ALoveSupreme

Recovering Old Music

2012-01-31T11:07:00.001-07:00

My long term project-recording old vinyl LP's (old enough to be called "long playing") keeps me in contact with music I have either grown up with or have known for 20 or more years. Old Beatles records still have life in them; recently I listened again to Rubber Soul from my old monaural LP (for those who have no idea what that is, there was a time when music was not recorded in "stereo," something we take for granted). The Lennon-McCartney songs still sound well (the lyrics seem to seek rhyme over sense; they don't reach too far) but more interesting are George Harrison's songs. Think for Yourself stretches lyrically and musically, at least to my ears. I suppose I like his more introverted and reflective personality and his tendency to reach beyond the moment in his life. He never really carried an entire album on his own, but somehow he always has something unique to say.

Then there is Graceland by Paul Simon. Simon has always looked for new ways to create music. He brought a great gift to music by featuring other musicians who worked in other genres of music. Cajun musicians, African musicians, jazz musicians, gospel musicians-he would work around their music and incorporate what they were doing with his own musical concepts. He had done it before Graceland, but this was a major project and done on larger scale. By now the music is well known. At the time it was fresh and opened new sound worlds, certainly for me. The township music of South Africa was totally new to me and many others. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, now famous, were a Western discovery. The lyricism of Simon's music blended with that music and produced appealing melodies and harmonies. Throughout the album the rhythms come from world music, the songs themselves are influenced by world music and the whole project seems like an international music festival. This fusion of musical styles is as old as music itself. Sometimes it's more intentional and Simon's album is one of those moments. But early Christian chant derived from Jewish chant, Bach and other Germans of his time learned from and borrowed Italian music, Brahms studied the polyphony of the Renaissance, and jazz is rooted in African, Latin American and sacred American music. Joplin rags, as one example, use hymn-like harmonies to undergird the syncopation. 20th century European music broadened its influences to include Balinese gamelan (Debussy), not to mention Indian rhythms and even birdsong (Messiaen). It's a pretty exhaustive list if all were included. Simon did it in a new way and in a new genre.

I also recently recorded Wagner's Parsifal (with von Karajan conducting) and find it beautiful, pretentious and exhausting. It's hard not to be drawn in to this music, yet it also repulses. It's like a musical tsunami. You see it coming, you run as fast as you can and it overwhelms you in the end. Some people just don't live close enough to be affected, I guess. I once allowed myself to be baptized with Wagner's Ring cycle in a week long performance of the four operas. That was about enough. It was Romanticism on steroids. I have a hard time not feeling a good deal of megolomania in Wagner's music. His music seems to want to overwhelm everything around it, just devour it, like music with a personality disorder. I can't seem to ignore it but I want it to go away. I suppose it fits the story of his life, a history of using others for his own artistic ends. He is the artist as god-like, mating irresponsibly with humankind and producing semi-divine progeny. By the way, my Wagnerian baptism didn't take. I keep him around but I won't be visiting often. He won't leave the house.

Nonviolence

2011-01-17T15:22:00.003-07:00

It's now several days away from the tragedy in Arizona. The memorial services are running their course and Congresswoman Gifford is recovering rather miraculously. Jared Loughner is in solitary confinement, for the moment and for the likely long term no longer a threat to society and the well-being of others. We will be hearing more about his mental state and motivation down the road, but for now we have to be content with the knowledge that his brain chemistry was imbalanced and had been bothering him since at least the age of 16. Clearly his family life plays a role in all of this, but when it comes to mental illness even the most well-adjusted families can produce troubled children. The sad thing is that he did not get the help he needed and it doesn't seem that he was going to anytime soon. Will he now?

