An Ugly Truth

 One day Dinah, the daughter Leah had given Jacob, went to visit some of the women in that country. Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite who was chieftain there, saw her and raped her. Genesis 34:1-2 (The Message)

I was listening to NPR this morning and a story about a story in the New York Magazine was highlighted. The story is entitled ‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen and Noreen Malone was interviewed and is one of the authors of the story. Accompanying the story is this photography:

Over the last year or two sexual assault has been in the news: the terrifying situation in the US Military, the dangerous reality on college campuses, sexual slavery all over the world and the Bill Cosby story. Being a large, white, male who came of age in a time when a lot of what we know is wrong now was not only tolerated but in some ways expected I have been challenged to see the hard reality that I never really saw before.

Here are some statistics just to put this whole conversation into stark perspective:  

• 44% of victims are under age 18
• 80% are under age 30
• Every 107 seconds, another sexual assault occurs
• There is an average of 293,000 instances (victims age 12 or older) of sexual assault each year
• 68% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police
• 98% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
• Approximately 4/5 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim - 47% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance
• 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her life time.
• 17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.
• 9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.

·         About 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

• From 1995-2010, 9% of rape and sexual assault victims were male.
• 2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape.
• Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

I don’t have a lot to say right now…I am trying to keep from crying…I am trying to figure out how we as a nation have allowed this to become such a huge problem…I am trying to find a way to get my footing as I think about all the women that I know and how 1 out of 6 of them have been victims of sexual assault…I am trying to think about what I have done in my life and to reflect on the ways I might have unknowingly contributed to an environment where this reality might have been allowed…I am trying to find the words to offer a sincere and heartfelt confession to God and the universe for this terrible social, spiritual, cultural and physical sin and the sin of silence, the sin of ignorance, the sin of apathy, and the sin of letting this go on.

I hope and pray that with all that has been coming to light and with all that we are learning and with all that we are horrified about change will come.

Dear God, forgive me my complacency. Forgive me my lack of attention. Forgive me for whatever I might have done or failed to do that somehow contributed to the terrible place we find ourselves. Comfort those who are the victims of sexual assault. Give them strength and healing. Be with those who assault others, help them understand the terrible thing they do and to find a way to change. Amen.

Do Something For Yourself

 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."  Mark 12:28-31 (NRSV)

I struggle with this passage A LOT. I often get caught in a cycle of trying to figure out exactly what it means to love God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. There are days and times when all my heart and soul and mind and strength are needed to just get myself through the day or event. Sometimes I barely have enough mental capacity to do the routine in my life. Occasionally I find my mind unable to process all that it is being bombarded with. There are event moments (honestly sometimes hours and even days) when my soul aches and doubts assail me. And don’t get me started on the limits of my physical strength as I find myself marching ever onward in the realm of becoming even more chronologically gifted.

Now add to these limits and realities the second part, the stuff about loving my neighbor and I sometimes feel unable to be a faithful child of God. I mean how do I love some of the people in this world? How do I look past the hatred, the blind fanaticism? How do I not hear the hurtful words they speak and the destructive actions they do? I can love the guy that cuts me off in traffic. I can love Donald Trump in all his insanity. I can even love the Confederate Battle Flag waving South Carolinian. But how do I love the ISIS believer who is training children to behead infidels? How do I love the woman who drives her car into the water and drowns her children because she thinks they will be better off dead? How do I love the young white man who guns down people in a Bible study?

And what really gets me is the very last part of this passage, that part about loving yourself. Really, in some ways and on some days loving others as I love myself would be worst than hating them. You know what I mean, those days when you hate yourself for falling off your diet or for the way you spoke to your spouse or for the angry outburst you visited upon your children. There are those days and times when you just don’t love yourself and in fact you love others more than you love yourself. So how do I love God and my neighbor when I can’t even love myself? How do I get out from under my cloud of self-loathing and once again love who I am? This is the question that haunts me the most when I am not at my best.

But don’t fear; I don’t get not lost in a pit of self-abhorrence because I have a way to once again love me. I do something kind for myself. I treat myself nicely. I stop beating myself up and instead do something to build myself up. Sometimes it is as easy as listening to a favorite song. Other times it’s a half day at the Japanese Garden or the Art Museum. Still other times it’s a stout and fries at the local pub. A sure way to help myself feel the love is to go to the most recent Disney animated movie or watch the Minions or the Madagascar Penguins.  And when it is really necessary or even when it isn’t I get together with a friend to just enjoy one another’s’ company. When I do these things I can find a way to love myself and that helps me to once again love others.

This isn’t a fix for all that I mentioned earlier, especially the extremists and the haters. Those take prayer, faith and a huge dose of just trusting that somehow God will help me find a way to love them. Which reminds me, loving God with everything I am and everything I have is really simple if I trust what I believe; do the rights things, work for justice and walk through my day with God at my side.

So I encourage you, do something for yourself today, find the love and feel the love for yourself and then share the love with others!

Dear God, help me to do the rights things, to work for justice, to walk with you. Help me love those I find unlovable. Help me find ways to love myself. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for showing me how to love others. Thank you for the ways I have to love myself so that I can love you and others. Amen.

