Click on: Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati talks of racism and mesmerizes students at South. This man is a legend in his own time Minnesota. He deserves all the air time the world will give him. He has spoken at Shepherd of the Hill Church‘s First Tuesday Dialogues on the historical roots of the colony at Jamestown, and is a highly esteemed colleague and friend.
Pond with morning mist evaporating
A newspaper reporter asked me some questions. We were preparing for a First Tuesday Dialogues series on sustainability called “The Good Green Earth.”
The series would bring five speakers, including spokespeople from the Gulf of Mexico deeply engaged in hazard assessment, technology, and recovery in the wake of Deepwater Horizon.
What’s your sense of the possibilities and trends for sustainability in your work now and what does it look like in the future?
I responded that one of my inspirations is Paul Tillich, according to whom:
Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name ‘God’. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
The Spider’s Web with Morning Dew
My calling as a pastor was to help us here at Shepherd of the Hill and here in Chaska literally “go out of our mind.”
Because the collective mind that has delivered us to this place is killing us and destroying the balance of nature.
My calling is to shake us loose from the mental and spiritual chains of species superiority, My calling is to shake us loose from the mental and spiritual chains of species superiority, the mistaken notion that we – humankind – are the exception to Nature. It’s a call to help re-shape our understanding of ourselves as participants rather than owners, participants rather than conquerors or manipulators, members of a diverse natural order of interdependent life. The spiritual resources are there in Hebrew scripture, in the New Testament epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, and in the ancient respectful spirituality of some of America’s indigenous people. By “going out of our mind” we will come back into a the web of sanity and fullness.
What factors do you see pushing towards or against sustainability?
Historian of science and technology Lynn White said flat-out that the root problem of the sustainability crisis is religious or spiritual, and so is the solution.
So, number one, we have to address the old and emerging questions about what Tillich called “Ultimate Reality” and the meaning of our existence. We have to go into labor to set the new theological and anthropological paradigm free from of the old destructive thinking. What we are beginning to find as we go into this spiritual labor is that this more respectful, more holistic way of thinking is not new at all – it’s the older paradigm that got side-tracked by greed and pride.
Building of the Tower of Babel – Master of the Duke of Bedford
God has “come down,” as it were, to frustrate our attempts at building the secure city called Babel; God is making us nomads again who recognize that we and the Earth are already full, not empty. Every settlement comes to nothing. Every tower built as a monument to pride falls. And number two, and I’m afraid there is no other way to say this – we will never make it without leaving behind the economic system of greed. Capitalism is killing us.
The consolidation of wealth and corporate power have a stranglehold on national, state, and local public policy. The members of the boards of the oil companies sit on the boards of General Motors and Ford. So it’s no wonder that U.S. federal policies on transportation are car-friendly and suspicious of mass-transit, regardless of a car’s gas mileage. Osalescence is built in because you can’t sell something five years from now if the old model is still like new. Our health care and the FDA are in the palm of the insurance and drug company’s so that it’s illegal to go across the border to fill your prescription in Canada.
Finally, the sustainability of the human species itself is, I believe, imperiled by chemical alterations that are meant to do good but that, in the long run, make us biologically less resistant and resilient. Our natural immune systems are being weakened by pesticides in the food we eat and by the pharmaceuticals we ingest from the drug store.
Black tar heroin – U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
We have become a nation of addicts. Addicted to illusionary dreams of abundance. Addicted to prescription drugs. Addicted to fast food and faster short-term solutions. Even instant gratification is too slow. Controlled by advertizing that sells us prescription drugs that’ll give you an immediate erection but may send you to the emergency room if it last more than four hours,or drugs that may ruin your liver or land you in a casket, and the real pushers are not the petty drug peddlers on Minneapolis’s North Side. The real pushers are legal. They’re given license, while those who would shut them down are looked upon as crackpots and throw-backs who are opposed to progress.
So…what’s stopping real progress, a more Earth-friendly way of organizing human affairs that embraces reality itfself, “Being-Itself”? The intransigent, legal, institutionalized arrangements of power and money, on the one hand, and our willing compliance with the de-democratization of America that salutes the system of greed. We have to learn again, and we are – very slowly – pushing and screaming, that “the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”. We have turned it over to the forces of greed and destruction.
