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What I Mourn Today

25 May

This Memorial Day, I have many thoughts wandering around in my head. The hope that I will soon be able to safely visit the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton, Georgia, and hear the new carillon play. That makes me think of my first visit to Arlington and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, for me an experience that left me speechless then and still does, my ears ringing with the profundity of the silence. It reminds me of the late Judge Sam Lowe, who spent 11 months in a POW camp in Germany.

It also brings to my mind two other men—my great-uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Weyman Major, and my now late friend, Captain Robert “Punchy” Powell, who devoted the last years of his life to ensuring that the 352nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers from England to Germany, and its remarkable men would be remembered.

I can go straight in my mind to Uncle Weyman’s funeral in 1967. It was the first time I saw a 21-gun salute and heard Taps played in person by a lone bugler. When he knew he was going to die, he asked to come home and be buried in a small cemetery in Cordele, Georgia, a momentous event for our small rural town. Three months before he was due for promotion to full colonel, Uncle Weyman, my grandmother’s youngest brother, died of leukemia at age 48, evacuated from his last post in Anchorage, Alaska.

Uncle Weyman enlisted in World War II and served under Gen. Mark Clark in north Africa and Italy. (Gen. Clark would later become the commandant of The Citadel in Charleston.) Uncle Weyman remained in the Army, rising as a non-commissioned officer to serve in a variety of places across the U.S. and around the world, including a mission in Korea in 1961, when the Cold War was full on and our involvement in Vietnam was first beginning. I have no evidence to support the idea, but I’ve wondered if his blood disease, unseen in anyone in my grandmother’s family before or since, was connected to one of his apparent specialties—biochemical warfare. Just a theory—we’ll likely never know.

I was only 10 when Uncle Weyman died, but from that moment, I would hold every lost soldier in my heart, according each the same sense of somberness and honor of the sacrifice—whether I agreed or not with the agenda of those who sent him or her into harm’s way.

I never got to talk with Uncle Weyman as an adult about his knowledge of things we will likely never know or his opinions of the judgment of his superiors. But, I was privileged, while working with Punchy Powell to publish a book of stories and interviews from the 352nd, film a video tour of the museum he once kept in his basement, and provide technical support for him when his sight failed him, to talk with him about a wide variety of things. I proudly drove him, along with one of his 352nd compatriots, Don Bryan, to and from the airport in Atlanta when they made their last visit to Bodney, England, the site of their airfield they flew from in 1943-44. Bless you, my beloved West “by Gawd” Virginian.

When I first met Punchy, I was a younger woman in my 40s, politically independent, but leaning left (still am). At the time, Punchy was in his mid-80s, and a registered Republican. He was an Eisenhower Republican—of no relation to the ilk of the Republican Party today. Punchy and I debated any number of issues during the hours we sat beside each other at his computer. I learned much about things I had not been taught in history class and I think he learned that the world looked somewhat different to me, a member of the generation of his children.

But one thing was the same—we both held each other in great respect. I dare say that Punchy came to love me. I certainly loved him.

Unfortunately, these men are not all I mourn today. I mourn that the very ideals they fought for are disintegrating in front of my eyes, that some large contingent of Americans—large enough to continue to defend a president who doesn’t have a clue to what respect and humility and sacrifice even mean—apparently can’t or won’t read the Bill of Rights for themselves and have the perverted sense that what all these men fought and died for was the “right” for them to have anything they want, irrespective of whether their desires impede other equally valuable, equally important citizens from getting what they need or want for themselves.

Nor do they apparently “get” the concept that if as a citizen something is their right, it is also the right of every other citizen, even those—especially those—who speak with an accent different from their own, subscribe to a different set of man-made interpretations of what “God said” or “God thinks,” have darker (or lighter) skin, or have a different set of reproductive organs—despite the fact that our brains and hearts aren’t found in our vocal chords, skin, or genitals. (Thank God that I figured that last one out early on—I had a hysterectomy in 2001 and if I’d depended on one of them to help me make the decision, I might have feared I would be undergoing an elective lobotomy.)

I can assure you that Punchy and Uncle Weyman and all of the men and women who have fought and died in dangerous parts all over the world didn’t fight so you could buy an AR-15 and parade it through a restaurant with no regard for others there. They didn’t fight and die so you could refuse to wear a mask during the epidemic of a virus for which there is neither a cure nor a vaccine. They didn’t fight and die so you could demand that Target or Walmart or Lowe’s be opened (with your AR-15 along) so you can buy a new grill to flip your hamburgers on today.

