I am concerned with the way polemic and inaccurate statements are bandied about as uncontested "fact" and my growing conviction is that we need to keep challenging the fuzzy thinking. In the Jesus Creed post quoted from below (I like Jesus Creed because all sorts of people "gather" there and thus the diversity of opinion is broad) Scot McKnight, Jesus Creed blog owner, has been talking about the changing philosophy of education funding since the 1960s, in which higher education was seen a public good.
From Jesus Creed at http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/09/12/ucal-education/#comments
In order [in California] to assure access for all, tuition charges were banned—only “fees” for some costs other than education were allowed. Most funding was to come from taxpayers. The premise was that higher education was a public good for the state, which was nursing its own future entrepreneurs and taxpayers. As Mr Kerr put it, the universities were “bait to be dangled in front of industry, with drawing power greater than low taxes or cheap labour”.
That consensus has been upended. In 1990 the state paid 78% of the cost of educating each student. That ratio dropped to 47% last year, and will fall even more during the current academic year, after the latest round of budget cuts, overseen by Jerry Brown, the current governor and son of Pat Brown.
From a frequent blog responder:
California tried to provide everything for everyone, and they went broke. Thus, things ended up worse (and yes, worse for the same people they were trying to help) than had they simply been responsible in the first place. It’s odd that people continue to not get this after so many examples. Ultimately, when the same thing happens on a national scale, the truly poor will be the ones most hurt. Our desire to provide everything will ultimately lead to the most vulnerable (some like to call them “the least of these”) ending up worse than before. This is why people claim (rightly, in my view) that endless amounts of ‘helping people’ results in those people being worse off than before.
My response:
California never tried to provide “everything for everyone.” That’s simply not an accurate statement. I lived in California years ago and was not allowed to loll around collecting a welfare check. I worked hard to make a living. However, in the past, responsible people have believed that investing in the civic sector by providing “for the larger good” was an honorable, responsible and worthy task to be engaged in by sober, mature citizens. My heart broke when I read that people cheered at the latest Presidential debate the idea of letting a person without health insurance die in the emergency room. My heart breaks to be part of a society in which we are not a commonwealth anymore but a a group of individuals each out for himself or herself. My question is–under the guise of the unchallenged (by some) assumption that we “can’t afford things” anymore, which flies in the face of massively improved productivity in the US over the past 20 years– or that the least bit of sharing in the culture for the common good somehow equates to “socialism”–are we becoming evil? Is the Christian ethic of the Good Samaritan being subordinated to the lust for money?
My response was perhaps overly impassioned but I am concerned about, for instance, people cheering the idea of letting an uninsured individual die in an emergency room. Sometimes I feel I went to sleep in my beloved United States and woke up in a nightmare land. What can we do?
Showing posts with label the dark side. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the dark side. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
New York Times: The Missing Photo
I have been writing "utopic" visions and with others, have begun to envision a world of small, caring schools, floating to work on waterways and more time at home to hang laundry and grow gardens. This is the beginning of a lovely portrait of a shalom world, and it's fruitful to have these visions. "Without a vision, the people perish."
However ... in the real world, I sense something fearful.
I sensed it this morning when I woke up and pulled up the New York Times. I was faced with an image of illegal immigrants in Arizona, dressed in their black and white striped prison uniforms. For a moment, I couldn't quite register what I was seeing. If it hadn't been for the bright color photograph, I would have thought I was looking at a Nazi concentration camp. It was a disturbing image. So disturbing that I decided later I would blog about it.
But strangely, when I went back to grab the image from the New York Times, it had disappeared. A slideshow of five photos had been reduced to one image of students in Georgia protesting immigration. Hhhm. For some reason, the sudden disappearance of the inmates troubled me as much as the initial image.
The photo I've posted here is from the website: http://www.correctionsone.com/corrections/articles/1843990-New-program-uses-inmates-fingerprints-to-net-illegal-immigrants/
The photo we now see is captioned: "Approximately 200 convicted illegal immigrants were handcuffed together and moved into a separate area of what has been deemed Tent City, by order of Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Wednesday, Feb. 4 2009. Arpaio is using Tent City to keep illegal immigrants separate from the rest of the inmate population. (AP photo)"
I wake up every morning and see the contours of life as I have always known it. There's food in abundance, a roof over our heads, warmth in the winter and gas for our cars. We take summer vacations and our children go to school or to college and we have gifts for Christmas and we read books and watch movies, take walks and visit friends. If we are sick, we go to the doctor. We put money away for retirement.
Yet since the financial crisis of 2008, I've felt anxious.
Roger and I spent a long weekend in Toronto last summer. We loved Toronto. Everyone seemed so relaxed and at ease. I didn't feel the undercurrent of fear that I do here.
At a weekend retreat in Barnesville, I asked a Canadian Friend about this, commenting on the different atmosphere I sense between here and Canada. Is it just me? I asked. Am I projecting my own anxiety onto the people around me?
No, he said. There's definitely some level of fear in the United States that's palpable. He feels it when he comes here. He doesn't know what it is.
Often, I want to brush all this away, like some nightmarish cobweb, to convince myself that it's some weird, warped fantasy devised by my own mind. Perhaps it's my fevered imagination that finds beneath the facade of normalcy that America is changing in unsettling and ominous ways. It must be me, I think. Perhaps I am spending too much time reading about Germany in the 1930s: Don't we always diagnose the illness we are studying?
And yet the dots ... I keep finding dots that unsettle me.
Five states, including Ohio, calling for sub-minimum wage for teenagers--along with a rollback on protections for teen workers.
IKEA taking advantage of the cheap labor in southern Virginia to open a factory there--$8 an hour for workers versus $19 in Sweden (their minimum wage).
Draconian laws against illegal immigrants.
A city in Michigan assuming "emergency powers ..." that takes governance from elected officials in favor of vesting it in an appointed board: http://michiganmessenger.com/48278/benton-harbor-emergency-manager-strips-power-from-all-elected-officials (HT: MM)
Constant reports of the dramatic increases in the wealth of the upper 1 percent of our country, along with the flattening and even decrease of wealth for the rest of us.
News that Paul Ryan, author of the bill that would replace Medicare with inadequate medical vouchers for seniors, requires his staff to read Ayn Rand, a "philosopher" hostile to Christianity and apparently to any form of compassion save self interest.
I'm sure much more could be added. I worry that something strange is happening in the United States that will strip most of us of our rights and our livelihood, predicated on a financial "emergency." Am I even thinking this? How can this be? I fervently hope I am wrong and this current period and its excesses will dissipate as the American economy recovers.
Thomas Wolfe wrote eloquently about about his gradual, growing awareness of the profound evil of Nazi Germany during a visit there in 1936. It was this awareness of what he called a primeval evil that led him to conclude he couldn't go home again. He'd lost his innocence. The passage below, written on the heels of his visit to Germany, could equally apply to today:
From You Can't Go Home Again
I think the enemy is here before us, too. But I think we know the forms
and faces of the enemy, and in the knowledge that we know him, and shall
meet him, and eventually must conquer him is also our living hope. I
think the enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I think we
know that all his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single
selfishness and compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the
brutal power of his blind grab. I do not think the enemy was born
yesterday, or that he grew to manhood forty years ago, or that he
suffered sickness and collapse in 1929 [or 2008], or that we began without the
enemy, and that our vision faltered, that we lost the way, and suddenly
were in his camp. I think the enemy is old as Time, and evil as Hell, and
that he has been here with us from the beginning. I think he stole our
earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and ravaged and despoiled our land.
I think he took our people and enslaved them, that he polluted the
fountains of our life, took unto himself the rarest treasures of our own
possession, took our bread and left us with a crust, and, not content,
for the nature of the enemy is insatiate--tried finally to take from us
the crust.
I think the enemy comes to us with the face of innocence and says to us:
"I am your friend."
I think the enemy deceives us with false words and lying phrases, saying:
"See, I am one of you--I am one of your children, your son, your brother,
and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become--and all because
I am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful I
am--and all because I am one of you--shaped in your way of life, of
thinking, of accomplishment. What I am, I am because I am one of you,
your humble brother and your friend. Behold," cries Enemy, "the man I am,
the man I have become, the thing I have accomplished--and reflect. Will
you destroy this thing? I assure you that it is the most precious thing
you have. It is yourselves, the projection of each of you, the triumph of
your individual lives, the thing that is rooted in your blood, and native
to your stock, and inherent in the traditions of America. It is the thing
that all of you may hope to be," says Enemy, "for"--humbly--"am I not
just one of you? Am I not just your brother and your son? Am I not the
living image of what each of you may hope to be, would wish to be, would
desire for his own son? Would you destroy this glorious incarnation of
your own heroic self? If you do, then," says Enemy, "you destroy
yourselves--you kill the thing that is most gloriously American, and in
so killing, kill yourselves."
He lies! And now we know he lies! He is not gloriously, or in any other
way, ourselves. He is not our friend, our son, our brother. And he is not
American! For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces,
his own true face is old as Hell.
Look about you and see what he has done.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Sub-minimum wage
Here's on child labor: http://www.womensenews.org/story/equal-payfair-wage/110411/gops-attack-child-labor-threatens-our-daughters
Several states, including Ohio, want to roll back minimum wage for people under 20. The details vary from state to state, but apparently Maine is proposing $5.25 an hour for this specific group.
Here are my problems with this:
An acquaintance of mine has a daughter who started at the same state university she attended 30 years ago. She wanted the daughter to work her way through college for character building reasons, but noted that the cost of the education there had gone up by 10 times in 30 years while minimum wage had increased a mere 2.5 times. These figures made it impossible her daughter to earn enough to work her way through school. A sub-minimum wage would make that financial struggle even harder, especially as Pell grants are under attack now.
Apparently, at least in some states, the proposals abolish the kind of oversight that prevents abuse. In fact, some of the legislation takes away any requirement for record keeping. The message is clear: Employers can hire very young workers and do what they want with them. (This in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Fire?) The most vulnerable will be the most exploited.
I have been wondering when and how the assault on minimum wage would come. Never, ever do you hear anyone like Boehner, our representative from Ohio, say anything but "job creation." There's never any talk of decent jobs at decent wages with decent benefits .... Now I know how minimum wage will be attacked: Use the states, target specific groups, slice and dice, whittle and prod .... Then the "rest of us" will have to compete with $5.25 an hour ...
Where is the mainstream media on this? The New York Times spent masses of time on the Triangle fire but in the meantime, in real time, Rome is burning all around us. We hand wring over past abuses while politicians are trying to rewind the tape to recreate those days.
Perhaps this summer, when it looks like I will be unemployed, I can get involved in politics for the second time in my life. I'm simply not an overtly political creature ...
Am I over-reacting to this? I really see this as a part of a "vision", not to bring the rest of the world forward to decent wages and benefits for workers, but to create a huge class of underpaid proles in America who can "compete" with Third World workers in a race to the bottom. It makes me deeply sad on spiritual level.
Several states, including Ohio, want to roll back minimum wage for people under 20. The details vary from state to state, but apparently Maine is proposing $5.25 an hour for this specific group.
Here are my problems with this:
An acquaintance of mine has a daughter who started at the same state university she attended 30 years ago. She wanted the daughter to work her way through college for character building reasons, but noted that the cost of the education there had gone up by 10 times in 30 years while minimum wage had increased a mere 2.5 times. These figures made it impossible her daughter to earn enough to work her way through school. A sub-minimum wage would make that financial struggle even harder, especially as Pell grants are under attack now.
Apparently, at least in some states, the proposals abolish the kind of oversight that prevents abuse. In fact, some of the legislation takes away any requirement for record keeping. The message is clear: Employers can hire very young workers and do what they want with them. (This in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Fire?) The most vulnerable will be the most exploited.
I have been wondering when and how the assault on minimum wage would come. Never, ever do you hear anyone like Boehner, our representative from Ohio, say anything but "job creation." There's never any talk of decent jobs at decent wages with decent benefits .... Now I know how minimum wage will be attacked: Use the states, target specific groups, slice and dice, whittle and prod .... Then the "rest of us" will have to compete with $5.25 an hour ...
Where is the mainstream media on this? The New York Times spent masses of time on the Triangle fire but in the meantime, in real time, Rome is burning all around us. We hand wring over past abuses while politicians are trying to rewind the tape to recreate those days.
Perhaps this summer, when it looks like I will be unemployed, I can get involved in politics for the second time in my life. I'm simply not an overtly political creature ...
Am I over-reacting to this? I really see this as a part of a "vision", not to bring the rest of the world forward to decent wages and benefits for workers, but to create a huge class of underpaid proles in America who can "compete" with Third World workers in a race to the bottom. It makes me deeply sad on spiritual level.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sexism: Alive and Thriving in 2011
I was going to excerpt the blog post below, but the whole is worth reading, especially as it speaks, in general, to empowerment versus resignation. I wonder if as Quakers, where, mercifully and grace-fully, in my experience, women are not subjected to routine sexism, we can coalesce around speaking truth to those who stereotype women as "whiners." This is not about politics, "rights," or controversial issues, but simply about speaking up and saying that women are fully human, fully adult, and, whatever your specific religious language, made in the same image of God as men. And maybe we can laugh along the way--even at ourselves, but not at the caricatures of us that others invent. :)
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/25/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/25/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/
Friday, February 11, 2011
Dean's Beans Writes
From Dean of Dean's Bean's:
"Sorry to write again so soon, but I need to take responsibility for a mistake I made in my last blast. I need to clarify that it was actually NOT PBS calling me. Apparently, a small industry has developed of production companies that claim to work with PBS, NBC and others, but who really don't. They get people like me to sign on, they produce a three minute DVD, send it to PBS etc so that they can say it was "distributed" to PBS. Then you get a copy, which most of us would put on our website proudly, especially as it bears a PBS logo on it. So it looks like it was made for and shown on PBS when in fact neither happens. PBS gets hit so often by this that that have a FAQ on their website about this, even naming the companies that do it. PBS has a legal department which apparently spends a lot of time calling people who put these DVD's up on their website, telling them they have to take the logo off as it is not a PBS production, although folks are free to keep the DVD up otherwise.
So please don't be angry at PBS for this. They are victims of this scam, as is anyone who falls for it. I am sorry for the misinformation. The point of the blog holds, that there is a play for pay world around recognition. Just add the occasional scam on top of that."
"Sorry to write again so soon, but I need to take responsibility for a mistake I made in my last blast. I need to clarify that it was actually NOT PBS calling me. Apparently, a small industry has developed of production companies that claim to work with PBS, NBC and others, but who really don't. They get people like me to sign on, they produce a three minute DVD, send it to PBS etc so that they can say it was "distributed" to PBS. Then you get a copy, which most of us would put on our website proudly, especially as it bears a PBS logo on it. So it looks like it was made for and shown on PBS when in fact neither happens. PBS gets hit so often by this that that have a FAQ on their website about this, even naming the companies that do it. PBS has a legal department which apparently spends a lot of time calling people who put these DVD's up on their website, telling them they have to take the logo off as it is not a PBS production, although folks are free to keep the DVD up otherwise.
So please don't be angry at PBS for this. They are victims of this scam, as is anyone who falls for it. I am sorry for the misinformation. The point of the blog holds, that there is a play for pay world around recognition. Just add the occasional scam on top of that."
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Awards for Mer ...? Never Mind,
Roger and I, thanks to an endorsement by Scot McKnight, buy mail order Fair trade coffee beans from Dean's Beans or did in those halcyon days of prosperity. I found this e-mail from Dean's Bean's in my mailbox this morning and wondered what you think:
"I just got off the phone with PBS Biography, a show I have watched since I was a little kid (that's how I learned about the great figures of history when I was young). They called to say they were interested in doing a spot on me and Dean's Beans. I was honored, but I have been here before. So I bluntly asked what it would cost me. They said the same $22,000 "production fee" that they would charge George Bush or anyone else they were working on. I told them that $22,000 would go a lot further doing development work in farming villages or even keeping our prices down here at home. Also, to me, if we are doing something newsworthy, I still believe that newsworthy outfits, be they blogs or national newspapers, will pick it up and report it. We don't pay to play.
This is not the first time this has happened around here, but it is happening with greater frequency. We were approached by Visionaries, another series. That one was $40,000 We have been hit on by a ton of food shows who would feature us if we wanted to pay to play. Similarly, we were awarded the National Republican Council Small Businessman of the Year Award and the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal for Business Freedom several years ago on the promise that we would be big contributors to their cause (I did send $25 as it also got me an invitation to the Inauguration Dinner with then President Bush - if I was willing to fork over an additional $4,000-no dessert at that price - I still have the invitation, which is a pretty cool memento).
More problematic for me are the number of times we have been approached for Green Awards from organizations that want to recognize our achievements in sustainability. Several prominent new organizations supposedly dedicated to sustainability have offered to consider us for an award - for a fee. Even the august United Nations Global Compact, with whom I have worked for about five years, recently offered to put me on a board of top world thought leaders in sustainability - for another $20,000.
I know I might be naive to think in the current ethical climate that recognition for good works should be based on the works themselves, not on the ability of the person or organization to pay. Just call me old fashioned."
I had no idea awards were for sale this way. Did you? I was distressed, especially having just read Margaret Benefiel's moving The Soul of the Leader, about company heads who care about people and principles and prosper as a result. Beyond that, with all the self-examination a Quaker seminary education invites, I have been wondering at my own distrust of ... everything, and I realized that it's not an isolated, pathological paranoia but rooted in the reality that almost everything in this culture these days is commodified, almost everything for sale. An e-mail like the above suggests I am probably still too trusting. I know there is hope, but where, incarnated, outside of the Divine (of course, everything is part of the Divine, but you know what I mean) and prayer, both obviously powerful, is the hope manifesting? What can we do?
"I just got off the phone with PBS Biography, a show I have watched since I was a little kid (that's how I learned about the great figures of history when I was young). They called to say they were interested in doing a spot on me and Dean's Beans. I was honored, but I have been here before. So I bluntly asked what it would cost me. They said the same $22,000 "production fee" that they would charge George Bush or anyone else they were working on. I told them that $22,000 would go a lot further doing development work in farming villages or even keeping our prices down here at home. Also, to me, if we are doing something newsworthy, I still believe that newsworthy outfits, be they blogs or national newspapers, will pick it up and report it. We don't pay to play.
This is not the first time this has happened around here, but it is happening with greater frequency. We were approached by Visionaries, another series. That one was $40,000 We have been hit on by a ton of food shows who would feature us if we wanted to pay to play. Similarly, we were awarded the National Republican Council Small Businessman of the Year Award and the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal for Business Freedom several years ago on the promise that we would be big contributors to their cause (I did send $25 as it also got me an invitation to the Inauguration Dinner with then President Bush - if I was willing to fork over an additional $4,000-no dessert at that price - I still have the invitation, which is a pretty cool memento).
More problematic for me are the number of times we have been approached for Green Awards from organizations that want to recognize our achievements in sustainability. Several prominent new organizations supposedly dedicated to sustainability have offered to consider us for an award - for a fee. Even the august United Nations Global Compact, with whom I have worked for about five years, recently offered to put me on a board of top world thought leaders in sustainability - for another $20,000.
I know I might be naive to think in the current ethical climate that recognition for good works should be based on the works themselves, not on the ability of the person or organization to pay. Just call me old fashioned."
I had no idea awards were for sale this way. Did you? I was distressed, especially having just read Margaret Benefiel's moving The Soul of the Leader, about company heads who care about people and principles and prosper as a result. Beyond that, with all the self-examination a Quaker seminary education invites, I have been wondering at my own distrust of ... everything, and I realized that it's not an isolated, pathological paranoia but rooted in the reality that almost everything in this culture these days is commodified, almost everything for sale. An e-mail like the above suggests I am probably still too trusting. I know there is hope, but where, incarnated, outside of the Divine (of course, everything is part of the Divine, but you know what I mean) and prayer, both obviously powerful, is the hope manifesting? What can we do?
Monday, December 13, 2010
How do we help?
Sunday at Stillwater, a man who had never attended the meeting before stood and told a disturbing story. When he'd first come in, I'd assumed he was a plain dressing Friend because of his white shirt and suspenders; however, he was a Pentecostal who had recently gotten interested in Friends. He told us he'd been working in a barber shop in Pennsylvania, cutting hair. If I understood the gist of his story correctly (this, at least, is how I pieced it together), he was laid off some months ago after his employer learned that he done prison time.
The man lost his apartment next door to the barber shop, and he and his wife and three young children headed for help to Pentecostals they knew of in the deep south. The man said he'd been credentialed as a Pentecostal minister but that the Pentecostals in the south could do nothing for him. He then left with his family and stayed with someone in North Carolina, who eventually took him to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where he and his family stayed with yet another person. Somewhere in the narrative their vehicle--I'm not sure what kind--broke down, and they eventually borrowed a van to come to Ohio. But before that, the wife earned some money picking tomatoes.
The man said, having researched Friends and discovered Stillwater, he came to Ohio, thinking he and his family might settle in the Barnsville area. The man spoke of his criminal past, of a crime he committed at 19, and for which he served five years in prison –in part, because, if I understood, he couldn't afford a private lawyer. He indicated that the past was the past, and mentioned that God transforms hearts. He said he was already in trouble here in Belmont County with child protective services for letting his children sleep in the van in the cold. He was now using his wife's tomato-picking savings to room the family in a motel.
I had to leave before he was finished, but his story has stayed with me, for the following reasons:
Right before he spoke, a meeting member, a very lovely and distinguished woman, had talked about the injustices in the criminal justice system. Public defenders, for whatever reasons, often don't have the time to prepare an adequate defense for their clients, and thus the system, which is supposed to serve the poor, is often stacked against the poor.
I don't think God acts by accident, and I can't believe it was simply chance that caused a man, poor and with problems related to the criminal justice system, to arrive on our meetinghouse doorstep the same morning a member felt moved to speak of her concern about the plight of the poor in the legal system. What we are supposed to make of this, I don't know, but it is on my mind.
Next, this man's story stays with me because of my mixed reactions to it. Part of me thought, "It's the Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath, displaced by the economy and forced on the road, living hand to mouth out of their (borrowed) car. This is a story of our times, a story of how the most marginal are the first to be fired and thus the first to suffer the brunt of the recession. Where can he get a job? Will anyone hire him with a criminal record?"
However, another part of me said: "This man is a con artist. Why was his wife picking tomatoes? Why wasn't he? Of course he could get a job... so why is he forcing his children to wander around? What kind of education are they getting? Why are people constantly "pushing him on" down the road?"
Then, I thought, why am I so judgmental? Do I know anything, really, about his situation? Perhaps there's some good reason he can't pick tomatoes. And with jobs in short supply for everyone, it's not such a stretch to imagine he really can't find any work. Where is my heart?
The man, with his wife and children in our meetinghouse, made a strong emotional impression on me: they raised my compassion and my alarm. I kept weighing: should we help him? Shouldn't we? As Roger said, the decision is, do you help people regardless, even if you know you might be getting conned, or do you not? Most of me says, yes, of course, you help people, and you don't ask questions. But on the other hand ...
I keep thinking too, of the larger debate in our society now about who should provide the kind of aid this family needs: housing, food, a job. Should it be the government or should it be churches, meetings and other faith-based organizations? The argument, and I hear it from people I respect, is that the aid should emanate from the church and local community, one on one, based on developing relationships with the people in need. This family, by singling out our congregation, represents exactly the right model. We see their faces, we hear their voices and press the flesh of their hands as we help.
But I shy from this because inevitably, if charity is based on a personal relationship, even a brief one, in essence, I--or my meeting--is sitting in judgment on another person. Who am I (the "I" standing for my meeting) to judge? How can I judge? And yet, inevitably, in this situation I have to judge, because in the real world, our meeting lacks the resources to meet every need of every person. And maybe we don't need to meet all needs--maybe only as many as we are able to help will come to door. But it's hard to trust in that.
My impulse is to want to direct this family, these strangers in our midst, to the government social service agencies, even frayed as they are right now. I feel the agencies have more know-how and more resources than our meeting. I also want to turn to them because I believe they are objective--that they are not evaluating each person individually or emotionally, but by applying a set of standards that are used universally to determine need. This family may not get their every need met by the government, but they will be treated impartially.
I fear a system in which how much help a person receives is haphazard and dependent on his or her ability to convince my faith group that he is of the worthy poor, that he deserves aid. This is what I fear--know--will happen if we dismantle government services. People who are personable--or able to grovel sufficiently--or seem enough "like" us or enough lacking in the vices we disapprove--will receive our help. Because we can only help so many, we'll help the favorites. Then the outcast, as they always are, are left to the too few saints. I don't wish for that.
I fear it already happens in our broken health care system. As a journalist, I would sometimes cover local silent auctions or other fundraising events to help a family needing money for cancer treatments for a wife or a child's operation that wasn't covered by insurance. These were warm and bonding events for the communities involved, but in every case, what was emphasized to me was what good people we were dealing with. Good people. How much Jane Doe had contributed to the church over the years! How well-liked the parents of little John Doe who needs an operation! Always, without a fail, it was this way, and I would often wonder, what happens to the people who don't help out at church or who are disagreeable or disliked or simply not known? Do they die or go bankrupt? I don't know.
So I am troubled. I would prefer to pay taxes and have the government impartially take care of people's basic needs. Then I can develop relationships with the people who come to my church or cross my path without them on their knees, begging.
What would you do in this situation? Give money? Send the family to social services? Something else?
The man lost his apartment next door to the barber shop, and he and his wife and three young children headed for help to Pentecostals they knew of in the deep south. The man said he'd been credentialed as a Pentecostal minister but that the Pentecostals in the south could do nothing for him. He then left with his family and stayed with someone in North Carolina, who eventually took him to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where he and his family stayed with yet another person. Somewhere in the narrative their vehicle--I'm not sure what kind--broke down, and they eventually borrowed a van to come to Ohio. But before that, the wife earned some money picking tomatoes.
The man said, having researched Friends and discovered Stillwater, he came to Ohio, thinking he and his family might settle in the Barnsville area. The man spoke of his criminal past, of a crime he committed at 19, and for which he served five years in prison –in part, because, if I understood, he couldn't afford a private lawyer. He indicated that the past was the past, and mentioned that God transforms hearts. He said he was already in trouble here in Belmont County with child protective services for letting his children sleep in the van in the cold. He was now using his wife's tomato-picking savings to room the family in a motel.
I had to leave before he was finished, but his story has stayed with me, for the following reasons:
Right before he spoke, a meeting member, a very lovely and distinguished woman, had talked about the injustices in the criminal justice system. Public defenders, for whatever reasons, often don't have the time to prepare an adequate defense for their clients, and thus the system, which is supposed to serve the poor, is often stacked against the poor.
I don't think God acts by accident, and I can't believe it was simply chance that caused a man, poor and with problems related to the criminal justice system, to arrive on our meetinghouse doorstep the same morning a member felt moved to speak of her concern about the plight of the poor in the legal system. What we are supposed to make of this, I don't know, but it is on my mind.
Next, this man's story stays with me because of my mixed reactions to it. Part of me thought, "It's the Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath, displaced by the economy and forced on the road, living hand to mouth out of their (borrowed) car. This is a story of our times, a story of how the most marginal are the first to be fired and thus the first to suffer the brunt of the recession. Where can he get a job? Will anyone hire him with a criminal record?"
However, another part of me said: "This man is a con artist. Why was his wife picking tomatoes? Why wasn't he? Of course he could get a job... so why is he forcing his children to wander around? What kind of education are they getting? Why are people constantly "pushing him on" down the road?"
