Crosswalk America

God's plan?

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@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

Curt Peterson grew up in a loving family. His mother and father farmed sugar beets and raised sheep just outside Bridger Montana. In 1976 he told his mother, Joan, that he was gay and shortly afterwards moved to Denver Colorado where he “would be more accepted”. He never shared his sexual orientation with his father, Harold Peterson. Harold found out his son was gay only after Curt’s death on April 30^th 1977. Curt was stabbed to death between 3 am and 4 pm on that day in Billings Montana.

  Bridger Montana

It is hard to imagine a more peaceful place than Bridger, population 745 in 2000, where Curt was born and raised. His parents still live there. They still seek answers to his violent death. There are none.

  
Belfast NI

Paul O'Reilly moved with his mother and eight siblings to New Brunswick, Canada, from Belfast, North Ireland `Eve of that year. It is hard for me to imagine a more violent place than Belfast in the 1970s. It was especially violent if you were Catholic living in a Protestant neighborhood. It is also hard, for me, to imagine how it would feel to be rejected at 16 by your father when your mother died. That was Paul’s early life.

 

Paul and his siblings were adopted by an aunt and uncle who had four children of their own. The love of that family shaped him and turned him from the path of bitterness, hatred and despair. Read about Paul here.

 

Two contemporaries, Paul O'Reilly and Curt Peterson, lived worlds apart. Curt died young and Paul is a college professor and administrator .But, both loved and were loved by family. Curt helped his father with the beet harvest (sugar beets not the kind you eat) the day before he died. Paul gives his family credit for steering him towards his calling. One gay, one straight, they followed different plans. Curt wanted to become a woman; Paul wanted a large Catholic family. Paul realized his dream; Curt died before his could happen.

 

Paul believes that God has a plan for him, even if he doesn’t know what it is. I don’t know. Did God have a plan for Curt that resulted in his violent death?

 

I have often heard that God has a plan for every life. The Christian, I used to be, would have said that obviously it wasn’t God’s plan for Curt to be a woman and that Paul was destined to become an administrator at a Catholic college. One was good the other not. My experiences have made me think about my beliefs.

 

I have known several women who were formerly men. Two were delightful women that I liked and admired. Rhonda, who I worked with, and Sarah from Asbury UMC, were pleasant and a joy to be with. Others not so much. College professors have affected me similarly. There was the one that read a poem that I had written as an example of how not to write poetry to over a hundred students (I was present). There is Michael Powell running for state senator against a woman who believes that life begins two weeks before conception. I could go on both ways. They are not good or bad because I like them. It makes them human, the same as me. Another might like the ones I dislike or vice versa. I may even feel affinity for someone that does not share my views and preferences.

 

God, I’ve heard, loves them all. I try but often fail. I believe God loved Curt as much as Paul. So, why did one die in violence while the other did not?

  Thomas Aquinas College

Thomas Aquinas College is on the road between Santa Paula and Ojai California on the edge of a National Forest with great hiking trails (there is one not far from the college).

Yellowstone River upstream (west) of Billings

Bridger, Mt. is not far from Billings and the Yellowstone River (where Curt died). I have been to all three places and remember them as beautiful, peaceful, havens from strife.

 

God’s plan? Curt’s parents aren’t talking about a plan for him. They just want to know who killed him. Paul talks about one for him but doesn’t have the foggiest what it is.

 

I don’t know what the one for my life is either. I just keep on traveling along, hoping that I am on the right path and doing the best I can. Same as Paul does. Same as Curt did.

Not turning anyone away

 

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

It’s not much of a place, just an exit on Interstate 90 in the floodplain of the Yellowstone River. Park City, Montana boasted a population of 870 in the 2000 census. Not large enough to be a town, it is a Census Designated Place, CDP. The county it is part of, Stillwater, only has three towns, three CDFs and three unincorporated communities. Laurel, five miles to the east has a population of 6,000 some. Billings 25 miles farther east is the largest city in Montana. Like I said, Park City is not much of a place on the out skirts of a small city.

 

When I lived there in the forties and fifties the population was a little more than half of what it is now. In that time there were three bars, a drugstore, a mercantile, and a lumberyard. The bar scene was down to one, the drugstore is gone but the lumberyard was still there, the last time I visited my grandmother’s grave. The truck stop, originally located about where the interstate is now, has moved to the exit of the interstate. I think it now incorporates a casino as well as a restaurant. I only remember two churches in Park City. There was a Baptist and a Lutheran. The Roman Catholic Church had closed long before I lived there, but the building was still standing vacant. I remember the Lutheran. It was housed in a magnificent, if small, stone building not far from the center of town (OK CDP). I can’t quite put my finger on where the Baptist Church was or what it looked like.

