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“Here lies an atheist; all dressed up and no place to go.” -Epitaph on tombstone

The Religious News Service reports that a poll on global religious identity shows that, while Christians and Muslims still make up the two largest religious groups, people saying they have no religious affiliation have now become the third largest category. The number of people worldwide who identify as atheist or agnostic is now roughly equivalent to those who identify as Catholic.

I personally find the division between theist and atheist to be silly. Religion is sacred poetry not scientific treatise. Plenty of orthodox Christians have believed human images of an actual God to be ludicrous. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

 Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what God is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how God is not.

Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart said:

“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love God as they love a cow – for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love God for their own advantage. ”  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is embraced as Christian martyr, but how many have heard his words?

[Religious human beings] must therefore live in the godless world, without attempting
to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. They must
live a “secular” life, and thereby share in God’s sufferings. They may live
a “secular” life (as one who has been freed from false religious obligations and
inhibitions). To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular
way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the
basis of some method or other, but to be a human–not a type of human, but the human
that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian,
but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. (paraphrased to avoid sexism)

C.S. Lewis claimed that atheists express their rage against God although in their view that God does not exist, but atheists are not attacking believers by having different beliefs or by claiming to have none. I believe one of the most important bridges to be built in our world today is between theism and atheism, between our science and our poetry. What will be required from the church’s side of the bridge is the humility to remember that our human images are ridiculous caricatures of the mystery we are celebrating. All that is required from the non-theist side, is the humility not to assume that a theist’s use of religious poetry is necessarily superstition and the rejection of the scientific method.

If by “God” we mean an unprovable entity there is little hope of such a bridge, but if by “God” we mean a symbol of universal love, the bridge has been there all along.

And to get a little corny, this is the Judds singing “Love can build a bridge” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0VHJrnJNw

The Pentagon is required by Congress to report on its spending overseas.  Last year the Pentagon reported expenses of just over 22 billion. But a research project by David Vine of American University suggests that the total might be closer to 1.8 to 2.1 trillion. How on earth can you hide that much money from the American people? For one thing, according to Vine, the Pentagon also has a habit of forgetting things like the bases in at least 18 countries that were simply left off the list. They will also leave off little details like the cost of operations and maintenance. In addition the cost of maintaining US territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, etc. for some reason are not considered to be “overseas.”

The Pentagon does not consider health care costs, or cleanup of military pollution to be a part of reportable costs. Nor are the bribes necessary to keep foreign hosts friendly and co-operative. And, obviously, the Pentagon does not report on its secret activities like the growing CIA paramilitary role, the drone wars, spying and targeted assassinations.

Most incredibly, the Pentagon doesn’t count money spent on active wars like the one in Afghanistan. So when you take a look at the US budget, and are told we can only avoid the “fiscal cliff” by cutting programs for the poor, look again. It is the hidden crimes of Wall Street and the hidden costs of empire that are driving us into the ground.

To read David Vine’s article in Foreign Policy in Focus: http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_cost_of_occupying_planet_earth

The first step in freeing (human beings) from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. To free one’s mind of chains is to free it of the care of what is acceptable or viewed so by society, this is when true freedom is discovered. -John Dewey

For as long as I have been alive, there has been a war on liberal education as if it were one end of a political spectrum. It has been said education should give a child two things: roots and wings. Conservativism is the roots, liberalism is the wings.

Liberal Education is an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest. A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings. American Association of Colleges and Universities

Liberal education is a backbone of democracy. John Dewey felt the primary purpose of liberal education was not to propagandize children to serve the state, nor to equip them to succeed at business, but to prepare them to be good human beings. In other words, liberal education is not a sinister socialist plot, but one essential component of a fully functioning human being as conservativism is the other.

A fully functioning human being needs twin skills of maintaining continuity with the values of the past (conservativism) and of opening to new truths (liberalism). A pure liberal would be a tumbleweed rolling around with no constant commitments. A pure conservative would be a mummy looking out at the world with the borrowed eyes of the past.

Conservatives are correct that their values are best taught at home, but they are wrong to believe that exposing their children to broader views of liberal education will mislead them. As conservative values prepares them for their private relations, so does a liberal education prepare them for their public duty.  Conservative values make sure we pass along the torch given us by our forebears, liberal education makes sure that torch is still lit.

You seldom hear preachers mention the fact that the three wise men  got lost on Christmas.  The Magi following the star to Bethlehem, ended up in Jerusalem instead, tipping off Herod and triggering the slaughter of the innocents.  Did the star make a wrong turn?  Were the wise men really not so wise?

