This is a deeply personal post. It delves into issues of faith and belief. I hesitate to release it into the world for many reasons. If you have never wrestled with religious belief or struggled to understand what faith means, you may want to skip this one. It may surprise or shock you if you do choose to read, but I am merely trying to be honest with myself about my journey.

My sister called me the other night.  We are close, but talk infrequently and see each other even less frequently.  She lives out east with her life, and I am out here with mine. We love each other, though, and when we talk, we return to themes that have ordered our conversations for years.  Re-discussing them never gets old, because even as we do (get old), our views on these matters continue to evolve.

Our most recent conversation was occasioned by what I wrote about our mom. Her first comment to me (after telling me she liked the piece) was to say it made her angry at mom.  That surprised me at first, but as we talked, I understood why.

I had remarked that “at least we did not grow up in a dysfunctional family,” which she immediately contested. Rare in our conversations.  Of course, I was thinking of dysfunction along the lines of the kind of physical abuse and neglect my daughter, who works in child protective services, tells me about on a routine basis. My sister, on the other hand, was thinking about a different kind of abuse—the spiritual kind—that she felt our parents had subjected us to. Her anger with mom, in part, stemmed from that upbringing.

I conceded the point.  Of course, we had grown up in a dysfunctional home.  A home in which religion (I won’t say “faith’) was weaponized to keep us in line. The weaponization was not always carried out by our parents. Rather, it came from the religious environment in which they raised us. They merely reinforced what our pastor told them to do. Religion—the old-time gospel, as some called it—was a form of social control, and while my sister, as a girl/woman in its patriarchal culture, suffered in ways I never had to, both of us agreed that we had been raised to live in a strange kind of fear: the fear of what would happen if we abandoned the “faith.” 

And yet, there we were, talking about that very thing: leaving behind the carefully crafted, controlling narratives of our childhood. I told her that I never expected to fully leave that fear behind; that I had decided I would wrestle with it for the rest of my life. 

Admitting that helped her a little. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to live with the cognitive dissonance that comes from knowing we must abandon a deeply ingrained belief, while simultaneously fearing the wrath of the higher power behind the faith we had abandoned. I know that does not sound healthy. But here we are.

Without pushing me, my sister skirted the edges of the question that is not safe to ask: “So, what DO you believe?”

While I think about that question incessantly, I have avoided putting my thoughts down in words because doing so would make the break—the abandonment—official.  Am I ready to do that?  Maybe not.

Where I am in relation to “all that” is not a simple statement and must be rolled out in relation to four themes: what I believe about 1) the Bible, 2) the Church, 3) God, and 4) Jesus.  I place these in order of complexity—what is easiest to talk about first, and what I really do not want to say out loud last.

I also need to put down a narrative of how I understand humankind’s place in the world. I will come to that last.  

Note: My sister and I were raised in a brand of Christianity that used to call itself “fundamentalism,” now falls under the umbrella of evangelicalism, but is more a kind of non-charismatic, pietistic, Christian Nationalism. 

The Bible

We were taught that the Bible—“Old” and “New” Testaments—was the inspired word of God.  God did not dictate the words of the Bible; rather, God inspired men to write them to lay down an accurate account of what had happened in the world.

While the entire Bible was considered a kind of moral guidebook, not all parts of it were equally important in practice.  Writings ascribed to Paul were given primary place; the four Gospels were used sparingly, mostly to prove the virgin birth and the importance of the cross, and, to a lesser extent, the resurrection; and the so-called books of prophecy were scoured relentlessly to divine secret truths about the end times.

I acknowledge that the Bible is a historically important “book.” But I don’t understand what it means to say that it is God’s word. It is a collection of stories, histories, bits of advice and wisdom, accounts (real or imagined), and proclamations that flow from one religion to another (the second birthed from the first). 

If there is a single narrative arc running throughout the whole thing, I am not sure there is any universal consensus on what it might be.

The writers invoke God’s name and claim to act on God’s orders, but I think that many of the writers were merely using God as a cover for some pretty nasty business.  To suggest that a God whom they call just would order the pogroms, ethnic cleansings, and genocides that are scattered across the Old Testament is ludicrous. These writers just wanted to pass off evil acts as the work of a higher power.  I am not buying that “God told us to.”

I don’t know who wrote what and to what end.  Most of it seems self-justifying, and because I was never taught to read the Bible with an eye to its cultural/historical/sociological context, I am left wondering what the motives really were. And much of the time, I am not even sure what the point was or is. In other words, is it relevant to my life?

The Gospels tell a significant story, but are they historically accurate?  How can we know?  Can I gain solace, wisdom, or guidance from the Gospel accounts?  Yes. Can I state with any certainty that it all happened that way?  No, and I won’t try.

Growing up, to deny the Bible was, literally, the road to perdition.  Without the truth of the Word, there was no reliable source of ethics. There was no anchor in a “storm-tossed” world; there was no way to know right from wrong. We were taught that the Bible is sufficient in itself as a source of instruction for how to live a holy life.  Those who doubted its truth would end up wayward—at best. Frankly, if you doubted that God had inspired the Bible and that it contained the “truth,” you were already lost. The fear starts here, because I no longer believe the Bible is God’s word. 

The Church

This one is a bit tougher, largely because the word “church” carries so many meanings.  On the one hand, there is the “church universal,” which is the communion of all the saints (believers) of all times, everywhere in the world.  Let’s call that church with a capital C.  

Then there is the “church local”—the gathering of believers in every place where they come together to celebrate sacraments, sing, pray, receive teaching, and do the things that communities of practice in all religions do everywhere. 

Of course, one does not “believe in” the church, but one has understandings of its role and one’s responsibilities to it.

The most salient thing I learned about the church growing up is that we must not “forsake the assembling together of ourselves, as is the custom with some.”  In other words, you need to go to church.

That expression “go to church” was the foundation of our social lives growing up. Not going to church would be like not being in a family, or leaving your town to wander as a stranger.  You simply had to do it, and to “forsake” it was to admit, publicly, that you were not a believer.

I don’t “go to church” anymore, and I don’t plan to. It still makes me afraid to say that. 

I can try to explain why.  I don’t go anymore because the church (local) has so disappointed me. I know that all institutions will disappoint us, after all.  For example, I am not always proud to work at the university that pays my salary. But I stay there. I can’t think of a single organization I have been part of that did not let me down at least once. I have left many of them, but rarely because of disappointment.

But the church holds a special disappointment for me because it is supposed to be different than other institutions.  It is supposed to be the place where the hurting can find solace, the outcast can find a welcome, and where the lost can locate themselves. It is supposed to repent of its collective sin. It is supposed to be better.

In my experience, it is and does none of those things.  

Okay, let me be careful.  There are some congregations—some churches—that inspire confidence. I have friends who work in this field, so I want to confirm that the church is not rotten everywhere.

But in my experience, it has never failed to let me down.  Is that sufficient reason to abandon it?  Maybe not.  But I finally came to the point about a decade ago when I asked myself what is the point of sticking with this?  Is it ever going to change?  Will it ever change?

Not only is the American Church (capital C) a wasteland of navel-gazing and petty fights over popularity, it is frequently racist, sexist, homophobic, and… you can add to the list. Not all churches (congregations), but many of them. White nationalism thrives in the American Church.

But, and I am going to say this as carefully as I can, the so-called progressive churches are also places that may SAY things I agree with, but in my experience, practice a bunch of self-serving actions that are about local prestige and a focus on their own well-being.

I know that sounds harsh.

But I have had a front row seat.  When I was mayor, there was a time when I desperately needed local churches to step up and defend the humanity of unhoused people in my community. But they were nowhere to be found.  They were too busy (apparently) making sure their building campaign was on track or that their parking was not impacted by city actions.

I stood alone, fighting the dehumanization, while the churches apparently had better things to do. 

I am sure I sound bitter, but at least I see things clearly now.

Growing up, to leave the church was a brazen statement of abandonment of one’s faith. My parents would speak in hushed tones about so-and-so who had “left the church,” their voices tinged with pity and fear for the very soul of that wayward person.  Of my siblings, my mom had very few questions, but a key one was always “Are you going to church?”

I want to be clear: I did not “leave the church;” the church left me. Indeed, it left me over and over many times over the years. 

God

Okay, we are really getting down to it now. What do I believe about God?

Let me return to some things I noted in the Bible section above.  The Bible’s portrayal of God is problematic in many ways.  The worst of these are the sections where God tells the people to wipe out entire populations.  Now I can say that the writers were merely using God to justify their evil, but what I was taught about God and the Bible was that, actually, God ordered those things, and if I did not understand them, well then I just needed to “use the eyes of faith” to accept that there were some things about God that were beyond humanity’s grasp.

Except, no.  If the God of genocide is what or whom you are asking me to believe in, then I can be clear.  I don’t believe in God.  If that entity is truly the God of the universe, then I think we are all in trouble, because that God is a capricious, vengeful being who deserves neither worship nor praise. 

But let’s say we accept the argument that those stories are just projections of humans’ bloodlust onto a deity.  Then, what IS God really like?  And does that description help to decide what to do about the “God question?”  If I get to choose the kind of God I want, haven’t I essentially created God in my image?  Doesn’t that make me God (kind of)?

