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Archive for August, 2012

Of “genuine Christian groups,” community organizers & hurricane relief (Noon Wine)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 31, 2012| 4 Comments »

To help provide relief to hurricane victims consider a donation to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief), where every penny of every donation goes to helping people recover. Administrative and overhead costs are paid for by other church sources so that your donation can actually help to lift somebody up.

Click here for more.

“The Christians have always been there serving.” — David Tracy

In doing some research I came across a quote that jumped out at me the other day from David Tracy, an influential theologian at the University of Chicago School of Divinity.

In an interview with that enduring and wonderful magazine Christian Century, Tracy said:

“In terms of the work of the Spirit among genuine Christian groups, I would point to the fact that when you go into the really terrible neighborhoods, you’ll find Christians serving there. And they’ve always been there. The hope for our culture as a whole—and not only the Christian church—is a recovery of that kind of spirituality.”

Indeed, our ultimate hope doesn’t really lie in the leaders and wannabe leaders in Washington D.C. or our statehouses. They’re mostly egomaniacs who deal in lies, distortions, misrepresentations and character assassination anyway.

Our real hope lies in the “genuine Christian groups” that quietly act as the hands and feet of Christ in, for lack of a better word, the “terrible” neighborhoods that most people avoid like the plague.*

These genuine Christian groups get precious little media coverage or glory for the Christian love they put into action and practice, but being the genuine (i.e., humble) Christians that they are, they aren’t in it for reasons of the ego anyway. They go in, for lack of a better word, to “terrible” neighborhoods and connect with people outside of their own comfortable homes because they genuinely love God and love others.

These are Christians who know that God doesn’t inflict pain and suffering on the very people that God loves unconditionally. Anyone who believes that God inflicts pain and suffering on anybody, anywhere, has God confused with some monster. These are Christians who know that God calls Christians to do God’s work in those very neighborhoods, or any place where despair is breeding.

You can bet that a lot of genuine Christians are already working alongside the poorest of the poor in Haiti to pick up and recover from the latest disaster to strike that country.

You can bet that multitudes of teams of mission-minded, loving Christians are already in areas ravaged by the same hurricane on the Gulf Coast and beyond in our own country.

You know the people I’m talking about, I’m sure–the compassionate Christian people that the militant atheist Bill Maher dismisses as “mentally ill.”**

And it’s not just “genuine” Christians, but people of other faith traditions, or morally high-minded humanitarians, whose faiths or value systems have the Golden Rule and serious peace and compassion at the cores of their theologies and world views.

God is blessing them as much as the people on the receiving end of their compassion.
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*That said, I always give President Obama the credit due him for getting his hands dirty in working with the poor in the Chicago streets as a community organizer. I see that life experience of his as a big plus, not the negative that the Sean Hannitys and ultra-conservative politicians have seized upon with their typical distortions and misrepresentations. I’ve known and worked with community organizers and never met one that I didn’t admire for their integrity and their unselfish and unheralded work in “terrible” neighborhoods–and their Christian faith.

**Why so many Christians, and even clergy, are fans of Bill Maher, to the point of posting his quips on Facebook, is a mystery to me. His whole mission in life, like that of Paul Ryan’s hero Ayn Rand, is to destroy and eliminate Christianity and every other faith tradition.

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Ayn Rand’s Prairie Home Companion (Bloodless Women Writers Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 26, 2012| 2 Comments »

The fine and mighty fine biographer and reporter Judith Thurman has a fascinating story in the ever-fine and great New Yorker magazine about the friendship and ultimate fallout between two famously strong-willed Libertarian women: Ayn Rand and the writer-daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of “Little House on the Prairie” fame.

Rand’s awful, heinous, propagandist fiction, her militant atheism and her pill-fueled, anything-goes lifestyle is well known, and better known now that Vice President nominee and Big-Time Flip-Flopper Paul Ryan (a perfect match he and the other Flip Flopper)is backing off his heavily documented love and admiration of Rand.

Rand, who was totally pro-abortion, is not the sort of writer that a wholesome family-values Republican candidate who wears his Catholicism on his sleeve wants to be associated with in any form, fashion or manner. Thurman cleverly and somewhat incisively refers to Ayn Rand in the New Yorker piece as Paul Ryan’s “Jeremiah Wright.”

Since coming under heavy attack from his own Catholic U.S. Bishops and all varieties of Catholic leaders for his not-so-compassionate-Catholic budget proposals, Ryan now claims his favorite author is the great Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas.

