jimrigby.org

Perhaps it is a sign I am getting old, but the whole topic of genetically altered crops seems a bit Frankensteinian to me. It seems terribly premature in our exploration of the topic for humanity to begin to tamper with the alphabet of life. We only discovered genes within my lifetime. We have barely begun the process of mapping them. I have trouble believing we yet understand the long term and ecological consequences of changing the genetic code anywhere along the rippling web of life. Instead, it feels like a teenager has just finished a couple of defensive driving courses and now wants to work on the family car.

When Mary Shelley wrote her classic horror novel, it seemed a thrilling but Luddite warning about scientific presumption. I am not a geneticist, so it is very possible that I am reacting out of ignorance, but I cannot help but think that the scientist mapping the various genomes of life how ever competent and well intentioned, works under the looming shadow of bloodless monsters with names like Monsanto.

Thanks to Paul Davis for sending this NPR piece on music. A man has gone back and changed certain sad songs to happy just by moving them from major to minor key. He also took a happy song like “Hey, Jude” and completely changed it’s feel by shifting it to minor key. What is it in the brain that hears certain music as sad, and other music as happy? It’s a fascinating study.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=173832177&m=173843031

For the past few decades we’ve been struggling to develop a new theology that will allow us to be scientifically honest and politically responsible. We are looking for an understanding of religion that won’t set us against other people who believe differently, or who do not believe at all. We are looking for a religion that won’t set us against new discoveries that science makes.

When we seek a worldview that will work for today, we sometimes have to leave behind the images we had as a child.  It can create a kind of crisis, a time in the desert where we lose not only  some of the bad things of childhood, but we also lose some of the good things, as well.  If we are not careful in our pursuit of honesty and responsibility, we may lose the excitement of being alive, or lose a sense of reverence, a sense of the mystery of things.
My hope in doing this work is to put those elements back together – to have a religion that is scientifically honest, politically responsible, and that also puts us in touch with a reverence for being alive. We need an honest view of life, but one that does not look out at the world as a bunch of rocks and at people as so many biological mechanisms. There’s a mystery here for us to share. We live in honesty and in reverence, excitement, and joy.  I believe that can happen.

(From the introduction to a recent sermon)

I do love satire. This is a take off on the White House’s refusal to say whether citizens will be assassinated by drones on U.S. soil. We in the U.S. have been so traumatized by the brutality of recent presidents that we no longer feel our own fear. We are like zebras in the Serengeti. As long as there is another zebra between us and the lion, we call it “peace.”

http://paulbibeau.blogspot.com/2013/03/you-probably-wont-even-know-guy-we-blow.html#.UTs6qtvnaYN

Tomorrow, all interested parties are invited to our first ever trek to Rev. Jim’s Dam Bar out by Lake Buchanan. We will gather at the church starting at 1:00 and will leave at 1:30. None of us has been to Rev. Jim’s so we have no idea what it is like other than a picture on it’s website. I’ll run off maps, but we can carpool. I’m mainly hoping to get to meet some of our friends from the blog.  Rev. Jim’s does have food, but vegetarians would be wise to bring food just to make sure.

What follows is an excerpt from an article by Peter Van Buren on the disasters following the Iraq War. I will provide a paragraph, and then say where I disagree.

“We don’t get it.  We really don’t.  We may not, in military terms, know how to win any more, but as a society we don’t get losing either.  We don’t recognize it, even when it’s staring us in the face, when nothing — and I mean nothing — works out as planned. Take the upcoming 10th anniversary of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq as Exhibit A. You could describe what happened in that country as an unmitigated disaster — from the moment, in April 2003, U.S. troops first entered a Baghdad in flames and being looted (“stuff happens”) and were assigned to guard only the Interior Ministry (i.e. the secret police) and the Oil Ministry (well, you know what that is) to the moment in December 2011 when the last American combat unit slipped out of that land in the dead of the night (after lying to Iraqi colleagues about what they were doing).”

The entire article is linked below and serves as a helpful reminder of the debacle that was Desert Storm.  I do not disagree with the facts of the article, but I very much disagree with its tone. I believe it is a serous mistake to lapse into this kind of confused narrative that pictures our foreign policy as good intentions gone bad through our own incompetence.

It was an international banker who brought me to clarity. I was doing his wedding and at the dinner he began to talk about a deal he was making with Libya. At the time the US had no dealings with Libya, so I asked him how he was able to do that. He deflected my comment and changed the subject. I began to I express my torture at not being able to figure out Reagan’s foreign policy. It just didn’t make any sense. It seemed contradictory and self defeating. After some time of begging on my part the banker, who had been drinking heavily, flashed an anguished smile, leaned forward and conspiratorially whispered three words that forever removed my confusion. “Follow the money.”

For the people who profit from it, no war is a failure. If their nation is humiliated they still get to keep the wealth. Even if their nation falls, the rich go on finding ever new places to spend the blood money.

So when we discuss the Iraq war we must also ask ourselves three questions: Who made money building up the government of Saddam Hussein even when it was clear he was a brutal dictator? Who made money destroying him along with the nation of Iraq? Who made rebuilding the nation of Iraq, however poorly it was done? When you realize that you are speaking about the same group of people, you will understand the shell game that lies behind US foreign policy.

