Personal space, and lack thereof

I don't think I'm a cold fish.  If someone wants a hug, I'll generally oblige.  But, ever since I  became a public minister of the church, I've noticed that people, including perfect strangers, possess a license, or think they do, the existence of which I was previously unaware, to reach out and touch me. 

What the flake?!

This was our weekend: the picture on the left was taken from my front stoop on Saturday morning.  The picture on the right was taken from the same spot on Sunday morning.  In between it snowed most of Saturday.  That's on April 27th.  I realize that for readers in Florida, or Alaska, accumulating snow in late April may not make much of an impression, but take it from me: in the southern Great Lakes region of the snow belt, it's not the norm.  I grocery shopped on Saturday morning in a futile attempt to beat the snow.  The grocery store scene was roughly what I'm given to understand grocery shopping is in Myrtle Beach on the eve of a hurricane landfall.  On Sunday morning at church, I wished I had a nickel for every parishioner who slapped me on the shoulder, grinned and said some variation of, "Merry Christmas!"  Good old climate change.  But at least we're not doing anything about it.

Colors of the holsters should match the season

  Another Sabbath, another synagogue shooting. Makeshift memorial with candles, balloons, teddy bears and flowers. The usual. Plus more than usual talk about arming churches and synagogues. After all, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Yee-haw!

 The state that was home to the Parkland school shooting and the aroused students who bothered our beloved lawmakers still bans guns in schools. But that is about to change in response to Parkland. Our beloved lawmakers are on the verge of OK-ing armed teachers to go with the armed security guards it has already thoroughly and enthusiastically endorsed.

 Now that we have to talk about churches, I suppose the solution will be weapons training for priests and deacons.

 The good guys in the congregation have guns already.

Taking risks

This is the text of the homily I preached today.  Today's readings, the 2nd Sunday of Easter, are here.  If some of this feels like deja vu, it's because I based this content on a post from yesterday - if I'm not mistaken, that's the first time I've posted something here at NewGathering and then had it turn into a homily.

Thoughts on Divine Mercy Sunday

The first Sunday after Easter was officially designated as Divine Mercy Sunday in 2000, the same year that St. Faustina Kowalska, the Divine Mercy visionary, was canonized.

Risk-taking quiz whiz

While looking in the NY Times online edition for something else, I came upon this interview with the man who is setting "Jeopardy!" records, James Holzhauer.

Bernie Organizing Day Today

Bernie's Campaign Predicts His Own Blue Wave in 2020

I just returned from the local (Mentor, Ohio) organizing kick off meeting for  Bernie Sanders, the content of which is described in the above link.

We had about 20 people, roughly evenly divided between the elderly and the young, men and women. The meeting was organized by a young woman of college age. She did a good job of dividing us up into a groups that did not know each other, and left our discussions develop over sufficient time that they were productive without becoming boring. 

The video that featured Bernie was targeted on the Bern app which will allow people to be their own organizers and recruiters feeding into a system that will track people to be sure that they are registered and then vote. It is like opening more that 4700 field offices today. Obama made a great deal about organizing his campaign. For the second term he built a large computerized get out the vote effort.

As presently scheduled Ohio's presidential primary will take place on Tuesday, March 10, one week after Super Tuesday.  However, it may be moved back to May where it is in non-presidential elections. 

Ohio Will Consider Moving its Primary Back to May

I brought up the issue of our incumbent Republican Representative with the young organizer. She agreed with me that it was just as important that we replace him as getting Bernie elected. She noted my name and said that she would be in contract with me as things develop. So maybe we will have a grass roots organization that makes a blue wave. 

Testing

Will this post?

What Joe Biden Has Going for Him

By now you have read that Joe Biden has declared as a Democratic candidate for president. To say that enthusiasm has been underwhelming in certain quarters is an understatement. Joe isn't one of the "cool kids", like Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, or Cory Booker.  But his age and long record of service is actually a strength, according to this article in the Washington Post, by Henry Olsen.  From the article:

Glad you asked!

Commonweal's current print issue (May 3, 2019)  has a letter to the editor taking me to task for my "choices of language," in a  recent column ("Racism in America, March 5, 2019). The writer, Ruth Piatik of Tulsa, OK, asks whether I checked out "anyone with significant African or African-American ancestry to check for European-American self-congratulation."  She also advises:  "that Commonweal columnists study the work of Showing Up for Racial Justice to learn ways of undermining white supremacy that involve a bigger commitment than excerpts from Treemonisha."

