Looking back at 1968, with the help of Doris Kearns Goodwin

Source.  

For the last three or four days, I've been captivated by Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960's. "Captivated" isn't too strong a word for my reading; I've resented nearly every interruption.

The book is structured around an intellectual and emotional adventure that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband Richard Goodwin undertook together: systematically exploring the 300 cartons containing documents and memorabilia of Richard's participation in the election campaigns of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert F. Kennedy, and his speechwriting for presidents Kennedy and Johnson. 

Among the fascinating episodes (described by quotations from the documents and the lively conversations between husband and wife) are Dick's involvement in the creation of the Peace Corps, the shaping of Johnson's civil rights campaigns and the War on Poverty, and the painful end of their powerful alliance when Dick rejected Johnson's Viet Nam policies. Not only did Dick have to turn his back on Johnson after devotedly serving Johnson's "Great Society" vision with all his heart, soul, and superlative communication skills (Jack Valenti called him "the most skilled living practitioner of an arcane and dying artform, the political speech"), but then he also had to abandon presidential primary candidate Eugene McCarthy, whom he greatly admired and whose youthful campaigners he adored, when his personal friend Bobby Kennedy entered the 1968 primary race.

All of this drama might make for absorbing reading in the hands of any competent historian. But Doris and her husband had deep emotional stakes in retelling these stories for each other—and now Doris for us. They were eleven years apart in age, and at times their disagreements reflected their deepest political and personal allegiances—Richard to the Kennedy family, for example, although the example is an oversimplification; and Doris to LBJ. Many times they had different recollections or interpretations of important events, and their conversations seeking a fuller understanding are part of the sweet essence of the book. They recreate a half-generation of American politics where passionate advocacy for economic and social justice (despite all the hardball political maneuverings they recall together) was worth putting one's whole career on the line. Equally challenging for both of them were the times they had to insist on saying goodbye to a titanic political figure simply in order to reclaim one's own life.

I've read about 70% of the book, so I shouldn't give any sort of final assessment. However, I've just made it through the chapter devoted to 1968. I'm ten years younger than Doris Kearns Goodwin, so at the time she was working in the Johnson administration (first as an intern, a member of a year-long program called the White House Fellows), I was just beginning high school. My diary, which I started on January 1, 1968, recorded my first awareness of the events of that year—events that filled many of those 300 boxes Dick and Doris were exploring together.

Honestly, I have fewer than 10 boxes, just a file cabinet of correspondence from back in the times of paper letters, and these 55 diaries, most of which are locked up in a bank. Even so, it's interesting to me to take my 1968 diary and correlate the echoes I received as a fifteen year old high school student with the great events that these authors witnessed or participated in. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, threw President Johnson into one of his episodes of despair and depression, no doubt made worse by the fires of Washington, DC's riots. When Johnson recovered, he decided to seize the crisis to push housing legislation through Congress to honor Dr. King. My diary recorded the assassination and my own family's crisis at that time, but didn't make the connection with Johnson's legislative response.

A few events made it into my diary that weren't mentioned in Doris Kearns Goodwin's book: the loss of the submarine USS Scorpion, for example, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the flights of Apollo 7 and 8, and the North Koreans' seizure of the USS Pueblo. Their inclusion in my diary reflected my own increasing interest in the Cold War (an interest that actually started with the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was nine years old) and space exploration. The Goodwin selection process for their joint exploration of the documents, and for this book, reflected their personal involvements, and the memories called up by their joint exploration of Dick's archives.

The overarching theme of those involvements, and those memories, was a yearning on both their parts and among their colleagues during that era, to rebuild a politics of justice and fairness. It's a theme reflected in Bobby Kennedy's aspirational speech in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, on the night he won the California primary. It was a speech he gave a few short minutes before he was fatally wounded. Dick Goodwin had never heard the speech until he and Doris played the recording together, fifty years later:

I think we can end the divisions in the United States ... the violence, the disenchantment with our society; the division, whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, between age groups, or the war in Vietnam.

Suddenly Dick rose from our couch. "I can't watch this anymore," he said. And with that, he quickly left the room. I stayed on to listen to a voice that did indeed seem capable of bringing us together.

We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running...

---

Thank you for indulging me in these reminiscences from 1968 with the help of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book. I've mentioned my diaries in other posts, including: Diaries. Radio shorts. Amtrak to Washington, DC: October 1973.

Do you also keep a diary? If you're from this same era, what are your memories of 1968?

---

Many Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter this coming Sunday. Here are a couple of articles on the dating of Easter: Preparing the Orthodox for the Date of Pascha; Some Common Misperceptions about the Date of Pascha/Easter.

Walid S. Mosarsaa: What does it mean to say Jesus is Palestinian, and why do some object?

Who Is Afraid of Degrowth? Visit this page to download Celine Keller's graphic treatment of the idea of degrowth, and how its critics misunderstand it.

Nancy Thomas has also been looking through old journals.

Mike Farley on the contemplative journal and the human condition.

... Explanations and arguments appropriate to the rational, discursive mind so often skip over the surface of our deep selves, over the waves of grief and longing, the currents of desire, like stones over the sea; it is only when they have worn themselves out with bouncing that they will sink out of sight.

---

Remembering Lazy Lester ... with guitarist Eve Monsees at Antone's Records.

Christmas Eve -- and a country in turmoil

"Happy New Year!" Elektrostal's 2020 holiday tree on Lenin Square, with Kristall ice hockey arena in background. Source.
(Elektrostal was my home from 2007 to 2017.)

The hour of Christmas nears. I want so much to listen to the music of the season, and to enjoy our Christmas tree and its ornaments, gathered over the four decades of our marriage. But there's a discordant static in the air, generated by the friction and distress of a country in turmoil, a president unresponsive to alarm signals on all sides in favor of his obsession to remain in power, a Congress at a loss for what to do next. Maybe we could ignore all this noise, if our circumstances were happy and isolated enough that our neighbors' health and economic distress made no difference, and we could therefore wrap our gifts and play our happy Christmas music in ignorant bliss.

I doubt that simple happy bliss is your lot today, or you would not have read even this far. I'm grateful that I have some help in describing this strange moment: Elizabeth Spiers, who claims not to be religious as an adult, but grew up Southern Baptist, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that carves up responsibility for our plight with surgical theological precision: "Mike Pence and the GOP are waging the real war on Christmas."

In case the paywall keeps you from reading this whole article, let me summarize some main points.

Her starting point was a Turning Point USA event two days ago at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, at which public Christian vice president Mike Pence was a speaker. While exhorting his audience to keep up the fight for Trump's second term (interrupted by chants of "Four more years! -- four more years!"), he warned of the dangers of what "the Democrats and the radical left want to do...." Now, nobody expects to get a fair and accurate account of Democratic policies and plans from someone like Pence, but these words struck her as revelatory: "They want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable."

