Ponderings

Reading the news in an election cycle is not for the faint of heart. I admit that I lost my stomach for the political season before the primaries were over. Once the ads went negative, I tuned out. Admittedly, I am a wimp.

Attempting to remain somewhat sane in an insane sea without going to shore, I have attempted to read an array of sources from the Huffington Post to Fox News, from the New York Times to Aljazeera. Although an economic neophyte, I have tried to read the daily news of the unraveling economy with intention while dodging the mud fight that is always a paragraph behind.

Coming of age with Ronald Reagan the rise of the Moral Majority, religiously tinged political rhetoric is not new to me. What is new is the level of hatefulness and the loss of all semblance of decorum. When our political rallies become feeding frenzies for hate-filled rhetoric, we have gone too far. When the charged rhetoric from the podium unleashes chants from the floor for murder, it is too late to hide behind the banner of free speech.

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To be sure we are a fearful people and it is our fear that opens our hearts and minds to the swirling public sewer of negativity. Our scientific minds have now so far outpaced our moral ones that we have neither the scientific vocabulary nor the moral sensitivity to have a responsible conversation about the essence of life. We can start life in test tubes and keep hearts beating with machinery, but we have no clue about when the spirit enters and leaves. In lieu of wisdom, we purchase packages of soundbytes from one side or the other to hurl across the divide. Instead of discourse, we create discord. In this cultural context of fast paced shallow conversation, we find both a presidential campaign, an endless war, and a tanking economy. The result is not pretty. The toxic stream unleashed in recent weeks will not assuage our fear, it is in fact a heady fertilizer that puts our fears into hyper drive, turning our fears into potent landmines.

Although I was not a fan at the time, I’m beginning to see greater wisdom in the simplicity of Nancy Reagan’s, “Just say ‘no’.” To be sure, the problems we face far exceed any soundbyte including this one. Still, the first step to breaking the alcoholic cycle is to stop drinking. So too with the toxic waste destroying our public discourse. Just say no.

Between now and the election, I would suggest that if a negative commercial comes on the television, turn it off. If attending a rally that becomes negative, go home. If your friend or neighbor begins to tell you what’s wrong with this candidate or that, change the subject. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Now, more than ever, we need a return to the basic rules of kindness that govern the kindergarten playground.

Turning off all the negativity may well leave a void, but it is in this void that our still speaking God can be heard.

For the next month, there is one place safe from the fray, your local 12 Step group. The 10th Tradition in AA (and all of the related groups) is a clear mandate to steer clear: “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.” Refusing to enter the debate, refusing to entertain even a sharing of perspectives, local groups are able to remain safe space for everyone and focus on the business of healing.

The welcome reprieve of such safe space leaves me wondering about the role of the church. Last weekend churches in 20 states participated in an event organized by the Alliance Defense Fund called “Freedom in the Pulpit” in which their pastors delivered sermons admonishing votes for particular candidates. The event was intended to highlight their opposition to the 1954 law that links a church’s tax exempt status to their neutrality regarding political candidates. Churches can of course discuss issues without jeopardizing their tax status, and many ministers use the pulpit to endorse issues that are candidate specific.

Most of us abhor the notion that any pastor would deign to claim God’s choice during an election. It is therefore tempting to suggest that the church, like our 12 step programs, ought to steer clear of politics. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that our mission allows us that choice. Though not overtly partisan, the gospel is inherently political. Invariably those who are serious about following Jesus find themselves immersed in the issues of the day. As our culture wars have raged, the neutrality of the church has crumbled and the role of the church using pivotal wedge issues cannot be underestimated.

Our mission at Evangelical UCC is: “Following the God made known in the life and teachings of Jesus, we gather as an Open and Affirming community, to worship, learn and serve.” Committed to being Open and Affirming, we cannot turn a deaf ear to the cries for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (found in the Republican Party Platform). Gathered to worship, learn and serve, we cannot turn a blind eye to the urban battlefields of our abandoned drug war in the name of being “tough on crime” (found in the Democratic Party Platform). Believing Jesus, we cannot pretend that any candidate or party or even nation-state is divine. To embody our mission is to have conversations that engage the issues of our current day, conversations that foster the dawning of the God’s peace and justice.

