bloomingcactus

Irish Peace Activists Found Not Guilty

The "Pitstop Ploughshares" were charged in 2003 after disabling a US Navy plane bound for the Gulf at Shannon airport.  The five defendants protested that Ireland was a neutral country and should not allow US warplanes to pitstop on the way to Iraq.  Exerts from the defense attourney were posted at Commondreams.org and are worth reading:

"The final summations of each defense counsel urged jurors not only to ask whether the defendants were right to take action, but also ask why it is that the rest of us haven't acted. Mr. Nix, praised by the prosecutor as "the last of the great orators," noted that the prosecutor had characterized the action of the defendants "political" as if that were a bad thing. "I'll tell you of someone who made a great political speech," said Mr. Nix, "the greatest political speech of all time and that's Jesus Christ." He went on to quote the Sermon on the Mount to the jury. I could hear the pencils stop scratching, see the jaws drop all around the courtroom. It was an awe-inspiring moment. The shock was yet to come.

Mr. Nix told us he had recently been in a park where he'd listened to children laugh and shout as they happily chased ducks and each other around on the green grass. He thought a sound of universal happiness must be the sound of children playing.

But now his tone darkened. "Now Lebanon is burning," he thundered. "Today, children swimming in a pool were bombed. A swimming pool is now filled with burning children. This is war."

He concluded, " What will rise you to action?"  Perhaps we are all on trial as this war spreads.
For more on the Pitstop Ploughshares see Peace on Trial.

NY Times Ignores Anti-War Position at WCC

Hello everyone. Sorry I have missed my lectionary posts for a couple of weeks. I hope to get back on track for Lent with a series on Victor Frankl and the problem of suffering.  Meanwhile, I have just a few quick words about how the New York Times covers religion.   The Times has consistently ignored Christian statements against the war in Iraq while Pat Robertson keeps making the front page with any ridiculous thing that comes to mind, whether it means assassinating Chile's President or proclaiming that God caused Sharon's heartattack as punishment for moving settlers out of Gaza.  Why has the NY Times chosen to focus on this headline:

Conflicts Cited at Christian Conference

and this one:

Orthodox Ties to Catholics Seen as Vital 

instead of this one:

Church Alliance:  Washington is 'Raining Down Terror' with Iraq War

10 Political Christmas Wishes

The busyness of the Christmas season overtook me, so I wish everyone a belated "Merry Christmas."  I ran across this interesting article by Bob Burnett at Commondreams.org about his "Political Christmas Wishes."  It worth a read, especially wish #3:

Convert to Christianity, George Bush. Abandon the fundamentalist pabulum you've been spouting - the "Weekly Reader" summary of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations. Read the Gospels. Pay attention to the teachings of Jesus: The admonition to tell the truth. Not to murder. To care for the poor. Step into the light, George. Before it's too late for you to save your soul.

Wow!  That's really putting it out there.  Its almost as radical as the Magnificat.  While such a statement might sound way over the top from most pulpits, I wonder if it is more hopeful and faithful than more moderate questioning.  Embedded in in the political radicalism is a belief that people can change and experience a conversion.  It is easy to scoff like Jonah that Nineveh will never change.  If we let George Bush off the hook from our pulpits for condoning torture, violating civil rights and denying justice to the poor, have we given up on his soul?  If we are afraid to speak out to our congregations, have we given up on their souls as well?  I understand that we are not all called to be rabble rousing prophets, but I think every good preacher knows how to put tough issues before the flock. 

I'd like to here from some of you.  How are you addressing the prophetic challenges of preaching these days?  Most of my preaching had been in a congregation that was probably half Democrat and half Republican.  How do we handle the challenges of preaching truth in a politically divided congregation?

bloomingcactus

Bill Moyers for President!

A grass roots group is starting up a petition to draft Bill Moyers, formerly of Public Television (before they took on Walmart as a sponsor), to run for President.  Bill Moyers has always been an inspirational voice in my life.  I loved his work on "The Power of Myth" with Joseph Campbell, and his great interviews and books like "Listening to America."   Since then he has been the best orator and champion of democracy I have heard in this nation.  Just read his keynote address to the National Conference on Media Reform or his Take Back America speech from 2003.  Whether he runs for president or not, it would send a clear message and maybe shake up the Democratic Party a little bit.  The group is trying to get 100,000 signatures by January 1, 2006.  Take a minute a click on this link, www.billmoyersforpresident.org/.  I get about 1,000 readers a week, so if you all take 30 seconds, we can be 1 percent of the needed signatures.

The Real Way to Take Back Christmas?

Every year I have a “Christmas rant” about the excess of materialism, usually somewhere around the 3^rd or 4^th Sunday of Advent. I have tried very hard to not give in this year. When I heard people were paying $5000 on EBay for the new Xbox, I shrugged it off as this year’s craze toy in the grand tradition of Tickle-Me-Elmo and Cabbage Patch Dolls. No need to rant, it happens every year. When I read that an electronics company has developed a Bluetooth ski jacket that acts as a receiver so snow boarders can talk on their cell phone and listen to MP3 music while thundering down the slope, I did some deep breathing exercises and after a few minutes decided it was a cool idea and maybe not to over the top decadent. At least there are other minds working on noble causes like cures for cancer and third world poverty, right?

 

Pearl Harbor Day

Today is Pearl Harbor day and I would hardly remember "the day that will live in infamy" if it were not in the fine print of my calendar.  Normally I would not think that Pearl Harbor Day and Advent had anything in common, but I bumped into an article at commondreams.org today that made me wonder if Pearl Harbor still has some grasp on us and how we veiw continued threats to our security, such as Al-Queda and the 9/11 attacks.  Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote an interesting peice comparing Eisenhower's vision of America and Martin Luther King's dream of a "Beloved Community."  Chernus believes that Eisenhower's view has led us to create a "national insecurity state" which he describes as follows:

"The best to hope for was to contain and manage apocalyptic dangers, to practice what can best be called apocalypse management. As long as he could manage every apocalyptic threat, he would consider the “free world” victorious and the whole world at peace. Seeing the world as an arena of endless conflict and threat, Ike could not help fearing that any significant change in the world situation might spark apocalyptic change. It seemed so much safer to keep the wall of containment firm, to prevent any significant change at all. The practice of apocalypse management made peace and freedom equivalent to preserving the status quo."  (Full article at commondreams.org)

Creationism Backfires at Tulsa Zoo

I knew this would happen sooner or later.  Creationists would push the topic too far and some group would request that all creation myths be taught in school.  As yesterday's NY Times notes, this happened first at an exhibit in the Tulsa zoo.  I think it would actually be a good idea to teach multiple creation myths at school, to see how a wide variety of cultures make sense of human life.  It is inspiring to me to see how the biblical account borrowed the Babylonian Ennuma Elish and shaped a myth of domination into a story of how God affirms the world and all within it as good.  It expresses the great hope of a people in exile who can still believe the universe is in the hands of a good and benevolent God even though they are suffering in oppression.  That seems more relevant to me than how many days it took God to make the world.  Read on...Blooming Cactus

It's All Happening at the Tulsa Zoo

New York Times Editorial Page, Published July 10, 2005

Christian creationists won too much of a victory for their own good in Tulsa, where the local zoo was ordered to balance its evolution science exhibit with a display extolling the Genesis account of God's creating the universe from nothing in six days. A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism.

After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world's multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa.

You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P'an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow?

The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora's box (which see). In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration.

Second thoughts are a creative characteristic of Homo sapiens, and the Tulsa Zoo directors did well by theirs. They were fortunate to have Ganesh, known to true believers as the remover of obstacles and the god of harmony, on the grounds.