Thank goodness for the recent discussions of surveillance in the US. I find them simultaneously encouraging and missing the point. The Powers-that-be are currently struggling to give answers for these recent leaks. The internet has become so dangerous that one Pentagon official said
“We have developed a full range of capabilities to operate in the cyber-domain, but we are not going to talk about it.” He emphasized the “same rules of engagement” apply in cyberattacks as with other targets the U.S. military might strike.
What was once held in secret is now free for all to see, which is exactly what Edward Snowden wanted to happen. In an interview, Snowden said “You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process.” His conscience was getting to him, unlike the US, which like all empires is numbed to the abuse, violence, and heartbreak across the land and the world.
Let us pray for Edward Snowden:
God of the Earth,
Thank you for prophets amongst us willing to challenge the status quo because of their compassionate hearts. Guide and Comfort Snowden as he is in Exile in China. He was led by your spirit to release these documents; help us to follow you in this truth. Protect his family from government officials and the police, and may they live productive lives. Help us as citizens of your kin-dom to follow you in all that we do, that we may further your kin-dom of love, truth, and justice. Let us not be numb to the world around us or to focus too much on ourselves, but on others.
A conversation aroused in my house about a week ago after my roommate watched the film, Bidder 70. She brought up that we can get comfortable marching in protests, joining in on sit-ins, and supporting boycotts. Tim DeChristopher, Bidder 70, took creative risks to slow down the process of oil and natural gas fracking that was going to take over some beautiful and untouched land in Utah. DeChristopher’s activity had him in conflict with the US government and after nearly two years in prison, he was released two months ago. Found in a similar situation are three non-violent anti-nuclear weapon protestors in Nevada. Their charges have been escalating from violations to breaking federal laws. Thus changing their prison sentences from 6 months to more than 15 years! Empires throughout the centuries have used tactics like this, cutting off the head of leaders, to put fear into others who have the same concerns for justice. Catherine Keller authored a beautiful text titled On the Mystery in which she describes uses of power in this way:
We are radically interdependent, we are unbearably vulnerable to each other. We are in each other’s power. But power does not mean dominance. Power is manifest concretely in the flow of influence, the flow of me into your experience, of you into mine, by which we consciously and unconsciously affect each other. We may define power as the energy of influence: so it can be human or inhuman, benign or destructive. Power is that process whereby causal influence has effect: whereby any being has its effect on another (80).
If power is neither inherently good or bad as Keller points out, how can we use our “energy of influence” to encourage good social and political change while those currently with more power use it for the sake of dominance and control? This question stumps me, but I do know that it must come from the bottom up rather than from the top. Those on the bottom struggle with what sociologists name interlocking oppressions. These oppressions look slightly different depending on what culture your located, but these are the people who have no power of influence because their voices are squashed by the powerful.
In the US, WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) males still make up the majority of the rich and powerful. The breakdown of categories or traits that are dependent on oppression and power include: race, nationality, sexuality, gender, disability, and class. Of course, there can be several more factors that influence oppression, but these are much more systemic and prevalent ones in the US. Although, sociologists, rightly focus, on human persons in society, other oppressions exist beyond the person. These include the way that we treat animals, our earth-dwelling-fellows, and the Earth herself.
If Keller is right about the interconnectedness of all things, then this must be true for how we treat the Earth and other creatures. According to those who follow the changing climate of the Earth, those who will be most affected by melting ice and expanding oceans will not be the those in the US or China, but third world countries who do not aid in global warming. The ill effects of us overusing the Earth’s resources does not directly effect us, but “the least of these.” If this interrelatedness is found in oppressive structures then its opposite should be true. Mainly that structures of justice helps to lift up society in whatever way it is performed. Thus, if we start constructing a new path for justice where the Earth is treated with dignity and respect, then may be we can treat others in the same way. Leonardo Boff, a liberation theologian, poses an interesting connexion in Francis of Assissi: A Model for Human Liberation in the form of a story of Franciscan Spirituality.