And if you believe Paul Ryan has slugged through the theological thought of Aquinas, you probably believe Ryan when he tells you he’s not out to destroy Medicare with his now famous and heavily scrutinized Medicare proposal.

Anyway, Thurman’s story on the unlikely relationship between the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Ayn Rand is quite a well-done and a fascinating read.

And Thurman, btw, is probably best known for her fine biography of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,” which won a National Book Award in 1983and ended up as that enduringly good movie “Out of Africa’ with Meryl Streep and Redford.

And furthermore, btw, you can click here for a take on Ayn Rand that yours truly posted more than a year ago here at the blog that is saving the world.

Yes, your favorite and always cutting-edge blogger was bashing Ayn Rand before it was fashionable to bash Ayn Rand!

And with no further of that old ado . . . . here’s Thurman’s New Yorker piece:

Shortly after John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, four years ago, a journalist asked her sister Heather Bruce what books Sarah had read as a child. Only one came to mind: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie,” the third in a cycle of eight novels on pioneer life, which have sold some sixty million copies. (In 1974, when Palin was ten, the “Little House” saga was adapted as a television series that ran for nine seasons. It was Ronald Reagan’s favorite program.) In September, the Library of America will publish Wilder’s collected fiction in a two-volume boxed set, edited and annotated by Caroline Fraser, with a glossy picture of amber fields of grain on the cover. It’s a great gift for values voters—Paul Ryan should take note.
The youthful reading habits of our new Republican Vice-Presidential candidate have also been fodder for the news cycle. Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” was so influential to Ryan’s career, and to his view of ethics and society, he said some years ago, that he gave it to his staffers as a Christmas present. In the last few days, however, Ryan has had to shrug Rand off—she’s his Jeremiah Wright. A Soviet-born Jewish intellectual (née Rosenbaum), who emigrated to America in the nineteen-twenties and worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter before turning to fiction, Rand was a pro-choice, antiwar atheist and Benzedrine user with a scandalous domestic life, vehemently opposed to drug laws, sodomy laws, and any other state interference in the lifestyle choices of citizens. (Ryan now says that his favorite writer is Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth-century Catholic saint.)
At first glance, Laura Ingalls Wilder, the daughter of pioneers whose hardscrabble life as a farmer redefines frugality, and Ayn Rand, the flamboyant cosmopolite and champion of privilege who lived in a ménage à quatre in New York City, hobnobbing with the élite, do not have much in common beyond, perhaps, the fervor that their work inspires. There is a connection, however.
Wilder’s books were written in collaboration with her only child, Rose Wilder Lane, a best-selling author in her own right. The extent of that collaboration is disputed—some critics have called Rose Laura’s “ghostwriter.” The evidence suggests that, at the least, Lane edited and shaped the manuscripts considerably, and thought of her mother as an amateur. (I wrote about Laura, Rose, and the Little House books for the magazine in 2009.)
Lane was a compelling, and in many senses, a tragic figure. She was a woman of tremendous enterprise and passion who suffered from suicidal depressions that she diagnosed as a “mental illness.” Born on the frontier, in 1886, and raised in dire poverty, she rode a mule to the village school, where she was mocked for her rags. After high school, she became a telegraph operator, and eventually moved to San Francisco, where she married a feckless adventurer who fathered her only child. The baby died in infancy; Lane’s thwarted maternal instincts would thereafter be channelled into intense relationships with a string of protégés.
After her divorce, Lane made a career in journalism and as a popular biographer—of Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, and Charlie Chaplin, among others. But Chaplin was so appalled by the inaccuracies of his portrait that he sued her. Factuality was never Lane’s forte. She preferred a “corking” story.
Lane also wrote novels, and enjoyed some commercial success, though not the kind of literary acclaim that she yearned for. Her prose was purple and simplistic, if not trashy. But an eclectic and discriminating circle of friends (Dorothy Thompson, Floyd Dell, who was the co-editor of The Masses, and Hoover) prized her for the wit of her letters and conversation. She transformed herself from a barefoot farm girl into a woman of the world who lived the life of a bohemian in Greenwich Village, and of an expatriate in Weimar Berlin and Jazz Age Paris, and filed dispatches from exotic places like Albania, where she befriended the leader of its ephemeral revolution, the future King Zog.
In the late nineteen-twenties, however, crippled by depression, Lane returned to her parents’ farm in Missouri. She was tortured by bad teeth—the product of childhood malnutrition; she lost her savings in the Depression; the state of the world increasingly embittered her. And the left-wing idealism of her youth took a hard turn to the right. When Roosevelt was elected, she noted in her diary, “America has a dictator.” She prayed for his assassination, and considered doing the job herself.
In 1936, the Saturday Evening Post published an essay that Lane called her “Credo,” and which announced a new phase of her career: as a right-wing polemicist. “I am now a fundamentalist American,” she declared. Her vision was of a frontier democracy—a Republic of the Fittest—with no handouts or entitlements, and minimal taxation. She may have been the first writer to use the term “libertarian” as the label for a nascent revolt against state authority. (Lane’s heir and adopted son, Roger MacBride, was the Libertarian Party’s candidate for President in 1976.)
Lane, who died in 1968 (the Wilders were a long-lived family) spent her later years in a Connecticut farmhouse on several acres, protesting Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” (the F.B.I. took note) and raising her own food. A determined individualist, in her view, should be resourceful enough to live off the grid. Her goal was to reduce her income to the point at which she wouldn’t have to file federal taxes. Old friends were dismayed by her increasingly erratic militance. One of them described her as “floating between sanity and a bedlam of hates.”
Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, and Isabel Paterson, a journalist, critic, and novelist who wrote the political treatise “The God of the Machine,” have been called “the founding mothers” of Libertarianism. (In a liberal chat room, a wag redubbed them “The Three Witches.” Paterson, like Lane, it’s worth mentioning, came from an impoverished farming background; Rand’s family lost all they had in the Russian Revolution of 1917.) Theirs, however, was a triumvirate of rivals (they would quarrel—about Rand’s atheism, among other things—and part ways), and compared to her co-parents of the movement that Paul Ryan now leads, Lane was the softie. As Rand’s biographer Jennifer Burns recounts, Paterson was infuriated by Lane’s emotionality. Their cause could only be served by cold reason, she believed; anything less surgical was treasonous. Rand, like all propagandists, was adept at manipulation, which is to say, mythification, but she found Lane’s politics too “holistic.”
Lane and Rand exchanged collegial letters for a while in the late nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties. But when Lane invoked the Biblical imperative to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” and protested that “without some form of mutual coöperation, it is literally impossible for one person on this planet to survive,” Rand “tore apart [her] logic” and denounced it as collectivist heresy. That sort of impulse, she concluded (to help your neighbor save his burning house, for example) led inexorably “to the New Deal.”
Rand’s ruthless supremacism, however—her stark division of humankind into “makers and takers”—leads inexorably to a society like the one that staged “The Hunger Games.” And it’s to Lane’s credit that, for all her zealotry, she couldn’t quite transcend the instinct to give succor. Should Paul Ryan decide to revisit the “Little House” books, he will certainly hear the congenial echo of Lane’s polemics in them, though tempered by something more humane. They exalt rugged self-reliance, but as Lane suggested rather plaintively in her argument with Rand, the pioneers would have perished (in greater numbers than they did) had they embraced the philosophy of every man for himself.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/rose-wilder-lane-ayn-rand-and-americas-libertarian-literature.html#ixzz24g6FiHfL

