scales covered with oil residue, vision impaired despite the new third eye. Yet it is the rich who have poisoned our waters and then charged the rest of us for their crimes.

--------

All of this is not to say that the poor are helpless, wailing away in incompetence. They have done stunningly well for generations with what little they are given. But that's a relative "stunningly well". As in, the poor may live meaningful and productive lives, but we constantly worry about our next meals, about our children's health, about our parents' care.

To allow the poor even less assistance while continuing to deny them access to the means to live securely is, simply put, evil.

Have mercy on our souls for allowing this evil to flourish, Jesus.

There's the Proof in Your Puddin'!

After a few days, Jesus returned to Capernaum, and word got around that he was back home. A crowd gathered, jamming the entrance so no one could get in or out. He was teaching the Word. They brought a paraplegic to him, carried by four men. When they weren't able to get in because of the crowd, they removed part of the roof and lowered the paraplegic on his stretcher. Impressed by their bold belief, Jesus said to the paraplegic, "Son, I forgive your sins."

Some religion scholars sitting there started whispering among themselves, "He can't talk that way! That's blasphemy! God and only God can forgive sins."

Jesus knew right away what they were thinking, and said, "Why are you so skeptical? Which is simpler: to say to the paraplegic, 'I forgive your sins,' or say, 'Get up, take your stretcher, and start walking'? Well, just so it's clear that I'm the Son of Man and authorized to do either, or both . . ." (he looked now at the paraplegic), "Get up. Pick up your stretcher and go home." And the man did it—got up, grabbed his stretcher, and walked out, with everyone there watching him. They rubbed their eyes, incredulous—and then praised God, saying, "We've never seen anything like this!"

- Mark 2:1-8 (The Message)

Which is simpler: To say, "These are your sins and if you don't follow the rules, you are a horrible, lowly person. You should be full of shame and fear because of your body/stance/sexual attraction/color/doubt/economic stance," or say, "You are forgiven. Act as if it's a new day because it is. Let us seek healing together - as one"?

All of Me = None of Us

The Lenten Season in the Christian calendar is a time to reminisce and reflect on the sufferings of Jesus toward his crucifixion. Many connect this period - remembering the humble, suffering servant - with reflecting on the suffering of those whom he suffered with and amongst: the hungry, the outcasts, the strangers, the widows, the orphans, the prostitutes, the sick.


As Liz Lemon would say, "I want to go to there."

In my efforts of solidarity with Jesus and those he identifies with, for the next forty days (with breaks on Sundays) I'll be limiting my diet to non-processed foods with rare meats and at a budget of five dollars a day.

That may be a bit difficult, sure, for this spoiled American with food addictions. But that's not going to be the difficult part for me. In fact, suffering won't be hard for me right now.

Frequent bouts of depression. Near drastic and chronic under-employment. Marital woes.

I do know how to cry. Extensively.

But I need to get out of me. I'm full of me. I want to be full of something healthier. I want to be a part of something greater.

Woe Is I!

May I surrender as Jesus did, for the glory set before him (us): Not my will, but thy will be done.

Happy Sorrows!

It's raining outside this morning. Overcast, dark, sunless, drizzling like soft tears. It's fitting for Ash Wednesday.

My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
nothing to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.

Isaiah 53:2-5 (New Living Translation)

My faith tradition prides itself on not following tradition (which, oddly enough, makes another tradition all in itself), but I've been drawing closer to these ancient traditions in years of late. But as I was - tardily - contemplating if I should even attempt to run this Lenten season. I decided that I should for two reasons.

photo © 2009 Kathleen | more info (via: Wylio)

First, despite the fact that I've had problems with the sin-centric approach of the Western Church for the last few years and that I'm moving from that perspective, I have to admit that sin is real, and that it needs to be grieved over. I sin. I hurt my wife, myself, my God, my daughter, my neighbors, my friends, my brothers, parents, and sometimes even you by my selfishness, my unthinking, my uncouth responses, my deliberate and sometimes accidental burning hatred, loose words, my penchant for violence, my wandering eye.

I'm also a part of a society that revels in sin. And as a result, I find I need to stand with the prophet Daniel in calling out the sins of my people. My shopping habits help to embolden a system that oppresses working class people in the US as well as virtual slaves outside of it. Our habits of entertainment are a trap-door to escape from true brutality, we ignore and exploit those that are far from us in either ideology, geography, or in skin-tone. I hear Jesus telling us that we need to repent for allowing a culture where we still have inquisitions. I seek to change my heart from complicated excuses for my selfishness that lead to leisure built on or expanding violence to a life of simplicity and grace (and maybe vegetables).

The second meditation of this season is on the Man of Sorrows himself. This is a core Christian teaching, that God has become human. That he is deeply familiar with our deepest sufferings. That what we have gone through, God has gone through. The faith of Christians is rooted not in a removed and God-from-on-high, but rather a God-among-us. He became dirty, homeless, penalized, beaten, brutally murdered under the current death penalty.

And he is deeply familiar with the sorrows and griefs and pain and heartaches of the single mother bagging our groceries and gearing up for her second job of the day, of the eight year old daughter sold into brothels, the ten year old son working twelve hour days stitching together shoes, the abuelita with osteoporosis, the neglected teenager, the rejected queer, the forgotten father.

He knows me in my depression and my rage and my doubts and fears.

He knows us; he walks with us.

He is deeply acquainted with us.

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Additional note:

If you're looking for something tangible to do to alleviate the suffering of others during this season, please consider taking a part of my friend Kurt's campaign to raise money for Blood: Water Mission. $2 a day for the next forty days, to raise money for wells in Africa.

What am I Lenting? Help me to find out!

Tommorrow marks the beginning of Lent, as anyone who is a Christian and -unlike me- is not a non-denominationalist should know. (I'm guessing that Eastern Orthodox guys are all screwed up too, due to their screwy week-late Easter celebrations and all.)

But I don't know what to fast this year. Food as wholesale (even for, say, daylight) is out of the question. Maybe I can, but I tend to get short during those periods. And I don't need to get any more impatient or angry. Not at work.

Or home.

Maybe I can fast from work.

Ok, what about coffee? I didn't do any prep on that. I dunno. Sounds sketchy. I never feel like I get enough sleep.

I wonder how many wimpy Christians (like me) refrain from coffee drinking during this period. Must put Starbucks and the big coffee international corporations on a dip. They refer to Lent as "the Lean Months." I can hear trembling in an office in Seattle, "We're going to have to temporarily lay off about 1/3 of our work force for forty days. Slowly bring them back during the week after Easter."

I need to blog more, not less. So that's out of the question.

I don't watch tv, except for The Office, which I catch on my iPod.

What's your choice? What are you Lenting this year? Are you? What should I Lent?