And when you climb
Into your bed tonight
And when you lock…
And bolt the door
Just think of those
Out in the cold and dark
’cause there’s not enough love to go round

[chorus:]
And sympathy
Is what we need my friend
And sympathy
Is what we need
And sympathy
Is what we need my friend
’cause there’s not enough love to go round

Now half the world
Hits the other half
And half the world
Has all the food
And half the world
…
’cause there’s not enough love to go round

Repeat chorus

Another version (probably the studio music was overdubbed onto the French TV video this was taken from, but one at least gets the idea what Rare Bird looked like live circa 1970 or so):

From WIRED magazine

Mark Twain once said, “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.”

There’s wisdom in that as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far.

Each on of us has specific fears in our lives. Some may be shared by nearly all of us (such as the fear of rejection). Others are more original, such as a tall woman who once told me her most irrational fear was that of short people.

What is your fear? How does it affect your daily life? Have you found ways to cope with it? And are you brave enough to voice your thoughts here?

Scroll down to leave a reply.

As a man, I am with this post venturing way out of my area of either expertise or existential knowledge. But bear with me and I’ll try to explain my compulsion to do so in spite of my non-qualifications!

I don’t track celebrities much. But Angelina Jolie’s decision to — in the face of an 87 percent chance of future breast cancer — have a preventative mastectomy seemed to me a slam-dunk decision. She intelligently weighed her risks and options and took a course of action which reduced her chances of cancer 82 percent (she now has under a five percent chance of breast cancer). Apparently, not all observers shared my positive outlook on Ms. Jolie’s choice.

But why comment on this very woman-centered issue, Trott? You big white pontificating male you!

I have my reasons. Or maybe reason. Carol Elaine Durkin (Trott), my wife, has faced two cancers during our marriage. Her breast cancer was treatable and caught early on. But before we knew fully what options existed, the two of us talked about mastectomies as a possibility. And — in predictably blunt and perhaps over-the-top fashion — I emoted my strong feelings on the subject. “If there’s any doubt, cut ‘em both off.” Carol looked at me wide-eyed. “No, really. It’s you I love, want, need. I love all of you, but if a part of you threatens all of you, get rid of it.” In predictable Trott fashion, I got a bit teary at that point.

Now sure, “get a mastectomy if needed” is easy for me the male to say. Women’s relationship to their mammary systems is not one I can understand. A man may admire the female breast (most men I know do) but they don’t know what it’s like to have such breasts, or to be faced with losing them for (at best) a nerveless silicone alternative. As it turned out, Carol’s doctors were able to remove and treat via chemo her breast cancer without a mastectomy. That was 13 years ago, and since that year she’s been in full remission. Thank God.

My own experience in this case (again admittedly vicarious as Carol, not I, actually had the cancer) does raise a question or two that continue to haunt me. Basically, what does it mean when someone says of their physical self, “This is my body” or “I hate my body” or “I don’t want to lose that part of my body” or just “…my body”?

This idea of ownership seems sensible enough on its face. After all, my own sense of being a self is rooted in having a physical existence before I experience conscious self-awareness. I had a body at birth — even before birth — and as a baby I began “discovering” that those little wiggly things in front of my face were in fact extensions of self, pleasure and pain receptors, controllable by me (See, I can wiggle ‘em at will! Is that cool or what?!). And oh look! A foot! With more little wiggly things! Wow….

As a teen one often discovers that sexuality is an extension of this “ownership” thing yet simultaneously has serious limitations (the urge to sexually unite with another person’s physical self).

The biblical portrait of marriage sketched out first in Genesis talks about “the two becoming one flesh.” But it is not explained who gets to own what when these two bodies become one body. At least, not there. Paul’s New Testament coverage of the subject does offer an intriguing possibility, namely, that as far as the sexual relationship goes, each spouse in effect surrenders their own body to the grace-informed desires of the other. A sort of body-switch occurs!

But this issue of ownership and bodies isn’t just about sexuality; it is about existence. All existence. All?! Really? Hang with me a little longer.

I consider myself a feminist. That is, I see history as among other things a record of the oppression of women by men. I believe the Second-Stage feminist critique of western culture, with perhaps the twist that it was through a hierarchical system owing more to Greek thought than Christianity the west conceptualized and treated women as objects of ownership. Feminist history, as far as it goes, is accurate.

But many of the feminists, along with their opponents, also tended to treat ownership as a simple idea. Their solution was to “return” the body/person to its proper owner… namely, that same person.