 

I was pushed into this memory trip when I read an article in the Billings Gazette online. The article, Park City church opens center to help people in need, took me by surprise. Park City is not a wealthy enclave of yuppie cube dwellers commuting to Billings. Most are connected to agriculture in some way. Some might work for the refinery in Laurel or the BNSF railroad. Blue collar or no collar jobs are the norm here. But here was a small Baptist (Southern Baptist Convention) Church starting a center to help down and out people. It started last spring with all of the flooding along the Musselshell River, a tributary of the Missouri. They gathered clothes and filled a trailer (20 foot long, single wide) with them. Having some leftovers they decided to keep the trailer and park it next to the church and call it The Park City Care Center. Like the Center the church is modest in size, with about 300 members. Both fit well in Park City.

 

One quote by the Center’s director, Julie Diskin, caught my eye:

 

“The Lord didn’t turn anybody away, and I’m sure not gonna.”

Julie Diskin

Julie certainly got Jesus’ message and it seems that the small church did also. But I wonder about how she, or the church, would feel if a gay couple walked through the trailer door. Still what she and the Park City church are doing is right in line with the teachings of Jesus. For that, I applaud them.

 

Now, if only the SBC would apply that, (the willingness to not turn anyone away), to its membership.

Does not compute!

@ Home in Phoenix, AZ

February 7, 1964: Marilyn, mother of my children, woke me in the middle of the dream. “It’s time”, she said. I glanced at the clock. It said, 3:30 am. I said, “I programmed that function out”. Then, I rolled over and tried to pull the blanket around me. It didn’t work. Eventually, she got me awake after telling me that her water had broken. I called the cab and we went to the hospital.

 

In the dream, I was programming a Univac 1206, military computer. It stood 6 foot tall and 4 foot by 4 foot. It was water cooled. It was one of the first computers to use semiconductors instead of tubes. Most of the heat was generated by the memory which consisted of 32 K (1 K = 1000) of 30 bit words. The magnetic toroid coils needed a lot of current to change the magnetic orientation. My dream came from the topic of the current, at that time, course in Navy computer school.

 

In the years since, I have marveled at the speed of change in computers. Today, if you carry a smart phone, you carry a computer more powerful than the one I was studying to be able to repair. PCs have memories numbered in megabytes (one Meg = one million) and disk storage in the gigabytes (one gig = 1000 million). Speed has gone from thousand of operations per second to millions, giga, per second. Size of course, has gone in just the opposite direction by like amounts. Cost also has plummeted.

 

But one thing has remained constant. That is the ability of computers to consume time and attention of their human owners. For some, it is gaming with realistic graphics. There is the porn available on the internet. Facebook and other so called social networking can make hours seem as brief interludes. Computers and the related technology aren’t all bad. I know one man that carries all of his contact information and calendar on his smart phone. He can tell you who he ate lunch with ten years ago as well as most of what else he did that day. If you want, he will send you an email of that (or call you if you are old fashioned). Modern levels of productivity is due, in large part, to of use of computers.

 

The danger, for me, is that I can lose myself in using and programming them. I suspect many others share that proclivity. Addiction to things such a gambling, porn, shopping and game playing has always been with us, It is that computers just make it ever so much easier to indulge. But, again for me, the real danger is that I lose contact with other humans and reality while I am engaged in computer activities.

 

I remember, as a high school student, spending entire an afternoon playing cards with friends to pass the long summer day. Sometime after too long a period on my laptop, I come away with the same empty feeling. The difference is that while playing cards, I had social interaction with people. With the laptop, there is just me and my thoughts.

 

I know the mother of a child disabled from birth. She related to me how her thoughts became twisted, when she had too little contact with normal adults. I related immediately. My thinking go to strange places when I am away from normal social interaction. That is true even when using social networking or email. I can’t remember how many ill-considered emails I have sent. I have said things in an email that I would never dream of saying to a real, live person.

 

So, I wonder. What about the hermits in the early church? Does it work if you isolate yourself to commune with God?

 

I don’t know. Sometimes I isolate myself to meditate and come away feeling good. But those periods are brief, less than an hour, and more usually a half an hour. Of course, I don’t use computers during the meditation and the early Christian Desert Fathers (and Mothers) didn’t have access to them. The hermits of early and medieval Christianity also gathered in communities and allowed disciples and followers to interact with them. So perhaps, they had more socialization than what we commonly consider a hermit to have.

 

It would be easy for me to lose myself in a virtual world created on my computer. A world where paranoia, and twisted, devious, logic rules. Almost like the one in 1963 where I programmed a human birth out.

Just plain wrong

 

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

I think, I was 13 but I could be wrong by a year either way. It was a dismal Ohio evening and I was at the youth meeting at my church, the Goodyear Heights Community Church. We had read a passage in I Corinthians and there was a word I didn’t know. The word was “fornicator”. Being curious, I asked our youth leader, the pastor, what it meant. It embarrassed him to no end – this was, after all, in the fifties. He asked if I knew what “adultery” was and I replied in the affirmative. Then, he replied, fornication is for people that aren’t married. No mention of the “s” word by either of us. I still wonder about that exchange. Was sex so taboo in that time that neither of us could mention it out right? Don’t know.