(I'd like to add what Pence says his side does want: to make everyone richer because "a rising tide lifts all boats." Have we actually seen this happen during these last years, when the increasing gulf between our richest and our poorest, already growing at an accelerated pace, has gained speed in COVID times?)

Spiers reveals the assumptions behind the implication that the poor must not be made more comfortable -- 

In the modern Republican version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” the Tiny Tim situation is unfortunate, but private insurance shouldn’t be obligated to cover his preexisting condition, and we certainly can’t give Mom and Dad unemployment just because they lost their jobs — they’ll have no incentive to find new work! After all, it would be grossly unfair to ask Ebenezer Scrooge, a self-made man, to pay a bit more in taxes.

Republicans don’t have to state the case for this callousness overtly because it’s articulated over and over again in policy. In Dickens, Scrooge tells the men soliciting donations for the poor that the poor can go to the workhouse or prison, and if they can’t, they can just die, and reduce the surplus population. If that sounds overly cruel, it’s worth examining GOP policies that try to force people who can’t work to do so, throw people who haven’t been found guilty of a crime into prison because they can’t afford bail or leave them to die for lack of health care. At least Scrooge is honest about his morally abhorrent end goals. Democrats want a War on Poverty; Republicans want a war on the poor. [Links in original.]

Spiers pinpoints the irony: the "war on the poor" is being waged in part by evangelical Christians, the very people whose Gospel requires aid and comfort to those who suffer -- and not just those deemed worthy of help by those with the capacity to help but held captive by their love of wealth. Jesus is quite clear that he is helped -- or rejected -- whenever we help or reject someone in distress. In the feasts of loaves and fishes, there was no means test.

Gospel values, it turns out, make sense as policy values as well. In Spiers's words,

The problem with poverty is not, as the GOP would have it, systemic laziness and bad judgment on the part of the poor. It is the condition itself, which is not conducive to human prosperity and certainly not a de facto crucible in which character is forged. Without any kind of economic safety net, poverty often perpetuates itself no matter how hard the poor struggle to alleviate it. Class mobility via the market is nearly impossible when basic needs aren’t met. Even when people can participate in the labor market — and not everyone can — they need to be able to eat and take care of themselves first. In this context, making the poor more comfortable isn’t just the morally correct position; it’s the only sustainable policy prescription for long-term mitigation of poverty.

Elizabeth Spiers allows that there are many nuances and alternatives in working out exactly what would make up a "sustainable policy prescription" -- but they don't include patronizing and self-serving platitudes claiming that helping poor people does them a disservice.

Marley's ghost; source.

She ends her column by an observation that she might not call "evangelistic," but I do. It is a call to "repent and believe the Good News," but she puts it in the context of Charles Dickens. She points out that Ebenezer Scrooge, after all, did repent and change. Are Republicans (and all of us, for that matter!) willing to do the same? 

One further point, beyond what Spiers wrote.... Another argument that Christian conservatives often use to insulate themselves from pitching in more generously to the cause of poverty reduction is that there is nothing biblical about the government aiding poor people. The Bible assigns that task to the family of faith.

It's true that the Bible asks us to be obedient to the rulers (except when they contradict God, or when God counsels disobedience), but the Bible is also utterly realistic about what rulers will demand of us, and the corruption that can ensue. Now, thanks to a revolution, we citizens of the USA have become our own rulers, with a charter (the U.S. Constitution) that makes "the general Welfare" part of our common mission as a nation. When private philanthropy cannot reach the scale necessary to comfort the poor who somehow haven't earned the Republican Party's compassion, isn't it our democratic right and duty to fulfill our common mission through governmental mechanisms of our choice and that are accountable to us?

To sharpen the point further, we are in the midst of a pandemic, our legislature has already approved emergency assistance at the very moment it needs to be in place for people whose health, or housing, or food security, might be in danger. (Apparently, our wannabe Caesar is choosing to play politics with this aid; so far he has refused to sign the bill.) Is there a biblical precedent for government assistance in crisis? The first example that comes to mind is Joseph organizing Egypt's emergency storehouses, Genesis 41:46-56.

At any rate, let's put more effort into searching for good answers to this question of our national obligation to comfort the poor, and less effort into dodging it under cover of "biblical" piety. After all, few spectacles are more harmful to the reputation of the Gospel than celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace while refusing to see him appearing among us here and now.

A PS to last week's coverage of the conflict at Earlham School of Religion: Chuck Fager tells us what he's found out. Since then, there has been an online worship-sharing among those who are concerned about these developments, to be followed this coming Monday by a strategic follow-up meeting.

Hamilton Nolan: Merry Christmas, Americans.

Margaret Fraser spirals around: "Ministry kind of creeps up on you, and it’s only by looking back that we see pieces that complete a picture."

Molly Olmstead: The USA's most famous nun, Helen Prejean, confronts death. (Part of slate.com's series on the 80 most influential Americans over 80.)

Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, in Germany for treatment for Novichok poisoning, has published a video in which he apparently pranks one of the members of the team that poisoned him with intent to kill. The video (subtitles available) -- note the number of viewers. Some of the fallout in the Russian Internet. On the one hand, this whole episode is an amazing gift (just in time for Christmas) for all those who slog away in the struggle against authoritarianism. On the other hand, what additional risks might Navalny now face upon his return home?

More from Navalny (in Russian) ... the pluses and minuses of contemporary medicine, from one who has experienced both.

Justo L. González reviews how his self-understanding as a minister, theologian, and historian has changed over his decades of service. (I reprinted one of his articles here. In that article, he comments on the "teach a man to fish" dictum which Elizabeth Spiers also mentions.)

Camas Friends Church presents our Virtual Choir:

The socialists are coming!!

I'm not much for labeling people,
but I have to make a living somehow. Source.

Among my friends and relatives, the supporters of Donald Trump's re-election as U.S. president have two top priorities.

Priority one is their opposition to abortion. I wrote last year about my own conflicted views on abortion (and added some thoughts more recently), but those who explain their support of Trump by saying "I’m voting for every unborn soul the Democrats want to murder," are probably not available for the conversations I advocated there.

Right now, in close second place, Trump supporters oppose the inevitable socialist apocalypse that would follow a Democratic victory in November. "Don't let the Socialist Democrats turn the USA into Venezuela," warns one popular graphic. Once again, the "socialist" label is being pressed into service, not in the service of a fair discussion, but as an epithet.

To be effective, this scare tactic requires us not to look too closely at what's behind that "socialist" label. We must believe that the democratic socialism of people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the same as the forms of socialism practiced in Venezuela and Cuba, for example, and that the factors that shaped those case studies would be present in the USA as well.

I can see why it would be tempting to encourage this confusion. Classic socialism -- government control of most or all markets for goods and services -- has a disastrous historical record. In theory, such a system would ensure that everyone gets their basic needs met, but the level of social control required to maintain these systems practically guarantees a descent into tyranny. For a preview of this tendency, look at the history of socialist and communist organizations. Only Protestant Christians rival them for the ability to quarrel and divide on doctrinal issues. If we just take the scare tactics at face value and assume that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are hell-bent on creating that sort of system, we can be excused for fearing the consequences.

