A (Canine) Refugee from New Orleans

As I write this post, I am looking from my second floor window across the alley to the house directly behind me. It is a big, well kept home and the wisteria hangs gracefully over the large deck. I see a black dog, probably of several pedigrees, running around. I can't tell the dog's age but it doesn't seem to be a puppy. Maybe two or three years old.

Yesterday I talked to my neighbor from this house as I was taking trash to the dumpster. We talked about neighborhood things--other houses up for sale, my newly landscaped back yard, the upcoming neighborhood alley cleanup.

As I was getting ready to go back to my own back yard, he introduced me to Penny, "a refugee from New Orleans." I asked what he meant. He said that another neighbor had acquired several displaced pets from New Orleans and offered Penny to his family of two teenage girls. They took Penny in and now she has a loving home.

I looked at Penny and wondered: What has she seen? How was her life turned upside down? Who in New Orleans is missing her? Or is anyone missing her at all? Was she one of those pets that was found floating on a door or on the top of a roof, the waters about to engulf her?

I am touched by the kindness of my neighbors in accepting Penny and giving her a home. Somehow and in ways I cannot describe, kindness to animals and to "all of creation" seems to me to be connected to kindness to other humans and to a better balanced world.

My partner took in a cat at his house named Webster. Webster runs in and out of the house. He eats there but doesn't always want to hang out. He makes few claims of my partner and his daughter. But one day when he was mauled in a cat brawl, he was lovingly cared for until he could go out on his mysterious prowls again. Another sign of kindness to animals.

Now when I look out and see Penny running around her new back yard, I will remember New Orleans. Many of the human refugees have not fared as well as Penny. It is strange that my most concrete and visible link to what happened down there is a dog.

Difficulty Moving On . . . . . . .

If you have read some of the recent postings on this blog site, you know that I just completed a move to a new house.

Until I got really involved in the process of leaving the apartment where I had lived happily for eight years, I thought that just another move would be the easiest thing in the world. I am fairly well-organized. I hold no opposition to the idea of change and movement for any individual or society. And I spent years traveling internationally. My image of myself was as a person who embraces and even welcomes change.

As a country, Americans are committed to change. Have you counted how many times in the past few weeks you have heard the phrase "moving on"? I have no proof but it is my belief that this phrase was hardly ever used even a decade ago. In the United States, we encourage not only physical movement but psychological movement. A person in bereavement is encouraged to move on. A divorced person is encouraged to move on. People who have suffered serious traumas calculate their health by their ability to move on.

So, getting back to my situation, I moved exactly eight minutes by car from my old apartment. In this process I have discovered a number of things about myself. Basic to these discoveries is my enjoyment of a regular fixed routine. I found that just a very small thing such as where I leave my keys when I come in the door could drive me crazy.

And the chaos! For several weeks, many of my possessions, including all of my books, were left behind at the other apartment. I found that I had not labeled the moving boxes in such a way as to be able to find things when I needed them.

Friends would ask if I am enjoying the new house. I would have difficulty trying to decide whether or not to tell them the truth (no, no yet because I feel so unsettled here) or just say something like "It is wonderful to be here."

Just learning new public transportation schedules, seeing new neighbors each day, buying groceries at a new neighborhood supermarket have all left me feeling very much at loose ends sometimes.

Yes, I myself "moved on" to a new house that I myself selected and purchased. But it has been a largely unpleasant and unsettling experience. So I am left wondering if my difficulty navigating change is something that I am developing as I age or if it is just the normal response to having a fairly regulated existence turned upside down for awhile.

As I write these notes, I have been in the new house for about five weeks. It is beginning to seem right and feel like I wanted it to feel. Now I know which drawer holds the flatware and where to leave my keys when I come in the door. Still, the experience of learning that my response to change is more brittle than I thought is unsettling.

Lent Review: The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus Final Week in Jerusalem

I might as well admit (confess?) it: This Lent has been badly acknowledged and participated in by this writer. I made the mistake of buying and moving to a new house just a few days before Ash Wednesday. For the first time in memory, I did not participate in the imposition of ashes. And all Sundays so far have been spent trying desperately to get the remnant of my books and clothes out of my former apartment before the lease expires on March 31st. It seems that what I have given up is Lent itself!

Still, I am in the book business and I buy and read books obsessively, even during such a stressful time as a move. So when I saw the attractive cover of a book by theologians Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, famous for their work on the historical Jesus, I layed down the money, bought and read it. Without any prior planning, the reading of this book has become my de facto Lenten exercise.

The book is titled The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem (San Francisco: Harper, 2006). Crossan and Borg trace the narrative of Jesus's last week, beginning with the entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, based on the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the gospels. The crisp prose and the unsentimental, yet nuanced, "working over" of literary and historical materials provides a fresh and challenging view of what happened to Jesus and those around him during his last week.

I won't try to rehash the flow of what Crossan and Borg develop. But I will lift up three insights that provide me with new keys to understanding the original events of Holy Week.

First, the authors portray the leadership of Jerusalem, especially the culture and structures of the Temple, as constituting a sort of collaborative government representing the Roman Empire. Borg and Crossan call this a "domination system" in which religious content and structures legitimate imperial and elite interests. Over against this, Jesus represents a non-violent Kingdom of God that cannot be tolerated by the Roman Empire and their Jewish representatives in Jerusalem. This frank political analysis of what was happening at the Temple and in Jerusalem enrich my understanding of Jesus' confrontation with the authorities and his resulting death.

Second, the authors demonstrate that atonement theology surrounding Jesus (i.e. Jesus as the sacrificial lamb who must be given up to atone for the sins of the world) is alien to Mark. They comment that Jesus did not die for the sins of the world (we repeat during the Eucharist "Agnus Dei who takest away the sins of the world") but he died because of human sin, limitation and frailty. I have never understood atonement theology but I definitely understand the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark: Declaring a kingdom of God with values opposite to those of the Roman kingdom or empire and being sentenced to death as a criminal because of his passionate espousal of these values.

Third, the authors address a question that I have had for a long time: Did the events of Holy Week have to happen? The idea of God foreordaining the death of Jesus has always been repugnant to me. The authors simply state that events converged in such a way that Jesus was executed. Something else could have happened. But as we look back on the events in retrospect, we can see God's hand in them.

Whew! Just when I thought that I had come to terms with many traditional theological concepts I bought and read this book. It brought to the surface some of my doubts and addressed them in a way that actually strengthens my faith.

In my bedroom is a wonderful ebony crucifix that I purchased some years ago in Mozambique. I look at it often and often focus my prayers and meditations on it. Now, having read Borg and Crossan, I can bring some new understandings to these moments.

And, yes, I definitely recommend the book to the readers of The Blue Ogee.

Hamas-led Palestinian Government--Democracy?

Over the past few weeks, there is something that I must have missed in public discourse.