 

I did a quick search on “fornicator” in the King James Version and found five results. Four of them were in I Corinthians and one in Hebrews. The word does not appear in the New International Version, NIV. One of the results, I Corinthians 6:9, is interesting, and to me, illustrative of why the King James Version is better left to poetry lovers and historians rather than believers and theologians of today.

 

9: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

10: Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

 

I Corinthians 6 – KJV, 1608 CE

 

Effeminate? Now, what the hell does that mean? I looked it up of course. I already had a fair idea of what it meant but wanted to be sure. Why would a man having a high voice or being delicate or over-refined (for male or female) keep some one out of the Kingdom of God?

As a youth, I assumed (but was too embarrassed to ask), that the “abusers of themselves” referred to masturbation. I was wrong, of course, but with the explicit references to sexual activity, how can a teenager be blamed for thinking that the abusers being pointed out were ‘self-abusers’ (in "1950’s speak”)? Everyone in the 1950s knew that masturbation was just plain wrong.

 

Comparing the KJV with the NIV is enlightening.

 

9: Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men^[a]

10: nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

I Corinthians 6 – NIV, 2012 CE

 

Ever so much clearer, don’t you think?

 

This passage, written by Paul ca 49 CE, shows some of Paul’s bias. The homosexuality is confined to men only. If you ask a modern day conservative Rabbi about homosexuality, his answer will be the same as Paul’s. Between men, it is sinful. Please note, only men. So here we have first century Jewish morals being re-reinterpreted by politically correct translators in Stuart England. Doubly confusing to those of us that uses a 21^st century dictionary and has a differing definition of what constitutes sexual immorality.

 

The footnote [a] in the NIV translation refers to two Greek words that Paul used to talk about male homosexuality. One was for passive and one was for the active participant. That pretty well explains the KJV verboseness. The note clears a lot up for me. It makes me feel better about the masturbation thing too.

 

I started thinking about this subject when I read of a new translation of the bible. The translation, "The Voice", aims to concentrate on the dialog in the New Testament so that modern readers will get a fresh look at what is really being said. For the same reason the title “Christ” is not used in this translation. I liked the article and intend to acquire a copy of the translation.

 

The article also mentioned that Mike Norris of the Franklin Road Baptist Church in Murfreesboro Tn didn’t agree that this was a good idea – to have another translation. The congregation of Franklin Road Baptist Church thinks that only the KJV is a faithful word for word translation. Mike Norris is the pastor of Franklin Road Baptist Church. Among other things, he has a master’s degree and several honorary doctorates. Doing some research, I found out that the only accredited school that “Dr.” Norris is associated with is Appalachian Bible College, a small, non-profit, private, Christian college in Beckley, West Virginia, where he received his bachelor degree. I mention this because I wondered what Mike’s qualifications as a Greek scholar are. Pretty nonexistent, I imagine, since the school where he obtained his masters, Louisiana Baptist University, does not appear to be academically rigorous. In fact, it would appear to be a diploma mill.

 

I suspect Mike is no more a Greek scholar than I am. In my case, I know I am not and therefore rely on people who are. People such as David Capes, PhD. Dr. Capes, a real Greek scholar (his PhD was earned), feels that The Voice is a more accurate translation for those of us that speak modern American English. I’ll take his word for it. I also accept The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) for the NIV translation scholarship. They wrote a stinging rebuttal to the Southern Baptist Convention’s criticism of the NIV translation (here). The SBC’s criticism of the NIV has the same agenda as Mike’s criticism of The Voice. That agenda is fundamentalist dogma. Dogma is always aided by obtuseness. The KJV may have beautiful arcane language, but it is not very understandable and even misleading in many places. In other words, obtuse.

 

Wonder how Mike (and the SBC) feels about masturbation.

Lost on Earth

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

I am in a quandary this morning. No, it’s more of a quagmire. The day started badly after a good hike on Piestewa Peak. I left home without my wallet and therefore didn’t have any money when I went to the Duck for a coffee before lunch and blogging. Invited to have a cup before I went back home for money, I did, sat down with the coffee and promptly started nodding off. I have sleep apnea and some days are just like this for me. In between mini-naps, I considered a subject to write about. That is when I discovered the quandary. There are two thoughts I have to consider.

 

First up:

 

I have this question buzzing in my head like a horsefly on a summer afternoon. No matter how vigorously I wave thoughts, like hands, at it, it continues to plague me. The question is:

What is the greatest danger faced by the early Church. Today?

These questions come from the class I usually go to on Sundays at First UMC. The class is currently watching a DVD of From Jesus to Christ. Sunday we watched the segment covering the early 3^rd century and the martyrdom of Perpetua. Perpetua, a young, nursing mother, was thrown to the wild beasts in a coliseum. She accepted her death bravely and with honor even though she was given several opportunities to deny she was a Christian.

 

In answering the question, it is tempting to say that be killed because of being a Christian but in actuality, there were not that many martyrs in the early years of Christianity.

