Lay Theologians

I am a professional theologian. That is, I have extensive training and study which have established a wide body of theological ideas and findings which enrich my spiritual journey, usually giving me direction for life decisions.

Lay theologians ordinarily do not have that kind of educational background unless, much later in life than us professionals, they choose to attend seminary for the purpose of learning and not just making a living.

It has been my privilege to bump into four lay theologians over the last year. Dee Lambert I’ve known for over 30 years and she is now helping two little churches keep going by being their lay speaker. I’ve posted one of her poems on my blog. See October 26 below for it.

Barbara Wendland I’ve known about fifteen years and she continues to actively stir up the denomination not only in her part of the world (Texas) but reaches many people around the country through her newsletter (www.connectionsonline.org).

Art Davis, my poet friend, has always been insightful but he recently showed me an essay in which he argues that God may be tired of creating new earths which seem all to end in environmental or military catastrophe. Our earth is number 7. His closing words are “Will any survivors report to Me? PLEASE. UFOs up to family-size are ready!” At least God is willing to try again, Art says.

Natala Orobello teaches English at a local college and has published her first book, DESTINED FOR GREATNESS (available through AMAZON.COM). It is one of five she has finished. When asked why she chose this one to be published first, she answered, “God told me.” When you read it, you can see why.

I read her book as I read other novels, a little bit at a time, usually just before bed. That works for novels just fine. But when I finished, I found I had to go back, not for plot points or character names, but for insights which she slips in all through the book.

The format is “novella” but the purpose is “spiritual journey.”

She does not preach. But she illustrates her main proposition that God intends greatness for everyone but each one of us makes choices which even to God, come “as a surprise to us!”

Professor Orobello was born in Sicily and was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. The standard theology she heard from the priests left many questions for her which usually, when answered at all by the priests, were called “mysteries.” She wasn’t satisfied with that and has thought through what her experience and educational background provided as substantive answers. DESTINED FOR GREATNESS does not trace her spiritual journey but is more the result of it, with hints of how she struggled to get there.

Her book deserves to be read as part of one’s devotional practices. But it is not didactic. You will be tempted to keep on reading at the close of each of her brief chapters.

What I like the most about a lay theologian is the freedom to explore thoughts which those of us with traditional theological training hesitate to do. Are the results of their explorations going to become mileposts in humankind’s spiritual journey? Who knows? Quite possibly!

To me, they are a sign that God continues to converse with us and those who hear are sharing their thoughts in creative ways.

Short Christmas Sermon

The local paper asked me to write a sermon for their series "SERMON OF THE WEEK." Here's my offering:

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I love the lights, the music, the stories, even the commercialism! While a lot of advertisements are gross and the desperation to sell gets annoying, it still seems as if all of America and much of the western world finds a way to be brighter, be cheerier, be more generous than any other time of the year. And that sure helps us pass through the darkest days on the calendar, those around the winter solstice.

Far more important to me than the flurry of exciting activities and decorations which lighten the season is the Incarnation. “God with us,” God becoming human to live with us, walk . . ., sweat . . ., work . . ., attend worship . . ., deal with difficult people . . ., struggle with all the issues of humanity including physical suffering and death. He knows first hand what we go through!

He also lived in a time when power was international, except we need to realize his country was the one being occupied.

And he taught that his nation was ordained by God to rule the world. HA! No, Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. Somehow we’ve forgotten that part of His message.

He taught many things but the key to his call to us is that we are to also incarnate God’s love. As He came to live God’s love among us, so we are to do the same, live God’s love with everyone else. And the Judgment of God about our lives will be based on whether we fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, healed the sick, and visited the imprisoned. The Bible says that and I believe it, and that settles it!

That “final exam” described in the Book of Matthew, 25th chapter, verses 31-46, takes us way beyond any belief system which we follow in our religious life. I’ve discovered that people who believe differently than I do and take Jesus as seriously as I do, are the last to presume immigrants, legal or illegal, are evil and need to be removed from our midst. I’ve discovered that people of other religions not only welcome the stranger, they feed the hungry and clothe the poor and care for the sick and imprisoned.

“You will know them by their fruits,” Jesus said (Matthew 7:16).

What then is faith? Fear for our immortal souls? Fear of disobedience? Fear of being wrong? No. As the angels told the shepherds, “Fear not!” Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear is.

Faith is far simpler. It is trusting God.

For months, Annie prayed for a horse for Christmas. She did it each night before she went to bed. Even though the main focus of her prayers was to bless her parents, neighbors, friends, and even the strangers in her town, she slipped in her desire to get the horse. Her parents having only a small apartment for the three of them had no way to afford a horse or renting a place where it could be boarded. But they didn’t have the heart to challenge Annie’s earnestness and faith that she’d get the horse.

Christmas came. Annie gleefully jumped out of bed and ran into the living room to check out her presents. She found a doll buggy and a new doll under the tree. She put the doll in the buggy and went door to door on her floor in the apartment building, showing everyone what Santa had given her.

Her parents were stunned. Annie said nothing about there being no horse. She was just full of joy to have the new toys.

When she got back from her trip to the neighbors, they talked to her. “Annie, we’ve always told you that God answers your prayers. But he didn’t answer the one about your wanting a horse.”

“Oh but God did answer my prayer,” Annie said. “He just said ‘No.’”

That’s faith.

Coach's strategies

One of the marks of Coach Mike McCarthy's work with the Packers is that his game plans have been effective. How else do you win when you do not have a running game?

One of the things you do not see on the game films of opponents is the opponent coach's game plans. You can get an idea but until you have a history in the league and against a particular opponent, it is hard to know what to expect.

McCarthy's plan to attack the Cowboys deep last Thursday night was a great idea. For a lot of reasons, it failed. It appears the Cowboys' defensive game plan anticipated just that attack. Perhaps they are better at self-scouting than the Packers are just now. Given the average and injury-struck defensive backfield, any smart coach might have done the same as McCarthy did.

McCarthy learned a lesson. Sometimes you have to plan to go strength on strength and let the attack on weaknesses come later. If the Packers get to play the Cowboys for the conference championship, the game plan is more likely to be just that.

But first, McCarthy will have to prepare the team for an emerging Oakland Raiders. The Bears are coming on and the Lions will have nothing to lose. The Packers will have a whole set of battles to win before they can start talking about game planning for the Cowboys!

Green Bay Packers' Game Plan

The sports writers and announcers do not seem to have grasped what the game plan was for the great game between the Packers and the Cowboys. It was obvious to me that the Packers thought they could jump all over the Cowboy corners with long passes.

There were two goals: one, wear out the corners for more success against them later in the game, and two, get a lead so that Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo would have to play from behind, something he may not be able to do yet.

It almost worked. But the Cowboy corners held up well enough to stay with the wide receivers of the Packers and Favre was just a little off in his throws. Also, the offensive line was not as capable of holding off the Cowboys defensive line as they had hoped.

Even if Favre had not been hurt, the Packers' plan was most likely to go back to the short pass/five receiver scheme with which they had been successful and proved to be early on during the opening series of plays.

Now the Packers know how far they have come as a team, having played mostly teams with losing records. They know they need all their troops and that they cannot look on any of their up-coming games as "easy." They are capable of winning them all, but sometimes, having one or another key player out will make them vulnerable.

But they also know they can run with Dallas and are not afraid to return to Dallas for a play-off game. Favre still has to win at Texas Stadium. And he will.

Art Davis poem - By My Beard . . .

Mr. Davis is a good church member, a dedicated Christian who has not only given much time, resources, and skill to the churches of which has been been a part both up north and here in Port Charlotte, but he has lent his "bum" to more sermons than you. So he is aware of Scripture passages like, "You will know the false prophets by what they do" (Mt. 7:20) and songs like, "You will know we are Christians by our love," (folk hymn from the 1970s).

His fertile mind plays with phrases like that and he comes up with the some wonderful stuff:

By My Beard You Shall Know Me

Oh hear me, Muse,
I do implore.
Prevent my penning
Words that bore.

In searching through
My poetry books,
I found a sim-
Iliarity of looks.

Longfellow, Whitman,
Elliott, and Keats,
All giants of
poetic feats,

I realized,
You'll think it weird,
Those titans each,
I found with beard.

The question broached
Is not too hard.
Without a beard,
Can one be a bard?

Once I'm bearded,
I'll overnight
Then take my place,
Midst those classed erudite?

I label writing
Rather hard,
For I could end
With beard, and yet
Still not be a bard. . .


Arthur H. Davis
4/11/07
Copyright
6/12/07
Posted by permission of the author

James Holsinger's Recusal

I have watched the Judicial Council for many years.

Back in 1993, something happened that I did not know could happen. Rev. Zan Holmes recused himself from consideration of the case of a Perkins School of Theology professor who was a member of the annual conference to which Dr. Holmes belonged. See Judicial Council Decision (JCD) 696.