The Good, Good Earth: Our Island Home
We need to recover the gratitude and spiritual paradigm of a natural abundance in order to push against the false promises of those who would have us believe that our lives and the world would be empty without all the stuff that ends up in the landfills or washes ashore in the estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico.
So……Chime in, friends. How would you answer the reporter’s questions?
President Gerald Ford addressing the nation on energy policy
Click HERE to be blissfully inspired by dynamic speaker President Gerald Ford’s speech on energy policy and Congress “doing nothing to end energy dependence,” including a call for “a windfall profits tax on oil companies,” complete with equally dynamic props. “Nothing has been done since January!” “We must get on with the job RIGHT NOW. Thank you, and good night.” – 1975
Give Us Barabbas
There are two Jesuses – two different Sons of the Father. One is executed; the other is released. Both are with us still.
Here’s the sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN, a place for the mind and heart on YouTube:
YouTube: “”
You who hold us in the hollow of your hand,
Who hold us in the curve of a mother’s arms,
Whose flesh is the flesh of hills and hummingbirds and angleworms,
Whose skin is the leathered skin of the barge-toter and the old Indian Chief and the smooth skin of a newborn babe,
Whose color is the color of the zebra and the brown bear and the green grass snake,
Whose hair is the aurora borealis, the rainbow and nebulae,
Whose eyes sometimes shine like the evening stars, and then like fireflies, and then again like an open wound,
Whose touch is the touch of life and the touch of death,
Whose name is everyone’s, each and all alike, for just a fleeting moment on the shore of time, the hem of your eternity:
Grant us to see ‘tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.’ Let Your healing balm salve the tender wounds of grief and turn the tears of mourning into tears of unshakable joy.
God of the sparrow, God of the whale, God of the pruning hook: You ask only that we do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with You. Lead us to take the claims of justice, mercy and humility into the palaces and chambers of power where public policy is made and administered. Give us confidence that, though truth still sways upon the gallows, yet it is truth alone that is strong.
Let our lives flow in endless song above earth’s lamentations. Let no storm shake our inmost calm. No tempest dim our vision. No noisy gongs or clanging cymbals of ignorant armies clashing by night drown out the gentle sounds of the flute and the dulcimer, the quiet chords of love.
For this work and this alone, raise us up on eagles’ wings to follow Wamble Pok-he, our lead eagle now departed, and to see him standing there, like old Joe Hill, as big as life and smiling with his eyes. “What they could not kill,” says Joe, says Doug, “went on to organize, went on to organize.” “I did not die,” says he. “I did not die. Where workers strike and organize,” says he, “You’ll see Doug Hall,” says he, “We’ll see Doug Hall,” says he. How can we can we keep from singing? Amen.
– GCS, pastoral prayer at Doug Hall’s Memorial Celebration, Wabasha, MN.
Stephanie Autumn and Clyde Bellecourt honoring Doug with Indian blanket
Doug was the definition of “the street lawyer.” The farewell to Doug was attended by the people he had defended over many years, the founders of the American Indian Movement, African-American activists, U.S. District Court Judges, MN Supreme Court Justices, Indian drummers, and “America’s troubadour, Larry Long.” Doug was an important figure in the standoff between the federal troops and the AIM members who occupied Wounded Knee. He served as Director of the Legal Rights Center, and, in the last decade of his life was a leading figure in the state-wide movement for restorative justice. He was the Honorary Chair of the Minnesota Restorative Justice Movement.
Joe Hill, Swedish-American labor organizer, songwriter, (1879-1915)
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me.
Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead.”
“I never died,” says he,
“I never died,” says he.
“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,Him standing by my bed.
“They framed you on a murder charge.”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”
“The copper bosses killed you, Joe,They shot you, Joe,” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man.”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die,” Says Joe,
“I didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes, Joe says,
“What they forgot to kill Went on to organize,
Went on to organize.”
“Joe Hill ain’t dead,” he says to me,“Joe Hill ain’t never died.
Where working men are out on strike,
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side.”
“From San Diego up to MaineIn every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organize,”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill.”
Says he, “You’ll find Joe Hill.”
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last nightAlive as you or me.
Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead.”
“I never died,” says he,
“I never died,” says he.