As we enter these waters, we are wise to be cautious. The undertow is strong and the current rapid. We are tempted to stay on the shore or cling to that which appears to be buoyant. Wedge issues appear deceptively like life boats, but beware. Their sharp edges gouge with wicked fury. If we decide to play in the water, we should do so with intentionality and humility. Perhaps if we remember no other commandments, we would do well to repeat the first one daily: “You shall have no other Gods.” Certainly elephants and donkeys are idols that have no place in our churches. But beyond the idols, a life of faith is lived in a real world that calls us into voting booths on November 4th. Gathered as a community, we need to practice talking about what these means for our faith.

Before coming to church, though, we might want to attend a 12 Step meeting.

No pondering can commence without some acknowledgment of the economy. The gravity is shocking enough to interrupt even the normal wrangling of a presidential campaign. One can only hope that it will interrupt also the endless run of negative commercials.

As the world turns, I wonder how the news of the day intersects with our daily lives. To be sure it makes me cautious about my own financial choices in ways that are new. But thus far the basic balance of life has been largely untouched. We go to work, make our mortgage payment, use our credit cards at the grocery.

Of course we reason that the big guys are the ones who should pay. The obscene wealth of a few at the expense of the many rightly offends us. Appropriately we ask accountability in these current negotiations to minimize the continuation of this injustice. Yet the situation is not so simple and the blame not so neatly placed at the feet of a few. We’ve largely prospered in an economy designed upon greed, where our endless desires push the economy forward.

The search for scapegoats will no doubt also commence soon. In times of economic uncertainty the temptation to point fingers is hard to resist, but we must. This is neither a blue problem nor a red one. This is not about nationalities or creeds. More importantly, solutions to the current challenges will not come from skewering anyone but rather from demanding greater accountability both from ourselves and our leaders.

Perhaps an appropriate response might be one of humility. Impermanence is a spiritual principle not often explored in western Christianity, but perhaps one worthy of our consideration. Impermanence is the perspective that all of life is flux, that constancy is an illusion and change the norm. Embracing impermanence would enable us to loose our grip not only on our stuff but more importantly on our expectations. Freed from the inclination to cling, we are empowered to find life in whatever context unfolds. Focused on matters of the spirit, we will also be less likely to join the hunt for scapegoats.

Clearly we pray for a quick fix to the economy, but more measured attention to our souls may be the order of the day.

When the nights are restless and I begin channeling Goldilocks in search of sleep, I sometimes find myself on the family room couch. Last night was such a night and as I drifted off into long awaited slumber, the dog was nearby making sleeping dog noises in her box. The clink of the metal crate as she shifted in her sleep was the only sound in the otherwise quiet house.

As I consider my dog’s comfortable sleep in a wire cage, I confess confusion. Personally I find dog crates (the euphemism for cages) to be anathema and I had no intention of ever having one of those heartless contraptions in my house.

When our beloved Evie came to live with us several Christmas’ ago, I set up a bed of blankets on the floor beside my own assuming that she would sleep blissfully alongside her new people. Wrong.
As soon as she heard the sounds of her new people sleeping, she explored the bedrooms in search of a place to relieve herself. Not a good first night. When my son awoke on the second morning, it was to the sight of prized toys mangled by Evie’s teething. Our day time hours spent with Evie were so rich we might have been able to overlook the nighttime indiscretions, except that her indiscretions were creeping into the daytime. Any stray toy was an invitation to chew and when she started chewing on my furniture I cried foul.

Even so, when the kids and I trudged through Petsmart looking at crates, Evie in tow, I knew that I was a dog-mother failure.

Despite their claims to the contrary, these contraptions are not very user friendly. Once assembled, we turned our attention to the accompanying DVD, “Crating Your Dog 101”. We were skeptical as the talking heads assured us of how happy our Evie would be in her new ‘home’, but we listened impassively as they described dog nature. We were not convinced that dogs instinctively need the safety of defined perimeters, but our alternatives were few. Stubbornly we listened on. By the end of the video, we realized that we had lost track of Evie and quickly scanned the room. Evie had already crawled into the awaiting crate and fallen asleep.

Clearly Evie knew and wanted the comfort of ‘crate life’. Because she had been an abandoned dog, we knew nothing about her patterns and preferences. All the while we thought we were honoring here with the run of the house, she was needing the security of a box. Our transference of our values came at the cost of her sense of safety.

As I roam the house in the quiet of the night, searching for the perfect sleeping space, am I too searching for the perimeters? Is it a definition, a boundary that I seek?

