Marking Time

I’m reading real books again this summer, for a change. There’s a sort of weight and permanence to the printed word, on real paper, especially when bound in a hard cover. Maybe I’m a romantic, an old-fashioned old coot, but books still matter to me –in this age of dying newspaper conglomerates, bad novelizations of bad movies, and blogs (including this one) that seem outdated within mere minutes, as we move on to the next topic or political fetish. 

True to form, I’ve chosen some classic books and highly “literary” authors for my current reading binge: To Kill a Mockingbird. (O Harper Lee, Where Art Thou?) . Americana, a recent John Updike poetry collection. Grace (Eventually)  by Anne Lamott, which is my current book (I’ve slowed down, to savor it, not wanting to be done yet). And A Man Without a Country, a terrific, short, memoir-ish, doodle-filled, social critique sort of thing by the late great Kurt Vonnegut, the last book he ever put out. You might say it was his “parting shot”.

Kurt is someone I need to learn more about, partly because I am hoping to include him as a key minor character in my slowly-evolving Cape Cod novel (he lived there in the late Fifties and early Sixties, the time period of my novel). He’s the perfect mentor for one of the teenage kids in my disgruntled Eisenhower-era family, the McKittredges.

Vonnegut always lived the tough questions and contradictions: he was a WWII vet who became a pacifist, a scientist/anthropologist in disguise as a novelist, a pragmatic Midwesterner in spirit right up to the end (he was from Indianapolis) even while living in New York, a great American who knew that patriotism need not be reduced to jingoistic sayings and blind acceptance of stupid policies, an unapologetic Socialist sympathizer (but only the old 1930s brand of idealistic socialism), and one of the funniest mo-fos ever to walk the planet.

And it was a planet he loved dearly, too. A Man Without a Country has some of the best rhetorical arguments against fossil fuels that I’ve read anywhere. Though he’s cynical, too (or realistic, depending on your outlook), and doubts we can actually save the planet, one which he ruefully reminds us it took a mere hundred years for us to ruin.

Here’s a few choice quotes from Man Without a Country:

“Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. Freud said that humor is a response to frustration - one of several… I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all they time. They could be so easily killed.”

“How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, ‘If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not? …But if Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being. I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.”

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings… ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”

“There are two sorts of artists… one responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself… what you resond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”

This last quote was actually Kurt quoting another friend of his, Saul Steinberg, who he called the wisest person he ever met. For me, Kurt may be the wisest man I never met, except through his books. His novels take a long view of human history, and they expose our species as the beautiful fools we’re often too afraid to admit we are. He can speak eloquently about science and deny the existence of heaven in one breath, and then by the end of that same paragraph express more genuine gratitude and appreciation for the life and words of Jesus than most Christians I know. In other words, he was wise: he knew enough to admit that he really only knew very little, with any certainty. As an avowed skeptic and misanthrope, he didn’t have what one could call “faith” — in God, in politics, in humans, in anything, actually. But he had the guts to keep asking the tough questions, to stay focused and informed, and to express his brilliant, hilarious opinions, right up to the end (which was in April of 2007).

I can only hope to be so lucky, or even half as gifted.

Regarding the switch to digital cable from analog, I put it off for a year or two, not for any good reason, but because my cable needs were modest, a switch would be a pain, and I assumed that any kind of upgrade would end up costing more, whether they told me so or not.

Now I’ve gone through the process, made the switch (to non-HD), and meanwhile adjusted my account so that we no longer have a separate internet account. Except I’m not happy with what I’ve got now. I feel like we went backwards in some ways. This is not for the usual reasons, but because I expected more improvement than I’m actually seeing on my HDTV, and we also have not solved the technical problem (occasional dropout of our internet service) that was our main reason for upgrading.

I’m somewhat enjoying Comcast’s On Demand feature, but otherwise I’m frustrated. Internet still goes away unpredictably, even with a new modem now and a newish computer (2006?). The HD-level channels that were coming through the cable all along (!!!) and were formerly being read directly by my new HDTV are now being blocked by their non-HD box (they say an HD box is $10 a month more). So now I probably have to bypass the box if I want to watch an HD broadcast in true HD. Ridiculous.

