Discerning God's Work In The World: Tips From The Times For Preachers

Sex and human nature in The Wall Street Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:18:59 PDT

That got your attention, right? Yep, the Murdoch version of the WSJ is (predictably) a lot more colorful, in both senses of that word, than the old grey version. No little drawing in black-and-white dots for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. His face in full color, together with a chronicle of his misadventures, fills up a tabloid-sized amount of space on the front page today. (Will we ever again be able to say we’re going hiking on the Appalachian Trail without irony?)

The former GOP chairman in South Carolina, Katon Dawson, said that Sanford’s purported Trail hike and further obfuscations were “the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen” and continued, “We’ve [the GOP) been struggling with our elected officials. We’ve run on values and we’ve been struggling.”

But more useful from the Christian point of view was this statement by State Senator John Land:

“The position he’s taken the whole time he’s been in office is, ‘I’m smarter than the rest, I’m more religious than the rest, I’m more godly than the rest.’ I just don’t see how he can come back and be a sinner like the rest of us and still function.”

The article went on to state that Mr. Sanford “in the past has emphasized his Christian faith and absolute moral values.” He voted to impeach Bill Clinton and he publicly disapproved of Rep. Bob Livingstone when he acknowledged extramarital affairs, saying “We as a party want to hold ourselves to high standards, period.”

The whole story is a gold mine for the study of human nature. "What fools these mortals be!"

And from a different angle, perhaps we might reflect on the saying of Rochefoucauld:

Hypocrisy is the homage [or tribute] that vice pays to virtue. (Maxim 218)

The American dream, by Governor Patrick

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:14:06 PDT

The African-American governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, told the graduates of Wheaton College (Mass.) about the trajectory of his life:

Our youngest daughter, Catherine, graduated from high school a couple of years ago. Sitting at her graduation, I couldn’t help thinking about the difference between her journey and my own, nearly 35 years earlier. I grew up on welfare on the South Side of Chicago in my grandparents’ two-bedroom tenement. I shared a room and a set of bunk beds with my mother and my sister, who is here today — so we would rotate from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to the floor, every third night on the floor.

I went to overcrowded, sometimes violent public schools. I can’t think of a time when I didn’t love to read, but I don’t actually remember ever owning a book until I got my break in 1970, when I came to Massachusetts on a scholarship to boarding school. ... Now, our Catherine, by contrast, has always had her own room, most of that time in a house in a leafy neighborhood outside of Boston. By the time she got to high school, she had already traveled on four continents, she knew how to use and pronounce the “concierge,” and she had shaken hands in the White House with the president of the United States.

David McCullough on the great cloud of witnesses

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:51:26 PDT

In a commencement address at the University of Oklahoma, the beloved historian David McCullough said:

There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Never was, never will be. We are all, as were those in whose footsteps we follow, shaped by the influence and examples of countless others — parents, grandparents, friends, rivals. And by those who wrote the music that moves us to our souls, those whose performance on stage or on the playing field took our breaths away, those who wrote the great charters which are the bedrock of our system of self-government. And so many who, to our benefit, struggled and suffered through times of trouble and grave uncertainty. And by teachers. ... I want to stress as emphatically as I can the immeasurable importance of teachers.

Friends, we've got a lot of work to do

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:08:38 PDT

A friend of my husband's swears this is true:

He reports:

Last month, as I was shopping [in New York] for a gift for my wife, a young woman standing next to me asked the clerk if she could look at the crosses. The kindly clerk asked: "Which cross interests you?" To my chagrin and the clerk’s surprise, the young woman said: "The one with the little man on it." I asked her: "Do you know who that little man is ???" "No," she replied, "but the little man gives the cross a certain flair."

Rethinking capitalism across the pond

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:05:02 PDT

Whatever else he may be, Prime Minister Gordon Brown (son of a Church of Scotland minister) is a deeply moral thinker about the capitalist system. The Sunday New York Times (March 29) reported that when he feels most free to speak, as in Strasbourg a few weeks ago, he focuses on the demons that detractors believe are inherent in the capitalist system. Europe, he told legislators, had learned the truth that "riches are of value only when they enrich not just some communities, but all...As we have discovered to our cost, the problem of unbridled free markets in an unsupervised marketplace is that they can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self-interest, all sense of value to consumer choice and all sense of worth to a price tag."

Today the BBC reported something Mr. Brown said this morning (haven't been able to find the exact quote online yet) to the effect that we cannot look to capitalism to create ethics and values, but that capitalism had to be built on the values of the heart.

In an article last September, when the global financial crisis was exploding, the Times ran an article "Criticizing Capitalism From the Pulpit," about the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. Rowan Williams (Canterbury) had written that week in The Spectator that placing too much trust in the market had become a kind of “idolatry.” At the same time, he reminded readers of Karl Marx's criticism of laissez-faire capitalism, noting, “He was right about that, if about little else.”

John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, was even less circumspect than Canterbury in criticizing hedge funds that had sold short the shares of a British bank, HBOS, forcing it in an emergency sale to a rival, Lloyds TSB. They were “clearly bank robbers and asset strippers,” he said in a speech on Sept. 22.

A new voice speaks up for classical Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:22:13 PST

The most amazing article to appear in Episcopal Life in living memory (admittedly my memory is about one day long these days) can be found at this link:

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81840_104409_ENG_HTM.htm

A dove alights in Dunkin' Donuts

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:46:54 PST

This is from the "Metropolitan Diary" of The New York Times, a rich weekly source of human material:

Published: March 1, 2009

(The contributor writes: This is a true story; it took place in Sheepshead Bay, a section of downtown Brooklyn, this winter.)

In Dunkin’ Donuts this morning,
an old lady wearing a tattered watch cap
started speaking to no one in particular.
“I can’t sleep at night.
I have pains in my chest all the time.
My leg hurts and my children do not love me.”
People waiting in line
hid in their cellphones, looked away
or stared straight ahead.
“I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know where to turn.
My husband died two years ago on the 27th.”
Everyone pretended she wasn’t there.
The girls behind the counter took the next customers.
The line inched forward.
At a side table, a beautiful young lady with matching purple scarf and hat
looked at the old woman and said, simply,
“Honey, please sit down with me,
and tell me your story.”

It’s possible, you see,
for one person to save the world.

--contributed by Mel Glenn, Brooklyn, NY

(For what it's worth, my bet is that this young woman was African-American. The description of her as a "young lady" and the endearment "Honey" reinforce my impression.Whenever I see an act of kindness in (for instance) the subway , it is very often a black person offering it. I rode the Harlem buses for years when I was a student at Union Seminary, and I still do; I enjoy the neighborly feeling. --FR)

Best inaugural article?

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:37:38 PST

Here's my nomination for the most humbling, sobering, inspiring and impressive story (from the Wall Street Journal) about those who attended the Inauguration:

