Category Archives: Uncategorized

Exhaustion

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I’m exhausted…spiritually exhaused. They’re exhausting me…all the emails…and the voice mails telling me that if I don’t give one more dime one more time…my candidate is going to lose…and the world will come to an end…and it’s going to be… my fault.

Anyone else feeling that way?

I’m also torn up inside. I’m trying to be civil…trying to understand why this election is even close…and trying not to be haughty and naughty.

I’m missing my afternoon nap. I love my afternoon nap with Maggie and Sebastian, my buddies here at home. They still sleep like logs…the way I used to…before the Presidential debates and emails that clog my inbox and the phone calls from chummy best friends I’ve never met who want just one more donation of “just $5” so so-and-so knows s/he can count on me.

It’s an illusion. Anyone else feeling that way?

Meantwhile…between the emails and the phone calls…I visit the dying…in hospice care…who live on the edge of existence itself…who sip comfort from the deeper wells. My spirit is strangely quieted. Strangely calmed.  We sit in silence. I read a psalm or two. We…the dying…and I are refreshed. Ready for a nap.

I go home and stumble upon a prayer by Wendell Berry “To the Holy Spirit”:

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,

Who in necessity and in bounty wait,

Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,

By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.”

 

Wendell Berry, Collected Poems, North Point Press, 1964.

Why the President Didn’t Ring the Bell

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Did anyone else feel the sober tone of the President last Wednesday?

He seemed tired, ill-prepared, scattered, aloof.

It looked to this observer as though he did not want to be there, but for different reasons than the pundits suppose. I saw a President who was tired of the nonsense, the posturing, the game in the Charlie the Tuna ad – “Just because it looks good doesn’t mean it is good.” He knew that the solutions proposed by his opponent were the problem that brought America to its knees on near economic collapse in 2008, and that the Republican Party set its sights on insuring the failure of his presidency instead of working together to solve the nation’s problems.

The President is a kind man. His civility is offensive to his enemies and his friends alike. He doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. But his belief in doing to others as he would have them to him is more than a throw-line.  At the Democratic National Convention, he had refused to follow the crowd in shouting down Gov. Romney as if he were evil incarnate. Even after Clint Eastwood had put in Obama’s mouth words that he never speaks (“Shut up”), the President chose not to retaliate. He hushed the convention delegates from playing tit-for-tat. He told them not to go there, to rise above it, incurring the anger of a number of party faithful who wanted him to fight with brass knuckles.

Last Wednesday President Obama’s face and demeanor seemed to say, “I want to be somewhere else. I hate this. I hate this charade. There has to be a better way than sound bytes, memorizing one-line shots to fire across each others’ bows, the twisting of fact and the avoidance of the deep philosophical questions that keep a President awake in the night.”

There are no simple solutions to America’s current problems.  They’ve been building for decades. There are no magic wands. The problems are moral, spiritual, and structural. This President knows that reality is different from the one we would like to make up. When such a one sees the complexity, it’s hard to step out on a staged, phony debate that squeezes the world into the nut-sized phrases and slogans that ring the bell that makes Pavlov’s dog salivate.

Could the stage on which he stood – on the night of his real wedding anniversary – have struck him as the opposite of reality itself?  Maybe that’s why he didn’t ring the bell.

The First Duty of Love

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Paul Johannes Tillich

This morning’s crossword quote is from theologian Paul Tillich:

“The first duty of love is to listen.”

To learn more about Paul Tillich click THIS LINK.

Most weeks I return to the works of Tillich. Paul Tillich has rescued many a faith, including my own, when doubt had been mis-perceived to be faith’s enemy.

“Doubt is not the enemy of faith; it is one element of faith.”

– Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith

Tillich’s statement about faith and doubt go hand-in-glove with listening as the first duty of love. If you missed “Staying Together” on Views from the Edge’s, scroll down.  Steve’s poem puts these two Tillich quotes into practice of listening. Here’s a sip:

“Listen, learn, respect, rephrase, repeat

before you even start to speak.”

What Divinity Is

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Steve Shoemaker wrote this in response to Wallace Stevens’ poem “What Is Divinity” posted today on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Click HERE for the Wallace Stevens poem and the Stevens’ bio posted today on The Writer’s Almanac.

         What Divinity Is

    (A response to Wallace Stevens)

…

The Madonna who pulls back just enough

of swaddling cloth to show the Magi what

had bled so recently on our behalf.

The twelve-year-old who finds a place to sit

among the wise (but disobedient

to both his searching, mystified parents.)

The  young man with the twelve who heals, confronts

the proud, turns water into wine, asks who

is without sin?  The one who shows the way

right here on earth to live in peace with neighbors,

enemies even…a human who

took bread and fish and shared it with the crowd…

the man who died alone crying for God.

 

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Oct. 2, 2012

Staying Together

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Looking for advice on how to stay together? A wise old owl speaks in verse this morning:

It takes two, of course, since either one

is free to leave at any time.

But if both are strong and firm to come

and work together, you may find

problems can be solved.  Sit side-by-side

and face the issue–not your mate.