The question I ask is: “What is the purpose of God?”                                             

Notwithstanding what I was taught growing up, there is no proof for God or why there is one. The idea of a supreme being who oversees everything feels old-fashioned, from a time when the scientific method had not yet begun to explain the world and the heavens. God used to have considerable explanatory power in describing the “miracles” of the world. But in these times, most miracles have given way to empirically-derived descriptions of how things work (at least at a basic level).  Now granted, there are still many things we cannot explain, but even in my lifetime, we have come to understand and “see” things we could not have imagined in prior generations.  I am thinking about things like the human genome, the brain/mind, and the nature of the universe itself. 

Looking at it that way, is there really much space left for a God? Is there a reason for God?

I would say no, but.  But. But I have yearnings. I have a hunger. I experience awe. I see my complex and unknowable heart. I see the resilience of life.  I give and receive love.  I find joy, and heartache, and hope. 

There is more, but my point is that I find what others have referred to as a “God-shaped void” at the center of my being.  I want more. I am desperate for more.

I understand that all of these can be explained as merely the result of a long evolutionary process, as social conditioning, or culturally determined ways of interacting with the world.  But the utter longing I feel for “more” leads me to the choice I have made. I choose to believe that there is a God who knows us and, in some way, cares about the direction the world takes. A God who can give me the answers to the yearnings, and fill the hunger. 

Perhaps my decision to believe in a God is a remnant of my upbringing, a kind of cosmic insurance policy I can pull out if I have to stand someday before my Maker and plead my case for why I belong in their presence.  I will acknowledge that this is possible. 

Nonetheless, it is something that I choose to do.

Choosing to believe in God would have been considered the height of hubris growing up.  And it still may come across that way now.  All I mean is that I can’t prove God’s existence, and I won’t try. But, I will still move through the world living a life centered on the idea that if there is love in the universe, if there is redemption for my errors, if there is reconciliation of broken relationships, if there is hope—all these things are possible BECAUSE there is a God whose nature makes these things possible. 

It is a choice I have found I must make over and over. 

Jesus

It might surprise folks to learn that Jesus was a bit player in the religion of my youth.  Of course, he was behind it all—after all, we called ourselves Christians (but more often believers).  Jesus was the object of our beliefs, and we prayed in his name, but his role in our lives was largely limited to his birth and his death.

His teaching?  Not so much.  We learned about him in Sunday School—the only time we were ever taught by women —and I now sometimes see how these teachings were somewhat subversive and not mainstream fare in the upstairs (Sunday school was always in the basement) sermons.  

Even then, most of Jesus’ teachings were reduced to simple morality stories.  Jesus was completely ripped from his historical and cultural context.  The Jesus of the Sunday School stories could have fit right in at our church (except for the robe and long hair—at that time, only hippies dressed like the portraits we had of Jesus). He was white, and I always kind of assumed that if he were alive today, he would live in America.

It wasn’t until I was well into my adult life that I learned that some folks within the broader Christian tradition took Jesus’ words and teaching utterly seriously. They saw the Gospels as like a “canon within the canon” of sacred writings, and they spent their time trying to figure out how to live according to his life and teaching. These folks changed my understanding of Jesus.

So, where am I with Jesus these days?  Great teacher? Moral leader? A kind of first-century Gandhi or King? Messiah? Son of God? Savior?

I can start by saying it’s generally accepted that a person named Jesus actually walked the earth, and he did enough to attract the attention of some folks in first-century Palestine. And not too many years after his death, his reputation spread across much of the Western world and had a lasting impact on its people and cultures. 

I believe that Jesus followed in a long line of prophets within the Jewish tradition.  He called out religious institutions, called his co-religionists to repentance, and lived a simple life of devotion to God. He attracted a small group of mostly lower-class folks and a variety of social outcasts, and they followed him faithfully until the very end. 

I think there is also some evidence that the religious powers of his day saw him as a sufficient threat to persuade the political power of Southwest Asia at that time (the Romans) to put him to death in a most public and humiliating way. 

His teaching, in modern terms, focused on social justice, centering on the depredations of the wealthy (and religious), and a “preferential option for the poor.” Beyond that, he preached a message that suggested he was bringing about a different kind of reign.  But even then, he turned political power on its head by engaging in outrageous performances like riding into Jerusalem triumphantly—on a donkey, or inviting prostitutes and other outcasts to dinner. The kingdom that he said was coming (was actually “here”) was so wildly at odds with what humanity had ever experienced that most people ended laughing him off, and his irrelevance was sealed by his crucifixion.  (“See what happens to people who step out of line? You end up like Jesus” might have been the lesson that parents and religious leaders told their children and followers.)

All of this would set Jesus up as little more than an interesting historical figure. Someone whose teachings might be a useful set of moral and socially useful aphorisms. 

But then his followers claimed he had come back to life. And that really raised the stakes for what this whole thing is all about.

In a letter attributed to Paul, the writer claims that without the resurrection (first Jesus, then his followers), there is no point.  No point to faith, ultimately no point to life: “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 

The resurrection is central to Christian orthodoxy, and its celebration is the point of its holiest day. 

What does one do with that? Rationally, scientifically, people do not come back from the dead, and if Jesus merely appeared dead, then the whole Christian project is thin gruel.  

Resurrections move us beyond redemption to a new life itself, after all. 

So, when it comes to Jesus, one has to deal with this central claim. And what we do with Jesus, and how Jesus fits into any story, turns on the point of what happened after his death. The whole story of “Easter” is, in itself, a social and political statement.  According to the Gospels, the first person to discover the event is a woman, probably a woman of ill repute.  Even his closest male followers are in doubt, but the woman believes. But can anyone believe her?

Further, what does it say about the mightiest military on earth that their mechanism of torture and death of a traitor cannot keep him down?  What does that ultimately say about the power of the state, the power of any earthly institution, to prevail? If resurrection is a thing, then, ultimately, the powerful who tread the meek of the earth underfoot will not have the last word, and they are rendered powerless. I say, ultimately, because whether death is three days or three thousand, resurrection promises ultimate justice for the oppressed. 

If moral arcs bend—or are bent—it would seem that it takes something like a resurrection to provide the pressure.

I am not interested in following Jesus as simply a moral teacher. His claims about himself, though at times oblique, combined with his reported actions, are simply too bold, too self-assured, too world-challenging.  Accepting Jesus feels like a package deal, and that includes the resurrection. 

Again, acceptance and belief can only come as a choice. In this case, a choice to suspend belief about rational explanations as a sufficient guide to life. Maybe this is Kierkegaard’s leap. Maybe we can only ever come to accepting something as ridiculous as a resurrection this way: through a leap. 

I feel like I have jumped.

I want my life to follow the life and teaching of Jesus. There are reasons I will try to describe in my “narrative,” but many more that would take too long for this piece. Put simply, though, I want to follow Jesus because I believe he brought the key to saving humanity from itself. 

To fully engage his life and teaching, I have decided that I must choose to accept the resurrection and move on in hope from that point. 

It is a choice I must remake quite often.

Meta Narrative

Herein, I try to pull all of this together into a story—or perhaps what I think of as a story of stories.  The story of humanity. The Bible is a necessary ingredient, as are beliefs in God, Jesus, and the resurrection.  

A story:

When humans evolved to consciousness, to self-awareness, the God who had spun out the universe for reasons known only to God, sought out humanity to offer relationship and support.  God had no desire to control humanity but wanted to offer it all the beauty and joy God could provide. God loved these conscious, fragile beings. No one knows why.

And so, God made the offer.

But humans saw more opportunity in power—power over themselves and power over others. Not everyone could have power, but it was clearly something worth fighting for. So, humans rejected the offer and went their own way—like sheep they wandered away. 

They chose autonomy. 

They gained a keen knowledge of good and evil, and quested for autonomy and eternality. And it did not work out so well for them. Murder, domination, and injustice showed up quickly, and so humans called out to God. Help!

And because they understood good, but also learned to practice evil in such exquisite ways, God handed down a code. God called out a people to be the “code-bearers” and gave them the law to be an example to humanity. The code was set up so that good had a fighting chance against evil.

And the code helped a little, but evil still prevailed. Indeed, humans twisted the code to use it for the evil it was meant to prevent. 

Evil prevailed because humans were so enamored with autonomy—the desire to be left alone to seek to be their own best selves (frankly, they/we wanted to be gods). But their autonomy quest only ever ended up in violence, oppression, rape, carnage, and death. 

But God still loved humanity (no one knows why). And God pursued humanity, knowing that if humans would only accept God’s gift of relationship, they could find what they truly wanted: belonging, peace, meaning, and love. God knew that the autonomy quest promised much but offered nothing. 

 Humans used the God-given code to oppress and obstinately refused to back down from their destructive evil.  And so God decided to show them the truth of what they had become, the failure of the code, due to their own bent to turn it to evil. 

So, God sent Jesus into the world, just like God had sent prophets in the past. But Jesus was a spotless human.  A human that the code could never condemn.  A human who taught a way out of the autonomy quest.  A man who taught self-sacrifice, love of enemy, preference for the downtrodden, and radical interdependence. Everything that could make humans fully human. Everything that autonomy could never provide.

