Seditious Faith

#13. Messengers and Messages

It's getting close to Christmas…and, come to think of it, I need to start my shopping. But that's another matter. One thing that always comes to mind this time of year is trouble we get with priorities. We like to think that we can "soften" a bit during the holidays, be kinder, more accepting, more generous, whatever. Most of us have some kind of internal list of faults we feel we "ought" to be working on, and Christmas (or New Year's) is when we focus on them. And…by Easter time we're mostly way beyond that. The feeling just doesn't last. Too bad, but there are lots of reasons, too. More on that later.

But getting back to the whole Christmas story thing, the time leading up to December 25^th is peppered—in churches, anyway—with stories about John the Baptist. Theoretically a relative of Jesus, but certainly a real person and apparently quite a character. The thing is, baptizing wasn't his primary motivation in life. A better title would have been "John the Messenger" or something like that. He talked about something—or more exactly, some one—who was to follow him for whom all this preparation was being made. John's thing was that everyone shouldn't just wait for this person, they needed to prepare for his coming. What this means—or maybe, what it probably should mean—to us is that Jesus wasn't another messenger, but in some way the message itself. Not an answer: that would leave all of us with nothing left to do. No, messengers are transitory, messages often are not. And if the message is powerful enough or shocking enough or so counter-intuitive that you'd never accept it otherwise…well, then you need a whole lot of up-front prep work. For Christianity, that's what the whole Christmas season is supposed to be about. But by the end of December we figure that we've all celebrated the guy's birthday and it's time to get back to our lives the way we've scheduled them.

Funny thing about John the Baptist in relationship to Jesus. It goes along with the difference between the messenger and the message. Over the course of time I think that most folks feel that someone like Jesus—or what we project onto Jesus and how we view him and his life—is more important than the life of John the Baptist. We'd be more apt to tell kids to emulate Jesus than John, but since we never seem to get over the need to sufficiently prepare for the messages we're supposed to be getting during the holidays…well, maybe we need more "John the Baptists" than anything else. The downside of that is that these guys are always getting killed because the implications of their messages are rejected by so many people in visceral and often violent ways.

Another good "John the Baptist Analogue" is perhaps more well-known: Mohandas ("Mahatma") K. Gandhi. Like John, he came from a background that could have assured him a relatively comfortable life of some privilege and power (John could have been a Temple priest, Gandhi a lawyer or judge). Both turned their backs on "mainstream" aspirations to live lives of relative poverty and to espouse the need for change. Both were also ultimately killed for precisely these things. Still, today, we hope for change—real, BIG change—but we can't easily accept it if it comes with the price of our own change first. We tend to like to focus on the "messages" these people foretell—peace, love, equality, etc—without remembering that these messengers are pointing out that nothing will ever happen if WE don't take responsibility for our own changes first, last, and always. We tend to give extensive lip-service to figures like John the Baptist or Gandhi—what they represented, what they called for was change we desperately want and need. We just need more of them…and to remember the difficulty of that mission, to tell, so the saying goes, "Free people that they are, in fact, enslaved."

More later

#12. Away too long...

Well, one thing leads to another. My wife's ongoing battle with cancer and chemotherapy, too much work--WAY too much of that--all the associated drama of a highly-charged work environment that's heavy on the responsibility, and a host o other things. Never stopped "blogging in my mind," but this is where I'm supposed to be doing it. So...let's get started again.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the current political situation. It's on the minds of many, naturally, and the comics have been handed a lot of free material that they've been putting to good use. But there's a different side to all of this that bears examination. I began it before. Thinking about the whole difference between a conservative view of life and a liberal view of life has come back into focus. It's not as simple as "us versus them." Liberals know and live alongside conservatives, and vice versa. Yes, I consider myself a liberal, but I have lived with all kinds--so have most of you. A coworker of mine came to mind this week as a particular case. He's a few years older than I am and had worked for or company over 20 years (I'm a relative newcomer). He retired a couple of years ago to a homestead in the woods in Oregon where he can, in his words, "Get away from all the damn liberals." His views were not merely strident, they were a daily exercise in "over-the-topedness." But he's really no different from most of the people I grew up with in small towns in the Midwest. He--and they--see liberal ideas as threatening and poisonous. I'm not sure how and where I changed--it was long before I got to the West Coast--but I certainly did. Nonetheless I know these people and sort of understand them, I guess. So let me offer a new thought or two.

Before (down below in this series) I noted the difference between conservatives and liberals as: "A conservative is one who does not trust those who are different than they are, and a liberal is one who does not trust those who are just like they are." And it's still an oversimplification. Thinking about it more, let me re-write this. Conservatives live their lives in a survivalist mode. They see the world around them full of dangers to that survival, and they even see each other as competitors for resources, power, wealth, etc that they feel they need for that survival. In order for them to survive as a group they need to feel that they share views and values in common--thus they are consummate organizers and joiners. Liberals, on the other hand, seldom seem to be capable of that level of organization. No, conservatives are constantly in a battle for survival, even if it means ultimate wars that leave a great deal of destruction. It's a true "last person standing" mentality. It's the reason that SUVs are powered by "our" oil that "other nations" just happen to be living above, as one bumper-sticker example.

Liberals, on the other hand, and at the other extreme (this is all about viewing these groups in their respective extremes) are not survivalists in the same way. For liberals survival is lessened and possibly not even worthwhile if we cannot grow beyond that need for basic, brutal survival. That has driven (so far failed) attempts at widespread health care and education, along with help for those at the fringes of society--those whose bootstraps fell off long ago and who are therefore unable to reach them and pull themselves up like many others. In this group such things as universal conflict and war are not useful. Where liberals are challenged most is at the point that personal survival becomes paramount. History has shown that young liberals often acquire conservative traits when they take on the new responsibilities of family and career. But adulthood is not a guarantee that liberals are youthful dreamers and that conservatives are the ones with all the wisdom. On the contrary, wisdom is not all about suspicion and power; it is quite the opposite. We've just never gotten used to the idea that we're somehow called to learn "new things" in this life as we age. "New ideas" is the whole topic of this blog, at any rate.