For years, a key member of the Judicial Council had given in writing, by phone, and in personal conversation ex parte opinions to bishops in cases that were headed for the Judicial Council. That kind of "help" by a Judicial Council member was finally ended by General Conference in 1992. See Paragraph 2607 of the 2004 Book of Discipline.

Dr. Holmes' recusal set a precedent of integrity that was honored by a number of other Judicial Council members when cases came from their respective annual conferences. For instance, a recent case caused the secretary of the Judicial Council to remove himself from any action related to a case during his annual conference so he would be free to fulfill his role as a Judicial Council member. He spelled out his actions in his concurring opinion, last paragraph, of JCD 1032.

One might think that maybe Dr. Holsinger, president of the Judicial Council, is showing a similar ethical concern by withdrawing from the Fall Session of the Judicial Council held last week. Unfortunately, I cannot believe that is so.

In the past, during his seven years on the Council, Dr. Holsinger did not recuse himself from at least two cases before the Judicial Council in which he had significant relationships with parties at interest. Now he recused himself from a session in which there were some cases dealing with controversial matters. No matter how he would vote on them, it would not affect his integrity but it could affect his chance to become Surgeon General.

The issue of his ethical practice recently has become a public matter through reports about his role involving the disbursal of proceeds from the sale of an annual conference property. Some of those proceeds were donated to programs at the university where he worked. When that story came out a few weeks ago, in my opinion, Dr. Holsinger should have resigned from the Judicial Council then. But if he had, how would that look going into the Senate confirmation hearings? If he is confirmed by the Senate, then he can resign from the Judicial Council for a positive reason.

It is time for Dr. Holsinger to face his past unfortunate decisions and actions and the serious questions they have raised. He can show the same integrity as his predecessors by resigning now from the Judicial Council, not simply recusing himself for this session because his nomination may be an "unnecessary and unproductive distraction."


--This post is also published as a commentary on UM NeXus, http://www.umnexus.org--

"Trilogy of Cancer"

One of my colleagues, Ann Freeman Price, went through cancer recently and put her experience to paper in poetry and song in a wonderful book entitled "Trilogy of Cancer - The Jolt, The Journey, The Joy." (Copyright 2007 - Ann Freeman Price) It is worth every penny of the fifteen dollars cover price.

Some of her verse is plain. Some goes to songs we samg at camp! She even includes handwritten staffs of music in case you don't know the tune. She includes blessedly brief notes on aspects of her experience.

The concluding poem to her first section is set to the tune of "Home on the Range."

Oh, Lump-ec-tomy!

O sing me a song
'Bout a day that went wrong
When they did the lumpectomy.
Well the nodes were bad too
So they took out a few
And two scars for Ann you can see.

OH, lumpectomy.
It's a pain and that I'll agree.
So let's move on right now.
I'll be showing you how.
We're gonna be finding the key.

She speaks of "healing circles" and drum therapy and a number of thinsg that sound strange to most folks but once inside her work, they make all the sense in the world.

This is from "Healing Drum."

simple hand drum
steady beat
five minutes
a day

five minutes
to feel my hand
touch skin of drum
synchronize with
heart and blood

five minutes for
cancer cells
to scatter from
the pounding
and the pulsing
of the ancient sound

five minutes
to feel vibration
connecting cell to cell
organizing life stream

five minutes
for beat and breath
to gather energy
for the day

the day which
starts with
drumming


Contact Ann at annfreemanprice@embarqmail.com for further information how to get a copy of her book. - Contact her quick because I did not get her permission to publish her pooems and this blog may disappear!

Theology

I am pleased to share with you the work of others that I like -the work and the others! The following is a poetic essay on The Rev. Dr. Dennis Reedy's personal theology:

I’ve “threatened” believers on both sides of the aisle.

To my conservative brothers & sisters, I say: “You must be born again;” O.K. but that’s the starting point, not the goal.

To my fundamentalist brothers & sisters, I say: “Are you saved?” … yes, and I am being saved every day.

To my liberal brothers & sisters, I say: Show me your faith by your works; and love as Jesus loved.

To my deist brothers & sisters, I say: Yes, God did set the cosmos into its cycles; but God is also involved in the tiny, daily details.

To my modernist brothers & sisters, I say: Yes, Jesus is the example; but more than a moral example, Jesus is the complete image of a man of God, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To my holiness brothers & sisters, I say: “Repentance” means turning away from self and toward God; but it’s Grace that saves me, not works.

A friend in Christ has suggested that, in fact, I am really a “CharisFundaConservaLib.”

"If There Were No God" by Dee Lambert

This week a friend sent me some of her poetry. I think she should be published. She gave me permission to post this one:

If There Were No God

If there were no God,
How would I explain
A bright red bird on a dark and dreary winter day?

If there were no God,
How would I explain
A cooling breeze on a hot summer day
That seemed to come from nowhere
Just to cool my face?

If there were no God,
How would I understand
The bittersweet pain of a baby's cry?

If there were no God,
How would I ever know
The rocking arms that held me in my greatest pain
And shared in the tears that came,
So that I would know I was not alone?

If there were no God,
Who would I thank
For boundless joy that comes from
Nothing extraordinary?

If there were no God,
Who would have heard my borning cry
Or stilled my fear of dying?

When all others have gone, and centuries have passed,
Who would remember that I was here
If there were no God?

Copyright 2008, published by permission of Dee Lambert

-- The writers' group which critiqued her work hopes she will build a new poem around one passage we redacted:

If there were no God,
Who would live on the mountain tops
Where wind echoes across ancient graves
Nestled on the edge of cliffs
At the edge of Time?

Occupation

I wonder how it is that Americans have forgotten what an occupation is like.

Every time we visit some historic site on the east coast, we discover something new about the occupation of America by the English during the Revolutionary War.

When we visited New Jersey, we learned that the colonists there were not especially excited about revolting. Then a squad of Red Coats came upon a farmer’s daughter and gang raped her. Word of that event spread like wild fire through the colony. Farmers out in their fields began carrying their muskets, ready and loaded, and then leaned them against a shock of corn stalks. As a squad of Red Coats marched by out on the road, a farmer could easily slip over behind a shock, take the rifle, pick off one of the occupying soldiers, put the gun back, and return to his field work as if nothing had happened.

When we visited Andrew Jackson’s childhood home along the Waxhaw River, the story there was that his neighbors didn’t want the Brits intruding upon their little township. When they tried to stop the Red Coats, they were slaughtered. The soldiers than went through the settlement and killed a number of the women and children there. North Carolina “remembered” the Waxhaw massacre and joined the Revolution. Jackson witnessed the slayings as a teenager. He spent time as a British prisoner. When the Red Coats came back in 1814 and tried to take New Orleans, Jackson commanded the forces of pirates, renegades, mountain men, and regular soldiers that crushed the proud troops of the British Empire and saved the Mississippi River from their control.

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway is a tourist center called the Virginia Explore Park. Among its living exhibits is one from the 18th century. The story told there by the docent was that Virginia, the largest and most productive of the British colonies at the beginning had little interest in the Revolution. Many of its men had served with the British against the French and Indians in the 1750s and 1760s. Unfortunately, about the time those men were to receive their major benefit for their years of service, land on which to settle, the King proclaimed that there would be no settling allowed in the very territory that had been set aside for those veterans.

Among those who earlier fought by the side of the Red Coats was George Washington.

As I think about these incidents in American history just from the Revolution, I wonder how anyone who has visited any major historical site related to the Revolution could be comfortable with sending our soldiers to occupy any foreign country. The dangers of the rogue action of just a few individuals changes hearts dramatically. The occurrences of “overkill” (we call it “collateral damage”) are not forgotten. The broken promises antagonize friends and make them enemies.

Wasn’t the situation that led to the Revolution one where England faced losing wood and other raw materials for its industries because of its autocratic and distant policy making? And when they sent troops to occupy the colonies, didn’t they aggravate the situation?

The purpose of sending our troops to Iraq was a little more complicated than that. Iraq dropped Scuds on Israel during the first Gulf War under President Bush 41. Then “Poppy” Bush was the target of an Iraqi attempted-assassination. Then not long after that war, Saddam Hussein violently suppressed Shi’ites America encouraged to rebel. And finally, control of Iraqi oil looked like it was slipping away. So we sent in the troops “to find weapons of mass destruction” and kept them there until the oil question was settled so our companies would gain the benefit.

The longer the Iraqis put off making that decision, the longer we have had to be there. All the timelines for projected drawdowns used to be tied to the oil decision. Now they are tied to the depletion of our military.

Occupations are chancy things. How many times over the decades since the end of WW II have there been riots and demonstrations in places like the Philippines and South Korea and Japan to close our bases and remove our military?

We should know from first hand experience that occupations are really not the best tool to resolve an international problem. Just because we are the ones doing it does not make it right. You’d think we know better.

Have you ever - - -

Art Davis let me take two of his poems to publish here:

Have you ever - - -

In all my life that's gone before,
I've never heard a cricket snore.
Nor have I heard an earthworm yawn
While inching tunnels 'neath my lawn.

