Last week, an estimated 60,000 people descended on Jena, Louisiana, to protest the unequal treatment before the law of whites and blacks in that town. Mykal Bell, a black seventeen-year-old, had been tried as an adult for attempted murder; his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. But Bell remains in jail. Who knows why. Oh, yes, he’s black. Dangerous. More dangerous than the white boys who hung nooses on their tree in the school yard as a warning to blacks who sat under it.
Earlier in the summer, I wrote about this case, at a time when little attention was being paid. Last week, the plight of these young men was all over the news. The media finally woke up to what was happening in Louisiana (not my doing but the work of many others). The church remains asleep, as events in another part of Louisiana demonstrate.
The Bishops of the Episcopal Church happened to begin their semi-annual meeting in New Orleans last week just before the protesters arrived in Jena from all over the country. Before the bishops is the earth-shattering question of how they should respond to an ultimatum from the rest of the Anglican Communion that could result in a split between the Episcopal Church and the others. Readers of this blog know that the issue revolves around whether homosexuals can be bishops and whether they can be sexual as priests and bishops and whether they can be married. Yawn.
A couple of days after the Jena Six protest the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, preached at a Eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans that included the blessing of the hand-built "Elysian Trumpet," dedicated to the memory of all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield played "Amazing Grace" on the it. I do not doubt that this event was moving and appropriate to memorialize the victims of Hurricane Katrina (or, rather, the victims of governmental incompetence, beginning with the inadequate attention given to levees affecting the African-Americans living in the Ninth Ward and continuing with federal mismanagement of the aftermath--but that wasn't mentioned).
So far as I can tell, no bishops joined the Jena protest. They were in church.
The issue before the Episcopal Church is whether it will continue to be a church of hierarchy and privilege. That is what is really at stake in Louisiana. A new church might come into being, one that is wholly inclusive and one that is marked not by meetings of men and women in fancy clothes counting angels on the head of a pin, but rather by men and women who go to places like Jena and put their bodies on the line for justice. (I note that the bishops did put on work clothes and build houses or something like that. There were a lot of photos taken. Praise them in their plaid shirts and blue jeans, praise them for their hammers, the nails....)
Be not afraid, however, the old church is firmly in command, according to dispatches from Louisiana. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who came to listen, rejoices that the bishops are “passionate” about the Anglican Communion. Passionate. Bishop Katharine spoke passionately and eloquently about “trumpeting the Gospel” in her sermon. She imagined an inclusive procession of all God's people (going I'm not sure where). It really was good, beautifully written. Hearts beat faster as she preached. But as usual it was mostly talk--sound and fury, signifying nothing. The church at its best in ceremonial display and eloquence.
The real split the bishops should be concerned about is the one that is already killing the Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the Christian Churches: the split between those who are tired of what one writer called “the narcissism of small differences” and the clueless who are parsing doctrine in Louisiana this week.
The Gospel is being trumped, not trumpeted.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Water in the Desert
Last Friday evening, I was sitting at a bar in the Ramada Plaza Hotel at JFK Airport in New York, eating my fish and chips, as the Lou Dobbs nightly program began. Some of you may know that Lou Dobbs has been especially tenacious about the “problem” of illegal immigrants (especially those pesky Mexicans) in the US. Dobbs himself was away, but his substitute (whose name I missed, but she’s also a regular) continued to read from the same script. She decried the renewed efforts by those pernicious Democrats to resurrect the “amnesty” proposals that have already been twice rejected by congress. “When,” she wanted to know, “will they understand and abide by the will of the people?” The Russian woman behind the bar brought me a glass of Cabernet.
Well, I don’t know about the will of the people. In this administration, and in some media environments, it is hard to separate information from manipulation. But clearly the attempt to demonize immigrants and particularly Hispanics, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is going forward. Migrant workers from Mexico are an easy target, as are “towel heads” and other undesirables. It has been a part of our history since its beginnings, that the foreigners are the cause of our problems. Never mind that we are all foreigners.
I referred in my last blog entry to a migrant workers’ aid program in Arizona supported by my aunt’s congregation, First Christian Church in Tucson. The program is called Humane Borders. Its ministry is to migrant workers crossing the desert from Mexico into the US who do not have food or water for the journey. Many of them die. Humane Borders maintains water stations in the desert, presently over eighty of them, with the help of 8,000 volunteers. The program has been underway since 2000.