So let me leave it here for now. I'll try to be more regular in my blogging habits, and I always invite observations.

#11. Sin and Subjugation

New visitors--please check out all of the entries. The themes here develop over the span of the blog...I hope, anyway.

Sorry it's taken a while to get back to this. Travel for my "day job" took up a lot of time, then at the conclusion of one trip my wife found out she has breast cancer. Dealing with the initial stages of that has consumed much of our lives for many weeks. Things are more hopeful and stable now, and I feel overdue in writing. So here goes. This entry has been floating around inside my head for a while now.

It was bound to happen, sooner or later. A coworker has been visiting me to talk, off and on, about his marriage for years. Things have been unravelling for a long time for him and his wife. Sometimes slowly, sometimes rather quickly. In spite of all the talking about the dynamics of marriage, divorce, and so on one topic came up that I've been waiting for in his case. He wanted to talk to me about the whole notion of sinfulness as it applies to divorce, or at least to the time in a relationship when love seems to end. For him--and for countless others--the marriage vows aren't mere words, and the promises made are meant to be spiritually binding. Life, though, throws us curves that we can't see when we make these vows, and sometimes things truly do "melt down" irreparably. I've also lived through it. I hated it and hope to never ever repeat it, but also admit to myself that it was the "right" decision, even with all the pain attached.

But this entry isn't about that fellow's marriage or divorce in general. I want to talk a bit about sin. It has a lot of cultural, spiritual, and moral baggage attached to it, and most people feel that they "know it when they see it" or at least can talk about it with some personal authority. It's a really problematic topic, however. And I guess I should add right here that "problematic" is an understatement in most cases. In keeping with the general theme of this blog, I'm going to try to give it a whole different interpretation than you're used to. I believe that what I'm going to offer is probably more useful for us, no matter what we beleive, spiritually or morally or in any other way.

In the terms most people talk about sin, it seems to be the breaking of certain "special" rules for which the penalties go far beyond fines and jails and prisons. There are a lot of influential people who readily assign the penalties to the afterlife--where, they believe, we all sit awaiting judgment for our sins and that, it is possible, the penalty can be eternal damnation or karmic pay-backs in reincarnation or something like that. And although the "judgment" for these sins is supposed to come from God or whatever supreme authority reigns in our afterlife, these people are only too willing and ready to proclaim eternal judgments here on earth as well. The "sins" of breaking God's "rules," it seems, can be judged in the here-and-now, long before we get to the eternal part of the journey.

In a very straightforward way, we're pretty much trained to accept this rather dysfunctional judgment. In our secular lives we have a lot of rules and laws that we obey and live by, and for our infractions we understand and more or less accept the punishments delivered. We are used to rules and laws, and we have--for milennia--expected there to be a set of cosmic ones as well. The Hebrew Torah is a good example: over 600 laws that all must be observed and followed in order to stay of God's "good side." Most cultures, though, have such sets of holy laws--ones that are connected with punishments that come from God or gods or whatever. As part of that landscape of holy laws we often also include punishments that God or the gods deliver here on earth. Many cultures believe--even today--that illness, poverty, childlessness, and plain old back luck are based on an individual's sinfulness in life. Some cultures also believe that the problems of the current generation can be traced back to the sinfulness of previous generations. When God (or one of the gods) gets angry, there's no telling how long the retribution will last!

All of this gives the judgment of sin a powerful place in our lives. After all, it goes beyond--at least it seems to go beyond--our crimes and misdemeanors. If we steal from another we might wind up being punished not only here in this life, but according to some, also in the next. And since the people who keep the "holy rule books" up to date and who pass eternal judgment can easily do so based on their own perceptions of scriptures or teachings, they don't have to pass a bar exam or face legal ethics boards for what they do. They can label a person or a group of people as sinful or infidels or ungodly or whatever and culturally we put up with it, always a little bit nervous that they might, after all, be right. Hurricane Katrina was a punishment visited upon the people of New Orleans for their sinfulness, according to some religious leaders. And there are followers who are afraid to challenge such notions.

Sin is a powerful tool in the hands of those who need to subjugate others, and some claim the ability (or so-called "duty") to define sins and declare their severity and punishments. Those knowing of these judgments are called--as the "unsinful" or "true followers"--to join in the judgment and to treat sinners differently and often cruelly. Eternal judgment and punishment can start right here. And the "righteous" always have a score card that proscribes the necessary actions to alleviate the sins' probable punishments. On my dresser I have an "Indugence" issued by the Roman Church a few years ago from a monastery. In fine print along the lower edge it offers the reassurance that praying with this item deducts 100 days from Purgatory each time the prayers are repeated.

This also brings to mind a story I heard some years ago. It was conveyed as a true incident that happened to a young couple who had embarked on a mission of evangelism to a tribe in a more-or-less remote part of the world. In their work, they translated the Christian Bible (or at least parts of it) into the local dialect and lived and worked with these tribal people, gaining their respect and teaching them about God, Jesus, and salvation. At some point they offered the tribespeople baptism as a way of guaranteeing their eternal salvation and saving them from the fires of hell. The elders of the tribe held council and discussed the matter. Their answer, after some deliberation, was "No." The missionaries were, naturally, stunned. They had done all they could to impress on these people the importance of salvation and the punishment for continuing in their pagan (and thus sinful) ways. The elders explained that, after all, they would be the first generation of their tribe to be baptized, and thus all previous generations would spend eternity in the torment of hell. They, however, felt such a bond to their kinsfolk that they would rather spend eternity with their tribespeople in hell than listen to their anguish from heaven. In the final analysis, the promise of salvation that the missionaries offered was only powerful if it carried price for refusal.