Not to mention the appointment missed by the first cable installer, the rigamarole of rescheduling, the installation charge for the new box and moderately faster modem…

Why do we put ourselves through this? Why do we let them get us hooked on the junk?, and then we fall for the promise of more and better junk, and then they’ve got ya.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good metaphor, and one of my favorite writers on spiritual matters, Anne Lamott, put me in mind of a very good one today: the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the ancient temple courtyard in Jerusalem. Here’s an excerpt from her most recent book, Grace (Eventually) :

… a picture of a young boy and his father in yarmulkes, pushing prayers written on paper into cracks in the wall. This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes, my glove compartment. I have found that… turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you, and that just might work.

Anne herself is a recovering alcoholic, and writes quite humorously and eloquently about her journey, about the various ways God chased her around northern California until she finally surrendered and came to Jesus. I’ve been thinking alot lately about the idea of surrender. Certain prayers and attitudes are a healthy form of surrender, as Christian and Buddhist theologians have been teaching us for years. They say that letting go, giving up control, embracing humility, is the way to peace and happiness. Yet in an uptight, me-first, macho, militarized, post-9/11 world, the idea of surrender is not fashionable. Then again, when have I ever been fashionable?

Surrender also came up in church yesterday (Redeemer Lutheran in Park Ridge), as one of the earliest of the Twelve Steps in traditional recovery program language. Here’s how people in “the program” usually put it:

Step 3
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

“God as we understood Him.” This phrase is where the conservative evangelicals that I occasionally keep company with tend to part company with AA, considering it either a respectable but non-Christian system, or else a cultish organization of anarchists and tool of the devil (though not many would go that far… given the number of recovering addicts and success stories, it’s hard to make a case that God does not support the program).

Why don’t conservatives accept Step 3 at face value? Because those who cling tightly to an exacting and narrow interpretation of the Bible would like to believe they already understand all they need to know about God, through relationship with His son Jesus. Surrendering to the possibility that some things just cannot be known or explained scripturally, or that God as someone understands Him would not include Jesus, is too much of a stretch for them. Therefore a more subjective view of God, however one is able to see or experience God, is also too much of a stretch. For me –getting more theologically liberal by the day in how I look at the biblical text itself– the jury is still out on some of what Jesus actually said and did, and what I should therefore do.

Jesus was just such a confusing cat at times, wasn’t he?

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have great respect for scripture, and the utmost respect for Jesus — at least on the days when I’m not a sinful, piggish, opinionated clod only out for myself. On those bad days, Jesus is my perfect older brother, and I have a severe distaste for Him, because how could I ever possibly measure up to such a high standard? Those are my depressive days. My lonely days. My angry days. My self-pitying, potentially addicted days, which I often fill with too much tv or non-prayerful computer use. Basically that’s Mondays, alternate Wednesdays, and any other day upon which I have to take some responsibility for the well-being of myself and my family, and yet don’t want to do that.

And there’s the rub: I have to surrender control, and yet still maintain an attitude of responsibility and steady service to the principles set down by a Higher Power. I can’t just give up, say WTF?, and move on with my own business. I have to follow the path that has been shown to work. I have to have self-discipline, and set goals, even as I give up an investment in the outcome (knowing that it will not exactly match what I want personally). At this moment of surrender, the proud young Turk within me wants to stand up and say, “Wait. What’s in this for me? Why should I follow, if this path is so hard, and the ultimate destination is unknown (or sometimes unpleasant, if you’re doing it right, like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King)?”

At which point the Holy Spirit shows up (hopefully) and answers for God, saying, “Because this is the path to health, dipshit. The path to abundant life. Do you want to be healthy and growing, or miserable and lost, wandering around some more in your own private 40-year desert?”

See how God is not always as gentle as those nice evangelicals once told me He was?

Meanwhile, remember those old Catholics, the ones who used to whip themselves? Well they may have been overdoing it, but they were still onto something: they knew how to surrender, and they knew how tough it is to do, over and over again, every bleepin’ day of our whole bleepin’ life. 

Which leads me back to where I started, the Wailing Wall. It took God so many years to get the Jews to a point spiritually where they were wise and humble enough to build His City, and then to build those temples properly and with the right attitude. It took both strength and humility, as modeled by leaders like Solomon, to create and maintain the home where Jehovah and his Ark (containing the original “Twelve Steps”) could take up residence. And then God turned around and chastened His people yet again, taking down the Second Temple as well, leaving nothing but an old retaining wall that keeps the mountain from spilling over onto the temple courtyard. That’s our Wailing Wall… it’s a glorified earth dam, a retaining wall.