President Bush has repeatedly indicated that he wants to see democracy (meaning, I suppose, the kind of political system that we know in the West) implanted in the Middle East. Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with the idea of less authoritarian governmental systems in the Middle East. It seems to me like a no-brainer that we would prefer that the people select their governments over coups, hereditary regimes (i.e. Syria) and strong man governments run by thugs (the former Iraq).

In the case of Palestine, it appears that the people have, in fact, spoken clearly about what government they want and it is a Hamas-led government. The elections were generally seen as fair and the proportion of voters in the population was greater than that of voters in the USA.

Since the elections, the Bush administration has made it very clear that it has changed its mind and now does not want to recognize the government chosen openly and fairly by the Palestinian people.

Apparently, the problem is that Hamas is considered to be a terrorist group and refuses to renounce violence to achieve its goals. I agree that this is a problem. With 9/11 still fresh in the American memory, violent actions by political groups have to be of concern.

However, the Bush people are sending the wrong message in their opposition to the Hamas government of Palestine. They seem to be saying that democracy is okay as long as the decisions of the people suit the USA. When these decisions do not suit the USA, then we will renounce them and turn our back on democracy.

What is it, George? Are you willing to accept decisions by other peoples with which you disagree? Is it democracy or what that you really want?

On the Down Low on Brokeback Mountain

About five years ago, I decided to post a personal ad on Yahoo Personals. I mulled this over for weeks before submitting the posting. What I knew as an older comfortably out gay man who had, as they say,"been around the block," was that I hoped to meet another single older guy who would share some of my own commitments to the arts, theology, travel, family and the idea that there is more to a relationship than sex.

My frank opinion was that this posting would bring in zero replies. But, well, why not try it? So I submitted my carefully crafted submission and began to check into the reply box. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered in the first week that ten men of ages ranging from the thirties to the seventies had answered.

What struck me immediately was that none evidenced having read my submission. The basic answer went like this: "Read your posting. Am happily married but enjoy the guys also. Have afternoons free. Answer soon."

As someone who prided himself on having been "around the block" and "seen it all" I was stunned by these answers. Most of the respondents were on the down low or on the DL. In case you aren't acquainted with this term, here is the National Center for Disease Control definition of it: "The most generic definition of the term down low or DL is to keep something private," whether that refers to information or activity. The term is often used to describe the behavior of men who have sex with other men as well as women and who do not identify as gay or bisexual. These men may refer to themselves as being 'on the down low,' ';on the DL,' or 'on the low low.' The term has most often been associated with African American men. Although the term originated in the African American community, the behaviors associated with the term are not new and not specific to black men who have sex with men."

In order to reply to these responses, I drafted a short paragraph in which I tried to communicate clearly that I am a Christian out gay man who has already told his own secret and who does not want to keep the secret of another from a wife. One of the recipients of this note wrote and thanked me for the answer and for helping him reconsider his situation.

When my partner and I went to see Brokeback Mountain at the Keystone Cinema last month, I vividly remembered this surprising experience with men on the DL. In the movie based on novelist Annie Proulx's New Yorker short story, cowboys Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) establish a lifelong intimate relationship in remote Wyoming mountains. The movie is set in 1963 and as would have been fairly typical of that time, most men who loved men ended up getting married to women. This happened to Jack and Ennis.

This tragic movie set in expansive breathtaking mountains and plains is about the harm that happens to men and their families when they are unable to tell their own truth to themselves or to anyone else. For me, the most heartrending parts of the film had to do with the way that both men managed to sideline loving wives and children. So even though the film is about two men, it is very much about the women and children in their lives.

This film has been acclaimed rightly as a great film, a breakthrough in its portrayal of gay life. OK, maybe that is true: Yesterday we had fabulous young guys on TV in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Now we have rugged gay cowboys. The more important thing about this film is that it is a kind of cautionary tale about what happens when truth cannot be claimed openly. The message is that hiding on the DL harms beyond repair and even into death everyone who is on the DL and connected with them.

The reason that the Center for Disease Control even bothers to put a definition of
"down low" on its web site (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/faq/Downlow.htm) is that one of the prices of this behavior is an increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS among the women of guys who are on the DL. HIV/AIDS doesn't figure in the movie. But the movie points clearly to the deadly consequences of hidden patterns of behavior.

I hope that everyone who has read these comments will go see Brokeback Mountain and will post their take on the film here. Whatever your views, the film is surely one of the greats of recent times.

And now just a final comment about the Yahoo Personals site: Altogether I received twelve responses. Just when I was about to close down the ad as a disaster, I received a wonderful long response from a man who had really read my posting and who possessed all of the qualifications I had been looking for. We are life partners now. I guess that the personal ad was not a waste after all!

Half Priced Christmas Cards and Hope

Last week I did a little shopping. First, I bought a stock of seventy Christmas cards for 2006 at 50% off. Second, I purchased three huge rolls of Christmas wrapping paper at 75% off. I hate paying full price for these things which usually end up at the bottom of a trash can on Christmas day or soon afterwards.

Good consumer thinking? Yes, of course. But this year I realized that people who invest in a future event a year or more away--even in small ways like buying half-priced Christmas cards-- are really expressing hope. In my case, I hope that I may be here for Christmas 2006 and that I will be able to share in its joy with friends and family as I have done already for 62 years. When I read the obituaries in the Indianapolis Star each morning, I realize that there are plenty of people my age and much younger who in fact do not survive. So I hope that life may continue.

One of the things that I have realized during the past months is that to hope is not easy for everyone. Last week I was trying to console a man who came into the bookstore with black and blue marks over his face. He had been beaten up by his partner during a fight, his glasses were broken and he left home with two grocery bags: one for his t-shirts and jeans and another for his medicines. He cried out that he had really messed up his life big time. He didn't feel any hope and it was hard for me to convey any tangible hope outside of listening to his narrative. Another young woman I know, in her early twenties, told me that she had made a series of irrevocable bad decisions and it is impossible to undo any of them or to move in a new direction. She is caught. She feels as though her future is simply the acting out of the consequences of her bad decisions. She expressed that she has absolutely no hope.

In light of the existential pain and hopelessness that these people feel, my "Christmas card hope"appears trivial. Yet, I cannot allow the hopelessness of others to become my rule and I cannot try to discern my own hope in huge earth-shaking events: I hope for myself. I hope for a better and more just world. And I look for signs of this hope in the seemingly insignificant material of daily ordinary life. This is a theme that I have written about in several of these blog postings. I have done a little inventory of places in my daily life where I express hope and here are some of the items that I was able to list:

• Writing letters each month to government officials around the world related to human rights abuses sponsored by Amnesty International. I spite of incredible human cruelty to other humans, I hope for a better, more just world.
• Selecting a birthday present for my (almost) two year old great niece, Catherine. When she is my age, I won't be around to know who she has become. But I hope that she will have a full, wonderful life.
• Reciting the Nicene Creed during the Liturgy each week and repeating with other believers "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."
• Trying to learn how to manage the computer program Excel. It may be that some old dogs do not learn new tricks but this guy wants to know knew things. I hope for a life characterized by learning, even when I am old.
• Giving hugs and receiving hugs from friends at appropriate moments. I hope for a life where individuals support individuals in their daily trials and struggles.