Humane Borders also advocates for legislative change. There are six actions the group recommends (see their website, www.humaneborders.org for information on the group and its work): (1) legalize the undocumented now living and working in the US; (2) begin a responsible guest worker program by issuing work visas directly to migrants so that they are not tied to any one employer or sector of the economy and allow workers to be organized; (3) increase the number of visas for Mexican nationals; (4) demilitarize the border; (5) support economic development in Mexico; (6) provide federal aid for local medical service providers, law enforcement and adjudication, land owners and managers.
The program Humane Borders recommends sounds like a reasonable one to me, more so that the Dobbs approach, which is to nail up the doors and windows. This xenophobic reaction is increasingly common in this country. One of the Humane Borders workers, Sr. Elizabeth (a Franciscan, I believe), was in Minnesota for the summer. Speaking to the media while she was there, she described her work as ministering to Jesus in the desert. The group’s newsletter, “Desert Fountain,” remarks: “You’d have thought she was giving guns to terrorists. . . . In a matter of days, over 500 emails were compiled by the St. Cloud newspaper.” The emails did not applaud the analogy or her ministry.
Take a look at what Humane Borders is doing. It is a worthwhile model for faith-based action, prophetic and sustainable.
Next week I will talk about the New Sanctuary Movement, which is aimed at supported immigrants facing deportation. It too is prophetic and essential, but a lot more dangerous. You don't have to ask Lou Dobbs what he thinks of either of these responses to the reality (not the problem) of human need among migrant workers and immigrants.
Meanwhile, I note that the Episcopal Church House of Bishops meeting begins September 20. Apparently the most important question on the agenda has to do with how the church will respond to demands from the "traditionalists" in the Anglican Communion that it become less inclusive and adhere to myth-based doctrines forbidding sexual relations between people, or perhaps even animals, of the same gender. What is there to discuss?
One group of Christians is giving water to people in the desert. Another is consumed with its own existence as an institution. How sad for the Episcopal Church. Perhaps Humane Borders can show the Episcopalians where to find living water before they (we) die of thirst in the desert.
Well, I don’t know about the will of the people. In this administration, and in some media environments, it is hard to separate information from manipulation. But clearly the attempt to demonize immigrants and particularly Hispanics, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is going forward. Migrant workers from Mexico are an easy target, as are “towel heads” and other undesirables. It has been a part of our history since its beginnings, that the foreigners are the cause of our problems. Never mind that we are all foreigners.
I referred in my last blog entry to a migrant workers’ aid program in Arizona supported by my aunt’s congregation, First Christian Church in Tucson. The program is called Humane Borders. Its ministry is to migrant workers crossing the desert from Mexico into the US who do not have food or water for the journey. Many of them die. Humane Borders maintains water stations in the desert, presently over eighty of them, with the help of 8,000 volunteers. The program has been underway since 2000.
Humane Borders also advocates for legislative change. There are six actions the group recommends (see their website, www.humaneborders.org for information on the group and its work): (1) legalize the undocumented now living and working in the US; (2) begin a responsible guest worker program by issuing work visas directly to migrants so that they are not tied to any one employer or sector of the economy and allow workers to be organized; (3) increase the number of visas for Mexican nationals; (4) demilitarize the border; (5) support economic development in Mexico; (6) provide federal aid for local medical service providers, law enforcement and adjudication, land owners and managers.
The program Humane Borders recommends sounds like a reasonable one to me, more so that the Dobbs approach, which is to nail up the doors and windows. This xenophobic reaction is increasingly common in this country. One of the Humane Borders workers, Sr. Elizabeth (a Franciscan, I believe), was in Minnesota for the summer. Speaking to the media while she was there, she described her work as ministering to Jesus in the desert. The group’s newsletter, “Desert Fountain,” remarks: “You’d have thought she was giving guns to terrorists. . . . In a matter of days, over 500 emails were compiled by the St. Cloud newspaper.” The emails did not applaud the analogy or her ministry.
Take a look at what Humane Borders is doing. It is a worthwhile model for faith-based action, prophetic and sustainable.
Next week I will talk about the New Sanctuary Movement, which is aimed at supported immigrants facing deportation. It too is prophetic and essential, but a lot more dangerous. You don't have to ask Lou Dobbs what he thinks of either of these responses to the reality (not the problem) of human need among migrant workers and immigrants.
Meanwhile, I note that the Episcopal Church House of Bishops meeting begins September 20. Apparently the most important question on the agenda has to do with how the church will respond to demands from the "traditionalists" in the Anglican Communion that it become less inclusive and adhere to myth-based doctrines forbidding sexual relations between people, or perhaps even animals, of the same gender. What is there to discuss?
