I-YOUniverse

Gordon Atkinson’s comment at CCblogs on my piece Requiem for Cannibals prompts me to write about homophobia, the church, and me.

A prayer for healing

A couple decades ago the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond offered a service for healing at which unidentified people who were gay and HIV+ or living with AIDS assisted. If you wished, you could receive anointing and prayer for healing. I was anointed and prayed to be healed of my homophobia, which flared up in my training to be a pastoral counselor.

 About then, a Southern Baptist Convention president announced in San Francisco that AIDS was God’s judgment on homosexuals. Of course, most people don’t know that in Baptist polity, rightly construed, he was speaking for himself alone.

I felt I must do something. So I began volunteering with the local AIDS ministry. In those days we still didn’t know much about how the disease was spread; antiviral cocktails hadn’t been discovered yet.

(Although this is about 20 years ago, I am not disclosing identifying details about clients or volunteers.)

Panic up close and personal

The training I received in a neighborhood Episcopal parish house was glorious. I met vibrant Christians who were really making a difference. Sunlight literally bathed the room.

But nothing prepared me for my first visit. On the living room wall was the large family portrait like they take for church directories: a vigorous healthy young minister in all his pastoral dignity, his beaming wife, and two-year-old daughter. When I met him, however, he lay on the bed, weighing less than 100 pounds. Half conscious, he rolled about, crying out, “Lord, have mercy! Have mercy!”

I used up my latex gloves changing his diapers. When I wrongly fed him a bit of cheese, he choked. I had to reach my unprotected hand into his mouth to remove the cheese. Of course, now we know that, although dumb, that action is not as life-threatening as it felt.

I drove home, and succumbed to a panic attack.

The prodigal Sonny

I decided, given my own physical challenges, to volunteer in an AIDS hospice rather than in private homes. My client now was a 6′4″ skinny 20-something man with a sunny smile, so let’s call him Sonny. I met him once a week for a couple years.

When His Baptist family of birth ejected him because of his addictions and attendant problems, Sonny learned to survive on the street. His vocabulary, however, was better than mine. I quickly learned to trust Sonny to use all his survival skills at all times. He knew how to direct my guilt symphony with the expertise of a Leonard Bernstein.

I had to stop seeing Sonny for my favorite pastime, spine surgery. But, when he was baptized by a Baptist pastor and received into the church, he called me to tell me. Shortly before his death, he enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast at home. His father gave him a key to the family home.  

I love Sonny. I miss him to this day.

For simplicity’s sake I’ll use “gay” as shorthand for “male homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered” persons.

 Entering into the church’s closet

While the church is wrangling about homosexuality, about one in ten of its members wrestles with core identity concerns about being gay. A much larger percentage love gay family members, co-workers or friends. Gay teens experience a much higher rate of depression, addiction, and suicide than other teens. Unlike minorities whose difference is visible, gay youth often feel utterly alone; they know no one like them. Church is the last place they dare go for help. Many media images of gays are unhealthy or destructive.

Several years after leaving a church, I got a phone call from a member. (Again, identifying details changed.) ”Can I come see you?” she said. The issue was her son’s being gay. After her own conversion, she lived totally for Jesus. She believed the Bible condemns homosexuals. But her son hurt so deeply. He rejected his homosexual nature, but could not change; he felt damned.

His mother called to ask me to share my understanding. She took it and studied the Bible intensively on her own. I passed on copies of Fr. John McNeill’s Taking a Chance on God and Walter Wink’s Homosexuality and the Christian Faith.

Frankly, I was dumbfounded. Years earlier, she was closed. Now, not having seen her for a long time, I found her heart tender and open to her son’s suffering. The seed God’s Spirit had hidden in the soil of her heart, after long dormancy, had germinated.

After walking away from—where to turn to

A third instance, more recent. Homosexuality was the headline everywhere. When my Sunday School class asked me to teach what the Bible says about homosexuals, I did. The pastor told me to stick to the safe parts of the Bible; instead, I walked away. I should have done it sooner, more simply. People have a right to their beliefs; I, however, will never again be involved in a church that does not expressly welcome gay people.

