The Inclusive Christian Blog

Remembering Joseph C. Hendrzak

2011-08-05T16:36:00.002-04:00

Remembering Joseph C. Hendrzak
On the 35^th Anniversary of His Death
August 5^th, 2011

Joe and I were college freshman at Lehigh. My first recollection was of this freshman at Dravo House who was wiping the floor with everyone in chess.

How he ended up with my motley group of friends, I'll never know. He wasn't in the Marching '97. He wasn't in Inter-Varsity Christian fellowship. We certainly were in classes together and – at the beginning of our sophomore years, we were in adjacent upperclassmen dorms in Centennial I near Rathbone Hall, the dining service.

I remember our extended breakfasts in Rathbone. Both of us would get there when they opened the line at 7:00 AM and, on those days were we didn't have an 8:00 AM class, we'd sit and drink coffee and talk.

He had the greatest (and most foul) sense of humor of just about anyone I ever met.

He was in Army ROTC and we used to sit with a real peacenik student. After again being castigated for belonging to the military, Joe looked at our friend and said, "You know. You're right. I could never shoot someone." The guy gave a big grin. "I'd have to use a bayonet," he finished.

Another time, when the peacenik student said that Joe would probably follow any orders he was given up to and including bombing a church, Joe said, "Of COURSE we bomb the churches! That's where all the people hide!"

Joe and I were both involved in the Lehigh University Volunteers. He coordinated student volunteers at Sts. Cyril and Methodius elementary school while I worked at Wiley House (now KidsPeace).

The kids at Wiley House got into a chess craze. Joe had a rating of 1776 (an easy to remember and very high number) so he volunteered to come over and play simultaneous chess against all the kids in the unit. He had two stipulations: they had to use a standard black and red chessboard and black and white pieces.

When he got there, the kids had every imaginable type of chess set. He still managed to go around, board to board, and beat them all. I remember walking around the room helping to keep order and seeing him puzzle over his position against a kid who had an orange and red chessboard and dark green translucent and light green translucent chess pieces.

I remember him pointing out one twelve-year-old and telling me how good the kid was. I found out later that Joe bought him a chess set and paid for his membership for a year in whatever chess club Joe belonged to.

Joe was a Chemistry major and graduated with his Bachelor of Science degree and a Lieutenant's commission in the Army. He was engaged to be married.

That summer, while I worked at camp, Joe stayed in Bethlehem. He was an avid runner and one afternoon, I believe it was thirty-five years ago today, he went running with his fiance on his normal route: from Lehigh to the Minsi Trails Bridge, down the steps to the canal path, over to the New Street bridge, then back to Lehigh.

It was a very hot day and his fiance had to stop at the stairs of the Minsi Trails Bridge. He said he'd come get her with the car after the run.

He never came back. She went down the canal path and found him dead in the canal: he had apparently (possibly due to an undiagnosed condition) passed out, fallen into the canal and drowned in maybe six to eight inches of water.

It's one of the most arbitrary things I've ever experienced in life: he passed out and fell into the canal instead of on to the canal path.

And it was the difference between life and death.

I did not find out about this until some three weeks later when I got home from camp and called his house from my home in Seaford, Long Island.

It's always been hard for me (if not impossible) to reconcile myself to such a tragic, inexplicable end to such a wonderful, talented and loving person with his whole life ahead of him.

And then I remember that stuff like that happens all the time, every day, all over the world.

Our lives really do hang by threads all of the time, whether we realize it or not.

Ryan White, the young man who died after a long battle with AIDs and bigotry was eulogized by his pastor at his memorial.

I can't find the exact quote, but the pastor basically said, "We prayed for a miracle not realizing, until now, that Ryan WAS the miracle."

And while Joe certainly had a short but happy life full of accomplishment and service to others and family and friends rather than one of struggle against illness and hate, I believe Joe's life was a miracle as well.

Maybe all life is a miracle.

The Starfish and the Spider (Summary, All Chapters)

2011-01-20T05:22:00.009-05:00

The Starfish and the Spider:
The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Introduction

When researchers studied how the brain forms memories, rather than a top-down structure, they found "a mess." Memories triggered neuron activity in multiple areas of the brain without apparent rhyme or reason. To wipe out one's first memory of grandma, one cannot simply go and eliminate the so-called "grandma" cell. Memories, even individual memories, of grandma are distributed throughout the brain structure.

This book is the story of what happens in an organization "when no one's in charge."

Napster, al Qaeda, Craigslist and Wikipedia are just a few of the decentralized organizations to be examined in this book.

Chapter One: MGM's Mistake and the Apache Mystery

A college student invented a music-swapping protocol that allowed people to download music and share it with each other. Unfortunately for the music business, they were doing this without paying any royalties. They were, in effect, stealing the music. The music industry took them to court and won. Napster was destroyed. But then other groups started file-sharing and the music industry went after them and the music industry again took them to court time after time and won. The industry attacked those downloading the music as well as those who enabled the thefts. But despite winning case after case, the problem of music piracy increased. It was almost as if the more they were attacked, the stronger they became.

As the authors were investigating this, they came across Tom Nevins, a cultural anthropologist. Nevin described Cortez's victory over the Aztecs, in which he completely took over the vast Inca civilization in a period of about two years by taking over their capital city and killing (and replacing with there own puppet) Montezuma, the leader of the Aztecs. Pizarro accomplished the same feat with the Incas, again completely subjugating an ancient and vast civilization in about two years.

He then compared the experiences of the Aztecs and the Incas with the Apaches. The Apaches had no pyramids, highways or gold. The Spanish tried to turn them into farmers and while some took up that life, many resisted. The Apaches, unlike the Aztecs and the Incas, held off the Spanish for the next two centuries.

The difference, per Nevin, was that the Apaches were a decentralized society. They had no big chief, no headquarters, no hierarchy. Leaders who did emerge led by example rather than by any type of coercive power. In the Apache tribes they were the Nan'tan: spiritual and cultural leaders.

In this type of "open system," power and information and resources and decision-making are distributed throughout the elements of the tribe. It's not that there are no norms or sanctions, it is that such norms and sanctions are taught and enforced organically within the tribe rather than as a directive from "the top."

The Spanish found, as the music industry found, that when you attacked a decentralized organization you, in fact, made them stronger. The Spanish destroyed the Apache villages – the Apaches responded by developing a nomadic existence. The villages were simply not essential to the Apache way of life.

This leads to the first principle of decentralization: [Italics] "when attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become more open and decentralized." [/Italics] (p. 21)

If one looks at the music industry "pirates," one sees a similar pattern.

Napster (which was broken by the legal system) gave way to even more decentralized players such as Kazaa (which was forced to take legal sanctuary somewhere in the South Pacific), Grokster, Napster II, and eDonkey with each one becoming more and more decentralized, becoming a tougher target to hit legally. The final and possibly ultimate level of decentralized music sharing is eMule – an ubiquitous program so obscure that no one even knows who wrote it.

An entity such as eMule is beyond the reach of any corporate lawyer. Who do you sue?

Chapter Two: The Starfish, the Spider and the President of the Internet

In 1995 Dave Garrison, CEO of Netcom (an early ISP) attempted to get backing from French investors. He hit a stonewall when he couldn't respond to their question, "who is the president of the internet?" (Exasperated, he finally told them he was.)

The problem with the French is they didn't understand the difference between a spider and a starfish.

This leads to the second principle of decentralized organizations: [italics] it is easy to mistake starfish for spiders. [/italics]

A spider is a centralized creature. Cut off it's head and you kill it.

A starfish is a very decentralized creature. Cut it in half and you'll end up with two starfish. Cut off its legs and each leg will become a starfish.

Another example is the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. Ed Sheeran attempted to evacuate his crew because he knew, based on his personal experience, that the storm was coming. But he had to clear everything through his Jacksonville, FL headquarters. The resulting "drag" on information-sharing and decision-making caused many of Sheeran's men to die.

This brings us to the third principle of decentralization: [italics] "an open system doesn't have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system." [/italics]. (pp. 39 - 40)

Another decentralized organization is Alcoholics Anonymous. In Alcoholics Anonymous, no one is in charge. Yet everyone is in charge.

Decentralized organizations, unlike centralized organizations grow and adapt very quickly. So the fourth principle of decentralization is that [italics] "open systems can easily mutate." [/italics] (p. 40)

The fifth principle of decentralization is [italics] the decentralized organization sneaks up on you. [/italics] (p. 41)

If you look at the music industry over the last 100+ years you see a transition from individual musicians, to recorded music, to small independent labels, to large labels and then – with the internet and file swapping – to more and more decentralized structures: from Starfish to Spider to Starfish.

Looking at this economically, the sixth principle of decentralization is [italics] as industries decentralize, overall profits decrease. [/italics] (p.45)

How do you tell if you're looking at a starfish or a spider? By asking these questions:

1."Is there a person in charge?" (p.46)
2."Are there headquarters?" (p.46)
3."If you thump it on the head, will it die?" (p.47)
4."Is there a clear division of roles?" (p.48)
5."If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed?" (p.48)
6."Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed?" (p.46)
7."Is the organization flexible or rigid?" (p.50)
8."Can you count the employees or participants?" (p.50)
9."Are working groups funded by the organization or are they self-funding?" (p.51)
10."Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries?" (p.52)

Chapter Three: A Sea of Starfish

This chapter examines a number of successful decentralized organizations already out there including Skype, Craigslist, Apache, Wikipedia and the Burning Man festival. These all provide the data for the rest of the book.

But the immediate lesson from all these decentralized organizations is the seventh principle of decentralized organizations: [italics] ...put people into an open system and they'll automatically want to contribute.[/italics] (p.74)

Chapter Four: Standing on Five Legs

Granville Sharp was a musician and lawyer in the second half of the 18th century in England. He spent much of his life as an abolitionist and the decentralized movement to which he belonged demonstrated the five foundations of decentralized organizations:

1.Circles (p. 88): Successful decentralized organizations have many circles of volunteers who work with each other in non-hierarchical ways

2.The Catalyst (p. 91): Successful decentralized organizations usually have people who function as catalysts or facilitators or spiritual leaders rather than as top-down, authoritarian bosses.

3.Ideology (p. 94): Successful decentralized organizations are defined by their ideologies: ideologies that are freely embraced by their participants

4.The Pre-existing network (p. 96): Successful decentralized organizations often piggy-back off pre-existing networks. In Sharp's case, it was the Quakers. Today, the internet often fulfills that function.

5.The Champion (p. 98): Successful decentralized organizations often have a "front man" who champions the cause to the public. This person balances off the more low-key, behind-the-scenes catalyst. With the English abolitionists, that champion became Thomas Clarkson and the political face of the movement was represented by William Wilburforce, a member of Parliament.

Chapter Five: The Hidden Power of the Catalyst

Catalysts generally work by letting go and trusting the community. They often work behind-the-scenes. They generally have some or all of the following tools:

1.Genuine interest in others
2.Loose connections with a wide circle of people
3.Mapping – the ability to connect people
4.A desire to help
5.An ability to meet people where they are
6.Emotional intelligence
7.Trust
8.Ability to inspire
9.Tolerance for ambiguity
10.A hands-off approach to leadership
11.Receding – catalysts know when it's time to get themselves out of the way

Chapter Six: Taking on Decentralization

A young man known only as, "Sky" travels to a new town and recruits a circle of people to go into the woods on hunting days, track the hunters and make enough noise to scare the game. They wear orange jackets so that if an enraged hunter shoots them, it's obviously a homicide. Sky's various circles were loosely connected with a larger group of loosely connected circles known as the ALF (Animal Liberation Front), one of the largest animal rights group in America and Europe.

The ALF formed in the early '80s and made a name for itself by breaking into animal research labs and "liberating" the animals. They would take pictures of abused animals and circulated them to the press causing immense public relations problems for the lab. Increasingly the raids became more destructive and activists began burning labs to the ground. The FBI investigated and even penetrated some circles with informants. The results were minimal. A few ALF folks went to jail which largely served to make them folks heroes within the movement and attract even more new recruits.

The labs responded to the threat by changing the design and security procedures of their labs, in essence turning them into large underground bunkers with security cameras and other layers of security.

As with the Apaches, this demonstrates the eighth principle of decentralization: [italics] when attacked, centralized organizations tend to become even more centralized. [/italics] (p. 139).

A similar pattern of decentralized attack and centralized defense can be seen with Al Qaeda which almost precisely parallels the ALF situation.

Still, starfish organizations are not invincible and there are more effective countermeasures than reflexive centralization.

STRATEGY 1: Changing Ideology

The first example of changing the ideology takes place in Kenya where Ingrid Munro, a Swedish UN worker repeatedly put herself at risk to help the people in her slum. When she announced her retirement, the locals despaired. So Munro determined to help them become self-sufficient.

She told the women in the slum that for every unit of money they could save on their own, she'd loan them two units. The circle of women who did this guaranteed each others' loans and then used the money to start small businesses and so Ingrid Munro was an early pioneer in micro loans. Basically, she created a bank for poor people and folks for the first time in their lives had access to credit.

By enabling the women to build a better standard of living she slowly changed the ideology of the slum from, "my life has no future so I may as well join Al Qaeda," to "if I apply myself, I can create a better life for myself and my family."

A second example is in Afghanistan where a local catalyst named Abdullah, working for an organization called Future Generations started the "Poggel Party." "Poggel," in the local language means, "crazy." Abdullah told folks in his assigned village that if they were "poggel" enough to believe a better life was possible, join the party. Membership in the party cost 200 mud bricks.

They then used the vast amount of bricks they collected to begin a building program of schools and even hospitals. Again, with the prospect of a better life, Abdullah gradually changed the ideology of the village.

The third example was in Pakistan following the Kashmir earthquake of 2005. American Chinook helicopters brought relieve to isolated villages. The people, originally distrustful of Americans, began to consider the Chinook helicopters as America's best ambassadors.

None of these efforts are easy or quick. But with effort, the ideology that upholds a decentralized organization (in these examples, terrorist organizations) can be changed which undermines the group.

STRATEGY 2: Centralize Them (The Cow Approach)

As we saw, the Apaches resisted the efforts of the Spanish and later the Americans to change their culture for hundreds of years. Per cultural anthropologist Tom Nevins, the Apaches were a problem until 1914. Then the military came up with a startling solution.

They gave the Nant'ans cattle. By giving them a valuable and limited resource they changed the source of their power from the spiritual to the material. They now could either give or withhold this to individual members of the tribe as they saw fit.

The Nant'ans centralized power to protect their property and, once having done so, they became manageable just as the Aztecs and Incas before them.

A second example is AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). Bill W, the founder, wisely decided to let go of the reigns of power. When he finished, "The Big Book" he determined that all proceeds would go to the organization. At that time, there were probably only about a hundred people in the movement and he probably determined that such small amount of money as might be raised from book sales could be used to purchase chairs or stationary or whatever.

The book became a worldwide bestseller and suddenly a huge amount of money pored into the organization. They began fighting over what to do with it and even sued members to protect their copyright on the book.

As with the Nant'ans, with a valuable resource (whether cows or book royalties) comes the desire to centralize to protect and control the resource.

Give a catalyst control over the valuable resource and they become a CEO and their circles become competitive rather than cooperative.

STRATEGY 3: Decentralize Yourself (If You Can't Beat 'Em... Join 'Em)

One country having spent enormous financial and personnel resources attempting to fight Al Qaeda came up with an effective and cheap – if brutal – alternative.

During the day, their police functioned as normal police involved in normal, counter-insurgency procedures. At night they'd return in disguise, be given plenty of ammunition, and be sent out to hunt Al Qaeda as if they were prey. The police didn't even know which other police were involved and which were not. The program was devastating to Al Qaeda because the police knew their neighborhoods and knew who was a bad guy and who was a good guy.

Chapter 7: The Combo Special: The Hybrid Organization

eClass229 is an online store where, through its eBay store, one can get quality clothing at a fraction of the price you'd pay at a "brick and mortar" store.

The roots of eClass229 go back to 1995 and an online company called Onsale. Onsale knew that a critical element of buying online is trusting the vendor. So Onsale used only trusted manufacturers and pledged to stand behind the products they sold.

Along comes a person named Pierre Omidiar. He creates a similar company which soon became eBay. He added an additional twist to the Onsale concept: instead of a store, eBay would run online auctions in which buyers and sellers interacted directly with each other. So eBay never had possession of the inventory.

As with Onsale, Omidiar realized trust would be the central component to the system. To build trust into the system he empowered both buyers and sellers to rate each other on the trustworthiness of their transactions and to post those "trust" results to the web. Research has shown that those sellers with the highest trust rating earn significantly higher than lower trust sellers selling identical items. Trust is a commodity for which people will pay.

Despite all this, eBay is not a decentralized organization. It has a corporate headquarters, a CEO and a large physical plant employing many people. It is a hybrid organization: a centralized organization that has decentralized its customer service operation.

A key part of eBay's continuing success is due to its acquisition of PayPal. While people are willing to trust anonymous vendors with good trust ratings, they DO NOT trust them to the point of giving them their banking information. This is where PayPal comes in. PayPal is a centralized organization that guarantees the financial security of your credit card or other banking information.

Seeing eBay's success, Yahoo and Amazon attempted to duplicate that success with their own online auctions. And to lure customers from eBay, they eliminated eBay's listing fees.

One would think this would have worked: all other things being equal, lower price should win.

Their ventures, however, led to only limited success. The reason? Because eBay already had a vast number of "vetted" vendors. Buyers were unwilling to switch because the vendors at Yahoo and Amazon weren't vetted and Sellers were unwilling to switch because they were already established as vetted on eBay and saw no reason to start over again on a new network.

This situation demonstrates, "the network effect." Imagine the first person to have a phone. It is useless. But once the SECOND person acquires a phone, the value of the first phone goes up because you now have someone to call.

As each new phone is added to the network the value of ALL phones on the network go up. User ratings on eBay had the same, "network effect." One user recommendation is not very helpful. But millions of user recommendations are.

Despite its failure as a whole to steal away eBay's success in decentralized marketing, it HAS had limited success with low cost items such as books, CDs and DVDs and it allows third-party vendors to list their wares right alongside Amazon products.

Amazon has also introduced a new twist: user reviews of the products themselves. This is initially baffling. Unlike eBay "trust" ratings, product reviews are not essential to the system as a whole so the motive for writing such reviews is not to ensure the system's survival. Writers don't get paid to write reviews and, in fact, they don't even own the reviews they write – the right of ownership passes over to Amazon. So why do they do it?

They do it because that is the nature of open systems – people who use the system want to contribute to the system.

Another hybrid example is Oprah's book club. She has a centralized company. She recommended her first book. Sales went through the roof, far beyond what could be explained by her mere endorsement.

It turns out, a central aspect of Oprah's book club was for circles of women to get together to take time for themselves and to read quality novels. The 'bounce' occurred through the many decentralized circles of her club. Without intending to do so, and without making any money in the sales of the books, Oprah Winfrey became a powerhouse in the publishing world.

The creator of TurboTax and Quicken, the owner of Intuit (Scott Cook), found a similar result when he set up discussion boards on his various pieces of software. People would ask questions and they'd be answered at lightning speed. And the answers were good – so good that he incorporated some of them into the official documentation and even made product changes based on recommendations.

The sites sell no products – not even his own. And he made no attempt to "brand" the sites with the Intuit name. He simply found out that the entire user community was smarter than any one designer and he leveraged that fact to his company's advantage.

A next step is taken by companies like Google, Mozilla (Firefox), Apache and Sun Systems which utilizes their user communities to actually create the open source products. IBM even belatedly entered the game once it starting losing significant market share to open source Linux, assigning about 600 of its engineers to study and help build Linux and then centering ITS efforts on building computers that would run the operating system.

Beyond this, Sun and its competetor IBM tout the fact that applications created by either company will run on either machine. This is the opposite of the earlier strategy of trying to lock customers in to a proprietary system. Now, if customers try one package and are unsatisfied, they can painless switch to their competitor's. Sun has seen a rebound effect from those who abandoned their product, were unhappy with the IBM alternative and came back – grateful to Sun for allowing them an easy out.

Another example of hybrid decentralization is GE under Jack Welch. He made each operating segment completely independent – independent to the point that if they purchased resources from another segment they needed to pay full market price!

While this seems counter-intuitive (to say the least) it fit in with Welch's strategy: reduce operating inefficiencies, be number one or two in a market or get out and, if a business unit can't do that, sell it.

Another example of a centralized organization successfully using decentralization strategies is venture capitalist Tim Draper. While most venture capital firms are like fortresses where the only way your proposal is even seen is if it is promoted by someone trusted by the firm, Drapers firm opened offices all over the world and examines ever proposal on the idea that local markets (e.g., in foreign countries) know best what will work in their market.

The final form of hybrid organization looked at is economics Professor David Cooperrider of Case Western who developed a planning tool known as "appreciative inquiry" in which individuals at all levels of the organization are paired with each other across hierarchical lines and then interview each other using questions Cooperrider developed to encourage people to open up with each other. They then come back to a large meeting in which each contributor shares their vision for the company. While sounding touchy-feely, it captures information from the very boundaries of the work environment and has been used successfully by trucking companies, the US Navy and other industries.

Chapter 8: In Search of the Sweet Spot

In hybrid companies, one must find the best possible balance – the sweet spot – between centralization and decentralization.

This chapter reviews the various hybrids discussed in the previous chapter and talks about how they swung back and forth until they found the proper mix, the sweet spot, between centralization and decentralization.

Generally, information-oriented operations (e.g., the bidding and trust rating processes on eBay) or operations where something illegal (e.g. the Animal Liberation Front) or embarrassing is involved (e.g., AA) will tend to swing towards decentralization while operations requiring security and accountability (e.g., Paypal) will tend to swing towards centralization.