I could go on and on but you get the point.

As this New Year begins, I hope.

The Book Reads Me

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was a prominent literary critic and well-known professor at Columbia University. Among many of his quotations, maxims and aphorisms is this statement: "The book reads you" or some such sentence. (I have not been able to document where this statement comes from even though every one who uses it attributes it to Trilling. If you know the exact reference, let me know.)

As a person who deals with books both professionally and personally, I have many opportunities to advise friends and customers at the bookstore where I work which books should be read. I usually tailor these suggestions around my own reading as well as the needs and interests of the customer.

It seems obvious, doesn't it, that books are objects that we read? We belong to a consumer culture and, for many, books are objects--maybe not so different from hamburgers, clothes, cars, etc.--that we buy and consume. Very rarely do the objects that we purchase speak back to us or argue with us. They are passive things, meant to be acquired. Marketing of books by the mega-book chains would seem to encourage this attitude: Get this book, get that book, get, get, get.

Yet, Trilling turns all of this around. By stating that books read us, he is saying--I think--that books speak to the deepest and most intimate parts of our being. They evoke and awaken in us much that we need to know about. They read us by bringing us face-to-face with other experiences or our own. In that way, books read or elucidate who we are.

I can offer two examples of what I think Trilling is getting at out of my own reading from this past year. First, is the experience of hearing the reading of the Gospel each week at Christ Church. It seems to me that as I hear the story of the betrayal of Christ by the disciples, I am somehow hearing my own story. In fact, in the face of death, I would probably betray him too. Or, I might follow him if called to leave my nets, if the call were done under the right circumstances. In other words, when I hear the proclamation of the Gospel, I feel as though it is reading me and scanning my innermost life.

The second example comes from my engagement with one of the past year's most important literary offerings: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. In this unrelentingly intense memoir, Didion chronicles her thoughts and memories following the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, just after Christmas several years ago. Without any sentimentality, she writes of her ups and downs, grief, shock that went on, in one way or another, for at least a year after her husband's death. The book "reads you" because as you follow Didion's journey, you start measuring your own possible reactions and responses to the sudden death of a loved one. In fact, sometimes as I was reading this book I was more embedded in my own fears and my own projection of grief than I was inside the author's.

As I have reflected on Trilling's quotation, I have begun to think that one of the characteristic of a literary classic is its ability to "read you." For example, in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov's existential journey into evil and its consequences force the reader to ask "Would I, too, be capable of bludgeoning an old person to death for no reason whatsoever?" Or, in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past,the dreamy unhurried remembrance causes the reader to engage in a similar exercise based on his or her own life.

Do you accept Trilling's notion that books read us? What examples can you point to that would support this notion? Or, is Trilling's notion no more than a reversal of that books are meant to be read? Have I gotten the possible meaning of Trilling's quotation right? Share your thoughts, if you wish, in this posting's comment box.

Making a Can of Campbell's Soup Sacred

Each week when I attend the Eucharist at Christ Church I take a can of Campbell's soup or some other object such as peanut butter, Ivory soap, macarroni and cheese, etc. and place it in the food baskets at the rear of the nave. These items are then distributed through the congregation's social needs ministry to the homeless. Living in downtown Indianapolis, I meet the homeless and many of our city's more or less professional panhandlers on a daily basis. But my option is to help through this ministry of my church.

When the monetary offerings and the wine and bread are brought forward to the altar just before the eucharist, the food baskets are also presented. Often, when I am kneeling at the altar rail receiving communion, I can see my donated can of Campbell's soup and I marvel at how it has made the trip from the soup section of Krogers to sharing sacred space with the Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

There is nothing magic about this trip. It is simply the dedication of an object--any object--to the purposes of Jesus: feeding the poor, taking care of the least of these.

In other blog postings I have written about how I walk a lot. That is one of my options, which I enjoy very much, as a person who chose not to own a car. Sometimes I find disgarded coins--pennies and nickels mostly--on the sidewalk. I take these coins home and put them in the piggy bank on top of the refrigerator. When the piggy bank gets full I sort the coins and bank them. Then I write a check for the same amount to some cause that I care about--often Episcopal Relief and Development for tsunami or other victims or to the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City for HIV/AIDS persons. Often I marvel at how an almost worthless lost coin can find new nobility and worth by moving from the sidewalk to the piggy bank to the bank and finally to the purposes of these organzations.

All of this reminds me that simple things can take on sacred meanings. Even Campell's soup. Even lost pennies.

Sabbath Quilt

I have two jobs--one in a downtown Indianapolis bookstore and another cleaning private residences. These jobs, plus trying to have a life, keep me busy . . . . . too busy.

Most Americans are overworked, overscheduled and overbusy. We live with calendars and PDA's in one hand, laptop or cellphone in the other. Recently large numbers of us have taken to multi-tasking or doing more than one thing at a time.

I long to break my frenetic life with rest that refreshes. I need to stop at an oasis for awhile and drink some cold water and strengthen my forces for the journey ahead, whatever it may be.

This is why I began thinking about the concept of sabbath. A rabbi friend told me that sabbath is at the very core of the Jewish faith. She said: "It is like a vacation once a week."

I could use that vacation. The problem is that I have so many competing tasks. Sunday, a day I attend mass at Christ Church Cathedral and when I don't have to go to the book store or clean houses, is the logical and traditional candidate for my sabbath.

Yet, even this "day off" becomes a magnet for all of the things that I was unable to do during the week. For example, there are bills to pay, groceries to buy, unanswered phone messages to answer, the laundry that needs laundering and the house that needs cleaning. Sound familiar?

The need to introduce some balance and equilibrium into my multi-tasked life has caused me to try to "keep sabbath" on Sundays. I have been working on this for about five years. Following are some of the things that I have learned:

1. The core activity of sabbath for me, as I indicated above, is attendance at the liturgy. In this liturgy of Word and Table, I find myself reflecting on the big issues of life and death in light of the Christian narrative. Because my work involves being on my feet or working physically, sometimes it is only during the liturgy each week that I am able to sit still. This in itself is restful.

2. At home I try to signal a change of pace with some special touch. And this is where the quilt comes in. I have a beautiful quilt that I keep folded in the armoire during the week. One of the first things I do on Sundays is to place it on my bed. This bed cover is what I call my sabbath quilt. Just having it visible reminds me that the rhythm of the week has changed, if only for a day. Another special touch is the icons which are arranged in an icon corner in the living room. It is usually on Sunday morning that I light a candle and burn incense at the icon corner and offer a prayer for whatever is on my mind.