You’ll find whispers of openness (often more powerful than shouts) on my blog. From day one, I described e-thou encounter (precursor to I-YOUniverse) as a welcoming affirming space. Those words describe Baptist churches who welcome gay members (go here: http://www.wabaptists.org/.) 

On the side bar is a link to What We Wish We’d Known, a fabulous resource nicknamed The Blue Book compiled by caring friends, here: http://www.pcmk.org/Blue_Book_V5.pdf.

Other resources can be found at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, here: http://www.bpfna.org/.

I never thought my post about enduring schism and living to tell the tale might covertly endorse the fear and hatred of people who are lesbian, gay, transgendered or bisexual.

Fighting is not the best way. Use your good energies to make a difference. If you can’t agree, walk away. Shake the dust off your feet. Put the church assets in God’s hands, and walk away.

What Paul did

One biblical model is how Paul dealt with Hebrew-Greek racism:

When [the legalist faction] opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue.

Acts 18:6-7 (NRSV)

In taking up the Collection for the poor of Jerusalem, he continued throughout his life to reach out to those who excluded themselves (Rom. 15.26-27).

Where I am now and here

Concerning this phobia (like all the others), still I have miles to go. But it’s way past time for followers of Christ like me to get up off our assertions and

reach out to,
learn about,
get acquainted with,
invite home for dinner,
celebrate the weddings and anniversaries of,
share the heartbreak of,
be politically active on behalf of

gay people, black people, Hispanic people, undocumented immigrant people, Jewish people, Muslim people—

 WHOSOEVER’s a pretty big group of people—

It’s way past time for followers of Jesus to be and to do everything, anything you do when you’re for real.

It’s freaky (at least some people will think so) to make friends with the dead. You could say that’s what I’ve been doing over the past few months, reading up on Charlie Andrews (1871-1940), friend of Gandhi, British missionary and consultant at large on problems of race and labor relations in India, Africa, the South Pacific, and South America.

He has so much to teach us.

Missionary with an Unusual Vision

His father belonged to a Christian cult characterized by speaking in tongues and keen anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ, but Charlie studied at Cambridge with some of the best biblical scholars of the age. Knowing the critical study of scripture, he chose to go into the Anglican ministry.

But even early on, phrases in the creed about the damnation of the lost troubled him deeply.

He went to India, where he taught at St. Stephen’s College. He had a deeply caring nature, and found himself welcome in corridors of British power as well as the hearts of Indian colleagues and the lowliest of Untouchables. He pressed the college to elect an Indian president, rather than an English one.

He became an early ally and lifelong friend of Mohandas Gandhi, spending time in his South African ashram. Charlie wrote several books introducing Gandhi to the West.

Facing the Problem of Racism

The issue of race prejudice troubled him deeply, whether in India, Africa or the United States. He found himself identifying strongly with the Indian people, eventually leaving his mission appointment, a decision he explained like this:

It was the inner moral beauty of India, which I was seeking to know at first hand. I could see it and almost grasp it. Sometimes I could instinctively recognize it in human faces I met. But at Delhi [seat of government and of St. Stephen's College, where Andrews taught] I could never fully comprehend it. There I was in constant revolt against the narrowness of government control of education: I was also in revolt against much that has rightly been called “foreign mission work.” For I had no wish to be “foreign” any longer; rather, I longed to be bound up with the life of India in every respect. If I were to find Christ truly in India as the Son of man, then I must live and move among the people of India as one of themselves, and not as an alien and a foreigner.

C.F. Andrews, What I Owe to Christ (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1932), p. 241.

Ministry of the Written Word

During the 1930s Charlie continued to be a negotiator, teacher and writer while living in England and in India at Santiniketan “Abode of Peace” the ashram of his friend the poet Rabindranath Tagore (who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature for his poem Gitanjali). Among many other books, articles and pamphletts, Charlie wrote an account of his faith What I Owe to Christ, an exposition of John 13-17 entitled Christ in the Silence, of the Lord’s Prayer Christ and Prayer, and of The Sermon on the Mount.

