Musings

The Power of Intention

About ten years ago, I read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. When I was done with it, I wished I had read it when I was a teenager. Franklin was an inspiring character for so many reasons, but the one that stood out for me was the intentionality of his life. As a young man, he came up with a plan for his life, and he followed it. He set goals for himself, and reached many of them.

But even in Franklin's charmed life, there were major interruptions to his plan. Franklin didn't foresee his involvement in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, nor in the establishment of the United States of America. Nor did he count on the tragic death of his beloved young son. He became one of the "founding fathers" of this country despite the fact that it was not one of his goals.

But his seriousness of purpose had everything to do with the many things he achieved without ever intending to do so. Having goals was an end in itself. It focused and energized him in ways that readied him for the unpredictable events in his life. He is much more famous for the way he took detours than he is for following the road he planned for himself.

Back in our youth, when we did a lot of hitch-hiking, one of my Santa Cruz friends stood at the bottom of Highway 17 with a sign that read "San Francisco", and held out his thumb for a ride. No one stopped. Hours passed. Finally he turned the sign around and on it he wrote "Alaska", and held out his thumb again. Right away somebody stopped and said, "Alaska! Cool! Well, I'm not going that far, but would it help if I took you as far as San Francisco?" Having clear and noble intentions takes us farther down the road than we otherwise would go, even if where we land is far from where we planned.

The Soviet Union was big on its five-year plans. But that empire fell because it became enslaved to its goals instead of empowered by them. The Soviets tried to control everything, right down to the style of shoes that would be produced years in the future. The result was a corrupt, backward economy.  And lots of ugly shoes!  A good goal is one that liberates us, rather than one that gets in the way when circumstances change, as they do inevitably. A good goal gives us energy that can be re-directed to positive purposes when roadblocks appear ahead.

Intentionality gives us power we can use to help others and ourselves, even if particular goals become unrealistic. Setting and seeking after goals fills our sails, and as long as we prayerfully keep our hands on the tiller, we can go to good places no matter what obstacles arise.

This is a good time to make such goals, or to dust off the ones we've already set for ourselves. May we be freed and empowered by our best intentions in this new year of 2006!

The Dark Virgin

Gaze into her face, and listen. The Dark Madonna whispers to us from a realm beyond time.

The darker the soil, the more fertile it is. Out of the darkness of the earth, into which the seeds are planted, life springs up. We see it in this season, in this place. Green grass sprouts out of the darkness beneath the hills of gold. In the dark hollows of the redwood forest, lacy ferns explode into life. In the darkness of the womb, new life grows and then emerges.

In the darkness of a church, candles burn. Candles lit by hopeful faithful souls, generations after generations of people making the very signs of love and promise that they seek, by lighting votives in the hush of the sanctuary. The smoke of these numberless candles rises and slowly builds up on the surface of an image of the Virgin Mary in the monastery of Jasna Gora in Poland, darkening her face until she is known as the Black Madonna.

On a hill in Mexico, where once the goddess Tonantzin was worshipped, the freshly-baptized Indian, Juan Diego, kept a vigil, meditating deeply, and from the dark place inside him exploded a glowing vision that brought Meso-American and European spirituality together as one. In effulgence she hovered before him: La Morenita – the Dark One – the Virgin of Guadalupe, goddess and mother of God.

All over Europe, as people converted to Christianity, they found in Mary a figure that bridged the worship of the earth goddess of ancient times and the worship of the God of the church. And in dark images of Mary, they were comforted with a spiritual continuity, carrying the black-skinned earth goddesses into a new religious age. They heard whispers of the earth goddess as they gazed into her face in statues and icons.

Our Lady of Czestochowa.  The black madonnas of Switzerland, France, Germany.  Of the ancient Coptic churches of Ethiopia.  The deep copper skin of Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe.  The dark virgin’s beatific gaze haunts us.  Her voice emanates from the earth itself, asking us to pay attention to the state of the planet. The dark soil being washed to the sea by overgrazing and over-tilling. The air fouled with pollution, the water squandered and poisoned. The burning of fuels and forests that threatens the climate and the ecosystems upon which it depends. She whispers, reminding us that we are of the earth, we depend on the earth, that it now depends on what we do, the choices we make in what we buy and how we eat and how we travel. She whispers of the pain of the world which she took upon herself when she accepted the glorious doom of divine conception: Love the weak among you. Reach out to the lonely and lost and sick. Protect the most vulnerable among you. Show divinely humane kindness to the very people you are most tempted to hate.

