Savor Like Crazy

The inauguration ceremony only 6 short days ago was so good in so many ways. I went to the Baltimore Convention Center to watch it. It was warm and the TV screens were big. My favorite part, though, besides being treated to a performance of "Poison" as made popular by Bel Biv Devoe while various dignitaries appeared on the huge screens, was seeing a group of women in their thirties and forties starting up a line dance to a performance of "Get Ready."

So, that was a week ago tomorrow, and the NYTimes just posted a story about 62,000 jobs being cut. The inauguration speech mentioned some sacrifices. Who knew it would be so soon? If you're not the praying type, I suggest you become the savoring type to make it through this here downturn.

Savor the changes we're already seeing - Guantanamo Bay on the chopping block, Starbucks doing ads about community service, stronger standards for car emissions, and smart people in place in the administration to make good decisions carefully. Savor the connection to history that Obama spoke about - this isn't the first time that our nation has faced difficult times. And finally, savor what you do have. If you have a job, if you have your health, if you have your own computer to read this, savor those things. If you have friends and loved ones, spend time with them. Enjoy what you do have.

Finally, if you do happen to be the praying type, you can savor the promise of faith, which is that ultimately God's kingdom is bigger and more essential than the US economy. We are in God's hands, and that is the deepest source of security there is.

Landings

I hope Barack Obama will be as steady-handed and lucky with the US economy as Capt. Sullenberger was yesterday as he carefully ditched his US Airways flight into the Hudson River after both engines lost power.

Thanks to multiple bird strikes - the collapse of the housing bubble, the credit freeze it precipitated, and two ongoing wars (do I need to say that wars cost a lot of money?) the economy's engines have choked. Inflation in 2008 was 0.1%, with the last three months of dropping consumer prices figured in. Usually, annual inflation is about 30 times greater - 3%.

Congress is mulling over a landing package of 825 billion dollars. Even if we land just right, without breaking off our wings or turning over in the water, it's likely that many of us will have to stand with freezing water up to our waists for a while, anyway.

The key to yesterday's rescue, and perhaps to the longer economic one will be not only the skill and luck of our pilot, but the fast arrival of ferries and rescue teams - a collective team effort - to make sure that not one person is lost beneath the freezing waves.

Yes, Virginia, Waterboarding is Torture

One of the big "news" items from the Eric Holder confirmation hearing is that he agrees that waterboarding is torture. Of course it is torture to almost kill someone by drowning and then bring them back from the point of death to do it over again. What is crazy about how things have been run for the past 7 years is that there were people who tried to pretend it wasn't torture.

Interesting historical notes: not only did the US prosecute Japanese soldiers for waterboarding after WWII, we also prosecuted our own soldiers for doing the same thing during Vietnam.

Inauguration Preachers

So I already dished a little about Rick Warren, but here's some more interesting information - other preachers will be doing other preaching, etc., during the weekend of the festivities. Two in particular are of interest to me: Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church, and the General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ. Here's the Slate article on it.

One thing I disagree with in the article is that Gene Robinson's take on gay sexuality goes against the beliefs of the Episcopal church. That might be true for the international Anglican church, which the Episcopal church is part of. But the conservative groups that are getting ready to leave the Episcopal church because of Robinson's election as bishop are much smaller than the main body of the American church -- about 100,000 people, compared to 2.3 million. That doesn't mean that the people who are staying are necessarily on board, but it does mean they don't see it as important enough to make a break with their church.

One of the quotes in the Slate article is that Bishop Robinson felt called to come out of the closet by God. I'd agree with that sentiment in my own life. Coming out requires courage and serves justice and truth. I hope we'll get coverage of what he has to say Sunday.

Happy Epiphany!

January 6th marks one of the lesser-known Christian holidays, Epiphany. It is the day to celebrate the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus. For what it's worth, the nativity scenes that have the shepherds, angels, and wise men in them are kind of condensing things. But no big deal.

The visit by the wise men to Jesus' birth, as told by Matthew signals a kind of stamp of approval from the ancient wisdom traditions. In the gospel of John, we don't get any stories about the birth of Jesus, just a meditation of what it means for the Word of God to be made into an incarnate human being. In both cases, Jesus is a symbol of the wisdom of God.

There's a story about an ancient Buddhist teacher who hears Jesus' core teachings in his Sermon on the Mount for the first time. "That's what I've been trying to say," is his response. Perhaps the wise men, too, on seeing Jesus, said "This is what we've been trying to say."

Family & Poverty

In this week's Christian Century, (not up online yet - I have the analog version), a writer tells the story of his son's untimely death at 38. This son left behind a pregnant wife and toddler child. The writer points out that while friends slowly faded away in the long course of grief, family made sacrifices to be nearby and to support his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Family, he argues, is ultimately a stronger source of support than friends, and policies and practices that weaken the family come at a cost.

Being hundreds of miles away from my nearest blood relation, the idea makes me a little nervous, personally. BUT! it also has interesting implications for poverty. What if poverty is nearly always a problem of family? Either a person has no family to care for them in crisis, or has destroyed family ties through addictions, or else a person's whole family may already be poor, which means the culture and connections to rise out of it are essentially not there.

This is probably fairly obvious, but I am used to thinking of problems like poverty as localized in an individual poor person, rather than being connected to a slightly larger family system.

Jesus was not particularly pro-family in his teachings. It may be that he recognized that families do not always manage to care for all of their own. In the kingdom of God, then, we are all one another's family, and care for each other as such, regardless of blood or marital relationship. In other words, no-one slips through the cracks. What would that look like in practice, I wonder?

Obscenity

I was watching "A History of Violence" on TV this weekend, and in one of the scenes, three men get killed trying to kill a different man. The boss who ordered the original killing gets mad that it has gone awry, and he shoots one of the already dead men in the chest and yells at him, "How the **** do you **** that up?" That's a direct quote, because the swear words have been blocked out.

Doesn't it seem to be a little bit beside the point to edit out the swearing on such a violent scene? Or, to be more to the point - which is more obscene, really? A few swear words, or shooting a man in the chest instead of trying to save his life?

Storms

I paid $16 to fill up my gas tank today, which about matches the prices we were paying when I was in college 10 years ago. Because of inflation, this is actually much less expensive, even than it was then.

While it's nice to pay less, I can't help but think that this is something I've never seen before, and it makes me nervous. What I'm used to seeing the price of gas do is go up, sometimes in big increments, sometimes in small ones. Occasionally, it will fall back down, too. But not by well over half its cost.

It reminds me of the tsunami at the end of 2005. As the ocean drew away from the shore, farther and farther, the people rushed out onto the uncovered land, picking up fish and marveling at how far out the ocean had gone. They didn't know that a wave was coming back - huge and ominous and as fast as a train.