Still, it was a violent act. On Martin Luther King Day it is appropriate to consider nonviolence in a culture that seems to embrace violence, justified with terms like constitutional rights, liberty, righteous war, and personal or national defense. King had serious questions to ask about the necessity and the pragmatic consequences of violence. He could not have been more adamant on any issue than he was about this. His philosophy was rooted in the New Testament letter known as I John. Here love is key and is grounded in the nature of God with implications for the entire cosmos. "God is love," it says and King saw everything else flowing from that reality. For King it was built in to the basic structure of creation. It allowed him to trust in the future, the goodness of God sustained over the long haul, and even in humanity created in God's image. He appealed at all points to the higher nature of human beings and refused to be pulled in to name calling, hateful or divisive rhetoric of any kind (including the "Black Power" slogan, though not the content of the movement's analysis), or physical violence, even in retaliation to unjust acts. This he learned from Gandhi and from Jesus' words and actions in the gospels. He was against war on the grounds of love, for love cannot harm another person for any reason. He was sensitive to the way people are exploited and used and advocated for the dignity of fair wages for honest work. He saw the exploitation of labor in his time and he saw the way economic power diminished the value of workers for greater profit. But he would not, and could not, respond to even the most extreme injustice with violence and hate. He learned from Gandhi that the goal of resistance to injustice is the redemption of the one(s) who is inflicting the injustice. This is also rooted in the meaning of the death of Christ at the hands of his enemies, the Christ who answered his enemies with forgiveness rather than hatred and judgment.

King's nonviolence was an active resistance to evil, defined as the diminishment of the integrity and beauty of those created in the image of God. Had he lived, he would have extended this to creation itself. Love does not know limits. Of course he was criticized harshly when he seemed on the surface to abandon a clear focus on racism alone. But as he says himself his calling was always broader and deeper than that. Segregation and racism were first on the agenda, for their time had come to be challenged. For Martin, that was the beginning of his ministry. But there was always much to do to bring in a just society. He was committed to doing God's will (and one can hear his voice in those words) for God's will was to see justice fulfilled in the world (not legalistic justice, but justice as redemption and reconciliation).

I was once asked, as part of a group of students in an anthropology class, if the United States was a violent culture. No one wanted to speak up on that one, perhaps because the answer could implicate us. We struggled to say anything, mumbled some avoidance sounds, until the teacher called us on it. Of course we are! The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, slavery, our treatment of Native Americans, our participation in international wars and colonialism, our attitude towards guns and the right to guns. our armed police, and so forth. We are not self-reflective about this, but King was not ambivalent about it at all. He knew the violence of American society; he'd seen it up close, and experienced it himself. He had seen cruelty to children and women and young men and old men at the hands of white police in the south. In a culture steeped in violence there could be no answer in a violent response, except to deepen it and expand it. If peace was going to be achieved at all, it would be by peaceful means and that alone. The alternative was unthinkable and also unsustainable in the long run. It was a choice: to choose nonviolence or not. The future would be built upon that answer.

It would be good if King's clear philosophy were to be enacted again in our society. Our current reaction to outrageous hate rhetoric is to throw it back. Hate for hate. An eye for an eye. The so-called left is rightly criticized for jumping quickly into blaming rhetoric almost moments after the Arizona shootings. The call for a more civilized conversation and society seems to begin with, "Shut up!" Not a good start, nor in the spirit of nonviolence. King would have words to say along the lines of President Obama's speech the other day in Arizona, though King would extend the nonviolent call to our (and others) international wars and turmoil. But he would not answer any hateful or name calling rhetoric with more of the same. He was always looking to redeem his enemies so they would travel with him. He was looking for disciples of nonviolence, for people to answer a higher calling given to them by their creation in the image of God.

I believe that King's entry into the arena of history sets a new standard for social transformation movements. Gandhi, likewise, opens up another way for history to move. It is a way superior on all counts to the Civil War and even the Revolutionary War. It is superior, certainly, to all violent revolutionary movements. It is superior to the segment of the violent left of the 60's and the more recent Tea Party movement with its insulting rhetoric about government and of people who disagree with them. It lives brightly in the Truth and Reconciliation commissions of recent history and in the work of people like Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea). It lives in the movement for restorative justice in our judicial system. I think we can say that it has become a valid moral option for anyone choosing to adopt it. There is historical precedent and a background of success. We can question and argue about it, but I don't think we can honestly say that it can't be done (though that is the argument people use to discredit it). A cabinet level Department of Peace, anyone, to explore and study alternatives to war? Or is that just too much to consider?