Yes, they did fight for a country whose highest ideal is freedom of personal choice, but with that freedom has always come responsibility to others. Most of them never dreamed they were dying so we could make choices with no regard at all for the impact those decisions would make on others—especially those who have no choice or ability to get out of our arrogant way. The Declaration of Independence ends with the statement, “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” What else, pray tell, does that mean? We mutually pledge the risk of our lives, our money, and our dignity as human beings to each other. It’s mutual—you don’t get to demand my pledge to protect your rights without making the same pledge to me and vice versa.

So, today, I mourn not only for those brave humans now gone, but for the loss of the America they fought and died for. I am hopeful that those who share with me the drive to create new alternatives for living in peace and safety and liberty together will link arms together this fall and remove those from power who couldn’t give a damn about anything except themselves, many of whom I suspect would find it difficult to prove they even took a course, much less learned anything about civics or accounting or economics or administration. And leadership? Please.

But today, I am less hopeful than in years past. I am no longer as assured as I once was that we as a people are capable of achieving that outcome, because it requires a commitment to an American ideal that I have discovered even some I once knew apparently, to my despair, don’t and perhaps never shared—that when compared to the lives and safety of those around us, an annoying inconvenience is a small price to pay.

Otherwise, we spit on the graves of those who paid the ultimate price.

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Thank You…COVID-19?

3 May

Intrigued by the title of a book by the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, I read it when it came out in 2016. An occasional reader of Friedman’s column because I’m interested in technology and globalization, I wondered what Thank You for Being Late could possibly mean.

In short, the title came from an incident in which someone with whom Friedman was scheduled to meet didn’t arrive on time. On this particular day, rather than huff and puff at the offending friend’s disrespect for his time—which is a more common response than most of us are willing to admit in our previously over-scheduled days—Friedman had used the time to pause and reflect on the possibilities and dangers inherent in the chaotically accelerating speed with which new technologies were becoming available and globalization of the marketplaces was becoming further entrenched. The possibilities are mind-boggling, but the dangers too. The evidence is that humans have not evolved as quickly, i.e., are not cognitively or emotionally equipped to adapt with equal speed to the changes. The title, as well as the content of the book, was a call for us to slow down for a moment ourselves and contemplate the meaning and purpose of our lives in the midst of the malaise.

Having grown up in a rural community attending a small Southern Baptist church largely populated with the farming families, I immediately thought of the wisdom of the Sabbath. It was easier in those days—I’m old enough to remember when shopping on Sundays was virtually impossible because store owners took their Sabbaths as well. Except for mom-and-pop shops in both rural and suburban towns, and folks like Truett Cathy, whose commitment to Sabbath is still demonstrated by the closure of Chick-Fil-A restaurants on Sundays, the adoption of the custom has disappeared from the landscape largely. Until now.

Predictably, as with the full transition from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, which Friedman estimates took 30 years, we humans aren’t built for ongoing, ever-increasing change. Although Moore’s law of technology (which basically codified a rate of technological advances that rendered new discoveries obsolete in 1.5 to 2 years) continues—what number iPhone or Android are you carrying now?—it still takes humans about 15 years to move from the “early adopter” stage to full integration of new products and services.

We can’t keep up the pace, blindly moving forward and struggling to hold on to the tail of the tiger. Nor should we want to. We need time to think, to process, to determine if the tail we have wrapped our white-knuckled fingers around indeed belongs to the right tiger for us.

I don’t know why we have to have an event like 9/11 or a worldwide pandemic to bring us to a screeching halt. But here we are, and in many ways, I’m thankful. The coronavirus, like Friedman’s colleague late to the meeting, has forced us to stop. We can use it to panic, to demonstrate our inherent selfishness like those who early on hoarded toilet tissue and now some, with even guns in hand, who suggest that they are the centers of our universe—and that our First Amendment rights include the right to go to Target, their favorite pawn shop or tavern, or in-person church service, no matter whose inalienable right to life is violated in the process.

Or we can take a breath, assess our surroundings, and reflect. In the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” I’m convinced it was a double entendre. I’m sure he probably meant us to pray for guidance in securing our basic needs for food and water, but I don’t think he was just talking about “Nature’s Own” or “Sara Lee” or the goods from the bakery downtown. After all, he’s the one who, according to the story of his time in the desert, also said, “Man does not live by bread alone.”

We have a chance here to reevaluate what we’ve been focusing our time and energies on, to reconnect on a personal level with those we love and even with those we used to just pass in the hall at work with—via amazing technologies like Zoom and its peers that were little more than ideas less than 15 years ago. And an opportunity to revisit the tigers whose tails we’ve grabbed.

Despite the fact that we were brought to this place kicking and screaming, together, we can be the change we desperately need.

Proud to Have Marched in D.C.

