What is your next chapter?

What is going to be “the next chapter” of your life?

It hit me last night that I really need to step out of my comfort zone in a big way. I have always known that, but last night, the magnitude of that necessity hit me in the middle of a sound sleep.

I woke up.

The truth of the matter is that we get so comfortable being uncomfortable. Discomfort has a comfort of its own which we do not like to acknowledge, but it is there, and it paralyzes us.

We lose the right to complain about our circumstances if we refuse to move. If I have a cut and keep pouring salt in it, it seems rather foolish to complain about the pain, right? If I want the pain to stop, I have to stop pouring in the salt.

We so often insist upon pouring salt into our own wounds, our situations, and then we complain. When I woke up last night, I realized my complicity in my angst. I realized that some of what I carry as angst, I carry because I have chosen to keep pouring salt in old wounds.

The death of my sister jostled me. How in the world could one so young go away, be taken by illness? She had the spirit of a fighting hawk; death took her, but not easily. Yet, she is gone, her chances to stop pouring salt into her wounds gone.

It is as if God said to me, “Well, what will YOU do?”

I would bet that God is asking a lot of us that question, not because it is the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one, but because God really wants more of us to “become’ what God created us to be. It is not about resolutions, which seem flippant, but about conviction about who we are and what we were put here to do.

We have a limited amount of time. When I felt the divine jostle, I knew what God was saying to me.

The chapters of most of our lives fall into a mundane hum. Many to most of us exist as opposed to living. We take everything for granted, from the breaths we take to the days of life we are granted.

Yet, God wants us all to have a “next chapter,” a chapter which will be different from what we have had up until now. God wants us to “be’ what God created us to be, to contribute what God put in us to contribute.

The best thing is that no matter how old we are, as long as we have breath and life, we have a chance to begin the next chapter. Even if we cannot finish the chapter, we need all to begin it. We ought to love ourselves and our potential enough to look into what God sees in us.

Even if one is an atheist, there is a “higher power’ than the “here and now,’ something which can encourage us to reach for the stars even though we may only reach the moon. The important thing is that we reach.

What is your next chapter? All of us have a “next chapter.’

That would be a candid observation.

America, Christmas, and the Great Commandment

Though I’ve heard a lot of people voice anger and angst over not feeling comfortable saying “Merry Christmas,” being urged to say “Happy Holidays” instead, I find myself thinking that it’s good that America is really living up to its legacy as a pluralistic nation.

When I was a kid, nobody said anything else about any other religion. It was simply, “Merry Christmas,” and it was fine. There was Santa and Christmas Carol, and there was the baby Jesus. We never mentioned Hanukkah, though there were plenty of Jewish children around, our classmates, actually. In fact, some of my Jewish friends said that their families celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah …not the Jesus part …but the tree and gift part.

We Christians didn’t hear much, if anything, about Hanukkah, and if we did, we certainly didn’t know what it was about. That is so …not cool…for a religion, Christianity, which sprang from Judaism. The eight day celebration, commemorating the dedication or rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem seems to be as central to our existence as Christians as it is to the history of Judaism.

In other words, had the Jews not regained control of Jerusalem, there might not have been a Christianity.

That opinion aside, there is something larger here. America is not monolithic. Our motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” or, “out of many, one,” is what America is supposed to be all about; it is what marks us as a unique place, a democracy that is different from every other country in the world.

Instead of celebrating that, though, we have had an environment where everyone has tried to assimilate into the mainline culture, which was white and Protestant. In doing that, we created boundaries between us, something Rev. Dr. James Forbes once called “verusism” in a sermon he did about the woman at the well. We became a nation which was diverse according to the census, but closed according to the reality of how we lived. One had to be “better than” or “truer than” another in order to feel affirmed.

Meanwhile, what happened to all of the other faces in the crowd?

The worst thing about being a pluralistic yet closed society is that such a state creates, increases and incubates ignorance, which leads to hatred, fear, and bullying.

Saying “Happy Holidays” acknowledges that we are appreciative of all of the people who live in America and who have made important contributions; it says that we are secure enough in our own religion to respect another. There is Christmas, the birth of the Christ, surely, but there are also other religions which, to their adherents, are just as important to them as our religion is to us.

Sarah Palin blasted President Obama for sending out a Christmas card that says “From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season.” But a card sent out by President Reagan in 1987 says, “The President and Mrs. Reagan extend to you warm wishes for a joyous holiday season and a happy and healthy new year.”

The card is signed by Mr. Reagan.

