Detroit Walking Blues

A couple of weeks ago, the story was hard to miss. A factory worker in Detroit had to walk 21 miles a day to get back and forth to work:

Leaving home in Detroit at 8 a.m., James Robertson doesn't look like an endurance athlete.

Pudgy of form, shod in heavy work boots, Robertson trudges almost haltingly as he starts another workday.

But as he steps out into the cold, Robertson, 56, is steeled for an Olympic-sized commute. Getting to and from his factory job 23 miles away in Rochester Hills, he'll take a bus partway there and partway home. And he'll also walk an astounding 21 miles.

Five days a week. Monday through Friday.

Soon, ABC picked up the story. And then, a college kid set up a GoFundMe web site that raised $350,000. A local car dealership donated a new car.

Happy ending, right? Not so much. Robertson was soon receiving threats and had to move out of his apartment for his own safety. Moral of the story: whenever white folks get together to lift a black man out of poverty, his friends and neighbors drag him back down.

But reality, unlike television, is not so simple.

How many James Roberstons are there in Detroit, or in the country for that matter? Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands. Maybe millions. How many of them could use a new car, a break on their mortgage, a hand with a doctor's bill? Yet how few will catch the eye of a rich benefactor or a story-hungry media?

I don't begrudge Robertson's good fortune. Not at all. Nor do I fail to comprehend the rage and frustration that his neighbors might feel. One man, who like so many others is trapped in a low-paying job (Robertson makes $10.55 an hour). gets lucky. The nation stops to look and commiserate for a few days. Maybe kick in a few bucks. Then the nation's attention and largesse move elsewhere. The money stream goes dry again. And only one man, as ordinary as every other, benefits.

When I was a kid, I remember my grandmother remarking (somewhat out of the blue) that "Canadians are so jealous." I heard that as a put-down of her own people, and mine, and was uncomfortable. But I came to understand how people in marginal societies feel. We French-Canadians came from a nation of failing farms. The soil yielded less each year. Resources were few and had to be shared. Charity was not something one did once in a while, but was a daily necessity. All struggled. But if one family suddenly became comfortable, eyebrows were raised. Where did the extra money come from? Do they think they're better than us now? Why can't some of their good fortune come my way? The cocktail of resentment, bitterness and envy becomes toxic. It was less that we were an especially jealous people (sorry, Memère!) but that we came from stock that didn't get special treatment -- unless something shady was going on.

So too with James Robertson's neighbors in Detroit. One man's good fortune simply shines a spotlight on the dark fortunes of the rest. Neither good fortune, nor ill, is deserved or earned. But a beleaguered people's dark emotions rise, to be trained on the closest available target, poor James Robertson.

Meanwhile, we in more affluent parts of America are satisfied. We have done our bit -- sending $10 or $20 to help a single individual. The TV stories were heartwarming and had a happy ending. Even the jealousy of Roberston's community cheers us: our preconceptions of the depravity of the poor is confirmed once again.

Yet isn't the real scandal that Detroit's factories continue to pay their employees scandalously low wages -- so low that they can't afford transportation to and from work? Isn't it tragic that millions live in shoddy homes and send their kids to underfunded schools? But the time for such questions is over. The television lights have moved on. And the hearts of the wealthy remain as chilly as a winter roadside in Detroit.

Here I see, there I see, everywhere a Pharisee

I've said many times that there was only one groups of people that drove Jesus crazy. And it wasn't the Romans who killed him, or the scribes and lawyers who antagonized him. It was the Pharisees.

The Ps were not a bad lot overall, and in spite of the acres of parchment devoted to the them in the Gospels. They were basically a group of lay people -- no rabbis or priests among them -- who took it upon themselves to put a shine on the simple Judaism of the peasants. They were day-to-day chiders and scolds, reminding the people to tithe, to wash and to mind the Ps and Qs of the Torah. Think of them as the grammar police of daily Jewish life -- tsk-tsking over the religious equivalents of misplaced apostrophes, dangling modifiers and the misuse to-two-too.

