Time to Tick You Off, Sports Fans!

Okay. I'm going to speak frankly for many, MANY of my colleagues in ministry who are experiencing many of the same issues I see in my congregation and community. In the process, I am, no doubt, going to offend many people who I love very much.

Sorry, but here goes.

"We all have to remember that we can't let our love of the games get ahead of the core values, and we know that happens often. This is a painful, painful reminder that awful things can happen when that occurs."- MARK EMMERT, president of the N.C.A.A., announcing sanctions against Penn State University after the child sexual abuse scandal.

"Sports do not build character, they reveal it." - JOHN WOODEN, former coach, UCLA men's basketball (and quite possibly the best coach ever in any sport)

There is one morning more than any other when people in this society once gathered to celebrate life, faith, community and love. On this morning, we affirmed our shared values, challenged our assumptions, encouraged each other to stand up for the down-trodden, the afflicted and the weak, and we shared ancient and current examples of humanity at its best and its worst. We instructed our children regarding a loving, plugged-in Supreme Being, and celebrated every child of God. It used to be the one one-hour period when we could bring almost everyone together to re-group, re-frame and re-affirm. Some of us still gather on Sunday mornings.

Saddened by the state of society and sport?

Take a look in the friggin' mirror.

Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy. - Exodus 20:8

Lust in the Dust... It's The Holy Bible!

Genesis Chapter 38 is an astoundingly trashy story regarding one of the Judeo-Christian Patriarchs – Judah – and his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar (disguised as a prostitute), and how they came to have sex and spawn the lineage that would one day include kings David and Solomon, and, eventually, Joseph, husband of Mary, mother of Jesus.

You know, typical Biblical family values.

This story is timely, however, for what happens before Judah impregnates his daughter-in-law. 

Judah has three sons. The oldest, efficiently named Er, marries Tamar, but dies before any children are born. Now, as is standard practice in traditional Biblical marriage, Judah’s second son, Onan, must impregnate his sister-in-law, so she can have (hopefully) a son to gain claim to an inheritance and keep Er’s lineage going; also protecting Tamar, who, as a woman, cannot own property or fend for herself in that ancient world. Again, traditional Biblical family values.

 

Onan is powerfully attracted to Tamar, but sees that providing offspring for his dead brother will only weaken his own holdings, so: he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and He put him to death…(Genesis 38:9-10, NRSV).

Now the rest of the story is well worth reading, but I’m stopping here, as this is a root of a current kerfuffle in our nation: birth control. I do not wish to argue about whether a corporation owned by a religious institution can be forced to partially underwrite coverage/care that is in direct opposition to the religious teachings of that corporation’s owners. I would tend to tread veeeery carefully with such an issue. Instead, I’d like to tweak a bit the “Biblical basis” some bandy about regarding this particular conflict.

The Sin of Onan

One thing I love about the Bible is the fact that it refuses to sugar-coat human behavior. Onan is a first-class jerk, taking advantage of a woman’s dire predicament to slake his lust without offering her deliverance from her troubles through impregnation – which is the justice principal underlying the whole sordid tale. Onan, through his manipulation of the law for his own gain, gets what he wants but leaves the woman as vulnerable as ever.

In December, 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to cover contraceptives for women violated the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which was itself an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Now the Department of Health and Human Services has ruled that birth control must be covered in most insurance policies without additional cost (pleasepleaseplease note that this is not precisely the same as “free” or “paid for by the church.”)

It can be argued persuasively that the relatively new-found ability of women to plan when they will get pregnant makes them (and their children) less vulnerable in society: empowering them socially, culturally, politically and economically in ways that Tamar, Onan, Judah and the writer of Genesis could never have imagined. Therefore,  the modern “Sin of Onan” in this case may not be denying the 21^st century Tamar the right to a child, but, ironically, insisting she pay extra beyond her already rising health insurance premiums to determine when and with whom she will have that child.

I’m just saying.

Postscript:  Roman Catholic Church law allowed the use of “The Pill” for women with irregular cycles from 1957 until an official stand against oral contraception was declared in 1968. Prominent Catholic physician John Rock argued that The Pill merely regulated the body’s hormonal cycles, and was therefore “natural.” 

Spending Time

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon! – John F. Kennedy

Way back in a former life, an electric utility CEO once told me that he had just left a meeting in which his board of directors had instantly approved spending $10,000,000 on a new substation without batting an eye, then debated for an hour before tabling a motion to expend $3,000 on a bit of office carpeting.

“Some things seem too big to question,” he reasoned. “Instead, people object to little things that cost next to nothing, but provide a convenient illusion of control.”

I would say the same flawed thinking holds true for spending time. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average 25-64 year old adult spends his/her life like so:

 

33% Sleep

24% Full-time job

11.3% Watching television

9% Other activities/self-care

8.3% Household/family

5.2% Eating

4.5% Online

4.1% Commuting

0.6% Religious activities

It is appropriate and healthy for us to sleep a third of our life away. It is hard to escape spending a third of our lives pursuing a living.  But surrendering 15.8% to staring at a screen?!? And, if 99.4% of our precious time is spent elsewhere, why are our faith practices often first to suffer when life gets hectic?