We may have to come to grips with the death penalty for Jared Loughner. After his violent rampage, would that be a just punishment? Would that solve something? Would that deal with our need to forsake violence in our culture? An eye for an eye? Is that the way into our shared future and that of our children?

Back to A Love Supreme

2010-12-12T19:52:00.003-07:00

I've been absent from the blog for some time (last post: June, 2010) and it's time to return. Lately I've been recording old vinyl LP's and downloading them into my iTunes library. I can't actually remember the last time I purchased an LP, but I'm sure it was in the 1980's as CD's were just beginning to be popular and affordable. There was some Oregon, Joni Mitchell (Mingus, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, Shadows and Light), a fusion group with Michael Brecker called Steps Ahead, a Paul Winter United Nations concert, some classical recordings of minimalists Steve Reich and John Adams. I was still buying non-digital records: Cage, Lou Harrison, and other off-label artists.

I'm still discovering the collection again. So far I've recorded two very early folk albums from the 1960's: one by Judy Collins (Golden Apples of the Sun) and what I believe is Joan Baez's first album. That music is still good and the voices young and strong. Judy Collins was always an alto, but as she matured she kept insisting that she could sing soprano. Her range becomes too thin in the upper register for me, but that's only my ears. On this early album she is a strong alto with occasional lovely moments in her upper register. She set the title song to a poem by William Butler Yeats, Golden Apples of Sun, and for me it is a stunning success. Simple, but beautiful, guitar and voice and the poetry of Yeats set to a gorgeous melody and harmony. It has to be one of the best songs of that year, much more sophisticated than anything Dylan and others were doing at the time, with the exception of Joni Mitchell. I was in love with that music from the beginning and followed it as it became part of the larger musical pop culture of the time. Baez was all folk, nothing of her own, but her voice is strong on songs like All My Trials and House of the Rising Sun (long before The Animals and Eric Burdon took Dylan's version, who had basically stolen it, I understand, from Dave Van Ronk). All of that 60's earnestness is touching, if a bit sad, today.

The idealism was lost along the way and the simplicity and hope was overwhelmed by drugs, rock 'n roll and the Vietnam war. Too much death: assassinations of the era's heroes and leaders and the final blow in Chicago with the Democratic National Convention, the nomination of Humphrey under Johnson's war shadow, and the carefully controlled and ballooned Republican National Convention with Nixon that became the model for future conventions: a spectacle, a moment of careful propaganda, cued music, and all the rest. The culture became noisy and angry, it seems to me, and the young crowd eventually discovered money. So to go back and listen to that relative innocence was refreshing.

When I was 18 I went with a friend one evening to have some awful 3.2 beer in Denver in a club that used to book Judy Collins and other popular folk acts, who were too popular for that venue in 1968-9. It was quiet, only a few people there, and it seemed nearly closed. All of that history and excitement had moved on. But it's still recorded and though the cultural context is gone, the music still captures the time in many ways, at least for me. These two albums, at least, are moody, poetic, idealistic, innocent, fresh, and the big plus is that the liner notes are full of history about each song and its origins. We've moved on, for sure, and certainly these artists moved on fairly quickly from these albums and started doing contemporary songs by Dylan and others, but the records are still there and it was fun to go back.

City of God Urban Ministry Conference June 7 2010

2010-06-07T20:26:00.001-06:00

This afternoon Sr Joan Chittester spoke to the 30+ people at the City of God Urban Ministry Conference in Washington DC. I took it all in from the front row and sat amazed for a couple of hours as Sr Joan laid out a prophetic program for the church in the 21st century. Today she was speaking largely to clergy, who make up the largest portion of the group here. I didn't know that Sr Joan was trained as a social psychologist in addition to her vocation as a Benedictine Sister. The range of her learning is broad and her knowledge of modern culture is deep. For those who have not had the pleasure to hear in person, she is down to earth, very energetic, blunt, funny, and slightly irreverent. She is also incredibly smart and exudes a practical spirituality that is at once compassionate, authentic, and cuts like a spear. She spoke fast and with intensity and gave her all for the two hours she was with us. It was very intense, demanding, and prophetic.