Kosuke Koyama – RIP
The late Japanese Christian theologian Kosuke Koyama (click HERE for NYT obituary) said, “There is only one sin, and it is exceptionalism.” Koyama was baptized during the bombing raids of Tokyo in WW II. As the bombs exploded and the building burned around the church, Kosuke’s pastor looked him in the eye. “Kosuke,” he said, “You are a disciple of Jesus Christ. You must love your enemy… even the Americans.”Koyama first saw the myth of exceptionalism in the Japan of his youth where the Emperor and the Divine were hand-in-glove. Japan was an exceptional people that could not fail. In his later years, following his retirement from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, “Ko,” as his friends called him with great affection moved to Minneapolis.
During the 15 years I knew him, he shared his greatest sadness that the ideology of exceptionalism he had experienced as a boy in Japan he now saw in the United States.
Today in 2012 political candidates cunningly appeal to the myth, believing that doing so will rally true believers to cast their votes for them as the truest believers in America. Steve Shoemaker sent this piece today.
Verse – Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL May 2, 2012
The U.S.A. actually is just one
country out of quite many “under God.”
It would be wrong to think the summer sun
shines only on our farms. In other lands
the children grow as strong and bright as here,
and elders have respect around the world
(in fact, in many places they don’t fear
such loneliness and high cost of health care.)
Other countries are also free and brave, and have fine soldiers ready to defend
their shores. It’s sweet and seemly that we give
our lives to save our families, friends and land,
but we must not think we’re exceptional
and forget, too, the international.
Socrates is reported to have said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Judas' conscience - G.E Nikolaj (1891)
Any honest self-examination knows that to be human is to experience betrayal. We betray and we are betrayed.
Would it help to think of God as being closer to our betrayals than we ever dare to be?
Would it help, perhaps, to see your betrayal of others and your self-betrayals, as scenes in a drama with many different scenes and acts, a drama bigger than betrayal? A drama of One who knows our nature. Our fears. Our dashed hopes. Our un-trustworthiness. The side of us so ugly that we dare not look it in the eye – the side that, for thes moment, cannot imagine the larger dramatic piece and the hopeful theme we have forsaken: the persistence of love, of forgiveness, of life out of death, the resurrection of love itself…here and now…not just then and there.
There are two traditions about Judas, disciple of Jesus whose betrayal has been handed down across the ages, the scapegoat Betrayer we don’t want to be.
According to the first story In Matthew, “when Judas, [Jesus’] betrayer, saw that [Jesus] was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver…and throwing down the pieces of silver…he departed; and he went and hanged himself.” The first story puts Judas at the end of his own noose. But there’s an altogether different tradition according to which Judas exploded from within while walking across a field. In this story, the Betrayer is a walking dead man, walking with such self-hatred – a self-loathing so profound – that he could not live with himself, and as he was walking, “all his bowels gushed out” (Acts of the Apostles 1:18).
A few of us have attempted suicide. Most of us have not All of us, if we’re honest, know something of what it’s like to walk through life with unsettled stomachs and intestines. The prescriptions we take for upset stomachs or roiling bowels cannot touch the issue of betrayal when we have betrayed or have been betrayed.
But – stay with me a moment longer -here’s the thing I’ve come to see. The word for “gift” in New Testament Greek is didomi. The word most often translated “betrayal” is paradidomi – to give over – para (over or across) and didomi (gift). Tradition is handing over the gift from one generation to the next.
Interesting…strange, even…that these words are so closely related. In Christian tradition, Jesus is the great Gift. Judas, the Betrayer, unwittingly passes on the gift, gives the gift over, hands the gift over… to the authorities…and to us…with a kiss.
With Judas’ kiss the story of Jesus the betrayed becomes OUR story: the story of the Betrayer and the Betrayed, the tradition handed over to us across the millenia.
Betrayal Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, 2012
J. seemed a friend–he chose to join the group.
We trusted him. We let him keep the purse
we held in common. We would meet for supper
often–yes, our hands would touch, we’d curse
the same opponents, be amazed and shake
our heads at miracles. We later learned
he stole, and made a secret deal to take
the silver from the Priests–from grace he turned
to greed.
Soon after, he was overcome
with shame: he threw the money at their feet.
J. left us then, he had himself to blame
and took his life: Disciple of Defeat.
The greatest miracle of all he’d miss
because he betrayed Jesus with a kiss.
Betrayal is not the most importance scene in life. Stick around for the next scenes and acts that transform the laments of examined lives into anthems to the One who is closer to our betrayals than we ever dare to be. The examine life is worth living.
