“Guns Don’t Kill People”
OK, so what if we accepted that “guns don’t kill people, people do”? Just for the record, I don’t happen to accept that premise, since guns kill people a whole lot more efficiently than, say, knives or fists, but never mind. Let’s just take it as a starting place.
Isn’t it just possible that our culture of guns encourages people to kill people? Mightn’t the fact that it is legal in many states to carry concealed weapons to the grocery store or to church create an expectation that we NEED guns wherever we go? Might it be possible that memes like the picture going around Facebook of a gun holstered under a steering wheel as an anti-carjacking device teach us that the solution to being hurt or scared or offended or threatened is respond with lethal force?
Perhaps people do feel more secure carrying guns about, but it is a security based on the assumption that the solution to fear of violence is to escalate the violence. Maybe the guns themselves aren’t the root of the problem. Maybe the guns are the effect of an assumption that the way to feel safe is to become more dangerous ourselves. Maybe the ever more rampant violence is bred by a culture that says that if you have been offended, if you are hurting, then the solution is to make those who offended you pay.
What if we didn’t have the guns to back us up in that belief? What if we all had to admit that there are situations in which we are powerless or terrified or ill-treated, and there is, ultimately, nothing we can do about it? What if we had to accept that life is dangerous in more ways than we can count, and that pain and, ultimately, death is inevitable? Might we then come to a little more compassion for our fellow human beings who all share this lot in life? Might we learn to address our pain in ways that are more constructive—or at least less damaging to those around us? Might we try to find solutions to some of the systemic problems that drive people toward desperation? Might we, just as a “for instance,” learn to teach our young men that striking back is not an available option, let alone one that our culture admires?
Isn’t it time that churches started taking seriously Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek, and consider what that might mean for our society? God knows it’s time for some leadership to come from somewhere.
Ready for Christmas
‘Tis the season. The standard greeting these days seems to be, “So, are you ready for Christmas?” Frankly, this is a question that flummoxes me every time. Honestly, I really have not the faintest idea how one is supposed to answer. Am I ready for Christmas? What does that even mean?
Have I decorated the house? No. To be perfectly frank, I haven’t even mopped the floor in some weeks. I have not hung lights. So far, there is no tree. In my house these things are usually accomplished somewhere in the vicinity of Christmas Eve. In my defense I will say that trees are much cheaper then, and my daughter has come to understand Christmas Eve as the traditional time to decorate a tree.
Have I baked cookies for my co-workers? That’s an easy one. I work online. My co-workers, wonderful as they are, live across the country. They don’t expect cookies. But then, neither do my neighbors. OK, neither do my friends and family. Sometimes it’s best to set low expectations.
Have I bought presents for all and sundry? Um…not so much. Some day very soon I will think about what incredibly thoughtful items might be purchased for my nieces and nephew that Amazon can gift wrap and mail for me. Shopping for my 14-year-old daughter is best done by gift card. We agreed that the lovely hand-made mask my wife dearly wanted would be her Christmas present, but it’s already hanging on the wall. The rest of my family doesn’t really exchange presents. Can I just say that anything involving a shopping mall is NOT my idea of a jolly holiday?
I guess by all prevailing standards the clear answer is that no, I am not in the least ready for Christmas.
Unless you mean: Am I ready to wish wes-hael—be whole—to those around me in the traditional wassail greeting of the season?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to embrace the dark of the year, but also keep an eye on the lights that shine in the early night?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to consider what it means to imagine God in the form of a powerless baby?
Unless you mean: Am I ready to follow a star, or whatever might beckon me toward the surprising, the miraculous, the new?
In that case, I’m still not sure, but I suspect—I hope—that the answer is yes.
The Christmas List
We’ve reached the season of the Christmas list. Children far and near are making careful notes as to what exactly they would like Santa to bring them. While these lists contain an amusing variety including the improbable (a pony!), the impossible (a griffin!) and the heartbreaking (a military parent home for Christmas) as well as your standard covetous and grasping, that is not the kind of Christmas list I’m thinking of. No, I’m considering the other side of the equation.
Santa, we’re told, is “making a list, checking it twice.” Santa is “gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” Does this strike you as just the tiniest bit creepy? Talk about Big Brother. Really, what defines someone as naughty or nice? Anyone I’ve ever met is some combination – mostly nice, but with regular lapses. Does Santa have some sort of computer algorithm that assigns a point value to acts, naughty or nice, and then spits out a conclusion on the balance?
What I really wonder, I guess, is whether anyone really ever gets a lump of coal. Are we ever judged that inadequate, that naughty? Would a “right jolly old elf” ever decide that a person is so bad that they don’t even deserve an orange at the bottom of their stocking?
