Season's Greetings

Here is my annual holiday letter to the bishops of the United Methodist Church.  Previous letters have been posted at www.aiateam.blogspot.com/.  But I think you will also enjoy it.

Dear Bishop,

Today is my grandson's tenth birthday.  He figures into this year's holiday letter to the bishops in two ways.  

First, he appeared in the New York City Ballet's NUTCRACKER as one of the dozen children in the opening twenty minutes.  Which means we got to see him and the rest of the cast perform, of course.  Our son finagled fifth row seats near the orchestra so we saw everything, including him disappearing for a few moments to fix the broken heal on his shoe.  We also were close enough to see just how much force the two principal dancers had to use to maintain leverage.  We were amazed that what looks so effortless from a distance requires such skill and strength.  

That reminded me of what it takes to be a pastor and how we may not realize the expenditure of energy it takes sometimes to do it right and yet to outsiders it looks like it should be so simple.  There really is no way to appreciate that without actually being there.  That goes for your job and it goes for your pastors'.

Second, for all his maturity, my grandson has maintained his belief in Santa Claus up till just recently.  Who wants to let go of something like that!  On the other hand, he is old enough and astute enough to now want to start buying presents for the rest of us.  So it is time to share with him the four stages of Santa: 1. Believe in Santa; 2. No longer believe in Santa; 3. Become Santa; and finally, look like Santa!

May these holy days bless you and yours.

In the covenant of the clergy,

Jerry

Rev. Jerry Eckert, retired Elder

Wisconsin Annual Conference

Why the Roman Empire Fell

Those of us who have done any traveling or watching of travel programs on television have encountered the ruins of ancient civilizations.  It is not uncommon to hear possible explanations for the demise of those great cultures.  And it is not surprising that many really have no clear explanation. 

The fall of the Roman Empire has been the subject of much scholarship.  For most people, Gibbon’s explanation, the moral decay of Rome, is enough.  But those of us who have stood in the empty pueblos in New Mexico sites or walked the steps of Mochu Pichu or stood beside effigy burial mounds in Wisconsin have wondered if Gibbon’s theory applied to them too.

Looking at the history available and at sociological insights that have or have not been discussed or put into books, I got to wondering if there is a common thread that might be far simpler, an idea needing some serious consideration.  Let me carry this thought forward.

Every successful culture featured significant population growth.  They were successful in our eyes because evidence exists to some of them lasting centuries and becoming vast, crossing major portions of the continents where they prospered.  To survive so long and expand so much, they needed imaginative sources of food and water as well as technologies. 

Some writers, Malthus among them, posit that such expansion of population had limits and that with disease and war, each expansion came to a halt.  As significant as those limits have been in human history, population has continued to grow even with the demise of those great cultures

Maybe rather than looking at characteristics of culture, such as technology, political structures, or even societal values, all of which can be easily criticized in hindsight, maybe we need to look at something far simpler. Maybe we need to look at growth of the sub-groups as populations expanded.  The longevity and complexity of great cultures like the Mayans and Egyptians would show that the genius group of engineers, political leaders, and exemplars of cultural values grew apace as their cultures expanded.  Those capable of algebraic thought, the technicians upon whom everyone depended for consistency and adequacy of adapting and expanding, also grew.  But let me point out that another group was also growing all along in every great empire: the stupid.

Before I expound further, let me admit that this particular term is loaded and offensive to most folks.  So let me illustrate the concept of sub-group growth with that of another sub-group, homosexuals.

Those of us over 65 years old grew up in times where homosexuals were seldom known.  Reference to them was usually in the form of bullying with swear words none of us ever personally experienced or even thought were real. 

I posit that the reason American society has changed so dramatically in a half of a century is because with the expansion of population, and hence the expansion of each sub-group, the number of homosexuals reached the point where there were enough of them to be noticeable, first to themselves, then to everyone else.  By sheer numbers, they burst out of the closet and the rest of us had to deal with that.  Of course not all have dealt the same way, but enough have now met homosexuals and have begun to realize they are just Richard and John and Judith and Diane.  They are really no different than everybody else, just maybe in one aspect of their lives, like left-handers. 

Every group expands as populations grow. 

If you now understand that concept, then you can apply it to those who do not have the capacity to think things through beyond the first and most obvious possibility, who do not trust anyone else for what is true but what they feel is true.  In fact, they tend to operate on emotional terms more than thoughtful terms and hence do not argue but presume, do not question, but accept what they are most comfortable with, true or false!