In the early days of my ministry, I still worked full-time at a local advertising agency. One day a co-worker approached me. He was in his early 30s. He and his wife had young children. He put in a lot of hours at the office.

“I was raised Christian,” he said to me, “and I do miss my church. But by the time Sunday morning comes around, we’re too exhausted from our week to pack the kids in the car and head off to worship. What can I do?”

This was the first time I was ever asked this question. I’ve answered it a thousand times since, but my reply really hasn’t changed in all these years. It is obvious to me that my friend wasn’t questioning the big things, but strained mightily at that which involved a fraction of a fraction of his resources. I could have suggested my co-worker not stay so late at the office when he was tired and his potential productivity was so low. I could have recommended he turn off the TV and spend more time in physical activity with his family. But he didn’t ask me to critique how he spent his time. He asked me how he could possibly connect to his faith community when he was completely spent at the end of a long week.

“Don’t go to church at the end of your week,” I suggested. “Go at the beginning of your week instead. I bet the support, energy and inspiration you’ll gain will improve the six days that follow.”

Last I knew, he and his family were still attending their church regularly. 

A Kick to the Liturgical Crotch

So I’m a few weeks into my Lenten fast. I have given up all violent media this time. This is harder than you might think, even for a fairly passive guy like me. Actually, I blew it on the first day.

Abbey of the Genesee

On Ash Wednesday, the wife, the son and I rode over to the Abbey of the Genesee, a Benedictine trappist monastery in Piffard, NY famous for their breads. (http://www.geneseeabbey.org)We bought lots of loaves (mmm, raisin bread…) and then slipped into the chapel for vespers.

If you’ve never attended a session of the Liturgy of the Hours, you should seriously consider it. It is peaceful, reflective, beautiful and wonderfully restorative.

Well, usually. On this fine afternoon, the chosen psalms for recitation included 139  (If only you would slay the wicked, O God) and 140 (let the mischief that is on their lips bury them. Let hot burning coals be poured upon them : let them be plunged into that miry pit from which they shall never arise.). This was incredibly violent stuff, even when chanted with placid monks in front of a minimalist stone altar. Check that - especially when chanted with placid monks in front of a minimalist stone altar. The effect was chilling! In a place of high Roman Catholic holiness on the very first day of Lent, I broke my fast before I’d really even started. Oh, the irony.

As it turns out, this experience was fair warning for what has followed. Violence is so deeply woven into American culture that it is nearly impossible to avoid. I lean over a pew before church to joke with a young congregant and he’s deeply engaged in a light saber duel on his hand-held video game. I sit down to watch the Daily Show and have to avert my eyes from a commercial for an automatic bill pay service that features a malevolent, angry bill collector shattering glass and breaking down doors to deliver an invoice.  At a hotel in Binghamton last weekend I had to turn off the cable tv because the commercials inserted into even the mildest of programs featured a ton of violent content.

 

Last night at band practice I began to show the boys and girl a rendition of Let It Be from one of my favorite movies (Across the Universe), only to realize I’d have to shield my eyes through the first 1/3 of the song.

Ridiculous? Yes, it is. The lengths to which we must go to honor a somewhat arbitrary decision is part of the glory of a Lenten commitment. It is maddening, imbalancing and terribly inconvenient --all things a good reflective faith challenge should be. These passing weeks help me realize how indifferent or even accepting I have become toward violence. I didn’t realize how ubiquitous it has been in my supposedly peaceful life. 

So much of what and how I think are built on what I've observed and experienced. It is only in trying to avoid violence that I've come to realize how many rapes, murders, assaults, tortures, kicks, punches, slaps and thumpings I normally pay to see. Violent imagery excites the brain and leaves us hungry for more. How can this be anything but a bad thing? 

Yesterday was Charles Darwin's 203rd birthday, and I'd say he's holding up well for a man who's been dead 130 years.

I am a proud member of a group called the Clergy Letter Project, started by Michael Zimmerman ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman.) That means I take part in Evolution Weekend. Each year, on the Sunday closest to Darwin's birthday, I preach/teach about the compatibility of science and religion. It's an important message to deliver.

Yesterday, in a children's message, I urged the kids to recognize how much of their existence owed itself to scientific inquiry. I noted that the very building inwhich we worshipped was designed, built and maintained utilizing the sciences of geometry and physics. I removed a cover from an altar candle holder and talked about the ingenuity of the candle, and even showed them the ingenius spring-loaded mechanism that keeps each candle uniform in appearance and burn. We talked about the clothes on their backs and the thoughts in their heads. We praised the scientific method as a marvelous lens and tool for better understanding the universe and every little thing in it. Happy birthday, Charlie!