And so thus I come to a new way to understand sin. First of all, I believe that we are here to learn how to love--that is, to know how to give and share our own power without the need for reciprocation. If you want to boil it down to some kind of Christian precept, then it's worth noting that it is the rule that formed everything we know about Jesus, in one way or another. The only commandments he quotes--and he quotes them as being all you need to know--are to love God, ourselves, and each other with completely all that we have. But a command to do anything with all of one's heart, mind, soul, etc means that we, as less-than-perfect, must always have another chance. It is, after all, something that we aren't born knowing how to do instinctively and must therefore learn it by trying, by making mistakes, and by succeeding as often as we can. Renewal and what some might call "forgiveness" are built in, automatically. Judgment--especially by experts outside of our own experiences--is meaningless. We have written and enacted enough secular laws to cover almost anything a human can do in our societies. If we are called to become loving beings, laws will not work. Fear of punishment will never succeed. Hell is a myth. I have felt for many years that we are as close to hell in this life as we will ever be.

In wrapping this entry up, I'd offer that sin is what we experience when we haven't managed to live in love (and justice--see previous entries) and need to back up and try again. And it didn't come from Adam or Eve or your great-great-grandparents. It is a process of learning that we all share, and there is no judgment attached to it that can send us anywhere in the hereafter that we don't want to go. But sin, as a tool for those seeking power, can become a weapon that world entirely against all of this. Judgment, in its most common form, is perhaps the greatest sin of all, since it closes the doors to our ability to grow in love and justice.

My coworker and I discussed a lot of this material, along with a lot of other stuff about life's struggles and how to make the best choices for everyone concerned. I'm just waiting to see what happens next.

#10…When love is not enough…

As always, if this is your first visit to this site, please read at least some of the earlier entries. That should help this one make more sense. This entry follows right on the heels of #9, in more way than one, and is a transitional piece.

It's true. Sometimes love simply isn't enough, or the right answer at the moment for a given situation, or perhaps it's been tried with less-than-desirable (and sometimes even disastrous) results. After all, love is all about giving away one's power, and sometimes that's not what is needed. Love has the greatest potential to allow things to begin, to help bring life into situations, to push things in life into starting when that's needed. On the other hand, there are times when "things" just have to stop…for a variety of reasons. Abuse. Oppression. Hatred taking over from every good intention we might otherwise have. Vengeance. The list is a long one. In such cases another basic idea of life (just like love is one of them) is called for. As with love, it's also one that is mostly misunderstood in our daily meanderings through existence and social interactions. It is justice. And just as the giving away of one's own power can also give life to a situation, a possibility, or a relationship, justice is what makes things—the things that go against our desires to love—stop.

Justice is often wrongly understood as fairness. Sometimes it is what we assume one gets out of laws and all the legal wranglings and entanglements that society seems to depend upon. Justice is, however, simply what makes the "bad things stop." And if that sounds like an answer that is too simple to fairly describe justice, well, it is…and it isn't. One of the starkest examples I remember about trying to explain "justice versus fairness" happened to me while I was a chaplain in the youth ranches in our county. A lot of gang members wind up in these institutions, and I saw them in groups for what was loosely called "Bible Study." We might talk about the Bible, but we were really there to talk about—and listen to them talk about—their lives. In this instance the oldest boys were around 15 years old. There had recently been a shooting at a fast food establishment and one member of their gang had been the target. I was talking to a group largely made up of that gang—and they wanted revenge and plenty of it. As we talked they spoke of the need for fairness and justice and how this was needed to make things right again. They weren't too naïve, either. They knew that the rival gang would seek their own retaliation if they sought revenge, and they were ready for it. There was simply no middle ground.

Here's where I introduced the basic notion that justice isn't about revenge; it's about making things stop. For them, they could only perpetuate things by answering violence with more violence, and they were aware of the consequences. The fact was they just could not see any other way of even looking at this issue. Deciding to end the violence by refusing to answer it with more violence just never occurred to them. I'll wager that, even though its novelty was talked about, they also never adopted it. I got to know these kids pretty well, and I can't delude myself that they put down their guns and knives and turned their lives around just because of what I said. But I did say it, and watching that scene unfold that night helped me to understand it all much better. Like the rest of us, I have also felt anger and the desire for vengeance or vindication or whatever you want to call it. In all the years my family was terrorized in the family courts in our county we lived with this daily. But in the end, all we could do was to take matters into our own hands…and make things stop. Not by force, but by ending the dialogue that abuse has with revenge. Easy? Never. Like love, it is completely counterintuitive in our daily lives. Like love, it involves power, but in a different way. For love, power is willingly given away. For justice, it is willingly not given away…at least not directly. In those instances that seem to be demanding an angry, oppressive, or violent response, giving power to another can actually be an act that perpetuates all of the bad things that are happening. Injecting our own power into a situation that is waiting for it and that is about to explode only hastens the explosion. Withholding it—withholding the response—changes things. Some adversaries view such acts of withholding as weakness, hoping instead to be able to grab whatever power we might bring to bear our of anger or fear and take it from us and use it against us.

There's another important distinction that I need to make right away. Withholding power isn't the same as guarding it or accumulating it. It is merely the conscious decision when and how to share it. In that way it is part of love: the power can and will be offered as an act of love, but not if (or when) it is part of a battle and done out of fear or anger.