Her fundamental message to us, the clergy present, was not to minister in a vacuum. We live in a time of social collapse, but also of social renewal, she told us. This is obvious, of course, but she is firm that what is dying is simply making room for what will be born. She referenced Anthony F.C. Wallace on four stages of cultural renewal: 1) first there is individual stress; here individuals start questioning basic assumptions, in this case church teachings and rules, but do not share these thoughts in public; there is no community of questioning, just a kind of dis-ease; 2) the stress then becomes more widespread and the questioning becomes public in nature; groups form of like-minded people; in one study she worked on with church historian Martin Marty there was a point where liberal Lutherans were finding more in common with liberal Roman Catholics than with conservative Lutherans; this was an indicator many years ago that the uniformity of the church was breaking down; people were starting to listen in to televangelists and preferring them to their own local pastor or priest; 3) now people agree broadly that there is indeed a problem, but there is no consensus on what to do about it; some propose a hyper-traditionalism or a kind of nativism that looks back to a golden age, assuming that if we can do that we can hold on to the past that seems to be receding before us; the fault lies somewhere, probably in authority, perhaps the pastor or the council or other governing body (the national church, for example, or the national Bishop); 4) finally we begin the reconstruction of the new worldview, which is essentially a restructuring of the old institution in a new and vital form; we shed light on the old recognizing that it is the same Spirit at work taking on a new shape.

And who will finally arrive at the answer(s) to this dilemma (and drama) of social collapse? Those of us who are older but who also desire to help the church make this transition are the ones who ask the right questions and allow others to ask them as well. The problem with someone like myself and others like me is that I and others were initially formed in the old institution(s); therefore we carry lots of the old baggage. That puts us in the position of understanding the institution's problems but not in the best place to give the answers. The answers will come from the younger generations, who have left the old institution behind and are free of those forms and thought patterns. Someone like myself becomes a transitional figure, preparing the way for new and vital work ahead. The church is changing and it is sometimes painful. There is no doubt that our church socialization makes it difficult to see the future. Many of us still see the church as the place where spiritual things happen. We haven't always seen the larger world as the real parish. A "church" which, for example, doesn't have a building and all the adornments that a building gives us, including all the paraments, organ, etc. is next to impossible to imagine. We don't understand "church" without all of that. But at least part of the future may look somewhat like that. As far back as World War II Bonhoeffer wondered about such things after he considered the total failure of the institutional church under the Reich to fulfill its calling. Such are the ideas that Sr Joan asks us to think about.

I love the idea of "seeding the questions." I do see that as important, that and trying to breathe new life into old forms and rethink old images and stories of the faith. One thing I can say about Sr Joan. When it comes to thinking about older images and stories she is more than ready to relate them to the modern world with its injustice, greed, and violence. Our priorities are skewed with more money going to pet food than to the poor. I flinched a little, knowing how important pets are to people, and rightly so in many cases. But it does tell a tale of priorities in an age when the military is the most trusted institution and most of our foreign aid is military, when feminism is considered over in America while women worldwide are struggling for the most basic rights, when our national obsession with instant gratification leads to exploitation of land, children, third world nations and precious gifts like the Gulf of Mexico, and when poverty falls most severely on women and children in the so-called "feminization of poverty."

I feel privileged to have experienced a modern day prophet, which she certainly is. But her call to all of us, not only to clergy, is to become the prophets we are called to be. Holiness, she said today, is about virtue, not visions; being there for others; focusing on something greater than oneself; and being present to the Presence, where it is and where it is not. Holiness as a private vision and experience is an old, very old, model that no longer applies. Times have changed and so has our understanding of holiness and spirituality. Our inner spiritual life has to inform our outer expression of it, but it is not complete if it is merely an ascetic discipline. Privatized religion must make its way out of that ghetto to the arena of public responsibility. A new age is forming right under our noses and we are a part of its creation. It is a difficult process, but "everything we do changes the future." There are many emotions that emerge out of this process but I like what Sr Joan says about anger: "If we had been holier we would have been angrier" as we face the injustices in the world and the clear need to realize the vision of the gospel, the reign of God, in the world today.