Do baby kangaroos cry "Ouch!"
In case they fall from Mother's pouch?
Has anyone yet heard a sigh
From a fluttering butterfly?

Do dandelions in seed go puff-f-f
When they release their fuzzy stuff-f-f?
I've heard the hum of honey bees
But from pollen never heard them sneeze!

Does the praying mantis really pray?
Unanswered questions of the day!
I wonder if when cows go Moo-o-o
They're telling they've got milk for you.

Well, quite enough this wondering
Like - Is God mad when thundering?
Now don't let the "silence" bore you.
Stay alert for others, I implore you. . . .

(Art Davis, 5/24/07 and revised 9/14/07, copyright)


* * * * *


REMEMBERING...

Another day gone by at moon's rising,
to add to the lengthy skein of days assigned.

Ironically, it means one less day to live,
but--one less day of affliction,
a day wherein one forgets
what was spoken but a few breaths ago.

To tamper the brain,
forget recent moments of devotion
by those who selflessly serve
with their gifts of love and patience,
such to bloom happiness,
evoke childlike laughter
over gossamer weight matters.

The mind, despite the grasp of those who care,
suddens into the quicksand of failure
to recall a grain of love,
a trumpet of joy;
the madness of forgetting,
robber of tranquility
from all who loved;
a slow downward spiral
into blurred emptiness.

The syptoms we know and fight
to stem the torture of it all.

Silently, systems rebel.

Sadly, one coils fetal as life commenced
who now slowly exits life's arena,
perhaps never telling those care-givers,
those who untiring served,
that they were loved.

No doubt somehow
they would have shown gratitude.

They just didn't remember . . . .

(Arthur H. Davis, 9/3/07, copyright)

Dick Selchert

My cousin died since the last World Series. He and I were born three months apart and, from seventh grade through high school, were in classes together and played on intramural sports teams together.

In the days before the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee, we were both Cub fans Growing up just outside of Milwaukee, my allegiance switched the moment Joe Adcock hit the homer that drove in Billy Bruton with the winning run in the home opener. Dick's, however, stayed with the Cubs even when they traded Andy Pafko to the Braves.

Dick stuck by the Cubs through the eras of Phil Cavaretta, Hank Sauer, Ernie Banks, all the way up to Kerry Woods and beyond.

The cockles of my heart were warmed by Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, Johnny Logan, Henry Aaron, and all the other Braves that got into the playoffs and World Series while I was young. When the Braves moved to Atlanta, I tried to be a fan of the Brewers and saw a number of their games. I enjoyed Harvey's Wallbangers, especially Gorman Thomas, and the World Series games they got to play.

As I've gotten older, I've lost track of Milwaukee major league baseball.

But Dick stayed faithful to the Cubbies through thick and thin (mostly thin) to his dying day.

I saw in the local paper (the Charlotte Sun-Herald, Port Charlotte, FL) that the Cubs are in the playoffs.

I'd like to think he has great seats from which to watch his beloved Cubs and cheer them on to the World Series.

Florida Primary

I can understand the thinking which wishes Florida Democrats would not vote before Iowa and New Hampshire.

It's based on the principle of smaller committees who understand something based on intense investigation and making recommendations to the larger body. Most legislative bodies do something like that. On the national level, Iowa and New Hampshire have a lot of meetings with small groups all over their states with each of the candidates. We may never get the chance but they do the eyeball-to-eyeball thing we wish we could do. They usually do well in picking out the top candidates that way. After those are done, it's pretty much boring debates and soundbite TV ads ad nauseum for everyone else.

The Republicans run the state of Florida and may have realized by moving up the Presidential Primary that the Democrats would be in trouble with the national party. Far as I can tell, it makes no never mind to the Republicans. Ron Paul is the only one on that side that is making any sense and he has a long way to go to get out of the lowest tier of their candidates.

Personally, I hope the candidates show up down here before January 29 but I really want them to prioritize their time to be in Iowa and New Hampshire. I trust those folks to get a decent reading on which of the candidates is real.

But I confess I will vote on Jan. 29 even if my favorite candidate gets no official credit for it at the Democratic Party's convention.

I want someone to see Dennis Kucinich got a vote. Imagine, he actually wants to impeach Vice President Cheney, like all the rest of the country does, and he wants to set up a Peace Department as a counter to the Defense (War) Department. Imagine what would happen if we spent as much money seeking peace as we do seeking excuses to use our military arsenal so we can pay some corporation exhorbitant prices for new materiel.

I am tempted to vote for Bill Richardson. Do you know he was nominated for a Nobel prize? And he has been a good governor for New Mexico. And he actually knows Spanish, compared to the President who knows a few phrases. What would it be like to have a President who can speak Spanish in this day and age!

While I love those two guys, I will not be unhappy no matter which Democratic candidate is chosen. America is so lucky to have such a talented group of people running.

So, America, encourage all the candidates to have to go one-on-one in Iowa and New Hampshire to do what we would like to do ourselves. Look at Florida's vote as a straw vote which just might mix up the respective packs of "runners."

SubordiNation

NATION WITHIN IN A NATION

What Laws Apply to Clergy

Liberty is one of the cherished features of living in America. As citizens of the United States, we are protected by the Constitution from abuses like cruel and unusual punishment and unreasonable searches and seizures. We have the right to face our accusers, trial by our peers, impartial juries, assistance of counsel when facing criminal prosecution, due process, and seek redress. These are all guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments spell them out.

While I could now take off on why I think the current administration has undercut America’s credibility in the world by refusing anything approaching these rights to prisoners in their “war on terror,” I have a very different reason for reminding us of these precious gifts of liberty in our country. I would like to call your attention to the fact that these same individual rights are already being ignored in one of our society's most cherished institutions, the United Methodist Church. The victims are not terrorists; they are pastors.

Local pastors can be removed from office without any chance to defend themselves against whatever accusations caused their being fired in the first place.

Pastors can be refused the right to view the files kept by the Cabinet which the Cabinet then uses as the basis for decisions about appointments of those pastors, incorrect materials and all.

The Cabinet, which has the right and often abuses that right to sign the complaint against the pastor, picks those who make the decision about the guilt or innocence of a pastor in a church trial, a group called the “trial court.” The accuser gets to pick the jury!

Pastors are brought in by a superintendent for an innocuous reason and “ambushed” with a verbal lashing based on an unwritten complaint and coerced into withdrawing from ministry.

The opinion of the bishop about the guilt of a pastor usually guides the deliberations of the groups meant to check the facts and make the judgment.

Bishops often decide to handle a complaint administratively that should have gone to church trial.

Pastors have been suspended just on the word of the bishop without the proper consultation required by the Book of Discipline.

It takes a higher standard of proof to convict a church leader who violates due process rules than to convict a pastor of a chargeable offense.

How can there be such a disparity between the rights we have as American citizens and the rights clergy have within the United Methodist Church?

We clergy live in a different nation. “Subordination!” according to a Minnesota state court examining the right of the church to have secret files on clergy.

Most clergy, trained in a variety of backgrounds and with different jobs, still have the general experience of citizenship. Consequently, we presume that the U. S. Constitution has a higher priority on legal civil rights than anything in the Discipline. That presumption is wrong.

In 1976, the Supreme Court made a ruling on a case from the Syrian Orthodox Church. In their decision, they said that civil courts had no jurisdiction over churches that have a judicial system (as the United Methodist Church does) even if that system is not followed. Yes, you read that right. The Supreme Court allows churches not to have to follow their own judicial procedures.

Civil courts hate having to deal with church cases because judges face re-election by voters who go to church.

But the real problem faced by judges is that to take a case about a church personnel matter would require the court to have to make a judgment about matters as defined by that faith. The doctrine of separation of church and state declares that no court should do that. And so, since 1976, the United Methodist Church has drifted further into counting on that protection. Now the easiest route lawyers representing the church have is to say to a civil court that the case is a personnel matter and judges tend to drop the case.

As a result, any careless or intentional failure on a church leader's part which violates a pastor's rights under the U. S. Constitution AND/OR under the Book of Discipline is seen by church leaders as inconsequential. If they have an opinion about a pastor, they can act on it without reference to church law or civil law!

So if the civil courts can't protect a pastor from abuse by church leaders, why not use church law? Aren't there provisions for a complaint process against bishops? Indeed there are. A complaint against a bishop goes to the president of the jurisdictional college of bishops. No bishop wants to have another bishop interfere in his/her own conference matters and so there is a tacit agreement that anything that is not a sexual misconduct accusation against a bishop is dropped. So bishops have no accountability to anyone for their behavior toward pastors.

Can the Judicial Council be called upon to respond to a challenge of a bishop for procedural problems?