God was not testing humans to see what they would do. What they would do had been pretty clear for some time.  Humanity would never accept abandoning the quest, and so, it was easy to see that things would not end well for Jesus.

And that is what happened. The code holders and the powers that controlled the entire world decided that the only just human would need to be killed.  And, as evil does, it created trumped-up charges of sedition against the one good man. And it savagely beat and killed him in the most public way—as a lesson.

No, this was not a test. 

This was a demonstration.  

God showed humanity who it was. God showed humans the vacuousness of their pursuit. God, in Jesus, demonstrated the falsity of what human autonomy promised.  God revealed the lie of it all.

And, the story could have ended there. Proof. Evidence. Now, humans, do with it what you will.

And humanity would have absolutely fumbled it. It would have said, thank you very much, but we know. We know better. 

But Jesus did not stay dead. After demonstrating the failure of the old way—the code way—Jesus came back to life to disclose the other truth: there is a way out. And whatever you might decide to do, God will never abandon God’s pursuit of you.  And you, humanity, now know the nature of the choice. You can continue down the path of destruction, or you can choose another way—the way of peace, reconciliation, love, and belonging. 

In a loving community, you can spread this message of hope and live lives that demonstrate its power. 

This, I think, is the narrative that seems to reveal the most about myself—the yearnings, the hunger, the doubt, the wonderment. 

And this is the narrative I choose to believe.

I am joining with 50,000 other people participating in “1,000 Words of Summer.” The “challenge” is to write 1,000 words a day from May 29 to June 12. I am starting May 31 and continuing through the end of June. I am publishing a few of them here.

She wakes to the sound of birds singing.  It recalls the flighty cardinal who barely perches on the porch rail at home.  The porch where she sat on a rocker saying “blue devil, blue devil, blue devil” over and over again, knowing that it was somehow naughty to say “devil,” but never knowing why. 

Back home, where mother cooked at the wood stove.  It wasn’t that long ago; she is still so young.  

She hears a rustling on the bed beside her. “What’s that?” as fear shoots through her body.  It’s a man!  What?  Who? How?  Will he hurt her as the Colonel did?  “Oh, dear Lord, protect me from him.  Oh, God, hear my prayer.  I love you, Jesus.  Please don’t let him hurt me.”

She begins to cry.

Now she’s angry.  “Who are you and what are you doing in my bed.  Get out.  I will scream!” All she can think is that it’s that pervert Pastor Smock who asked her for “just a kiss” in the kitchen—not that long ago, it seems. 

“Honey, it’s me.  It’s okay.”

A hand touches her shoulder.  “Don’t you dare touch me!”

“Flo, it’s me, Pete.  It’s okay.  I’m your husband.”

“My husband—ha! You are far too old for that.  You’re not Pete—why, he has dark hair, and his skin is so smooth—looking so fine in that Navy uniform. Get out!”

He sighs and gets out of bed.  “Let me get you some breakfast.”

She’s terrified and notices that her pillow is wet. Did she spill some water from the bedside stand? Is there any water there?  Where is she and how did she get here?  Maybe she can get past him and go out into the kitchen and call someone… But is the kitchen out there, through that doorway?  She can’t be sure. This isn’t her house.  Wait, the one with the kitchen “out there” or the one with the kitchen “down there?”  This place isn’t either, but where is it?  

She sits up thinking of that kitchen/those kitchens.  Of baking pies and chocolate cake with caramel icing.  Someone’s birthday.  Maybe it is Diana’s.  She loves those sweets—just home from college.  Now, which college is that?  Barrington—along that beautiful coast up north, in Rhode Island.  Yes.  They were just there.  Did she graduate?  Oh, yes—we went for that. So proud.  She is a fine young woman.  I always wonder if she will get married soon.

Is this now?

“Pete—oh, there you are. There was a man in here, and I don’t know who he was, and I think I am supposed to make a cake for Diana today—is it her 22^nd or 23^rd birthday?”

He smiles, glad to have her back, recognizing him.  Last week, she slapped and punched him. Made his nose bleed, and he still has a bruise on his arm.  They don’t heal like they used to. 

He’s tired.  

She tossed a lot last night and coughed so much.  She seems to have trouble swallowing now. The days are scary.  He can never know what she will do.  His worst fear is her getting out and getting lost.  He can barely go to the bathroom. He never imagined such simple things could cause such fear.  Keep her in sight.  That’s his commitment

The daycare had worked out well, but she seems to be past that now.  She is afraid of so many things.

She, meanwhile, sits on the bed thinking of getting dressed.  She was never one for high fashion, but she knows how to make the most of what she has been given.  But her hair, that is her pride.  Maybe she’ll drive over to Elaine’s today and have it done.  Did she just get it done last week?  Seems so. Maybe she can wait.

She finds her dress, but this one is SO hard to get on.  She struggles.  Pete comes to help. “Here, let me get that.”  

“Oh, leave me alone, I can dress myself.”

He knows she usually cannot. 

After it is all in a twisted knot, he comes back, and she acquiesces.  But she is not happy about it.

“I am not a child.”

Children—oh yes, she has six.  Diana, Rodney, Coletti, Cheryl, Darwin, and Robbie.  In that order. All such nice young people. Robbie’s actually still a baby. Where is he?  Is someone taking care of him today?  Oh, yes, I’ve been sick.  Daddy keeps them all out of the room, that’s why I can’t see them. Robbie must be at a babysitter.  Oh, he will cause her such a headache.  

I’ve been sick, yes.  I can’t use my arm like I could before. I can’t sing.  I used to be so good at it. Wait, am I still sick in bed?  But I’m not sick now, am I?  I sang in Allentown so recently, and it went so well. I wonder if they will invite me back—those smiling faces. 

Is this today?

She talks to herself (as she’s always done): “What’s wrong with you Flo? Well, you are not getting any younger, are you?  Never were too smart, were you?  Yup, I’m stupid.  Can’t even remember where the kitchen is!”

“What’s that?”  Pete asks.

“Oh, I was just thinking it would be good to go see Dad and Dale.  We can take Darwin and Robbie to keep it simpler. The girls can stay alone now.  I know I am feeling better, and I think we should just drive down and see them for a week?  Can you get off work?

“Flo, Dad, and Dale are dead.  Robbie lives in California.

“Why do you say such awful things? Why didn’t I just see Robbie yesterday after he came home from the sitter?  Lives in California?  That’s ridiculous.  Why are you teasing me, Pete?”

He brings her over to the table.  There’s yogurt and some toast.  The toast is getting harder for her, but she likes it, and she can mostly get it down.  She choked yesterday.  Just keep the water nearby. 

“Honey, we live at Darwin’s house.  In the basement. Robbie moved to California about five years ago.  Dad and Dale have been gone for many years.  We live here now.  Everything’s okay, but they said it’s okay if I tell you the truth.  It won’t matter now.  And so, I feel like I should.  I love you, Flo. I would never hurt you.  You know that, don’t you?”

She considers the yogurt—never had that back home.  They have eggs, when they can afford them, and a bit of corn mush.  There’s a depression on just now, and everyone is suffering.  That and dad just drinks too much.  Last week (was it?), he got into a fight with Harold.  I was scared.

What was he just saying about Darwin and Robbie and California and Dad and Dale?  I worry about that man.  He says crazy things.  I don’t understand why.

Everything is very clear to her.  She is going to Weaver’s later today to sort socks.  She will come home, up the street from the store, around 3:00, and make dinner.  Tonight will be tuna and noodle casserole.  None of the kids turns their noses up at that.  If she has time before prayer meeting, she will make a little cake—something Pete likes. That white cake with white icing.  Then they will drive to Ephrata (or is it Terre Hill), and is that house up the street from Weaver’s or over in Bowmansville? 

Something’s wrong. Everything is clear.

But when is she? 

She looks at Pete.  “I love you, honey.  Maybe we could take Darwin and Robbie and go to Dad and Dale’s this summer for vacation.  We have not done that in a few years.”

Then and Now

Flo passed away just months later. I sat at the foot of her bed for a few hours before my flight back to Northern CA. She talked about many things, mostly of times that predated my arrival on earth.  The details were sharp and delivered without hesitation. She chatted openly as she always did with strangers, like the one in front of her.

The talk wandered around to the subject of the birth of her “baby.” She recalled it with a smile and vivid details about the weather, time of day, and the realization that this would be her last. 

I said, “Mom, that’s me.  I’m Robbie.” 

She gave me that smile, the one that turned up just one side of her face. The smile that said, “You’re trying to pull one over on me, but I’m in on the joke.”  Then she said with a small laugh, “Aw, you’re not Robbie, he’s just a baby.”

I never saw her again.

But it was in those final moments that I gained a sense of what Alzheimer’s had done to mom’s mind. I am not an expert on these things, but we all knew what we heard and saw.  Mom could recall very clearly events that had happened many decades before.  It is not that she remembered everything; it seemed that what she could remember were the events that were accompanied by deep emotions: joy, shame, anger, fear, love, trauma, and belonging. Almost as if those things—weddings, funerals, births, abuse, graduations—were etched in a different part of the brain that her disease could not reach.