(For a fictional attempt at a spiritual x-ray of late-stage Soviet socialism, read Francis Spufford's novel Red Plenty, which I summarized here as "the most unusual book I've ever read about the Soviet Union.")

Democratic socialism shares the same major goal as classic socialism: eliminating the social and economic causes of suffering. Eliminating preventable suffering is also a major ethical priority of Christianity, which is probably why so many socialist thinkers have been Christians. For example, Canada's democratic socialist political party, the New Democratic Party, included Christian politicians such as J.S. Woodsworth and Stanley Knowles among its formative leaders. The Roman Catholic Church's social teachings helped form the modern labor movement in many countries. Prominent Christian socialists in the USA's history include Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, Kirby Page, and Mother Jones. This history, if better known, might go a long way to correcting the impressions left by the celebrity Christians of the far right.

Democratic socialism recognizes that there is no way to impose this laudable goal of eliminating preventable suffering from the top down. Coercive centralized planning, no matter how elegantly organized or diligently practiced (see Red Plenty), involves a monopoly on power, and we humans have a terrible record with unchecked power. Democratic socialists rely on two major devices to keep power in check -- a system of political checks and balances, and a market economy. Strangely enough, these are the same mechanisms favored by conservatives! 

The mission of democratic socialists is simple and twofold:

First, they advocate and evangelize for their central vision: a good society ensures fair access to the community's resources so that nobody suffers needlessly.

Second, they compete in the political marketplace of ideas and policies, engaging with colleagues and opponents to find the right balance between two competing goods: building up enough resources for the community's social goals, while providing for reasonable incentives for the private marketplace to thrive and the hybrids (public utilities and other public/private joint ventures) to reward investors.

This is where conflicts often arise: advocates for the most generous social policies can collide with those who want to maximize entrepreneurial and investor incentives. The more we challenge each other to keep our shared values of social justice at the center, the more fruitful (my optimistic self says) these conflicts can be, and the more we can expose the hidden motives of greed and class interest that are in direct conflict with everyone (progressive and conservative alike) whose goal is fair access to resources and the elimination of needless suffering.

Democratic socialists propose solutions that analyze the division of labor between government management and the free market, and adjust that division in favor of our most vulnerable people. For all activities that are best regulated by the free market -- the vast majority of industries and services -- there may be no role for government beyond the preservation of public safety and mechanisms for resolving disputes. But for those activities that are basic to everyone's health and safety, such as police and fire services, roads, every-address postal service, guaranteed access to education, and (I would argue) health care, accountable government management makes sense. The free market simply does not know how to weigh private incentives and the public good in such large-scale concerns, though many will pretend (for their private benefit) that any alternative to the market is (scary music) socialism!

Improving this division of labor -- making better choices between what the free market does well, and what an elected government can accomplish -- is the actual conversation proposed by actual democratic socialists. Every democratic country in the world has already arrived at some such division of labor, including the USA, although nobody has done a perfect job. How can we in the USA do a better job together to "promote the General Welfare" and eliminate needless suffering? And ... really, does this urgent conversation sound so apocalyptic?

............................

In thinking about this theme, I found a couple of interesting articles.

On Wikipedia, "Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor."

And on Norway as a case study of democratic socialism, "Scandinavian Socialism: The 'Truth' of the Nordic Model."

On this site you can find one of Truman's more famous pieces of rhetoric, on the use of the word "socialism" by politicians on the Republican side. Here he is in Syracuse, New York, on October 10, 1952: 

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. 

Socialism is what they called social security.  

Socialism is what they called farm price supports. 

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. 

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

More labels: evangelical, conservative, radical.

............................

To call Jesus a socialist might be a suspicious use of religious rhetoric for political gain, but let's look with pure motives at how Wess Daniels describes the biblical evidence of the Savior's priorities: Jesus against empire.

Church during "lockdown" and a "hiddenness of life and worship...."

A sad anniversary: Samantha Smith and the Soviet Union.

............................

UPDATE on the Ramallah Friends Schools:

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the pandemic-era situations faced by several Friends schools. I've also been wondering how Ramallah Friends School in Palestine has been doing. Yesterday I got an update from Adrian Moody, director of the School:

We are currently preparing for a return to school on the 7th September. Cases in the Westbank are going up around 600 per day. We know if we get a case here at school then we will have to close again so things are really uncertain. We have to prepare whilst the goal posts are constantly moving.

The pandemic has really hit school finances. Shop owners were severely hit with all the closures but civil servants were also hit because salaries were cut up to 60%, A lot of our parents are struggling to pay their fees and have to pay for the last academic year as well as prepare for the new academic year. We do what we can to help and we have opened up applications for financial aid and fortunately were able to raise some emergency funds through donors to help our most affected parents.

The financial situation on the Westbank has been dire for some time and the pandemic has just made it incredibly difficult. We are in for a tough year.

To make a contribution to Ramallah Friends School and their resources for financial aid, visit the School's online donation page. To participate in Friends United Meeting's support for the School, visit FUM's donation page. 

............................

Enjoy Sue Foley breaking down the blues guitar for us:

Stress test

I was 38 years old when I flunked my first stress test. It all started with pain that I felt doing aerobic exercises. The doctor put me on a treadmill, wired me up, and increased the treadmill speed until I said "uncle" or some variation thereof. She then referred me to a cardiologist, who examined me with a variety of expensive machines and could not find anything wrong with me.

Ten years later, something similar happened, only this time I was working in a very stressful environment. One busy evening I was running back and forth between two locations, one upstairs and one downstairs, when suddenly I found myself dropping into a chair and almost fainting. After resting, I went home to a normal sleep ... after sending an e-mail to a doctor describing my symptoms. (That e-mail is now a family legend.) After reprimanding me for using e-mail to report coronary distress, my doctor ordered another stress test. Again I flunked. This time at the end of the process I was the proud owner of a Cordis Velocity® stent, which has (apparently) served me well to this very day.

A stress test is not fun. It subjects the body to measured amounts of excess stress, with the calculation that the strain it causes will aid diagnosis without unduly harming the patient. This diagnostic opportunity is the hidden blessing -- maybe the only blessing -- that I see in that global stress test we know as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Tyron Siu/Reuters via New York Times.  

Despite what conspiracy theorists say, no Western agents of russophobia, anti-Trump media, or other plotters developed this novel coronavirus. It apparently has the same genesis as countless other viruses in human history, some of which have wreaked similar havoc. It spreads in ways similar to other viruses as well, by contact with respiratory droplets from infected people. Because a typical infected person may spread the disease to several others, the progress of the disease is exponential until people learn to stop giving the virus opportunities to spread. Although much research needs to be done on specific features, treatments, and prevention, nothing about this current pandemic is unprecedented or particularly mysterious.