On one occasion, Brother Bonaventure, the gardener of the friary at the Portiuncula, climbing Mount Subasio with a brother from a faraway country, was asked what Franciscan spirituality is. Brother Bonaventure, a simple and very spiritual man, in a sweet voice made more so by his Umbrian accent, responded: “Franciscan spirituality is Saint Francis. And who is Saint Francis? It is enough to utter his name and everyone knows who he is. Saint Francis was a man of God. And because he was a man of God, he always lived what is essential. And so he was simple, courteous, and gentle with everyone, just like God.”
Later in the afternoon, Brother Bonaventure and a new brother walk out in a nearby field.
The brother from the faraway country discovers some mulberries, green and ripe, and he tastes them. “Why do you take the green mulberries, Brother?” interrupts Brother Bonaventure. “Don’t you see that they suffer? Would you cut someone down in the prime of life? Only when they are older do they offer themselves gladly for our enjoyment” (3).
Our culture is not simple. We have layers upon layers of technology, myths perpetuated to keep our conscience clear. We’re over-militarized and undereducated. We cannot undo many of the mistakes that we have made here and around the world, but we can move forward to make sure that they never happen again. We can make sure that people are treated fairly at work in terms of wages and hours. That everyone should be treated with the great kindness and love. The Earth should not be polluted for items that are unnecessary anyway! We don’t need fracked water for the sake of job creation! Everything is interconnected! Let’s start acting like it.
In sex, as in other things, we have liberated fantasy but killed imagination, and so have sealed ourselves in selfishness and loneliness. Fantasy is of the solitary self, and it cannot lead us away from ourselves. It is by imagination that we cross over the difference between ourselves and other beings and thus learn compassion, forbearance, mercy forgiveness, sympathy, and love—the virtues without which nether we nor the world can live. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community by Wendell Berry
Recently, I went out with a few friends who have preschool and elementary aged children. Our conversation overflowed with stories of their children’s engagement with the world. They shared stories of how their kids embraced the May Day pole ceremony and how they react to beat-bop jazz and heavy metal. As a Youth Worker I too have plenty of stories up my sleeves. My favorite stories are ones where the child’s imagination shocks my own sense of the world. For instance, I handed out bags to the elementary kids to fill with presents. The first boy took the bag and looked at it and said, “My archenemies, we meet again.” I wish I still had these kinds of interactions with inanimate objects! In the opening quote, farmer, poet, and activist, Wendell Berry makes the distinction between fantasy and imagination. Imagination is that which is in the communal conscience. Fantasy, on the other hand, is a solitary moment of one’s desires without recognition of the community. In the US, fantasy is commonly related to going to space or sexual acts.
Further researching imagination I came across Jesuit theologian Roger Haight. In Haight’s texts Jesus: Symbol of God and The Future of Christology (a smaller and less dense Symbol), he tips his hat to Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts on the imagination. Aquinas breaks down imagination in three parts:
First, everything that we learn about the world comes through sense data and the imagination. Like Aristotle and the British Empiricists, our minds are blank slates that are filled with our interaction with the world. This is in contrast to Platonism that says that we already have all knowledge we are merely wiping off the charcoal stains off our minds.
Second, this is similar to the first, that we can know nothing unless it has been received from the senses. All of our knowledge comes from what we perceive from the material world. Haight says that everything that we think has an “imaginative residue.” When one thinks of dreams, which are often imaginative new events, they are not so far out of this world that one can explain them to others.
Lastly, Aquinas wrote that one has an active and a passive imagination. Our passive imagination is what we store in our memory. Active imagination happens when we create new images out of the material world. Aquinas gave the example of making a golden mountain. Both things separated exist and are part of the world, but a golden mountain takes an active imagination to create.
Understanding this through Berry’s definition, communities experience the world in similar ways, which is their passive imagination. For their active imagination, communities construct lexicons, habits, and relationships in particular ways. In the Christian tradition, this can be seen in the Gospels. The Johannine community culturally were Greco-Roman who used popular Greek Philosophy, aka Platonism, to speak of Jesus. Does this degrade John’s Gospel to lesser than God’s Word? Of course not! What it does show us is the deep importance of Jesus to their community. Around the world, Jesus and God are known by different names. According to the liturgy in the Jesus Sutras of Eastern Asia, Jesus is prayed to as the Jaded-Face One. To be jaded in Eastern Asia means that to have experienced life to the fullest and thus be divine.