On a caustic note, every politician knows that he or she cannot govern or expect to win re-election by being exclusivist. They must be diplomatic and use language that does not offend any of their potential supporters.

But on a humanistic note, to use “neutral” or “inclusive” language is just plain …American, not to mention polite. A mentor of mine, the late Rev. Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, shared with us that we Christians should never do an invocation at a public event and end the prayer with “in the name of Jesus,” because many people in the audience will not be Christian and will feel left out.

The thing is this: at the heart of every religion is the need for love, and love is inclusive. In the Christian Bible, we are fond of quoting 1 Corinthians 13, where it says “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal…Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking…it does not delight in evil but rejoices at the truth.” Paul the Roman Jew touched and converted by the Christ, wrote that.

And the truth is, America is a pluralistic nation. We don’t often embrace that fact.

A candid observation …

Jesus, the Homeless Hero

Every now and then, a question will come from out of nowhere that is so profound one has to stop and think. Such a question was in a post by Paul Raushenbush on the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/shane-claiborne-new-monastics_b_1156525.html) this week: How can you worship a homeless man on a Sunday and evict him on a Monday?

The question was in reference to Jesus, the Christ, whose birth Christians the world over will celebrate this Sunday. The scriptures that will be read, describing the night the child was born in a manger “because there was no room in the inn,” are romantic at best, because they camouflage the fact that even in Jesus’ time, the issue of class was a problem.

Jesus, the Palestinian Jew (despite Newt Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented” people) was not part of the in crowd. His parents were not wealthy, not even close; they did not belong to the upper class. Clearly, that is the case, because had they had money, someone, somewhere would have found room for this very pregnant woman.

Throughout Jesus’ life, he posed a problem for the powers that be. Scholars including James Cone, William R. Herzog and the Paulo Freire and Obery Hendricks have suggested that Jesus’ life and ministry was all the more dangerous and difficult for him because he was part of the oppressed class, and spoke against oppression in what some would call “subversive speech.”

We Christians are too far removed from the Palestine and Roman Empire of Jesus’ day; we have a need to believe in the myth of Jesus as opposed to his hard message. We forget that Jesus saw the elitist class of Jerusalem collaborate with the Roman government, something that resulted in more oppression for “the least of these.”

Jesus, in Matthew 25, was not an observer, looking into the lives of the oppressed; he was an insider, looking out, and not liking what he saw.

Freire said that understanding Jesus’ life that way, we understand that the parables were not “earthly stories with heavenly meanings,” but rather they were earthy stories with heavy meanings.” William Herzog, in his book, Parables as Subversive Speech,” said that Jesus was aware of the exploitation of the masses that went on, and he challenged it. Herzog said that the “parable was a form of social analysis, every bit as much as it was a form of theological reflection.”

We Christians do not want that, though. It seems that we cannot fathom the idea that Jesus was not mild and meek, but was instead a rabble rouser, every bit as irritating and annoying to some as is Michael Moore or the late Rev Dr. Martin Luther King. The thought that Jesus might indeed be in the midst of an Occupy tent camp repulses those of us who hold onto myth.

The truth is that we tend to deify people once they are gone. Jesus was hated when he was alive; once he died, he became a hero. The week of his death, according to the Bible, was one in which this schizophrenic type of belief was obvious; on a Thursday, they hailed him as a hero, but a couple of days later, egged on by the religious elitists, they urged the government to crucify him.

That biblical reality notwithstanding even in hero status, the message and mission of Jesus as a social revolutionary is a message that the hero-makers want to, frankly, subvert, recast, and ignore. We are not unlike the Maundy Thursday crowd, praising Jesus (for our own selfish purposes) one moment, but then rejecting him three days later.

He was not rich enough, not “right” enough, not “connected” enough, to be worth caring about deeply. The upper class cares for its own but Jesus just did not belong to them.

We Christians may not all be upper class, but we have issues and beliefs which we hold onto, and frankly, this notion of Jesus as a revolutionary, one who challenged the status quo, just does not work for us.

Sad.

In essence, we are still capable of worshipping him, a homeless man, on a Sunday …and evicting him on a Monday.

A candid …and painful …observation.

Gingrich a Grinch

I have held off saying anything for as long as I could. I have been …meditating …on how to talk about …Newt.

You know, as in Gingrich. The now-leading GOP presidential candidate hopeful.

I nearly ran off the road when I heard his comments on the radio – something to the effect that poor kids have no work ethic because they don’t see anyone who works, and that they should become janitors in their schools, or maybe junior janitors.