He came to believe, as Tagore said, that the West had sold its ideals (to give just one example) in the scramble for Africa in the mid to late 1800s, and in the continuing war-lust and greed of the Great War and its aftermath (the buildup to World War II). He struggled against giving allegiance to the tribal god of parts of the Old Testament and instead gave his life to the universal Christ, who taught, “Love your enemies.”

I wonder what Charlie would think about the world situation today. Surely he would rejoice with India, as it stretches and grows, but I think he would worry that it may adopt Western practices of hurry and greed and lose its soul. He would without a doubt condemn the war in Iraq.

He Being Dead yet Speaketh

Jesus said, “[God] is the God not of the dead, but the living.” Henri Nouwen in his book Our Greatest Gift writes that at death our spirit is released from the local limits of the physical body, and is free to commune with those who love us. I’ve found this profoundly true with family members. I find it also true of those I read, like Charlie Andrews, whose life of love for friends, whole nations, and the world, continues to speak today.

I never take media storms at face value. Take, for instance, this controversy over Jeremiah Wright. 

His comments were inflammatory. His ministry has been remarkable, though. He is highly regarded by responsible leaders. What if you sweep aside the distortion of sound-byte reporting and statements made in the heat of accusation-innuendo and the glare of the 15-seconds-of-fame spotlight? What if he has something to say? What if, though you disagree with certain statements, you find truth in his overall message?

During my friend Jean-Emile Ngué’s visit we watched the film Gandhi. The independence of India through spiritual struggle is one of the great victories of the 20th century. I’m intrigued by the Anglican clergyman C.F. Andrews, who showed up in South Africa to support Gandhi. Few of the English supported racial equality.

How did this clergyman escape the racism of his age? How did he so effectively identify with the Indian people?

I believe in missions and in the contributions missionaries have made. Missionaries way too often proselytize, however, and make converts twice the children of  hell as themselves (Mt 23.15). I’ve come to believe we need to go meet Christ among the people we serve, for Christ is already there. Too often what we bring is our own narrow white North American consumer culture.

Especially today, although 9/11 has changed our welcome of international students, the best opportunity in missions we have is the international students here. Think of the impact we could have by adopting students in our churches. Many live on starvation rations. A home away from home, no strings attached, would constitute worthy service in itself as well as plant seeds of Christian compassion. If a thinly disguised program to evangelize, though, such an effort would be disingenuous and sure to fail. We need to leave the winning to God, and simply do the loving.

I recall visiting a lovely SBC church in Gary, Indiana. It had a commercial style kitchen, fellowship hall, sanctuary to seat 300. But only four people attended, and there were bullet holes in the windows. Why? I asked the local Baptist leader. He said, “The problem is, you have to be converted twice to get into our churches. First, you have to become a Southerner, then a Christian.”

The great issue we face (perhaps not the greatest, but close), is racism. So many churches demand converts to be white first. I cannot speak for black churches.

What’s required is for us as individuals, if churches will not, is to become part of the lives of people in our cities, which are not whites only, to care about the issues people care about, to offer unconditional love. I’m afraid what most of us love unconditionally is our comfortable lifestyle. We live in a balloon of white privilege.

I’m still poring over The Ordeal of Love: C.F. Andrews and India (NY: Oxford, 1979) by Hugh Tinker. I found a used copy on Amazon. I’ve also found the two volumes of his Christian witness What I Owe to Christ and Christ in the Silence, which I will be reading soon. I’ve also found a terrific site for liberation theology reading at Liberation Theology Resources Online.

At our house through DVDs we’re reliving The Waltons, the mythic story of a family in Appalachian Virginia during the great depression. Sandy brings dinner into the living room on wicker TV trays, and we settle in for a feel-good hour. OK, sure, the show rasps off all the rough edges.

But I can’t imagine too many shows today that would continue to feature a star after a stroke, as Waltons did Ellen Corby. On TCM I looked for her as a much younger woman in I Remember Mama; she got more beautiful as the years passed, especially the lovely shots of her in the Waltons reunion show, on Easter Sunday.