Listen, learn, respect, rephrase, repeat

before you even start to speak.  

If the conflict is not solved, you still

have both shown that you have the will,

faith, and hope to stay together.  Love

will not come floating from above:

love is built by kindnesses and care–

hard work can save you from despair.

– Steve Shoemaker, host of Keepin’ the Faith with Steve Shoemaker on WILL, Urbana, Illinois, celebrating 47 years of marriage to Nadja.

America and “the Fall”

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WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange addressed the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. His speech is reminiscent of American theologian William Stringfellow who declared in 1968 that we were already living under the rule of “extra-constitutional powers and authorities” that operate covertly in the shadows of democracy.

Watch WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaking by satellite from Ecuador where he lives in exile. Unedited Politics deserves credit for posting this.  Of particular interest are references to President Obama that hold his Administration accountable while seeming to grant some credit and holding out hope that he might change things.

Julian Assange Speech to UN General Assembly: “US Trying to Erect National Secrecy Regime” – 9/26/12.

William Stringfellow

William Stringfellow – author, lay theologian, lawyer among the poor and defense attorney for Bishop James Pike and the Berrigan Brothers (Frs. Phil and Dan) – wrote the following in 1973:

“In this world as it is, in the era of time, in common history – in the epoch of the Fall, as the Bible designates this scene every principality has the elemental significance of death, notwithstanding contrary appearances. This is eminently so with respect to nations, for nations are, as Revelation indicates, the archetypical principalities… All virtues which nations elevate and idolize – military prowess, material abundance, technological sophistication, imperial grandeur, high culture, racial pride, trade, prosperity, conquest, sport, language, or whatever – are

subservient to the moral presence of death in the nation. And it is the same with the surrogate nations – the other principalities like corporations and conglomerates, ideologies and bureaucracies, and authorities and institutions of every name and description…

“The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America… Since the climax of America’s glorification as a nation – in the ostensible American victory in World War II, most lucidly and aptly symbolized in Hiroshima – Americans have become so beleaguered by anxiety and fatigue, so bemused and intimidated, so beset by a sense of impotence and by intuitions of calamity, that they have, for

the most part, been consigned to despair… Racial conflict has been suppressed by an elaborate apartheid; products which supposedly mean abundance turn out to contaminate or jeopardize life; the environment itself is rendered hostile; there is a pervasive Babel; privacy is a memory because surveillance is ubiquitous; institutional coercion of human beings has proliferated relentlessly. Whatever must be said of earlier times, in the past quarter century, America has become a technological totalitarianism in which hope, in its ordinary connotations, is being annihilated.”

– An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, William Stringfellow, 1973. (Bolded print added by Views from the Edge)

WikiLeaks at the United Nations 9/26/12 – a Reflection

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Watch WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaking by satellite from Ecuador where he lives in political assylum. Unedited Politics deserves credit for posting this. It’s chilling. But it’s important. Of particular interest are references to President Obama that both hold him accountable and seem to hold out hope he might still do what lies beyond the power of the Oval Office.

After watching the video, read William Stringfellow’s words in An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, published in 1973. Stringfellow argued that “extra-constitutional” powers and authorities had already walked off the republic.

Julian Assange Speech to UN General Assembly: “US Trying to Erect National Secrecy Regime” – 9/26/12.

William Stringfellow – author, lay theologian, lawyer among the poor and defense attorney for Bishop James Pike and the Berrigan Brothers (Frs. Phil and Dan) – wrote the following in 1973:

“In this world as it is, in the era of time, in common history – in the epoch of the Fall, as the Bible designates this scene every principality has the elemental significance of death, notwithstanding contrary appearances. This is eminently so with respect to nations, for nations are, as Revelation indicates, the archetypical principalities… All virtues which nations elevate and idolize – military prowess, material abundance, technological sophistication, imperial grandeur, high culture, racial pride, trade, prosperity, conquest, sport, language, or whatever – are

subservient to the moral presence of death in the nation. And it is the same with the surrogate nations – the other principalities like corporations and conglomerates, ideologies and bureaucracies, and authorities and institutions of every name and description…

“The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America… Since the climax of America’s glorification as a nation – in the ostensible American victory in World War II, most lucidly and aptly symbolized in Hiroshima – Americans have become so beleaguered by anxiety and fatigue, so bemused and intimidated, so beset by a sense of impotence and by intuitions of calamity, that they have, for

the most part, been consigned to despair… Racial conflict has been suppressed by an elaborate apartheid; products which supposedly mean abundance turn out to contaminate or jeopardize life; the environment itself is rendered hostile; there is a pervasive Babel; privacy is a memory because surveillance is ubiquitous; institutional coercion of human beings has proliferated relentlessly. Whatever must be said of earlier times, in the past quarter century, America has become a technological totalitarianism in which hope, in its ordinary connotations, is being annihilated.”

– An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, William Stringfellow, 1973. (Bolded print added by Views from the Edge)

Color and Saint Austremoine (PJ McKey)

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Via Lucis often makes my day. Today was one of them. Click and enjoy.

Color and Saint Austremoine (PJ McKey).

Marriage and Old Love

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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.