 

I believe the two questions are the same. The greatest danger to the church around in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries is the same as for the church today. This danger is that the church replaces and forgets the teachings of Jesus. When “Love your neighbor as yourself” is replaced with such things as icons, visions and the worship of the resurrection then the church has lost its way. The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples says “... Your will be done on Earth as in heaven...” We, the church, are to pray for (and want) heaven on Earth, not the Church in heaven. I believe that when the church feeds the hungry, gives water to the thirsty and visits prisoners in their cells, then it is showing the world the risen Christ.

 

Recently, I heard a pastoral quote that I am still trying to wrap my mind around. I am not sure of the exact words but it was to the effect that nothing kills a church quicker than doing justice work. I find it jarring that the leader of a church would say something so un-Christ like. Jesus surely had a ministry with the outcasts of society. He ate with prostitutes, tax collectors and others of that ilk. He said to invite those that could not repay you to dinner. Perpetua was arrested and eventually killed with her catechumen class, three of whom were slaves. She, like Jesus, associated with riff raff. And today, we have a pastor that believes that a church that concerns itself with such people will die?

 

There, that quiets the buzzing a little. Next up for consideration: Walmart.

 

I know there are a lot of Walmart haters in this world but I am not going to enter into the controversies surrounding corporate practices of this retailer. Instead, I am going to consider a current problem that the business is experiencing and treat it as a generic modern corporation. There was a lengthy news article in the New York Times this past week about a new scandal. The article, Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart, is about the investigation of Walmart officials in Mexico by the New York Times

I have since seen the news around the web. The thrust of the story is that Walmart (de Mexico) was only able to grow because of immense bribes to local officials. When confronted with this information Walmart officials not only covered up the facts of the case but promoted those responsible.

 

Modern corporations are driven by profits and growth. Presumably, the growth comes with the expectation of making ever more profit. In the case of Walmart (de Mexico), growth came at the expense of legality – it is against the law for any US corporation to engage in bribery of government officials even if the officials are in a foreign country. I don’t believe this is an unusual problem. I believe it happens all of the time. What makes this special is the amount of it that went on and the cover-up.  Not only did the higher ups in Walmart de Mexico hide it from top corporation officers and board members in the US but the board members and top corporation officers conspired to hide illegal activities from shareholders and the public when the facts were brought to their attention.

 

The size of Walmart is also important. It is for example, the largest employer in Arizona and has a huge global presence. What other kind of illegal activities does it or any corporation hide?

 

I expect this sort of happening from corporations. They are not only godless, they are human-less. The only humans involved are rewarded when they contribute to profits (therefore only work for the corporations for personal profits) and at the very end as investors that are again profit motivated. It doesn’t help profits to be motivated by the teachings of Jesus. There is nothing more powerful than profits to Walmart or any corporation.

 

That is why the US congress (at the behest of the people – some of whom are Christians) has enacted laws to force corporations to behave in moral fashion. Bribery is not moral and in the case of all US corporations, such as Walmart, illegal.

 

As it stands now, the guilty have been rewarded; the whistle blower (who is not innocent but a participant that is upset that he wasn’t rewarded) has been punished.

 

The only losers are the citizens of the US who have had their laws flouted and anyone that believes that transactions on earth should be done with morality (as they are in heaven).

 

Oh, and maybe, just maybe, the employees of Walmart that could be paid more if the ‘legal’ fees were lower.

 

When I began this post, I thought the two subjects were unrelated. They are not. The church is also to be prophetic. The church, we as Christians, needs to stand against evil in any form. A business, that has profit as its only god, is evil. If the church losses its voice and accepts bribery as the ‘cost of doing business’ then it is lost. And, we Christians are lost with it.

Mary, Mary

 

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

Saturday evening I went to a presentation of “The Search for Mary Magdalene” by Margret Starbird. My wife, Barb, and I met another couple at the lecture and had planned to go out for coffee afterwards but in the event, Barb and I left before the lecture ended. The lecture ran late starting and ran on well past the scheduled ending. Barb and I left after the scheduled end time. The problem was that I either had the worst attack of allergies I have ever had or the nastiest cold. I’m not sure which and from a patient’s standpoint it doesn’t much matter. My sinuses pounded so hard it was difficult to hear the speakers. Regardless, I do remember some of what Margaret said.

 

The lecture started with the story of what started Margaret on her search. It started sometime in the 80’s and culminated in her writing her first book, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail in 1993. I not going into details here because there were too many remember and frankly I didn’t pay a lot of attention. Even when I am in the best of health which I wasn’t that evening, I do not believe that large numbers of mystical experiences enhance the telling of the path that they led to. OK, it is enough to say you had a mystical experience that led you to investigate something. Saying you had this experience and then another and another, just makes me want to go to sleep. Anyway, she had many mystical experiences which led to the writing of her first book. One of her main points was that these “burning bush” signs pointed to facts contrary to the teachings of the church even though she had previously been a devoted and “by the official rules” kind of Catholic.

 

The next portion of the lecture was commentary on a series of slides of medieval paintings of Mary Magdalene. I actually found this very interesting. I am always keen to learn about medieval art and religious thought from an expert and Margret Starbird is an expert in those fields.

