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Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to give advice to civil rights workers just before MLK Day.

 “If a lot of African-Americans back in the ’60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma?”

In his defense, Limbaugh is not alone in missing the point of MLK’s nonviolent resistance. Rush’s logic seems to run  something like this: “If Gandhi accomplished a lot, think about how much more he could have done with non-violence AND a machine gun.”

Again, Rush is not alone here. Even progressives who parrot MLK at every turn leave out his utter rejection of violence as well as his radical critique of capitalism and the American Empire. In fact, Rush’s willful ignorance may be less harmful to the intent of MLK than that of progressives who wish to apply the wisdom of MLK without dismantling the deeper economic and political sources of human enslavement and misery. No one has understood Dr. King who believes that violence is the answer to the problems that confront us.

And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

—Martin Luther King, Jr., “A CHRISTMAS SERMON” 24 December 1967

I am hoping to get the blog going again before long but I’m still under the weather. I have cancelled my sermon Sunday and also a radio show on Monday for MLK Day. I’m hoping I will be well enough to give a speech for NARAL at the Capitol on Tuesday, but only time will tell.

If you get flu like symptoms take them seriously, these are not nice microbes.

One skill most humans seem to have innately is the ability to create scapegoats. In times of trauma our brains seem to move instantly to the question, “whose fault is it?” This is particularly true when we do not want to see our own role in a problem.

I’m getting a little nervous that the conversation on gun violence seems to be centering so much upon the “mentally ill,” as though that term was in any way predictive of violence. I do not understand why we treat bodily and mental illness so differently. No one assumes that a flu victim is more likely to commit a crime, why do we assume a heightened threat from someone with mental or emotional challenges?

There are people with and without mental illness who are prone to violence. To focus on the illness and not the violence is another act of denial by those who do not want to face the problem of violence in America.

It shouldn’t have taken a scientific study to prove that our species has a much better shot at survival if we use our full leadership capacity by finally and fully granting equal rights to women. The study summarizes the problem as follows:

The key drivers of collapse, according to Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, are overpopulation and overconsumption by the wealthy. The side effects of the very practices that have allowed humans to prosper have combined to put incredible strain on the planet’s natural systems, and that threatens to negatively impact future generations.

Studies of the planet’s ecological footprint suggest that sustaining today’s 7 billion people at current standards will require roughly an additional half planet of resources (or, four to five more Earths if all citizens of the planet were to consume at the level of the United States).

The human population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by the middle of this century. Such growth compounds the consumption problem, because each person added to the planet requires a greater allotment of natural resources than the person who came before. This non-linear trend traces to the start of human civilization: As populations grew from soil-rich river valleys, humans were forced to farm more marginal land, and required more resources – land, fertilizer, energy, etc. – to produce the same quantities of food.

“The next 2.5 billion people will do much more damage than the 2.5 billion added since the 1970s,” said Paul Ehrlich, a professor of biology and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology, “because people use the richest, most easily extracted resources first.”

There are hopeful signs that technological efforts – such as improving agricultural practices, replacing fossil fuels with innovative energy solutions and reducing greenhouse emissions – could meet the demands of future generations, Ehrlich said, “but you can’t save the world on hope alone.”

Feminists have long claimed that abuse of the earth follows from the patriarchal mindset of conquest and control. Rather than pretending our planet can infinitely continue to make room for more and more people, the authors suggest that adding the brain power of women will instantly double our problem solving capacity. They also point out that, when women are in control of their own lives, birth rates drop. At the very least the study may open a much needed window into the role that patriarchy plays in keeping us from dealing with global climate change:

“One of the saddest things is that the scientific community has described, in detail, the environmental factors leading to the collapse for quite some time, but society has not reacted,” Ehrlich said. “After all, the U.S. just had a presidential election in which the crucial issues facing society were not debated. Instead the focus was on financial problems easily solved by negotiation among people. You can’t negotiate with nature.”

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/equal-rights-women-011113.html

I have tried to listen to Ann Coulter. I really have. I’ve bought her books and combed through them to find something of worth in them. I keep coming back to these sorts of moments where she seems to be saying whatever might sound good to angry white men. Consider the following quotes:

 “If You Compare White Populations, We Have the Same Murder Rate As Belgium”

and:

“So perhaps it’s not a gun problem. It is a demographic problem.”

