On "turning the other cheek", etc.

For anyone who hasn't seen this explanation before. This version in particular is from a Unitarian Universalist minister's sermon, Jesus speaks to UUs: He says, "to those who smite you on the one cheek offer also the other; And those that take away your cloak forbid not to take your coat also." But contained within these humble sentences is something far more radical than goodness or patience – a recognition that we love our enemies not only by making them our friends, but also by helping them understand when they do wrong. Where do I see this in the sermon on the plain? When Jesus says that famous phrase, "turn the other cheek," he is not being humble, as is the usual interpretation. In fact, according to recent scholarship, he is being defiant. In the ancient world, those who smote others were usually superiors, who would give the inferior a right-handed slap across the left cheek. The left hand was considered dirty and profane, and not to be used for much beyond toileting. Therefore, to turn the other cheek meant to invite one's oppressor to profane himself by having to smite us with his left hand. It sounds small to us, but it was a radical, eye-opening act – an act of love for our enemy designed to wake him up to his own sin. Similarly, in the ancient world, one's clothing was a basic unit of security. A cloak doubled as a blanket, as shelter from fierce cold and heat. To take a man's cloak was to rob him of his dignity, perhaps even his life. It was indecent. Thus, the act of inviting one's oppressor to take not only our cloak, but also the coat beneath it, invites him to see the profanity of his act, and therefore gives him the opportunity to change. (These insights are, to the best of my memory, from L. William Countryman’s Dirt, Greed and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today and conversations with Darryl Schmidt, the Jesus Seminar scholar who was my “New Testament” professor in seminary.)

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I apologize that this is not one of my more "polished" entries, but I'm feeling under the weather at the moment. Yet I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of the story of the Our Lady's appearance to Juan Diego in 1531, and I could not let the day pass without comment. I readily admit that one thing I miss about the Catholic church--having been received into the Episcopal church a year and a half ago--is Mary. The Blessed Mother has been an important figure to me ever since my youth, although I am not sure I can easily articulate why. As I grew to adulthood, I became more troubled at the notion that a "virgin mother" should a role model for me in any sense, but a couple years ago I discovered the book Meditations on Mary and read Kathleen Norris' thoughts on the matter... I used to feel the dissonance whenever I heard Mary described as both Virgin and Mother; she seemed to set an impossible standard for any woman. But this was narrow-minded on my part. What Mary does is to show me how I indeed can be both virgin and mother. Virgin to the extent that I remain "one-in-myself," able to come to things with newness of heart; mother to the extent that I forget myself in the nurture and service of others, embracing the ripeness of maturity that this requires. This Mary is a gender-bender; she could do the same for any man. I owe my reconciliation of the Virgin and the Mother to the Black Madonna. Late one night at the abbey I sat before her statue, not consciously praying, but simply tired. Suddenly words welled up from deep inside me, words I did not intend to say - I want to know motherhood. Stunned by my boldness and the impossibility of the request - I have known since adolescence that motherhood was beyond my capacities - I began to weep. This remains my only experience of prayer as defined by St. Anthony of the Desert; he called a true prayer one you don't understand. When, a few months later, through an improbable set of circumstances, I found myslef caring for a seventeen-month-old niece with a bad case of the chicken pox, I was amazed to realize that my prayer was being answered in a most concrete, exhausting and rewarding way. I also sensed that the prayer would continue to be answered in many other ways throughout my life. And it was this same chapter by Kathleen Norris that first introduced me to the Virgin of Guadalupe in a way I found compelling, meaningful, even powerful... Mary's love and pity for her children seems to be what people treasure most about her, and what helps her to serve as a bridge between cultures. One great example of this took place in 1531, when the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian peasant named Juan Diego on the mountain of Tepayac, in Mexico, leaving behind a cloak, a tilma, imprinted with her image. The image has been immortalized as Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Mexican-American theologian Virgilio Elizondo argues, in The Future is Mestizo, that the significance of this image today is that Mary appeared as a "mestiza," or person of mixed race, a symbol of the union of the indigenous Aztec and Spanish invader. What was, and still is, the scandal of miscegenation was given a holy face and name. To be honest, Our Lady of Guadalupe was never one of my favorite images of Mary. There are probably a couple of reasons for this--we are most comfortable with the images we were exposed to in childhood, and we are drawn to images of the divine that look like us or people we know. I'm sure there's something Jungian about that. But I like Guadalupe a lot more now that I think of her with new layers of meaning. Richard Rodriguez concludes his essay in the anthology by describing his attempts to convey the prophetic power of Guadalupe to a skeptical feminist who can see in this image of a barefoot and pregnant Mary nothing but imperialist oppression and the subjugation of women. You don't understand, Rodriguez says, that the joke is on the living. What joke? the woman responds, and Rodriguez explains: "The joke is that Spain arrived with missionary zeal at the shores of contemplation. But Spain had no idea of the absorbent strength of Indian spirituality. By the waters of baptism, the active European was entirely absorbed within the contemplation of the Indian. The faith that Europe imposed in the sixteenth century was, by virtue of the Guadalupe, embraced by the Indian. Catholicism has become an Indian religion. By the twenty-first century, the locus of the Catholic church, by virtue of numbers, will be Latin America, by which time Catholicism itself will have assumed the aspect of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Brown skin." Last year when I was reading about the Virgin of Guadalupe I started collecting the some of the different artists' renditions that have been done, from the traditional to the scandalous. You can see them here. And there are more details about the story of Juan Diego and its meaning here.

