The Senseless Destruction of War

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"

This was probably not among the most frequently used MLK quotes on Monday, but it should have been. As I have asserted several times, war is the most asinine of human behaviors. And yet we seem incapable of abandoning it, so sure are we that violence can solve our problems. Now to be fair, it does excel at giving that impression, at least momentarily, but those victories never last long. So insanely, we try, try again.

To make matters worse, too many of us refuse to question the purposes for which so many of our brothers and sisters have died. Most recently, a television journalist had the gall to voice his unease with the seeming senselessness of American casualties in Afghanistan while on-air. The outrage was swift and silly; a shining example of our "support the troops" mentality in action, with its mindless cliches and chest-thumping antics more appropriate to devoted sports fans cheering on their favorite team. Sadly, this incident was also an example of denial at its worst and deadliest.

Every war death is senseless, because each is a product of our failure to find better ways of settling differences. Living in denial about this truth might bring us temporary comfort, but it also ensures more destruction and more death.

And not only through the occurrence of future wars. Our insistence that violence can solve big problems inevitably leads us into believing that it can solve personal ones as well. Which is how a silly personal dispute in a movie theater turns deadly. And why too many children choose to express their rage with a gun. And, it must be said on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade, one of the hidden reasons behind so many of us being convinced that abortion is a reasonable solution. We are surrounded by symptoms of the spiritual death of which King warned us. Why do we not heed them?

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

"Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love. How hard is that? What are you afraid of? If he was willing to die to love you, what’s your excuse for not loving those you fail to understand, those you despise, those you hate?"

How many of our siblings must die before we finally say "Enough!"?

The Choice to Love

Earlier this week, I watched an ESPN documentary about how Nelson Mandela used the sport of rugby as a tool to promote reconciliation and unity in post-apartheid South Africa. What struck me most was not Mandela's actions, but that so many of his fellow countrymen chose to follow his lead. They did not have to after all. It would have been understandable, perhaps even justifiable, for them to remain stuck in their anger and fear. But instead, whether reluctantly or eagerly, they chose to love.

We have spent the last few weeks celebrating Nelson Mandela, as we should have. But let us also take the time to celebrate those ordinary South Africans who chose to love their neighbor rather than fight them. Even better, let us emulate them.

"Yes, this path will be terrifying. It is uncertain and full of risk. But we owe it to our family to embark upon the journey. It is who we are and why we were created: to love our family, all of it."

The Wages of Tolerance

"Who is my neighbor?" As I wrote in last Sunday's "Good News" post, we know the answer to this question. We know where this truth is supposed to lead us. We just fail to "carry it out." Why? Because we have settled for tolerating our neighbor, rather than loving them. Or even worse, we believe these acts are one and the same.

I wrote about this topic back in January, but it has become even more evident to me in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial. So much raw emotion is being spilt over this case. The subjects of our tolerance are tired of being unloved. Moreover, they see the harsh truth of our supposedly enlightened culture: if all Trayvon Martin deserved was our tolerance, then it becomes incredibly easy to tolerate his death.

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

We cannot just tolerate the Martins and Zimmermans of this world. We must love them with everything we have. They deserve it. And so do we.

Firefighters & Deportees

Two articles in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times stood out to me in an unintentionally interconnected sort of way. The first was on the previous day's memorial service for the 19 firefighters killed in Arizona. The second told the story of the rediscovery of the names of 28 Mexican citizens who died in a plane crash near Coalinga in 1948. They were deportees on their way home, who became a nameless group buried in a mass grave. Two sets of people, separated by time and so much more, memorialized on the same sheet of newsprint. An unintentional connection bursting with meaning.

"We come from a common source. We are children of the same parent. Like it or not, we are family."

The firefighters certainly deserve every last drop of honor we can muster. But why did the deportees deserve anything less? A society should not be measured by the way it remembers its dead heroes, but by how it acknowledges the passing of those it labels as insignificant or unworthy. For these divisions exist only in our minds.

"In the end, we will all die. We will all return to the artist’s palette. We will all return as one … Our creator loves us all equally, saint and sinner. Our brother died and rose to welcome both to the banquet."

Recovering a name seems like such a small thing, especially when it is attached to someone who died so long ago. But a name means that you were known and loved, that you were a person with dignity, and that you have a seat at the banquet. These particular names remind us that we lost 32 siblings in that Central Valley canyon, not four individual Americans and a single inseparable mass of foreigners. Each one of them left behind a story that deserves to be heard just as much as the stories of those 19 firefighters who sacrificed themselves for us in that other lonely canyon.