 

Is there anyone on the planet who cannot hear the racism in such a comment? Most of the mass murders that come to mind were white, so she is obviously wrong, but please listen to the video and leave your opinion. Is Coulter not saying America’s problem isn’t guns, but too many people of color?

http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/01/14/ann-coulter-if-you-compare-white-populations-we/192232

Why do dictators so often repress artists? Why do leaders wanting to take a nation to war, so often cut funding for the arts? Is it not a fact that before our leaders can makes us brutal and violent, they must first convince us to give up our hopes for something better? For us to forget our longing for beauty, and to choose brutal power instead, art must have fallen silent.

When Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he wanted to use that stage to teach the importance of art in the struggle against mindless violence. He chose a phrase from Dostoevsky as his title, “Beauty will save the world:”

A great heart beats for the concerns and misfortunes of the world…And this was how I perceived and felt my own case that world literature was not an abstraction, not something…created by the scholars of literature, but was a certain common body and common spirit, a living unity of the heart, in which the growing spiritual unity of humanity was expressed.  And state boundaries are still being reddened by blood and heated by high-tension wires and by bursts of fire from automatic weapons, and certain ministries of internal affairs still imagine that literature, too, is an internal affair of the countries at their disposal, and newspaper headlines still read:  They do not have the right to interfere in our internal affairs.”  And the only salvation of humanity lies in everyone concerning themselves with everything everywhere. (paraphrase)

There is no rational reason why we should care for others. Ethics is not born of intellectual calculations, but of feeling another’s pain, and recognizing that it is the same as one’s own. Art, as Picasso used to say, is not for decorating apartments. It is part of a larger struggle against all that is brutal and cruel. But just because such artistic compassion is vulnerable, does not mean that it is weak:

People will ask what literature can do in the face of the pitiless assault of open violence?  Well, let us not forget that violence does not have it’s own separate existence and is, in fact, incapable of having it: is invariably interwoven with the lie…Once a people have proclaimed violence as their method, they must inexorably select the lie as their principle… (Violence) does not always nor invariably choke its victims; more often it demands of them only the oath of the lie, participation in the lie.

A person or a culture who chooses the path of power, must silence the testimony of the heart. Solzhenitsyn has recognized that an open heart must adopt no overriding creed or oath that would prevent it from feeling the pain of another living heart. We must not believe the lie that we are mere believers or patriots, first we must be human. This humanness requires tremendous courage.

Simple is the ordinary courageous human being’s act of not participating in the lie, of not supporting false actions.  In battle with the lie art has always been victorious, always wins out, visibly, incontrovertibly for all!  The lie can stand up and win out over much in the world- but not over art.

And that is why, my friends, I think that we are capable of helping the world in its white hot hour of trial.  We must not reconcile ourselves to being defenseless and disarmed; we must not sink into a heedless, feckless life- but go out to the field of battle.

As you go out into this day of life, protect your heart from the lie of whatever culture you have been born into. You are not a mere soldier or business person, you are a living human heart. And the purpose of this day is not for you or your tribe to gain in power, but to serve this world by creating a more beautiful world for all.

Whenever anyone asks if you believe in God, it is relatively certain they do not know what the symbol means. Symbols are never self referential or else they would be ordinary speech. A symbol is not like a noun that exists or does not exist. To be a symbol, a word must open us to some reality beyond our ordinary verbs and nouns. Such a word is “God.”

Every religion would be greatly served if it would remember the Second Commandment of Judaism- not to form images of God.  A comfortable image of God is an idol wreaking havoc on our own personal lives and dividing us from every other understanding of our common ground. The symbol “God” is a word some of us use to refer to that mysterious something seething underneath all we touch and all we are. It is a poetic intuition of the invisible string that binds all life into one whole. Science is better at identifying the facts of our existence, but religion is better at expressing the wonder and gratitude for existing at all.

Literalist religion is a very dangerous thing. We each see the universe from a different angle.  For many people, religion is the consecration of one viewpoint over all others.  I believe that true religion is looking at life from an angle that includes us all. Since none of us actually observes reality from that angle, we sometimes introduce a narrator named “God”.  “God” symbolizes that angle beyond any of us.  “God” is a symbol of that very real unity which holds us and our enemies in one embrace.  God is a symbol of a unity so basic we cannot conceive of it.  “God” is also a symbol that reminds us that the mystery stands beyond any of us. Religion becomes instantly insane when it forgets that God is a symbol of all we cannot say.

There is a problem when we only think of God as a large invisible person.  Inevitably, we each begin to jockey to get that giant person on our side.  The symbol “God” is a placeholder to keep us growing toward universality.  “God” is a voice beckoning ever from beyond the known.  As Tillich would say, we must always remember the “God” beyond “God”.   “God” isn’t real as a noun is real, but points to an ultimate reality, the universal mystery out of which we live and move and have our being.

