Musings

Faith and Filibusters

This past Sunday, in Louisville, Kentucky, a big rally called “Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith” was held by fundamentalist Christian media figures James Dobson and Tony Perkins.  The Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, wired himself in to the big screen at the Highview Baptist Church to lend his support for their cause. 
 
Across town, another rally was held at Central Presbyterian Church, consisting of clergy and lay people from many faith traditions, protesting the injustice of “Justice Sunday”.  This group decried Sen. Frist’s participation in an event that claimed to speak for “people of faith”, but left out the perspectives of millions of faithful people who support an independent judiciary, the balance of powers enshrined in the Constitution, and the ability of the minority to express itself through the time-honored use of the filibuster.  (And by the way, Perkins’ “Family Research Council”, host of "Justice Sunday", said publicly that the filibuster was a good thing back in 1998 when conservatives opposed the nomination of a gay man to an ambassadorship.)  The rally at Central Presbyterian raised the voices of people whose deeply-held faith leads them to oppose the nomination of judges who would be “activists” from the bench for far-right causes, riding roughshod over the Constitution and accumulated case law. 
 
Unlike the leaders of the Highland Baptist rally, the folks at Central Presbyterian did not pretend to speak for “people of faith” as if they were one solid voting bloc, of one mind on social or moral questions.  The folks at Central Presbyterian were rallying for pluralism and for freedom.  They were rallying against the “works of the flesh” listed by St. Paul in Galatians chapter 5:  “selfishness”, “dissention”, and “party spirit”.
 
Sen. Frist’s speech at Highland Baptist bodes ill for our country and for all people of faith, including Baptists.  There’s another church in Louisville, with a similar name: Highview Baptist.  Its minister, Joseph Phelps, objected vigorously to Frist's speech.  He said, “We see ‘Justice Sunday’ as part of a larger effort to link church and state in ways not seen in America since the Puritans were hanging Quakers on Boston Commons and exiling Baptists to Rhode Island.”  Wise words of warning from Highview to Highland, from one Baptist to others, and to us all.
 
I am very uncomfortable with judicial nominees who oppose a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion and want to deny a person the choice to die with dignity.  I’m very uncomfortable with judges who aim to dismantle our civilization by drastically weakening the legal structures of social services, environmental and consumer protections, civil rights, and access to health care.  But these issues pale in comparison to the even higher stakes of upcoming court appointments.  Senator Frist has identified himself with a sect that demands a narrowly-defined theocratic legal system.  It’s painfully ironic that we have soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan today, to rid that country of Islamic “sharia” rule, and at the same time we have the Senate Majority Leader speaking on a giant TV screen in a church, in support of a crowd that demands a fundamentalist Christian judiciary.  We’re dropping bombs on the Muslim Taliban while the Christian equivalent takes over our own country. 
 
My exercise of faith depends completely on the full freedom of people of other faiths to practice their own in a public atmosphere that does not favor one religion over another.  Your ability to practice your faith depends on real religious and cultural pluralism in America. Only in this atmosphere can there be a full flowering of the “fruits of the spirit” that St. Paul also listed in Galatians chapter 5: “patience”, “gentleness” and “self-control”. 
 
But the “Christian Taliban” demands nothing short of “Christian dominion” in this country.  They aim to create a nation structured by a fundamentalist interpretation of just one religion.  They believe that they will get much closer to “Christian dominion” through ensuring the appointment of their favorite judges. 
 
This extremist movement must be stopped.  Not because they won't get abortions or wouldn’t allow their feeding tubes be removed if they were in a vegetative state, not because they read the Bible literally, not because they like the Ten Commandments more than the Sermon on the Mount.  Not because they refuse to have gay or lesbian sex.  They are and ought to be allowed to think and believe and live this way.  It's already a free country where their fundamentalism has flourished.  But that’s not good enough for the folks who gathered at Highland Baptist last Sunday.  They feel compelled to force everyone else to live that way, too. 

And that’s why their movement is so dangerous.  Their “dominion” would be a house with only a few “mansions”, or rooms, unlike the spacious heavenly home Jesus promised us.  There’s no room even for Baptists who aren’t “right” enough for them, or Republicans who aren't their kind of Christians.  Much less progressive Christians like myself.  Much less non-Christians, homosexual people, and women who choose to have abortions. 
 