So rest in peace, our dearest brothers and sisters:

Miguel Alvarez. Andrew Ashcraft. Bobbie Atkinson. Frank Atkinson. Robert Caldwell. Travis Carter. Frank Chaffin. Tomás de Gracia. Dustin DeFord. Francisco Durán. Santiago Elizondo. Rosalio Estrada. Marion Ewing. Bernabé Garcia. Salvador Hernández. Severo Lara. Elias Macias. José Macias. Christopher MacKenzie. Tomás Márquez. Eric Marsh. Grant McKee. Luis Medina. Manuel Merino. Luis Miranda. Sean Misner. Ignacio Navarro. Martin Navarro. Scott Norris. Román Ochoa. Ramón Paredes. Wade Parker. John Percin. Apolonio Placencia. Guadalupe Ramirez. Alberto Raygoza. Guadalupe Rodriguez. Maria Rodriguez. Anthony Rose. Juan Ruiz. Wenceslao Ruiz. José Sánchez. Jesús Santos. Jesse Steed. Joe Thurston. Baldomero Torres. Travis Turbyfill. William Warneke. Clayton Whitted. Kevin Woyjeck. Garret Zuppiger.

Abandoned Sisters

The plights of two women caught my attention recently. Carie Charlesworth was an elementary school teacher for the Catholic Diocese of San Diego. She was fired from her job because her abusive ex-husband was seen as a potential threat to the school community. Sobhana Gazmer left her rural hometown to live and work in the big city of New Delhi. She endures constant sexual harassment and the fear of rape. Two very different women, with very different lives, yet both victimized by similar sorts of men. And both let down by a larger community that failed to protect them.

It is this last point that keeps sticking in my mind, for it marks an abhorrent rejection of family. Gazmer herself seems to note this in comparing her hometown to the big city: "In Manipur, if any guy bothers you, you shout and everyone helps. In Delhi, it's a very different mentality." And unfortunately, one that appears to be shared by the diocesan officials who wrote in Charlesworth's termination letter that they would continue to pray for her, but left unstated the obvious fact that she and her children were otherwise on their own. What does it mean when even the Church refuses to live as family?

I am sure that the people of Delhi and the Diocese are good men and women who just want to keep violence from touching themselves or their loved ones. What they failed to recognize, however, is that Charlesworth and Gazmer are their loved ones too.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

It is not easy being a family. It requires self-sacrifice. Clearly, fewer of us are willing to make those sacrifices than we would like to believe. But we can at least look honestly upon the consequences of that failure. How many Charlesworths and Gazmers must be thrown under the bus for our safety and peace of mind? How much hurt and sorrow must our siblings endure before we finally say enough already?

"Family is about hope, not fear."

Or at least it should be.

The Life and Death of Gabriel Fernandez

Gabriel Fernandez was just eight-years-old when he died two weeks ago. His mother and her boyfriend are the ones who have been arrested for causing his injuries, but it is the county child welfare agency that is shouldering much of the public blame for his death. Unfortunately, the outcome of such outrage, according to a Los Angeles Times editorial, "is too often a cycle of invective, firings, discipline and policy changes that may satisfy a hunger for action, but only of the wheel-spinning sort."

I wrote about such "hunger for action" last month, and here it is once again. A child is dead. Something must be done. Now! Something will be done, we will feel better, for a moment, until the next time. And there will be a next time, because we always manage to avoid the truth of such matters: We failed Gabriel Fernandez.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Being family means that we are responsible for one another. It means operating as a community that gets involved in one another's lives, not as a collection of individuals who simply happen to coexist in the same geographic area. It means that when one of our siblings is needlessly killed, we all share in the blame and shame.

Is that last sentence unfair or just uncomfortable? Look into Gabriel's face in the family photographs published by the Times. Have we truly done everything in our power to ensure the safety and well-being of all children? Why does our "hunger for action" only seem to materialize after children like Gabriel are dead, rather than while there is still a chance for them to escape the abuse? Is it only the social workers' fault? For me, it is the photo in which he is wearing a yellow t-shirt. That is the one whereby Gabriel asks me to accept personal culpability, no matter how minuscule, for his fate.

The Times editorial on this matter concludes thusly, "There may always be tragic child deaths. But we can do better." That means all of us. All of us.

Rest in peace Gabriel. I am so sorry that we failed you.

Knowing the Dead

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. Time for grilling and shopping. And in our rush to start summer with a bang, it is easy to forget that Monday's holiday was created for a more solemn purpose: to remember those who have sacrificed in our name. It is our moral obligation as citizens, and as human beings.

To fulfill that obligation, however, we must go far beyond patriotic jingoism or "support the troops" pep rallies. We need to listen to the stories of our dead. We need to gaze into their faces in the photographs they left behind. We need to read the words written about them by loved ones old and new. We need to get to know them. They died for us after all. Is that not the least we can do for them?

And once we are done with them, perhaps we can get to know those who have been killed in our name, whether enemy or "collateral damage". They died for our well being just as much as our own dead. Is that not the least we can do for them?

And after them, maybe we can get to know those who survived the battlefield, only to kill themselves here at home. They served on our behalf too, and walked away with a broken soul because of it. Is that not the least we can do for them?

And after we have gotten to know some of these beautiful, but dead, siblings, maybe, just maybe, we will finally start to see how truly asinine warfare really is.

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

Peace Be With You

There is a certain kind of irony to life in that just as the Church is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the papal encyclical "Pacem in Terris", the world should be subjected to the saber-rattling of North Korea. Pope John XXIII shared a vision that "projected a world where peace would be achieved by governments dedicated to the fulfillment of human rights." Kim Jong Un is teaching lessons "about the value of having a nuclear weapon or two." So which of these two men is the crazy one?

I say we are the crazy ones. We chase a peace that will never come, while dismissing one easily within our grasp. Peace is not some utopian way of life that we can talk or kill our way into. It is a state of being that comes from placing absolute trust in Love, and that manifests itself most purely in the love of our enemies.

"Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love. How hard is that? What are you afraid of? If he was willing to die to love you, what’s your excuse for not loving those you fail to understand, those you despise, those you hate?"

Yes, we must fight injustice. Yes, we must reject violence. But simply because that is what love demands, not because doing so will bring about some magic land of peace and justice. Love calls us to tilt at windmills, and to do so joyfully.

"It is time for us to embrace our family, even though we will fail, and probably fail miserably. This is another paradox of our Creator. We can never truly be one family in this life and yet they compel us to try, they demand that we make the attempt."

And therein lies the key to peace: we are family. It is a truth more profound than any encyclical and more powerful than any atomic bomb. A truth we proclaim with a Kiss, and not a kiss that says, "I will tolerate you," but a kiss that says, "You are my brother, my sister, and I love you." A truth that reveals that the Kingdom we crave has been right in front of us all along, if only we would trust in it.

"So much of life is a paradox, but it is there that we find God the most. It is there, in the confusion and that mess that we must dwell. It is there that we experience true beauty, true joy. It is there that we can see something wonderful, something that sends a chill down our spine, and puts a smile on our face and a laugh in our heart, where we know with certainty who and what we are and why we are here in this time and place. It is in that moment that we are at peace."

Peace is not a grand dream, but a simple love. Peace be with you.

Farewell, Brother Benedict

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected ... He was seen as the Vatican's "Enforcer" ... "God's Rottweiler," the "Panzer Cardinal" ... Hence in the immediate aftermath of his election, most commentators fell back upon tried-and-true labels: "archconservative," "authoritarian," "hard-line."

Probably the best expression of all this came in an editorial cartoon in L'Unità, the newspaper of the old Communist Party in Italy. Understanding the cartoon requires a bit of background. In Italy, perhaps the most revered pope of modern times is John XXIII, known as il papa buono, "The Good Pope." One treasured memory of John XXIII is an evening in October 1962, the opening of the Second Vatican Council, when the Catholic Action movement organized a torchlight parade that finished in St. Peter's Square. The pope was not scheduled to address the crowd, but when it arrived, John XXIII wanted to speak. He said something burned into the consciousness of most Italians, repeated endlessly on television and radio. Smiling down on the crowd, he said ... "When you go home, you'll find your children. Give them a kiss, and tell them that this kiss comes from the pope." It summed up the legendary love of the man.

Thus the L'Unità cartoon showed Benedict XVI at the same window, saying, "Tonight, when you go home, I want you to give your children a spanking, and tell them that this spanking comes from the pope."