Since 1980, there has been a personnel case before the Judicial Council nearly every year. Sometimes there have been as many as six. There are at least four cases before the Council this October. In 1996, the Council went so far as to say the following:

"It should be emphasized that both the administrative and judicial processes in the Discipline are carefully and specifically designed to protect the rights of clergy and of the church. The steps set forth must be followed carefully and explicitly or injustice results. Lack of diligence, integrity, care, or compassion in dealing with a case almost always results in irreparable harm to both the individual and the church. That has usually happened by the time a case of this nature gets to the Judicial Council."
Judicial Council Decision 777.

Despite that observation, even the Council has not always supported the rights of pastors when they have been violated by Cabinets and Boards of Ordained Ministry. Even the decisions that have supported pastors are ignored across the Church.

So pastors have a real problem. Even though they are United Methodists, they cannot assume that their right to a church trial will be honored.

They cannot assume they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a trial. They cannot assume they will be treated with respect until a resolution is developed. They now must assume their own words will be used against them, that declaring innocence will be seen as defensive and all the more reason to judge them as guilty, that they will not see the accusations nor the accuser unless the bishop decides that should happen, among other things.

United Methodist clergy no longer live in the "nation" of the United States and its personnel laws and rights. In fact, they cannot count on living in the "nation" of the United Methodist Church's personnel and fair process laws.

The only "nation" left is "subordination" to the bishop who hopefully understands legal civil rights and fair process protections under church law. Since no bishop is required to have competence in either of those in order to be a bishop, there is a chance a pastor "doesn't have a chance!"

What can be done about this?

First, all pastors need to know their rights as laid out in the Book of Discipline. They should read Paragraph 362.1-3 and Paragraph 2701. Even if they are never accused themselves, they have every right to ask conference leaders to describe what was done so that they could be assured Fair Process was followed or challenge actions that fail to do so. If the pastors are accused, they should immediately go online to .

Second, the General Conference needs to establish a new study commission as they did in 1988 to re-evaluate how church leaders should and actually do handle complaints and suggest new laws for consideration of the next General Conference.

Three, General Council on Finance and Administration and Annual Conference need to report the costs of church trials and civil court actions to the respective Annual Conferences and to General Conference. (Detail of many cases cannot be divulged under confidentiality agreements but those costs need to be added in some reasonable way to what can be reported. There are costs for episcopal autocratic behaviors

Four, General Conference should require a substantive training program for all Cabinet and Board of Ordained Ministry members so that they will understand the concepts of due process in civil law, fair process in church law, and personnel policies required under federal law.

And finally, the General Conference needs to change how complaints against bishops are handled so that those who elect them take responsibility, as Judicial Council Decision 475 required. Similarly, superintendents should not have the "hidey-hole" of Paragraph 429.3.

There is a saying in politics: "If they can, they will." To me, applied to the leadership of the Church, "they" can and "they" already do!

Because clergy do not really live in liberty, protected from abuse, and free to properly defend themselves, it is long past time to open discussion of this grievous state in the United Methodist Church.


(Note: For non-United Methodists, the Book of Discipline is the listing of our denomination's constitution and by-laws. References to segments of law called "Paragraphs" are from the 2004 edition.)

--Shortly after this was written in 2006, Diana Henriques of the New York Times ran a series of articles about how this same kind of injustice is occurring in other major religions and denominations.—

Revised 9/30 07

Thanks, Michael Moore

This Administration, since 2001, has been one of the most astounding in American history.

Those who have tried to follow current events since we were taught to do so in grade school have been on a rollercoaster ride. It seems that every few days, some new bizarre twiist to managing government comes out in the news.

Even though the news covered it quite well, the elections in 2000 had some of the most distatsteful things occurring from the repainting of Max Cleland and John McCain into something they weren't to the practice in many states of minorities being disdallowed to vote because they had the same name as a felon to the attack by a white-shirt-and-tie crowd of Washington-based Republican staffers on poll workers in Florida who were trying to recount the vote.

The rumors that the Clinton staff had removed W from all the computer keyboards to President Bush going on vacation shortly after coming to Washington to being asleep at the switch before 9/11 and then on 9/11 to promulgating a war in Iraq that was irrelevant to fighting the terrorists who did 9/11 were all just opening vollies on our senses and sensibility. Colin Powell was used by the Administration to be their front man at the UN on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (so much like General Patraeus being used by the Administration to keep the war going). Then there was Abu Graib where most of the prisoners were guys brought in because they were Arab guys who were then treated the way the Israelis treat Palestinians in prison. And the occupation of Iraq with too few troops that led to the insurgency. And on and on.

Then there was the Swift Boat ads and Jack Abramoff and Republicanizing K Street and Tom DeLay and Vice President Cheney saying the most awful things as if they were true and the President making sure dissenters were not allowed anywhere near where he was speaking and then allowing in only those loyal to him. And Alberto Gonzolaz Republicanizing the Justice Department. And on and on . . . .

I firmly believe that the strategy was intentional to pull so many bad stunts so that they kind of disappeared behind each other and fed the premise that government is bad so people would not vote or even care about what happened in politics. The voices of those outraged by everything as it happened soon were on television so much that they lost the uniqueness of their challenges. And reporters and netwoirk news executives were intimidated and the whole belief that there was news which could be unbiased becoming the "liberal press" compared the the "fair and balanced" stuff at Fox News so that now no news is given any credence because it is all boased anyway!

Into this kind of crazy setting comes Michael Moore. He picked a subject and he has stayed with it. His website has always been a source of news about some of the craziness but he has, like Al Gore, focussed on one topic among all that have flowed from the political gatling gun of this Administration and kept us focussed on something specific and have fought hard for that so that it does not get lost in the swirling absurdity called governance and news these days.

Future Americans will look back on this eight year period and wonder how we could let those people get away with so much in such a short period of time. I hope they see the evil genius in that strategy and not allow it to occur in the future. And I hope they have a Michael Moore to jump all over one subject and move toward action that helps us regain our true nature.

Empire America

Not all prophets have long white beards, wear sandals, and live in the desert . . . or even the Middle East.

Barbara Wendland is a housewife who went to seminary and writes the most prophetic commentaries on religion and the church, which carries her into seeing things most of us are too busy to see or think about.

You can find her observations at www.connectionsonline.org.

You should find her observations! This time, she is looking at American imperialism in the second of a three part series. Her observations about how empire operates should shake even our most conservative people.

It won't because, as she says, Empire suffuses the air we breathe and we just assume it is God's wish for us.

Her next observation will be about how Jesus and Paul resisted imperialism.

This prophet wears a dress and lives in Temple, Texas.

The Cabinet's primary task

During my forty or so years of experience as a pastor in te United Methodist Church, I have watched my superiors in office change from fellow ministers to distant bureaucrats.

I'm told by clergy friends from larger conferences they always saw the Cabinet (bishop and district superintendents who make the decisions to which church ministers are appointed in our system) as distant bureaucrats to be avoided at all cost!

Having had three superintendents who are friends to this day and having met a number of superintendents who are not caught up in the general tendencies I'll describe below, I still have hope that my earliest experiences can be brought back into the present day church.

Here's what I saw happen in this transition that I experienced. Bishops no longer chose superintendents as teachers and mentors for the pastors they supervised (what else does supervise really mean?).

The bishop chose pastors who were compatible with him (it was a guy in that case). They were younger, ambitious, and more willing to be "yes" men (again, in that case it was all guys). He then assigned them to be his extension on the program committees of the conference in order to have more influence on the missions and ministries those groups carried out across the state. That gave the bishop bragging rights over successes that brought attention.

The bishop saw to it that superintendents also got onto national boards and agencies so they would have the chance to become a bishop like himself, since he had succeeded by going that route.

Suddenly, friends of mine who became superintendents stayed friendly but no longer listened to my ideas or concerns. THEY WERE TOO BUSY! And they really only saw each other between jaunts all over the state and nation working on their programmatic responsibilities and meeting those who could help them advance in the Church.

Because they really had only each other as their core relationship, being unable to sustain friendships they'd had before becoming superintendents, they began to suffer from what Irving Janis called "Group Think," taking all their views of what was going on from each other. They were in a "bubble" long before George W. Bush came along.

The old timers that were superintendents for the last six years of their careers before retirement and knew all the tricks of the trade and all the wise ways to deal with conflict and all the sanity saving activities that had helped them survive, wonderful things to pass on to the newer pastors, were quickly gone from the scene.

In their place were good pastors who got swept up into a completely different model of superintending. They were no longer the mentors and support staff to help the pastors of their district. They were the "up-and-comers" serving as the right hand of the bishop.

They no longer visited their clergy. They were never home if the pastor happened to be in their town of residence. If the superintendents showed up at a church function, it was because their busy schedules were open that day when the invitation came.

The worst symptom of superintendents' distance was their willingness to believe the first complainer who came to see them when they assumed the office . . . or worse, when they had been superintendents a long time and still immediately believed the complainers.

No matter what the facts of the situation were, an oral complaint against a pastor was an interruption to their busy schedules and the pastor should never have let something get bad enough that it turned into a complaint that ended up on the superintendent's desk!

