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Any minister is saddened to discover that there is a demon hidden in his or her church, but a demon who mocks our sacred national myths is a particular threat. So, I was shocked to discover yesterday that one of the members of the church where I serve wrote an article entitled “No Thanks for Thanksgiving,” which can be found following this link http://www.alternet.org/culture/no-thanks-thanksgiving

When I first met Bob Jensen, I was aware he was listed in a book called The 100 Most Dangerous Intellectuals, but I never thought he would ruin the wonderful story of Thanksgiving by bringing up the true story right in the middle of our meal. When I am celebrating this wonderful land that God gave us, I don’t want to be reminded that we actually stole it, and so are actually thanking God that our own thievery was successful. Apparently there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do. I found the following titles of articles criticizing Jensen’s piece. Trouble was it was the same article under different names, but don’t let that stop a good lynching:

Robert Jensen Leftwing Junkmedia Professor Calls Thanksgiving a White Supremacist Holiday

 Far Left Professor: Thanksgiving Celebrates Our “Original Sin”

Thanksgiving Celebrates Our ‘Original Sin,’ ‘Views Virtually Identical To Nazis,’ Journalism Prof Preaches

Well, you get the idea. US constitutional Free Press is a website celebrating freedom. It’s motto, “give me liberty or give me death” should not be understood to mean that they believe that left wing thought should be tolerated, or that feminists should be heard. The site tagged Jensen’s article under categories like “ignorance” and “liberal hate,” so now when someone searches Google using the word “ignorance” they may trip across Jensen’s article. Take that, Illuminati!

Responses to the article were also illuminating:

“That makes him Nordic Nazi Viking Racist and so ashamed of it he will sell out his own race in favor of those that would destroy us.”
“Their claim to strive for diversity is an act of dividing people. Busting up people that have a commonality, as all humans do, in order to undermine the cohension (sic) of society itself..  This is exactly what the Nazi’s did in order to take over,. divide and conquer Unity is what society should strive for, not division Unity brings peace , prosperity and progress. Progressive want to undermine the unity that national holidays bring to us,  So they must attempt to destroy Thanksgiving , Christmas, the Fourth of July ,….anything that brings us together.”

Unfortunately most of the responses used words I cannot repeat, but again, you get the idea.

If I may summarize the critiques of his article, Jensen is an idiot (lots of synonyms for that word), left wing intellectual who once wrote an article for a gay newspaper and for a George Soros funded site. Like all elites, Comrade Jensen is trying to destroy America by dividing us, and by “us” they do not mean women, or blacks, or immigrants, or homosexuals, or poor people, or Muslims, (please extent phrase to infinity including all entities not included in the subset “straight, white, Christian, conservative men, born in the continental U.S.).

I have to say “Nordic Nazi Viking Racist” is a phrase worthy of Shakespeare. Let’s see Professor Fancy Pants refute that kind of first rate rebuttal.

Amy Zimmet is the very best at finding wonderful snipets on the internet that teach larger lessons about the political world in which we live. Just like Canadians get tired of being associated with cold weather, Africans don’t like to be identified as a place that needs charity.  What follows is a satirical PDA made in Africa announcing a new charity sending radiators to Norway.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/11/21-1

Thanksgiving is a day for us to be grateful. As such, it is a wonderful holiday and I wish you a happy one.

At the same time, we all know that our joyful story of Thanksgiving is haunted by the shadow of what really happened. While we celebrate the story of brave pilgrims and friendly natives, at some level we all know that what we call American history is a mask covering a terrifying face we do not want to see.

It is important to pause and be grateful. I would not want to dim this day of joy, but I also know that joy based on falsehood soon becomes sorrow. If we are not very careful today, we will count as blessings those things that were stolen by our ancestors. If we are not careful we will celebrate a level of consumption that displaces much of the world and imperils our own survival as well.

So I propose that we enjoy this day fully. I also propose that we take any images of pilgrims or natives off our table so we do not  repeat the false history of Thanksgiving. I propose that we enjoy this day with friends and family, but also that we light a candle for the displaced people of our past and present, and that we pledge ourselves to work the rest of the year for the kind of blessings that can be shared with all the people of the world.