Chapter 9: The New World

When the world is changing rapidly, it is easy to be left behind. While the rest of the world was investing in telephone networks in 1917, the Soviet Union – fearing the decentralized nature of phone networks – opted instead for a nation-wide system of loudspeakers allowing the government to talk to the people while inhibiting the people's ability to speak to each other. Their poor strategic decision preventing efficient collaboration between workers certainly hindered their economic growth.

At times like that (and times like now) one discovers the rules are changing and new rules apply.

RULE 1: Diseconomies of Scale
It used to be the big dogs had the clout. Not necessarily anymore. Being small allows one to leverage the lowers costs of fewer employees and infrastructure. Think ATT and Skype.

RULE 2: The Network Effect
Each node added to the network increases the value of each node and the network as a whole.

RULE 3: The Power of Chaos
Whereas the old economy advantaged "command and control" the new economy increasingly values creativity. And creativity requires a certain capacity for chaos.

RULE 4: Knowledge at the Edge
There are ways in which the line worker at a car assembly plant knows more than the CEO. Smart companies will harvest this "knowledge at the edge" and increasingly learn to decentralize knowledge throughout the organization.

RULE 5: Everyone Wants to Contribute
The "Burning Man" festival, Wikipedia, Amazon user reviews, etc. demonstrate a fundamental trait of decentralized, open systems: the people who use the system will want to contribute and add value to the system.

RULE 6: Beware the Hydra Response
There are ways of battling a decentralized organization – but DON'T try to cut off its head or you'll discover what the music industry found out when it attempted to take on the music pirates.

RULE 7: Catalysts Rule
Catalysts are essential to decentralized organizations but not because they "command and control" but because they inspire, empower and know when to let go.

RULE 8: The Values ARE the Organization
A decentralized organization without an identifiable boss, staff or structure IS its ideology. Take away or change the ideology and the organization dies.

RULE 9: Measure, Monitor and Manage
The metrics change. "What matters more is looking at circles. How active are they? How distributed is the network? Are circles independent? What kind of connections do they have between them?" and "How's the circle's health? Do members continue participating? Is the network growing? Is it spreading? Is it mutating? Is it becoming more or less decentralized?" (p. 207)

RULE 10: Flatten or Be Flattened
You can beat a decentralized organization by attempting to change the members' ideology or by trying to centralize them. But often the best response is to meet a decentralized threat with a decentralized response. For traditional centralized organizations such as General Motors or GE, that meant becoming more decentralized or even becoming a hybrid.

END

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
First published by Portfolio, A Member of the Penguine Group (2006)
Penguin Group, New York, NY

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

2011-01-06T14:16:00.005-05:00

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Chapters One Through Five Summarized by Bill Bekkenhuis

Introduction

When researchers studied how the brain forms memories, rather than a top-down structure, they found "a mess." Memories triggered neuron activity in multiple areas of the brain without apparent rhyme or reason. To wipe out one's first memory of grandma, one cannot simply go and eliminate the so-called "grandma" cell. Memories, even individual memories, of grandma are distributed throughout the brain structure.

This book is the story of what happens in an organization "when no one's in charge."

Napster, al Qaeda, Craigslist and Wikipedia are just a few of the decentralized organizations to be examined in this book.

Chapter One: MGM's Mistake and the Apache Mystery

A college student invented a music-swapping protocol that allowed people to download music and share it with each other. Unfortunately for the music business, they were doing this without paying any royalties. They were, in effect, stealing the music. The music industry took them to court and won. Napster was destroyed. But then other groups started file-sharing and the music industry went after them and the music industry again took them to court time after time and won. The industry attacked those downloading the music as well as those who enabled the thefts. But despite winning case after case, the problem of music piracy increased. It was almost as if the more they were attacked, the stronger they became.

As the authors were investigating this, they came across Tom Nevins, a cultural anthropologist. Nevin described Cortez's victory over the Aztecs, in which he completely took over the vast Inca civilization in a period of about two years by taking over their capital city and killing (and replacing with there own puppet) Montezuma, the leader of the Aztecs. Pizarro accomplished the same feat with the Incas, again completely subjugating an ancient and vast civilization in about two years.

He then compared the experiences of the Aztecs and the Incas with the Apaches. The Apaches had no pyramids, highways or gold. The Spanish tried to turn them into farmers and while some took up that life, many resisted. The Apaches, unlike the Aztecs and the Incas, held off the Spanish for the next two centuries.

The difference, per Nevin, was that the Apaches were a decentralized society. They had no big chief, no headquarters, no hierarchy. Leaders who did emerge led by example rather than by any type of coercive power. In the Apache tribes they were the Nan'tan: spiritual and cultural leaders.

In this type of "open system," power and information and resources and decision-making are distributed throughout the elements of the tribe. It's not that there are no norms or sanctions, it is that such norms and sanctions are taught and enforced organically within the tribe rather than as a directive from "the top."

The Spanish found, as the music industry found, that when you attacked a decentralized organization you, in fact, made them stronger. The Spanish destroyed the Apache villages – the Apaches responded by developing a nomadic existence. The villages were simply not essential to the Apache way of life.

This leads to the first principle of decentralization: "when attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become more open and decentralized." (p. 21)

If one looks at the music industry "pirates," one sees a similar pattern.

Napster (which was broken by the legal system) gave way to even more decentralized players such as Kazaa (which was forced to take legal sanctuary somewhere in the South Pacific), Grokster, Napster II, and eDonkey with each one becoming more and more decentralized, becoming a tougher target to hit legally. The final and possibly ultimate level of decentralized music sharing is eMule – an ubiquitous program so obscure that no one even knows who wrote it.

An entity such as eMule is beyond the reach of any corporate lawyer. Who do you sue?

Chapter Two: The Starfish, the Spider and the President of the Internet

In 1995 Dave Garrison, CEO of Netcom (an early ISP) attempted to get backing from French investors. He hit a stonewall when he couldn't respond to their question, "who is the president of the internet?" (Exasperated, he finally told them he was.)

The problem with the French is they didn't understand the difference between a spider and a starfish.

This leads to the second principle of decentralized organizations: "it is easy to mistake starfish for spiders."

A spider is a centralized creature. Cut off it's head and you kill it.

A starfish is a very decentralized creature. Cut it in half and you'll end up with two starfish. Cut off its legs and each leg will become a starfish.

Another example is the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. Ed Sheeran attempted to evacuate his crew because he knew, based on his personal experience, that the storm was coming. But he had to clear everything through his Jacksonville, FL headquarters. The resulting "drag" on information-sharing and decision-making caused many of Sheeran's men to die.

This brings us to the third principle of decentralization: "an open system doesn't have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system." (pp. 39 - 40)

Another decentralized organization is Alcoholics Anonymous. In Alcoholics Anonymous, no one is in charge. Yet everyone is in charge.

Decentralized organizations, unlike centralized organizations grow and adapt very quickly. So the fourth principle of decentralization is that "open systems can easily mutate." (p. 40)

The fifth principle of decentralization is "the decentralized organization sneaks up on you." (p. 41)

If you look at the music industry over the last 100+ years you see a transition from individual musicians, to recorded music, to small independent labels, to large labels and then – with the internet and file swapping – to more and more decentralized structures: from Starfish to Spider to Starfish.

Looking at this economically, the sixth principle of decentralization is [italics] as industries decentralize, overall profits decrease. [/italics] (p.45)

How do you tell if you're looking at a starfish or a spider? By asking these questions:

"Is there a person in charge?" (p.46)
"Are there headquarters?" (p.46)
"If you thump it on the head, will it die?" (p.47)
"Is there a clear division of roles?" (p.48)
"If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed?" (p.48)
"Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed?" (p.46)
"Is the organization flexible or rigid?" (p.50)
"Can you count the employees or participants?" (p.50)
"Are working groups funded by the organization or are they self-funding?" (p.51)
"Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries?" (p.52)

Chapter Three: A Sea of Starfish

This chapter examines a number of successful decentralized organizations already out there including Skype, Craigslist, Apache, Wikipedia and the Burning Man festival. These all provide the data for the rest of the book.

But the immediate lesson from all these decentralized organizations is the seventh principle of decentralized organizations: " ...put people into an open system and they'll automatically want to contribute." (p.74)

Chapter Four: Standing on Five Legs

Granville Sharp was a musician and lawyer in the second half of the 18^th century in England. He spent much of his life as an abolitionist and the decentralized movement to which he belonged demonstrated the five foundations of decentralized organizations:

Circles (p. 88): Successful decentralized organizations have many circles of volunteers who work with each other in non-hierarchical ways
The Catalyst (p. 91): Successful decentralized organizations usually have people who function as catalysts or facilitators or spiritual leaders rather than as top-down, authoritarian bosses.
Ideology (p. 94): Successful decentralized organizations are defined by their ideologies: ideologies that are freely embraced by their participants
The Pre-existing network (p. 96): Successful decentralized organizations often piggy-back off pre-existing networks. In Sharp's case, it was the Quakers. Today, the internet often fulfills that function.
The Champion (p. 98): Successful decentralized organizations often have a "front man" who champions the cause to the public. This person balances off the more low-key, behind-the-scenes catalyst. With the English abolitionists, that champion became Thomas Clarkson and the political face of the movement was represented by William Wilburforce, a member of Parliament.

Chapter Five: The Hidden Power of the Catalyst

Catalysts generally work by letting go and trusting the community. They often work behind-the-scenes. They generally have some or all of the following tools:

Genuine interest in others
Loose connections with a wide circle of people
Mapping – the ability to connect people
A desire to help
An ability to meet people where they are
Emotional intelligence
Trust
Ability to inspire
Tolerance for ambiguity
A hands-off approach to leadership
Receding – catalysts know when it's time to get themselves out of the way

END OF SUMMARY FOR CHAPTERS ONE THROUGH FIVE. THE REMAINING CHAPTERS DEAL WITH DEFEATING DECENTRALIZED ORGANIZATIONS, FINDING THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF DECENTRALIZATION AND THE HYBRID ORGANIZATION COMBINING CHARACTERISTICS OF BOTH.

That's not where my interests are at the moment, though I may return to the book later.

Why I Bother With Online Arguments

2010-12-16T07:00:00.002-05:00

Generally speaking, I argue about religion and politics.

Generally speaking, I argue with folks and within environments in which I have no reasonable chance of swaying the other to my position.

Beyond that, even if I could sway others to my position, it generally wouldn't matter in the greater scheme of things.

President Obama doesn't care what I think. Neither does Mitch McConnell. My congressional rep, Charlie Dent, could conceivably care what I think but I'm sure he's much more concerned with, for example, what the Republican House leadership or the NRA or AARP thinks.

So my goals are more limited.

First, I hope that some of my more thoughtful rhetorical adversaries will bring an information source or argument to the table that I had not previously considered. Because then it's not a complete waste of time as I will have learned something.

Second, I hope that some of my more thoughtful rhetorical adversaries will actually consider my own contribution of data or argument to the extent that they could give a rousing defense of it even if they did not ultimately accept it.

Beyond that (as well as merely providing an excuse to chat with friends, many of whom are no longer local to me) I don't expect very much from online discussion.

A Brief Comment on "Citizen's United"

2010-10-29T10:05:00.001-04:00

Why is money such a big deal in politics? Particularly SECRET money?

The old-fashioned answer is corruption, corruption of the most venial type.

The office-holder would like some gravy on their meatloaf. :-)

But it's become something MORE than that.

Money buys media. And it takes BIG money to buy media. And media buys elections. And the media need not be anything particularly accurate or truthful to be effective.

So, whereas only the venial politician was tempted by corruption, now the most civic-minded politician in the world is similarly tempted.

Because you can't serve the public if you're not elected and you can't get elected unless you have the media which means money which means kissing the right corporate butts and having the "correct" position on issues.

If there is an answer (beyond transparency) to the issue of money in politics it is an educated, critically-thinking electorate.

In the end, it is voters, not corporations, that cast ballots.

And, as Lincoln said, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The End Of The World As We Know It

2010-10-29T08:48:00.009-04:00

Okay, so I hyped it a bit. :-)

'Tis the season.

In case anyone is unaware (e.g., they've been away in an alternate reality, they're in a coma, etc.), Americans vote next Tuesday. (Actually, I believe Americans vote every day, but that's another issue for another day.)

Democrats are going to take a thumping. The party holding the presidency almost always takes a thumping in the mid-terms, but this might be an exceptional thumping.

The Mother of All Thumpings.

But, never fear.

Democratic pundits have all the bases covered.

If the Dems retain control of both houses, that will be good for Obama.

If the Dems lose the House but retain the Senate, that will be better for Obama.

If the Dems lose both the House and the Senate, that will be the best for Obama.

Following the trajectory, one could only presume that if Obama figured out how to lose both houses of Congress and the presidency in this off-year election, he'd be in the strongest of all possible positions to advance his agenda.

So, we're covered.

In fact, one can only hope that Democratic strategist have a "disaster recovery" plan in case, by some dreadful mishap, Democrats retain control of both houses.

I hope everyone votes. [Even my reptilian-brain-washed Republican friends and family. :-]

I myself am voting a straight Democratic ticket on principle (sorry, Charlie Dent, R - PA 15th but you'll probably win anyway :-) : a Republican Party far more right-wing and obstructionist than this Republican can tolerate may take control of one or both houses BUT NOT WITH MY CONSENT AND NOT BY MY NEGLECT.

Afghans and Iraqis vote in far more troubling governmental situations than our own and at risk to their life.

And patriots since the American Revolution have died to secure the vote for us.

So I'm voting. And that's that.

But, after electoral Armageddon we're going to wake up in the morning and find out that with this particular Armageddon, unlike the real thing, the sun will come up the next day.

So what then?

I will venture my predictions which are more long term (say, 5 – 10 years) rather than short term.

First, politically, no matter who wins the mid-terms, no matter who wins the presidency in 2012, unless pragmatic, non-ideological, centrist Democrats and Republicans start rejecting the extremists in their parties and begin working together, our national political scene will remain gridlocked. (Or a similarly minded third party of the so-called "radical center" will develop.)

Democrats will hate the gridlock as it blocks what they're trying to get done and Republicans will love it because they don't want what Democrats want to get done to get done. In fact, they don't want anything to get done. As Senator Mitch McConnell put it, The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

So do not look to Congressional Republicans for leadership. Their legislative agenda is getting rid of Obama.

Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that there are vital issues that need to be addressed: employment, the deficit (which means dealing with taxes and entitlements), education (which is Greek for "future employment"), immigration (ditto), energy policy, and climate change. And that's not even considering foreign policy issues.

Hope is not a policy. Neither is "No!"

So look for the adults, the centrists from both parties.

Next prediction?

Don't look for the centrists in Washington, DC. (They are there but, for the reasons described above, will probably be pretty helpless at getting "those crazy kids" on both sides of the aisle to listen to reason.)

Look for them at the state and local level.

At that level of government, generally speaking, you can't run deficits and you can't just print more money – you have to make things work in the real world or the real world wastes no time taking a great big bite out of your butt.

Also, particularly at the local level, the people running government for a community also live there. And they are known by their neighbors. And their kids go to the local schools, etc.

So making things work at the local level is not just their job, it's their life and the lives of their families.

Combine these two predictions and you have a local model of political action: the big problems are not going to be addressed at the national level and, most of us not being huge corporations or very rich people who can write big checks, we don't have many levers to pull (other than the one on Election Day) to hold them accountable.

The best thing we can do to help such surviving adults in congress is to give them local, hopefully scalable approaches to such national problems as employment, energy, education, the environment, etc.

That is, WE NEED TO BE THE LEADERS WE'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR in our own neighborhoods and towns and hope that our government learns to follow our lead. (And they will, once local leadership is sufficiently empowered to let their local congressmen know that the game is up and that all the corporate money in the world will not save them.)

So, two pieces of advice for my fellow left-leaning friends.

First, vote! (People who would have you believe that not voting actually accomplishes something are far more self-deceived than voters will ever be.)

Second, if the Republicans take one or both houses of congress, don't jump off a bridge! :-)

There are more attractive (and useful) options at our disposal.

Diary 102710; PAYING THE RENT, FEEDING THE DOG

2010-10-27T08:31:00.002-04:00

Having spent the last leisurely seven months considering what knowledge, skills and attitudes I have to offer an employer and the types of employers to whom I would like to offer those knowledge, skills and attitudes (as well as working for the US Census and perusing the help wanted ads, such as they were), I am ready to move to active job hunting.

I've created an employer database using Base by Open Office and plan to have two-hundred prospect employers in that database by close of business on Monday, November 1st.

I'll then pick up the phone and start snooping around a bit to see if the employment situation in the Lehigh Valley is as dire as everyone says it is.

I am posting this online to ensure my plan's success as I've found public shame and humiliation a useful motivational tool. :-)

Notes on "The Transition Handbook"

2010-10-21T09:46:00.004-04:00

Another terrific book I hope to acquire soon.

The book deals with an anticipated shortage of cheap, safe, easy-to-extract oil. It does not assert that we are running out of oil, per se, but that while for the past hundred years we've produced more and more oil each year we are now reaching, if we haven't already past it, our peak oil production capacity. (See Peak Oil at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil )

This means that each year, less and less oil will be produced and oil prices will rise – perhaps dramatically.

As almost all the power we use for industrial and residential use as well as used to ship the material items we need is ultimately provided by fossil fuel, this – alongside of disruptions produced by global warming - promises to be a very disruptive change if we do not take the ten to twenty years it will take to re-gear our economy to one based on local production of energy and food.

He uses two historical examples of how this was done: Great Britain's re-tooling of its agriculture program during WWII as well as Cuba's re-tooling of its agriculture after its Soviet Union lifeline collapsed in the early '90s.

He also sites contemporary examples of so-called transition initiatives in which communities are deliberately "powering down" to face the coming challenges. (See Transition Towns at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns )

Beyond the huge but specific problem this book addresses, it is my opinion that his largely positive, hopeful and happy approach goes beyond the immediate problem to other social problems such as unresponsive government, employment, education and other issues.

Namely, we need to not wait for the government to solve these issues (although government will ultimately have to involve itself) but to engage them ourselves, as communities of citizens, at the local level.

In all of these issues it is becoming the role of the citizenry to lead the government, rather than vice versa.

The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins
at http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Handbook-Dependency-Resilience-Guides/dp/1900322188/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287350955&sr=1-1

Notes on Religion and Politics in America (Fourth Edition)

2010-10-20T07:57:00.002-04:00

This is a terrific book and a must-have for anyone, especially activists, who need to know the specifics regarding America's long-standing and deep connection between religion and politics.

I plan to get it as soon as possible but wish to record a few brief notes.

Four dimensions in American religion: Puritan, pluralist, evangelical and populist.
Churches growing the fastest are the ones whose values and communities are distinguishable or in tension with the dominant culture and that make demands on their adherents.
As pervasive as the religious impulse is in America, its effects on public life are muted. This is because the founders set up a system in which no sect is established and all – grudgingly or not – must tolerate those sects with which they disagree as the price of being accepted itself. So all religions can have influence, but the system makes it all but impossible for any one sect to have dominance.
Factors affecting a church's influence include size, isolation vs. involvement in the political process, geography, socio-economic islolation and respectability.
Religious lobbies have limited effects on policies except when they are able to form coalitions. Religions that wish more influence need to participate in the intellectual discussions of our day and need to engage in culture-building activities such as congregations, schools, colleges and media outlets.
The relationship of political and cultural elites to religion is complicated. Simply knowing that a congressman is Jewish, for example, does not necessarily predict their voting pattern.
Religious disputes are more often arbitrated in the courts than in the legislative or executive branches. Access to the courts gives even small religious groups an opportunity to defend against encrouchments from the larger society.
A key issue is the relationship between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause in the First Amendment.

END

Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture, and Strategic Choices by Robert Booth Fowler, Allen D. Hertzke, Laura R. Olson, and Kevin R. den Dulk at http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Politics-America-Culture-Strategic/dp/0813344360/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287573742&sr=8-1

Institutional Commitment

2010-10-12T11:52:00.010-04:00

First, to answer the obvious question.

No. I haven't been. Not yet, anyway. :-)

But I've been thinking a great deal about the current American and world situation as well as my own unemployed situation.

I've done a great deal of reading (from increasingly reputable sources), a certain amount of serious thinking but have taken nowhere near enough serious action. That, however, is about to change.

As I see it, the battlegrounds on which I will fight over the next several years of my life are mostly going to take place within various institutions: businesses, churches and other voluntary organizations.

As the late Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams emphasized throughout much of his writing, voluntary associations in America are the access points into which ordinary folks can amplify their voice and negotiate with the state, megabusiness and the other Powers That Be. (See James Luther Adams at http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/jameslutheradams.html )

THE CHURCH

The first institution, the one that – to me – ties my involvement in all the others together, is the church.

As a Christian who is theologically indebted to the late lawyer and Episcopal lay theologian William Stringfellow, I see those Powers That Be as fallen (not evil – there is a difference) and see their ethics as seeking to either enthrall or terrify human beings, ultimately preying upon them to ensure their own survival the concern for which they are consumed. (See "William Stringfellow at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stringfellow )

The Powers That Be, in essence, demand worship.

3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. 4 Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?"

5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. 6 He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. (Revelation 13:3-7 (New International Version))

It is the specific ministry of Christians (as well as the more general service of interfaith and secular allies) to discern and challenge ownership claims of "the beast" over people and our natural environment in whatever guise or disguise they may appear, recalling them to their true vocation of glorifying God (for those so-convinced) and serving others (on which we all can agree).

