meanderings

i was driving with my mother in my daddy's truck. she began to bemoan the political season and that guy, what was his name and his affairs, you know, the democratic candidate.... i told her i didn't watch tv so i hadn't heard about his sex life yet. she said they were talking about it on the radio. i had not been listening. but when i tuned in i was naively surprised once again by the incredible bias. it was wmuu...the bob jones university station. it was so unabashedly and blatantly one sided politically. i'd never heard anything like it. but i am rather ignorant of these things, i guess.
so i'm wondering when jesus got to be so adamantly and unreservedly republican (with a capital r). and i can't help but compare the religious right obsession with sexual sin to the pharisees of jesus's day... and the parallel disinterest in any kind of social justice.... as in jesus's day. and the bible says that jesus cut them no slack.
i'm such a peacemaker. i know there are some good people who listen to this trash, my parents among them. why don't they see the biblical conflict in what they are listening to.
the choice between republican and democrat is a compromise. neither represents christian values. they are both secular entities concerned with power. but the bible i read does not give us a choice about social justice. we are to live it and we are to work for it. there is no difference between the old and new testaments on this matter.
... but jesus was considerable lighter on sexual sin.... read the stories. he gives the pharisees hell. he tells the sinners, i forgive you, go and sin no more. no punishment. no threat of hell.
something to think about, isn't it.

i woke this morning from a dream that was half memory, half fear, and all sadness
we're going to visit my daughter in colorado this summer, and we're going by way of st. louis. my brother wants to tell me all the cool places we need to see on our one day stop, but for me there is only one place that calls my name. it is the grave of the woman who was once my friend. and next to her the daughter that died in my house.

the events that change our lives come so abruptly.
i thought it was going to be about being a mother, about the long awaited arrival of my first child. but it was the feel and power of irrevocable death that made its first mark on me that long ago january 4, 1981. i knew death only from newspapers and the old. i didn't know that death could invade so tiny a body, and change so what was warm and soft to unbearably stiff and cold.

most days i think i've left that behind me. but this trip has triggered my shadow grief. i can still feel the no within me when my husband held me close and told me that jeanne was dead. more than that, i can feel courtney's body so still upon my hands.

and so i have dreamed of holding my own baby, beloved beyond all my imaginings of my ability to love, lying cold and stiff and accepted as dead in some bizarre compartment of my mind. but even in my dream, being unable to live without hope. resurrecting her deceased body in bizarre ways.

i cannot imagine death on the scale i read about in the media. i don't begin to know how you can heal from such tragedy. i do know that we are never the same.

If the Americans move what they have in their left hand to their right hand, it is still in their possession - credited to Ayatollah Sistani


What images of wisdom do American have? What places are left where we come together to talk religion and politics with children listening to their parents and grandparents? Where do they hear passionate discussions of who is right and wrong?
Certainly not on TV.
And in the homes, the television is constantly on.
Not in the newspapers.
And who reads them anymore.
How many families spend 30 minutes a week discussing what their values are, much less taking the time to listen to others who might have a different idea?
And how many families spend 2 to 4 hours watching TV in the evening?
Fox News may be a bastion of conservative values in its news coverage, but its programming is a commercial enterprise. And what sells today is an appeal to our baser instincts. There are the rare creative enterprises that have a positive message, of which oddly enough the at one time controversial Simpsons would be included. But more often, it is simple crudity and adolescent male humor that rules the air waves.
What are we to do? It is so hard for me to keep even minimally informed on what my government is doing and what is happening in the rest of the world. Mainstream media is giving such an abbreviated, watered down version of what is happening in the world that the fact that there were no WMD is breakiing news in this country when the rest of the world has known it for months and months. No one asks the simplest of questions when our government contradicts itself. This country was founded on the belief that the right to question the government is fundamental. Today, questioning the government is seen as a lack of patriotism.
It's hard to keep a nation of such educated people ignorant. It is not that we do not know how to read and think. It is that we have been hypnotically lulled into believing that we don't need to

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.. Jesus

we went back to the presbyterians this morning. and before that, i read most of the sojourner's magazine that i so seldom read offline and not in a hurry. i remember especially the article with phillip yancey and his experiences with bad church, writing and dealing with making large amounts of money... and the sermon topic today was on forgiveness.

i've always wondered why jesus needed to die on the cross. yes, i know all about the bloodthirsty needs of the hebrew god... but there had to be a reason for the crucifixion in the context of our redemption that i have never really understood. i think i got a picture today of what it is. to me, jesus is the ultimate example. in spite of its commercialism - the what would jesus do guide to getting it right. and what jesus did in the midst of one of the most painful methods of execution was to forgive his killers.... who were NOT EVEN SORRY.

that is what man must do to find redemption.

all men (and women) and any one.... we must somehow learn to forgive and be forgiven.

for whatever reason, kindness and goodness must be learned. some children find this easier than others, but all of us enter life self-centered. and it is directing our focus on our brothers that peace and joy become ours. every religion recognizes this. somehow we must come to the place that we can forgive those in our life who hurt us....

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow