This Is My First Book

For roughly four years, I’ve been working on much of These Mornings Are Rough on Many a Night: A Hazy Memoir of an Urban Teacher – my oh-so-hahalarious memoirs as a failed teacher in Chicago. Some parts for even longer. I had been holding out for that elusive book deal for so long that I never actually got it published. But I bit in when I noticed that the technology is ripe for self-publishing. Particularly e-publishing.

It’s $2.99. It helps out a worthy cause (me not starving) and allows me the opportunity to kick-start a second career.

So, please, pick up a copy. It’ll work in your Kindle or Kindle app (mine looks nice on my Asus Transformer Droid tablet. Which I wish I never bought and got a laptop instead. But that’s a different story…). If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow it for free. If you’re not, you can preview the first few pages for free as well.

I’d appreciate any feedback (and, yeah, that cover has to go. I know. Was working on it at 4 am).

I’d like to release a second e-book in the middle of next month, that one more closely associated with this blog.

Shrewd Advice

Be wary of the shrewd advice that tells you how to get ahead in the world on your own. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes.

– Mark 4 (The Message)

The poor tend to know this. Out of spirit, we share, knowing that we usually get back when it is necessary and when we least expect it. And often a hundred-fold. It’s a communal, involuntary insurance.

And it leaves us being gracious for what we have in terms of not just property, but family.

But sometimes we give out of our poverty and we’re hurt for it.

A fellow, a neighbor, a stranger, a cousin, burns us. Steals from us when we house him. Lies to us about her kid’s hunger or medical needs. Jimmy bums loose squares, always promising to pay back and never delivering. Some real nice lady does a business transaction with us but she runs into some problems and in an effort to speed up the process, we end up losing thousands of dollars that we don’t have. Roy comes over for dinner every other day but then starts mocking the food and service.

It’s easy to forget. To become stingy at this point. To take on the work and personality of the world around us.

Let’s not. Let’s not succumb to use the tools of the mean-spirited. He is in solidarity with no one; he cannot even trust himself. He dies alone and miserable, and lives alone and miserable.

Let us be continuously generous, for then we live as free men and women. Our wages may be restricted, our generosity even trampled on, but when we abandon our sisters and brothers in their time of need, when we refuse to share in the bounty of our meager harvest, we break the bonds of humanity, of friendship, of family, of our own very selves.

Share. It will be given back to us. A thousand-fold.

Calling Evil for What It Is: Refusing to Help

Yesterday’s Lenten reading was in Mark 3, where Jesus finds himself in the awkward position of defending his healing and feeding habits during the Holy Day. And in this, Jesus asks a simple question:

What kind of action suits the Sabbath best? Doing good or doing evil? Helping people or leaving them helpless?

(The Message)

What kind of action is truly holy? What kind of action is actually religious?

This brings us to austerity. Austerity is sanctions against the poor and assistance to the rich. Maybe that sounds disengenuous to some readers. But it is what it is: Leaving the poor, the elderly, the sick, and those with the least amount of help with little-to-no help. Under austerity, workers, seniors, and the working poor lose assistance, benefits, or sometimes even wages under the guise of state poverty. The state cannot afford to continue to sustain such lavish payouts, austerity advocates proclaim.

Yet on the other hand… Austerity gives humongous tax breaks to those who can most afford to pay their taxes. These corporations and extraordinarily wealthy people make their riches through the infrastructure afforded them by a free state. Yet the Austerians defend them and decry the leeching poor.

Yes, it’s backwards. This that benefit the most are “heroes” and those exploited for the profits of the heroes are lazy parasites. Ayn Randism all over again.

Austerians claim that the way to help the poor is to hurt them into self-reliance. “Give a man a fish,” begins their favorite proverb, “and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”

This is agreeable on the surface. Those of us who have had to or presently rely on some form of government aid would love to be able to make it by our own means. We do not want to rely on someone else’s assistance and often feel worse for it. So getting help to provide for our own selves by our own means is something we tend to desire.

But that’s not happening. Certainly not within Austeria.

– In Austeria, educational funding for the poor – already tremendously deficient – has been drastically reduced for profit. And despite what the Austerians are declaring, they themselves are not teaching the poor.

