Faithful Prohets

Last week, I made a trip to Milwaukee WI, for the annual "Call To Action" conference. This year the theme was "Faithful Prophets: God Alive In Every Generation".

I went to Milwaukee wracked by a crisis in faith. It was not my faith in the creator that was in trouble, but faith in the church. Recently I have come to feel very alienated by the Hierarchy of the Vatican. The Pope and his minions, the Bishops, seem bent on doing the wrong thing at every turn. In their covering up the misdeeds of pedophile priests, refusing the ordination of women and their cruel indifference to LBGT Christians, particularly by not speaking against the harassment and bullying that has actually driven some of Gods children to suicide in order to escape terror. I was having very real doubts about whether or not I could remain a Catholic in good conscience. What I found in Milwaukee was a lot of powerful inspiration. (and a great Irish Pub).

I was inspired by being in a room with literally thousands of like minded Catholics with similar frustrations to mine. We attended breakout sessions and listened to keynote speakers together and there was a great optimism and a sense of hope that change is possible. Together we all made the statement that to be a catholic one need not be a bigot, a homophobe or a sexist. One can be a catholic and appreciate Gods love of ALL of Gods Children, even if they are gay, or undocumented or are a women answering the call to priesthood.

The keynote speakers were wonderful.

I was warmed by Shane Claiborne, a young man from rural Tennessee who found Gods love working with homeless squatters in an abandoned church in Philadelphia. His first battle was to keep the diocese from throwing them out into the street. He won that battle and helped create a viable and helpful community that exists today.

I was move by Asra Nomani, an Indian born Muslim raised in West Virginia who continues to love and practice her faith even though it has not always been good to her. She was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was a close friend and colleague of Danny Pearl, another WSJ reporter that was kidnapped and murdered by extremists. She is the mother of a child, the father of which, whom she was in love with, was a Pakistani man who disappeared when Pearl was kidnapped out of fear for his own skin. She took the baby home to WVA where she tried to reintegrate with the Muslim community that was rigorously segregated along gender lines. Instead of walking away, she fought and, with the support of her parents, made her mosque coed (no easy task even in the US, particularly carrying the stigma of a single mom).

I was empowered by a Sister Joan Chittister, a benedictine nun and ardent feminist. She spoke of the isolation and loneliness that is the lot of prophets and how they strive for change anyway. She spoke of how they are seldom appreciated in their own time but continue to minister anyway and how we learn from them in later times. She is a powerful voice for humanity and change in the church.

I came home a better and more compassionate christian. I now know I can have faith and compassion at the same time. In the conference I found permission to be a catholic that loves my LBGT brothers and sisters and fight for fair and humane treatment for them(not driving gay kids to suicide would be a good start). I found permission to speak out for the ordination of women in the church because their learning, nurturing and healing is so desperately needed not only in the church but all through creation. I found permission to love all people and care for them even if they don't have legal immigration status. Being a catholic does not require allegiance to a group of tired old men in Rome with a decaying grip on reality or their appointed Bishops in this country who seem determine to keep the church in the dark ages. The church belongs to the people not the clergy and I'm going to fight for that principle. They can kick the parishioner out of the church, but they can't take the church out of the parishioner. Only the parishioner can do that. To quote Rosemary Ruether: "Catholic does not equal Vatican". If you are interested in such things, please check out CTAs link:

http://www.cta-usa.org/

The Homefront

Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California
Today, Tomorrow or Next Week