White supremacist that I am and full of European-American self-congratulations, how could I pass up the high dudgeon gauntlet thrown at me. Since the editors didn't ask, let me reply: 

What to do, what to do

 The brain dead Democrats are arguing among themselves over whether to impeach the highly impeachable president or wait until 2020 and try to beat him at the polls. It does not seem to occur to them that they can do both.

 The Senate  Republican majority leader has turned over to the president the keys to his home, car, heart and soul. If the House were to impeach, Addison Mitchell McConnell is fully capable of – and probably would – give the articles of impeachment the same disdainful dismissal he gave the nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. The reconstituted Supreme Court would uphold him, if it came to that.

  None of which would make the articles of impeachment disappear. There is something that would, but I’ll come to that after the break. Before the break I would like to recommend the most recent Lawfare commentary  on the Mueller Report.

Can't comment on threads after sign in

When I hit sign-in, it takes me to the normal page. I can create a new post. But I can't comment on old posts.

When I click "view" on a thread (Jim's thread on Resurrection"), it doesn't show me as signed in and I can't comment on any posts, including this one.  So I am editing my own post to ask for help!

Believing the Resurrection

Of all the things Christianity asks us to accept on faith, the Resurrection may be the most difficult for me.

A worm and no man

The phrase in the title of the post is taken from the intercessions for Morning Prayer on Good Friday:

Christ our King, you became an outcast among us, a worm and no man

My personal experience of Catholic spirituality is that the church has focused almost obsessively on Jesus's physical suffering: his being beaten and scourged, the blood running down his face as the crown of thorns is pushed onto his head, being forced to bear his own cross, the agony of the nails piercing his hands and feet. 

Yet it seems that, every bit as much, perhaps even more so, is the humiliation of the whole business.  The mocking, the spitting upon, the stripping him of his clothes, the enrobing him in purple, the sarcastic "Hail, King of the Jews", the sign posted on the cross "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" - all part of what Luke, in this year's Palm Sunday Passion reading, referred to as the "spectacle".  It was not only an exercise in physical torture, it was an exercise in public humiliation.  It seems one of the goals of crucifixion was not just to inflict pain but to, quite literally, unman the man.  Make him less than a man. 

The futility, of course, is that killing him neither took away his humanity nor made him less than human.  They (we) may have wished to make him a worm, but all we succeeded in doing was revealing him as the Son of God.

A quick thought about the Holy Thursday service this evening

My wife and I both have stressful jobs, and today, both of us had particularly bad days at work.  Neither of us was in a frame of mind to go to church after the days we had, but we decided that it is Triduum and we should be there.  Both of us sang in the choir.  We're both really glad we went.  For me, it was a good spiritual experience.  I was feeling the truth of the dictum that s/he who sings once prays twice (or however that goes).  There is something about making music that is creative, and also it engages the whole person - it uses the core of the person's body, it requires concentration, it requires collaboration, it requires sacrificing one's ego for the good of the body of Christ (as instantiated by the choir), and when it's done in praise of God, there is a spiritual dimension as well. 

I know there is a futility in writing about really subjective things like a spiritual experience or a musical experience.  Just want to share that tonight was good for me.

Notre Dame is ablaze - Updates

Update 4/17 8:20 am - at the bottom of the post, I point to an article listing some of the major items saved and lost in the fire.

---

My wife let me know at lunchtime that Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is on fire.  It seems to be devastating.  CNN is reporting (and showing) that the spire has collapsed, and pictures indicate that the roof is heavily involved in flames.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/world/notre-dame-cathedral-fire/index.html

He Gave Up Cars for Lent

Here is an interesting article about what it's like to give up cars in a city which isn't very mass-transit or pedestrian friendly.
In the comments to Jim Pauwels' Palm Sunday post the subject of parking lot traffic jams came up. And coincidentally I saw the article in the Omaha World Herald about Don Ferree Jr.'s Lenten penance. “This is definitely a bigger commitment than giving up sweets for Lent,” the school guidance counselor says, half-smiling and half-grimacing as the rain continues to fall."

