Where We Need to Focus

Becoming more contemplative as I age (even me, impatient ActionNow child of the '60's), I am concerned over what I see in my country today.  Those with great talents flow toward excessively lucrative careers in finance and technology rather than professions giving service to fellow humans. Politics seems to draw the opportunists, unaware that theirs is a position of trust in a democracy, and that their job is to govern us well.  Their charge is to draw us together through inspiring words and to enable the machinery that benefits us all to work well: roads, schools, orderly immigration.

As a Presbyterian Christian, I deplore the way our Presidential candidates are treating one another, failing to recognize their opponents not just as flawed but also as made in the image of God and deserving of respect.  The end does not justify the means.  Winning at all costs is losing.  Process matters.

Many of our people are immensely frustrated by being unable to find work, or even if working, unable to afford housing or food.  Outside our nation exists groups dedicated to our destruction.

Let us pool our energies to solve these problems using the precious tools of democracy and not use the democratic process to pit us against one other and risk losing our democracy to chaos or authoritarian rule.

Lesson for the New Year

For Christmas, my son's family gave me a digital photo frame, an electronic viewing device on which family members can remotely post photos. Anxious to begin receiving pictures of my children and grandchildren, I attempted to set up the device as soon as I returned home. The quick start guide was easy to follow.  Just five simple steps, simple for a technology professional like me!

1. Attach the support stand
2. Turn on the device
3. Connect to Wi-Fi
4. Enter your code to claim your Skylight email
5. Now, ask loved ones to send pictures

All was well until I attempted to follow the details of step 4: "your personal 6-digit code, which is on the paper insert in the box." Wait! Did I miss the paper containing the code when I removed all the packing materials? Back to the box.  No, nothing there but styrofoam sheets.  How frustrating when I was so looking forward to seeing the show! What to do now?

I emailed the Customer Service Department, fearing the worst. There was no serial number on the device and since it was the holiday week between Christmas and New Years probably no one was in the office. Woe to me!

The next day, I began sorting through the holiday mess.  I spied the photo frame packing materials, looked through the box once more, and tossed it into the trash but then had misgivings about my actions.  Maybe I should keep the box in case I had to return the frame. As I picked up the box to take to the basement, I closed it and just happened to turn it over. Voila! Glued to the top of the box was the insert with my code and personal email address! Typing in the code, I was blessed to see many photos had already been loaded, (and later I found a note from customer service in my email.)

One little letter in one small word, "in" vs "on" and my brain had become trapped...inside the box.

May we all learn to think outside the box during 2016.  Happy New Year to all!

Reflection upon Reflection

Are my thoughts productive, the disturbance creating a resolution that goes beyond the original state,

     Milk into butter;

Are my reflections motion going nowhere,

     Turbulence that leaves passengers agitated;

Has this very process of turning thoughts over in my head become harmful,

     Picking at scabs, preventing healing, increasing damage?

Move the Windows!

Art in government buildings should affirm our national unity and ideals; church art should support our beliefs.Two stained glass windows at Washington’s National Cathedral do neither. 
They honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, heroes of the Confederacy. The Cathedral is an Episcopal church with quasi-governmental status, not receiving Federal financing, but serving as a location for government officials to gather for prayer during national emergencies and a place to bury Presidents. Currently, in the shadow of the Charleston massacre, the Cathedral community ponders the presence of these windows and their Confederate flags. 
As an American citizen and a Christian believer, I call for the Cathedral to change the context and the message of these windows:  Move them to a museum and surround them by the visual displays of the painful fruits of the Confederate state’s violent ideology of racial domination. Show shackles, slave auction blocks, lynchings, Klan terrorism, the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Charleston massacre.  Racial domination is an ideology we must renounce just as South Africa abandoned apartheid.  Glorifying these ideas gives them power to remain an accepted part of our national dialog. 
Art can be used to bring division to a country and genocide against its minorities. In the recent past, for example, Serbia looked for support for genocide against Muslims from The Mountain Wreath, a 19th century epic poem celebrating the killing of local Muslims. Better we should look to Germany, where World War II veterans are looked on with suspicion,and swastikas may not be displayed. Contrast  Japan’s current government, which is considering bringing back its World War II “Rising Sun” flag, while at the same time retracting apologies for wartime acts . 
We do not need to hide the Confederate flag from view, but rather undermine its use as a battle flag for racist ideologies . Delegitimize the narrative that the Southern struggle was honorable.  Our national unity and our integrity as Christians call for such a stand.