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Our Phony Selves & Other Happy Friday Thoughts: Quotable Quotes, Random Thoughts, Summa This & Summa That)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 24, 2012| 3 Comments »

That Frenchie philosopher of that old existential dread Jean-Paul Sartre said:

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.”

And it occurs to me that when rich and powerful men wage “cultural wars,” it’s mostly women and children who suffer and, in some cases, actually die.

More happy random thoughts, opinions and summa this and summa that below.

Read on if you dare here at the world’s most dangerous blog . . . .

“FORGIVE THEM, LORD, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.”


What follows are just some rambling thoughts and music and stuff for what I hope will be your Happy Friday, dear reader.

I’ve always said I could never be a Buddhist, but an enormous amount of Buddhist teaching and tradition certainly parallels with the teachings of Christ. A lot of Buddhist teachers and leaders, such as Her Greatness Pema Chödrön, help me to keep my Christian theology and thinking as sharp as a lot of Christian teachers and leaders do.

I subscribe to the great and always well-written online edition of the Buddhist magazine “Tricycle,” and receive daily email reflections from it. Here’s part of a reflection that came today from Pema:

“To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior. We catch ourselves one zillion times as once again, whether we like it or not, we harden into resentment, bitterness, righteous indignation— harden in any way, even into a sense of relief, a sense of inspiration.

Every day we could think about the aggression in the world, in New York, Los Angeles, Halifax, Taiwan, Beirut, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq, everywhere. All over the world, everybody always strikes out at the enemy, and the pain escalates forever. Every day we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, “Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?” Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?”