JANUARY 21, 2009
'Forgotten Children' See History Close Up
Religious Leader From Chicago's South Side Brings Three Wards of the State to the Swearing-In Ceremony
By KEVIN HELLIKER
WASHINGTON -- The Rev. Angela Hill visited the nation's capital Tuesday for the first time in her 47 years. "God told me to go," the Chicago minister said.
But unlike many at the inaugural, Ms. Hill isn't awestruck by President Barack Obama. His story is no more inspiring than her own: Forced onto the streets as a teenager, she went on to forge a legal career, a ministry and a marriage that's on its 26th year.
And Ms. Hill takes umbrage at those who call Mr. Obama's inauguration the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. "This isn't dream realized," she said Monday during the long drive to Washington.
View Slideshow
Some – But Not All – Dreams Realized
As evidence of unfinished work, she brought along to the inauguration three casualties of the streets of the South Side of Chicago. "My babies," Ms. Hill called them, though their legal parent is the state of Illinois. Abandoned, neglected or abused by their biological parents, they have lived in a series of foster homes and institutions since age 3 or younger. Statistically, their risk of future homelessness or incarceration is astronomically higher than average.
But these three aren't statistics. They are the winners of an essay contest Ms. Hill sponsored among the 50 or so wards of the state to whom she ministers. "God called me to make this trip for the benefit of these babies," said Ms. Hill, a passionate Obama supporter.
"This election means to me no more excuses, we as a people can accomplish anything," wrote Brittany Hudson, 20, who on her birthday will face a legal milestone called emancipation -- the end of state support.
Winner Anthony Brown, 19, wrote that the inauguration of Mr. Obama "proves to every African American male that anything is possible instead of being in jail or selling drugs or killing each other."
The visit to Washington gave these three an almost unprecedented break from their lives in Chicago. It may also have diminished a sense of shame that is common among wards of the state. "Attending the inaugural is something nobody expects to happen to people like us," said winner Jasmine Williams, 19. "How we're seen is: Property of the State."
Their inaugural trip offers a glimpse into the lives of a particularly disenfranchised group -- children who suffer not only the loss of their families but also the indignity of failing to win adoption. Of the roughly half million children in state care at any given time, federal research suggests that 90% eventually win permanent placement via adoption, legal guardians or return to their families of origin. The other 10%, says Ms. Hill, are "America's forgotten children."
The inaugural trip also offers a different view of an institution that gained notoriety during the presidential campaign: Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Mr. Obama, a longtime member, distanced himself from that congregation following the release of statements by its former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that were perceived by many as racist and hostile.
But that church and its controversial leader inspired Ms. Hill to commit herself to showering love upon a landscape of urban despair. With Trinity's help, she gained a masters degree in theology in her late 30s, and since then she has become one of the South Side's most visible ministers to prostitutes, gangs and abandoned children.
"Most of the religious leaders in the third ward go beyond the walls of the church," says Chicago Alderman Pat Dowell, who represents the third ward. "But Rev. Angela -- she's taken it further."
Soon after abuse and neglect put her on the street at age 16, Ms. Hill met her future husband, Curtis Hill, another homeless teenager. They found jobs, rented and then purchased a home and started a family. Ms. Hill became a paralegal, her husband an office-equipment technician. When their firstborn, Curtis II, was 9, Ms. Hill vowed to expose him to church.
Going to Trinity changed the family. "My parents had been known for their New Year's Eve party, freely flowing with libations," recalls Curtis II, now 27. "But the church turned them into different people."

Ms. Hill credits the sermons of Mr. Wright with instilling in her a sense of social responsibility. Following her daytime work at a law firm, she began attending graduate classes at a local seminary. Deciding that God was calling her to the street rather than the pulpit, she established In His Grip Ministries and opened her family's door to prostitutes, drug dealers and the homeless -- anyone seeking a warm meal, a break from the cold or a gift on Christmas Eve. When a local gang firebombed Ms. Hill's car, she put on its burnt shell a poster that said, "and God still loves you," a move that ultimately led the gang to befriend her.
Ms. Hill is committed in particular to wards of the state. To demonstrate the irrationality of the widespread reluctance to adopt kids beyond infancy, she and her husband adopted a 10-year-old girl about a decade ago. Then she devoted her ministry to kids failing to win adoption, especially those approaching emancipation. Illinois is one of few states to keep supporting such wards to age 21, a policy that federal research shows produces significantly better outcomes than showing them the door at age 18.
By contrast, most young Americans continue receiving parental financial support deep into their 20s, research shows. And the average American youth receives substantially deeper emotional support than do wards of the state. After Anthony Brown, the 19-year-old Illinois ward, won acceptance into a national academic club in high school, he says he was the only student at the induction ceremony with no loved ones in the audience.
Both ahead of and beyond emancipation, Ms. Hill's ministry provides career and life-skills counseling, along with material goods. In November, when Ms. Hill sponsored the essay contest to the 50 or so wards (a tiny fraction of the Cook County total) to whom she ministers, she knew she could afford to take only two. But she feared that none would apply. "These kids have experienced so much rejection that they run from any possibility of it," she says.
As it turned out, however, three wards entered the contest, providing well-written responses to the question of what this election had meant to them. All three, it turned out, had voted. As African-Americans, they took particular pride in seeing a member of their race win the presidency, as did Ms. Hill, who had first encountered the Obama family years ago in the pews of Trinity United.
Before deciding which two of the three entries would win, she told her employer, law firm Bryan Cave LLP, about her need to attend the inauguration. Mention of the contest prompted several lawyers at the firm to write checks to In His Grip Ministries, enabling her to include all three contestants and avoid placing the cost of a rental van on her American Express card.
"Angela is very humble about her work outside the firm, but those of us who are aware of it know that she is having a tremendous impact on the lives of others," says Derek S. Holland, a Bryan Cave lawyer.
On Monday morning, the three winners were told to arrive at Ms. Hill's house at 5:30. The first arrived at 4:50, the other two at 5:10. "I was too excited to sleep," said Ms. Hudson, the 20-year-old.
Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Inauguration trivia-- the "oaf of office"