There's an old observation of mine that I've used to help me understand things and I'll pass it along here. Fear, arrogance, and anger are all then same thing, just different "sides" or manifestations of it. It's useful to consider that when one has fear it is because of the potential for loss, and that loss is often associated with self-image or something we hold dear. If someone is truly acting out of arrogance, the loss is easy to see—arrogant people often act as they do out of fear of the discovery and exploitation of weakness. We're all that way to some small or large degree, and at the same time we're also fearful in roughly the same degrees. Anger is the manifestation of the power used to guard our weaknesses and to lessen our fears. Realizing that the question, "Why are you angry?" can also be translated as "Why are you afraid?" is useful for many of us.

In my last entry I spoke about the responsibility we all have to follow a path that seems counterintuitive in life: one that sometimes—and even often—willingly gives away power in love. In that piece called the "Sermon on the Mount" the teaching continues with the well-known line about turning the other cheek when struck. Most of us grow up seeing that as the nonviolent, good way to live, but I invite you to now look upon it as something far more meaningful. It is a response that—even if we are hurt—can make things stop much more effectively than drawing one's sword and inviting combat. It is another thing that must be understood in life; justice is our responsibility in this world, too. The price of love is also the price of justice.

I got a question from a reader about followers and the good and bad people who are followed by them. Perhaps it's fitting to note here that, as part of justice as a responsibility it is not the bad nature of a despot that is nearly as dangerous as the desire of followers to share in the power that a leader offers and to support the despotism. Simplistically, Hitler would have not achieved fame without willing followers, even if those followers though they had no choice. It is always vital to examine our own motives in the choices we make—and the people and causes we follow—in life.

More very soon…

#9...The Price...

As I've noted before: if you're new to this site, I'd heartily advise you to read all of the entries that lead up to this one. They build on one another. This might, in the long run, make the most sense. But in any event, I invite you to plunge in. Here's today's offering.

17 February 2008. This happens from time to time. Someone stops me to "have a chat" on one topic or another, and somehow we get around to some of the things I've been writing about (and will later expand on) here. Pretty uniformly the responses have to do with how difficult it all seems to be. It seems that just about everything we're actually called to do in life (from education to relationships to family, to jobs...etc) that has meaning is also difficult, at least in one way or another. You might conclude that "the easy stuff doesn't mean as much as the hard stuff." That might, in some sense, actually be true. Especially if we assume that one fundamental reason that we're here is to learn things and leave the world better than we found it. "Easy" hasn't gotten us very far, and really has never turned out to offer the "easy" paths in life anyway. It's like there's a built-in price for the learning and making things better. I guess that, in some cosmic way, our more or less "natural" choices (some like to call them that) don't involve what we might need to learn from them and generally  they also leave the world worse off. However, the "better paths" seem somehow also counterintuitive and more difficult right from the start. They also carry obvious prices for choosing them.

One of my favorite examples is the more recent saying that "Freedom isn't free." You know, bumper stickers and license plate frames. It's said by folks who rely upon might and power and a whole good-versus-evil, us-versus-them way of approaching things. That phrase is used to support military solutions to everything in this world, and it virtually always takes examples from previous wars.

But let me offer it differently. "Freedom definitely IS free. It is war and conflict that are expensive." In simple truth, you can never---NEVER--build peace out of war or the aftermath of war. We tend to call peace the time that follows the bloody parts of a war, but that time is merely what takes place in between wars. Power is, during that respite, redistributed, old leaders are liquidated, new leaders rise up with new plans for conquest. Peace, on the other hand, can only be built out of the material that is not about war or conflict but that has only to do with peace. Similarly, freedom is an outgrowth of peace, and thus it is itself built out of freedom's material--the stuff that is, by definition, free. Unfortunately, we tend to actually listen to those who lump war and peace and freedom all within the same package. There are those who would say that it is human nature to wage war in order to achieve what we want and need and that the victors actually build peace out of war. That's merely the PR from those who use power to get what they want and to oppress whom they want. But remember that it is also not entirely out of line with human nature to negotiate and show compassion, either. And if you look back at even a few of the most recent conflicts in our history not one of them was entirely "inevitable;" there was always a point well before the onset of hostilities when the balance could have swung in the opposite direction. World War II was a direct outgrowth of the vengeance wrung out on the German people after World War I, as one example.

One of the other sorry trends in our history is how power is sought, accumulated, and ferociously guarded by "leaders" who view war, conflict, and suffering as natural and even desirable as a tool for growth and, sadly, "stability." In other words, we tend to follow those who "seem" best able to lead, and we have over and over again chosen warriors over statespeople. No president could ever hope to get elected in the United States by claiming compassion and negotiation over hard-line "shock and awe" politics with our adversaries, grown out of a sense of fear that must first be instilled in the nation. We thus take on the bad guys down in the gutter--at their own natural level--and become just like them, no matter what our ultimate self-image might be.

This brings me to an interesting piece that was written about the "Price" of peace, love, compassion, and all that kind of stuff. It was written a long time ago, and it's been misquoted so often as to render it useless in many ways. You know--"sounds nice but is never going to fly in our modern world." That kind of useless. A lot of people have heard bits and pieces of it, maybe can even quote parts from memory. But understanding it--really understanding it--takes it out of the realm of a greeting card quotation and into the cold reality of our own lives in a world beset by needless and destructive conflict. It comes out of the Christian biblical New Testament, and in that literature it appears in various forms but has the same general outline. I'll use what is perhaps the most recognizable. If you can lay your hands on a good, reasonably modern translation (the NRSV is probably superior to the others), turn to Matthew, chapter 5. It's usually called the "Sermon on the Mount (or Plain)" or "The Beatitudes."