The problem today is we emphasize fantasy too much. We have an active fantasy life and force those desires on others. The work of imagination is found in the midst of community. Of course, this is not perfect, but if we are aware and intentional in our imagination-creations then possibly we can create a better and more just society.
Practically speaking:
What songs, stories, art work, dramas, etc. does your community gather around?
How does your community engage with the other?
How do others perceive your community?
Christian communities around the world and throughout the ages gave the Divine a personal name. Has your community done this or have they used their experience with the Divine to add to God’s qualities?
I was raised in a religious denomination that had no concept of the lectionary or the Christian calendar. Sunday’s Scripture was based on whatever the minister was thinking about that week. Once I started to attend a church rich in liturgical fervor, I fell in love with the rituals, holidays, and lectionary. I love the lectionary because every three years, a congregation will hear the majority of Scripture and it presents good challenges to the preacher for that week. For now, I regularly attend a United Methodist that is quiet liberal with their use of the lectionary so when it is used, I get very excited. For the first lesson this past weekend it is one of my favorite texts in Acts because God talks back and to help Peter interpret the vision.
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” Acts 11:1-18
These verses speak highly of inclusion. John Dominic Crossan wrote in his autobiography, A Long Way from the Tipperary, that if Jesus is to the right of the God then that means that God is to the left of Jesus. Crossan clearly making a political joke, but one that seems accurate of the overall picture of God in Scripture. God is for the outcast, marginalized, forgotten, but God is also trying to push the oppressor into love. Thus making God a Leftist beyond Leftist.
Peter’s vision spoke of the inclusion of the Gentiles and just in its infancy stage for the followers of the Way. This is radical, but not rare for God since hints came as early as the prophet Micah who declared that God will be praised even by the Gentiles. These new converts do not need to be circumcised, but baptized. The text reads that Peter remembers the early words of the Jesus that all shall be baptized by God’s Spirit.
If we take this text to its radical end it means that God’s love is for all and in all. God tells Peter “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” God thus broadens who’s in and who’s out, meaning all are in! Yet, even if this is true theologically, which I believe to be very much so, our social constructions point us in other directions.
Since the Boston Bombings, the Right Wing has upped their anti-Islam rhetoric. Republicans made a statement immediately after the suspect was found that the FBI and other law enforcement should keep a closer eye on Muslims and their mosques. First, there is no need to create fear in a group where no fear is typically found. I should know, I live in an area in West Philly that is mostly made up of Muslims and we all live peacefully together. Second, have we forgotten our past of putting Japanese and Asian Americans into work camps during WWII. Are we heading back to that? I sure hope not! What we need is love for those we have silenced and fear.
The way we move forward is through relationships. These are always uncomfortable at first, but like most things we get use to them and feel comfortable. May we be like God and include all people. We should see others as sacred as we believe ourselves to be.
If America’s soul was not already wounded by the violence we impart around the world, it is certainly broken now. Last week we suffered conflict after conflict: the Boston Marathon bombing, the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, and the shooting at MIT, etc. It would be most appropriate to practice “Dangerous Memory” as Johann Baptist Metz taught. It calls us to remember those who are suffering and have suffered. (Consumer-capitalist culture thrives on amnesia, not giving us any chance to remember those who suffered and have died because we are too busy consuming.) As we remember those who are currently suffering, we relate their struggle to the life, suffering, and death of Christ. Yet, Jesus’ life does not end with death, but God/She raised Jesus and we keep this hope for those who suffer. Alongside our remembering and hope in new life, we lament. We cry out to God/She, asking that justice may come. The road of healing and restoration is hard but necessary, and if we are following Jesus, then restoration is the only way.
My practice of Metz’s “Dangerous Memory” fell short last week, being was consumed by the news, my twitter feed, and NPR. On Thursday morning I stayed in bed all morning until I went to work at 1:30pm listening to NPR.