Last night, we made it through half of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had remembered the cute child “Short Run,” but even he couldn’t hold our attention. So we switched and watched a Waltons episode about the Revival Meeting.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Preacher

The evangelist arrives in town, demanding to go to the local den of iniquity. The preacher suggests the nearest they have is the Dew Drop Inn, which serves beer as Jason Walton pounds out country ballads on the upright piano. The evangelist blasts the patrons with the news that they’re going to hell, if they don’t come to his meeting and get saved.

Young Ben Walton happens to be there with ne’er do well Yancey Tucker. The outraged preacher sends him home.

John and Olivia are divided, John having never been a church-going man. He insists the children be let alone to make up their own minds. But the saved siblings tease those who are lost, particularly Ben. He asks why he should get baptized if Daddy never has.

Peacocks and Other Sinners

John does go to the meeting, but, as the preacher yells at the top of his lungs, John walks out, drenched in the rain. I can’t help wondering if that isn’t symbolic of John’s being a natural-born man of God, whose faith doesn’t express itself through ritual.

Each  episode seems to have a symbol parallel to the story. In this one the symbol is a peacock. Jim-Bob names it Rover; when he confines it to the barn so that it won’t fly off, it begins to lose its feathers. At last, persuaded he must let it go, he releases it and it roosts in the tree-house. There it cries through the night, until Jim-Bob goes outside to keep it company.

Maybe the subtext is that the church folk need to go outside the walls of the safe and familiar.

Seeing with an Outsider’s Eyes

Having given most of my life to the church and been baptized twice, I’m now seeing things more from John’s point of view.

American Christians have lost a lot of ground the past several decades, by throwing our weight around. I wonder if we will only reach people today “from below,” in Bonhoeffer’s words; outside the corridors of power, in the alleys with Mother Teresa, and on strike with the sanitation workers and Martin Luther King Jr.

As for the century, the Indian poet Tagore expressed it like this:

Alas, shadowy Africa,
Under your black veil
Your human aspect remained unknown,
Blurred by the murk of contempt….
You wailed wordlessly, muddied the soil of your steamy jungles
With blood and tears;
The hobnailed boots of your violators
Stuck gouts of that stinking mud
Forever on your stained history.

Meanwhile across the sea in their native parishes
Temple-bells summoned your conquerors to prayer…

“Africa,” by Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems, trans. William Radice, (NY: Penguin, 1985).

A Christian whose example we might follow is William Wilberforce, whose determined efforts led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. (His story is told in the 2006 film Amazing Grace.)

Hope of the Hopeless

Flipping through the channels, I heard one scientist say that we’re headed for another mass extinction like the one that occurred 65 million years ago. On CNN was a review of the documentary I.O.U.S.A., a serious look at the public debt, which will shackle our grandchildren.

I struggle to find hope. There are historical examples of civilizations that used up their resources, like the empire whose capital was Angkor Wat in Southeast Asia, or that destroyed themselves through warfare like the Mayan culture of Central America. Today the world is one culture. We live or die together.

“Is there any hope?” Pippin asked Gandalf, as they looked out over the destruction of the great City. “There never was much hope,” answers the old wizard, “just a fool’s hope.”

The poet of Lamentations, surveying in heart-breaking detail the razing of Jerusalem, found this reason to hope:

But this I call to mind,
     and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
     ”therefore I will hope in him.”
The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
     to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
     for the salvation of the LORD.

Lam 3:21-26 (NRSV)

Gandhi taught us that meaning abides in the struggle for, as well as the achievement of, our goals. If there was hope for the poet of Lamentations, surely on this side of the cross there is hope as well-even if, in the eyes of the world, it is just a fool’s hope.

I’m making good progress in LOTR. The orcs have Frodo in custody, Aragorn and the Dunedain have taken the paths of the dead, and the Rohirrim are about to ride. Sam reveals that Frodo bears the Ring to Faramir, Boromir’s younger brother and son of the Steward of Gondor, and (in the book) Faramir has no desire to take it for himself or his father, not if he found it lying on the road.