One group of Christians is giving water to people in the desert. Another is consumed with its own existence as an institution. How sad for the Episcopal Church. Perhaps Humane Borders can show the Episcopalians where to find living water before they (we) die of thirst in the desert.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The Big Three
Three issues are occupying my attention right now. Perhaps they are important to you too. One of my goals for the month is to become more engaged in each of them in some way.
The first and most immediately pressing is the war in Iraq. On the weekend we saw a movie I commend to all of you: No End in Sight. It is a documentary that explains clearly (and for me for the first time) how policy decisions in Washington and the Green Zone led to the insurgency and our almost certain defeat in Iraq. It is a compelling and horrifying film. Despite the continuing chaos and government floundering (and I include here the Democrats as well), too many Americans are silent. The churches are virtually comatose. There is a vote coming in Congress about the future of the war that will be based on the success of the so-called “surge”—escalation by any other name—which has clearly not been successful in bringing about political stability. I am joining with PDX Peace, a Portland-based group, to apply pressure on local senators and representatives in a series of Wednesday vigils to collect signatures opposing the continuation of the war. Please be in touch with your own congressional delegations. The lack of pressure from the public is translated by government officials as support for the status quo.
The second is an issue that I have discussed before: sex trafficking, particularly in the United States. There is an article by Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times that talks specifically about the situation in Las Vegas, where the sex trade is booming under the leadership (if that word applies here) of the present mayor, Oscar Goodman. Herbert describes the situation facing teenagers, some as young as fourteen, who engage in prostitution at widely advertised sex clubs. When I was in Vegas three years ago for a meeting of the National Episcopal Council of Clergy Associations, hosted by the bishop of Nevada, Katherine Jefferts-Shori (now the Presiding Bishop of the church), I saw the billboards hauled by pickups through the streets advertising the services of young women who could be delivered to your hotel room. Although prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, the mayor would like to make it so. Meanwhile, the sex trafficking business is alive and well in the city. It is hard to know what to do about this situation since the sex trade is a routine part of our cultural life. We ignore it and the impact it has on young people. I know it must be part of the Portland, Oregon, landscape: we have more strip joints per capita than any other city in the country. And therefore I assume young boys and girls are being trafficked through here. After all, the city is a major international port. I wonder if the Presiding Bishop might like to return to Las Vegas and make a public statement about the sex trafficking business there. I’m sure she knows Mayor Goodman. Maybe a lot of us would be willing to go with her. Meanwhile, I’m sending this blog to Bishop Itty here in Portland asking if he’d like put together a group to tour some sex clubs to see about how many dancers are under age.
Third, the situation for illegal immigrants—and legal immigrants—is growing worse. When some young people were executed in Newark, New Jersey, not too long ago, a couple of the killers turned out to be of Hispanic origin. I thought at the time that some politician would use that information to suggest that Hispanics are dangerous. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. There is a modest sanctuary movement growing in the country among churches that are concerned that the Hispanics will be targeted next as the newest cause of all American ills. It appears that some Republican candidates for President are already talking about the immigration issue in terms previously used by Bush the First when he abducted the image of Willie Horton to race bait the country. My aunt is a minister in the Disciples of Christ Church in Arizona, and her congregation is engaged in a simple ministry, providing water to immigrants as they make their way across the desert. What might other churches do to support the men and women who do so much of the work that supports our social structure as they come increasingly under attack by the government? I don’t have an answer.
I offer these issues as those of primary importance to me right now. Naturally, I hope that some of you are working on them and perhaps have some ideas to pass along about what we might do to end the war, end sex trafficking, and end discrimination against Hispanic immigrants. Perhaps you could also share with us what is of deepest concern to you. The question is what we do to make a difference as individuals and as members of faith or action communities. Prayer is good, of course. Now what?
The first and most immediately pressing is the war in Iraq. On the weekend we saw a movie I commend to all of you: No End in Sight. It is a documentary that explains clearly (and for me for the first time) how policy decisions in Washington and the Green Zone led to the insurgency and our almost certain defeat in Iraq. It is a compelling and horrifying film. Despite the continuing chaos and government floundering (and I include here the Democrats as well), too many Americans are silent. The churches are virtually comatose. There is a vote coming in Congress about the future of the war that will be based on the success of the so-called “surge”—escalation by any other name—which has clearly not been successful in bringing about political stability. I am joining with PDX Peace, a Portland-based group, to apply pressure on local senators and representatives in a series of Wednesday vigils to collect signatures opposing the continuation of the war. Please be in touch with your own congressional delegations. The lack of pressure from the public is translated by government officials as support for the status quo.