John Allen, "The Word From Rome", National Catholic Reporter

This is my favorite anecdote about the conventional wisdom on Pope Benedict. Once upon a time, it was a perspective I shared. As his papacy comes to a close tomorrow, I trust that I am not the only one who has shed that view.

Benedict confounds our American socio-political labels. His words alternately delight and enrage both the family values and social justice crowds. He refuses to be stuffed into one of our usual boxes. Theology professor Charles Camosy describes Benedict as the Pope of "the 'great et…et' or 'both/and' way of being authentically human."

Yes, it must be said that, as the headline of a more recent John Allen offering puts it, "Benedict leaves behind legacy full of ups and downs." But popes are more than just CEOs of a global corporation, this one in particular. Benedict is in love with Truth, and that is the gift he was given to share with us. "He asked searching questions of both the church and the world, and offered his own provocative answers," says Allen, who concludes the aforementioned article with another anecdote.

British Prime Minister David Cameron may have provided the best epitaph while bidding the pontiff farewell at the Birmingham airport on Sept. 20, 2010, after a four-day swing in Scotland and England.

"Holy Father," he said, "you made us sit up and think."

The reason I love Benedict so much is that I've come to believe that the central truth he is trying to get us to see is the same one I am struggling to proclaim: We are family. As Benedict himself said in his final General Audience today:

It’s true that I receive letters from the world's greatest figures - from the Heads of State, religious leaders, representatives of the world of culture and so on. I also receive many letters from ordinary people who write to me simply from their heart and let me feel their affection, which is born of our being together in Christ Jesus, in the Church. These people do not write me as one might write, for example, to a prince or a great figure one does not know. They write as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, with the sense of very affectionate family ties. Here, one can touch what the Church is – not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian purposes, but a living body, a community of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ, who unites us all.

"Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love ... Our brother died and rose so that we might all be one people, one community."

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Benedict may not have blown us a lot of kisses in the last eight years, but let it never be said that his love for us, his family, was anything less than legendary.

May God bless Pope Benedict XVI, our brother Joseph Ratzinger!

One Family

At the Inauguration two weeks ago, a prophet spoke to us. He was not a preacher, nor a politician. He was simply a poet, telling us of "One sun ... One light ... One ground ... One wind ... One sky ... One moon ... All of us ... Together." One family.

Richard Blanco wrote "One Today" specifically for the occasion. I doubt he was trying to be a prophet, and he may never be one again. But on that morning, on that stage, he was. So listen to his poem, and hear not just his words, but God's Love.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Our Kaleidoscopic Family

As we celebrate both Martin Luther King Day and President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural, my mind keeps returning to two images from election night last November. One was the amazing display of diversity at Obama's victory party in Chicago. The other was the sea of white faces at the gathering of Romney supporters in Boston. The contrast between the two struck me so powerfully, that it is still difficult to put my thoughts into words. Our future and our past, all colliding so visibly to highlight a topic we so desperately wish would just go away and leave us alone: race.

We want to believe that we live in a post-racial America. The election night images say otherwise, as does the personal experience of too many of our fellow citizens. There's only so much we can dismiss as misperception. We need to face the reality that "our kumbaya era" was a fantasy of denial. Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks, who has written about racist rhetoric in politics and racist behavior in Orange County in the last few months, said it best: "There's hope. But real progress will only come when we are willing to deal honestly with uncomfortable, homegrown truths."

And the simplest of these truths is that we only love some of our neighbors. No, our watchword is tolerance. It sounds enlightened. But it has nothing to do with love. You can tolerate people you find annoying, people you despise, people you're so indifferent to that you would never in a million years bother to learn their names. Yes, it sounds enlightened. But it's just a fancy word for politeness. We deserve better.

"We come from a common source. We are children of the same parent. Like it or not, we are family."

And you don't tolerate family, you love them, all of them.