I don't mean to minimize anything. Once infected, most patients recover, but it's a considerably more dangerous virus than a typical flu, especially if the patient already is vulnerable for one reason or another. (Again, see this WHO site.) But, aside from the medical questions, what are we learning about ourselves and our societies from the stress imposed on us by the coronavirus? Or to put it another way, what stress tests have we already flunked?

Here in the USA, national leadership has utterly failed to follow the paradoxical rule that governs all unpredictable national emergencies: the more serious the response, the better the outcome. Facing an epidemic, people who are told to "relax, it's no big deal" because "the alarmists just want to hurt Trump" -- and who therefore do relax -- will just make a situation of exponential growth that much harder to control. Yes, leadership also needs to avoid panicking people, but that requires telling us all convincingly that we're in it together and that the government is exercising competent stewardship over all the resources required in the emergency. Diagnosis: leadership incompetence. Those not in the personality cult of Trump are, to put it bluntly, not surprised, but now everyone can see how high the stakes are in maintaining competence and confidence.

The existing health care financing "system" has also flunked miserably. A single-payer system would allow the whole health care community to focus on prevention and treatment. In the current emergency, that would have saved politicians countless hours now devoted to negotiating complicated and controversial workarounds, all the while posturing to look good to the incredulous and anxious audience of voters and potential patients. At the end of the negotiations we may cobble together something like a centrally-financed response for this specific emergency, which will probably fall apart completely once the emergency ends.

Finally (at least for tonight!), we see how fragile our global trade and financial markets have come to be. Global actors have never been veritable angels, but Trump and his nationalist counterparts in other countries are weakening the post-WWII ideal of collective security almost beyond recognition. In its place they basically advocate the law of the jungle, however dressed up it might be in Stephen Miller-style pretensions. Markets, left unchecked by an ethic of investment in each other's well-being, inevitably devour anything that gets in the way of profits. Russia and OPEC may be in an oil price war, but for both entities, the ultimate enemy might be the USA's petroleum industry, who will (they hope) be driven into bankruptcy by low oil prices before Russia's reserves run out. Ordinary people in all countries affected by this price war are the last to be consulted and the first to suffer as markets contract.

As we monitor these diagnostic indicators, I hope that Christians, among others, will retain the ability to care for the individuals and communities involved without getting sucked into xenophobia, conspiracy theories, and passive despair. Examining the world's powers and principalities through a godly lens, we see that there is nothing going on that is unprecedented or particularly mysterious. It's just a virus, stressing us badly at the moment, impelling us (if we're faithful) to restore a vision of right stewardship of resources, and right investments in each other's well-being.

---

Until a couple of days ago, I was expecting to leave on Monday for my first trip back to Russia since Judy and I left our Elektrostal jobs and apartment, back in October 2017. I still plan to make that trip, but not until something resembling normalcy returns.

---

TOP: "There's a woman president in Estonia. What do you

say: can a woman become president in Russia?"

BOTTOM: "Of course not. I'm not a woman."

(Found on Facebook.)

Martin E. Marty explores the space between decline and renewal in American Christianity.

What about the theory that Trump is an instrument of Christian righteousness?

The Russian constitutional amendments: what will it mean to insert God into the document? And how did the amendment process give V.V. Putin two more terms of power despite his repeated claims that he wanted no such thing?

For Russians, humor is a key factor in the will to survive. Back in 2011, when Putin and Medvedev revealed that the latter, in serving as president for four years (2008-12), was saving the place for Putin to serve a third and fourth term, one of our students said out loud in class, "Putin again? By the time he leaves office I'll be 32 years old! I might as well shoot myself now." Turns out, she'll be 44!

---

A different kind of blues, from the film Horowitz in Moscow. I am so fascinated by the faces of the audience.

Triumph of the magic tycoon

Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendor of their houses increases;
for they will take nothing with them when they die,
their splendor will not descend with them.

Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
Psalm 49:16-17; Ecclesiastes 5:10, NIV

---

Do you remember the millionaire columnist Percy Ross? His column, "Thanks a Million," was published in one of the newspapers we read regularly in our Richmond, Indiana, years, and in about 800 other papers nationwide. It ended in 1999, when Ross announced that he had exhausted the fund set up for his philanthropic project ... although privately he sometimes still responded to requests after that date.

The column originated when Ross decided to devote the majority of his fortune to a specific kind of very public but human-scale philanthropy. If you wrote to him with a credible pitch that some cash from him would improve your prospects in a way you weren't able to manage for yourself, and -- of course -- if your letter got picked from among the 10,000 he received each week, you'd get the cash. Actually, many more people were helped than the few whose stories were chosen for his column. In some cases, instead of cash, you'd get an in-kind gift from a sympathetic business, or Ross would kick off a campaign to get donations from other readers. His column would often also include examples of unsuccessful pitches, along with Ross's tart explanation of the denial.

Americans seem to have a fascination with wealthy people, and with the magic wand such people could wave over the rest of us who saw them as role models or yearned for a piece of their good fortune. The enormous popularity of "Thanks a Million" was just one example of that fascination, and by no means the worst. Ross wasn't exactly a systemic critic of capitalism and its ills, but he seemed to have a fair understanding of how people could end up needing help through no fault of their own. Although it seemed clear that Ross enjoyed the publicity while it lasted, there were no political or doctrinal strings attached to his gifts, and he hoped and expected to fade out of public view after his project ended.

Source.  

All of these thoughts about Ross and other tycoons were stirred up by the spectacle of the constitutionally-mandated State of the Union speech for this year. Once again, a wealthy, publicity-seeking man dispenses his favors -- but isn't it fair to observe that this one is a bit different? All of the gifts and guest appearances arguably were tied into the Trump re-election campaign, but for me the most outrageous moment was awarding the nation's highest civilian honor to Rush Limbaugh, who has endorsed Trump to his dittohead audience.

(Related: see "Trumpworld has converted the nation's regional talk radio hosts into a loyal army.")

The speech was also remarkable for what he claimed that he was achieving or giving us despite his administration's actions (or inactions) to the contrary. His "ironclad pledge" to preserve coverage of pre-existing health conditions is a scandalous example, as is his claim that prescription drugs are getting cheaper or his prediction that the new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico will add 100,000 auto industry jobs. One record he could have mentioned but did not: The U.S. national debt reached $22 trillion last year, or 78% of gross domestic product, with little or no apparent relief forthcoming from the pledges made during the 2017 campaign for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Aside from that law, very little of the national debt can be blamed on Trump, but an accurate State of the Union speech would not leave out this evidence of our collective refusal to live in reality.

Donald Trump did not invent the idea of using this annual speech as a campaign ad, but I cannot remember any previous report on the State of the Union with such a high proportion of blatant self-promotion, self-congratulation, and deception. I cannot pretend to have been surprised. The evidence suggests, however, that a large part of the USA still hopes for our Tycoon-in-Chief to bestow his magic bounty on us for another four years.

