Minnesotans will vote in November whether to amend the MN State Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. This beautiful video of “old love” features couples in long relationships here in Minnesota. The music and the pictures speak for themselves. Some of the faces are from a congregation I once served. Enjoy.
The NFL is a mess. The game’s integrity (what there is of it) could be restored in a heart beat.
All it would take to settle the lockout of the NFL refs would be for the Players Union to join them. Walk out.
One doesn’t have to love football or the NFL to see that the replacement referees have already jeopardized the integrity of the game. The Seahawks-Packer game last Monday is but the latest in a long series of incompetence by “replacement referees”.
The union movement in this country began with the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) calling on workers of the world to unite. When one trade union went on strike, other unions joined them…on strike…often at great sacrifice and with no immediate interest, because they understood that an assault on one worker or one union was an assault on all.
Monday night’s nationally televised game was refereed by replacement referees whom the union movement once would have called “scabs” – men willing to walk across a picket line to take the to take the jobs of striking or locked-out workers, collect their pay checks, and keep the production lines rolling at the factory while the bosses laughed on the way to the bank.
Unions, however, are not just about workers’ rigthts and collective bargaining. They have standards for competence and safety in their trades. They train their members. trained. Historically union members took pride in doing good work. Hiring a union plumber gave assurance to the homeowner that the plumber knew more than the do-it-yourself plumberf who flooded the second floor fixing a toilet.
If the unions serve their members, they also serve management by insuring that their employees are held to high standards of competence. The NFL referees union is no exception. They are trained. They are competent. Their replacements are not.
If the Players Union has a back bone…if the Players Union cares about the integrity of the game…if the Players Union cares about the other NFL employees who make profession football competent…the solution is simple.
Stand with the refs. Honor the best of the union movement and its history. Act not just for yourself. There’s no game without those men you love to hate on the football field: the professional, qualified refs who know what they’re doing.
Walk out!
Today “In the company of hysterical women” referred to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the post “Living Below the Line – Day 2”. The reference to Maslow led to bringing this draft commentary out from the file drawer where it’s been gathering dust since early August. Here’s the reflection
Defining Human Needs and Their Satisfaction
Terry Gips, Sustainability Associates
Terry Gips, President of Sustainability Associates (click HERE for description), introduced me to Chilean philosopher-economist Manfred Max- Neef’s ground-breaking re-conception of human needs and needs-satisfaction. Max-Neef’s framework offers a different view from Abraham Maslow’s pyramid-hierarchical model of self-actualization that prevails in the West. While the Maslow model is typically Western in centering on the individual, the Max-Neef paradigm looks at the larger culture and society in terms of needs and needs-satisfyers. It’s focus is the community.
The basic human needs are listed here, along with a rating scale to measure how we’re doing (a person, group, nation, world).
Protection 1 2 3 4 5
Affection 1 2 3 4 5
Understanding 1 2 3 4 5
Participation 1 2 3 4 5
Idleness/Leisure 1 2 3 4 5
Creation 1 2 3 4 5
Identity 1 2 3 4 5
Freedom 1 2 3 4 5
– Manfred Max-Neef – Matrix, Human Scale Development
According to this framework, food and shelter, for example, are not regarded as needs, but as satisfiers of the fundamental need fo subsist.
In much the same way, education (either formal or informal), study, investigation, early stimulation and meditation are satisfiers of the need for Understanding. Curative systems, preventive systems and health schemes in general are satisfiers of the need for Protection.
There is no one-to-one correspondence between needs and satisfiers. A satisfier may contribute simultaneously to the satisfaction of different needs or, conversely, a need may require various satisfiers in order to be met. Not even these relations are fixed. They may vary according to time, place and circumstance. For example, a mother breastfeeding her baby is simultaneously satisfying the infant’s needs for Subsistence, Protection, Affection and Identity.
Think now of “The American Dream” – a phrase coined 1931 by J.T. Adams (1878-1949), U.S. writer and historian, in Epic of America. Here are the words that introduced the aspiration of “the American Dream” to the U.S. national lexicon:
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
Sipping coffee on Terry Gip’s porch with five seminary classmates, the discussion took a nose dive into theological and economic despair as the Christian pastors lamented the victory of environmental degradation, greed, concentration of wealth, militarism, and consumerism in American life. We were like the prophet Amos, or so we must have thought, thundering our cries of “Woe to you” when Terry, a person of deep and active Jewish faith, asked us to stop and think.