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Shades of Gray

 The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is the Lord's alone. Proverbs 16:33 (NRSV)

Iranian nuclear deal, Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, Educations funding... it seems that a lot of things are getting done and that nobody is really happy about any of them. You hear a lot of language like, “It’s the best we could do.” Or, “Something is better than nothing.” Or, “It’s a small step.” Whatever the verbiage, it is clear that a lot of the decisions being made aren’t triumphs of right over wrong or best over worst or good over bad. I would say that a awful lot of what is happening is far from either black or white and is caught somewhere in a shade of gray.

I don’t like gray. I like back and white, this or that, clearly right or clearly wrong. I want to see something, read something, learn about something and then know for sure if it is the correct thing or not. I have been indoctrinated into a worldview that says there is a clearly discernible right answer and wrong answer. I have been nurtured on the concept that one is evil and the other good. I have been programmed to accept only a clear yes or no. I have been told that things are either black or white. And my experience has shown me that all there really are are shades of gray. I want one or the other – the best or the worst and I want to pick between those two options. The problem is that there are infinite choices on the spectrum from best to worst and often times the choice I have is between something that is bad and something that isn’t quite as bad. It is a choice between shades of gray.

In addition to the spectrum of choices placed before me there are also so many points of view, so much evidence, and a pantheon of experts to speak authoritatively on the subject all being pressed upon me to try and help me make my choice. With so many shades of gray and the possibility that finding the distinction between them is nigh on to impossible for an uninitiated novice I am always feeling unease about supporting something or opposing it for that matter. Life is complicated enough without my feeling inadequate in taking positions on relevant and important subjects.

So what do I do? How do I live with all these shades of gray? How is it that I find a way to voice support for or opposition against something? First I try to educate myself a little bit on what the subject is. I know I will never have the time, expertise or energy to do much in the way of in-depth research but I still can spend a little of myself trying to get a handle on the subject. Then I check out who is for and against it. I know who it is I trust to have the interests of the wider spectrum of people in mind and who doesn’t. I also know that some folks are more interested in getting something, however small and inadequate, done that they will support something that is grayer.  I talk to friends and family that I respect and whose opinions I value. I pray about it, seeking God’s wisdom and the still small voice that is there trying to help me live faithfully.

And this works except when the subject is finely nuanced or my guides are divided or the opinions I trust aren’t speaking with one voice. When this is the case I usually make my stand based on one simple question, who does this seem to help the most and who does it seem to hurt the most? My support always goes to whatever is hurting the poor, minority, disenfranchised, or common person the least or helping them the most. One way I test this is to see how it impacts me and my life. As part of the world’s ultra-wealthy minority if it costs me more, if it limits my choices, if it cuts into my profits, if it makes my life just a bit harder while at the same time it gives the vast majority of people a little more, eases the damage to our planet, and brings a small amount of relief to the poor and powerless then I support it. I guess I mean it when I pray, “Thy will be done.”

But the truth is I had the shades of gray!

Dear God, help me live with the shades of gray in life. Help me to listen for your wisdom and to make choices that help others over helping me. I pray for the poor and powerless and ask that improving their lives might become the standard by which all choices are made. Amen.

Legacy

Those who betray their own friends leave a legacy of abuse to their children. - Job 17:5 (The Message)

Something happened, something changed the way life is viewed and the way time is figured and the way we feel about what is important and how success is defined. I’m not sure when this change took place.  But somewhere in the not too distant past there was a shift and that shift has caused tremendous upheaval in our society. What I am writing about here is our sense of the value of the long term, our understanding of success, the idea of legacy as a motivator for how one lives in the present.

 I know there are negatives to a focus upon legacy but there are some really helpful things about it as well especially if the legacy in question isn’t about one person’s egocentric stamp on the world. I can be nostalgic I know that. I also know that the past can teach us things to help us in the present and future. The most helpful way to be nostalgic is to take something that is good from the past, clean it off, modify it a bit and set it loose in new situations and circumstances. I think this is what we need to do with the concept of legacy.

Today when we talk about leaving a legacy it has connotations of wealth and property. We see a legacy as that thing that someone else leaves you in a will. Or we mean it as the child following the parent in attending a particular college or university, membership in a group, or other situation where your familial relationship with a past member allows you entrance and access. The other way to talk about legacy is in reference to the way someone will be remembered, the thing that will carry forward into history that was their major accomplishment or failure.

But legacy used to mean something more than it does now. A parent worked the land, developed a farm or ranch with the intend of not only leaving the property to their children but a better life for them and for the community. There was the sense that the legacy you left was a better world. People who started businesses not only wanted to succeed in the present but they also wanted to leave something vital for their families and for the families that depended upon them for their livelihood. To leave a legacy meant to have done something meaningful that changed the world for the better. A classic example would be Andrew Carnegie – I know that he was no saint but by the time of his death he had given away 90% of his wealth ($350 million then or about $4.76 billion today) and part of what those donations bought were public libraries across the country. He left a legacy that made the world better. I think Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and even Phil Knight are trying to do the same with their fortunes. But too often today people seem only interested in making money for themselves and their immediate family and friends with no real desire to improve the common good.