Mom, like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, had become “unstuck in time.”  Or, perhaps, more correctly, mom’s mind had become unstuck in time.  Imagine the confusion of standing up in a room and not knowing where that room might be, then recalling intensely, events of a prior time. The only problem was that those events themselves could become confused. 

She could remember going to church (one of her favorite things), but was it from Bowmansville to Terre Hill or to Ephrata?  Or was she going to Ephrata from Fivepointville?  She had lived in both and gone to church in both, and memories of both were so clear.

She couldn’t remember five minutes ago, but all the rest crowded in—a cruel mélange that must have been unbearable at times. 

What is now?  When is now? Where am I now? Who, really, am I now? 

I don’t know what the official cause of death was, but I know that the trickster who stole today and replaced it with every meaningful memory of yesterday led her down a confused and torturous ten-year path that ended in her release.

Billy Pilgrim could see his future.  I am not sure that mom ever did. But I can hope that the God in whom she had placed her trust provided her visions of the heaven she had never seen in waking, but perhaps had dreamed of in rapturous moments of delight.  Maybe those “memories,” too, were etched with all the rest. 

I am joining with 50,000 other people participating in “1,000 Words of Summer.” The “challenge” is to write 1,000 words a day from May 29 to June 12. I am starting May 31 and continuing through the end of June. This one encompasses three days of writing, and, I unexpectedly wept when I read it to my wife.

The ferry crossing between Mauritania and Senegal is a carnival.  The passage includes a full sample of the flora and fauna of both countries (with a strong oversampling of goats), approximately seven different spoken languages, and a variety of products that appear to be manufactured identically on both sides of the river but, for some reason, exported to the other side.

To say it is cacophonous is to understate the sheer volume of everything crammed into the small waiting area.  But because it is (mostly) a carnival, there are smiles, jokes, and the normal ribbing that accompanies families, friends, and business partners across the “fleuve.” (People don’t say they cross the Senegal River, they just cross “The River”—there are so few in these parts.)

We were there to make our way to Dakar for… wait for it… a softball game.  Or, rather, a full-blown softball tournament that drew expatriates from nearly all the former French and English colonies lined up along the Atlantic.  From embassy workers to oil men (from Nigeria), we converged on a sandy soccer field on the outskirts of Dakar to play a version of the American pastime.

Our team was the most eclectic because we had to draw on nearly every able-bodied (and willing) American in the country to complete a team of nine.  We were aid workers, undercover missionaries, non-governmental organization employees working on a variety of “development” projects, a few embassy folks, and a handful of Marines, in-country to guard the embassy and get drunk as often as frequently as possible. 

We traveled south on the two-lane, crumbling asphalt road that was the sole connection between the Capital and the water.  Nouakchott, that desert capital that had, in recent years, spread like the ever-advancing sand dunes that were slowly burying the nation, just as it buried the sand all the way to the Atlantic.  You either take over the sand or the sand takes you over. Either way, the dominant color is sand.

But the river—the crossing in particular—was a riot of color. From the deep blue boubous of the Maures, to the tie-dyed robes of the Peuhl and Wolof speakers on both sides of the river. The greens, the splashes of orange and red, the blues (blue dye is cheap and ubiquitous), and the occasional pure-white costume (how do they keep them so white? someone has asked). 

And we in our standard fare blue jeans and t-shirts—the “toubobs” that, according to local lore, gave up their clothes upon death, with said clothes inevitably ending up on the “dead toubob” clothing piles in markets all over the continent. Cheap, used goods, recycled through the global trade, that locals could only grasp as an admission of just how rich the “Europeans” really are.

Some of us had done these “messy” crossings.  Land crossings involving suspicious border guards not used to seeing white faces slumming it on ferries.  Messy in comparison to the antiseptic airline/airport crossings that transport one seamlessly from capital to capital. Messy because they ARE messy. Lots of yelling, pushing, shoving, shouting, jostling, and just plain body slamming that you never experience in the clean crossings. 

The locals notice nothing because this is how a crossing is done.  The expats plunge in (if they dare) with a sense of adventure.  There is a feeling that anything might happen, but what usually happens is that everyone finally crams onto the boat, and you end up in another country in about 30 minutes. Timetables are estimates. There is little purpose to a watch, and anyone looking at one angrily to show displeasure at the “delay” only shows that they don’t understand the terms of the agreement: you show up and pay, we take you across. Beyond that, the details are fuzzy.   

It only takes a crossing or two to realize that the crush of bodies is part of the day, and you haven’t really crossed unless you have exchanged your Sahelian sweat with at least fifty complete strangers. 

I will take a messy crossing over the cleaner kind any day of the week.  One, I hate to fly and cannot stand the thought of the teeth grinding I go through at take-off and landing, only to have them happen roughly fifteen minutes apart. Two, I love the unique things I will see only on a land crossing: the random goat being toted in a burlap sack with only its head sticking out, the impossibly large bundles of cloth balanced on women’s heads, the food vendors setting up shop shoulder to shoulder for the kilometer or so at the approach to the ferry landing.  Each one selling nearly identical products to the crowd whose numbers approximate those of the sellers. I never really understood how I chose one over another. And the children—so many children.  Running, laughing, pushing, fighting, selling, stealing (?), swearing in any tongue available to them.  

Airports are full of adults—mostly men.  Ferry crossings display the full demographic profile of a nation—you can create a decent population pyramid just by counting heads and estimating ages. 

The day of our crossing was the typical spring day in that part of the world, with the vault of heaven rising impossibly into the whiteness of the sun.  Blue, but not deep blue—too much humidity for that.  Warm, but not hot.  Those days are coming, when the hammer of heaven slams the anvil of earth, and poor humans scurry for cover from the heat that never eases until the sandstorms and the rain chase it further north (where it never rains) later in the year. 

But that day was spring, and with a slight ocean breeze flowing eastward up the river, it was fine. A day for baseball, if you want to know the truth.  And baseball (softball, actually) was on most of our minds as we joined the throng to shove our way onto the craft that we assumed (usually correctly) would make it to the other side. 

We had our gear, which, obviously, included baseball bats.  And here the carnival atmosphere gave way to something more sinister (was that a stray cloud covering the sun?).

The US Marines stationed in Nouakchott led a cloistered life—by design.  They were there for one thing: to guard the embassy and keep its (also cloistered) staff safe.  By that time, having a full embassy in a country like Mauritania was a bit of a joke; today, it feels like an anachronism. But it was there, and so they were.

I say they had one job, perhaps they had three: 1) guard the embassy and its staff, 2) play softball or basketball, 3) get raging drunk at the American club at least once per week, depending on the rotation.

They rarely traveled outside a well-worn path between their living quarters and the embassy—except when they escorted key staff to official functions.  They crossed borders the antiseptic way and avoided contact with the locals, whose language they could not speak, and whose customs were as inscrutable to them as the mind of a pacifist.

They were led by a gunnery sergeant whose nickname was, aptly, Gunny.  He was shorter than what your mind would conjure when you think of an American Marine.  Maybe that is why he was so, how shall I say, direct.  No, he was aggressive.  He was in my face regularly at basketball games where the “non-official” Americans dunked on the embassy and Marine folk until Gunny made sure they brought in a wringer from Cote d’Ivoire.  A fine basketball player originally from Indiana.  We still beat them.

Gunny played hard and made up for his middling talent in both softball and basketball with a Pete Rose-like hustle that wore you down over the course of the seemingly infinite number of games he insisted we play every Friday afternoon (our day off in that Islamic Republic).

Gunny did not like to lose, and he would get so frustrated with our routine thrashing of his team that he frequently ended up stomping away or committing some ridiculous foul—I saw him drive the lane one time and strike a well-positioned defender in the chest with the bottom of his shoe and then scream for a blocking foul.

His men treated him with deference but secretly smiled at his wild ways.  That’s just Gunny, they would say.  Indeed.

I don’t know why Gunny, with his wife and daughter in tow, decided to take the messy crossing rather than the 20-minute flight between Nouakchott and Dakar, but he did.  Maybe we talked him into it, suggesting it would be good to get out and see the country.  Most of us spent most of our time “en brousse”—in the rural areas where only traders, ag extension, and health workers roamed.  We had seen not only the messy crossings, but a whole lot of other messy things: the malnourished children, the villages emptied of men who had fled to find jobs in the city, the desperation, the slavery (yes, it exists). In other words, the messiness was baked into our experience, and in comparison with what we had seen, the border crossing was a joyous occasion.  It was an opportunity to relax and enjoy the beauty and diversity of this border, which is like so many other borders around the world.

Borders are places where things like ideologies, identities, religion, and skin color get mixed in amazing ways.  Every human of every kind crosses them—most take the messy way. 

Amazing, enjoyable, even joyous to most of us at the border that day, but not for Gunny.

While we were buying food, exchanging words in languages we barely spoke, watching the kids, enjoying the springtime sun, and otherwise gazing and marveling over a BIG river.  I think I mentioned how scarce rivers are in that part of the world. 