Interesting post from David Earle in New Zealand
Saturday “Views from the Edge” re-posted David’s piece on the Bishop with dreadlocks, originally posted on “In the Company of Hysterical Women.”
Today’s piece offers an interesting personal reflection by someone who left the church in disgust because it had become insular and irrelevant to the larger world, returned to it because of marriage, and now rejoices that the walls may be tumbling down.
Oakritchie left a comment on the earlier posting of the Bishop with dreadlocks that merits a thoughtful response. I’m still working on it. Perhaps David, too, will choose to weigh in on Oakritchie’s observation about “us” and “them”.
Thank you, David, Oakritchie, and all of you who have so thoughtfully engaged the conversation.
This post is by historian and friend Gary Severson. I asked him to put his reflection in writing not because it says someting nice about you-know-who, but because I thought it should reach a larger audience. Views from the Edge added the photos of Atlas holding up the world to supplement Gary’s commentary.
Rockefeller Center Plaza with sculpture of Atlas
“When in NYC this past week I made my way to Rockefeller Center just to see a part of the city I had never seen. As it turns out my NYC experience in Rockefeller Center related to Gordon’s sermon this morning, “The Estate Sale & 1000 years”. His sermon related to the impermanence of many things in our society including its architecture. Gordon was surprised to see the estate sale he attended taking place at an “art deco’ style house that was totally out-of-place in a neighborhood of Tudor houses. This is a style that has disappeared compared to more traditional styles.
“As I arrived in Rockefeller Center Plaza I was taken by the immense architecture of places like NBC, News Corp., Time Life, Citibank etc. The tremendous sense of the power represented by these buildings was overwhelming in the sense that they represent a huge influence in terms of their ability to generate propaganda about America.”These buildings are generally of a sterile style described as spires of steel & glass. I stopped to talk to a security guard and by his demeanor it was clear he even took on the arrogance these buildings exuded. I walked into another RC building where I saw a $137,000 necklace in a window display & saw the clerk inside & thought that isn’t a place I would be welcome in either. As I turned around I noticed a sign that said “Onassis Museum”. I went in and could see it was free admission and contained 100 or so priceless sculptures, tiles, metal work etc. from Greece & Rome.
“As I listen to Gordon’s sermon I realize I’d been experiencing what he is describing in terms of permanence and impermanence. These skyscrapers in Rockefeller Center will be imploded while these ancient artworks represent eternal ideas right here in the midst of the impermanence of these modern buildings. In fact the exhibit in the Aristotle Onassis Museum was about the changes taking place in the artwork of the period in the transition from paganism to Christianity.
“When I left I saw across the street St. Patrick’s Cathedral, built during the Civil War. It rivals the cathedrals of Europe. It stands out in stark contrast to the surrounding modern glass structures with its spires pointing 300 ft. into the air. I went in and again saw the amazing sanctuary with its 250 ft. ceiling & spectacular stained glass windows.
Saint Patrick Cathedral
“Here we have a building that is already 160 yrs. old and will outlast the surrounding towers of crystalized guilt, a reference to the attempt by modern man to deny his mortality by replacing traditional religious worship with the worship of Earthly money and power. Today’s sermon was a wonderful example for me of the connections we can make between our seeming separate spiritual & everyday lives to create meanings that allow us to gain a deeper understanding of who we are.”
– Gary Severson, Chaska, MN
Atlas and St. Patrick Cathedral
“He Always Taught Her to Respect Herself”
Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL – April 24, 2012
A college-age daughter does not enjoy
hearing that her dad was quite the
when her age.
She can see him in a boy
that she is with: so tall and gaunt, a grin,
a joke, a casual touch roué. But now a man
quite married to her mom–could he have been
a thong-collector? (No, back then they called
them “panties…”)
Now a lawyer, then he studied
seduction, Casanova, de Sade?
Now he’s a Deacon in the Church– absurd!
“Views from the Edge” note: Steve is not a Deacon and he’s not a lawyer. He’s a retired Presbyterian minister, poet, and activist living on the prairie near the University of Illinois. Steve was Pastor and Director of the McKinley Presbyterian Church and Foundation at the University of Illinois. He concluded his ministry as Executive Director of the University YMCA at the University of Illinois, a vigorous campus student center as big in heart and mind as Steve. His voice is heard every Sunday evening as host of “Keepin’ the Faith” an interview show on the University of Illinois’s radio station, WILL AM – Illinois Public Radio.
Views from the Edge 