Success was defined both personally and communally. If you succeeded as an individual you also helped your community and the world succeed. You saw the need to improve things now for the long term. Simon Benson, the lumber baron of Portland, gave money to build a High School that would educate young men and give them training so that he could have a trained and educated workforce for his businesses. Sure his motivation was personal and centered on the bottom line but he saw the way forward as improving the lives of others in order to get what he needed.

The debate today about the minimum wage is a debate about how we define success, how we view the long term vitality of our communities, and how we understand the concept of legacy. If the prime motivation is the bottom line this quarter then a low minimum wage makes sense – lower employee costs mean more income in the quarter. But if you look out even 2 years you will see low productivity, high employee turnover and lack of employee desire to innovate and improve the company and the bottom line and the costs associated. It is being shown over and over and over again that investing in living wages, providing benefits, making sure that employees are adequately trained, and doing other things to enhance the work environment and experience increases profits and company vitality over time. One quarter may not look good but the longer term picture shows that the investments are worth it. The legacy a company leaves with living wages and an improved work environment is a successful business providing jobs, a community that has a healthy middle class, and a world that improves as others see the value of improving the common good.

I think it is time investors started working long term. It shouldn’t be about this quarter or this year. It should be about the way a company makes its mark on the world and the legacy it is leaving and the profit is generates. A company with a long term view and a sense of legacy will perform and often perform well. But, you have to be in it for the long term and you have to see the success of your investing as not only what you make but also what the legacy of the companies you invest in are. Success is improving the common good and making the world a better place. If you have a pension plan, a 401K, invest in stocks, bonds, or leave you money in savings you are investing. What legacy are you leaving from the places where you put your money?

Something to think about…

Dear God, thank you for those who have the gift of being entrepreneurs, thank you for those who are willing to give away what they earn in ways that better lives and improve the common good. Help me to invest myself and my resources in such a way that I leave a legacy of a better world. Amen.

What a Week!

 The blind and the lame came to Jesus in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry…  Matthew 21:14-15 (NRSV)

I have been on vacation for a couple of weeks but what happened last week cannot be left un-Mused about. It was a week of historic proportions. The Affordable Care Act was upheld and the freedom to marry for all adults was confirmed both by the United States Supreme Court. Add to this the lighting fast and totally awesome almost universal call to take down Confederate Battle flags from public places and off flags, license plates, etc in response to an overt racist’s violence and it was an amazing week indeed.

I have a monthly gathering with any who want to join me called The Preacher’s Public House Chat. We eat and drink together at a local brew pub and talk about many things but usually focus upon an article, TedTalk, news item, etc that I have suggested. In August we will be talking about a blog by a woman who happens to be a Christian and her opinion about whether or not the church is dying. I am sure we will have a good conversation, we always do. But I want to offer here my opinion that the church isn’t dying, it is waiting. It is waiting for those of us who claim it as our own to once again stand fast in our commitment to what is the loving, just and right thing. If we do not hold fast to this commitment the church as we know it – the institution that is with us now will die but the purpose of the church will live. The purpose of the church is to live out God’s values of justice, righteousness, acceptance and love and this must be the driving force behind our institution. If it is not a new institution will come to be that will be different from what was but that will still be the church because it will be what God needs.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool United Methodist. I claim as my own our heritage – the good and bad. I recognize within it the values and character of God. But as we move ahead as a society and a community of faith I am troubled. What troubles me is that United Methodists will forgo our heritage of social justice and compassion for those outside and underprivileged in the name of orthodoxy- of correct belief. United Methodists are not about nor have we ever been about believing the “correct” things. We are about making the world a better place for all and loving absolutely everyone no if, ands or buts. In the past the United Methodist Church often led our society into the transformed world God wants for us – advocating for the least, lost and unloved. Public education, child labor, temperance, abolition, etc… our history is one of witnessing to what could and should be based upon the values and character of our God. In the recent past we have not been doing this and instead have had to draw battle lines in culture wars and force the church to stay out of the vanguard of making love, justice and peace real for more and more of God’s children.

As I have mentioned before, in May of 2016 the General Conference of the United Methodist Church comes to Portland. But what really matters is that the UMC will need to look at itself in the mirror and decide who we will resemble, God or a misinformed caricature of God. Can we once again see in ourselves the image and likeness of God, of the one who has a special place in the heart for those on the fringes of society, for those excluded from community, for those deemed unacceptable by some but who are still and always have been God’s beloved? My hope and prayer is that we will look and see God and that this image and likeness, this being created in the image of God will rule the hearts, minds, and spirits of those selected to make decisions for the UMC and that we can join hands to journey into the transformed world God dreams for all God’s beloved; a world of acceptance, justice, love and peace.

Dear God, thank you for rays of hope that reflect your heart and will. Be with our society as we move forward into new ways of being. Be with the United Methodist Church as we wrestle with what it is you want and need from us. Be with me as I contemplate what my future might be. Help me remain faithful to you. Amen.