Imagine the problems that the geniuses and technocrats of any culture face when the stupid find a way to dominate, either by fearful ignorance or by force.  The values of listening and learning, of diplomacy over armed conflict, of flexibility and compromise over rigidity and true belief, values that with technology brought the culture to greatness, crumble before the onslaught of ignorance and emotion.

Imagine the pueblo people, the Anasazi (ancient ones), who faced persistent draught and were unable to sustain their population with corn, had to leave the security of their cliff dwellings in order to find a place where they could subsist and then thrive again.  The genius group would see the necessity and be flexible enough to consider such a major change.  The stupid group would not.  If the stupid group is large enough to prevent any changes, the culture will eventually die out.

Imagine the Romans, unwilling to admit that another nation (tribal horde) could defeat their great army because they stupidly believed they were they greatest on the earth, and refused to listen to the ones who knew what was actually happening.  Such an empire despite its former greatness, would crumble. 

Of course one could throw in stories of people who refused to move away from Mt. Vesuvius, people who could not survive the ravages of war and disease such as the Aztecs when faced with the Spanish, and other catastrophes that even the genius group could not fully adapt to (though there are remnants of nearly all the great cultures still living in our midst). 

But finally, my simple premise holds: the stupid who choose not to adapt can bring down the greatest civilization.

Now if only I can find a better term than “stupid.”  Or if this concept of small groups growing into larger and more influential bodies as a population grows could be better stated and illustrated . . . .   We need a good macrosociologist.

E. Harold Eckert 1910-1968

St. Patrick's Day was my father's birthday. He'd have been 105. He graduated from Waukesha High School, also the alma mater of Judy, Jack, and me. We even had some of the same teachers.

He started at Carroll College but had to drop out after a semester for economic reasons. Carroll was a natural choice because it not only was in Waukesha but where his mother, Ethel Marsh Eckert, was a house mother at one of the women's dorms after Emil, Dad's father, died

He started as letter boy at Waukesha Motor Company. He worked his way up to Traffic Manager where he had memorized the schedules of the trucking and train firms who brought in parts and materials and took out completed engines.

A lefty, he was an excellent bowler. Not quite professional class but consistently in the 500s during his participation in bowling leagues. He enjoyed listening to Packer football and Cub baseball games on the radio. He got me hooked on the Packers but I switched to the Braves and later the Brewers when Milwaukee got its own pro teams. He was "ecumenical" in that he stayed up with both the Cubs and the Milwaukee teams.

In his younger days, he loved ping pong and entered tournaments at the YMCA, starting at the bottom of each tournament and working his way up and usually winning. Being lefty may have helped him but it was his "eye-hand coordination," he always said. I played him when I was in high school, years after he had left ping pong behind. I was pretty good myself but he still could play great defense and wait out my anxiousness to make a score and, in that anxiety, miss. Yes, I won finally but he was always in the game.

He was funny about words. He used them correctly but he pronounced many of them funny. Then I realized his vocabulary depended more on cross-word puzzles than ever hearing the words used. He was excellent at cross-words. I bet he would have done the very hard sudoku puzzles if they had existed when he was alive.

He was also funny with puns. At meal times as we ate together, he frequently played with the words of the conversation. The classic was one day when Judy said we'd been playing outside until the next door neighbor boy messed up what we doing. She said, "We had fun until Dwayne came." Pop immediately threw in, "That's odd. There wasn't a cwoud in the sky." (You may have to read that out loud to get it.)

All his memorabilia from years of working with transport companies and household goods he'd had after Mom died disappeared during his second marriage. One thing did come into my possession, a hand gripped "stapler." Looking sort of like a pliers, it has a mechanism in the "head" that punches a "v" shaped cut and then pushes it back through a slit in the paper. No staples, just paper held together by an ingenious means. I think of Dad every time I use it. Still works great.

There are many memories that come back now, mowing the lawn for his second wife but never for Mom, wanting to wear a hard hat to church in case the roof fell in because he finally got there, picking us up on the corner of College and Waverly on his way home from work at noon or at supper time. I, and sometimes Judy too, would run the block to that corner just to ride with him. And now Ann saying I'm a lot like him. I guess that's not too bad a compliment.

Cosby

I just finished the biography of Bill Cosby by Mark Whitaker.  The book shed a lot of light on the current controversy over recent accusations, some a few years back and some as old as forty years, that Cosby drugged women in order to have sex with them.