The second is an issue that I have discussed before: sex trafficking, particularly in the United States. There is an article by Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times that talks specifically about the situation in Las Vegas, where the sex trade is booming under the leadership (if that word applies here) of the present mayor, Oscar Goodman. Herbert describes the situation facing teenagers, some as young as fourteen, who engage in prostitution at widely advertised sex clubs. When I was in Vegas three years ago for a meeting of the National Episcopal Council of Clergy Associations, hosted by the bishop of Nevada, Katherine Jefferts-Shori (now the Presiding Bishop of the church), I saw the billboards hauled by pickups through the streets advertising the services of young women who could be delivered to your hotel room. Although prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, the mayor would like to make it so. Meanwhile, the sex trafficking business is alive and well in the city. It is hard to know what to do about this situation since the sex trade is a routine part of our cultural life. We ignore it and the impact it has on young people. I know it must be part of the Portland, Oregon, landscape: we have more strip joints per capita than any other city in the country. And therefore I assume young boys and girls are being trafficked through here. After all, the city is a major international port. I wonder if the Presiding Bishop might like to return to Las Vegas and make a public statement about the sex trafficking business there. I’m sure she knows Mayor Goodman. Maybe a lot of us would be willing to go with her. Meanwhile, I’m sending this blog to Bishop Itty here in Portland asking if he’d like put together a group to tour some sex clubs to see about how many dancers are under age.
Third, the situation for illegal immigrants—and legal immigrants—is growing worse. When some young people were executed in Newark, New Jersey, not too long ago, a couple of the killers turned out to be of Hispanic origin. I thought at the time that some politician would use that information to suggest that Hispanics are dangerous. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. There is a modest sanctuary movement growing in the country among churches that are concerned that the Hispanics will be targeted next as the newest cause of all American ills. It appears that some Republican candidates for President are already talking about the immigration issue in terms previously used by Bush the First when he abducted the image of Willie Horton to race bait the country. My aunt is a minister in the Disciples of Christ Church in Arizona, and her congregation is engaged in a simple ministry, providing water to immigrants as they make their way across the desert. What might other churches do to support the men and women who do so much of the work that supports our social structure as they come increasingly under attack by the government? I don’t have an answer.
I offer these issues as those of primary importance to me right now. Naturally, I hope that some of you are working on them and perhaps have some ideas to pass along about what we might do to end the war, end sex trafficking, and end discrimination against Hispanic immigrants. Perhaps you could also share with us what is of deepest concern to you. The question is what we do to make a difference as individuals and as members of faith or action communities. Prayer is good, of course. Now what?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Books You Haven't Read (Maybe)
Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog (http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-sellers-books-that-just-keep.html) lists ten best-sellers you have probably never heard of or read. Here's the list with sales or in-print figures:
1. Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (614,000 copies sold)
2. Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. (325,000 in print)
3. Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (close to 600,000 in print)
4. Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson (83,000 sold)
5. Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan (over 200,000 in print)
6. How the Light Gets In, by M.J. Hyland (over 50,000 in print)
7. Best Friends. by Martha Moody (over 500,000 in print)
8. I Rigoberto Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray (130,000 sold)
9. The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl (782,000 paperbacks in print)
10. Interventions, by Noam Chomsky (nearly 25,000 in print)11. Honky, by Dalton Conley (90,000 in print)
A couple of the authors are familiar. But what’s fascinating about the list is what it says, or doesn’t say, about American culture. The Best Seller lists are in themselves interesting indicators, but at the same time the books that make it there are (somewhat) understandable. The authors are famous; the titles are provocative; the buzz has been generated and we salivate and buy. But the ten books in the NBCC list are just weird.
What are these books doing here? What does it mean that the biggest seller is a first book mystery story (The Dante Club) about a group of nineteenth-century Bostonians, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, who gather to translate the Inferno and find themselves on the trail of a serial killer? Who are these 700,000+ readers?
Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a memoir by a Hmong immigrant—and is one of the most-often assigned books in freshman college courses. Did you know that?
Take a look at the other books. Read about them on Amazon.com. One of the fascinating aspects of this list is how intelligent most of these these books are, unlike so much of what is normally on the best-seller lists. Rigoberto Menchu? I remember when this book came out—and I also recall that it was later thought to be a fraud, not written by the presumed author at all. (I don't know if that was ever proved or not.) It’s a radical critique of colonial US culture. Best Friends is another first novel, this one about college chums.