Poverty & Greed

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood." - Mark 12:41-44

3 December 2012: Almost time for children to learn a valuable life lesson. Santa loves rich kids more. - GS Elevator Gossip (Twitter)

The U.S. Catholic bishops declared January to be Poverty Awareness Month. In that spirit, two recent articles from the Los Angeles Times are instructive. Last week, we were introduced to Shahbaz and Shahzad, two children who, along with their parents and millions of other Pakistanis, are indentured servants. They are forced to accept loans from their employers to survive, but are not paid enough for their work to be able to repay them. The family debt, currently a mere $200, is the only inheritance Shahbaz and Shahzad are likely to receive. On a brighter note, luxury house flipping made the front page on the day after Thanksgiving. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

We are a nation in love with greed. In a commentary on the Gospel passage above, Professor Beth Haile wrote about a class discussion on tithing. One student said “If Jesus wanted us to give all our money away, why should we work so hard to get an education and a job?” I heard many similar remarks when I taught high school. It's all about the money. We seem to be comfortable with a world where some are trapped in a lifetime of servitude over a $200 debt, and others flip multimillion-dollar homes to sell to "house hobbyists" "looking for second and third homes." We may not say it out loud, but our actions state pretty clearly a belief that God loves rich people more.

There's no simple fix for poverty. Throwing money at it has not and will not work. We need to make an attitude adjustment. Jesus praises the widow for donating "her whole livelihood" not because poverty is good, but because sharing everything that we have is an imitation of the divine. The Truth is that God loves Shahbaz and Shahzad every bit as much as our own children. The only question is do we?

"Family is about loving one another, not using one another. Family is about sharing all that we have, not hoarding it. We do not earn anything; it is all a gift from our Parent. Family is about supporting our siblings, not controlling them. Family is about hope, not fear. It is time for us to embrace our family."

Beyond Politics

Since just after Christmas, I've been watching "The West Wing" on Netflix. What I love about the show is that it proclaims both the nobility of politics and the ugly competitive nature of the American political system. In fiction and real life, these are good people, looking to do good things, but they are still human beings, with all the ego and fallibility that are part of the package. So we divide them into two teams, human nature takes over, and the very predictable result is a game where winning trumps everything. Not always, but far too often, and with too much collateral damage.

The most recent episode, of course, was the whole "fiscal cliff" fiasco, but the game is played in so many arenas: health care, guns, immigration, etc, etc. The common good, and common sense, seem to take a back seat to scoring points. It doesn't have to be this way. The Los Angeles Times recently published an opinion article written by the four leaders of the California Legislature during our state's budget crisis in 2009.

We spent weeks in early February with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and together concluded there was only one way out: Both sides had to cross over and vote for budget solutions antithetical to our interests and desires.

There was no great "kumbaya" moment. The negotiations were difficult, exhausting and extremely frustrating. Each side sought a little more of one solution and a little less of the other. But over time, the four of us, all with different backgrounds and beliefs, went from being suspicious of one another to developing a strange but genuine camaraderie as we pulled the budget deal together.

... Our story and the current federal crisis are not identical. But we tell this story because the current circumstances are close enough. Sometimes what matters most is the future of the state or the nation.

"Sometimes what matters most is the future of the state or the nation." In other words, the family comes first. When politics is played as a game in which one party wins and the other loses, we all suffer. Compromise is not weakness, when doing so advances the common good. And stubbornly holding to your principles is not integrity if it violates that same good. When we stop playing the game, politics becomes an instrument for serving the needs of our family. That is noble and righteous by any standard.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

The Quilt

And I never really was able to tell you.
That's why I'm telling you now that you can't hear.
It ain't gonna be the same around here without you.
And I'm holding back a flood behind one tear.

And we'll go down to the post-mortem bar,
And catch up on the years that have passed between us,
And we'll tell our stories.
Do you remember when the world was just like a carnival opening up?

"Post Mortem Bar", Zane Campbell

from the movie "Longtime Companion"

This Saturday, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. Of all the tributes to those we've lost, none is more profound to me than the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Perhaps because of the manner of its creation, it seems to radiate with life, as if the souls of the deceased imparted some of their grace upon the quilt's fabric. It may not have been conceived as religious art, but it is sacred nonetheless.

I only saw the Quilt once, when a portion of it was displayed on the Berkeley campus while I was a student there, but just looking at photographs of it stirs something inside of me. It reminds me so much of the Communion of Saints tapestries at the Cathedral here in Los Angeles. Both are tangible expressions of what I mean by "Family of the One", that we humans are siblings, not strangers.