Experienced old-timers, even in their first week as superintendents would rarely think that way. They'd have too much respect for the training and years of experience the pastor had. They'd remember when antagonists in their churches had tried to pull that kind stunt.

On top of this dynamic change, the Church gave superintendents a new power. In 1980, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a law that allowed superintendents to initiate a complaint against a pastor.

In conferences where the bishop or superintendent felt they could go see a pastor, demand his credentials, and have him on the street by nightfall, this new law seemed good. It made the Cabinet member have to write something down first that could then be processed through a committee before the pastor would be out on the street.

In conferences where Cabinet members had been collegial with pastors, this new law brought a terrible wedge that ruptured the covenant of the clergy. The superintendents had a new power. They were sheriff now. And it went to their heads and the pastors did not dare trust them with anything sensitive or difficult.

In all conferences after only a little while, now superintendents not only had the power to appoint them to their next church but also had the power to destroy their ministry.

You can imagine the pressure on pastors to conform, to not take chances that could lead to complaints, to not rock the boat so the next appointment would be a better one, and to avoid the superintendent so as not to disrupt his attention in any way.

Of course, the ambitious ones saw this as an opportunity to play up to the superintendent to gain favor and attention so that s/he'd (there were women superintendents by this time) have a favorable impression when new appointments were being made.

The mix of immaturity, ambition, and fear has given us, relatively speaking, superiors in office who do not think first of the pastor's needs that only an outsider like a superintendent can fulfill.
How can we turn that around to where the Cabinet can change?

There are several things that need to be done. It would be great if they could all be done at once!

First, Cabinets need to see that their first responsibility is TO HELP PASTORS SUCCEED IN THE CHURCHES TO WHICH THE SUPERINTENDENTS APPOINT THEM.

Second, superintendents and bishops must not have the authority to initiate complaints.

If a pastor shoots and wounds a superintendent, of course as the victim, the superintendent has the right to lodge a formal complaint. And if after supervising an ineffective or unmotivated pastor by working together over at least a year on remedial education, finding medical or psychological therapy that could help, and providing support for follow-through, a superindendent would be a witness to the lack of success of those efforts and thus a proper one to initiate a complaint. The file would be thick to back up the complaint.

Any other use of the power to initiate a complaint would be hearsay or power abuse.

Third, the Church needs to pare down what it expects of its Cabinet members. Program in the conference and in the general church should be done by volunteers or those on special appointment so that bishops and superintendents would not have to use their precious time shilling for national programs or sitting in on meetings where they were not needed.

That would mean some kind of watchdog group would have to oversee the national boards and agencies to keep them from becoming feifdoms of charismatic leaders. We currently make bishops be the watchdogs.

Fourth, Cabinets have to appoint experienced pastors near the end of their careers to be superintendents. Ambition would be expressed by effective pastoring for many long years rather than by who one gets to know. And respect for the realities of ministry would replace impatience.

Fifth, bishops and superintendents would all have to take salary cuts until the church could afford to reward them. As it is, we reward them just because they are superintendents, not because they are of any help to the local churches and pastors.

Sixth, we need to elect bishops who do not need the attention which having successful splashy programs provide, men and women who are willing to be content with doing a great job matching pastors and churches and helping them both succeed. Maybe someone needs to establish an award for bishops and superintendents who work on that most primary task.

Will we get back to where superintendents and bishops are there to help the local church and pastor succeed as disciple- and apostle-makers, as "hospitals for sinners," as the vine that nourishes its branches, as the "bread of Christ broken for many"?

Do we have the grace?

"Siesta Dreams" - a poem by Art Davis

With Art's permission, I publish here one of his delightful poems:

"Siesta Dreams"

While on these lazy, hot and humid afternoons I snooze

And once asleep, my Walter Mitty complex courts the Muse.

Solzhenitsyn raves about my poetry; it's so nice!

With Bush, Chirac and Putin crave political advice.

I've urge to storm the lofty citadel of Pulitzer,

Brusquely stopped by surly surrogates suggesting, "Cool it, sir!"

Yes - in my mind, I know, if given chance I'd show 'em,

If they'd allow me to recite for them my latest poem.

Or - team me up with Ginger Rogers. I say, "What a pair!"

Doing intricate routines, so eat your heart out, Fred Astaire!

Or, playing the piano as dear Mother used to do,

Dazzling all at Carnegie Hall, playing "Rhapsody in Blue."

On the operatic stage, I know they'd breathless watch me

And listen to my tear-voiced presentation of Paggliaci. . . .

I'd make them soon forget the one and only Pavotatti

As they listened to my dulcet tone-enraptured "fa-sol-la-ti!"

I would design, as Architect, tall buildings touching star,

Or put to canvas beauty such as found in a Renoir.

Alas, all such pleasant dreams do surely fade away.

The dreams now done, I waken to reality of day.

Arthur H. Davis

8/28/07 (based on a poem of 4/21/93)

Copyright

Mother Theresa

Mother Theresa is probably the most outstanding modern era saint of the Roman Catholic Church. And so it became “news” that a biographer printed letters she wrote to various confessors over her career that point to a “dark ‘life’ of the soul.”

History contains saints who often had the “dark ‘night’ of the soul” experience. John Wesley who founded Methodism, for example, within days after his Aldersgate experience when he felt even his heart strangely warmed and his sins were forgiven, wrote in his journal that he never felt further from God.

Martin Luther had terrible periods of depression. One vignette tells of his being particularly depressed and his wife wanting to do something about it. While he was stewing in his office one day, she scrounged up every piece of black clothing she could find and put it on, completely covering herself. She then went upstairs. When he became aware of the silence of the house, he called for his wife. No answer. That surprised him. And worried him. He called again. This time he heard a sound from upstairs. He ran up to where he thought the sound came from and heard quiet sobbing coming from the bedroom. He burst in the door and found Katherine, his wife, sitting in the middle of the bed, dressed with black dress, black stockings, long black gloves, and heavy black veil, crying into a black kerchief.

“What’s the matter?” he yelled, rushing to her side.

“God is dead!” she cried.

Luther howled with laughter, and that period of depression came to an end.

There are many more such stories of how the inner lives of the saints were tormented. Psychotherapists point to the fact that many suffered from clinical mental illnesses, particularly bi-polar disorder and depression.

These kinds of illnesses often become grounds for removing pastors from ministry even if they have been brought under control by therapy and medication. Thank God the church did not put all its mentally ill on disability but allowed them to struggle through to sainthood. - There are some sociopaths many wish had not been allowed to take positions of authority in the church but that requires a separate treatment.

Since the focus of the letters chosen for the recent book on Mother Theresa were from her descriptions of her darkest times described for her counselors, it is hard to tell if she suffered from debilitating disorders that sometimes overwhelmed Luther and Wesley. We do not see anything of the moments she may have felt otherwise, if those even exist.

From what I gather, given quotes from her letters, I want to offer another view on the reason for her suffering.

There is a pietist movement in Christianity that encourages us to look for assurance, to believe that “He’ll come to you if you ask Him; He’s only a prayer away.”

The more committed one is to that piety, as many monastics tend to be, the more difficult their faith becomes for them if, by chance, they do not feel God’s presence.

The Early Church, as reflected in the New Testament, gives a good deal of attention to the issue. Without going into the nature of the differences among people, those writers offered alternatives to the pietist notion of personal assurance.

Two passages best provide the argument: “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says Matthew 7:16. Matthew 25 says, “If you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

Matthew 25:31-46 describes the final judgment. In this story, all the nations are gathered and the Lord separates them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He points out that the “sheep” have served him. Many of them say, “But when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and gave you drink, or a stranger and welcomed you, naked and clothed you, sick or in prison and came unto you?” And the “goats” ask the same question from the other side, “When did we not see you hungry . . . .?

The real power in Mother Theresa’s life was how the poor, “the least of these my brethren,” motivated her to do her ministry.

The fruit of her efforts have certainly been honored by the “World,” most notably by the Nobel Prize. Her work continues even after her death, though her charisma is certainly missed.

Yet she suffered in anguish over the feeling of emptiness and loneliness confessed in her letters, feelings which lasted the larger number of decades of her ministry.

My first impulse when I read of her pain was to offer assurance from these other Bible texts which are not traditionally pietist. I wanted her to know that assurance comes through the eyes of the Christ in the poor she so urgently served, and that not all people can have the sense of Christ’s presence emanating from the great beyond or even from their own hearts.

But to God, Who made us each to receive Him/Her in our own way, it is the good that we do, no matter how it is motivated, that is what finally counts, is what separates the “sheep” from the “goats.”

When I decided to go into the ministry, I remember on two occasions seeking a sense of God’s presence. I was on my knees at a church altar rail in both situations. And nothing happened. I don’t even remember the moment or how it came about that I decided not to worry about it. I was majoring in anthropology at the time. I must have figured out that God wasn’t going to come to me that way. Blessed were those who had that experience, I guess. But more blessed are those who seek to do God’s will without some kind of pay off.

