Ponderings

Don Imus is at it again, speaking the unspeakable. When hearing the crime tangled story of a prominent athlete, Imus asked, “What color is he?”

Like the rest of America, I found his question viscerally offensive and quickly typed the opening line of a ponderings. That was on Monday. On Thursday, I return to find the page still empty. On Friday, I’m still wondering. What, specifically, was the offense?

Given that Imus’ interview was about an NFL player, odds are that the player is black. In fact 65% of the NFL lineup is black. A case could be made that Imus’ question signifies a new level of openness on his part, his not assuming the blackness of the athlete in question.

Perhaps the offense is the implied correlation between race and crime. Truth be told 69% of us Americans claim to be “white”, and 71% of all Americans arrested are “white”. Our prisons tell a different story though of race. In both federal and state prisons, 44% of inmates are “black” and just 35% are “white”. If we are talking about an NFL athlete imprisoned, a statistician would have to assume that the racial identity was black. If, however, the athlete in question had just been arrested, the odds are more even.

But what is blackness?

Turns out that race in America is a legal construct and an immigration tool at that. There are a couple of fascinating Supreme Court cases from 1922 and 1923 which defined “white” for the 20th century. In both of these cases (Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Thind), the issue was the degree of ‘whiteness’ necessary to become a citizen of the United States. Is an upper caste Indian “white” enough for citizenship? Or an immigrant from Japan? The answer was a resounding “no”. To be sure, by the close of the last century, the courts had made a dramatic 3600 turn and embraced a preference for a utopic colorblindness.

My neighbor and I were sitting on the front porch last Sunday night talking about Obama and race in America. We figure we’re entitled to have the conversation because we’re both outsiders in our neighborhood, visitors in a storied past that is not our own. Washington Heights is the name of our little corner of the world, a name not mentioned in either of the city halls to which we pay tax. Our neighborhood was once a self-contained bedroom community that boasted the only accredited high school for Blacks in St. Louis county. My neighbor and I love our neighborhood, its rich history and unnamed elephants, but we respect that it is not ours. She is a Black woman from the city, I a white woman from out of state.

We mused together about the younger generations who seem to be free of the hatefulness of Jim Crow, to which our neighborhood bears witness. Too they seem free of the colorblindness now in vogue that refuses to see the richness of our neighborhood history. Obama-mania seems to represent a generation that is fully free to celebrate the wonder of diversity with skin tones and ethnicities without the confining little boxes that fit no one.

As I indulge in the audacity of hope, I realize that it is not a color blind Don Imus for which I yearn, nor can I abide one predisposed to either elevate or demote based upon skin tones. I yearn for public icons that aren’t afraid of the race card, that are able and willing to celebrate Black and White and Pacific Islander and Mayan and every other wonder of humanity. In the naming can come the claiming, and therein lies our hope.

My first adult church was an enchanted place with historic architecture (the rounded Akron Plan), stained glass windows, and a pipe organ that sang. The First Congregational UCC in Menomonie, Wisconsin came complete with bats in the belfry and in every other dark corner.

In rich wooden pews, scratched with years of stories, I learned hymnody from the Pilgrim Hymnal. Having grown up in Sunday School and church camps, coming of age in praise chorus style worship, the richness of European style hymnody was an acquired taste to which I’d not yet become accustomed. The entry point was a response that we sang each week with the same words, same tune, and same placement in worship. The repetition seared the simple classic lines in my soul and whetted my appetite for the then foreign style of hymnody.

The Gloria Patri was the response that opened a window in my soul. The Gloria Patri was steady even as I entered the turbulent theological and spiritual waters of seminary. My dear friend Julie cross-stitched these words for me and they buoyed my timid feet.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, amen.”

After four years of grounding, 3 of which were spent in the choir pews where the sounds of the organ danced throughout my body, our pastor left and we entered the strange odyssey of the interim land. Our interim was fresh out of seminary but with an uncanny amount of wisdom. In several important ways she quietly laid groundwork for the congregation to celebrate its past while moving boldly into the future. I had and have immense appreciation for her ministry and thoroughly enjoyed watching it unfold.

Until she changed the Gloria Patri.

One week the music changed so we were expected to sing the familiar lines to unfamiliar sounds. The next week the music reverted to our comfort zones but the words were jolting, “Glory to the Creator, and to the Christ, and to the Spirit, One!” My head was with the new words; inclusive language was in vogue and I a seminarian ready to lead the charge. But my heart longed for the comfort of the Holy Ghost. Not that I believed in ghosts, holy or otherwise, but I longed for the comfort of the syllables that my mouth could make without thought.