And that is the worst tragedy of AIDS, past and present, that so many of those who died were ostracized and stigmatized. At the moment they most needed to feel part of a larger family, they were thrown away, like the lepers of old. The saddest panels on the Quilt are the ones "For those who died alone." If we do nothing else on Saturday, let us set aside our fears and judgments and vow that none of our brothers and sisters will ever die alone again, that each will know their family's love.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Poverty & Consumerism

“It is foolishness and a public madness to fill the cupboards with clothing and allow men who are created in God’s image and likeness to stand naked and trembling with cold, so that they can hardly hold themselves upright ... You are large and fat, you hold drinking parties until late at night, and sleep in a warm, soft bed. And do you not think of how you must give an account of your misuse of the gifts of God?”

... St. Chrysostom is not St. Francis. He does not ... give away all that he owns -- or urge his listeners to do so. That would be easier to dismiss ... He just insists, with ferocity, that Christians give away every single drop of excess. Chrysostom’s requirement is not absolute poverty, but a trickier, sometimes more elusive, ideal: enough.

"St. John Chrysostom and What We Really Don’t Want to Hear"
Holly Taylor-Coolman, Catholic Moral Theology

Tomorrow, local TV news will be full of stories about charity Thanksgiving dinners for the poor and homeless. Only to be replaced the next day by stories of people being trampled at the Black Friday opening of some big box retail store. The real tragedy is that we will pat ourselves on the back for the first images and shake our heads at the latter ones, when we should be thoroughly ashamed by both.

In a nation as prosperous as ours, why the hell should anyone be poor or homeless at Thanksgiving? And given that so many of our brothers and sisters are suffering in this way, how the hell can we be so obsessed with getting a bargain on meaningless toys and gadgets? What is wrong with us that we feel so little shame about this?

Poverty is not some strange disease for which we haven't discovered a cure. It is the natural byproduct of an economic system driven by greed. That is what I see in both the Thanksgiving and Black Friday news stories: greed. We believe it is acceptable for some to live in unnecessary luxury, while others scrape by. Throwing a few dollars or volunteer hours at the poor may cover up the stench and assuage our meager guilt for a short time, but it does not erase the stain on our collective soul.

"Family is about sharing all that we have, not hoarding it. We do not earn anything; it is all a gift from our Parent."

It is time to stop defending an economic system and start standing up for our brothers and sisters. All we have to do is say: I have enough; I've had my fill and I don't need any more; Let someone else have their fair share.

I know, easier said than done. As Taylor-Coolman says, "Chrysostom’s requirement" is tricky and elusive. I am certainly no expert at it. But truth is truth, even when it goes unacknowledged or is being proclaimed by a hypocrite. And the truth is this: "The gifts of God" belong to all of us, not some of us, and our Parent wants each of their children to have enough. Can we create a society that honors and lives by this truth? Not a snowball's chance in hell. But that's not really the point now, is it?

"It is time for us to embrace our family, even though we will fail, and probably fail miserably. This is another paradox of our Creator. We can never truly be one family in this life and yet they compel us to try, they demand that we make the attempt."

At the end of the day, it's not about ending either poverty or consumerism, it's about standing with our brothers and sisters.

"Yes, this path will be terrifying. It is uncertain and full of risk. But we owe it to our family to embark upon the journey. It is who we are and why we were created: to love our family, all of it."

Who Would Jesus Kill?

I imagine that military service was a common theme in sermons last Sunday in honor of Veterans Day. I wonder, though, how many pastors were willing to delve into the morality of war itself. Probably not many, given that the average American is blissfully disconnected from the wars currently being fought in their name.

We can bury our heads in the sand, but the death and destruction will not go away so easily. War is the most utterly asinine behavior; the idea that we can resolve conflicts by killing people. It's pathetic and juvenile, and we cannot resist it.

I recently watched "The Kingdom", a movie about an FBI team helping to investigate a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. One of the early scenes is a briefing where they learn that a fellow FBI agent was killed in the attack. The team leader consoles one of his colleagues by whispering something to her. Eventually, the team tracks down and kills the man who planned the attack. As he is dying, this elderly man also whispers words of consolation to his granddaughter. At the end of the movie, we learn that the wisdom imparted by both of these men is this: "We are going to kill them all."

At the end of the day, it's all about revenge. We can theorize about just war criteria all we want, but it's just a cover for simple playground vengeance. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and we think he's the naive lunatic! Absolutely asinine.

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

Enough indeed.

Four More Years

In his victory speech last night, Barack Obama spoke words of truth that we need to hear, whether you voted for him or not, if we are to come together as a family:

While each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.

... Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated ... But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future.

... The role of citizens in our democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government.

