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Apple has become the most valuable company in the world. They are tasking an outside group to make sure they are using fair labor practices in other countries. When I first saw the story I was so amazed and excited. Unfortunately, as I looked more closely I found the auditing group has a questionable track record, and is accused of just providing cover for corporate abuse. Apparently, Apple needed to do damage control after 150 workers threatened to jump off the roof of their factory if conditions didn’t improve. I guess the good news is that there is a major corporation that is still human enough to, at least, mimic a conscience.

To read the article,

click here

Most of us in this culture were taught a religion that makes us ashamed of our bodies.  We were taught that our longings and needs were sinful. We were taught that we should strive to be “spiritual,” which was a bloodless, needless, passionless place we could never quite reach. Living out of our body is called “dissociation” in psychology and is considered a disorder. The doctrine of the incarnation, or of the word becoming flesh, is a call back to our own skins.

It has been claimed that most people cannot recognize pictures of their own hands in a line up. Since our bodies are the only source of empathy, our lack of incarnation has devastating effects. At the same time hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s were suffering and dying from a U.S. embargo some years back, people here were outraged that Janet Jackson had shown her breast at a football game. In other words, our entire nation was suffering from dissociation disorder.

When we think of our natural bodily functions as dirty, they take on an irresistible fascination, which is why you clicked on this article when you saw the word’s “Rated X”.

Any religion that teaches us to be ashamed of our bodies is a source of great pain and violence, not to mention great silliness.  we should call such religion “bad” even if our sect considers it “orthodox”. On the other hand, any religion that helps us find a healthy balance for our bodies, to each other and within nature is, at the very least, pointing us in the right direction. We should call that religion “good”, even if our own sect calls it “heresy”.

Noam Chomsky doesn’t get much play in the U.S. media for obvious reasons. He is saying the very truths from which we are being protected by the corporately owned U.S. mainstream media. Whether liberal or conservative to have credibility, an intellectual or leader in the U.S. must begin with the false history of our nation as an innocent and misunderstood giant. The pursuit of truth begins by facing one’s lies.

In this article, Chomsky reminds us that in midst of the “Camelot” of the Kennedy administration, the President sent troops to crush the attempts of the Vietnamese people to gain independence from their Western overlords. To read the article,

click here

When religion is not informed by science, it is formed by superstition. There is a reason tyrannts praise superstitious religion, but persecute religion when it is reality based. Questioning evolution is a good way to keep people from questioning superstitious religion itself. Much of what goes under the name of “religion”, is actually politicians using the language of religion for nefarious purposes. No one should be surprised, for example, to discover that many of the “religious” groups opposing the idea of global warming, are actually funded by oil companies. Sometimes religion is the problem, sometimes it is just the mask.  Just because someone is beating you with a bible, doesn’t mean they read it.  To read a Guardian article on the subject of anti-science in the U.S,

click here

After a lifetime of faithful service, Rev. Jane Adams Spahr was called out of retirement to face a church court. The charge against Rev. Spahr was that she had performed marriages for couples of the same gender. In other words, the “crime” of Rev. Spahr was showing grace to people that the church would shun.

This weekend she will reach the end of her appeal process in San Antonio, Texas. Finally, a verdict will be reached on a trial that has lasted years. When she was convicted at a regional hearing in California, the judicial panel had an interesting comment. They said Rev. Spahr did what Jesus would have done, but until the church changes its stand on homosexuality they had no choice but to convict her.

Being in the room at the time, I was filled with shame for my denomination. They had publically admitted that they considered the teachings of Jesus as having less authority than the rules of our denomination.

I cannot guess what the verdict will be this weekend, but I do know that Janie Spahr is no longer on trial. When the courts determined that she was following Jesus, and that the church itself did not have the courage to follow as well, Janie Spahr was for all intents and purposes ruled innocent. At this point, it is we, the Presbyterian Church, who stand trial.

I finally figured out how to put a picture on my blog.! It only took me two months. I have not felt this dumb since I couldn’t get my locker to open in grade school.

Usually when children begin on their faith journey, if they are raised by Christians, they are taught prayer as a conversation with an invisible person called “God” or “Jesus”; but a child experiences mystery all around them, and so many of us externally took up the religion of our parents, but kept a secret closet in our minds for the mystery we felt all around us. We didn’t necessarily feel it in church, but the mystery was always there around trees and animals. For many, that secret closet does not survive into adulthood, and so we teach to our children, something that is dead to us, but which we hope will live in them.

