Musings

Updraft of Awe

 

(Photo: along Peach Tree-Indian Valley Rd

between Hwy 198 and San Miguel, CA)

On the road from nowhere to elsewhere
Along a hill-hidden valley
Where silence flows down the creekbed in a ribbon of silver
Where folks are because they were
And will be because they are
Making life on sparsely-settled ranches
Where subjects get dropped like rusty pickup trucks
Already as away as they could be towed
Where grass keeps growing
And cows munch it for a hundred years
As hawks float high on the valley's updraft of awe
The old oaks on the hillsides
Still take the advice of their parent acorns
To stay put, and soak up October's slanting sun
Why do I drive past and wish

This road would never end?

 

Occupying America

“It is extremely difficult for most of us to believe that our political or economic system is inherently corrupt,” said New York University psychologist John Jost, (quoted here from Miller-McCune Magazine, 10-24-11) “and it is a belief that we are tempted to resist, even when there is evidence suggesting deep and fundamental problems. Because of our immense psychological capacity to justify and rationalize the status quo, human societies are very slow to fix system-level injustices and to enact substantive changes.”

New York  Times, 10-25-11:  "The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Officesaid Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt."


I walked through the Occupy LA encampment in front of City Hall on Monday afternoon.  I was most impressed with its orderly rows of tents and the quiet demeanor of its “occupiers”. I hope this peace prevails here, unlike what happened in the last few days in the Bay Area "Occupy" sites.  In the midst of this impromptu community, which has browned all the grass on the east and north sides of the building, I found a tent marked as the “Meditation Temple" (see attached picture). This seemed to epitomize the relatively calm atmosphere of the protest, if protest is the right word for it.  I’ve participated in lots of loud, sign-waving, boisterous political marches in my day, so the relative lack of sign-waving and noise was striking.  This loose gathering appears bent on avoiding heated partisan rhetoric.  They’re sticking with the message that the 99% of the American people who have become a dog wagged by a 1% tail have decided to sit on that tail and hold it down until our economic and political system fundamentally changes.   Their message is overwhelmingly resonant with the preferences of the American people, who want a much more equitable distribution of wealth.  According to a recent study by Harvard and Duke University scholars, 92% of Americans want the wealth "pie chart" of Sweden (a country that still has plenty of rich people), rather than the one that currently prevails in the US.  We don't want perfect equality of wealth.  We just want much more equality than we have today.

I teach a course in public policy at the graduate school of Social Work at USC, and preparing for my lectures has convinced me more firmly of the need for major structural changes in this country.  We’re now at a point where 20% of the population owns 80% of the assets of the country.  But my students react like deer in the headlights when I first introduce them to the statistics about income inequality in America and the corrosive effects it has on our democracy and our society.  It's hard for them to connect that information with their everyday lives, nor with the lives of their clients in the social agencies where my students are placed as interns.  It's hard to imagine what to do about something so massively amiss.  We'll never see a ballot measure asking a "Yes" or "No" vote on whether or not it is okay for the rich to get richer and the middle class to lose buying power.  All politicians, of all political persuasions, are dependent on big-money interests to mount credible campaigns.  

But after visiting Occupy LA, I've been musing that taking effective action might be simpler than it seems.  The signs at the encampment focus on "99%".  But really this campaign is about 100%.  It's time to tell 100% of the people we know, repeatedly and boldly:

I'm going to vote in every election for the candidates who are most likely to do whatever it takes to make the poor and the middle class better off before letting the rich get any richer... so that 100% of Americans have a more secure future.  

What is your one-sentence summation of the sentiments of the Occupy Wall Street movement?  Write it up and send it to everybody on your email lists!  Or copy mine and do the same.  

It's up to us to re-frame the political discourse in this country.  Our politicians aren't going to do it for us.  

If the 99% are richer, the 1% will have a bigger market in which to make even more money than they are making now.  So the fundamental changes required in our economic and political system will benefit 100% of the American people.  This isn't "class war".  It's not partisan or ideological.  This is a struggle against economic and political irrationality that hurts everybody.  "Trickle-down economics" failed, and the evidence of its failure surrounds us. So why do Rick Perry and other Republican candidates still advocate for it?  It's time for "trickle-up" economics.  If the people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are better off, everybody will rise higher.

Here's a short version of the details of the solution:  Protect the poor and middle-class with a strong public "safety net", take strong action to protect the environment, raise taxes on the rich and cut military spending to balance the federal budget, and rationalize regulations so that private enterprise will thrive on a more level playing field.

Here's a longer version:  Close the tax loopholes for the rich and the corporations, so that Warren Buffett's secretary doesn't pay a higher effective income tax rate than her boss.  Raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, if necessary, to balance the federal budget without wiping out the public social safety net.  Drastically cut the military budget: a strong society is the best defense.  Make taxes simpler and more predictable, while maintaining the progressive system that taxes wealthier people at higher rates.  They get relatively more out of our society, so they should contribute relatively more to it.  Regulate the financial system in a simple and efficient manner, to protect consumers from predatory and careless lending practices.  Vigorously enforce insider trading rules in the financial markets and make corporate governance more transparent: make sure that purse-snatchers don't do more jail time than corrupt financiers who wipe out the assets of tens of millions of working Americans.  Maintain ecological protections while at the same time streamlining regulatory processes so that they are more predictable and much less time-consuming.  There's no reason we can take bold action against the threat of human-caused climate change while at the same time enabling private enterprise to flourish.  Make the IRS our health insurance payment system to cover services by private doctors and hospitals.  That will improve public health and eliminate the nearly half-million bankruptcies that happen every year because people can't pay hospital bills.  It will save everybody a lot of money now wasted on for-profit insurance bureaucracies and emergency room care for uninsured people who can't afford to go to much cheaper outpatient clinics.  

