WHAT ARE WE UP TO NOW?

We’re living in a cute little duplex in NE Portland. There are chickens in the backyard. Good friends next door. And a library, Whole Foods, little shops, a big park, and a cute little family-friendly Irish pub just a few blocks away. I’m still working for my cafe in NW, and enjoy spending time creating delicious concoctions—and the advertisements to market them. Cortnie just finished another term at PCC where she’s been studying, among other things, Early Childhood Education and Traditional Chinese. The boys get cuter, bigger, and smarter with each day.

We don’t have much time for computers and blogs right now. So sorry about that! Although we love writing and keeping everyone updated with our comings and goings, we haven’t been able to write to you as much as we would’ve liked this year. We have lots to share about our recent time in Portland, our summer in Montana teaching TESOL again, and our latest plans and dreams. But for now, the best way to find out what’s going on may be to give us a shout, or a call (and we have a new Oregon cell number if you’d like it: 503.308.0031), or invite us over for dinner or coffee or conversations when we visit California for Christmas (12/19 – 12/27).

Come back here again. We’ll keep you updated along the way, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have something more interesting to look at here in the near future.

Blessings, [Andrew]

Window:North

[From under my favorite tree in the meadow on the hill]

The tall grasses dance in motion at the edge of the meadow on the hill. As the wind quickens, their movements become fast and heavy as they sway shoulder to shoulder. A meadowlark escapes, taking instant flight far from the violent bend of the dance. Thimbleberries shudder beneath the trees, their tissues darkened ripe with red, and delicate—nearly bursting with midsummer’s nectar. Forest tightly surrounds the meadow on every side but one. A window north, the last side is open only to the cloudless evening sky and two distant peaks beyond the river, elevating their snowy fields like banners above the green and blue horizon. They stand—quiet, cold, and still. Cold like steel. Cold as granite in winter. And still as the Dead. 

While the sun sets, the two sleeping volcanoes to the north of me lay unmoving against the winds that shake this meadow. Their ragged faces marbled white with melting snow, they capture the day’s last light in the lofty folds of their highest valleys and hold it captive there. The nearer of the two, St. Helens, trembles silently as it let’s out a deep yawn (or so I imagine) while Rainier behind it tucks itself under cloudy blankets drifting in from the sea beyond the Sound.

From my perch in the meadow atop the hill, I stare intently at that second, distant mountain with nothing but its lonely head visible above its pillowy bed. I draw a line with my finger. I draw a line with my heart. Down the hill, across the river, over St. Helens’ shoulder, straight to Rainier—the northernmost point on my horizon. The nearest place to my family, far-away and sleepy in the East. By a lake in Montana.

If I could stand on Rainier this night, I would only have to look east to see Cortnie and the boys. I would gaze toward their windows until every last lantern was dimmed. Kisses and wishes at the speed of light.

With my hand I draw a line to Rainier. With my mind I carve a road through clouds and darkness. Over forest and water. With my heart we turn right at the far mountain and head east to where love sleeps and the future dreams.

Goodnight Cortnie, Eoghan, and Finn.
I can’t wait to see you.
I send to you now; my prayers and hugs like blankets tight.
Look east at sunrise. I’ll send you my kisses,
Travelling westward at the speed of light.

Love [daddy]

Rip. Pour. Stir. “Cheers.” Take a sip and smile.

As Casey and I drink our matching espressos we catch up on the times. The rainy weather outside. The encroaching snow. Recent discoveries in music. Love for the electric guitar and overdrive. This is not home away from home, but it is home. The very place.  One that doesn’t exist geographically, as much as it does relationally.  History precedes this conversation and these now finished espresso cups—enjoyed to the last caramelly drop. 

Long-term relationships bring so much comfort these days. We’ve spent so much time in the last year surrounded by new friends in new places, that it’s always refreshing to find someone from the past. Someone who knows you, or at least who you were, once, and who doesn’t go looking for you to define who you’ve become since your last visit. Someone who will accept you, no matter. Who will love you, even if you left your good shirt at that place you call home—those four walls, now 800 miles away.