---

If you think I'm being unfair to Donald Trump, you probably shouldn't read or watch this.

Umair Haque asks why Americans idolize the rich. Are his observations fair? Also see Gillian B. White's article on photojournalist Lauren Greenfield, who has been documenting Americans' apparent fascination with wealth. And the Cato Institute surveys Americans' attitudes toward poverty, wealth, and work. Interesting sample:

Nearly three‐​fourths (71%) of Americans admire more than resent the rich. But people also believe this admiration can be taken to excess. A similar share (75%) believe that their fellow Americans admire the rich "too much."

Jacqui Shine tells us more about Percy Ross and his column "Thanks a Million."

Here's why Russian prosecutors dropped murder charges against sisters who stabbed their father.

Josh Daffern proposes six reasons that might explain why the so-called "nones" are walking away from church. His six reasons are all worth considering, but there's another reason that I'd propose -- and this might help explain several of his six: too many churches simply do not take Jesus seriously, and people know it. To borrow (without permission) a phrase from Norval Hadley, the body should reflect the beauty of the Head. Let's start making that our priority, rather than all the programming and thought policing that we see now. (Some of my own thoughts on Friends' weaknesses and potential strengths are here.)

Here's a topic you don't see every day: Sex and the married missionary.

---

Another kind of blues: Daniel Deitrich's "Hymn for the 81%." "I grew up in your churches...."

A Quaker concern for Ukraine

Source.  

Back in May, I reported on this peace initiative, which has developed as follows. (The links within the report below were added by me for today's blog post, which was edited by John Lampen on behalf of the initiative's support group, using reports supplied by Misha Roshchin and Roland Rand.)

A Quaker concern for Ukraine

In early May Mikhail Roshchin of Moscow Meeting and Roland Rand of Talinn Friends Worship Group in Estonia brought a concern to the Europe and Middle East Section (EMES) of Friends World Committee for Consultation. They wished to travel to Ukraine to find out what ordinary people were experiencing in the midst of violent conflict and ask if there was anything Quakers could do in a modest way to foster local peace initiatives. Friends gathered in Strasbourg for the EMES Annual Meeting recognised and upheld this concern, and asked EMES to facilitate it by banking any money collected for it.

An article appeared in the Friend (May 16) after which Friends, many Meetings and two Trusts, together with sources in other European countries, gave enough to cover the costs of our two Friends’ visits; there might be surplus for small-scale one-off support if some promising Ukrainian peace work was identified.

In the mean time the violence was getting worse, which made it unsafe to go during the summer, which was the original plan. Eventually Roland visited Kiev and the Odessa Region in September. In conversations with members of different ethnic groups, young people and a religious leader, he found a universal wish for the fighting to end, though some did not want this if the price was the break-up of the country. He attended a meeting of the local Alternative to Violence Group, and commented, “At the AVP seminars it was the clear wish for Ukrainians to live in a tolerant environment despite the differences among them. I sensed that many had reached that viewpoint at the end of the seminar. The regret over historical neighbours not managing to live in harmony was shared by many who held nationalistic viewpoints. Compromise was considered essential for a peaceful solution to a conflict.” He recommended AVP training in Ukraine as a possible recipient of Quaker support.

His first meeting in Odessa was with the AVP Group there, where again the national situation was discussed. “Concerning the question what can be done right now for the resolution of the conflict, it was found that activity should take place on several levels: person-to-person, system-to-system. One person cannot resolve conflict between systems, but s/he can help on the person-to-person level. Some participants thought that it is important to start with the closest one, for example with oneself.”

Roland Rand with children in Odessa

Next day he met the philanthropic organization “The Way Home”, and heard about the temporary living arrangements for families from the eastern Ukraine regions. He visited a Kindergarten for low income large families and gave the children toys and candy. There is a possibility of organizing summer camps in Ukraine and Estonia, because the opportunity for children to learn about other cultures early would be helpful in building tolerance. This is another programme for which he advocated Quaker support.

He also met other community activists, among them Inna Tereshchenko, director of the Odessa Regional Mediation Group. Currently Inna is the representative for the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). (A number of Friends have worked with her in the past and have a high regard for her.) Roland wants to stay in touch with her and give her whatever support he can. He found that cultural days and festivals are being held to promote peace and stability. Good examples are the free-of-charge concert given in Odessa that he attended, and the women's movement's demonstration at Maidan Square in Kiev against the war.

Mikhail (known as Misha) managed to reach Lugansk near the border with Russia in October. This District has declared itself the “Lugansk Republic” which makes Ukraine a “foreign country”. He found both his journey and the city very calm and quiet since the armistice which was agreed in Minsk in September – but is not universally honoured. He says, “The armistice is observed well here. I have met a few responsible people such as the President of People's Council of the Lugansk Republic, Alexei Kariakin, who took part  in the Minsk peace  negotiations. I have met also with a vice-prime-minister Vassili Nikitin. Especially interesting and helpful for me was a meeting with a troupe from the Ukrainian-speaking theatre in the city. In the People's Council I heard of a project of a peacemaking dialogue between Lugansk and Ukraine. I feel that this proposal is very positive.”

He also reports “a peacemaking initiative of a social-political leader of Alchevsk (a city in Lugansk province) called Alexey Mozgovoy who started a real peacemaking direct dialogue, by means of web, tv and skype connections, with with peacemaking activists (journalists, political people and even a few military people) from Kiev.”

War-damaged church in Lugansk

In general Misha felt that “there is a lack of presence of peacemaking, human-rights and humanitarian international organizations operating in Lugansk and Lugansk province. I saw myself in the city only representatives of International Red Cross. I feel that more long-term peace-making Quaker work in Lugansk and Eastern Ukraine is not only possible, but needed. I can continue to collaborate with friends there who are searching a long-term established peace on the base of their program of dialogue between both parts of Ukraine.” It was part of Misha’s original plan to make a visit to Donetsk where much fighting has taken place. He still has funds in hand for this if it proves safe to go. Meanwhile, he plans to keep up the contacts he has made in Lugansk. He is also in touch with the peace-making movement "Anti-War" (Antivoina). This movement is based in Kiev and organizing discussions using tv and web links across the country.

The AVP project leader in Kiev said later: “I'd like to say that Roland's mission was a success. Thanks to him, we started raising important issues and a desire to promote peacemaking. In my opinion, we had a real peaceful dialogue, and I'm sure it has helped many of us to take another step to understanding its meaning.” There are fuller reports from both Friends on their experiences, and copies are available from lampen (at) hopeproject.co.uk.

Friends gathered in Strasbourg for the EMES Annual Meeting recognised and upheld this concern, and asked EMES to facilitate it by banking any money collected for it. A support group was set up for them. It hoped that ongoing support for peace activists there would follow in some form, not necessarily involving new structures, which it felt it could not undertake to manage. This seems to be happening.