What’s my point here? (I'm trying to find one.) Those of us who are interested in contemporary culture and what makes it go find helpful direction in the book world. What are people buying and reading? (Why was Mary Gordon's book about her mother and Roman Catholicism reveiwed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review yesterday?) Does it mean anything that people are buying these ten books and not ten others of perhaps equal value? (Maybe they are and those books are on someone else's list.) What about the fact that many of these titles were initially reviewed tepidly or even negatively. Pearl’s was recommended only for the largest library collections by Library Journal—ie, too dense for most people. In publishing we used to say that a negative review is just as helpful as a positive review.
There are no books with “religious” themes here. The list is obviously eclectic, however--not at all "scientific" or representative. It is not meant to reflect any particular reality except that of the blogger who thought this was an interesting collection of best-sellers most of us haven’t heard of. We know that The Left Behind series of books outsells everything, except maybe The Purpose Driven Life and the Harry Potter books.
We also know the Holy Bible outsells everything. The Koran anyone?
Well, I thought you might find this list as interesting as I did. If you are still looking for something to read this summer, maybe one of these books will attract your attention.
I'm not reading any of them. Right now, my leisure reading of choice is Philip K. Dick, Four Novels of the 1960s, in the Library of America series. I'm halfway through The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich from that collection. Dick is one of those writers being recovered by American readers. All of a sudden. Who knows why? It's kind of like this list of books.
Professionally, I'm reading Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith. It definitively takes apart the Intelligent Design argument, but it also raises some pretty serious questions about the whole idea of a created universe for those who think of themselves as Christian and evolutionists. Really? Have you thought that through? Can you explain how the Creator God who is interested in us personally also made/makes the universe and all of its suffering so that we might worship him/her/it?
Ok, I've slipped from frivolous end-of-August space filling to something serious. Sorry. Go back to reading Danielle Steele.
1. Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (614,000 copies sold)
2. Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. (325,000 in print)
3. Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (close to 600,000 in print)
4. Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson (83,000 sold)
5. Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan (over 200,000 in print)
6. How the Light Gets In, by M.J. Hyland (over 50,000 in print)
7. Best Friends. by Martha Moody (over 500,000 in print)
8. I Rigoberto Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray (130,000 sold)
9. The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl (782,000 paperbacks in print)
10. Interventions, by Noam Chomsky (nearly 25,000 in print)11. Honky, by Dalton Conley (90,000 in print)
A couple of the authors are familiar. But what’s fascinating about the list is what it says, or doesn’t say, about American culture. The Best Seller lists are in themselves interesting indicators, but at the same time the books that make it there are (somewhat) understandable. The authors are famous; the titles are provocative; the buzz has been generated and we salivate and buy. But the ten books in the NBCC list are just weird.
What are these books doing here? What does it mean that the biggest seller is a first book mystery story (The Dante Club) about a group of nineteenth-century Bostonians, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, who gather to translate the Inferno and find themselves on the trail of a serial killer? Who are these 700,000+ readers?
Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a memoir by a Hmong immigrant—and is one of the most-often assigned books in freshman college courses. Did you know that?
Take a look at the other books. Read about them on Amazon.com. One of the fascinating aspects of this list is how intelligent most of these these books are, unlike so much of what is normally on the best-seller lists. Rigoberto Menchu? I remember when this book came out—and I also recall that it was later thought to be a fraud, not written by the presumed author at all. (I don't know if that was ever proved or not.) It’s a radical critique of colonial US culture. Best Friends is another first novel, this one about college chums.
What’s my point here? (I'm trying to find one.) Those of us who are interested in contemporary culture and what makes it go find helpful direction in the book world. What are people buying and reading? (Why was Mary Gordon's book about her mother and Roman Catholicism reveiwed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review yesterday?) Does it mean anything that people are buying these ten books and not ten others of perhaps equal value? (Maybe they are and those books are on someone else's list.) What about the fact that many of these titles were initially reviewed tepidly or even negatively. Pearl’s was recommended only for the largest library collections by Library Journal—ie, too dense for most people. In publishing we used to say that a negative review is just as helpful as a positive review.
There are no books with “religious” themes here. The list is obviously eclectic, however--not at all "scientific" or representative. It is not meant to reflect any particular reality except that of the blogger who thought this was an interesting collection of best-sellers most of us haven’t heard of. We know that The Left Behind series of books outsells everything, except maybe The Purpose Driven Life and the Harry Potter books.
We also know the Holy Bible outsells everything. The Koran anyone?
Well, I thought you might find this list as interesting as I did. If you are still looking for something to read this summer, maybe one of these books will attract your attention.
