Other People's Storms
The last few days have been very pleasant. Hurricane Rita spun out a few calling cards, and they were welcome indeed. The stifling heat of a Florida summer was broken by brisk breezes and cloud cover. The recent drought gave way to small, contained summer storms. A few weeks ago, Hurricane Katrina tossed over similar greetings: enough wind to convey a frisson of anticipation, a bit of rain to keep the plants healthy, some dramatic waves. The waters poured over our main highway, our sorely battered shore line gave way to a storm surge yet again; but in the main, Katrina as experienced in the Florida Panhandle, provided an unexpected break from daily chores and stress.
For us, this has been a year of other people’s storms (with the exception of Hurricane Dennis, which was a pretty profound exception). Were it possible to turn a blind eye to the death and destruction just out of view, we could easily consider hurricanes and other tropical storms to be a pleasant diversion from routine.
Other people’s storms are the metaphor for our time. Most of us in the middle class are just a few latitudinal degrees away from disaster, but as long as the storms (whether they are related to health, economics, or meteorology) keep just to the east or west of us, we can feel insulated and protected. We don’t have to worry about the consequences of our actions, or see the bleakness of despair in the eyes of our neighbors. We can heave a sigh of relief: thank God our child didn’t get cancer, or our job didn’t get out-sourced overseas; or our house didn’t turn out to have been built in a flood plain after all. We take stock of our personal lives, find we’re okay, perhaps send a few dollars to the Red Cross, and move on.
We need to realize that other people’s storms are, indeed, our storms as well. We pledge allegiance to the concept of one nation, “with justice for all,” but social justice is a hollow term today. Economic inequality is staggering enough to be a threat to the nation. While the top half of one percent rakes in obscene wealth, 34% of the population experiences poverty for at least two months every two years. As we move to a service economy, few corporations offer living wages. Our educational system slides ever more quickly into inadequacy. We continue to stand aside and let our environment be plundered and pillaged for the good of the few, and the nightmare of the many.
We cannot take too much solace in our isolation from this year’s storms. Storms of all kinds are brewing, and all of us are in harm’s way. To paraphrase John Donne: Do not ask for whom the storm comes. It comes for thee.”
On Education
One of the many blessings that have come my way has been my good fortune in establishing real friendships with really conservative individuals. They keep me grounded, and aware of the common values that we share, despite our different approaches to philosophy, law, science, religion, education, and pretty much anything else that would seem to preclude affection and conversation.
It is the friend who wrote “failed, failed, failed” about the welfare system who reminds me both explicitly and implicitly that we are not nearly as far about in our goals as I might think. We both want a just and inclusive society, and we are willing to acknowledge that there are varying routes that lead to the same place.
My friend is deeply concerned with the quality of education taking place in our public schools, and I can hardly argue that our educational system is a beacon to the world. Perhaps we recoil at different symptoms: I find the fact that 75% of Americans think creationism is a valid scientific explanation of the origins of life to be an appalling indictment of our schools. To me, this screams that our high schools are graduating young men and women who have no concept of the scientific method, and cannot tell the difference between a scientific theory supported by mountains of reproducible evidence, and an opinion offered at a cocktail party. This particular issue may not distress John quite so much, but he’s pretty alarmed that our high school seniors are fairly clueless when it comes to higher math.
John’s diagnosis is that students are putting more time into video games and mass media than they are into their studies and life experiences. My issues deal with scholastic structure and content. I don’t understand why we are still wedded to a 180 day school year, 6-1/2 hour school day, when the amount of knowledge necessary to succeed in a global economy grows exponentially by the minute. I am appalled that my second daughter was given the same geography text in 1996 that her sister was given in 1993, printed prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. One detail that stands out is that asbestos was listed as Canada’s primary export.
The differences between us are significant: John’s solutions require better parenting and more self-discipline on the part of students. Mine require more money: more salaries and utility funds to support longer school hours, better textbooks, and instructional styles that complement the types of academic mastery necessary for survival in a computer and informational-dependent world.