She is with us now, in the gathering darkness of winter. Through her the hope of new life is born again within and among us. The dark Virgin whispers to us of a creative, peace-making, justice-serving Word that is about to emerge. A Word that energizes us to acts of compassion, to be willing to make sacrifices for the common good. A Word that seeks a justice beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a war for a war. A Word that shows a love beyond the easy warm and fuzzy. A love that goes the distance, right into the hearts of our enemies.

In her image, holding the Christ child, the mysterious cycle of birth and death and rebirth is reflected. Her somber expression of fateful knowledge, her loving, caressing hands of hope. Grief and joy mixed, alchemically transformed. In her darkness the mystery of communion is consummated. Spirit and matter are united within her. Creator and creature embrace. She is the marriage-bed in which the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the mundane, wrestle into one. In her, the emergent property we call life arises out of the lifeless elements of the earth.

The dark Virgin whispers: You are my child. My precious child. And all those you know are my children. You are all brothers and sisters, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, so cherish each other as you cherish yourselves, and as I cherish you. Your pain is mine, in your victories I share. I am your Mother, and I need your love and your care, and more than all else I need your presence. I need to be with you, and you with me. So linger with me, let my heart be yours. Your gifts of compassion to each other, your acts of service, will be gifts to me. The respect you show to the earth and its living creatures will be respect you show to me. So may it be. Amen....

Warless Christmas

Somebody once taught me that I should never eat anything that was labeled prominently with the word “food”. If it isn’t obviously food, but explicitly claims to be food, you wouldn’t want it to touch your lips.

A major news channel should be presumed to be “fair and balanced”, because that is the very essence of professional journalism. So when I go to the Fox News website and see its prominently-displayed claim to be “fair and balanced”, that’s a strong warning to take what it says with a grain of salt. Or better yet, to soak the whole website in a vat of brine for a few weeks.

Fox News claims that there is a war against Christmas underway in this country. Their latest evidence is a school district in Texas that banned red and green paper plates and napkins from a holiday party. The story concludes that “if religion-neutral is no religion, then the no religionists have won before the game ever begins.”

Yes, there are some absurdities in the way public institutions have avoided expressions that might suggest a religious preference. In an effort to do the right thing, and honor the separation of government from religion, there have been incidents when officials have gone farther than they needed to go. And yes, some businesses have taken their avoidance of religious preference to extremes.

But such incidents hardly indicate that there is a war against Christmas, or against Christianity, or against religion. On the contrary, a religion-neutral public sector allows for the fullest flowering of religious sentiment. Religion has not been hurt by the decision to use white paper napkins and plates at school holiday parties. (What about “White Christmas”, anyway?)  Religion has never been more lively in this country than it is today, and strict separation of church and state is one of the main reasons for it.

Marin County, California, is about the most irreligious place in the country.  We are as far as you can get from the Bible Belt. And from my reading of local lore, it's always been this way.  I discovered that there is only one Christian bookstore in this county, and it is located at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Tiburon. I went there a few weeks ago and noticed that I was the only customer. When I first came to work in Sausalito, some locals greeted me by saying, “Welcome to our fishy little sleeping village!” An apt description of this unorthodox town, whose long-time mayor in the 1970’s was the retired madame of the whorehouse by the waterfront. You’d think that if there was a war against Christmas, the front line would have passed through Sausalito first.

So why is our town square festooned with red and green? Even the stone elephants in the park, which are the symbols of this town, have Christmas garlands around their necks.  (That's right, elephants - here in Marin, which voted 73% for the donkeys last year!)  Why do so many people come to our annual La Posada caroling procession downtown? (Join us this Saturday at 5 pm to sing!) Why are we surrounded by reminders that Christmas is approaching? If there was a war against Christmas, you’d never know it here.

I'm a Christian pastor in the county with about the lowest percentage of people who attend church. You’d think that if there was a war against Christmas, I would be able to smell the gunsmoke. But on the contrary, I feel encompassed by the warmth and joy of the season, in public as well as in private.  And I've found that spirituality is very much alive here. Just because some people would rather go mountain biking on Tamalpais on Sunday than sit in a pew, that doesn't mean they aren't interested in experiencing mystical union of their souls with God, which the Christ represents.

