Rev. Corey Keyes' Big Announcement

Thank you all for coming. I have a brief announcement, then I will field your questions.

I have decided against seeking the nomination to run for President of the United States in 2012. I repeat: I will not seek the presidency in 2012.

Several months of exploration, day after day of fervent prayer, and a six-pack of Labatt’s Blue all went into this decision, which is final. Here are my solemn vowels… the reasons I will not run:

America needs a strong leader, now more than ever: an individual of singular vision, steel-spined determination and bold action.

That ain’t me. It is not uncommon for me to spend ten minutes in the cereal aisle debating the pros and cons of Post versus store brand.  Any “Special Interest” lobbyist, corporate multi-nationalist or international terrorist appearing at the Oval Office door with a cute l’il abandon kitten  would get whatever they want from me, especially if the international terrorist was three feet tall, wore pigtails and spoke with a slight lithp.

Elitism has run rampant in the Oval Office.

And THAT is a very good thing. In the 222 year history of the U.S. Presidency, only 44 men have held the post. The President of the United States is the single most powerful human being on planet earth. Elite is a given. Please, let him/her hold a degree from a university that wouldn’t accept my application for a parking pass. Let him/her speak four languages. May he/she have no idea who Snooki is. Let him/her be smarter, more successful and far more erudite than I could ever hope to be.

Elite I am not, and elite the president must be.

Informed individuals only need apply.

As ashamed as I am to admit it, I get most of my news from NPR, PBS and the BBC, so I spent my morning watching the Network news shows this a.m., just to see how out-of-touch with the American people I have allowed myself to become.

Did you know that someone named Justin Bieber got a haircut?!? People are, like,  all “OH MY GAWD!” He lost 80,000 Twitter followers over it!

And not only that, Charlie Sheen is now dating a mystery blonde with a history in graphic…design?!? And, like, Kate and Prince William are really going just cuh-razy planning their wedding, while perfectly adorable and notoriously mischievous Prince Harry is planning the Bachelor Party?!? And Sarah Palin is all, like, “whateverrrr…” over this book her former BFF is writing about how absolutely SKANK she really is?

I didn’t know these matters of greatest importance to the American people, as NPR, PBS and BBC fritter away my precious time with distracting reports of two American-led wars, revolutionary meltdowns in Northern Africa and the Middle East, national and international economic crises,  renewed labor struggles funded by the Koch brothers, and the role of new media in the spread of democratic ideals, perhaps reducing the influence of Islamic extremism. (Honestly, how ironic that the only way to miss all the coverage of the royal wedding is to watch the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation?!?)

I’m just too  poorly informed and out of touch with the American people, I guess.

Overactive bladder  Um... 'nuff said? 


Underdog 9 a.m. every Friday morning on the Cartoon Network. Cabinet meetings  and tense, eleventh hour negotiations would have to wait until I knew Sweet Polly Purebread was absolutely safe.

So there you have it in a nutshell. I will not seek the nomination, and, if nominated, I will not run, and, if I run, I will not win, and, if I win, I will not serve, and if I serve, I will not… I think you get the picture.

All this to say, I think I’d make a really poor president. What kind of president would you be? Huh?

Stand Up, Stand Out

Standing Up, Standing Out

…to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. -- Sirach 15:15

I just watched the most astounding movie. Temple Grandin is a stunning portrayal (by the incredible Claire Danes) of a real person; her genius and her autism. We will be showing this movie at our church this Saturday evening at 7 p.m. in our Christian Ed wing. Please come. The showing will be part of a weekend devoted to a central concept we carry with us in our ministry at West Bloomfield UCC:

Community, not conformity.

We will continue with this concept in worship Sunday at 10 a.m., and with a give-and-take information session for those considering joining our church at 11 a.m.

I believe religious movements often go awry in the insistence that everyone think, believe and do the exact same thing.  Narrow conformity is stilting, anti-creative and paralyzing, and is nothing like what Jesus meant when he spoke of “the narrow gate and hard road that leads to life,” (Matthew 7:13 – smack dab in the middle of the sermon in which he begins with “judge not, lest ye be judged,” moves on to the Golden Rule, and ends with an admonition not to simply say ‘Lord, Lord’ and go about casting out what we perceive as other people’s ‘demons,’ as if that is what he asks of us. No, clearly from the context of the full pericope, Jesus is calling us through the narrow gate that strips off our pride, self-promotion and grandiose self-perceptions. The gate is narrow, preventing us from carrying our own extraneous baggage through it, making us better traveling companions on the hard road beyond!).

If we are, indeed, pilgrims on a journey, how much better the trip if we accept, encourage and celebrate each other and ourselves. The movie documents how Temple met resistance at every turn, but also had a handful of people in her life who encouraged her, helped open new doors for her, and saw beyond the quirks and awkward manners to the brilliance of her strange ideas. To do this with the Temple Grandins in our own lives is not without risk, heart-ache and frustration. Things don’t always work according to plan when we open ourselves to other. But Christ tells us over and over again to risk it anyway. Life is far richer for such openness.

I am very proud of this faith community I pastor. We are a loose amalgamation of outlooks and beliefs. We are not like-minded in the traditional sense, but we are LIKE-minded in the sense that our first impulse is to LIKE each other (not regardless of difference, but, rather, with a high regard for difference).  Every stranger we welcome in adds to the beauty of the community, carrying experiences and perceptions that are unique and uniquely compelling.

A building is a box, but a church is a community:

We come with beautiful secrets

We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls

We come to every new morning

With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces

Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty

To tell a better story

I want to shine with the light

That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations

It brings redemption to life and work

To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community

It comes in helping a soul find it's worth

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces

Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty

To tell a better story

I want to shine with the light

That's burning up inside

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful

This is grace, an invitation

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces

Calling out our best

And I want to add to the beauty

To tell a better story

I want to shine with the light

That's burning up inside

Sara Groves, Add to the Beauty, © 2005 INO Records LLC

Waging Peace - A Perspective

A friend and colleague, Rev. Rodney Noel Saunders, writes this regular letter that I am privileged to receive. I have received permission to reprint his most recent missive in its entirety:

FARESPITHE THOUGHTS ON BUILDING SCHOOLS, NOT USING BOMBS AND BULLETS

(FARESPITHE stands for faith, religion, spirituality, theology:  “fare” like fair; “spithe” like with)

     With serious, even violent, ongoing protests in Egypt, and even some, though not as widespread as yet, in Jordan, Israel must be exceedingly on-edge worried, which likely means all its military, and the US Fleet in the Mediterranean, have been placed on high alert.  When I saw what was happening in Egypt I immediately thought, “If this spreads to Jordan this could really be a terrible mess.”  Those two countries have peace treaties with Israel, yet also have the longest borders with Israel.  Egypt also has the Suez Canal and if that were threatened the western world’s oil supply could become very limited and very expensive.  Both countries function as allies of the US.  Yet if either government collapses and is replaced by those thought to be radicals strongly opposed to Israel and the US, then I suspect Israel, under the aggressively conservative leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu, would not hesitate even minutes before launching a preemptive strike if they felt seriously threatened.  That this threat could easily be supported by many other regimes in the area, like Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and even fundamentalists from within Saudi Arabia, is not unthinkable.  Then the US would almost certainly become involved in a military conflict on the side of Israel.  While some would ask why the US would become involved, many know that the political realities are that no US president could not help our strongest and longest ally in the Middle East.  To even pause while the possibility existed that the Jewish nation could be annihilated is simply not possible for any American president.  Because I intensely do not want to see such a war, I intensely do not like the developing situation.  I think it is the worst-case scenario, but it is very possible, as I see it. 

     Now there are some who would immediately think—“Armageddon”.  I am not one of those because this is not about that ancient prophecy which only reflected the fact that the Plain of Armageddon/Megiddo just happens to sit at the conjunction of three continents—Europe, Africa, and Asia, and in the ancient world of huge land armies marching toward each other to do battle, it made sense to that prophecy writer to think that huge plain was the most likely site for the last battle of good versus evil.  With missiles, air forces, and even, most frighteningly  destructive and deadly, nuclear weapons, that plain will not be the site of any final battle of any kind.  While we all know nuclear weapons could indeed cause an end to the world as we know it—it still wouldn’t be a battle between good and evil as in that ancient prophecy—it would be a battle between bad and bad, as any nation deciding it’s existence is more important than not to use nuclear weapons is as bad as those they use them on, from any moral or ethical position I can consider worthy of the meaning of those words—because nuclear weapons are immoral and unethical by any definition that is true, authentic, and real.  While the result would certainly be demonic, it would not be of the devil’s making, but of human!  But there is a so much better way, and we all know it—and that way is the way of peace!  I will illustrate how it can happen.

     Three Cups of Tea tells the story of Greg Mortenson, the American who got lost on his descent of K-2, the second highest mountain in the world, and ended up in a high mountain village in Pakistan, where he was nursed back to good health by the people of that village. When he was ready to leave he told the village elder that he would build him a school, and he came home, raised the money, went back and did build that school.  That was in 1993.  Through the Central Asia Institute he founded he has now built, with the local people in each village, 155 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and every one of them teaches girls, and not one of them has ever been attacked by the Taliban, or any other radical or fundamentalist Muslim group.  I heard him speak last Monday night at TCU.  One of the last schools he built was in a very isolated part of Afghanistan that is inhabited by fierce mujahadeen fighters.  It is so isolated and fierce that few westerners have ever been there, and he wasn’t even sure he should go there when invited by the village, and he said it was a place he would not have advised anyone else to visit.  After the visit he invited them to visit one of the schools he had built so that they could see with what  they were getting involved.  The men came heavily armed with their AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles and bullet bandoliers across their chests.  When they saw the playground of the school they dropped their weapons and got into the swings and started to swing (he showed us the pictures).  They proceeded to swing for over an hour.  One of the men later told Greg that they had always been warriors, always fighting somebody—the Russians, then the Taliban, so that they had never been allowed to be children, and when they saw that swing set they were finally free to be children for awhile.  They told him they wanted him to build their village a school and that it had to have a playground like the one they had just used.  Greg said he hoped the children got to use the swings as well.  Greg Mortenson has shined the light of truth, understanding, knowledge, and compassion into dark places and had more good effect and created more good will for Americans than all the thousands of bombs and millions of bullets we have used there ever could.  His book is now required reading by all the commanding officers and Special Forces sent to Afghanistan.  He became like a child wanting to go to school and built schools for children, so that even hardened warriors could become like children!

     I told this story in a sermon and a woman said to me afterward, “Why can’t we learn that lesson that schools are better than bombs, and apply it?”  I said, “Well, we are, at least somewhat.  Mortenson told us another story.”  The US military, under the leadership of General McChrystal, was planning a major offensive in a wide swath of Afghanistan, to drive out as many of the Taliban as they possibly could.  When he was removed due to his insubordination, General Petraeus took command and was going to proceed with the operation since it was already planned and ready to be implemented, but first he asked Mortenson to set up a meeting with tribal and village elders.  After that meeting, where those elders asked the general not to kill civilians, Petraeus cancelled the entire operation.  He knew it would not be what would be best in the long term for the people of Afghanistan, nor for US soldiers and the mission in Afghanistan.  The builder of schools had such connection to the people there that they trusted him enough that they went to that meeting, and because of that trust, a US general realized that listening to people, respecting them, and building schools, as Mortenson has done, could be a better option than mere military might!

     There is now a song, “Three Cups of Tea”, with words and music by Jake Fleming, though all the words convey the truth of Greg Mortenson’s words and experiences.

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  [the traditional Muslim greeting that means

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m    “Peace be with you.”]

I see a hero.  A child of the times.

A girl who lives with joy.  Who’s not afraid to speak her mind

and thinks the world is divine.

I see a young boy etching letters in the sand.

In this land of ancient scars a promise still remains;

When darkness comes you can see the stars.

    

     Three cups of tea.  First cup, you’re a stranger.

     Three cups of tea.  Second cup, a friend.

     Three cups of tea.  By the third you’re family.

How long to trust a stranger?  How long to share three cups of tea?

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m

A light burns bright across the ocean

A light shines warm before the sun.

I’ve got to find a way to build a bridge, join us to them, and be the change I wish to see.

If I give a penny for a pencil,

My hero writes a word.

Her words become great tools, his stories make wise the fools,

and I believe it’s just three cups of tea away.

    

     Three cups of tea.  First cup, you’re a stranger.

     Three cups of tea.  Second cup, a friend.

     Three cups of tea.  By the third, you’re family.

How long to trust a stranger?  How long to share?

I will call you friend, sit with you

Here to build a bridge, share the dream in this circle of friends.

    

     Three cups of tea.  First cup, you’re a stranger.

     Three cups of tea.  Second cup, a friend.

     Three cups of tea.  By the third you’re family.

