cairns

Just found this in Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God,

Grounding this praxis is a stunning principle first articulated by Pope John Paul II in 1990: ‘respect for life and the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation.’  Pragmatically, humans shall survive together with the other creatures on this planet or not at all.  The issue is more than practical, however, for respect for life cannot be divided.  Not only human life but the whole living Earth is God’s beloved creation, deserving of care…

‘Who is my neighbor?’ asks Brian Patrick, ‘the Samaritan?  The outcast? The enemy?  Yes, yes of course.  But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain forest.  Our neighbor is the entire community of life, the entire universe.  We must love it all as our very self.’

S, if you still read here, doesn’t that sound like what our native cousins tried to teach us when we got off the boats?

peace

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Sermon this morning was the first of advent and was supposed to be focused on the father of John the Baptist.

First we got a commercial on how many families bought the manipulative weak theology of the last month on tithe and turned in their pledge cards (and who will now be blessed as will be shown on web published videos!)

Then we got to the sermon — how God could show up in such bad times and bless.  I get how it was bad times for Elizabeth to be old and childless especially in context.  But, he started talking about our country.  He gave a whole litany of reasons to consider things dark in America today.  Some of them I even agree with.

But, give me a break! Horrific things happened in India this week.  Hundreds died in riots in one African nation.  Tens of thousands of infants still starve every week worldwide.  People in Venezuela are suffering under changes brought by dictatorial methods.  Sudan is still hell on Earth.  Congo is right behind them.  Haiti’s new solution is to start tearing down all the substandard buildings, (that would be pretty much every structure in the country.) The Earth is warming at a rate that is already bringing devastating results to life both animal and human while we sit in luxury.   We are in the small percentage that has most of the world’s wealth and could do the most to bring relief and hope and not one thing was said about the condition of the world.

Most people in the congregation drove to church in vehicles costing more than the total lifetime income of the world’s poor.  And we are talking about dark times because the stock market is iffy and our retirement accounts are less secure? We need saving because a Democrat won so pro-life and family definition supposedly lost even though nothing on the national ballot was supposedly about either?  We need God to show up in miraculous force because too much has been spent to bail out banks raising the national debt, but the auto deal fell through?  Ah yes, I forgot, the universe and the Gospel are all about US!

On second thought, I agree.  It is dark in America.  May a saving light show up for the sake of everyone else.

peace

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Its so much more than thanks for the list, the stuff, the health…this thing called gratitude.  Like Beck Weathers on Everest feeling the miracle of eyes opening even if you cannot see.  Like the homeless in Same Kind of Different celebrating that last night they did not starve or freeze.  IN our worst moments, celebrating more moments in the presence of the mystery beyond our present.  We are.  He lives.  Grace abounds.  It is all we need and desire even when we fail to see.  Life is.

peace

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Didn’t get a lot of takers on helping flesh out a true pro-life position.  I think the Catholic Church has bragging rights for realizing and proclaiming that the right to life must to extend to the most despicable murderer if we wish to proclaim it as universal.

Two of my daughters see a decidedly “non-Christian practice” Psychiatrist.  He is the best in our area at correct medicinal treatment.  But, he is always politely suspicious of our beliefs and practices.  He was amazed to find out my daughter worked for the O’Bama campaign since so many Christians claim the only issues that matter are pro-life and family definition.  We discussed how little anybody on the ballot had to say about either issue once the campaign propaganda dies out.  And, I got to tell him that for me pro-life has to include the born as well as the unborn, the toddler and teen as well as the fetus, the soldier as well as the Iraqi, and just about the time he thought he understood– I told him that it would also include my brother the wolf in Alaska.  He was still grinning and shaking his head in disbelief when we left.

Skipped church today as the guest preacher is the author of a financial advice book for Christians.  Seems the tithe is twelve percent and still binding on Christians who dont want to steal from God, the local church is the temple and it is improper to put your tithe anywhere but in the hands of the church leadership, all debt is of the devil, but not to worry, those who give tweleve percent to God up front will find God blessing them with wealth beyond their dreams.  I did not want to throw up on the carpet, curse out loud in church, or cancel my decision to stay by getting thrown out.  So I stayed home and played with the leaves in the yard.