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:14:59 PST

One of the NYC tabloids headlined "the oaf of office," referring to the Chief Justice's botching of the words of the Inaugural oath. Any member of the clergy who has ever performed a marriage must immediately have recognized what went wrong. The Chief Justice gave Obama too many words at one time, setting off a series of overlapping mistakes. He said, "I, Barack Obama," and paused for just a split second, at which point Obama quite naturally began to repeat, "I, Barack Obama," thinking that the Justice was waiting for him, whereas what was actually happening was that Roberts was forging ahead with "do solemnly swear" without waiting. Obama therefore began again, but by that time Roberts was plowing on with his botched version of the rest of the oath.

Everyone who has ever presided at a wedding will testify that on such important and nervous-making occasions, the vows should be parcelled out only a few words at a time unless the couple is extraordinarily cool. At the Inauguration it seems that it was the Chief Justice who was nervous!

In any case, was it not a most glorious day in the history of our Republic?

Inaugural parade's most hopeful band

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:59:00 PST

If you are going to watch the Inaugural Parade on Tuesday afternoon (and why would you not?) be sure to look out for the Bonnie Brae Knights. This drum corps--from Westchester County where I live--has been coached, coaxed, nursed, hectored, boosted, molded, pushed, pulled, drilled, and otherwise encouraged to put forth an inaugural-worthy performance.

The Bonnie Brae Residential Treatment Center serves the most intractable adolescent boys, from the most destructive homes (or lack of homes). The drum corps was, in the words of their director, "terrible" as recently as four months ago. However, they were selected to march in the Inaugural Parade (which says a lot about Obama's staff and its commitments). They had no proper uniforms or even enough drumsticks until their plight was made known and $40,000 poured in. What a wonderful story about the difference that devoted coaches and supporters can make. Check out the band at http://www.bonnie-brae.org/.

Forgiveness and reconciliation in action

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:59:03 PST

Does everybody out there know about Stephen and Elizabeth Alderman of Bedford, New York? Their son Peter was among those who died in the furnace of the World Trade towers on September 11, 2001. His parents established the Peter C. Alderman Foundation which has already achieved status as one of the ten most effective small foundations in the United States (Barron’s). Its stated purpose is "to create a sustainable, culturally effective mental healthcare system... by training indigenous caregivers and establishing mental health clinics to provide appropriate treatment in their local villages and communities, 80% of the victims of global terrorism and mass violence can be returned to productive lives."

The foundation has done this—so far—by "training indigenous healthcare workers to treat their own countrymen, forming private/public partnerships with local stakeholders, and leveraging these relationships to treat the country’s wounded population." They are operating in many of the world’s most tortured locales, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chile, Iraq, Rwanda, and Uganda. They operate two clinics in Cambodia, two in Uganda and will open two more in Rwanda with Partners in Health on May 1, 2008. The website is http://www.petercaldermanfoundation/.

The moral implications of greed

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:05:20 PST

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has a column today, "The Madoff Economy" in The New York Times, which raises all sorts of good and probing questions about the ethics of the financial services industry. One of the salient paragraphs reads as follows:

...how much has our nation’s future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?
Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.

One of Mr. Krugman's main points is addressed to all of us. By admiring and encouraging these high-flyers, haven't we all contributed to a culture in which teachers, community organizers (yes), journalists (that threatened species), engineers, and honest laborers are devalued? Haven't we as a society been insufficiently committed to raising a generation of young people who seek to contribute to making a better world, rather than making a pile and living in back-country Greenwich (hedge-fund capital of the world) behind eight-foot stone walls and an electronic gate? (My doctor's nurse told me today that you can actually get a parking place on Greenwich Avenue [the equivalent of Rodeo Drive] these days. That's a first.)