Don’t we all, in the end, receive a shower of gifts, without regard to our naughty/nice quotient? Trees and mountains, air and sunshine, birds, oceans, sunsets, rain, wildflowers, fat bumblebees—doesn’t it all come to us in an overflowing profusion, far beyond what we can measure, let alone fit under a Christmas tree?
What if there is no list, and no one is checking to see if we measure up? What if the whole scheme rests, not on the threat of punishment, but rather on the premise that we long to give back as we are given to, that we find our joy in returning to the world as beautiful a reflection of what we are given as we can muster?
I’ll say it. I don’t believe in Santa—not the one with the twice-checked list at any rate. I am, however, a steadfast fan of the reindeer, who are so in love with the idea of delivering gifts that they are, against all reason, able to fly.
REsources for Living
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You’re standing there in the cold, waiting for the bus to come, and every minute feels like an hour. You’re waiting for the phone call that will give you the results of a medical test, and the more you try not to think about it, the more your pulse races in fear. You’re waiting for your birthday to come, or for the start of vacation, and the anticipation is half pleasure and half agony.
Do What You Would Ususally Do Wednesday
We have, at last, come off of a whole string of days officially or unofficially designated to tell us what to do with our money. There was Black Friday, when we were supposed to go shopping; and Buy Local Saturday when we were supposed to spend more money, but this time with local merchants and independent retailers. Then came Cyber Monday, when we were supposed to buy stuff online. Followed by Giving Tuesday, when we were supposed to redeem ourselves for all that socially-irresponsible spending by giving money to good causes.
Honestly, I have no idea who determines these things. Who designated Cyber Monday or Giving Tuesday or any of the rest, and how did these things somehow become folded into the Holiday Season? What exactly defines the Holiday Season, anyway? Does it run from Thanksgiving to Christmas? New Year’s? If you celebrate Chanukah and not Christmas, does the Holiday Season end with the completion of Chanukah (the evening of the 16th this year) or do you have to say in a festive mood until the last of the eggnog is consumed at New Year’s?
I have no idea. On the theory that whoever designates these things has no special authority (and really, aside from the Supreme Court, who does?), I would like to designate today, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, as Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday. If you need something, go out and buy it. Otherwise don’t. Unless, you know, it’s really calling to you and you can afford it and it’s genuinely going to make your life better, in which case, what the heck, go for it. If you can get what you need from a local merchant, that would be great. But if you just don’t have the time or energy to go out into the world and you can find what you need online, believe me, I understand. And hey, today would be a great day to contribute to the welfare of others, or to the arts or to any organization that you think is doing wonderful work in the world.
But, you know, tomorrow would be just as good. Setting up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account would be even better. Face it, how you spend your money just isn’t a holiday. It isn’t something that deserves a special moment set aside from ordinary time. Which is not to say that how you spend your money isn’t a religious practice. It certainly is. Jesus, for instance, had far more to say about how people should spend their money than he did about far more contentious topics like homosexuality and divorce. Judaism and Islam have plenty to say about money, particularly about giving it to people in need. Money is one of the major ways that we express our values, which is to say, how we express what we think is right and good, which is to say, our religion.
How we spend our money matters. But it doesn’t need a holiday, a special, set-apart time. Far better that we make our financial choices daily, mindfully, choosing over and over again to invest in those things that matter most to us: the health and safety of our families, the pleasures that leaven our lives, opportunities for learning and growth, care for those who are in need. Today, Do What You Would Usually Do Wednesday, please spend your money exactly the way you ordinarily would. Unless you aren’t satisfied that your financial habits reflect your deepest values. In which case you should look forward to Do a Little Better Thursday, which is coming right up tomorrow.
A Different Thanksgiving
Somehow the Thanksgiving plans turned out different than we expected. Like most folks in the US, my images of Thanksgiving include big tables groaning with food surrounded by family and friends. That’s not just a Norman Rockwell fantasy for me. My family both gets along well and cooks well, and Thanksgiving dinner is always a pleasure.
So when my parents announced, months ago, that they would be heading to the opposite coast to spend the holiday with my East Coast siblings, we knew that the holiday would look different, and we talked about friends that we might invite to celebrate the holiday. We would have different faces, but the same effect of feasting and conviviality. And then we kind of never quite figured out who to ask. And then my wife went in for an emergency appendectomy. And so, there we were, a few days out from Thanksgiving, with no real plans.
But hey, we could manage. We’d have a special celebration with just our little family—my slowly-recuperating wife, my daughter and I. Go see a movie. Have some easy-going family time. Choose a couple of favorite Thanksgiving dishes to make and just hang out.
Perhaps this would be a good moment to mention that my daughter is 14. My images of family time and hanging out together don’t usually come out the way I have in mind. Eventually the image of the family gathered around the groaning board devolved into a plan for my daughter to watch the final Twilight movie at the same time and in the same theater that my wife and I watch The Life of Pi. Not quite what I had in mind.