Urban Ministry Conference in Washington, DC

2010-06-07T13:20:00.003-06:00

I am spending a few days in Washington, DC, from June 4-9. I have been fortunate to attend a number of good conferences over the years, but this really is one of the best. There are 30+ people here, many ordained but by no means all, and they represent many different parts of the country. For the record, four of us are Lutheran but I am the only male Lutheran present. There are a number of Episcopalians (the organizers happen to be Episcopalian), some Methodists, a couple of Prebyterians, and one or two non-profit directors. One of the attendees is Diana Ortiz, director of Exodus Ministries in New York. This is similar to Project Turnabout, helping ex-felons gain training and employment after relase from prison. Diana was released from prison herself four years ago after 22 years (I believe) in the prison system, beginning at age 18. She is a truly remarkable and gracious individual and has shared some material and a DVD with me to bring home and share with others. Another couple here some of you may remember from a PBS documentary about slavery in the north. James DeWolf, if I have my history correct, was the largest slave trader in the north, perhaps in history. He alone transported 11,000 slaves from Ghana to Cuba to the US in the north. One of his direct descendents is Dain Perry, who is here with his wife Constance Perry to present the video and have a conversation with us about racism in America. He and Constance, who is Afro-American, facilitate these conversations around the country in all kinds of venues, including churches. The story challenges the standard history that the north was not complicit in the slave trade but in fact opposed it and fought against it. In fact, the north actively benefitted from slavery and the slave trade and was economically dependent upon it. From the construction of the ships to the sugar industry using materials from the cane plantations in Cuba to the "help" in the homes of the wealthy, the north was deeply involved in supporting slavery, even after the slave trade was abolished in 1808 (DeWolf continued to trade in slaves far beyond that year through a political favor from Thomas Jefferson). The documentary was made by descendent of DeWolf, Katrina Browne, a woman who discovered her family's history while a seminary student at an Episcopalian seminary (the family religion, including that of DeWolf). You can check out the video, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, inheritingthetrade.com.

We have visited Emory United Methodist Church, a minstry led by Dr. Rev. Joe Daniels (author of Real Church, Real People). Daniels has taken this community from a dying and small congregation to a vital, three service a Sunday (including a service geared to homeless folks) ministry that is trying to grow into a large multimillion dollar complex that includes affordable housing, transitional housing for the homeless, businesses, counseling, etc. with the original Emory Church right in center. It's a visionary enterprise and Rev. Daniels is nothing if not energetic and visionary. Inspiring stuff and full of faithful risktaking!

There will be more to write and now that I am back on the internet here I will continue to add entries about the conference and my experience here. For now, I'll just say that the key word so far is transformation. The other word I would use is energy. Each of the leaders we've heard from so far are full of incredible energy. I want to reflect some more about all of this, but you can see that this is a marvelous conference. Social justice is linked here with Christian faith in a powerful partnership towards the goal of realizing the reign of God, on earth as in heaven.

The next entries will cover Luther Place Memorial Church, a ministry that specializes in ministry to homeless women; and Sr Joan Chittester, who is speaking this afternoon and evening. I want to reflect a bit more on our racism conversation, which was moving and difficult at many points. There is more to add on both Emory and Luther Place Churches and what some of the characteristics are of these prophetic ministries.

Needless to say when we're not doing something REALLY IMPORTANT we're eating or sleeping. And we're staying in the luxury of modern retreat housing at Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic academic institution. The world may be in great suffering but I can't say that we're sharing that suffering very much. We live in privilege. The only issue is what we plan to do with it.

Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer

2010-06-02T20:26:00.000-06:00

I recently finished a memoir by Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God. He is the son of Francis Schaeffer, a unique and at one time an extremely influential evangelical teacher, speaker, author, and self-made intellectual and pop culture critic. Francis Schaeffer died of cancer in 1984. I once attended a conference put on by Schaeffer's ministry, L'Abri, a retreat center whose home is in Switzerland. Schaeffer was there, with his trademark European knickers, goatee and a noticeable scowl. The conference was an interesting, if unusual, combination of Biblical literalism and course in the Humanities. Great European art, philosophy, music, and literature provided the content, all of it presented with respect and enthusiasm but also run through a Christian evangelical filter that pointed out the historical trajectory away from God at the core of things. At its peak L'Abri, in its home space in Switzerland, attracted artistic and celebrity luminaries from England and America, not to mention large numbers of wandering, seeking hippies. Many were converted and became workers at L'Abri, some left their artistic careers to "serve the Lord," but however it might have affected people it was a cultural phenomenon that fascinated and drew in a generation of 60's kids and later became a major force in laying the foundation for the modern Christian Right. At the center of that development was none other than Frank Schaeffer, who grew up under the shadow cast by his famous father and mother, Edith.

I couldn't put this book down. Not only is it a gripping story of the background to the Christian Right's explosion on the political and cultural scene, it is a story of faith and self-awareness lost and found and lost and found again, with the two poles moving in and out of one another as the drama of Frank's life unfolds. He describes an incredible life, charmed and seemingly cursed at the same time, a child growing up in an atmosphere of missionary zeal and religious absolutism often contradicted by his own humanity and questioning, not to mention his father's rages, episodes of spousal abuse, and personal love for the art and culture he publicly questioned and even warned about.

But Frank is not one sided. His father was also compassionate and stood for justice when it mattered. His mother had wanted to be a dancer in her youth but did not pursue it out of a sense of obligation to God and the saving of souls. He writes of his father's deep love for art and speaks of a several week trip he took with him to Italy when he was 11 or 12 to visit all the museums and churches they could fit in. His father became light and relaxed, unlike the overly serious intellectual evangelist he was known in public to be. On that trip, he notes, his father never said grace at a meal, reveled in the art, and left his Bible at home. When Frank visits his mother in her 90's she dances to the music she once condemned, beautifully, gracefully he says, and she appears radiant and at peace with not a mention of the old pieties she used to routinely pronounce.

It is clear that Frank overdosed on religion and couldn't escape it. He was nearly smothered by it. His intensity, intelligence, intuition, and talent for painting and writing, not to mention a natural sense of rebellion against inconsistency and absurdity, could not co-exist with a narrow fundamentalism, even if his parents were moving personally toward a broader view of the world. So it is ironic that Frank and his father ended up on the road together promoting two feature documentaries put together largely by Frank. The first one emphasized his father's intellectual tour through the Humanities but it also included, at Frank's insistence, the first serious public campaign against abortion and Roe vs. Wade in its last two sections. It is still being shown and studied in evangelical circles today. The two of them went around the country presenting the documentary to huge crowds, holding forth on big intellectual themes and finally encouraging activism against abortion at the political level. They were ignored by people outside of the evangelical subculture, but anyone near that subculture couldn't avoid the Schaeffers. They were the stars and the ones to listen to. They carried the intellectual weight and had the communication skills to rally thousands to the cause. The world had to be saved from itself. The rhetoric was, from the beginning, extreme.

Frank has left all that now and this book is his confession. It is remarkably honest, wonderfully written, funny, at times blunt in its sexual descriptions, and at the end very moving. There is much love in it and just as much despair. Frank tries to say what he sees without romanticizing it. He doesn't spare anyone, including himself. If others saw his parents as the best of saints, he tries to see them for who they really were, flawed but caring human beings.

The greatest casualty of this book is fundamentalism and the American subculture built upon it. Frank sees its shadow, the underbelly of ambition, pretense, startling insanity, and corruption. And he knows what he's talking about. It was his milieu. These were people he spoke with, stayed with, in whose jets he flew around the country, and who hired him to speak at their rallies and to appear on their television and radio programs. When he was young they would be guests at his parent's home. He saw them up close, away from the cameras. I need to point out that he is talking, not so much about the followers, but the frontline leadership of the evangelical movement during the last 40 years.

Frank Schaeffer today is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, a place he can come and go, take in the beauty of faith so it can feed and not starve him. He can "serve the Lord" by being himself, now a writer and painter. He heads his last chapter "Peace."