3. Sunday is also a day when I try to extend some special act of hospitality to friends or family. It is easy to pull out the slow cooker and prepare a roast beef dinner and invite a friend. Just the smell of the roast beef reminds me of my childhood and youth when we almost always had a roast beef dinner after church and when friends visited each other. As an alternative to dinner, Sundays are when I try to find people to play board games with me. Even though I almost always lose at Scrabble, I love playing it. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

4. Generally, I have declared a moratorium on spending money on Sundays. I work in retail all other days of the week. I want to give consumerism a rest. I don't think that sabbath can be practiced in malls.

Sometimes it is impossible to bring together worship, special touches , hospitality, and a boycott on spending on a given Sunday. Sometimes the best that I can do is to put the sabbath quilt on the bed or light a candle next to the icon of the Holy Mother. I wish that this were not the case but I live in a culture that gives very little support to the concept of a day of rest and restoration. Maybe there is a special residential cleaning that I have to do (as I did today). Maybe there is an urgent meeting at the bookstore that is required. Maybe I just need to do the laundry.

When this happens I remind myself that there will be other occasions when I can practice sabbath. At the very least, I can put out the sabbath quilt as a reminder that, as the Scriptures attest, even God needed rest after the exertions of creation.

More Sloppy God Talk

Everywhere you turn in this country, people are talking about God.

You might think that I, as a person of faith, would like this. I don't.

If God is really holy, mysterious, beyond the limits of our minds and human experience, then God is not a toy which becomes a convenient explanation for whatever, whenever.

Example: This past week evangelist Pat Robertson threatened the people of Dover, Pennsylvania with God-sent natural calamity because they voted out school board members who voted in a thinly veiled religious version of the origins of human life.

Example: An acquaintance whose family lives in Evansville, Indiana where the terrible tornadoes struck last week, reported to me that his family was relieved that God had "protected" them from the twisters. He was irritated when I asked him why, then, had God not protected the people who were victims of the tornadoes.

In both of these examples God's action is remarkably impervious to human suffering. In both examples, God's action is totally self-serving: Pat Robertson gets a validation for his crazy far-right rantings and my acquaintance reasons why his family is spared the randomness of a natural act.

At the root of much sloppy God talk is the firmly embedded notion that God is omnipotent. This means that God is all-powerful. Christians have been drenched with notions of omnipotence in prayers, hymns, sermons for so long that it is almost impossible for them to imagine God in any other way. Yet, at the same time they -- we -- talk about the cross where God made no intervention at all to save Jesus. Omnipotent?

The problem gets really complicated when you try to reconcile the idea of a loving and just God with the idea of an all-powerful God. Or when you try to explain mind-boggling evil. What was the omnipotent God doing during the Holocaust of the Jewish people or during the genocide in Rwanda or during Katrina or the tsunamis?

I think that the only way to be a person of faith and maintain intellectual integrity and compassion is to abandon the idea of omnipotence. Maybe God isn't orchestrating all events with purposes in mind. Maybe we need to try to find signs of God's presence in otherwise inexplicable situations and events. This shifts discussion to more tangible terms. So, in the case of Katrina, we find God's presence in the caring of neighbors or in the resilience of the victims or in the courage of the volunteers and others who went into New Orleans just after the floods.

In Old Testament times, people were afraid to name God. I think that this was because once we begin playing with the term, we trivialize it or use it for our own purposes.

Public discourse in this country would be served inestimably if people would hesitate to invoke God at every turn of the corner. And it would be served if people of faith would try to hammer out more intelligent God talk.

More on How Big Is Family? Kurt Vonnegut's Idea

A few weeks ago I posted a short reflection on how the family in the USA is way too small. If you haven't read it, check it out on this blog site.

This week I was reading a new release by Hoosier author (but now living in New York City) Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions and many other novels. This new book is titled "A Man Without a Country," New York: Seven Stories Press, 1985.

The work is divided into short reflections that ramble here and there on a series of great ethical and social issues. As you read the book you have the feeling that you are having coffee in a diner somewhere with an eccentric uncle who, in his late years, has decided he doesn't give a damn what you or anyone else thinks. He is going to say whatever he wants, however he wants. And in Vonnegut's case, he wants it on record.

Maybe I feel a little close to Vonnegut even though I never met him because my son went to the elementary school #43 that Vonnegut also attended. And someone told me that in the early years of this arts and crafts style apartment building in which I live, the Vonneguts also lived here. There are still Vonneguts running around Indianapolis.

In discussing the family, Vonnegut says that "It used to be that when a man and woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to". But the extended family has disappeared to the extent that "When a couple has an argument nowadays they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: 'You are not enough people!'". Conclusion: "A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit."

After discussing how the Igbo children in Nigeria may be taken to meet hundreds of relatives, Vonnegut states that "I would really, over the long run, hope America would find some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families--a large group of people they could call on for help." Vonnegut is right: We need to look to Africa for the way family supports its members. And even there it is fast disappearing.

Thanks, Kurt Vonnegut, for writing on a better version of family values. And if you should ever happen to stumble on this blog site, leave me a comment.

Mug of Hot Steaming Coffee and Belonging

After almost twenty-five years of marriage, one December day I packed my things and moved to a Victorian bed and breakfast in downtown Indianapolis.

The reasons for this move are not important and, anyway, I wouldn't put them up on a public blog. What is important is that after so many years of family life, I suddenly found myself by myself. There was no noise in my apartment unless I made it. And it was always dark inside when I came home at night.

No doubt about it, I was glad to have broken loose. But, I did not have any close friends. Sure, there were work colleagues but they seemed embarrassed when I wanted to talk about what had happened. So, the phone rarely rang. I felt very much alone.

I missed being around people. I also missed the house I had lived in and the things that were in that house. None of them were fancy or valuable. But, all the same, I missed being around my things. All of those things told stories and through them I could construct my own narrative.

This sense of solitude was compounded by the terrible winter weather that year. It was bitter cold. There were heavy snows and I was trying, for the first time in my adult life, to do shopping, get to work, go to church and all of the other things I needed to do, without a car.

I remember the first Sunday after I left. I had gotten up very early to get ready to attend mass at Christ Church. Next to the bed and breakfast were some townhouses. My third floor bedroom looked down on these townhouses and on their windows.

Just below my bedroom I could see the open curtains of a townhouse bedroom. There was a lamp that exuded a warm glow by the window. And on a little round table with a kind of Laura Ashley cloth, there was a ceramic mug of hot steaming coffee. I gazed at it for a long time--imagine, me a coffee voyeur!

Somehow the combination of the mug of steaming coffee, the Laura Ashley textile, and the golden light spoke to me. It all seemed to underline that, hey, Daniel is very much alone and not in a real house, just a bed and breakfast. And only yards away, there are people who live in real homes, with their own things, and they wake up on Sunday morning to steamy coffee mugs and long sessions of New York Times and maybe soft classical music or Miles Davis Kind of Blue.

Gazing on that mug of hot steaming coffee I realized that I was at an "in between" place. I had left where I was and did not yet have my own place, my own routine . . . . . . not even my own coffee mug or coffee maker! I ached with loneliness. And I wanted to belong again to people and to a place.