Which is not to say there are no well intentioned people in the process, or that there is some nefarious plot that is done consciously. It is enough to have a few people without conscience hidden in the system of unbridled profit that is capitalism, and also hidden in the most profitable business of all- which is war. So if you want to know why your son or daughter may die in a foreign land, do not listen to the noble words of the politicians who but are the talking heads for a much deeper mindset. If you want to know why our nation goes to war, follow the money.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175658/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_one_day_even_the_drones_will_have_to_land/

A spokesperson for the Republican Party released the following statement yesterday:

“We are pleased to announce that we have successfully cloned a Neanderthal caveman, and are now running him for President. We feel Grok will be the perfect face for the exciting new ideas our party has in mind for America.

Grok is not your grandparent’s caveman. For example, whereas the old cavemen used clubs to control their women, Grok will now use vaginal probes and harassing legislation. Whereas the old cavemen ran from fire, Grok runs only from the science of evolution and global climate change.

Grok believes religion should be taught in school, and that that evolution is just a theory. So, along with scientific theories, he believes students should be taught religious theories of creation as well, such as Grok’s own belief that the world was created by a large bear.

Grok will take several current Republican proposals, and make them even better. For example, a bill by a state lawmaker banning bare breasts in public except for breast feeding will be enhanced. It has been shown that 100% of those who use pornography began by viewing their mother’s naked breasts.  So to protect infants from being stimulated by nudity, instead of being breast fed, they will be given a milk voucher. That voucher will be redeemable at any agribusiness. If elected, President, Grok will sponsor the “Breast Protection Bill” which will ensure that bare breasts are limited to designated areas that will be called “gentlemen’s clubs.” And President Grok will pass tough new laws to make sure our nation’s most important documents are not compromised by lactating women.

Grok will also issue government grants for any automakers who will develop a personal truck running off  clean burning coal, and that can actually frack the oil out of the ground. The truck will sport a large reservoir to store the toxic waste, and a GPS that will lead the driver to the nearest poor section of town for disposal.

Finally, instead of blocking black and Hispanic voters through clumsy voter id laws, Grok will simply ask voters to prove they are white by presenting a Confederate flag or Vanilla Ice cd. So as not to alienate minority voters, Grok will begin every speech attacking affirmative action with, “I’m not a racist, but…” And, speaking of diversity, people of color who are willing to speak against racial preferences, and women willing to marry misogynous men will always have a place in Grok’s cabinet.

So if you are tired of the same old Republican policies, give us another chance. We are wrapping those old ideas in completely new packages. Our campaign slogan is simple. ‘If you’re tired of our same old crock, vote for Grok!'”

Calling some one  “liberal” or “conservative” these days is a bit like honking in traffic. Only the person doing the honking knows what the signal means.

Once upon a time “liberal” and “conservative” referred to actual political issues. One could assume that a member of the labor party would support workers over management, for example. But these days it is not hard to find strike breaking liberals or conservatives who actually conserve nothing but their own money.  Now the two terms are primarily understood relative to one another.  Usually they simply mean you belong or don’t belong to the group doing the labeling.

To say that being liberal or conservative is good in itself is like saying that “up” is always better than “down.” Unless we tether our political terms back to actual policies, our political discussions will have more in common with the barking of dogs than with meaningful dialogue between responsible citizens.

Robyn Ross has written a nice article for the Texas Observer  on the “Christian Left.” Several of us in the article tried to reframe that term a bit, but it’s understandable, if we discuss the religious “right” that others will speak of a religious “left.” For some of you, the article will be an introduction to the wonderful work of Ryan Valentine and Bee Moorehead.

As the article points out there are people all over the state that do not fit the profile of conservative religion. The article tries to explore why the voice of progressive religion is so hard to hear.

We might add that while the article focuses on Christianity, there are wonderful progressives of every religious stripe here in Texas. The title of the article is Left Behind: The Hidden Progressive Christian Community of Texas.

http://www.texasobserver.org/left-behind-the-hidden-progressive-christian-community-of-texas/

There is a story in scripture about a group of men about to stone a woman they had “caught in adultery.” The story never explains how the moralists were able to catch the woman involved, but not the man.

Annie-Rose Strasser  has written a story on AlterNet about a young teacher at a Christian college who became pregnant and was fired. The school has a policy prohibiting pre-marital sex, so that part of the story was predictable, but where the story takes a turn is when the school offered a job to the boyfriend who got her pregnant.

The Christian Church has a long history of hypocrisy when it comes matters of sex, punishing women and winking at men for the same sexual acts. But I do not believe the lesson here is that the school should have punished the man in the same way it punished the woman. I believe the lesson here is that the church’s obsession with monitoring sex has itself become a kind of perversion.

Scripture says nothing about getting a marriage license or getting the approval of the church before one engages in sex. The implication I get when looking at all the versions of marriage throughout scripture is that the writers were concerned that humans not be used as sexual objects and that offspring be cared for. To say the biblical model of marriage is only between one man and one woman is patently dishonest. That standard would wipe out many of the heroes of the Bible, Abraham, David and Moses among them.