... We are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.

Mere rhetoric, or a real and genuine vision of who we are and who we can be?

"[Family] is not an organization to join, but a fellowship to accept. It is who we are at our very core. Family is birth, death, and all the joy and tragedy in between. We may run from it at moments, but we will never truly be apart from it."

"Family is about loving one another, not using one another. Family is about sharing all that we have, not hoarding it ... Family is about supporting our siblings, not controlling them. Family is about hope, not fear."

Obama himself defined hope as "that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting." Such hope tells us that regardless of who you voted for, we are family and we have an obligation to embrace one another, no matter the hardships it might bring or how little we may accomplish. Such hope is the best gift we Americans can ever give to our global family.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

So whether you cried tears of joy or heartache last night, or just shrugged and went to bed, let us hope with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. We have elected a brother to lead us for the next four years who is far from perfect, but who sees us as we truly are and who seeks to help us become the family that we were meant to be. Let us hope in him and in ourselves.

The Catholic Vote

Which presidential candidate should a good Catholic vote for? I don't know, but plenty of pundits, and even a few bishops, are happy to give an answer. That's the corporate religion approach to politics. They buy into the false dualism of our two-party system, which demands that every person, community, and idea must be either Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. We know that states, and churches, are never just red or blue, but it sure does make it easier on bloggers and journalists if we pretend that they are. Unfortunately, many believe the gimmick is actually truth.

Way back in February, the Los Angeles Times published a pair of opinion articles by Charlotte Allen and Diana Wagman arguing that liberals and conservatives cannot talk to one another. Sounds silly, until you read this gem from Wagman: "We each would prefer the other just didn't exist." I wish I could believe that the attitudes espoused by these two women are only an aberration, but I've heard their echoes constantly in the political discourse offered up by both secular and religious voices during this election season. It's sad and pathetic, and not the way for siblings to treat one another.

"It is past time that we recognize this family of the One, this fellowship of the One. They are tired of us ignoring, neglecting, and tarnishing it. This family is our Creator's greatest gift to us and we spit upon it constantly. Enough!"

Jesus admonished us to "repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." We do not honor our Parent when we allow ourselves to get swept up into the natural inflation of our politics, where small things look like life and death matters, and shrill, angry self-righteousness sounds prophetic. Our Church and our family deserve better. They belong to God, and cannot be carved up to suit the needs of political games. Yes, we do need to vote; Jesus did not absolve us of our obligation as citizens. But what matters is how we vote, not for whom we cast our ballot.

In saying this, however, I am not interested in assembling a guide or checklist for your conscience. There are plenty of Catholic entities filling that void already; perhaps too many, and some too eagerly. No, the Catholic Vote I have in mind is something very different, an antidote to the poison spread by people like Allen and Wagman, a simple practice that a theology professor named Gerald W. Schlabach urged us to take up for Lent this year: "Love the Enemy in Your Pew"

So this Lent, listen to uncomfortable voices in your community. Listen without arguing back, for as long as it takes to really hear. Listen deliberately. Listen for the back story behind positions you may never agree with. Debate later.

... Listen particularly to someone who represents all you think might be wrong with the Church. A Catholic neighbor ... who is so impassioned about some ways of defending life that he or she seems to ignore other ways. Or an openly gay Catholic who continues to receive the Eucharist or an activist campaigning to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Listen to the fan of that dangerous neoconservative columnist George Weigel, or the fan of that idealistic peacenik Jesuit John Dear.

I don't care which candidate you vote for in November. I do care that you vote to love and listen to those who will be voting for the other guy.

A New Direction, An Eternal Faith

Last Friday, my intention was to write about Donald Spoto's biography of Francis of Assisi "Reluctant Saint" in honor of the saint's feast the day before. Obviously, that didn't happen. Once again, the right words refused to come, for I have lost my way.

This blog was never supposed to be a "blog." It is a tool to promote a revelation, no more, no less. But then I decided to expand the content and somehow it morphed into being like all of the other religion blogs out there that endlessly talk over one another. It cannot be that, because that can never convey a revelation that is inherently simple.

"Why do you babble so much about me? So much time and energy, for what purpose? What more is there to understand about us than love? You think too much and feel too little. You talk too much and love too little."