This can’t be allowed to happen.  It’s going to take all kinds of people of faith, conservative and liberal, traditional and progressive, to rise up and say “Enough!”, and demand the rejection of the most radical of the upcoming judicial nominees.  This country won’t be recognizable as the United States of America when James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and their radical friends get their way.... which they will do, unless we stop them.  Now is the time for us to tell the President, the Senate, and the Congress what kind of country we want America to be, and how our faith informs our intentions.

Spiritual Spam

Recently, the junior high kids in my church were having a discussion about the story of Noah and the
ark in their Sunday School class. Their teacher reported to me that they were intrigued by God's
detailed instructions, down to the nearest cubit, of how Noah was supposed to build the ark. Why don't
people get such detailed messages from God these days, they wondered? One of them, a kid named Sean, observed that today we are so bombarded by messages, electronic and otherwise, assaulting us from so many directions, that "if somebody got a message from God, they might think it was spam and ignore it!"

I've been meditating for the past week on Sean's wise words. Just how do we sort out divine messages from the "spam" we make up in our own heads, much less from the "spam" sent to us by others? It's an old problem that won't go away. Early Christianity had a very difficult time distinguishing worthy expressions of divine Spirit from those which were not. There were lots of Christians who claimed to deliver messages from God, and there was no institutionalized means of determining whether these claims were valid or spurious. St. Paul devoted much ink to this vexing problem in his letters to the first churches, warning against charlatan preachers and false doctrines.

Later, once it consolidated its centralized authority, the Catholic Church simply declared the era of direct
divine inspiration to be over. Any message seeming to come from God that wasn't channeled through Rome was declared "spam". This worked up to a point. After all, there was plenty within the bounds of Catholic dogma that did have the ring of divine truth to it. The authority of the church canonized and preserved the Bible with all its spiritual riches. The doctrines of the church had at least some basis in the practical religious experience of everyday people.

But by the late medieval era, the Catholic hierarchy became dreadfully corrupt, hypocritical, and thoroughly at odds with its own stated purposes. It began to smell more and more like a "spam" factory
itself. In time, people began to install the spiritual anti-spam software of the Protestant Reformation onto their religious hard-drives.

One such anti-spam program was called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. John Wesley, founder of what we now know as the Methodist Church, said that the way to discern whether or not an inspiration was authentic was by comparing it to four "sides" - the teachings of Jesus, of his disciples, and of the Bible, and the experience of Christians over the millennia since the Bible was written. In its time, the "quadrilateral" was a very progressive idea. It injected a bit of democracy into faith. It left room for questioning the supposedly divine utterances of the church, to see if they "squared" with the good common sense and practical life-lessons of everyday people. But Wesley's glimmer of openness and religious evolution in the 18th century was too radical for many Christians, then and now.

The new Pope's biographer, John Allen, was quoted in the SF Chronicle as saying that Ratzinger "believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesial totalitarianism. He believes the Catholic
Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes."

If it is a true characterization, the new Pope Benedict's ideas resonate with the words of the early
American, William Penn, who said that "men will either be ruled by God or by tyrants". Many of the "founding fathers" of this country believed similarly. They thought that unless the inner person was subject to the spiritual monarchy of God, the outer person would be incapable of engaging in democracy. Unless the soul was protected from spiritual spam, the body politic would be hopelessly infected with deadly political viruses.

It seems to me that we have evolved, albeit haltingly, from that condition. We've practiced democracy enough on the outer dimension so that it has taken root in our inner life. I believe that it is now possible for us to practice spiritual as well as social democracy. We don't need a religious or moral absolute "monarchy", whether a Bible or a church or a Pope, to tell us definitively what is right and wrong, what is
acceptable and what is not. We can be liberated from church dictatorship and be liberated from political
dictatorship, as well.

Spiritual democracy is what happens when we convene an assembly within ourselves to examine carefully whether or not we have really heard the voice of the selfless, loving God, or just the voice of our selfish, egoic selves. Spiritual democracy is what happens when regular folks share their spiritual experiences with each other and subject themselves both to encouragement and to skeptical scrutiny. Spiritual democracy is what happens when people listen to each other's stories of divine encounter, and give each other honest feedback about whether or not it is pseudo-spiritual spam or the real thing. A church can be such a spiritual democracy, where we share our best lights, and respond lovingly but honestly to each others' perceptions.

Popes, and even Protestant preachers like myself, may have valuable things to say now and again. But better yet to be part of a spirit-centered community of peers, one including all sorts of people with many
points of view, in order to get help in sorting the real soul-food from the spam.

