That We All May Be One

Man Found Dead in Crashed Van on I-57; Among 14 People Shot In Chicago

        Police: 3 Killed, 8 Wounded In Monday Shootings Across Chicago

Headlines from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times over the last twenty-four hours. I was in Chicago last weekend on a parish visitation for confirmation. Of course, I saw no shootings, heard no gunfire. Because this particular parish was north and west of the city, although we have plenty on the south and west sides of town where these incidents are most likely to occur.

Most likely indeed. Why? Because of decades and generations of segregation, poverty, unequal education and a lack of job opportunities which,in our day, has led to increasing amounts of drug abuse, gang membership, and an ocean of guns which show no signs of decreasing. The situation is really very little different from when I was in seminary in the late 60s/early 70s and did field work in a Black congregation on the West side and Northwest side parish just getting into Hispanic ministry.

The main difference today is the level of violence because of easy access to high powered weaponry. The virulent racism and rampant disregard for educational and economic equality remains the same. All these years later.

The tragedy and complexity of the situation was highlighted for me because one of the assisting priests in the congregation I visited is also a Chicago policeman. He said that the weekend was among the saddest day of his life, not because of these senseless killings (which he sees all the time and which he seemed almost immune to feeling), but because of a decision by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel to disband the current police oversight board and replace it with “all-civilian” membership.

This priest/officer interpreted this as one more slap in the face of a police force which has been coming under increased scrutiny and criticism in recent years because of incidents of over-reach and even brutality. “Out of the 12,000 officers in Chicago,” my colleague said, “there are maybe 250 who should never have put on a badge. The rest of us are your family members, neighbors, and friends who are working as hard as we know how to keep you safe and be fair to everyone.”

I couldn’t help remarking that 250 “bad apples” can kill a lot of people. But I understood what he was saying. Undoubtedly most members of the Chicago PD are brave and honest people trying to do a dirty job with what feels like little support from the government, from the media, and from the people they serve. Until all of us are willing to make the kind of sacrifices necessary to begin to address the systemic racism and chronic poverty which infect this city, these officers will continue to fight an uphill battle to keep the peace in these neighborhoods.

Please remember such things as you cast your votes in local, state, and federal elections over these next months.

The children are dying.

“Will there be blood?” asks The Miami Herald‘s Leonard Pitts in today’s column. Given the violence at Donald Trump rallies and his apparent endorsing of it, Pitts wonders just how emboldened his supporting bullies might feel to perpetrate such acts on a wide scale should he be elected.

Perhaps even worse, should Trump be defeated, what will his disappointed supporters do if they feel the “rigged system” has let them down once again? Right wing violence has been a problem in this country for decades now. Let we forget, Pitts lists some of them:

“From the Oklahoma City bombing to the Atlanta Olympics bombing to a New York state plot to murder Muslims by radiation poisoning, to a massacre at an African-American church in Charleston, to the attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, to the crashing of an airplane into an IRS office in Austin to a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility to, literally, dozens more.” Frightening to see them all massed together like that. How quickly we forget!

And this on the day when we learn that George Zimmerman is planning to auction off the gun with which he killed Trayvon Martin! No doubt, there will be plenty of potential customers.

So many of Donald Trump’s supporters seem to be white males who are fearful and angry that the world they used to think they dominated (and did, in so many ways) is changing and that power is being taken away from them by African Americans and Muslims and women and big government And this is precisely the demographic most likely to be associated with what I believe is rightly called “domestic terrorism.”

Unless and until we move away from the win-at-any-cost, my-way-or-the-highway, might-makes-right, “get-’em-out-a-here, get-’em-out” ethic that pervades so much of our American society today (and in”deed much of the world, if the truth be known) I am afraid that Leonard Pitts’ troubling scenario is all too likely.

What would we replace this prevailing ethic with? I suggest something very simple. Very simple indeed. Simple enough to be found in every major religion in the world and some which are not so major. Something Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, calls “A Global Ethic.”

