Stop Being So Damn Nice

Never thought you'd hear that from a minister, did you?

But seriously, stop it. 

Here's the problem.

In 1945 a guy named Karl Popper came to an amazing realization. He checked it out, and it held true, so now we have a theory known as Popper's Paradox, or the Paradox of Tolerance.

Hold onto ya hat cause here it comes.

Popper's Paradox says:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

If a society, in the name of tolerance, is tolerant without limits, their ability to keep being so bloody tolerant will eventually be seized and ended by the intolerant.

We just saw it happen. On March 16, 2016, President Obama appointed Merrick Garland to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Republican Senate leaders refused to vote on the nomination, perverting the system and holding the position open for 293 days until President Obama's term ended.

A conservative Republican was appointed in his place, changing the face of the court for decades and allowing years of justice work to be destroyed or threatened.

We tolerated the intolerance because it just isn't polite to riot, and now the highest court in our land has been stained and twisted.

Stop being so damn nice.

We tolerate hatred and give it a forum over and over again because we want to "hear all of the options," because "it isn't fair to be one sided."

When did hatred and ignorance become positions we want to get out there just in case someone needs to follow their heart and just go with some light genocide?

Freedom of speech is specific.

Quoting Wikipedia here:

Freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice".

So.

You can hold whatever opinion you want. You can share it, barring some specifically prohibited instances, any way you want.

Great.
Lovely.

You know what that doesn't guarantee you?

An audience.

It doesn't guarantee that there will be no consequences from your opinion holding or sharing.

It doesn't guarantee you support for your position, or a platform on which to give it.

In the US, the 1st Amendment, the one about freedom of speech, is ONLY about laws that Congress can or can't make. It's not about making individuals listen to you.

Listen, liberal folks, granting evil an audience, granting it the courtesy of equal consideration, may seem fair, and maybe it is fair, but it is also a form of self destruction and privilege in which we can no longer indulge.

We can clutch our pearls and claim that we simply won't descend to their level and you know what?

Some of us are going to die so that others just don't sully their white hands and their whiter souls.

It's called a paradox for a reason. In order for us to be allowed to survive, we can't tolerate intolerance.

We can't claim we are too good to play by their playbook, too holy to stoop to their levels, because that is a position of mindless privilege and some of us can't afford it anymore.

Make no mistake. We are engaged in a great war for the soul of our nation. This is not about "people of good will sitting around the table and working out our differences."

They know who we are.

And they literally want some of us dead. They understand if they get their way we will die; there is no mystery. People of color and LGBTQ+ people have understood this for years. People with handicaps deal with it all of the time.

It isn't a misunderstanding. They want us dead.

The far right is willing to go to any extent right now. 

They preach hatred and politics from the pulpit and call it faith.
They steal Supreme Court seats and call it legal.
They torture children and call it security.
They pillage our financial system and call it greatness.
They decimate our schools and call it wisdom.
They destroy our unions and call it freedom.
They ravage our healthcare and call it progress.
They murder our youth and call it fitting.

They savage the weak and the needing, and they call it justice.

And what do we do?

We refuse to talk about the evil inherent in the things they have done and we are willing to grant that they may be misguided or confused, undereducated, or angry for reasons beyond our ken. 

We argue amongst ourselves and we demand ideological and linguistic purity of those who would prefer to be by our sides. We split our votes and we argue about why the most electable liberal candidates don't deserve our support because they are also stained and we, we are so damned pure of heart that we must vote our conscience even if it means the Tea Party wins.

We step back and we obey the laws and we bewail the bad behavior of the other side even as it wins over and over again because we are too good to stoop so low.

We stand in our privilege and we are nice, even as some of us remind everyone over and over again that we are the ones who are and will be dying.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing as Conservative churches preach politics from the pulpit, and turn the hearts and minds of the undereducated to evil.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing as children are herded into concentration camps, because it is currently legal and we don't really want to break the law and put ourselves at risk.

We stand in our privilege and do nothing because it isn't time yet, or yet, or yet, or yet, and we all know it isn't, like, so bad that we'd need to risk our jobs and our houses and the schools where our kids go.

Except for some of us, who know that the time was yesterday, or maybe two years ago.

Some of us who understand that we are still playing by a rulebook that the other side has thrown away.

We are checking to make sure our croquet mallet is the legal weight and that the exact color of our uniforms is allowed and they, they have gotten chainsaws and sawed off shotguns.