24 Jan

I was—for me, as many can attest to—relatively silent about my general feelings during the run-up to the recent presidential inauguration. I started several times to blog but changed my mind, struggling to put into words the roiling of my emotions, which have ranged from peaceful observation to mourning to anger to an almost daily consideration of what I would accept in silence and what I would speak out against.

For most of my adult life, I have had no problem discerning what I saw as my responsibilities as a Christian and those as an American citizen. Fortunately, they have not often come into conflict with each other, but the course of recent events have presented many opportunities to do battle in my head over what I consider to be “right” actions and what I consider not to be. Because I am Christian first, and will always be no matter where in the world I pitch my temporary tent, the first question I ask is how, if at all, I see the thoughts and actions of Jesus applying to whatever is happening around me, and then I try to think about things the way he would and act in that way. So, when the march came up, I asked Jesus what he would do. How would it look through his eyes? What would he be looking at? And what, if anything, would he do, based on that vision?

Let me hasten to say that, in asking the question, I am not inviting you to chime in with your version of what Jesus would do because what you think Jesus wants me to do is not even remotely relevant. Nor is what Franklin Graham or Pat Roberson or Mike Huckabee or the Bishop of Western North Carolina, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope says. I can read and think and talk for myself—I’ve never studied from other people’s notes and it has turned out well for me. If Jesus had any message to the fellow 1st-century members of his tribe, it was that they didn’t have to go to the temple and follow what the priests said about buying doves and lambs to find out from the priests what God said or wanted them to do. (As an aside, that’s why Caiaphas and his lieutenants conspired to have Jesus killed by the Romans and told lies about him, e.g., that he was engaged in a jihad against the Romans.)

For me, to “believe in Jesus” as yet another bottleneck to reach God flies in the face of that message. For me, “I am the way, the truth, the life,” Aramaic idiom that it is, means that emulating the life that he lived, assuming the mindset through which he viewed himself and those around him, and treating myself and others as he treated himself and those around him would bring me peace and set me free. Not from the experience of pain, but from ever thinking God wouldn’t love me if I didn’t follow a bunch of cockamamie rules made up by someone else.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the fact that I marched in the Women’s March on Washington this past Saturday? Well, when asked how to tell a false prophet from a true one, Jesus said to observe the fruit of his labor. And I have.

For starters, the Jesus I’ve read about and talked to and tried for most of my life to think and act like never once “grabbed a pussy” whose owner hadn’t consented for it to be grabbed. He was poor, apparently by choice, as we assume his earthly father Joseph had involved him in carpentry but he’d chosen not to stay in the family business and stiff the people who helped him build it. (He also said something about rich guys having a really hard time entering the kingdom of heaven, too, so I suspect he was avoiding the temptation of wealth.) He gave up being a homeowner in Nazareth, rode in other people’s boats, and developed a nasty habit of eating with people who might easily today wear rings in their noses and dye their hair blue or whatever styles you or I might think despicable. And, God forbid, he even ran around with people who took tax money and gave it to the government or other people and sometimes even kept it for themselves (think Matthew and Zaccheus).

He dared to intercede to keep a single pregnant woman (How exactly do you think they caught her in adultery? I doubt they blasted into another man’s compound and dragged her out of bed) from being stoned to death (the baby would have been killed too) and he dared to suggest that a Samaritan (translate Mexican or Muslim or libtard or alt-right, for our purposes) was the true neighbor in a story — not the priest or the “pure” assistant to the priest (Levite). He mocked none of the disabled he met constantly along the way. And when unjustly arrested because of the lies some of the Pharisees and Sadducees told, he didn’t “hit back harder,” and then justify his behavior with Orwellian “doublespeak.”

So, in the face of that, when I said to Jesus, “What should I do?” he said, “Stand up for love.” I asked him if he’d be there, and he said yes. For the record, he also said he had upcoming engagements in south Georgia because a big storm was coming where he would be needed, with some Syrian refugees in Turkey, in the hospital where a young couple was about to lose a pregnancy, and at a bar in Green Bay where someone was just about to bet all of his family’s rent money on a football game.

If you have a problem with that, you’ll have to take it up with Jesus.

John 21:18-22. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” 20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” 22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? …”

Vally

P.S. I can’t tell you who spoke at the march or what they said. I can’t tell you how many groups supporting god knows what there were. But I can tell you that for a few hours, I stood with the kindest, most polite, most diverse group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience and got a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.