And here’s something I didn’t know till I looked it up today: that expanded courtyard and its Wailing Wall were built by none other than Herod the Great. This is the same guy who was one of the worst Roman collaborators ever, who was outsmarted by the Magi, Mary and Joseph when Jesus was a baby, and then later killed his wife and two of his sons. So why did they call this guy great? Goes to show you: power does not equal greatness. It’s no wonder God had to get rid of Herod’s precious Second Temple.  It was nothing but a monument to  gross injustices, slave labor and corrupt, reprehensible acts by a man who couldn’t carry Solomon’s jockstrap. 

Besides, with the coming of Jesus, God moved off the Temple Mount and out into the world anyway. So the remaining ruins of the courtyard wall aren’t much more than a tombstone, really — an important landmark to what once was great. The old Jerusalem, the old temple, the old ways — those are all gone now. We have to surrender to the future, to what’s healthy and best for everybody that has a stake in the New Jerusalem (which seems to cover just about everybody, right?).

Thus, a desk drawer or glove compartment will suffice from now on, as repositories for the prayers of those of us who still want to write down prayers for peace in Jerusalem, or for the healing of our wounds so we won’t drink or gamble or compulsively shop anymore, or for anything else that’s too big a problem for us to solve through merely human methods.

A computer and a blog work pretty good, too. Pardon me while I go finish my wailing in private.

As conspiracy theorists go, I am clearly bush league.

This week’s reminder of how far one can go down this strange, winding path is one Michael Tsarion. He was proposed to me recently as a writer who advances the cause of all things Irish and/or Celtic, and thus mystically and/or politically reasonable. However, in wandering around upon his complex private “interweb” of fact and fiction, I see that he’s just another in a long line of goofy astrologists, occultists and conspiracy theorists, those colorful cats out to take wild, random potshots instead of pointing out a productive path toward the truth.

By now, a small but dedicated handful of you are saying under your breath to me: “Oh, you poor simpleton. You deluded soul, already stolen away from us, we who were only trying to free you from the tyranny of lies and deceit, perpetrated over the past 5000 years.”

Nevertheless, I must defer to a higher authority, who calls me to sing out loud and proud:

“I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

Meanwhile, Tsarion and his ilk are out to convince us that every U.S. president was a Freemason, that the mystical, philosophical or biological descendents of Egyptian pharaoh/priest Akhenaton are in control of every Western government, and probably that monotheism in itself is the true enemy of mankind. 

Therefore the Yahweh of the Bible, for some of these theorists, does not love His people but has instead abandoned them to the slings and arrows of all these false prophets and tyrants. Or else the One True God is an invention by these past cults, to keep Everyman down, to keep us from accessing our inner power, which would allow us to practice magic, travel by astral projection, and tear down well-armed despots the moment we encounter them. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting it wrong though. These amateur symbologist types draw such tenuous and strange connections that it’s easy to get confused. 

For instance, did you know that Hitler was actually in league with the pre-Zionist Zionists, in England and elsewhere? Mr. Tsarion even has a photo of a young Hitler, kissing the hand of Elizabeth the Second  –though he mislabels her as Elizabeth the First! This is the kind of sloppy, stupid, ahistorical hogwash that his type loves to slip by us, under a veil of actual facts and plausible interpretations, of very vague details and far-reaching symbols.

Here’s another example, taken directly from Tsarion’s site:

The Bohemian Club - Elite members of this secret order (that includes most US presidents) meet at a time when the sun (Aton) is at its highest point during the year - at the summer solstice - June 21st. The summer solstice was adopted by Hitler and his Nazis as their most important day of ritual and celebration. It was the most sacred day in the Nazi calendar.

Dude, if you so smart, where’s my local Boho meeting being conducted tomorrow? I wanna be there! Are they really THAT good at keeping secrets?

Tsarion tries to make a case for the Nazis and others co-opting and altering many basic Druidic or similar ideas. Yeah Mike, it’s well-established already that Hitler co-opted everyone’s mythology, from India to Scandinavia to Ireland to God only knows where else. But that doesn’t mean he was secretly in compliance with some long-standing plan of the Knights Templar to rule the world. It just means he was crafty and evil, a tool of Satan, a disenchanted but brilliant nutjob who veiled his megalomania in intense nationalist, populist, pseudo-religious bullshit.