While we are doing all of that, Gunny was huddled to the side, wide-eyed and clearly agitated. At first, we ignored him; we were with him, but not of his tribe.  Personally, I thought Gunny was on his own. He was a big boy whose name implied a destructive force that I could not understand.  He could take care of himself.

But Gunny was breaking down.  First huddled, then pacing, then striding up and down the passageway—nostrils flared, eyes darting, fists clenching/unclenching.  We soon realized that Gunny was not handling the scene very well. 

And then he went for the softball gear—the aluminum bats in particular.

The good news is Gunny didn’t crack any heads that day.  He didn’t swing the bat wildly.  What he did kind of scared us more than any of that.  Once he picked up the bat, Gunny stood perfectly still.

Now we had seen Gunny on the diamond and on the court.  We had seen this stance before—usually sans bat.  But we knew it well. Gunny was going to explode.  And the only question about the explosion was who would be in its way and who would get knocked down.

We left our food purchases, abandoned our gazes over the river, and cut off the conversations, and, all of us, seeming of one mind, converged on Gunny.  His breath was shallow, and he repeated over and over—”We might have to bust some skulls, we might have to bust some skulls.”  

And then “This place is out of control.  It’s a madhouse.  It’s crazy.  This is coming apart.”

“Gunny, Gunny!  Hey, man.  Step back.  Give me the bat, Gunny.  Come over here, Gunny. Take a break, Gunny.”

We surrounded him, and one of us gently took the bat from his hands.  No fight. Gunny didn’t put up a fight.  He just looked around—looked at us and said: “What is this?”

After we had his bat in our hands, we all calmed down a bit.  We, tacitly, without any discussion, decided that we needed to mind Gunny, we needed to guide Gunny, we needed to be with Gunny.  We walked him over to the water—showed him the women doing laundry on the rocks below.  We urged him to try some thieboudienne (if you haven’t eaten it you must). We introduced him to a few distinguished travelers we had identified.

And then we got on the boat and went to Senegal.

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 ξένος (xénos) φόβος (phóbos) 

There was only one difference between Gunny and us. Well, perhaps more than one. After all, we were not trained killers, but in regard to our lives in the Islamic Republic, there was really only one that mattered.

While Gunny never interacted with the people of that nation (aside from a few local embassy staff members), the rest of us were plunged into the most intimate interactions you could imagine with them.  Crammed shoulder to shoulder as we drove hours and hours across the scorching desert tracks.  Showering virtually naked together as we bucket bathed behind the nearest sand dune.  Sleeping piled together in tiny adobe brick structures to escape howling windstorms with all windows and doors shut and temperatures sweltering at 100+ degrees—bearing one another’s odors and sweats throughout those restless nights.

We had been to places where the only food was three glasses of sugary green tea, a recently slaughtered (and extremely scrawny) chicken, and a bit of rice.  We had trekked from village to village chasing down children to be vaccinated, having them urinate on us in their abject fear.  We had had our hands and faces tainted blue from wearing the “howlies” that kept most of the dust out of our mouths and ears.  We had spent endless hours listening to stories whose morals often escaped us.  We had felt homesick in a dozen places where we lay sick from the influences of bad food, seasonal malaria, or both. We had argued, and bartered, and learned to swear in the most exquisite ways, bringing amused smiles to the faces of our Mauritanian colleagues. We had danced at weddings and sat long hours at funerals.

We had listened to the griot sing the songs of daily life as he played his rickety three-string, sitting on the ground under the stars. 

By the time we got to the River, we had seen the full array of colors, we had heard the Muezzin in a hundred places, we had tasted all (and I mean all) the parts of a goat, we had touched the calloused and broken hands of the herders, water haulers, and domestic servants. What we saw at the river could not begin to match the diversity of what we had experienced. But it was beautiful—just as, in their own way, all the other experiences had been too.

I live in a country in which “diversity” has become a dirty word—a word to be chased from both the lexicon and our daily lives. But I live in a place that understands its value and glories in its promise.

I see my life enriched by being crammed (metaphorically) into a place that welcomes the world and all that means for good—and sometimes ill.  (I often say that the entire world comes to my small university town—and the world brings all the joy and turmoil of a thousand places with it). I see the faces that have seen things I could never imagine.  I hear the lingua of a dozen places at a time just walking down my street. I smell the rich diversity of plants from other lands in a nearby park. I taste the teas, sweet desserts, holiday treats, and dishes from every continent.

And I cannot understand a people who fail to rejoice at the sheer amazingness of a vast and diverse world that contains the gifts of billions, in service to other billions, for the good of a planet we all must and will share.

There is a beautiful image from the Apocalypse of Jesus (better known as Revelation) in the Christian Bible.  It is a throne room in which God sits, and the people of the world gather round.  The observer, one John, describes his vision thus: 

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.

The word for “peoples” in the Greek is “ethnos.”  A heavenly scene, made heavenly by the sheer diversity of what was there.  A diverse multitude without number. For Christians, this is the future they, apparently, yearn for.  And it is a beautiful image.

Gunny was afraid. I know that now.  He was afraid of “the other.” He was afraid of the strangeness.  He was afraid of what he did not know and could not readily understand.  He needed a guide; someone who could help him see that the bodies and the colors and the strange food were all, in their way, beautiful. Not to be feared, but celebrated. 

And because our work had thrust us, at times unwillingly, into that strangeness, we had not only come to see it, hear it, taste it, and smell it, but also to perceive it as the beautiful riot it was and is.  I won’t say I ever really understood the full meaning of the diversity on display before me, but I came to value it for its sheer audacity.

(For Tim, Paul, and Jon–broussards with hearts)

Urban Dictionary: A death cult is a religion that has a focus on either all of their members, or everyone who isn’t a member, dying in some sort of religiously significant way.

Not for the first time, I heard a Trump administration official recently refer to Iran—and specifically to Iran’s leaders—as a death cult.  The most recent comments came after the killing of high-ranking Iranian leaders whose deaths might be considered by some followers of Shi’ism as a form of glorified martyrdom.

But beyond martyrdom, these US officials were referring to Iran this way because of Iran’s pursuit (according to them) of nuclear weapons, which, once obtained, would immediately lead to their use and the annihilation of entire nations (notably Israel and the United States).

The combination of an (alleged) quest to obtain weapons of mass destruction and adherence to Shia Islam is proof of a desire to not only experience a meritorious death, but also to wreak death and destruction on the entire world. They are proof that Iran is a death cult. 

I won’t dwell on the simplistic understanding of Shi’ism this characterization demonstrates.  I will also not focus on the way that this administration treats Iran as a nation and people unlike any other on the planet.  (They are, seemingly, a people, unlike others, who should never seek hegemony in their region or arm themselves as a deterrent against others in that region that have weapons of mass destruction.) 

Essentially, if Iran wants a nuke, it is because Iranians are bent on destruction. End of discussion. 

I will not dwell on that; rather, I will reflect on what it was like growing up in a death cult and living in one today. And by using the word “cult,” I explicitly introduce the idea that we are dealing with a religion. A cult is a religious sect or system of belief—often extreme.  A death cult, as we have seen, is extreme in its attraction to death.

Like all religions, a death cult has its liturgies.  Liturgies are “customary public rituals of worship performed by a religious group” (according to Wikipedia).  James K. A. Smith (Desiring the Kingdom, 2009) defines a liturgy as a “formative practice.”  To Smith, our cultural liturgies form us to be certain kinds of people.  Smith notes: “(E)very liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person.”

Let’s examine a few of our liturgies—the practices that form us.  

The background noise of my life has been war.  I cannot remember a time when my country was not engaged in war—and wars by other names.  When we weren’t waging them directly (Viet Nam, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran) we were supporting them (Horn of Africa, Angola, Nicaragua and other places in Central America, Afghanistan (USSR war), Yugoslavia, and myriad other locales where the US supported insurgents, “freedom fighters”, or others in the struggle against global communism or global “terror.”

Support for the Pentagon budget is one of the last truly bipartisan efforts in the United States. Military spending has sunk deep roots in the soil of our land. 

The US budget is challenging to decipher because it comprises mandatory (legislatively required) and discretionary expenditures.  Whatever the case, the US military budget stands at approximately $1 trillion per year.  It consumes about half of the US’s “discretionary” budget. 

These expenditures are not audited, there is little accountability for their use, and hard debates about the need for this or that piece of military hardware are perhaps a once-a-generation activity. Closing a military base represents a major inflection point in history. 

If, as has been said, budgets are moral documents—documents that reveal our priorities and values, then it is pretty clear what we value. 

But budgets are not liturgies. To understand our liturgies, we must examine other, more mundane and quotidian practices that form us to be certain kinds of people. 

We are a nation that brings the military, and the reminder of the destructive power of our warmaking capacity, into all aspects of our lives.  A sporting event of any consequence must include a fighter jet flyover, and dead soldiers returning from abroad are met with a solemn quasi-religious homecoming offered to honor their sacrifice. We love having our heartstrings tugged by the surprise reunification of a soldier with his/her family, captured on camera. We treat our veterans with reverence (while using them as political pawns). There is no group more routinely used to manipulate public opinion than a veteran of a foreign war. 

Maybe I should pause to talk about martyrdom and the liturgies associated with soldier death. 