Almost certainly, the story of the three Magi cannot literally be true. Have you ever tried to stand directly under a star? The Polestar appears to be directly overhead, but the reason it’s called the Polestar is because it is actually over the North Pole. So the idea of following a star from Persia to a particular manger is dubious at best.

I don’t suppose there is any verse of the Bible I take literally, yet I have spent my life studying that book.  Why? Because I believe scripture is speaking in symbols of a most important subject -our own unknown inner depths and our univeral connections to all that is. Symbols are not true or false, like ordinary words. They are revelations of deeper aspects of our subjective experience. They are personal in that we must go deep inside to experience them, but they are also universal because humans share the same nature, and belong to the whole universe.

There are two mistakes we can make when it comes to symbols. We can accept them literally or we can reject them literally.  Either way, we misunderstand what a religious symbol is. Religious symbols can be like surreal painting. We do not look at surreal painting to learn directly about the world. What we understand when we look at a painting by Van Gogh or Picasso is the artist’s deeper subjective experience of the world. When Picasso paints everything blue, he isn’t describing a miracle, he is sharing his own sadness. He is sharing the insight that when we are sad, the world looks bluer and blurrier.

In surreal paintings the artist distorts objects on purpose. In the same way, scripture is not written to describe the world as it is. The gospel writers were not telling us the physical details of Jesus’ biography, they wanted to share how the world looked and felt when he inspired an awakening in their lives.

So when a critic points out that the Bible is simplistic and distorted, I respond “so is every map.” In the real world, roads aren’t really blue, and capital cities don’t really have a giant star in the middle. Thank goodness a map is smaller and simpler than the real world, otherwise it wouldn’t help at all.

The reason the wise men got lost wasn’t because they didn’t have a map, it was because they are a map. The story of Christmas is not a history of actual events, it is a symbolic map for the journey to the center of our own subjective being.

Walmart has long been a company that helped redefine American business. They have been on the forefront of union busting activities. They perfected the art of disguising wage slavery overseas by subcontracting out into a flowchart so complicated the company becomes unaccountable. Every dollar we save at a Walmart is the result of wage theft, but the company gambled (rightly) that America wouldn’t care about a US company exploiting foreign workers, so long as we don’t have to see the actual corpses.

So Walmart is now the biggest private employer in the US. To be sure, it has to pay regular fines for unpaid work. But fines have become a cost of doing business, not an imperative to reform. It is not unusual for Walmart’s American workers to also be on government assistance, but those workers have it easy compared to foreign labor. When more than 100 workers burned to death at a Bangladeshi factory where Walmart obtained some of its clothes after years of ignoring pleas for worker safety, the company did the only thing a responsible American business could do, they blamed it all on the subcontractor.

When the company’s reputation began to suffer, Walmart hired a liberal strategist to prepare adequate window dressing to silence their critics in the Democratic party. Suddenly, the company presented itself as concerned about energy and even supported Obamacare. While it still employs sweatshops overseas, and crushes unions at home, it has considerably reduced criticism. It’s a sobering to realize that US businesses can be caught in the most horrific crimes, and if they make cosmetic changes, they will avoid any real consequences. It is a sobering to think that, if Hitler had been a CEO in the United States and was caught red handed, all he would need to get back in business would be a good nose job.

So here’s to Walmart. Let’s give the devil his due, but not a single cent of our money.

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/86498-walmart-vs-dot-union-backed-our-walmart

I was very saddened by the shootings in Connecticut, but not at all surprised. When people ask how this happened, it can only mean they are not paying attention to what our culture has become. I am not one who blames all our problems on guns. I hate handguns, but I understand that there are good people who feel safer with them. For the life of me, I cannot understand why assault rifles are necessary, but I want to focus on something else.

Even setting aside the question of gun control, there is a pattern in our culture that is hard to miss. We human beings are animals. We respond to our conditioning. How can human beings live surrounded by constant violent stimuli in news and entertainment and not become either violent or numb? When certain weapons are introduced into this culture the equations change. In this violent culture a handgun can remove the one moment an angry or hurting person may need to return to sanity. An assault rifle can turn a homicide and turn it into a massacre.

Weapons to hunt or defend one’s home are one thing, we can disagree about those. But when gun sellers play off our basest emotions, and then hide behind ordinary gun owners I do not understand why gun owners respond so automatically and mindlessly to protect all weapons equally.

Mother Jones has collected 20 ads for guns that you will have to read sitting down.