My head was no match for my heart in those days and the experience made me downright crabby. “She took my Gloria Patri!” was my loud and public lament.

All these years later, now with teenage children who don’t even know the Gloria Patri, I still can feel my visceral reaction to change. My worship habits are more subtle now, but every bit as entrenched. I cannot start Advent without “Jesus, Jesus” and Lent begins with “Be Still and Know” and ends with the promise of Easter’s “Halle, Halle”. None of these responses may be noteworthy in their own right, but their consistent ebb and flow throughout the past decade has woven them deep into my being.

As we act our way into being, moving pews in the sanctuary and trying new things in worship, I remember the interim that took my Gloria Patri. Each new position of a chair, each new shape of a bulletin, each new sound in worship, represents both gain and loss. Perhaps not with the timelessness tone of the Gloria Patri, but certainly with a promise more lyrical, Carrie Newcomer offers wisdom for times of transition with her song, “Leaves Don’t Drop”:

Leaves don’t drop they just let go,
And make a place for seeds to grow.
Every season brings a change,
A seed is what a tree contains,
To die and live is life’s refrain.
… And this I know is true.

Sometimes you pray to be wrong.

When being right about your fears signals a path of unmitigated disaster, being wrong would be a blessing. When you fear that the police sirens are heading towards your speeding car, you pray to be wrong. When your child’s behavior shifts and you fear they’re dabbling in unknown substances, you pray to be wrong. When your balancing the creditors and you fear that this is the month that the house of cards will collapse, you pray to wrong.

And I wanted to be wrong about what a “W” presidency would bring.

I confess that when the Supreme Court announced their decision giving the presidency to George W. Bush, I felt an enormous sense of dread. But I never wanted to be right. As the World Trade towers fell, I felt eerily unsurprised. Fearing what seemed an inevitable reign of retaliation, I attended prayer vigils, wrote letters, and put out a yard sign for peace. Mostly I prayed to be wrong.

And though it was too little too late, I thrilled to see an enlivened Al Gore on the big screen. But believing his global warming doom did nothing to help me sleep at night. Please, dear God, please let him, let me, be wrong.

With our communal gaze now on the presumptive presidential nominees, the sins of the fathers are creeping into the mainstream with little fan fare.

Even if the global warming theories are wrong about the cause of our earth’s shifts, no one is denying the change and the unfolding chaos as floods and droughts, earthquakes and storms, threaten what we have known as civilization.

Despite the platitude offered by Laura Bush and Cheri Blair, the women of Afghanistan have not been liberated. Womankind, a British-based research group, reports that 80% of Afghan women are victims of domestic violence, 60% forced into marriages (some as early as age 8!), and more than half of 16 years olds are already married. Conditions for women in Afghanistan are currently so desperate that women are literally setting themselves on fire to escape. In a song entitled, “Not in My Name,” Kris Kristofferson laments the “billion dollar bombing of a nation on its knees.” Pulverized into a feudal existence, the situation for all of the Afghanis is grim.

With a change in our nations’ administration on the horizon, the publicly traded media outlets are beginning to ask edgier questions. Keith Olberman’s tirades are now standard fare and the Associated Press covered the story of Kucinich’s Impeachment resolutions. The Supreme Court this week acknowledged the human rights of the men at Guantanamo and the alternative press is being heard as it points out that more than half of these guys are likely innocent.

If righteous indignation had any correlation with happiness, Eli Lilly & Co. would be filing for bankruptcy protection. Tragically their profits hold steady even as the American economy tanks. For anything that really matters, the privilege of being able to say, “I told you so” isn’t.

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened.
Sometimes I wish I could no longer see
All of the pain and the hurt and the longing of my
Sisters and me as we try to be free.

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened,
Just for an hour, how sweet it would be
Not to be struggling, not to be striving,
But just sleep securely in our slavery.

But now that I’ve seen with my eyes, I can’t close them,
Because deep inside me somewhere I’d still know
The road that my sisters and I have to travel:
My heart would say, “Yes” and my feet would say “Go!”

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened,
But now that they have, I’m determined to see:
That somehow my sisters and I will be one day
The free people we were created to be.
(Words and Music By Carol Etzler, 1974 published by Sisters Unlimited, RR 1 Box 1420, Bridgeport, VT 05734)

These words are the lyrics to a folk song written by Carole Etzler three decades ago, just as edgy today as they were when first sung. Although Carole is writing about the specific awareness of her lesbian sisters, she speaks to a truth that is much broader. Inclusion begets inclusion.