From The Buddha Is Still Teaching,
selected and edited by Jack Kornfield, © 2010
————–
In doing research for a book of essays and reflections that I’m writing on certain scripture readings and theological themes, I come across a lot of great stuff in going back to writers, theologians and preachers that I like.

In one of the reflections I’m writing about the importance of being genuine and authentic–in being our truest and most honest-to-God selves– I went to a sermon preached by the Canadian Methodist preacher Victor Shepherd. I’ve quoted Rev. Shepherd here at the blog before because I think he’s a really terrific, traditional Methodist/Wesleyan preacher.

Click here for his web page.

Here’s the excerpt from his sermon on our Lord’s encounter with crazy Legion (see Mark 5 in your Holy Bible):

“Think of the daily pressure to be something to one person and something else to another person and something else again to a third person.  Think of how it seems we have to ease our way through tight spots in life by bending the truth here and telling just a little lie there and misrepresenting ourselves somewhere else, all in the interests of getting us or those dear to us past the landmines and quicksands that will otherwise take us down.  The truth is, of course, we are daily putting on one false face after another, always telling ourselves that underneath our exchangeable false faces there does remain our real face, our true face, our genuine identity.  If no one else is aware of who we are at this point, at least we know who we are.

  ” But it’s never this simple.  As we shuffle the false faces, falsity overtakes us little by little.  We tell ourselves we haven’t reduced ourselves to phoniness; we tell ourselves that when this sticky situation is past we can revert to our real face, our true self, our proper identity.  But of course life is so very fraught with sticky situations — every day brings a host of them, doesn’t it? — that we simply become more and more adept at interchanging false faces until we no longer are aware that any one of them is false; no longer aware that we have become false; no longer aware that we are phoniness incarnate.”

We are “phoniness incarnate.” Wow. That’s strong stuff.
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And then there’s all our American politicians, who deal in the hackneyed art of nothing but phoniness now.

And especially all the crazy Legion-like white men who can’t stand to have to relinquish the power and control they’ve had over women and children since the days of Moses.

There was a time–in my own lifetime–when aging white men could be admired and respected for their class, their dignity, their selfless public services in politics, religion and all kinds of fields.

Men like Eisenhower, Albert Schweitzer, who always showed class and dignity and could articulate their wisdom and truth in ways we could admire.

I grew up admiring men like Gen. George Marshall, a fierce American warrior who was just as fierce in his passion for finding a way once and for all to world peace, which he believed was largely attainable this side of heaven.

He also was the only military leader ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way.

Where are these wise men now when we need them more than ever?

How did we get here, where people like Mr. Akin, the biggest embarrassment to come out of the great state of Missouri since Rush Limbaugh (Mark Twain must be rolling in his grave), are not even wolves in sheep’s clothing but simply wolves who can’t even see the harm they do to women with their reckless beliefs and words? (And I know that even Rush has denounced Akin, but that’s classic pot calling the kettle black.)

Where are our peacemakers who know the horrors and horrible ripple effects of all kinds of wars–military and “culture” wars alike?

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

― Military General & U.S. PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower

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We who trust and believe in God and the Lord Jesus Christ keep the faith, and pray.

And speaking of old black me we love . . .

It’s still a wonderful world after all these years:

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And the rich get richer (Corporate Welfare Alert)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

THE CORPORATIONS AND CEO’s AND THEIR LOBBYISTS NOT ONLY WRITE OUR AMERICAN LAWS NOW, THEY TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, IN EXCESS, WHILE SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS (AND SETTNG UP HEADQUARTERS OVERSEAS TO AVOID TAXES IN EVER GROWING CASES), AND HAVE THE NERVE TO TELL US THEY STIMULATE THE ECONOMY?

IN THIS FILE PHOTO FROM AP: Boeing Company Chairman, President, and CEO W. James McNerney, Jr. attends the first-ever State Department Global Business Conference, at the State Department in Washington last February. Twenty-six big U.S. companies paid their CEOs more last year than they paid the federal government in tax, according to a study released Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 by the Institute for Policy Studies. The study said the companies, including AT&T, Boeing and Citigroup, paid their CEOs an average of $20.4 million last year while paying little or no federal tax on ample profits, according to regulatory filings. The study said McNerney Jr. of Boeing got $18.4 million in pay last year while his company received a tax refund of $605 million. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

AP reported last week on a study showing the still head-spinning amounts of money that huge corporations pay their CEOs and others at the top of their corporate heaps while they still find unique ways not to pay taxes.

(And then there’s the Big Banks, never content to do what banks used to do and were meant to do–to make personal and commercial loans rather than losing kazillions and hurting scores of people with their “creative” money-making schemes.)

