Category Archives: America

Elephants, palm trees…and us

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Adult elephant mentor

Adult elephant mentor

This “comment” on Steve Shoemaker’s poem “What did you ask in school today?” deserves a posting of its own.

“Gordon, thanks for this from Steve S. This reminds me of a few things I’ve thought about lately. The images evoked when a parent says the above is that it is an example of how we nurture the young by helping them understand how to connect to their world in deeper ways than by just asking “what did you learn today”.

“The large Palm tree that stands wilted in front of the TreeHouse youth shelter on the highway 41 curve here in Chaska is a reminder that when we attend to our youth with the ideas in this poem we have a “live tree” vs. a dead tree”. In like manner when no attention is given to the affective behaviors the poem describes we have a “wilted” group of young people. The TreeHouse facility leaves the tree in place all winter after the Fall freeze to help our community remember it takes a village to raise our children. They will plant a live Palm again this Spring to help us see the results of their endeavors over the long winter to bring back to health the youth in their program.

The other thought that I was reminded of by Steve’s poem is about a National Geographic documentary last week that described the rebellion of young Elephants worldwide. Yes, strange as that sounds Elephants are killing trainers, strangers et al in epidemic numbers. Why? The program went in depth to explain that because we have destroyed so much Elephant habitat, and in the process we have also destroyed the adult males by culling the herds to ostensibly prevent the destruction of crops. The result is there are no older males to raise the young males resulting in the lack of control of violent behaviors among the young males. When young males are placed in herds with older males the murderous behaviors disappear as the seniors exert that influence. We’ve known for a long time how smart Elephants are but this goes way beyond that. There can be no doubt our children are at least as sensitive to our attention.”

NOTE: Gary Severson is a historian, researcher, and writer who recently completed his teaching career at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. Gary lives here in Chaska where he attends Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church and leads an adult course on our common indigenous spirituality. Those who have the privilege of knowing Gary enjoy the repeated pleasure of this kind of thoughtful reflection – Gary’s own views from the edge.

Is Easter’s coming?

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After receiving this today I called Steve suspecting depression. “Hi, Steve. Your stuff’s been really dark lately. Are you depressed?” “No! Why?” said Steve with a chuckle. “Not at all. Pay attention to the last line. I CAPITALIZED Easter.”

miserable days

these days cold rain falls on faces
looking for the season’s changing
…
birds are silent somewhere hiding
winds whip trees no buds are showing
…
bulbs are prisoned in their places
beneath clods slowly rotting

floods have drowned all springlike traces
dark clouds keep the sun from shining
…
graves are closed is Easter coming

– steve shoemaker, urbana, il, feb. 26, 2013

What did you ASK in school today?

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Another Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Feb. 23, 2013

Verse — Learning
(With thanks to Ellis Cowling)

What did you learn in school today?
…is not the best question.
Ask your kids instead:
Did you ASK any good questions
in school today?
What puzzled you?
What did you explore today?
Did you solve any mysteries?
Was there something that made you
laugh today?
Did you say or write something that
helped others laugh?
What did you do today that was kind?
Today, did you help another learn?
What can you teach me right now?

fear of dying

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fear of dying

the umbrella is gone
…
with my mother’s death
a year ago
i am the oldest
in the family
…
slowness
stoopedness
sickness
forgetting
falling
all remind me
of my age
…
i visit doctors
more than friends
…
faith is far away
fear is near

[stoopedness–yes]

-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 23, 2013

Harry Bellafonte: Sing your Song

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Stand and Fight?

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“Views from the Edge” exists to promote public discussion of critical public issues. It’s not often that we post something from the NRA, but this one needs to be read by everyone who cares about the future of the United States of America. The “Stand and Fight” campaign announced in this piece is a call to arms. It assumes impending chaos. Readers of Views from the Edge rarely hear it from the horse’s mouth.

I invite readers to listen very carefully to what is said and what is not said – what is written between or below the lines – and the tone of how it’s said.
If you haven’t already read today’s earlier post – “The Common Ground Beneath the Gun Debate” – you might want to swing by it before or after you read this column by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Click “Stand and Fight” to read how the NRA sees responsible life in our times.

Then post on “Views from the Edge” what you think you saw and heard. Thanks for coming by.

The Common Ground beneath the Gun Debate

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Gordon C. Stewart, February 22, 2013 – Copyright.

“Ninety-nine percent of reality is perception.” Analytical philosopher Willem Zuurdeeg argued that perception itself is the expression of something far deeper, far more powerful.

Zuurdeeg, author of An Analytical Philosophy of Religion and Man Before Chaos: Philosophy Is Born in a Cry, spent his life listening to human speech, listening more deeply for what lay under the surface of the language.

Homo loquens (“man-who-speaks”) is homo convictus (“man-who-is-convicted/convinced”), the creature who establishes finite existence in time by powerful, unshakeable ‘convictors’ that anchor us against the chaos.

What we often describe as irrational speech, is, in fact, “convictional language”, the hidden power of which can only be understood by a kind of “situational analysis, i.e., the life “situation” (historical-convictional context) of the one who is speaking. Our varying perceptions are determined by the less conscious hidden convictions of implicit needs and unquestioned cultural traditions.

What is missing in the national debate is public expression of the non-rational perceptions of the word ‘gun’ and the unspoken convictions that shape our different perceptions.
We not only hear the word ‘gun’ differently. We hear different things differently.