And wrapped their shoes in barbed wire tipped with glass.

The day is now and the hour has gotten late and if we are going to preserve a society of law and tolerance we cannot tolerate intolerance for one more day.

We have got to put down our privilege, put down our preciousness, put down our refusal to dirty our hands and join in intersectional action today.

Let me say it again for those in the back.

If we are not willing to join with communities of color, with LGBTQ+ people, with handicapped people, if we are not willing to get into the trenches right now, if we are not willing to fight fire with fire and fight evil with every weapon at our disposal, to fight evil with every dirty trick and underhanded blow and sneak attack we know, if we are not willing to put down our pearls and pick up a God damn stick, than we are going to lose.

And some of us are going to die.

But the rest of you, the ones without pre-existing conditions, the ones who have white skin and able bodies, the ones who are not identified by letters or descriptors because you are centered, the ones with money, the rest of you can comfort yourself that you lived your values.

And you stayed nice.

You Are Not Your House and Other Statements of Fact: Exploring the Systemic and the Personal

We have a problem in America. Maybe we have a problem all over the world.

We don't understand the difference between the systemic and the personal.

I mean, we understand it in a theoretical "oh I learned about that in school" kind of way, but we don't get it.

So first a refresher course; what do I mean when I say systemic and what do I mean by personal?

"Personal" is related to you, or at least to someone or something. It is about a real person and their actions or beliefs in the world. Personal is the "this happened and here is who did the action and here is who was the target of the action." Personal is an attribute or quality of, well, a person or thing.

If I use an adjective to describe a person, their thoughts, or their actions, it is primarily personal.

Lars is a kind man.
Jim is a a black man.
Marika is a racist.

No snoozing in the back. This is important.

People have specific attributes for a host of reasons, some innate and some learned and some forced on them.

Some personal attributes can be changed easily: a haircut, a tan, a job. Some are harder or impossible to change even if someone wanted to: base skin color, handicap, levels of personality traits like kindness and empathy.

We all have at least some agency over some of our personal traits and attributes.

Got it? Good.

A system is an interlocked group of interrelated and interdependent parts that is either natural or artificial/human created.

Think of your household as a system. There are independent pieces like people, and pets, and bits of furniture. Each of the independent pieces has personal qualities, like shape and color and personality traits. The independent pieces all impact each other, work together or clash, and make-up a whole that impacts the world as a unit.

You are a subset, a part, of your household system. It is not you, and you are not it. It impacts you and you impact it.

It reflects on and changes you, and you can reflect on and change it.

Now, here's the tricky part.

The system and its parts may not match in attribute; personal attributes of pieces of a complex system do not have to match the attributes of the system of a whole.

What the hell does that mean?!?!?! How can they not match?

You have red hair. Your household system does not.

Your house is 130 years old and infested with roaches. You are immaculately clean and neatly dressed.

Now, let's go one further.

Sometimes you inherit a fully functioning system.

Your parents die, and they leave you their fully-furnished house. Until they died it was theirs; you were not able to make large changes outside of your room, even though you lived there.

Now you own it. 

The furniture is ugly and outdated. The wiring isn't up to code. The paint is peeling. There is a fence around it that has a sign saying "No Admittance!" It has 17 steps up to the front door, and is totally inaccessibly by anyone in a wheelchair.

But now it is all yours. And you are responsible for it. You didn't build it, or shape it. You couldn't control how accessible it was. You didn't do anything other than be born to get it handed to you, and you didn't cause its decline or obvious faults. 

Until you inherited the responsibility, you had no power, and now that you have the power, you are also responsible, even though you didn't create it.

Ok, hope you're still with me. Now that you understand the difference between systemic and personal, what is the problem?

It's this. Some attributes can be applied to either a person or the system they are in, and some people can't understand that the attributes of the systems they are in do not refer to them.

No, really.

In America we have inherited a battered house. We've inherited a set of interlocked white supremacist, male-dominated, heterocentric, ciscentric, and abelist systems of applying laws, selling houses and cars, schooling, politics, and interaction.

But the attributes of the systems of America are just that-systemic. They do not have to apply to all parts of the system. 

You are not innately falling apart just because your house is.

Here's the catch. Remember when I said personal and systemic attributes reflect one another?

Yeah.

So if you inherit that old house, or that racist system, and you leave it battered and broken when you have the money to fix it, if you leave it white-centered and ugly when you have the agency to make change, then you do become responsible.