But lately I find that I am no longer addressing the chief front of anti-science rhetoric. Sure, there are still plenty of narrow-minded, misguided folks of faith who wear their intentional ignorance as some sort of proof of their piety. This is sad, and must be engaged. But I am finding more and more that faith and science actually share a more formidable opponent: profit.

This is a strange and imperfect point, since much of our current scientific inquiry serves commercial purposes, but here are a few examples of what I'm thinking:


Climate Science: The reality of global warming is undeniable.  For a long time, it was popular with a certain crowd to deny this fact in the face of a tsunami of data. As that stance has crumbled, the more recent retreat position is to deny human causation. This has little to do with science and much to do with commerce. The fossile fuel and related industries are powerful and ubiquitous. They are central to our way of life. Reality is no longer a friend of ours.

Epidemiology: In conversation with one of the more informed folks I know, yesterday she mentioned a farm in Pennsylvania with three separate populations of cattle, each of which drank from a different water source. One population of cows experienced a 3000% increase in mortality rate (from two to 60 annual cow deaths) after hydrofracking operations had commenced near the stream from which they drank. The public never hears of these cases because financial settlements for damages include a blanket gag order. How can we possibly make informed decisions if evidence is thus suppressed? How many other paths of epidemiological inquiry are shut down or shut up to protect financial interests?

Education: It is now quite popular with a certain crowd to attack teachers and educational institutions. Ask yourself what motivates such attacks.

I have not yet fully formed this opinion. It is more of an inkling that I'd like to flesh out or throw out through dialogue with my peers. What do you think? Are there monied interests suppressing certain areas of scientific inquiry?

Creation

So there’s One.

To One, a thought occurs:

Two.

What a lonely thought that must first be!

And, BANG, there’s Light and Dark. One can work with that.

Next comes Matter and Doesn’t Matter. One can work with that, too.

And One throws Matter into Doesn’t Matter, all willy-nilly at first, but can’t fill it up. So One puts Matter here and there in ways that One don’t know…sort of makes sense.

In the process, One discovers Thin and Thick. One stretches Matter from really Thick to Thick to Thin to really Thin in bits and pieces and various gradations throughout Doesn’t Matter, and sets it all to spinning, circling, zooming and floating.

One gets really excited when certain bits of Matter seem to catch on to what One is doing. One’s Creation begins creating.

It isn’t much, at first. Just some particular little bits of Matter seem to organize and replicate. Then some bits grow identical bits and split. This starts to get more and more complex, until some Matter becomes adept at finding other Matter a lot like themselves, and they combine tiny pieces and nurture and grow new bits of Matter between them that are almost identical but just a bit... more-so. Some Matter prefers places where the Matter is fairly thin, some like to be in constant contact with thicker Matter, others float or swim around where Matter is sort of in between. Much of it has an appetite for innovation.

One sees Oneself in Two, and sits back and checks it all out.

What is wanting? What is needed?

One can’t help Oneself, and reaches out and lightly touches a bit of a more complex system of Matter. To One’s delight, it turns around.

I’m right here! One says excitedly. Hello!

But instead of waving or smiling or otherwise engaging One, each of these little bits of complex Matter strain unsuccessfully to recognize what is obviously still far beyond their grasp, and, inevitably, each turns to their companions and says “Did you hear that?” or “I think I almost caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye.” or “I don’t know, I just have this feeling, you know?”

One recognizes what is happening. Two sees itself as two! And all the separate pieces of Two are individually wrapped up in dark-or-light, black-or-white, yes-or-no, right-or-wrong, this-or-that; so much so that there is little or no sense of One or even oneness about Two or any of its pieces. Little bits occasionally come close to recognizing One before wearing out or breaking or giving up. But the process is so slow and terribly frustrating to watch. It is hard on One, learning that One and Two inadvertently make at least three.

So One sits back, occasionally leaning in (Hey, I think I can talk to this piece of Two…). A touch here and a great religion is born. A breath there and a marvelous advancement is realized. One even tries slipping fully aware into a bit of matter to show several little pieces of Two what it is all about, beating a path back to One, but ends up nailed to a post and causing a lot of arguments. One whispers into solitary ears on mountain tops, under trees, or in caves and beautiful ideas are documented, filled with hints of One and profound truths, causing a lot of arguments within the various pieces and parts of Two.

One has to admit to Oneself: Two is biological, binary and bi-polar. There is nothing for it but for One to simply love Two as is, and wait for Two to get its meds right and realize its oneness, before the whole of Two can recognize and become one with One.

So One waits.

Anyway, there is something tugging at One that merits attention. It is just a vague stirring, at first. But the idea grows to a maddening whisper from some back corner beyond Matter-Doesn’t Matter; a question in need of exploration. One can’t help but steal occasional glances over One’s own shoulder.

Is there a ONE or MORE I don’t recognize beyond Me, too?

My daughter wrote this great piece on her blog. I ask all of my readers to follow this link, read and think about what she has to say:

http://daegansquebecadventure.blogspot.com/