I wish I could have met Mother Theresa, given her a hug she seems to have needed very desperately, and reminded her of Matthew 25.

Pink's "Dear Mr. President"

My daughter and granddaughter introduced me to Youtube tonight. They showed me two videos, "Muffins," and "Dear Mr. President."

Youtube is where a lot of young people spend their time. My daughter says it motivated a lot of young people to get out and vote in 2006.

Pink's song was not only powerful but appears to be the top of the list of most watched videos on Youtube.

Obama has a chance . . . if the kids actually vote in the primaries.

The Frightening New Enemy

Oh my God, we better vote Republican or we will be overrun by Communism . . ., uh no, that's mostly dead.

Um, the Axis of Evil, . . . no that's Bush's line . . . besides North Korea is no longer in it, Iran is many years away from being a credible nuclear threat and Iraq never had the Bomb.

Wait! What's that dynamite phrase John McCain threw out on Sunday on FACE THE NATION? "Transcendant Islamic Jihad!"

That is so 21st century! Like the twentieth century's fascism and communisim, "transcedent Islamic jihad" gives us a mega-enemy vague enough to use to scare everyone and with just enough vivid pictures thanks to the televised beheadings.

Well, for a nation that does not seem to want to be without someone to hate and fight wars against (I mean Gays? Ha! Who can work up going to war against homosexuals because they live next door and the collateral damage would be us).

Now we have a concept that can be pushed by the Republicans that will satisfy the ones who think in black and white terms and who don't like browns either! Collateral damage will be the non-white folks who live overseas. We can just put the ones here in the US into concentration camps as we did the Japanese during World War !! (Gotta keep those young disenfranchized Arabs from Michigan or New York from planting a bomb among us white good folks.)

Sorry if I went over the top there . . . . I am so afraid of how this concept of the "Enemy of the 21st Century" will be used. I lived at the time of the internment camps and know some who lived in them. I was afraid of the Bomb and knew to cover my head and duck under my desk at school. I saw Joe McCarthy in action. I've watched how the fear of Communism led to our slaughter of Vietnamese and Laotians. And this war against the Axis of Evil has led to the death and maiming of too many of our kids and maybe a million Iraqi deaths with two million already spreading into Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere (not the US so much . . . because we won't let them in!) as refugees.

Is there a danger from the Wahabi sect which has schools in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Yes. Some graduates from those schools are among the volunteers that are going to Iraq and other places in the Middle East to be the suicide bombers for Al Quaida. I do not think they have infiltrated Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Sunni and Shia insurgents in Iraq but are involved with the Taliban.

The Wahabi (begun in the 1700s) have been especially active for decades. So their influence has grown, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Their mindset, as I understand it, is the most militant. They scare the Sunni nations and are apparently seen as competition among the Shia more than as allies.

This "national security estimate" of mine means to remind us all that there is a danger and that it is complex and has many competing elements in the Islamic world. If we let anyone (particularly Republicans in this day and age) build their political platform on fear of Islamic jihadists and use that the same way we saw 20th century "isms" used, we will repeat the same mistakes and further separate ourselves from the rest of the world.

Thanks to the Bush Administration, and to those Democrats who subscribe to helping international corporations, the military-industrial complex, and Israel have their own way, the threat of long term conflicts with the Islamic world's many factions is very real.

But with a lot of wisdom and a lot of squelching of demagoguery, we may be able to keep the conflicts at the level of policing as it is in Europe and is so far here in the US.

Finally, let me remind everyone that whenever there is a threat, we have to quantify it. How many are there who are real threats? Where are the Wahabi and how strong are they? Do we need to gear up large military forces or can we actually just enhance our law enforcement capabilities? Can we develop competent onsite intelligence, something so dreadfully lacking in the Middle East? Should we be establishing "peace" offensives such as Peace Corps, economic development, water purification and renewable energy that even the Third World poor can afford, etc.?

If the politics of fear of "transcendent Islamic jihad" takes over, it's going to be a very long twenty first century. . . .

The active duty soldiers' op-ed

I just tried to post a comment on THE HORSE'S MOUTH blog in response to the report that the Main Stream Media have given no attention to the recent op-ed piece by active duty soldiers about how the Iraq war is really going, as compared to the wall to wall coverage of the O'Hanlon, et al folks who took the military's trip around Iraq and spoke to those chosen by the military.

Unfortunately, the blog said the comment it let me write was not accepted because the blog was not accepting comments!

So, all glitches aside, let me post my comment here:

All too often, the messengers of unwelcome news are attacked. I am cynical enough to think that the more attention those troops get for their forthright statement, the more likely it is they will be treated the way Uriah the Hittite was treated by King David - put at the front of the battle line . . . .

O'Hanlon et al are home safe. Those boys are still in danger.

If I were a front-running Dem, I'd be on the phones with the news media to pressure them to report the op-ed piece by the soldiers, especially in light of the media's plugging the Bush Administration line so much. But I'd ask they refrain from identifying the soldiers themselves to protect them from retaliation.

Us and the Mainstream Media

In today's Port Charlotte Sun-Herald, Tim Giago writes of the problem of "spin" and "euphamism." Tim is founder and first president of the Native American Journalism Association .

He criticizes the MSM (Main Stream Media) for accepting the terminology provided by the Bush Administration without pushing behind the words to their actual meaning as compared to what other terms might be more appropriate. The "surge" might better be described as "escalation" and "sectarian violence" is probably really "civil war," though I don't think he is attempting to spin himself.

The strangest example of what he's talking about is the 20,000 "non-surge" troops recently sent into Iraq. "Does this mean the 'non-surge troops' are not in harms way?" he asks.

He is calling on all of us (not just the MSM) to choose the most appropriate word and stick with it, no matter what euphamism is chosen by whatever leader is trying to spin the action being described. He writes, "Please stop being a tool for those who would use words to promote an unjust cause. Get some spine."

All bloggers should take that to heart, myself included. The Administration's setting the word choice means we can be lazy and use their words, knowing what everyone is talking about. But that perpetuates the untruth rather than facilitates full discussion.

Maybe I need a new Thesaurus because it's not easy to find the right words, especially when the Administration provides new spin words every day.

But thanks to Tim Giago for calling us all to the task.

Interesting precedent

Associated Press reported in this morning's paper that the Bush Administration is seeking to blacklist the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist organization." They stopped short of naming Iran as a government to be a terrorist organization.

If they finally decide to name some factions of or all of the Iranian Guard under President Bush's 2001 executive order (AP reports they are still debating it), then other nations could consider pressing for blacklisting CIA black ops groups that kidnap and then conduct extreme rendition, permanent incarceration, and torture of the kidnapped.

Maybe some would look at our occupying forces in Iraq as "terrorist organizations" based on their charging into civilian homes in the middle of the night seeking "insurgents" and "al Quaida" fighters based on skimpy and ineffective intelligence, frequently finding no one but terrorizing the families in the process.

Maybe that's why this Administration has not pushed to go all the way to calling Iran a terrorist organization. That would open the world to the option of naming the United States as a terrorist organization.

Or worse . . . , it would reopen the old argument against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and their treatment of Palestinians as "state-sponsored terrorism." Heaven forbid that we allow anyone to look upon Israel that way. . . . I mean so what if their home guard (settlers who carry guns and shoot Palestinians on sight) terrorizes Arab workers and students walking past their settlements. So what if huge armored Caterpiller bulldozers crush Palestinian homes, schools, vineyards, olive groves, and businesses because they stand where Israel wants to build its wall or its highway system which chops Palestinian settlements into little pieces.

Maybe we should applaud the President for taking this step to further antagonize the Iranians. This Administration just might set a precedent that frees the rest of the world to do their own blacklisting.

Where did we learn to torture?

I posted this comment on Digby's site in response to his summarizing Jane Mayer's article in a recent NEW YORKER MAGAZINE:


Several years ago, I researched a novel for the sake of telling the story of the Isreal-Palestine conflict. I became aware the Israelis systematically tortured Palestinians who they arrested as "terrorists."

After reading Sy Hersch's first article on Abu Graib, it became obvious to me that even the tactics used by Sgt. Graner and company were taken out of the Israeli torture playbook which the British identified as "M-12."

Where I got those conclusions, I cannot any longer tell you.

All I can say is that I had the impression that the minute 9/11 happened and this Administration needed a way to interrogate any suspects, I had the feeling they called in Idraeli experts and began to use the same techniques which the Israelis said were effective on Muslims.

This is opinion because I cannot trace back my sources. But I'm sure our torture has been intentionally sophisticated at least since 9/11 and not the result of cruelty by "a few bad apples."

Kudos to New Yorker and its writers for keeping this issue before us.

And God preserve us from the world's wrath, though we do not deserve God's grace, for policies like keeping prisoners incarcerated so they cannot report how they were treated.

OJ is not guilty of murder

For years, I have felt that only a very few bothered to read about the O J Simpson trial and its evidence. I recently responded to a Salon article on sports by King Kaufman in which the writer indicated he disagreed with the trial court innocence verdict on OJ. Having submitted my response, accidently misspelling my first name, I checked the string of responses and discovered Bob in Pacifica who not only believes as I do but bases some of his view on information I had not seen.