– In Austeria, the poor do not have access to the good water with the good, healthy fish. Those lakes and streams have been closed off – with high and wide electric fences, pinching dobermans, security guards with bees coming out of their mouths, moats filled with living fire.. Austerians claim that this is necessary. Their argument is that only the rich know how to properly care for the best resources. Somehow, we believe this nonsense.

– In Austeria, the waters that are available to the poor are tremendously polluted, dangerous, and filthy. The fish are limping along, gasping, gills cluttered with waste, scales covered with oil residue, vision impaired despite the new third eye. Yet it is the rich who have poisoned our waters and then charged the rest of us for their crimes.

——–

All of this is not to say that the poor are helpless, wailing away in incompetence. They have done stunningly well for generations with what little they are given. But that’s a relative “stunningly well“. As in, the poor may live meaningful and productive lives, but we constantly worry about our next meals, about our children’s health, about our parents’ care.

To allow the poor even less assistance while continuing to deny them access to the means to live securely is, simply put, evil.

Have mercy on our souls for allowing this evil to flourish, Jesus.

There’s the Proof in Your Puddin’!

After a few days, Jesus returned to Capernaum, and word got around that he was back home. A crowd gathered, jamming the entrance so no one could get in or out. He was teaching the Word. They brought a paraplegic to him, carried by four men. When they weren’t able to get in because of the crowd, they removed part of the roof and lowered the paraplegic on his stretcher. Impressed by their bold belief, Jesus said to the paraplegic, “Son, I forgive your sins.“

Some religion scholars sitting there started whispering among themselves, “He can’t talk that way! That’s blasphemy! God and only God can forgive sins.“

Jesus knew right away what they were thinking, and said, “Why are you so skeptical? Which is simpler: to say to the paraplegic, ‘I forgive your sins,’ or say, ‘Get up, take your stretcher, and start walking’? Well, just so it’s clear that I’m the Son of Man and authorized to do either, or both . . .” (he looked now at the paraplegic), “Get up. Pick up your stretcher and go home.” And the man did it—got up, grabbed his stretcher, and walked out, with everyone there watching him. They rubbed their eyes, incredulous—and then praised God, saying, “We’ve never seen anything like this!”

– Mark 2:1-8 (The Message)

Which is simpler: To say, “These are your sins and if you don’t follow the rules, you are a horrible, lowly person. You should be full of shame and fear because of your body/stance/sexual attraction/color/doubt/economic stance,” or say, “You are forgiven. Act as if it’s a new day because it is. Let us seek healing together – as one”?

All of Me = None of Us

The Lenten Season in the Christian calendar is a time to reminisce and reflect on the sufferings of Jesus toward his crucifixion. Many connect this period – remembering the humble, suffering servant – with reflecting on the suffering of those whom he suffered with and amongst: the hungry, the outcasts, the strangers, the widows, the orphans, the prostitutes, the sick.


As Liz Lemon would say, “I want to go to there.”

In my efforts of solidarity with Jesus and those he identifies with, for the next forty days (with breaks on Sundays) I’ll be limiting my diet to non-processed foods with rare meats and at a budget of five dollars a day.

That may be a bit difficult, sure, for this spoiled American with food addictions. But that’s not going to be the difficult part for me. In fact, suffering won’t be hard for me right now.

Frequent bouts of depression. Near drastic and chronic under-employment. Marital woes.

I do know how to cry. Extensively.

But I need to get out of me. I’m full of me. I want to be full of something healthier. I want to be a part of something greater.

Woe Is I!

May I surrender as Jesus did, for the glory set before him (us): Not my will, but thy will be done.

No True Christian

No true Christian would ever…

Let’s draw a Venn diagram, shall we?

Here we have two, very, very crudely drawn circles. One is labeled “Christian”, the other “Christ-follower.” Notice that the two are neither mutually exclusive nor are they equal. Meaning that one can be one, or the other, or both, or neither. But just because one falls under one label doesn’t mean she falls under the other one.

And now you may have one or two questions. I’ll see if I can figure them out and then answer them for you.