Now, in what will probably be an exercise in frustration, I have to ask: How does a person own herself? Own himself? What, in the face of my own mortality, does “owning my own body” or perhaps “owning my own destiny” even mean? Today’s news is of an F4 tornado which has devastated Moore, Oklahoma, taking the lives of dozens including a number of school children who drowned in their school’s basement, underscores my anxiety.

Ownership as a concept is not exactly erased (if it were, why be a feminist, a Christian, or anything else except perhaps a nihilist)? But ownership is relativized. That is, my existence is not primarily rooted in my own decisions or ability to make those decisions (unless at an extreme one chooses suicide). My existence is rooted in the larger world around me in all its complexity. Two storm fronts coming together miles over my head just might impact my life in ways I never imagined. Or, to return to Angelina Jolie and my wife Carol, cells too small to see with the naked eye might become carriers of death.

Contingent. That’s a word used to describe something which relies on another thing or things which come before it for its own existence. All human beings are contingent, and contingent in ways we rarely consider.

There is the original contingency of our parents having met and mingled their DNA in order to bring us into being. There are the myriad ongoing contingencies of air, food, and water, without which our ability to exist is negated. There is the contingency of human history. For instance, my wife would not be alive today without the wonderful development of modern medicine via scientific inquiry into the causes and treatment of cancer.

Contingency relativizes any idea of ownership, whether of the human body or of our surrounding environment. Does one really “own” any material object? The object often has far more chance of existing for a longer period of time than does the human being so possessively clinging to said object. The rich man’s barns are full, but the barns may well outlast the man. As the writer of Ecclesiastes murmurs concerning the gathering of such wealth:

“For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.” – Ecc. 2:21-23 NRSV

The weariness of life grows upon a person as time passes, both through what experience teaches and what the body itself endures. Is this body “ours” in a meaningful sense? Yes. But is it ours in an absolute sense? No. What my body does, directed by me, is not autonomous. That is, I might think I own my own decisions and body and actions. But those things are governed as well by forces beyond my consciousness. I needn’t be an Atheist to acknowledge the obvious about my human frame. I am a weird mix of chemicals, electric impulses flying through the brain, various hungers (desires) competing with both each other and with my so-called “logical” mind (Id vs Super-ego stuff).

To return to my wife’s cancer, it was one of the first times I’ve had to face contingency in a real-life, non-abstract and non-”life of the mind” way. Her life is my life; her body is my body and my body is her body. Yet nothing guarantees either of us a continuation of that unity from one moment to the next. Death relativizes everything.

Except one thing. The mortal, says Scripture, shall put on immortality. This flesh — both my beloved wife’s and my own — shall perish. But, if the Scriptures are true, that ending is in fact a beginning.

But what of now? Heaven and immortality lie yet in the future (for us at least). And here is where what novelist Walker Percy calls “sponsorship” comes into play.

My body is meant for something wonderfully relational not only in my marriage bed with my beloved but also a commingling with Spirit — the Third Member of the Trinity Who makes this fading flesh into a Temple of the Holy Spirit. This union is not future tense, but today. Right now.

My wife — Lord forbid — may again face cancer one day. Even Angelina, despite her informed decision to take prophylactic action against future threat, might one day face cancer. She will certainly one day face death. I pray for her what I pray for my dear wife, and for myself. May we align our desires, our will, our energies physical and mental, with Grace and the movement of Grace in the world.

Jesus Christ took on human flesh. And in that act, he exercised the maximum freedom yet without selfishness. He poured out his body, his blood, his life for the sake of love. Only in Him will we find a Sponsor who allows us to truly love our bodies, to own ourselves as stewards of Love rather than as needy consumers in a desolate, relationally dessicated culture.

We become unified with our own bodies most closely when we become children of the God of Love. Our body will one day fail us, but His body ensures we shall never be lost.

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church–for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery–but I am talking about Christ and the church. -Ephesian 5:29-32 NRSV

USNews photo

Is there any word or sentiment which is off limits these days?

Last week, talk radio shrieker Pete Santilli accused Hillary Clinton of being involved with the killing of American troops in Benghazi, Libya. And then he offered this:

“I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away. I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all.”

And in conclusion? Santilli: “On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.”

These comments have drawn attention from the FBI, but Santilli yesterday doubled down on his original comments. “I don’t want her to die. I’ve actually done something and said something that’s less humane: I want her to suffer.”

Santilli is not one of the more well-known talk show hosts. But it is instructive to note that major NRA spokesperson Ted Nugent, himself infamous for his threats to shoot the President, has appeared on Santilli’s program, and made the most of it by calling President Obama “a Nazi.” Such nice pals.