The first article in the Friend and other information about this initiative raised an astonishing £10,490 from Friends, Meetings and Trusts to make it happen. The original plan was for each journey to be made by two Friends, but this proved impossible, so our Friends’ costs were less than expected, around £6,600. This left a good surplus to devote to the local peace-building initiatives which they recommended to us: the AVP training, the proposed summer camp for displaced children, and the work of our friends in the Odessa Regional Mediation Group. There is also a modest grant for the continuing dialogue between Misha and his new contacts. Misha and Roland want to thank those who supported their concern and bring back to you the gratitude of people in Ukraine who are trying to be positive in the midst of fear, anger, loss and uncertainty.

---

Picturing a national economy as a "household": John Sentamu, Anglican archbishop of York, introduces his just-released book On Rock or Sand, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Melanie McDonagh says that "the book is a vivid reminder of the forgotten but obvious truth that most progressive British politics, from Wilberforce to Joseph Rowntree, have had a squarely Christian origin."

The top ten reasons Gregg Koskela is a Quaker.

Welcome to a new virtual meetinghouse. And C. Wess Daniels is building a participatory pedagogy.

Carl Abbott: Is Portland the big bully of Oregon?

It's not the same: American digital diplomacy in Russia after Michael McFaul.

What Terrell Jermaine Starr learned about race relations in Ukraine.

---

Once again, under Samantha Fish's spell...

If you know what's good for you...

But first: Today was an extraordinary day in Oslo. Just a couple of days ago, in open court, Anders Behring Breivik denigrated the beloved song "Barn av Regnbuen" ("Children of the Rainbow"), Lillebjørn Nilsen's Norwegian adaptation of Pete Seeger's "My Rainbow Race." Breivik is on trial for the July 22 massacre of 77 young people and others, in Oslo and at the Labor Party youth camp; he asserted that Nilsen's song is an example of the Marxist-inspired multicultural poison that is endangering Norway and that justified his violent intervention.

Two Oslo women, Christine Bar and Lili Hjønnevåg, decided that Breivik's charges could not go unanswered, and in just two days they managed to catalyze an event that drew over 40,000 people into downtown Oslo, in the rain, to sing this song within the hearing of the courthouse. Just yesterday, Lillebjørn Nilsen himself agreed to lead the singing. And there he was as I sat in front of my computer screen here in Elektrostal and watched the crowds singing, sometimes wiping away tears, and waving roses.


Similar sing-alongs took place in several other cities and towns of Norway. As one participant in Oslo said, "This song represents the opposite of everything he [Breivik] stands for...." It represents the determination of millions not to let implacable violence have the last word. Love is kind, patient, longsuffering ... and sometimes assertive, too.

"Thousands gather in Oslo to sing song Anders Breivik hates."
"Thousands sing song of peace to protest Norway killer Breivik."
"Norwegians sing out against Breivik" (with lyrics).

---

Years ago, I read about Garrett Hardin's concept of the "tragedy of the commons," the choice between apparent individual benefit and the good of the community. Hardin's context was demographic growth and "the freedom to breed," but the context I remember from college economics class was commodity prices. The individual farmer needs income, but putting his or her crops on the market lowers the prices for all.

I was reminded again of the dilemmas of individual choice and common good (though not necessarily the math of Hardin's  "tragedy") when I read this fascinating interview with Abhijit Banerjee, co-author of the intriguingly-titled Poor Economics: Barefoot Hedge-fund Managers, DIY Doctors and the Surprising Truth about Life on less than $1 a Day.

To the constant frustration of idealistic donors and activists, people just don't do what it seems starkly obvious (to us) they should do for their own good. Banerjee points out that most of us, poor and wealthy alike, often don't do what seems sensible, for all sorts of reasons, including the fascinating concept of "time inconsistency," as Banerjee explains:

It means there are lots of decisions that you think today you'd like to implement and stick to, but which – once you get to the sticking-to part – you don't want to stick to any more. I think most of your readers, and certainly including me, have the problem with candy. I'm very convinced that I should not have as many sweet things as I do, but then when it comes down to when I see one, I really feel like having one. There's an inconsistency in time between your self in repose and your self in action, and that's a permanent tension we live in all the time.

The interview touches on the fruitlessness of the conventional debate about development aid (progressives aiming at the "poverty trap" and conservatives aiming at "dependency"). Once we've established that we actually care enough about people trapped in poverty to want to take action, whatever our politics and theology and acknowledged or unacknowledged vested interests, then the practical data gathered by Banerjee and his coworkers provide very important lessons. There is no magic formula, but "when aid is carefully designed to navigate the specific socio-cultural landscape of its recipients' lives, it begins to deliver the sort of results [interventionist Jeffrey] Sachs claims."

I'm definitely going to get hold of this book. In the meantime, I am thinking about one criticism of the book as mentioned by interviewer Decca Aitkenhead, namely that Banerjee and co-author Esther Duflo take insufficient account of politics and power as factors. Part of the Poor Economics message seems to be that repression and corruption do not need to be 100% solved before economic progress can be made (except in those cases where there's truly outrageous tyranny). In fact, by the logic of this interview, politics are in fact part of the "socio-cultural landscape" that must be patiently examined and incorporated into development design, as frustrating and sometimes distasteful as that might be to the Western expert. This reminded me of Lawrence Rosen's article, "Understanding Corruption"--the part where his friend Hussein says to him, "You know, bribery is our form of democracy." No, no, no, I want to say--if you only knew what's good for you!--but if I actually care about solving problems, I have to keep tracking with the conversation as it really is.

My mind also went back to another book, one that influenced me a lot when I worked for Right Sharing of World Resources: Charles Elliott's Comfortable Compassion? Poverty, Power and the Church. Among other touchy subjects, Elliott writes about the power imbalance between donors and recipients--and the resulting distortions in aid. I remember one moving example--the Ugandan church that wanted the aid organization to provide them hymnbooks. What a ridiculous request; honestly, don't they know what they really need? First things first: it may feel more righteous to point fingers at corrupt governments, but we might get some good practice in combating corruption, racism, insensitivity, and so on, if we start with our own organizations.

One of the tragic splits in church history mentioned in Charles Elliott's book is the split within various Christian confessions between mission and service bodies. Particularly in the post-colonialist era, it seemed expedient to divide those functions, but when they stopped informing each other, each function arguably became weaker. (Can we imagine a more dramatic example than the differences between the American Friends Service Committee and Evangelical Friends Mission?) Maybe we could draw from Banerjee's argument to say that, after this split, both sides had fewer resources to navigate the full political and spiritual and cultural realities of people's lives, to find out how they experienced "time inconsistency" and other factors that tended to defeat change.

We Friends used to hold "Mission and Service" consultations. Maybe they're needed again for a new generation of Friends evangelists and activists. After all, from a "Lamb's war" perspective, political and economic bondages are always linked to spiritual bondages.