Such fine print, and more, will be needed in the service of goals that can fit simply in a sentence.  For now, as the political season heats up, I pray that all of us will find a few words to express our values and aspirations for our country - and repeat them to everyone we know.  Thank you, Occupy Wall Street, for focusing our attention on the change we really need....

Walking on Water: Metaphorical Literalism

Matthew 14: 23-33:  "And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea."

When I was the pastor of College Heights United Church of Christ in San Mateo, CA, we formed a group to study dreams.  We used the method of the Jungian analyst, Jeremy Taylor, to share our night-time dreams and explore their many possible meanings, both for ourselves and for each other.  It was a very rich experience for us.  We shared very deep secrets with each other, often without even knowing that we had revealed them until after sharing a dream.  For this reason, the group kept confidentiality. 

In the group, I observed that there was a disproportion of dreams that entailed movement beneath and above the surface of water.  Dreamers experienced swimming and diving as well as doing extra-natural things on or under water.  I've had many dreams of this kind, as well, so it was striking to me to learn how many others shared this phenomenon.  It may well be that water features so prominently in our dreams because it was in water that all of us began our lives, swimming in the warm fluid of the womb.  It's the realm of the pre-conscious, the primal habitat of our souls. 

So it is that the story of Jesus walking on water toward his disciples, who were riding in a boat on a lake in heavy weather, lends itself to interpretation as a dream -- all the more because the incident happened at night.  Being afloat on wild water is a scary thing for people today.  How much scarier it must have been for people in the first century, when hardly anyone knew how to swim, and life-preservers were not required kit for boaters!  Jesus, out of love for his disciples, walked on the water toward their boat.  "Perfect love casts out fear." (1 John 4: 18)  Lovingly, fearlessly, he strode across the sea.  At Peter's urging, Jesus asked Peter to do the same, and step out of the boat onto the water toward him.  Peter made it a short distance before panicking and sinking, until Jesus rescued him.

Jesus represents mastery of the unconscious realm.  He knew it, he fathomed it.  It was at his service, not he at its command.  When we fear the chaotic, unknown seas within ourselves, we fall.  We dissolve in a sea of tears.  Ever been afraid to cry, for fear of completely losing emotional control?  Peter embodies that experience in this story.   Jesus invites him, and invites us, to dive into our dreams and explore the inner, unconscious dimensions of ourselves.  What feelings churn beneath our surface?  What unresolved conflicts and issues prowl beneath the waves?  What important aspirations await our attention, kept underwater by our pretenses and defenses?  Jesus is the archetypal spiritual hero who knows what's down there.  He doesn't let it consume him, but rather employs it to support him.  He's in touch with the wild waters, but without being overwhelmed by them.  His feet get wet, but he doesn't sink.  Jesus invites Peter, and all of us, to join him in mastery of the primal waters.

This is a story we not only can know, but can feel.  Our imaginations fire across synapses in our brains that correspond to those that activate when we take steps with our legs and feet.  Our bodies engage with the story, so that we can feel the wiggle of the water under us, and experience something of what it would be like to steady ourselves upright on the waves.   Sometimes our bodies jerk in our sleep, coinciding with our experiences in dreams.  Intellectually, we understand dreams and stories metaphorically, but our bodies can take them literally.  The story of walking on water is fictional in terms of history and factual in our embodied experience of it.

Shortly after the death of an elderly friend who was very dear to me and my family, I dreamed that she and I were swimming deep underwater.  She eagerly was showing me treasures that were hidden at the bottom.  I woke up from that dream feeling richer, more fully alive, and full of gratitude for having known her.  She had transcended death, for me, and made me more the master of the sea within myself.  It was an experience of metaphorical literalism.  All of me, including my body, felt differently after that dream in the "fourth watch of the night".

My "walking on water machine", which I built as a "prop" for a lecture/sermon I gave at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Santa Cruz on 10/8-9/11.  Turn the handle and the feet step up and down in a bucket of water.

Oak of the Golden Dream

(Roberta and I took a hike last Sunday afternoon at Placerita Canyon on the north side of the mountains above LA. There we discovered the Oak of the Golden Dream, an old tree with a burnt, hollowed trunk and scrubby leaves marked with brass plaques beneath it. Legend? fact? who knows, but the story goes that in 1842 a vaquero named Francisco Lopez took a nap under the tree and had a dream that he was floating on a pool of gold. When he awoke, he went nearby to dig up some wild onions to eat. Clinging to the roots of the onions were flecks of gold. This started a small-scale gold rush to the area. This poem is dedicated to my wife, Roberta, in whose golden pool I am blessed to bask every day...)

On a bed of leaves I laid my head below an old oak tree

And floated in a lake of gold in a dreaming reverie.

Without a fear, in blissful peace, in liquid gold I lay:

The sunshine warmed my joy-filled face as I drifted all the day

On treasure that was measureless: a weight too great to see --

Unlike a ring to own and wear, this ring of gold wore me.

What matters most I cannot keep: what holds me up owns me:

This was the treasured truth I learned beneath that old oak tree.