My first thought was, “How arrogant! Has he been in a poor neighborhood, where parents often work 2-3 jobs, usually minimum wage with no benefits – and still can’t make ends meet? Has he been in poor neighborhoods dominated by slum landlords who charge exorbitant rent for habitats that are one step removed from shanties? Has he been in neighborhoods where there is no local supermarket and where many people cannot afford cars, so children are forced to eat horrible food gotten from the local corner store …which also charges too much?

I would bet not.

But then, I thought along a different line. If the children in poor neighborhoods became the janitors, where would the current janitors work – people who are trying to make a living and provide for their families?

Did he think of that? Would he even think to think of that?

The fact is, Gingrich, like so many white and privileged people, relies on stereotypes and generalizations. He, and others like him, speak on what they assume to be true. The “poor people” of whom he speaks (he and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Bachmann, Coulter and others) are not even worthy of a personal investigation of why they are where they are, and how difficult it has been to get out and move up in a society which spurns them.

The fact is, many kids seldom see their parents because those parents do have a work ethic and they work their fingers to the bones, at the expense of their families. How many poor kids have come up saying that their parents worked two and three jobs, that their mothers were so tired after working that they would sit at the kitchen table and fall asleep? No, everyone doesn’t have the same work ethic, but some of them do not because they have given up. They have tried and tried to get good employment, to no avail and have stopped trying.

All kinds of people these days, who would not call themselves “poor,” or wouldn’t have called themselves “poor” before now, know what it feels like to try to work and get rejected, over and over. After a while, people stop trying.

Gingrich might be an intellectual, but he’s an insensitive and calloused and prejudiced intellectual who has no business wanting to be president of a country where there are more and more people who do not have work. A president is supposed to care for everyone, including “the least of these.” Donald Trump defended Gingrich’s statements, and said Barack Obama had not done anything for “people in the ghetto.”

Oh, how the cries of “socialist” would have been even louder had the president put his focus there!

Michelle Bachmann says that “the American people” are gravitating to the views of Hannity, Limbaugh, and people who, I suppose, think like Gingrich. Clearly, “the American people” of whom she speaks are white, privileged Americans who think the poor – primarily black and brown people – are not worthy of time or respect.

Gingrich was out of line. His arrogance is repugnant …and surely, “the American people” would not want such a divisive character to lead this country, the so-called, “land of the free and home of the brave,” poor people included.

A candid observation …

God and Government, Really

It occurred to me that we humans treat God and government in much the same way.

When times are good, we tend to marginalize God and we rail against “big government.”

But when the bottom falls from beneath us, we run to God or government or both, depending on the situation.

Nicholas Kristoff wrote an article in The New York Times about a former employee of Chase Bank whose job it was to award sub prime loans to people whom the bank knew were poor risks. If things fell apart, the bank reasoned, the government would bail the banks out …and no one would be the wiser.

Things did fall apart and the government (that would be big government) did in fact bail banks and corporations out, and the people who had been granted loans the banks knew they’d never be able to pay were left out in the cold – some of them literally.

Big government did what a government is supposed to do, right?

In times of economic prosperity, however, big government is spurned and scorned. It is pushed to the side; a government too involved in the life of the masses of people makes it too “socialist.” Whatever America is, it is not socialist. God forbid.

The same type of marginalization of God tends to be a reality. When times are good, for way too many people God is an afterthought, or if not an afterthought, an unwelcome reminder that there is a God who is the same whether times are good or not.

In Biblical literature, the Israelites, over and over, rejected God when times were good, when they were enjoying economic prosperity and benefited from all that money gives. They failed to understand that God doesn’t like to be marginalized and they failed to appreciate God’s anger against such insensitive treatment.

When times got bad, however, and they always got bad – these same people would fall before God and ask for forgiveness and mercy and relief from their dilemmas.

Government doesn’t much care, one would suppose, if it is marginalized. Government, though it is supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people,” doesn’t have a personality with which adherents have to deal. Government takes its knocks; some politicians do what they can for “the least of these” when the anti-big government cries are loud, and they see that those whose voices cannot be heard are those who are themselves marginalized, with seemingly no voice.

God, on the other hand, according to the Bible, doesn’t take very well to being marginalized. If we are to believe the Biblical texts, then God must be fuming because the recent spate of prosperity encouraged way too many people, some of them church-going believers – to push Him/Her to the side.

But that’s how we treat God and government. We consider them our tools, our property, really, to use when we need them, but to be pushed onto a nice shelf when we are doing all right.

A candid observation …