I prefer to take my home with me. On the road. And no, I’m not talking about buying an RV. (Besides, I always preferred the model of the hobo, the nomad, the backpacking-hitchhiking adventurist with neither compass nor map in hand.) Even though my grandparents have always had an RV, and I’m currently staying the week in a recreational-fifth-wheel-trailer/guest-house, I still find it kind of amusing how we’ve created numerous ways to make fully functional houses-on-wheels in order to bring all the comfort and security that we’re used to having at home with us on our next family adventure, wherever that might be. Is “Home” defined by the people you have near you, or your access to a microwave oven and a campsite with Wi-Fi? (Really, they have those? If that thought gets you excited, then I’m happy you’re reading this with me. Keep reading.)

I want to redefine Home as the space in which I exist at this moment. The room I’m sitting in, or the sidewalk I’m walking down—the 20’x20’ bubble around me, and anyone or anything I may find in that space. If you’re close enough for me to see you, and make eye contact or say “hello”, then I’m at home and you’re at home with me and we can be free to be free. To be as vulnerable and honest as we can get. To say what comes to mind, not just what’s polite. And to speak love into those matching spaces that surround the two of us.

I’m far from a home that is only four walls and a television. I now want it to exist wherever there is a friend—whether one old, or brand-spanking new.

I want to be your friend.
Welcome to my Home.

[drew:espresso in hand, @the cool bean cafe, Oakhurst]

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9:30AM, SATURDAY, CALIFORNIA:  Third-to-last push, second-to-last push.  “Cort, he looks just like Eoghan!” One last push, and Finnegan wiggles from his home for the last 40 weeks.  For the moment he is swollen and blue, but he is here and a few of us can see him. Cortnie is still on her knees, the position her body had instinctively found during the last difficult pushing stage.  Finn chases the fluid in his lungs with the outside air, and as he clears his throat he lets loose a little cackle.  The first pronouncement. His first song.  As the speechless lyric of his call reaches Cortnie, the tired and triumphant mother begins to cry, “My baby, my baby, my baby!”

Cortnie can’t remember saying those words. In the rawness of the moment—the joy and the ecstasy, the pain and the exhaustion—her first memory is the moment Finn was set down on her chest.  Skin to skin, body against body.  A baby finding his mom, finding his home.

I will never be able to understand, nor fully describe, the connection those two shared for the first nine months of life—half of their love concealed beneath flesh and the sound of two beating hearts.  It also makes me a little sad to have cut the cord that bound the two.  But as I keep reliving that moment of birth and separation, I excitedly look forward to this new life we all get to share.  Alive and free to live.  A brand-new—slightly larger family.

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MARTIN LUTHER KING

–APRIL 4th, 1967, ONE YEAR BEFORE HIS ASSASSINATION:

“And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.”

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WHILE PONDERING THE WORDS OF THIS SPEECH, I have found them to be a light of encouragement to my own thoughts.  As the world–with all of its expectations dealt, and assumptions siezed–continues to press down on the intuitive whispers of a gentle human conscience, I will listen to the dissenting voices of the prophets who oppose the king, that in those words I might hear an echo from my own inner being.  A call for peace, in a time of war.   A Jubilee Year of love after a decade of hate.  An era of freedom from an unending era of slavery.  The end of the Wars of Bush and Obama–and the new beginnings of Justice and Understanding–when we can teach the children of the world to write constitutions with pens instead of Kalashnikovs, and to freely plant fields of food for intelligent minds instead of fields of claymore mines. Even now, while blood still covers the hands of the patriots who made its request, may the shouts of the innocent victims reach the ears of the peaceful protestor.  And may the protest of the advocate no longer go unanswered. When speaking the truth is terror, and burying our enemies is sold as a fight for freedom, may we have the boldness to speak out against the atrocities of the king and his men.  And may we all have the courage to be afraid.

