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Prayer does not have to mean talking to an invisible being.

Prayer does not have to be an effort to change the laws of the universe through special pleading.   The most profound prayer can be more like listening than speaking. For some, prayer is putting their personal meditation into words so it can be shared in community.

Even a complete materialist may say that we emerge from something more basic than ourselves. Remembering that we are expressions of something more basic is vital for keeping our personal lives in perspective. If waves could think, it would be vital for them to remember the ocean to keep their little circle of life in context. They would need to constantly remind themselves that they were not separate beings, but aspects of one another.

Just as some Buddhists meditate to get “Buddha Mind,” many Christians pray “in the name of Christ”, seeking the same spirit of compassion for all beings that Jesus had.  Praying is a way of remembering that we are not orphans of the universe, but expressions of the mystery out of which everything comes.  “Prayer” is any way we remember our larger connections to the universe and thus lift ourselves above our own isolated petty melodramas.

To pray “in Christ” means to pray until our shallow concerns deepen and broaden into a compassion for all beings. That does not mean Christianity is the only way to such compassion. It just means when we rise from prayer with the same universal compassion Jesus had, we know our prayers have been answered.

Paolo Gabriele is the former butler of Pope Benedict XVI. He was recently convicted for releasing the Pope’s private papers and leaking them to the press. The Vatican has every right to fire someone who betrays their confidence, but because the Vatican is its own entity, Gabriele was accused by the Vatican, tried in the Vatican, judged by the Vatican and will be imprisoned in the Vatican. Apparently the Magna Charta doesn’t extend into Papal turf.

According to the former butler, he leaked the papers because he became convinced that the church had become evil and corrupt when he saw its inner workings. He wanted the world to know what really happens behind closed doors. As I say, the Pope should have every right to fire someone who feels and acts that way, but who knew that the Vatican has its own jail? It’s a bit chilling when the same entity is judge, jury and executioner of a sentence. But, I guess when you represent Christ on earth, turning the other cheek is out of the question.

To read more.

http://www.religionnews.com/faith/leaders-and-institutions/Popes-butler-starts-18-month-sentence-for-leaking-private-papers

“Seven cities warred for Homer being dead

Who living had no roof to shroud his head.”

                                          – Thomas Heywood

It has been said that a suburb is a place where developers name the streets after the trees they cut down to build. That description may be too harsh for suburbs, but it is fairly accurate description of some religion. Jesus said that the religious people of his day built memorials to the same prophets their forebears wanted to kill. In other words, nothing is easier than loving a dead prophet and nothing harder than honoring the living spirit of prophecy.

Most religious leaders have a kind of mummification process whereby the radical teachings of the prophets are reprocessed so as not to challenge their own status and comfort. Radical social reformers are recast as isolated individuals who merely made predictions about the future. Plush hospitals are named after penniless saints. Radicals like St. Francis are turned into statues that stand wordlessly in our gardens. Uncomfortable calls to fairness like Martin Luther King gave, are turned into mere pleas to be nice. This all happens so that the mummy of the prophet might be serviceable to hierarchy of the culture.

So when we come to church to praise Jesus, it is most often not the radical prophet of love we honor, but his mummy. In most churches, Jesus’ call to justice has been removed along with his small intestines. We know a living Jesus would call us to deconstruct the rich edifices we have built, and to use our wealth to serve the poor. We know a living Jesus would strip the terms of status from our clergy and tell them to take the lowest place. We know a living Jesus would confront the arrogant moralism we use to judge others. We know a living Jesus would send us out into the world with a message of love and justice for all people.

So we gather at the cross. We know the Jesus there will be safely dead.

There was once a heretic who found truth in birds and in nature and so was a threat to teachers of religion. He openly embraced those called “unclean,” and so was a threat to the defenders of morality. He preached that we are one human family, and so was a threat to patriots everywhere.

The heretic stood nakedly human, luminously alive, threatening all who live behind masks of morality and certitude. He was called a heretic because he stood outside any system of thought. He was called a traitor because he stood outside any system of power.