At their most recent congregational meeting, Epiphany UCC (Benton Park) adopted a statement becoming a “Whole Earth” church. As their pastor, Mary Albert was sharing, they have discovered that becoming open to one arena of justice, additional vistas came into view. Epiphany is an Open and Affirming, Just Peace, Whole Earth congregation. Although the labels are a bit daunting, the commitments to which they bear testimony are laudable.

In fact, in our own journey as a congregation we have discovered this same truth about the effects of inclusion. Wanting to be inclusive of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, we realized that we were excluding those in wheelchairs. Out came a pew, and then another. Committed to making our facilities accessible, we discovered that our operating structure needed to shift to be more inclusive of folk not able to make monthly meetings. As we prepare for our sixth year at Pride (amazing!), we are intentional about not GLB and T (transgender) concerns, but have found a new way to be inclusive of our kids with Children’s Bulletins (thank you, Leslie!!!).

One of the most challenging areas is that of theological inclusivity. The desire to have an open table theologically may itself be the gift of liberalism, but our table is not complete unless and until a range of perspectives have gathered. For some of us the sacred is “Christ”, for some a higher power suffices, for still others Yahweh or Holy One are most comfortable. Although we come to the table experiencing the presence of the sacred in our midst, for some it is the body and blood and for some the bread and cup represent the community gathered.

Every time I begin whine about being stretched, I am reminded of Jesus’ friends. Surely, they were made of rubber as they learned to stretch and grow. Following their example, folk like Carole Etzler (now Eagleheart) continued to push the boundaries. Now it is our turn.

Immersed in another election cycle (which started much too soon!), we are being invited to again bludgeon one another in the name of God. The witness of communities like ours will be incredibly important as we seek to move through this season with a modicum of grace. Each week we gather and practice holding our stones, learning to live with ambiguity and dissonance, discovering beauty in diversity.

But now that I’ve seen with my eyes I can’t close them… my heart would say, “Yes!” and my feet would say, “Go!”

Confessions may be in order. I took Winnie and her friend to see Sex and the City yesterday, and I inhaled.

As gratuitous sex goes, it was a pretty mild offering. The fairy tale offering of happy ever after, however, was over the top. As my colleague said, “it leaves you with the impression that the two choices in life are to find the love of your life or be alone.”

Given that I enjoyed the series immensely (at least the belated Blockbuster version), cotton candy or no I was destined to see this one on the big screen. Despite the predictability, my 3rd quarter bathroom dash was as quick as ever, fearful as I was that I might miss a drop of candy.

Occasional pieces of chocolate, like good red wine, can be delectable and do not on their own lead to the cardiac surgeon. Indulgence in an afternoon matinee does not necessitate the confessional.

Indulging in this particular candy, however, without a chaser of something substantive can erode one’s sense of self-confidence. As Samantha’s friends express shock at her “gut”, subliminally we are all hearing that the only acceptable size is emaciated. Any hint of curvature is a sign of emotional weakness.

Although Carrie has now apparently kicked the cigarette habit, each encounter with stress necessitates an open bottle and a new cocktail. Worth is measured with jewels, waxes, and handbags; shame in bodily functions.

I wonder at the basic character flaw that allows me to enjoy something so fundamentally at odds with my professed worldview.

Given that the messages of this flick are at odds with almost everything I claim to believe, why did I inhale? I new what it would be. I could have said no. I could have dropped them off at the door. I could have hung out at the video games. I could have at least disapproved. But no. I loved every minute.

The dilemma, as it unfolds, is tragically simple. The more I inhale the candy, the less satisfied I am with life. Entranced with the drama, I find myself clinging to the speeding train of life. I fantasize about finding a way into the safety of the interior, sometimes even of finding the engine room. As I try to hold on, even the caboose looks amazingly appealing.

Clinging to the train, my goal is to find a way in.

But what if the train itself is the problem? What if the spirit’s call is to the bike trail or the walking path? Perhaps the calm I crave is not to be found on OR in this train. Maybe the peace that passes understanding is not found with happy ever after’s, gourmet bags, and best selling books. Could it be that my imbibing at the cinema only perpetuates my grip on a train that offers no life?

And so to the confessional I head. The good news, though, is that I did succumb at least long enough to have something juicy of which to repent.