But, you know, it’s OK. Really, gratitude means a lot more in the real world of plans that fall apart than in that all-too-rare perfect world in which everything comes out the way it’s supposed to. I am grateful for my family, even if it’s next to impossible to get the eye-rolling teen to occupy the same space as her less-than-cool mothers for any period of time. I am grateful for my comfortable home, which will not get the thorough cleaning it so desperately needs, since no one is coming over. I am grateful to have enough to eat, even if we end up with In n’ Out Burgers rather than turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving this year.
I am grateful to be here, in this particular place, at this particular time, which is as full as devastation and war and suffering as any other time, and as full of heroes and incredible blessings. However our Thanksgiving Day turns out, I will take a few moments for gratitude. May I remember to do that all of the subsequent days, whether they turn out the way I imagined or not.
Moving On
In a way, it feels like a magnified version of Christmas – the election, I mean. All of that lead-up, all the wishes and hopes for what you might get this year, all of that investment in trying to get just the right outcome…and then it’s done. The big reveal is complete. And we either did or did not get just exactly what we wanted, or some results feel like the best gift ever, and some are more gravely disappointing than an ugly sweater or a set of pickle forks.
But one way or another, those of us who have spent months obsessing over polls or calling strangers or arguing politics on Facebook need to find something else to do with our time. The decisions are made, the gifts unwrapped. There is only so long one can continue to fill the hours with election re-caps and analyses about how and why this or that demographic voted as they did. It’s time to move on.
Except that it isn’t. Moving on implies letting it go, moving forward as if nothing happened. It sounds like brushing one’s hands together and declaring mission accomplished if your side won, or grumbling off into the night if it didn’t. Neither of those stances really exemplifies the best of democracy or, for that matter, spirituality.
Far better to choose moving forward. If there were candidates or causes you were passionate about, you cared for a reason. You voted because you cared about the environment or liberty or education or marriage or any number of visions of the society that you hope to live in. And none of those visions is either accomplished or lost based on the people or propositions that got the most votes. All of those visions are still merely possibilities.
Every time an election rolls around we are told that it is the most important of our lifetimes, and that catastrophe is imminent if things don’t go our way. And that might be true. But it is also true that the work of the world, the pursuit of justice and freedom and health and wholeness has been continuing—imperfectly—for a very long time, and isn’t likely to be finished any time soon.
So take the time you need to celebrate or mourn the outcome of this most recent election, but don’t take too long. The work of clarifying your vision of the world you want to see, and the work of nudging the world toward that reality, is still very much in season.
REsources for Living
When my wife and I adopted our daughter Mattéa as an infant, we knew that we wanted to build something into our lives together in the way of prayer or ritual. Nothing too formal or fancy, but something that regularly reminded us that we belonged to something larger than our own little selves. We settled on singing a table grace at dinner:
Thank you for this food, this food,
This glorious, glorious food
And the animals, and the vegetables,
And the minerals that made it possible.
This works for us. It covers the basics. We need to say thank you for what we are given—the animals, the vegetables and the minerals which are constantly in interaction with us, and on which our lives depend. Just who or what we are giving thanks to doesn’t matter so much. That bit can remain open. Perhaps it’s the Source of Life, or the Evolutionary Process, or the Interdependent Web. Maybe how each of us pictures it, or doesn’t picture it, changes over time. Frankly, we don’t talk about it much—we just sing, and then eat. Sometimes we toss in a thank you for the cooks, although technically the cook is covered under the “animals” clause.
One day, when she was perhaps seven or eight, we got to the end of the song and Mattéa threw her hands up in the air and hollered “Boom!” Kelsey and I were, needless to say, perplexed. “Boom?” we asked, “Why boom?” “It’s the fireworks,” declared Mattéa, in a matter-of-fact tone.
It’s the fireworks. That’s what was missing from our brief moment of family prayer. The fireworks. The wonder and excitement and glory. Of course the marvelous fact of animals and vegetables and minerals, of life in general, deserves a nightly fireworks display—a grand celebration of the utter fabulousness of it all.
Prayer can be giving thanks in moments of quiet contemplation. But prayer can also be ecstatic, energetic, exuberant. Some of our human family’s most ancient forms of prayer involve drumming and dancing, bodies moving together, voices chanting, feet pounding or hips shaking in a glory of sound and movement. That “fireworks” version of prayer is every bit as real and valid as a monk praying silently in his solitary cell.
What does prayer look like for you? Do you have a way of addressing something that is larger than yourself, tuning into whatever is biggest and most holy? Some people pray as introverts: writing in a journal, sitting in meditation, reading poetry, walking in nature, finding God in the silence, or listening for the “still, small voice.” Some people pray as extraverts: singing, chanting, dancing, drumming, sharing joys and sorrows and lifting up the community in prayer. Some people pray to find their center, to listen for the voice inside. Some people pray by to be in communion with God, or Jesus, or the goddess, to be in the beloved presence of the Divine.