The chief tool I, personally, can bring to that ministry is my gift of encouragement. Christians truly believe in providence and the sovereignty of God over the Powers That Be and therefore Christians are, if I dare say so, uniquely empowered to encourage others no matter how dark or even hopeless the situation as the foundation justifying the encouragement is not ourselves nor any human capacity but the trustworthiness of God.

And therefore, while God can be discerned anywhere in the world, I believe the God Christians believe was most clearly incarnate in a crucified human being in ancient times is also most clearly encountered in contemporary times in the poor, the sick and dying, the criminal, the insane, sexual minorities and, more generally, in exactly those people and sub-cultures that the dominant culture has consigned to societal death and would, if it had its way, "bury" out of sight.

As a Christian, one performs this ministry as part of a community and when one is in a community of at least relatively like-minded Christians, we call that community a church. Many of them look like the ordinary churches we're all familiar with. Some look a bit more exotic, occuring in para-church institutions and interfaith and/or secular institutions.

My particular calling, at this time anyway, seems to be to perform this service of discerning the Powers and encouraging and allying with the humans who contend with them in the interfaith and secular setting known as Unitarian Universalism.

Churches (as well as synagogues, mosques, temples, etc.) operate in two modes.

On the community worship day (generally Sunday), the community gathers and explicitly affirms and celebrates its faith. In a Christian church, that would be done in explicitly Christian terms. In Unitarian Universalism, that is done using a variety of religious and secular languages, rituals and cultural forms (including, on occasion, Christian ones).

The second mode is what occurs the other six days of the week, namely, the dispersal of churches (that is, the community) throughout the world in families, neighborhoods, occupations and volunteer organizations.

As I believe the evangelical theologian Elton Trueblood expressed these two modes, the church gathered and the church scattered.

So my first and primary institutional focus will be the church.

And my specific projects within the church will be to help lead adult religious education programs (including the church's Christian fellowship), to provide staffing to youth religious education programs when needed and to escort at the Allentown Women's Center to mitigate the effect of anti-choice bullying.

POLITICS AND THE COFFEE PARTY MOVEMENT

If religion is a primary concern of mine a closely related concern would be politics, particularly a politics focusing on civil, informed discussion on America's challenges and holding government officials accountable for delivering humane, pragmatic and non-ideological efforts to address those challenges.

Therefore, a second institutional venue in which I plan to contribute is the Coffee Party Movement in Bethlehem. At the present time, the Coffee Party Movement in Bethlehem is more of an idea and a mailing list than an actuality, but I believe the Coffee Party Movement's analysis of our political dilemma is correct and that its ideas to move towards solutions will stand the test of time and I will continue to commit to helping it do so.

There are many activist organizations out there mounting politically significant movements to address specific social problems, but the Coffee Party Movement represents, in my opinion, the best opportunity to draw non-activists (such as I've been) across the line into becoming activists and showing them the various like-minded groups out there.

THE TRANSITION INITIATIVE AND THE ADVENT OF ENERGY SCARCITY

As my increasing political interest has brought me into contact with the legion of serious problems with which America and the world are faced, I am becoming convinced that the key issue of our day (if not way, way before our day) is sustainability, both environmental and economic.

Our use of the planet's resources, particularly energy, is simply unsustainable in both environmental and economic realms. The concentration of those resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations, a concentration causing the enormous and growing gap between rich and poor, both in America and worldwide, is simply unsustainable. The use of that wealth to buy governments and prevent remedial action, is simply unsustainable.

This is leading me down paths that I've never been particularly drawn to before: energy conservation and the development of renewable sources of energy.

The institutional model I'm being drawn to in an attempt to educate myself on these issues is the emerging idea of so-called transition towns. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns )

This is a movement that recognizes that the era of cheap, easy to extract and safe oil is coming to an end and that rising energy costs will profoundly change society. Rather than wait for government to respond (though certainly supportive of efforts to make it more responsive), it seeks to empower small groups to initiate grass-roots efforts to become resilient in the face of changes to come.

And it recognizes that before energy consumption can change, people and cultures must change.

Like the militia movement, it seeks to prepare citizens for a coming social upheaval.

Unlike the militia movement, it uses gardens and flourescent lights instead of guns. :-)

PAYING THE RENT, FEEDING THE DOG

Oh, yeah. Guess I need a job, too. :-)

Jobs are important, not just because we need the money but because they are sources of meaning and friendship and personal growth and opportunities to contribute to the common good and – when you think on it – are probably where we spend almost half of our waking time.

(There are 168 hours in a week: if we spend 56 hours sleeping and 50 hours at work (including commuting) that leaves 62 "conscious" hours. With that type of weekly commitment, week after week, you certainly don't want to spend 50 hours a week at some place you loathe. :-)

After my 6.5 month Sabbatical since becoming unemployed, I made a number of decisions regarding myself and what I have to offer to an employer.

Reviewing my past jobs, I find that I work best in small businesses requiring a combination of my sales, training, servicing, writing (procedures and sales proposals) and database skills.

I also need to work in environments that either support the values listed above (e.g., my most recent employer who helps companies keep their pharmaceuticals safe and their facilities energy efficient) or are at least somewhat neutral regarding them (e.g., my work at EDS in support of Bethlehem Steel which manufactured steel – steel being useful for making weapons but also for building hospitals and infrastructure).

My biorhythms and other vocational interests (as in all of the above) lead me in the direction of daytime employment in a Monday through Friday situation, though I can be flexible regarding overtime and occasional weekend work.

My primary targets, as I believe they will be the first to start hiring, will be small businesses in the medical or energy fields as well as companies that export to emerging markets such as India and China.

SO...

This constitutes my plan to contribute my knowledge, skills and attitude, such as they are, to the institutions where I believe I can get the most bang for the buck (including the business of my future employer that I hope will allow me to continue enjoying luxuries I've grown fond of such as eating and living indoors :-).

There is another plan that I'm working on - personal rather than institutional.

For anyone into the Myers-Briggs thing, my reporting out as an INFP indicates a heavy tendency towards introspection (which is always a surprise to those who know me well) and a hesitancy to bring things to closure. (See "INFP" at http://www.personalitypage.com/INFP.html )

Both of these factors explain my being quick to read and analyze and write but slow to act - action requires reaching out and engaging people and that, for someone heavily introspective, requires major energy.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy face-to-face interactions (I do) nor to say I'm not good at it (I am) - just to recognize that whereas extroverts find such interactions energizing for me it's an energy drain.

And that has caused me to be more theoretical than practical, more idealistic than activist. And I need to begin compensating for that - which I can, now that I see it.

But, regarding my institutional or, I guess you could say, public commitments, that's the plan.

And now that I've posted it on my blog for all the world to see I guess I need to execute the plan or suffer severe public humiliation and disgrace. And poverty. Let's not forget poverty. :-)

Hmmm... getting this done was my goal for the morning and so I have.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Brief Summary of My Theology of Ministry

2010-09-17T11:42:00.001-04:00

Brief Summary of My Theology of Ministry

It's funny. In my senior year at seminary I had to write a theology of ministry, looking forward to see what my approach to ministry would be. If I remember correctly (lost my only copy, unfortunately) it was about thirty pages long.

Now I'm in a situation where I've got about thirty years of track record, such as it is, in a variety of ministry settings in both religious, social service and business organizations.

Looking back at what I actually do (as compared to what I had planned to do) and why I do it can be easily summarized in less than a page. I've either become very concise or don't remember much of what I learned in seminary or maybe just don't have much of a ministry (maybe some combination of the three :-).

But, for what it's worth...

My theology of ministry is rooted in the Bible and the broad mainstream of the Christian tradition. I've been involved in a number of different churches (including Roman Catholic, Methodist, American Baptist and last and most exotic, the Unitarian Universalist church) but my "true" church home would probably be in the Episcopal church. (As we used to say, all the religion of the Catholics with half the guilt. :-)

Putting it in simple (if mythical) terms, its center is in the death and resurrection of God in Christ, an event which defeats the Power of Death (the atonement) and is available in the ordinary life of all the world (the incarnation).

The notion that the catastrophe of Jesus' death on the cross is the very ground of victory is ironic on its face and the irony extends to how we encounter, share and respond to the experience of the death and resurrection of God in Christ in our own ordinary lives.

Because I've come to realize that the very foundation of hope is most clearly (and, again, most ironically) revealed in the heart of our darkest despair.

It is when all ordinary connotations of hope are gone that the hope which remains is most trustworthy, the least likely to be based in some false hope placed in some false idol or god.

My particular ministry appears to be centered in the communication of hope not just in moments of deepest despair but in all the events in our ordinary lives. Many events do not come to a happy ending on this earth but such legitimate hope as is found functions, I believe, as a sacrament: an outward and visible sign of an inner, invisible, but very real hope for the consummation and completion of all creation in Jesus Christ.

It would appear I have strong communication skills (verbal and written) that I use in this communication, specifically an ability to use humor (which is often based on irony), an ability to provide service, an ability to teach, and – on rare occasions – an ability to be persuasive.

As I've put together my resume for the job hunt and tried to discern some order in the wild riot of jobs I've had, it seems these are the common threads in each and I suspect they'll continue to be significant aspects of such contribution as I can make in either employment, volunteer work or just plain social interaction with others.

Five Simple Steps: Rules of Engagement

2010-09-13T03:50:00.002-04:00

Five Simple Steps: Rules of Engagement

The point of posting this is to explicitly state what Bill Bekkenhuis intends to do when he converses online. If you are not also doing this or something very similar, then Bill may or may not have any interest in engaging you as we are doing two different things.

There are three legitimate points of civil discussion.
1. Entertainment
2. Education
3. Persuasion

There are five core principles enabling informed, civil discussion:

1. Presumption of Positive Intent: Presume positive intent by all unless you can substantiate otherwise
2. Civil Discussion: Be civil (presumed by number one)
3. Cards on the Table: Be explicit regarding one's database of information
4. Assertions Supported by Evidence: Back up all factual assertions with links to the database
5. Assertions Supported by Reason: Use valid reasoning.

Links

Rhetoric (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

List of Fallacies (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Persuasion (Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion

Five Simple Steps: True Value

2010-09-07T04:34:00.003-04:00

Just a quick list I wanted to capture of the things I consider to be of true value. The goal would be to prioritize and target these items for both my consumption and as the values I wish to support in the way of my personal production.

Security / Peace
Medical care (urgent, long term, preventative)
Shelter
Clean Air
Clean Water
Safe Food
Education (including access to quality media)
Work (fulfilling and productive)
Culture (music, art, entertainment, etc.)
Environment (pleasant and in-balance)
Family / Friends / Community
Personal Meaning / Significance and Encouragement

I find it thought provoking that even though satisfying the world's population with these seems to be beyond our current reach, still, it's really not a very large list. I mean, it's not like there are hundreds and thousands of items on it.

Thankfully, I have a least a survivable portion of most of these at the moment.

How You Can Change America in Five Simple Steps

2010-09-05T13:58:00.002-04:00

How You Can Change America
in Five Simple Steps
Bill Bekkenhuis
September 5, 2010

1 Become selectively and creatively unhappy about things.

We recognize the great good in America despite its serious flaws. Hating everything will paralyze our ethics and make us bores at cocktail parties. So we pick and choose where to focus our efforts. We allow our unhappiness about the state of the world to trigger a creative response to whatever portion of America's problems, large or small, we're capable of putting on our plates rather than falling prey to apathy, silence, conformity, scapegoating and complicity.

2 Insist on quality information.

Everything – and I mean everything – in the media is designed first and foremost to entertain us and sell us something and only secondarily designed to inform us, to teach us to think critically or to encourage us to become better and more humane people. So we intentionally choose which media sources we allow to direct our attention and to inform our participation in the great national conversation.

3 Commit to producing true value and consuming true value.

A life-affirming culture, economics and civil society cannot be built on a foundation of garbage. Much of what we uncritically accept as value has been force-fed to us by the media in its promotion of consumerism. So we thoughtfully consider every investment of our time, our talents and our money as votes for the values America should embody. In America, we vote every day, not just on Election Day, for our security, our food, our health care, our education, our housing, our arts and music, and our economic opportunities - for ourselves, our families and our communities.

4 Reach out to others with respect and charity.

Having begun the process of getting our own lives realigned with what we thoughtfully and intentionally determine to be of true value, we reach out to and enlist our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers as allies. We photocopy and distribute this message to those who are interested. We admire and emulate those with greater commitment than our own, we are patient with those with a lesser commitment than our own and we seek the positive intent behind the thinking of those with a different commitment from our own. We organize potlucks and discussion groups using the best articles, books and DVDs we can find. We help build stronger neighborhoods and communities.

5 Invest in like-minded voluntary associations.

Voluntary associations are the mediating institutions between individuals and the Powers That Be. We invest our time, talent and money to support those institutions we determine to be aligned, however imperfectly, with our values knowing that groups working together to share information and values and to deliver the money and votes that come from large organizations can change things in America.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: There is no more information. This is the program. What we do with it is up to us.

How I Spent (and What I Learned on) My Summer Vacation

2010-08-30T09:14:00.013-04:00

How I Spent (and What I Learned on) My Summer Vacation

One of the challenges of unemployment is the question of how to take a quality vacation. First, you have no money. Second, it's hard to be sure what you are taking a vacation from.

I took two "staycations" this summer. One was at Musikfest (a week-long, annual music and beer festival in Bethlehem, PA).

I had a great time and listened to a great deal of music: probably more than I had ever experienced in any other Musikfest.

But I also noticed an out-of-character behavior I had developed. Each evening, I'd carefully review the next day's acts at the various venues, plan my itinerary and then doggedly (if not always successfully) pursue it – even if I didn't particularly feel like it.

In short, for God alone knows what reason, I began turning it into a job substitute.

Apparently, five months into unemployment, I'm experiencing the need to be someplace each day.

When I begin the active part of the job search (most of my preparation is done), immediately following labor day, hopefully that will work for me.

My second "staycation" was a week-long house-and-dog sitting job at my friends' home which had, along with a number of other wonderful amenities (such as a built-in pool and jacuzzi) a flat screen TV the size of an aircraft carrier's flight deck complete with various remotes and hundreds of cable channels and stored movies.

It took two pages of technical documentation for me to use a bare minimum of its features.

We do not have cable in my house. We have a TV and DVD player. And a radio tuned to NPR. And a computer with a dial-up connection communicating using CSC (Can-String-Can) protocol.

So I brought along books and writing I wished to accomplish and personal development tapes to listen to and... plunked myself down in front of the TV and scarcely moved for the next week other than to let dogs in or out and to feed us.

I even kept it on while I slept. (I apparently have more difficulty being alone than I realized.)

So, it was a seven day total immersion experience.

Oddly enough, it was probably a wise use of my time. It confirmed a great deal of what I already believed and exposed me to some new stuff.

First, it was quite obvious that everything on TV is created to sell the viewer something. In the case of advertisements, they are attempting to sell you products and services. In the case of everything else they are attempting to sell you on continuing to watch their channel thereby driving up the value of the advertising "space" they sell.

When you think about it, whether they are selling you goods, services or entertainment, what they are actually selling you is a culture, an ethic and a lifestyle.

So, while any particular program may, ostensibly, entertain or edify or inform there really is only one genre on television and that is persuasion: to persuade us to buy the advertised goods and services and to persuade us to keep watching that channel. And to persuade us to buy the lifestyles implied by each.

Basically, it's all infomercial.

This is a learning that, hopefully, will cause me to my critically evaluate my internet consumption as I am sure the same dynamic applies as one gathers all this neat, "free" (if sometimes questionable) information available on advertiser-sponsored web pages.

This is not to say there aren't qualitative differences.

Horton Hears a Who, Adam (story of a young adult with Asperger's), Food, Inc. (criticizing America's food industry), and the astonishing, Up (what the heck is that animation? – it certainly is not a children's story) were movies that were, in my opinion, quite well done and worth the time spent.

Another new discovery was Disney Channel's cartoon series, Phineas and Ferb. That impressed me so much I ordered two DVDs. (Why is it the best freakin', highest-quality stuff on TV is geared towards children? The worst trash is reserved for the rest of us. Maybe children are more discerning.)

Following my news addiction did not lead to such fruitful finds.

I had hoped to give FOX News a chance but the very first story I heard them report on was distorted. (I had already seen the story on CNN and MSNBC about how the farms involved in the tainted eggs had a history of various violations going back to the early '90s – FOX reported the same story only mentioning the violations that occurred during the Obama administration. BUZZ! Sorry, FOX, thank you for playing. One nice thing about freedom of the press – you get to choose your poison.)

Finally being able to watch The Daily Show and The Cobert Report I decided that they, along with MSNBC and CNN, are basically variations on the same theme: entertainment cloaked as news programs. I just found The Daily Show and The Cobert Report more entertaining.

I suppose that was one of my significant learning experiences of the week. It isn't so much that CNN leans center and MSNBC leans left and FOX leans right (if I may indulge in a bit of understatement) as much as it is that all three news networks are primarily entertainment.

The folks that did the movie, Network nailed the direction "the news" was going.

There was some upside.

First, my two lingering reminders of what network news used to be like in the days of an Edward R. Murrow or a Walter Cronkite was the News Hour with Jim Lehr and the BBC World News, both presented on public broadcasting.

If I had cable, I'd watch those and probably no other news services.

And cable TV News – even on CNN and MSNBC - is good at presenting visual news: in this case, the flooding and terrible conditions in Pakistan as well as the retrospectives and progress reports on New Orleans during and after Katrina. I had been following those stories on NPR but my imagination failed to grasp the reality portrayed by the photojournalists.

But, bottom line, if one considers the "density" of the news as the amount of factual information, analysis and expert opinion over time spent viewing, reading or listening to it, I'd have to say that NPR (on the radio) and the web pages for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, PBS and the BBC take the prize (along with other big city newspapers such as The LA Times, The Times-Picayune or The St. Petersburg Times).

As far as shows such as Keith Olbermann (as well as the whole conservative menagerie and freak show on FOX which I didn't even sniff at), I consider them pretty much garbage.

So there are two important things I learned on my two summer vacations.

The first is, in a capitalist society, everything is for sale and everyone is trying to sell you something. And I'm okay with that. But we need to realize it and evaluate the various offers critically and intentionally.

The second thing is that there's a lot of value out there in our media-driven culture and society for not a whole lot of money (for example, most of the music at Musikfest and most of the information on the internet is free) but there is also a lot of crap and garbage – and some of that crap and garbage serves as an addictive narcotic that is actually quite expensive, over the long run, in time and money and moral sensitivity.

Let the buyer beware.

Changing Things

2010-08-19T08:45:00.012-04:00

Changing Things
Bill Bekkenhuis
August 19, 2010

Introduction

There is a lot of frustration in America. Political and economic frustration. It's felt on the political left and the political right. Some of those who feel it want to see radical change. Others want to see incremental change. And we are sharply polarized regarding the desired form that change would take.

This post will attempt to deal with that frustration and a possible response to that frustration from a writer who considers himself center-left but is a registered Republican.

Recognizing the Need for Change

The entry point for myself and probably for many people in America right now is anger. Anger and alienation. Anger at the direction my country is taking and my sense of alienation from the political process that the ordinary citizens of America are supposed to own. Oddly enough, my friends on the right feel the same way though we differ, of course, in our opinions regarding the direction the country should be taking.

So, I must either put up with and learn to live with my anger and alienation, which eventually will lead me to become numb and apathetic to it, or I can do what small amount I can do to address it.

Visioning the Direction of Change

I believe it important that a program of social change have positive goals rather than simply being against things. You can't embrace a negative.

There are any number of sources both religious and secular as well as role models for my vision of the "good community." I would like to list a few. (Naturally others may have different sources. But these are mine.)

Albert Schweitzer's thoughts regarding Reverence for Life. (http://www.schweitzerfellowship.org/)
The United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (http://www.usconstitution.net/)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml)
The Principles and Sources of Faith of the Unitarian Universalist Association (http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml)

Changing Ourselves

All lasting change begins with ourselves. We need to embody the change we wish to see in society. All the great leaders of social reform – people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela – have taken this to heart.

I cannot aspire to the heights of a Gandhi, a King or a Mandela. (They often felt as if they couldn't aspire to them either.)

And there are many thousands of things that need changing in this country.

Still, I will do what I can do and pick a place and start.

I've decided to focus on two of the things that need changing in this country Other people may make different choices.

But I've decided the US Constitution is being warped almost beyond recognition by an unholy trinity of politicians, the advertiser-driven and technologically sophisticated media, and corporate interests (both profit and non-profit).

In a sense, this has always been the case and probably always will be.

But access to media has become so essential to getting elected and so expensive to obtain that we are really in danger, in my opinion, of becoming a plutocracy.

And the media itself has become so compromised by corporate interests, the need to access (and therefore not antagonize) government officials for their stories and the desire to increase their audiences (and therefore increase their advertiser revenue) by entertaining them rather than by informing them, that they're all but dominated by fluff, glitz and propaganda.

I believe the best response Americans can make to this new state of affairs is to become intelligent consumers of products and services on the one hand and from where we get our information on the other.

How much of what we "value" is truly of value? How much of what we "value" really comes down to what we are told to value by these same media outlets and corporations?

In the end, our politicians – who are supposed to be accountable to us – are, in fact, virtual prisoners of the 24 X 7 news cycle, the endless media-driven campaign, and the need to raise money.

So, my personal action plan in response begins with my own mindfulness regarding the way I expend my time and money and especially the way I gather and evaluate information.

To that end I will...

Keep a journal regarding how I spend my time each day,
Evaluate my expenses each month to see which corporate interests I am supporting,
Make a list of the highest quality media sources I can review in about an hour each day on average.

I will, in turn, use the information that comes from this process to become selectively alienated from destructive aspects of my culture and to withhold my economic support and media attention from those aspects.

Selectivity is, I believe, a very important decision affecting both strategy and tactics. In a military campaign, it would be the principle of the objective. Universal alienation from our culture is all but impossible to sustain and renders us politically irrelevant. It also ignores the very real benefits that culture produces. I would not trade my situation now for slavery in ancient Rome or serfdom in feudal Europe – and many a person poorer than myself would concur.

And looking at various great change agents we see their ability to focus their energies and their leadership on one issue at a time. Using just Gandhi as an example, one remembers his focus on putting an end to the identification papers the government required people of color to carry in South Africa and his march to the sea in India to challenge the British Empire's monopoly on salt. One issue at a time, one campaign at a time, Gandhi challenged colonial rule, recruited people to his cause and enlisted international support.

Becoming Part of a Change Movement
at Home and in the Neighborhood

As we determine those aspects of the culture from which we are most alienated and replace our behaviors that reward or endorse or subsidize those aspects with more positive, life-affirming, community-affirming behaviors, the next step is to enlist our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers – our circle of influence - to our cause.

That requires persuasion and persuasion requires charity and tact.

People do not respond well to being lectured or preached to. They do not respond well to being told they're unethical or evil or unpatriotic or complacent or just plain stupid.

They do respond to being asked questions about what they believe and they do respond to being listened to and replied to courteously and intelligently.

They also must be respected and valued when their commitment to reform or their ability to translate that commitment into material support for reform is less than our own. (This may spare us some of the guilt we will experience when we inevitably encounter those whose commitment and sacrifice in the cause of reform makes our own look pitiful and less than halfhearted.)

This is not to minimize the inevitability of significant conflict but to recognize that conflict is the last straw and, even then, should be conducted in a spirit of charity. Gandhi told his followers in India that when the British were inevitably forced out of India, he wanted them to leave as friends. And so they did.

People who are serious about challenging The Powers That Be probably need to have a copy of, How to Win Friends and Influence People right next to their copy of, Rules for Radicals (http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/1439167346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282223496&sr=1-1) and (http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Radicals-Saul-Alinsky/dp/0679721134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282223542&sr=1-1.)

Becoming Part of a Change Movement in
the Community, the Nation and the World

Being involved in our own change process and continuing to reach out to our circle of influence we are now in a position to both institutionalize our efforts and to make common cause with like-minded groups in the community, the nation and the world.

In America probably the quickest entree into that level of change is through voluntary associations.

Just as we are free to speak our minds in America so, too, are we free to associate with those like-minded individuals who share our commitments. Whatever aspect of the culture that one chooses to engage, religious institutions, ethical societies, political parties, cause-oriented groups and other voluntary associations have probably gone down the same road before and have ideas as to what works and what doesn't work. They also may have connections to similar entities having a wider scope. For example, a church engaged in dealing with homelessness in the local community may very well be involved with national organizations such as Habitat for Humanity or even international organizations.

As important as it is to make ourselves the models for the change we want to see in the world and as important as it is to reach out to our circle of influence, it is also important to associate with those larger entities which, through their own resources of membership and money, have more of an ability to irritate, challenge and ultimately influence the Powers That Be.

Not only that but these voluntary associations will reinforce our own personal change efforts through challenging those things we still take for granted and supporting us in our personal change efforts.

And, if no such voluntary association exists or if one considers the existing ones to be inadequate, one always has the option of starting one's own.

Conclusion

Anger and alienation should not be feelings we treasure like precious jewels nor should they be precursors to numbing out and apathy. Least of all should they be triggers to destructive acting-out or violence.

They should be seen as incitements to reform.

They should be seen as challenging us to engage in efforts to make America, under the constitution, a place where we can achieve and enjoy the fruits of our individual accomplishments in a context which also recognizes our individual and corporate responsibilities to the good of the community.

So the first step of reform is to feel the anger, embrace the alienation... and then commit oneself to constructive action directed at their sources.

The second step of reform is to critically analyze and change, if necessary, the television, books, magazines, web sites and advertising we consume.

The third step of reform is to critically analyze and change, if necessary, the actions we take and the money we spend as each of these represents votes for the type of America we wish to see.

The fourth step of reform is to reach out to our circles of influence (whether face-to-face or virtual) and attempt to enlist them to similar commitments in ways that are persuasive, respectful and charitable.

We do this because, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, people are most often correct in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. Even our most intractable political adversaries' efforts are most often motivated by values we, too, would hold true. And such differences as we have with them are largely in how those values are ranked relative to other, competing values as well as in our respective programs to attain those values in the real world.

And remember, it's a political truism that today's adversary is tomorrow's ally.

The fifth and final step is to invest ourselves in humanity and in the natural environment that largely determines the quality of our lives through tangible commitments of our time, our talents and our financial resources to worthy voluntary associations of my choice.

Is something like this essay the kind of thing that could turn into a program? I don't know.

Could a program based on five principles make a significant difference? I don't know.

In my life? Certainly. Beyond that? Who knows.

But it beats living an apathetic life where I uncritically consume the mush fed to me by the media-driven culture: thinking what it wants me to think, buying what it tells me to buy, valuing what it tells me to value and doing what it wants me to do.

Until I am no different, from a moral point of view, than a dead man.

Broken God

2010-02-28T04:15:00.004-05:00

Broken God:
A Cross-Eyed View of Our Common Life Together

Bill Bekkenhuis

January 17^th, 2010

[IMPORTANT NOTE: FOOTNOTE NUMBERS FOR REFERENCE ONLY - LINKS DO NOT WORK]

Introduction

Welcome, everyone.

The blurb in the Spectator said, "In a Christian world view, Christmas celebrates our discovery of God's presence in our flesh and blood lives. Easter, on the other hand, celebrates our discovery of the counter-intuitive nature of the God who comes to us in our flesh and blood lives: a broken God. Join us in a conversation regarding what healing or what hope, if any, a broken God can share with broken people in broken communities in a broken world. Or, "Why a Christian would choose to worship at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley (of all places :-)."

Now that I'm actually here with paper in hand, I'm not sure I can deliver on the promise of that blurb. I am certainly not going to be able to deliver on it directly as I don't intend to talk about God or Jesus Christ or the incarnation or the atonement or being washed in the blood or accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior or on Anselm's Ontological Proof for God. Nor am I going to explicitly state why Bill Bekkenhuis, Christian, has determined that the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley, of all places, is where, at this point in his life, he can best worship the Christian God.

At least... I'm not going to address any of those issues directly.

There's an old joke from my brief stint in professional Scouting with the Minsi Trails Council.

It seems a District Executive went to his district's Fall Camporee, which was a rainy event. At some point, in the troop campsite that had offered him a berth for the weekend, he lay down by the fire to take a nap and left his boots by the fire to dry out.

A young Scout built up the fire without noticing the boots and, when the DE awoke, he saw the boots had burned.

The next week, in the office, the Scout Executive submitted his expenses for the week and along with meals and mileage and some other items, listed, "Hiking Boots – Fall Camporee - $95.00".

When his expense report came back, he noticed they had reimbursed everything but the boots.

He went to his supervisor and asked about the boots.

"I'm sorry," said his supervisor, "the boots are your personal property and are your responsibility."

"But," the DE said, "I only need hiking boots because I'm a professional Scouter and they burned at an official Scouting event at which I was required to attend."

"Sorry," said the supervisor, without looking up from his desk, "the boots are denied."

The next month, in a bit of defiance, the DE again listed the boots on his expenses.

The supervisor called him into the office. He wasn't in a particularly good mood.

"Listen! I told you before. The boots are denied. They are your own personal property. If you know what's good for you, you'll just let it go."

The next month the DE's somewhat complicated expense report came through without the boots. A bit crestfallen, the supervisor approved it all and went to the DE's desk to hand it to him personally.

"Look," he said, "You're a good man and a good Scouter. I'm happy to have you on the team. Thanks for dropping the issue with the boots. The rest is approved."

The DE looked up from his desk, smiled at his supervisor and said, "The boots are there, Sir. You find them."

So, a gentle warning. God is in this talk. Jesus Christ crucified and risen is in this talk. The forgiveness of sins is in this talk as well as the significance of accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

You find them.ⁱ

Part One: Death

I figured I'd start by bringing everyone down and talking about death.

Whenever I've taken this tack before, or evaluated some other Christian theologian who has taken it, the response always seems to be something along the lines that death is merely a part of life – as Bob Newhart's psychiatrist character once said, 'the last part' – and, as adults, we learn to accept and deal with it.

So, rather than arguing, let's presume that we can all rationally accept the reality of our own death.

Right?

Now, how would I argue that point...?

I guess I'd start out by observing that it can't be that big a deal. After all, we've all been dead before :-)

Let's face it, one hundred and fifty years from now, I will be dead.

But, one hundred and fifty years ago, I was also dead.

If asked how I felt, at the time, about the Southern states seceding from the Union, a quite proper reply would be, "I didn't feel anything. I was dead."

Which is pretty much how I expect to feel one hundred and fifty years from now when glaciers cover the world and the biosphere is ravaged.ⁱⁱ I'll feel dead. Which is to say, I expect to feel nothing at all.

I didn't experience any sense of loss or discomfort one hundred and fifty years ago, I don't see any reason to anticipate any sense of loss or discomfort one hundred and fifty years in the future. Right?

What's wrong with that argument? Is there anything wrong with it?

Somehow, I suspect there is something wrong with it.

And I also believe I'm not alone in my suspicions.

Because we generally don't say that we were dead in the past. We generally say we weren't born yet. Just a simple difference in language but food for thought: why do we distinguish, in language, between not being born yet, on the one hand, and being dead, on the other?

For some reason, the status of being dead is apparently reserved to those who were once alive and not to those who have simply not yet been born.

If I went around talking about how much I miss my dear friend Fred Figedus who was never born and never will be, I'd get locked up.

Still, the fact remains. Two hundred years ago we were dust and two hundred years from now we will be dust and, as we didn't have any apparent problem with the first state of affairs, one wouldn't reasonably expect to have any problem with the second state of affairs.

Now, one of the things I've heard from folks from time to time is, "I don't have any problem with my own death... Oh, no. I just have a problem with the deaths of other people, e.g. friends and family, that I care about." But why should this be? Are there any rational grounds for thinking that another's death is any more to be feared than our own? If death is no big deal for us, then is there any reason to think death would be any big deal to any other living creature?

A person could respond to that by saying that death of other people bothers us while the thought of our own eventual death does not because it is only natural to miss the dead, on the one hand, while we certainly won't be in any position to miss ourselves, on the other. But one can miss things at significantly different levels. If I break a favorite coffee mug, I may miss it. Is that really comparable to losing a much beloved pet, a spouse, a life-long friend, one's child? Is there really nothing more involved than, "gee, I really got used to seeing that old beast around the house." (I mean the dog, not one's spouse. :-)

There's another intriguing thing about the word "death." Death, as it turns out, is apparently quite a useful metaphor for referring to the end or nothingness of all sorts of non-biological things. We can refer to the death of a relationship, the death of an institution, the death of a way of life. Think of the bartender who says to the cook, on a Monday, 'boy, it's really dead in here tonight." What exactly does he or she mean – and why use that particular word? Wouldn't it suffice to say it's really... well, quiet? (As in, quiet as the grave? :-)

(On the same note, it would be quite unusual, I would think, for a funeral director to use the same expression with his assistant. "Boy, it sure is dead in here tonight." I mean, what on earth would he mean? :-)

You know, I remember growing up in Seaford, Long Island during the '60s and '70s. As I reconnect with classmates on Facebook I see contemporary pictures as well as old elementary school pictures. A lot of these people I haven't laid eyes on or spoken to since the day we graduated from high school – and some of them were in my classes from kindergarten on up.

I'm aware of the passage of time and the way we've scattered and developed our own separate lives in that time. I'm aware that I had a mother and a father and a dog named Red and a brother and sister-in-law and three nieces who were closer to my age than my brother was and so, once every weekend, we were playmates for an afternoon and had our three-generational meal that Sunday night.

Now, in my current life, Mom and Dad and the dog are all dead, my brother and former sister-in-law are divorced and my three nieces are now all grown with kids and adult issues of their own and are scattered all over the Eastern seaboard. We are friends, but we are no longer playmates, and years pass between the times I get to see them face to face. About ten years ago, I re-visited Seaford to see the house where I grew up. I walked right past it without recognition. (This is not as strange as it may sound in suburban Long Island :-)

Now, is it not reasonable to say that the entire life I knew in Seaford, Long Island – family, school friends, teachers, Scout leaders, home – is dead? The life I knew so well back there and then is now only available to me, as are other dead or lost friends and family members, through fading memories of a life, or a way of life, that no longer exists?

Maybe this is the answer regarding the question as to why the word "dead" is reserved for the period after our lives and not before them. Before we have a life, only potentiality is lost. My dead non-existent friend Fred Figedus is not to be mourned because there is no Fred Figedus to miss the life he never had and no attributes that I can miss because he had none. After we've had a life – with it's richness of experiences, friendships, memories, causes, projects, hobbies, etc. - it is actual value, not merely potential value, that is lost. Or so it seems to me.

There is a sense that despite our best efforts and, in fact, the best of all possible efforts, the value of life – all of life – our connectedness to each other and the world - is ultimately lost and forgotten.

And that raises the most radical question regarding our current efforts – namely, since everything we know or value or commit ourselves to dies then what, in the end, is the point of all our efforts? Why do we get up in the morning? Why do we give a damn about stuff that is destined to fade into nothingness? How many ancient Sumarians are known to us today? Doesn't that at least raise the question, "did their lives and loves and struggles ultimately mean nothing ?"ⁱⁱⁱ

As the philosopher Charles Hartshorne put it, "If 'All's well that ends well" is a sound principle, what are we to make of the apparent facts that a human life ends in death and that being dead seems as far as possible from being well?" ^iv

So I submit to you the following suggestions.

First, that we recognize that we are mortal and that on some given day in the future our biological organism and all that is based on it, such as our subjective life of the mind or of the human spirit, will die. That's just plain hard-wired into our biology.

Second, that we recognize that what is lost in an untimely death is our actual value as well as our potential value and that what is lost in even a timely death is our actual value.

Third, that we recognize that death at a more symbolic or metaphorical level encompasses not only the day or event of our own biological death but also the 'death' of institutions, ideologies, ways of life, communities, nations, jobs, etc. upon which our lives, as social beings rooted in language, are so involved.

Fourth, I would think – if we're fair-minded about the issue – that because of our ability to anticipate, in our minds, worlds that do not yet exist, that we recognize that the these very hard facts regarding death and its implications at least raise the question that death threatens our normal day-to-day peace of mind in which life is meaningful, valuable and purposeful.^v

In short, every foretaste, every anticipation of that last day... every suffering, every disappointment, every failure and every discernment of the human capacity for evil in ourselves and others puts the question to us: is the positive meaning and purpose and value that all people ultimately find in life and that all people ultimately need to function in life not also ultimately based on an illusion? What Ernest Becker called, "the vital lie."^vi ^vii

Part Two: Superstitions Regarding Death

When an animal is faced with death, it tends to fight or run... and so do we.

But human fighting and running not only takes place in the same, literal arena as a mouse cornered by a snake, it takes place in the symbolic, or psychological realm as well.

So, we not only literally run or fight in response to an immediate threat of physical death - we also deny, avoid or attempt to overcome those people or institutions or events or other realities of life that anticipate our eventual, literal deaths.^viii

And, again, while animals only engage their fight-or-flight mechanism when actually faced with the threat of literal death, humans - due to their linguistic, symbolic capacity to be ever confronted by their own death and the death of all they love - have their fight-or-flight mechanisms constantly engaged.

How do people manage to get through the day without the constant struggle of justifying the meaning, purpose and value of life in the face of death distracting if not outright crippling their ability to function in the world?

I believe there are three primary strategies, if you want to call them that or, as I prefer to call them, superstitions.

The first is denial or escapism.

In denial, people attempt to put death as well as anything representative of death out of their minds and their life. They deal with death by not dealing with it. That's the flight option.

Any distraction can work – business, senseless hobbies, alcohol or drugs, the entertainment industry, etc.

Anything that completely absorbs us and keeps our minds from thinking.^ix

Anyone who, like myself, has proved an abysmal failure in meditation, can prove this to themselves by sitting in a quite place where they won't be disturbed and try – just try – to either empty their mind or focus on some inconsequential object or mantra for just five minutes.

Beyond flight, a second option is the option of taking on and fighting or overcoming death through a direct assault on death's domain.

Let's call it the "kill the bastards" option.^x

We defeat death by brute force. This is the theme of any number of action, superhero or vigilante movies. Unfortunately, of late, it has also – in my opinion – been the theme of our foreign policy.

Even the 'kill the bastards' crowd knows you can't ultimately conquer death through counter-force.

So, while overcoming death may be temporarily possible in the sense of overcoming the actual concrete reminders or anticipations of death we encounter in day-to-day life (e.g., failure in business, the loss of an important relation, the on-set of a serious illness or, nationally, vanquishing a nation perceived as a threat to national security), it is quite obviously impossible to forever evade the reality of one's own eventual death as well as the eventual death of all one values and loves.

So there is a third strategy available, a hybrid of fight and flight - deal-making.

In deal-making, people attempt to achieve mastery over death in one area of life (which could, quite literally, be anything - career, home, family, patriotism, helping the poor, sex, and – let’s not forget - religion^xi, etc.) as a way of overcoming the reality of death. The strategy that says, “I may die, but my life’s meaning will continue to live on because I accomplished ‘X’.” Ernest Becker calls this an Immortality Project^xii. ^xiii ^xiv ^xv

So long as I'm successful at my career, my life meant something. So long as I have children, my life meant something. So long as I'm the most religious person in my church, my life meant something.

So what's the problem with all these strategies for dealing with death beyond the obvious one that they're all based in illusion and deception?

The fact is, all these approaches – fight, flight or deal-making - have toxic side effects, personally and socially.

First, they create, in both the individual mind and in community sensitivities, what might be called Dominions of Life and Death into which the 'stuff' of life - events, situations, people - are consigned. Into the first domain, the Life Domain, goes everything that society says either wards off or distracts one from or enjoys some negotiated level of success over death.

The Life Domain is the home of the beautiful people, the advantaged, the healthy, the rich and famous, the well socialized and cultivated, the ones we see in commercials who look so unlike the ones we meet on the bus or, for that matter, in the mirror.

Into the Death Dominion goes the nasty bits of life, including suffering, evil, our 'shadow' side, and people such as gays, people of color, the poor, the mentally ill, the homeless, those of other religions, the aged, the criminal, and all those who are stigmatized for one reason or another. All of these are literally consigned to the Death Domain, society's trash can, as a sacrifice, excluded from one's personal life, marginalized in society, eliminated if necessary, and forgotten.^xvi

It's the reason we avert our eyes when we see a beggar on the street.

I'd argue that we spend much of our psychic energy on the process of sorting each person or situation we encounter into these domains such that we can appropriately, if that's the word, respond to them.

Another aspect of these distorted ways of dealing with death is that instead of loving people and using things, we learn to love things (specifically those things that advance our Immortality Project) and use people (specifically those people who advance our Immortality Project - treating them, in effect, as if they were nothing more than things).

In essence, all these approaches coincide in that the engine that drives them consigns those events, situations and people - that is, those that either force us to deal with death or that neglect or hinder our Immortality Projects - to the Death Domain. This is the heart of what afflicts us, indeed, possesses us as people and it is, in my opinion, very, very powerful in its ability to distort individual persons. ^xvii

And these approaches not only have an individual or personal side (e.g., the person who sacrifices their health and their family to advance their business – or to feed a drug addiction) but a social side as well. Because it is not just individuals who are distorted but families, communities and nations as well.

It is not only individuals who struggle against death and to establish themselves over and against other people, but our social institutions also contend against each other in the struggle for survival. One business strives against another while both form alliances and join conflicts with the government, labor unions, etc.^xviii ^xix

The problem with these superstitions, again aside from being based on fantasy rather than reality ^xx, it that once a person or institution is taken by one of them, they will do anything, sacrifice anything or anyone, to maintain that which, to their individual or corporate minds, serves their ultimate survival interests in the face of death's threat.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if there are any defining characteristics of a fantasy-based appraisal of death it would be its splendor (as in the Life Domain described above), on the one hand, and its absolute ruthlessness when it comes to the sacrifice of people, communities or the natural environment.^xxi

When the stakes are an individual or corporate entity's survival, no price in blood is too high – whether the blood of others, or one's own.

Part Three: A Hopeful Realism Regarding Death

I believe that if death is viewed in all realism, absent denial and fantasy and wishful thinking – including religious wishful thinking - then hope is the only true antidote to death and death's assault on human meaning, value and purpose. ^xxii

Think of the most ordinary of situations. A student faced with failure. A person losing their job. Someone struggling with cancer. Why do they persevere? Because, at some level, they still have hope.

But there are many forms of hope. Strong hopes and weak hopes. Hopes based on fantasy and hopes based on realism.

Where, in life, does one go for the source of hope in the face of the end of all things? ^xxiii

Well, oddly enough, hope in its most undiluted and most trustworthy form turns out to be an ironic hope, a paradoxical hope.

It is a hope that comes to us when hope, in its usual connotations, is not possible. ^xxiv

It is a hope that some, including myself, claim encounters us in its purist form in the full light of reality as it is and not as we might wish it to be. It is a hope that encounters us and allows us to clearly see and accept the most unacceptable, the most deathly parts of ourselves and our life's situations and allows us to see and accept the most deathly events in the world. It is a hope that nonetheless comes to us in our darkest hour, in our most grievous suffering and on those occasions when the veil is pulled away and we are staring into the abyss with our eyes wide open.^xxv

And because such a hope is, by definition, unanticipated, it cannot be manipulated through positive thinking or some other neuro-linguistic programing (as much a fan as I am of such efforts in the penultimate aspects of life such as goal achievement). One might practice in its discernment and must act upon it when it presents itself, but it is no one's possession – it is free.

Now, having said all this about encountering hope in hopelessness, don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing for masochism or wishing suffering on anyone. Lest of all myself.

And this hope is not an excuse to shirk working to make ourselves better people and to improve the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us and to improve the lot of every creature in this world.

Indeed, it is this tough-minded, realistic hope that empowers working for change in the most hopeless of situations.

It isn't that hope isn't present in the happy, healthy, successful and prosperous times of life because it certainly is. But one can always wonder to what degree such a hope is a false hope based – whether we recognize it as such or not – on our fragile personal circumstances of the moment. Worse still, maybe the hope we have in happier times is founded on the superstitious, fantastic and distorted forms of living I described above. If one is committed to truth, then a false or distorted hope is certainly worse than no hope at all. ^xxvi ^xxvii

But I believe that hope that comes to us where no hope is possible, paradoxical though it may be, is the most certain guide to the true character and destiny of the universe. ^xxviii

It is, I believe, just such a hope that is offered to us in our ordinary lives just as they are and to us just as we are and in our communities just as they are if we have the eyes to see it and the trust to act on it, no matter how limited our scope of possible actions may be. ^xxix

Part Four: Engaging Life as Individuals

So what are the new possibilities for someone who ultimately trusts reality at its core? For someone who trusts reality even when encountering with utmost realism the specter of death, death's implications and the varying sufferings and disappointments that are death's heralds? Someone who believes that even concealed within death itself is a powerful and unlikely and unanticipated hope that not only carries us in our despair but also illumines all the other events, both great and small, of our lives? An ever-present hope that is not dependent on our good fortune nor on our achievements, whether those achievements be moral, cultural, financial, etc, but that is instead hard-wired into the very nature of reality? ^xxx

What is life like at those times where we experience the end of fantasy and superstition regarding death? ^xxxi

I guess the first thing that happens is we quit the rat race. As Lily Tomlin once famously said, the winner of the rat race is still a rat.

Now, as I said before, nothing in what I've said should lead to the conclusion that we are not to strive mightily in this world, and that we shouldn't work to achieve our goals – goals on behalf of ourselves, our family and friends, our community, our nation and our world.

It is a wonderful thing that someone can devote years of their life to winning an Olympic medal. As the runner and missionary Eric Liddell, as portrayed in the movie "Chariots of Fire" says, "God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." In the movie Liddell, a strict Calvinist, refuses to run in an Olympic heat on the Sabbath despite all the pressure put on him by the British Olympic committee.

Years later, according to theologian Langdon Gilkey, Gilkey knew Mr. Liddell in an internment camp in China during WWII.

Known as much for his athleticism as for his missionary work, the other missionaries attempted to recruit Liddell to coach boy's sports on Sunday and he refused. Faced with the confinement and boredom of the camp, the boys began to fight each other. Liddell reluctantly began coaching and reffing games on Sundays.^xxxii

Consider this. He would not break the Sabbath for his own glory nor for the glory of his King and his country. But, when it came down to it, he'd break it to keep some long-forgotten boys from scraping with each other.

That's the kind of balance the world invites us to once we've dropped our fight, flight and deal-making efforts with regard to death.

There's another word for that type of balance and that's the word, "freedom." ^xxxiii

There's a song by Dylan that claims you have to serve somebody. But if one is embraced by this type of hope and released for this type of freedom, you really don't have to serve someone – not in that sense. You are free to serve anyone – compelled to serve no one. ^xxxiv

Along with quitting the rat race is the demystification of our lives. We no longer treat ourselves or others or, for that matter, the natural environment with which we co-exist, as objects or tools in the fulfillment of our superstitious immortality projects, we consider them as creatures with their own integrity.

In other words, everything that happens is no longer "all about us."

When a realistic hope grasps us even in the face of life at its worst then, freed from our own drivenness and neediness, we find ourselves set free to be available to others. ^xxxv

Lastly, along with quitting the rat race and releasing the rest of reality to be creatures in their own right rather than props in our show comes a reality-based self-acceptance.

Realizing that the hope we've encountered is not self-generated allows us to accept it as a gift and accept ourselves exactly as we are in the cold light of dawn and not as we might wish to be. As we release others to be creatures in their own right rather than props in our show, so too do we release ourselves from the unrealistic burden of being the heroes of our autobiographies. Again, it's not all about us. It is not all about our accomplishments – moral or otherwise. And it is not all about our failures – moral and otherwise. ^xxxvi

Part Five: Engaging the World as a Community

All churches, and probably all societies, aspire to be role models for how the world should be. We can look at the Good Community project at Missouri State University or our own Unitarian Universalist Principals and Purposes to get examples of how most of us believe the world should get along and what the world owes its citizens and, particularly, its most vulnerable citizens: the poor, the sick, the children. ^xxxvii

It's not hard to figure out. Peace with justice. Food, housing and medical care. Opportunities for education and culture. Opportunities to contribute to society through paid and volunteer labor. Recreation. A sustainable relationship between nations and with our natural environment.

The problem is not conceiving it... the problem is doing it.

When an individual or community is captivated by fantasies of escaping from, overcoming or doing a deal with death in its myriad anticipations and precursors, it is hard to have enough energy or freedom or courage to put one's very existence on the line on behalf of the good community.

We – both as individuals and communities – ensure we'll take care of Number 1 first. The rest get what can be spared.

And the argument has been made that it is even harder for organizations, institutions or societies to take self-preservation out of the driver's seat than it is for individuals.^xxxviii

And, as I said before, this is not magic. One can't use some mind game to pretend that we can act on an unconditional hope or trust in reality if we don't, in fact, have that hope and trust.

But we can, as individuals within a community, prepare ourselves for the possible visitation of such hope. I would suggest the following disciplines for a community such as the UUCLV both in its capacity as "the church gathered" on Sunday's and "the church scattered" the other six days of the week.^xxxix I call them disciplines because while some may come easier to some people than others (which is part of the reason we need each other) they still take a bit of conscious application – particularly when times are tough and hope is more elusive than usual. ^xl

The first and foremost discipline is celebration.^xli In my opinion, what takes place in our sanctuary on a Sunday should be celebratory. Other things can certainly occur in the sanctuary and some occasions in our communal and national life are less conducive to celebration than others. But if reality and life are sustained by a hope that is trustworthy even in the most hopeless of situations, then what better way can we dramatize that daily truth then through a public event and testimony that is, at its core, a party.

The second discipline is learning.^xlii Again, as both individuals during the week and in our corporate mode on Sunday, learning communicates an openness and vulnerability to the world as well as a useful reminder that we don't know everything. It is completely appropriate that a community such as ours, grounded in hope, should function not only as a party but as an educational campus for all matters whether religious or secular.

A third discipline is personal growth.^xliii Yes, in the end death takes us all, our friends and loved ones, and our projects. But to use such time as we have to encourage and cultivate the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth of our community and those our community touches is a powerful witness to the trustworthy nature of life despite all evidence to the contrary. I recently lost a friend to a decades long struggle with cancer. Her doctor told her that as she had no chance of survival, she might want to consider foregoing further chemotherapy in the hope of increasing the quality of life in the time she had left. Even though I think it would have been perfectly acceptable to go that route, as a free person she chose to go down fighting her unbeatable foe. That's the type of hope I'm talking about. Her decision, while realistically useless against the imminent threat of death, affirmed to herself and communicated to others what she really believed about life. That's personal growth.

A fourth discipline of the community is friendship.^xliv The UUCLV is an institution but, when I think of the UUCLV I don't primarily think of the institution but of my friends within the institution. Our institution is really a collection of small groups and many face-to-face interactions. As friends we again are called to get over ourselves and into the lives of others. We come here because we enjoy – and need – each other's company. That, in the end, is the answer to getting more people into this church – find them, befriend them and – once they're here – give them something to do. ^xlv

A fifth discipline of the community is service.^xlvi Whereas friendship is a call to get over ourselves as individuals, service is a call for us to get over ourselves as a community. Surely there is no more distinguishing mark of how free a community is than by what it does for people who are not its members.

A sixth element of our community is encouragement.^xlvii A community whose foundation is hope can play an essential role in the larger society by offering words of encouragement. In a world in which hope often comes in disguise whereas anticipations of death are flagrant and obvious, our primary purpose is to perceive this hope and share it with others. We are not a professional social work organization nor are we psychotherapists. We cannot solve everyone's problems. But we can share with everyone – no matter their situation – a word of hope.

The seventh and last suggested discipline of our community is accountability.^xlviii With myself more so maybe than most, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I'm a much better person in my mind and imagination than I am in the flesh. (At least, my friends and family and co-workers keep telling me that, so I suppose it's true :-) ) But our community is a place where our ideals and our aspirations for ourselves, our community and our society hit that cold, unyielding and sometimes thoroughly annoying thing called, "reality". And that, when you come right down to it, is the justification for the endless hours many of us spend in meetings talking about procedures and budgets and organizational charts, etc.

Conclusion

This concludes my presentation. I've been vain enough to print out copies of my remarks. [Actually, I was vain enough but not competent enough. The edited, printed version is coming out a week after the presentation – which is probably a good thing :-) ] Those of you who expected, hoped or dreaded hearing a great deal of Christian theology from me this morning will be either relieved or aggrieved to see that such theology is embedded in the endnotes of my talk. I opted for end notes over footnotes for ease of disposal for those allergic to Christian mythology.

I've talked about destructive strategies towards dealing with death and death's tokens or precursors. Strategies based on fantasy and superstition that, to the extent we fall captive to them, will come to possess, enslave and cripple us as human beings and, ultimately, destroy us – both as individuals, as a community, and a species, possibly taking the rest of the biosphere with us into extinction.

I've talked about a reality that encounters us in all of life but which I believe is ultimately and most perfectly revealed in the very darkest moments of life. A reality that paradoxically guarantees the meaning, value and purpose of life at the very point where that meaning, value and significance are most seriously challenged.

I suppose that this could be considered, by the thorough-going skeptic, as the very last and perhaps the very most cruel illusion of all. ^xlix

And logically they certainly make a serious point – possibly the most serious point against the position for which I argue and one that is certainly a great deal more weighty than discussions about the coherence of technical, theological affirmations.

But then we're finally left with a last dilemma – the choice to accept a hope in the fundamental meaning, purpose and value of reality and human existence or to instead live with the knowledge that such hope, while absolutely essential for human personal and corporate life, is ultimately an illusion we bewitch ourselves with in a universe both dead and disinterested.

Thanks, all, for your patience and attention.

Questions or comments? ^l

i One of my faults as an amateur theologian is to go all academic on folks. In the midst of preparing this talk, a friend of mine who was both a gifted school teacher and an accused child molester chose to take his own life shortly before he was due to plead in the case. Without venturing any judgments on guilt or innocence I can only say that the magnitude of this tragedy, for all involved as well as for society as a whole, has really forced me to confront the issues in this talk at a thoroughly experiential level. And, even more recently, tens of thousands of people are dead and dying in Haiti following last weeks earthquake. Having dealt with the death of my one friend, I find myself incapable of even grasping the suffering involved in the deaths of tens of thousands. Events like these truly force the question regarding what we actually believe in our gut as well as our head.

ii Or the glaciers will have melted? I forget. Whatever :-)

iii 9 As a cloud vanishes and is gone,
so he who goes down to the grave does not return.
Job 7:9 (New International Version)

iv Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes; p.32

v 1 So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. 2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, [a] the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
As it is with the good man,
so with the sinner;
as it is with those who take oaths,
so with those who are afraid to take them.

3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope [b] —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

5 For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten.

6 Their love, their hate
and their jealousy have long since vanished;
never again will they have a part
in anything that happens under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-6 (New International Version)

vi Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, Chapter Four

vii Even someone who commits suicide has some distorted form of hope that they can take action to "improve" their situation. Consider the person who says, "I can't take it anymore" and puts a gun to their head... only to let their hand drop down helplessly to their side saying, "Oh, what's the point?" Now that person truly has no hope. :-)

viii 5 He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.

6 He has made me dwell in darkness
like those long dead.

7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.

Lamentations 3:5-7 (New International Version)

ix 34"Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. 35For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.

Luke 21:34-35 (New International Version)

x 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,
who rely on horses,
who trust in the multitude of their chariots
and in the great strength of their horsemen,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel,
or seek help from the LORD.

Isaiah 31:1 (New International Version)

xi I can't find the citation, but theologian Karl Barth once said something to the effect that Church is where sinners (Christians? :-) go to make their last stand against God.

xii See The Denial of Death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Use www.google.com and search "denial of death" "wiki")

xiii 16And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'

18"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '

20"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'

Luke 12:16-20 (New International Version)

xiv 11 Their tombs will remain their houses forever,
their dwellings for endless generations,
though they had named lands after themselves.

12 But man, despite his riches, does not endure;
he is like the beasts that perish.

13 This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
and of their followers, who approve their sayings.
Selah

Psalm 49:11-13 (New International Version)

xv 17Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

1 Timothy 6:17 (New International Version)

xvi 19 Evil men will bow down in the presence of the good,
and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.

20 The poor are shunned even by their neighbors,
but the rich have many friends.

21 He who despises his neighbor sins,
but blessed is he who is kind to the needy.

Proverbs 14:19-21 (New International Version)

xvii 16When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Matthew 2:16 (New International Version)

xviii 1After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2With a mighty voice he shouted:
"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil[a] spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.

Revelation 18:1-2 (New International Version)

xix 8Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

Mark 13:8 (New International Version)

xx 17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.

Psalm 33:17 (New International Version)
(For "horse", substitute any aspect of creation! )

xxi 26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle had gone against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they failed. 27 Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land.

2 Kings 3:26-27 (New International Version)

Note that the human sacrifice to his nation's god "worked" – at least in the short term.

xxii 17 I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.

18 So I say, "My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the LORD."

19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.

20 I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."

25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;

Lamentations 3:17-25 (New International Version)

xxiii Albert Einstein, in response to a reporter's question on the most important question one can ask of the universe, replied, "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves." I read about this, I'm sure, in Stephen Hawking's, A Brief History of Time but cannot find it now for love or money. See http://www.ortholog.com/archive/compleat_scientist/a_friendly_universe.php

xxiv 18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

1 Corinthians 1:18-30 (New International Version)

xxv God is not lost to Eliezer entirely. During the hanging of a child, which the camp is forced to watch, he hears someone ask: Where is God? Where is he? Not heavy enough for the weight of his body to break his neck, the boy dies slowly and in agony. Wiesel files past him, sees his tongue still pink and his eyes clear, and weeps.

“ Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now?

And I heard a voice within me answer him: ... Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows"

From Night (book by Elie Wiesel) at Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_(book)#cite_note-N61-23

Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor and his novel is based on his first-hand experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.

xxvi During the question and answer period following this talk, I was asked if I was saying that someone who didn't accept Christ couldn't have hope. To give what I hope is a better answer now than I gave in the heat of the moment, I'd reply, "Yes and no. "Yes" in that if your hope is somehow conditional, then you are open to the charge that your hope is at least potentially based on superstition or illusion. "No" in that I'm not claiming that one needs to embrace Christian theology, Christian culture, Christian language, Christian identification, etc., to understand or experience what I'm talking about. Christians believe that the entire world was created by God in Christ yet only a small portion of that world is now – or ever will be – identified with "Christendom". Christians – even Christians in the Unitarian Universalist church – have a responsibility to share the good news of Christ crucified with everyone through word and deed. But the revelation of hope in the midst of hopelessness, that is, God in Christ crucified and risen, is the possession of no person and no institution – even if that institution be as venerable as Christendom.

xxvii 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

John 10:15-17 (New International Version)

xxviii In the midst of my friend's suicide and the earthquake in Haiti, I was grateful for the 'Miracle on the Hudson" one-year reunion on Friday and will take it – the salvation of one airliner's passengers and crew - as the better clue to the meaning, value and purpose of life - without denying or depreciating the reality of either the personal tragedy of my friend or the very public tragedy of the Haitian cataclysm. This is what is meant, theologically, by the word "miracle" – it is a sign of God's ultimate authority over the world even in the midst of all the many evil things that happen. And the celebrations of the survivors on Friday in the full light of what might have happened to them and what did happen to my friend and multiple thousands in Haiti is what I would call, "worship." It is what should (and often does) happen in our sanctuary and every sanctuary each Sunday. Celebration.

xxix The lesson of Job: Per Satan, God's prosecuting attorney in the Heavenly Court, take Job's good fortune away and he'll curse God's name. Such, apparently, is not the case. At one point, Job defiantly says,

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him

Job 13:14-16 (New International Version)

xxx 13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15 (New International Version)

xxxi 15. Thus the Word condescended to man's engrossment in corporeal things, by even taking a body. All man's superstitions He met halfway; whether men were inclined to worship Nature, Man, Demons, or the dead, He showed Himself Lord of all these.

On the Incarnation of the Word (Athanasius) (See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm )

xxxii See Eric Liddell (Wikipedia) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Liddell

xxxiii 1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Gal 5:1 (New International Version)

xxxiv 14Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants.

Hebrews 2:14-16 (New International Version)

xxxv 44"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Matthew 13:44 (New International Version)

xxxvi 2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

1 Corinthians 4:2-4 (New International Version)

xxxvii See The Good Community Committee at http://www.goodcommunity.missouristate.edu/IntoToGC.htm and see Unitarian Universalist Association Principles and Purposes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalist_Association#Principles_and_Purposes

xxxviii "The difference between the attitudes of individuals and those of groups has been frequently alluded to, the thesis being that group relations can never be as ethical as those which characterize individual relations."

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p.83.

xxxix I cannot find the exact quote but I'm certain the distinction between "the church gathered" and "the church scattered" came from Elton Trueblood, The Incendiary Fellowship.

xl I'd like to respond to another question I received after the talk – a bit more artfully, I hope, than I did at the time :-) Someone said something to the effect, "I have so much on my plate already, I'm exhausted, and now you're urging me to embrace this hope and do even more for the church?" I hear you :-) But that's not what I meant at all. It is not my wish for people to exchange the idol of career success (for example) for the idol of "church volunteer who sacrifices themselves on the cross of church committeedom" :-). The point is that once we've been released from our bondage to our idols / demons / powers / gods we are radically free to expend that once-captive energy where we will. Augustine supposedly once said, "Love God... and do as you please." And Luther once shocked his parishioners by exhorting them to, "Sin boldly!" The Christian faith is a call to such radical freedom that no less a personage than the Apostle Paul had to defend himself, on more than one occasion, from the charge of preaching immorality.

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Romans 6:1-3 (New International Version)

xli Worship, in Christian lingo.

xlii Christian Education

xliii Pastoral Care

xliv Fellowship

xlv I must admit I've been less than diligent in my support of the UUCLV. I have a half hour walk or so to get to the church and Sunday is about the only day that I don't HAVE to get up at the crack of dawn and be somewhere. Commitments to youth and adult RE compel me to go even when I don't feel like it :-) So when someone new comes here, we need to find what motivates them and connect them to an appropriate task that will engage that motivation.

xlvi Missions

xlvii Evangelism

xlviii Stewardship

xlix 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

1 Corinthians 15:16-19 (New International Version)

l One last point. While I recognize the truth in what I have presented, I have by no means assimilated it into the totality of my life and my behavior. It is, in fact, not that kind of thing. Grace comes to us as it does and the possibility of slipping back into old ways is clear. John Calvin supposedly once said that the human mind is an "idol factory" and no sooner do we we rid ourselves of one idol than we adopt another. I do not believe I, as a Christian, have any particular advantage over those who are not Christian beyond the fact that I believe my experiences with the Bible, books about the Bible and people explicitly committed to the communal reality described in the Bible (that is, the Christian church) have helped me discern the human dilemma, God's response to our dilemma, and the new human possibility as individuals in community. I am vain enough to print and distribute my remarks but not so vain as to believe God sent me to the UUCLV to turn everyone into orthodox Christians :-) My purpose at the UUCLV is to encourage.

To Greg Ritter's Alleged Victim and Family

2010-01-12T07:15:00.004-05:00

First, I understand that in all likelihood you'll never read this, so we can consider this my prayer to God in Christ crucified.

I apologize for referring to you as the "alleged victim" because, as the most vulnerable person in your relationship with Greg Ritter, your testimony should be favored.

I knew Greg Ritter. Greg Ritter, at his best, would have wanted you to have a good, happy and productive life.

When Greg Ritter took his life a week or so ago, he was not at his best. He certainly didn't act on your behalf.

He was in a dark hole and didn't know how to get out, which is why most suicides occur.

People don't commit suicide because they want to be dead - they commit suicide because they want the pain to stop.

And I'm sorry that Greg Ritter put his very significant troubles over your peace of mind and future happiness.

But please, be assured, that whatever the facts of the situation, Greg Ritter would be very sorry for any harm he had created and would want you to have a wonderful life.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, Pa

Greg Ritter Succumbs to the Beast

2010-01-09T20:20:00.002-05:00

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. 4Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?"

5The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months. 6He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. Rev. 13:1b-8 (NIV)

First, I've been attempting to write a lucid, rational account of the Christian faith for my fellow Unitarian Universalists today – so while Greg may have succumbed to the Beast, I will succumb to florid Christian mythologizing.

And I do so without apology. The above, to me, is probably the most accurate description of the past year or so in the late Greg Ritter's life.

To make a very long story very short, Greg was a Scout camp counselor and an award-winning teacher who was accused of sexual contact with a child. I've known him since 1986 or so and, while he was not a close friend, he was (and remains) a friend. When the situation broke last year, I wrote a letter to him skirting the issue of guilt or innocence but affirming that he was, and would remain, my friend.

He replied to me...

Bill, I can not express in the written word how much your letter meant to me. Thank-you for your trust and friendship in my hour of need. I hold your friendship deep in my heart, and only wish that someday I can shake your hand and imbrase you in my arms and tell you in my own words. Thank-you Bill! Thank-you for being you! Greg Ritter

We never contacted each other again and last Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, before pleading in the case, he committed suicide.

I have my own guilt about failing to follow through on that initial contact but that is from the gut. My head tells me that, while it would have been good for my soul to have pursued a closer relationship with Greg, it was highly unlikely that anyone – including those who were much closer to him than I – could have made an effective intervention.

Teaching, in my opinion, was his life and – no matter how this would have resolved – his life as a middle-school teacher was over.

Whatever Greg may or may not have done, my guess is that everyone – including me and everyone else who knew him, including the alleged victim and his family – probably feels a bit crummy right now.

Because there are absolutely no winners in this situation – only losers.

The Beast spoken of in the Revelation to St. John ate Greg's lunch.

Without judging Greg (which is God's domain, not mine) I can only say that if the allegations were true, then Greg was fighting the demons within. If the allegations were not true, then Greg was fighting the demons without (which is not to say anyone did anything wrong – if the boy or his parents felt that inappropriate contact had occurred, they had a moral obligation to report it to authorities, even if the ultimate situation was determined to be either innocent or some very bad judgment on Greg's account regarding text message 'jokes' sent to the youngster.

Either way, the Beast ate Greg's lunch and – to the extent that the world needs people like Greg, which I think it does – it ate the world's lunch.

I believe in God revealed in Jesus Christ crucified.

That means, I believe in God's hidden rule even in the heart of darkness.

What Greg failed to see in his despair, but what we – if we are to honor his memory - must see, is that God has chosen to meet us, in disguise, in the darkest areas of our lives.

Whether the darkness is exterior to us (as in the Holocaust) or interior to us (as in pedophilia, anti-social personality disorder, alcoholism, gambling addiction or – for that matter – enslavement to financial or career success), it is in the broken areas of our lives that God has chosen to most clearly (if ironically) reveal his authority over the power of death in our lives.

To quote Jesus Seminar scholar, priest and poet Edward Beutner, "God is nowhere absent, everywhere hidden."

Whatever Greg's guilt or innocence may be, God in Christ will stand vigil over his grave until all things are revealed and renewed in the great Day of the Lord.

In God's one-sided contest with the Beast, God proves God's sovereignty by giving the Beast the first round.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

HELP! George W. Bush is Spamming My Blog!

2010-01-09T05:53:00.003-05:00

Someone left a comment on one of my blog posts. It looks like the victim of a hit-and-run language translation program. If I ever start a religion, this will be the first document in its canon of scripture. (Wouldn't necessarily encourage following any of the links unless you are really serious about being unswerving how to harness the goliath power of Xrumer and communicate with afar it into a Cash machine. :-)

Enjoy.
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Afghanistan Weighing on my Mind and Conscience

2009-10-19T21:21:00.002-04:00

I had hoped to post something on Afghanistan but have not so far. All I can say at this point is that President Obama needs to lead America and the West into a decades-long struggle (for lack of a better word) in support of a moderate, tolerant Islam committed to the full mobilization of its human resources (including, especially, its women) against Islamic, extremist militarists.

It is a struggle that will be intercontinental and involve military, political and economic force in which America needs to use "just enough, but no more" military power. It is a different type of struggle, I believe, than any America has engaged in.

It is no less than a struggle between civilization (both Western and Islamic) and barbarism.

It is in the context that the decision about "more troops to Afghanistan" must be considered. The Afghanistan decision is operational: it may be that other commitments of power are called for. But the overall decision to commit America to this extended and expensive struggle is strategic and must be brought home to the American people by President Obama.

I believe he needs to lead us into the most tragically necessary war America has fought since the Civil War and WWII.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

References: The Continuing Global Conflict Against Islamic, Extremist Militancy

2009-10-13T13:14:00.009-04:00

This is what I've been reading over the last few months.

No particular order than reverse chronological (as I've posted these links to Facebook).

THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Esquire, March 2003)

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document

Letter From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

This Week at War: Where is Jones? | Foreign Policy

The Purpose of the Afghan War - Council on Foreign Relations

The Cost of Commitment in Afghanistan - Council on Foreign Relations

A Muslim solution for Afghanistan - Yahoo! News

Peter W. Galbraith -- U.N. Isn't Addressing Fraud in Afghan Election - washingtonpost.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Still Not Tired – NYTimes.com

The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’ - NYTimes.com

Obama considers range of Afghan war options - Yahoo! News

Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears – NYTimes.com

Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- In Afghanistan, the Middle Ground May Be Most Perilous – washingtonpost.com

Irans Nuclear Threat Heritage Foundation

Op-Ed Columnist - Obama at the Precipice – NYTimes.com

PostPartisan - Israel's Final Warning to the World?

Obama's Iran disclosure likely part of clever chess game - Yahoo! News

The Arena: McChrystal report-what now? | POLITICO.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Real Men Tax Gas – NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Policy Has to Match the Sacrifice – NYTimes.com

The cap-and-trade bill: Waiting for the other shoe to drop | The Economist

Strife in Yemen: The world's next failed state? | The Economist

Even amid a war and a recession, Americans shouldn't adopt a misguided doctrine - By Paul Wolfowitz

David Rothkopf -- Hillary Clinton Redefining State Department and Her Own Role – washingtonpost.com

The Women’s Crusade – NYTimes.com

The Holocaust's shadow over Israel's choices - Yahoo! News

Bill Cahir, Marine sergeant killed in Afghanistan, to receive Purple Heart – lehighvalleylive.com

What to Read on American Primacy

Op-Ed Columnist - Green Shoots in Palestine II – NYTimes.com

US troops now a 'coalition of one' in Iraq - Yahoo! News

A day of reckoning for Bush's 'torture' lawyers - Yahoo! News

Op-Ed Columnist - The Losers Hang On – NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No. - NYTimes.com

Obama's Favorite Theologian? A Short Course on Reinhold Niebuhr - Pew Research Center

The Pentagon's Wasting Assets

Soldier who fought in pink boxers home for 4th - Yahoo! News

What Role Has Iraq Played in Iran?

Op-Ed Columnist - A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets – NYTimes.com

The Next Explosion in Iran - Yahoo! News

Beyond the Banks By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Don’t Try This at Home By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Foreign Affairs - Beyond Iraq - Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk

This Is Not a Test By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Obama Says No to Torture; Interrogators Say Yes to Obama - Yahoo! News

The Long Dance:Searching for Arab-Israeli Peace

Foreign Affairs - Change They Can Believe In - Walter Russell Mead

Troglodyte Talk-Radio Republicans

2009-10-09T17:47:00.004-04:00

My deepest sympathies to my Republican friends whose glee at America losing a chance at hosting the Olympics has been spoiled by America's president being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Please let the rest of us know what we can do (short of putting a Republican in the White House) that will cause you to root for America again.

My first thought at 5:30 AM on hearing this was, 'Can't wait to see how Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter and the other troglodyte media-heads spin this such that President Obama receiving a prestigious international peace award for attempting to prevent a nuclear holocaust is a disgrace, confirmation of his traitorous ambitions and another indication of the illegitimacy of his presidency.'

Coming home tonight and reading some of the response, I've not been disappointed.

I would love it if some ditto-head would explain to me how Republicans ever intend to win another election in this land.

But I guess I have my answer - by hoping Obama fails and that they'll be elected by default.

That would explain, of course, why the Republicans chose, early on, not to put forward their own global reform plan for health care. (See Dems taunt GOP: Where's your health plan?)

I can only hope that the wild hope that Obama fails at anything he attempts will not carry over to his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief.

The first step back toward sanity is to take the little ear bud out of your ear and go read some articles by knowledgeable people - and I don't care if its The Weekly Standard or or Foreign Policy or the Heritage Foundation.

Anything is better than the mind-screwing you get from listening to the demagogues (and yes, that means you too Keith Olbermann - nuts is nuts whether you fall to the left of the tree or the right.)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

A Time for Heroic Action?

2009-09-26T12:29:00.002-04:00

See...

Family cemetery visit led to hanged census worker

Friends: Hanging victim devoted his life to kids

“Times of threat bring increased aggression,” said Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the agency’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior during his 21-year career at headquarters in Langley, Va.

“And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization,” said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University. “The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”
(see Social change could spark violence)

If census worker (and Scout leader and teacher and lymphoma survivor and churchman) Bill Sparkman's death turns out to be anything other than suicide or deliberate mis-direction on the part of the killer or killers, then every person and especially every media pundit – professional or amatuer – who ever diseminated the idea that our current federal government is fascist or socialist or run by traitors or is being illegally led by a constitutionally unqualified president (or similar statements) has some blood on his hands for his death.

Let me say that again.

Maybe it was a suicide, or a murder in which the killer sought to deliberately mislead on motive or maybe some weird auto-erotic thing such as that which ultimately claimed Keith Carradine...

But if not...

...then anyone who participated in the poisoning of our national conversation to help create an atmosphere in which a harmless census worker could be targeted for lynching by a violent wing-nut bears some responsibility for his death.

In 1974 (the year of his death from cancer at the age of 50) Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Denial of Death. I cannot recommend it enough. It, along with the works of the late lawyer / theologian William Stringfellow and, I guess I should add, the Bible, have most informed my views on the reality of (and the attempt to overcome) death as a moral (as compared to a biological) issue.

In a nutshell, my read on Becker is that humans – the one animal species with the capacity for symbolic thought – find the idea of death, in its full implications for human meaning, intolerable. The better adjusted of us learn to accept a “vital lie” in which, somehow or other, death is overcome. For example, death will not matter if I have surviving children, or if I gain tremendous wealth or power, or a great number of sexual conquests, or make the world a better place, or have the greatest stamp collection in the world – the content of the “lie” doesn't really matter, so long as we believe it and can fulfill it.

And God help the poor fool who stands in the way of our (as psychologist Norman O. Brown called it) immortality project. (This, in the Bible, is what is called “sin”, but that's a topic for another time :-)

For the lesser adjusted (and I place myself in that category :-), we develop some neurosis or phobia or something, which allows us to continue functioning, albeit in an impaired way.

For example, let's say I can neatly bundle all my existential anxieties about my death and the ultimate meaning (if any) of my life into a fear of snakes. I can function just fine so long as I'm not confronted with snakes. And that's a viable “plan” because, to a certain degree, I can manage my activities to minimize the possibility of encountering snakes.

One major alternative for dealing with death is to openly confront it – that option Becker calls 'heroism'.

The hero (and we all love heroes – look at the movies we watch) confronts the power of death in a very direct and non-metaphorical way – and defeats it.

And THAT type of heroism, I'm afraid, is what Jerrold Post (in the block quote above) refers to: someone who has been all charged up by anti-federal government ranting and decides to fight and destroy “evil” directly by lynching a representative of the federal government.

It's the same type of heroism Roeder (allegedly) had when he gunned down Dr. Tiller as the unarmed Tiller ushered at his church.

Now his heretofore worthless life is transcendently “meaningful.”

But – and you can trust me on this - God help the radio show hosts and internet bloggers who selected his target for him.

A true hero right now is someone who leaves their ultimate justification in life in the hands of God and does their best to de-escalate irresponsible rhetoric before more innocent people are killed and, more importantly, before all chance of America's brilliant constitutional government functioning is lost amidst the inane babble of those who would substitute hate and ideology for citizenship and intelligent conversation.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

The Battle Against Extremist, Militant Islam

2009-09-21T18:41:00.002-04:00

Just a quick sharing of two links: An analysis (by Bob Woodward and others) on the current situation in Afghanistan (which, of course, also has consequences for nuclear-armed Pakistan) and a declassified version of General McChrystal's request for more forces - and for a change in strategy.

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document

Thwarted Decency

2009-09-20T19:02:00.002-04:00

See This Anger Isn't Just In Black And White by Jim Sleeper (The Washington Post)

This may be the most intelligent paragraph I've read regarding the fear and rage that otherwise decent folks are expressing through screaming and other forms of incivility.

Yet it would be a mistake to feel disdain for these guys [young folks screaming 'USA' at John McCain's acceptance speech], for their buffoonish chanting was only one side of them, and not necessarily the dominant one. They haven't curdled into fascists, as some on the left seemed to think. More likely, the thwarted decency in them is trying to find a political home, a sense of civic standing that is slipping away.

I see it in the anti-choice protesters at the Allentown Womens' Center. I see it in Rep. Wilson's shout-out at the President of the United States addressing a joint session of Congress. I see it in the anger expressed during the Town Halls and I saw it in the crowds Sarah Palin was drawing during the presidential compaign.

I see it in my friends and family, many of whom are glued to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.

I see it in one conservative micronationalist friend who is supporting the state sovereignty initiative in Tennessee and I see it in a liberal Scouting friend who has recently been singing the praises of fascism.

It reminds me of the prescient film, Network, and the deranged anchor, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), who has an on-camera nervous breakdown.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting]'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

These people are all decent people (including the anti-choice protesters and I'm giving some of them the benefit of the doubt on that :-).

There is a fear in all of us... the fear that the (more or less) comfortable lives in a comfortable America (which is the situation most of my friends and family share, though many others do not) are passing away; they are transitioning into something new, particularly if one is white, male and middle class.

And as fear will do what fear, from the standpoint of evolution, is “designed” to do, we are pushed into fight or flight mode.

Well, unless we plan to leave these fair shores to go to another (equally transitional world), that leaves us with fight mode.

It starts with verbal agression and can escalate to physical aggression.

I am convinced there are two triggers to verbal and physical aggression.

The first is the simple matter of not getting our own way.

I don't believe that is all that significant. Most of us, since childhood, have learned that we don't get our own way much of the time.

And that's okay – so long as our “non-negotiable” needs are met and so long as we believe the process is fair that that we (the minority) have been heard.

And that's the anger I'm hearing now... that the needs denied are “non-negotiable”, that the process is not fair and that I'm not even being heard. (And, of course, if I'm not even being heard, what recourse do I have other than violence?)

Most (not all) of the people I know are Christians and Americans.

For those of us that fall into both of those categories, we live within something that the late lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow called, The Constantinian Arrangement.

Christians were persecuted in Rome until the Emperor Constantine “cut a deal” with the Church: respect and live within the laws of my regime and I will tolerate (and even allow as a monopoly) the practice of your religion.

Some sixteen hundred years later, it is still a matter of dispute as to whether or not that was such a good idea :-)

But for those of us who believe it was a good deal (or who are willing to live with it nonetheless – see “on not getting one's own way” above :-), this is my take on the American situation.

In America, we live according to a social contract whose penultimate authority is the Constitution and whose ultimate authority is God (or, for my secular friends, conscience, not that I believe the two are identical, but they are close enough for government work :-).

The constitution was (wisely) designed in such a way that competing interests (whether of individuals or collectives such as companies, industries, non-profit groups, etc.) could battle it out to a victory in a three branch system with checks and balances all along the way – all of which occurs in the context of a Bill of Rights which protects the rights of the minority).

I must admit that I believe the Founders of America did a bang-up job on this (with the notable exception of their tolerance of slavery and the subjegation of women and other non-propertied peoples).

In the world today, America has the “longest-lived” and briefest constitution of any other nation.

My friends on the right would (I believe) declare that we do not, at this time, live under the Constitution. They might argue that life under the Constitution as that was understood by the Framers ended with United States vs. Butler in 1936:

The general welfare clause of article 1, section 8, was also intended as a shield, to ensure that Congress, in the exercise of any of its enumerated powers, would act for the general rather than for any particular welfare. Here, however, Hamilton stood opposite Madison, Jefferson, and others in thinking that the clause amounted to an independent, enumerated power--albeit limited to serving the general welfare. But as Congressman William Drayton noted in 1828, if Hamilton were right, then whatever Congress is barred from doing because there is no power with which to do it, it could accomplish by simply appropriating the money with which to do it. That, of course, is precisely what happened, and what the Court sanctioned when it came down on Hamilton's side in 1936 (United States v. Butler), then a year later went Hamilton one better by saying that although the distinction between general and particular welfare must be maintained, the Court would not itself police that distinction (Helvering v. Davis). Congress, the very branch that was redistributing with ever-greater particularity, would be left to police itself. On the First Principles of Federalism by Roger Pilon

I don't buy this.

The Framers understood that the government would, at times, get it wrong. (See “on not getting one's own way” above :-).

When it's wrong, we have to suck it up and live with it (as I did for eight years with Bush vs. Gore and as slaves did for decades – under slavery – and Blacks did for decades under Jim Crow, and as women did until the early part of the 20^th century).

And as Republicans need to do now. At least for 4 – 8 years.

Why?

Because I have free speech. Because I have freedom of the press. Because I have the right to assemble with like-minded people.

Because there is no power of government, whether Executive, Legislative or Judicial that, in the long term (if not always the short), is beyond the reach of the people through either legal means or through non-violent civil disobedience.

So what we really need to do, as liberals and conservatives, as Democrats and Republicans, as Hamiltonians and Madisons, as pro-choice and pro-life, as etc., etc....

...is listen to each other.

We need to listen to each other and get political and, if we cannot come to an agreement, at the end of the day, use our political power to force our will.

Because if we get it wrong it will not, in the long run, endure.

Obama can possibly force health care reform through a simple majority vote if he can get enough votes to fight a filibuster. Then the issues will be resolved under conference.

But if what comes out of it is not good, it will not last – because laws can be changed or repealed (see Prohibition :-)

As Benjamin Franklin said, we must all hang together or we shall assuredly all hang separately.

And while it may not play well in Tennessee (at least WESTERN Tenassee ( :-) ), I cannot help but recall the words from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Is Healthcare a Right or a Personal Responsibility?

2009-09-18T18:24:00.000-04:00

It is my (at least preliminary) belief that access to affordable health care is a right of the people of the United States and that it is within the powers of Congress to pass laws enabling that under the “General Welfare Clause” in Article I, Section 8 and the United States Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; [Followed by Congress' enumerated powers]

For those who care, this would put me on the Hamiltonian side of constitutional interpretation as distinguished from the interpretation of James Madison.

No one questions the authority of congress to legislate in support of military defense against national security threats so it seems to me quite reasonable for Congress to legislate in support of non-national security threats to life.

For those who would argue the Madisonian view I would, while aware of the dangers of a predatory federal government such as is restricted in the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution, am persuaded (until someone persuades me otherwise) that the same interpretation given in the Hamiltonian view is used by state governments within their own state constitutions.

Governments – whether federal, state or local – simply must have sufficient power to create conditions in which people's welfare (including their health, which is the foundation for most other types of welfare) can best be enabled.

This would not, in my opinion, rule out legislation that would require people to take significant responsibility for their own health and welfare (as we do with our careers, our finances, our marriages and our other private endeavors) but – as with these other endeavors – the federal government has the responsibility and power to fund and regulate the larger rules of the game.

Anyway, that's where I come down on the issue (for today, anyway :-)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
bekkenhuis@fast.net

The Inclusive Christian Discussion Forums...

2009-09-17T17:37:00.002-04:00

...are now up and running at The Inclusive Christian Discussion Forums on ezBoard.

I'm hoping it will prove a place of intelligent and (mostly :-) civil conversation on a variety of topics.

While you need not post under your own name, please pick a pseudonym and stick with it - I don't want to argue against 15 separate posters and find out they're all sock-puppets of the same guy :-)

You do not need to be a member of ezBoard to either read or post.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Thought Provoking Issue Raised by an Abortion Protester

2009-09-12T12:31:00.002-04:00

Will deal with this later, but thought I'd quick log it before I forgot. (If I log it, my anti-choice associates will "remind" me that I haven't responded to it :-)

If one presumes that a fetus starts as a fertilized egg and eventually becomes a "pre-born" baby in the womb (as I do) and if one presumes (as I do) that a fetus has no "right to life" whereas a baby - in the womb or out of the womb - is entitled to have its interests represented regarding a decision to abort, what is one to make of medical technology that is pushing back "viability" to earlier and earlier weeks?

A protester told me fetus' have survived out of the womb as early as (if I remember correctly) three or four months - which I find very early and plan to confirm via some research.

Nonetheless, even as a thought experiment, what if doctors were technically capable of extracting a fertilized egg from a womb and basically continue to "grow" it in some type of artificial womb?

Does that change the ethical issue at all?

I suspect not (as I don't believe "viability outside of the womb" is the key test), but it is worth giving a decent think.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

The Death and Life of New Orleans: City of Refuge

2009-08-30T17:22:00.001-04:00

The late William Stringfellow (lawyer and lay theologian) was a good friend of The Rt. Rev. James Pike.

After Bishop Pike's death in the wilderness of Judea, Stringfellow and Anthony Towne published a book entitled, “The DEATH and LIFE of Bishop Pike.”

His explanation of the non-intuitive reversal of life and death in the title was something along these lines: that Pike's death was implicit in the entirety of his life and that the entirety of his life was implicit in his death.

Something similar could be said for the City of New Orleans as depicted in Tom Piazza's fictional City of Refuge as well as his non-fiction work Why New Orleans Matters.