---

Another case of "if you only knew..."? "Why educated Republicans are in denial about climate change." (Thanks to Marshall Massey for the link.) I stumbled a little at these sentences early in the article: "It is not surprising that the uneducated core of the Right's supporters are readily swayed by this campaign. Lacking scientific literacy, they do not have the tools to resist manipulation by media masters, and they hold a set of political and religious beliefs that is challenged by climate disorder." To my mind, a bigger stumbling block for less educated people than their beliefs is the way they're sometimes treated by educated people, which provides fertile soil for the anti-intellectualism of unscrupulous politicians. But the article itself is helpful and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

---

From Nancy Thomas: "Some simple thoughts on grace." (Judy has just sent in her own essay on grace for the Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.)

John Wilson interviews Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on Jim Douglass's book Gandhi and the Unspeakable. "What if Gandhi lived his whole life knowing that he would face an assassin and that the truth of his entire philosophy would be tested by his response? What if when he prayed to die with the name of God on his lips he meant that to be a prayer of grace for his assassin?"

More on Breivik in Foreign Policy: "He's Not Alone. The trial of Norway's alleged mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is only the tip of the iceberg in a rising sea of radical Islamophobia in Europe."

On a more cheerful (Norwegian) note: "99 Minutes. Listen to Norway" podcasts.

In this week's Linux department: "Linus Thorvalds wins the tech equivalent of a Nobel Prize" and "Ubuntu 12.04 arrives and it's great." (I agree.)

---

Oscar's first jam! Admire ...

The Madonna of the Metro

Proof that spring is advancing on Radio Street: View from my classroom window on April 1, and April 8.

---

A member of Moscow Meeting sent me a link to an article, "A note to those who give alms" (in Russian here among other places). Her cover note said, "Please read this article for a deeper understanding of our life."

Briefly, the writer, who says he is an accredited journalist, describes a scene in a Moscow subway station passageway. For a whole month, every time he goes by this particular place, he sees a woman of indeterminate age sitting and panhandling right there near the stores and kiosks, with a small child in a dirty cap lying asleep in front of her. Many kind-hearted passers-by drop coins into a nearby bag. The writer already suspects that the beggar gets little more than food and drink from these earnings--the rest likely goes to build a palatial abode for whomever employs her for this trade.

But after a while, something else arouses his concern: he notices that the child never seems to be awake, in stark contrast to the normal liveliness of a child that age. When he asks, "Why is the child sleeping"?, he is pointedly ignored by the woman, and eventually pulled away from her by a passer-by who rebukes him for his heartlessness. Another time, a policeman treats him the same way.

I've been reading this booklet at this time every year
for the past 30+ years. A new pdf-format edition
is available through this link.

An acquaintance with underworld connections clues him in: the mother is a participant/victim in a syndicate, the child (who may have been kidnapped for the purpose) is dosed with heroin or vodka. They will get very little for their role; most of the money goes to the bosses. Moreover, according to this acquaintance, different ethnically-based syndicates specialize in different forms of begging--the "madonnas," the injured veterans, and so on.

Children used as bait, drugged to keep them quiet--the very idea is incredibly repulsive. Sometimes, according to the writer's informant, the child even dies while on duty--and the supposed mother is forced to continue to the end of her shift as if nothing happened.

Indeed, toward the end of his story, the writer again visits the woman's station, and stops in shock: there's a different child! What happened to the other one, he asks. Another beggar and nearby venders let him know that he'd better stop asking questions and leave. A policeman asks him for his ID papers, but then agrees to investigate and goes for help. Before he returns, the whole tableau has vanished.

The journalist ends his article with a punch: if everyone stopped giving to beggars, the industry would not survive, but perhaps some children, now condemned to serve as alms-bait, would survive.

I'm properly shocked by the article, but after a few minutes of Internet follow-up, I can't help noticing that the article has been circulating for about four years, with at least 104 Google entries. The name of the article varies; often it is called "Why does the child sleep?" The oldest entry claims that the person posting the text had received it in an unsolicited e-mail that she dismissed as spam at first, but then found it interesting enough to post.

I've no doubt that there are substantial truths in the article--for one thing, it strains credulity that prime Metro begging spots are "first come first served." And beggars' syndicates operate in many parts of the world; why not in Russia? Also, perhaps this article's wide circulation has reduced the number of children used as bait; I can't remember the last time I saw one. (No, that's not quite true--I saw a young boy accompanying a beggar on a local suburban train not long ago, but he was wide awake and looked relatively healthy.) But I wish the article had a few more substantiating details, especially a specific location and date. And I can't help wondering about the reasons for its circulation--a legitimate expose or yet another boost for cynicism at the expense of compassion?

---

Robin Parry engages with another round of the Augustinian/universalist conversation.

Meanwhile, Jamie asks for your help in defining "grace." Just a few hours until her Friday deadline. (Maybe you should ask her for a grace period.)

More on the Gagarin anniversary: "The Enigmatic Vostok 1" and "Yuri Gagarin's private passions."

"Can books still genuinely change the world?" and "Revolutions and resurrections: How has Russian literature changed?"

Thanks to Tom Engelhardt, here's a fascinating and moving intellectual biography of the late Chalmers Johnson by his wife Sheila Johnson.

---

"... that's all I know about politics," says Super Chikan, as he sings in support of Bill Luckett for Mississippi state governor. Take a look at his guitar!


Super Chikan sings "Get It Done" for the Bill Luckett for Governor Campaign from Andrew Shipley on Vimeo.

100% links

My blogwriting time today was taken up by the health care forum, part of which I was able to follow live through C-Span's Web site. This site also provides a link to a PDF document from the Kaiser Family Foundation, summarizing the difference between the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate versions of the current health care reform bills.

If your analysis of the health care financing mess (and what we need to do to fix it) differs from mine, nothing I could say at 1:30 a.m. is going to change your mind, so I won't tackle that subject. All I know is (and this was hinted at more than once) ... every participant in that conference had adequate health care coverage.

With that out of the way, here is this week's crop of righteous links:

My Web Will (www.mywebwill.com) is a soon-to-be-launched commercially packaged approach to organizing your digital life after death. Take a look at this interview with co-founder Lisa Granberg. Jennifer Farwell in a 2007 article, "Death and Digital Data," reviews some of the legal issues involved--issues that might be simplified by a service such as My Web Will. My question: if vast amounts of text (particularly correspondence) are inaccessible or simply disappear after we die, what will be left behind for future historians to study?

Books and Culture is going behind $ubscriber wall$--except for four articles of every issue. I'm in shock! The New York Times, I can almost understand, but ....