And, of course, lots of people don’t pray at all. Nor do they have to. But what if you wanted to pray, but didn’t know how to go about it? With all these ways of praying—quiet and loud, introvert and extravert, table grace and fireworks—how might a person get started?
Here’s what I think. Start with what you love. Maybe it’s gazing at stars or snuggling your cat or running for miles. Begin with a thing you love, and then add to it the intention to open your heart. So as you lie there with your cat on your chest or the stars shining down from the unimaginable distances, just focus on opening your heart to where you are and what you are doing.
And maybe once you are there, doing what you love with an open heart, you will want to invite someone else in—not literally, although that would be fine, too. But while you’re there, open heart and all, you could imagine the presence of those you love, or those you know who could use some extra support and compassion, and you could imagine them wrapped in that open-hearted beauty of the stars or the purring.
Maybe in that open-hearted space you’d like to reflect on a few things that you’re grateful for. Maybe you could hold yourself in that open-hearted space while you thought about things you were sorry for, and want to mend or do better next time. Maybe, while there in that soft heart-space you would want to ask for help, or forgiveness, or courage.
Don’t worry about who or what you might be asking to help or forgive you. Really, I don’t think that’s the part that matters. But if you want an image rooted more in science than religious tradition, think of this. Scientists recently proved the existence of the Higgs boson, what some people call “the God particle.” I’m not sure why exactly they call it the God particle, but my understanding is like this. Space isn’t empty. Even what looks like a complete vacuum is full of the Higgs field, which is only in evidence because things, well, are. Scientists know it’s there because without it, nothing would have mass, and there would be no atoms, let alone all the animals, vegetables and minerals of our world. Emptiness isn’t empty. There is always something which holds and catches the tiniest bits of the universe, allowing things to bind together, to connect.
Pray, if you will, to the Higgs field that holds all of everything, in which we are all linked. Surely it deserves to set off a small “Boom!” of fireworks in your heart every now and then.
Masks — A Poem for Halloween
Masks
What will you wear for Halloween?
The trees are changing faces, and the
rough chins of chestnut burrs
grimace and break to show their
sleek brown centers. The hills
have lost their mask of green and grain,
settled into a firmer geometry
of uncolored line and curve.
Which face will you say is true—
the luminous trees or the branches underneath?
The green husks of walnuts, the shell within,
or the nut curled intimately inside,
sheltered like a brain within its casing?
Be careful with what you know,
with what you think you see.
Moment by moment faces shift,
masks lift and fall again, repainted
to a different scene. It means,
the cynics say, there is no truth,
no constant to give order to the great equation.
Meanwhile, the trees, leaf by leaf,
are telling stories inevitably true:
Green. Gold. Vermillion. Brown.
The lace of veins remaining
as each cell returns to soil.
Lynn Ungar’s book of poetry, Bread and Other Miracles, is available at www.lynnungar.com
What God Intends
Let’s be fair, here. I’m sure that Richard Mourdock did not in any way mean to defend rape when he said that he thinks that God intends for babies to be born who are conceived through rape. I would hope that no one could believe in a God who intends for women to be raped. But I’m sure there are brave women who have borne their rapist’s baby, whether that rapist is a husband, boyfriend or stranger, and who regard their child as something precious that managed to grow from a terrible beginning. Such is the amazing resilience that can come to the human heart, and wouldn’t God be present in that beautiful redemption?
But let’s get real here for a moment. One could certainly imagine a God who could redeem even something as terrible as rape through the love of an innocent child. But when did it become the government’s job to determine on God’s behalf that this is the necessary outcome? For every woman who has chosen to keep and love a child conceived through rape there are probably many more who choose a morning after pill or abortion to end a pregnancy that they never wanted, and which would be an intolerable life-long symbol of a great violation. Why would you assume that God is not in that decision as well? Why wouldn’t God be there at the side of a woman as she struggles to reclaim her life and her strength and her ability to move forward in the world? Is God not in that woman’s choice to restore her own integrity and wholeness as she understands it?
I won’t presume to speak for God, but I will tell you what I think. When a woman is raped, God’s body is torn as her body is torn. When a fetus is aborted, some piece of God’s potential is lost. But God’s potential is infinite, and a woman reclaiming her life is no less a part of God’s potential. Indeed, every moment when every person chooses life, whatever that might mean to that person at the time, is a part of the potential of God unfolding.
It isn’t the job of politicians to decide which bits of potential God finds most precious. It is the job of each us, day by day and minute by minute, to decide what will constitute life more abundant for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and to act as the body of God in living out that choice. The role of the government is to support those decisions or get out of the way.