It’s a shame that so many people in our time associate religion with fear and superstition. For many, religion is the skillful means used to confront our fears and illusions and draw close to nature and to each other.

A case in point is work being done in California with veterans who have lost the capacity to relate to others. Veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome have only had marginal success with traditional methods of treatment.

One marine said that holding one’s children after accidentally killing someone else’s children

“You know, you’re going into a building, and you know there’s a grenade being popped in there,” he says, “and there’s a woman and a child in there … and you’re part of that?”

“The fact of holding my daughter in my arms, you know, or even being intimate with my wife? Very difficult. Very difficult because of the trauma,” he says.

In the West prayer is often thought to be a conversation with an imaginary person, but there are plenty of traditions where it is a method of deep listening to life itself. It is true that much religion is an escape from reality, but philosophy and science can also be used as escapes from the painful task of being fully human. In this California program veterans are being taught how to meditate as a way of reconnecting to others.

This particular technique is called “compassion cultivation training.” Weiss, who helped develop it, tells the men to think of a person they care about and to “allow yourself to feel the presence of this person.” There’s a phrase Weiss repeats, like a mantra: “That person is just like me.”

“Consider that, just like me, this person’s had ups and downs in his or her life. Just like me, this person’s had goals and dreams,” she says.

The idea here is that in combat, the way to stay safe is to think of everyone as a potential threat. Fear and distrust are default. But with PTSD, it stays that way, even after combat is over. The soldier with PTSD has lost the ability to relate to people as just people. Compassion meditation is about getting that ability back, learning to see oneself in others.

Science has been a great corrective to religion. I would never want religion to regress to its pre scientific beginnings. But I would never want science to replace religion. Only science can give us truth, but it cannot give us meaning. Religion is the art of reconnecting with nature, life and humankind. Some of that work is objective and scientific, but much of it is subjective, intuitive and emotional. Religion and science can appear to be enemies, but heaven help humankind if we choose between them and do not learn to bring the subjective and objective truths of our experience into harmony.

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/21/165667696/through-meditation-veterans-relearn-compassion?sc=17&f=1001

Thanksgiving has begun well for me. I often start the day at a Starbucks that opens at 5am. That way I can get my blog up early.

When my order arrived at the counter, a big muscle guy thought my coffee was his. As he sat sipping my coffee, I bided my time. When his order was announced, the man was mortified.  He scanned the room to discover me looking melodramatically hurt and bewildered. The management rushed to give me a coupon for a free coffee. But when I tried to get the man to take a bite out of my breakfast sandwich so I could get a free one of those as well, the jig was up and the man left laughing.

Some progressives attend family gatherings with hearts in throats fearing that, in between passing the dressing and cranberries, they will be asked to justify their political and religious worldviews. Such exchanges could be enriching for all, if not for the knowledge that some people go into the conversations already convinced that there is but one correct answer, and that anyone with a differing opinion is assaulting Jesus and the Liberty Bell at the same time.

Bob Jensen has written an article calling us to such conversations.

On religion: People will ask, “Do you believe in God?” Instead of taking that as an invitation to a verbal brawl, I respond, “What do you mean by God?” That invites a thoughtful exchange by asking others to expand on what they believe.

On politics: It’s difficult not to take disagreements about sexual behavior personally, but we can cultivate the ability to consider not just our own choices but the social consequences. For example, on the contentious subject of pornography, instead of immediately defending or condemning the use of sexual material, we can ask: “What stories about sex and intimacy does pornography tell, and what is the effect of those stories?” That opens up the conversation.

Dr. Jensen adds a moral argument for such conversations.

If that doesn’t sound like the recipe for a successful holiday meal, remember this: Our affluent society produces an excess of everything except what we most desperately crave: meaning. Not meaning manufactured and sold to us, but meaning we create authentically, through dealing honestly with reality.