The problem isn't my willingness to pay, in theory--but, if the pay model catches on, how do I prioritize my few discretionary rubles? In my case, as with almost everyone I know who gets a lot of information through the Internet, the traditional subscription model just won't work--we simply rely on too many sources, and most of us will inevitably abandon those sources that charge us in favor of those who still keep their gates open. (I subscribe to several sites, however, that have a free basic level of access, and for-pay enhancements. Fair enough.) I've seen endless variations on this discussion--for example, here's one hosted by McKinsey.

I don't like arrangements where online access is linked to a print subscription. In almost all cases, even if I can afford the print version, I don't want it. Aside from other concerns, the mail to Russia can be slow. We are still getting Christmas cards in February.

The even bigger problem for me is sharing worthwhile articles. If I have a subscription but I want to make an article available more widely, I have to either copy and paste (which will probably be against the terms of agreement) or wait until another site has reposted the article and link to that second-hand site. There are places in this world where other forms of public information-sharing are subject to heavy censorship or self-censorship and the Internet represents a relatively free arena. I hope it stays "free."

Take a recent article by Katherine Jeffry, "'I Am Not Who You Think I Am': Situating The Shack in a Christian literary landscape." This is an example of the kind of Books and Culture article that I'd like to share freely, in this case with readers of William Paul Young's novel The Shack. I don't agree with the doctrinal correlations Jeffry makes with other works of Christian literature, according to which The Shack falls woefully short--I don't think she gives readers credit for sufficient intelligence to distinguish metaphor from heresy--but she provides a lot of food for thought.

"Which sources do we trust, and why?"--particularly when researching and advocating earth care policies.

Pew Forum researches "Religion among the Millennials." Among the summary observations: "In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values. At the same time, Millennials are no less convinced than their elders that there are absolute standards of right and wrong."

"Open source is a restaurant where everyone is a chef."

On the "silent justice" of the U.S. Supreme Court: "Does Thomas' Silence Thwart Advocacy?"

---

Skip James sings "Crow Jane," an old song sometimes attributed to him. (See the discussion here.)

Meridian Street Shorts

Teaching idioms. A while back I praised the book The Gift of the Stranger. In a paper I wrote for a conference at the New Humanitarian Institute, but delivered in my absence because we were back in the USA, I tried to say a bit about how this book helped shape some of my teaching. The authors challenge instructors to clarify (1) the motivation of foreign language instruction; and (2) the whole-life influence they desire to have on their students. Often foreign language instruction is marketed as a way to be a more effective businessperson, persuader, tourist, connoisseur--all ways of enhancing the learner with little regard for the value of the target culture, or even for the value of the learner to the target culture. Smith and Carvill ask us to consider, instead, what kind of people our students will become, and what kind of relationship with the target culture we are preparing them for. They advocate helping our students become “gracious hosts” and “sensitive strangers,” with “spacious hearts” capable of recognizing boundaries and differences as well as our essential common humanity. read more....

Relating to the Bible: honesty, pain, and guilt. Not long ago I sat with a circle of evangelical Friends who were telling each other about their relationship with the Bible. Almost nobody in this circle of about ten people, most of whom had a lifetime of church experience, had a serene relationship with the book. One frequent theme was knowing that the Bible was important, and therefore feeling guilty that it was not an important part of daily life. Another overlapping theme: former diligence replaced at some point by current neglect. One person said, helpfully, that he had learned that when people say, "The Bible says," he knows that this really means, "I interpret the Bible as saying...." Some people had been on the receiving end of judgmental applications of Scripture. Others simply didn't know what to make of God's apparent cruelty and ruthlessness--for example, in the books of Joshua and Judges. A couple of people simply confessed that their eyes tended to slide over the words and they had a hard time retaining the material. For me as an adult convert, the Bible is the community-ratified story of my family, a source of endless fascination simply as documents, aside from their inspired origins and equally inspired process of compilation. As I've said before, the Bible itself does not require us to treat it as magic. In their own way, those famous verses of Paul are as servant-spirited as they are powerful: "... Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother's milk! There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us." (from 2 Timothy 3:14-17, The Message.) I was grateful for the honesty of these participants. The session challenged me to think about what might be required of those who love the Bible to provide fresh access to its treasures, while DEcreasing the factors leading to these frequent neglect/guilt cycles.

Voracious consumers. President Barack Obama was put in a nearly impossible position on the G-20 world stage: expected to demonstrate leadership without dominating, to defer without abdicating, to inspire modestly. I think he succeeded. I was particularly grateful for a challenge from Obama that is directed as much to us as to those internationally who have a dysfunctional love/hate relationship with us: the USA isn't likely to return to its "voracious consumer" role in the world economy. (And he might have added, "nor should it.") I hope that "stimulus" money that goes into health and education and better energy stewardship wears new patterns into our global economy, so that the planet can simply find a more sustainable metabolism rate. Unfortunately, it's not just the booms and busts of consumer appetites that threaten global stability. We're going to need significant amounts of energy and resources in the foreseeable future, whatever near-term changes we succeed in making. How do we find new patterns of trade that recognize the moral and ecological poverty of the petroleum chess game being waged ferociously even as the G-20 leaders politely say goodbye to each other? Will there ever be a G-20-style table where the resource-rich and the resource-hungry lay their cards out, recognize that ANY unfair configuration lays the basis for future conflict, and make honest and transparent bargains? Ordinary citizens may feel relatively powerless, but we ought to beat a constant drum for honesty. Among Russians, for example, nothing inspires more cynicism (in my experience) than the claim that the USA only desires to spread freedom and democracy. All a Russian observer needs to do is look at which countries in the world flagrantly violate their citizens' rights without fear of American reaction, and what resources those countries supply to the USA. I only hope that President Obama's performance in the last couple of days signals a new era of candor. If it does, he'll need all our prayers.

.

Righteous links. No More Hummer Nation . . . wishes Maureen Dowd. American Religious Identification Survey, 2008 version: plenty of fascinating details to poke around in. And here's a Russian news story about the survey; if you don't read Russian, look anyway to see the photo they chose to head the story. (Thanks to Sasha Gorbenko for tipping me off.) I can't help wondering if that choice of photo reflects an assumption about American spirituality! Friends Committee on National Legislation testifies before the U.S. Congress; see site for link to the testimony presented by Bridget Moix--a graceful, succinct document. Friendly Circle--Cincinnati publishes Mary Kay's eloquent plea to stop obsessing on our Quaker diversity and other well-worn domestic agendas and start asking what's on God's agenda??? This is a highly inadequate summary--please read for yourself. open source theology offers a thoughtful critique of Richard Rohr's attempt (video provided) to describe a growing consensus in the emerging church movement. Thanks to DVDs borrowed from Luke, I'm catching up with a year and a half of Battlestar Galactica, hoping that I find an episode or two worth using in class so that I can justify this amount of happy video escapism. This article helped me believe I'm engaging in worthwhile cultural/theological reflection. To end: one more eloquent reminder of the stakes involved in our worldwide economic "reboot." And a theological reflection: who really counts?

.

---

Charlie Musselwhite's question: "Blues, Why Do You Worry Me?"