We don’t call our fallen soldiers martyrs.  That is a religious term that (still) cannot gain purchase in our popular imagination.  Still.

Do we not venerate them?  Do we not speak of “ultimate sacrifices” or “dying for freedom?”  Is that not martyrdom-like language?  When a Pat Tillman dies, do we not revere him (until we find out he was killed by friendly fire)? We have our martyrs, and their names are engraved on black walls and myriad stone emplacements in public parks around our nation. 

In the flyovers, the solemn reception of the dead, the veneration of the fallen, and the ritual visit to memorials which are ubiquitous across our land, we engage in practices that form us to accept the death and destruction of war and to value the destructive power of our weapons.  They form us to stand in awe of destruction and to value a certain kind of sacrifice over all others. 

They form us to believe in our own God-given destiny to stand astride a planet and dictate the terms of peace. The teach us to look past double standards and celebrate our uniqueness. 

Double standards.  

They are terrorists; we are liberators.

They are bloodthirsty; we do what is necessary.

They are bent on destruction; we build nations.

They are a death cult; we are (obviously) pro-life (in the long run at least).

Except no…

I remember General Schwartzkopf providing witty commentary during the early days of the Gulf War (that almost quaint mini-war launched by George H.W. Bush in 1991), a made-for-primetime engagement that showed off our military might in graphic terms. 

While a video showed the trajectory of a missile toward a bridge, across which a delivery truck traversed, he joked about how that guy had just escaped destruction. 

That guy was a human being, presumably with a family, just trying to make a living.  

But the commentators hosting the revered general laughed.  Lucky, he made it.

That’s when I knew. We are being desensitized to death and destruction. It was “funny” now, and we could deliver the comedy of destruction in primetime on CNN.  

(During the mop-up campaign of that same war, I remember when news shows filmed Iraqis surrendering to US troops. Their fear, their decrepit state… on full display.  They were living in holes in the ground.  I remember that I wept—that these men had been reduced by us and by them to this state was so profoundly dehumanizing that I could barely stand to watch.)

That experience brought war and its glory into our living rooms, and we marveled at the utter destruction that our military could bring to distant parts of the world. Whether we viewed it with pride or with horror, it was a profoundly religious experience. The annihilation we witnessed was awe-inspiring.  We were like god. And we all engaged in the liturgy of the military-entertainment complex (as Smith calls it).

That war was the first time we saw, in real time, the destructive nature of our armaments.  In previous wars, there were newsreels and newscasts with recorded images, but seeing that destructive capacity live was new.  It introduced us to the lingo of war, and we no longer had to leave the destructive and death-dealing nature of our weapons to our imaginations; we could see them in full color.

This is when I first remember hearing about “collateral damage;” a quaint way of saying innocent people had been killed by weapons designed to destroy and kill. Despite the claims of amazing precision (remember the truck and the bridge), it became increasingly clear—visible to our own eyes—that death was the outcome of our investments. 

And while they tried to convince us that modern warfare was respectful of innocent life because of our ability to knock out the enemy’s weapons of war, we saw the outcome of war for what it was—the creation of refugees and internally-displaced people, vulnerable to exploitation and violence; the loss of industrial and agricultural bases that promoted health; and the general disruption of normal human activities like education and vaccination programs. All of these things combined to increase mortality.  Even sanitized war was/is ultimately about death.

And because we have been formed to be certain kinds of people, we stand back and watch the destruction in the current war, lacking a coherent response to the nation we have become. 

Even if we oppose the war, we cannot extract ourselves from the death we are uniquely qualified to bring.  We cannot find a way out of the ritual expense of ever-greater sums to ensure that we remain capable of “defending” ourselves. 

We don’t call any of it into question in a fundamental way. The bipartisan funding of the war machine will continue.

The apocalyptic^[1] administration that has led us to this current war has, true to form, told us the truth of who we are.  Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War, promising mass destruction, and warning of the annihilation of an entire civilization.  It, at least, has told us the truth about this is really all about—who we really are, what kind of people we have been formed to be.

We are a death cult and have been one for quite some time.  

From Sherman’s march, to the firebombing of Hamburg, to the inevitable actions far above Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Napalm of Vietnam and the My Lais, and the death road out of Kuwait, to Abu Ghraib… we have shown the world the kind of people we were formed to be. 

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^[1] Apocalyptic in its literal sense: revelatory—revealing that which was hidden.

I don’t talk about it very much.  Mostly because it is, by now, ancient history.  Also, because not many people want to understand why I would do such a thing.  And, it turns out to be a great conversation stopper (lots of umm-hmm and feet shuffling after it is revealed).  So I don’t bring it up much. But since the war has, at long last, come, I thought I would reflect on some things I learned during that time.  Not because I expect that my reflection will change the course of things, but simply so I can go on record describing how I think war with Iran is a disaster–and so unnecessary.

Many people (though by no means all) agree that trying to follow the teaching of Jesus as it relates to “love of enemy” is a pretty noble thing… At least in theory.  When it comes to actually putting it into practice with a real enemy–a flesh-and-blood one as opposed to a theoretical one–I have learned that most people think it is just plain crazy.  Especially if that enemy is the president (if not the true leader) of a nation described by some as a “death cult.”  But I want to be really clear that I did what I did because I was aspiring to follow the teachings of the Nazarene. Back then, I might have called myself a Christian. No longer. But then, as now, I take the teachings of the man as the source of a normative social ethic that I try to follow (often poorly).

In any case, when I got the phone call from the Iranian Ambassador to the UN (there is no such Ambassador to the US, of course), I knew this was going to be an experience that would test some pretty fundamental things about my true commitments (and those of the organization with which I worked).  I was the Executive Director of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) — the relief, development, and peacebuilding arm of the Mennonite Church in North America (Google “Mennonite” to learn more about who these people are).  I won’t go into all the reasons why the Ambassador called me, but, in brief, it was because the Mennonites had helped out the Iranian people after a major earthquake in Iran in 2003.  That help turned into a long-term relationship between Mennonites (Mennos from here on out), the Iranian Red Crescent and some notable (and powerful) Islamic clerics.

The Mennos were honest partners, good interlocutors and willing to discuss all manner of issues related to faith and practice with inquisitive Iranian theological students.  One of these had come to the US to study at a Menno institution in VA and had found the experience transformative in many ways.  After his return home this man had risen up through the ranks of the Iranian foreign service but had maintained ties with his Menno friends.

Then Mahmoud Ahmedinijad was elected president and decided to attend the UN General Assembly.  This was 2006.  Though I had not fully recognized it then, my days with MCC were almost over.  I was a lousy leader and was on my way to resigning once that finally hit home (a story for another day, perhaps).  Still, I was the big boss, and so I got the call with the following request: Would the Mennonites be willing to organize and host a meeting of American religious leaders with the President? The “student” was in a high enough position to have recommended this, and his recommendation had been accepted.

In the event, I told the Ambassador that I would need to discuss it with my staff but that we would be in touch soon.  Thus began an extended series of discussions, meetings, phone calls and periods of reflection.  Through it all my conviction grew that we needed to try to meet with this man and that we needed to show hospitality in doing so.  I had worked for many years in Muslim lands and had been fundamentally transformed by what I had experienced in terms of the hospitality that had been extended to me (again, some stories for another day).  I knew that Americans were generally pretty unaware of what showing hospitality entails and rarely practiced it.  So, as the weeks went by this idea remained clear in my mind: “we must show this man proper hospitality.”

Beyond that, nothing was coming together at all.  Though my staff finally agreed that we could host a meeting (they were a pretty risk-averse group), and, though the MCC Board also agreed to move ahead, we could not find any church of any size in New York who would be willing to host the meeting.  It is important to keep in mind that the President was not permitted to travel outside New York City (I think he was limited to a 15 mile radius around the UN).

In the end, we decided to rent a room in a hotel not far from the UN and the Quakers (the Friends Service Committee to be exact) offered to host it with us. Many other denominations expressed “an interest” in attending, but all feared the repercussions, so it was left to a couple of small “peace churches” to put this thing on.

We decided that we would welcome the President and then ask him some questions about his and his followers’ statements about Israel and the US (death to both, was a common chant from his folks). Slowly, some other Christian groups came on board to participate, but they wanted to avoid talking to the man, and many were on the phone at the last minute getting clearance to attend. The politics were comical–we were just going to sit with the President for about an hour and discuss how our faith should inform how we acted in the world. Why was that hard?

It was a strange and incongruous gathering. We represented no one but ourselves, while the President represented (ostensibly) an entire nation. We had no power, no sanction, no authority. And so we offered what we had: an open hand and open heart, and the exchange of ideas, peppered with hard questions about violent language and murderous intent. Mind you, we knew who we were: citizens of a nation with the most destructive military the world had ever seen. We acknowledged that.

The President was not OUR enemy, but he and his country were clearly the enemy of ours.

I remember feeling like “What am I doing here? What does this even mean? What is the point? We are no one. This changes nothing.”

And maybe it didn’t.