“Ready, Fire!” the sharp crack of seven simultaneous rifle shots split the grief thickened air of the cemetery.
“Ready, Fire!” again.
“Ready, Fire!” once again
“Order…arms.” The seven members of the white gloved honor guard snapped their M-16s back into the “Port” position across their immaculately uniformed bemedaled chests. At that moment the mournful melody of "Taps" sang out from a lone bugler standing on a rise a short distance away. The six uniformed pallbearers folded the flag that had draped Billy’s coffin in the traditional manner of a military funeral, each performing a single fold until the flag rested in the hands of the last in a perfect triangle. Billy’s Dad, Jim, listened to the sad tune as the flag was folded. He thought he could hear just a touch more heart and a touch more feeling in the age-old rendition. Maybe it was just the moment or maybe it was because it was his older son Jason who was playing it. Jason played trumpet in school and picked it up again to help pass the endless down time that is so much a part of being a soldier. They pulled Jason out of his unit in Baghdad to attend Billy’s funeral after he was killed in southern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. Jason requested that he be allowed to play "Taps" over his brother. The Army loves gestures like that so his request was granted. Jason knew the stretch of road where Billy got lit up as he almost met his own end there two and half years earlier on his first trip down range. Billy wasn’t the first American kid to come home in a box because of an ambush there and Jason knew he wouldn’t be the last.
Jason was always a tough kid. He was a notoriously vicious linebacker who made “All State” in high school then went on to the Army going through Ranger School, then Special Forces. He had one combat tour in Afghanistan under his belt and he was half way through another one in Iraq. Today he didn’t look so tough as the tears streamed down his face under his green beret, some actually falling on the rows of ribbons that decorated his uniform and told the world that at twenty-two years of age, he had seen blood by the bucket full and death by the car load. He tried for all he was worth to finish his tribute to his brother. Near the end of the tune, he faltered ever so slightly as he almost broke down. At that, two soldiers that were from Billy’s unit lost it and bowed their heads to weep. In his four years in the service Jason had seen so many people die; now it was his kid brother. Jim almost lost it too. He felt he had to keep it together for the sake of Billy’s Mom who hadn’t stopped crying since the two Chaplains, from the local National Guard unit knocked on their door in the middle of the night to inform them of Billy’s death. Jim did his duty but it was hard. His mind kept flashing to memories of Billy as a kid. The Christmases and birthdays kept coming back. He thought of how proud he was when Billy’s soccer team took the regionals. He remembered the scoldings for a variety of youthful trespasses and the thousands of tender moments that seem small at the time but came back to him larger then life now. He remembered pride mixed with trepidation as Billy followed his brother’s footsteps into the army. At first he told himself that he just didn’t understand but he understood all to well. Jim had been a soldier once himself as were his dad and uncles and cousins. It was expected in his family. You graduate high school, enter the service, get out and have a life. He understood alright, it was the way it had always been except that Billy didn’t make it to the “have a life” part. What Jim didn’t understand is what the hell was in Afghanistan that was worth dying for. He had heard the “party line” over and over again, about how we had to fight terrorists there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here. The trouble was that the more the government and the media pounded that message, the hollower it sounded. Added to that is the fact that you never seemed to hear about a senators or oil billionaires child being buried just the kids of working stiffs and today it was his boy. Jim was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it was all bullshit. He was starting to feel that his family had been had. His Dad and all the rest had fought and sometimes bled for the greater good of some rich bastards that never had to put their own butts on the line. Billy died and for what? Nothing that he could see.
The flag made its way down the line of soldier pallbearers to the hands of a young captain who never knew Billy. He walked over to Billy’s Mom and gave her the flag and whispered “the thanks of a grateful nation” to her as he handed her the memento. She was near blind and paralyzed with grief and took the flag absently from the captain’s hands. Jim wasn’t even sure if she knew where she was.
As the flag was passed to the grieving mother, troops on the other side of the world were mounting up in helicopters and Humvees. Weapons were being checked and prayers were being said, prayers in different languages. The Americans didn’t know if today was the day they would find the roadside bomb with their name on it or take a bullet in an ambush. Afghans and Iraqis wondered if this was the day they would get blown to bits in an air strike coming home from the market. They wondered if they were going to get shot in the crossfire between Jihadis and Coalition soldiers or maybe just get killed because someone was having a bad day. Fear and death were constant neighbors, lurking in their homes, cities and villages. The “War on Terror” didn’t seem to stop a lot of terror. It just seemed to exacerbate it.
Jason finished Taps and bowed his head and cried unashamedly. Green Berets be damned, this was his brother.
“Grateful nation my ass” Jim spat under his breath as he wiped his own tears away, “I want my son back”.

An Open Letter to the Richmond Police and Fire Unions

Regarding the recent disclosures about Mayor Gayle McLaughlin of Richmond:

How dare you? How dare you encourage the stigmatization of the mentally ill for political gain? How dare you insinuate that suffering from depression somehow makes one unfit to lead? Does the name Abraham Lincoln ring a bell? How dare you search out old wounds that are completely unrelated to the Mayors performance in office and try to rip them open after a difficult, painful and successful recovery. Mayor McLaughlins past challenges and her victory over them is cause for celebration and admiration, not an invented handicap to be used as a campaign weapon. Is it your intention to get to the Mayors office by crawling through the sewer? How can people that act with such bravery on the streets be so cowardly in smoke filled rooms?