“We won’t get anywhere by negativity,” he said, or something like that. You guys are Christian pastors. People need good news. The old model is a model of scarcity; that’s not good news. We have to re-define abundance. Think about it. You can change the world if you take seriously what Jesus said by preaching a theology and ethic of abundance. We should be talking about a world of abundance, not scarcity.
Jesus: “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”
We left Terry’s porch wondering what it would look like to alter the approach to the proclamation of abundance re-defined in light of Jesus and Manfred Max-Neef’s human scale development. The “yoke” (responsibility) that brings satisfaction and rest, not only to the soul but to the body politic, is the shared yoke of humility and sharing.
The American Dream is again up for grabs on the road to the November election. I listen to every campaign ad asking which dream is being promoted, and the six Christian pastors go into the pulpit Sunday mornings chastened and deepened by a faithful Jewish brother who seemed to know our Lord, the Jewish rabbi, better than the Christian pastors on his back porch!
When only six, our son , Dan, was in school
and heard read there “The Ugly Duckling” tale.
The teacher asked, when putting the book down,
“How did the duckling learn he was a swan?”
Dan waved his hand and shouted his answer,
“He saw his erection in the water!”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL. Sept. 22, 2012
The Ugly Duckling
Join with Plato Oct. 23: “Poetry is closer to vital truth than history” … or a political campaign.
An evening with Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen
MN Poet Laureat Joyce Sutphen
Joyce Sutphen’s first collection of poems, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; Coming Back to the Body was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and Naming the Stars won a Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. In 2005, Red Dragonfly Press published Fourteen Sonnets in a letterpress edition. She is one of the co-editors of To Sing Along the Way, an award-winning anthology of Minnesota women poets. She is also a Renaissance scholar and has published essays on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. She grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota, and she teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Her latest collection, First Words, is a “memoir in poems,” and was published in 2010. She is the second Minnesota Poet Laureate, succeeding Robert Bly. Joyce will read and discuss her own poetry and works of other poets:
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history” – Plato. Take a break from the campaign season to look through the eyes of a poet.
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church, 145 Engler Blvd., Chaska, MN 55318.
*First Tuesday Dialogues: examining critical public issues locally and globally” is a community program for the common good, re-creating the public square in the southwest Twin Cities metro area.
www.shepherdofthehillchurch.com
“A place for the Mind and Heart”
Rev. Alexander Sharp on Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Not too long ago, the police department, the prosecutor’s office, and the public defenders association in Seattle, Washington were stalemated. They had been fighting for eight years over allegations of discriminatory law enforcement against African American and Hispanics for low level offenses. Finally, a police lieutenant interrupted one of their meetings: “This isn’t helping anyone. What can we do differently?”
They worked together to create a radically new approach. Those who designed it will be joining us at the Chicago Temple on October 10 for the Robert B. Wilcox Symposium, “Serving Our Communities: Alternatives to Incarceration.”
We hope you will be present to meet them and other leaders in criminal justice to learn about their solution: in Seattle’s LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) program, police work directly with social service providers without having to navigate the court system first. This may be the only place in the country where this is happening. Early signs are that it is working well.
Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle; Cook County State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez; Chicago Police Superintendent, Garry McCarthy; and Milwaukee County District Attorney, John Chisholm will participate. We will also be bringing forward two other models for keeping non-violent low-level offenders out of the criminal justice system: Milwaukee County Treatment Alternatives and Diversion and Adult Redeploy in Illinois. These programs are making communities safer, saving tax payers money, and enabling non-violent offenders to rebuild their lives.
Consider that Adult Redeploy Illinois, which funds counties to divert non-violent offenders who would otherwise be headed to the Department of Corrections, has 10 sites which have already saved $11 million in incarceration costs. We will be meeting the leaders of their Macon County project, an early success.