Then, I thought, why am I so judgmental? Do I know anything, really, about his situation? Perhaps there's some good reason he can't pick tomatoes. And with jobs in short supply for everyone, it's not such a stretch to imagine he really can't find any work. Where is my heart?
The man, with his wife and children in our meetinghouse, made a strong emotional impression on me: they raised my compassion and my alarm. I kept weighing: should we help him? Shouldn't we? As Roger said, the decision is, do you help people regardless, even if you know you might be getting conned, or do you not? Most of me says, yes, of course, you help people, and you don't ask questions. But on the other hand ...
I keep thinking too, of the larger debate in our society now about who should provide the kind of aid this family needs: housing, food, a job. Should it be the government or should it be churches, meetings and other faith-based organizations? The argument, and I hear it from people I respect, is that the aid should emanate from the church and local community, one on one, based on developing relationships with the people in need. This family, by singling out our congregation, represents exactly the right model. We see their faces, we hear their voices and press the flesh of their hands as we help.
But I shy from this because inevitably, if charity is based on a personal relationship, even a brief one, in essence, I--or my meeting--is sitting in judgment on another person. Who am I (the "I" standing for my meeting) to judge? How can I judge? And yet, inevitably, in this situation I have to judge, because in the real world, our meeting lacks the resources to meet every need of every person. And maybe we don't need to meet all needs--maybe only as many as we are able to help will come to door. But it's hard to trust in that.
My impulse is to want to direct this family, these strangers in our midst, to the government social service agencies, even frayed as they are right now. I feel the agencies have more know-how and more resources than our meeting. I also want to turn to them because I believe they are objective--that they are not evaluating each person individually or emotionally, but by applying a set of standards that are used universally to determine need. This family may not get their every need met by the government, but they will be treated impartially.
I fear a system in which how much help a person receives is haphazard and dependent on his or her ability to convince my faith group that he is of the worthy poor, that he deserves aid. This is what I fear--know--will happen if we dismantle government services. People who are personable--or able to grovel sufficiently--or seem enough "like" us or enough lacking in the vices we disapprove--will receive our help. Because we can only help so many, we'll help the favorites. Then the outcast, as they always are, are left to the too few saints. I don't wish for that.
I fear it already happens in our broken health care system. As a journalist, I would sometimes cover local silent auctions or other fundraising events to help a family needing money for cancer treatments for a wife or a child's operation that wasn't covered by insurance. These were warm and bonding events for the communities involved, but in every case, what was emphasized to me was what good people we were dealing with. Good people. How much Jane Doe had contributed to the church over the years! How well-liked the parents of little John Doe who needs an operation! Always, without a fail, it was this way, and I would often wonder, what happens to the people who don't help out at church or who are disagreeable or disliked or simply not known? Do they die or go bankrupt? I don't know.
So I am troubled. I would prefer to pay taxes and have the government impartially take care of people's basic needs. Then I can develop relationships with the people who come to my church or cross my path without them on their knees, begging.
What would you do in this situation? Give money? Send the family to social services? Something else?
Monday, September 27, 2010
Libraries
This makes me very sad. Must we work librarians to death for profit? I love librarians. To me libraries are sanctuaries, places of calm and peace and good cheer ... and a Quakerly quiet, and librarians are the key to maintaining that atmosphere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?src=me&ref=homepage
But the bigger picture is perhaps the lack of imagination that allows us to be willing for librarians or any workers to be harried and rushed and overworked. People are already strained with commutes and bills and childcare, eldercare, the many complexities of navigating life these days, and perhaps every job doesn't need to be turned into a treadmill. I don't begrudge librarians or any other worker some time to gather their wits on the job or a moment to say a few kind words to a client. Are any of us going to be happy or at peace in a Gradgrind world of endless toil? Are libraries going to be come as crowded and unpleasant as airplanes have?
A second thought. People, according the article, still volunteer--more than ever--at these for-profit libraries. I am all for volunteering, truly I am, but I do wonder at volunteering where the money is padding the pockets of somebody who, apparently from what he said in the article, doesn't care about the worker. Especially in these times of high unemployment, I think we need to be careful not to do volunteering that takes jobs away from people. It might be better, as the paid librarians are going to be worked into the ground anyway, to challenge these libraries by not volunteering, so that the actual cost of labor is reflected in paid labor. But I struggle with this too, because work should be intrinsically about dignity more than pay, and volunteerism exemplifies that spirit. On the hand, I don't think librarians make all that much money that the owner of the for-profit library company couldn't pay a few more to do the work of the volunteers and make a profit that is real. What do you think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?src=me&ref=homepage
But the bigger picture is perhaps the lack of imagination that allows us to be willing for librarians or any workers to be harried and rushed and overworked. People are already strained with commutes and bills and childcare, eldercare, the many complexities of navigating life these days, and perhaps every job doesn't need to be turned into a treadmill. I don't begrudge librarians or any other worker some time to gather their wits on the job or a moment to say a few kind words to a client. Are any of us going to be happy or at peace in a Gradgrind world of endless toil? Are libraries going to be come as crowded and unpleasant as airplanes have?
A second thought. People, according the article, still volunteer--more than ever--at these for-profit libraries. I am all for volunteering, truly I am, but I do wonder at volunteering where the money is padding the pockets of somebody who, apparently from what he said in the article, doesn't care about the worker. Especially in these times of high unemployment, I think we need to be careful not to do volunteering that takes jobs away from people. It might be better, as the paid librarians are going to be worked into the ground anyway, to challenge these libraries by not volunteering, so that the actual cost of labor is reflected in paid labor. But I struggle with this too, because work should be intrinsically about dignity more than pay, and volunteerism exemplifies that spirit. On the hand, I don't think librarians make all that much money that the owner of the for-profit library company couldn't pay a few more to do the work of the volunteers and make a profit that is real. What do you think?
Friday, September 10, 2010
Quakers and the age wars
Micah Bales posted a blog at http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2010/09/bridging-generational-divide-in.html which made good points about the way Quakers (and other denominations) need to change to be relevant and attract membership. Like him, I agree that Quakerism needs to become less institutionally bound and more open to community (more missional) and transformational in order to attract new members. I too deplore that lack of younger Friends. However, I also regret the lack of Friends my age (late Boomers) and the lack of early Boomers and the lack of older-than-Boomer people who are alienated from Quakerism and other faith institutions for the same reasons as younger people.
Below is the comment I posted at Micah's blogsite, cleaned up but not polished, so I hope you will respond to raw thoughts. I also want to say that my comments in response to your comments keep disappearing into the ether, but I will continue to try to respond.
Micah,
I enjoyed and resonated with your post, which was thoughtful and held insights. We do need change, but perhaps need changed hearts, not changed generations.
Although I am statistically a late Boomer, like many of my cohort, I think like an emergent (in fact, the emerging church movement was started by disaffected Boomers), so I don't believe that a generational explanation is the best explanation for the lack of change, growth and vitality you see. It may be more that the people who seek--and hence get--fixed, institutional power with strong boundaries and privileges have a certain mindset that is identified as "WWII" and "Boomer" because these are the people who happen to have by this time worked themselves into the institutional power positions. In other words, certain ways of thinking aren't necessarily distinct to certain generations as much as they are distinct to certain people within generations.
Unfortunately, our society works to divide people along lines of color, ethnicity, political affiliation, etc., and age is another way increasingly used to pit people against one another, especially now that we have largely arbitrary labels for different age groups. Does someone born in 1963 (a "Boomer") has more in common with someone born in 1946 than someone born in 1969? I believe we need to be careful about not fostering divisions. I have noticed in my life that in any time period I have studied or lived through, the same attitudes crop up again and again. Dorothy Day, eg, who was born in 1897, in the 1930s held much the same attitudes as many Generation Yers do now. Luckily for her, the dark powers and marketing forces had not yet stamped a label on people born between say, 1888 and 1902 that marked them as different from anyone else. She was able to gather around her like minded people of all ages. And so must we.
I believe we are increasingly sliced and diced into generational groupings by powers that would like to pit us against one another. "Boomers" are pitted--unnecessarily-- against the generations that follow when it comes to programs like Social Security, as if we are not all in this together. Divided we fall. I believe the powers of darkness would love an intergenerational war between Quakers that would divert us from the larger and more important concerns of loving God and neighbor with all our hearts, minds and souls.
Below is the comment I posted at Micah's blogsite, cleaned up but not polished, so I hope you will respond to raw thoughts. I also want to say that my comments in response to your comments keep disappearing into the ether, but I will continue to try to respond.
Micah,
I enjoyed and resonated with your post, which was thoughtful and held insights. We do need change, but perhaps need changed hearts, not changed generations.
Although I am statistically a late Boomer, like many of my cohort, I think like an emergent (in fact, the emerging church movement was started by disaffected Boomers), so I don't believe that a generational explanation is the best explanation for the lack of change, growth and vitality you see. It may be more that the people who seek--and hence get--fixed, institutional power with strong boundaries and privileges have a certain mindset that is identified as "WWII" and "Boomer" because these are the people who happen to have by this time worked themselves into the institutional power positions. In other words, certain ways of thinking aren't necessarily distinct to certain generations as much as they are distinct to certain people within generations.
Unfortunately, our society works to divide people along lines of color, ethnicity, political affiliation, etc., and age is another way increasingly used to pit people against one another, especially now that we have largely arbitrary labels for different age groups. Does someone born in 1963 (a "Boomer") has more in common with someone born in 1946 than someone born in 1969? I believe we need to be careful about not fostering divisions. I have noticed in my life that in any time period I have studied or lived through, the same attitudes crop up again and again. Dorothy Day, eg, who was born in 1897, in the 1930s held much the same attitudes as many Generation Yers do now. Luckily for her, the dark powers and marketing forces had not yet stamped a label on people born between say, 1888 and 1902 that marked them as different from anyone else. She was able to gather around her like minded people of all ages. And so must we.
I believe we are increasingly sliced and diced into generational groupings by powers that would like to pit us against one another. "Boomers" are pitted--unnecessarily-- against the generations that follow when it comes to programs like Social Security, as if we are not all in this together. Divided we fall. I believe the powers of darkness would love an intergenerational war between Quakers that would divert us from the larger and more important concerns of loving God and neighbor with all our hearts, minds and souls.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
George Fox to BP
As the Lily, Ye All May Grow
He shall grow as the lily, Hosea, 14:5
Take heed, that with all your mind [you] may be kept up to God, who is pure; that as the lily ye all may grow, and receive wisdom from God how to use the creatures in their places, to the glory of him that created them."
George Fox, from Mind the Heavenly Treasure, p. 38
Amen, George.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
How would you respond?
Recently, a blog asked the question: Should the government get out of the business of charity and leave that work solely to faith groups?
The conversation was civil. Some answered that government help should be avoided because it's inherently immoral to give people goods they have not worked for. One line of thought went as follows: it damages the recipient to receive something for nothing. We are helping people more to insist they pull themselves up by their own efforts.
As humans, I think we're expected to do many things simultaneously, rather than either/or, so I support both private charity and government help. I also believe that as a civilized country, we're morally obligated to establish an economic baseline so that people don't have to go hungry, naked or homeless. I understand that some will cheat the system, but I accept that as the price of doing the right thing.
On the blog, I asked whether there were not two sets of standards, one for the rich and one for the poor. If receiving money you haven't worked for is morally destructive, what of inheritance? Should young people --or any people--become fabulously wealthy from money they didn't earn? Should we block (tax) inheritance to encourage people to work?
I received this response, which was a polite attempt at discourse.
"Thank you for your comments. I do think it is different when money is passed down from one family member to another. We can hope that there was some teaching/training/modeling about charity and sacrifice going on before the money was passed down. The teaching the government is doing is that there is no accountability to use the help offered and get back on your feet- thus allowing people to become more and more dependant [sic] on the government funds."
What would be a helpful response?
The conversation was civil. Some answered that government help should be avoided because it's inherently immoral to give people goods they have not worked for. One line of thought went as follows: it damages the recipient to receive something for nothing. We are helping people more to insist they pull themselves up by their own efforts.
As humans, I think we're expected to do many things simultaneously, rather than either/or, so I support both private charity and government help. I also believe that as a civilized country, we're morally obligated to establish an economic baseline so that people don't have to go hungry, naked or homeless. I understand that some will cheat the system, but I accept that as the price of doing the right thing.
On the blog, I asked whether there were not two sets of standards, one for the rich and one for the poor. If receiving money you haven't worked for is morally destructive, what of inheritance? Should young people --or any people--become fabulously wealthy from money they didn't earn? Should we block (tax) inheritance to encourage people to work?
I received this response, which was a polite attempt at discourse.
"Thank you for your comments. I do think it is different when money is passed down from one family member to another. We can hope that there was some teaching/training/modeling about charity and sacrifice going on before the money was passed down. The teaching the government is doing is that there is no accountability to use the help offered and get back on your feet- thus allowing people to become more and more dependant [sic] on the government funds."
What would be a helpful response?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Are We Gadgets?
From http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647:
Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?
Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.
What do you think?
Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?
Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.
What do you think?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Year of Living Republicanly
I was thinking of doing a blog called The Year of Living Republicanly, as everybody seems to be doing a "Year of Living" series ... And, OK, I was pretty serious, as I felt and feel out-of-touch in a grassroots way with my Republican brothers and sisters. If I listen only to one group, I begin to become the thing I dislike. For example., I remember how stunned I was when one of my Republican friends told me in 1996 that the only reason I voted for Clinton was that I was brainwashed by people with hidden agendas. Whattttt? I sputtered---NO, that's YOU... you voted for Bob Dole because you've been brainwashed by people with hidden agendas! Oh--I get it. BOTH sides say that. "My" side is a mirror of "their" side.
OK. Point taken.
I thought a good way to avoid groupthink (an oxymoron if there ever was one) and liberal fundamentalist partisanship would be to commit to reading and interacting in a serious way with conservatives. I started researching and then thought: I can't do this. And it wasn't the Republicans. Instead, it's the overall political and economic situation in this country right now that's, let's say, a "downer" ... and while disengagement isn't the answer, merely worrying isn't the answer either.
When I think about the U.S. situation today, I look at history, and wonder: How can having a few very, very wealthy people and many people becoming poorer and angrier by the day, not end badly? I think Weimar Republic, French aristocracy circa 1787, Russian aristocracy circa 1903, English aristocracy circa 1635 .... not good. The short-term positives I hang onto are a: I'm no doubt being an alarmist, b. even if crisis hit, countries with a democratic --or at least stable--tradition tend to come out right on the other side. c. California so far seems to be an example of people trying to use the political process to drive reform.
But--before I drop this topic of politics-- in the spirt of non-partisanship, I quote from Michael Lind in Salon. Lind has a point of view--that Americans have a right as citizens to "freedom from want" or "economic citizenship." This organizing point of view transcends allegiance to any one party. (His full piece is at http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/story/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/01/11/second_bill_of_rights.)
Here's what he writes:
"While George W. Bush pushed for partial privatization of Social Security, he failed because of massive public opposition. But Bush and the Republican majority in Congress succeeded in enacting the Social Security drug benefit, a flawed but genuine expansion of economic citizenship. Clinton is the only president to have successfully supported the destruction of a New Deal entitlement, while Bush presided over the greatest expansion of the Rooseveltian entitlement system since Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare."
Do you have an organizing principle or point of view that transcends party politics? Where does faith work into this for you?
OK. Point taken.
I thought a good way to avoid groupthink (an oxymoron if there ever was one) and liberal fundamentalist partisanship would be to commit to reading and interacting in a serious way with conservatives. I started researching and then thought: I can't do this. And it wasn't the Republicans. Instead, it's the overall political and economic situation in this country right now that's, let's say, a "downer" ... and while disengagement isn't the answer, merely worrying isn't the answer either.
When I think about the U.S. situation today, I look at history, and wonder: How can having a few very, very wealthy people and many people becoming poorer and angrier by the day, not end badly? I think Weimar Republic, French aristocracy circa 1787, Russian aristocracy circa 1903, English aristocracy circa 1635 .... not good. The short-term positives I hang onto are a: I'm no doubt being an alarmist, b. even if crisis hit, countries with a democratic --or at least stable--tradition tend to come out right on the other side. c. California so far seems to be an example of people trying to use the political process to drive reform.
But--before I drop this topic of politics-- in the spirt of non-partisanship, I quote from Michael Lind in Salon. Lind has a point of view--that Americans have a right as citizens to "freedom from want" or "economic citizenship." This organizing point of view transcends allegiance to any one party. (His full piece is at http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/story/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/01/11/second_bill_of_rights.)
Here's what he writes:
"While George W. Bush pushed for partial privatization of Social Security, he failed because of massive public opposition. But Bush and the Republican majority in Congress succeeded in enacting the Social Security drug benefit, a flawed but genuine expansion of economic citizenship. Clinton is the only president to have successfully supported the destruction of a New Deal entitlement, while Bush presided over the greatest expansion of the Rooseveltian entitlement system since Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare."
Do you have an organizing principle or point of view that transcends party politics? Where does faith work into this for you?
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Quakers get good press
Nicholas Kristof gave Quakers a shout-out in his Jan. 9 ope-ed piece on religion and women in the New York Times. I like that Kristof recognizes that religion does good in the world as well as bad:
"Yet paradoxically, the churches in Africa that have done the most to empower women have been conservative ones led by evangelicals and especially Pentecostals. In particular, Pentecostals encourage women to take leadership roles, and for many women this is the first time they have been trusted with authority and found their opinions respected. In rural Africa, Pentecostal churches are becoming a significant force to emancipate women.
That’s a glimmer of hope that reminds us that while religion is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. The Dalai Lama has taken that step and calls himself a feminist.
Another excellent precedent is slavery. Each of the Abrahamic faiths accepted slavery. Muhammad owned slaves, and St. Paul seems to have condoned slavery. Yet the pioneers of the abolitionist movement were Quakers and evangelicals like William Wilberforce. People of faith ultimately worked ferociously to overthrow an oppressive institution that churches had previously condoned.
Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior. The Elders are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals."
What do you think? Major faiths started out accepting slavery, then defending it ... then being the most vigorous forces in overthrowing it. And, in Quakerism we have, of all the amazing things, a pre-Enlightenment acceptance of female equality, based not on secularism but on revelation. I throw my lot in with a religion of love (for me, that's Jesus: love your enemy, Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes, justice will prevail ...) as more powerful than anything else, even the hatred in its own ranks.
