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The Pope has repeated that the issue of ordaining women is a “closed door.” The boys at the Vatican have made that case for centuries, but those justifications could cut both ways. Here is a logical case against the ordination of men. Thanks to David Marks for the link.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/11/10-reasons-why-men-shouldnt-be-ordained/

The clip that follows is of a minister who has been asked to pray before a public meeting. He uses the occasion to “pray” against abortion and same sex marriage. The minister is so drunk with his own brand of religion that he has no concern what his words might mean to anyone else.

Let me say, I consider religion to be the most important topic in the world. In religion we explore our core assumptions about the world. We affirm our deepest values and widest commitments. In religion we share the whole circle of life with a kind of art and poetry that requires great discipline and sharing. But religion is also the most intimate of subjects. Jesus said prayer was to be practiced in one’s closet. I don’t think he was speaking literally, but at the very least his words mean religion should be shared in a consensual community and not crammed down anyone’s throat who has not consented to those assumptions and to that vocabulary.

So when people ask me to pray at a public event (that is, outside a church) I consider the people of other faiths as well as those of no particular faith. I’ll give a blessing, a devotional or a reading, but I will not do a prayer without the prior consent of everyone present. To me, religion is so deeply personal that I have a lifelong horror toward the practice of conspicuous religion. To me, showy religion fits in the category of eating with one’s mouth open or discussing ones sex life in mixed company. In my opinion, to attempt to force God’s love upon the world is the spiritual equivalent to rape.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/alabama-prayer-gay-marriage_n_3651756.html

Peter Buffett has a nice article in the New York Times on what he calls “The Charitable-Industrial Complex.” The article is linked below and has some important insights:

“Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.”

Yesterday was the 23rd birthday of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA falls outside the radar of many Americans because they think of freedom negatively as an absence of co-ersion rather than positively as access to basic human rights.

Even though medicaid funds exist to help, the tendency among states has been to institutionalize people with disabilities instead of helping them obtain independence. Only 12 states have spent even as much as 50% of available funds. Instead, states prefer to house their fellow Americans with disabilities in nursing homes.

While we have light years to go on this issue, it is important to stop and celebrate human rights victories as well, so happy birthday ADA!

The celebration of the royal baby is a reminder that most people have never integrated the democratic ideal. We still believe there is a superior caste of human beings in whose world we dwell. A child born to the rich causes the world to hold its breath, but the birth of a baby to the poor causes not a stir. If the time and money dedicated to this one birth had been spread out to all human newborns it could have perhaps meant neonatal care for an entire city if not nation.

A Republican measure to limit voting has passed in North Carolina. The new measure will require voter IDs, shorten early voting by a week, ends same day registration, make any changes to one’s address at least 25 days before the election and eliminates straight party voting. The legislation will make it harder to trace the money behind campaigns.

Voting statistics in North Carolina show Democrats are more likely to vote early and vote straight ticket, two of the practices targeted by the bill. A state study also estimated more than 300,000 registered voters lack driver’s licenses or other forms of state-issued ID, most of them elderly or low-income minorities.

In practical terms, voter suppression makes sense from a Republican viewpoint. For decades the Republican Party has thrived on a hateful rhetoric essentially waging war against  the poor, women, gays, people of color and immigrants. Consisting now of a shrinking demographic of angry white men and a thinning crowd of minority groups who want to please them, the Republican Party has little choice now but to declare war on democracy itself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/north-carolina-voter-id-bill_n_3656084.html

Jim Hightower has a piece on Common Dreams titled, “Blessed are the Rich” in which he presents how two super rich people say we can end homelessness. In both cases tough love is the answer. Andy Kessler, who Hightower describes as “a former hedge-fund whiz,” saw his 16 son volunteer for a homeless shelter.

The homeless problem, he recently wrote in an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, stems from “all this volunteering and charitable giving” by do-gooders like his son. Homeless folks ought to be working, he lectured, but they’re not, “because someone is feeding, clothing and, in effect, bathing them.”

Reagan’s speech writers began the mantra that lead to this kind of thinking. The more we have tried to do for (fill in the blank) the worse things have gotten. So the very attempt to educate, feed or clothe people is the real problem. One could make the same case against fire trucks. New York is spending more on fire fighting than ever, but in spite of that, arson is worse than ever. Ergo, firetrucks cause arson. It is simple libertarian objectivity. Strip the city of fire stations and you will end its problem with fire.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/24-2

I’ll be doing a workshop at Seton Cove on the Universal Roots of Christianity. Today we will look at the Egyptian God Osirus.