Twenty-six big U.S. companies paid their CEOs more last year than they paid the federal government in tax, according to the study released Thursday by a liberal-leaning think tank. The study, by the Institute for Policy Studies, said the companies, including AT&T, Boeing and Citigroup, paid their CEOs an average of $20.4 million last year while paying little or no federal tax on ample profits, according to regulatory filings.”

(Click here for details on the study in which the corporate vultures claim they are “stimulating the economy” with their excessive salaries, immoral and unethical business practices and avoiding taxes at every turn while taking government money or what has been rightfully called “Corporate Welfare.” Their claim of “stimulating the economy” would be funny if it weren’t such a sick joke considering the state of the economy and their own complicity in wrecking it for those of us who don’t have their power to enrich ourselves.)

We’re all at the mercy of these masters of the universe who rake in ungodly amounts of money–more than the average American can conceive of–while shipping jobs overseas, setting up headquarters or businesses or setting up other tax loopholes overseas, feeding at the federal trough with government contracts–with which they inevitably get paid for their “cost overruns” with few questions asked by the Congressmen and Senators they own and whose power they have supplanted with their armies of lobbyists. And then there’s the federal grants and subsidies they take out the wazoo–paid out of our tax dollars.

And Fox News and the Romneys and Ryans of the world (Ryan–he who like so many conservatives attacks Obama’s big spending while quietly and secretly taking Obama’s stimulus money to feather his political nest, and THEN having the audacity to deny it until he can’t deny it anymore) continue to paint our President as a Socialist or even Marxist dictator.

Really?

But then, in the interest of the fair and balanced reporting that Fox News proclaims every five minutes–as if it’s their place to grade themselves with the A pluses they given themselves on their fairness and balance– I have to say that the Obamas and Pelosis (she who is clearly guilty of insider trading as much as she vehemently still wants to rap 60 Minutes for exposing her corruption) and everybody else in D.C. or connected to D.C. in any governing or electioneering capacity, Democrat or Republican, is just as morally corrupted, if not legally corrupted, by corporations and their lobby armies whose only interest is their self-interest, starting with their arrogant and coddled CEOs.

And then there’s all the other corruptive forces at work in government and politics–a number of the unions and so many other special interest groups, that I have to wonder . . . .

Why vote?

Or as one of my faith heroes Dorothy Day used to say–she whose only politics was advancing the Kingdom of God with her deep and extremely deep discipleship– “I don’t vote. . . .

“Why encourage them.”

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Hanging at the “Tuna Sandwich” (Belizean Postcards Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: Sorry for that first “draft” edition of this I accidentally posted that was automatically emailed to you while I was trying to watch the Houston Texans game and blog at the same time. And thanks, BTW, for subscribing to the blog that is saving the world.

SO SOMETIMES ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS AROUND 3 I TAKE THE FERRY OVER TO THE ONE-MILE (STRAIGHT UP!) ROAD TO THE XUNANTUNICH MAYAN RUINS, THE POPULAR TOURIST ATTRACTION HERE IN FAR WESTERN BELIZE WHERE I’VE TAKEN UP RESIDENCE–ACROSS THE HIGHWAY FROM THE FERRY.

I go up mid afternoon because the ferry stops crossing at 4:30 and the tourists are starting to go down when I go up. The park rangers are my neighbors and the last to leave and they don’t leave without me. Being a Belizean resident has its privileges.

It’s a little creepy, but very cool nonetheless, strolling around such sacred old haunted grounds with nobody around.

The white trees are called “All Spice Trees” because their leaves and seeds make for some good cooking material. Also, if you heat up the snapped leaves in very hot water and gargle with it when the water is warm enough you have a sure-enough cure for a sore throat–this according to my village neighbor the park ranger Mike. “You don’t want to gargle if the water isn’t very warm or hot,” though he says, grabbing his throat and feigning near death. (Note to myself: Remember, do not gargle for a sore throat with All Spice remedies in cold water.)

These western Belize mountains and forests have scores of these old Mayan trails. This one leads all the way down to the Caribbean Sea at Belize City, although you can’t go far down it before you come across the private property that is a huge cattle ranch. Speaking of which–the beef steaks in Belize are incredibly tasty and tender. Hate to say it, but I’ll take them over a Texas steak from home any day. I’d pretty much stopped eating red meat several years ago but a Belizean steak now and again is a temptation to which I happily give in.