If on the balance organized religion is more solution than problem, how to show that? Do you think it's true?
"Yet paradoxically, the churches in Africa that have done the most to empower women have been conservative ones led by evangelicals and especially Pentecostals. In particular, Pentecostals encourage women to take leadership roles, and for many women this is the first time they have been trusted with authority and found their opinions respected. In rural Africa, Pentecostal churches are becoming a significant force to emancipate women.
That’s a glimmer of hope that reminds us that while religion is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. The Dalai Lama has taken that step and calls himself a feminist.
Another excellent precedent is slavery. Each of the Abrahamic faiths accepted slavery. Muhammad owned slaves, and St. Paul seems to have condoned slavery. Yet the pioneers of the abolitionist movement were Quakers and evangelicals like William Wilberforce. People of faith ultimately worked ferociously to overthrow an oppressive institution that churches had previously condoned.
Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior. The Elders are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals."
What do you think? Major faiths started out accepting slavery, then defending it ... then being the most vigorous forces in overthrowing it. And, in Quakerism we have, of all the amazing things, a pre-Enlightenment acceptance of female equality, based not on secularism but on revelation. I throw my lot in with a religion of love (for me, that's Jesus: love your enemy, Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes, justice will prevail ...) as more powerful than anything else, even the hatred in its own ranks.
If on the balance organized religion is more solution than problem, how to show that? Do you think it's true?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Liars or Friends?
I have been thinking recently about the Lewis and Clark journals, which I read in the early 1990s. I'm recalling ... and I hope have this straight.
As I remember, early in their exploration of the territory received in the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark disciplined a member of their party. This was a military expedition sponsored by the US government, and Lewis and Clark were both military officers.
They proceeded to beat an insubordinate recruit.
Native Americans were on the scene, watching, and their leader, distressed at beating, tried, I believe, to prevent it, and then cried tears at the violence.
Lewis and Clark were astonished and thought the leader must be feigning his distress. Why are you so upset, they asked? Don't you beat your son?
No, never. We don't beat our children.
Here is where it gets interesting. Lewis and Clark simply could not believe the chief--and the Indians in general-- didn't beat their children. It was so far out of their child rearing and hierarchical paradigms that they simply assumed the leader was lying. The only way they could make sense of the statement was to assume that the leader must have had a hidden agenda. It also fed into their preconception that Indians were deceptive.
Lewis and Clark were not alone in believing in the necessity of corporal punishment. Samuel Johnson, usually an enlightened man, defended it as the only way to compel young boys to learn their school lessons.
Of course, from the vantage point of today's culture, we know that we can raise successful children without resorting to physical violence -- and in fact, better understand the psychological harm that can arise from physical punishment. We can look at this encounter between Lewis and Clark and the Native American leader and see it as culture clash.
What interests me about this episode (aside from the fact that I'm glad our culture has moved in the direction of the Native Americans) is how we process what doesn't fit into our framework. We tend, I believe, like Lewis and Clark, to dismiss what doesn't fit as a "lie." (I believe Nietszche said a similar thing when he wrote that we label the "other" as evil.) In Lewis and Clark's case, as I remember, they didn't see the Indian as evil, but as childlike, deceptive and, most of all, contemptible. There was no attempt to, say, do a thought experiment and assume that perhaps he was telling the truth. And if he was, to ponder what the implications of that might be. There was no reflection that seemingly "normal" discipline might truly be distressing to another culture--and perhaps there might be something to think about in that slippage between the two cultures.
I'm thinking about this because recently the "culture wars" have been breaking out again in a part of the blogsphere I frequent ...and the assumption on both sides is that the other side is either deliberately lying or that innocent people are being misled by unsavory leaders with the ever-present hidden agendas. But what if we really tried to get into the minds of the people on the other side? What if we assumed that they were telling their truth--that they weren't misled or lying, childlike or contemptible? What leads them to this truth that is different from our truth? What can we learn from it?
As I remember, early in their exploration of the territory received in the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark disciplined a member of their party. This was a military expedition sponsored by the US government, and Lewis and Clark were both military officers.
They proceeded to beat an insubordinate recruit.
Native Americans were on the scene, watching, and their leader, distressed at beating, tried, I believe, to prevent it, and then cried tears at the violence.
Lewis and Clark were astonished and thought the leader must be feigning his distress. Why are you so upset, they asked? Don't you beat your son?
No, never. We don't beat our children.
Here is where it gets interesting. Lewis and Clark simply could not believe the chief--and the Indians in general-- didn't beat their children. It was so far out of their child rearing and hierarchical paradigms that they simply assumed the leader was lying. The only way they could make sense of the statement was to assume that the leader must have had a hidden agenda. It also fed into their preconception that Indians were deceptive.
Lewis and Clark were not alone in believing in the necessity of corporal punishment. Samuel Johnson, usually an enlightened man, defended it as the only way to compel young boys to learn their school lessons.
Of course, from the vantage point of today's culture, we know that we can raise successful children without resorting to physical violence -- and in fact, better understand the psychological harm that can arise from physical punishment. We can look at this encounter between Lewis and Clark and the Native American leader and see it as culture clash.
What interests me about this episode (aside from the fact that I'm glad our culture has moved in the direction of the Native Americans) is how we process what doesn't fit into our framework. We tend, I believe, like Lewis and Clark, to dismiss what doesn't fit as a "lie." (I believe Nietszche said a similar thing when he wrote that we label the "other" as evil.) In Lewis and Clark's case, as I remember, they didn't see the Indian as evil, but as childlike, deceptive and, most of all, contemptible. There was no attempt to, say, do a thought experiment and assume that perhaps he was telling the truth. And if he was, to ponder what the implications of that might be. There was no reflection that seemingly "normal" discipline might truly be distressing to another culture--and perhaps there might be something to think about in that slippage between the two cultures.
I'm thinking about this because recently the "culture wars" have been breaking out again in a part of the blogsphere I frequent ...and the assumption on both sides is that the other side is either deliberately lying or that innocent people are being misled by unsavory leaders with the ever-present hidden agendas. But what if we really tried to get into the minds of the people on the other side? What if we assumed that they were telling their truth--that they weren't misled or lying, childlike or contemptible? What leads them to this truth that is different from our truth? What can we learn from it?
Friday, December 4, 2009
Sister From Another Planet
Often I feel like sister from another planet in that I seem to look at life through a different set of lenses. For example:
I actually liked the period during which we had one car. It slowed us down. It felt good. It felt right.
I wish all our towns were connected with trains and buses and even passenger boats drifting down waterways.
I don't think the government does everything wrong. I think they handle many programs well.
I don't agree with the sentiment: "If their own parents don't care about them, why should we?" when children are in trouble. On that note, I didn't like the parties in elementary school given for the children whose parents got the school forms back "on time." Should a child whose parents are so disorganized or have so many problems they can't get the school forms back be doubly punished? When I would say that, I would hear "If their own parents don't care about the, why should we?" Then I would feel angry. And then I would feel ... like sister from another planet.
Well, the list could go on. Almost daily. It can make one despairing, frustrated or misanthropic, but then it gets back to ... ...loving people anyway, looking at life through their lenses, not judging ... accepting that the world won't conform to my ideas and that's probably a good thing ... any other ideas?
Same anyone? Additions to the list? It could go on and on and on .... :)
I actually liked the period during which we had one car. It slowed us down. It felt good. It felt right.
I wish all our towns were connected with trains and buses and even passenger boats drifting down waterways.
I don't think the government does everything wrong. I think they handle many programs well.
I don't agree with the sentiment: "If their own parents don't care about them, why should we?" when children are in trouble. On that note, I didn't like the parties in elementary school given for the children whose parents got the school forms back "on time." Should a child whose parents are so disorganized or have so many problems they can't get the school forms back be doubly punished? When I would say that, I would hear "If their own parents don't care about the, why should we?" Then I would feel angry. And then I would feel ... like sister from another planet.
Well, the list could go on. Almost daily. It can make one despairing, frustrated or misanthropic, but then it gets back to ... ...loving people anyway, looking at life through their lenses, not judging ... accepting that the world won't conform to my ideas and that's probably a good thing ... any other ideas?
Same anyone? Additions to the list? It could go on and on and on .... :)
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
American Movie, social class, Kierkegaard, despair
I recently saw the film American Movie. It's a 1999 documentary about Mark Borchardt, a 29-year-old with a passion for movie making. The film documents his struggles to finish a black and white horror film called Coven.
Struggle he does. Perhaps the most overt theme in the movie is how every card in this working class high school drop-out's life is stacked against him. Mark is intelligent, energetic, determined to succeed, funny and personable. He has a vision and a passion. Yet because of his class situation, there's almost nothing to support him. Certainly very little money and almost no access to people with the education and expertise to smooth his path.
His Wisconsin world is bleak, from the barren, frozen landscape to the small, drab house he shares with his mother (and sometimes his three children from a former marriage) to the cramped trailer where his uncle lives in a mobile home park. Mark supports himself by delivering newspapers and doing janitorial work in a mausoleum/cemetery (at one point this involves washing defecation off a bathroom wall). His best friend is a cheerful, overwieght recovering alcoholic and acidhead whose main activity in life involves buying scratch-off lottery tickets, which he justifies as a better use of his money than drink or drugs.