Massacre of the Carols

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:12:28 PST

Just in time for Christmas, the latest news from the p. c. front:

From The Times of London:

"Massacre of the carols": Trendy vicars are wrecking traditional Christmas carols

by Ruth Gledhill, Times Religion Correspondent--December 12

Traditional Christmas carols are being wrecked by politically correct vicars who are altering well-known words because they think their congregations will not understand them or will find them offensive. Britain is heading for a “massacre of the carols” this Christmas by clergy bent on playing to the mood of modernity sweeping across the established Church of England. Other English-speaking churches in Europe, the US and elsewhere are also affected, according to the satirical Christian website ShipofFools, which is running a competition to find the worst rewritten carol. “Innocents like king, man, son, virgin and Lord – they’ve all been slaughtered to make carols more modern and 'inclusive',” said site editor Steve Goddard. “Theologically modified carols will ring out everywhere this year.”

In some revised versions of "O Come All Ye Faithful," for example, the phrase “Glory to the Christ child bring” replaces "Glory to the newborn King," and “O come in adoration” is sung in preference to "O come let us adore him." At one church, "Joy to the World" was changed to begin: "Joy to the world, for peace shall come, let this be our refrain!" This contined for three verses, avoiding all reference to Jesus but exhorting the congregation to to exult in the coming of a whole clutch of abstract nouns.

One of the most frequently altered carol is “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,” which has been changed to "Brightest and best of the stars of the morning." "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" has been altered in some churches to remove any reference to the Virgin. Some songsheets render Wesley’s classic, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," with the line “Born to raise the sons of earth” altered to "Born to raise us from the earth."

Earlier this week, Israeli ambassador Ron Proser launched a protest against a carol service at St James’ Piccadilly, one of London’s best-known churches, where traditional carols were rewritten to give them a strongly pro-Palestinian bias.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ShipofFools website goes into a little more detail, as follows:

Chorister [a correspondent] is puzzled about changes to "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." The original words, "This day is born a Saviour, of a pure Virgin bright," have been changed to "To you is born a Saviour, in David's town tonight." Is this careful avoidance of Mary being a virgin?" asks Chorister. Mockingbird [another correspondent] has problems with the re-working of Wesley's classic, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." The change of "Born to raise the sons of earth" to "Born to raise us from the earth" was presumably intended to make the line more inclusive, says Mockingbird. "I think it has the opposite effect. 'Born to raise us' could be taken to mean 'born to raise us nice elect Christians only, and tough luck on all those reprobates'. Raise us from the earth sounds like neoplatonism, suggesting that the earth is some icky place we need to get away from, rather than a good work of God."

An interfaith group that might work

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:39:21 PST

I am usually cynical about "interfaith" initiatives, but this charming article from The New York Times gives real hope about how best to proceed with this difficult project. Here is the link:

Finding Similarities Among the Differences
By JOHN HANC
November 11, 2008

A program brings together high school students of different faiths and encourages cooperation on community service projects.

The state of marriage today

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:58:00 PST

Whatever one may think about same-sex unions, a letter to The New York Times (November 7) from Mitch Kohn in LA has got to be a wake-up call. If the churches were half as intentional about strengthening traditional marriage as they are about homosexuality, we would not look so foolish and ineffectual in the eyes of secular society.

Here is the main body of Mitch Kohn's letter:
---------------------------
Straight people are allowed to marry and divorce multiple times. They can get drunk and get married in the middle of the night in Las Vegas by going to a drive-through chapel. They can get on a show like “The Bachelor” and sell themselves on national television to find a spouse.

But somehow my 25-year relationship with my partner is a threat to the “sanctity” of the institution of marriage.
--------------------------

Seems to me I remember a little popular song from the fifties with the line, "One man, one wife, one love, through life..." Is it still possible to hold up this ideal? (My husband and I celebrate our fiftieth anniversary next year -- an occasion for humble thanksgiving.)

The only thing I am presently able to say in public about the various issues concerning homosexual orientation is that we do not yet know the mind of Christ on this, and I have written a lengthy piece which is posted on this site.

Canada in O-mode

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:40:21 PST

It is thrilling to see how the election has captured the Canadian imagination. The papers are full of O-news every day. Here is a saying I hadn't heard before, from The Globe & Mail:

Mike Victor, a 57-year-old African American commodities trader, said, "Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Obama could run, Obaba ran so our children could fly."

