Ponderings

During the Primary season, politics were easier in the church. In a field where it takes both hands to count the contenders, polarization wasn’t as seductive. Now we are down to two candidates that stand on either side of the infamous American wedge issues and the divide seems unbridgeable. Conversation across the divide seems improbable so we gather as groups on either side and yell at each other.

Herein lies the challenge of a faith community. To be relevant, we cannot ignore the elephant in the room. This is an election season, and a crucially important one. To be a gathered group on a particular side of the divide is tempting, but only contributes to the abyss. A gag order may appear the preferable option, especially following the IRS investigations, but our silence unwittingly indulges the divide. Neither bigger megaphones nor stronger gag orders will dissolve the wedges that are buried deep within our communal psyche.

For this healing we need to forge new paths of dialogue.

We do not find a common path by sharing only our ignorance. When we are able to share the depth of our understanding, the nuance of our perspective and receive the same from others we can begin to identify common threads. When our discourse moves beyond the sound bytes and into the heart of the issues and our passions, we find the strands that can be woven together.

The hallmarks of this discourse involve naming and claiming our particular perspectives. This requires that we dare to pay attention, get involved, develop our individual beliefs. Having named and claimed our own perspective, we can then be open to respectfully hear perspectives that differ from our own. Rooted in what we now, we can listen, discover common threads and at times find our own perspectives moving. Respect for self and other is the ground of this discourse.

This respectful discourse is the call of the faith community in a contentious time. Our space must be safe without being neutral. Each of us is encouraged to bring our questions and our yearnings into the community, our buttons and bumper stickers too. So too to bring our open minds and our open hearts to receive the questions and yearnings of others whose buttons and bumper stickers differ from our own. Sunday morning is not the neutral zone nor is it the zone for either side of the divide. Sunday morning is the time when we bring all that we are to the table, in all of the wonder of our diversity, and therein meet the presence of the living God.

So come, children of God, come with the fullness of who you are… questions and answers, blue and red. At the table together we will discover the beauty of purple.

One of the friends that used to hang around when our kids were small warned about the dangers of stepping on a mother’s last nerve. I laughed whenever he said it and it became a household phrase. “I’m on my last nerve,” was all I need say and behaviors would change. I suppose every mother has a different tipping point, and a different reaction when tipped, but all of us have the vulnerability of the last nerve, the thin veil that stands between us and chaos.

I’ve been pondering the presence (and absence) of the last nerve. If indeed we could identify the source to replenish a mother’s nerves, Hallmark would be rendered useless as children instead gathered coins for nerve replenishment. Although motherhood may be a particularly poignant vantage point to watch the last nerve phenomenon, I suspect its really quite universal. The causes are equally diffuse. Long associated with the female reproductive cycle, men are no stranger to the phenomenon, the phrase ‘grumpy old men’ didn’t originate in Hollywood. Neither are children immune to the ebb and flow of nerve supply.

One of the benefits of aging is perspective, and with growing perspective I realize the fine line between righteous indignation and my last nerve. I’ve come to understand that not every bit of fiery advice that emerges from my mouth can be understood as kingdom building, in fact sometimes quite the opposite. If understanding translated easily into impulse control, we would be wise to put our elders in charge. Unfortunately, as wisdom dawns, impulse control is often fading.

Unlike the overburdened camel, the power of the last nerve metaphor is the acknowledgement of need and interdependence. Simply put, when someone you care about is on their last nerve, you have a choice. You can either offer to them a hand, an additional nerve if you will. Though there is no short cut for nerve replenishment, I do believe that the spirit abiding in relationship refuels our frayed souls. The other option when approaching someone with minimal nerve reserves is to play the foolish child, jumping on what remains and living within the chaos.

With the heat index down and the air quality meters again green, refueling is the order of the day. Still, I am humbled by the realities of my own reserves and grateful for community with which to refuel.

You know you are beyond youthful indignation when you see the cover of the New Yorker and, ignoring the jeers and the cheers, all you can think is, ‘gosh, that Michelle is a great looking militant.’ I wish I could look that good with boots and an AK-47!

To be sure, I can see the offense. Whether the offense is given, taken, or both, though, is less clear to me these days. Frankly, I find a militant Michelle to be rather sexy and Obama in a turban isn’t bad either.

I admit to being more than a little confused about the flag thing. I know that the anti-Obama fringe (there are not many of them, but they are inordinately noisy!) likes to say that Obama somehow missed the patriotism boat. I can only conclude that is ageist. No one in our post-baby boomer pre-gen-x set can say the pledge of allegiance without some mental gymnastics, remembering our parents injunction that good Americans stand to say it with their hands over their hearts while our hippy public school teachers taught us to sit down and sing “Where Have all the Flowers Gone”. Obama is too old to buy into the post-911 blind patriotism and too young to remember the Civil Defence programs infamous “duck-and-cover” drills. I confess that I am a Pledge of Allegiance avoider, pledged to God and unwilling to pledge to nation-state, so admittedly I am not a good judge of patriotism. Personally, I found the obligatory flag pin debacle to be un-American.