I'm not reading any of them. Right now, my leisure reading of choice is Philip K. Dick, Four Novels of the 1960s, in the Library of America series. I'm halfway through The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich from that collection. Dick is one of those writers being recovered by American readers. All of a sudden. Who knows why? It's kind of like this list of books.
Professionally, I'm reading Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith. It definitively takes apart the Intelligent Design argument, but it also raises some pretty serious questions about the whole idea of a created universe for those who think of themselves as Christian and evolutionists. Really? Have you thought that through? Can you explain how the Creator God who is interested in us personally also made/makes the universe and all of its suffering so that we might worship him/her/it?
Ok, I've slipped from frivolous end-of-August space filling to something serious. Sorry. Go back to reading Danielle Steele.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Instructions: A Poem
No music, please
Only silence such as I have entered
only the ambient squall of traffic
airline passengers in falling flight
the shuffling of impatient feet
a chair
and let me be hidden from the congregation
congregated for me
neither in vessel nor box
but truly somewhere else than where they are
not out of disrespect for them
and grief
but my necessity
I am gone
let that be clearly known
by darkness and the silence
by the emptiness I have gathered
let no one pray or bark a word of praise
let there be no story telling
of the time I did or did not do whatever
nor retelling of the jokes I never told so well
let no one that I’ve loved come near
the stage of my departing
you know why
you know what I have been and done
as others do not know
this is your chance
to forget
I send you these instructions having seen
the beyond not far from any
there is no point in explaining
it is not what you expect
do you remember walking on the shore
of Oregon to Haystack Rock between
the clouded heads at either end
of Cannon Beach
and families in recumbent bikes
like crabs escaping withering tide
but circling back and back
the overcast above the rock crackled
by the gulls and chilling rain
the goofy dogs erupting from the waves
without a clue
torpedoed us
where I am is nothing
for god’s sake don’t say anything
to give my life away
Only silence such as I have entered
only the ambient squall of traffic
airline passengers in falling flight
the shuffling of impatient feet
a chair
and let me be hidden from the congregation
congregated for me
neither in vessel nor box
but truly somewhere else than where they are
not out of disrespect for them
and grief
but my necessity
I am gone
let that be clearly known
by darkness and the silence
by the emptiness I have gathered
let no one pray or bark a word of praise
let there be no story telling
of the time I did or did not do whatever
nor retelling of the jokes I never told so well
let no one that I’ve loved come near
the stage of my departing
you know why
you know what I have been and done
as others do not know
this is your chance
to forget
I send you these instructions having seen
the beyond not far from any
there is no point in explaining
it is not what you expect
do you remember walking on the shore
of Oregon to Haystack Rock between
the clouded heads at either end
of Cannon Beach
and families in recumbent bikes
like crabs escaping withering tide
but circling back and back
the overcast above the rock crackled
by the gulls and chilling rain
the goofy dogs erupting from the waves
without a clue
torpedoed us
where I am is nothing
for god’s sake don’t say anything
to give my life away
Monday, August 13, 2007
God Is Dead, OK?
Ron Currie, Jr., is not a writer I have encountered before. A couple of weeks ago in Powell’s bookstore here in Portland I spotted the title of his book, God Is Dead, and thought, “Well, that’s old news.” Flash back to the fifties and the “God is dead” theology that famously made the cover of Time. I picked up the book and was hooked by the first sentence: “Disguised as a young Dinka woman, God came at dusk to a refugee camp in the North Darfur region of Sudan.” I bought the book.
The Dinka woman, aka God, is killed by the Janjaweed, and word of his/her death spreads quickly. The end of the Supreme Being is catastrophic….or is it? This is the implicit question in Currie’s clever and horrifying fiction.
The world of the first chapter is all too familiar and includes a hilarious and outrageous appearance by Colin Powell who tries to rescue the Dinka woman, in spite of official consternation that he is taking an interest in this lowlife woman. She changes Powell, who suddenly begins to tell the truth. In a riveting telephone call with President Bush, he calls the President a “silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker.” All right.
God apologizes to a young man she has asked Powell to find for her—not actually the one she asked for but an imposter:
“Guilt gathered in God’s throat and formed a lump there. He realized with sudden certainty that this boy, or any of the people in the camp—the men suddenly alone in their old age, the young women with disappeared husbands and hungry children—were as deserving as [anyone] of his apology, would serve just as well as the altar for him to confess his sins of omission and beg forgiveness. God slid from the cot and stooped on his knees before the boy, like a Muslim at prayer.”
