Humanity’s Sharp Learning Curve

 

I arbitrarily decided when I first started blogging to make Friday my “due date.”  It was a discipline.  There have been times when I approached Friday with “Oh dear, what should I write about?”  Not today.  Today there is too much to write about.

 

There are the endless commercials proclaiming why we should BUY at the Memorial Day SALE.  And there’s the traffic headed out of town for the Memorial Day weekend.  And I wonder how many of us will remember Memorial Day?  The one day we set aside, not to glorify war, but to remember those who, as Lincoln said, gave “their last full measure of devotion” to their country.  Our country. 

 

I preached on it last Sunday.  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is well worth rereading.  Lincoln not only remembers those who gave their lives, but also charges us, “the living,” with the duty of carrying the torch … “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

 

It seems to me more and more that we are becoming a nation of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. 

 

Which leads me to the horror set loose on the Gulf of Mexico.  Greed, it appears, spurred the accident.  From what is coming out in dribbles, it appears that BP wanted its oil and wanted it NOW.  Not in a few days.  They couldn’t wait a few extra days.  So much devastation, so much damage to the ecology of the sea and the life that calls it home, so many lives destroyed, so BP could make a little more, a little faster.

 

Which leads me to the harangues against our president.  All Mr. Obama has had to do in the past sixteen months he has been president is deal with a nation teetering on the brink of a full scale depression, deal with two wars, including at least one that never should have been fought, deal with a national debt roaring out of control, and deal with a broken health care system.  And now, the horror in the Gulf. 

 

Which leads me to regulation.  I guess this is what really gets to me.  Who is connecting the dots here?  Once again, in the Gulf disaster, the regulators were much too close to the people they were supposed to be regulating.  Hey, anyone remember the Wall Street/Banking fiasco that all but brought this country to its knees less than two years ago?

 

We’re back to Lincoln.  We need our government to be more of the people, by the people and for the people. 

 

And does this have anything, anything at all to do with matters spiritual?  Yes. 

 

I was about to write that our poor are becoming institutionalized.  But I think over the past thirty years they have indeed become institutionalized.  And there’s a new study out that says our youth are even more self-interested than their parents.   There is, it appears, a growing “empathy” gap.  That all but insures that the poorest of us will stay poor. 

 

This, “It’s all about me” is a spiritual disease.  We’ve fostered it.  We’ve fed it.  We’ve even glorified it.  And now we must live with its consequences.  Its consequences when Wall Street runs amok.  Its consequences when corporate greed turns the Gulf of Mexico into oil sludge.   Its consequences when, as we discussed last week, the manipulation of what we eat threatens to make increased risk of ADHD another cost of being poor.

 

There is no me.  There is no them.  There is only us.  And we have, it seems, an increasingly short period of time to learn this lesson.  A lesson Jesus tried to teach us two thousand years ago.  A lesson Confucius tried two thousand five hundred years ago.  And so many, many others.  There is no me.  There is no them.  There is only us.  When do we learn?   To quote Hillel, “If not now, when?” 

Food Choices and Moral Implications

 

Sometimes synchronicity can be a pain.  This past week I’ve been reading a fascinating but disturbing book by Michael Pollan called “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”.  I’m evidently a late-comer.  I was talking to a friend about it who replied, “You mean you never saw the documentary ‘Food Inc.?’”  And there’s evidently another documentary called “King Corn.”  Be that as it may, this was mostly new to me.  How the transformation of our food suppliers from small farms into a food "industry" has affected what we eat and what is in what we eat.  It’s an amazing and well written book.  I strongly recommend it. 

 

But that’s not what this blog is about.

 

This past week, just as I was in the middle of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I came across an online article that confirmed a concern I’ve had for some time.  The article is titled “Pesticides in kids linked to ADHD.”  Here’s a link to that article.

 

I’ve known that ADHD has been on the rise.  I’ve know that allergies have been on the rise.  And I’ve always suspected that it was related to our use and over use of pesticides as well as the extent to which we have generally fouled our ground and our air.  Here was proof.  Damning proof.  The “allowable” amount of pesticide residue in our foods is related to ADHD.