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m

A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m  A-ssa-la-m  A-lai-ku-m

    

     Yes, “Peace be with you”, peace be with us all, indeed!  For, yes, there is a tremendously better way than violence and military action—and we all know it!  It is the way of peace that builds schools that builds a bridge between them and us.  While I am sure that US officials are working feverishly to accomplish their best possible diplomatic solutions to the unrest in Egypt and Jordan, they also need to work just as feverishly on the ways that make for peace, for the good of all the people in that part of the world, and for the good of every part of the world that could be drawn into that conflict.  It should have been our policy for decades, but it must be our policy now—for the good of us all!  We need the kind of efforts and actions that allows hardened warriors to be children for awhile as they swing on playgrounds!  May it indeed be accomplished again and again as Greg Mortenson has demonstrated convincingly it already has!

Love, grace, hope, joy, compassion, peace,

Rodney Noel Saunders                                                                                              January 30, 2011

Is the Dream Still Just a Dream?

As we approach MLK Day, some unnerving statistics from the US Census Bureau, Human Rights Watch, Department of Health and Human Services, JAMA, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as cited in the latest issue of Sojourners magazine:

Less than 1% - Difference in rates of illicit drug use between African-Americans and white Americans.


13% - Percent of illicit drug users who are African-American.


35% - Percent of drug-related arrests that are of African-Americans


256.2 per 100,000 - Rate at which black adults are imprisoned for drug offenses


25.3 per 100,000 - Rate at which white adults are imprisoned for drug offenses.


Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers are white, 75% of those imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino.


Is it truly a war on drugs that we're fighting? Seems like a mighty selective war...

Hyperbole Will Surely Be the Death of Us All !!!!!!

What happened in Tucson is tragic. It seems pretty obvious that Jared Lee Loughner is really messed up. A kid expelled from his local community college for mental health reasons and concern for public safety should be in regular treatment, and should not be able to legally purchase a Glock. Private citizens cannot legally purchase the magazine he used which allowed him to rapidly fire so many rounds into the heads and bodies of folks just like you, me, our parents and kids. Whoever illegally sold the magazine to him should be tried as an accessory to murder and never be allowed within 1000 yards of a firearm again.

I get all that. I think just about every reasonable human being would agree with everything stated above.

As a slightly left-leaning down-the-middler, I also get the frustration and disgust with the current state of political discourse. I avoid Glen Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, WHAM, and - for that matter - Keith Olberman and Ed Schultz. I find NPR to be much more level-headed in everything short of knee-jerk personnel decisions.

I don't like Sarah Palin as a candidate. I'm of the opinion that if she was physically unattractive she'd be back home in Wasila. Forever. She'd better quickly hit the books and gain some gravitas, because gravity is already beginning to address that which attracted the spotlight to her in the first place. (I can say that because I'm pushing 50, too.)

But here is where I find myself drawing the line: I can't find Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh or partisan bluster remotely responsible for a sick kid who did a sick thing. I firmly believe the above listed politainers play fast and loose with facts when they bother with facts at all. I firmly believe they further poison the already brackish political waters (and, again, I'd throw Keith Olberman and his constant faux outrage into the same pot). I firmly believe they make it very difficult to reach out and reason with "the other side of the aisle," no matter which side you're on.

But I find my conservative acquaintances to be among the most upright and law-abiding citizens I know. Even if I can't talk politics with them, I know I can trust them personally. Some of them own legal fire arms. As far as I know, none of them has ever so much as pointed a steak knife at another human being. Conservative anger -- or even hubris -- is not a crime. And even if political vitriol might speak to some armed-to-the-teeth psychopath,  ornate wallpaper patterns and the neighbor's dog do, too.

I very much want to end the political polarization of this nation. How can we do that when we take our own accusations to such polar extremes?

Joy

I had a moment yesterday during worship.

Cheryl Walters and Earl Petit were singing a stunning version of "O Holy Night." I mean free-flowing-tears-among-the-congregation stunning. It was that beautiful. I was sitting up on the pulpit dias behind our singers, a perfect vantage point to watch the emotion swirl and roll through the pews.

Third Sunday of Advent means I was about to preach a sermon on joy. As I sat there looking out on the people with whom I've ministered and to whom I have preached for 14 years, I started calling up some of the sacred, private moments into which I have been welcomed:

• my dear, lovely friend who has embraced her too-soon widowhood as a challenging, sometimes-solitary adventure, and whose homily when the grief was so fresh two Easters ago - on joy as something for which we must decide to reach and work - still sticks with me every day,
• the widower facing his first Christmas without the physical presence of his remarkable, Spirit-filled wife 
• the beautiful, fun and friendly couple who are silently going together through a profound grief quite similar to one Teresa and I once experienced,
• the man who went two years powerless and unemployed before suddenly finding potential employers beating down his door,
• the great, great grandmother,
• the sister who suffered mightily convincing her mother to leave the homestead she loves for a safer environment.

So many people. So many cycles of tragedy and triumph, all together in a moment of deep, profound beauty. A thrill of hope. A weary world rejoices.

"Merry Christmas" doesn't begin to cover it, does it? Joy is something so hard-won and all-encompassing. It warms us to the core through some of the coldest of human experiences. It doesn't whistle past graveyards or drown out sighs and tears with staged laughter. Joy is planted firmly in what is and who we are.

In that moment, I saw an entire congregation make the conscious decision to reach for joy. For some, I knew, it took heroic effort. God bless them.

Merriment distracts. Joy completes. 

Please don't settle for a merry Christmas. Reach for joy.

me and radio

Two memories:

FIRST: I'm a young kid of seven or eight. My sister and I are in the back seat and it is once again past our regular bedtime. Dad's driving. Mom's riding shotgun. The push-button car radio (AM only, thank you very much) provides hokie music, then news. The magic minute of 10:07 p.m. arrives, and the creaking door and croaking tone (of E.G. Marshall) usher in CBS Radio Mystery Theatre on WHAM. Mom is concerned it will scare the kids too much this late at night. She doesn't realize I listen to it almost every night in my room, under the covers, through the earphone on my little transistor radio. She's right, of course: That show, coupled with my vivid imagination, are far too scary for this time of night. Got to listen, though, because the dark bedroom to come with all its sinister shadows is half the fun.

SECOND: I'm a little older, maybe 11 or 12, and I alone am awake in the house at 3 a.m.  I am rattled and anxious -- no doubt part of the teeth-grinding, mind-twisting crossing-of-days that was adolescence. I'm going out of my mind, staring at the ceiling, feeling every sting of yesterday's junior high social slings and arrows, and hearing every crack and groan of that old house. I reach under my bed, and there's that same old transistor radio, mostly thrown over for album sides and eight-tracks, but still faithful. I turn it on (the nine-volt is still juiced!) and find WSAY on the dial, just as the DJ drops the needle on Nights in White Satin (the full, poetry- and kettle-drum-soaked album version, of course...I mean, we're talking about WSA-freakin'-Y here). I breathe deep, comforted, close my eyes and drift away.



I have always loved radio. From those early days with it's constant, time-marking presence to today. When I was 17 it was WCMF and WMJQ hanging with me at the house before school; Mom and Dad being long gone to work, and me fighting off the morning lonelies. When I was 19 and suddenly came to myself in Fortran 77 class, rose and walked out on the day's lecture and my ill-chosen Computer Science major, it was the studios of Brockport State's student-run WBSU to which I turned.

Within two years, I was station manager. Within three years, I was out in the broadcasting world, Communication degree in hand, hosting a jazz show in the very-same studio where some DJ had once sat and played Nights in White Satin at 3 a.m. all those years ago (by then it was WXXI-AM, which has long-since moved from that odd house/studio on French Road that they had inherited from Gordon Brown's scattershot, eccentric experiment in freeform acid rock/Roman Catholic radio).

In the ensuing years I have DJ-ed and produced off an on, but mostly I have listened. I have listened and loved Garrison Keillor, Diane Rhem, Terri Gross, Click-and-Clack, Bob Smith, Bob Matthews and Bob Edwards. I have continued to root against the Yankees, but for the broadcast team of Suzyn Waldman (a brilliant baseball mind) and John Sterling ("th-uhhhhh pitch..."calling every single game without fail since 1989). I have listened and winced at the invective of many current talk-radio hosts, but have begrudgingly recognized the consummate skill with which they deliver it.

Radio. No other broadcast medium allows you to cast heroes and villains from your own imagination. No other broadcast medium can quite crawl inside you while you are busy doing other things. It still travels the open air, seeps in your ear and dances in your head with whatever it finds on your mind at the time. What are your memories of radio?

(And now a word from our sponsor: On Friday, December 3rd at 7 p.m., our church will be transformed into old-time radio studio WBCC for A Bloomfield Home Companion, complete with  radio-theatre comedy and drama produced live before your eyes, our own house band burning up the music of Patsy Cline, Old Crow Medicine Show, Hank Williams, Bing Crosby, and Lucinda Williams, and special displays and archived broadcasts provided by the Antique Wireless Association Museum. Tickets are a mere eight bucks!)