As God lies awaiting death, he closes his eyes and wishes “for someone he could pray to.”
That’s the first chapter. What’s an author to do next? Currie describes a world sunk in chaos and war, horror and cruelty. It seems like a cliché—God is dead and now everything, as the philosophers used to say, is possible. Morality flies out the window. As one character says, talking about violence in the world, “there is no why. There’s the impulse, and the act. But nothing else.” Martial law is declared; the National Guard moves into every American city. Suicide among nuns and clergy rises to an epidemic scale. Looting of Little Debbie snack cakes escalates. Serious shit.
But then the cliché begins to turn on itself. Feral dogs that fed on God’s corpse begin to speaking a “mishmash of Greek and Hebrew and walking along the surface of the White Nile as if it were made of glass.” It's a story straight out of supermarket tabloids. Temples are built to them. But among people braced for the end of everything, a gradual realization dawns: nothing has changed. “God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy.”
Needing something to revere in place of God, the people of the US begin to worship children: “God has abandoned us. The way to salvation is through the child.” Since, as the author observes, Americans virtually worship children already, the step to actual worship is easy. Evolutionary Psychologists try to break Americans of this idolatry, but it is not easy.
When war erupts between the Postmodern Anthropologists and the Evolutionary Psychological forces, the Evo Psychs threaten invasion of the United States. All hell really is about to break loose in the name of absurd ideologies.
What we realize as we read the evocative and unnerving stories Currie has written is that the world after God is the world we already live in. Time was right. God Is Dead is a fable of our own times and our own culture, our idolatry and indifference, our cruel warrior mentality, our false religions. Despite our high rates of religious observance and our national assertion of belief in God, we Americans in fact behave exactly as we would if we knew for a fact that God does not exist. We simply worship what makes us feel good and secure. For all we know or care, a Dinka woman eaten by dogs in the Sudan might well be God.
What’s the Sudan thing again? I mean, like, whatever.
Currie has written fiction but it is, like all good stories, simply the backside of our daily lives.
The Dinka woman, aka God, is killed by the Janjaweed, and word of his/her death spreads quickly. The end of the Supreme Being is catastrophic….or is it? This is the implicit question in Currie’s clever and horrifying fiction.
The world of the first chapter is all too familiar and includes a hilarious and outrageous appearance by Colin Powell who tries to rescue the Dinka woman, in spite of official consternation that he is taking an interest in this lowlife woman. She changes Powell, who suddenly begins to tell the truth. In a riveting telephone call with President Bush, he calls the President a “silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker.” All right.
God apologizes to a young man she has asked Powell to find for her—not actually the one she asked for but an imposter:
“Guilt gathered in God’s throat and formed a lump there. He realized with sudden certainty that this boy, or any of the people in the camp—the men suddenly alone in their old age, the young women with disappeared husbands and hungry children—were as deserving as [anyone] of his apology, would serve just as well as the altar for him to confess his sins of omission and beg forgiveness. God slid from the cot and stooped on his knees before the boy, like a Muslim at prayer.”
As God lies awaiting death, he closes his eyes and wishes “for someone he could pray to.”
That’s the first chapter. What’s an author to do next? Currie describes a world sunk in chaos and war, horror and cruelty. It seems like a cliché—God is dead and now everything, as the philosophers used to say, is possible. Morality flies out the window. As one character says, talking about violence in the world, “there is no why. There’s the impulse, and the act. But nothing else.” Martial law is declared; the National Guard moves into every American city. Suicide among nuns and clergy rises to an epidemic scale. Looting of Little Debbie snack cakes escalates. Serious shit.
But then the cliché begins to turn on itself. Feral dogs that fed on God’s corpse begin to speaking a “mishmash of Greek and Hebrew and walking along the surface of the White Nile as if it were made of glass.” It's a story straight out of supermarket tabloids. Temples are built to them. But among people braced for the end of everything, a gradual realization dawns: nothing has changed. “God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy.”
Needing something to revere in place of God, the people of the US begin to worship children: “God has abandoned us. The way to salvation is through the child.” Since, as the author observes, Americans virtually worship children already, the step to actual worship is easy. Evolutionary Psychologists try to break Americans of this idolatry, but it is not easy.
When war erupts between the Postmodern Anthropologists and the Evolutionary Psychological forces, the Evo Psychs threaten invasion of the United States. All hell really is about to break loose in the name of absurd ideologies.