Two Days

31 Oct
Every once in a while, I have a day when the convergence of events leaves me contemplative for several days afterward.
Sometimes the days leave me laughing. Sometimes they leave me reflecting on how far we have yet to go to see either the kingdom of God on earth or the dream of America manifest for all its citizens.
An example of the former happened a few years ago when I, for the first time in some 30 years, attended a Holy Week service at my new Episcopal church. There were two congregations, one referred to as “Anglo” (which included a small contingent of people of color mostly of Jamaican ancestry), one Hispanic, who usually held separate services to overcome the language barrier. On this particular night, however, the rector had decided to combine the two. Our programs included the verses of Scripture and the words to the songs to be sung, alternating in reverse from the actual performance. In other words, if the Scripture was read in English, the words in the program were in Spanish. If a song was sung in Spanish, the words to the song in English were printed in the program.
The beginning of the service quickly illuminated the differences in our congregations. Not having an organ in the Youth Center where the Hispanic services were normally held, a band including guitarists and an electric bass player were positioned to the left, across from the Anglo congregation’s choirmaster, who doubled as the organist. Both played in accompaniment, whether the song was sung in Spanish or English.
Also on this night, there were a number of children presented for baptism from the Hispanic congregation, so there were quite a few large families in attendance with children of a variety of ages. More than once, I found myself reaching under the pew in front of me to rescue a wayward pacifier or other toy. At one point, a cell phone rang out from a couple of pews behind me and a Spanish conversation ensued, despite whatever else was going on up front.
A longstanding traditionalist in terms of church music, the choirmaster, incidentally a gay man, had chosen the English songs as he usually did, to match the Scripture readings. One of his choices was the Negro spiritual hymn, “Go Down, Moses,” which I was, frankly, surprised to find in the Episcopal hymnal.
As a lead-in to the song, the bass player began to play a simple, but familiar, rhythm often employed in country music. I realized suddenly that what he was playing was the underline of the fight song of my high school before our “white” and “black” schools were consolidated post court-ordered desegregation. We’d been the “Rebels,” and the song was “Rebel Rouser,” for those who might know it. For those who don’t, yes, I’m talking about those Rebels.
I glanced to the front at the rector and deacons, all of whom looked a bit like deer in headlights, surrounded by a host of beautiful young Hispanic couples with children in gleaming white dresses, and I lost it right then and there. I laughed until tears ran down my face. A gay white man and a Hispanic bass player were playing a Negro spiritual to the tune of a Confederate-tinged fight song in a church still loosely tied to the English monarchy. I don’t know if anyone else in the place made those connections, but I can say without reservation that I have seldom enjoyed a church service as much before or since.
Fast forward to this past weekend, and you find me in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. My best friend and I, who both played on our high school girls’ basketball teams in the early 1970s, had gone on a whim to visit the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. While there, we spent a half hour dribbling around on a couple of half-courts and trying to play H-O-R-S-E. (Today, I’m reminded of what the days after the first practice were like 45 years ago.)
I found myself thinking about how many of the inductees I had never heard of, how many women had gone before, reaching back to the early 20th century, to lay the groundwork for me to play—remembering too that I played when Title IX had first become the law of the land and it was still thought that we female sorts as a rule were incapable of playing 5-on-5, all running the full court. We had at least progressed to where it was admissable for two of us to run up and down the court, but the others of us had to stay in our respective half-courts.
My friend and I had noticed a food festival of some sort setting up in a large field across from the Sun Sphere, which remains from the World’s Fair held in Knoxville in 1982, and decided to eat lunch there. It turned out to be an international food festival, supporting the local Muslim community, with offerings from all around the Near East, except for those of Israeli extraction, of course. The partakers of the feast ran the gamut of ethnicities, from WASPs like us to people of color, from the obviously well-to-do to some I suspect were homeless.
We went to our room to watch college football and take post-lunch naps before heading out for an early dinner. We walked a few blocks to the Market Street Square and put our names on a waiting list for one of the many restaurants there. We were sitting out on a bench waiting to receive a text that our table was ready when a probably homeless fellow walked by, pointing up to the sky, and said, “The birds are back.”
There above us were literally thousands of black birds, flying in a massive circle. Every once in a while, a small group would break off, fly away from the swarm, and then return, joining in once again. While watching the spectacle, I happened to hear some of the words of three men who stood diagonally across the square from where we sat—a diatribe about how it was God’s will that women remain in the home, cooking for their families and bearing children. I will assume that playing basketball, much less running for office, was out of the question.
I won’t describe these men because it doesn’t matter what sub-groups they’re members of. Besides, you’ve already projected onto them your own imagination, anyway, and proclaimed it as truth, despite the likelihood that you were hundreds of miles away from that square. There are many different iterations of those who would demonstrate the arrogance of speaking for God, from virtually every religious tradition, including your own, whatever it is. The noise is loud today, in every public square.
Our text finally came. We ate quietly, watching with UT fans as their team, playing away in South Carolina, came up short, and walked back to the hotel. It had been quite a day. But this time, I wasn’t laughing. I was wondering, instead, of what those a hundred years from now, will think of us.
We’ve been here before, many times. We can choose to celebrate a diversity of experience that benefits us all and doesn’t require that one group of people dominate another on the basis of wealth or physical characteristic or country of origin or any other differences we had nothing to do with. (I’ve accomplished a lot of things, but the fact that I’m a Southern white female is not among them.)
We can choose to defend those who do not seek to harm us from the delusions of those scared to death, screaming that the system is rigged against them when the truth is, on a level playing field, they can’t measure up unless the system is rigged in their favor. We can choose to laugh at the ironies like white and Hispanic people playing Negro spirituals with an undercurrent of Confederate leanings, and then, sheepish, shake each other’s hands and go about our business, no matter how different our cultures are, only to return when it matters to join together for a spectacular finish, like the birds that flew above me on Saturday. Sounds a lot like the kingdom of God to me. Sounds a lot like the dream of America, too.
The question is will we?