Ahmedinijad had wanted a “dialogue of civilizations.” Around the time of our meeting, his predecessor, Mohammad Khatemi, had delivered a profound and compelling speech to a packed house at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I attended that event and was stunned by the depth of thought and articulation of the principles that could foster dialogue between the US and Iran. Indeed, all the news articles following Khatemi’s speech highlighted the “dialogue” aspect of his speech. I will never forget that night. Ahmedinijad wanted, I guess, to practice that dialogue, but he was no Khatemi. Whereas Khatemi was an intellectual, Ahmedinijad was a bare-knuckled politician. He was holding the meeting with us to show his partisans back home that he had the capacity to do what Khatemi could only talk about.

We knew we were being played for an Iranian audience and Iranian politics. Though we were accused of it, we were not naive. We went in with our eyes open.

Our only commitment was to try to live out our understanding of the radical nature of peacebuilding. We were prepared to take the long view (or, as Paul Farmer famously said, “To live the long defeat”).

In the end, all I can really say about the event and the aftermath are the following:

1. We welcomed him. We offered a venue and a space to say, “You are human, we are human.” There was nothing more profound than that: sitting with an “enemy” to witness to our commitment to peace.
2. We upset a lot of people. In the weeks and months afterward, I crossed the country to defend what we had done and answer the angry questions of people who could not understand why we would do that. I answered as best I could, but convinced very few of the meeting’s value.
3. We met political leaders in DC. They were stunned that we had done it… And begged us for details of the meeting. We answered their questions simply and asked them to commit to not waging war on Iran (it was on the table at that time).

I have no illusions. The meeting was not even an apostrophe in the long history of US/Iranian relations (which, keep in mind, begain in the 1950s, NOT the 1970s).

What I learned before and after is that looking at the people of Iran was/is like looking in the mirror. They are human. Their leaders fail them. They want to raise their children in peace and live their lives in security. They are us. That is what I learned.

Meeting with the President was like meeting with any politician–a lot of games, posturing, and playing for the camera, and not much else.

Would I do it again? Yes. Without hesitation.

I have come to believe that the change we want comes through the daily acts of faithfulness to what we believe. I know that change is never in the shock and awe, in the posturing that finds its way onto social media, or in the proclamations of the “powerful.” Change comes from showing love towards others, from practicing compassion in the face of hostility, and from forgiving (ourselves and others). I am committed to that, but I need to take a VERY long view to live day to day.

So, now we are at war with Iran.

And, yes, I am devastated. We know this will end badly, and the people who will be hurt the most are those who merely want to live in peace. What I saw in the eyes of the President was a people. A people so like us that it took my breath away to consider that leaders of my nation might seek to destroy them.

I wish I could be with them in their hour of devastation–to weep with them, to mourn with them–for what we have done, for what they have experienced. I wish I could welcome them in the same way I welcomed the President, and we could reason together in a dialogue of peace.

While the simple definition of “epithet” is a “name” or “moniker,” the connotation is clearly negative, as in “hurling epithets.” An epithet is name-shaming—a designation meant to demean.  It is a rhetorical punch, meant to land with force and effect.

Growing up “born again,” of which I have written before here, here, here, and here, there was an entire list of epithets that were rehearsed on a regular basis at home, in churches, on Christian radio, and in the religious schools that still dot the land.

They were mainly employed as a warning—a warning about certain people, people with ideas or actions that were wrong, dangerous, and possibly demonic.  When I say “rehearsed,” I mean just that. In sermons preached in local churches, large assembly halls, on the radio, and on TV (in the later years), you could almost predict when they would come out as the “preachers” worked themselves up to a frenzy of anger and hate.

At home, they were as regular as the evening news—when they were most frequently employed.  And at the Bible College, where I spent four years, they were given more refined formulations—more intellectual renderings.  But they were still meant to be hostile, and in all cases they were used against people who were (God’s grace notwithstanding) pretty much beyond redemption. 

My purpose here is not to sort through all of them.  In recent reflections, I have only gone back to the most prominent ones, the ones that stood the test of time and evolved even as the targets changed.

My purpose here IS to examine how these epithets, in current times, most aptly describe, not the people I was taught to fear (hate), but rather the people most beloved by the kind of folks who were my teachers.  

I am not going to offer exhaustive proof.  I am merely going to hold up the most public aspects of these people to illustrate how the epithets of my youth have evolved to describe those in power today.

And the lesson—the conclusion, really—is simple.  The epithets that were hurled (with abandon) in my youth were tossed about by men who were envious of the targets of their attempted humiliation.  Let me say it in the current vernacular—every accusation was an admission.  They wanted to be able to “live that way,” but they knew they could not, at least not then.  But times have changed, and now those to whom these “monikers” apply seem to glory in the naming—they wear them as a badge of honor.

Let’s dig in to see what I mean. In no particular order, here are the epithets of my youth.  Some are best expressed as nouns, others as adjectives. 

One note: As you read through these, you will see that about half of them have to do with sex.  This is not surprising since the brand of Christianity I grew up in was positively obsessed with it. I won’t go into all the details about this here. But sex was that one thing that one could simultaneously not engage in and not really talk about in any meaningful way, but was also on the mind of the “preachers” almost constantly, and found its way into their condemnations constantly.  

It’s not an exaggeration to say that pretty much everything was about sex then, and it still is. Fundamentally, it was, and still is, about controlling women’s bodies, while men were/are given a pass for their indiscretions. After all, most of these folks seems pretty okay with “grab ’em by the pussy.” 

Permissiveness

In one sense, “permissiveness” was the root of everything.  Permissiveness was used to describe people who lived without “boundaries.”  Being permissive meant that you could indulge your carnal pleasures without limit or concern for the consequences. Permissiveness by parents would lead to children who smoked, drank, had sex, and used drugs.  Permissiveness was a sickness of the time. 

Back then, permissiveness was associated with questioning authority, eschewing norms, and generally flaunting social conventions.  

The issue of “boundaries” is interesting in our time, when the most powerful people in the world (I mean that literally) can say things like “the only thing limiting me is my own morals.”  In other words: “I set the boundaries, and they are whatever I define them as.”  

Permissiveness has graduated from something we warned children about to a big grown-up thing we assume the powerful will practice—with abandon and without consequences.

Lawlessness  

If permissiveness was for children, lawlessness was a grown-up term.  In one sense, lawlessness was the “adult” outcome of permissiveness.  If you grew up in a permissive household, you would end up a lawless person.  

Lawlessness was, not surprisingly, associated with violence, such as the urban riots of the 60s and 70s.  Clearly, people who would riot in the streets, burning cars and buildings, had grown up in permissive households.  They had not learned limits.  The result was literal lawlessness.  But the problem was in their hearts.  

At home, lawlessness or lawless acts were not against the government, after all, the government was a suspect entity. Acts of lawlessness against the government might not be lawlessness at all. They might be necessary. Lawlessness showed itself in damage to something far more sacred: private property.  

This was how lawlessness was used at home, but there was also lawlessness among Bible teachers. This was the lawlessness that was, essentially, shaking one’s fist at God.  This lawlessness was far more dangerous than the mere physical kind because one’s eternal soul was at stake. 

I will note that all forms of “white collar” crime were exempted from the category of lawlessness.

It is interesting to see how parts of America that, in other times, would condemn physical violence against the police as a prime example of lawlessness, seem to allow it in certain carefully prescribed circumstances (say, at the Capitol on a January day).  In these days, the lawless might be pardoned if their lawlessness is against the right kind of people or for the right reasons.  As was the case in my youth, lawlessness might be okay if the target is corrupt or suspect.  And, as was the case then, if you have enough money and don’t actually throw a punch or a projectile, your lawlessness may not be lawlessness at all. 

Antinomianism

When I went off to Bible College, permissiveness and lawlessness acquired a new moniker—a more theological formulation: antinomianism. Antinomianism is considered a theological error (by orthodox Christians) and a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s grace, suggesting that those covered by grace are not under any moral law. 

In essence, antinomians say that God’s grace covers all sin and that God’s grace is beyond bounds. Therefore, for followers of Jesus, there is no moral law; their faith and God’s grace render moral law unnecessary.  

St. Paul seems to have directly dismissed this idea in Romans 6 when he asked whether we should “continue in sin” because of grace. His answer was a resounding “No.”

Paul never disputed that grace abounds: “where sin abounds, grace abounds even more,” he said just before arguing that this does NOT mean one should continue in sin. 

Perhaps today we could frame this as “where sin abounds, praise abounds even more.”  After all, we have a president who, no matter his sin—be it transgressing the Constitution or protecting a pedophile—receives praise.  The ritual genuflecting at every staff meeting, or the mindless praise heaped on his acts of genius, move in tandem with his worst sins.  

Where sin abounds, praise abounds even more. Indeed.

Our president is an antinomian—relying on the unswerving grace (and praise) provided by his sycophants—to continue in sin and defy any and all moral strictures. 

But antinomianism is also a statement about autonomy. To be unbound. To be free. To be accountable to no one and no standard is a declaration of autonomy.  More could be said about this, but this “freedom” is, perhaps, the unstated goal of humanity, and may explain why we secretly admire the antinomian for the audacity of their declaration of independence.  What Joan Didion referred to as the “dream we no longer admit.”  But, maybe now we not only admit it, but praise it. 