What we realize as we read the evocative and unnerving stories Currie has written is that the world after God is the world we already live in. Time was right. God Is Dead is a fable of our own times and our own culture, our idolatry and indifference, our cruel warrior mentality, our false religions. Despite our high rates of religious observance and our national assertion of belief in God, we Americans in fact behave exactly as we would if we knew for a fact that God does not exist. We simply worship what makes us feel good and secure. For all we know or care, a Dinka woman eaten by dogs in the Sudan might well be God.
What’s the Sudan thing again? I mean, like, whatever.
Currie has written fiction but it is, like all good stories, simply the backside of our daily lives.
Monday, August 6, 2007
A Redwood on the Streetcar
Connie and I discovered a nursery in Northwest Portland last week at the end of NW 18th Street by the railroad tracks, about as far north as you can go in Portland before you fall into the Willamette River. Peter, who runs the nursery, is a copper-haired Belgian who works alone among hundreds of plants. He likes to talk to visitors and seems mostly unconcerned about actually selling much of anything. On our first visit, we bought three potted Begonias and two Dogwoods (small) for our 5 by 8 foot terrace. There was already a small Butterfly Japanese Maple there.
A lot of foliage for a small space, admittedly; and we also have a breakfast table and two chairs. But it’s cozy not crowded. A place of joy. We added along the front of the balcony some Mums and a couple of other flowers whose names I lost. Then we returned to see Peter: we wanted an evergreen of some sort in front of the living room window that overlooks the terrace. He showed us around on a 90-degree sunny afternoon. A freight train pulled up alongside the nursery, its engine throbbing rhythmically.
Most of the conifers we looked at were too large, the pots half the size of our terrace. Or they were too small, ornamentals we would not be able to see from the living room. Then he showed us a Redwood. Sequoia. It was about four feet in height with a dogleg left or right depending on your vantage point. It was exquisite.
“It grows to be the tallest tree in the world,” Peter said. “It’ll reach 500 feet.”
“We could angle it over the street,” I suggested.
“Cut a hole in the terraces above us,” Connie offered.
Peter said, “It will stay small if you leave it in a small pot.”
We could put a Redwood on our terrace?
We paid Peter the $29 he insisted was the price and we squeezed our Redwood into our blue shopping cart and walked it back to the streetcar and rolled it on. We got a seat. The Redwood stood.
“I’ve never seen that before,” said one man, “a tree on the streetcar.”
The tree made everyone smile, especially when we told them it was a Redwood. Then an infirm woman boarded, young but crack-addict skinny, and I offered her my seat. She smiled with teeth that went in all directions and bowed a gracious thanks. I angled the Redwood over her head, “to give you some shade.”
She smiled up at me. “Well, thank you, sir.”
The streetcar hummed along 11th Avenue past the library, the Redwood branches swaying over her head, and she looked cool in the shade of the tallest tree in the world, which now sits on our terrace in front of the living room window.
A lot of foliage for a small space, admittedly; and we also have a breakfast table and two chairs. But it’s cozy not crowded. A place of joy. We added along the front of the balcony some Mums and a couple of other flowers whose names I lost. Then we returned to see Peter: we wanted an evergreen of some sort in front of the living room window that overlooks the terrace. He showed us around on a 90-degree sunny afternoon. A freight train pulled up alongside the nursery, its engine throbbing rhythmically.
Most of the conifers we looked at were too large, the pots half the size of our terrace. Or they were too small, ornamentals we would not be able to see from the living room. Then he showed us a Redwood. Sequoia. It was about four feet in height with a dogleg left or right depending on your vantage point. It was exquisite.
“It grows to be the tallest tree in the world,” Peter said. “It’ll reach 500 feet.”
“We could angle it over the street,” I suggested.
“Cut a hole in the terraces above us,” Connie offered.
Peter said, “It will stay small if you leave it in a small pot.”
We could put a Redwood on our terrace?
We paid Peter the $29 he insisted was the price and we squeezed our Redwood into our blue shopping cart and walked it back to the streetcar and rolled it on. We got a seat. The Redwood stood.
“I’ve never seen that before,” said one man, “a tree on the streetcar.”
The tree made everyone smile, especially when we told them it was a Redwood. Then an infirm woman boarded, young but crack-addict skinny, and I offered her my seat. She smiled with teeth that went in all directions and bowed a gracious thanks. I angled the Redwood over her head, “to give you some shade.”
She smiled up at me. “Well, thank you, sir.”
The streetcar hummed along 11th Avenue past the library, the Redwood branches swaying over her head, and she looked cool in the shade of the tallest tree in the world, which now sits on our terrace in front of the living room window.
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