Tsarion’s not the first one to try connecting Hitler, Pat Robertson, Pope Paul VI, Satanist Anton LaVey, The Illuminati, philosopher Francis Bacon, and the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster (it’s like some fascinating but intellectually dishonest variant of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon  game!). Anyone with a will to think creatively can build a case and turn up potential evidence. Remember the Lone Gunmen, from The X Files? (Oh My Gawd!!!  I was such an X-Files fan… and here’s a thought: was it The Man who secretly killed off the Lone Gunmen’s short-lived spinoff show, or just really crappy writing?)

There are thousands of people like this out in the world, who believe they’re doing important work. In my opinion, a few of them actually are. But they get lost in the midst of all the noise, and because of the very nature of evil, which works to remain hidden and secret for as long as possible.

Every once in awhile, I get sucked into exploring this complex web of numerologists, Kabballah enthusisasts, astrology buffs, and ultra-conservative Christian Pentacostals on the lookout for secret but powerful cults to pray against. And again, I’m not saying these groups, alliances and spiritual connections aren’t out there. They definitely are out there (the “powers and principalities” that Paul speaks of), though I can’t claim any expertise in which theories are solid and which are misguided. Frankly, it just makes my head hurt whenever I read all the fundamentalist, neo-paganist or other misguided tripe that tries to explain every last war and historical development as part of some evil Master Plan.

Sometimes, you gotta just pick a lane and drive. The fact is, sin is real. A negative spiritual force or personality does exist in the universe. But so does the eternal Creator and Redeemer. Thus, every human ever born is capable of both incredible mercy and unspeakable evil, depending upon whom we align ourselves with, and how much ethical and spiritual discipline we are willing to practice.

Yet we are lazy and fearful by nature, and prefer to conform, so we mostly tend to aim down the middle, ignoring Jesus’ path of radical love (and political change, and true justice) because it requires us to feel like such aliens in a world gone wrong.  Even Christians, in most cases (myself included), can’t manage to be in constant, peaceful communion with the Creation and Creator, choosing instead to practice religion rather than faithful, risky, loving action and forgiveness like Jesus himself. 

On the other hand, if we are also hungry or powerless, or have not forgiven past wrongs against “our people”, we are then ripe for the picking by every jihadist, neo-con, or self-aggrandizing leader looking to play upon those fears and physical needs by promising a comeuppance for “the godless infidels”.

If you think about it, commiting to remain disenfranchised, to share equally amongst ourselves, to hang with the prostitutes and have nowhere to lay one’s head, doesn’t sound like such “good news”, does it? It’s so much nicer to sit with a big steak in air-conditioned comfort in front of an HDTV at the ESPN Zone and watch the Boston Celtics (BTW, did they have a Druid priest saying incantations, arranging for their victory?… or perhaps bribing the referees to call fewer fouls?). Fasting and praying under the stars in front of a Celtic cross, clothing the naked, taking in and feeding the orphan, admitting you’re wrong once in awhile… these are works of radical discipleship that require God’s grace precisely because  they’re so hard to perform without His help. Ignorance, of both the good and bad in the world, really is bliss. Anyone with the guts to look into his or her own soul will tell you this.

I say “his or her” above, but let’s be honest: most spinners and practitioners of these crazy conspiracy theories are men — emasculated or psychically wounded men, pseudo-religious pirates, a much different brand of “outsider” than the disciples of Jesus. They’re the fickle followers of Barrabas, the Judases who took a wrong turn, or the self-appointed shamans looking to justify themselves, while leaving others (especially in the undeveloped Two Thirds World) to fend for themselves.

Most are looking for a systemic or external explanation for why they’re forever on the outside personally. Some want power, others merely acceptance. Meanwhile they’re in denial themselves, avoiding the “dark night of the soul” that might actually transform them into credible  witnesses to the true Eternal Light and the truth. This is why other outsiders (you may call them geeks, but we all need to embrace our inner geek) find these theories so attractive. It’s cafeteria-style, libertarian, serve-yourself, super-sweet philosophical candy in an attractive package. The theories free us from any responsibility for our own situations, be they personal or political. They let immature, adolescent, me-against-the-world attitudes fluorish and find justification, irrespective of any higher authority or personal call to holiness and service.