I hunted for a way to contact him directly and have not found it yet. I'd sure like to compare notes with him. If you have a way for me to contact him, let me know.

Democratic Congress?

The main stream media has not painted a very clear picture of the accomplishments of this Congress. They had reported extensively on the bills that were vetoed or that the Senate cloture (requiring 60 votes) rules have caused to be submarined, primarily the anti-war legislation.

But how long has it been since Congressional committees called on Administration officials to talk about their actions (and inactions)? How long has it been since "Promote the general welfare" kinds of legislation have been before the Congress, such as Farm Bill, Violence against Women, Global Poverty Bill, Hate Crimes legislation, S-CHIP, legislation overturning "Don't Ask Don't Tell," Congressional Ethics bill, and Worldwide Health Act?

There are aspects of these bills with which bi-partisan support is available. These bills are neither Republican nor Democrat in terms of need for attention. And each party would put its stamp on it . . . except Congresses since the 1990s somehow did little to face up to the issues behind them.

The Democrats in Congress should not be included in the numbers showing that Congress is even less popular than the Bush Presidency. And I'm not real pleased with the progressive bloggers that are too ready to condemn the Dems for obstacles the Republicans throw up in their faces.

Infrastructure and the future economy

I write the following to my Congressman:

Dear Representative,

The devastating collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis combined with the bursting of the 80 year old steam pipe in NYC have made a dramatic statement about our presuming our infrastructure could be ignored a little longer. As was pointed out in various commentaires, postponing upgrades to our infrastructure is a calculated risk that community leaders take because they do not want to add to the tax burdens of our citizens.

As others have pointed out, those leaders on local levels have done creative financing to help major league sports venues and, on the national level, have embraced horrendous debt to fight a war in Iraq.

It is time to put that kind of wisdom to work to put our bridges, air ports, etc. back into safe and lasting condition.

Better yet, let's look at a massive federal government intervention including increased taxes as a way to do it.

Yeah, right!

Wait a moment. Think along with me for a minute and see if this highly unlikely scenario is feasible.

First, I think such a taxation would be accepted by the public, especially if the major corporations that benefit from the infrastructure pay a significant share. We'd all pay if the Oil Corporations paid.

Second, construction workers would benefit from the income they get from doing the work. They would pay taxes, spend that income on goods and services stimulating the economy, and provide a product that would be a benefit for years to come (as compared with the spending on military material which tends to end up destroyed). My college econ professor said that every dollar that enters the economy expands seven-fold. If the tax rate averages 15%, then each dollar spent by the government which goes into the workers' hands would pay for itself. - The problem is that there are "money grabbers" that minimize the money going to the workers and maximizes it going to themselves! So any good spending program needs to be monitored to prevent that kind of "Monopoly game playing" to maximize the economic value of the spending.

Third, the public will grew dramatically when that bridge fell down. Congress can keep that motivation going if it eliminates no-bid contracts, maximizes utilization of small local contractors, and meets deadlines for completing the needed upgrades.

Finally, President Roosevelt used public moneys to help our country begin to work its way out of the Depression. It was no small coincidence that the forty year old bridge which collapsed stood a quarter of a mile from a bridge built during the Depression!

Please begin the process of establishing a Congressional plan to deal with the collapsing infrastructure of our nation. Have something ready to go by January, 2008, if not sooner!

Help "Stay the Course"

A friend of mine said something to me this morning that led me to write the following letter to the editor. Feel free to use the ideas. - Garrett, many thanks!

Dear Editor,

It is upsetting to have people refer to those of us who are against the Iraq War as “cut and run” cowards. So let’s see if our critics are willing to show they have the “right stuff.”

For those who want to “stay the course” and are young enough (have you noticed many of the Reservists and National Guard are in their forties and fifties?), please volunteer and join up now to help the surge so you can get the victory and stay on as peace keepers as long as the President wants you there.

For those who are too old for military service, let me urge you to call Halliburton and any of the other defense contractors who are operating in Iraq to volunteer to help with anything from serving food to our soldiers to repairing the electrical grid. We’ve only lost 800 civilian workers compared to the 3600-3700 soldiers. Compared to the 23,000 soldiers who died during the period when President Nixon and Henry Kissinger agreed in 1971 to postpone ending the Viet Nam War so Nixon could be re-elected in 1972 as a wartime President (see Robert Dallek’s book NIXON AND KISSINGER), you as a pro-war volunteer would be practically as safe there as you would be here.

If you are really for this war, there are ways you can go to Iraq and do something about it.

What makes Bush tick?

I could never win an argument with Jack, my older brother. He was a staunch conservative and loved to bait me on social and political issues. It always took me awhile to get my thoughts and facts together and by then, the argument was over.

He finally let me know the secret of his success. "When I saw you were ready to pounce, I changed the subject," he told me.

One would think I'd learned that lesson by the time I was fifty but I needed him to tell me. He was always a little smarter than me.

This little vignette might help us understand the character and mode of operation of President George W. Bush. But first, let's review the most common understandings.

Some have been taken in by his abominable use of language and presumed he was not very bright. The man passed courses at Yale and Harvard and flew jet planes so he is not a dim bulb. He used his "dumb" act as cover to tweak the eastern elites and stake out a niche for himself. And he tweaks the educated on purpose by his verbal devices, like "nuculer." I don't think he can change now. I don't think he would ever want to. He feels it makes him sound "common" as opposed to elitist that he is.

The device also gives cover to his agenda. No one expects any high sophistication from him when he comes across as a brush clearing buddy.

Some are sure the President is a front man for VP Cheney and powerful corporate interests much as he was when he was made owner of the Texas Ranger baseball team. He was a delight to everyone as the face of the team while the real Dallas power brokers conducted the transactions that got special deals for the team out of the city fathers. Thus it seems that while he is the face of the Administration, the real power of it lies in the Vice President's office.

That image, though, may also be a smoke screen allowing people to dismiss the real man.

Some look at his background of drinking and drugs and wonder if those chemicals damaged his brain and caused some kind of dissociative disorder in which he could not recognize and respond to reality before making decisions. Michael Moore illustrated that kind of character when he showed the President on a golf course making a strong statement to the press against terrorism and immediately adding as he took his golf club, "Now watch this shot." Then showing the President leaning back in his golf cart with his legs crossed to follow his shot, Moore showed a man completely separated from the tragedy of the war. Who else but a dry alcoholic could seem to completely miss the message of the American people in the 2006 congressional elections?

If that were an act, it would be hard to sustain and actually manage anything. If he were truly dissociative, those close to him (think Laura, Karl Rove, certainly the ultimate cynic and master of expediency Dick Cheney) would have been long gone by now.

Some think the President is an eldest son in rebellion against his father. This one seems to draw the most support because as a Yalee like his dad, the President chose to carry on just the opposite of his dad: cheerleader instead of athlete, Texas "hick" instead of Connecticut privilege, modest grades instead of successful student. The biggest illustration of the rebellion could be seen in the President's refusing to take the Iraq Study Commission's recommendations. Jim Baker, his dad's surrogate in trying to help George Jr. out of the quagmire of Iraq, appears to have unintentionally pushed the President the other way.

One might think, then, that the only way to get the President to act reasonably would be to try to impose something so unreasonable that he would decide to do the opposite! Good old "reverse psychology" might work, if the President is the rebellious son he appears to be. There is no question the President goes against any pressure to do something most people feel is realistic. But is this what drives him?

Some wonder if he has a congenital or environmentally engendered sociopath tendencies where he is immune to conscience or the Christianity that he professes. Could someone who was normal be against stem cell research, be against helping children of the indigent and working poor get health insurance, preside over the death of a hundred prisoners without showing any mercy while governor of Texas, support the use of torture of prisoners of war, and ignore the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians, far more than who died under Saddam Hussein or in the attack of 9/11?

What else could explain such a horrendous record of a leader?

There is at least one other option.

Would you believe he is following a vision of leadership that has a degree of sophistication and acuity that no one person can successfully counter him? Would you accept that he has seen how to establish a politicized executive branch protected by a politicized judiciary that even a legislative branch in the hands of the other party could not successfully challenge?

Consider how effectively he has used my brother's tactic of changing the subject just when it appeared the opposition finally was about to force a change? By use of raising some fearful threat (real or "potential"), by doing something so outrageous that it changed the direction of everyones' thinking, by lying about what is going on, by claiming executive privilege and secrecy to cut off any further investigations, and by just refusing to cooperate without any legal grounds because he knows that justice is slow to come to fruit, our President has successfully put off anyone who got close to stopping him.

The smoke screens well laid, conducting so much business in secrecy, and the strategy of changing the subject working so well, the President has been able to enlist many powerful and financially strong leaders to support his efforts to help them enhance their own well being . . . financially. Manipulation of their greed has given the President a base which will sustain him for his eight years in office.