As for Mark's family, they are less than the American Family Values ideal: His brothers say disdainful things about Mark: he won't finish his film, he's a hopeless dreamer, he's a loser, he has about enough brains to work in a factory. His father, who is separated from his mother, won't help him with the film. He self-righteously doesn't like the "language" in it. HIs mother doesn't think he will ever complete the movie, which he has been working on for years. People come to production meetings, then melt away when he needs them. Luckily, he has a girlfriend who actually doesn't undermine him. Possibly his best supporter is his shrunken old uncle in the trailer, who gives him $3,000 to complete the film and makes it through 31 takes of a scene in which he has to say four short lines that he keeps botching. The uncle is no great enthusiast however: At best, he is a verbally abusive skeptic, the unwilling underwriter of a project he doesn't believe in and has been bullied into financing.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? Yet the grace in the movie is the way Mark works with the people around him. He's largely patient and good-humored through what must be enormous frustrations. He's able to laugh. He's able to see the good in what seem like the biggest collection of misfits ever assembled. He's able to inspire them to be better than they are. He's able to pull them together, however imperfectly, into a community that transcends itself. Through his passion, he draws them in and releases their energies: Near the end, it's amazing to see them all working feverishly against a deadline to edit the movie in the hours--even minutes-- before its premiere.
His mother gives him a place to stay and though often unwilling and largely unable, she fills in as an extra and does camerawork. His acidhead friend is nothing but loyal. He even gets his young children to help with the filming from time to time.
You wonder how Mark keeps on. He gets depressed sometimes--and lashes out bitterly at the safest people in his life, his mother and uncle--but he never despairs.
Kierkegaard and Mark
About the same time I watched this movie, an essay ran in the New York Times written Gordon Martino about Kiergegarrd and despair (happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/kierkegaard-on-the-couch/?scp=1&sq=kierkegaard&st=cse.) This essay, I thought, describes Mark.
According to the Times piece, Kierkegaard distingushed between depression and despair. Despair is the state of not wanting to accept who you fundamentally are, of wanting to get rid of yourself, as Kierkegaard put it. It's a malaise of the spirit. Depression is the blues, the self being out of sorts. Ironically, accepting who you are can lead to depression--if you fancy yourself a wealthy extroverted businessperson but your soul cries out that you are truly an avant-garde musician-- that can be depressing, given the mores of the culture. Yet that very depression--the struggle of the self-- can lead to spiritual growth. Though we've collapsed the spiritual and the psychological in our culture and see despair as a form of depression, a malady of the self, in fact, a person can be depressed and yet spiritually healthy; happy and yet spiritually ill.
Mark, it seems to me, enacts this Kierkegaardian distinction between despair and depression. For as depressed as he gets--and who wouldn't, with his bleak, miserable prospects--he is not a figure of despair. He's fundamentally doing what he was called to do--fundamentally expressing his deepest, most creative self as he enacts his filmmaking. Bad as everything in his life is, including his movie, we respond to his spiritual health and vitality, his integrity. And the rawness, pain and vulnerability of his desire.
At one point in this film, Mark, in many way this most spiritual of people, drives around looking at Macmansions and talks about aspiring to the American Dream of material success. He discusses having a Christian ethic but also wanting money, about being torn, about being half a Christian. It's funny in its naivete of expression, but we're drawn, again, to his integrity, his awkward passion to express who he really is.
In the end, his irony is our irony: Reaching his goal of material success might be the very thing that drives him out of depression and into despair. At the same time, in seeking his goal, he is fully, authentically alive.
Do you agree with Kiergegaard's dinstinction? What blocks us--many of us probably more privileged than Mark--from finding and expressing our authentic selves and how do we do this in a way that isn't narcissistic?
Struggle he does. Perhaps the most overt theme in the movie is how every card in this working class high school drop-out's life is stacked against him. Mark is intelligent, energetic, determined to succeed, funny and personable. He has a vision and a passion. Yet because of his class situation, there's almost nothing to support him. Certainly very little money and almost no access to people with the education and expertise to smooth his path.
His Wisconsin world is bleak, from the barren, frozen landscape to the small, drab house he shares with his mother (and sometimes his three children from a former marriage) to the cramped trailer where his uncle lives in a mobile home park. Mark supports himself by delivering newspapers and doing janitorial work in a mausoleum/cemetery (at one point this involves washing defecation off a bathroom wall). His best friend is a cheerful, overwieght recovering alcoholic and acidhead whose main activity in life involves buying scratch-off lottery tickets, which he justifies as a better use of his money than drink or drugs.
As for Mark's family, they are less than the American Family Values ideal: His brothers say disdainful things about Mark: he won't finish his film, he's a hopeless dreamer, he's a loser, he has about enough brains to work in a factory. His father, who is separated from his mother, won't help him with the film. He self-righteously doesn't like the "language" in it. HIs mother doesn't think he will ever complete the movie, which he has been working on for years. People come to production meetings, then melt away when he needs them. Luckily, he has a girlfriend who actually doesn't undermine him. Possibly his best supporter is his shrunken old uncle in the trailer, who gives him $3,000 to complete the film and makes it through 31 takes of a scene in which he has to say four short lines that he keeps botching. The uncle is no great enthusiast however: At best, he is a verbally abusive skeptic, the unwilling underwriter of a project he doesn't believe in and has been bullied into financing.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? Yet the grace in the movie is the way Mark works with the people around him. He's largely patient and good-humored through what must be enormous frustrations. He's able to laugh. He's able to see the good in what seem like the biggest collection of misfits ever assembled. He's able to inspire them to be better than they are. He's able to pull them together, however imperfectly, into a community that transcends itself. Through his passion, he draws them in and releases their energies: Near the end, it's amazing to see them all working feverishly against a deadline to edit the movie in the hours--even minutes-- before its premiere.
His mother gives him a place to stay and though often unwilling and largely unable, she fills in as an extra and does camerawork. His acidhead friend is nothing but loyal. He even gets his young children to help with the filming from time to time.
You wonder how Mark keeps on. He gets depressed sometimes--and lashes out bitterly at the safest people in his life, his mother and uncle--but he never despairs.
Kierkegaard and Mark
About the same time I watched this movie, an essay ran in the New York Times written Gordon Martino about Kiergegarrd and despair (happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/kierkegaard-on-the-couch/?scp=1&sq=kierkegaard&st=cse.) This essay, I thought, describes Mark.
According to the Times piece, Kierkegaard distingushed between depression and despair. Despair is the state of not wanting to accept who you fundamentally are, of wanting to get rid of yourself, as Kierkegaard put it. It's a malaise of the spirit. Depression is the blues, the self being out of sorts. Ironically, accepting who you are can lead to depression--if you fancy yourself a wealthy extroverted businessperson but your soul cries out that you are truly an avant-garde musician-- that can be depressing, given the mores of the culture. Yet that very depression--the struggle of the self-- can lead to spiritual growth. Though we've collapsed the spiritual and the psychological in our culture and see despair as a form of depression, a malady of the self, in fact, a person can be depressed and yet spiritually healthy; happy and yet spiritually ill.
Mark, it seems to me, enacts this Kierkegaardian distinction between despair and depression. For as depressed as he gets--and who wouldn't, with his bleak, miserable prospects--he is not a figure of despair. He's fundamentally doing what he was called to do--fundamentally expressing his deepest, most creative self as he enacts his filmmaking. Bad as everything in his life is, including his movie, we respond to his spiritual health and vitality, his integrity. And the rawness, pain and vulnerability of his desire.
At one point in this film, Mark, in many way this most spiritual of people, drives around looking at Macmansions and talks about aspiring to the American Dream of material success. He discusses having a Christian ethic but also wanting money, about being torn, about being half a Christian. It's funny in its naivete of expression, but we're drawn, again, to his integrity, his awkward passion to express who he really is.
In the end, his irony is our irony: Reaching his goal of material success might be the very thing that drives him out of depression and into despair. At the same time, in seeking his goal, he is fully, authentically alive.
Do you agree with Kiergegaard's dinstinction? What blocks us--many of us probably more privileged than Mark--from finding and expressing our authentic selves and how do we do this in a way that isn't narcissistic?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Gossip and Quakers
Martin Kelly raises an important issue on Quaker Ranter and I'm willing to help it go viral (even though he's not asking :)). Here it is:
"Ethnographic Study Looks at Gossip in the Workplace" in the NYTimes:
The earlier studies found that once someone made a negative comment about a person who wasn’t there, the conversation would get meaner unless someone immediately defended the target. Otherwise, among both adults and teenagers, the insults would keep coming because there was so much social pressure to agree with the others.
Some interesting here. They say gossip usually spirals down until someone intervenes to defend or deflect. In one school, gossip set up rival camps; teachers eventually left and student test scores fell.
Friends (and Christians more generally) are officially against gossip, though of course we're not immune and I've seen it act as almost a kind of currency in some settings. But what are the classic Quaker tools for deflecting this natural human tendency and keeping our communities from the downward spirals of camp building? "
Factionalism, favoritism, in-groups and gossip do immense, and I would say, often unacknowledged, damage to Quaker institutions and meetings, as well as in the wider world. I've seen the "mischief making" and I've seen people more often than I'd like to have leave meetings because of it. Mostly, they don't care about the quarrel, whatever it may be, but they do care about the way people act and they are appalled at what they see. As Quakers, as upholders of the community and equality testimonies, we should be fighting gossip and factions (which are patterns for destroying community and equality) at every turn. They are against our core beliefs of how we live out God's word in the world. What do you think causes the problem, and as Martin says, how can we deflect it? What do you think of people stepping forward to protest as soon as it starts? What if you come into a situation where this behavior --and the "in-groups"--are already entrenched?