Such meaning comes when in our everyday lives we talk with people — those we know and strangers on the bus — about the most basic questions that have unsettled humans forever: What does it mean to be a decent human being? How do we deal with the problem of power? Those are the questions that never get answered definitively but which we answer contingently through constant conversation.

As always, the blog management is not responsible for injuries suffered while following our advice.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/jensen-go-ahead-talk-religion-and-politics-at-the-/nS9zg/

Santa Monica has been a bit of a battleground at Christmas these last few years. For the last 59 Christmas seasons there has been a nativity scene in the city park but, recently, an atheist coalition formed, and claimed much of the space for secular displays. After vadalism became a problem, the city felt it needed to stop having any kind of display on public property.

One religious group has filed suit to reopen the nativity scene. William J. Becker is a lawyer who takes on “viewpoint discrimination cases on behalf of Christians and  conservatives.” In representing the group sponsoring the nativity scene, he compared the city of Santa Monica to Pontius Pilate, the biblical figure who allowed Jesus to be crucified. And that wasn’t the strangest thing he said:

Christianity,  white men, heterosexuality, meritocracy, Christmas. These are the relics of a  distant culture.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  They have been tipping  into the abyss for some time.  Only now — plunging as we are with  increasing velocity — do the tremors of our nation’s mortality begin to beat  their throbbing rhythms insistently.

Okay, I’ll admit that Santa is white and probably heterosexual (unless Mrs Claus is a cover) but we don’t know any of those things about Jesus. I would love to talk to this lawyer just to figure out how a nativity scene came to stand for vested white male heterosexual privilege in his own mind.

The good news is that baby Jesus will get Christmas off for the first time in 2,000 years. I’m sure he will appreciate being able to avoid the Christmas rush and to stay home and, as a Jewish person, just enjoy Hanukkah.

Read more about the story: http://www.slate.com/blogs/trending/2012/11/20/santa_monica_nativity_banned_california_park_didn_t_violate_constitution.html?wpisrc=sl_iphone

When we humans forget we are animals, we become inscrutible to ourselves. While we are unique as a species, we have much to learn from our primate cousins. A recent discovery is that, like humans, the other great apes may experience a “mid-life crisis” like we humans.

Chimpanzees and orangutans may experience a “mid-life crisis” like humans, a study suggests.

An international team of researchers assessed the well-being and happiness of the great apes.

They found well-being was high in youth, fell to a low in midlife and rose again in old age, similar to the “U-shape curve” of happiness in humans.

The study was based on observations of over 500 apes by the people that knew their behavior patterns. status and roles in their group.

The study showed that male and female humans, chimpanzees and orangutans have the same U-shaped curve despite differences in social roles, and the phenomenon is therefore not uniquely human.

Observers noted chimpanzee males compensated for the downturn by trying to mate with more females or trying to hoard more resources. The study meshes well with the data suggesting that humans have a mid-life downturn in happiness indicators regardless of education, income or marriage. but knowing such feelings are organic and not situational may be the key in not acting them out in unhealthy ways.

For the last 12 years the Church of England as struggled with the issue of allowing women to become bishops. The legislation fell just six votes short, and could spell serious credibility problems with the denomination, one bishop calling it, “a national embarrassment.”

The bishops voted 44 to 3 in favor of the measure, but the laity voted 132 to 74 which fell 6 votes short of the two thirds majority required. The bishops will meet to try to figure out a way to save the legislation. If they are unsuccessful it will be another 3 years before the vote can come up again.

The ultimate loser could be the Church of England itself. Many people are running out of patience with religious organizations so deeply out of touch with liberation movements around the world.

A ComRes poll in July found that 74% of respondents thought female clerics should be able to attain the highest reaches of the church. The bishop of Lincoln, Christopher Lowson, said the failed vote could make the church look even more outdated. “This is a very sad day indeed, not just for those of us who support the ministry of women, but for the future of the church, which might very well be gravely damaged by this,” he said.

“The church has suffered a serious credibility problem while it worked on the legislation, and this is a setback that could cement the church’s reputation as being outdated and out of touch.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/20/church-of-england-no-women-bishops