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, negatively stated:

What you do not wish done to you, do not do unto others.

Of course, “simple” does not equate with “easy.” But this global ethic actually works — in domestic policy, in economics, in politics, in religion,  in international relations.

Such an ethic has not been tried and found wanting (as C. S. Lewis once said about Christianity itself). It has simply never been tried.

Perhaps it’s time.

Or, consider the alternative.

Apparently things have not changed in the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv since my several trips to Israel/Palestine in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Traveling through that airport “last week for a climate justice meeting, World Council of Churches (WCC) staff and partners were detained or deported in a manner that WCC general secretary Rev. Dr. Olav Fykes Tveit terms both unprecedented and intolerable.” Continuing on the WCC website, he writes:

“Members of the WCC’s Working Group on Climate Change from as many as 13 countries reported that they were held for hours of interrogation, including tough intimidation and detention in prison-like conditions for up to three days — a very difficult experience…We believe that it is also in the interest of the government of Israel to address these very unpleasant incidents for future visitors to this country, and to prevent their recurrence,” said Tveit and added, “We are ready to meet and discuss these issues.”

Readers of this blog and my Facebook posts will know that I have a deep commitment to Israel and therefore reserve the right to criticize her government just as I criticize my own, from time to time. I reject the charge that any such criticism is somehow Anti Semitic. I have cast my lot with J Street, the pro Israel, pro peace lobby in Washington DC and consider their positions on most issues related to the Middle East my own.

I well remember receiving the “good cop, bad cop” treatment on various trips through Tel Aviv. A smiling young Israeli woman officer would ask a series of questions while examining my luggage. And then I would be hustled off to a small room where the same questions would be asked in a rough and bullying manner by a team of soldiers, obviously trying to find some inconsistencies in my reasons for travel, etc. They were both rude and abusive.

I am aware that Israel has all kinds of reasons to be hyper vigilant and to maintain high security arrangements. As I’ve written elsewhere, “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!” But there is no excuse for belligerent and disrespectful treatment of passengers, be they tourists or pilgrims to the Holy Land.

The United States and other countries also have stringent security arrangements in airports, but I have always found the TSA agents to be civil, if not always kind. The state of Israel enjoys a kind of mindless support in this country, but it is not so around the world.

Just as the Palestinians would garner much more support in this country if they would renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel, so would Israel increase its standing around the world by simply humane treatment of those of us who love her and want only the best for her.

Not an “Ascension”

Up, up, up, up and away.

Now he fills all things!

On a whim, I ordered a DVD of Otto Preminger’s 1960 film Exodus. It was based on Leon Uris’ fine novel of the same name and starred Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb and Sal Mineo! How’s that for a cast? It was a bit long at 3 hours 28 minutes (!) and considerably dated in its dialogue and special effects. But it was set on location in Israel/Palestine and the photography quite beautiful for its time.

It is set in 1948 and chronicles the rebirth of a people and the lead-up to the establishment of the state of Israel. The lead character, played by Newman, is Ari Ben Canaan (said to have been based loosely on the real-life Yitzak Rabin) who is a commander of the underground and who leads some 600 Jews from the detention camps of Cyprus onto a large freighter bound for Palestine. But British forces learn of his plan and insist that he turn back. Undaunted, the Jews refuse to give up and risk their lives for the greater cause of Israeli independence. Much blood is shed and the film concludes without a real conclusion and with Newman and his troops headed off into one more battle.

Whenever I get fed up with Benjamin Netanyahu’s strong arm tactics and policies of the Israeli government which trample upon the rights of the Palestinian people today, I try to remember that there is a reason why the world’s Jews seem paranoid and why they do not think their incredible military might (today funded and supported by the United States in large part) is unnecessary. As they old saying goes, “Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!”

Yes, in many ways the oppressed have become the oppressor once again, this time in the state of Israel and I reserve the right to be critical of the Israeli government without for one minute conceding to the charge of anti-Semitism. I criticize my own government, but am not thereby un-American. I have allied myself with “J Street,” a Washington based pro-Israel, pro justice and peace lobby who continue to strive for a viable two-state solution in the Holy Land.