The Mosque

Let me start by saying that nobody was more enraged and horrified on 9/11 then I was, but consider this...Wouldn't it be a sign of our strength if we allowed the Mosque to be built? Wouldn't it show the world that we are tough enough to fight our enemies without persecuting our own Muslim citizens? My son and my nephew have committed themselves to put there lives on the line in defence of our nation, just as my father, uncles and cousins did before them. Don't we owe it to them to show the same guts at home that they show overseas? Please know that I am sympathetic to the pain of those who lost loved ones in the attack and I grieve along with the rest of the country, that is why it is important that those deaths have meaning. If we are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, let us be brave enough to exercise our freedoms. That's what winning looks like.

Where is Beauty

Where is Beauty?
Sold in the market place
of a brutal culture
numbed by greed
Prostituted
Buried in the mindless drone
of televisions
of computers
of video games
It has been abandoned
In the desolate wasteland
of material desire
But it survives
In a childs hug for his grandfather
In the eyes of a dove
bathing herself
in a soft warm rain
In the churning surf
Of a Northern California beach
Just after a storm
In the damp floor of a redwood grove
So dark, so deep, so cool
In wisdom
In knowing
In us all
And for us all
In the love of creation
And in creations love
Beauty is here

Beauty In Being

I am blessed to lived on the northern end of a long, wide belt of parkland that stretches almost thirty miles from West Contra Costa County, California to Southern Alameda County. Although there is heavy urban development to the west and suburbs to the east, it is a beautiful, functioning wilderness that is truly a gift of God.

Most days, weather permitting, I walk our Greyhound, Honey, for about an hour over a ridge near our home. Last year, not to far into our walk, I was startled by a vulture taking flight from some bush near the trail. I walked over to where it been and saw the remains of a deer. I noticed that a variety of insects were already busily feeding on the putrefying flesh and I found the process to quite fascinating. Over the course of the next several weeks I would take a short time out from our walk, while Honey would busy herself romping and frolicking over hill and dale, and check the progress of the deer disposal operation that the local carrion creatures were performing. Little by little, the corpse disappeared. The flesh was soon gone then the hide started to disappear. The skeleton disintegrated until it was just an unrecognizable pile of bones. Eventually, the deer was gone completely. I marveled how something so ugly as death and the consumption of rotting flesh could have such an interesting and desirable result. Then it occurred to me: there is no ugliness in nature. Certainly there are things that are unsightly, disgusting and even nauseating, but there is no ugliness. I found a new affection for the much maligned vulture that I had previously believed to be one of the ugliest critters in creation. The vulture, a symbol of death in our culture, frequenter of haunted houses and other scary places, does not cause death but merely cleans up after it. Francis of Assisi might have called him "Brother Vulture" after being startled by his abrupt departure from breakfast that morning. That is the beauty and lesson of Saint Francis, all creatures have a part in creation and all are beautiful in their own way.

The biblical book of Matthew (25:40) quotes Jesus as saying:

"whatever you did for the least brothers of mine, you did for me"

Consider, if you will, the next time you are walking on a city street and you see a homeless person muttering to himself or rummaging through dumpster, or perhaps when you consider the problem of undocumented immigrants or paroled felons. As in the species of nature, there are no disposable people. To torment the afflicted or to oppress the poor or to deny basic health and dignity to other human beings is a crime against creation.

Now I am not suggesting that we all go out and find a homeless person and put him in the spare bedroom, or throw the borders open to unregulated movement or allow murderers and rapists to leave prison and roam the streets freely. What I am suggesting is to approach social problems with the love of families and not the wrath of avengers. Instead of getting hung up on the surface, look more deeply into the potential. Strive to find beauty in what seems to be ugly, not simply destroy for the sake of convenience. Respect the dangers but appreciate the beauty. Life is sacred, this is true throughout creation, animal, vegetable and human. Let us be circumspect when we take life be it for food, or the common good or whatever reason and let us not do so lightly. Let us look at those less fortunate then us with loving eyes and contemplate how we may help instead of how to get them out of our sight because they upset us. Let us reorder our priorities and make the focus of our journey one devoted to love, life and community as opposed to material profit. Just pick up a news paper and as you contemplate the events of the day ask yourselves: As a people are we prosperous? Are we fulfilled? Are we peaceful? Are we happy? What does our future look like? If we don't like what we see, how can we change it?

When considering our neighbors we would be well advised to remember Brother Vulture. Ugly at first appearance but valuable in his presence. Remember that what we do to the least of our brethren we do to creation. That which we do to creation, we do to ourselves.