Then you do take on attributes related to your personal actions within the larger system.

But you are not taking on the attributes of the system itself.

You are not a racist "because the system is racist." You are only a racist if you accept a racist system. You are only a racist if your personal actions say you are.

Who cares?

You do, or at least you should.

Because people tend to conflate systemic critique with personal criticism. Maybe you do. Maybe people you are talking to do.

When they are told, for example, that they are in a racist system, what they may hear is "I'm being called a racist." 

No, you're not. Or at least hopefully you personally are not.

If I say your house is purple I'm not saying that you personally are purple. I'm saying the greater piece you live in has that color.

I'm saying the purple reflects on you.

I'm saying you can change the purple if you will.

We have to be able to critique and criticize systems based on fact, without reacting as if we were the pieces being critiqued.

So if your house is damaged and falling down, and I tell you I can see it and it's dangerous, I still love you. I am not saying that you are broken. I am not saying that you are bad because you inherited it.

But the house has to be fixed.

Our country has become a nightmare, and we have inherited it. Please, help me to fix it before it's too late.

Before it does become personal.

The Face of Evil

I believe in an awesome God.

I believe in a God who welcomes us home, no matter what we have done, no matter how far we have traveled, if only we try to return.

I believe in a mighty God who loves with a never ending love, and who calls us to the love over and over again.

I believe in the God who inspired the writing of these words in Romans 13, verses 8 through 13

8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”[a] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently…

Love does no harm to a neighbor so let us behave decently.

Right now in America we are seeing something I never hoped to see, something I never thought I would see.

We are seeing what happens when the leadership of a nation turns away from that welcoming love.

We are seeing the face of evil.

William Shakespeare wrote:

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

On June 14^th Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border by citing a passage from the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans:

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

Later, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.”

The Devil can quote scripture.

Sessions words twisted and perverted a call to obey the great commandment, the great call of the Almighty to love those around you, and to treat them righteously, into an evil and perverse call for the support of the mortal sin of harming children in the name of nationalism.

The God of my heart, the Christ who came to the poor and the sick, the man who was Love embodied did not call for this.

I say this to Jeff Sessions and to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you snakes. you vipers.

Above all else we are called to one thing- we are called to love with a deep and abiding love the Lord our God, and in order to do that we have to love the humans who surround us.

Not with a perfect love because we are not perfect. We will get it wrong and screw it up and miss the mark over and over again.

But the man they called Jesus was very clear.  In Matthew 25, verses 31-40 he spells it out

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

The kingdom of God welcomes  every soul, but you cannot get there by walking in the opposite direction- it isn’t God walking away, it is you.

Throughout history there have been crimes, murder, rape, genocide, done in the name of country and king. Crimes done in the name of the law. Crimes done because of the law.

All evil, not just wrong or bad but morally corrupt and ethically stained.

All glimpses of the great enemy, the great liar Satan, who tells us what we want to hear.

Satan says Put country first.

He says Put the love of money first.

He says Put your own interests first.

He says to hate them because they are not us and you never think to ask what he is telling them and so we destroy each other one bit at a time and we take an eye for an eye until the whole damn world is blind

Satan tells us that what matters is that we are great. What matters is that we are frightening and powerful. What matters is that we reign even if it is in hell.

I’m telling you now that Satan lies.

I’m telling you that there are concentration camps for children being built on our American soil, that we are pulling children from asylum seekers crossing our borders in search of the help promised by our great country.

We are holding those children in cages. We are holding them in tents, in the Texas heat.

We are torturing children. Poor children, immigrant children. Children the color of a man from Nazareth.

We are torturing the least of these, in the name of Caesar. We are torturing them in the name of power and control.

We are torturing them in the name of serving God and I don’t know which way our leaders think that we are heading but if we support the torment of children then I suspect that Hell is straight ahead.

As for me and my house, we will try to serve the Lord, regardless of what that means, and I hope that you will too.

What do you believe in? What values do you claim to be fighting for? Who are you living for?

It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, because this isn’t about that anymore. The actions of these leaders are not in line with the beliefs of any normal political party.

This is about a struggle for the soul of our nation.

This is about the battle for our own souls.

This is about the endless battle against the forces of evil personified in the acts of human hands and human hearts, and there are no neutral bystanders

So I’m telling you now that no person can serve both God and Caesar. I’m telling you that you have to decide, and it can’t wait anymore.