What’s more, the anarchic, non-theistic, or factually fuzzy solutions these theorists often recommend don’t account for the contentiousness and will to power that inevitably sets in among all us sinners. They make it easier to attach blame beyond ourselves, to the eternal THEM – whether THEY are the liberal Jewish media, the conservative fundamentalist Zionist warmongers, the Black Jesus-denying racists, the imperialist/royalist/fascist aristocracy, the Wahabist (or Shi’ ite) usurpers of the true Islamic faith, the Socialist/Communist hippie baby-killers looking to give away the store and crucify Christ again, or the Christian witch-hunters out to kill every horned owl and tree sprite that ever sought to set us free.

Sure, a few modern conspiracy analysts are on a genuine quest for the truth. But many are just the next generation of pawns and liars in the eternal struggle of good and evil.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not advocating we remain ignorant. Just that we consider the source, question authority with a healthy but non-obsessive skepticism, and then lead with our hearts … but without disengaging our heads. Be faithful first. Then be smart. And be careful not to get caught on the wrong side in this battle of disinformation and distraction, only to find out too late you could have instead been enjoying the fulfilling fellowship of true believers all along, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

As Peter once said to Jesus when Jesus gave him leave to abandon their difficult journey: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life? We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

‘Nuff said.

A bit of housekeeping, or perhaps a pat on my own back, if you will indulge me: late last week, I reached 200 posts on WordPress. That’s since April 2007. Here’s the first one, still a classic. I had blogged prior to that on MySpace for about nine months, but I don’t think I hit stride till I started cross-posting at WordPress and taking advantage of its better user interface. (Thanks for the gentle nudge, Will.) Or maybe I’ve yet to even hit stride. Only time will tell…

I also just read a long Emily Gould NYT Magazine article (re-posted at Brad Listi’s A.D.D. blog) about the ups and downs of blogging life, especially when one compulsively includes a lot of personal information, or seeks too much validation from the form or its audience. Nevertheless, don’t be afraid to drop me a comment now and then, just so I can get off on pretending I’m famous, and well-liked by strangers, and followed with much interest by my closest friends, who in my highly delusional blogger persona I think of as my apostles.

Be ye perfect, therefore, as I am not… after all, somebody’s gotta pick up my slack, don’t they?

My friend Ruth “blog-tagged” me the other day… oops, it’s been over a month ago now, where did the time go? I don’t often get involved with chains, or forwarding stuff, but since this one is more like shameless self-promotion disguised as a game of tag – and I’ve always been a fan of shameless self-promotion – here goes…

Here are the rules if you decide to play along:
1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Ahem… and now, my seven facts (for which I make no claims as to their randomness or their weirdness, as I’m too far gone by now to distinguish weird from normal):

1) My earliest memory is a traumatic one: bleeding profusely from my right forearm, after snagging it on a cabinet hinge at about age two and a half, or three. (Yeesh… what a way to start, you sicko.)

2) My first job out of college was with Kartemquin Films, producers of the acclaimed film Hoop Dreams and dozens of other social-issue documentaries featured on PBS and in theaters. My name is even in the credits. I got fired from that job, though. (I was 22, and in over my head in terms of the specific, sales-oriented job I was supposed to be doing.)

3) My middle name is Sebastian, which was my maternal grandfather’s first name. (My son’s middle name is Brice, my dad’s first name, …and his first name, Graham, is similar to my father-in-law’s middle name, Gorham.)

4) I once missed a plane home from Paris, and was forced to stay an extra day or two. Not the worst place in the world to be stuck, let me tell ya…

5) Best comic timing I ever exhibited: my little sister spilled a glass of milk at supper, and some of it dripped into Dad’s lap, and he started screaming and swearing, and she started crying. After ten seconds of that, I piped up with this classic: “No use crying over spilled milk.” Everyone cracked up, including Dad. Crisis over. But my ambition to be a comic, or a humorist, or somehow use words to make people’s lives better was just beginning.

6) I took a date to a Cure concert once in the Eighties, mistakenly thinking it was the Christian rock band The Call. Never felt so out of place and awkward in my life, out there at Poplar Creeek Music Theater among 30,000 pre-goth, brooding, black-clad brethren, and me like a doofus in my yellow Izod LaCoste shirt. It was my one and only date with that girl, too.