Up to this point Jesus had been going around doing all sorts of good things for the people, and because of that the crowds following him kept increasing. Not so much because he was Jesus, but because, after all, in that place and time life was painful, brutal, short, and often not very happy. Jesus had offered a little bit of something hopeful and good in the midst of their lives, and they simply wanted more. Now that might sound a bit crass, but that's also a bit of human nature and, after all, how the mega-churches operate today. Jesus, on the other hand, often got tired of the crowds that never got "the message" but who always wanted "the power" and he'd go off by himself to be alone and recharge his batteries. In this long scene, however, the crowds have caught up with Jesus. He's just gathered his disciples--the twelve--and it's time to teach them something about what lies ahead for them. He sizes up the crowd and turns to the disciples to begin, "Blessed are the poor in spirit..." and it continues from there. Like I said, it all sounds so lovely but it also has real meaning. A better translation that also circumvents the sound bite aspect of this might go something like this: "I know you think that you don't have what it takes to help these people, that you're poor in spirit or something like that. I know that you're going to mourn over all that you've left behind--family, friends, livelihood and that you see yourselves only as peasants, powerless and by nature meek before those in authority. I also know that you'll be frustrated by the injustice and unrighteousness you'll encounter at every turn. And you'll also have to be merciful in spite of your anger and frustration, to try to drive all that anger and frustration out of your minds, and thus to seek peace instead of conflict. For that you will be persecuted and reviled and probably end up badly. Congratulations. You've just made the right choice...I say that you are blessed for it. Not here--this world doesn't yet appreciate it, but sooner or later these people will understand it if you persevere. And this is absolutely essential to all life. It is like salt--nothing replaces [or at least then, nothing could replace] it. It is also like the persistent and undeniable light that shows the path in even the darkest and most backward places."

Jesus had just advised his followers of the job description for anyone who decides to try to change to world for the better. It all turned out to be accurate. I'm surprised they still followed him. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the initial number was much larger and only twelve stayed on. But what was true way back then is no less true today. The price, for now, is about the same as it always was. The answer, though, has also never changed. For although each one of us must do something personal and individual to bring about change, all we will do still falls into the category of challenging the power base of the status quo. All of that also attracts oppression and abuse. But in the end, no matter how much or how little is done, what finally becomes change in this world depends on the paths we've taken. Criminy, that sounds preachy, but it's still true. And like my friend learned as we talked, no one ever said that it would be easy.

More later...

#8…Love, power, change….and all that

Again, if you are new to this site I advise you to go back to the beginning…way on down this page. That should help make this entry more meaningful. Otherwise, here's the latest installment.

Back down the page I wrote a bit about change as something that takes place beyond our interference. By that, just to reiterate, I mean that we like to think that we're changing something because of our actions, but really change is what you find once you quit acting. Our actions are a kind of interference in the natural course of events in this world; change is only a result. Global warming is a "change" that is the result of our actions. It may seem a minor point, and perhaps readers might enjoy discussing or arguing about it. Go ahead, but it won't change much, especially here. Also, whether the result is a positive or negative one is first of all not guaranteed by the actions that lead to it, and second the whole positive/negative judgment is somewhat subjective…open to interpretation, and often leads to still other changes or consequences that can never be clearly foreseen.

Also, to recap the last entry, power accumulated and protected is (and must be) oppressive; power willingly shared or given away is the nature of what we call love. Either choice, however, can disrupt the status quo of our lives and world and therefore bring about change. That is, if what we do makes a difference at all in anything at all—good or bad, intentional or by chance—then it always produces changes in the final analysis. Some days we feel like nothing we do will ever make a difference. I've had plenty of those, too. But every day does produce differences that produce change. Our frustration is usually tied to our inability to make the changes we really want. And, along with that, the kinds of changes we want fall into the nature of power and how it is manifested: oppressive or loving. There's no "third way." Conditional love does not exist; it passes as manipulation and is just another way one person gets an advantage—and can therefore oppress—another.

This brings me to a tough lesson about power and love. It is that, in the competition between people, love and oppression can never really compete. Oppression—guarded power—must either "win" or "lose". Power that is shared or given away—again, as a willing act—has no score to keep. The battles between these disparate sides seem unfair and uneven, but that's merely because we tend to look at them as requiring winners and losers. Oppression can take place but it can not actually "win" without the fight over the power at hand. That seems so extremely discordant with our lives…we are not brought up to understand this. We aren't taught this in school, by religion, or in our work lives. Sometimes, if we're lucky and we pay attention, we get glimpses of it in our loving relationships with others. The tough part, though, is that unless the oppressed choose to fight back in order to deny power to their oppressors there is not battle…but the outcome is often unimaginably painful for those who are oppressed. It also seems horribly wasteful and meaningless to allow others to oppress individuals. It seems obvious that a race of people who live and are nourished by the sharing of power would be quickly overpowered and exterminated by powerful neighbors. Indeed, as history teaches us, this does happen.

The questions that comes out of all of this—and there truly are questions that each of us must answer if we are personally responsible for what goes on around us—are "Where then does change begin? Which of my actions will be different, loving, not be directed to increasing my own power over others but rather in sharing my own power with others?" The magnitude of what might ultimately be changed by even our most insignificant actions is clear. It is, simply, everything.

#7...But there's another side.

Now, if you're new to this blog site, I'd advise you to go back, maybe even best to go back all the way to the first entry, in order to make some sense out what I'm going to say here.