And I’m asking you to join me in truly accepting that Great Commandment, and the one that follows it. I am asking you to join me in loving God and in loving your neighbor as yourself.

I am asking you day by day to make a commitment to turning away from the work of evil no matter what the source.

I am asking you to care for the least of these, as Jesus asked you to do. amen

I am asking you to feed the hungry, amen.

I am asking you to welcome the stranger in your country, amen.

I am asking you to care for the mentally and physically ill, amen.

I am asking you to comfort the widows and the orphans and the lost and the frightened, amen.

No matter where your political beliefs fall, there is no place for the mental or physical torture of children and so I am asking you to welcome the little children because theirs is the kingdom of Heaven, and the world of Jeff Sessions is indeed the kingdom of Hell.

Amen

Amen

Amen

Knock Knock, Your House is Falling Down

("Old Falling Down House" by FairieGoodMother)

Centering is on my mind today.

Or, more specifically, decentering.

Because I keep running into problems on all sides of the equation as my faith and my country begin the terrible and wonderful work of decentering "whiteness" and wealth and masculinity and able-bodied status in our American cultural machine.

On one side, words like privilege and fragility cause an uproar. Racism and abelism and classism come into play. Toxic masculinity rears its head and other body bits.

All to keep the status quo firmly status quo as we begin the blood-boiling task of dismantling the work of colonialization and empire-building.

On another side, some fight to decenter the current centers, but struggle with naming what will replace them. Some claim nothing will.

Some few seek to center themselves, and profit personally, rather than systemically, in the process.

There is always a center. It's how systems work. There is a principle they are based on, a physical point they are balanced on, an attribute or attribute set they regard as most favorable for operation, something.

And the problem is that we have based or centered our current systems on the wrong attributes entirely- not just on the wrong subsets of those attributes.

Empire got it wrong.

It isn't about skin color.
Or gender.
Or wealth.
Or physical ability.
Or religious choice
Or language.
Or immigration status.
Or heterosexuality.

None of those things should be centered. None of those things should be "the right choice" or "the preferred option" or "the one that makes life easier." We aren't trying to simply change who is oppressed going forward.

No attribute should be the center at all.

We have to take apart the current machine entirely, and rebuild it.

The center is equity. The center must be equity. The machine itself must work differently.
It is the only way to move forward without destroying ourselves in the process. Because equity doesn't mean destruction. Equity doesn't mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Equity is not diversity or inclusion, though it includes them. It is not equality, because it surpasses it.

Equity is a condition where all people, ALL people, receive what they need to survive and succeed, whether in a society or in a subset of a society (an industry, a religion, an educational system).

It means that if three people all need to see over a 5 foot fence, the 3 foot person is given a 2.5 foot box to stand on, and a ladder to use to step up onto it. The 5 foot person is given a slim 6 inch platform and no ladder, and the 7 foot tall person is given nothing.

It DOESN'T mean, however, that the 7 foot tall person is made to stand in an 18 inch deep hole. That isn't equity, it is oppression. Forcing anyone to do or be less is the way to Kurt Vonnegut's nightmare dystopia, Harrison Bergeron, where the graceful were weighted down, and the brilliant forced to only be as intelligent as the least capable among them.

That is not equity.

Equity means things have to change. Equity means reimagining how we do almost everything in this country, from home sales and rentals to hiring to policing to receiving medical care. It means changes to education, and to religion.

It means that we have to commit, because people won't wait forever. People can't wait forever. We are all losing every moment that the way is blocked for a black scientist, a Latinex mathematician, a queer sculptor, a theologian in a wheelchair...

We need one another to succeed and thrive.

The Age of Empire is over. We have to fix the machine, before it catches fire, and takes the whole house with it. No more fooling around.

So let's move. We've got work to do.

Tired, Fed-Up, and Occasionally Furious

I spend a lot of time these days wondering whatever happened to common sense.

It seems to have taken a permanent vacation somewhere, no forwarding address provided, and it can no longer be reached even by shouting and prodding with a long stick.

Well, I have reached a momentous decision, fueled by three cups of Death Wish coffee and a newspaper article on whose "nuclear button" was bigger. In the absence of common sense, I will have to do.

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, I spent a bunch of time hearing about American ingenuity, American by God BRAVERY, American can do spirit. I heard amazing stories of people who came to the US and did amazing things and we were by God proud, PROUD, that such smart and wonderful people had made the smart and wonderful decision to come to the USA and do their smart and wonderful stuff here where it would be appreciated.