I have more yard than I can clean by myself, with friends who live in lands brown and dry without shade.  I was working to beat the rain, with friends who live in places where rain does not come.  I was working to get done before going back to school tomorrow, with friends who work with children who have never been allowed to go to school but have served in the militia.  And I thought again, simple observation should answer the question in the affirmative.  Life is good.  Waking up in each day in a place filled with life is a blessing.  Waking up with a new President who is bringing hope both here and in those other lands, is a blessing.  But waking to another day of life would be blessing if I was in any of those other settings.  Life is, and life is holy.

peace

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I haven’t written about the natural magic of fall on here for a while.  Figure my volcano piece has already been done.

But, this fall we did it again.  We looked around and said, “There just hasn’t been enough rain, it will be a brown fall without much color.”  Then Fall came anyway.  The yellows and oranges are brilliant with some hardy reds.  To be sure there is plenty of brown in some areas.  But, it makes the tree which has burst into full color stand out all the more.  And, my own neighborhood has been absolutely blazing with glory.

Now the leaves are coming down.  My yard is a “mess” thanks to the rains coming right after the leaf fall.  But, I love it all.  The street is full of leaves and I love driving through them in my little car as much I as I used to love blasting through them on my bike.  It is a pre-snow transformation from solid concrete and hard edges to natural blurs and complexities that dance and whirl.

And in the woods last weekend alone, the pure pleasure of the soft crunch beneath my feet was exhilarating.  Life that had soared into the air through tiny veins of wood, was returning to the soil enriched by sun, air, and water.  I marvel at the loudness of a single leaf somersaulting down through the trees when there is no machine noise pollution to mask its passing.  Every part of life’s cycle has a beauty and fall is still a favorite of mine.  I rank it right up there with Spring, Summer, and Winter!

11/20  This week the reds came on strong.  The trees that fill the middle of the boulevard coming into my neighborhood lit up like British soldiers on parade.  Then today, snow flakes, lots of snow flurries whirling everywhere melting almost before touching the ground, added to the picture.  I saw serious faced “how am I ever going to reach these kids” teachers turn giddy with the pure delight of the spectacle.  I do love life in four seasons.

peace

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Left right after school Friday for the Hoosier National Forest.  Two nights with just me, trees, wind, a few birds, lots of quiet, a little campfire, and time to not think.  No music, no writing, a little reading, some praying, noproblems to solve, a little hiking, no elections to win, just me sitting alone in the woods.  Temps just above freezing meant the few families that went to the camp area I chose camped on a loop with electricity.  I was in a campground for the ease of car camping, but completely by myself.  I have no great thoughts to write.  It was a beautiful time to be, just be, in creation.  It was good.  peace

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You want to stop or decrease abortions?  Give the mother a hope and a future for herself and her unborn.  That is an important start.  Let Mom know that the country she lives in has a place for her and her child, a good life worth bringing a child into, worth the effort of raising them to join us as a citizen in a great experiment of human potential.  That is part of what last night was about and it is part of the answer.

You want to decrease abortions? Start teaching our young people that it is not OK to seek pleasure without regard to consequences.  Sex makes babies, but our culture has treated it like a playground for slightly older and less responsible children.  Call Americans to lives of thoughtful responsibility.  An attitude of considering the worth of yourself, your actions, and the effect on the other party will go much further for decreasing abortion than any law or sermon of damnation.  That is part of what last night was about, and it is part of the answer.

You want to decrease abortions? Shout out the value of every person and stop dehumanizing your enemy.  John McCain did that last night and did it very well.  Indeed, if America had seen the face and heard the voice of the man who gave last night’s concession speech instead of the image manufactured by an attack campaign, this election might have gone completely the other way.  In our deepest disagreements remember that the Republican Ronald Reagan was famous for calling people to agree without being disagreeable.  If we want life to be valued, then we must value each other most when we have the courage to disagree.  Last night John McCain did that as well, and it is part of the answer.

peace

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I hope I can discuss the election with my young students without crying today.

Forty years ago the young people of my generation gathered in Grant Park demanding a voice in the nation’s future and the end of a hopeless war.  The Democrats were in charge of the city.  They came out in force and beat our heads in.  Then they rounded up those they considered to have been leaders and put them on trial.  The iconic image of a black man from that moment in US history is Bobby Seal bound and gagged in the court room for demanding a separate trial.

But, last night, oh my last night, praise God hallelujah!  A cross section of America including many many young first time voters stood in Grant Park again and celebrated victory!  They celebrate the victory of a message of hope over cynicism, a message that America can be what we tell the world we are, a message that we can come together and be one people.  Yesterday was my Camelot.  For a least one shining moment we all, including a very eloquent John McCain, proclaimed that we can still be a place of hope and promise.