The heretic lived before the church that would be founded in his name. He never signed on to anything that church would later say about him. The Heretic knew that every human being craves love, but still we make our peace with fear. Thus we live out our days in cages we call “freedom.” In his day, the caged birds descended to silence the heretic who showed a way out of captivity. His sin was to remember the song of the human heart. His greatest crime was to remind clergy and politician alike of their own captivity.

“Forgive them, they know not what they do.”  The heretic knew that love does not awaken easily in wounded hearts.  His own pain was as nothing compared to the pain of the pious whose love is narrow and shallow.  His own fear of dying was as nothing compared to the fear in which the orthodox conformists live out their empty days. In the end we, the religious ones, struck down the heretic. We who crushed his flower were washed in perfume and have scattered the seeds of beauty far and wide.

If our nation’s Supreme Court ever declares hurricanes to be “persons” in the same sense that corporations have been, there can be little doubt for whom the new persons will vote. A “Frankenstorm” like Sandy would have to love a nation of dog eat dog individuals leaving their most vulnerable helpless against her wrath.

To read more:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/helpless-in-a-hurricane-mitt-romneys-five-dumbest-budget-cuts-20121030

It would have to work both ways. If a hurricane means you have too many gays and lesbians in your city or state, then a drought means you don’t have enough. Clearly, Texas needs more precipitation. Let us pray for more GLBT people to move to Texas so God will stop withholding rain.

The Presbyterian Layman is a newspaper that sees itself as a watchdog for our denomination. I have been attacked on their pages numerous times, as have many of my progressive Presbyterian friends across our nation. In this month’s issue of the Layman, there is an article listing 14 churches that “wink and nod at open violations of covenant life.” The church where I serve, St. Andrew’s, happens to be first on their list, but also included are Faith Presbyterian here in Austin, and Madison Square in San Antonio.

Our collective “crime” is to identify with the 8 points of progressive Christianity (linked below). Our own church has reworded the points for our own situation:

• We are Presbyterian, yet our first allegiance is to Christ’s gospel of universal love.
• We are Christ centered, yet we respect and learn from all religions of love.
• We affirm the ancient symbols of our faith, yet we strive to speak a new language that includes all people and affirms the scientific discoveries of our day.
• We hope to teach children the stories of the Bible without sectarian dogma.
• We strive to be a close, nurturing community, yet we welcome all people into our midst.
• We wish to live in inner peace, yet hear God’s call to work for peace and for universal human rights.
• We take faith seriously, yet believe the journey should be fun. We celebrate life in many artistic forms.

To be attacked for trying to live by such beautiful principles is strange, but it makes me very grateful to all the voices of Progressive faith across our land. The grievances listed by the Layman are quite revealing:

McKinley Presbyterian in Champaign Il. is singled out for saying, “We invite gay, lesbian, bisexual, and  transgender people to participate fully in the life of our church alongside  straight allies.”

Mount Auburn Presbyterian in Cincinnati, which was already leading the way into progressive theology while many of the rest of us were just getting started, is included on the rap sheet for holding a “high regard freedom of conscience,  openness of discourse, mutual forbearance, inclusiveness of human diversity, and continuous reformation.”

Madison Square Presbyterian in San Antonio is linked to such sinister organizations as the ACLU and Soulforce. Soulforce is an organization that attempts to bring the methods of Gandhi into the struggle for GLBT rights..

St. Luke Presbyterian in Wayzata, Mn. is singled out for saying,  ” Dogmas, doctrines, purity codes, or catechisms are not what we’re about.”

Western Presbyterian in Washington DC is criticized for pointing out that, “while Presbyterians used to limit ordination to men, oppose the scientific theory of evolution, and believe in predestination, we no longer do so. We try to rectify our past failures to understand God’s Word and to stay open to God’s new revelations in the present.” It is also pointed out that the church says, “All  persons are invited to participate fully in ministry, regardless of age, disability, economic or social circumstance, gender, marital status, race or sexual orientation.”

The Layman article reminded me how proud I am of all those progressive Christians who are willing to weather attacks by other self appointed watchdogs and continue loving all kinds of people, accepting all kinds of verified scientific discoveries, and respecting every other compassionate path, theistic or not.