Inconsistent, as Tolkien’s critics charged? Not to me. Faramir is a pure soul; nothing in him is snared by false promises of power and domination. Temptation arises because something within answers the external call. “One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it” James 1:14 (NRSV).

Scapegoating

We keep tripping over the dynamic of projection, blaming others for our sins. It’s a strategy as old as Adam and as contemporary as 2008 presidential politics. It’s Eve’s fault Adam ate the apple. It’s illegal aliens who are wrecking the U.S. economy. I’ve never met a little green Martian; as far as I know there are no laws against them.

Hooray for California

Oh, speaking of projection. Imagine:

Two young MTV-watching kids go to their preacher. “We want to get married, be true to each other, forsaking all others, till death do us part,” they say.

“No way,” says the preacher.

“How come?” they ask.

“Everybody knows, gays aren’t monogamous,” the preacher replies, “and this isn’t California.”

I promise on a stack of Bibles to read

Speaking of temptation. My reading queue is getting quite long. I’m including it also as a text widget as a kind of self-discipline. Currently it includes:

• Anglo-Saxon Spirituality
• Julian of Norwich (in the Classics of Western Spirituality series)
• Selected Poems of Tagore
• Prayers of Tagore, ed. Vetter
• WordPress for Dummies
• Not yet delivered: Ordeal of Love: C. F. Andrews and India, Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods

Reading is what I do, mostly. Without it, this chair I spend my days in would be a prison. And I have few temptations stronger than amazon.com in my repertoire.

What are they?

Never mind.

I’m doing my annual read of Lord of the Rings, a myth of war.

Soldiers of Peace?

As much as I love Tolkien, I realize

(1) he wrote when his city was being bombed by the Germans and his son was in the military.
(2) He was a veteran of World War I.
(3) He wrote from the Germanic tradition that glorifies the war hero, depicting Jesus as a hero who leaped onto the cross as to a battle.

For example, take these lines from Dream of the Rood, one of the oldest poems in English:

The young hero stripped himself–he, God Almighty–
strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,
bold before many, when he would loose mankind.

(ll. 39-41)

A Tradition Explolited

More than to Boromir, the elder brother, I’m drawn to Faramir, the younger brother, who longed for peace. He said:

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.

LOTR, 1994, p. 656

In the past the desperate straits of war often called forth human response at its best. Civilians worked long hours, sacrificed for the common good. Soldiers gave their lives to defend home and loved ones, and ideals such as freedom. Today it’s still true some individuals offer their very best in time of war.

Politicians and corporations exploit this tradition of honor and valor.

Mass Destruction in a Bottle

Today is different. The capacity to destroy the earth lies within reach of small groups as well as nations. All the progress of science will be weighed against the development of weapons of mass destruction including weaponized gases and viruses, which can be transported in small bottles. The good accomplished by warfare will be obliterated along with everything else by its indiscriminate violence.

History will judge as a grave error the decision to treat the attack on the World Trade Center as an act of war rather than as a crime. Once we responded with violence, with our own WMD, we became the aggressors, the destroyers; the terrorists became defenders of their homes, their culture, their religion.

A Corporate Shell Game?

The war on Iraq is more about economics, oil, than ideals. It’s about the military-industrial complex. It would be interesting to analyze corporate bottom lines in relation to the cost of war and so-called aid to Iraq, the development of its infrastructure, schools, hospitals. I believe the incredible sums of our children’s and grandchildren’s money we are spending are chiefly going to corporations.

I also keep asking who benefits from keeping the world’s second largest oil reserve off-line?

Is Violence a Vestige?

Violence is a vestige of our evolutionary past. Dictionary.com defines “vestige” as:

a degenerate or imperfectly developed organ or structure that has little or no utility, but that in an earlier stage of the individual or in preceding evolutionary forms of the organism performed a useful function.

Viewing footage of sheep or rhinos or other male animals rutting, competing for the right to mate, you see that violence once served to select out the healthiest, strongest, and most adept individuals to contribute to the gene pool of the species. But we humans don’t determine individual rights based on brute force. (At least, most of us don’t.)