We don’t need red and green paper plates and napkins in schools to celebrate the story of the birth of the Prince of Peace. We don’t need creches in city parks in order to sense the joy of the coming of the universal Christ-consciousness into the world. We don’t need chain stores to dangle Santa in front of us in order to sense the mystery of the divine Word becoming flesh. It hasn’t happened here, and I don’t hope it will, but if the stores and public spaces of were denuded of Christmas decor, it would probably be a great thing for our church. Our famously irreligious citizens might well make more of an effort to seek us out, joining us in remembrance of the deeper meanings of the season: generosity, humility, conviviality, and peace.

So from the land of hot-tubs and peacock feathers, from America's Bible Shoestring, I wish you a glorious and warless Christmas!

Life and Death

On December 13, Tookie Williams is scheduled to die at San Quentin Prison, not far from where I live.  Williams was the founder of the notorious Crips gang of Los Angeles.  In prison he has become a strong advocate for ending gang violence. Celebrities are supporting him and petitioning the governor for clemency.

But if Tookie Williams, a convicted killer, isn’t worthy of  the death penalty, who is?

Just who does deserve to be killed by you and me, the citizens of California, or of any other state?  What kind of murderer is more or less worthy of execution?  The 152 people that George W. Bush signed off to die in Texas when he was governor?  Or the thousands of other murderers who got life in prison as a sentence – only because, perhaps, they had better lawyers?  Or happened to kill somebody of a particular race or socioeconomic status who got more or less sympathy from a judge or jury? Who's more appropriate for execution, a developmentally disabled murderer who kills in cold blood?  Or a fully competent murderer who kills only in the heat of passion?

There is no clear moral calculus used to decide which convicted murderers get the life sentence versus the death sentence.  All manner of subjective and uncertain factors come into play in carrying out this most objective and certain of punishments. Differences in the way the death penalty is applied can be literally breathtaking, depending upon which side of a state line the crime is committed.

These mortally serious irregularities point to a conclusion.  We are not competent to decide whether or not any other human being is more or less worthy of this one irreversible punishment. As a society, we have studied hard to pass the bar exam that would entitle us to condemn criminals to death, and we've flunked it, over and over again. We've executed people who later were found to have been innocent -- an outrageous outcome that we can never be sure to avoid.  We've enforced the death penalty in a manner that is perversely unpredictable.  The one punishment which, above all others, should be most clearly justified and consistently applied has been neither.

I do not ground this conclusion on a code ethic against killing.  In my youth, I was absolutist in my response to Jesus' teaching against violence to one's enemies.  Personal experience and growing historical awareness about the reality of sociopathy led me to a more nuanced view.  Violence should be assiduously avoided, but, dreadfully, there are times when love gives us no real option but to use deadly force to protect others.  But the death penalty is never employed in one of those times.  Once murderers are jailed, the lives of others are protected.

My wife, Roberta, has a view of the subject grounded by  tragic experience.  When she was 16 years  old, her father was killed randomly by some teenagers with a sawed-off shotgun. That act of senseless violence left thirteen  children without their dad. The killers  were never convicted, but if they were, she wouldn’t want them to be  executed. Roberta believes that capital  punishment only adds to the atmosphere of violence that contributed to her  father’s death.

The moral and spiritual weight of Christianity tips the scales away from the death penalty.  Someone in jail, no matter what the reason for his or her incarceration, is in an exceptionally vulnerable position. Jesus and his followers had a strong bias toward protecting the weak, the marginalized, and the despised.  Cherishing human life, especially the lives of those we are inclined to hate, is the most central spiritual discipline of the faith.  It is the practice that liberates us from incarceration in our own selfishness and bitterness, freeing us from our basest instincts.  It is the practice that makes us most divinely human and humanly divine.
 
Tookie Williams is safely behind bars, and there may he live out his days, continuing his positive trajectory of moral and spiritual growth.  We can't evolve into becoming fair, consistent practitioners of capital punishment.  But we can evolve beyond our urge to avenge those who kill:  this is the promise of the gospel.