So it goes with extremist talk show personas… from Rush Limbaugh on down their antics apparently pass as “entertainment” to those inured to the venomous contents. One example of a myriad: a young woman who dared to testify at a Congressional hearing was labeled “a slut” and “a prostitute” by Mr. Limbaugh, who pays no apparent penalty for his hate speech. Limbaugh’s most infamous comment may be his “joke” aimed not at Hillary but another Clinton, then 13-year-old Chelsea whom he compared to President Bush’s dog. Limbaugh’s women-hating includes his phrase “femi-Nazi” and his infantile verbal attack on another President’s daughter, Amy Carter. “She may be the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country.”

But if it were just these talk show hosts, that would be one thing. Who is listening to them? Who is advertising with them? Most shamefully, what Christian (or supposedly Christian) media sources and persons are repeating the words such men churn out? We ourselves become implicated, because it isn’t just talk radio or certain TV channels promoting this sort of discourse. They do so because we support it via lending it our ears, eyes, and (most importantly) minds. By doing so, we imbibe emotional and intellectual poison. And what goes in does come out.

Go to any mainstream news site and browse comments sections. A recent CNN article about the Oklahoma tornado disaster had a comments section filled with flaming rhetoric against the idiot Christians who believe there’s such a thing as a God. Perhaps — and I didn’t drill down deep enough into the thousand-plus comments to see — there were believers in God who likewise were being vile. The story’s focus on the profound suffering the storm created was seemingly forgotten as commenters’ respective wells of bile spilled out through their fingers.

The various four letter words used to describe those we loath have become ubiquitous. The ultimate diminuitive word used to describe women (and it is a word Pete Santilli aimed at Ms. Clinton via the euphemism “this ‘C U Next Tuesday,’ Hillary Clinton”) has become nearly as common as the short version of Richard aimed at males, and has far more negative potency. Bill Maher’s use of the word, though in a slightly different context, was also aimed at Hillary Clinton. But his most infamous moment came when he called Sarah Palin both the ‘c’ word and “a dumb twat.” His attempts to obfuscate via the ruse of “I’m just a comedian” sounds exactly like Limbaugh’s very lame “I’m just an entertainer.” Ha. Ha. Ha.

Conspiracy mongering such as that purveyed by Glenn Beck and his many less wealthy cohorts is a conveniently indirect method to spread hate ideology via the airwaves and the web. There’s nothing as potent as hatred delivered with a sincere “aw shucks” smile or innocently child-like frown (such as when Beck falsely and horrifically accused George Soros, a Jew who survived Nazism’s attempt to eradicate all Jews, of being “a Jewish boy helping to send Jews to the death camps”). All said with that oughta-be-patented quizzical Beck look. That’s hate speech. And Beck regularly subjects his listeners to it via an astonishing weave of half-fact and whole fancy.

Mr. Beck illustrates a general principle regarding hate speech: hate distorts truth. If we begin with a set of preconceived notions, built upon one or another ideologies with hate at their core, we will not be willing or able to clearly see reality as it actually is.

Long ago human hatred was focused on one man, the most innocent man who ever walked the earth. Hatred triumphed, or so it seemed, in an unholy alliance between the sacred and secular as they conspired to take his life, first with words, then with action. How could they have been so blind? How could they have been so hateful?

Why are we?

The slogan says it well. Photo from SalvationArmyUSA.org.

We join with Christians worldwide remembering the town of Moore Oklahoma, and would ask those reading these words to pray for them. As President Obama said, “Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today. And we will back up those prayers with deeds for as long as it takes.” Good for the government, and good for us Christians as we get going.

One of our own Project 12 students is from Moore and was visiting her home area when the tornado struck; fortunately, she was visiting a neighboring town when the storm reached Moore. But many others weren’t so fortunate and as the news footage abundantly shows, are in need of all the help we can offer. Our hearts especially go out to those who lost not only property but loved ones, including the eight children lost in two different schools struck by the storm.

One good organization with “feet on the ground” to donate to? We suggest the Salvation Army. To quote from their own web site:

Supporters are encouraged to give online at www.SalvationArmyUSA.org or by calling 1-800-SAL-ARMY (1-800-725-2769). You can also text the word “STORM” to 80888 to make a $10 donation through your mobile phone; to confirm your gift, respond with the word “Yes.”

Donations in the form of checks designated to Oklahoma Tornado Relief may also be mailed to:

The Salvation Army
PO Box 12600
Oklahoma City, OK 73157

Again, please remember Moore and other areas nearby which were struck by the F5-force tornado.