When Osiris was born a star appeared in the East. Three wanderers followed the star to the birth. Osiris was betrayed and was cut into pieces. The pieces were scattered out and Isis his loving partner seeks out the pieces. Osiris is then resurrected and in some Egyptian traditions becomes judge of the quick and the dead. Osiris’ resurrection was remembered by a communion service using bread and beer. The priest would say, “This is my body. This is my blood.” Mithra (another offshoot of Osiris, says “If you do not eat of my flesh, drink my blood, you will not have eternal life.”

So early Christians who had heard the Egyptian version of the story, would hear the gospel versions of communion very differently. They would realize the symbol was not about an historical event, nor just about Jesus. They would recognize that the gospel writers were giving their own culture’s inflection on a very ancient story.

Christianity is a branch of a very ancient tree. Honoring the roots out of which we have grown is a way of finding the full expanse and depth of a religion which is bigger than any one cultural expression. So what would a larger version of communion mean? Perhaps it symbolizes that we are born in debt to those who gave their lives that we might live (parents, teachers, etc.) After gratefully receiving that gift, we must some day give ourselves back as food to the world. This surrender does not cause us fear if we identify with all of life.

Bread symbolized the fact that the germ of wheat dies to give life.  In these ancient mystery religions wheat or corn would represent not the the god who died in the story, but the life process itself. After saviors (personifying the life process) would symbolically rise from the dead, they would then invite initiates to join join in the circle of life. Initiates would no longer perceive themselves as mere individuals standing outside of life observing but as the fire of life itself. Initiates would stop identifying with their little life that dies and identify as the one big life of us all. They would then know that life is expressed as fully through our dying as through our being born.

Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh has his own version of the symbol when he writes:

“I asked the leaf whether it was scared because it was Autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me, “No. During the whole Spring and Summer, I was very alive. I worked hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the tree. Please do not say I am just this form because the form of leaf is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am already inside the tree and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree. That’s why I do not worry. As I leave this branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’ You should not say life of the leaf; you should only speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just life.” I bowed my head and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid. It knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die.”

Our personal story is never complete. Families are never all together. Life is never all together. We’re always on a journey to something else. If we can realize that’s who we are, that we are life in transition to another form, then we do not feel lost as life changes form. We can look at the deaths of our loved ones and our own death as beautiful and ephemeral expressions of something bigger that does not die.

Okay, “hate” is too strong of a word, but perhaps there is a growing discontent against Republican policies from within the ranks. In a recent ABC poll Republicans and Independents that tend to vote Republican were asked if their leaders were leading the party in the right or wrong direction. Only 37% said they were happy with the direction their leadership has taken, 57% said the leadership had led the party in the wrong direction. Now if they can only get the voices of sanity back into leadership positions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/07/23/National-Politics/Polling/release_253.xml

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/07/republicans-are-really-really-not-happy-their-leaders

It was recently disclosed by the Associated Press that the president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, sought to ban Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” from being taught in classes K-12 in Indiana while he was Governor of Indiana.

“In an email exchange with top Indiana education officials, Daniels wrote, “This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.” After he described “A People’s History” as a “truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page,” Daniels asked: “Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?” -Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

The People’s History was a rare attempt to permit voices normally excluded from the story, so it included excerpts from Native Americans, Black Americans, women, labor leaders and socialists.

Daniels has continuued to try to discredit Zinn calling him “anti-American” and “a fraud.” More than 90 faculty members from aPurdue University protested:

“…To charge that he ‘purposely falsified American history’ … reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of academic discussion,” according to the professors. “Scholarly debates and disagreements create ferment that leavens the study of history. Without vigorous disagreements about the meaning of the American experience, the field would not have moved in such important directions as the study of women’s history, African American history, labor history, the history of sexuality, and so on.”

Whatever the flaws of “People’s History” it was a rare attempt to listen to step outside the “official” version many of us were taught that framed history as the story of white European males and their discovery and conquest of the the rest of the world. To call Zinn’s effort to lift up other voices “un-American” may reveal an unwillingness to listen to the victims of the American Empire or to ever even once look them in the face.  To call Zinn a “fraud” may reveal simply that he has violated the most sacred if unspoken tenet of education within an empire, history is to be written by the conquerors.

http://www.jconline.com/viewart/20130722/NEWS0501/307220030/90-Purdue-professors-troubled-by-Daniels-continued-criticism-of-Zinn