Be Careful What You Chase

15 Mar
Almost 15 years ago now, I published a book of “essays” written from the point of a view of my Siamese cat, Simon. An occasionally arrogant fellow, as those who know Siamese cats will understand, Simon fancied himself a philosopher, and I have to admit that he taught me quite a few things. I was looking through some old files when I ran across this essay. Made me think about the current presidential candidates and the people who seem to be mesmerized by the bright and shiny things about some of them.
I was lying on a patio chair late one afternoon.  It was starting to get dark – M had turned on the lights inside – and I was contemplating dinner when I saw something light up over in a corner of the yard.  It disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
Jumping down from the chair, I crouched low, looking for it again.  I stayed down for a moment, pupils wide, but I didn’t see the light reappear. And then, just as I started for the back door, I saw it again.
Over the next few moments, the scene repeated itself, except that this apparition kept appearing in different parts of the yard.  I would creep in one direction, only to find that the light source had moved again. And then it happened right in front of my face.  In a lightning-fast move, I batted it out of the air and onto the ground.  I touched it with my paw, and squinted at it in the dusk, waiting for it to light up again. It didn’t.
About that time, M opened the door to the yard and stepped out.  I heard her say to someone inside, “Oh, look – there’s a firefly,” and I glanced in the direction she was pointing.  There was another one of these things near the fence. I looked at M and back toward the fence.  Then I looked down at the object at my feet.  I sniffed it and jabbed at it a little.  It still didn’t light up.
Confused and disappointed with my catch, I turned and walked toward M and the door, leaving it where it lay.
Be careful what you chase. Sometimes it turns out to be nothing but a bug.
P.S. from Vally: And remember, some bugs bite. And what happens next isn’t pretty. Take care to look very closely at the person you vote for.
If you’re interested, the original book is available as an ebook. Click here to buy.

One by One

28 Jun

I’ve chimed in here and there on Facebook during the past few days, sparring with others over the Confederate flag in general and in specifics in the state of South Carolina, but, introvert that I am, I had to wait before writing a blog to let the dust and noise settle so I could contemplate what I am truly feeling. The first item of business I had to consider is the enormity of the deaths of nine Christian disciples at the hands of a misguided, and perhaps demented young man, and the response of the people of South Carolina and across the South itself. And then there were not one, but two rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which honestly surprised me because of the cynicism I admit I’ve felt in recent years. And then today, I learned that the Episcopal Church, of which I am a member, elected a new presiding bishop who is African-American—from the Diocese of North Carolina, a one-time Confederate state and my newly adopted home. On the very first ballot, no less.

Years ago, when I was a psychotherapist, our “protocol” was to give a new client a battery of tests—a measure whether anxiety was a long-standing problem or just a function of a recent trauma, the MMPI, occasionally others based on what the client’s presenting complaint was. The results of those “inventories” provided a jumping off point for therapy, and it was easy to form an initial sense of the areas needing exploration. There was never a time when I wasn’t forced to completely reevaluate the ongoing treatment plan in my head on the basis of the disclosure of an experience by the client and his or her perception of the event I couldn’t have anticipated. I learned quickly that every person who walked through our doors was unique, that I could make no generalized statements about any of them on the basis of their employment or clothes or physical characteristics. Symptoms, yes, but not demographic data. For me to assist them in finding a path to healthier functioning in their own individual lives and relationships, in their own individual circumstances, with their own individual bodies and brains required that they trust me to hear their stories from their points of view without judgment. In a word, it required me to respect and honor the boundaries between us, the differences, while seeking the similarities that supercede them—our desires to love and achieve, be special and important to someone, to be loved and appreciated for who we are, irrespective of where we came from or the mistakes we have made.