For, was it not a two-state solution that was initially envisioned? Near the end of Exodus Newman speaks at the burial of a boyhood Arab friend and a young Jewish girl, side by side, in the rocky soil of Palestine. He vows that, just as these two sleep together in death, one day Arab and Jew will live together, in this same land, side by side, in peace.

This story was set in 1948. The lines were spoken spoken in 1960. It is now 2016.

How long, O Lord?

We lost another prophet on Saturday. The Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan, a Jesuit priest and poet who was active in anti-war activities in the 1960s…and ever since. When I entered seminary in 1969 Dan and his brother, Philip, were heroes to many of us.

We were an interesting mixture on the seminary campuses of the late 1960s — some of us right off college campuses where we had marched for civil rights and against the Viet Nam war, some of us returning Viet Nam vets reassessing what they had seen and done in the light of their new-found, or renewed faith. But most all of us admired the Berrigans because we knew that, as the New York Times has it today:

“It was an essentially religious position (for them) based on a stringent reading of the Scriptures that some called pure and others radical. But it would have explosive political consequences as (the Berrigans)…and their allies took their case to the streets with rising disregard for the law or their personal fortunes.”

They were more radical than many of us: burning Selective Service draft records in Catonsville, Md.; hammering missile warheads in Pennsylvania; blocking the entrance to the Intrepid naval museum in Manhattan — Daniel the ascetic poet and Phillip a decorated hero of WW II. I sometimes questioned their tactics, but never their courage or their integrity.

And lest we think that we can slack off on our efforts for peace and justice today, that things have gotten better since the 1960s and 70s, hear this troubling comment from Daniel Berrigan just six short years ago in The Nation magazine, “This is the worst time of my long life. I have never had such meager expectations of the system.”

If he was still well enough, in his long illness, to keep up with the political machinations of today and the meager expectations so many of us have of Congress, he may well have been just as glad to close his eyes for the last time, knowing that even in this long night, he lit more than a few candles rather than being content to curse the darkness.

Whether or not it proves to be the case that Prince’s death was caused by an overdose of painkillers (like Michael Jackson’s) the problems we have in this country with opioids is massive. It’s a very different, and in someways a more complicated, problem than other kinds of drug addiction like heroin or cocaine. These drugs are often prescribed by doctors and the user becomes addicted slowly while trying to manage the symptoms of real and chronic pain.

We simply have to get on top of this issue because, as more and more of us live longer and longer, more and more families are going to be confronted with the need for so-called palliative care. Failing that, increasing numbers of people are going to join voices as different as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and talk show host, Diane Rehm, who are calling for legislation commonly called “the right to die.” In other words, physician assisted suicide.

I am conflicted personally about that approach. My church, and most others, continues to speak against this kind of suicide, pointing to the value to human life to the very end and to the slippery slope which could lead to elders being taking advantage of by relatives all too happy to speed us on our way. Invariably, they point to such things as hospice care and palliative care (including opioids and other pain killing drugs)as doing away with the need for anyone to suffer unrelenting pain and agony in their last stages of life.

That, however, is easier stated than demonstrated in practice. My wife and I walked with her mother during the last years and months of a painfully degenerative illness which led to her increasing use of oxycodone and other such medications.  At the end, they barely touched her pain and, like Diane Rehm’s late husband, she eventually stopped eating and drinking, we are convinced, in order to hasten her own demise and end the suffering she had to endure for all too long.

For, in order to avoid tragedies like Prince’s, doctors are often extremely careful about how much pain killing medication they are willing to prescribe. The pollyanna view that “no one need die in pain anymore” is simply false.

If, holier than thou religious types wish to pontificate about refusing to support physician assisted suicide, perhaps they had better spend more time at the bedsides and in the homes of, especially, the poor who do indeed continue to die in pain and who wish nothing more than to follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ who, at the last, “bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John 19:30c)