 

To my mind her reliance on the medieval paintings and sources actually creates a problem for her message. Medieval Europe was full of strange religious thought. Some examples follow. First you have Popes thinking that to curb sexual abuse of women by priests that the priests should be celibate. Then, you have Thomas Aquinas wondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Around and after Aquinas’ time, Popes were having orgies in the Vatican. Many Popes, bishops and priests had girlfriends as well as fathering children all during this time. Lastly, but not the least obvious, is the selling of indulgences which Martin Luther thought not right. The sheer diversity of religious thought and hypocrisy is enough to make my head spin. Both the thought and hypocrisy were interwoven with politics because Popes, bishops and cardinals were also temporal powers that played in the political game also. The reformation and the warfare brought on by it was an almost an inevitable climax to the period. This, coupled with the many medieval forgeries, makes me not so sure that anything medieval can be trusted to shed light on events immediately during or after Jesus time.

 

Throughout the lecture were little nuggets of what her message is. The nuggets were not obvious as principles of her message, at least to me, and they were presented as accepted facts. Presentation as fact of unheard of or controversial theories is like a red flag to me. I heard many of these during her talk. For instance, the acceptance of Mary Magdalene as a direct descendant of King David has to be extremely controversial. Male lineages in the male dominated society of Israel surely make sense. Female lineages are far more questionable. There are even some scholars that have doubts about the existence of David as a king – Amy Jill Levine comes to mind.

 

Key beliefs of Margret Stargbird (either stated or inferred by me from the lecture):

 

• Mary Magdalene was a direct descendant of King David – as above.
• Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.
• Mary Magdalene was pregnant at time of Jesus death.
• Mary Magdalene taken to what is now Southern France – by Joseph of Arimathea.
• Validity of oral traditions (involving bloodline of MM and Jesus into Merovingian dynasty of France)
• There is a tie in between Mary Magdalene and the ancient earth goddess as worshipped in the ancient near east.

 

The last came as a bit of a surprise to me. I am not quite sure of what is meant by the sacred feminine. I do sometimes think of God as female or feminine but what Margret Starbird or others mean by the term I am not sure. I do know that Jeremiah blamed the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the destruction of the temple on the fact that the men of Judah allowed the women of Judah to practice of worship of a goddess. So, I am puzzled and wonder how the tie in between Mary Magdalene and any cult of an earth goddess was established.

 

As for the rest, I am not convinced.

 

I am convinced that her research and her book, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail was useful to Dan Brown. She said so and her book is mentioned in The Da Vinci Code.

 

That doesn’t make her right - or wrong.

Twisted

 

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

So, Easter has come and gone. The most visible reminders of Easter are the left over chocolate bunnies on sale at drug stores, grocery stores and inferior candy shops. More hidden are the bags of candy, colored hard boiled eggs and ham sandwiches. Crosses are uncovered and back in churches but most of us will not see that until next Sunday when we return to pews in fewer numbers than last Sunday. I have often thought about what a strange, mixed up holiday Easter is.

 

Bunnies, eggs and other symbols of the regenerative powers of nature vie with the Christian symbols of a resurrected Christ. Chocolate a sign of the excess with the end of lent. (Does anyone fast for lent anymore?). That in itself seems strange to me. Overindulgence marks the end of a no-longer very much observed season of fasting, repentance and reconciliation. It is almost as strange as the overindulgent Mardi Gras that began lent. The use of ham to feast a Jewish Rabbi also strikes a discordant note to my ears.

 

There is a pine tree outside of where I work out. Originally the tree was shaped as a “Y” with two equal branches reaching heavenward. Long ago, one of the braches was lopped off because it grew out over a sidewalk. The tree responded by twisting and curving back over the trunk. The fact that the tree is a pine that would not ordinarily grow in the desert adds to the strangeness of the sight. The twisted tree reminds me of Christianity and the strange shape it has taken on two thousand years after Jesus lived.

 

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, of Scotland, preached an Easter sermon (well, actually the report was written the day before Easter – so I don’t actually know that he preached that, only that he was expected to) on the importance of Christians wearing a cross every day of their lives, proudly. I smell the rancid odor of politics diluting Christianity in this message. There is a case going before the European Union high court about the rights of employees to wear crosses at work. The Cardinal is following the Popes lead here. They are concerned about the suit brought before the EU court by two airline stewardesses that were told they could not wear crosses while they worked. My first thought on reading the article was one of disbelief. Doesn’t he have any spiritual messages for Easter?

 

He is worried about a larger issue. That is the marginalization of religion (his, of course) in society. I am thinking the “church” and Christianity would be better off being on the outside of politics and society. I am also thinking that many actions and political positions by Christians are driving the marginalization “in some quarters”.

 

• Insistence on a literal interpretation of the “truth” of the bible.
• Stands on abortion - absolutely not.
• Stands on homosexuality - of the devil.
• Response on sexual abuse by clergy - a day late and a dollar short.
• Anti-Semitism - Jews killed Jesus.