At the end of the memoir I thought he came out in a place of grace and beauty. He has found acceptance. He has returned to himself. All of the impossible absolutes are in the past. There is nothing to live up to, only being who he is, loving his family, being a better husband and father (he, too, was abusive in earlier years, even to one of his children). His "service" to the world is simply to offer himself, his writing, his art, his confession, his truth.

We may take from it what we will. There is certainly a lesson here about what healthy religion is and is not. Religion can be very crazy and life-denying, often when it is most intense and too serious about itself. God can be the most neurotic of pursuits when we ignore ourselves and our inner passions to serve an ideal that comes from someplace other than our own souls. A God who tells you to be something other than who you are is probably not God at all. If that seems provocative, then read the book. You might be convinced, but maybe you won't. Maybe it's better to give it all up and save the world. But I doubt it.

A Spiritual Foundation for Immigration Justice

2010-01-13T18:47:00.001-07:00

I used to serve two congregations in southern Minnesota, an area of the country noted for the settlement of largely Scandinavian immigrants beginning around 1880. There were the Norwegians and the Swedes, of course, and the Irish and the Germans and others joined them, all bringing with them their own reasons for making the long and arduous trip to the difficult climate and rich soil of that region. The story of 19th century immigrant life on the American prairie has been told countless times and even today it is a story of softened, but very real, survival. The old stories are still passed down, tales told and retold, comic and tragic, trivial and profound, stories that paint a rich picture of individuals, families, and communities in relationship, learning how to live on the land, how to live (or not) with others unlike themselves, how to build churches and faith communities without the benefit of state support, and how to be citizens in a nation whose centers of power and wealth are already established. There's a lot more to that experience than Lake Wobegon and Grumpy Old Men, which remain affectionate caricatures.

Immigration is back on the national agenda. The immigrant experience is in the DNA of this nation and it has never been an easy road. Immigrants have historically been easy targets for ridicule or blame, but eventually they are assimilated, after the language and the cultural cues are learned and the initial bicultural identities are more or less shed. But it takes time. Those of us whose families have been here a while can be impatient, forgetting or not even knowing our own immigrant family histories.

In our Denver metro region Metropolitan Organization for People (MOP) is beginning its campaign in support of immigration reform. On January 12 at St. Therese Catholic Church in Aurora a number of clergy and lay people spoke at a prayer rally before 610 people, most of whom were Latino. No doubt many were members of the St. Therese community. I can't personally put "prayer" and "rally" in the same phrase, but the intent was to mobilize the faith community around the spiritual foundations of immigration reform. My own comments focused on the biblical grounds for immigration justice:

The Hebrew scriptures tell a story of a nation, ancient

Israel

in fact, whose identity was rooted in being liberated by God from exploitation by Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. They had known the experience of being second class workers in an economy that used them but would not dignify them with their God-given status as human beings created in the image of God. Judeo-Christian tradition has ever since stood up for the refugee, the one who lives among people of another nation. The biblical word is to treat them honorably and help them to the fullness of life. Jesus, too, was a Jew in the Roman Empire, second class all the way and not given the fullness of citizenship and the rights that came with that.

What are we to say today as we face immigration issues in the

United States

? People of faith know that we must stand up for the rights and dignity of all people. There are no “immigrants” in the eyes of God. We know the results of a broken immigration policy. Families are broken apart, children suffer, workers are taken advantage of, the rights given to citizens are denied, and the fabric of our own humanity is torn as we artificially label one another “legal” or “illegal.” Lies are told as people feel threatened by something they don’t understand.

As people of faith we know where our values lead us. But the political battle will be a hard one. We will need to remember the spiritual roots of our support for immigration justice. We may need to pray for those who oppose reform, forgiving as we are forgiven. We need to remember our faith in a God who values justice.

The debate is about to begin. Our Judeo-Christian values are clear and they trump the values of capitalism and any sense of privilege that we may imagine belongs to us. We'll see what happens next.