As a child, what drew me to the stories about Jesus was the idea that God knew every hair on my head. Not the heads of all girls or the heads of straight-A students or the heads of all Americans or the heads of all Southerners or the heads of all Southern Baptists or the heads of children raised by single parents or the heads of financially-challenged families or whatever demographic group of which I was a part or was to become a part of in the future. God knew every hair on MY head. God knew every circumstance, every experience, every good behavior, every bad behavior, and wonder of all wonders, loved me in spite of them all. It didn’t matter what other members of the groups of which I was a part did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, approved of or didn’t approve of. I was considered, comforted, confronted, blessed, all by my little, inconsequential self. What they did, what they thought…was irrelevant.

For me, the next logical step in that burgeoning awareness was knowing that if God knew every hair on my particular head, then he knew every hair on everybody’s else’s head, too, and that he loved them as fiercely and as unconditionally as me, no matter what I thought of them.

The only question, then, was what to do when the boundaries collided. And when that collision happened—and it is inevitable, a hundred times a day—how do we respond?

Jesus lived as the ultimate respecter of boundaries. It didn’t matter that Zaccheus was a tax collector, despite the fact that most of the people in the crowd probably wanted to strangle him and had already dismissed him as a traitor to his people. He called him down from the tree and sat down at his table with him. It didn’t matter that the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery, was someone that he, according to local or cultural laws, was prohibited from speaking to. He stood right there, in front of God and everybody, and told her—in the act of speaking to her—that she too could drink the living water straight from the well, without bowing to any man or religious law. He even looked at the thief hung beside him on a cross and said, in effect, “Hey, I don’t know what you did, but I know who you are, and you’re coming with me.”

In terms of the U.S. Constitution, the boundary questions are the same. If we are to be equally protected and equally privileged under the law, at what point is there a collision that renders us unequal? Who gets to say where the line is? And what do we do to try and ensure, however imperfectly, that no equal citizen is disenfranchised from the expression of that equality? That, and that alone, is the job of the U.S. Supreme Court, of nine equally-endowed and equally imperfect people.

In the end, whether we’re talking about Jesus or the U.S. Constitution, it all comes down to respecting each other’s boundaries. Doing the oh, so difficult work of examining our own motives and acting in a way that accepts the pragmatic reality that there are limits to the expression of our freedom and the limit is the boundary of the “other,” whether we’re talking about the neighbor we are to love as we love ourselves or the First Amendment and all the rest of the amendments, which only attempt to clarify and define where those boundaries are, protecting and preserving the rights of all Americans—irrespective of what one individual or one demographic group or one religious congregation has arrogantly deemed to be the authoritative end all of what God says. I can’t help but believe, if I look at the words and actions of Jesus as a whole, that what he meant by loving each other was based squarely on the concept of respect of each other’s boundaries. As both he and St. Paul would say later—if we love God and each other, the rest of those commandments, all dealing with boundary violations, will take care of themselves.

Because of that perspective, being a Christian and being an American—in the ideal—are not difficult for me to reconcile, to live in parallel, but thankfully, there is still a boundary between the two. We must make no choices, give no favors to one religious opinion over another. I am eternally thankful to have been born an American because of that. I can rest in the assurance that Sharia law or Mormon law or Roman Catholic law or even Episcopal law will not govern me as long as the separation of church and state remains intact. But having that assurance comes with responsibility and personal limits, too. Every Muslim, every Mormon, every Roman Catholic, every other religious adherent—is safe from whatever cockamamie religious law Franklin Graham or Pat Robertson proclaims or the ones I dream up in my head, too.

Even the Affordable Care Act, and its haters, is a battle of boundaries. How do we promote the well-being of those who can’t, for mostly reasons of poverty and depressed income, irrespective of our wretchedly arrogant opinions of their deservedness, pay the premiums of health insurance in 2015 without putting those who are barely making it, but making it, at risk? How do we not favor the members of one group over another, based on the circumstances and the timing of their lives in the midst of a recession from which we have not, despite all the political rhetoric, completely recovered? It ain’t easy, but the personal boundary assaults from both sides of the issues are ugly, and they have no place in our public discourse.

The other happenings of this week raised boundary issues, too—individual ones. There are nine dead individuals, dead because of one of those physical characteristics and not the desires of their hearts, their individual experiences, or their own individual respect for the boundaries of others. Dead because a young man violated their boundaries in a vicious way that cannot be mended, only forgiven and punished. Dead because a young man, right or wrong, perceived that his boundaries and those of his association were in danger of violation, that “their” country was being “taken over.”