1. What’s the difference between the first circle and the next?
2. What does this all mean and what is your point?
3. Couldn’t you have used the circle drawing tool in the SuperNote app? It would’ve looked so much better?

Well,
1) To say that one is a Christian is to say that one follows or is a member of a particular religion that is attached to not only the person and deification of Christ, but also the religious ties that have been drawn up since then. Rules, guidelines, prescriptions, seasonal celebrations (such as Lent coming up right now), worship, ascribed doctrine, regular (or irregular) gatherings with co-religionists, offerings and other sacrifices, etc. On the other hand, to say that one follows the Christ himself is to say that he or she follows the examples and teachings – as best as can – that Jesus set out during his ministry years.

2) This is done to point out the fallacy of the No True Scotsman rule as applied to public figures and their claims to Christianity. Men like Franklin Graham are going around affirming Gingrich and Santorum’s Christian credentials while plausibly denying Obama’s Christianity. As a retort, many on the left are declaring that Gingrich and Santorum cannot be true Christians. But to say that is to deny that Christianity is a religion fraught with horrible atrocities committed in the name of Christ. Christians supported religious wars against Muslims and other Christians, genocide against American Indians, Palestinians,

Though without Jesus’ approval and quite contrary to his teachings and examples.

3) Only two questions, please. So shut up.

So what we see here are two distinct but intermingled identities – one easy to identify (the particularly religious one) and one with different sets of criteria that can be seen through an engagement with the Gospels.

Please notice, unlike a particularly viral video posted by a young Christian, I don’t want to give off the impression that religion is bad. Christianity, for many Christ-followers, can give us an anchoring, an identity, a spiriual home, and a community that we may otherwise flail about without. Joining in the suffering of Jesus that is Lent helps to remind us and keep us focused as to the person, work and focus of Jesus. Prayer and meditation keep us connected to our source and heart and can energize us – or at least calm us down.

But one can – as we used to say – go through the motions without actually following Jesus.

Most self described Born Again Christians would agree with that statement. But I don’t mean the same thing they do, necessarily. Jesus said a tree is known by its fruits. We would have some overlap as to what those fruits look like (specifically, the fruits of the Spirit), but considering the de-emphasis on Jesus’ teachings on the sheep and the goats (the most obvious qualifications he gives), not much.

Let’s look at those qualifications:

• Love God.
• Love your enemies. (This means, particularly and without equivocation, we need to shun war and other acts of violence done against our neighbors and enemies.)
• Pray for those who persecute you.
• Let go of wealth. (This one is especially de-emphasized in modern times. We tend to say Jesus was okay with wealth, but the truth is he wasn’t. He considered it evil and he shunned it, personally. The creator god of the universe, for example, came to earth not just as a baby, but as a peasant. And then he lived homeless, as a vegabond. It’s within this context that we should understand his talk with the rich young ruler, or his lesson about the evil eye.)
• Work towards peace (Not just ending war, but all sorts of violence we do toward each other – including poverty)
• Visit those in prison (Rather than throw them in there to forget them under the auspice of “keeping us safer”.)
• Give water to the thirsty and feed the hungry (In other words, those arguing for an end to social programs for the hungry – without any real, tangible plans to alleviate the suffering of those who are dependent on them are in direct defiance of this order.)
• House the homeless (Ditto)
• Clothe the cold (Well, most of us seem to get that one right. For the most part. Seriously.)
• Love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, keep in mind, the parts in parentheses are interpretations of the more direct exhortations in the Gospels (and the epistles as well). They are not direct commands, but I tend to think they’re pretty obvious from the context of Jesus’ culture and socio-political surroundings, as well as from the way that Jesus and the first few centuries’ worth of his followers practiced out their faith. But again, my interpretation.

Which, I think, goes to show how complex it can be to try to point and say, “He’s in; she’s out; she, in…” I’m not so sure that’s our place. Because if we were to go by specific rules, then we “all fall short of the glory of God.” To follow Christ is to acknowledge that we are traveling, and that there is no destination, only journey.

I was highly tempted to list those I felt belonged in certain groups. But I think I’ll refrain from that pharisaism. If public figures want to go around and act like anti-Christs while they claim the name of Christian, then they make their own rotten fruits evident. 