The Courage of a Non-Violent Future

It takes more courage to put down your weapon and fight using non-violent resistance. Yet Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. both demonstrated that non-violence is more persuasive than any weapon. Non-violent resistance is not passive, it is not weak. It takes all the courage, wit, and will humans can muster.

In the coming Presidential election, Americans face a daunting choice. John McCain stands in the tradition of military force. He is honorable, though his temper could have deadly consequences if it had the world’s strongest military at his command.

Barack Obama represents the future. Much of the world identifies with him. He would be the first person of color to hold the office of President. But, more important, he voted against the war. He can demonstrate to the world that this war is not the American people’s war, but the war of a business and political elite, perhaps even the war of America’s enemies seeking to run the U.S. financially into the ground.

Not a bad strategy. You explode an IED that cost a few hundred dollars. Americans respond with weapons that cost tens of millions each. Before long, that amounts to quite a tab.

And even one life (on any side) is one too many.

A New Species?

Jesus never fought in war. His saying about bringing not peace but a sword cannot be used to justify war.

I believe that, in Jesus (yes, uniquely Son of God) and a few others, a new species is evolving, whom I call Homo spiritus, a species whose strength lies in the spiritual capacity to love and be loved, especially in the sense of agape love, and especially in the case of loving those whom it’s not easy or “natural” to love.

We have reached a turning point in human history, in fact in the history of all life on the planet. We will either learn to live together in peace, mutual respect, and cooperation, solving together the immense problems that we face, or we will die.

Unlike the dinosaurs, we still have a choice.

My friend is gone, the house is still, I’ve slept around the clock almost twice. How Sandy, who resumed 10 hour days Wednesday, manages I don’t know. I hoped to write about his stay, but like an Orthodox Jew on Temple Mount not knowing precisely where the Holy of Holies is, I choose not to walk anywhere.

I think of these lines from Stephen King’s Rita Haworth and the Shawshank Redemption (an incredible piece):

We’re glad he’s gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

We spent the last couple nights at the movies: Gandhi and Pope John Paul II. I agree with Gandhi’s statement, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

Invisible Violence

I am convinced that one of my and the Western church’s chief sins is materialism. We’ve had several Enlightened Ones now, Gandhi and Mother Teresa, and others who have shown us that God empowers the poor to change the world.

There are 9-11 massacres happening every day among nameless millions who lack food, water, vitamins, shoes, childhood inoculations. But they are invisible, they are institutional. Nobody sets out to harm them. They just fall to the side because of globalization policies that give preferential terms to the wealthy.

We do not realize when we shop for the cheapest price we are perpetuating child labor; when we buy multinational brands we enable employers who pay less than a living wage for commodities like coffee, while drug lords pay handsomely for the drug-makings that poison our streets.

I feel so damned helpless.

Learning to See

I am fascinated by Charles Freer Andrews, the Anglican clergyman who spotted Gandhi early on and quickly allied with him. How did he see differently from other Christians? I’ll be commenting on his biography in awhile.

(I’m half through three or four books: The Life of Dialogue, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality, Sadhana: The Realization of Life, by Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate, friend of Gandhi, an overview of one kind of Hinduism, a religion I’ve never understood.)

Sick of Religion

We had a get together of my wife’s relatives, some of the best people on the face of the planet. And as we usually do, our conversation turned to the Southern Baptist history of the last 30 years, much of which is written in our families’ sweat and blood. But my son left the room. After awhile I went to find him.

He said, “Dad, I’m sick of religion. I’m not interested in religion, it’s not my thing.” He no longer goes to church, although we raised him to. In that moment I got a glimpse of myself. This is what my sectarianism has done! God, have mercy!

Mid-Year Milestones

Tonight we’re celebrating my son’s birthday, bringing in meals from Outback. Sunday will be Mother’s Day, then wedding anniversary and our birthdays, all bunched up in the middle of the year.

But I’ll have to punch my way through this damned depression to do all that. Writing is the last thing I want to do. I’m out of pain meds until next week sometime, and pain hovers at 5 or 6 or more. Not only that, I’m depressed as hell.