Being at an "in between" place was like living in an existential parenthesis. The old had been left behind but what was to be, to become had not yet happened. How could I know that it would take almost a decade to accumulate my own things, establish another routine, build up an extended family and live in a place long enough to love it?

Today was a beautiful November day in central Indiana. I woke up at 6 am when it was still dark outside. The amber glow of the victorian era streetlights gave a beautiful patina to the sidewalk, the street and the trees. Inside this century old apartment, I had my books, art, music, some antiques, furniture and heirlooms. There are pictures of my partner, my kids, my mom and sister. In one corner of the living room are the holy icons.

On this early morning I smelled the coffee brewed by my timed Coffee Maker. I turned on one living room lamp and sat in an easy chair slowly sipping coffee, thinking about the day ahead. The coffee was in a sturdy hand-made mug that I bought on the Navajo reservation near Farmington, New Mexico several years ago.

When I went to shave, I left the mug, steaming, on the windowsill. When I placed it there, I thought: "Now I too belong."

How Big is Family?

When I lived in Zambia, Central Africa I noticed that family was always way big. You would hear someone speak about his or her father or mother. I assumed, at first, that the person referred to was father or mother exactly as we understand it in the West: The man or woman who created you biologically.

This idea fell apart quickly when I discovered that in terms of many African kinship systems, father or mother can be uncle or aunt or even distant cousin, as Westerners comprehend such relationships.

We lived in a kind of compound surrounding a lake. My daughter, Nelia, was only two and had recently given up her pacifier, baby bottle and diapers. I feared that somehow, if we weren't constantly vigilant, that she would wander into the lake and that tragedy would ensue. But I discovered very soon after arrival that she could go out playing with the neighbor children and the older ones would take care of the younger ones. At lunchtime, some family would invite her into their home for the stiff corn meal staple called nshima.

The flip side of this is that we were expected to maintain the same standards. Back in the USA we had been used to saying to Nelia's friends when dinner came: "It is dinner time and now you need to go home." But in Africa, where there may be ten or twelve people eating, what is one more little mouth? And, anyway, the expectation is that we all take care of each other.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties: I'm nolonger living in Africa, even though I still travel there frequently. But now I am learning the language and symbols of the gay community in the USA. Often I would hear someone ask: "Is he family?" This doesn't mean "Is he a blood relationship?" but "Is he gay?"

What interested me when I was introduced to the out gay community was that there was an assumption that other gay folk constituted a support network, a veritable family, providing emotional support and stability. I realized how important this was (and is) when I disovered how many persons had been kicked out of their own families when they came out to them or how many persons were given a kind of emotional freeze-out when their gayness was revealed.

It is fascinating to me that out of two very marginalized groups--North American gays and poor Central Africans--definitions of family are broad in scope and hospitable in nature and move beyond the narrow definitions of blood and ancestry. Even as I express my fascination, I am aware that in these two groupings boundaries are often set: Africans may not extend "family" beyond tribe to other Africans. Some gays may not extend "family" to persons not sharing their own struggles as men who love men.

Still, the point is clear to me: Family is whoever provides fundamental emotional support and is the basic point of reference for shared life and commitment at its deepest levels.

This is not to imply that our blood relations do not have special and enduring claims upon us. Parents have obligations inherant in producing children that cannot be handed over to others. Older children have obligations towards the elderly that cannot be shortcut without much hurt and pain.

But, generally, in the USA, in spite of all the hype about family values, our understanding of family is way too small and way too outdated. Groups such as "Focus on the Family" model things more on narrow 1950's understandings, passed off as supposedly Biblical and American, that exclude and restrict more than reach out and build broad community.

I am for "family values" that:

--Focus on community and communal responsibility for all, especially children and the elderly.

--Welcome new models and styles of family, such as those proposed by same-sex family units, or those lived out by single parents.

--Provides support for busy parents who have to work. Good systems of publically financed and sponsored child care and early childhood education could do so much here. I think of Hillary Clinton's reminder that it takes a village to raise a child.

--Models global citizenship in the local family unit, however that is defined.

Whether or not you, the reader, agree with these ideas (they are sketchy, I know) I hope you will agree that some better, non-nostalgic, non-far Right Christian thinking and discussion about the shape of the family is absolutely critical.

The divorce stats should be all we need to be convinced of this. More than half of all American marriages end in divorce.

Is the family going to be bigger or smaller? Family values depend upon definitions of family. What does the family look like to you?

Did God Cause Katrina?

Like so many other Americans I have found myself glued to the television screen watching the reporters predictably standing in front of levees, seawalls, beaches just before, during or after hurricanes Katrina and Rita have struck. I watched also with horror the many unforgetable scenes coming out of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina: looting, people left behind, the terrible conditions in the Dome. My daughter is a graduate of Tulane University in public health and so I have felt how the personal story of our family somehow intersects with the story of New Orleans.

My most enduring emotion was a mixture of sorrow for the loss of so many thousands of people--their lives in some cases but also property, employment, social and living space--and outright anger at the tepid response of government at all levels to what was certainly a predictable occurrance. No need to write more about this here. It has been covered remarkably well by the media.

One of the biggest surprises to me during these last days has been a theological undercurrent that has not really gotten broad coverage in our nation's press. I became aware of it when one of my colleagues at work reported that her pastor at an evangelical community church here in Indianapolis stated in his weekly sermon that Katrina was God's punishment for the evil of "that part of the country." I didn't ask what constitutes that evil but I can guess: Mardi Gras, drinking, the French Quarter, Anne Rice vampire yarns, tolerance of gays and other sexual minorities. . . . . . . . . My surprise was compounded when, during my weekly telephone call with my mother she shared more or less approvingly that one of the television preachers that she sometimes watches on Sundays also interpreted Katrina as a sign of God's wrath.

Of course, I should have not been surprised. Hello, Dan Hoffman! This is a country where one of the bestselling fiction series is the Left Behind series in which God is (fictionally?) portrayed as bringing about the so-called rapture and is concluding history through warfare, pestilence, etc. [If you are interested in exporing this kind of theology and its political and social implications, a critical study by Barbara R. Rossing entitled The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation is very much recommended. I should have known also that America has become more and more fundamentalist in its approach to all things and that the discourse of Katrina-as-God's-punshiment would be inevitable.

I am a Christian, though not a far-right fundamentalist. I am active in the Episcopal Church, one of the more tolerant and progressive denominations in this country. I am not expecting to hear about God's punishment of New Orleans' sinners in that church. Rather, it is my expectation that I will hear calls to care for those who have had their lives and webs of relationship tragically interrupted. I hope to hear challenges to dig into our pockets and do more than feel media-induced pity.

For myself, I renounce strongly the language of God's punishment. We see the truth on car stickers all the time: Shit happens. This is just the condition of living in a finite world in which we do not have control of all forces. It happens not because God wills it but simply because it is wired into the condition of life itself. In the Old Testament Job learned this. In the New Testament, Jesus succumbed to conditions that he could not control but I believe that he was victorious in the end. Just because something happens or does not happen does not mean that God is either rewarding or punishing our behavior. Things happen. The real issue, as it was for Job or Jesus, is how do we deal with it.