[drew]

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IF YOU’D LIKE TO HEAR MORE, CLICK THE VIDEO BELOW TO LISTEN TO AN AUDIO CLIP OF THE ENTIRE SPEECH…CLOSE YOUR EYES, AND LISTEN TO THIS SILENCED VOICE FROM THE PAST.  If you must, open your eyes and turn on your TV (with the volume muted) and while you flip through the channels, try to see if you can find a single video clip about the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.  As you labor to find any stories of war (nearly a decade since the shock and awe of their inception) amid news flashes for American Idol, the Super Bowl, natural disasters (as opposed to the man-made kind), and one single shooting rampage in Arizona (instead of the daily rampages carried out by American-sponsored militaries and militias worldwide)…ask yourself, “WHEN DID WE GET SO BORED WITH WAR?  WHY HAVE WE MOVED ON?  HOW DID THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS?  HOW DID WE LET THIS HAPPEN?”   When the speech has ended, you can either get up out of your chair or turn up the volume and give in to the noise…

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BELOW, I’ve provided a transcript of this historic speech that calls us all to speak out rather than continue in silence:  *ENJOY*

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Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath –
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be — are — are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States’ influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing — in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon, the only solid — solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call “VC” or “communists”? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred — rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the — for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do [immediately] to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing — Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile — Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality…and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala — Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand 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.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”² We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”³

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing — embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate — ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.”⁴ Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says:

Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

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And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”⁵

^-

¹ King stated “1954.” That year was notable for the Civil Rights Movement in the USSC’s  Brown v. Board of  Education ruling. However, given the statement’s discursive thrust, King may have meant to say “1964″ — the year he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Alternatively, as noted by Steve Goldberg, King may have identified 1954′s “burden of responsibility” as the year he became a minister.

² Isaiah 9:2/Matthew 4:16

³ Isaiah 40:4

⁴ 1 John 4:7-8, 12

⁵ Amos 5:24

MARCH 31

Someone left the light on…

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JULY 2

Passersby and the Party

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JUNE 20

the UNDERCURRENT newsletter
(Volume 3)

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AUGUST 13

TESOL: And just like that, it’s over

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NOVEMBER 6

The Final Adventure:

a story about a leaf

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Here are a few more favorites to enjoy from 2010:

January 1  the UNDERCURRENT newsletter (Volume 2)

January 24  The Agees and Lucases come to visit

January 29  The secrets of the universe (Part I)

March 28  More family and friends

April 11  Celebrating Easter

April 24  There’s “No other way” like Jack’s way

April26  Happy Stewards Of Creation Day

June 6  Just Breathe

June 30  A small sign, a big encouragement

July 6  From one home to another

July 15  You’re beautiful…

July 27  Jewel Basin {a.k.a. Car Trouble}

August 22  The Babe and His Brother

September 1  One Fine Day

September 16  The Beanie Thief

November 19  The OFFICIAL “Gender Release Party” for Baby Brooks

OH, I NEED YOU LORD

COME BY HERE…

The pessimists will always say that “holding hands and singing Kumbaya” won’t change a thing.  Some say that “pessimists are never disappointed.”

I thought it’d be fun to look at the origins of this campfire favorite–a spiritual song of unity that recognizes our need for God’s help in times of crisis, and petitions Him to come to the aid of his people.  I pray that we may always be aware enough to recognize our own need, and humble enough to ask for help.

May you find your own Harmony,
and May you forever Sing…
[drew]

- 

“Kumbayah” (Gullah, “Come By Here”) — is an African-American spiritual song from the 1930s. It enjoyed newfound popularity during the folk revival of the 1960s and became a standard campfire song in Scouting and other nature-oriented organizations.

The song was originally associated with human and spiritual unity, closeness and compassion, and it still is in many places around the world…

The origins of the song are disputed. Recent research has found that sometime between 1922 and 1931, members of an organization called the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals collected a song from the South Carolina coast. “Come By Yah”, as they called it, was sung in Gullah, the creole pidgin dialect spoken by the former slaves living on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia…

These facts contradict the longstanding copyright and authorship claim of Reverend Marvin V. Frey. Rev. Frey (1918–1992) claimed to have written the song circa 1936 under the title “Come By Here,” inspired, he claimed, by a prayer he heard delivered by “Mother Duffin,” a storefront evangelist in Portland, Oregon.

