The Donkey: a Kid’s Verse

“The Donkey” has been waiting for the right occasion. Dennis Aubrey’s photographs and commentary “The Ineffable” on Via Lucis Photography linking suffering and beauty led me fetch “The Donkey” from the “draft” file today for reasons hard to explain.

What I love about Dennis’s commentaries is that he refuses to engage in simplicities that reduce ambiguity to something manageable.

It led me this morning to The Passion (“suffering”) of Jesus, which begins Palm Sunday with a mistaken public perception: the Redeemer is a King who will vanquish the Roman “King” and who, perhaps, by his “Triumphal” Entry, will triumph over suffering.

The wish to escape suffering is, in some way, the kiss of death. There are Christian theologians today who argue that we should remove the cross as the central Christian faith symbol because it glorifies suffering, shifts the focus away from Jesus’ life, and contributes to the perpetuation of violence. But to do so would be to run and hide from the peculiar mystery of the human condition described by Dennis Aubrey’s piece – the ineffable and the beautiful in the face of suffering. The truth is in the paradox and the contradiction.

Steve’s poem brings all of that to mind. Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem to free it from its military-economic occupiers and from its own violent self. The Passion continues to arrest our deepest soul in the mystery of life in the face of suffering and the abyss of nothingness. As Dom Sebastian Moore observed, “the crucified Jesus is no stranger” – we put him there…and we are he.

A Poem for Palm Sunday: “The Donkey: a Kid’s Verse…”

The coats the folks are throwing down

sure make it hard for me to walk

especially carrying this clown

whose feet are almost to the ground.

“Hosannah King!” is all the talk,

but this guy seems to be as poor

as I am–no one could mistake

him for a Royal–he’s just a fake!

They wave palm branches, and they roar,

but my long ears can hear the real

parade across the city square:

the General, the Priests, the score

of war horses–the whole grand deal.

This pitiful parade will fail

to save a soul, and soon the yell

will change from “Hail!” to…”Kill!”

– Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 28, 2012

You should be ashamed of yourself!

Ever want to say OUT LOUD how you REALLY FEEL and why … without self-censorship?

Carolyn sent this to every Senator who voted against “gun safety” in the U.S. Senate.

Gun SAFETY

The Second Amendment to the Constitution was written by men whose notion of “gun” was a musket needing reloading after each shot.

With your recent votes on gun safety, you represented the interests of manufacturers of guns and ammunition, and voted against the safety of Americans, as well as against the expressed wish of 84% of us. You also spit on 26 graves in Newtown, CT, and on those of many, many thousands of other victims of gun violence.

You put forth high sounding phrases, and tell lies about the effects of the bills, but we know that your sole motivation was and is to keep collecting legalized but still immoral bribes from the gun manufacturers and to keep the votes of those few Americans who either think serious differences of opinions are best resolved by violence or threats of violence, or the subcategory who think they some day may need to solve differences of opinion with our democratically elected government by armed insurrection — that is, treason.

To be sure, very many (not all) Senators bury their dead consciences before taking the oath of office, and you are clearly one of the many who did. Therefore it behooves me to remind you that you should be heartily ashamed of yourself.

Carolyn and I went to Kindergarten together. Our families were closest of friends. She is now retired from the University of Pennsylvania Music Library, well-versed in the do’s and don’ts of ascribing motives. Carolyn is also VERY polite; her speech is routinely moderate and carefully considered, but she decided on this one to throw caution to the wind.

“I’m certain it changed no minds,” said Carolyn’s email to me, “but it was a relief to me somehow to ‘tell them off.’

“I sometimes quarrel with myself about things in it like ascribing motive — “…we know…”. But it certainly is how I feel. …[T]hen I reassure myself — there are many who make the same assumption. What’s more, I think it is a fair one.”

When you look at the fact that the 45 U.S. Senators who voted against “gun safety” received in excess of $8,000,000 in campaign contributions from the NRA and gun manufacturers, it’s hard not to go where Carolyn went. These Senators know that the Second Amendment would not have been breached by the bill sponsored by their two courageous Senate colleagues who chose to do the right thing despite their A ratings from the NRA.

FOX and the Scapegoat Mechanism

Today’s post on FOX News is inspired by Rene Girard’s “Mimetic” theory and an Aesop’s fable. First the fable.

THE FOX AND THE CROW

A Fox (read FOX) saw a Crow (the American people) fly off with a piece of cheese (real information) in its beak and settle on a branch in a tree.

“That’s for me, as I am a Fox,” said Master Reynard, and he walked up to the foot of the tree.

“Good day, Mistress Crow,” he cried. “How well you are looking today: how glossy your feathers; how bright your eye. I feel sure your voice must surpass that of other birds (parties, races, countries), just as your figure does; let me hear but one song from you that I may greet you as the Queen of all Birds.”

The Crow lifted up her head and began to caw her best, but the moment she opened her mouth, the piece of cheese fell to the ground, only to be snapped up by Master Fox.

“That will do,” said he. “That was all I wanted. In exchange for your cheese, I will give you a piece of advice for the future: ‘Do not trust flatterers.'”

THE SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Rene Girard’s theory of “mimetic” desire, mimetic rivalry, and the scapegoat mechanism explains the secret of the appeal and success of FOX News. The Fox takes the cheese it extols by flattering its viewers as the true patriots, the lovers of goodness and truth.

FOX News is the 21st Century voice of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI). Joe McCarthy and what came to be known as “McCarthyism” scared the American public in a search for neighbors who might be closeted communists or communist sympathizers until news anchor Edward R. Murrow ended McCarthy’s witch-hunt with a single newscast.