Levi Strauss, Madeline Albright, Joseph Pulitzer, Irving Berlin. Albert Einstein.

We laughed at Charo, we applauded Rita Moreno, and Ricky Ricardo, Eddie Van Halen, and Joni Mitchell. We watched Ah-nold Schwarzenegger.

We wore Oscar de la Renta and Liz Claiborne.

We practically idolized the poor kid done good story; a guy or gal with moxie and pluck comes to America (sailing by the Statue of Liberty of course, accompanied by "Coming to America" played on the ferry speakers) and in his or her or their humble way rises to the top, never stopped by the fools who would laugh at their accent or interesting immigrant food choices.

And while our parents were inside reading those feel good stories, wearing Levis and Liz Claiborne, and laughing at the antics of Ricky and Lucy, us kids could play outside without those same parents getting arrested.

Kids didn't have play dates; they just played. You came home when the streetlights came on, or when your mother screamed up the road, or at 5:30 if you were lucky enough to have a watch. You rode your bike to do stuff because your parents would have died in hysterics if you asked them to drive you anywhere within 10 miles.

In school we had science and math, and the teachers, in general, wanted you to learn. How could you cure cancer, or fly a rocket ship to Mars, if you were an undereducated clod? It was your American DUTY to be smart and brave and hard-working, and to support anyone else who wanted the same. If college wasn't for you there was always tech school, and kids learned to fix cars, and plumbing, and heating and air conditioning. Some kids learned to be farmers, and some practical nurses, and some welders or fabricators or masons.

We sucked at a whole bunch of things, don't misunderstand me here. This is not nostalgia; we were miserable at LGBTQ* rights, we were horrible at racial justice. We didn't get that there were other religions besides Christianity. We struggled with mental illness and with poverty. We stank at handicapped accessibility. 

But we wanted to be Number 1. And we seemed to get that this required both intelligence and a bit of guts. The right and the left disagreed on HOW to do this, but there did seem to be general agreement that we did not want to be a third world nation.

What the hell happened?


A large chunk of the far right have become a group of anti-intellectual, Bible-totin' troglodytes. They are afeared of college education, anyone who talks "furrign," "blacks," and "them queers.".

They want to go to church, without following anything their own book says. They hate strangers, the poor, immigrants, and anyone who is different in any way; they don't want to kill these groups, they will tell you, but they do want to legistate things so that they cannot live, which they seem to regard as a morally justifiable option.

They have become detached from reality.

If you are a part of this group and still reading, good. Let me give you some information. This is not fake news.

Coal is not coming back. Undocumented immigrants do a huge amount of labor in America, and without them entire industries will fail. We cannot afford to "build a wall" and most undocumented folks simply overstay a Visa anyway. Deporting undocumented parents of American children is bad and useless. Puerto Rico is part of the USA.

Vaccines are good for you- it's why most of us are alive. Knock off the dumb shit.

The earth is not flat. Race is a construct that has little to do with actual skin color and everything ot do with culture and socialization. Rap is here to stay. There are religions other than your own and they are equally valid. There is no war on Christianity- there is a war on Christian sharia law.

Global warming is real. LGBTQ people are all around you. The US is emphatically not a Christian nation, and English is not the national language.

People with handicaps have a right to be wherever they want to be and accessibility is expected.

The press has the right to speak the truth. People have the right to protest.

Most people are not bright enough or trained enough to be trusted with a gun. A local militia can no longer take on the might of an army.

Just because you aren't educated enough to understand a fact doesn't make it a lie.

Just because something is outside of your experience doesn't make it wrong.

And the left? Oh my people, we are not any better.

A group of us on the far left have become precious, simpering snowflakes. We are triggered by any deviance from liberal orthodoxy and have carried social justice warrior stereotypes to the point of incoherence.

Some of us want to go to "church" without having any belief other than the right to believe in whatever we want (which we never actually bother to define). We don't want a religion. We want a country club with a spiritual theme and social justice outings.

We love everyone but Conservatives and conservative Christians, who we cast as villains without a second thought. We don't want to kill them, but we want to tell them how they have to live to meet our needs, with no concern for their own perspectives.