What the movement of 68 lacked was the Internet.  The opposition should have paid less attention to Obama’s being friends with a Weatherman and more to the parent organization of the Weathermen, the SDS.  Last night grass roots democracy, funded by amazing numbers of 5 and 10 dollar donations, daring to proclaim that everybody matters, took the presidency of the United States — led by a black man unbound, speaking the truth the Civil Rights Movement has proclaimed for a generation through so much pain and tears.  We are all Americans and we can, yes we can.  I wept.

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Help me think through what a full pro-life Christian position would look like.

I know and have pointed out to many people that I heard Francis Schaeffer in person declare at the beginning of the pro-life movement that no church or pastor should claim to stand with him unless they were willing to fully commit to supporting the life of the child and the mother after birth with whatever means it required until the child reached adult independence. But, I think we would need to go far beyond that.

So far I am thinking first that it has to include all people in all places having divine significance.  How can we devalue women and claim their unborn have inalienable rights?  How can we ignore millions of preventable deaths yearly among the poor, and yet claim those not yet born cannot be violated?

But, I think we would have to go even further.  I think we would have to start with the sanctity and worth of all life.  The Bible says God notices a sparrow that falls and how the grass of the fields is dressed.  That may be poetic, but truth often is.  If life is holy, then why not all of life?

I don’t think I would/could take it to the extreme Buddhist position.  Even the Dalai Lama says a total vegetarian diet made him ill and he gave it up.  I am thinking more along the lines of respect one finds in more primitive societies toward the animal that gives its life to sustain ours.  I haven’t read enough to be fully conversant in the authors who go back to Genesis to proclaim the divinity of creation, but I think it is something along those lines.

If we want people to accept the unborn human as sacred, I think we have to begin to articulate more clearly the divinity of all life.

I think we have to stop attacking and dehumanizing our opponents on whatever issues.

I think we would have to seriously examine our views on war and capital punishment if we want to claim that no human life can be taken in order to satisfy our aims.

I think we have to examine how far our respect for life extends to the non-human as well.

So, help me think it through further.

What might a real pro-life position call us to do, to give up, to change, to articulate, to honor, to live?

peace

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Just watched a supposedly “non-partisan” video on my church’s web page about voting the issues tomorrow. OK, that was a dumb move to start with because I knew what it would be and knew I would be offended.  I did write a note about it directly to the church leadership before doing this rant which will be read by folks who have no control, or will never even darken the door of the place.

It implied that the the rights of the unborn and the definition of marriage for us and our children hinges on Christians choosing the right person tomorrow.  It was pure Republican in every way but having an RNC endorsement attached.

And yet the President of the United States decides neither of these.  After decades of pro-life and pro-family Bushes and a Reagan, we still have abortion rights and my daughter lost all government assistance for either her or her daughter the second she got married.  Supposedly, I can control the court to do the “right” thing by always voting for Republicans for President.  So, I looked up the Supreme Court record.

Reagan and the two Bushes have successfully placed eight justices on the Supreme Court and the situation remains unchanged.

How long can this party keep claiming people’s votes on this single issue when they have not and cannot change it when they are in power?

As long as we let them would be my answer to my own question.

As for me, don’t tell me you are pro-family and remove all government help the second a single mother chooses to marry the baby’s father.  Do not tell me you are pro-life when you are also pro-war, anti health care for the poor, anti-education which would help to prevent unwanted pregnancies, indifferent to the plight of all people and life that is not “us,” and anti-policies that would provide a living wage to workers. Don’t even imply that there is a holy choice when the nominee of the party which claims to support your issues is a man who first cheated on and then divorced his wife after she was injured and had become less attractive to him.  Please don’t tell me Jesus wants me to vote for the party that openly states their preference for improving the future by favoring the rich.  I do not believe He ever said anything of the sort.

I do not believe that the Democrats have any magic answers either.  I do not begrudge you your preference if you vote Republican.  I just wish church people would quit using the Bible to beat up anyone who disagrees with their choice!

Jesus did not tell his followers to form or support political parties, in fact he rejected all offers to make his mission a political one in any traditional sense.  He told us to love God and our neighbor as our self.  He told us to forgive as He forgives, and to love as He loves.  He told us to carry the message of His saving work to all people.  Those are what the church is supposed to be about.  Meanwhile the western church spends its resources on itself and brags if we send more than 5% of our money to the 90% of the world which is unchurched.  We have too much wrong inside our own house to be throwing stones at anybody.

OK, I feel a little better now.

peace

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