7) My favorite food is lasagna. For all my other favorite this, that, and the other, check out my MySpace Profile. It’s one of the few things MySpace is good for anymore…

Seven other blogs I frequent:

1 - Brad Listi - A.D.D. - An actual published novelist. Doing a younger, hipper blog that has as many funny commenters as I’ve seen anywhere. Brad’s also funny, and capable of serious political and cultural analysis, too.

2 - Will Fitzgerald, aka Will.Whim . Words are the air he breathes… and he’s a fledgling Mennonite pastor, to boot.

3 - Jesus Manifesto - started by Mark VanSteenwyck (I think), this blog has grown up into a cool little webzine.

4- Alternadad - former Chicago Reader journalist and sometime novelist Neal Pollack, doing a blog about parenting a wild-ass six-year-old, much more colorful than my own kid. Neal leans more toward the profane side of my sacred/profane duality, but as the only person in this list who makes any MONEY at blogging (at Parents.com), he’s my hero anyway.

5 - Pastor and Author Greg Boyd’s Random Reflections. I first caught this cat on Charlie Rose’s interview show, on PBS. Then I read his book Myth of a Christian Nation. Then I started listening in to an occasional podcast of his sermons, and reading this blog.

6 - Rafiki James - one of my first and most consistent supporters for the MySpace side of MT. He does some fine spiritual and political essays himself, I must say.

7 - Carolynn Todd Burbee’s chatty little blog without a name. It’s primarily personal news and reflections, by an old college friend who teaches history. I mean… she’s not old. A year older than me, but then… oh never mind. I’ve already gone and stuck my foot in it…

Just experimenting a little bit here. Because for once I have nothing new to say, and in the interests of saving time, and perhaps to give newcomers to Marking Time a glimpse of some past highlights, I present the stats and links below.

Consider it a summer re-run. They still do that on TV, don’t they? It was one of the things we could always count on when I was a kid: that 1) you could probably see a repeat of an episode you missed earlier in the season, and 2) when it’s nice outside, maybe even still light out after 9pm, you can be out in the world instead of holed up inside watching TV, partly because you know there’s nothing new or good on TV anyway.

Hey, turns out I did have something to say after all. Enjoy the re-runs… or not.

******

Gotta rant, Got ta rant, Got…to… RANT (aka “Killing Rupert”), 1,471 views

Mash-up, Morphing and Censorship for Shorties, 465 views

Road Rant: Less Is More, 333 views

It never fails. I watch a great political movie like Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl (or Blood Diamond with Leo DiCaprio, or Syriana with Matt Damon and George Clooney), and I’m immediately inspired to do something. The courage and grace of French/Cuban journalist Mariane Pearl (as seen in this Oprah interview), during and in the aftermath of her American journalist husband Daniel Pearl’s murder in 2002 Pakistan, demands nothing less than some kind of concrete nonviolent action. I can’t watch these compelling stories strictly as passive entertainment. “I have to do something!”, I always end up saying.

And then it hits: the feelings of powerlessness, the frustration, even self-loathing; the sense that I’m a little dustmite, an annoying mosquito in the drawers of the powers that be. What can I, of all people, do?

Furthermore, what makes me think I have anything to say that anyone could want to hear, or any skills that are of use in the struggle against such powerful and entrenched warmongers? I’m just a pathetic little schoolteacher. I’m a blogger with a readership of about 12, most of whom probably feel as powerless as I feel, otherwise why would they be mucking about here on the internet instead of out in the streets actually doing something. (Yeah, why ARE you here, by the way? I never had the guts to ask before…)

But those feelings of powerlessness are exactly what the enemies of peace and justice want us to feel. That, and fear, are what keep the downtrodden down, and what keep the genuinely powerful but woefully misled majority silent. Therefore, refusing to give in to those feelings of apathy and fear is the first and most essential step in taking victory away from the perpetrators of violence, in dulling the power of the sword (and the bulldozer, in the violence they would do to our planet). This step does not bring me much closer to knowing what I can do to help, but it at least gets me out of that comfy little foxhole/prison they would have me fall asleep in.

Besides, where are the streets anymore? Does protest actually matter? Are these the streets, these electronic alleyways lined with dirty windows, through which we see silly dressed-up kittens, old instructional video footage of James Brown teaching us to dance the boogaloo and funky chicken, and dumpster upon dumpster filled with porn?