Whitaker draws this picture of Bill and Camille’s marriage.  In 1984, he and his wife came to an agreement.  It was time for him to grow up and to be the man he was as Cliff Huxtable in the new “The Bill Cosby Show.”  Up till then, he was doing TV work in California while she stayed home with the kids in New York and later, Massachusetts.  Hugh Hefner saw to it that Cosby always had a night of “respite.”  And, charmer that he is, never seemed to lack in the “respite” department wherever he was when he was away from Camille.  

Cosby came clean when a woman went public about an affair they’d had from which she claimed her child was his.  He took financial responsibility for the child’s health, well being, and education even though he had his doubts about being the father.  When a man who looked like her stepped forward claiming he was the true father, he and Cosby offered to have DNA tests to prove parenthood but the mother, Shawn Berkes, refused.  The affair drew national attention in 2004 when Cosby won in criminal court against the daughter who was trying to extort $24,000,000 from him.  The entertainer whose stock-in-trade was family values as the father in the Huxtable family and as a stand-up comedian in concerts all over the country was widely decried for his having been unfaithful to his wife.  By then Camille was furious, writing an op-ed published in USA Today that she and Bill had long ago put behind them the immaturity involved and had a solid marriage.

Whitaker, in describing their life and times included another observation that spoke to the current allegations.  Date rape was known about in the 1970s when a good share of the current allegations are said to have taken place.  The women making their complaints in recent years could have known at the time about it and could have been heard by some police at the time because of that common knowledge.  After all, Cosby is Black, and someone would have taken the allegations seriously at the time.  

While no male truly understands, I have some idea of the reasons women who have been raped would not want to come forward.  Having lived through that era, however, I saw how women were coming forward by the 1990s, some based on memories surfaced by psychological therapies (and some of those discovered to be based on “false memory syndrome”), some based on new found courage generated by feminism, and some seeking attention or financial settlements.  This listing does not provide quantities under each category so please do not presume that I think the number of complaints of rape victims is smaller than those that were spurious.  I can attest to the fact that among the complaints there were spurious ones.  I just have insufficient data to say more than that.  

In our denomination today, it seems that all a woman has to do to prove she was raped is to come forward and say it and name the pastor.  Our denomination then goes through the motions of trial and appeal but the presumption is that the man is guilty and every church law process used is unrelentingly so.

In secular law, it seems that women still face the same barriors to fair treatment they have faced all these years.  Who would believe them?  How can they overcome the shame?  Where can they find help, especially in small towns and on many college campuses?  More and more go to emergency rooms and are tested.  Here may be a new barrior: the testing agencies are not always very prompt in reporting out results and so some rape cases are never prosecuted.

Into this context come the allegations of the past forty years against Bill Cosby, and contrary to his taking responsibility for any of them as he did in the Berkes case, he has denied them.

The pattern among the allegations is pretty consistent.  The women say that while they were with Cosby, they drank something, and later found themselves in a compromised position, remembering nothing, but sometimes claiming they had the residue of sex on them, and Cosby standing there, cool and distant, a monster.

No one knows for sure at this point what may have happened.  In one of the most recent allegations, Cosby’s lawyer had records to prove he wasn’t where she said he was.  In cases in the denomination to which I have had access, I saw two where women became copy cats or clearly were not truthful when several claimed sexual misconduct of the same pastor.  So I am not intimidated by numbers bringing claims.  I have seen where some women have projected behaviors of men with whom they had affairs onto the pastor who had tried to help them.  I have seen some completely distort the facts to cover their own predatory action.  I have seen some retaliate like scorned lovers when their advances were appropriately rebuffed.  

Does that mean I disbelieve every allegation of a woman against a man?  No!  But like the old Norwegian who has seen everything, I am more likely to say, “Oh?”  And then look at the facts.  Studying many cases in our denomination, I was surprised at how many facts there were surrounding the allegations. There were enough that I could show many of the complaints were fabrications.  If there are no facts beyond “he said/she said,” I look to see if it is plausible.  In Cosby’s case, the “MO” is not plausible for the reasons cited above.  The actors, men and women, in the TV Huxtable family who have been interviewed all found the accusations hard to believe.  While that may persuade me for now until new facts are unearthed, that does not prove innocence.  Neither does it prove guilt.  Especially when Cosby’s millions could be at stake.

Finally, all I can see to be said is that sometimes where there is smoke, there may never have been a fire.  We need more than smoke to presume that Cosby is guilty.  While it is possible, we do not have enough facts to say it is even likely.