Most children experience more mystery in Harry Potter than in Bible stories, which is a failure of that corpse that often calls itself the “church”. Adults take dead stories from their parents and pass them on so we can all avoid a punishment called “hell”. That is a religion for cowards. Religion should be, and the church should be, awakening to the shared mystery of reality as it is lived in this moment.

People sometimes ask me why I stay working in the church if I have so many bad things to say about it. But I am not nearly as harsh as Jesus or the prophets against those who claim to be passing a torch, when everyone can see the flame has burned out. It is the same reason I stay in my nation even though it commits attrocities. It is the same reason I do not jump out a window when I consider my own failings.

If we want a better world, we have to start somewhere. It makes sense to start where we are. I cannot start from scratch because I carry the same arrogance and ignorance of my religion and my nation. I am not attacking either of them. As Rev. William Sloane Coffin used to say, “I am having a lover’s quarrel.” I love what the church should be, but we cannot get to truth if we begin with what we know is a lie. Instead, “faith” must mean trusting reality enough to be radically honest about what we know and what we do not know. I would feel a duty to do this whether I was born Jewish, Muslim or atheist.

I believe we must return to that secret closet of mystery, and realize Jesus was talking about that most intimate place. Jesus was not trying to get us to merely believe something about him, but to realize something about reality itself. He did not come to divide us into groups, but to teach us we are one. We are one, and every person, every animal, every twig is a holy prayer that the church must stop trying to control, and learn to sing harmony with. We can only save the church by letting the real Jesus out of the closet.

A nature writer once lamented that for every person interested in physics there are one hundred thousand interested in metaphysics. Many people are afraid the harsh lights of science will bleach life of any meaning or charm, so they live in the reflected light of their own imagings.

Scientific objectivity is not necessarily cold and uncaring. Schweitzer was a more loving missionary because he had studied medicine and science. Michelangelo and Leonardo did not soar above their contemporaries simply because they could better control the brush or chisel, but because they studied anatomy and optics. They based their perceptions of beauty upon the best science of their day.

Scientific objectivity can be a reverence for the mystery of the other. A starry eyed girl drawing horses on the cover of her school book may not yet love real horses at all. She may have no idea what really frightens or delights an actual horse. It is her imagined image of a horse that she loves.

Only a scientific eye can love the uncaged bird. Only a scientific ear can stop trying to teach the bird to speak like a human, and can really listens to the song the bird is singing when it is untrained and free. It is scientific heart that can understand the horror of bird cages and who can protect the bird’s habitat asking nothing in return.

Every true gardener is a scientist and an artist. Blessed are they who know that every leaf pulses with information, and that growth is an unfolding of information written in the seed. Blessed are they who can stroll through a forest knowing they stand in the holiest cathedral of all.

The muse of art flows most freely through the eye prepared by study and the hand calloused by practice. We should not be like photographers who smears gel on their lens so all appears vague and dreamy. If we want to love reality we must sharpen our focus until we see a world not of objects, but of circuits of energy; shining, singing, dancing, all. Yes, art, yes, ethics; but first, yes, science.

Driving through the pines of East Texas gives me shudders when I consider the violence that took place in their shadows. No less than the trees themselves, the history I was taught cloaked and hid the violence of whites against blacks. “Strange Fruits” was a prophetic song decades ago that whispered the unspeakable truth. It gave voice to those being choked into silenced, and gave a face to the hooded figures of our shared past. Because it wasn’t acceptible to talk about this side of American history, Columbia Records refused to release the song, but the song became a kind of anthem. To hear “Strange Fruits”,

click here

When I was a kid, Republicans were “live and let live” conservatives. I was young, but I do not remember that party being a haven for the cruel and ignorant. It’s hard to believe it now, but I was President of the Young Republicans at my High School. For all his flaws, Nixon raised the minimum wage and cared about the environment. Eisenhower was a conservative, but who warned against the “military-industrial complex.” I disagree with Romney on most issues, but how any real conservative can choose Rick Santorum’s hateful and ignorant ideas to represent their party over Romney’s or even Gingrich’s focus on more traditional conservative values is a mystery to me. At this point I realize I’m to the left of any political party, but I still care about electoral politics, which means the healthy expression of liberal and conservative ideas. This is a clip of a Republican who is weeping over the issue of same-sex marriage. Maybe it will stir some memories of a day when being fiscally conservative, was not linked to attacking other people, or disregarding human suffering, or being anti-science. To me this is what the Republican Party really is, but that doesn’t matter if they let hateful people speak for them. I do not believe most Republicans are cruel, but I do think they are responsible for allowing hateful groups to hide in their midst. To see the clip,
click here