In the name of decolonization we want to deconstruct and destroy all that Empire building and colonization have created, without a plan for reconstruction and global societal reintegration for our newly re-created society. And without ever working across the political aisles, we expect power-holding Conservatives to AGREE to decenter the white and wealthy society which created them, and to see that their children need to be silent and take a backseat for a few generations.

We have become detached from reality.

If you are a part of this group and still reading, good. Let me also give you some information:

It is possible to push too far. I saw an online post where a cut and paste glitch in an online survey left "Mayonnaise" as a gender option. A meme was created because of it, and someone was furious that people were laughing about it. No one had mentioned trans people but they wildly defended trans rights until someone said incredulously "Are you defending mayonnaise [as a gender]?" Sometimes we need to take a breath.

It is not possible to make it possible for everyone to participate in everything- live with it. I do not want to live in Harrison Bergeron's world and neither do you.  

Cultural appropriation- where do I begin? It sounds simple until I ask one question- which culture are "we"?

Oh look- white Euro culture is centered again!  We are often reduced to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin as we try to work out if the group in question has enough of the subgroup in question to "legitimately" do the event. We ok events as "ours" and "coming from our heritage" which really mean "Of course all of us are white so this activity is okay".

It isn't ok to take someone else's sacred ritual or costume and foul them up and use them out of context AND if we cannot integrate the pieces of culture that immigrants bring to our country we will continue to demonize and otherize them forever. Take a deep breath and think before you start screaming; maybe, I dunno, eat a fucking taco.

Vaccines are good for you- it's why most of us are alive. Knock off the dumb shit.

Guns are not evil devil machines which will blow up in your hands and hunters are not demons.

It is not always possible for everyone to afford to eat organic and pure. Turning your nose up when some one brings fried chicken and soda to the potluck is classist and downright assy. Get over yourselves.


Both sides, get over yourselves.

When I was learning to drive, I got furious because a huge truck took the right of way that belonged to me and my tiny Ford Escort. When I told my father about it and angrily said that I should have gone anyway and cut him off, Dad said quietly, "Well, that's one approach. But would you really rather be right and dead than let someone go and both of you make it to another day?"

I've never forgotten that.

So many times these days we are so committed to being right that we ignore the fact that we are cutting off any means of communication with the other side. We are dead in the water.

Ya know what?

Knock it off.

Both sides, knock it off.

Our country is slowly being dismantled by political swamp monsters. They are not Republican or Democrat or anything else- they are nationalistic right wing horrors that neither side actually agrees with.

Can we all just look up from the infighting for ten minutes, and note the folks with the chainsaws heading for all of us?

Please?

Fitting into the Team: Privilege Beats Bootstraps Every Time

Dear White people, some of you seem to be uncomfortable with the word "privilege."

When I say someone has privilege, I'm NOT saying that they are sitting in a penthouse eating bonbons and paste while getting paid for doing approximately "no work whatsoever."

I'm not saying anything about their wealth or their work ethic at all.

Privilege is a way of measuring how close your experience falls to a centered "standard" human experience mold; this mold is a creation of the societal group locally, or regionally, or nationally in power. The systems of society are optimized for the experience centered as "standard", so your life gets easier, more privileged, the closer you are to fitting into the mold.

National or international privilege outweighs regional. Regional outweighs local.

We have molds for business people, molds for class structure, molds for taste and style, and entertainment, and sports, and leisure, and education. We have molds for dating and molds for religion. The biggest molds are for race, and gender.

And they all fit together, so that if you don't fit into a basic mold for something like education, it prevents you from fitting neatly into more complex molds for housing and jobs and recreation.

Intersectionality describes the places where someone doesn't fit into multiple perceived "standard" molds, and the resulting complex lack of fit has a cumulative effect in making their life more difficult.

The harsh truth is this, in America the base molds have always been strongly defined.

White.
Male.
Middle-class
Christian.
Heterosexual.
Cisgendered.
White collar
College educated
Monogamous
Currently able-bodied
English-speaking

I'm sure you can think of more.

But abstracts are sometimes challenging, so let me give you something a little more concrete.

I wasn't always a minister.

A long time ago I had a sexy and exciting job or two.

I was an Assistant Director of Nursing and Licensed Nursing Home Administrator (decent money) and a Healthcare Industry Consultant (lots more money).

Yeah.

How did I get such a sexy and exciting job or two? I'm glad you asked.

Privilege.