As in that sordid history of the Salem Witch Trials in which the Puritans were summoned by their magistrates and clergy to rid themselves of evil (see Kai Erickson’s The Wayward Puritans: a Study in the Sociology of Deviance), McCarthy’s hunt was a convention of social control to maintain the old fraying religious, political, cultural consensus. FOX resurrects those shameful chapters of the American experience.

There is no quicker way to rally people than to create a scapegoat (a shared enemy, the embodiment of evil). All it takes is a FOX to flatter the “Queen of all Birds” into dropping the Cheese.

Evil

Truth-teller

Truth-teller

I rarely use the word. But a conversation today makes me say it. Some things are just plain evil.

The ticket seller at today’s church fund-raiser said, “Obama’s trying to take all the guns away!”

“No, he’s not. No one’s proposing taking guns away. Nonsense. Nobody is arguing that. Where’d you hear that?”

“FOX!”

“FOX is not news. It’s right-wing propaganda.They’re the 10 Commandment station.

“Remind them of the Ninth Commandment. ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor’.”

Oil and the Gulf Coast

Chief Albert Naquin

Chief Albert Naquin

Return in a few days for the forthcoming commentary. I need time to sit with it before writing and publishing.

Yesterday Chief Albert Naquin of the Isle de Jean Charles tribe of coastal Louisiana and Kristina Peterson, pastor of the Blue Bayou Presbyterian Church of Gray, Louisiana came through Minneapolis on their way to a conference in Duluth. Kristina also works part-time as a researcher at the University of New Orleans’ Center for Hazards Assessment and Risk Technology, a Center that has maintained its integrity by refusing all funding from BP.

A three-hour interview with them will lead to a commentary on Views from the Edge on the effects of Deep Water Horizon, the ravaging of the coast by the oil companies since 1940, the distribution of BP settlement funds, and the life of these subsistence fisher people on a disappearing island.

For people AT HOME in Boston today

Areas of Greater Boston are in lock-down this morning because of the madness that lit the fires of hate and violence, whatever the reason(s) behind the bombings at the Boston Marathon. In times like this, I often turn to deeper sources for strength, hope, and peace. Veni Creator Spiritus is one of them. The second and third stanzas of the lyrics, attributed to Rabanus Maurus in the 9th Century C.E, become in 2013 a prayer for the people locked in their homes in Boston:

Thy blessed unction from above
is comfort, life, and fire of love.

Enable with perpetual light
the dullness of our blinded sight

Anoint and cheer our soiled face
with the abundance of thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home:
where thou art guide, no ill can come.

To hear the plainsong, beginning with the ringing of a bell, Click Come, Holy Spirit, Our Souls Inspire.

Gabbie Giffords: “they looked over their shoulders”

“I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done,” Giffords wrote. “… I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. … I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say, ‘You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.'”

The former Congresswoman (AZ) is still recovering from the assassination attempt that left her with serious brain injuries and caused her to vacate her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The quote above is from her Op Ed piece in the New York Times. Click “A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip” to read the entire piece. Here’s a further excerpt:

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that others might be spared their agony.

A prescription for spiritual health

Video

A sermon on forgiveness as releasing or letting go preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN April 7, 2013. The sermon is indebted to Professor Robert Kegan, neo-Piagetian psychologist at Harvard University and Professor Mona Gustafson Affinito, Southern Connecticut State University Professor Emerita and author of Forgiving One Page at a Time and other books on the theology and psychology of forgiveness.

Interview with Chief Albert Naquin tomorrow

Isle de Jean Charles Band

Isle de Jean Charles Band

Tomorrow morning Chief Albert Naquin of the Isle de Jean Charles Band, coastal Louisiana, will spend several hours at our home here in Chaska.

The Chief is one his way to Duluth with Kris Peterson, a mutual friend and environmental activist pastor and researcher with the University of New Orleans Center for Hazard Assessment, Response, and Technology. Kris and her husband, Dick Krajeski, were guest speakers at First Tuesday Dialogues, a community program of Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church, following the explosion of Deep Water Horizon.

Return here for a post later tomorrow on the interview with Chief Naquin re: the current state of affairs on Isle de Jean Charles three years after Deep Water Horizon.

Bullying and Cowardice in the Senate

Yesterday’s vote in the U.S. Senate comes down to this: cowardice in the face of gun-lobby bullying.

How did they bully?

A well-funded misinformation campaign by the NRA, gun-manufacturer’s lobby, and FOX alleging – although the bill itself explicitly prohibits it – that the moderate compromise proposal would mean a “national registry” of gun owners and erosion of the Second Amendment. The fact that the bill’s co-sponsors had “A” ratings by the NRA made no difference. What makes a difference is money and profits. And the difference they make is fear.

Why were the Senators cowards?

They put their campaign financing ahead of moral principle. According to President Obama, speaking to the American people yesterday, NOT ONE of the Senators could give him or Vice President Biden a reason for opposing the legislation…other than “politics“. Not one.

90% of Democrats voted in favor. 90% of Republicans voted against it.

Polls show that 90% of the American people SUPPORT universal background checks and limiting the size of magazines.

Democrat Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) broke ranks with their Party by voting against.

Republican Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) broke ranks with their Party to vote in favor.

BREAKING NEWS: Last night former Republican Presidential Candidate Senator John McCain, joined by Senators Collins, Kirk, and Toomey, invited the other caucus members of the Grand Old Party (GOP) – “the party of Abraham Lincoln” – to join them for an evening at Ford’s Theater for a private showing of the film “Lincoln” and discussion of how he and the children and teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School died.