And the G & M man in Washington, John Ibbitson, who writes well about America, had this to say:

Americans delivered a message to themselves that the world overheard: The
last eight years were a waste. Our leaders drew the country into a war in Iraq
that should never have been fought; outraged the Constitution with detention
camps and torture, and brought the economy to the edge of the abyss. Our leaders
were wrong, we were wrong, the people decided. We need to start again....
...This is a dawn to savour for everyone who believes that the future of
America is the future of the free world. Its citizens have risen magnificently
to a magnificent occasion, demonstrating that the affliction of race resentments
can be surmounted. Once again we have learned the lesson we keep forgetting:
that entrenched assumptions can be uprooted. Peace can come to Ireland. The Cold
War can end. America's racial wounds can start to heal.

In the best of worlds, it will take half a century to heal them completely. But the nation is now firmly headed in the right direction.

Americans have shown us yet again what a fascinating, frustrating, complicated people they are. They have chosen a young black man with little experience in high office to lead them in a time of danger and complexity.

People of good will everywhere will wish him well.

What O might mean to black boys

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:01:02 PST

More than one Republican I know admits via email that he/she can't help being moved by the outpouring of hope and pride. The view from Canada is: it just may be a truly transformational event in our history. A Canadian told me this morning that she saw a black soldier interviewed on TV who said that until this moment he did not believe that he was created equal, but now--for the first time--he did.

Here's the best article I have seen so far about the possible effect of the epochal election on black children (be sure to read all the way to the end).

For Striving 6th Graders, History Is Now
By LISA W. FODERARO
November 6, 2008

The idea of America: reactions from overseas

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:23:55 PST

An article in The New York Times today was reported by journalists from 15 countries on four continents. Anyone of any political persuasion has got to be moved by the way that the idea of America continues to be so compelling to people all over the world. Here are a few excerpts:

Dateline Gaza: From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.

Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.

“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas...

Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”

But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Mr. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course...

It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did....

The world’s view of an Obama presidency presents a paradox. His election embodies what many consider unique about the United States — yet America’s sense of its own specialness, of its destiny and mission, has driven it astray, they say. They want Mr. Obama, the beneficiary and exemplar of American exceptionalism, to act like everyone else, only better, to shift American policy and somehow to project both humility and leadership....

So foreigners are watching closely, hoping that despite what they consider the hypocrisies and inconsistencies, the nation they once imagined would stand as a model for the future will, with greater sensitivity and less force, help solve the world’s problems....

Read the entire article:
For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: November 5, 2008

Marilynne Robinson and our lost traditions

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:17:00 PDT

A friend sent this. It's from an essay by Marilynne Robinson (author of Gilead). Exact quotations from her are in quotation marks.

Speaking of her understanding of personal holiness, which she describes as "no less traditional or Scriptural" than current prevailing views, she says of the tradition out of which she writes, "it has gone into eclipse with the rise in this country of a culture of Christianity that does not encourage thought. I do not intend this as a criticism of the so-called fundamentalists only, but more particularly of the mainline churches, which has assiduously culled out all traces of the depth and learnedness that were for so long among their greatest contributions to American life. Emily Dickinson wrote, 'The abdication of Belief/ Makes the Behavior small.' There is a powerful tendency also to make belief itself small, whether narrow and bitter or feckless and bland, with what effects on behavior we may perhaps infer from the present state of the Republic."

My friend (a UCC pastor) adds that the charge of "feckless and bland," is aimed, I believe, at the mainline Protestants, and comments, "Apt, I'd say."

Alan Greenspan and the Seven Deadly Sins

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:16:15 PDT

The Globe & Mail (Canada's National Newspaper) for October 24 had a banner headline (all the way across the front page), "Canada Teeters on the Brink of Recession." Just underneath is a huge four-column photo of Alan Greenspan. The former god of finance said, "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms...Something which looked to be a very solid edifice and, indeed, a critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down. And...that shocked me. I still do not fully understand why it happened."

Greenspan is shocked, shocked that even guardians of the public trust like bankers could perhaps be subject to--greed.

A Globe & Mail columnist wrote that "Alan Greenspan is having a crisis of faith." Maybe Ayn Rand is not Holy Writ after all.

Of course this is an overly simplistic take on the complexities at work in the financial meltdown, but from a Christian perspective it is certainly accurate to say that banks and the Federal Reserve are among the principalities and powers and should be regarded as such, with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Greenspan admits 'mistake' on bank regulation
by Barrie McKenna
The Globe & Mail
October 24, 2008

The View From Canada

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:10:57 PDT

Margaret Wente, columnist for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, writes these rather startling words on October 18:

Who can blame Canadians for being bored numb by our election? We didn't need it. The stakes were low. The main contenders were unappealing. And after it was over, nothing really changed.