Debtor Love Is No Love At All

I’m reading a fascinating interview in The Boston Review with David Graeber, activist, anthropologist, and author of the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, about the history and trap of debt, about how money is largely a way What the book does as a reading exercise is enliven one’s imagination to the multitude of possibilities there are in how we can think about debt.

One reason to spread the canvas so broadly—the same thing that drew me to anthropology—is that you fight the idea that all these questions are settled, that there’s really only one way to run the economy, the political system, society. What you see when you look at history, if you look anthropologically across the world, even at any one time, is a dazzling infinite variety of social possibilities. Which you would never have dreamed possible until you see them. It makes it much more difficult to make the argument that nothing except what we’ve got is possible.

One of the primary arguments that Graeber makes is that throughout history, the financing system has largely been rigged toward the lender. Even prior to money, there was lending and even then the lenders had the upper-hand. It follows that coin/paper currency was used as a way to broaden and strengthen the debtors’ margins of profit.

This fits in with what we’ve been thinking here: That we need to rely less on paper and globalized currency and more on localized systems of organic economies. Not so much that currency is evil, but that a strict reliance upon it leaves most of the world indebted and imprisoned to the monied few. And this isn’t how nature works nor how we act naturally. Currency-based economics actually colors and poisons our relationships.

Most interactions with people that you trust, people that you love, or people that just need to cooperate with on an immediate basis, take the form of “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” It doesn’t matter if you’re working for the government, working for a corporation, or working in your family; if you need to fix the toilet because it’s leaking and you say “Hand me the wrench,” the other guy doesn’t say “What do I get for that?” It’s not an exchange; people act according to their abilities to chip in.

That’s how we tend to operate amongst people we live with and amongst. We’ve had many friends and relatives stay with us at their time of need, and many have had me during my times of need. Not because I’m awesome, but that’s how we do people we’re close to. There is no record of debts or wrongs.

Which only further convinces me of the need for a local-based organic, sustainable economy. Before we talk more about this later this week, I’ll leave you with this.

[O]ne of the more dramatic consistencies I’ve noticed in the history of debt: debts between equals are not the same as debts between people who are not equals.

Debts between either poor people or rich people, that they have with each other, can be renegotiated or forgiven. People can be extraordinarily generous, understanding, forgiving when dealing with others like themselves. But debts between social classes, between the rich and the poor, suddenly become a matter of absolute morality.

Yeah, see, equals.

h/t to Slacktivist for the interview find.

Futile Complications of Wagery

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, back in 2007, back before the massive foreclosures:

On any given night, approximately 750,000 men, women, and children are homeless in the US.

* 56% are living in shelters and transitional housing, while 44% are unsheltered.
* 59% are single adults and 41% are persons living in families.
* 98,452 are homeless families
* 23% are chronically homeless according to HUD’s definition.

Regarding hunger:

The [Greater Chicago] Food Depository defines “food insecurity” as “reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet,” or, put simply, “unsure where they will find their next meal.” Overall, Chicago has a 20.6 percent rate of food insecurity. That means 581,558 people are food insecure, a fairly terrifying number. Even worse, 36% of those who are food insecure are thus not eligible for federal nutrition programs because of their income – suggesting that the income cap for those programs may be too low.

In the impoverished, underresourced, segregated South side neighborhoods of Englewood and East Garfield Park where I’ve taught, nearly a third of residents (31.2%) face food insecurity.

We don’t, oddly enough, have a shortage of houses or food. Just as we don’t have a shortage of doctors or pharmaceuticals. We have a shortage of meaningful, living-wage jobs that provide adequate means to food, shelter, medical care, transportation, and a degree of economic security. There need not be a shortage of ingenuity nor of resources*. But there sure seems to be a shortage of imagination. Not because we are not intelligent, but because all of our thoughts of work and resultant earnings have been reduced (by the Powers That Be and, sadly, by our own complicity with them) to thinking about making paper money. How one job or another can afford us more paper money than another, what that can afford us, and how far that can last or get us.

Rather, I propose, we should be thinking in terms of direct ownership of our tools, talents, work, hands and how these can get us direct access to that which we need.

