Guns, Giffords, and Weeping

OK. So why am I weeping?

I am watching Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords being transferred from Tucson to a helicopter which will take her to Houston for more medical care and rehabilitation. Her progress, in spite of her horrific injury, has been astounding and remarkable. She did not die. So why I am weeping?

Because I am sad. I am sad that guns, assault weapons, are so readily available. I am sad that people feel free to use guns to snuff out the lives of others. I am sad that nobody is really safe.

I am sad because some people who use the guns to kill and/or injure others are “sane,” and others are insane, but that in the end, there is no effort to distinguish between the two when guns are purchased.

I am sad because I am afraid that many people who use guns to settle their issues have been sick or at least unbalanced, for a long time, and they were either unable to get treatment, or their family and friends ignored the signs because there is such a stigma on having a mental illness, and so sick children grow up to be sick -and dangerous-youth and adults.

I don’t like guns, but I don’t think guns are THE problem. I think the problem is that there are so many hurting and sick people, and so many dysfunctional families, that too many people are falling through the cracks-only to reappear later, rage in their hearts and spirits, and innocent people suffer.

I cringe as I listen to people describe people who use guns to settle their scores, as “evil.” I cringe because I truly think many of them are sick. And I cringe as I listen to newscasters talk about how Giffords’ shooter, for example, may get the death penalty. He committed heinous acts, and has to be held accountable, but I am feeling that, in essence, he may be put to death for being sick.

That thought sickens me.

As I am writing, I am thinking about how much difficult work there is to do to make this world better. I am glad health care reform passed. Maybe some children who are mentally ill can get medical and psychiatric help before they grow up and do something horrible.

There is work to do, to make people feel like they are special, so that they don’t hold hurt, grief and rage in their hearts. Bullying abounds. Kids bully other kids, but parents bully their kids, too, and it makes hurting souls bleed.

I am angry that Giffords was shot and so horribly wounded, and angry that Judge Rolls and Christina Taylor Green had their lives snuffed out. I am weeping because this is all so wrong…

But it’s wrong on a number of levels.

That is a candid observation.

Damned Disease

I hate cancer.

My mother died of it. My father died of it, and my sister has it.

And let’s not fail to mention all the members of my congregation who have died of it, and my mother in the ministry.

When I was in high school, before anyone close to me had gotten the disease, I remember asking a biology teacher why it is doctors couldn’t just freeze people who had cancer until a cure was found? I don’t know what prompted me to ask that question, but I was passionate in my “ask” and was disappointed when the teacher said she didn’t think such a solution was possible.

I know that other diseases are supposedly more deadly – like heart disease, and I know that I should be more concerned with heart disease as I have a strong family history of heart disease.

But cancer is so …rude. It invades our bodies without a clue, far too often. By the time we figure out we have it, it has advanced to a point where the treatment will be arduous, long and painful. It is rude, this disease, and sneaky.

I also remember thinking while I was in high school that cancer must be a virus. It was a pesky, sneaky virus, I decided, like the virus that causes one to have colds. I read up on viruses and learned that they were hard to identify and doubly hard to treat.

So, this rude virus invades our bodies, even those of us who try to eat right and exercise. It invades the delicate bodies of babies and little children. It invades and it grows into what it wants, sometimes in such defiance of the drugs pumped into its tumors.

I hate it.

My son, who not all that long ago started smoking, asked me why I always say, out loud, that I hate cancer.

It’s because I do. It is my Moby Dick. It is a hated presence in my life and in the lives of others which has stolen moments which were not it to have.

I am grateful that research is advancing treatment and cures for this impostor, this unwanted visitor. I like to visualize the little arrogant cancer cells being knocked out by drugs that will not be knocked out or pushed around. I like to see them, in my mind’s eye, shriveling up, like the wicked witch of the North (was she from the North?), screeching in protest, only to be no more.

We are Captain Ahab, cancer. We who hate you are Captain Ahab …and we will beat you yet.

You are a damned disease…and that is a candid observation.

God, What?

We are taught from the beginning that God is perfect and that everything God does was and is good.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love God. I have issues with religion and religious people (funny, that, seeing as how I am a Christian pastor!) but I love God.

But this perfection thing…I wonder.

Why? Because of all of the imperfections I see in human beings. When babies are born with cleft palates, or with their intestines on the outside of their bodies, or with no brain, or no heart, I wonder. Would a perfect God be capable of an imperfect creation?

I think about the propensity of people to become addicted. People are addicted to all kinds of things, from sex to gambling to video games …not to mention alcohol and drugs. I find myself wondering what went wrong in the process of creation. If God is perfect, then what? Is it God’s prerogative to create imperfect human beings? I mean, doesn’t it seem that a perfect God would be able to wire this magnificent species called homo sapiens in such a way that we all came out perfect …and not inclined to fall into addiction?