–wikipedia

There are also several versions of lyrics.
Here is one of my favorites:

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Kum bay ya, my Lord,  kumbaya…
Hear me crying, Lord,  kumbaya…
Hear me singing, Lord,  kumbaya…
Hear me praying, Lord,  kumbaya…
Oh, I need you, Lord,  kumbaya…

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THREE DAYS OF LOVE AND HATE:

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Cortnie and Eoghan and I were huddled in a mass of people at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland.  We were smiling, singing “Silver Bells”, sipping hot chocolate from an old Starbucks thermos, and waiting for the Mayor (with the help of Santa Claus) to come and light our city’s Christmas Tree.  At the same moment, perhaps down the street or far away, a group of FBI agents were arresting a young man whose religious beliefs had spawned violent intentions and near-deadly actions…

* * * * * *

“One of these days…we’ll see how pleasant and politically correct all those liberal voters are – when it’s their kids blood splattered all over the walls.” –pigstotheleft (comment on FOX NATION website, Nov. 28)

THIS IS THE STORY OF THREE DAYS:

1. The day I should’ve died from a terrorist attack.
2. The day I got censored by FOX News.
3. And the day I learned to rise above my hate.

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT.

It’s not a paid advertisement for CNN, NPR, or some left-wing conspiracy group.¹

¹ [Although if I were to encourage you at all, I'd probably tell you to get a few sources...Why stop at one? Find sources that exist without the influence or support of the corporate lobby system and corporate underwriting: that is, funding given by a company or organization, in exchange for a mention of their product or service within the station's programming.  (e.g. Democracy Now, Free Speech Radio News,  Project Censored, etc.) The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And money is what pays the bills at every News station in America. Find out where that money comes from.]

Okay, so…maybe this is a political statement.

But since half the country is Republican, and indeed, I myself used to be a card-carrying member of that party (not a joke, my voter card was in my pocket everyday—not because I actually needed it that often, but because I was so proud of my political affiliations) and I was an avid viewer of The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News because it symbolized, for me, what was patriotic and true—fair and balanced—and the end of each show left me feeling keyed up and supercharged like I was on the tip of a spring about to release…

Because of those reasons, I don’t want anyone to think this story is about “How I Hate The Republican, Democrat, or any other Party.” (Nowadays I ”decline to state” my affiliation when registering to vote, independent and free!)  This is quite clearly about so much more. More than the religions of Islam or Christianity.  More than the religion of America: and the worship of Partisans and Patriots.

If you hold up—with a trustful eye of beauty and respect— the men who sit behind the cameras and microphones in news studios across America, then these words may offend you.  I don’t often speak out on politics, because I like the friends I have—and friendships are often conditional, so long as you don’t rock the boat (and slandering your friends’ favorite news anchors will likely piss them off quicker than calling the Bible a book of fairy tales).  But I feel as though I was mistreated by the so-called “Free-Press” establishment of our country—arguably, a group of moneymakers and fear mongers who control the airwaves and brainwaves of my country’s people, and who silenced my voice while giving wings to others. And after a month of silence about this: I’d just like to get it off my chest. (That is why this blog exists.)

CHRISTMASTIME IN THE CITY

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Cortnie and Eoghan and I were huddled in a mass of people at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland.  We were smiling, singing “Silver Bells”, sipping hot chocolate from an old Starbucks thermos, waiting for the Mayor (with the help of Santa Claus) to come and light our city’s Christmas Tree.  At the same moment, perhaps down the street or far away, a group of FBI agents were arresting a young man whose religious beliefs had spawned violent intentions and near-deadly actions.  He was 19 years old.  He was young, he was foolish.  He was full of religion and full of hate.  And it seems he truly wanted to end all of our happiness that night with the press of a button.  A bomb in a van parked nearby.

We left the square as though nothing had happened, because nothing had. The bomb was a fake—thanks be to God and the FBI—and we left skipping and singing and still smiling. We found out what happened behind the scenes the next day. Cortnie was definitely unnerved by the incident, the threat of such a painful and scary death for us, and for Eoghan. Smiles transformed into faces of horror and terror and death in the fraction of a second.  I admit, that possibility would be frightening if I let myself dwell on it, and the risk comes with living in a metropolis (especially one so far from the watchful eyes in D.C. and those still turned to the skies near Ground Zero in New York) but then again, we can’t all live in the countryside and safer suburbs. We can’t put all our trust, our faith, in the guy in the old-model Ford sedan with a spotlight above his mirror and “SECURITY” painted on the driver’s side door, or our gated community’s Neighborhood Watch program, or our many responsible insurance policies, or our security cameras, or our political representative elect who is going to change everything into the way I want it to be—the way it should be.