 Those  are not instep with modern times and place Christianity on the edges of society.

I’m sure that you could add many others.

 

Sometimes, I am glad not to be identified by wearing some symbol of Christianity. I think of how Jews were made to wear stars of David to identify them during Nazi times in Europe. Then there were the pogroms of Christian nations like Russia and other East European nations. How about the Inquisition? Armies of Crusaders (wearing crosses on their shields, no doubt) attacked and slaughtered Jewish settlements in Germany, and elsewhere, in the middle ages. They also made war on Moslems in the holy lands, just because they were not Christians. Then there was the Thirty Years War think reformation and counter reformation - in Europe that had Christians slitting each other’s throats.

 

Should I wear a cross to identify myself with them? Think I’ll pass.

 

Want people to know that you are a Christian?

 

How about acting like one? How about living the way Jesus taught?

 

• Feeding the hungry.
• Giving drink to the thirsty.
• Visiting those in prison.
• Loving your neighbors – regardless of whom or what they may be.
• Even more difficult, loving those that hate you.
• Abjuring wealth, status symbols, and being important.

 

How about staying out of politics and tending your flock?

 

Living with those principles would surely mark you as more of a follower of Christ than wearing a large gold or silver cross that could be seen by everyone.

 

Sort of like praying in a closet (Matthew 6:5-6) and washing your face when fasting (Matthew 6:16-18). Matthew 6 also mentions doing good things in secrete so that you will be seen in secrete by your father and rewarded.

 

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

 

Matthew 23:37, Luke 13:34 NIV

 

Numbers game

Numbers game

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

Imagine if you can, a block of glass in which you have imbedded a photometer. This photometer has only one purpose and that is to measure very accurately all light energy that strikes it. While you are imagining this, imagine also that you have a light source that you have calibrated very accurately so that you know exactly how much light you are shining on the surface of the block of glass. The question is: how much light gets to the detector and how much is reflected?

 

The answer is that 4 percent reflects and 96 percent goes through. Always, under any circumstance four percent of light will be reflected from a surface such as the one which we have imagined. And, it does not matter if the surface is glass or another substance that transmits light. Water is such a substance. That is how we get beautiful reflections when the surface of the water is just right. To the mind of the curious, another question occurs. How does the light decide which four percent will reflect? If you send light, one photon at a time, to strike the surface of glass or water, you will get 4 reflected out of every 100 sent. (A photon is the smallest possible unit of light; your eyes can almost, but not quite, detect one photon.) Which four? You can never be sure. It could be the first four, the next four, evenly spread out over the 100, not evenly or any combination possible. You don’t know, can’t predict and neither can anyone else. All that can be known is that four percent will ‘decide’ to reflect off of the surface.

 

Photons and questions such as those I have posed are the study of Quantum Mechanics. One of the basic ‘rules’ or ‘laws’ of Quantum Mechanics is that you never get to know exactly how a particle like the photon moves (or reflects or not) or where exactly it is. You only know the probability of what it will do. The quantum universe is just a numbers game. Surprisingly, our universe, the universe of planets, stars, galaxies, is at heart a quantum universe, built on the probabilities of Quantum Mechanics.

 

I just finished reading A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss which tells exactly how that came to be. Here is a link to a U tube lecture by the author. It is a good story and well told. Unfortunately, the author also has axes to grind about people who believe in God, creators and theology. Fundamentalists and biblical literalists take the brunt of his remarks about belief in god. But, who am I to criticize, they are also not well thought of by me, either. Professor Krauss, an admitted scientific skeptic, goes some distance beyond skepticism. Still, it is a good book and well written.

 

Professor Krauss asks a good many questions and quotes other scientists asking questions. My favorite was about Albert Einstein’s wanting to know if “God” had any choice in establishing the universe and the particular physics of our cosmos. Professor Krauss is careful to note that Albert’s God was not the God of the bible but rather a sense of the beauty and organization of the cosmos. I rather think, my God must be very close to that of Einstein; but, she is also the God of the bible. I just do not take all of the stories of God in the bible as literal or gospel, so to speak.

 

Getting back to Einstein’s question, did ’God’ have any choice in making the universe, macro and quantum size, function as it does. For the quantum universe it is easy to debate this theological question. (And it is a theological question, regardless of how Professor Krauss chooses to dismiss it.) Another way to look at this question is to ask: Could there be other physical universes with a different set of physical ‘laws’? Einstein didn’t know, Krauss doesn’t know, and I don’t know. Do you? As Professor Krauss points out, we may never know.

 

In the common place universe we can see with our own eyes, the question is not as theoretical. Our large size (from molecules on up) universe is just as driven by probabilities as the quantum universe is. This is especially true when it comes to disease and sickness. For example, we all know that if you smoke, you have a higher risk of getting lung cancer. Yet, there are people who have smoked and not gotten lung cancer. There are others that came down with lung cancer even though they never smoked or even been places filled with second hand smoke. Stuff happens. Stuff being probabilities.