The similarity is even more profound: We are both right. Lower wages and rising costs mean that two parents often hold three jobs between them just to meet the mortgage payments, and single parents may hold three jobs by themselves. Harried parents can often equal inattentive parents, who are happy that the kids are quiet and entertained. They know they should be insisting on greater help in the house, and less time with the game controls, but the energy to enforce this just isn’t there. Students arrive at school passive, unaware of their obligations to contribute to their own education, and unfamiliar with the discipline necessary to learn. All the textbooks and lab equipment and extended hours are of little use if the student can’t process the information. Despite my agreement that this has major impact on our educational system, I’m at a loss as to why the collective society (i.e., government) can do about it.
On the other hand, there are nuts and bolts ideas that can bring at least partial solutions. Schools need to adapt to the 21st century. The lecture method does not help anyone learn to build formulas into an Excel program. Repetition of basic math problems loses effectiveness if it cuts into time needed for understanding mathematical theory and how to use a graphing calculator to solve engineering problems (one of my pet peeves about the extended summer involves the necessity for 6-9 weeks of review at the beginning of each school year – what a waste of an already too-short year). Learning to write formula essays does not inspire critical thinking and analysis.
By bringing our various understandings to a common table, perhaps we can fashion solutions that address the multitude of problems facing an evolving society. Today we can work together on education; tomorrow, we can tackle the meaning of civil liberty and freedom.
I’ll let you know when we are ready to establish world peace.
Having fun yet?
A friend told me that a blog was the beginning of an unexpected journey. We may think we control the content and the path, but the blog itself quickly takes on a life of its own. You find yourself seeing new aspects in truths you had assumed to be fully established, and following your mind down wilderness paths that suddenly popped up among cultivated fields. I had no idea I was still so unsettled on questions of faith and policy, until I started reading what I was writing.
What helps me most frame questions in my own mind and seek new thoughts is the amazing quality of interaction, even so early on in this exploration. Thanks to the comments and e-mails I’ve received already, I’m being challenged to take fresh viewpoints, and clarify and define old ones.
I really appreciate those of you who have sent this out to far-flung places, thus widening even further the range of ideas and insights. Tomorrow I’ll post a blog on education. But for tonight, I’ll just go with my own thank-you card – a picture taken on our most recent trip (to Sedona, Arizona).
But for the grace of me...
A cousin, who should realize I need to watch my blood pressure, sent me an article equating “welfare parasites” with “criminals.” According to the author (though not my cousin), to accept Medicaid is to commit a felonious act. A conservative friend, knowing I was considering welfare as the topic of my next blog, sent just three words on the subject: “Failed, failed, failed.”
For many years, I lived an insulated existence, where these concepts were the norm. Occasionally, in my stay-at-home mom days, glimpses of life beyond the suburbs would filter in. I remember helping one child learn to write, suggesting she practice at home. She startled me by saying she had no paper. Without thinking, I took on the Marie Antoinette role, and said, “Maybe you could use the backs of the envelopes that junk mail comes in.” Note: poor people do not get junk mail.
Nine years ago, I found employment at a social services agency. Stereotypes that I did not know I possessed were shattered. I found that the shortest route to poverty was family abandonment; that mothers often faced untenable choices between living in abusive situations or taking their children with them into homelessness. I came face to face with people who work two and three jobs, and still couldn’t pay the rent. I was overwhelmed by the precariousness of lives dependent upon day labor, where a few rainy days shutting down construction jobs could literally mean the difference between life and death. I met so-called “throwaway” children, victims of abuse, neglect, and/or rape, with no skill sets suitable for life on the streets. I became aware of persons born with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, who are caught in a terrible circle of pain. Without medications, they cannot hold down jobs. Without jobs, they cannot afford medications, which can run anywhere from $500-$1800 a month. The concept of self-medication (cheap wine and gin) became more closely aligned with concepts of self-preservation. Given the circumstances in which many of these people live their lives, a barrier against the worst of the pain seems almost reasonable.
I had thought we had a social safety net. If we do, it is badly in need of repair. We have no emergency shelters in my town, no centers where people can go to wash their bodies and their clothes, phone employers, drop off their children while they attend job interviews. We have inadequate transportation, career opportunities (as opposed to low-wage service sector jobs that do not provide a living wage), or educational assistance. Our government is lavish when handing out corporate welfare but is parsimonious to the extreme when it comes to helping the indigent rebuild their lives.