 

But that’s not what this blog is about either.

 

The article’s conclusion is that caring parents should be looking toward feeding at least their young children if not their entire families organic food.

 

THAT’S what I’d like us to look at.  Because there is something left out of that recommendation.  Organic costs more.  Indeed, we seem to have managed to industrialize our food so “perfectly” that the less healthy a food is, the cheaper it tends to be.  Eating healthy is quickly becoming, if it hasn’t already, a matter of economic “class.”  The wealthy can afford to eat healthily.  The middle class can afford to if it’s careful.  The poor, too often, can’t afford it.  We need to put this front and center.

 

We talk about the prevalence of “fast food” and “supersizing” and the epidemic or obesity.  Learning to eat better is surely a part of becoming healthier.  Taking the time to make dinner at home is surely a part of becoming healthier.  Growing our own food, if we have a yard, is surely a part of becoming healthier (please visit songcroft.com for some great advice about sustainable living). But we also need to remember that eating healthy can cost more.  And what, as a people are we willing to do about that?

 

We are told now that caring parents need to start feeding their children organic foods.  But I would add, and add emphatically, that a caring society needs to make sure that organic foods are affordable and available to all.  If we don’t, we will soon be making ADHD yet another cost of being poor.  That’s wrong.  From every moral and spiritual sense that is just plain wrong.

First a quick note.  Living Interfaith Church has officially entered the 21^st century.  We now have a Facebook Page.  If you’re so disposed, please visit.  And if you “like” the page it will help to spread the word a bit.  J

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Nothing to Fear

 

As I watched the news a few nights ago, it was brought home to me yet again just how fearful our country has become.

 

FDR told us, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”  Perhaps that’s true.  But as I look around it is hard to escape that we are in the midst of a fear epidemic.  And of all the diseases of the world, I wonder if fear isn’t the most virulent … and perhaps the most destructive.  It not only destroys bodies.  It destroys souls. 

 

I made a point of watching “Good Night, and Good Luck” the other day.  It’s a film about the McCarthy era, and particularly about Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly’s gut-wrenching decision to take on Senator Joe McCarthy.  It’s a story that anyone not familiar with “the McCarthy era” should see.  And also a story that those of us who know of it still need to be reminded of from time to time.

 

McCarthy saw “Communists” everywhere, and that included the U.S. government.  He held hearings that hurled accusations and destroyed careers with evidence so flimsy as not to be worthy of the word.  Murrow knew what he was letting himself in for.  People were losing their jobs because of McCarthy, and their lives as well.  The fear Murrow faced, for himself and his career, was real.

 

And that’s really a point worth considering.  When we deal with fear, I don’t think the decision we make is “Will I be fearful or not?”  Few of us is “fearless.”  We mortals will be afraid, at least from time to time if not with more frequency.  The decision, I think, is not whether or not we will be fearful, but whether or not we will be governed by our fears.  This is a distinction worth pondering.

 

And it forms the tragedy in Conrad’s great novel, “Lord Jim.”  Jim makes a terrible mistake, born out of fear, and spends the rest of his life trying without success to make up for it.

 

No, the issue is not that we ought to be fearless.  Among other things, I think it sets us up for failure – for there will be times we are very much afraid.  But what will we do about it?

 

This was brought home for me personally in 2006 when I took out a full page ad (that frankly I could not afford) to comment on the Iraq war.  There was a true climate of fear in the country.  Anyone who did not support the president 100% was considered a traitor – a friend of the terrorists.  As the day for the publication approached I basically freaked.  Would I get hateful e-mails?  I did.  Would I get obscene phone calls.  I did, but only a couple.  I also heard from a lot of people who supported me and thanked me for the courage to publish the ad.  I point this out not to say I did anything wonderful.  I was truly scared – shakingly, sleeplessly scared.  Rather, it is to say that we can fight through our fears.  We can.  I’m not sure it helps us to say “I’m not afraid” when we know darn well we are.  But perhaps we can say, “As afraid as I am, I will do what I know is right.”