The trouble with Christmas kitsch

I had the page The 12 days of Kitschmas on the Ship of Fools web site bookmarked as a fun link to share. I mean just look at this stuff. But today for the first time, I clicked on the Christ vs. Kitsch link on that page, and discovered it's a pretty powerful read. For anyone who is offended by "strong language", I should forewarn you that it has some of that... THE PROBLEM WITH KITSCH is not readily apparent because (by definition) the treatment of what is considered unwholesome takes place off stage. Think of those Nazi propaganda films of beautiful, healthy children skiing down the Bavarian Alps. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Of course there is. For this is a world that has been purified, where everything nasty or troubling has been eliminated. The logical conclusion of kitsch, argues Kundera, is the ghetto and the concentration camp – the means by which totalitarian regimes dispose of their shit, variously construed. This is tied in with Christmas later in the article by describing how shocking and unsettling--how "profane" the story of the incarnation really is... Even many who felt the attraction of the Christian story believed this was going too far. Convoluted ways were sought to mitigate the offence. Christ was not really human or Christ was not really divine. Others created a firewall between the sacred and the profane within the person of Jesus himself. For the second century Gnostic, Valentinius, Jesus "ate and drank but did not defecate". I haven't read church history for some time, but I am aware that the debates about whether Jesus was fully human and/or fully divine went on for centuries, but it never occurred to me that people speculated about whether or not Jesus went to the bathroom. (Although I have mused to myself from time to time, wondering how easy or difficult the Christ child was to potty train.)In any event, I recommend the whole article, but will include the concluding paragraphs here as food for thought. The problem isn't that Christmas has become too materialistic – but rather that it isn't materialistic enough. Kitsch Christmas is another way of uncoupling the divine from the material, thus spiritualizing God into incapacity. I am not being a killjoy attacking the kitsch version of Christmas. Three years ago, my wife gave birth to a baby boy. The labour ward was no place to be coy about the human body and all its functions. The talcum-powdered unreality of kitsch childbirth cannot compare with the exhaustion, pain and joy of the real thing. But perhaps the most important corruption of Christmas kitsch is how it shapes our understanding of peace. This is the season where the word "peace" is ubiquitous. Written out in fancy calligraphy everywhere, "peace and good will to all" is the subscript of the season. It's the peace of the sleeping child, peace as in "peace and quiet", peace as a certain sort of mood. But this is not what they need in Bethlehem today. They need peace as in people not killing each other. This sort of peace requires a stubborn engagement with the brute facts of oppression and violence – which is the very reality that the kitsch peace of Christmas wants to take us on holiday away from. How ironic: we don't want the shittiness of the world pushed at us during this season of peace. This, then, is the debilitating consequence of kitsch. Kitsch peace is the unspoken desire that war takes place out of sight and mind – it's the absolute denial of shit. Political leaders who are preparing for yet more fighting will be happy to oblige. Christmas has become a cultural danger to us all, not just a danger to orthodox Christianity.