There are people who, for whatever reasons that no one but God can discern or judge (though I personally doubt the latter is even an issue—see above), are attracted to people of their own gender, who now have the freedom in America to publicly and legally proclaim their love and commitment to each other, no matter what I or anyone else may find uncomfortable about it. The boundaries of respect, at least under the law of the land, are upheld. We can’t stop another equal citizen from expressing their love as a matter of public record just because we don’t think it’s biblical or natural or fill in the blanks with your own adjective.

There’s a boundary battle between those who maintain that a flag is simply their “heritage,” flown by soldiers defending a “right” that is no right under God or the Constitution by any measure—that of owning other humans and defining their value as less than whole—and those in the group devalued and diminished by the symbolism of the flag, who cannot view it without the visceral and archetypal memory of split families, of murder, of whips, of rape, or being stolen from their lands and chained and sold as recently as 150 years ago. Both crying for the very same thing—respect, the birthright of every child of God.

There have been boundary issues since Cain and Abel. There will be boundary issues long after we’re gone. Jesus said as much. “Our father,” he taught us to pray, “forgive us our trespasses (violations of other’s boundaries) as we forgive those who trespass against us (violate our boundaries).” We are only offended, ranting and raving about our “rights,” when we perceive that a boundary of ours has been violated. It is our duty as Americans, but more importantly as Christians, to commit to examining our own desires and behavior, seeking never to intentionally offend, to be clear on where the boundaries between us really are (translate where our rights end and those of others begin) and to forgive the real—and the ones we only imagine in our heads—offenses against us. It isn’t in any way easy—but it is possible. Jesus showed it over and over, and the families of the Mother Emanuel nine did it in living color.

To solve these boundary disputes requires that, just like Jesus did every time, we meet each other one by one, seeking the similarities between us and respecting the differences as what they can be—the icing on the cake of a rich, diverse, multi-colored life for us all. One gun owner at a time, one gun-control advocate at a time. One person of black, white, Asian ancestry at a time. One “liberal” at a time, one “conservative” at a time. One heterosexual, one LGBT at a time. One Southerner at a time, one non-Southerner at a time. One 1 percenter, one 99 percenter at a time. One welfare recipient, one corporate CEO at a time. One Republican at a time, one Democrat at a time, one Independent at a time, one candidate at a time, one every-hair-on-the-head-loved-by-God-just-like-me person at a time. We will, no doubt, find those we choose not to engage with because of their inability to show respect, but that decision can’t be generalized without squandering potential we cannot recover. Lord knows how much we lost long before the nine people at Mother Emanuel.

God bless the United States of America, our President and members of the Executive Branch, our Congressional representatives and senators, our state governors and representatives and senators, and one other nine of significance this week—the U.S. Supreme Court.

But most of all, God bless us every one, and help us to do the same. One by one.

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Freedom Not to Speak

9 Jan

I haven’t said anything until now about the Parisian tragedy, the massacre of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. I continue to stand amazed at the level of inhumanity displayed by groups such as ISIL and al Qaida, who is likely to have been responsible for the deaths of the satirists, and I mourn for both their families and friends, as I do for those of any victims of senseless violence. I haven’t said anything because there is nothing for me to add to the conversation about that.

What disturbs me, though, is the automatic jump to invoke freedom of speech in the discussion. I don’t know the nuances of the French definition of “free speech,” or what laws protect whom, but I do know about our version. And I know the legal definitions of libel and slander, two words that I doubt members of our Congress can spell, much less define.

I’m pretty sure too that the people I “hear” screaming about freedom of speech every time there’s a backlash for something said or written that offends someone else have never bothered to read the First Amendment. In case I’m right, I present it herewith.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

If you were paying attention in English class, you would know that an alternative format for the text of the First Amendment would be as follows:

Congress shall make no law…

  1. respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
  2. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
  3. [abridging] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law…Congress shall make no law…Congress shall make no law…

Chicken-sandwich maker Dan Cathy’s freedom of speech was in no way abridged when he answered a question about anti-gay groups he’d donated money to. No law made by Congress (which is the only test) threatened to imprison him on the basis of giving the interview and answering the question.

Rush Limbaugh’s freedom of speech wasn’t abridged when he called a young woman a slut on national radio and thereafter lost a host of sponsors for his radio show. No law made by Congress (which is the only test) threatened to imprison him for saying what he said, nor did one influence corporate America.

So when I hear the justifiable outrage for the murders of these French men, the argument that they were martyred because of their exercising freedom of speech falls flat. They were murdered because murderers wanted to cause French Muslims and non-Muslims to rise up against each other, hoping to drag peace-loving Muslims down to the gutter with them. It had nothing to do with cartoons and nothing to do with freedom of speech. It’s worth saying that any murdered person has had his freedom of speech abridged.