My family spoke Broadcast Standard English. In grade school, I never got picked on for being on reduced lunches, because I had lunch money. I had water to bathe in and my clothing never smelled or had holes. I wasn't sitting up nights scared because I was homeless, and I always had a pencil and a backpack and someone home to read with me. I looked white, thought I was Middle Eastern, and I had a white, popular name.

By 2nd grade everyone knew who the bad kids were. They were loud and tired and never had their homework done. They acted up on school trips and forgot to bring money for souvenirs so they took them away from other kids. Their parents worked weird shifts and never showed up for conferences or events.

I was already learning how to "fit into the team" while those kids were learning that the team had no seat for them.

I got older and went to high school, and wouldn't you know, I didn't have problems there either. When I walked into class no one had already formed a negative image of who I was.

There were no language barriers. My parents signed permission slips and I never had unpaid fees. I didn't have to work in the evenings so I had plenty of time to do my homework, with my parents help.

By 18 I knew what the team looked like, and how it dressed, and what it ate, and what it complained about. I fit into the team like a hand in a glove.

I am not saying that poor children or black children or Hispanic children don't know how to behave, or that their parents don't do things for them. Not at all. I'm not saying that my parents, or my school system did anything wrong when they struggled to give us the best.

I'm saying that I didn't have anything holding me back, and other children started out the race carrying 200 pound backpacks filled with lead. I'm saying those packs got heavier every year, and pulled the children down even as privileged children were handed wings. The only way I could have had it easier was to have been born male.

I went to college and financially things got so tough that tough would have been an improvement, but I still had a leg up.

I had already had three years of college credits before I even came through the door. All my basic classes, done, because my high school had the funds for a gifted and talented track. I graduated in four years, without a student loan.

And even though I was amazingly poor I was able to get a decent teaching job at a wealthy private ESL school less than a month after graduation because my French was good and my English was precise and Broadcast standard and because I knew how rich people dressed so I bought the right interview clothing and bag at St. Vincent de Paul.

I still fit in with the team. Even though at home I was eating Ramen, and shopping at Goodwill and Sav a Lot, I fit in with the team.

I was able to rent a nice house on my parent's street, for less than I would have paid for poorer housing elsewhere, because I didn't have student loans to repay. No one asked for references or a credit check, which I would have failed, because they knew my parents. With my good grades, and a good address, in a good town, I was able to get into a good nursing school.

As soon as I graduated I was able to get a good job as a nurse. And because my high school and my college had had some of the first home computers, I knew about computers when almost no one else did.

So I was able to get a better job, fast. In three years, I was an industry consultant.

I still fit in with the team, and not only that but each team recommended me to other teams. Each team let other teams know that I had been vetted, that I knew how the molds worked and that I fit into my place neatly.

All one unbroken sweep of privilege, one train-ride of success made possible by unearned opportunity after opportunity.

Don't get me wrong; I worked hard. But I was given a chance to work hard because over and over someone decided that I fit in, that I would be more of an asset than someone else.

Because right now in America that chance isn't about the job.

It's usually about the other stuff. It's about fitting in with the team, and the team is usually white. The team is usually male. The team centers whiteness and defends whiteness and honors whiteness.

It's about how you dress, and what you have to do to make your hair look the way you want it to. It's about how you speak, and the songs you sing to your kids, and what you eat, and even what you smell like. It's about what you do for fun.

It's about will you shut up and be one of them who acts just like one of us so that you fit into the team.

It's about not seeing that we all start the race together, but some of us are carrying ten pound weights, and some of us have chains around our wrists and manacled ankles, and some of us have a jet pack and a cheerleading squad.

Right now in America that chance to work hard is about a false perception that says that everyone starts life with an equal chance to succeed, and that only your own actions determine your fate.

And that false perception leaves out brilliant, amazing people who are currently relegated to be supporting cast members the minute they are born into the world outside the ridiculous molds.Those brilliant and amazing people get left at the starting gate the minute they enter the race.

So before you congratulate yourself on how you did it all alone, or on how you don't have any privilege, think again.

White people, privilege is all around, and if you haven't seen it you haven't looked at all because you are not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You are pulling yourself along a line created historically to carry you to success, and you are walking on the heads and shoulders of the black and brown and queer and handicapped and female bodies that came before you in order to do it.

It's time to stop looking for people who fit into the team, and start making the team expand to fit into the future.

Molds are for Jello.