The real show is still two weeks away. My nails are bitten down to my elbow, because what happens in the U.S. will shape our fortunes far more profoundly than anything that happens in Canada. If the U.S. doesn't prosper, we won't, either. If America isn't safe, neither are we. If Americans can't figure out how to do more good than harm in places such as Afghanistan, then all our fine intentions and our soldiers' blood won't be worth a cup of spit. We desperately need an America that can find its way ahead again.

America is weaker today than it's been since the 1930s. Its moral authority in the world is shattered. Its proudly capitalist financial system has collapsed. The U.S. has created the first true crisis of globalization - and only the U.S. can fix it.

Read the column:
Now comes the 'real' election by Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail
October 18, 2008

God on the move in Zambabwe: church women on the front lines

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:31:40 PDT

During the past two or three years I have posted several messages (in Tips and Ruminations) about Zimbabwe. The image of the women praying in the rain stays with me. The Lord has not been deaf to their prayers. The October 18 New York Times has an article about the nonviolent uprising of the church women of Zimbabwe under the unlikely leadership of a brave, bawdy high-school dropout, Jenni Williams. She is the granddaughter of an IRA man, who came to prospect for gold in what was then Rhodesia, and his African common-law wife. Jenni's nonviolent movement is called Woza (Women of Zimbabwe, Arise!) and it was nurtured in Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and Apostolic churches. "If we force Mugabe out, it will be the women who are his undoing," said a male leader of the farmer's resistance movement.

Jenni looks very white, but the Woza women call her Ma Moyo and look to her for courage. Don't miss this article! Here is the link:
From Underground, Leading a March for Democracy
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: October 17, 2008

The Myth of American Innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:11:46 PDT

A new friend here in Toronto, a visiting faculty member like myself, writes a regular column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This recent column contains some important reflections for preachers and congregations as well as those who report on them. There are some good Advent resources here about the human condition (even if you don't focus on the politics).

Articles of Faith: The myth of American innocence
By Anthony B. Robinson, Guest Columnist

ONE OF THE OLDEST strands of American thought is the myth of American innocence. The first settlers from Europe left the "Old World," thought to be corrupt and exhausted, for the "New World," a kind of American Eden. American movies, from John Wayne Westerns to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," regularly invoked the theme of a unique American innocence and virtue.

The myth of American innocence portrays America and Americans as fresh and untainted by the ancient wiles and deceptions of others. It imagines that Americans have a combination of virtue, tenacity and practical knowledge that will allow them to prevail where others have failed.

One way to understand both John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin and the Palin phenomenon is in the context of this myth of American innocence.

Now Washington (the other Washington) is the corrupt Old World. McCain depicts himself as an outsider and maverick to the Washington establishment. But it is Palin that completes the evocation of the myth of American innocence.

Alaska is as far as you can get from corrupt Washington. The 49th state translates into frontier virtue. Moreover, Palin's inexperience, in the context of the myth of American innocence, is not a weakness but a strength. It means that she is untainted. Her youth and family complete the picture of innocence and virtue, and of an American original who will go to Washington and clean house.

George W. Bush drew on similar themes to cast himself as an outsider and turn his own limited resume into an asset.

The greatest recent examination of the myth has been Graham Greene's 1955 novel "The Quiet American." In it Greene exposes the havoc set in motion by one U.S. innocent, Alden Pyle, in Vietnam.

As it turned out, Greene's novel was prophetic, anticipating America's tragic engagement in a conflict it never really understood. When "The Quiet American" was released as a movie in 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, it again sounded an alarm and anticipated what happens when power and innocence are wed.

The problem with the myth of American innocence, as Greene showed, is that it renders its victims blind. Claiming to see clearly, the innocents are blind to the complexities of the world, but more important, blind to their own limitations and capacity for evil. The myth locates all sin and evil elsewhere and in others. This is part of the reason that Christian fundamentalism strives so steadily to convert or, if that fails, cast out gays. They represent the foreign body, the corruption of innocence.