[Full disclosure: Tom is a high school friend of mine who, though I haven't seen him in over 35 years, I've stayed in touch with via the occasional email and, more significantly, his excellent books. In high school I was the Republican conservative and he was the Democratic liberal and we've both lived long enough for me to see the errors of my ways :-]

Tom is a Long Island white boy who inexplicably (to his classmates) was heavily involved in “Negro” (as we would have called it at the time) music. [He has no doubt forgotten, but I remember asking him at one point in high school, “Leadbelly?! What mother would name her kid, “Leadbelly?!”]

Oh, my :-)

To make a very long story very short, Tom became a jazz/blues performer, a writer and – lastly – a citizen of what is no doubt his version of Mecca, the City of New Orleans.

To read City of Refuge, one would think he had been born and raised there.

Though I had read Why New Orleans Matters shortly after it was published, I unconscionably put off reading City of Refuge until very recently. I was afraid it would be a horror story.

Well, it certainly contains horrors but they are not recounted in a sensationalist way. It is an (on the surface) simple story of two families, one working class Black, one middle class white, who are caught in the maelstrom of Katrina and the death of the city that they, from their very different life experiences, both love.

The horrors are recounted in a very matter-of-fact way. A “sorry folks, that's just the way it was” sort of way.

The book is not a horror story, but an apocalypse.

It is the sudden and complete death of a great American city and the not-so-sudden, tentative signs of rebirth.

It reminds me, of all incongruous things, of Stephen King's book, The Stand.

It is the death of an old life and the frail, but hopeful beginnings of a new life.

For longer than anyone alive remembered, New Orleanians had danced at funerals. It was an obligation on those who were still alive to restate the resilience of the human spirit with wit and style, to be present, to answer when called, even with tears running down your face. If you lost your ability to dance in the face of death or troubles, then you lost everything. The point of holding Mardi Gras... was not to show the world that the city was okay. Mardi Gras was for the people of New Orleans, to prove to themselves that the spirit was not dead. (City of Refuge, p. 374)

As Tom is not merely an author but was an on-the-scene participant in the death (and hopeful resurrection) of the city (and people and music and food and etc.) he loves, I can only suspect how difficult a book this was for him to write.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Three Friends and a Discussion Regarding Abortion

2009-08-30T13:22:00.004-04:00

]Written in response to a Jewish-Christian friend's response to A Peek into Fetal Memory: Learning in Utero by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley

Introduction to a Discussion Regarding Abortion

A couple of things...

I did a little fact-checking on A Peek into Fetal Memory: Learning in Utero by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley and found the following:

In the Womb: Twins, Triplets and Quads (TV capture)

Discovery Of Fetal Short-Term Memory In 30-Week-Old Fetuses

My computer (and dial-up connection) doesn't give me the umph! to download media but, based on the description given, I see no reason to doubt the interpretation given in the quoted note.

So I'm prepared to accept the following facts: that multiple birth siblings respond to each other in the womb at some indeterminate time before birth (if I could download the video, I no doubt would know that time) and that short term memory has been shown to exist at about 30 weeks (a little under 7 months).

Second, I'm inclined to accept that a sperm cell in a man and an egg in a woman constitutes a potential human being. A baby constitutes an actual human being. There is a long process between the one and the other and, while science can give us certain facts, the decision itself as to when a fetus becomes a baby is not one that can be made by scientists (at least, not while remaining in their role as scientists).

It is a spiritual decision and moral decision, on the one hand and, within the context of a civil society, a political and legal decision on the other.

Spiritual and Moral Considerations Regarding Abortion

The spiritual and moral aspects puts us in peril at the get-go.

One good friend of mine is a Christian heavily influenced by the Jewish tradition who sees God's revelation in the Torah and in the Talmudic interpretations of the Torah given by Rabbis, particularly those in biblical times and in the early centuries of the Common Era.

I am a liberal Christian in a Unitarian Universalist church who is convinced of the spiritual authority of the Hebrew Scriptures (the so-called Old Testament), the Christian Scriptures (the New Testament) and the broad, mainstream tradition of the Christian tradition (which I take as being the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, the Anglican and the various mainstream Protestant denominations).

Another friend of mine (who does not know the first friend) is a committed atheist. He takes his moral compass from science and secular humanism.

Yet, we are all Americans and we are all joined by bonds of friendship and common nationality.

My Jewish-Christian (if I may call him that) friend seems to believe a potential person becomes an actual person sometime between conception and birth. And I would agree with that (though not on exactly the same grounds). And he also believes that a potential person, while not an actual person, is still something more than a tumor or a cyst – and I would agree with that as well.

My atheist friend would consider the potential person as becoming an actual person at viability outside the womb. I think that's unreasonably late – an entity that can experience pain, retain memories and (therefore) begin the development of a personality can certainly lay claim to actual personhood even if it hasn't undergone the “formality” of birth.

It is worth noting that the views of at least two of us (the Jewish-Christian and the Unitarian Universalist Christian (jeez, don't we have anyone non-heretical here? :-) are explicitly informed by “private” sources of “knowledge” (i.e. revelation). Arguably, my atheist friend's judgments in this matter are also informed by private sources of knowledge in that science can not make value judgments and it's hard to see how humanistic values can help in this case where the very question under consideration is when does a fertilized egg become a human.

It's also worth pointing out that the three of us are guys and that only one of us (the Jewish Christian) has actually helped birth and raise children – he knows the process better than we do, but he certainly doesn't know it like his wife knows it (especially the birth part)!

The Intersection of Private Spirituality / Morality and Politics / Law in America

As we move from the spiritual / moral issues to the political / legal issues I should point out a “quirk” in my own Unitarian Universalist Christian views.

Following the late William Stringfellow (a biblically conservative socially progressive Episcopalian) it seems incongruous if not arrogant to identify any human moral or political decisions with the will of God. It is one thing to pray to do the will of God and quite another to claim to know the will of God.

God may be infallible – we are not. And that fallibility, in my opinion, extends to those circumstances where we presume to speak of God's ultimate judgment regarding a person or decision.

I am reminded of the story of Abraham Lincoln, early in the Civil War when his goal was to reunite the country, not free the slaves. Two Quaker women approached him and said that God had revealed to them that God wanted slavery abolished. Lincoln gently replied that as he was President of the United States and as only he could actually free the slaves with a stroke of a pen (as he eventually did, at least nominally, in the Emancipation Proclamation) it was odd that God would have revealed this to them without revealing it to him.

Point taken.

A hundred plus years later civilized nations accept the principle that people should not be treated as property.

And it is quite possible that a hundred years from now civilized nations will have a shared view on abortion more pleasing to God than either “abortion on demand no matter the circumstances” or “no abortions ever, let the mother die.”

But so long as we remain embedded in history rather than living in God's New Jerusalem, all our ethical decisions are human decisions informed by our “private” beliefs and not divine decisions. So we all struggle along as best we can hopefully mindful that God (or, for my atheist friend, conscience and history) will ultimately judge our subjective, frail, human decisions.

This is the motivation, I believe, behind the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (See Text )

Speaking from a religious point of view, I believe this amendment specifies that the government cannot claim to speak in God's name and – more to the point – cannot side with any one group of people based on their claim to speak in God's name. It also allows people of various religious / secular beliefs to freely exercise those beliefs in the public marketplace and the political arena.

These two aspects have, at times collided with each other. (See Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment )

Political and Legal Aspects of Abortion

Where does this leave my Jewish-Christian friend, my secular humanist friend and my own Unitarian Universalist Christian self? (And, for that matter, our strict Pro-Life brethren, but I'll allow them to make their own case :-)

If we are Americans and if we are committed to the First Amendment, I suppose we fall back on 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

That sounds nice in principle but are we prepared to accept it when the (alleged) killing of babies is involved?

The Constitution was developed such that laws that were passed (as well as the interpretation and enforcement of those laws) reflects the victors in a succession of conflicts between competing interests – with the provision that the Bill of Rights protects certain rights of the losers in such conflicts and that this Bill of Rights cannot be changed without an overwhelming change-of-heart in the United States (as happened with the abolition of slavery, when slave holders were denied their right to “property” in favor of the Black Americans' right to be treated as people, not as property).

So we come down to two decisions that (to the extent we take the Constitution seriously) we need to make as a society:

When does a potential person under the law become a person under the law. At conception? At the first trimester? At the second trimester. The third trimester? After birth?
Who is authorized to decide the fate of the potential person on the one hand, and the actual person on the other? The mother? The father? The government? The religious establishment? How do we adjudicate the claims between a mother and a father or between a mother and the third trimester fetus that may have no prospective viability outside of the womb. Or that has prospective viability but might kill the mother?

I'd love to be able to say that God has revealed to me what God thinks about all this, but I can't. All I can say is that I believe that a fetus is a potential though not an actual person until such time as its nervous system has sufficiently developed to have feelings and to retain those feelings in memory, beginning the process of having a personal identity and history.

Science can probably give us the best answer on when that occurs but I'm sure that answer will also be tentative as that probably differs from one fetus to another.

Almost certainly during this time I believe the mother should be the decision-maker regarding whether to bring the fetus to term or not.

As I believe a fetus, all the way back to a simple, fertilized egg, in its status as a potential person, is still something of great worth, a decision to terminate a pregnancy should be made with great care and all possible advice from the mother's partner, her family, her religious or other institutions from which she draws moral guidance, and her doctors.

But I still believe it should be her decision.

At such point as society determines that the potential person has become an actual person, then I believe the interests of that actual person (as difficult to determine as that might be) should be taken into account by the government along with the interests of the mother and her husband (and possibly also her partner, even if they aren't married).

That point at which society determines when the potential person has become an actual person will no doubt be arbitrary. That is how the law works.

For example, someone is considered an “adult” in Pennsylvania regarding the consumption of alcohol on their twenty-first birthday. Had I been in Pennsylvania and had an alcoholic drink at 11:59 PM on February 4^th, 1975 I would have been in violation of the law. If I had an alcoholic drink at 12:01 AM on February 5^th, 1975 I would not have been in violation of the law – which is interesting because although I wasn't actually born until 3:02 PM in the afternoon, the law defines my adulthood by my birth date not my birth time.

Again, how these decisions are made (regarding when a potential person becomes a person under the law, what responsibilities society holds towards potential persons, how the interests of a fetus defined as a legal person should be considered) are, in America, through the political process under the US Constitution.

And as Americans, we are constrained to accept those judgments if we can and to work to change those judgments under the lawful processes provided by the constitution if we can't.

The Bonhoeffer Situation

What if we believe we cannot ethically accept those judgments and we do not believe the lawful process of changing those processes suffice?

What if we feel compelled to define ourselves outside of the American constitution and resort to violence to enforce our beliefs on others?

Well, to begin with, I suppose it bears mention that at the point we act on those beliefs we become traitors to our country and, in essence, go to war against it.

That is not necessarily immoral. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a traitor to Germany and the Nazi regime. Despite being a pacifist who initially used non-violent resistance to the regime he ultimately, through an accident of family history, became in the bomb plot. He was caught and executed days before his concentration camp was liberated by the allies.

Did Bonhoeffer do the right thing in ultimately embracing violence? I don't know. Only God knows.

Perhaps, at this time, it might make sense for the Catholics amongst us (if no others) to re-consider the Roman Catholic Just War Doctrine.

Just War Doctrine

The Just War Doctrine, as contained n paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

* there must be serious prospects of success;

* the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

I'll give some brief Unitarian Universalist thoughts on this :-)

First, a decision to engage in violence must meet “rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.” The decision to engage in violence against one's fellow citizens is no trivial decision for anyone who claims to respect authoritative teaching.

Second, the damage inflicted by the aggressor need to be “lasting, grave and certain”. The twist here is that as abortion is legal in the United States, the claim would have to be that the nation is the aggressor. That is, the aggressor is the United States of America and the Constitution which is the foundation of a legal system permitting abortion.

For argument's sake, let's say this holds. Certainly, if one accepts the decision (informed, again, by private knowledge or revelation not available to the non-Catholic rest of us) that an entity that should be recognized by society as a legal person comes into existence at the moment a woman's egg is fertilized by a man's sperm, then abortion would certainly constitute a holocaust. How could one not believe that the legalized, unmitigated slaughter of infants would not cause damage to a nation that would be “lasting, grave and certain.”

I would only ask that my Catholic friends remember that we're not all Catholic and many of us (including many of us who are Catholic) really do not find it obvious or self-evident that this is the case.

Third, violence must be the last resort.

Can anyone seriously believe this is the case in America? There are all the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment – to speak, to print, to assemble and organize, etc. We have a representative government. Votes and political financial contributions (for better or worse :-) effect elections and elections affect policy and policy affects laws.

Fourth, there are serious prospects for success.

I suppose that is arguable. Dr. Tiller's murder closed a clinic.

But that's winning a battle, not a war.

Those organizations committed to ending or limiting abortion seem to believe such violence ultimately immoral and counter-productive to the Pro-Life cause. (See All Statements from Pro Life Groups Condemning Tiller Murder).

I suppose one could take the conspiratorial approach and say that such statements are merely political in nature and that secretly these organizations believe that violence is the way to go.

But is that reasonable? Especially considering the Just War Doctrine's insistence that a decision to engage in violence meet “rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.”

Can one seriously defend the idea that all of these pro-life organizations secretly believe that violence against abortion providers and the federal and state laws that allow their work will bring victory?

I doubt it.

Fifth, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Again, can an argument be made that such “evils and disorders” will not result?

Tough question. If extra-legal violence ends a holocaust at the expense of ending America's constitutional “experiment” in representative government, could that not reasonably cause “evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated”?

I'll let my pro-life Catholic friends tackle that one :-)

Lastly, let's consider that “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”

Who, in America, has “the responsibility for the common good”?

Well, if one takes the Constitution seriously, we all do – collectively.

If one believes that the government that currently exists is representative of the people of America and legitimate, then what that government does reflects our corporate decision as to what constitutes the common good – even if we may disagree with this individual decision or that individual institution (as we all most certainly do).

Tentative Conclusion

I personally believe that a fetus is a potential person but not an actual person. As a potential person it is not something that should be treated as a tumor or a wart, but it is not entitled to full legal protection as a person either.

I believe it is a good thing for society to counsel sexual abstinence until such time as a person (hopefully a couple!) have the ability to assume the responsibility of an infant and, for those for whom the spirit is willing (or not, as the case may be) but the flesh weak, contraception.

At some point in the womb I believe that potential person becomes an actual person and should be recognized as such by law and should be considered a stakeholder in a decision to abort. That, to me, does not imply that no abortions would be performed after that time as, doing a bit of research after Dr. Tiller's murder, I am convinced that there are some really difficult situations women and their families encounter that may, indeed, justify abortion of a third trimester infant – just as we justify the execution of a murderer, the death of innocents (including innocent children) in a war or the withholding of a donor organ to one dying person to give it to another dying person with a better chance of recovery.

This legal decision-making will no doubt be messy and arbitrary but no less arbitrary than saying it's an actual person at the moment of conception or it's not an actual person until it is viable outside of the womb. (I'm 55 and I'm not fully convinced I'm viable outside of the womb. :-)

And, in the final analysis, whether or not society addresses each and every one of these issues the way I believe they should be addressed, I believe that the American constitutional system is largely (if not completely) representative and legitimate and that force is not justified (at least, to those who grant credence to centuries of Christian Just War thinking) to change the system when there are so many legal or illegal but non-violent options for those who seek a change.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Notes...

08/31/09 - Regarding John Dunkle's belief that there is no distinction between a potential person and an actual person, see the (pro-life) article at Cloning, Aquinas, and the Embryonic Person.

It includes this quote: The Catholic defenders of this "delayed hominization" of the embryo correctly say that St. Thomas Aquinas held (a) that there is no human person until ensoulment with a spiritual intellectual soul; and (b) there can be no ensoulment until there is a body proportionate to such a soul.

While the article says Aquinas' position is being misused in the debate regarding abortion / stem cell research, it does maintain that it was his position. If Aquinas can distinguish between a potential person and an actual one, so can I.

The Interfaith Christian

2009-08-09T18:58:00.002-04:00

Going to (or, on this particular morning, not going to :-) a Unitarian Universalist church has, over the last decade or so, caused me to grapple with two questions.

First, what is the difference between THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. (See 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker's take on that at the link.)

The second is, what to do – as a Christian - in a non-Christian (though by no means anti-Christian) congregation which is largely divided (in the context of worship) by the secularists seeking a sound lecture based on Enlightenment rationality and the spiritualists seeking some type of inter-faith spirituality not constrained by any one faith tradition.

I have wrestled and wrestled over the relationship between the Christian and the secular, the Christian and other faiths and Christian language over Christian – and universal – experience.

A lot of books and talks and arguments (thank you, xianity@yahoogroups.com!) have brought me to the following simple, conclusions.

First, what we call spirituality is the experienced connection between ourselves and reality – all of reality. As the joke goes about the Buddhist ordering a hot dog from a vendor in NYC, “Make me one with everything” :-)

It is a feeling based on an ontological reality – the connection between us and the cosmos.

When we feel “one with everything”, we have it. When we don't, we don't have it.

Of course it's a little more complicated than that – relationships always are.

Sometimes we may feel a bit non-spiritual not because we're disconnected from the cosmos but because we don't particularly enjoy or agree with what the cosmos happens to be telling us at a particular point in time. :-)

This brings me to a second point – what to do as a Christian in an inter-faith congregation.

There are really only two things I can do: interpret the Bible, Christian theology and tradition the best way I can to people who are probably not particularly predisposed to hear it (but are interested anyway), and to develop an interfaith and / or secular language for the gospel as I best understand it.

Simply put in interfaith terms, acceptance of the gospel allows me to celebrate life in good times and not so good times, to accept all of life, including the sometimes very grim aspects of life, and to live in hope – even when hope, in it's ordinary connotations – is no longer possible. (Thank you, William Stringfellow.)

And one can do that without worshiping idols whether they be idols of sex or alcohol or avarice or idols of patriotism, career success or family.

My favorite joke is, beyond all doubt, this beauty which perfectly represents the gospel.

A man is walking in a desolate area. He slips off the edge of a cliff and manages to grab hold of a branch about half way down. He can't hold on forever. He knows he will eventually let go and die. But he hollers anyway.

“Help! Help! Can anyone hear me!?”

To his astonishment, a voice returns his cry.

“Yes, my son, I hear you. I am God. What do you want?”

“Oh, God, thank you God, please save me!”

“Do you trust me my son?”

“Oh, absolutely. Please save me! Please!”

“Do you really trust me? Will you do anything I ask?”

“Anything, anything you ask I will do!”

“Let go of the branch.”

There's a moment of silence. And then,

“Hey!! Can anyone else hear me?!!”

Love it.

That's it in a nutshell. Whether or not you can grasp or appreciate or identify (as I have) with the Christian tradition the question is, are we ready to let go of our idols (money, success, reputation, alcohol, sex, patriotism, stamp collection, family, 401K, you name it) and trust God to justify our existences, such as they are, on this earth even in the face of death.

Hope that's helpful to someone, because that's about all I've got.

Why complicate the God question with Jesus Christ?

Again, it's very simply put: because of the cross of Christ.

The heart of the Christian proclamation is not that God rules in triumph in heaven (which I believe God does) but because God, more importantly (for me, anyway), covertly rules in the very midst of the misery of the earth – and God in Christ crucified on a Roman cross perfectly communicates that reality for me.

There is no aspect of Hell on earth that God in Christ has not endured for me, no aspect of my own capacity for depravity (to use a favorite Calvinist expression :-) in which God in Christ has not identified with and redeemed.

And that is good news indeed.

There are some corollaries of course, that need to be worked out along the way.

Forgiveness, and the love of others, for example.

If you have a cosmology that allows you to believe what I just said, it becomes well-neigh impossible to have an enemy – because you no longer believe that anyone can ruin your life, no matter what they do. Even if they end it.

That doesn't close the door on justice, but it reminds us that as Christians – or sympathizers or fellow travelers or, as the late William Stringfellow called them, fellow exiles and aliens – justice isn't about being compensated for personal harm nor is it revenge, it is about the Christian's legitimate concern for the protection of society.

But the basics are simple: for St. Augustine, “Love God and do as you please” and for Martin Luther, “Sin boldly!” (?! :-)

For myself, not being as theologically gifted (or concise) as Augustine or Luther, it is “Embrace and live life as it has been given you, do not trade the false comfort of idols and other gods for looking reality at its harshest in the eye, and never give up hope – even hope where no earthly hope is possible.”

To the extent that we allow God (or whatever word we prefer) to empower us to do this, every worship and all of life will make us one with everything :-)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

On the Sudden Death of Nancy and Peter Feist

2009-06-24T20:09:00.002-04:00

See In Knoxville, "We Are All Crushed"

See In memory of Nancy and Peter Feist

There is very little that I can say about the sudden death of Nancy and the baby she was expecting in September.

I can say I worked with her and her husband at camp, I can say they are wonderful people with wonderful children and I can say they treated me with great friendship and kindness.

I don't have any funny stories to share. They were just wonderful folks to work with at camp – they were like high school sweethearts.

Maybe my mood is not conducive to remembering funny stories right now.

My meditations are more drawn to the religious aspects of this disaster.

Technically, the existential / theological term for this type of event is “boundary situation” but that scarcely seems adequate.

It's a horror. It's every nightmare that horror writers seek to imagine come to life. It's H. P. Lovecraft on a pessimistic day.

It is, less technically, the situation one finds oneself in when the basic trust we all have in reality is forcibly and suddenly removed from us.

It strikes me that this, above all else, is what the Christian faith seeks to address.

It's not about being a good person. It's not about breaking bad or even immoral habits. It is not about making the world a better place. It is not, even, particularly about loving your neighbor. And it certainly isn't about finding relationship or financial success through accepting Christ.