Until we come together to discuss what we hear when we hear the word – our non-rational (not un-rational, as in opposed to reason, but non-rational, as in beneath the presumptions of reason) convictional worlds, the gun debate will be a shouting match that finds no common ground.

A simple exercise of word association demonstrates the difference.

Say the word ‘gun’ and listen for what it evokes in the hearer. In the ears of one, the word ‘gun’ means ‘safety’ and ‘protection’. In the ears of others, it means ‘without protection’ or ‘threat’.

But if we listen carefully to the apparently opposite responses, we discover a common ground they share: the threat of insecurity. The threat of chaos.

Whenever we hear a scream, something powerful is under assault. Chaos threatens. We cry out against the chaos. We cry out against death and extinction.

In Man Before Chaos, Zuurdeeg claims that, from its very beginning, western culture has been bound up with a powerful dread of chaos. Even Plato’s philosophy, argues Zuurdeeg, is born of a cry.

“Socrates has died. He himself does not fit very well into Athens’ political life. He is naked and defenseless and is not ashamed of it. He has the courage to cry against chaos and for Being and Goodness. All this has been smothered by the comfortable, although often quarrelsome, classical and medieval philosophy and theology. Who can live by a cry? Who can stand to hear such disturbing noise? Clear and calm reasoning under the guidance of venerable old philosophical schools (or just as respectable church fathers) enables us to live, make church and civilization possible. Who can endure permanently Plato’s uncertain, unsafe balance on the b rink of the abyss of chaos? By what does a man live? By a cry? Claims? The careful and broad elaboration of philosophy? All of them?” (Man Before Chaos, pp 43-44)

In the current debate about guns, the life situations, cultural traditions, and life experiences of the hearers are “worlds” apart. Perhaps…perhaps…if we could find the space to listen more deeply to our different cries in the face of chaos, we would find the common ground of homo convictus and move to something deeper than the shouting.

It takes one

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Click HERE to read “It takes one” – a poem sent to Views from the Edge today from nuclear-free New Zealand by David Earle in response to “The Home of the Scared and the Land of the Tyrannized.”

It all begins with one.

Into the Cocoon of Sorrow

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The return of the prodigal son - Rembrandt drawing

The return of the prodigal son – Rembrandt drawing

During seven years as Executive Director of the Legal Rights Center, Inc. a nonprofit public defense corporation founded in 1970 by American Indian and African-American civil rights leaders, there were sacred moments when the lawyers would call me in to meet a suicidal client in a jail cell. Sometimes the person in the cell was guilty of murder or manslaughter. They were beside themselves. All I could do was be there with them as a kind of quiet presence of hope and the possibility of forgiveness and new life.

I knew then that we were sitting right in the middle of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Gospel of Luke 15:11-32). In Jesus’ parable, the son, who has convinced his generous father into giving him his inheritance before his father’s death, has squandered it all, and, after finding himself in desperation, eating the left-overs in the pig sty of “the far country”, he staggers home to his father. He comes beating his breast with remorse and shame. “But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him,” and orders the finest robe for him and a magnificent feast to celebrate his son’s return from “the far country.” When the older brother who has stayed home obediently objects, the father of the two sons declares: “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, but is alive, was lost, and is found!”

Only after returning to parish ministry did I discover The Book of Common Prayer’s rite for the reconciliation of a penitent that is constructed on the story of the return of the son to the father. For those in the bowels of despair, remorse, and guilt, there is no word from inside one’s own self that can crack open the cocoon of horror, self-disgust, and condemnation. When I found this rite, it moved me deeply. I adapted parts of it for the Prayer of Confession in morning worship at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.

RITE FOR THE RECONCILIATION OF A PENITENT from The Book of Common Prayer (The Episcopal Church)

The priest and penitent begin as follows

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;
in your great compassion blot out my offenses.
Wash me through and through from my wickedness,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions only too well,
and my sin is ever before me.

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One,
have mercy upon us.

Penitent: Pray for me, a sinner.

Priest: May God in his love enlighten your heart, that you may remember in truth all your sins and his unfailing mercy. Amen.

The Priest may then say one or more of these or other appropriate verses of Scripture, first saying:: Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him.

Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Matthew 11:28

This is a true saying, and worthy of all to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I Timothy 1:13

If any man sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and nor for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. I John 2:1-2

The Priest then continues:

Now, in the presence of Christ, and of me, his minister, confess your sins with a humble and obedient heart to Almighty God, our Creator and our Redeemer.

The Penitent says:

Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and I have wandered far in a land that is waste.

Especially, I confess to you and to the Church . . . . (Here the penitent confesses particular sins)

Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance. Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Priest may then offer words of comfort and counsel.

Priest: Will you turn again to Christ as your Lord?

Penitent: I will.

Priest: Do you, then, forgive those who have sinned against you?

Penitent: I forgive them.

Priest: May Almighty God in mercy receive your confession of sorrow and faith, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen.

The Priest then lays upon the penitent’s head (or extends a hand over the penitent) saying:: Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins; in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Priest concludes: Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost, and are found; you were dead, and are now alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. Go (or abide) in peace. The Lord has put away all your sins.

Penitent: Thanks be to God.

A song for the weary soul

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Listen to the spiritual that soothed the mind and heart of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was rebuked and scorned. Sit back and feel the music sung by Odetta.