Power is something that we've come to learn to live with, something that we manipulate, something we covet, something we ferociously guard. And although most of us can name several different forms that power takes in our lives, we all seem to have a "working understanding" of it and its influence from our childhoods. As I noted in my last entry, we are most accustomed to thinking about and interacting with the kind of power that we try to accumulate and hold on to. Anyone who has tried to get a job, or a promotion, or even just to find some acceptance in this life know what it feels like to have "bargaining power"...and also, for most of us, what it feels like to be power-less. Power, after all, is a relative thing, and those who have it also feel the need to "dress it up," to acquire and show off the trappings that indicate power. Among the powerful it's not uncommon to see lives in which everything is "to excess": the houses, the cars, the clothes, the vacations, the toys...everything. And, likewise, we all know when someone's star is falling. It usually is accompanied by having to give up some of the excesses to which they had become accustomed. Sometimes we feel sad for them, but not really very often. Some folks identify the loss of power as an increased weakness for that individual and, in the avaricious race to accumulate their own power, are glad to see the weak fall by the wayside. Others seem glad in another's loss, acting as though power is a limited commodity in life. Less for someone else means more for those on the rise.

There was a Dilbert cartoon in last Sunday's paper (February 3, 2008) that summed up the feelings of many people, especially in their own feelings of powerlessness at the hands of their supervisors. I also read that strip and sighed with an enormous "knowing" of what Scott Adams was trying to say. Dilbert is trying to explain his work to his mother, and notes that, among other things, "Incompetence hangs in the air like the cold stench of death." I'd invite my readers to check out Dilbert.com to try to find the whole strip for that day. Every time I showed it someone (even while on travel) another copy was made of it. It appears to be taking on a life of its own. What seems to be the general understanding among those reading this strip is the way that power itself, and not ability, supports the status quo in business and life in general. Where I work this is especially true; no one rises in business there unless they have played golf in the right crowds, visited the director's cabin for weekends (helping him remodel), or stayed at work for long, unproductive hours to demonstrate loyalty to a system that rewards "intangibles" all too often. Those who want to see changes made are quickly shuffled off to the side or "dealt with" one way or another. In the corporate world, over and over again, in an array of companies, I have witnessed the same thing happen. Power is what defines the structure and hierarchy of life, especially in business, but elsewhere as well.

Religion is another place where power is a valuable commodity, and where power defines structure and hierarchy. A recent article in "The Economist" about a growing sect in Brazil brought this into sharp focus. People turn to a charismatic person to lead them, to give them the feeling that they belong to a group that is going somewhere, that matters, that has power, that will offer salvation now...and in the hereafter. People who have little power of their own look for it where they think they can find it, whether it's praying to St. Anthony to find lost car keys or to a vision of Jesus who will bring them a better life here and now. Christianity has no corner on this market; it's just one group that is growing rapidly, sometimes by selling power to the masses. That is not to say that any time people get together to share a common spiritual experience they are trying to get something in return for their prayers; there are some very earnest folks out there who care deeply about one another and are "hoping for the best." But religion has demonstrated time and time again (Remember Martin Luther's fight with Rome over the sale of Indulgences? By the way, they're still for sale. I have a few in a drawer, given me by a friend.) that it's also a small step from seeking spiritual health to seeking spiritual power. And too many preachers have figured out that spiritual power is something that can be--and is--sold for profit, and therefore can be employed to accumulate even more power.

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But enough about that. If there's one thing that many of the unchurched and non- or semi-believing know it's all the stuff about religion. And nearly anyone who holds a job or has tried to navigate life while having "less" (power, money, good looks, good breeding...whatever) knows about the oppressive nature that power represents in life. I want to shift gears now and talk about "the other side of the coin."

Oddly enough, most of us know this side of the coin pretty well, though it's not an obvious connection. It all has to do with the intentional sharing, or better yet, giving away of one's own power. This sounds awfully foolish and has that "life through rose-colored glasses" sound to it, but hang on. Do you remember your first crush? The first person you felt something different, some really special for? I remember the little girl in pig-tails...yep. I was smitten, and probably looked pretty foolish to my friends. But it's also a common human experience, no matter how romantic you are (or aren't). I have talked to some who can't quite make that human connection but know the feeling of falling in love with something instead of someone for the first time. Like I said, it's a common human experience but it is anything but predictable or uniform. At any rate, most people know it, and more importantly, how it makes them feel. If the object of their affection returns their feelings they feel wonderful. If they do not, then the giver can be plunged into sadness and even despair. Even if the object of one's affection is a thing, the same rules hold true. Guys who become attached to their cars only to find that they've fallen for lemons can become inconsolable. The common factor here is that, in each case, "falling in love" is the title we have for "giving our power to another", in this case, the object of our affections. Those who fall in love are sometimes surprised--even shocked--at the power their beloved wields over them. It is not the other, beloved person's power, however, but the power given to them in what we call love that is at play here. Some realize that they've given too much power to the wrong person and the breakups hurt badly on all sides. Some people cannot sustain the commitment of yielding power to another person for long periods of time (like, um, forever) and bounce from one relationship to the next. Life is all about power. Love is all about giving it away.

And so here--in stark contrast to the way we find life offered to us--is an operative definition of that which we crave. We want to be loved, we want to love, but we are trained to live in a world that renounces the kind of sharing and exchange that love demands. Let me say it explicitly again: Love is the intentional and willing sharing and giving away of one's own power to another. It is not a bargain, and exchange of goods, but the sharing and giving away of power. Bartering power as though it is love is abusive. Giving power to one who abuses that power by turning it against the giver does not lead to a loving relationship, either. More about that part later.

Remember the whole idea of personal responsibility I talked about earlier? Well, it also comes home to roost here. We aren't called into groups to love, but we are called to act as individuals in love. Love is always--ALWAYS--an individual thing, and the power given in love is given always at the level of the individual. No matter how benevolent the group we belong to we cannot "love" as a group but only as individuals. That is because we can only give up what is ours, personally ours as unique individuals. The groups and activities we enter into that require our adherence to group rules and loss of personal identity in the identity of the group or activity absolutely restrict our ability to love. That's a difficult thing, because on the one hand we seek social identity, and on the other hand we seek to act (mostly, I hope) lovingly or at least caringly.