The world as it is set up is simply needlessly complicated. Wagery. That’s what we live for. A certain amount of money that may or may not have anything to do with our skills, use, talents, passion, vision, focus. Nor the usefulness of those to people or the environment. Our aspiration is largely wasted on wagery.

The non-irony in all of this is that the most-compensated – the best waged – are those who control and run the Big Wagery. The Money People are those who, in general, receive the Most Money. And their control over us is predicated on our need for wages. Wage jobs give us money and with money we get…

Stuff.

Stuff like food and clothing and and electronics and housing and transport to our distant jobs and schools and stores where we may continually purchase food and clothing and… stuff. Much of which we know we could live without.

We are like fish who have been incepted to love us some bicycles.

It’s all both largely important and immeasurably futile. We are playing a game of life and death – with someone else’s rules, and on his island.

And until we loosen their control over our lives and get off their damned island, we have little control over our own lives.

Gluttony and Temperance

Absorbing it all so that there’s none left.

That’s gluttony in the short. And that’s what the United States of America – a country that comprises 5% of the human population yet consumes a full 20% of its non-renewable resources – is. We are the very definition of gluttony.

Read that again with me, please.

My country makes up 1/20th of the people in the whole world.

But we take in 1/5th of its resources.

The non-renewable kind.

Consumed. Complete. Swallowed. Done. Finished. Taken in and not-replaced.

That is, we take in four times per person, on average, what everybody else in the entire world does. This includes food. And clothing. Electronics. Cars. Gas. Oil. Electricity. Water.

These are resources that others can’t use.

This leads to malnourishment, starvation, disease.

Death.

Because we can’t be temperate in our insatiable appetites?

How do we avoid this trap of selfishness? How can  we still live well and assure that others do as well? That’s a serious question that we need to wrap our minds around.

Seriously.

Papa Pink Panda Blankie

Daddy, daddy.

That’s how I know she’s excited about what’s gonna come out of her little girl squeaky vocal tubes.

Yep.

This blanket smells like you!

It does?

It does? Should I assume the best?

Here, smell.

I’m used to my four year old giving me directives. But this one, to be perfectly honest, may be a new one. I decide not to correct her this time. Thissss time.

Hmm…

The blanket is pink and lightweight – like a throw. It’s not made to be a primary level of protection during Chicago winters. (For that, one should seek out the carcass of a brown bear. Hats and scarves made from timber-wolf fur and boots consisting of hollowed-out bunnies are also strongly encouraged.) But it is soft and comfy and has the heads of panda bears all over it (Not literally). And it’s her current favorite.

So the fact that is smells a bit musky is a bit odd.

It smells weird, right?

She sounds almost adult as she says this. As adult as one can when sounding like a preschool-aged Betty Boop – sans the masculinity. Which makes it all the more disorienting. And, therefore, insulting.

Yeah… It kinda does, honey.

The good news is, now we know what pink pandas smell like: Me!

The Force of Religious and Secualrized Freedom

Ready? Brace yourselves, because these are the things I believe.

I believe that there is one creator god who got so angry with his creation that he completely flooded it once. I also believe that this creator god is not just one being, but three persons within one (I know what you’re thinking: Is he schizoid or siamese?). I believe that one of those persons incepted a virgin teenage girl with another one. I believe that this man-god walked among us and healed people in ways that modern science and medicine would find absolutely quackery. He also rearranged molecular particles to make bread and fish multiply thousands-fold, to heal optic nerves, and to turn water into wine. This man-god, however, couldn’t save himself from death… because he chose not to. And, according to my belief, he up and walked out of his tomb two days later.

And can walk between walls now.

These are, to be honest, fantastical and unrealistic beliefs. But that’s okay. We live in a world where we are free to believe and disbelieve any notion we choose – even when external forces choose for us not to. More to the point, despite what some say, I find that these and related beliefs have made me more considerate, more kind, more compassionate. Our belief systems – whether religious or philosophical – tend to color our world and our interactions with them. That is inevitle, and it can be a good thing.

But if we’re not careful, our freedoms to believe as we want and act accordingly can cause considerable harm.

An atheist cheerleads war with predominately Muslim countries in efforts to bomb Islam off the face of the Earth.