Perhaps at the heart of our cultures wars is a yearning for definition, for boundary. Buried beneath the bitter words about abortion, homosexuality, and even our war making is a rusty crate that once defined our culture. Patriarchy was the frame by which we understood ourselves in relationship, though at times limiting it also offered a measure of comfort. Patriarchy provided definitions of gender roles and gave structure to what we call nuclear families but its influence far exceeded our individual lives. Patriarchy helped to define hierarchies among groups of people and even the created world, with animals and the earth itself. In its crudest sense, patriarchy offers the domino scenario where the angry man grumbles at wife who yells at child who hits the dog. The more sinister embodiments of patriarchy lead us through the living hells of the Salem Witch Trials of Colonial America and the Middle Passage of the 19th century, and land us in the modern era of gay bashing finally brought to light in the tragic murder of Matthew Sheppard. Despite the ugly underbelly, however, patriarchy functioned to provide structure and thereby comfort for centuries of western humanity.

In this new millennium we are witnessing a profound challenge to patriarchy and the result is loud saber rattling. Our children and now theirs are simply refusing to accept the definitions of gender and orientation and race that enabled us to identify the perimeters of our world order. Androgyny is a norm and the ethnic boxes on our forms have become irrelevant. Although we certainly share archetypal features with our canine friends, among them our innate desire for definition, humanity can no longer so neatly collapse into the categories and boxes upon which we once depended.

Inasmuch as our culture wars reveal the death rattle of patriarchy, perhaps we can celebrate even the sharp edges. For out of the ashes, new life will rise. In the meantime, we can rejoice that our crates are no longer locked.

Fifteen years ago I sat in the doctor’s office hearing the results of a blood test.

I was an otherwise euphoric pregnant woman with one toddler in tow and a congregation eager to embrace our growing family. I vividly remember the utter delight I felt when the pregnancy test turned pink, the delight of my community upon hearing the news, the ease in which I once again set aside my blue jeans and donned the flowing maternity clothes. Getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as my mother warned, but being pregnant had been a blissful enterprise. That is until Dr. Ebner shared the news of “possible abnormalities” and words like Downs syndrome and chromosome charged through the air.

Given that medical professionals were the ones to share the news, the possible responses offered were likewise medical. I was given the names and numbers for further genetic testing and an amniocentesis at the hospital an hour from our home. The answers I craved, I was assured, would be given as soon as I met with the next team of doctors.

Between my encounters with medical professionals was a period of deep soul searching. At least I expected it would be so. Although my perspectives around abortion have become more nuanced over the years, I was not morally opposed to abortion, for myself or for others. Yet the suggestion that further testing of the fetus was necessary to determine if my baby should be brought into this world was anathema. It was not a fetus that had captured my heart, it was a baby. Already the mother barracuda instinct was in full alert.

A friend had miscarried after an amniocentesis and I wasn’t willing to knowingly put my baby in harms way. My partner and I did visit with the genetic counselors but took a pass on the amniocentesis. The counselors were genuinely confused, but I don’t remember feeling a need to explain. We went home and cuddled with our toddler while we prepared the nursery for whatever child we would be lucky enough to bring home.

After the birth of a healthy baby, Dr. Ebner asked if my position on choice had changed. It was my turn to be confused. My choice to refuse the tests and thereby the option of terminating the pregnancy was an immensely personal one. Neither the medical establishment, nor the legal statutes, nor the political posturing could steal away the enormity of my choice. In fact my choice was not the one that my family expected, not the one that even I would have anticipated. All the more I was aware of the importance of choice.

My choice was certainly informed by faith, though not bludgeoned by dogma. Long before the blood test, several karma filled buses had long since obliterated my dogma. As pastor in a small town parish, I had seen plenty of scenarios where divergent choices were equally faith-filled. My only theological clarity as I made my choice was the inescapable love of God for both myself and my unborn child. Whether the child lived or died, whether my choice was to embrace the complexity within or to run the either way, still God would find us, claim us, and love us.

Admittedly the passionate rhetoric about choice and life in this election cycle is personal for me as it is for many women. I was deeply offended that Obama’s response to Rick Warren’s question about abortion (Saddleback, August 2008) was ridiculed by the pundits for its nuance. If a discussion about abortion doesn’t deserve our most careful consideration and, yes, nuance, I don’t know what would. Likewise I am offended that Palin’s choice to bear a child, a baby with Downs Syndrome, is considered to be politically significant. I applaud both Obama’s nuance and Palin’s right to choose.

As my babies headed to high school this week, I’m struck that one’s qualifications for leadership are distinct from one’s ability to procreate. Giving birth to our babies is perhaps the easy part. After their first squeal in the cold light of day, the choices we parent’s face quickly become more difficult. In the complex world of parenting, nuance is one of the few life lines we have. I’m keeping it.