cairns

Note to Republican leadership:  The country was fed up with the results of your recent administrations!  So fed up that they elected a majority in both houses plus a President from the other party.  You lost.  It is not the end of the world, the pendulum swings and right now you are the minority.  Yes, Obama is black–get over it.  You were just never told the evidence that Ike was too (try to find a picture of his mother).  No, he is not destroying the country and your extremist statements are not winning over anyone who didn’t already agree with you — reminder, they were the minority not the majority of voters in the last round of elections.

Note to Democrat leadership: Part of how you got a majority was anger over the gridlock and government officials unwilling to listen to the other side, or the American public.  You can lose power the very same way.  Your solutions are not right for everybody everyplace in this country any more than the Republican ones are.  From the time of the writing of the Constitution this has been a government based on compromise.  Its time to find a way back there.

Note to those preparing to lock and load:  The Founding Fathers really were the intelligent men you should have been taught that they were in school.  The political system works.  The economic system is a complex game of imaginary assets and wealth beyond anything any talking head tells you.  Most of it doesn’t even exist in the terms everyday people think of, and the CEO’s of the major multinational corporations are making more decisions about how the world is run than Obama has any power to do.

Note to self:  Everybody thought we were going to have a revolution in the Sixties.  The system sustained itself.  The biggest issue in American government today is not the Congress or the President.  It is the unbelievable power to create law by ruling on issues Congress has passed no law about, and which cannot be overturned, in the hands of nine old justices.  They must be laughing their robed ol’ butts off watching everybody fume about Congress and the President while they make the laws and policies of the country anything they want them to be.

This is the most important constitutional issue of our time.  Power will swing back and forth in the Congress and the White House like it always has as people become dissatisfied.  But, if the other two branches and the public do not find someway to balance the power of the Court: we are country living at the unchangeable whims of nine people the electorate never had any say in appointing, who cannot be removed from office, and who do not have to answer to anyone.

Bottom line — breathe — none of them will solve the world’s problems or destroy it.  There is a Higher Power whether the branches of our government or the leaders of the multinational corporations acknowledge the fact or not.  Their acquisition of power only appears to be by simple acts of man separated from the will of that Power.  And, when it is time for them to be “brought low,” it will happen.  The “System” far bigger than our beloved country works.

peace

Comments Off

It was beautiful to see all of the loved ones who came, some from far away; the excellent weather on top of the little hill at Garrison Chapel Cemetery; and to share in the hope and challenge of a life lived in service to God.

I thought I would include a link to my marked copy of what we shared for some who could not be there.

Moms funeral

Thanks to everyone who attended, who prayed, and who loved our parents.

peace

Comments Off

My old church is advertising their community Easter event with commentary about the other two crosses.  In part it says, “We do not know what their crimes were.”  And, I confess my first response was, “Because it doesn’t matter!”

However; I was quickly brought up short by my own commitment not to be critical of a place that nurtured my family for years (or any other part of the Body of Christ), by my recent reading of Volf’s book on grace and forgiveness as well as Brueggemann’s analysis of the narratives of the Old Testament, and a blinding flash of the obvious.

The Christian tradition has long emphasized the drama of God on the cross.  I have written in this blog on more than one occasion about God’s ultimate reconnection with mankind in that context.  But, less attention has been paid to humanity on the cross.  Christ, as both perfect God and perfect man, hangs there as both divine and human.  But, it is so easy for us to miss the human side in the wonder that God would do such a thing.  So, there in the narrative are the two thieves representing humanity — clear and obvious.

Once we recognize the thieves it is easy to do what the ad that started this reflection does and focus on the one who experiences union with Christ obviously in the narrative.  I think there is something important about clearly seeing both men there with the Savior.  One recognizes Jesus and asks for His help.  The other is still apparently in unbelief and issues challenges and demands.  If we look at it as a narrative providing metaphor for larger truth than just the specifics of that day, I think the two combine to represent the totality of mankind dying that day with Christ.  On one side we find those whose faith is placed in Christ, on the other those who do not yet know him.  Both die that day.

This morbid thought is important for its life giving conclusion on Easter morning!  We recognize our position as crucified and risen with Christ through passages such as Galatians 20.  But, we tend to limit the death and the life to just one thief — the one we identify with as “saved.”  I now believe there is a clear picture of all humanity in those three crosses, with the hope of resurrection for all humanity implied as well (see passages such as Ephesians 1 discussing God’s plans through Christ to being all things into unity).

Evangelicals may only be able to agree in as much as there was only one crucifixion covering all who died before in faith and all who came to belief later.  In that sense, we were all the thief in the state of unbelief , “while we were yet sinners,” at the time of the crucifixion.  Those with a more universal hope in reading the full narrative of the Scripture will see in the total inclusion of mankind at the cross the promise of the eventual (although mysterious in means and method as God is mysterious) resurrection to Life of all as well.  I clearly see myself in both men — sometimes turning to Christ in faith that overcomes great hardship, sometimes challenging, complaining, and still wanting to be in charge of the world.  My hope is based on the nature of the One on the center cross, not my good or bad days.

And, I now know the crimes of the other two crucified that day.  They are my own.

peace

Comments Off

This started out as a warning from somebody who learned about our country’s methods of dealing with frightening dissent back in the day.  So, I put together this list of names and places anyone speaking in terms of violence should know.

Daniel Shay, John Brown, Benedict Arnold, Kent State, Jackson State, Wounded Knee, Fred Hampton, David Koresh, Orangeburg, Tim McVeigh, SLA

They have one thing in common.  The US has never been a country where revolution or loose talk about revolution are safe activities, even for bystanders.

Both the Jeffersonian and the Reagan revolutions were achieved with the ballot, not the bullet.  So was the election of 2008.

But, as I have thought about it more, there is a deeper level that has not dawned on the folks broadcasting their support for either party.  Anyone who believes that our national government only taking care of the wealthy while waging war on the rest of the world will add up to a better life is just not paying attention to the constant decline in standards of living experienced by working people under those policies.  The only thing trickling down is the condensation on CEO’s golden shower curtains.

Anyone who believes that the Democrats can come up with a large national plan that will meet everyone’s needs while not taxing the working man to death, is probably still in the bonds of modern thought.  It was a nice dream, that man could invent grand answers that would eliminate suffering and injustice.  But, man is not God and the experiment failed. One of the biggest lies in American public policy is known by all common folk to be, “I am from the government and I am here to help you!”

I now see myself politically (and in all other areas) as a post-modern.  Answers work best on small scales, near the point of need, with ownership and empowerment of those affected most by the problem and proposed solutions.  Neither national party promises that, even though the GOP would like you to believe that they do.

So two last names for anyone selling your soul to any part of the political machine — P.T.Barnum and Jesus Christ; duly warned and Kingdom come.

peace

Comments Off