Copenhagen meets Our Savior's Lutheran Church

2009-12-18T17:15:00.001-07:00

Today Bella Energy completed, mostly, the installation of 106 solar panels on the new and older roofs of Our Savior's Lutheran Church. At 2pm we had a gathering of several community people, including Channel 4, Green Print Media, and other political and community leaders. To see the panels is one thing, but to experience the human reaction to the project said something important to me about the future. We care, deeply, about our shared future. Today jobs were created, creation will be cleaner, and it was accomplished by a few rather normal folks. It was a very good day.

We are, and I am, moved when things seem to move in a direction that values the common good and not simply the good of a few. There will be profit for some in this project and Our Savior's itself will see its investment return with interest over 15-20 years, beginning in 2010. But that's not the motivation for doing this or for the reaction that I saw today. What I think I saw was the power that we have as citizens, as people of faith, as a shared community of human beings working together for the good of all to shape the future. President Obama likes to say that history is bending towards justice. I like that. But we do the bending. We take the risks. We catch and share the vision. As the current Lutheran (ELCA) slogan says, "God's work; Our hands."

The Christian faith is often accused of being at the root of the environmental problems of the earth. The argument is that Christians have taught that God ordered the domination of the earth by human beings. But Genesis only says that we are to steward the earth, be its caretakers. You can't dominate-think "exploit"- and be a responsible steward at the same time. Maybe we should take a look at unregulated capitalism or simply greed without restraint as something to blame, if blaming does any good.

It's possible that Christianity has historically given the future over to God and not taken seriously enough the role that we play as co-creators with God. In certain Christian circles we hear the proclamation, not of the kingdom of God, but of the end of world. This particular narrative has civilization on a road to ruin, a train out of control. All that's left is the final train wreck and humanity thrown into oblivion. A few worthy souls, hard to give a number, will be saved from all of this so it's not all bad news, I guess. But a hard ending is coming and there is no choice in the matter.

A more generous narrative, and one much closer to the teachings we have from Jesus, tells a story of people empowered for social and personal transformation. If there is to be justice, we will have to act justly, empowered by the Spirit of God. If there is to be social transformation, clean air, unpolluted water, and all the rest we will be the ones who take care of it. Doing this for others and for the earth is serving Christ himself, doing it to him it says in Matthew 25. There is no inevitability to history. Giving up is not an option. Christianity serves creation's best interests and empowers us to do it. It is, if you like, our call and our salvation. At least that's a Christian narrative that makes sense to me.

Copenhagen has exposed once again the influence of moneyed interests. The developing nations have had a tough time getting their message across to the richer nations doing the majority of the environmental damage. As far back as 1986 a particular administration tore down the solar panels from the roof of the White House in defiance of another administration's vision of the future. But today Our Savior's has solar panels on its roof because we and a solar energy company (Bella) found a way and made a commitment to do it. People were moved and excited. History changes from the bottom up. Maybe that's why Jesus spent his time on the margins of society, not on the top but on the bottom.

So in a way I saw today the future we might have, the future we can choose. It was an emotional day, a hopeful day. The compromised future in Copenhagen was overshadowed for me by 106 solar panels on the roof of one church, and that church could easily be just one of many churches, non-profits, homes and businesses to come. That is the real story here. Was history made today? We'll see. But I think so.

2009-12-15T15:16:00.005-07:00

Welcome to my blog, ALoveSupreme. If you know a little about jazz you will recognize A Love Supreme as John Coltrane's classic album recorded with McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Jackson (bass) and Elvin Jones (drums). It more or less sums up what I think about theology and faith, but don't ask me to put too fine a definition on it. It's more about spiritual intuition and where the language of Christian theology and religious expression points, though the music isn't the end, either. Maybe we just keep trying to say it and "it" remains elusive but necessary. That should take care of any concerns of running out of things to write about. I intend to share some sermons, articles and thoughts about various theological issues in this space. My own interests include the relationship of Christianity and other faith traditions, theology and social/environmental justice, theology and the arts, Jesus scholarship, the emerging church, and all of this in the light (hopefully light) of Lutheran theology. I'll try to make it interesting and relevant and have some fun with it. Stay tuned.