]]> http://www.wilsonstation.com/?feed=rss2&p=8599 0 http://www.wilsonstation.com/?p=8554 http://www.wilsonstation.com/?p=8554#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 16:11:29 +0000 Curt Mortimer http://www.wilsonstation.com/?p=8554

Wendell Berry

Oh how my whole being loves your Sabbath, Wendell
An act of worship to walk those forest trails
How close you seem to the God of creation
Immersed in what He made
But I have a question:
Does God require the absence of humanity
Before He will be seen?
In my forest grow concrete and steel trees,
straight as arrows, full of people.
Is there any possibility of seeing God in Chicago?
And, oh, Just one last question:
Could I come to your church,
Or would that ruin the neighborhood?

Curt Mortimer

Mother and Daughters

Today, a dear friend unintentionally brought me face to face with my own anger. I had sent her links to an article blasting her ministry as unbiblical and “liberal.” Indignant, I was sure she’d enjoy ranting with me about their many logical and theological shortcomings.

Instead, she said merely, “Yes, I knew about the article. Could you join us in praying for them?”

The finger of God reached through her words to convict me! Not once had I thought of this most obvious thing, nor of the ideas behind it: “Pray for those who persecute you…” “Love your enemies…” Wow. The very stuff that maddens me about fundamentalists suddenly appeared within (gulp!) myself!

I realized, to quote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, “There’s a powerful smell of mendacity in this room!” It was time for me to confront myself with my own fundie reactions.

What are some of those reactions?

1. I believe I am *so* right.

2. I believe those who disagree with me often do so despite the obvious correctness of my position. This is highly irritating.

3. I mistrust their integrity. That is, to me it seems apparent they have selfish motives for holding their position.

4. I mistrust their submission to the Word. They seem to be injecting it with all sorts of meanings it does not have, while also ignoring meanings it plainly does have. That seems dishonest at the best of times.

5. I mistrust their realization of having been influenced by culture bias, the self-awareness it takes to fearlessly examine one’s own preconceptions.

6. I don’t want to pray for these people; they seem little more than cartoon characatures, theologically equivalent to a southern sheriff with a firehose, his watery blasts of Scripture keeping women in their subservient place. No, I prefer being angry at these people. They deserve nothing more….

7. I stop short of, but barely, of wanting to de-christianize such people, wanting them in effect evicted from the ranks of the faithful.

Now, that is a nasty, unloving bit of thinking.

My friend’s reaction is doubly convicting. She, after all, is a woman. I’m male, and must never forget that on one level I will never know the singular experience of exclusion all too common to womankind. Further, it is not my ministry which was attacked, but hers. Yet her example speaks of grace, while mine speaks of the very fundamentalist mindset I presume to confront!

There is, I suspect, a male flavor to fundamentalism, a need to exclude and create borders. I assume by saying so that some portions of what we consider to be biologically male are in actuality social constructions. I also assume via biology and biblical texts that God did indeed create humankind “male and female” and intended that difference to lead to bi-unities of husband/wife rather than wife/wife, husband/husband. (It pains me to even have to make such observations, but alas, the charge of androgyny seems to continually get leveled at biblical egalitarians.)

This male exclusion / border thing is definitely a part of my own make-up. And when borders seem threatened, I find myself becoming angry. Behind that anger, if I can play armchair psychologist, is anxiety. And anxiety, of course, is really a form of fear.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” Which just goes to show how far I have to go before I dwell in love as I ought.

Do We Have a ‘Macedonian Call’?

Christians vary in their understanding of just what “God’s Call” consists of. Curt Mortimer offers a whole lot of common ground for all of us to walk out in this encouraging, challenging message. (Click arrow at left of sermon link to play and/or download.)

Another good word from Wilson Station’s “Word from Chicago” page… check it out for many more mp3 sermons to hear now or download for later.

My tears were about the place — Boston, where my father grew up and near where I for a time attended college — and about the venue, the Boston marathon. I’ve run three marathons, though none in Boston, and can say that of all sporting events a marathon is the most meaningful to me. A pair of tennis shoes and an entry fee give anyone the option to run a marathon. It is a race not against others but against one’s own limitations. And it celebrates not speed as much as endurance, the ability to simply finish what one starts. It is a beautiful, though sometimes (I speak from experience here) painful event. Crossing that finish line is nearly as awesome for the last runner as it is for the first. “I did it! I ran a marathon!!”

A celebration of life, a sport for everyman and everywoman, was short-circuited by two young men’s heartless acts of violence.

I am haunted by the power of stories.

The runners, the bystanders, and those watching on Boston television shared in a story of endurance, sunlight, joy and enthusiasm. Two men shared a story about their god, their righteous cause, and the power of two kettle bombs to defeat a nation.