The complete Layman article is included here:

http://www.layman.org/news.aspx?article=30768

The official 8 points of progressive theology is included here:

http://progressivechristianity.org/the-8-points/

Most economists work by and for the rich. It is not that they are bad people. It is simply an occupational hazard. After all, very few poor people can afford to employ them, so economists, almost by definition, are going to be paid by the institutions built by the wealthy.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics. He is a former head of the world bank. He is also one of the rare breed of economists who really considers the toll of economic policy upon the poor. In the article linked below, Stiglitz lays out 5 myths that are common in traditional economics. I have listed the 5 myths along with his explanation.

“(1) America is a land of opportunity. While rags-to-riches stories still grip our imagination, the fact of the matter is that the life chances of a young American are more dependent on the income and wealth of his (sic) parents than in any of the other advanced countries for which there is data. There is less upward mobility — and less downward mobility from the top — even than in Europe, and we’re not just talking about Scandinavia.

(2) Trickle-down economics works (a k a “a rising tide lifts all boats”). This idea suggests that further enriching the wealthy will make us all better off. America’s recent economic history shows the patent falsehood of this notion. The top has done very well. But median American incomes are lower than they were a decade and a half ago. Various groups — men and those without a college education — have fared even worse. Median income of a full-time male worker, for instance, is lower than it was four decades ago.

(3) The rich are the “job creators,” so giving them more money leads to more and better jobs. This is really a subset of Myth 2. But Romney’s own private sector history gives it the lie. As we all know from the discussion of Bain Capital and other equity firms, many made their money not by creating jobs in America but by “restructuring,” “downsizing” and moving jobs abroad, often using debt to bleed the companies of money needed for investment, and using the money to enrich themselves. But more generally, the rich are not the source of transformative innovations. Many, if not most of the crucial innovations in recent decades, from medicine to the Internet, have been based in large measure on government-financed research and development. The rich take their money where the returns are highest, and right now many see those high returns in emerging markets. It’s not a surprise that Romney’s trust fund invested in China, but it’s hard to see how giving the rich more money — through more latitude to escape taxation, either through low taxes in the United States or Cayman Islands hide-aways — leads to a stronger American economy.

(4) The cost of reducing inequality is so great that, as much as idealists would like to do so, we would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg. In fact, the engine of our economic growth is the middle class. Inequality weakens aggregate demand, because those at the middle and bottom have to spend all or almost all of what that they get, while those at the top don’t. The concentration of wealth in recent decades led to bubbles and instability, as the Fed tried to offset the effects of weak demand arising from our inequality by low interest rates and lax regulation. The irony is that the tax cuts for capital gains and dividends that were supposed to spur investment by the wealthy alleged job creators didn’t do so, even with record low interest rates: private sector job creation under Bush was dismal. Mainstream economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund now recognize the connection between inequality and a weak economy. To argue the contrary is a self-serving idea being promoted by the very wealthy.

(5) Markets are self-regulating and efficient, and any governmental interference with markets is a mistake. The 2008 crisis should have cured everyone of this fallacy, but anyone with a sense of history would realize that capitalism has been plagued with booms and busts since its origin. The only period in our history in which financial markets did not suffer from excesses was the period after the Great Depression, in which we put in place strong regulations that worked. It’s worth noting that we grew much faster, and more stably, in the decades after World War II than in the period after 1980, when we started stripping away the regulations. And in the former period we grew together, in contrast to the latter, when we grew apart.”

It is well worth reading the entire article (or anything by Stiglitz). Thanks to Robert Jensen for sending the link:

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/stiglitz-some-are-more-unequal-than-others/

Critical thinking skill is essential for avoiding the flood of urban legends on the internet. There are plenty of sites that claim to verify or disprove internet stories. What is harder is to spot sometimes is the photo hoaxes. What follows is a quiz based on some popular images from the web. It is not always so easy to tell the authentic from the false.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_image_quiz.htm

Bill McKibben has written an article about hurricane Sandy otherwise known as “Frankenstorm.” Some years back I remember hearing a climate scientist give a warning. If I understood him, he was saying that, until the ice caps melt, global warming will produce convection currents producing monster storms. McKibben writes:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/26/bill-mckibben-on-why-frankenstorm-is-just-right-for-hurricane-sandy.html