Every human being has the right to basic health care. We need national health insurance in the U.S.

Until I went on full disability, my health insurance cost $17,000 per year, not including $1000s for copays. My wife’s health care coverage, without which she would die, will cost $30,000 next year, not including $1000s for copays.

And we are “lucky” to be able to get insurance at all. My wife is in a group of four. When I was an SBC pastor, in a group of 36,000, we couldn’t get health insurance for her.

When Walmart and GM realize they can make billions more by shifting health insurance to the government, things will change. Or when 200 million people can’t get coverage.

We wrestle against principalities and powers, spiritual wickedness in high places.

Dust blows in every crevice, grit sifts into your boots, through every piece of clothing next to your skin, your lips, your nostrils, cakes around the rim of your protective goggles. Who wants this god-forsaken country? Why the hell fight over this?

The rifle slung over your shoulder, the tension in each step because it could be your last if you trigger a land mine, the profane chatter of your buddies, however, assure you: it’s real. This dust is fought for. Somebody calls it home.

Just not you.

And the interstate north of town, the A&W where every car in the county ends up after Friday night ball games, the green fields of corn and soybeans, the white steeple church where you learned Bible verses by heart for bookmarks, the smile of your sweetheart, the tears of your Dad, and Mom’s Sunday roast beef and mashed potatoes-all shimmer, a mirage beyond your fingertips.

You think sometimes you’ll never get home again. But you deep six that thought. You’re gonna make it. Death, dismemberment, is somebody else’s fate, not yours.

You’re gonna make it.

Maybe the hardest thing, though, is how most people back home don’t notice you’re here, so very far from home. Preoccupied with the price of gas, the mortgage, the race for the White House, what Brittany Spears is going through, they scarcely even realize you’re putting your life on the line every damn minute for them.

Brian Williams announces five, ten more Americans killed in the war (not to mention uncounted Iraqis, Afghanis). “Honey, what do you want to drink with supper?” somebody asks.

Far from home.

Far from hearts that beat a little faster when the national anthem is played, that believe in what this country stands for-freedom-believe enough to give their life for the guy fighting beside them.

The big debate, WMD, how many 100s of billions of dollars spent-it costs the arm and leg of one amputee, the life of one who planned to go to college or work in a factory or raise kids. That’s what it costs, ten thousand times over. The big debate is irrelevant out here where the dust blows into every hole, and longing for home wells up in every silence.

Far from home is where you discover the high cost of the war, one heart at a time.

Yet, in each beating heart here is home. Such courage, devotion, and steel of commitment no matter what is the very best any human being is capable of.

The RCL Epistle for the 5^TH Sunday of Easter is 1 Peter 2.2-10.

Hatchlings

Once a little bird made a nest of sea grass near the beach, and laid her eggs there. But a hawk came along. The little bird hopped away, fluttering her wing, to distract from the nest, and she never came back.

Near the same place an old sea turtle had crawled ashore, dug in the sand, and laid her clutch of eggs. Then she covered them up and crawled back to the sea.

One moonlit night the eggs hatched. The little turtles began skittering to the water, rushing for dear life. A chick, the only one who chipped his way out of the shell, watched from the bird’s nest. “What are you doing?”

A baby turtle paused long enough to say, “Hurry! Into the water! The birds will eat you! You’ll only be safe in the water! ”

So the chick raced with all the little turtles into the foaming tide.

The Sea Bird

He grew into a beautiful gray sea bird. Eating worms and insects mostly, he made a nest in a tangle of reeds that grew in a marsh near the ocean.

The bird enjoyed the water. He loved to dive.

Water or Air?

Sometimes he watched the gulls and other birds that not only lived near the water. They also flew. A strange longing filled his heart.

But he kept hearing what the baby turtle said, “The birds will eat you! You’ll only be safe in the water.”

When he talked to the fish, they all agreed. The water is where life is meant to be. The air is unnatural, dangerous.

All his friends lived in the water. For them the air was an unknown realm of fear and danger.

Yet, in quiet moments, all alone, the sea bird felt a terrifying urge to fly.