Jesus went off on them as legalizers, of course -- as those who would "pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb" -- spreading holiness mindlessly into the very nooks and crannies of daily life. But he really laid into them as hypocrites, who were clean on the outside but dirty on the inside. Three devastating quotes from Luke 11: "Inside you are filled with plunder and evil," "You pay no attention to judgment and to love for God,"You are like unseen graves^* over which people unknowingly walk.”

That's a heaping helping of hostility!

But what was the issue? And why was Jesus so insistent that the community's worst sinners -- tax collectors and prostitutes (Matt 21:31) -- would enter the Kingdom before they will?

You can get an insight from our contemporary religious communities, my own included. For small "p" pharisees are legion.

Wherever there are people overly concerned about those who get to church late, or don't have their prayers memorized, or wear dirty clothes, or don't put enough in the collection basket, or don't bring a pie to the bake sale -- there you have pharisees. Wherever there are those who manipulate the community's decisions with their professional status, seniority or backroom dealing, their you have pharisees. Where you have those unable to see how their cliques and factions are dividing the community, or who rig elections and open discussions to get their own way -- there you have pharisees.

The worst part of today's phariseeism is not hypocrisy in the way we understand the term -- a conscious choice to act outwardly in opposition to one's inner reality. It's the sheer obliviousness of pharisees that there is a difference! Latter day pharisees cannot see their interior evil. They don't see that they act against the wishes of the community. Indeed they think that they are righteous, and that they represent the community. It's their blindness to their own evil -- not the fact of their evil -- that shunts them to the back of the line into the Kingdom. Prostitutes and tax collectors may do plenty of bad things. But at least they know it. They have come face to face with their own evil, and have made it part of their self image. People like that are ripe for a repentance; they know their own sin and hate it, at least on some level. And though repentance is the key to enter the Kingdom, pharisees can't repent, as they can't see their own sin. Dragging them to that realization is tough, tough work. No wonder that Jesus used his strongest language to shake them out of their complacency and self-righteousness. I'd like to think that Jesus was not condemning and discarding them, but trying to pierce through their tough skins to reach the sinner beneath the armor.

But pharisees are a tough and entrenched bunch. They run our church councils, hold up the pillars of our churches, donate lavishly and conspire (over coffee cake and salad) to outmaneuver threats to their leadership. Getting them to realize how they exclude new people and new ideas is long, hard, punishing work.

Even the Messiah thought so.

Wonderful "Wedding Week" in the heart of Dixie

Sometimes it's just best to let brilliant people express themselves in their own words. From AL.com.

Ellin Jimmerson is the Minister to the Community at Huntsville's Weatherly Heights Baptist Church. On Monday, however, she will take on a historic role as the officiant of the first same-sex marriage ceremony in Huntsville.
 
Rev. Jimmerson will be speaking and officiating at Huntsville's Wedding Week on Monday, the first day same-sex couples around the state will be allowed to obtain marriage licenses. She's excited about the opportunity and chance to spread her message of love.
 
That's the message that caught my eye recently. Jimmerson shared her thoughts about Wedding Week on Facebook and I wanted to share them here. She said the message is intended for other Christian ministers and Christians.

Here is Jimmerson's message:

 

"One of the issues for many is whether same sex marriages comport with biblical ideas of marriages. The truth is that people in the 21st century would not be comfortable with the kinds of marriages which are represented in the Bible. For example, we would not be comfortable with the biblical model that is one man, one woman, one concubine. Nor would we be comfortable with the idea of a widow being compelled to marry her brother-in-law. There is very little in the Bible which reflects the modern idea of one man & one woman united by love. That is where we have been comfortable for a long time now.

 

Today, we are being asked to move even further down the road of marriages being based on love. We are being asked to expand our ideas to include one man and another man united in marriage by love. Of one woman and another woman united by love.

 

It was not too many years ago that we in Alabama at last understood that the long-held ban on interracial marriages was hurtful and wrong. We moved further down the road of love. Now, most of us think nothing of interracial marriages.

 

On Monday, Feb. 9, the state of Alabama will move as a people even further down the road of love as the only legitimate basis for marriage. We as a people will recognize that God truly does love us all.

However, in the spirit of Governor Wallace standing in the school house door, the probate judges in Madison and surrounding counties have announced they no longer will perform any marriage ceremonies.