How to read the Mueller report

 I know, you thought you already did. But that was just the attorney general's Reader's Digest version as annotated by the president and his gerbils. The real thing, according to Attorney General Barr, is scheduled for release during Holy Week, which is now.
 So far, the media have made a perfect mess of the report, and that's without seeing it or even getting  credible leak. Think of what they will do with 400 pages and less than an hour to go live. (The whole frame shudders.)
 Before reading or watching, I recommend you take in the antidote provided by the Web site Lawfare. The article makes several points, all of them pertinent to the mush that will accompany the release of the report. Just one tantalizing example:

Paid liars need to be plausible

 Donald J. Trump tweeted a racist dog-whistle tweet against a Muslim.. Nothing new about that. His target was a member of Congress. Disdain for members of Congress? Nothing new about that. The Congress woman is getting death threats. Nothing unexpected about that.

 Sara Sanders Sanders says, on ABC yesterday: “Certainly the president is wishing no ill will and certainly not violence towards anyone."

 Here is an example of the certainty. Donald J. Trump, on  Feb. 22, 2016. "Here's a guy, throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming when we're talking. The guards are very gentle with him and he's walking out, big high-fives, smiling, laughing, I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you."

 If Sara Sanders ever works again in a job that doesn't involve a mop, a pail and plastic gloves, it will be due to some employer's extreme act of charity.

Hosanna!

This article appeared in our church bulletin for this weekend, Palm Sunday.  The readings for Palm Sunday are here.

Malodorous Assange

Recently, the unlikable Julian Assange was arrested by British authorities when Ecuador rescinded his asylum privileges at their London embassy.  The immediate reason for arrest is that he jumped bail on the Swedish charges of rape which have since been dropped.  The ultimate reason is no doubt the US call for extradition on charges of assisting Private Manning in penetrating the computer system beyond then his level of clearance.  Of course, the MSM is full of stories of his odd behaviour in the Embassy.  Also, he probably is a poor excuse for a journalist.  Dumping loads of data is not exactly skilled journalism, though that's what the WP did with the Pentagon Papers.  Also, the raw data may have exposed our Afghan collaborators.  Wikileaks is not very balanced.  It goes after the American Empire while ignoring the Russian and Chinese Empires. It dumped Democratic emails while we would all like to see Trump's tax returns.  Nevertheless, I wish to follow this closely and I could very well support Assange if this is merely an opportunity to weaken the free press.  God knows, and Tom Blackburn, too, that journalism is not in the best of shape.  And neither is our democracy.

Pope Emeritus Benedict's Article

I confess that I haven't read all 6000 or so words of his article.  Maybe I will. Later.  Meanwhile, here is a good article from the America Magazine site which briefly summarizes it.
I am not going to dismiss it as the ramblings of an old guy who is losing it.  Is seems pretty coherent, and deserves to be taken seriously.  But here's the thing: he isn't pope anymore.  I don't feel obligated to give it more weight than similar articles by clergy or lay theologians; such as the letter several months ago by Archbishop Carlo Vigano.  In fact the article by Pope Emeritus Benedict (hereafter referred to as P.E.B.) makes several of the same points that Vigano did.  I feel that both missed the point about the Church's sexual abuse scandals in significant ways.

Can anyone explain this?

Maybe it is because the country began with an enunciation of rights, but suddenly all kinds of rights are being asserted that I can only describe as strange.

You are familiar with the parents who don’t want little Balaam exposed to the quote theories of the quote scientists, like the emphasis Theory of Relativity, which led to pictures of a black hole this week, if you happen to believe they weren’t faked. Instead of quote scientific quote theories, little Balaam’s parents want him to get credit for a science course based on true Bible science.

OK. You’ve been there, seen that. How about this:

Pro or Con: Scholarship Tax Credit Programs

The Opportunity Scholarship Act, LB670, is pending a vote by the Nebraska State Legislature again.  I say "again" because they have been running versions of this legislation up the flagpole for years.  Basically it is a program where a tax credit would be given to those who donated to a scholarship fund for use in qualifying private schools in the state.  A distinction needs to be made that this is not a tax deduction.  Tax deductions are already allowed for charitable donations to scholarship funds.

Reconciliation and compensation for abuse victims (and some liability protection for the church)

The current issue of The New Yorker includes an article by Paul Elie, a senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and an occasional Commonweal contributor, entitled "What do the Church's Victims Deserve?"  It looks at a new model that some church leaders are deploying to address sexual abuse victim claims - and to prepare dioceses for the lifting of statutes of limitations.

Who are those masked parents?