In our society we retrieve information and news through screens: computer, tablets, television, phone, etc. 24 hour news cycles and up-to-second coverage on Twitter and other news-feeds bombard our minds and hearts. Brother Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk in Kentucky, wrote widely on subjects as war, violence, peace, monasticism, and silence. He is still revered for his writings. Concerning the news, Merton wrote:
I have watched TV twice in my life. I am frankly not terribly interested in TV anyway. Certainly I do not pretend that by simply refusing to keep up with the latest news I am therefore unaffected by what goes on, or free of it all. Certainly events happen and they affect me as they do other people. It is important for me to know about them too: but I refrain from trying to know them in their fresh condition as “news.” When they reach me they have become slightly stale. I eat the same tragedies as others, but in the form of tasteless crusts. The news reaches me in the long run through books and magazines, and no longer as a stimulant. Living without news is like living without cigarettes (another peculiarity of the monastic life). The need for this habitual indulgence quickly disappears. So, when you hear news without the “need” to hear it, it treats you differently. And you treat it differently too.
Merton viewed our obsession with the news cycle the same as an addiction to cigarettes. We desire to stay on top of everything as it happens and it makes us anxious when we don’t know what is going on. This is a problem. Last week CNN demonstrated that “Breaking News is Broken.” Farhad Manjoo, began his article:
“Inspired by the events of the past week, here’s a handy guide for anyone looking to figure out what exactly is going on during a breaking news event. When you first hear about a big story in progress, run to your television. Make sure it’s securely turned off.
Next, pull out your phone, delete your Twitter app, shut off your email, and perhaps cancel your service plan. Unplug your PC.
Now go outside and take a walk for an hour or two. Maybe find a park and sit on a bench, reading an old novel. Winter is just half a year away—have you started cleaning out your rain gutters? This might be a good time to start. Whatever you do, remember to stay hydrated. Have a sensible dinner. Get a good night’s rest. In the morning, don’t rush out of bed. Take in the birdsong. Brew a pot of coffee.
Finally, load up your favorite newspaper’s home page. Spend about 10 minutes reading a couple of in-depth news stories about the events of the day. And that’s it: You’ve now caught up with all your friends who spent the past day and a half going out of their minds following cable and Twitter.”
Majoo described the same kind ofspiritual practice as Brother Merton, only 60 years later. Any intentional engagement in the world that wants to positively affect the whole person: spirit, mind, and body is a spiritual practice. People are beginning to recognize this again as an important factor of life, which explains why yoga, meditation, walking in nature, etc. are making a comeback. Comedian Amy Poelher on her “Ask Amy” Youtube channel explained how her “eyes need a break” from all the tragic images in the news.
I am not saying that we never read or watch the news or not concern ourselves with the global community; it is far too late for that. I am suggesting that the world needs us to be full of love and compassion and we cannot do that if we are busy watching television. If we turn off the television, twitter-feeds, etc. we need to replace them with spiritual practices. These are the most counter-cultural act we can do since they do not consume anything, hence counter-cultural. You can take your time walking the labyrinth or read a psalm as slow as you want during lectio-divina or meditate by emptying yourself of thoughts and desires. 24 hour news-cycles attempt accuracy, yet they harm viewers with unwanted anxiety. To turn off these fear-intensifiers and to direct our emotions and energies toward prayer, self-care, meditation, and compassion in the community changes the way in which we engage in the world.
I mourn over the horrific violent act in Boston and all those effected. This was a senseless act of aggression and terror. As they still have not found anyone to blame this act on, let us pray for the perpetrators that they repent, and change their ways toward justice and compassion.
Concerning theodicy (a good God in an evil world), theologian Jurgen Moltmann responds in this way found in his book The Trinity and the Kingdom:
“God and suffering belong together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, a common question. And they only find a common answer. Either that, or neither of them finds a satisfactory answer at all. No one can answer the theodicy question in this world, and no one can get rid of it. Life in this world mean living with this open question, and seeking the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored.” (49)
Let us keep our questions and hearts open to God as we process this tragedy. Let us also remember those who suffer this kind of reality on a daily basis.