Barack Obama might also be thought to be appealing to the myth of American innocence, given his idealism and invocation of hope. Yet if you listen to Obama, you hear something different. It is not innocence but idealism that is at the core of his message. Obama has also frequently spoken of himself and his campaign as "imperfect," which further separates him from the theme of American innocence.

Obama's acknowledgments of imperfection owe something to his reading of the American Christian theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Obama described as his "favorite philosopher." Niebuhr was a great critic of the myth of American innocence, and ceaselessly pointed to its dangers. Niebuhr rejected all utopias, whether of the "back-to-Eden" or the futuristic variety, arguing that the best we could hope for in this life was proximate justice and incremental improvement.

While some versions of Christianity, particularly fundamentalist ones, have linked themselves to the myth of American innocence, this is not orthodox Christian thought. A better summation of that may be found in the aphorism of the French essayist and Christian, Pascal, who wrote, "The world is divided between sinners who believe themselves to be saints, and saints who know themselves to be sinners." The sinners who believe themselves saints are altogether too sure of their own innocence and virtue.

From where I sit, this election looks increasingly like a referendum on the myth of American innocence. With their improbable campaign theme, "Change Is Coming" (improbable, as they represent the party that has been in power for eight years), McCain and Palin seek to convey the idea of a freshness, innocence and unsullied virtue. Obama, while speaking of doing away with old-style politics, appeals less to innocence than to idealism.

Only too late did Greene's character Pyle realize that his innocence did more than render him blind -- worse, it made him dangerous.

Anthony Robinson, a pastor of the United Church of Christ, is a speaker and teacher. He can be reached at anthonybrobinson@comcast.net.
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Read it online:
Articles of Faith: The myth of American innocence
By Anthony B. Robinson, Guest Columnist

What not to say to an Iraq War veteran

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:07:39 PDT

The October 6 New York Times carried a story about a group of Iraq war vets who went off together to a Vets4Vets retreat to open up about their painful memories. "It was clear," wrote the reporter (who was allowed to attend) "that this was a wounded group." The story is really sad. Here's a portion of it (note the "don't"s addressed to us civilians back home).
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[Kevin Cajas, one of the vets, said,] “We were exposed to trauma so much we became addicted to it. We became trauma junkies. It doesn’t go away, so you’ve just got to learn how to manage it. I liked it; I’m not going to lie.”

Everyone had a transition story. Shifting from “hunter-killer mode” to husband-student mode is so sudden, it’s insane. One day you’re in Baghdad, the next you’re in Atlanta, passing rows of cheering civilians at Hartsfield airport. Then you get on with your life. The price is steep, in sleepless nights, troubled consciences and buried anger.

People have no idea, the veterans said. Ryan Knudson, from Phoenix, told me what a lifeguard at a pool had asked him: “Is it, like, all warry over there?”

Yes it is. Do you want to hear about it? No, said Mr. Knudson, you probably don’t.

Mr. Cajas: “We were the go-to platoon. When you’re on the go, you’re in a manic rage of violence, nonstop. My body’s just accustomed to that. I picked up my friends’ body parts. My roommate got his face blown off.”

Mr. Cajas was in a quick-reaction force, the guys who knock down doors. “We did a good job,” he said. “The irony of service is, we did a good job, and came back different. This is what it does to humans. The analogy we used was prison. We were locked in the base, and every time we were released, we had to go kill people. We acted like animals because that’s what we were.”

It was hard to watch them beat up on themselves, although their intense expressions of guilt seemed like signs of intact souls. One veteran told me he was haunted by the realization that any trauma he suffered was multiplied a hundredfold for the Iraqis he shot at.

Some gave me tips to pass on to the civilian world: Don’t ask The Question (Did you kill anybody?). “Support the Troops” magnets mean nothing to them. And military culture is not big on touching: the main things civilians want to do to soldiers — hug them and get them drunk — are generally not welcome.

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Read the entire article:
"Veterans, Alone Together, Share Stories They Can’t Tell You"
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: October 5, 2008

Encouragement for the long-married

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Floyd, Floyd Innovations LLC) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:54:18 PDT

Up here in Toronto the Globe & Mail has just run an article that is not only encouraging for those of us who have been married nearly fifty years but also for those who are perhaps wondering, at the 25-year mark, if they are going to be able to go the distance. Here's the link:

"The science of a long marriage"
In the long run, marriage is a state of being that suits, even enhances, human biology