As for the Obama-Osama thing, I confess to be being a bit cavalier. I spend a lot of my day with words and the deep layers of meaning to which they can allude. In a Jane Doe world, the words Obama and Osama are an irresistible invitation to word play. No good satirist can be forgiven for not having at least a wee bit of fun celebrating the leading presidential candidate with the arch nemesis of the outgoing one. The two O leaders could not be disparate. The O guy running for president has a lot in common with Oprah, a hard luck story turned around with grit and compassion who has spent his life nurturing hope. The O guy that we are taught to fear was born into luxury and has spent his life nurturing hate. Aside from the fact that their first names elude pronunciation by Midwestern middle class (read: white) folk, these two men have nothing in common. If our collective intelligence has degraded to a place where find an attempt to link these two to be anything but humorous, we have bigger problems than the election can address.

Barry Blitt, the artist who proffered the infamous piece, entitled his picture, “Politics of Fear”. Clearly, his intent was to satirize the ridiculousness of the fear baiting. Unfortunately, humor is dependent on our ability to parse fact and fiction and that ability is woefully missing in our current discourse. Not only have we devolved to electing presidents based on sound bytes, we have become so dull that we cannot be trusted with intelligent humor.

My faith says that humans are endowed with gifts, gifts that we are expected to use for the common good. One of these gifts is intelligence, another compassion, still another empathy. None of these is touted much in mainstream discourse, but together they would change our read on pieces like Barry Blitt’s. Although I want to believe that Blitt is right, that we as Americans can handle, enjoy and indeed learn from good satire, I fear that the naysayers might be right. Satire received at face value will fuel the very thing it aims to upend, and we can no longer trust Americans to engage in the depth that satire invites. Such a conclusion renders the piece offensive, but the greater offense is the loss of a thinking electorate.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with my two older brothers. My role is the be the family bleeding heart socialist, my next older brother is a fiscal conservative that would like you to he is Mr. Potter (It’s a Wonderful Life), though in fact while he abhors spending money he is very generous. My oldest brother is himself pretty tight with the checkbook but has the most moderate views of my siblings. We’re all grown up now but still play pretty much the same roles we’ve always played.

Truth be told, we’re all pretty lucky financially. We’re all three employed with jobs we love (at least I love mine and they enjoy theirs!), jobs that provide financial stability for our families. Jeff has the most money in the bank, Norm lives the most frugally, and I have the most fun. Jeff is concerned about the financial markets collapsing, Norm is focused on getting his daughter through college, I tend to look at today’s balance sheet and proclaim it enough. The conversation was fun and, with spouses and parents not buffering the exchange, what emerged was an interesting display of our personality types.

Talking about money is rarely so much fun. There is no faster way to raise the temperature in our family room than to tell Gary about another pending expense. Quite frankly, American families are in trouble with money:
* About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year.
* Average households carry some $8,000 in credit card debt.
* Personal bankruptcies have doubled in the past decade.
These grim statistics don’t even address the mortgage disaster or the looming and lasting effects of our national indebtedness. The market is down and energy prices are up, the tension is certain only to rise.

When the subject of money comes at in our church community, the movement is backward. Fear becomes the backdrop of the conversation. Anonymity, a nameless, faceless somebody, anybody but me, is pointed to as the great hope. Nowhere is a theology of scarcity more palpable than in our discussions about money. Undoubtedly our uncertainty with regards to financial security in our homes leaves us feeling at best timid, sometimes even catatonic, when the subject of money emerges in a wider community to which we belong.

James Caroll is a professor at Texas Tech that examined the effects of financial concerns on marital relationships. What he discovered was a surprise even to him.

“We need to rethink the idea that financial problems are always money problems,” said Carroll. Carroll said the conclusion that materialism can put a strain on a marriage is “common sense,” but said the truly interesting finding was that materialism could decrease marriage satisfaction even in higher-income couples. “Financial problems are as much a result of how we think about money as how we spend it,” Carroll said.
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2007-March/003325.html

If financial problems are rooted not only in our bank accounts, but also in our hearts and our heads, money is a topic that we need to broach in our places of worship. Not simply, not even primarily, because the church needs money, though it does; but more because our spiritual and mental health is inextricably connected with our attitudes about money. The shame that shrouds the financial quandaries of our lives is a spiritual matter and is exacerbated when we, in the church, continue to talk about everything but money.

With gas prices over $4 a gallon and the electric bill up 40%, it’s time to make safe space to name our hopes and also our fears. I’m grateful for a safe space with my brothers. Safe space meant permission to name the fear and to own our own perspectives, to be heard with question but without shame. Safe space meant receiving the perspective of the other with good humor but without judgment. I look forward to more safe space in our community.