Along with "power vs love" there are other tensions at work in our world. These will be the topics I want to begin to explore next.

More will follow soon...

#6. ...and how it works...

25 January 2008

Sorry I haven't written for a few days. It's good to be busy, however. It also allows me to think longer about what I want to write.

As I noted in Entry #5, power is something we're all familiar with, in one way or another. This isn't a shocking revelation, but I think it is necessary for us to all realize that we are, as I said, much more accurately "power brokers" than "tool makers". But power--as a "thing"--has characteristics that I think we seldom (if ever) take notice of. That's the point of this entry.

Let me begin here by clarifying something. When I talk about power here I'm going to specifically mean power that is accumulated, held on to, increased deliberately by what a person does--buying it, stealing it, whatever. This is an important point, because once we get some kind of power we tend to be loathe to lose it. As human power brokers that's part of our nature. Power is what sets an individual (or even a group, under some circumstances) apart from everything else. Someone has power, someone else does not. Life operates under this simple rule every day. But when power is the held on to, accumulated, and guarded, that power also has a facet that's not really all that nice. Power must act on everything around it if it is to actually be powerful, and the way it does this is by oppression of one kind or another. All power of this kind must oppress--or be capable of oppressing--or it has no value. Even saying "I have the power to make you happy" also implies the threat that the opposite can also be imparted. You know, there's a strangely ironic thing in all of this, and it comes from my being a priest. I've had lots of folks at work ask me to bless things that I would never "bless" in a million years. I usually politely defer, but often adding that, lest they forget, anyone who can deliver a blessing can also deliver a curse. No, I'm not into curses, but the "power to bless" need to be remembered in just such a way. Knowing this has made me far more respectful about being a priest, I guess. I might add--just as an example--that exorcisms are not blessings--they are much closer to curses hurled at unwanted or evil forces.

This idea--about the nature of power being to oppress--is something that we need to pay attention to every day. The powerful forces that control our lives, and the power we often wish we had to change things, comes with a price. The lessons were are alive on this planet to learn have absolutely everything to do with power. It is strangely that simple, I believe. Even if we "take power" over our own lives and happiness we are accumulating (or trying to, anyway) something that, when understood, must be seen for what it is. The power I hold onto, the power I must guard an the power I try to increase for my own benefit can only be of value if someone else does not possess it. If your boss has the power to fire you and you have the same power over that person, then the only result is a standoff that seeps into everything around both of you. More than 40 years of "Cold War" thinking and planning showed the world that things like "Mutual Assured Destruction" (MAD, for short) merely caused the oppression to be felt in other ways. In reality it seemed to help, but it was a folly from the beginning. Accumulating that kind of destructive power by both sides demands that it always be improved, increased, guarded by people who know that they must, finally be willing to use it or it is powerless.

When you think about how group activities (work, team sports, even religion) operate you can see that leadership is all too often synonymous with power. Members of the groups are "kept in line" or "managed" by the power to exclude, to shun, to remove the benefits of the group (for instance, a paycheck). Human groups operate in special ways to exploit the power of the leadership and of the group itself to satisfy their own goals. What's more, individuals relying on the group for power have another burden--they must, to some degree or other--lose their personal identity and their freedom to act out of personal responsibility. I think one radical example is the way our militaries operate and wield power. In order to have an army that can act as one, that can act instantly upon orders, that can do things that appear selfless, the individualities of the members of the group must be lost to the greatest extent possible. In cases where this has not been done completely wars have been lost and the combatants realize a sense of futility and disillusionment in what they are doing. In similar ways, all "successfully powerful" groups contain a membership that identifies itself primarily with the group and not as individuals. Years as a chaplain working with kids in gangs brought this lesson home hard.

Since this is an election year, I'd like to share an old insight. Really, it's an oversimplification, but it's still too useful to dismiss. It is the difference between a conservative and a liberal. Conservatives can often be recognized for being fearful of others not like them. Liberals are recognized for being fearful of those who are just like them. As I said, it's a bit of an oversimplification, but on the other hand, it explains why conservatives form such solid groups of like-minded followers and liberals simply can not...at least not to the extent the conservatives can.

In my next entry I want to offer thoughts on alternatives. Nothing radical, actually. The alternatives relate to another common human experience. Just something I'll bet you never considered.

More soon.

#5. ...and what it's all about...sort of.

13 January 2008.

I meant to start this posting the other day...but with all the disasters in my day job things got a bit hectic. Tonight is about right, I think.

What got me started on this posting was a teaser on NPR the other day (I heard it on my way to work) about an upcoming evening forum discussion between scholars having backgrounds in science and religion. Yet another science and religion forum. Sigh. With my background you might expect me to be anxious to tune in or that I might own a lot of books on this topic, but I don't. I mean, I've perused these books, flipped through them, even read from them whilst standing in book stores. Yeah, I've got a few, but not many. And those I have are there just in case I need to look something up. I've also entered in some of these discussions and found them neither useful nor interesting. I guess in the long run the whole notion of the disparity between science and religion never captured my interest. A good example of "why" came in my first semester in seminary. I wrote a paper I titled "Feynman's Riddle" in my spirituality class. (Some day I ought to attach it here.) The professor noted that he had no idea what any of it meant but graded me on my use of footnote style (I used American Physical Society, he wanted Turabian).