This is outside the scope of Free Will. We have not an iota of say while we are in the process of “becoming.” I know heredity plays a part, meaning that one’s genetic makeup cannot be ignored. But heredity is only part of the answer. And I know environment plays a part. The environment of the woman who bears the egg that is fertilized by the man mixes with his environmental particularities.

But isn’t God supposed to be able to trump all of that? Does the perfect God not want to duplicate perfection as much as divinely possible?

This discussion leads me to theodicy, that discipline which tries to help humans understand this God. If God is good, then why do bad things happen to good people? Why did the 9 year old girl and five others die in Tucson, victims of a crazed gunman? Is God all good and all powerful? If God is good, then, in light of the “imperfections of creation” and other phenomena, such as the Tucson shooting, is God not all powerful? Or is God all powerful, but not really all good?

I have struggled enough with these questions over the years to gratefully say that in spite of the lack of perfection in creation, I still believe God is both all good and all powerful. I have also decided, though, that God is incomprehensible. Whoever wrote that God’s ways are as far from ours as the east is from the west was on point.

I will never “get” God.

But I am glad I have God, in spite of the fact that I look around sometimes, and say, “God, what?”

That’s a very personal candid observation.

Winfrey vs Ailes

I know it isn’t her intention, but as I watched the debut of Oprah’s own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, it occurred to me that OWN may become the challenge to the Fox News Network.

That’s right: Oprah is the positive counterpart to Roger Ailes.

What it seems that Oprah’s network is setting out to do is to build people up and inspire people to “own” who they are, to get past their pain, their weaknesses, their issues, to scale the walls that separate them from empowerment and peace. Ailes’ network, at least on the news side, seems intent upon spreading dissension, fear and anger and a political point of view at any cost – even truth.

The Fox news operation has unabashedly fed into the fear that remains in America and its citizens because people do not read and inform themselves. They instead rely on people to give them their truth, to define their truth, or to validate the “truth” they think they have. This truth is based on years, generations, of simply accepting what people say instead of searching for the truth themselves.

I still reel at a statement I read on my Facebook page where a man wrote that “Glenn Beck taught me all I know about American history.” With all due respect to Mr. Beck, that is a sad and scary truth. But here’s what Mr. Ailes is: a genius at manipulating and using the fear and ignorance of people to his own political and economic advantage.

Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and a whole host of other Fox News people are likewise using the fear of people to build their own wealth and fame. Although Rush Limbaugh is not a Fox News anchor, he, too, does the same thing and perhaps set the standard. I remember feeling sick to my stomach at the thought that Limbaugh riles people up and then laughs all the way to the bank – that he says what he says in the way he says it in order to pander to his audience.

In other words, it’s an act, designed to boost ratings, and my feeling increased when Limbaugh, who has had nothing good to say about gay people or their quest for civil rights, invited Elton John to perform at his wedding. It spoke volumes to me about his hypocrisy.

Winfrey, too, is looking to reach a core part of human beings, but it isn’t their fear: it’s their power and potential. Too many individuals are stymied by feelings of low self worth. Babies born are full of potential, but then they are taken into their homes and are raised by individuals who themselves feel like nothing because they were raised by people …who felt like nothing. The result is babies who grow into children who grow into adults who do not have a clue as to who they really are, what they can do, and why they should do it.

So many people live lives of quiet desperation. Ailes’ network exploits that reality, while Oprah’s network is working to change that reality.

As people shed their fear, the fear that breeds racism and sexism and child abuse and spousal abuse and shyness and self-loathing and so many more damaging issues that people carry, the world will be a better place. The blinders will fall off people’s eyes and they will be more equipped and more inclined to seek a truth that empowers, not a “truth” that binds.

They will live in love, and therefore give love, instead of living in fear, which leads people to give fear out in the form of hatred, bigotry, and all sorts of toxins that make the ground fertile for people who would exploit those qualities.

At the end of any day, any month and indeed, at the end of any year, all of us ought to have a list of things we can see that we did to change ourselves and therefore our world, for the better. I am sure that people who live in fear cannot do that.

I am just as sure that people who have been touched by the programming Oprah has done over the past 25 years and the work she is continuing to do now through her OWN network can and will do that.

What we put out in the world is what we will receive. Ailes and his crew have given out fear and hatred and that’s what they get back. Oprah attempts to give out empowerment and that’s what she gets in return. She gives out love and love liberates, according to Maya Angelou.

People are looking for answers. I think the programs offered by Ms. Winfrey will give those who are ready to be transformed those very answers, and in the process, make this world a little better place. The programs will help people venture into their raw, tender places and seek healing. Healed people heal people; hurt people hurt people. Ailes’ network seeks to perpetuate the hurt; Winfrey’s network seems to be one that will seek and perpetuate the healing.

That’s a candid observation.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 37 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 65 posts. There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 123kb.

The busiest day of the year was November 12th with 63 views. The most popular post that day was For Colored Girls.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, twitter.com, alphainventions.com, and touch.facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for eddie long, “grass is not greener in someone else’s yard”, cassady2euca.wordpress, types of empowerment, and anne rice.