When I got home Saturday night, I googled a few news stories reporting what happened the night before at the square. Again on Sunday, I checked for more updates about the story. The first article I read was about a fire that broke out at the Islamic Center occasionally attended by the would-be bomber. An arsonist had apparently set fire to the mosque during the night, destroying part of the interior.  Pitiful, I thought. What simple-minded, fanatical—perhaps even “conservative Christian”—thought this was somehow justifiable…to seek righteous revenge by burning down another man’s church? I’m sure it was easier for them—believing they were mere Muslims, and therefore devoted to a false and dangerous lie.

My thoughts were none too happy at this point.

Displeased by the actions of the arsonist—my statesman, my neighbor (and probably someone holding to the same faith as myself)—I clicked the BACK button in search for better news. As I scrolled down the webpage, I noticed a story titled “Portland Mayor Goes PC Over Terror Suspect”. Interesting, I thought. And Strange. Why would someone try to be politically correct about such a blessed thing as not blowing up last night? He was there too—he would have died with us all. Why would the mayor have to be PC about not dying? I wondered.  And why would anyone make the story about political stratagem, instead of simply reporting the happy fact that the Mayor didn’t himself perish along with many joyfully gay folk in his city. Oh, I know, I remembered. ‘Cause he’s gay, that’s why.

As I clicked the link to the story, a twinge of chagrin shot through my fingertips. When I noticed the FOX NATION logo in the upper left corner of the screen, I sucked in a painful hiss through my teeth. Ah, I can see where this is going…

LINE AFTER LINE

The article itself said nothing really accusatory. It was only four sentences. Nothing revealing, that I noticed. But it was the title of the article, I believe, and the remark about political-correctness that caused such a stir. Maybe I should’ve watched my old buddy Hannity today, I thought. Then I’d be  as riled up as these guys. Whatever it was, a long list of condemning thoughts and opinions had formed below the writer’s story.  Line after line of bitterness and hatred.  Accusation after accusation, spoken as truth.  Not fair.  Not balanced.  A din of mockery and self-love.  Digital high fives dished out between conservative comrades.

I’d heard it all before—the biased rhetoric and name-calling that exists between outspoken members of those two Sacred Parties.  I’d heard my own beliefs slandered from both sides a hundred times before.  I’ve been mocked for loving Jesus.  I’ve been hounded for loving gays.  I’ve been placated as a conservative and a liberal in the same day, not because I’m a political scenester or because I lack personal conviction.  Instead, it’s those convictions that so often lead me to stand in a new place, in a new way—a place that exists in the divide between political opinions.  In the cavernous void between hate and love, and love and hate.  I’d heard it all before, but never in such concentration as here on this webpage.

My conservative brothers, armed to the teeth, spat their recited songs of disgust for the “liberal oasis” of Portland, Oregon.  Terror-givers and freedom-takers.  Gay-lovers and Jesus-haters.  Democracy naysayers, and communist traitors. I searched for some kind of sound reasoning and gentle opinion and found any that existed to be covered thick beneath layers of filthy muck.  Fueled by hatred.  Justified by a belief in a god of Hatred, and the worship of men.  Think I’m being too harsh?

You can read it for yourself, uncensored:

REGARDING PORTLAND’S CHRISTMAS TREE: “holiday, solstice tree for the libtards.” “Pagan Gay STDs Entitlement tree would probably be better”

MOHAMED OSMAN MOHAMUD (the bombing suspect), and ISLAM: “A radical Muzzie. Named Mohammed. Attempts terrorist act in US.= I’m a racist profiler.” “These sorts of attempts are being made predominantly by certain sorts of people.” “You mean satan worshippers of the Death Cult of ISSSLLLAAAMMMM”, “If I was the mayor, I would say “Put that #$%$^er in jail for life” in no uncertain terms : – )”