Calm in Our Storms

Mark 4:35-41
After Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans, in one of the cemeteries, the many monuments and gravestones ended up as ruble, small broken pieces of stone, with the remarkable exception of a tall statue of Jesus, intact except for one hand. A great image for the familiar story in Mark 4: 35 - 41. Here we see Jesus in a boat, going across the sea of Galilee, asleep in the storm, literally a great storm, with the disciples, even the experienced fishermen, afraid for their lives. What does this say to our churches today? Corporately, we are afraid for our churches as many believers die off from old age and we have difficulties attracting younger people to our congregations. Let's look at where Jesus and his followers were headed? Away from the familiar to the "other side," where the excluded, the Gentiles, lived. We in the church need to reach out to the unfamiliar, to the unchurched or to immigrants or to those from different backgrounds? We are called to this? Is it scarey? For sure it is! But what church in our Presbytery is drawing in young families? Nuevas Fronteras but many of them don't even speak our language! In very recent research reported in the New York Times June 19, across a wide variety of communities, areas of increased immigration had economic revitalization and lower crime. So connecting to the unfamiliar has benefits.

Let's look back to Mark to learn more about what happened when Jesus and his friends went to "the others." Massive storm, terrified disciples, woke Jesus, who revealed his power over wind a wave, like God over the chaos at Creation. Result -- great calm replaces great storm. What about the disciples? Do they respond in gratitude and faith like Psalm 107:29-30? No, great fear! Phobos like phobia. Repeatedly in the Bible, God's presence or an angel's brings fear and "Do not be afraid." Have faith in God's presence, the answer for our congregations today in scarey threatening times.

October Nor'easter???

We have 14 trees on our property so we were badly hit by the freak October Northeaster with very heavy snow added to the weight of the leaves. We had 5 or 6 big branches fall in the front and a huge branch is hanging onto our back 2nd story porch, held by a thread. Even if we could pull it down, it might take out our garage. We will wait a month or so until prices for tree men come. One major artery, Martine Avenue had trees down in four places last night.

Reflections on Barcott's It Happened on the Way to War, Prologue and Part I, #1.

Reading this book reminded me of conversations with my son, Huck. This young man, Rye Barcott, is serving in the Marines while at the same time running a NGO in Kenya. My son, Huck, is in the Navy, going to Medical School and running a startup web-based software company while being married and having a new son. Barcott learned Swahili so he go to Kenya. My son tried to learn Farsi and Arabic before he went to Afghanistan and brought back a translator. Both have fierce love of the military and patriotism, while being aware of all their negatives.

Barcott went with his family to Africa in high school and realized he wanted to go back later, including doing research to "give back." His mother encouraged his learning Swahili, because "research could be seen as being simply extractive" and "Learning a language was a sign of genuine commitment." (20) His language knowledge serves him well on his first visit to Nairobi where some local "hardcores" (7) are threatening, until he speaks to them in Swahili and Sheng, a mixture of Swahili, gangsta rap and local languages, which disarms them and brings him respect. This story reinforces my current desire to learn to speak Spanish well. Doing so is a way to show respect, both to the vibrant Spanish-speaking Presbyterian community, Nuevas Fronteras, and to family members from George's side of the family. Why hasn't this thought occurred to me and other Americans before. I find his word choice of "extractive" so meaningful. We who possess affluence, white privilege and education can so easily objective others and use them for our own benefit or entertainment. Making the effort to enter their culture on its own terms by learning the language seems a first step of respect.

Another powerful passage concerned Barcott's receiving advice from another young man who studied abroad as an apprentice to unique door carvers in Zanzibar Island in Tanzania. The advice was to be flexible and persistent in contacting people. "Reach out to a bunch of people and eventually a few, maybe five percent, will give a damn. That's enough, though. When they respond, you ca follow up and start pulling it together." I need to keep this in mind in any novel pursuits that need others' backing. This could be included in preaching to a church engaged in outreach and/or transformation.

Barcott writes about falling through the ice in a pond as a young boy (27-28) and coming close to dying. He returns to the spot and has an experience of light and God, and realizes how close he came to dying. He then goes through a period where he has a premonition of dying young, by age 30, but sees this as freeing and leads to an intense life. I wonder how many young soldiers and suicide bombers both have any such mindsets as he describes.

Works Cited.

Barcott, Rye. It happened on the way to war: a marine's path to peace. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2010. Print.