There is A Love Holding Me: A Sermon for Good Friday

There is a love holding us. There is a love holding all that we love. And tonight, on this most solemn of days, we celebrate that Love which holds and redeems us all through the person of Jesus Christ.

As he hung on the cross on this night, Jesus spoke aloud seven times. Seven simple phrases, but they provide a powerful meditation for us today.

The first words he spoke, recorded in Luke 23:34; “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Even in agonal suffering, forgiveness. Forgiveness for the soldiers who mocked and scourged him. Forgiveness for the friends and followers who had denied or abandoned him. Forgiveness for the crowds who had turned on him, and the political and religious system that condemned him. Forgiveness for all of us who were yet to come. At the height of his physical suffering his love prevails and he asks his Father to Forgive, and by his death all are forgiven.

A few moments later, he spoke again. Luke 23:43 tells us the thief hanging beside him on the right said, in all humility, we are receiving what we deserve but “this man has done nothing wrong.” The thief was speaking for all of us- every perfectly imperfect human who ever has been or will be. Every one of us who falls short of perfection by our very nature as a human being. And Jesus’ response? "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Forgiveness. Love. Mercy. We may not be able to get there ourselves but there is one who has gone before us to make a way and through him all doors are open and all may be reconciled to God through that grace.

John 19:26-27 says that as Jesus hung dying he looked down, and he saw his mother, Mary beside the foot of the cross. She was with his beloved disciple John and others. When Jesus saw her, he spoke for the third time and he said "Woman, this is your son." Then he said to the disciple: "This is your mother."

Take one another as family

Love one another. Care for one another. Human love is important; it is the reflection of the Love of God. It holds us all in a community of support. What we do for one another we do for the God of Love who redeems us all.

Both Matthew and Mark record the forth phrase Jesus spoke. Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34

say that around 3 o’clock, in the ninth hour of suffering, and after three hours of darkness, Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Our first inclination is to come to a screeching halt and to say why? Why would Jesus, the perfect follower of God’s will, fear that he had been forsaken? I mean, if God will forsake him, the son with whom he was well pleased, what about me? I can never be that perfect?

But you have to understand, those words are not Jesus’ words. They are from the first verse of Psalm 22, the prayer of a righteous sufferer, tormented by evil men. In his words, Jesus reminded listeners that he was fulfilling the 1,000-year-old prophecy of Psalm 22. And why?

Isaiah 53 answers that question.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

We couldn’t do this part. God let his Son experience the sense of distance from God so that he could become us, and we, live through him. We are welcomed eternally into grace because he was willing to feel, for a moment, a separation from God which he had never known before. And through that moment of separation, we earned God’s promise.

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

John 19:28 says that, nearing the end of his endurance, Jesus spoke a fifth time, and said simply “I thirst.” A human frailty. A moment that reminds us that loving ourselves matters too. Just as we hunger and thirst for the Word of God, our bodies require loving care. We cannot serve in the world, we cannot drink eternal life, if we refuse to drink water too. Sometimes the Love holding me reminds me to treat myself with care.

The sixth-time Jesus spoke is revealed in John 19:29-30. After he drank, he knew that he had fulfilled all that he had been sent to fulfill and he raised his head and said “It is finished.” John wrote in Greek and in Greek “it is finished” is one word- tetelestai (pronounced te-tel-es-sty).

This wasn’t sacred language- this is what people of the time said when a job was finished to the best of their ability. This is what they said when they had done a job well despite everything the world threw in their way. Tetelestai. It is finished. The Hebrew version of this is what the priest said when an offering was brought to the temple and found to be perfect. Tetelestai. It is finished. It couldn’t be any more perfect. It has been paid in full and the obligation is satisfied.

All debts are cancelled. The price has been paid. Everything promised during Jesus’ earthly life has been fulfilled, and nothing can or should be added to this perfect sacrifice

And there, at the end, he spoke for the seventh and last time.

In the words of Luke 23:46, “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."” This is a rephrasing of Psalm 31:5 - "Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God."

The bridge between humanity and God has been restored. We are reconciled to that Great Love, the space between us healed and made whole. Sin no longer had the power to condemn us and we have been redeemed for all time.

Today is Good Friday because it is the day that Love made us whole. It is the day that Love redeemed us from sin and death. The day that Love endured the ultimate pain in order to guarantee us redeeming grace. And we can never forget that there is such a Love holding us, that there is such a Love holding all that we Love.

Tetelestai.

Amen.

-Rev. Amy Petrie Shaw