A religious sect preaches that Black people are the spawn of Satan.

A Baptist school outlaws interracial coupling.

Satanist sects hang dead cats on doors.

Fundamentalist Christians force creationism in the public schools as a form of science.

Hebrew holy scriptures are used to justify the genocide of native Palestinians.

Theocrats of most faiths threaten, ostracize, and sometimes kill converts and non-co-religionists.

Some Muslims mutilate their daughters’ privates.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are way too friendly at 9 on Saturday mornings.

And celibate, male priests and bishops tell women how they should take care of their potentially child-bearing bodies.

Any right of religion/philosophy ends where it injures or violates others. Conservative Christians and Muslims have the right to refuse to marry homosexuals. But they should not be allowed to prevent homosexuals from marrying.

Believing in a Flying Spaghetti Monster, a million gods, or no god at all is perfectly fine and acceptable. Using that strain of belief to guide and protect bigotry, hatred, and murder (as Hitler did with various philosophies and Christian sects) is unacceptable.

Evangelicals and the Great Mission

“Go and make disciples of all the peoples. Teaching them everything I have taught you. I am with you to the end of the world.”

– Jesus (Matthew 28)

Evangelicals live by this, the Great Commission. It’s where our movement gets its name from. It’s why we are not a denomination, but a movement that encompasses and passes through and above and away from denominational lines. A denomination is fixed in boundaries, yet we’ve decided to move beyond such limitations.

This is where we get our energy from, and a part of the reason I still consider myself Evangelical.

I’m confident, though, that we are doing great injustice to the Great Commission and our own status as Evangelicals (Messengers of the Good News). I was thinking about this as I was reading Skye Jethani’s article in the Huffington Post this morning. Jethani, senior editor for Christianity Today’s pastor-centric periodical Leadership Journal, shares a story in which he gave a talk to a church youth group shortly after 9/11 and the pastor, finding that Skye had studied Islam in college, urged him to defraud Islam as a religion of hate. Jethani refused and insisted that 1) that’s an inaccurate lie and 2) the beauty of Christ is compelling enough on its own.

The pastor, however, countered that his cabal of youth were surrounded by doubts and needed some assurance that they were on the right path.

I can sympathize with those doubts, yet, if these young men and women were to continue to follow the insecure faith of their pastor, they’d be better off with doubt. Although he’s trying, in his own way, to fulfill the GC, he’s acting counter to it. As is much of Evangelicalism.

The Great Commission is sadly misunderstood in two important and related dynamics. And those two dynamics are integral to how Evangelicalism has been failing the GC that we feel is core to our identity and that we cherish*.

First, we make disciples not by forcing or manipulating others to believe as we do, but by demonstrating. Jesus’s words give comfort, not traditional triumphalism. It is not through war or emotional trickery, nor telling others how awful they are that we are able to demonstrate the wonderfulness of Jesus. We make disciples by focusing on the teachings of Jesus.

Secondly, we confuse the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of our religion. The teachings of Jesus are pretty simple: Love. That’s the gist of it. Love. Share one another’s burdens. When someone asked Jesus who is going to heaven just a few chapters before his Great Commission, he answered that those who practice love to the “least of these” – by visiting the imprisoned and feeding the hungry and comforting the afflicted – will be welcomed. Those who DON’T will be turned away. It is they, not Muslims or atheists or Catholics, who will be shunned at the door, who are called “workers of iniquity.”

Jesus’ teachings aren’t on specific doctrines, nor how other religions suck (in point of fact, he said we should “take the log out of your own eyes before considering his or her splinter”). They certainly aren’t centered on Capitalism or Marxism (although he made many, many fine points about the evils of wealth that American churches would do well to not navigate around- if we want to see heaven, that is.). Neither did he teach to be politically partisan.

In fact, Jesus taught extensively about loving our enemies – particularly those who we’ve been trained to hate.

It would do American Evangelical pastors some good to follow Jesus’ teachings more often. After all, they’ve got congregants filled with doubt.

———————————
* In saying this, I want to stress that the GC is, IMO, a great thing and should be followed. But not in the way it is/has been misapplied, misunderstood, and abused.