Another view of Xunantunich, the Stone Lady–she who haunts these hills and thickets way up here where the panoramic views are spectacular. Too bad my point and shoot camera can’t do those justice. BTW, Xunantunich is a mouthful but the locals tell the tourists, “Just call it The Tuna Sandwich–good enough.”

See you down the next Central American road.

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Melonie Gillett’s Beloved Belize (Music Vids Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 17, 2012| 3 Comments »

She’s not really my musical cup of tea, even though her voice has some power and passion in it, but Belizean homegirl Melonie Gillett is gaining the international star status that makes the proud people of Belize proud of her.

SMALL TOWN BELIZEAN GIRL MAKES BIG–AND BELIZEANS LOVE HER–AND THE FEELING IS MUTUAL

.

And this small town girl–she’s from Burrell Boom Village–is certainly one of this beautiful country’s biggest boosters. This video is like a Belizean postcard put to film.

Click here for more on her story.

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Another Sidewalk Attraction (Bush Doctors Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

WESTERN BELIZE HAS MANY FINE ATTRACTIONS, INCLUDING THE PEOPLE YOU SEE ON THE SIDEWALKS OF THE TWIN TOWNS OF SAN IGNACIO/SANTA ELENA. THIS IS MY DOCTOR. WHO IS SORT OF A SIDEWALK ATTRACTION HIS OWN SELF.

YES, the Bush Doctor of Bullet Tree Village just outside San Ignacio, Belize, sometimes works the sidewalks selling his CD of plenty good Jamaican music, mon. He claims he once played with Bob Marley and the boys, but every dred-lock Jamaican I’ve met in San Ignacio claims to have made music with Bob Marley.

And for all I know the Bush Doctor really did. He’s actually a pretty fine musician, but nowadays he grows herbs over in Bullet Tree. The other day he handed me this little leaf he folded over and told me to rub it and — lo! — it’s the stuff of some fine and mighty fine skin moisturizer.

Of course, I had a belly ache and asked de Bush Doctor, “Ain’t der nuttin’ I can take?”

And he say to me:

Which is perfect since I have a lime tree in the front yard and there’s coconut trees a hundred yards from mi casa.

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Your Tuesday Afternoon Music Therapy (Byrds Do Bob)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 14, 2012| 1 Comment »

She’s one of my neighbors here in Succotz Village, Belize and sells her colorful and finely woven crafts down at the market here every day, seven days a week. A traveling photographer and blogger who apparently had a great time vacationing with her family in this part of Belize posted this picture on her blog. You can click on that blogger’s link below.

And after that last posting . . . . on a more pleasant note . . . .

Here’s some of your regular Tuesday Afternoon Music Therapy for you . . .

But first . . . .

Wanted to share another blogger’s link with lots of pictures of my stomping grounds here in western Belize, where I’ve been living and enjoying life for a full month now.

This blogger took some of the pictures — click right here to feast your eyes on the culture I live in-– here in my home village of Succotz, including the famous Mayan “Stone Lady” ruins a mile from my house, which is the big tourist draw to this otherwise sleepy little country town on the River Mopan. But there’s terrific pix of other areas I tramp around in here in “The West,” as the WEstern Belizeans call it.

And now, here’s one of my all-time favorites of Mr. Dylan’s sixties output, done by the fabulous Byrds–one of the seminal bands of the sixties. They included a very young, baby-faced hippie named David Crosby, of course.

I like the Byrds version of this joyous song a lot more than Dylan’s original, which I love as well because of that unique way Mr. Dylan had of delivering a song so exhilarating, or his unique way of delivering anything for that matter. But other artists always did great arrangements in covering Dylan songs; Dylan himself much preferred Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “All Along the Watchtower” to his own.

With no further of that old ado. . . . The Byrds flying high . . .

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He was just another killer “retard,” so who cares? (Ugly Texas Christian Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

SOMETIMES THE TEXAS I LOVE IS AN OLD TESTAMENT, OLD FRONTIER TEXAS THAT MAKES ME NOT PROUD TO BE A TEXAN

Texas executed another one of God’s children last week, one with an IQ of 61, and never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed such executions as against the law of the land. Rick Perry’s “Christian” Texas goes by its own Texas rules and some kind of New Testament with which Jesus and the Apostles would not be familiar.

Jesus said, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.”

And, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “you shall not murder;’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.'”

Still, my governor and so many Texans and so many Americans–even good Catholics so feverish in their opposition to abortion–can’t get past that old “eye for an eye” frontier, Old Testament, justice that insist on, complete with some kind of patriarchal God with a long, flowing beard.

That image of God held by so many Christians actually is a caricature of God, but that’s another posting for another day.