 

The difference is that pain and suffering remove the theoretical mask from question of which photon will be reflected from the surface. In the large size universe it makes a difference which human gets a cancer cell that mutates into a death machine. But, it is still a matter of possibilities and probabilities.

 

Not far from where I went to grade school in Bozeman, Mt. there was a dry cleaning business. It wasn’t built until after I moved from the area but I went to school with people that lived nearby. Friends of my parents lived with their children West and North of where it was built. I read about how it polluted the ground water in that area, recently. The story related how families that drank water from shallow wells in the area seem to have a higher probability of having diseases and/or cancers. A daughter of my parents’ friends died of cancer many years later. She died in Puerto Rico. Now, I wonder. Did you drink the water, Mary Jane?

 

I don’t believe God had it in for her. Maybe, her number was just up and she could not run far enough from where she grew up.

An old “right”

 

@ Duck and Decanter in Phoenix, AZ

Have you ever thought about being a prophet? I used to believe that being a prophet meant foretelling the future. I got this idea equally from Hollywood and biblical literalists. The years have cured me of this misconception. In the first place, the future has not been decided yet. I know lots of people that believe it has been. Usually they talk about God’s plan and how the bible lays it all out for us. Harold Camping was one such. He has repented of that belief, just as I have. Pat Robertson has yet to repent but, at least he is keeping predictions to himself. I have hopes that he will repent entirely.

 

The dictionary I use, the Miriam-Webster online, is a little weird on the subject. In defining the word “prophet” the number one definition is: one who utters divinely inspired revelations. This is followed by number two: one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight. As number three we have: one who foretells future events. However in the thesaurus part we have either someone that predicts the future or someone that speaks for another or a group. Seems kind of strange that all the words we would use in place of “prophet” have to do with predicting the future or speaking for another. I suppose God could be considered another, from the divinely inspired part.  It would seem that most of us view a prophet as someone that has the inside track on the future.

 

I like the definition of a prophet being gifted with spiritual or moral insight – especially when it relates to injustice in the world. I see this in stories about prophets in the bible. Take Nathan and how he stood up to King David. He told David that he had done wrong when he had Bathsheba’s husband killed so that there would be no scandal. Jeremiah told his society that what they were doing was wrong all of his life. Eventually, he was exiled to Egypt for his stand. The bible attributes the spiritual or moral insights to the prophets’ closeness to God.

 

These days closeness to God has fallen out of favor and we hear more about secular prophets of Wall Street, politics or industry. In other words, we have returned to predicting the future. We may as well read our horoscopes and consult palm readers. My view is that prophets don’t care about the future. They care about what is right. That is why prophets speak out. They see and feel injustices. The future usually looks bleak to them. Bad stuff is usually in store for them because of their unwillingness to be quiet.

 

I have a story. I’m reluctant to tell the story but it seems to be about being prophetic, imperfectly prophetic, because it is a human story typical of our time.

 

In 1979 there was a representative of a United States company working and living in Japan. He worked with military hardware and there are some rather strict laws concerning military parts both in Japan and the US. The laws are not always compatible. He asked for and was granted permission to go home for Thanksgiving. The trip originally was scheduled for the week before Thanksgiving but was delayed at the request of “the customer” because there was a critical task that needed to be accomplished by him before his departure. The task turned out to be hand carrying failed parts back to the plant in the US for repair.

 

It was illegal, both to export them out of Japan and to import them into the US. He told them so. His program manager in the US called and told him not to worry too much about the foreign laws and that he would be met with the paperwork to bring the parts into the US. US customs regulations are quite clear about importing military hardware into the US. The paperwork must be done prior to bringing the part into the country. No one can give you anything, such as paperwork, because you have to pass through customs before having any contact with anyone in the US.

 

It was just plain wrong. In 1979 security on even international flights was not very rigorous. He might have accomplished the “critical task”. He didn’t like the idea of being a smuggler. He didn’t like the idea of failing his customer. But, he refused and explained why it was wrong. The refusal took several hours. He left anger behind him and flew into what he perceived as a dismal future. Being demoted at work was seen as the best that could be hoped for. Being fired appeared more likely.

 

The eight hour layover in Tokyo airport, at Narita, was the worst part of the trip home. Forced to meditate on sins of omission and commission while awaiting the boarding announcement and half expecting to hear his name announced over the loudspeaker was trying and made for a very long day. The flight to LA was restful; the time passed in sleep.

 

The story was my story. It wasn’t spiritual exactly. It was about doing the right thing and that is spiritual in a way, I suppose.

 

I have never been sure of exactly what lessons I learned from my refusal to do something I though wrong. I do know that I lost fear of speaking out about what I think is wrong, evil or harmful to me or others. It doesn’t matter if it is about racism, sexism, marginalizing people, or hate crimes. It is all the same. It is all prophecy. I can and will do it and so can any human.

 

I wonder if I would feel the same had I been punished for my actions. In the event, I was rewarded – promoted and given a raise by my boss.

 

So much for my being able to predict the future.