Just-Us Sunday III

We really do need a good sequel name for this one. How about Justice Sunday Reloaded? Or, since it's the third one, we can work with the "3D" theme--suggest that it will burst from the screen into your living room, grab you, lift you up, and fill you with the spirit. Alleluia! Not as catchy as any of those, but dead-on accurate, is what jc calls it in her recent post, Just-Us Sunday III Liberty for everyone, as long as you are white (or on a select list of token brown guys) and male (but not one of them homo-sex-yoo-als), LIBERTY CAN BE YOURS! The bible says so. Right there in the Old Testament. Quoting the Old Testament, and especially Leviticus, is quite the favorite of the Theocracy crowd, probably because Jesus inconveniently "forgot" to tell people to hate homosexuals, and all that love and tolerance that shows up in the New Testament just isn't much help when you're trying to control a country. In her post, jc also points out that if you are going to go with Leviticus as your source for laws, some of our more popular Americana ends up being forbidden. By the way, you know who else I heard speaking (approvingly) of the wall of separation between church and state? Former President Jimmy Carter, on last night's Daily Show . Hmm--does that mean the evangelical, Nobel Prize winning Sunday school teacher hates religion? I doubt it, but I also know we are dealing with people who will demonize anyone to get what they want. It's not hard to imagine the religious right accepting Jesus if he walked among them, that ACLU-loving, sandal-wearing hippie who said things like : And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. jc ends her post with this musing... P.S. Doing graphics, I work with fonts and can usually identify a lot of them. I've noticed in their logos that politicians often use fonts with names that "sound" patriotic, and I guess, in some cases, they must pick a font because of its name, rather than what it looks like. In that context, I wonder if we should be worried that the Theocracy crowd chose a font that bears a striking resemblance to "Futura Extra Black?" Funny, and also true. And it reminds me of how important it will be for religious progressives to shine our light where there is darkness.

Happy St. Nicholas Day

Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas. We knew a family that celebrated this day rather than Christmas. As I mentioned in a recent post at Street Prophets, there is a part of me that really likes that idea, as Christmas gets a little overwhelming sometimes. Read Aunt Arctic's diary about St. Nicholas day here. I've taken this information from The Encyclopedia of Christmas by Gerry Bowler who is an historian who has had a life long interest in the history of the festival. (He has just published Santa Claus: A Biography.) St Nicholas was a popular saint in medieval times. He was purported to have been born in 4th century Patara (now Turkey) and was active in the early church, and it is told that he attended the Council of Nicea in 325. Legends about the saint centre on his generosity as a gift giver and because he performed miracles. Like many legends, these vary with the teller and the time. One that Bowler offers is about the three daughters of a poor man who were destined to be prostitutes, so SN gave them each a bag of gold to be used as dowries. (These have often been referred to as three balls of gold and as SN was the patron saint of money-lenders and bankers this became the symbol of pawn brokers.) After his death he became patron saint of Greece and Russia, choirboys, Vikings, perfumers, barrel-makers, thieves, unmarried women, students, children and sailors, which covers a lot of ground. His tomb is in Bari, Italy. By 1100, St Nicolas had become associated with the Christmas season: his feast day (6 December) marked the beginning of the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which in some churches lasts until December 28th. By the 16th century, children in Germany were hanging stockings for him to leave gifts, although he didn't start bringing gifts to English children until the 19th century. Saint Nicholas was eventually replaced by the Christ Child as symbol of the giving season, as well as more secular givers, and the gift giving day was moved to December 25th or in some cases New Year's Day. He is considered to be the inspiration for the American Santa Claus. In 1969, St Nicholas was one of those Roman Catholic saints who was demoted from "universal" to "optional" and apparently some of his relics were moved to New York in 1972. This is just a short introduction, of course. Does anyone else have St Nicolas stories to share?.