I don’t believe for a minute that the Jesus who delivered such a radical love sermon was at the side of those executioners in that killing room last week, when Marvin Wilson was killed. If anything, Jesus was weeping, again, at the lust for vengeance that drove the State of Texas to wipe out the life of this mentally challenged man, who–there is no denying, was guilty of murder. Jesus and anyone else would be for justice being rendered for the murder and for Marvin Wilson being locked away for the rest of his life.

And, for sure, Christ was with the victim’s loved ones, whose pain and suffering is bound to be beyond what most of us can imagine who have never had a loved one murdered senselessly. I know that Christ has wept with them in their pain and anguish. And I cannot say that I blame them if their hatred for Wilson is intense. I don’t know where they are with their feelings about Marvin Wilson now, but that is not relevant to what the State of Texas has done, and how contrary it runs to entire New Testament witness and teaching and the Christian tradition of faith.

This human being Marvin Wilson’s guilt is not the issue. The issue is how we render justice to those like Marvin Wilson who murder and cause such enormous grief and suffering, and we don’t do it by killing them. “An eye for an eye,” as MLK Jr. famously said, “makes us all blind.”

It makes us too blind to see God’s will for justice but also God’s will for the appropriate measure of of justice with mercy.

And there was nothing whatsoever merciful in this execution.

And uh, oh–one other thing, dear reader, lest I be accused of being too hard on my beloved Texas.

Don’t ever forget that that great librul hero Bill Clinton made a special trip back to Arkansas when he was governor to order the execution of a mentally retarded criminal.

So in all fairness, it has to be said that executions always make good politics no matter which side you’re on politically.

Here’s a blurb from Wilson’s defense lawyer David Dow in the case, and here’s a link to where you can read the whole story from him:

Last week Texas killed Marvin Wilson—the 484th person the Lone Star State has executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Wilson’s execution became national news because he was mentally retarded: his IQ had been measured at 61. He was also my client.

When I first met Wilson nearly seven years ago, he was soft spoken, almost shy. His reading and writing skills were around the level of my son’s, who was 5 at the time. He told me getting convicted of murder was good because it gave him an opportunity to learn a lot of things. I asked him what he meant. He said, “You know, how to live on your own and things.”

In 2002 the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. You might think that would have ended the execution of the mentally retarded, but you would be wrong.

Why? Because Texas executes the mentally retarded anyway, and the federal courts don’t seem to care. In a 2004 decision the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a decision called Ex parte Briseno, which basically said it is OK to execute people who are mentally retarded, so long as their retardation is “mild.” That is not what the Supreme Court said in Atkins. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of what the Supreme Court said. Without putting too fine a point on it, doing the opposite of what the Supreme Court says is what is known as being lawless. Which raises the question: If you do something over and over again, and court after court appears not to care, is it still lawless?

Let’s not dance on the head of that pin just yet. Instead, some background: Wilson’s legal team, which included five lawyers as well as five law students from the University of Houston, where I teach, asked both state and federal courts to halt his execution. We had several arguments, but the one incontestable proposition was that Wilson was mentally retarded. Five IQ tests and testimony from numerous witnesses proved it. During the state court litigation, the only psychological expert to express an opinion testified that he was retarded. The state neither undermined his testimony nor had its own expert dispute that claim. So if the Supreme Court says you cannot executed the mentally retarded, and the only expert to testify says Marvin Wilson was retarded, how is it possible he got executed? Welcome to Texas!

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Of Africa’s complexities, war’s disaster and more from a Maryknoll Missionary/ Saint (Women We Love Div.)

Posted in Uncategorized on August 11, 2012| 2 Comments »

The war years left a mark on me that I’m still trying to come to terms with. The age-old questions of evil and the suffering of the innocent are never so boldly shouted, I think, as in situations of war. I cannot fathom how, in 2012, after centuries of war, genocide and mass murder, modern cultures cannot come up with another way of resolving conflicts. I don’t think you ever get over seeing innocent children maimed and killed by war and the effects of war. After that experience, I had to return to the U.S. to try to somehow come to terms with it all and make some semblance of “recovery” from it.

—- Marj Humphrey, Maryknoll Missionary on her years in The Sudan

MARYKNOLL MISSIONARY AND FORMER CATHOLIC WORKER MARJ HUMPHREY HAS BEEN DOING GOD’S WORK FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS, OFTEN IN SOME EXTREMELY DANGEROUS PLACES IN THE WORLD. ONE OF HER FAITH HEROES WAS DOROTHY DAY, WHO OF COURSE IS ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE BLAWGER’S FAITH HEROES. SEE INTERVIEW WITH HUMPHREY IN WHICH SHE WAXES WISE ON THE COMPLEXITIES OF AFRICA, WAR’S DISASTER AND MORE.