 

This means that same sex couples, many of whom have no pastor because they have not been welcome in their own churches, would have had nowhere to turn had it not been for the good people who have organized "Wedding Week".

 

During the week of Feb. 9, a number of ministers have volunteered to officiate at marriage ceremonies for whoever needs one. There has been a wonderful show of support for couples, many of whom have waited years or even decades to have their relationship solemnized by way of license and ceremony, from people offering wedding gowns, cupcakes, bubbles, and photography. So many people want to celebrate with people who have waited too long.

 

I have been invited to officiate at the first ceremony and to offer a short inspirational homily to those gathered in downtown Huntsville Monday morning. I am deeply touched by the invitation and have agreed enthusiastically.

 

I want to invite everyone who will to celebrate with the couples who have waited so long for this day.

To God be the glory!"

The Red Badge of Idiocy

It's not fair to say that we have ALL lost our collective minds, but there's a groups of purist lefties and paranoid righties who most certainly have lost them. And by collective, I mean just that: the part of our minds that is capable of thinking of the greater good.

If there ever were poster children for rampant individualism, they are the morally bankrupt and easily-led folks who refuse to vaccinate their kids against deadly diseases because, what, Google? Movies like Lorenzo's Oil probably contributed to the idea that a lone, committed  and loving mom can do her own scan of the medical literature, find a means of somewhat helping her suffering kid, then make a major movie all but claiming she found a cure. Mom v. the Men of Science. Hear enough of these feel-good stories, and you'll be surfing WebMD for your own cure for cancer, and turning down the chemo cocktail that has saved others.

Those sad evangelicals who refuse to treat their kid's obstructed bowels are one thing. At least they only murder their own offspring. But the idiotic, entitled, smarter-than-everyone goofballs pulling their kids out of the vaccine lines are not only wrong, they are endangering truly sick kids. The idea behind "herd immunity" is that if you vaccinate every kid who can handle the vaccine, you protect the few who can't -- infants and kids on chemotherapy, for instance. Every vaccinated kid forms a stone in the wall that prevents disease from spreading from child to child, eventually to the chemo kid. But reducing the vaccination rate removes a few stones from the wall, providing a few extra routes for the disease to reach the baby or the leukemic kid. Herd immunity is not only for the herd; it's for the stray dogies who can't yet handle the cure.

And to the dopes who think vaccinations are a government plot to take away our freedoms, I say, you're right. It is government's job to provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number of its citizens. That means you have to give up "freedom" to become a disease vector. Sounds like a good deal to me.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries will go down in history as the era when Americans lost their ability to see beyond their own personal needs. We have been barraged relentlessly with appeals to be individuals, though most of us dress alike and think alike. We proclaim our independence by buying the soap we are told to buy, the SUV, the patriotic bumper sticker, the movie and the TV show. We hate the same things (Obama, people who critique our wars, the French) and love the same things (violence in movies, fatty food, cigarettes and booze). Yet we flatter ourselves that we are individuals. And we prove it by showing the same disregard of others' bodies as we show to our own.

Hopefully, the recent measles outbreaks might represent a turning point in this hyper-individualistic thinking. Maybe we will see that when our views make kids sick (or dead) we have gone too far. And maybe that "virus" of an idea will spread and "infect" the many who are sick with paranoia and self-satisfaction.

May the herd become immune to the stupidity that plagues us.

Shower the people

Big news -- so the pope's people were handing out food vouchers to the homeless in Rome. Nice, right? But one of them told them pope, "We can't use these because when we go to redeem them, we are turned away because we smell." Pope's solution? Build outdoor heated showers at the Vatican, give the homeless a change of underwear and a haircut, and send them out.

On the one hand, this is so awesome -- giving the homeless dignity and a leg up on the cruelty of the world.

But on the other hand, it's so sad -- why has such an obvious act of mercy not been considered before?

But full pops to Pope Francis for having broken down the procedural walls that keep us from acting as Christ would.

I can almost hear my conservative friends saying, "But what the Pope is doing is enabling the homeless. Without market incentives, they will never leave poverty!"Truth be told, homelessness is ugly enough that few would choose it as a lifestyle. Better for we Christians to assume that the homeless are that way because of need.

Pope Francis is a saint -- a living saint. May he lives for a thousand years!