The need for such alternatives is overwhelming. Due in large part to the failed War on Drugs, the United States has become a prisoner nation, with 2.3 million incarcerated, more per capita than any other country on the planet. This includes 49,000 in Illinois, disproportionately African American and Hispanic. About 20% of those in Illinois prisons are there on average just 60 days. Most will be re-incarcerated within three years. We are cycling people in and out of prison at huge cost and great suffering.
Last week at the Illinois Justice Commission hearings organized by The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, which organizes African American churches, one ex-offender observed: “We recycle cans, paper, and cardboard. Can’t we spend just a little bit more to restore our most valuable resource — human beings?” That’s what diversion does. It makes new lives possible.
These programs are leaders in a movement toward sane public policy. Wise investments now can help us avoid much larger costs later. The difficulty is in making the case so convincingly that even elected officials, some of whom won’t get the credit in future years, are willing to do the right thing today.
LEAD is the national test case of whether we can move toward this better way. Two foundations — Open Society and Ford — are providing drug treatment, housing, counseling and other services for next four years, long enough to establish what can be accomplished with adequate support. At the symposium, we will learn how the leaders of LEAD are approaching the difficult problem of evaluation.
Please join us on Wednesday, October 10, to hear more and ask questions. These models represent a new paradigm for responding to those on the margins whose lives have been damaged in no small measure by misguided drug policy. They deserve your attention and support.
Published by Protestants for the Common Good, 332 S. Michigan Ave.Suite 500 Chicago, IL 60604 | contact us.
Dr. Seuss weighed in on the news about the 47% of “dependent” Americans and “the distribution of wealth” and power with the non-partisan story of Yertle the Turtle.
A comment on “Uproar over video offers a warning about what happens when fundamentalism wins” (MPR commentary September 18, 2012) on religion as a tide pool).
Here’s an edited version of what someone named Dan Brunner wrote:
I think tide pools vary but are basically the same-1 source, (1 God) bound by laws of nature (God/humanity/morality) composed of bits of the ocean’s ecosystem (people/works). Tide pool waters are nature being apostolic; even if the ocean isn’t within eyesight, people are instinctively drawn to the marvel of and connection to it, and at the core are likely to believe the tide pool is evidence that there is something greater beyond.
There should be simple joy/peace in such a marvelous place, given space and freedom, there probably wouldn’t be conflict, however a turtle without good motive, without talent or merit can make itself king of a pond, can control and oppress other turtles to elevate oneself/opinion. With the myth that Yertle has achieved the height required for the greater vision, he’s given the power to create arguments around whose tide pool is better, bigger of more virtue; Yertle can burn Korans, yell God hates __ and misrepresent both history and what other Yertles say.In the book, supporters supported until they physically couldn’t, but sometimes, in real life, Yertle supporters crawl out of the pond and get on a bus. Each tide pool can have its own Yertle and Yertle-supporters….
The Yertles argue; supporters support. Like a commodity, the tide pool can be fortified, quartered, used, harvested and polluted. The spiritual draw is weakened, but we sit there content and convinced we are right, or we feel obligated to follow tribe/tradition/peers to the point where we end up like the water you describe – slimy, stinky and immune to the stench. It’s good to be part of the tide pool, but isn’t our quest to be towards the ever-fresh ocean? Could/would Yertle ever explain that, if it meant he would no longer be seen as king of the pond?
Join Dan and chime in on the discussion of the tide pools (ponds), the kings, and poor little Mac at the bottom of the Yertle tower (the Tower of Babel) whose burp saved turtles from the tyranny of Yertle.
A sermon on Wisdom in the face of the turmoil in the Middle East, comparing the tide pools of religion with the greater Ocean itself.
You’re invited to an evening with Bob Stevens, CEO of Ridgeview Medical Center, and other health care professionals and providers for a close look at The Affordable Care Act.
Robert Stevens, CEO, Ridgeview Medical Center
What is it? What is it not?
What does it do? What doesn’t it do?
Facts, information, and discussion about health care in America.
Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church, 145 Engler Boulevard, Chaska, MN.
A First Tuesday Dialogues program “examining critical public issues locally and globally.” Offered free to the general public in the service of the common good.
Views from the Edge 