Much of this is the result of popular assumptions that the statement, “failed, failed, failed,” is correct. But the evidence doesn’t bear this out. A September 19 Washington Post editorial(currently a very conservative newspaper) presented this analysis of the effects of the war on poverty started by Lyndon Johnson in 1964:
“The share of the poor living in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty (40 percent or more) fell dramatically during the 1990s. Though many Americans hover at the edges of poverty, the number who are permanently trapped is surprisingly low: In the four years between 1996 and 1999, one Census Bureau study found, only 2 percent of the population was poor every month for two years or more -- but 34 percent of the population experienced poverty for at least two months. The overall poverty rate fell from 19 percent in 1964 to 12.7 percent last year, though most of that decline occurred during the first decade. Since 1999, the rate has been edging steadily, and disturbingly, upward.
At the same time, the creation and expansion of government programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies and the earned-income tax credit have made the America of 2005 a far less harsh place for the poor than the America of 1964. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded in a recent report that such programs "cut the number of poor Americans nearly in half . . . and dramatically reduced the severity of poverty for those who remain poor." Thanks in large part to government programs such as Social Security, the problem of poverty has been greatly ameliorated among the elderly -- falling last year to an all-time low (9.8 percent).”
Strategic, intelligent responses to poverty have worked well. Unfortunately, they are being dismantled, with disturbing results. For the last five years, the growth of capital at the expense of those persons producing the wealth has been extreme. Wages have been falling steadily, while the numbers of children being raised in poverty continue to surge (the poverty rate among children is higher now (17.8 percent) than it was in the 1970s.)
For many years, I have been wondering why it is that we who have so much, give so little as a society. One reason may be that it is a human characteristic to resent those to whom we should give. Unconsciously we reject those who, by their mere presence, reproach us with our plenty, our ease, our good fortune. We rationalize our affluence and their lack thereof: I work harder, I’m smarter; I had a better education; I understand deferred gratification and held off having a family. If I can do it, so could anyone else. It is enough to offer an example of the results of hard work and application.
After all, it isn’t but for the grace of God that I could be scraping by on the margins of society, but for the grace of me.
May God have mercy on us all.
A Prayerful Word
Following both the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, I was besieged by forwarded e-mails assuring me that all this was the result of our failure to permit prayer in schools. Putting aside the fact that students pray in schools all the time, both publicly before and after class, and privately during tests and before meals, I have to wonder at the reasoning.
Perhaps I’m harping on this subject, but I’m still stuck on the idea that we are supposed to view the Biblical record as inerrant. Every word is distilled truth.
So, shouldn’t we be praying in private anyway, whether prayer is “allowed” in school or not? Jesus said we should pray in secret where our Father, who is in secret, will hear us. He even took it further and told us not to pray in public the way the hypocrites do, who want everyone to know how pious they are, but to pray where even our left hand will not know what our right hand is doing. Those who pray in public have their reward on earth, but those who pray in secret find favor with God. The Lord’s Prayer came as a result of the disciples begging Jesus to tell them what he was doing when He went off to pray by himself. Jesus himself always chose to pray on his own, even to the point of leaving the apostles behind in the Garden of Gethsemane.
What kind of God rains down disaster and death on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, for abiding by His commands? The Old Testament God demonstrated a lot of wrath when he was disobeyed, but He tended to be pleasant toward those who were obedient to His word.
I need to get over this. It is clear to the fundamentalist that the Bible is revealed truth only when it agrees with the mindset of those who wish to use it in furtherance of their political and social aims. For instance, the several conflicting versions of Creation are all perfect, since none of them speak of evolution, but the admonition to feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are naked, heal the sick and visit those in prison isn’t quite so clear. The few references to homosexuality in the Old Testament are sacred text, but the story of the Good Samaritan, which warns us to avoid prejudice (as indeed does the story of Jonah) isn’t quite so compelling.