It is about life handing you a body blow like this and you find that somehow you have the grace to pick yourself off the bloody ground and keep going on.

But not just going on: going on in hope. Going on still vulnerable to joy and pain, still open to the needs of others and continuing to offer your chin to the gods to let them take another wack at you rather than hunkering down in some type of self-protective stoicism.

I've always thought the Simon and Garfunkel song gave the stoic alternative to a Christian stance on life the best: “hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock. I am an island.”

The other great world religions as well as many secularists would share this balance of realism and hope and vulnerability even though they'd use different language to express it.

But, in the end, it is not the language one uses to express it. It is one's encounter with the reality itself.

The central message of the Christian churches in the first and subsequent centuries was that God offered salvation to the world through the nightmare of Jesus' bloody and agonized death on the cross.

Through sanctifying (that is, making holy) suffering and death, God in Christ conquered suffering and death for all of us. Because of God in Christ, there are no godforsaken places in the world.

Whether one can accept certain physicalist ideas of resurrection or not, it would appear at least to Christians that God has chosen to heal us even in the abyss of our darkest, waking nightmares.

To believe in God in Christ is to believe that there is no such thing as a hopeless, meaningless life or a hopeless, meaningless death.

And, yes, being possessed by that reality can lead to forgiveness, love, moral behavior, social concern and even success in relationships and finance.

But what it mostly leads to is a hopeful, vulnerable embrace of life even when life seems to open into the abyss.

David and his grieving family are encountering the abyss and facing all the temptations of hopelessness and despair. But I've known them a long time. They've faced challenges before.

The gospel landed on good soil in this particular family.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

"Would you rather die by a knife or a gun?"

2009-06-14T14:36:00.001-04:00

Letter to Editor Express Times 06/12/09

Last Saturday the volunteer escorts at the Allentown Women's Center were repeatedly asked by a protester whether we'd rather die by a knife or a gun.

Paraphrasing, he said abortion is a procedure done with a knife. Dr. Tiller's “procedure” was done with a gun. I don't know which is worse, a bullet or a knife. So, how do you prefer to die – by a knife or by a gun?

We reported this to the Allentown police. Their response? “He's just asking a question.”

Nonetheless, I do not blame the responding officers.

They know what we know – that there is no local political will to enforce laws against intimidation or threats that would be enforced at any business in Allentown that wasn't a clinic providing, amongst other services, abortion services.

In the next 24 hours several escorts were interviewed by one FBI agent and two US Marshals who apparently had more political will behind them to follow up on such incidents.

Death threats are just the tip of the iceberg regarding the harassment patients, volunteers and staff must face while at the clinic.

It is, in my opinion, time for the women of Allentown (and their male allies) to let the City of Allentown (as well as their own families, friends and co-workers) know that death threats are NOT okay and that laws regarding intimidation, harassment and disorderly conduct MUST be enforced and that those who target providers of abortion services have no special immunity in this regard.

Gaza

2009-01-06T04:51:00.010-05:00

I don't know very much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

What little I know (or think I know) could be summed up by saying the Israeli and Palestinian peoples want peaceful relations between two economically viable states with defensible borders. Their governments, on the other hand, seem to be drawn to the more non-negotiable positions of their respective more hard line bases.

Hamas has attempted to manipulate Israel into an attack that would result in horrific civilian casualties broadcast around the world, strengthening its own power and prestige in the Arab world (viz a viz the more moderate party in the West Bank and the more moderate Arab and Muslim nations (excluding Iran).

Israel, fulling knowing that this is Hamas' game, finally attacked anyway.

Now, neither Hamas nor Israel want a cease fire and the suffering civilians, as always, don't get a vote.

What one might say theologically on all this will have to wait another time.

I found the three [edit - however many :-) ] articles below helpful.

Beyond the Banks By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Don’t Try This at Home By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: February 3, 2009

Beyond Iraq: A New U.S. Strategy for the Middle East

This Is Not a Test

The hundred years' war

The long tunnel to a Gaza peace

The Mideast’s Ground Zero

Despite Pummeling in Gaza, Hamas Thinks It Has the Upper Hand

Foreign Affairs - Change They Can Believe In - Walter Russell Mead

The Long Dance:Searching for Arab-Israeli Peace

(Non-Theological) Reflections on Facebook

2008-12-13T13:36:00.006-05:00

I worked at a Boy Scout camp (Camp Minsi) for a long, long time and a number of us have stayed in touch. About a week ago, one of us (Mike Roberts, on our Yahoogroup) suggested that everyone get a Facebook page as a number of Post and Camp alums were showing up there.

I hate faddish things. Popular, shallow, trendy, pop-culture, in-group things... like Facebook.

But, based on Rev. Mike's big thumbs-up, I figured, hey, why not?

So I created a Facebook page. Took about 15 minutes.

Suddenly, pictures of friends I'd lost contact with for years, if not decades, before started popping up on my screen like freakin' mushrooms after an overnight rain.

And I began re-establishing contact. (I have a strange ability to do this anyway. I can pick someone I've not talked to in 20 years, call them up out of the blue and say, 'what's up?' like we just got together last week.)

And I've been strangely hooked on this over the past week or so.

And of course, ruining it, I then had to go and over-interpret the experience :-)

The way I figure it, it's like this.

You look in a phone book and you see a name, an address and a phone number.

You look at most web pages and you see things like current status of one's life, movies, books that one is interested in, what jobs they have, etc.

Facebook has all that but it is a true database - it relates the information to other people the person knows.

So you see people's friends and you see their interests and community involvements, etc., etc., and all of it is hyperlinked so you really begin to see a person not just as a discrete unit but as a node in an ever-expanding interpersonal network of interests, relationships, commitments, beliefs and so on.

And you begin to see how a person's life history is bound up in the life histories of the significant people in his life over long periods of time.

Case in point. I vaguely recognized the name of a Boy Scout who had been maybe twelve or thirteen when I last worked on camp staff in the mid-90's. I didn't know him very well, but he was the staff groupie or, maybe, staff posse. He'd always show up on the dining hall porch before a meal and share with the staff what was going on in his troop, offer to play his bugle for some camp event, ask us about what was going on, etc.

Just a nice, clean-cut, idealistic kid who, just a bit, hero-worshiped the staff. (Ah, we were not worthy, but it was nice nonetheless :-) )

Anyway, his name popped up in the "fan of Camp Minsi" category and I vaguely recognized it and, more definitively, his photo and I hit the "add as friend" button.

As we re-connected, I got to see a bit of his current life, his friends, the ultrasound of the soon-to-be newest member of his growing family and I thought to myself, 'maybe, just maybe, when all us staff types were up there messing around and getting drunk on the weekends and running muck hikes and fridged froggies and singing silly songs in the dining hall and doing stupid skits at the campfire and ruining perfectly good food in the Scoutcraft cooking campfires maybe, just maybe, we made some small positive contribution to this kid's character.'

In spite of ourselves, no doubt :-)

Now all of this would have been true without Facebook but Facebook makes this network of personal interests, relationships and commitments over time a bit more tangible.

It will be interesting to see where this leads.

Case in Point: The Blagojevich Dilemna

2008-12-10T05:17:00.004-05:00

I'd go so far as to say that the most visible difference between the gods and God in Christ is that the gods, even the most respectable, benign looking ones, are ultimately bloodthirsty and demand blood sacrifice.

God in Christ requires no person's sacrifice.

[From my earlier blog entry: The Beginning of Christian Ethics]

If one can take the allegations at face value for purposes of discussion (without rendering a judgment on Governor Blagojevich's guilt which has yet to be determined)...

If the allegations are true, then it would appear to me that Governor Blagojevich's effective god in this situation (in distinction to any nominal commitment to God in Christ in this situation or even any actual commitment to God in Christ in the other spheres of his life) is revealed as being quite self-serving and disinterested in Governor Blagojevich's welfare, the welfare of the people of Illinois or the welfare of the American political system.

The key difference between service to God in Christ and the gods of money, power, etc. is not Governor Blagojevich's newly acquired disgrace, as Christians can suffer disgrace as well for following their Christian commitments. (Jesus' death by public crucifixion comes to mind.)

The key difference is freedom.

What Jesus did, what Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, what the Berrigan brothers did, they did in the freedom of the Christian to witness to God in Christ's free gift of a meaningful, purposeful and valuable life in the face of all idolatrous claims of the gods.

The allegations (based on phone transcripts) of the federal indictment against Governor Blagojevich reveals a person who is in no essential respect free. He, if the allegations prove true, was acting while in the iron grip of the gods. He is the puppet and the gods are the puppet masters.

God in Christ requires no such thing.

Galatians 5.1:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. [NRSV translation]

The Beginning of Christian Ethics

2008-12-08T03:59:00.006-05:00

If the beginning of revelation is that our speech, our actions, our loves and our causes have a fundamental meaning, purpose and value associated with them that the unyielding reality of death can not ultimately defeat, then what constitutes the program by which we live in the world? What is the beginning of Christian ethics?

Following William Stringfellow I do not believe that anyone can know how God will judge any particular action.

As the Rev. Hugh Flesher once told me, there is a difference between praying to do God's will and to know God's will.

But there is, I believe, a principle that stands behind Christian ethics and, oddly enough, it's a negative one - and one that even might sound a bit goofy to modern ears.

Simply put, don't worship false gods.

That certainly sounds easy enough, doesn't it? :-)

My atheist friends go one further - not only, do they say, will they will resist such temptations as worshiping Baal or Krishna, they'll do me one better and not worship God in Christ :-)

But the simple fact is that, at least in the Bible, there simply is no such thing as atheism. It is taken for granted that everyone worships the gods and a certain incredulity at the Hebrew claim to only worship one of them!

The normal atheist claim to worship no gods would have been considered quite an astonishing assertion.

But when one considers that those the ancients call gods have in a more secular age, been recast as values, ideologies, movements, fads, etc (and the physical and institutional manifestations thereof, such as money in the bank, governments, reputation, etc.), it can be seen that the gods are alive and well.

The source of ethical difficulty is that while many of the gods may be disreputable on their face (sex, drugs and rock and roll, that kind of thing), the most effective gods are quite appealing.

Who doesn't want to be a patriot for one's country?

Who doesn't want an outstanding reputation in the community?

Who doesn't think it important, even in a moral sense, to have money in the bank and to be dependent on no person or state for one's care?

Who wouldn't want to help lead a family and produce children?

These are inarguably all good things.

The problem, from a biblical point of view, is when one wraps one's life around any or all of these to the point that they become (false) means of justifying - to use the Pauline word - one's life or, in other words, to establish the ultimate meaning, value and purpose of one's life in the face of death.

To do for us at great cost and sacrifice (of our own lives and of anyone who stands in our way) what God in Christ claims to do for us as a free gift.

I'd go so far as to say that the most visible difference between the gods and God in Christ is that the gods, even the most respectable, benign looking ones, are ultimately bloodthirsty and demand blood sacrifice.

God in Christ requires no person's sacrifice.

And this is why I believe that while one may hope and pray to be doing God's will in some particular action or program or cause, one must ultimately leave final judgment on such action to God.

Because, to use a historical example, who other than God in Christ can say whether someone's decision to drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese civilian city in hopes of preventing a seaborne invasion that would have been costly in American and Japanese lives was motivated by one's honest obligation to make the best possible decision in the face of one's responsibilities or by an idolatry of one's nation over other nations?

For what it's worth, these are some of the tools that I'll bring to the table in coming discussions of abortion and the utilization of America's nuclear capacity.

The Beginning of Revelation

2008-12-06T08:38:00.003-05:00

One of the nice things about a blog (as compared to a web page or even a discussion board) is that you can pretty much shoot from the hip and worry about the niceties later.

So, having thought about this long and hard and even, arguably, professionally, I'm going to venture a quick, sketchy proposal or hypothesis or whatever on revelation.

We all know that we're alive and that life, despite suffering, is good. We also all know that someday we're going to die, along with everyone we've ever loved, every cause to which we've committed ourselves, every project or production or accomplishment we've helped bring about.

The vast majority of the human race, and their loves, projects and causes, will be forgotten one to two hundred years after their death.

On the face of it, that would - it appears to me - paint a very pessimistic view as to the nature of human life.

But humans (whether Christians, atheists, Buddhist or none-of-the-aboves) don't see it that way.

Despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, we speak and act as if our speech and actions had ultimate meaning, value and purpose.

And, again, we do that in the face of the empirical, overwhelming and inescapable evidence of the reality and finality of death.

I would affirm that this wispy, apparently ungrounded hope in the face of the iron reality of death is the greatest evidence for the providential presence of God in Christ in human life, whether individual humans or communities describe it in Christian terms, the terms of other religions or completely secular or atheistic terms.

Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...

2008-12-06T06:07:00.000-05:00

Had one of those happy coincidences of running into an old friend who suffered under my leadership in the kitchen at Boy Scout Camp Minsi some fourteen or so years ago.

Despite the fact that the Lehigh Valley has somewhere in the vicinity of half a million people (99.999 % of whom I do not know), this type of experience seems to happen to me quite often.

He passed my house mate and myself by and I had a flicker of recognition. I yelled at his back, "Excuse me, Sir, but you look very familiar" (apparently scaring the hell out of him :-) )

By this time my house mate had gone almost face-to-face with him and yelled his ancient nickname, "Weed!". (The name referred to his diminutive height and not to any pharmaceutical investigations on his part.)

He said that when he heard that it kind of amazed him as no one had called him that in at least ten years.

So we went into a bar, caught up and had a great time.

Once inside he said that he believes God puts different people in our lives at different times for specific reasons. (He's a lot more philosophical / theological than he was at the age of 15 which, considering he has a philosophy degree from a Catholic college, he has every right to be!)

It will be interesting to ponder the deeper significance of this chance meeting.

Update

2008-12-04T03:43:00.001-05:00

I've set up discussion forums dealing specifically with media issues on The Inclusive Christian discussion boards.

Moral Flexibility

2008-12-03T04:25:00.008-05:00

Nick Naylor: My job requires a certain... moral flexibility. (from Thank You For Smoking)

As noted a few posts before, on Inauguration Day the 'football' with the codes for launching a nuclear attack will pass from one President (George W. Bush, a Christian) to another President (Barack Obama, another Christian).

Beyond the Armageddon scenario, both presidents have had to deal with (or will have to deal with) issues involving conventional warfare, detainment of foreign enemies without trial, torture, whether or not to pardon persons facing the death penalty).

And, it goes without saying that any politician must consider the question (if it's even to still be considered a live question) as to their responsibility to always tell the truth to the American people.

While I'm at a happy point in my life where I, myself, need do nothing that troubles my conscience to earn a living, it is not like I'm not implicated in the Christian moral dilemma.

As a consumer, I make choices that - when their effects are multiplied by large numbers of American consumers making the same choices - cause poverty and suffering in other parts of the world.

The wars that America is fighting, along with their inevitable innocent casualties, are subsidized by my tax dollars and condoned by my silence (motivated by my desire to 'get along') and my political quietism (resulting from my expending all my energy on my employment, maintaining my standard of living and happily losing myself in the many entertainment distractions (such as blogging :-) offered in a consumer-oriented society.

Beyond that, despite what I consider my relatively conservative views on abortion, I find myself escorting patients (past screaming protesters) at a clinic that provides abortions.

As that is the issue I'm most immediately involved with that calls for a bit of Nick Naylor's "moral flexibility," that shall be the issue to which I'll return in the next post.

Update

2008-12-02T03:57:00.002-05:00

As of today, the Inclusive Christian discussion forums at http://p066.ezboard.com/btheinclusivechristian are being supported.

Bill

Codes for Armageddon: A new president to hold nuclear launch 'football'

2008-12-01T04:09:00.007-05:00

A friend sends me a link to a thought-provoking article which uses as its hook the passing of the nuclear football from Bush to Obama.

See Codes for Armageddon: A new president to hold nuclear launch 'football' By David Wood November 30, 2008.

A new long-range forecast from America's top spy agencies said the possibility of a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East, ignited by Iran's race to build a nuclear weapons arsenal, promises new instabilities "potentially more dangerous than the Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Weak Middle East regimes might be more tempted to actually use the weapons during a crisis in a region already prone to convulsive violence, said the report, Global Trends 2025, released by National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

The six Persian Gulf states, within easy missile range of Iran, have said they are pursuing "peaceful" nuclear energy programs. They are among 50 nations interested in building new nuclear facilities.

Add to that the possibility of terrorist acquisition of nuclear bombs or material from such states (with or without those states' cooperation) and there is certainly a recipe for disaster.

In the close calls of the Cold War (which I am old enough to remember) both the Soviet Union and the USA had too much materially to lose to casually initiate a nuclear exchange: the so-called Balance of Terror.

Now, we could face nuclear-armed enemies who have nothing to lose and a glorious martyr's death and Paradise to gain. (Americans may have believed in Heaven during the Cold War, but were in no immediate hurry to get there :) ).

It will be my endeavor to continue to examine this issue over the coming weeks and determine what, if anything, the Christian tradition can contribute to a discussion on where America should go from here.

The 'flow' will go from initial reaction on the blog, to discussion on the discussion board and - if anything worthwhile comes of it - posting more substantial articles on the web site.

Re-Inventing the Blog

2008-12-01T03:54:00.002-05:00

For reasons that escape me, I've decided to resume activities on this blog, The Inclusive Christian Web Page and The Inclusive Christian Discussion Board.

I'll start with the blog, even though I've always been suspicious of them. Who really cares what my favorite TV show is or the latest adventures of my beagle?

Nonetheless, it is the most accessible to me, so we'll start with that.

The web page should be re-built in about a week and the discussion board will start up after I a) post some content worth discussing to it and b) find someone who wants to discuss it.

Bill Bekkenhuis
bekkenhuis (at) fast.net
Bethlehem, PA

"Misunderestimated" by Bill Sammon

2004-07-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I guess seeing "Fahrenheit 911" had some positive effect on me.

That, and a discussion on the ezBoard community Have Theology, WILL ARGUE, provoked me to go out and get some books on the Bush administration (I mean, REAL books, not rants and raves by the likes of Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly or, for that matter, Moore or Franken...)

I tried to pick some that received generally favorable reviews and that contained positive comments (in Amazon) from both sides of the partisan divide. (Man, oh man, was it TOUGH to find four semi-positive books about Bush... :-)

Actually, not all the books I looked at are easy to classify - most giving some type of nuanced evaluation for Bush.

At any rate, I'm starting with "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters" by Bill Sammon, Senior White House Correspondent for the right-leaning Washington Times and political analyst for the more-right-leaning Fox News Network.

I started with it for the same reason you learn to eat your spinach before your desert - it goes down a little better that way :-)

I'm about a third of the way through the book and, to my surprise, am finding it an enjoyable, well-written and informative read despite the author's obvious enthusiasm for George W.

One of the incidents he recounts (so to speak) in the early part of the book is a fund-rasiing talk in Portland, OR where his motorcade was surrounded by maniacle Bush-haters and where he spent the evening (along with the high-rolling speach attenders) under a state of siege.

Ridiculously enough, Bush and his Republican conventioneers were sharing the hotel with "hundreds of homosexual men who were in Portalnd for the Gay Softball World Series".

The protestors, who - according to Sammon - were beyond any sort of reason also attacked and intimidated the gays trying to get to the hotel leading to a surreal discussion between Ari Fleischer and some of the gay leadership commiserating on what a shame it was that everyone just couldn't get along :-)

More reports as I continue through the book, but so far I give it a big thumbs up. (I don't necessarily AGREE with the spin he puts on events, but at least the events are laid out in a clear and even entertaining fashion.

This blog will be posted to both The Salon (in the Kingdom of Morovia) and City of God in The Secular City in Have Theology, WILL ARGUE and we'll see what kind of discussion we can provoke.

Original Sin

2004-07-11T07:03:00.000-04:00

Ah, yes, what better way for a Christian to spend Sunday morning than thinking about sin? :-)

Actually, I was thinking about Original Sin which - at my Unitarian Universalist church - is even more objectionable a doctrine than sin in general.

But it seems to me that sin is putting our own interests first, with the interests of others being somewhere between "second" and "nowhere".

Original sin says that this characteristic attitude is universal - that is, none escape it.

The doctrine of Total Depravity doesn't mean we're all raving sex maniacs or something. It simply means that there is NO ASPECT of human experience that escapes this tendency to sin.

Considered this way, Total Depravity is a useful warning against the idea that SOME aspects of creation (usually some aspects that are near and dear to our hearts, like our church or our nation) are immune from the effects of our fallen nature.

Total Depravity is a good doctrine to remember when President Bush states that America (not Christ) is the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it (as he did on 9/11/2002 in a speech at the Statue of Liberty).

WIL WHEATON DOT NET

2004-07-09T07:48:00.000-04:00

Wil Wheaton writes (in "midnight ravers":

"I know that it's not the first time I've said this, and it certainly won't be the last . . . but I want to thank everyone who has read this lame website over the years, and everyone who supported Dancing Barefoot, and Just A Geek. None of this would have happened without you guys."

I've not been by Wil Wheaton's very entertaining site for awhile and I'm happy to see it's still going strong and that he still finds (well, makes) the time to attend to it personally (rather than by hiring people to ghostwrite it as do some other celebs).

He's a great actor, a great writer and a great human being - and his books can now be found at Amazon.

Check out his blog at WIL WHEATON DOT NET!

This is all new to me...

2004-07-09T05:40:00.000-04:00

Attempted to respond to The Standard, the Kingdom of Morovia's newspaper blog and in registering was prompted to create my own blog.

Haven't a clue what to do with it, but I'm sure I'll think of something :-)

Bill Bekkenhuis
bekkenhuis@fast.net