Immorality/Hedonism

Immorality was always about sex. Hedonism was immorality celebrated publicly, wantonly, and unapologetically. If immorality was “grabbing them by the pussy,” hedonism was celebrating it publicly.  

Immorality, let alone hedonism, was never to be rewarded with, say, an election victory…

At best, you were given a pass if you were a man (married) who committed an “indiscretion” with a woman.  After all, women were largely responsible for these indiscretions.  Male immorality was a blemish, but one that could be removed with time and with the ever-enduring empathy for the weak (male) flesh. 

But back then, immoral people (men) were never celebrated, and the clock could run out on a life before it ran out on the opprobrium. 

No more. 

Today, those who would otherwise rail against immorality give immoral people a pass if they provide access to power. Now, immorality is ignored, and hedonism barely causes a stir depending on who engages in it.  

In fact, the most depraved forms of hedonism are seemingly ignored or actively hidden if they involve the wealthy and connected.  There is now evidence that, globally, many wealthy people even banded together in a loose but strong affiliation to commit heinous sexual acts against children. The social capital that enabled them to accomplish things together that they would never have contemplated doing alone is something to behold: deep human bonds nurtured to promote the most despicable acts.

I am a long way from my childhood on this one. 

Situation Ethics/Secular Humanism/Postmodernism/Relativism/Post-Truth

This last category is a cluster of terms that evolved over the course of my life, but all, more or less, came down to the same thing. The overarching characteristic of these terms—deployed in an ever-evolving condemnation—was the belief in the lack of any objective truth. 

In general, these terms were used against intellectuals who questioned the idea of a single, fixed set of moral standards handed down by a deity.  It is not that these intellectuals doubted the existence of good or evil; it is that they would not ascribe these concepts to the dictates of an eternal being. And, according to my teachers, without a god, there could be no truth. Deny God, you must deny truth.

I was well into adulthood before I learned that there were people in the world who held that “truth” could be independent of God.

I was taught that “We hold these truths to be self-evident” could only be understood if a creator were involved.

Having access to truth—God’s truth—was also the basis of morality.  People who rejected God’s existence could not be trusted to tell the truth because, after all, they did not hold to any truth.  Quite simply, if you did not believe in God, you could and would be a liar.  It is not that you would have understood that you were a liar; it is only that truth did not matter to you, because there was no truth. 

Without an anchor in truth, people could say anything at all. And that would inevitably lead to chaos.

Well, where are we today? 

Fact-checking is now a career.

I wake up every morning wondering what new slew of lies will have been told while I slept. We have never lived in a less truthful time, and the main purveyors of the firehose of lies that flow our way every day are those most admired by those who formally condemned our post-truth world. 

Epitaph (not epithet)

I remember all these epithets, these names, now with a kind of wonder. 

But I have buried those years, and the name on the tombstone of my (innocent) youth reads:

Herein lie lies parading as moral superiority. The words were mobilized to attack others, while those hurling the epithets secretly yearned not only to own but to practice them. 

I did something this week that I had long anticipated, but hoped I would never have to do. I told a friend that we were no longer friends. I did not do it in anger. I gave it a lot of thought. It hurt.

Maybe we should never draw lines we will not cross.

Maybe we should never close off dialogue and the potential for reconciliation.

Maybe I was wrong to do it.

But… when fundamental differences about what constitutes justice, or whether compassion matters, or whether some people matter more than others, or whether the evidence of science about things like vaccines matters are in play, sometimes you have to make a break.

I have devoted the majority of my life to bringing healing, caring for the oppressed, and welcoming the houseless and wandering into my life. When a “friend” values none of that, it might be time to say, we cannot be friends.

A friend from long ago sought to reengage, and this is my response:

Past relationships and memories, even good ones, are not the basis for a current or future relationship. The paths of our lives—yours and mine—diverged a long time ago.  For a relationship to transcend time (and physical location), requires more than memories. A shared past does not suffice. A relationship requires shared values, a shared understanding of the world and our place in it, and a commitment to shared goals for how to live in the world.  Values are not merely things we espouse, they are the way we live our lives.  I think it is fair to say that you and I do not have shared values.  You can feel free to present evidence to the contrary.  Given this, I would ask you to please leave our relationship where it belongs—in the past.  I would ask you to not contact me again.  If you do, I will not respond.  I hold no animus towards you, I merely do not think there is a basis for a relationship in the present. 

That is harsh.

But people are dying (I mean, literally).

And differences are no longer just “of opinion.”

Saying goodbye is hard.

But sometimes (like now), the world moves on, and we move with it. And sometimes that movement takes us into different universes across which human engagement is not possible. I think we are in a time like that.

I have the pleasure of working with a group of smart, dedicated, and passionate undergraduates at the Basic Needs Center at the University of California, Davis. Our Center provides food, housing, and financial resources to the over 40,000 students on the campus, and the students who come to us are facing extremely challenging situations as they seek to accomplish their (and their family’s) dream of new opportunities. Just under half of these students are the first in their families to go into higher education. The Federal Government considers over one-third of them to be very low income, deserving of financial support.

Our student staff is a microcosm of this broader student body, and they amaze us as they provide direct service to other students day to day. They deal with the most challenging cases and guide students to the resources they need. It is safe to say that I am, quite often, in awe of them.

We deal with the stress of this work by maintaining a high level of unbridled joking and general pranking. It keeps us sane, and no one is exempt.

So, when a colleague suggested we all go bowling at an on-campus bowling alley (the only one in town!), I got ready for a LOT of competition–with personal challenges and trash-talking. And in the lead-up to the event, I was not disappointed. Challenges got personal, and lines were drawn. I expected much of the same in the lanes.

But after we got our stylish shoes and selected the appropriate balls, everything changed. A silence settled over the lanes, broken only by the crash of pins. Competition turned to encouragement, and trash-talking gave way to grim resolve. I could see it in their faces–I could imagine it in my own.

We rolled.

And while we all had fun, I was struck by the utter seriousness with which every person took their turn. Amid the smiles, a focus and seriousness about the whole affair prevailed. We were having fun, but there was a studiousness that suggested we were sitting for a final exam.

I later learned that all but one of us was a “first gen”-the first of our family to attend university. And when I examined my own feelings throughout the evening (Did I mention it was fun? It was!), I identified what was going on.

The truth is, we did not leave the competition at the office. It was very much present. But we were not competing against the others. We were competing against ourselves. Our grimness was just concentration. Our stoicism was focus.

A focus on doing better.

On bettering ourselves.

And we were our own worst critics.

As I stood back and observed, I experienced a deep sense of pride in these students. I felt a tightening in my chest as I realized they approached this time of fun with the same determination and commitment they brought to their jobs and studies.

I will admit that I nearly wept.

There is a dark side to all of this. Imposter syndrome has followed me my entire life. Despite what has, arguably, been a successful career, I battle with that demon almost every day. Those who don’t live in that reality cannot understand how debilitating it can be: to always have to prove oneself, no matter one’s accomplishments, over and over and over again.

I suspect that my young colleagues face that demon all too often, too. And I mourn for them (as I mourn for myself).

But if one can overcome the challenges of the syndrome, one can marshal the strength to do extraordinary things. One can drive to be better–to serve more faithfully, to work more assiduously, to persevere more completely.

We went bowling.

And it was beautiful.

Maybe this is a lament…

It was just a short stint, providing leadership in the small city that has become home. It was never going to be earthshaking. It was, perhaps, pedestrian.

But it was a formal leadership role, and I would like to believe I helped lead–that I was, in fact, a leader. Some who live here may debate that, and I certainly left no “mark.” But I did my homework, collaborated on making tough decisions, listened to the community, told the truth, strove for accountability, and walked with those in the community who were hurting and needed a listening ear.

Most decisions, especially the consquential ones, were made within considerable constraints. At times I wondered if we were “deciding” or merely “stamping.”

We made sure that the water flowed, garbage was collected, roads were maintained, money was put aside for harder times, and safety was largely maintained. It was blue collar stuff, the stuff that makes a city what it is.

I guess the key in all of it, for me, was that we faced our citizens without guile, with transparency, with, I would say, a desire to make things better. Maybe we failed, but our goals were clear. We knew where the job would lead: to more hard decisions made under constraint (and sometimes duress). But we did it, and our expectations of personal gain were nil.

Nope, we were not heroes.

And we wielded the small amount of power we had with a kind of trepidation.

We

Me and some others.

I never took a bribe.

I never lied about a decision I made.

I never dissembled.

It was the basic commitments that were easy. The commitment to preparing well was without cost (okay, it took time, but that is part of the job). The commitment to listening never hurt. The commitment to explaining my votes actually made things much smoother. The commitment to telling the truth actually paid dividends in trust gained.

None of that is hard.

I did not have to overthink it or scheme with anyone to make that stuff work.

I am reflecting on this today, because I want leaders like us.

There is no hubris in that. We were unspectacular, unnoticed, unrecognized.

Maybe

Maybe leaders like us are not smart enough to lead at any level beyond the local. (I can own that, it may be true). Maybe we don’t have what it takes.

But still, I want leaders like us.

Leaders like us.

How hard is it, really, to have leaders like us?