Fittingly, my need to make a course correction with this blog takes place on the eve of the opening of the Year of Faith, which is "an opportunity for Catholics to experience a conversion - to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with him." This idea of conversion is also a key theme in Spoto's book:

The life of Francis of Assisi and the journey of his progress toward God had meant accepting a series of corrections and simplifications, a refining of his understanding about what God had wanted of him. We might even say that Francis had constantly to revise what he believed would honor God. Hence Francis's conversion was the work of a lifetime, with all its autumns and winters; it was not the achievement of an afternoon in springtime.

Life and faith is a journey, and not always an easy one. But why? If faith is just about believing the right things, being able to say the creed without your fingers crossed or fervently proclaiming that Jesus is your lord and savior, then how does that demand a journey? Well, here's one piece of the puzzle:

Take the earliest gospel, which is probably Mark. Right after Jesus’ baptism, Jesus goes out to proclaim his message: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

I am consistently asking my students, “What’s the good news?” It’s not that Jesus died and came back, because this is only the first chapter. He hasn’t yet mentioned the passion. Nobody knows he’s going to die. The good news has to be something else.

So the good news has to be what you get from the parables. The good news has to be the Sermon on the Mount. The good news has to be the healings, which show care for people in the community.

The good news is that everyone is part of the family. It doesn’t matter what your income level is. That’s even true of sinners and tax collectors, people who have removed themselves from the common welfare by working for the occupation government, disrupting the sense of community by stealing, or destroying marriage by committing adultery. Jesus says, “You know what? You’ve got a role in this community, too.”

That’s not belief; that’s action. It is reconciliation, and it’s family values in their best form possible.

Amy-Jill Levine, "A Jewish take on Jesus", U.S. Catholic

And here's a second:

Catholic stories are incarnational, they speak of God incarnate in the human condition at Christmas time and God going down to the valley of death with us and returning alive with us on Easter. They speak of a community of the followers of Jesus bonding with one another to pass on the heritage which is formed by the stories. The doctrines are latent in the stories. Both are necessary, but the stories come first. Alas, for much of which passes for Catholic religious education, the stories are discarded in favor of the doctrines. All the Trinitarian and Christological controversies in the early Church, as important as they may be, do not have the appeal or the value of the image of Madonna and Child.

... It is worth noting that it took four centuries to make the doctrine reasonably precise while the story was there at the beginning. Both require one another, but it is the story that appeals to the total human. It is the beauty of the story which holds Catholics to their heritage.

Andrew Greeley, "Why I’m Still A Catholic"

It's about relationship, from the beginning of our story as humans to the foundation of the Church, it's always been about relationships.

"You are my child. More than that, you are myself. We are one, linked forever. What you feel, I feel. What I know, you know. We are love incarnate. We are life."

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Faith is a relationship, not only with God but with all of our siblings alive and dead, and relationships are always journeys. Faith is not defined by the stretches when we stay on the path, but by how we deal with the potholes along the way, and how we respond to getting lost. Faith is not found in a moment or a year, but only through a lifetime.

And what of my faith? Where is my journey headed now? Spoto's book gave me a quote from Francis that I use on all of my websites: "Who are You, my dearest God? And what am I but Your useless servant."

This is a sublime prayer, not the expression of a philosophical inquiry about the nature of God and the self. It faces with absolute gravity the idea that God is utterly unknowable - as is the deepest truth of one's own life. But it is also, by the very fact of being addressed to God, a statement of unreserved conviction about the supreme reality of God, Who brings sense out of Francis's own emptiness and absurdity, his uselessness.

It is the prayer of a man who has felt God's touch and just wants to be obedient to that call. It is my prayer, and the only destination worth traveling to.

"Friday Night Lights" (2006-2011)

In keeping with my original theme for the week, I wanted to select something football-related for today. But "Friday Night Lights" is a TV series about much more than just playing a game. I think the spirit of the show is best encapsulated by Coach Taylor's motto for his teams: "Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose!" The words speak of living with purpose and passion, but they are always spoken as a group, not as a lone individual. That is because, at its core, the show is about family: the ones we have and, more importantly, the ones we create.

There are certainly lots of great lessons to be found in the show's episodes: that grace doesn't always come in a pretty package, that life is a constant series of choices and they all count, that any relationship worth having requires work and compromise, that marriage is fundamentally an act of hope, that we all have dreams and every one of them is beautiful. But its story about family is what makes "FNL" sacred.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Check out this TV show on Grantland, IMDb, Wikipedia, or YouTube.