Howard Dean on the Stephanie Miller show

A full transcript can be found here. The following is an excerpt: Howard: Yeah, we need to balance budgets. We need to have health insurance for all our people. Thirty-six countries have it and balance their budgets. We're losing jobs in America because businesses can't pay their health care bill. And we're going to have honesty in government. People always giggle when you say that because they believe that politicians are corrupt. The truth is, most of them aren't. Unfortunately the Republicans have brought a culture of corruption to a lot of the state governments and the federal government. I want ethics legislation, and I want Democrats to have to live under that too, and if they cross the line then they ought to be out of office too. Stephanie: Well, you know, Governor, that is absolutely true. I mean if ever there was an operative phrase for 2006 it has to be "Throw the bums out." Because at this point you can't say it's just one guy. When you say "culture of corruption" people go "Oh, talking point!" but it's not. When in your memory was there--you've got Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, you've had the White House procurement officer arrested. You've had the Vice President's Chief of Staff indicted--it's just unparalleled in my opinion. Howard: All that is bad--very, very bad--the worst thing is that Karl Rove is still in the White House with security clearance, having given away the name of a CIA agent. Now that's not a reflection on Karl Rove, that's a reflection on George Bush. George Bush thinks it's okay to have a security clearance for somebody who leaks CIA agents' names in a time of war? This is a thoroughly corrupt, incompetent administration. And I'll tell you the last time we had one, but it wasn't quite as corrupt, and that's Watergate, and Nixon had to resign. They didn't have the House and the Senate mired in corruption at that time. Now you've got the Republican leader of the Senate under investigation for insider stock trading, the Republican leader of the House is already indicted, you've got congressmen now resigning for having taken bribes--you've got more to come, too. This is not the last one--you're going to see more Republican congressmen go down under this one. This is awful, it's awful for the country, and we *will* do better.

A call to prayer for captured peacemakers

I just received the following news from our local interfaith peace group. A Call to Prayer for Peacemakers Four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Baghdad were kidnapped recently and are held hostage in Iraq. CPT is an ecumenical peacemaking agency associated with the Church of the Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers. Its members are deeply committed to non-violent peacemaking and are willing to put their lives on the line to make it happen. The four hostages are: Tom Fox, 54, Clearbrook, Virginia, Norman Kember, 74, London, James Loney, 41, Toronto, Canada, Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, a Canadian. More information on them are found at the Christian Peacemaker Teams website: www.cpt.org Tom, Norman, James and Harmeet are in Iraq for the sole purpose of bearing witness to the love of God as it is expressed through the sacrificial presence of the Prince of Peace. Because of their lifelong commitment to Jesus and the holy calling of peacemaking, these our brothers live to bear witness to the fact that violence is a sin against God. Indeed, they have consistently carried that message to the Coalition forces, first by condemning the political decisions to make war and later by expressing horror at the degrading violence the war begets. Long before the media reports, they were the first to protest the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison. Their message of peace was also expressed to those whose attacks on Coalition forces escalated the violence and whose suicide bombs took the lives of thousands of innocent human beings. In consultation with CPT, and in view of the delicate nature of the situation, we have refrained from making a statement about this situation and discouraged other American religious and peace groups from doing the same. Alternatively, we have leaned on international groups, particularly >Arab Muslim leaders to express their support for CPT. On Wednesday, Jerusalem Post reported that leaders of Palestinian political factions gathered in Hebron to issue a statement in Arabic about their experiences of seeing the CPT working in Palestine, and their personal knowledge of the three kidnapped members and their important work on behalf of the Palestinian people. Read their statement is here: http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/palstatement.htm he World Council of Churches also made the following statement: http://www2.wcc-coe.org/pressreleasesen.nsf/index/pr-05-73.html Today we call on our churches to take time in their Sunday worship services to offer special prayers for the peacemakers. We invite other religious communities meeting for worship this weekend to similarly offer prayers, and encourage friends wherever possible to remember our brothers in interfaith vigils. Contact NCC News: Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2252, pjenks@ncccusa.org; or Leslie Tune, 202-544-2350, ltune@ncccusa.org