"Ethnographic Study Looks at Gossip in the Workplace" in the NYTimes:
The earlier studies found that once someone made a negative comment about a person who wasn’t there, the conversation would get meaner unless someone immediately defended the target. Otherwise, among both adults and teenagers, the insults would keep coming because there was so much social pressure to agree with the others.
Some interesting here. They say gossip usually spirals down until someone intervenes to defend or deflect. In one school, gossip set up rival camps; teachers eventually left and student test scores fell.
Friends (and Christians more generally) are officially against gossip, though of course we're not immune and I've seen it act as almost a kind of currency in some settings. But what are the classic Quaker tools for deflecting this natural human tendency and keeping our communities from the downward spirals of camp building? "
Factionalism, favoritism, in-groups and gossip do immense, and I would say, often unacknowledged, damage to Quaker institutions and meetings, as well as in the wider world. I've seen the "mischief making" and I've seen people more often than I'd like to have leave meetings because of it. Mostly, they don't care about the quarrel, whatever it may be, but they do care about the way people act and they are appalled at what they see. As Quakers, as upholders of the community and equality testimonies, we should be fighting gossip and factions (which are patterns for destroying community and equality) at every turn. They are against our core beliefs of how we live out God's word in the world. What do you think causes the problem, and as Martin says, how can we deflect it? What do you think of people stepping forward to protest as soon as it starts? What if you come into a situation where this behavior --and the "in-groups"--are already entrenched?
Friday, January 9, 2009
On leaving and returning to Jesus Creed
Since writing this blog, Beliefnet has cleared up some of the issues with Jesus Creed, so I'm back ... andstill think it's a great blog.
I've come to the reluctant conclusion that I have to leave the Jesus Creed blog. I don't want to. But the difficulties of trying to navigate Beliefnet, Jesus Creed's new home, have defeated me. I can't take the time to watch the swirling beach ball go round and round while I hope my comment may post. I can't wait for minutes on end while I try to scroll ... I won't go on with the tiresome list of problems.
I feel sad about this because Jesus Creed was the blog that got me started, and I still find it a wonderful forum for intelligent discussion about the Bible and contemporary religious thought. I think it is the best blog on the Internet. Scot, to whom I've complained, has sent my complaints on to Beliefnet. I will check in from time to time to see if the site has improved but I am not expecting to be able to post there again. I will post summaries of Scot's blogs that I find particularly interesting and my responses here.
A wonderful outcome of Scot's JC blog is the cyberfriends I've made on that site, including Ted and Peggy (the Abbess) who have been doing some interesting blogs lately that I encourage everyone to take a look at. I will be moving my energies to become (I hope) more active on their blogs and on this blog. The Empire may have killed Jesus Creed for me, but Scot's work lives through his disciples ...
Scot has been more than generous in conversation with me about problems with the Beliefnet site, and I hope they get resolved.I've suggested some alternatives to him, such as a subscription to his "old" blog, but at the moment he is committed to trying to make Beliefnet work. In the meantime, I'm interested in the response of other Jesus Creeders to the new Beliefnet site. Has it been difficult for you to navigate? Do you have any tips?
I've come to the reluctant conclusion that I have to leave the Jesus Creed blog. I don't want to. But the difficulties of trying to navigate Beliefnet, Jesus Creed's new home, have defeated me. I can't take the time to watch the swirling beach ball go round and round while I hope my comment may post. I can't wait for minutes on end while I try to scroll ... I won't go on with the tiresome list of problems.
I feel sad about this because Jesus Creed was the blog that got me started, and I still find it a wonderful forum for intelligent discussion about the Bible and contemporary religious thought. I think it is the best blog on the Internet. Scot, to whom I've complained, has sent my complaints on to Beliefnet. I will check in from time to time to see if the site has improved but I am not expecting to be able to post there again. I will post summaries of Scot's blogs that I find particularly interesting and my responses here.
A wonderful outcome of Scot's JC blog is the cyberfriends I've made on that site, including Ted and Peggy (the Abbess) who have been doing some interesting blogs lately that I encourage everyone to take a look at. I will be moving my energies to become (I hope) more active on their blogs and on this blog. The Empire may have killed Jesus Creed for me, but Scot's work lives through his disciples ...
Scot has been more than generous in conversation with me about problems with the Beliefnet site, and I hope they get resolved.I've suggested some alternatives to him, such as a subscription to his "old" blog, but at the moment he is committed to trying to make Beliefnet work. In the meantime, I'm interested in the response of other Jesus Creeders to the new Beliefnet site. Has it been difficult for you to navigate? Do you have any tips?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Reply to Jim Wallis
In my e-mail box, I received a letter "from" Jim Wallis of Sojourners, offering me the "opportunity" to send Sojourners money!
I was irritated. Not because Sojourners is trying to raise money because, of course, as many people will tell me, they "need" to. What annoyed me was the smarminess of the letter. Addressing me by first name as if I were "Jim's" personal friend. Couching sending them money as an "opportunity." The creepy hackneyed hyberpole: "enormous," "Incredible." Treating the reader, without irony, as a fool. Maybe it was the absence of irony that bothered me most. Wanting absolutely nothing of me but my money and not even offering me a laugh for my buck. It reminded me of an old Monty Python skit where a doctor comes to pay a house call but ignores the patient while he runs around the house in a crazed way stuffing his empty black doctor's bag with any cash he can find. Of course, the skit was funny.
Here is an organization that prides itself on being different from "those people" on the other side of the political divide. Yet it seems to mirror standard corporate fundraising tactics. It seems to put all its faith in money to solve problems. Hhhm. Is it putting first the kingdom or filthy lucre? Are they anything but a mirror of the thing they purport to hate and want to "reform?" I imagine I am supposed to be naive enough to see sending them money as an "opportunity," but not so naive as to think they could "do it without my support (money)?"
I spent more than a decade in marketing and among many tasks I wrote what quaintly used to be called "direct mail" letters like the one from Sojourners. They're used because they're "proven to be effective." But just because something is an effective fundraising technique, does that justify using it? Not to be sanctimonious, but can you, Sojourners, really pour new wine into old wineskins?
I "replied" to the letter. Here's my response:
Dear Jim,
Thank you so much for contacting me personally and by first name.
In such a time as this, with both "enormous possibilities" and "incredible challenges," I too want to keep Sojourners work "alive and strong."
I am a religion journalist who would like to make you a gift worth more than a check for measly lucre: the opportunity of hiring me.
I will give you insightful, accurate and intelligent stories and columns for a reasonable salary. I will thus help you keep Sojourners work alive and strong. In fact, I will make it more alive and stronger. I am an "opportunity."
Under the new Obama proposed tax structures, this will will you a tax break of $3,000. Hiring talented people like me is part of the challenge and possibility to make a real difference in a failed economy.
Please e-mail me for my resume and more information.
Sincerely,
Diane
Do you think I'll hear from them? :)
I was irritated. Not because Sojourners is trying to raise money because, of course, as many people will tell me, they "need" to. What annoyed me was the smarminess of the letter. Addressing me by first name as if I were "Jim's" personal friend. Couching sending them money as an "opportunity." The creepy hackneyed hyberpole: "enormous," "Incredible." Treating the reader, without irony, as a fool. Maybe it was the absence of irony that bothered me most. Wanting absolutely nothing of me but my money and not even offering me a laugh for my buck. It reminded me of an old Monty Python skit where a doctor comes to pay a house call but ignores the patient while he runs around the house in a crazed way stuffing his empty black doctor's bag with any cash he can find. Of course, the skit was funny.
Here is an organization that prides itself on being different from "those people" on the other side of the political divide. Yet it seems to mirror standard corporate fundraising tactics. It seems to put all its faith in money to solve problems. Hhhm. Is it putting first the kingdom or filthy lucre? Are they anything but a mirror of the thing they purport to hate and want to "reform?" I imagine I am supposed to be naive enough to see sending them money as an "opportunity," but not so naive as to think they could "do it without my support (money)?"
I spent more than a decade in marketing and among many tasks I wrote what quaintly used to be called "direct mail" letters like the one from Sojourners. They're used because they're "proven to be effective." But just because something is an effective fundraising technique, does that justify using it? Not to be sanctimonious, but can you, Sojourners, really pour new wine into old wineskins?
I "replied" to the letter. Here's my response:
Dear Jim,
Thank you so much for contacting me personally and by first name.
In such a time as this, with both "enormous possibilities" and "incredible challenges," I too want to keep Sojourners work "alive and strong."
I am a religion journalist who would like to make you a gift worth more than a check for measly lucre: the opportunity of hiring me.
I will give you insightful, accurate and intelligent stories and columns for a reasonable salary. I will thus help you keep Sojourners work alive and strong. In fact, I will make it more alive and stronger. I am an "opportunity."
Under the new Obama proposed tax structures, this will will you a tax break of $3,000. Hiring talented people like me is part of the challenge and possibility to make a real difference in a failed economy.
Please e-mail me for my resume and more information.
Sincerely,
Diane
Do you think I'll hear from them? :)
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