The idea that Katrina wiped out New Orleans because of its sinfulness reflects, in my mind, a misunderstanding of sinfulness. How can anyone in Indianapolis, one of America's major urban centers where everything goes on, even if we don't see it, claim that New Orleans is more sinful. As far as I can tell, all persons are alienated from moral truth and behavior. If it were a matter of punishing sinfulness, who would be spared, ever?

Here are a few of the sins that I think we should consider if we are going to point fingers:

--The constant denial of the Bush administration that there is such a thing as global warming, even though we may now be seeing some of the first catastrophic consequences of it.

--The shipment of our military forces at all levels to a tragic war, based on lies to the American public, in Iraq and the consequent absence of these forces to assist in the aftermath of Katrina.

--The inability of this nation generally to envision energy sources or lives apart from petroleum resulting in disruption when refineries and pipelines are effected, as in Katrina and Rita.

--The "Left Behind" of the poorest and most vulnerable of New Orleans' residents, most of whom were persons of color.

God does not destroy God's creation. But we are challenged by Katrina to figure out how to respond morally and ethically for the greatest good when disaster strikes, as it inevitably will.

At the end of the day, I somehow believe that the generosity and the community spirit of Americans will overcome the rantings of far right Christians.

Cleaning the Toilet/Finding God

In order to secure an additional stream of income, I clean residences in downtown Indianapolis. I do this in between working at a bookstore and trying to care for my family life and to be active in my community.

For many of my friends and family, it seems strange that I clean houses as part of my living. I mean, with a long work history and graduate studies, why would I want to do this? For one thing, it is good and reliable money. For another, I just like cleaning . . . I have never viewed it as a "lower form" of human endeavor and enjoy keeping my own place clean and orderly. Then, it provides a wonderful situation where I can exercise without going to a gym: You crouch, squat, lift, move muscles in all directions. And finally--maybe most importantly to me--there is the silence.

All day long I enounter noise. At the bookstore there is overhead music and a constant flow of announcements to customers and staff. But I only clean houses when my clients are away at work and when their pets are at the dog or cat sitters. In silence I am able to work cleaning and to work thinking and reflecting.

What do I think about while polishing a coffee table or on my hands and knees using Murphy's soap on an old hardwood floor? Well, often it is about people in my life: My kids, partner, best friends. . . Sometimes it is about the practicalities of life: Is the Visa bill paid on time? What do I need to fix for dinner? Have I set my annual doctor's exam?

The silence also lends itself to some of the bigger questions that concern a person of my age and situation: What comes about in death? After death? Why does so much injustice and suffering seem to be increasing around me? Is there such a thing as human or historic progress? Why do I often retain anger after I think that I have forgiven someone? Am I a poser or "the genuine thing"? These are big questions and often then can't be thought through in solitude or even in silence. But at least cleaning time is a period when I can let the questions surface and when I can play with them from different angles. Maybe later I will ask Nelia or Frankie or Tyrone or my mom to give me some insights.

I have a friend who is struggling with his work, his own core identity and his future. Over dinner in our neighborhood pub his asked me where I find God. This question is not new to me because everyone who knows me knows that I reject a purely secular approach to life as simply not big enough for life itself. Many if not most of my friends are secular and so the question tends to come up often. Usually, I answer with some statement like "I find God in the life of Jesus" or "I find God in the struggles of those who suffer." But this time, without knowing why, I just blurted out "I find God while cleaning toilets." My friend demonstrated surprise, and a little unease, at this answer. And I surprised myself as well!

I guess that I was trying to say that I find God--whatever or whoever God is--while engaged in small, menial work. And I wanted to say that if you can't find God in that situation, then you probably can't find him/her/it at all. As good as the majestic sunset, the rugged mountains, the fine music of the mass or other sublime moments may be for communicating God, those moments are infrequent. But the small moments of our daily-ness, busy-ness have to be conveyors of God as well.

So, that was how I astounded and probably confused my friend. Another friend, Steve, who practices Zen and is involved in serious social advocacy, told me that my answer (but not the explanation that I have provided you, my reader, in the above paragraph) was worthy of a Zen teacher. I loved this comment. Maybe just saying that God is to be found in cleaning toilets is a comment that can and should stand on its own without any explication.

In the Christian tradition, Brother Lawrence has evoked some of the theme I am trying to discuss in this blog posting. Also, George Herbert has written the following verses to a hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal (#592): "All may of thee partake, nothing can be so mean, which with this tincture, "For thy sake," will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this cause makes drudgery divine: who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine."




I

Healing of Memories

Steve, a retired therapist now living in Portland, is a dear friend of mine. After many years of developing a thriving practice in Manhattan, in 2002 he wrapped things up and moved to the Northwest where he practices Zen, grows orchids in a greenhouse, enjoys the company of his two sons who live nearby and is, by my own reckoning, the posterboy for healthy retirement.

Several weeks ago, Steve stopped in Indianapolis for a weekend before flying to Cape Town, South Africa, where his major retirement project (for now) occurs. In that city he volunteers about half of each year for an institute that dedicates itself to the healing of traumatic memory among those who suffered deeply from the wounds of apartheid. Its founder, an Anglican priest, had his hands blown off due to a letter bomb sent by pro-aprtheid forces. More than a decade after the welcome end to the brutalities of apartheid in South Africa, many people are immobilized and unable to pick up the pieces that this nazi-like system engendered. As a country, South Africa has "moved on" but countless individuals have found this difficult if not impossible to accomplish.

Now some of this work is attracting attention internationally and the work that originated in South Africa is spreading to Australia where healing of memory involves aborigines who have their own painful, traumatic grievances. Any group that has suffered groupwide injustice at the hands of a dominant group of some kind may not find it all that easy to just pick up and move on. African-Americans and Native Americans retain profound resevoirs of awareness of injustice that their ancestors suffered and that they continue to suffer in many circumstances. And, if we are to believe much of the analysis of the post-9/11 world, a lot of terrorist activity is rooted in bitter memory of prior injustice.

Maggie Gordon, a friend working and living now in Japan, wrote to me this week about how persons of Korean ancestry living in Japan are still considered outsiders after many generations of living on Japanese soil and speaking Japanese. What memories are being engendered in that situation? How can they be healed? Maybe the "truth and reconciliation" approach promoted by Steve's institute and successful in the immediate aftermath of apartheid's demise would work.

Last week I had an experience that reminded me that memory can rear its head in ways that are unsettling and that cause some pain. With a friend I was visiting the historic building that I worked in for many years. It was, prior to my working in it, the site of Butler University, now a major institution of higher education here in Indianapolis. After my organization left this building, it was converted into a series of apartments for lower income senior citizen residents.

