Category Archives: Uncategorized

Time for NFL Players to Walk Out

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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!

“Oops!” on H2O

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H2O – a Verse published an hour ago was missing a important LINE:

The missing line is printed below in bold. Apologies to Steve. My bad!

1% of water

on the earth we can drink

(all the rest is salty.)

Since our bodies, we think,

are more than half water,

then thinking is faulty

that will waste and pollute.

H2O

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1% of water

on the earth we can drink

(all the rest is salty.)

Since our bodies, we think,

are more than half water,

then thinking is faulty

that will waste and pollute.

…

U.S. Senator Paul Simon, b.1928, d.2003

Senator Simon said

the crops need to be fed

that life-giving liquid.

Can we be resolute,

look into the future,

change wasteful behavior?

…

Will the glaciers all melt

and the deserts expand?

Will there always be drought?

Will our rivers run dry?

Cumulus clouds

Will there never be snow?

And will anything grow

with no clouds in the sky?

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Sept. 26, 2012

A Back Porch Conversation on Human Needs Satisfaction

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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).

Needs satisfaction rating: scale of 1 to 5 (5 = fully satisfied)

Subsistence              1 2 3 4 5                                           

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!

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David of “In the company of hysterical women” in New Zealand has determined to “live below the line” (i.e. poverty line). Here’s the Day 2 report. Views from the Edge posts this here because of the obvious connection with the showing of the new film “The LINE: Poverty in America” next Tuesday.

American Democracy – Trevor Potter, Bill Moyers, and Stephen Colbert

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Exercise Your Franchise

….

Voting  is our duty,

One person-one vote.

Together we matter,

Each voter take note!

– Steve Shoemaker, acrostic verse written in early morning hours, Sept. 25, 2012.

It’s all about citizenship. Trevor Potter said it last week on Bill Moyers & Company (PBS). He had said it earlier in interviews with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.

Go back and click his name to see Mr. Potter’s full professional biography on the Bill Moyers and Company website. Here’s the beginning of his bio and why the Moyers interview with Mr. Potter is important to us.

A former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter has been fighting for campaign finance reform through the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit organization he founded to track and pursue legal cases related to campaign finance, political communication and government ethics at the federal, state and local level.

Mr. Potter is a Republican who believes that the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision threatens democracy itself. In the interview with Bill Moyers, he states as clearly that a democratic republic’s integrity depends on the nation’s voters seeing themselves as citizens. For Potter, citizenship – which means putting the larger good above one’s own narrow self-interest – is seriously at risk. Campaign financial reform is not the whole answer, but it is essential to democracy itself.

Click on Bill Moyers & Company to watch the conversation in part or in whole.

The Line

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In the Company of Hysterical Women from New Zealand published “Live below the Line: Day One” this morning as we in Minnesota, USA are launching a press release to announce  the screening of a film on the new face of poverty in America. Click HERE to read In the Company of Hysterical Women’s post.

Here is today’s press release for “The LINE: Poverty in America. It’s not what you think”:

CHASKA, Minn., Sept. 24, 2012 – The new face of poverty in America is the subject of a new documentary film called The Line. The public is invited to a free screening of the movie at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minn. on Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. CST in conjunction with the premiere in Washington D.C. and sites all over the United States.

Logo for “The Line”

The Line is a groundbreaking documentary from Sojourners, a national Christian, non-partisan organization committed to faith in action for social justice, and Emmy Award-winning producer Linda Midgett. It features real people, their struggles, and their inspiring and creative responses to the challenges they face. The goal of the film is to break through traditional political divides, foster honest dialogue, and refocus our society on the common good.

Shepherd of the Hill Pastor Gordon C. Stewart will host a discussion immediately following the 40-minute film as part of First Tuesday Dialogues, a community forum held at the church from October through May each year that examines critical public issues locally and globally.

“Poverty is a faith issue. When I learned about the film I thought we should show that here. It fits our First Tuesday Dialogues program mission,” said Pastor Stewart. “What is more critical than poverty? The middle class has been slipping for a long time now. The problems are structural. Hand outs – traditional Christian charity – don’t address the deeper problem.”

Working through Sojourners magazine, Sojourners’ website sojo.net, public speaking events, media outreach, educational resources, books, advocacy, and trainings, Sojourners is an internationally influential voice at the intersection of faith, politics, and culture.

Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church is located at 145 Engler Blvd. in Chaska, Minn. 55318.  www.shepherdofthehillchurch.com

Learning the word “Reflection”

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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

The World through a Poet’s Eyes

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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:

  • Wislawa Syzmborska,
  • W.S. Merwin,
  • Charles Simic,
  • Mary Oliver, and
  • Nazim Hizkmet.

“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”

Yertle the Turtle and the 47%

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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.