The Old Turtle

Once, an old turtle crawled up on the beach near the gray bird’s nest. It sat still as stone, sunning itself in the hot sun.

The bird hopped near, but not so near that he couldn’t hop out of reach if the old turtle decided to make a snack of him.

“I knew some babies who’ll grow up like you,” the bird said, trying to think of something pleasant.

The old turtle opened one eye and stared at him.

“We hatched together, right there on the beach.”

The old turtle did not move or speak or even breathe, as far as the bird could tell. But it didn’t close its eye, either.

The bird kept talking, mostly because he was nervous. “They saved my life, you know,” he said.

The old turtle thought it had never heard anything so ridiculous. At least, the bird thought the silent old turtle thought that.

“They told me to stay in the water, or else the birds would eat me.”

What the Old Turtle Said

The gray bird wondered if the old turtle was paying any attention to him at all.

“So I stay in the water, where I’m safe from the birds,” the bird said, “well, most of the time, I do, that is. I like to swim on the surface, and there’s a quiet pool near here where I go hunting insects and worms.”

He was so nervous he just kept chattering, and the old turtle never closed its eye.

“I wish I could dive deep into the sea, like the fish and the turtles do. Of course, the sky is beautiful, light and breezy. If only birds weren’t so vicious and mean.”

He finally ran out of things to say. The old turtle just looked at him.

Then, in a cranky voice, it said, “You’re a bird.” And it dragged its great shell into the water and slowly swam out of sight.

A Bird? Him?

A bird? Him?

The small gray bird couldn’t believe what he heard. Birds snapped up baby turtles. They swooped from the sky to catch fish. Everyone was afraid of the birds.

Days passed, nights went by.

The bird couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. How could it be true? A bird? Him?

What the Deeper Voice Said

Actually, inside he heard another Voice, deeper than the fear. It said, “Fly!”

All he could think of is the advice of his fish friends, “You must never fly. People with fins, normal people, don’t fly.”

Still, at night, when all was silent but the roar of the waves crashing on the shore, the small bird heard the Voice, calling, “Fly!”

He tried stretching his wings. Oh! He’d never felt anything like that before.

Then, he dashed along the wet sand, spread his wings, and hopped. He landed with an embarrassing smash.

Night after night he practiced, being careful not to let anyone know what he was doing.

The Voice within grew stronger and stronger. “Fly! Fly!”

The Main Thing

By now, the bird felt torn apart. He didn’t know who he was. No one ever taught him to pray. He sighed and wondered if he was the only one who had ever felt like this.

You’re the only one! whispered a voice. It had a fish sound.

The bird had always tried to do what’s right. He didn’t know it, but the main thing in his life was love.

He loved the breeze whispering in the reeds. He loved the way the waves looked in the moonlight. He loved the fish and the turtles, the crabs and all the creatures on the beach.

He never hurt any of them. Except worms, which he ate, of course. What else could worms be for?

At the Edge of the Cliff

One night there was no moon. The bird hopped to the top of a cliff he had often seen from his nest among the reeds.

I don’t know what he had in mind, in going there. He was so sad, so confused. Anyone that wanted to fly in the air must be a monster, he believed.

Perhaps it would be better not to be alive.

The small bird trembled at the edge, looking down at his world: the beach, the waves, and far out the sea, calm and dark.

“Birds are vicious,” he thought. The fish and baby turtles were right. “I don’t want to be like that.”

First Flight

There came a strong breath of wind, launching the bird from the cliff.

At first he simply fell, carried by the air current. Then, without thinking, he stretched his wings, as he had done so many times secretly on the beach.

He was flying!

Now the Voice inside said, Fly, Bird! Fly!

He felt such joy! He didn’t know anything like it could be possible.

Far below, in the water, the fish looked up.

What the Fish Saw

“Will you look at that!” they said to each other.

Because they knew the bird. They’d often chatted with him as he floated on the surface of the water. They’d never actually known a bird before.

The bird himself was never the same, although his life went on, much as it always had.

Except for the time he spent in the air!