While many of my memories in those walls were positive, there were definitely some that were unsettlingly negative. I had pushed these into the back of my conscience. While on the little tour, I asked the building manager to show me the site of my old office. And, incredibly (to me), my door still had my name and title on it. When I asked if it could be changed, I was told that this was a concession to people who wanted to maintain some of the historic character of the building and that, in any case, the door was walled in and on the other side was an apartment.

Since I thought had "moved on" from that place and the memories associated with it, I found the experience of seeing the door very unpleasant and during most of the week it caused me to try to sort out why I feel so negative about the place and much that happened in it. Sorry if I am not more specific than this but if I were to become more specific it would be equally hurtful to some others who worked there and are still around.

But the point I am making here is that the healing of memories is work for all of us. Without trying to put myself in the same "location" as victims of historic injustice, I still have a lot that is negative and hurtful in my life experience that I need to find ways of healing. This is what I learned last week. It made me more attentive to those whose memories of historic injustice still scald and burn. What other memories should I consider that immobilize me and evoke bitterness? Can they ever be healed--really?

Maybe on his way back from South Africa, I can ask Steve to work with me on this!

Intergenerational Funk

I have just returned from Colorado where I interfaced with different persons in my family. There was my mother, who turned 83 when I was there. There was my great niece, Kathryn, who is about one and a half years old. There is my 57 year old sister and her 27 year old daughter and her husband. And there were others.

Being in inter-generational situations is not new or very unusual for me. Much of my life was spent in traditional cultures in Africa and Latin America where segmentation of generations is not normal--at least it was not normal when I was there. People of different ages live together under one roof; play together and often dance together (can you hear an American teen respond "Gross!" at that idea?); pray together in church and work together.

In other words, the kind of predominant youth culture with its own symbols, activities, language, clothing, etc. as we know it in America is somewhat missing in these situations. The idea that youth is split off from the wider community of human care and concern and material endeavor would shock many of my friends in Africa and Latin America as "unnatural."

In these places and elsewhere in the world, young people aspire towards adulthood and heavier responsibility. Not at all like in the USA where adults often take their cues from youth cultures and actually aspire in their constant makeovers to being young or youthful.

Much of my life, especially in the bookstore where I work, is spent interfacing with people much younger than myself. I like it very much! And I have learned so much from other generations. As someone who is nearly 62 years old, I am exposed to youth music, new ideas and many questions that I never remotely entertained when I was the same age as my younger colleague friends.

In my home, I have hosted younger persons for up to two years at a time. They have become my family along with my daughter and son and others.

So, if I get such energy and pleasure out of being with young people, even in this generationally segmented society, what is my problem? My funk?

To put it briefly, I am at home with what Paul Vaillant of Harvard calls "generativity" or caring for the next generation. This seems to come naturally to me. But, what I discovered in Colorado, especially as I tried to interface well and in a healthy way with my mother, is that it is much harder for me to relate to older persons (hey, I mean "older than me at age 62").

We spent some time in the great mountains at Rocky Mountain National Park. Nowhere in that gorgeous place is there a flat surface. I found myself fretting constantly about my mother's balance. I imagined the one fall while I would be with her that would result in a broken hip! Thank God, it did not happen.

I also found it hard to listen to her. Her points of reference are so much in the past and embedded in memories. While I wanted to listen to her as she reminisced about my grandfather or my great grandmother or cousin Hazel, I found myself wanting to have some great discussion about Reinhold Niebuhr or about the state of the world economy . . . . . . . .

Conclusion: I am not good, for whatever reason, with older persons. And, frankly, this bothers me because I am fast on the way to where my mom is now. A fourth of a lifetime only separates where she is now from where I will be.

I returned from Colorado troubled with my inability to reach out as well to the very old as to the very young. This is my intergenerational funk and, you won't be surprised, it is compounded by the fact that it involves my own mother.

So, I am busy mulling this over and trying to learn more about myself and about the aging process itself. My goal has been to age well. But I don't see how this can happen if I can't feel good about those who have already aged. By all accounts, my mom has done a good job. She is in relatively good health, is independent in mind and body and is interested in many things around her. I'll be lucky if I do as well as she has.

Normally, I wouldn't be so introspective on this blog. I decided that it would not be a "stream of conscience" blog when I established it. But my funk surely points to forces that are present in our current society.

Marketing False Needs

All of a sudden I am seeing a lot of advertisements for things that I supposedly "must" have. The marketing is direct and very concise. Bookstores are putting out lists of "must read" books. Department stores are telling me what are the latest fashion "must buys". There are now "must see" movies and DVDs as well as "must hear" CDs.

Everything that some corporate office looking for enhanced profits in the first or second quarters is billed as something that I, the consumer, "must" do.

What is behind this "must . . . . whatever" advertising wave? It is the idea that unless I possess a certain book, CD, piece of clothing, DVD or whatever else is being promoted that I am basically not in step, not with it . . . . probably can't hold my own.

At least that is what these advertising and marketing people would like me to believe.

And, hey, I am sure it works. So many Americans discover their worth through consumerism that this message must deliver the goods. Who wants to be left out if there is a "must read" book that "everyone" is talking about? Who wants to look like a thrift store buyer if I "must" have a Kenneth Cole new outfit?

So we live in a culture of having and having more all the time. But this emphasis on having, very peculiar to a wealthy country where most of what we have doesn't have any relationship to our survival, can't guarantee happiness, even though that is the promise implicit in the advertising.

I wonder if there are other Americans who, when confronted with a "must read," "must wear," "must have" advertisement decide immediately that they will not under any circumstances let such advertising dictate their needs or purchases.

It is hopeful to me that many thousands of Americans are moving in exactly the opposite direction from the corporate marketing offices. They are trying to simplify their lives and their budgets around core values that demonstrate responsibility to human community and the earth. Just recently the free cycling movement has taken root in many American communities. The idea is to offer your things free to other people who can use them. And maybe you will find something good as well. I am part of this movement here in Indianapolis. I have offered many things online and even have a nice aquarium and air filter that was offered through the Indyfreecycle network (but I had to buy the guppies!).

It seems to me that if we go back to Jesus' teaching about the lillies of the field and the birds of the air and how God takes care of them, we are on solid ground for countering advertising that attempts to create false needs.

What Happened to Civility?

We all know the experience by now: The loud person at the next table in a nice restaurant is babbling on a cell phone. "Where are you? . . . . Oh. . . . . Can you take out the trash?" It is not that we would mind it if something truly urgent were at stake, like a heart attack or something. But everywhere we are subjected to streams of discussion that do not concern us or are none of our business. Worse, sometimes we have to listen when the guy with the cell is fighting with his wife!

All of this is a symptom of an increased loss of manners and civility in the U.S.A. today. Appropriate behavior in appropriate circumstances seems to have been left behind.

I know that saying this will make me sound prim and almost Victorian. So be it. It is worth reminding ourselves that there are plenty of societies in the 21st century world where appropriate behavior is valued, encouraged and rewarded.