Which story was true? Which was the lie?

Eight year old Martin Richard was “defeated” — that is, his life was robbed from him and his presence taken viciously from those who loved him. What story in the bombers’ heads explained such a contingency?

Honestly, I don’t think such possibilities even entered these two brothers’ heads. Their story was as simple as a badly constructed video game, the only real climax to it coming via maximum damage done to the most innocent bystanders possible. Such a story makes goodness and chaos indistinguishable. It is a story of power, power at the expense of human tenderness or hope or life. Strategically, it is the equivalent of a malevolent teen-ager walking up to a Mother Grizzly Bear and jabbing it with a cub scout knife; the bear’s response is predictable. One bomber died, the other’s life is in ruins and quite possibly will also be forcibly ended by the nation he presumed to conquer. (One needn’t favor capital punishment to observe the probability of this “remedy” of nation-states to such assaults.)

We all live by the narrative. We understand things in narrative form; we accept some meanings and reject others. And here’s the scary part. If we’re not careful, we begin tailoring every experience, every encounter with fact, every other person’s story, so that our story always remains “on top,” the TRUE story.

These two young men were suckers. They bought into a twisted home-made version of religion — unrecognizable to mainstream Muslims (see my interview with Hoda Elsharkawi). Their story required them to ignore the humanity of others, to ignore the teachings of the faith they said they held, to embrace violence at the hands of men as synonymous with righteousness. It was as illogical and heartless as the rapist who justifies his deeds on the basis of love.

Stories are necessary. I believe in the Gospel story as the North Star to all good stories. Jesus is at the center of all I understand as “good” or “right.” But his righteousness does not belong to me as something I “own” — it is an alien, “imputed” (that is, “given to me by God’s choice”) righteousness. The terrible flaw in these two mens’ narrative was that righteousness was theirs, the bombs instruments of their own righteousness. And in a horrifyingly true way they in fact told the rest of us quite another story with a clear and personally applicable moral.

Beware any story in which one’s own role is that of judge, jury, and executioner of another human being. Some use kettle bombs. Some use smart bombs. Some use weapons of mass destruction (whether they exist or not in reality). Some use — no, we ALL use — words to destroy those we consider “evil.” And in such moments, we are victims of our own badly written, badly conceived, narratives that place us at the heart of righteousness. We are not righteous. Only God, as Jesus (Himself God) noted, is righteous.

Already other destructive stories have begun to emanate from the Boston Bombing. Some from the far-right media, such as the now infamous New York Post article that unjustly accused “two Saudi nationals” of being the bomber (and published their photos), cling to the anti-Islamic narrative no matter what. No apology is offered, because their narrative does not require the righteous to apologize to the “evil others” they see everywhere. Others even further right (and probably left as well) are suggesting the bombings were in fact the work of the American Government. (Alex Jones, anyone?) The old 9/11 conspiracy theories recycled… and why?

We need an evil other in our story. We need someone we can hate. We need to believe our own lives are rooted in the good, the righteous.

Christianity is shocking in, among many other things, its assault on such stories. “None is righteous, no not one. Human works are as filthy menstrual rags to God.” Does that sound like you — or like I — own righteousness?

The story of the cross is a story that requires us to surrender our self-righteousness. If we Christians cannot see that, we of all people are blind guides, surpassing the Pharisees of Jesus’ day in every way.

Our story must not be about righteousness, but rather about the sharing of our failure and our struggle to embrace the righteousness and goodness of He we say we love. His death via grace brings us into the kingdom of God, but it does not give us our own little story of being right. It instead takes such a tale away from us, categorically and irrevocably.

When Jesus said “take up your cross and follow me,” he was not merely speaking metaphorically. The death to self required of us involves primarily our stories! The rugged western male who saves the town from the bad guys… the story of American goodness. That story is not of God, but of men. The pure follower of Allah who blows up innocent children, women, and men… he honors neither God nor the faith he presumes to follow. The relentless cultural barrage of sexual anarchy disguised in story form as “good” (as in both tolerant and morally enlightened even as it demands conformity), is a self-righteous shallowness destructive to the heart and soul.

Christ bids us come follow. “Master,” the former prostitute but then redeemed lover of God cried out when she saw him risen fresh from the grave. She did not worry about her righteousness. She knew she was known. She loved Him. And such love is the only antidote I know of for those diseased with the misbelief that they have righteousness all to themselves.

The Christian story ends with a crucified, then resurrected God, but leaves open our response. Be sure of this: to follow Christ means letting go of your own story and your own sense of “goodness.” In Him is Goodness for all Eternity.