Addiction to Violence

There is a sickness in the American culture—we are in love with violence.  It is not just a casual indulgence it is an obsession.  We love violence in any form (be it in the pursuit of the bad or the good).  We love it in our movies, TVs, video games and even in our music—most notably in rap.  We can see it in our love of sports—the more violent the better and football tops all.  A subtler lure to violence is an increasing interest in extreme sports that thrive on the desire to ‘push the envelope’ ever farther.

 Among so many Americans there is an open love affair with guns and any attempt to set reasonable controls meets with angry resistance.  Mass shootings have become so commonplace as to be part of today’s norm. 

The political process of our nation has become a circus of verbal violence with shouts and insults and foul language and bold lies.  It goes on because the public responds not with criticism of it but with eager attention to it.  It is an embarrassment before the world that the highest office in our land is negotiated in such a manner.

I seem to be saying, “the grass is green”—yes, everyone knows of these things, but do we treat the love of violence as a serious problem that needs attention?  It doesn’t ‘just happen’ we choose it!  We respond eagerly at its display whether it is in the films we watch or the sports events upon which we spend billions of dollars.  As a nation we refuse to face the gun issue in a rational way.  As a society we refuse to look in the mirror at ourselves and see the self-damage we inflict . . . like the drug addict and alcoholic we maintain there is no problem—refusing to acknowledge the evidence.

If we are striving to be leaders of the free world, we have an obligation to set a precedence of choosing attitudes and behaviors that enhance rather than diminish, to do that we must face our addiction to violence.

Ash Wednesday Reflection

Today is Ash Wednesday in traditional Christian religions.  People attend church services to receive a smudge of ashes on their forehead as a reminder of our human mortality—we will die one day and return to ashes.  This day marks the beginning of Lent, a time of fasting and sacrifice.  It is to remind us of the forty days Jesus spent in the desert fasting and preparing for his ministry.

I attended the 6:30 AM Mass, scheduled especially for those who have jobs to go to.  The church was moderately full, much as it is at the early Sunday Mass.  It put me in the thoughtful mood of considering how brief is our mortal existence and thinking too of what people have accomplished in all the years of those uncountable brief existences.

History looks back at time measured in decades, centuries and millenniums while physics and astronomy looks further back to the billions of years it took to form the universe.  In such terms, the less than 100 years allotted the average human pales to insignificance, less than a blip on the time scale—seemingly inconsequential.  Yet, here I am writing, and there you are reading this reflection.

We are given life, consciousness, and free will; the rest is up to us.  In our brief experience of existence we have the opportunity to shape a bit of life, be it just for ourselves, or our family or our workplace . . . or for some, to shape a bit of the future.  Humans are the only creatures with the ability to do that, all others must live with what is given, knowing only what is in front of them—they have no history, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy or art.  But humans have changed the face of the earth with boats, bridges and roads; with machines to carry us places—even into the sky!  We’ve discovered how to combine elements and formulate medicines to fight disease.  We transport food from far away places to have for our use what is ‘not is season’.  We’ve built houses and stadiums and theaters and cathedrals to enhance existence.  Our communication systems and devices now reach round the world in an instant.  We have books and TVs and DVDs to bring, at will, everything to our own little piece of the world.  Life is one ever unspooling thread that continually builds today upon what was discovered, developed, devised and invented yesterday and the evolution will continue from today into tomorrow and the future.

We don’t like to think too much about our mortality, but doing so can awaken us to appreciate what we so often take for granted.  Individually we have short lives but look what the human species has collectively brought forth from our creative ingenuity—the Bible says we are “created in the image of God”.  Everything beyond the earth we stand upon with the fruits it yields is the product of cooperative human effort directed toward a goal.  May we find the wisdom to choose worthy goals. 

Martin Luther King Day

2016,  MLK Day—I’m reading the classic book, Jesus and the Disinherited by the brilliant black theologian Howard Thurman whose work influenced King.  It reminded me of my blog of 11/27/14, ‘Ferguson’s Accomplishment’.  In it I stated the Ferguson event “desecrated the memory of MLK, a true black hero honored by all people regardless of race.  He emerged from a society much more deeply steeped in prejudice, yet he brought non-violent pressure to right the injustice of segregation.”

I stand by my statement that the Ferguson’s riots dishonor his memory.  It was clear that MLK stood on the side of a just cause; blacks were innocent victims of institutional prejudice, yet he led peaceful protests and the million-man-march never resorting to violence and brought about the desired change.  With Ferguson 'the right’ is less clear; there is blame on both sides . . . are the police ‘trigger happy’ when it comes to black youth?  I think it is clear that is true—yet that is not the only consideration . . . the function of a police force is to maintain order in society; their effectiveness requires that society respect and support their authority.  Over the past few decades a ferment of anger, disrespect and hatred grew among black youths against police.  That hatred was echoed in the rap-music of insults and calls to oppose police . . . ‘kill the pigs’.  The police, when their authority is not respected or supported, tighten their reactions against perceived violations.

I thought I understood the duel nature and shared blame for the violence in Ferguson but Thurman helped give me deeper understand of the disinherited people’s anger, he explained the why and how of it—I quote his book:

            Pg. 69:  “Hatred in the mind and spirit of the disinherited, is born out of great bitterness—a bitterness that is made possible by sustained resentment.”