Perhaps I’ll borrow my bumper sticker from a less exalted author, but a sound one nonetheless: “God Bless Us, EVERYone.”
Note: In the daily paper, a letter writer posed the question: Why is the Christian right so hell-bent on getting the 10 Commandments posted everywhere? Surely, as Christians, they would prefer the Beatitudes, which praise the peacemakers and offer encouragement to the oppressed. This is, after all, the distilled essence of the Christian Gospel. A silly question, but I was glad someone asked.
The Gospel of the Bumper Sticker
Traffic was at its usual rush hour standstill, so I had plenty of time to read all the bumper stickers on the truck in front of me. Most were of the “I’m more Christian than you are” variety, with declarations as to “God is my Co-Pilot” and “Jesus is Lord.” However, pride of place, right in the center of the tailgate, was an oversized sticker that proclaimed: “May God Have Mercy on Your Soul, Because I Never Will.”
It made me wonder. Isn’t it the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is the revealed word of God, perfect in every way? Why then, boast of a sentiment that is the antithesis of everything spoken by Jesus? Indeed, is even directly disputed by the God of the Old Testament as well?
Although I would never be confused with a Biblical scholar, I am a graduate of numerous religious classes in high school and college, and a veteran of years of Sunday School both as student and teacher. I’m quite comfortable in my reading of the New Testament, because it isn’t very nebulous to begin with. When Jesus was asked which was the most important of the commandments, he didn’t weigh one of the 10 Commandments against the other. No, he was quick to reply, I give to you a new commandment, that you love one another.
That’s a pretty clear call for mercy to me, but I admit that the word is not used. So we turn to other texts, like the Beatitudes, where it is written “Blessed are the merciful.” When a follower whined, “how many times must I forgive my brother? As many as seven?” The reply was direct and swift, “as many as seventy times seven,” which was meant to imply that we must be ready to forgive as many times as it takes. And then there is the passage on turning the other cheek, and the one on “he who is without sin shall cast the first stone,” or “why do you seek the mote in your brother’s eye, and not the log in your own?” Even more pointed, when asked about what one does about one’s enemies, the answer came: “Pray for those who persecute you.” And for those who loudly pray for their enemies in language couched in insults and self-righteousness, you won’t find approval from Jesus on that one. He said to pray for forgiveness, both that you may forgive others and that you may be forgiven. It was the most direct opposite from conflict and arrogance he could come up with.
What about the famously vengeful and punitive God of the Old Testament? He may not have been consistently merciful, but he was consistent in demanding mercy from His followers. The famous saying, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” is meant to convey that humans should have no part in revenge, but must leave judgment and punishment to a Higher Power.
However, this is a moot discussion, because, as the bumper sticker indicates, mercy has already been banished, and is not the calling card of the fundamentalist Christian. Following the wake of Hurricane Katrina, our aggressively Christian neighbors have been flooding our newspaper letters column with venomous attacks on those who are victims of the hurricane. Those victims deserved whatever they got, because they had already been shown to be unworthy of God’s or man’s love. After all, they were poor, black, and probably had too many children at too young an age. It was their fault they didn’t have resources to flee the storm, and it’s only a shame more weren’t drowned. If they had been, we wouldn’t have had so much looting and vandalism.
In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickled and Dimed in America, the author speaks of attending revivals while working at low-end service jobs. She was struck with how silent Jesus was at these revivals. He was never quoted, His precepts totally missing from the texts. Everywhere He was depicted at the moment of His death, crucified, bleeding, and mute. The true Jesus, the homeless vagrant, the nomad dependent upon the charity of others, the apostle of love and grace, has no home in the fundamentalist Christian church. Indeed, if our refusal to help our homeless, and begrudge those who are vulnerable is any indication, He is indeed the enemy, just as was written by Dostoyevsky in the “Grand Inquisitor.”
I’m not certain when and where Christianity got hijacked in the popular mind as relating solely to the study of Revelations, a book that can clearly only be viewed as an outlier, having no particular connection with the Gospels or the acts of the Apostles. I’m not certain when the focus switched from Christian charity to self-righteousness and moral smugness. But I am certain that this trend can only lead to the death of the Christian faith if it continues.