It amazes me when people can only recognize God in the form of their own religion.  It is as if a husband could only recognize his wife when wearing certain clothes.  He recognizes her in nun’s habit, but not in the yellow robes of Buddhism.  He knows her in Islamic veil, but not in a Hindu sari.  What kind of love would that be?  We might conclude that he didn’t love the woman but her laundry! Humble religion does not pretend to ever understand much less speak for the mystery. Religion is the never ending sense of wonder at the very fact of existence. It is not easy to live in wonder. To do so, we must return periodically to the burning bush to melt down our symbols of God and recast them in ways that will not fool us when the Lover comes to us in new clothes.

 (originally published as “undressing your God”)

In thirty years of ministry I have only missed giving one sermon through illness and that was the result of an intervention by Nurse Donna. Now to be fair to her, Nurse Donna is a tireless volunteer who gives a tremendous gift to our congregation. But when I get sick, Nurse Donna changes. She becomes a robot who won’t listen to reason. For example, yesterday after she had spent much the day at the hospital caring for one of our members. we were on our way to attend a funeral. I have been sick this week and I knew my challenge would be to hide my symptoms. Nurse Donna is a career nurse and it is not easy to cloak one’s infirmities from her skilled eyes.

Hiding the headache was easy, I just didn’t squint. I was careful to sit up straight so I wouldn’t look ill. But, unfortunately, I also had whooping cough that sounded like the choked engine of a 1940’s car. Hiding that wouldn’t be quite so easy. Early in the trip, I let out a round of coughs, followed by a period of sucking for air. Not a good start. Nurse Donna shifts into robot voice, ”Let’s go to EMS and get some medicine. The people at the funeral will understand.” “No,” I insist firmly, “I’ll be fine”

When we get to the funeral I ask if we can sit on the back row just in case I need to cough, which happens almost immediately. I sneak out the back, hack a bit, and then go to a restroom to rub hot water on my throbbing headache. When I return to the back of the church and look at my pew, Nurse Donna is not in her seat. “Oh my God,” I think, “she has come looking.”

I am in the foyer now, crouching like a hunted soul. Out of the corner of my eye I see Nurse Donna roaming down one of the halls like a bounty hunter. My first thought, of course, is to run. I could live out in the woods with the animals. Unfortunately, we came together in the same car- hers. With the sound track to the television show “Cop’s” playing in the back ground of my head, I turn myself into Nurse Donna, who wiggles her finger toward me in the universal teacher signal for “come here.” Like a dog about to go into his carrying crate, I submit snarling and cowling at the same time.

As soon as we sit down in her car, she lifts up her cell phone, and says flatly “Ilene or Jensen?” I know exactly what she means. “Who is going to preach instead of you tomorrow, Ilene Dunn or Robert Jensen? Now we’re talking worst case scenarios. Jensen was out of the question, as he was part of Nurse Donna’s last intervention. The only other time I have missed a sermon for illness Jensen took Nurse Donna’s word over mine. I had no choice but to go with Ilene. She is new enough on our church staff that my evasive maneuvers might work.

I realized it would take all my skills to convince Ilene on the phone while Donna overhears everything I say. I call Ilene telling her that I am going to get medicine and I might need a replacement preaching but I wasn’t sure. I’m thinking then, in the morning, I can say I’m feeling better. It seems a flawless plan, but before long Ilene’s voice has shifted to the same flat robotic tone. She says she also thinks I shouldn’t preach. She uses hurtful words like “stupid” to summarize the excellent reasons I have for stalling. Nurse Donna has invaded her brain as well.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I am lying in bed writing my morning blog. I am plowed with drugs and have new heating pad on my chest. Not to wander off from my point, but the new heating pads aren’t very hot. Back in my day you could heat your chest with one side of the heating pad and fry a wiener on the other side, but I digress.

My point is, I am lying here on a Sunday Morning filled to the gills with medicine. I will send this blog off, turn off my alarm and sleep late for the first time I can remember.  And I will miss giving my sermon for the second time in thirty years- a victim of Nurse Donna.

“I can tell you that after decades of giving talks on domestic violence, I have often been asked why women go back to their abusers. The one question I have never been asked in all this time is, “Why does he abuse her?”” -Dr. Karen Wilson

In the face of domestic violence and sexual assault many give advice to women about how to act or dress to avoid abuse. Such well meaning advice places the burden for stopping violence in the wrong place. Instead, we should inform every boy and man that one price tag for acceptance into any decent society is their respect and fair treatment of women.