However, indomitable as his vision has been, two things have eroded his vision.

One is his own presumptuousness that he could keep control. It leaves a trail in the dust that will be traced and studied long after President Bush retires to his ranch. It disillusions many who were close to it as it operated. It demoralizes those who try to stop it. It motivates people of conscience to violate normal levels of loyalty and confidentiality in order to release word of what is really happening inside the Administration. Even the hand-fed mainstream media will sometimes balk despite its fear of losing favor and "unnamed sources." The President's mask slipped when he declared he was the "Decider."

The other is reality. Hurricanes blow or wash away all the covers of incompetence. A bureaucracy is lousy at keeping all things secret. Men and women with even a modicum of integrity are not always cowed by intimidation nor successfully silenced by "Medals of Freedom." Stories of those "on the ground" finally supersede the stories of the "civilians trying to run a war from Washington." Computer data does not just disappear into cyberspace; it is there somewhere - a reality not factored into the vision of governance when it was originally conceived. Even high sophistication has to deal in realities.

An open society has a chance to deal with that high level, misdirected as it is. So highly sophisticated that no one person has been able to stop the President, maybe the whole "village" with its accumulated wisdom and values may finally achieve that. Maybe it already has, thanks to term limits.

Shrewd as the President really is, he will hold on so he can retire in 2008.

What of his legacy?

This President will go down in history as having come the closest to establishing the "unitary executive" leadership pattern in the U. S. or, worse, will provide the model and stepping stone for another to finally succeed.

Iraq after the pullout

Everyone has an opinion and I'm going to see if I can formulate mine before your very eyes!

Iraq is more tribal than national. That means most Iraqis' first allegiance is to their clan. Their tribe tends to be related to an area of the land with deep historical roots and religious identity. Their affiliation with other Iraqi tribes was forced when European colonial powers mandated national boundaries with no serious regard for the tribal areas.

Someday, to stabilize the region, the United Nations needs to work with all of the Middle East to reset the boundaries to be more in tune with the regional tribal areas. The map needs to be redrawn to gain some coherence for establishing functional governmental units.

The nation of Iraq, except when its central government has been autocratic, holds together only the more secularized and urbanized Iraqis who have interaction with the the rest of the world and who may have been educated outside Iraq.

Religious ties among the secular are mostly with the Sunnis. The tribal areas north and west of Baghdad are Sunni too but are not as secular nor have as much contact with the rest of the world.

The Kurds in the north are more secular and relate with much of the outside world because they have been able to use the wealth of the oil fields in their area and the distance from Baghdad to attain a good deal of autonomy. They are not Arabs like the Sunnis and Shia. Saddam tried to change out the population of Kirkuk with Sunnis from the Sunni triangle which has left that city particularly vulnerable to ethnic violence.

The Shia constitute the majority of the Iraqi population in the south. They also have concentrations in ghettos in Baghdad and some other northern cities. Oil is abundant in many Shia tribal areas though that wealth was not shared with them under Saddam.

The tribal leaders in each area have established their own militias for the purpose of maintaining order and discipline among their members. Those militias were operative under Saddam as long as they did not cross swords with him. He was not tolerant of them and used the army to suppress them and their tribes by force when necessary because he established his autocracy under the oppression of the colonial powers. His Baath party controlled the oil and the wealth and was the public face of the state of Iraq.

In this cursory sketch, I have laid out what I think are the most salient factors to give us a clue of what will happen when the US pulls out (we WILL leave as completely as we did from Vietnam and will have to find another way to "pay back" Iraq for the damage we've done).

The tribal leaders of all the ethnic groups have no desire to give up their authority to al Qaida, Iran, Syria, the United States, Saudi Arabia, or any government set up by our occupying military!

The Iraqi government will not meet the political benchmarks as long as we are there. They will not accept being a colony to have their oil wealth drained off by American corporations. They will have a hard time sharing that wealth with each other, especially since the Sunnis shared nothing with the Shia under Saddam.

As I see it, the Sunni tribes have retained some degree of their Baathist organization, politically and militarily, because it worked for them under Saddam. They have some affinity for al Qaida because al Qaida is more Sunni than anything. But they also see al Qaida as an outside force which would want to run things for their own purposes which the indigenous Sunnis do not share. Al Qaida will never be more than a means to an end for the Sunnis. - The current cooperation with the Americans is to help the Sunnis gain access to more arms for the showdown with the Shia when we leave, as well as to gain enough military strength to take on the Kurds who are well armed.

The Shia have control of the current central government and have the benefit of the American military equipment (we still don't give them body armor and adequate munitions to really establish themselves as an army or police force). They will become quite formidable when the Americans pull out because many of the Shia militias control much of the national army and police.

Muqtada al Sadr really is playing his own game, more so than the other tribal leaders. He is using Iran to strengthen his hand in Iraq much like al Qaida and the Sunnis are using Saudi Arabia and Syria (plus most of the other Arab states that tend to be Sunni) to strengthen their hands.

Muqtada al Sadr wants to take over Iraq but no one will let him. He knows it even if he has the largest most organized and disciplined militia. To have any say in the future of Iraq, he will have to cooperate. He will be used by the other Shia tribes to help hold off the Sunnis.

My opinion is that this leaves a "mutual destruction" situation which the tribal leaders will calculate to be too grave to carry through a fulfilled civil war. There will be a scramble for the military materiel left behind by our troops when they leave. Just as many insurgents went into the arms caches Saddam set up and we did not stop to destroy or guard, the competing forces will hope to get as much as they can. The Shia will have the best shot at most of it but I see the crime lords already calculating how to get to it first. The tribal leaders better talk about that during the August parliamentary break.

Most Iraqis do not want the occupation to continue. Among the Sunnis and Shia, those not closely tied to a tribe by virtue of becoming secular and relating to the outside world do not have militias unless they got money from somewhere (US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, moderate Arab nations) to hire Blackwater or some other mercenary group. They are the most likely to be run out or killed by the insurgents. Many have already left Iraq. The university people, doctors, bureaucrats, and business people leaving constitutes a major brain drain. The tribal leaders do not see them as crucial to their goals. As with Vietnam, many of those folks will leave when we do if they haven't already gone. Many will be killed.

Al Qaida in Iraq and al Qaida (international) are probably going to be less of a threat than the crime lords to settling things in the future. The crime lords have all those antiquities they've stolen and want to get onto the market. Al Qaida only wants bragging rights to build up their jihad against the West. The crime lords will see them as a rival gang.

As when India partitioned rather than go into a full civil war upon the British leaving, there will be displacement and bloodshed between the ethnic groups and between some of the tribes. As a state, Iraq has not raised up anyone with the political skills to pull off anything like a central government.

The tribal leaders are the key to resolving the political problems. Maybe the best gift we have given them is that we helped some of them get better acquainted by providing elections and then bringing many of them together in the parliament.

During the summer vacation, they will solidify their own positions, and then in September may well vote to ask the U. S. to leave, vote new leadership to replace the American-friendly lot that we've sponsored, and see if they can settle the dispersal of oil revenues.

The Bush Administration will not leave unless they can assure the Oil Companies they can deliver contracts to work the Iraqi oil fields. (That's really the only victory the President wants and will rename to something more grandiose if he gets it.) But the Iraqis will stall and continue to treat us the way the colonists treated the Redcoats, targeting US forces and trying to build up their own militias until we do leave.

We'd be there until a new administration in Washington with less owed to the Oil Companies takes over and lets the Iraqis resolve their own problems. If the new administration feels it necessary to stay with helping the Oil Companies, I see no hope for our relationships with the Middle East ever improving.

We have to get out.

The Iraqis will eventually resolve their differences. Iraq will probably partition along ethnic lines and find a way to pay off the Sunnis so they can establish their own economy without feeling they have to take over all of Iraq.

The crime lords and al Sadr are the most important flies in the ointment.

It would help if Saudi Arabia would cut off funding to al Quaida. They more probably would support whatever Sunni state evolves.

Iran is not really in a position to do much except stay on good terms with the Shia. President Ahmadinejad would not want to test his own popularity by interfering in Iraq. The Persians (Iranians) are not welcome among the Iraqi Arabs.

Al Qaida will make lots of PR over our leaving but the real joy will be that the insurgents of both Sunnis and Shia succeeded in pushing out the invaders who had trashed their homes in the middle of the night, imprisoned their men for years without grounds or justice, tortured them, killed them out of fear and prejudice, and tried to muzzle them when they spoke up.

Some would call letting all that happen chaos. I call it allowing the multiple forces to settle their own disputes and getting out of their way.

UNLESS PRESIDENT BUSH DECIDES TO INVADE IRAN . . .

UNLESS ISRAEL BOMBS IRAN'S NUCLEAR FACILITIES . . .

UNLESS THE WEST FORGETS THAT THE ISRAELI - PALESTINIAN CONTROVERSY IS YET TO BE RESOLVED . . .