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/12/gun-ads-bushmaster-mattel

“Pants to Church Sunday” was a movement by women in the Mormon Church to call for greater gender equality within that denomination. Organized by a feminist group within the LDS called “All Enlisted,” women wore pants to church yesterday and men wore purple in solidarity. It has been called “the largest concerted Mormon feminist action in history.” Mormon women in the US, Europe and the South Pacific were seen if not heard yesterday calling for a major reformation in Mormon understanding of gender roles.

But by all accounts, Wear Pants to Church Sunday unfolded quietly and peacefully, even in congregations that had once threatened to summon participants for mandatory interviews with their clerical leaders.  In some Mormon congregations, it’s being reported, members of the male lay clergy wore purple in solidarity.

Because really, it’s not pants or the right to wear pants that tops the list of Mormon feminist priorities.  It’s the need for thoughtful conversation about how traditional gender inequalities—like the gender segregation of non-priesthood church administrative responsibilities, or the fact that in some congregations young mens’ programming receives more resources than young womens’ programming, or the unwritten rule against talk about Heavenly Mother—shape the spiritual lives of Mormon men and women.

• http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/6700/what_was_pants_to_church_sunday_really_about/

The massacre in Connecticut is merely the latest in a rush of violent tragedies that makes it very difficult not to go numb. Grieving is a natural process that realigns us after loss, but if we experience too many loses it becomes impossible to process them all. Those who live amid constant trauma must learn a skill for being both compassionate and aware. It is not easy. Here are 5 suggestions to begin the conversation:

Do not re-traumatize yourself by dwelling on news coverage.

After a tragedy has happened we can obsess on the details as if there were some way to go back and undo the damage. Instead what we may be doing is reopening the wound. There is a period where such obsession may be helpful, but at some point it can leave us numb.

Avoid discussions of easy answers.

There will be a time to talk about issues like gun control, but that is best done after we have returned to balance. If we argue out of our pain we may unnecessarily delay that return.

Instead of groping for answers, light a candle

There a moments in life that fit no human context. They remind us that life does not always seem to be aware of our human purposes. It can feel comforting to make up theories about why God or Karma would do such a thing, but then we are left living in a strange melodrama that actually makes it harder to heal our wounds, which are always in the real world.

By meditating, praying or lighting a candle, we take a moment to trust the life process. Life is not always kind, but it is always our home.

Instead of reading only news, read wisdom more lasting.

While it is important to stay informed, it is also important to take a longer term view of life, which newspapers seldom do. Remember the poets and philosophers who have fed your soul and keep them near in times of grief and turmoil.

Find something you love and make that your starting place for changing the world.

When we have lost perspective it is easy to mechanically push for our causes instead pursuing the true purpose of ethics which is restoring communion. Most violence is reactionary. True revolution can only come from compassionat revolutionaries. So when we see a world of heroes and villains, it is always the sign of a wounded heart. Retreat for a moment to someone (human or animal) you care about until you remember your compassion. Then deepen and broaden that love until you feel not only your duty to all humankind but also your compassion for it as well.

As I was trying to put my sermon together for yesterday’s sermon, I remembered a eulogy Martin Luther King gave for little children who had been killed in a church bombing. Dr. King wanted to assure their parents that because the entire church in Birmingham had been involved in a social justice movement that they had died in the service of a noble cause.

“These children–unoffending, innocent, and beautiful–were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained—glass windows. They have something to say to every politician [Audience:] (Yeah) who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats (Yeah) and the blatant hypocrisy of right—wing northern Republicans. (Speak) They have something to say to every Negro (Yeah) who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.” -Martin Luther King

The children murdered in Connecticut were not involved in a specific social justice movement, but their deaths also speak to us if we will listen. Their cries reveal to us of the violent nation we have become, but also of the peaceable people we should be.

To read the whole eulogy, click here: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1133

“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools, should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” Mike Huckabee on Fox News

While we were still trying to take in the news of the massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut, Mike Huckabee repeated the refrain that senseless tragedies occur because we do not allow God in schools. But what kind of God would need human prayer to intercede in such a situation? What kind of God would not protect children as punishment for insufficient grovelling? A God who required human belief to act could not have created our world, because there would have been no one to ask Him or Her to make it in the first place.

To say violence happens because children are not taught to believe in God might make sense if the school children had attacked the gunman and not the other way around, but the statement is ludicrous in this context. A God who would let innocent children suffer because they were born in an immoral nation would be a monster unworthy of anyone’s praise. Instead, I think we must look at ourselves if we want to understand this tragedy. A nation that finds money to arm itself to the teeth, but does not find money to treat the mentally ill, has written its own tragedy.

Our nation is tearing itself apart not because we haven’t allowed God to come into our schools, but because we do not allow justice to rule in our hearts.