But what do I mean by civility? Stephen Carter, law professor at Yale and novelist (several years ago he published The Emperor of Ocean Park) wrote a wonderful little book called Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy (Basic Books, 1998). Here is how Carter defines civility: "Civility . . . . . is the sum of the many sacrifices we are called to make for the sake of living together. When we pretend that we travel alone, we can also pretend that these sacrifices are unnecessary. Yielding to this very human instinct for self-seeking . . . . is often immoral, and certainly should not be done without forethought. We should make sacrifices for others not simply because doing so makes social life easier (although it does), but as a signal of respect for our fellow citizens, marking them as full equals, both before the law and before God. Rules of civility are thus also rules of morality: it is morally proper to treat our fellow citizens with respect, and morally improper not to. Our crisis of civility, then, is part of a larger crisis of morality. And because morality is what distinguishes humans from other animals, the crisis is ultimately one of humanity," pp. 11-12.

Cell phone behavior and road rage are standard examples for people commenting on civility today. But several other examples come to mind:

--At a distinguished Indiana liberal arts college known for its progressive policies, faculty and students, a distinguished conservative journalist is invited to speak. During the presentation, an outraged student throws a pie in his face.

--At a downtown Indianapolis retail establishment, a young woman enters the front door, runs up to a cashier and blows an airhorn in his ear, laughs and runs out the door. The cashier has his hearing potentially damaged and is unable to function out of shock.

--A telemarketer manages to get through the web of "n0-call" which I have established and refuses to stop pitching his goods, leaving me no alternative but to hang up.

--A server in a restaurant endures verbal abuse from a customer who has brought her personal problems into the "marketplace." The server is expected to give good customer service (at below standard wages!) to this woman.

What other examples could you add to this list from your own experience?

On television we see the examples of Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil, Family Courts and we think that it is normal to be rude and to let everything out, no matter how hurtful or uncomfortable it is for others. I can't forget the remark a friend from Latin America once made that after she arrived here in the U.S.A. she felt as though she could say or do anything that was on her mind because this was the way Americans act. When I asked why she had this opinion, she said that this is visible all the time on television. And she is right.

Even at the highest levels of our government, incivility seems to have taken hold. Maybe the arrogance of the Bush administration and its inability to see beyond its own policies, allows it to say things that normally should not be stated by governments. What about the derrogatory comments on France and the supposed "old Europe" when we were being pushed into the tragic war in Iraq? This kind of public language does not model careful conflict resolution among adversaries but encourages verbal abuse, pushiness, cultural insensitivity and rudeness at all levels of society.

As we train our children, places where in former times we worked out good rules of behavior, for example, the dinner table where we say "Thank you" and "Please pass the gravy" have almost disappeared. And the habit of writing thank you notes after Christmas, graduation, even weddings, seems to be a rapidly disappearing art.

My many years living in Africa taught me about the huge difference in cultures. It is still true, even in urban areas of Africa, that when you greet someone, you shake hands and ask how they are doing. You do not walk by a person without saying something, usually a formal greeting of some kind. The idea that you are not and isolated self-made person but someone who belongs to a larger group, with responsibilities to it, is what regulates all behavior. Of course, there are rude persons in Africa and rude behavior. That is human nature in all societies and at all times. But on that continent, which we often unfortunately characterize as "under-developed" the common good comes first.

In South Africa, there is a word umbuntu which implies togetherness and human-ness of the society in general.

I am thinking that America needs a good dose of umbuntu.

Silence and Struggle

Last week I spent the final days of Holy Week (called the triduum) at Holy Cross Monastery, an Anglican Benedictine center, located in West Park, New York. I have always found a disconnect between the demands of retail and the requirements of serious Lenten observation. It is hard to be at one moment in a bustling book store and the next moment in a Good Friday observance of Jesus' crucifixion or a Maundy Thursday footwashing. The deep and profound issues of Holy Week have to do with political structures, death, hope, renewal and new life. These are somber matters not easily contemplated in front of a cash register or while opening a box of incoming books or when providing customer service to an irrate customer.

My expectation in going to Holy Cross was that it would provide me with a space for pondering the Lenten narrative with other like-minded persons. I knew that there would be frequent liturgical celebrations throughout the day in which the Scriptures would be read, chanted and silently reflected upon. Within a day I needed to acquaint myself with the ancient terms for these liturgical moments: matins, diurnum, vespers, compline. The monks welcomed about thirty or so of us from across the United States into their monastery with graciousness and good hospitality.

It was announced that there would be silence in the monastery from Maunday Thursday services and footwashing until after breakfast on Holy Saturday. While packing, I had thought of taking my earphones and some cd's but at the last minute I decided not to do this. The idea of the silence was to provide a setting for deep reflection and prayer. The monks put up signs all over the monastery reminding us of the silent order of things.

Even though I live by myself, there is always the cd player, the television, the radio, the telephone and frequent visits to break any silence. At work, in addition to staff and customers, there is always the overhead music system blaring out strange combinations of classics, rock, blues, bluegrass, hip hop . . . . .

So I welcomed the silence with enthusiasm. I slept more. I read a good deal in the comfortable monastery reading room (including an important book by Columbia economist Jeffrey Sacks titled Ending Poverty that I hope to review eventually on this blog). And I did engage in meditation and prayer.

There is no way that I can express how much this experience with silence had a cleansing effect on my mind and on my body. To use an overused metaphor, it felt like rain in the desert. By not battling an array of imposed sounds, I was able to focus on important matters . . . . . or to even choose not to focus on anything. At the end of the two-day silence, I felt more whole and stronger.

Since returning to Indianapolis, I have been thinking about where persons who are on the outside of power structures or who are in some way counter-cultural get the strength to resist or to oppose things. I mean, as should be clear on this blog site I am distressed by many of the actions of the current United States administration. I also disagree with many of the assumptions of large numbers of Americans about gender, consumerism, relations with the world and with ethnic groups in the USA and a host of other issues. All of this is so big and overwhelming that sometimes I am tempted to just throw in the towel . . . . . and yet, I believe in resistance and opposition as critical activities.

Surely, we get strength for resistance and opposition from community or contact with other like-minded persons. For me this comes through my work in the church or Amnesty International or the ACLU. But the sources of strength need to come from beyond activism and ideas.

And this is where frequent practice of silence and meditation come in. In silence it is possible for the inner part of ourselves to be refreshed. It is possible to sort out and reflect upon our ideas, gaining new perspectives and approaches. It is possible in silence to create new spaces for the reception of new ways of doing things.

For me, this means that I need to declare silent days right here in Indianapolis. Of course, this is not easy. But I need to declare rest from noise and sound and talking so that my soul can be nurtured and refreshed. One thing I am thinking of doing is "keeping silence" from Sunday evening through noon on Mondays. Maybe this is just a short period but it can provide the strength that I personally am looking for in order to engage in the larger struggle as a progressive person.

In all of this I am inspired by the practice of persons like Thomas Merton, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and others who knew how to engage in careful meditation and silence while participating fully in some key historic struggles.