 

This, on a scale that totally dwarfs my small effort, is what Ed Murrow did.  This, right now, is what we need so desperately to see in our country.

 

I believe fear dominates the reaction of so many to Hispanics, and the new and truly unfortunate law in Arizona.  Not reason, but mindless fear.

 

I believe fear dominates the reaction to President Obama by those who seek to compare him with Hitler or call him a Socialist.  I’m not here to argue whether Obama is a good president not.  I’m not here to argue politics.  But like his efforts or not, to call him a Socialist is darn close to insane.  And to compare him to Hitler is obscene. 

 

Right now, I believe we are swamped with the politics of fear.  There’s a line from another movie, “The American President,” where it is stated, “They are interested only in telling you what to fear and who’s to blame.”  The “they” may be from the right or from the left.  It needs to be stopped.

 

We who wish to bequeath to our children a world worth living in, must fight through our fears.  And we must teach our children, not to be unafraid, but of the need to fight through their fears. 

 

Does this have anything to do with Interfaith?  Perhaps only this.  So much of our fear  comes from lack of understanding.  Throughout history Jews have been feared by many because they had no idea what Judaism was about.  Many (this is history) thought Jews drank the blood of Christian children at Passover.  Today many fear Islam not because of what Islam is, but because of what they fear it is.  Interfaith can teach us about each other.  It doesn’t mean we won’t find differences.  We will.  There are differences between our varying spiritual paths.  But if we will learn more about each other, we can better understand and embrace our common humanity.  We can leave our children a world worth living in.

 

Interfaith isn’t an answer to fear.  But it’s a start in the right direction.

So We Might Come to Know Each Other

 

As a Jew whose faith is Interfaith, I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the “Tower of Babel” story in Hebrew Scripture (Genesis 11:1-9).  Everyone on earth has the same language.  People get together and start building a tower with “its top in the sky.”  God decides to knock humanity down a peg and scatters people across the earth and gives them different cultures and languages so they can’t combine and threaten the heavens.

 

Of course, one could argue that it is because of this scattering that it has taken humanity three thousand years to reach the point where we can not only threaten the heavens, but the seas and the land with our hubris and sometimes seemingly unfettered greed.

 

Still, I am attracted to the rather different spin put on our diverse languages and traditions in the Qur’an.  In Sura 30:22, the diversity of our “tongues and colors” are included among the wonders of God’s creation, and not a punishment.  Then, in Sura 49:13 we learn that God has made us into nations and tribes, “so that you might come to know one another.”

 

So that we might come to know one another. 

 

Our differences, then, are a cause neither to feel superiority nor isolation.  Our differences are there “so that you might come to know one another.” 

 

What a gloriously Interfaith approach!  J 

 

Indeed, the essence of Interfaith and a huge and wonderful reason for practicing it is that we might indeed come to know one another.

 

That has already happened for me, though admittedly in a microcosmic way.  The Living Interfaith Church is but a seedling.  Yet I have already had the true joy of getting to know, at least a little, about the spiritual paths of so many deeply caring, truly wonderful people.  I not only would not have gotten to know them, I also would not have “come to know” their spiritual paths were it not for Interfaith.

 

I am in awe, truly in awe, of the people who have come to our Interfaith services.  We all seem to grasp the need for a “safe space.”  We all seem to grasp the need for “sacred space.”  We come together, to worship together, not in spite of the differences in our spiritual paths, but because of them!

 

I know there will be missteps along the way.  I’ve already made some!  But we’re all human.  We make mistakes.  What I love about our group and what continues to impress me is the willingness, indeed eagerness to cut each other some slack … all while feeling safe enough to ask a question rather than withhold it.

 

As example, at our last service, there was an insert of a rather extensive list of how the “Golden Rule” has been verbalized worldwide, from China, to Africa, to the Middle East, to the Americas.  After the service I was asked why I had left out a Wiccan version.  The answer is simple.  I left it out because I was unaware of it.  In future it will be included.  And in the meantime, a question that could have been left in silence to fester was given light.  That is the wonder and joy of a truly safe space.  And I came to know a little bit more about the Wiccan tradition.

 

It doesn’t get much better than that!