 There is a huge scandal going on, all the media tell me, in which rich parents committed crimes and social offenses of all kinds to get their pampered but dim-witted offspring into elite colleges, after which they can sponsor a line of perfume or become trust fund layabouts in Palm Beach. The mastermind of the scandal is allegedly one Rick Singer. We know his name because he is the mastermind. The parents involved number around 50, but two stand out. And stand out. And stand out because photos of one or both of them are used to illustrate the day's story. And their names are in the headline.
 Like today: Headline writers at outlet after outlet all racked their brains. And almost to a man or woman the headline they came up with is:"Huffman, 12 other parents plead guilty in college scheme."
 Who are the "12 other"?" One searches long and hard, even though, as ABC said, "Other parents charged in the scheme include prominent figures in law, finance, fashion, the food and beverage industry and other fields." Prominent they may be. Named they rarely are.
 Look. This is going to be an issue next year. One side will portray it as another example of Hollywood liberals with no respect for the law. The other side will try to avoid the issue because none of the parents without a SAG-AFTRA card will be named, much less bothered, by intrepid reporters.
 This story has gotten, so far, the worst kind of Rupert Murdoch-style coverage. It won't get better.
 

Obama speaks

IN GERMANY..

Barack Obama warns progressives to avoid 'circular firing squad'

Per local elections...lots of them

In case you want to see what's going on in local elections,
here's a rundown from Ballotpedia!

Engagement

In my recent post on this week's Illinois elections, I had mentioned that, while I hadn't seen voter turnout numbers for my local community, I expected they would be "paltry".  I may have been spectacularly wrong in guessing who would win the Chicago mayor's race, but at least I nailed the adjective for local voter turnout: this Chicago Tribune story states that turnout in my town was 9.46%.

Even if, as I suppose, nobody else who reads this blog cares about voter turnout in a nondescript Chicago suburb, I would nevertheless ask you to just pause and ponder that number for a moment: fewer than one out of every 10 registered voters could be bothered to exercise their prerogative as citizens to choose who will run the town in which we live, as well as the schools to which we all send our children.

Local election report

Yesterday, Tuesday April 2nd, was an election day in Illinois for some local races.  The headline event was the Chicago mayoral election.  We looked at that race previously, after the primary election in February narrowed the field to the top two vote-getting candidates, Cook County Commissioner Toni Preckwinkle and former US Assistant District Attorney Lori Lightfoot.  Both are progressive African American women, with the political veteran Preckwinkle in the role of establishment candidate and election newcomer Lightfoot as the insurgent reformer.  I had noted, in our previous look-in, that reformers don't usually do well in Chicago elections.  Whatever the merits of that observation, I couldn't have been more wrong as a prognosticator: Lightfoot won in a romp of historic proportions, receiving something on the order of 74% of the vote citywide, and defeating Preckwinkle in all 50 city wards, according to returns that were reported this morning.

Brexit: The Object Relations Explanation

Inevitable that we would get a psychoanalytic explanation of the leave and remain factor in Brexit. 

I wouldn't have read it except that DW Winnicott, who wrote my favorite child-rearing manual, Good Enough Mothering, was an important figure in describing "object relations." Think teddy bears.

Plus in this London Review short essay, we are given a succinct account of what Fintan O'Toole means by the English affinity for "Heroic Failure." "The Tory Leave mentality that precipitated Brexit drew on the long-standing tradition of English exceptionalism. The best description I know of this mentality, Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure, characterizes it as ‘the transformation of a screw-up into a demonstration of character’. Examples include the Charge of the Light Brigade, Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, and Dunkirk. In each case, the British character is seen to rise above self-inflicted disaster through studied indifference, and thereby to manifest its inner superiority. Theresa May’s blind, stubborn, quasi-suicidal determination to enforce the referendum is another instance."

The day the earth was shot, and almost died

The New Yorker's April 8, 2019 issue includes a feature on a paleontologist, Robert DePalma, who has been digging up some amazing artifacts which, if they're as real and as important as DePalma alleges, will significantly deepen our understanding of an event that surely was among the most catastrophic in the history of earth: the day an asteroid slammed into our planet and ended the Age of Reptiles.

David Ignatius on Kashoggi and Some Disturbing Details

From this article by Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius:

WASHINGTON -- "It has been nearly six months since Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, but the aftershocks continue. The U.S.-Saudi defense and intelligence partnership has been rocked. The future of the relationship is on hold, pending answers from Riyadh."
"...The bottom line is that unless the crown prince takes ownership of this issue and accepts blame for murderous deeds done in his name, his relationship with the United States will remain broken."