 

The matter is now complete

 

@ Home in Phoenix, AZ

I am writing this at home today (Sunday) because tomorrow is the first anniversary of my marriage to Barb. Monday is filled and to try and concentrate on putting sentences and paragraphs together would be overwhelming. Then, there is the problem using correct punctuation to tie everything into a rational whole. That last is always problematic for me. So, it is, perhaps, better that I should do it today.

 

Did you all survive ‘national drink green beer to excess day’ yesterday?

 

I know of one person that did not. He was almost 92, suffered from terminal bone marrow disease, as well as, chronic kidney disease. It was not unexpected. The only word I can think of for his life is tragic. His name was Ivan and he was born on April 3, 1920. That was a terrible time to be born in the Ukraine. There were at the time two Ukrainian armies, the Green and the Black, fighting each other and the Russian Red and White armies in what came to be known as the Russian Civil War. Just to keep things straight, the Russian Civil War followed the Russian Revolution. Or perhaps, was part of it. Depends on the source of your information. The Reds and the Blacks had won by 1922 and the Ukraine became the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine.

As a two year old, Ivan became a citizen of the USSR. His parents were poor and disabled. Home life must have been really tough during the famines in the 1930s. As a twenty-one year old, he was drafted into the Soviet Red Army. First wounded and then captured on the Kerch Peninsula, he made a fateful decision. He opted to cooperate with the Germans.

 

So let’s see here. You are a Ukrainian conscript in what to you is a foreign (Russian) army. You are offered a job by another foreign army (which had by this time conquered nearly all of the Ukraine), to help in the liberation of your country from the Russians who you don’t like in part because they had a helping hand in the famines of the 30s. So what do you do? Ivan said “Sure, how can I help?” Back then, it was not easy to choose between Hitler and Stalin. And, it did not help that Khrushchev was Stalin’s henchman in the Ukraine SSR. It was an error that would haunt him years later.

 

First, the Nazis teach him how to run Diesel engines. Unfortunately, these engines were used to make carbon monoxide that was used to kill Jews. Then in 1943, after the extermination camp, Sobibor (Poland) was closed, plowed over and disguised as a farm; Ivan was sent to one of the foreign units fighting the Red Army. That was another bad choice (if indeed, it was a choice).

 

Ivan wound up in a displaced persons camp in Germany after WWII was over. He met Vera Bulochnik there. They married in the DP camps, had a daughter and lived there until they immigrated to Cleveland in 1952 and continued the family with a son and another daughter. But there was a hidden problem. Ivan lied on the immigration papers. He said that he had been a farmer in the Sobibor area, which lies on a river where the Polish, Ukraine and Belarus borders meet. He also stated that he had not fought against the Red Army or any other allied army. Had he not lied, then he would have had to have stayed in Germany, Poland or the Ukraine. He also said his mother’s maiden name was Marchenko. He knew this was not true, but he could not remember what her maiden name really was. This was his worst mistake. More than twenty years later the hunt would be on for another Ivan, Ivan Marchenko. Ivan “the terrible” Marchenko was another Ukrainian that had enjoyed his work too much at another extermination camp where our Ivan had never been. Our Ivan had changed his name to John by this time and had retired from the Ford plant near where he lived as a mechanic. Because we now have too many Ivans, I will now call our Ivan by the name John; John Demjanjuk (pronounced (dem-YAHN-yook). John changed his first name not long after to moving to Cleveland.

In 1977 proceedings were started to revoke John’s citizenship which had been granted in the 50s. This was done in 1981 but John appealed. While the appeal was going on, he was extradited to Israel where he was convicted of being Ivan the Terrible. The conviction was overturned and John returned to the US. The Israeli high court decided that he was in fact not the Ivan Marchenko that enjoyed killing and torturing Jews.

His citizenship was reinstated and the yanked again. He was deported to Germany where he was convicted of complicity in the deaths of 27,900 Jews from the Netherlands. Anne Frank was not one of them. He appealed, was placed in a nursing home and died.

 

Did John fire up diesel engines to gas people? I don’t know? If he did, did he have a choice? Rock and a hard place, I think. Lots of Ukrainians helped the Nazis.

 

All of this makes me think about Jesus and the woman that was going to be stoned for adultery. He said let someone without sin throw the first stone. Shamed, none did. I could see myself making the choices that he did if I had been in his shoes. I don’t think I can throw any stones in this case. Even if he was guilty, which I am not convinced of.

 

I doubt the Israeli Supreme Court believes in Jesus or even reads what he is supposed to have said. But, in their decision to void John’s death sentence, they echoed Jesus sentiments almost 2000 years later.

 

“This [decision to revoke the sentence] was the proper course for judges who cannot examine the heart and the mind, but have only what their eyes see and read. The matter is closed — but not complete. The complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge.”

Justice Meir Shamgar of the Israeli Supreme Court

 

I don’t know John’s heart and mind either. Neither will I judge him.

 The matter is complete, now.

Links

John’s Obituary New York Times

John’s Obituary Washington Times