            Pg. 70:  “your hatred gives you a sense of significance which you fling defiantly in the teeth of their estimate of you.”

            Pg. 72: “thus hatred becomes a device of which an individual seeks to protect himself against moral disintegration.” (the devaluation he sees in the eyes of the strong).

            Pg. 74:  “Every expression of intolerance, every attitude of meanness, every statute that limits and degrades, give further justification for life-negation on the part of the weak toward the strong.”

Thurman gives insight to the genesis of the anger and hatred that is found among the disinherited—but sees its true nature beyond the violence it births—

            Pg. 76:  “hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater.”

Martin Luther King heard Thurman’s message and understood its truth.  He refused to accept disinheritance and used the strength of truth and justice to wage his fight, winning the ear and respect of all who value justice.

We are still seeking the way to co-exist.  There are two roads to the future;    

--will we choose the way of Ferguson through hatred and violence?

--Or Thurman’s and King’s way through peaceful insistence upon what is right and just?

'Something'

[The author of the Christmas poem in my last blog is Ian Oliver and the poem is in the book, We Ask Your Blessings: 100 Prayers edited by Donald Shockley.  I did not find a way to contact Ian Oliver.]

        __

Today I grab a page from my journal of a few days ago:

                                                                          _ _ _

There is ‘something’ that gave rise to the Universe and Life.  We had come to call it God.  There were many ways to say God’s name, but whatever name was used, people were identifying the Creator of Life and the Universe.

Creator of the Universe?? . . . that is beyond our ability to grasp! . . . so we constructed images and/or ideas of what we thought God might be in order to try to give us understanding—but all our ideas led to false images because God IS beyond our understanding.  For thousands of years we have struggled with the concept of God, nailing him down tighter and tighter while arguing with, or denying, or warring with those whose images and ideas were different from our own.  Since the beginning of conscious thought we humans kept seeking the source of our being—until the modern era when we made such giant strides in Science and leaps in technology that we developed the arrogance to believe Our Intelligence is supreme—so there is no need for a god.  Little by little we eliminated the search for who or what God is and now believe we can do without ‘a god’ (God).  But without a Center to operate from we are gradually destroying the structures we built to guide us to sustainability in a chaotic fragmented understanding (or lack there of) of who and what we are.  We enthroned our selfhood, liberated our inhibitions, took restraint off our aggressions and so are destroying the civilization that was thousands of years in the making . . . instead of working to correct the flaws in our institutions the attitude is to rebel against them with protests loud and long to get what ‘we’ (our little group) wants because we’ve come to feel entitled to have our every need met with no consideration to ‘the All’ (the Greater Good) and the future.

Whoever/whatever ‘a god’ is, we need the values God represents to point the way to how we can live together on this tiny planet in this vast universe.

                                                                                                           

A Christmas Prayer

When I am in Florida in the winters, I attend a weekly group (about 20+) which begins with some Biblical readings, then goes on to discuss thoughts that the reading stimulates.  Our discussions range widely and sometimes become controversial, but we all enjoy them and feel enriched by the varied perspectives.   Last year at the meeting before the Christmas break we had a poem whose author was unknown, the group was awed by it and I now wish to share it.  If anyone recognizes it and can identify the author please let me know, I would love to give him or her credit. 

A Christmas Prayer

On that holy night,

Somehow,

It happened.

Somehow,

God took a handful of humanity:

Proud, petulant, passionate;

And a handful of divinity:

Undivided, inexpressible, incomprehensible:

And enclosed them in one small body.

Somehow, the all too human

Touched the divine,

And was not vaporized.

To be human was never the same,

But forever thereafter,

Carried a hint of its close encounter with the perfect.

And forever thereafter,

God was never the same,

But carried a hint of the passion of the mortal.

If God can lie down in a cattle-trough,

Is any object safe from transformation?

If peasant girls can be mothers to God,

Is any life safe from the invasion of the eternal?

If all this could happen, O God,

What places of darkness on our earth

Are pregnant with light waiting to be born this night?

If all this could happen, O God,

Then you could be, and are, anywhere, everywhere,

Waiting to be born this night in the most

Unbelievable places,

Perhaps even in our own hearts.

Amen

A New Millennium

In the 20th Century we stopped believing in what we mistakenly call God

      --our Santa Clause in the sky.

We had manufactured our own image of a fabricated deity

      --then, tiring of it, discarded the essence with the fantasy.

We became the existentialists who proclaimed

      defiant strength to embrace our aloneness.

With Nietzsche we tried to shape superman

      to march out and conquer the void,

            Armed with

                  Machiavelli’s politics

                  Adam Smith’s wealth

                  Ann Rand’s selfishness

                  and Hollywood’s morals

            We set out to build a brave new world

                  ...and got lost along the way.

Is God?

The question cannot be answered!

Yet whether or not there exists a cogent being of Spirit,

The God-concept embodies all goodness and truth

      which we need to make life worth living.

When we stopped believing in God

      we turned away from

      values, purpose, meaning –

      all that we most need

      to become fully human.

In this new millennium, where is modern man to look

to avoid constructing another illusionary god?

A  bigger god, God of the Universe

Can we learn to embrace Mystery and not demand an image?

                             --I AM, Life IS--

The Wisdom literature of all peoples contain words that search the dark
     ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God’.