Yes, the First Amendment protects our right to say whatever we like, but it doesn’t protect us from the judgment of others for having said it. The First Amendment protects our right to prove ourselves to be verbal assholes without any threat of being arrested for being assholes, but it doesn’t protect us from the social consequences of being assholes. The First Amendment protects my right to speak here, to put whatever I think on Facebook or LinkedIn or some other social media site without worrying about someone from the government knocking on my door to take me away. But it doesn’t protect me from being “unfriended” or from the the impact of what I say if I should ever explicitly set out to offend someone.

I happen to love most political cartoonists—Mike Luckovich of the AJC has been a favorite of mine for years, and still is. Like what I consider a good preacher on Sunday is hired to do, I never know from cartoon to cartoon if he will have championed my opinion or surreptitiously slid in the knife, piercing my ignorant defenses, in the midst of my laughter. I’ve winced more than a few times, but it was wincing that made me think through my position on something, not to find a gun and hunt Mike down or maliciously attack his reputation with the intent of his losing his job, which is, by the way, one of the “tests” of whether when you publish something incendiary about another, it qualifies as libel or slander.

I’ve looked at some of what the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo have published. In my experience, Mike Luckovich wouldn’t stoop to it. The point is that Charlie Hebdo wasn’t blocked from publishing their cartoons and there was no threat of jailing or even a civil suit. They were a struggling satirical magazine whose circulation was shrinking, and having seen some of their stuff, I can understand. The massacre in Paris wasn’t about their exercise of freedom of speech or even satire. It was about raging jihadists for whom any life is dispensable, including their own, in service of a cause. They were simply the focal point for insanity. This isn’t about Charlie Hebdo any more than the World Trade Center attack was about the cuisine of the restaurant at the top. This is about al Qaida and terrorism.

But, lest we walk around with our noses in the air, transforming ourselves into adolescent blobs incapable of self-examination, we should remember that there was once a time in America when it was widely understood that it was evidence of ignorance, of incivility, of low upbringing to call another person’s daughter a slut or to call a person of a different racial or ethnic background a “whop” or a “spic” or that infamous “N” word in public, much less broadcast it to the heavens. There was a time when, at least by my way of thinking, it was understood by people still in touch with the inherent goodness of humans that a relationship with Jesus is a private affair, and that it is nobody else’s business to define or oversee, much less address in political cartoons. There was a time when, all other things aside, true freedom-loving patriots who understood the definition of equality resisted the temptation to mock another citizen for any reason, much less the religious figurehead of a tradition other than their own. It was a matter of respect, of decency, of honesty, not driven by political correctness or bravado or to boost newspaper circulation. It was the character of the speaker that came into question, not the subject of the rant.

I am not naive enough to think that America has ever been perfect, nor do I think we were ever a shining city on a hill, and I think we should take care with that moniker. I have a sneaking feeling that what Jesus meant when he talked about salt and light had nothing to do with self-described and unexamined superiority. American bravado these days is sadly more like the story of the emperor with no clothes. But that’s a topic for a different day.

As much as I am truly saddened by the deaths of those who went to work on Wednesday in Paris to never go home again, and as much as I continue to be struck dumb at the brutality of it all, I can’t help but wonder if Charlie Hebdo achieved what they set out to. Unlike Bill Maher, who apparently thinks freedom of speech is about the right to insult anyone and anything, I can’t help but wonder what possible good, what possible result the cartoonists expected to come of their cartoons, which Muhammed aside, had no obvious point except to insult.

Again, I make no excuse for what happened. I’m in no way saying that the cartoonists deserved what they got, anymore than on the basis of the very limited information I have, that Michael Brown deserved to be shot six times for stealing cigarillos and threatening a store owner. But the two things are unrelated. Michael Brown wasn’t shot over cigarillos. And Charlie Hebdo wasn’t shot because their publication was up for an award.

If I’m honest, I frankly don’t see a lot of difference between cartoons of the prophet Muhammed depicted in sexual orgy and the act of painting a swastika on a synagogue on Yom Kippur or burning a cross in the literal or figurative yards of black people or homosexuals. And yet those things still happen, even today, and we pretend that all is well with our souls.

Charlie Hebdo’s folks are murder victims, some of whose lives were snuffed out way too early. They were a conveniently visible focal point for an attack on the French by people who’ve lost touch with their own humanity, but they aren’t heroes anymore than Rush Limbaugh or Dan Cathy or Bill Maher.

Just because we’re free to speak doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think before we do. And perhaps, in this moment, we should consider that, having examined the profanity of what we might think in a moment of anger or fear, we are also free to choose to say nothing at all.

Vally

Mark 7:15

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