The lesson--well, one of the lessons--I learned from that was that science and religion aren't at odds for me, they're just, well, different. I liken it to having two languages, and not only that, but being fluent also in two different cultures. It is definitley not having one language, studying another, and then approaching the culture of the new language as something to be "studied" and understood scholarly. Actually, I do have another language--my second for over 40 years--and I've grown cozy with both languages and cultures with the years. The same can be said for my view of science and religion. I speak both languages, one might say, but more than that both cultures have been part of my life for long enough that I am also fluent in both cultures. The clash, for me, just simply doesn't exist. Assimilation isn't necessary, and it certainly isn't my goal. But when someone wants a guide and translator, then maybe I have something to offer that others among my colleagues lack. But this isn't the whole point of this posting; it's just what got me started. I need to continue.

Scence and religion clash from time to time, and the press and book sellers use up a lot of ink talking about it. Some of the clashes are actually battles, and both sides feel that there is much to gain or lose in how things turn out. This bothers me a lot--bothers me in ways that I've needed to understand, feeling the way I do, personally, about these two fields of knowledge and culture. You see, what I've just said is actually the key here: they clash when they perceive that there is something to be gained or lost. The simple, and perhaps brutal fact is that both have grown into fields that are defined by the power they represent and can wield. The clashes arise when their spheres of control--their bases of power--overlap and collide. I think that most folks might understand, one way or another, how science can be a powerful thing, and how it can provide and use its power to manipulate, insitgate, and control. But religion is something we tend to think of as not seeking power, not accumulating power for its own ends, not normally using power--like science--to manipulate, instigate, and control. But history shows us that this is indeed the case, and even more pointedly, current history underscores this. People tend to turn to religion for different reasons, too. Some seek to share a common spriritual experience. Religion helps bring these people together and to organize that experince. But many more are drawn to religion for the power it offers. The growth of evangelical mega-churches is merely one symptom of this fact.

This is one of those mildly heretical ideas I want you to take and mull over. It's probably odd, coming from a priest, but then again, maybe not so odd. But in the long run it isn't religion or science that I want to talk about, but power. When you think about it, and maybe when you consider how often the word or the idea of it or whatever comes up in our speech, our publications (including TV or the internet), and in our culture (including the workplace) it certainly is something we take so much for granted that it is a primary force in our lives.

Allow me to offer another small example. For a long time, those who write about such things from a scientific or philosophic viewpoint have labeled our species as "The Tool Makers," for a variety of reasons. And, of course, there is scientific evidence that upholds this identity, by and large. (Note that I'm not trying to start a discussion about the tools made and used by other species--humankind just has a special kind of self-identity wrapped up in this.) As we examine the items our ancestors made we find that wood gave way to stone, and then soft metals, then harder metals, and so on. We've even labeled them as "Ages:" Stone, Copper, Bronze, Iron, etc. But what's also impressive about these tool "ages" is that they also--and perhaps more accurately--define the development of weapons. The flint spear head was replaced by "something better" just as soon as that "something better" came along. And those new weapons were used to gain, protect, and exercise power in each age. An example from more recent history is found in how some talk rather fondly of the technological advances gained during the Second World War. Humankind is not "The Toomaker." Humankind is "The Power Broker," with all that ultimately entails.

So here is a first important piece of a puzzle that I think has ultimate importance for us all. I'm going to leave this piece here for you to ponder for a while. There is (probably obviously) a great deal more to talk about on this topic before I take it where I really want to. But for tonight that's a good place to end.

#4. As if to underscore it all...

January 8, 2008. A hotel room in the Southwest. My "day job" has brought me here--again--to deal with some technical issues at a contractor's site. Okay, that's fine. These are actually good and honorable people. The work part of this is easy. But I have just been informed about what the corporation that sent me here is about to do to all of these nice folks. I am despondent. Crap. I feel awful. Nothing seems to help.

On the plane getting here I had some time to think about the whole notion of "change," the topic of the last entry. Criminy, there's simply so much to be said. Let me give you some new things to ponder.

Let's start with the whole notion of the "personal" input that most of us wish we actually HAD on this world, in one way or another. Right now I'd like plenty, but then again, I'm up against a corporation. But one sort of archetype fits the "personal statement" mold especially well. Artists. Whether using words or colors, welding or knitting, people who express themselves in some kind of artistic expression are worth noting. Theirs is the way of the personal, after all. The whole idea is to do something that no one else could do, no matter what. Every work of fine art is a testament to the most advanced craftspeople of an art form. But what the rest of us lack in that mastery we add in personality. And, as it turns out some art does actually have an effect on the rest of us. We don't need talent to be personally expressive; it's just the expression that is itself important, not the degree to which it is likely to get a Nobel Prize or be hung in the Louvre.

But if art isn't your thing, then let me direct you to the antithesis of the personal expression: the corporation. The corporation was designed--from its very beginnings--to remove personal accountability or responsibility for what "The Corporation" might do. In the incarnation of the corporation that I am dealing with tonight, it allows a lack of vision and accountability to rule in particularly nasty ways. The individual has no real place in the corporation except as a "resource," hence the name "Human Resources," the department that replaced "Personnel."

Most of us sit somewhere between the Corporate Bigwigs and the Picassos of this world. But that doesn't stop some from finding alternative forms of personal expression. Each of us has the capacity to produce an indelible mark on this tired and broken world. It's time to think about where you--the reader--sits along this continuum. It seems to be an important part of the human experience that, while many people are content to be led within organizations (like corporations), a few feel called to positions, not of leadership, but of power. Leadership, by the way, is not the same thing as the kind of power that "gets people to do what you want them to do." Those among you who have known and experienced true leadership know the difference. For everyone else, suffice to say that leaders are known to those who follow them; the powerful are known to those who fear them.

More tomorrow, unless I'm on another airplane. In that case it'll be more the next day.