What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions . . .

by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute…

we can to a certain extent change the world;
we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy
and peace in a harried world. We can throw
our pebble in the pond and be confident
that its ever widening circle will reach
around the world.

— Dorothy Day, Love is the Measure


As one who considers Dorothy Day one of his faith heroes, I’m always reading articles about, and articles and essays and books authored by, the Catholic Workers or CW alums.

I have friends who are now or who have been Catholic Workers, and once spent a Christmas holiday week at the CW House in Houston for an article I wrote for a Christian publication.

At some point a few years ago I read something about the work that the Maryknoll missionary Marj Humphrey, who was a friend of Day, was doing as a physician’s assistant serving the poorest of the poor. So I was pleasantly surprised to come across an interview with her after being honored by Gonzaga University.

Here’s a few quotes from this courageous and committed Christian soldier (Christian Pacifism Div.) about the complexities of Africa, about war’s disaster and how kids with HIV helped her find healing in her own life.

Or, if you want to read the entire, quite interesting interview with her . . . .

click here for the whole enchilada.


INTERVIEWER: How would you sum up your 17 years in Africa?

HUMPHREY: I heard that a missionary in East Africa once said, “When you have been in Africa for a year, you can write a book. When you have been there five years, you can write a chapter, and when you have been there 15 years you struggle to even write a paragraph.” That is kind of where I am at with it. The longer you are there, the more complex you realize it all is, and you don’t even know where to begin in order to do justice to people there. “Africa” is a continent with more than 50 countries. The country of Kenya alone is home to 49 different tribes, each with its own language and culture. The Sudan, where I also served when that country was still embroiled in war, is huge, and very complex and tragic. Their more than 35-year civil war is often portrayed simply as a “holy war,” the Christian South against the Muslim North. But isn’t it really mostly about oil and greed and power? And within the Southern Sudan, there were multiple factions also fighting one another. There were atrocities by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) as well as the Khartoum government, like the forced conscription of 11- and 12-year-old boys into the army. One of our nurses had her 11- and 12-year-old sons taken out of their beds at night. Our area was also raided a number of times by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. They abducted some of the girls from our little mission school. The LRA was working with the Khartoum government at the time.

INTERVIEWER: That violence must have been terrifying.

HUMPHREY:
The war years left a mark on me that I’m still trying to come to terms with.

The age-old questions of evil and the suffering of the innocent are never so boldly shouted, I think, as in situations of war. I cannot fathom how, in 2012, after centuries of war, genocide and mass murder, modern cultures cannot come up with another way of resolving conflicts. I don’t think you ever get over seeing innocent children maimed and killed by war and the effects of war. After that experience, I had to return to the U.S. to try to somehow come to terms with it all and make some semblance of “recovery” from it. I was having terrible nightmares and [post-traumatic stress disorder]-like symptoms. Yet at the same time, I felt terribly guilty for leaving for a time. I was the privileged person who had choices and could leave. I remained in the U.S. for three years after the wartime experience, and then returned to Kenya.

INTERVIEWER: How were you able to go on?

HUMPHREY: Amazingly enough, it was children suffering with and dying from AIDS who healed me. Their courage and ability to love and enjoy life, in spite of tremendous personal suffering, really restored my hope and faith in humanity and God.

INTERVIEWER:What were the Africans’ gifts to you?

HUMPHREY:
They taught me many things — to laugh at myself and to be patient. There is a Swahili proverb, “Haraka haraka haina baraka,” literally meaning, “Hurrying things is not blessed.” They taught me to take things slowly, listen and spend time with people and answers to problems will come. Relationships are their primary value — relationships with family, friends, neighbors, one’s ancestors and with God.

We repeat, there is nothing that
we can do but love, and dear God,

please enlarge our hearts to love each other,

to love our neighbor,

to love our enemy as well as our friend.”

— Dorothy Day

DOROTHY DAY, WHO GAVE UP THE BOHEMIAN LIFE SHE SPENT WITH WRITERS AND ARTISTS LIKE EUGENE O’NEILL, CONVERTED TO CATHOLISM AND LEFT THE SOCIALIST PARTY (AND ALL POLITICAL PARTIES!) BEHIND TO DEVOTE HER LIFE TO SERVING THE POOREST OF THE POOR WITH “RADICAL LOVE” BY STARTING THE CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT.

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