A Prayer at Tax Time

Dear God, bless my taxes! Give me peace of mind as I struggle to fill out the forms and determine the right amounts I should be sending to Washington and Sacramento. Keep me calm, I pray, as I write out those fat checks on April 15. And whisper a reminder to me, Lord, of all the good reasons that I send my money to my government every year.

Remind me of the fact that I could not write this prayer if I had not received an excellent tax-subsidized education - my parents couldn’t have afforded fancy private schools or colleges. Gently show me that the Internet, through which I send this prayer to others, was created with taxpayer dollars. Help me to recall that my freedom to pray as I wish was purchased with the lives of soldiers and the tax payments of other citizens who defended liberty before I was born. Reveal to me, Lord, in my mind’s eye, the roads and the airports, the water systems, the magnificent parks and wilderness areas, the public health workers, the regulators of the environment and of commerce, the scientists, and all the other people and things that my taxes make possible. They provide safety and comfort, protect natural resources, and enable capitalism to flourish for the benefit of all. Remind me of how hard and scary life was for the sick and elderly before citizens paid Social Security taxes and received its benefits. Show me, dear One, just how expensive, difficult, and unpleasant life would be for me and everyone else without all the services and protections that are funded by my tax payments.

Dear Lord, remind me that, in fact, for all the good things that I and others receive back from our government, my tax payments are a bargain. Take me out of my selfishness and give me a spirit of gratitude as I write those tax checks. Inspire me to see that this is a sacred duty, and is a way that I serve others who are vulnerable, poor, or sick, and are especially dependent on public assistance.

O dear One, there are so many ways I wish my taxes could be spent differently. There are many things I don’t like about what my government is doing, there are ways that the tax system could be made more fair, and there are many important things the government leaves undone. I’m willing, O Lord, to pay even more in taxes if it would work for the common good: it could save us all even more money and trouble, in the end.  So, more than ever, dear God, give me the strength and the vision to rise up and take action as a voter, pressing my government to act for peace and justice at home and abroad. My sacred duty as a citizen is only partly fulfilled as I write my tax checks. I ask for your guidance, God, as I join with others to change the priorities and values of our government, so that they reflect more of what we see of your will.

May your blessing rest on my Form 1040 this next week, dear Lord, and may my taxes well serve you and my fellow citizens! Amen.

(The Blessing of the Taxes is a national effort, which I initiated and now has been adopted by the Unitarian Universalist Association. Churches and temples of many denominations around the country will be holding "Blessings" in worship in the week around April 15. Have a look at the national Blessing of the Taxes website at: http://www.uua.org/uuawo/new/print_article.php?id=571&;print=1 )

Word Yenta

Moon, I’d like you to meet Water.
Water, Moon.
Get to know.
Thought you might take a shine
To each other tonight
And maybe other nights, too,
But who can say?

Mountain, I’d like you to meet Sky.
Sky, Mountain.
Perhaps you can take a hike together
And see what comes of it.
Could be a breathtaking encounter.
But from here, it’s up to you.

Streetlight, I’d like you to meet Glasses.
An unlikely pairing, you might suggest.
But what do you expect
From a poetic matchmaker?
Together you might hit it off on the sidewalk
With a flash of reflected light
Brightening the night.
But an introduction is one thing,
And a meeting is quite another.

Grief, I’d like you to meet Rowdy,
For a far-fetched date,
And an unknown fate.
You might be much more
Than the sum of your parts.
But really, only you will know
What or if you should become:
A flaming ruin or a recipe for fulfillment.

Rose, I’m pleased to re-introduce you to Desire.
But after all your overuse, you should beware
Of each other’s poetically transmitted diseases.
Watch for the thorns, the horny dilemmas,
Get into couples’ therapy, prophylactically.
Oh, enough advice:
Have a good time, once again, you fools!

Words, I’d like to acquaint you with Deeds.
You are so far apart most of the time,
It has taken me some real effort to get you together.
Some would say you can never make it as a team,
But, really, what are you without each other?
I can’t wait to see you burst out of this poem
And burn bright next to each other.

That’s enough for now.
Another day, another poem,
Another set of matches.
I wish them all the best.
I wish I could make it all perfect for them.
I can’t help myself
From trying to slake their loneliness.
It’s a compulsion:
For me, no word should be left alone.