In a media-saturated society, it’s easy to shut down, to screen out, to remove ourselves from all this trivia and complicated mess that surrounds us. Yet we can do something else, from right where we are. We do it through real relationships, with real people, out living real life. The “streets that have no name” lead to our churches, our neighborhoods, our schools, our families. We can talk straight, do what we can to educate those whom we see every day, and hope that some of it sticks.

And yes, the Internet is The Street also. Furthermore, it’s as powerful a tool for doing good as it is for spreading, um, …fertilizer. We can use it to stay informed, or to publicize important information so that others are better equipped. We can donate money to some inspired project, like musician Peter Gabriel’s work with WITNESS providing hundreds of video cameras all over Europe, Africa and Asia, to document human rights abuses and bring to light what most abusers would prefer remain in darkness.

And last but not least, we can cry out ourselves –here in our little cul-de-sac blogs and boutiques of opinion– believing that if even one more person is saved (in body or spirit) by our dozens of attempts, by our refusal to stop caring, then we’ve done what we could, and it was good enough.

Or, …we can choose to go where the action is. For example, today I went to Jesus Manifesto and found out that its founder/editor Mark VanSteenwyck is joining with Christian Peacemaker Teams. Which means he’ll soon be putting his own ass on the line to keep local journalists, lawyers, human rights workers and labor organizers safe, in one of the dozens of war zones throughout the world. Mark is a young man with a new baby… a baby he cares enough about to try remaking the world into a safer place for him to grow up in. Furthermore, Mark trusts Jesus with his life, and that of his family.

In Colombia, Palestine, Congo, Iraq, and other conflict zones, hundreds of regular Joes and Janes on Christian Peacemaker Teams act not as soldiers, uninvolved journalists or security contractors but as friends, layman ambassadors, and prayer warriors. They accompany the powerless. They teach conflict resolution. They are patriotic but peace-loving, believing it is just as important to change the hearts and minds of combatants on both sides as it is to preserve the lives of the oppressed, those caught in the middle of it all. As Westerners (mostly American and Canadian Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers, with a few Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians and “Other” thrown in for balance) these teams really do show a Power to the People kind of courage and hope. They walk in the Spirit. They keep the conversation going, with the local Joachims and Juanas, while huge nation-states and mindless terrorist organizations prove every day that the way of the gun only results in more confusion and violence.

In Iraq Tom Fox, a CPT human rights worker, lost his life in the midst of that confusion and senseless violence. Tom was one of four CPT members kidnapped in March 2006. Though his colleagues were rescued, Tom was not so fortunate. But the witness that he presented to the world had an impact, and the CPT work in Iraq continues even now.

Last year, I met somebody here in Chicago who knew Tom Fox, who told me about something else Tom had done. There was a working collective of painters and artists in Baghdad that Tom had contacts with, and he acted as a go-between, helping set up channels for some of their remarkable and accomplished paintings to get out of Iraq. Those paintings are still coming over, to the Iraqi Art Gallery here in Chicago, in the Rogers Park neighborhood. This is not far from Living Water Community Church, where my own church (Reba Place) did a church plant in the early 1990s. The nonprofit’s director and curator, Chuck Trimbach (a former colleague of filmmaker Harold Ramis), is still plugging along after three years. But in the present political and economic climate he’s got to be scraping the bottom of the barrel by now. And it’s a shame, because the paintings are both excellent and affordable. More importantly, the artists who get the lion’s share of the profits need help, now more than ever.

Meanwhile in Iran, Mennonite delegations are practically the only Westerners that their president and more moderate religious leaders are willing to talk to or trust. And in a context of trust, even a controversial message (like “stop denying that the Holocaust occurred”) can be delivered face-to-face, which is precisely what those delegations have done. (“Speak the truth in love,” Jesus said. Right?) I know some folks, including my friend Dr. Tom Finger, who participated in these talks.

So I may never get to the front lines. But this is 2008. This is the internet. This is the worldwide church, established and empowered by Christ, which knows no national boundaries, and continues to dismantle the artificial boundaries of denominational division. This is the small world that they kept telling us was on its way. The battle lines keep moving, and they get more blurry every day. The battle to uncover and stand upon the truth is one we are all called to. So come on out of that foxhole now. We’re gonna need some help. Besides, you won’t be alone.