MAYOR SAM ADAMS: “Another lunatic running the asylum.” “More like pedophile b+tt monkey”, “For a politician to go PC could border on treason or aiding the enemy.” “a traitorus bad guy”, “you dont appreciate being protected. Live in your rose colored world”, “a liberal wussie.” “The Dufus Mayor”, “[Sam Adams] would calm his Jihadist rage with a nice soothing rectal inspection”, “They probably didn’t tell the Mayor Sam Adams for fear word would get back to the terrorists……”, “Did they find this guy during a pat down at the airport?”, “More than likely he crossed the border from Mexico”, “Knowing liberal states like Oregon, the mayor would have been out there blabbing.” “Enough of the political correct c r a p! Close the darn boarder and start profiling, or a lot of innocent of American’s are going to be killed.” “ANOTHER spineless politician more worried about his political career than the job he was elected to do and the people he SERVES.” “All I can say is that these leaders are not true leaders. Anyone that has served a month in the military would know this.” “A m0ron standing on a pile of sh!t. My sympathies to those who have to live in Portland!” “The reason he was not told ahead of time is because he would have warned the Somali of the FBI sting operation against him, The POS.”

PORTLAND and LIBERALISM: “Liberal Toilet” “you liberal pricks need to shed that pc bullsh|t.” “Sanctuary Cities Explode Nicely” “can’t be forcing that Christian stuff on those intolerant liberals.” “The liberal bastion of Portland….celebrating the lighting of a Christmas tree……? I do believe that is a contradiction of terms.” “Whatever. Eventually liberals will eat what they sow. Look at NYC for Pete’s sake…I say ‘Go for it, eat it raw.’“  “Maybe it was not muslem nuts may be it was left wing nuts,after all it is a chritsmas tree lighting and it is Portland.Just saying…..”, “The disappointing reality of it is that they don’t possess the consciencous capacity to percieve it in that manner.” “Liberalism is a mental illness that destroys anything it comes in contact with without reservation”, “Progressives are extremely naive..they will help load the gun that ki//s them.” “Naivete has nothing to do with it. The Progressives WANT to exploit the tension between religious groups. They WANT us to k i l l each other off.” “I am afraid that Progressives will never understand the world around them. That is what makes them so dangerous….to the rest of us.” “I wonder how some of them are feeling today? He took a little shine off the bubble they live in, didn’t he?” “Portland welcomes all illegals and terrorist. This is a perfect example of what happens when complacency takes over.” “The problem is Portland is full of old burnt out hippies” “Typical Portland response. Use a Somali mu slim terrorist attack as an occasion to trash European Americans.” “one day our luck will run out! Then how are the PC LIBS going to defend theit STUPIDNESS???” “Liberal bleeding hearts”, “One of these days they aren’t gonna get caught until post facto. Then we’ll see how pleasant and politically correct all those liberal voters are – when it’s their kids blood splattered all over the walls.” “If it weren’t so serious it would be funny watching the PC CROWD get their thongs in knots.” “If it wasn’t for the FBI another Islamic-Fascist that doesn’t care that you’re bleeding heart liberals, as a matter of fact they prefer it that way, would have succeeded in a terrorist attack. They know you’ll just stand there and take, hoping that holding hands and singing Kum-Bi-Ya will solve everything.”

OH, AND POSSIBLY MY FAVORITE:

Two liberal Portland Oregan voters rapping before they vote.
Dude #1 “dude who ya gonna vote for?”
Dude#2 ” I dunno dude, ther is this Conservative dude named George Washington but ain’t never heard of the dude.”
Dude#1 ” me neither, Hey wait there is this liberal dude named Sam Adams…anyone named after a beer gets my vote ”
Dude#2 “right on…duh I meant left on bro, lets go vote and then go get some sam adams beer” do you think he will give us a discount if we tell him we voted for him?
Dude#1 ” its worth a try that is how I got my food stamps and welfare checks”

Reading these words makes me feel disgusted. With myself—in all my dirty, enslaved, human flaws and evil intent. With my countrymen. With all the parties. All the nonsense.

CENSORED: WOW, THAT HURT MY FEELINGS…

I wrote a short comment to add to the rest. A few quick lines inspired by words from the Bible, including a few from Jesus and the Apostle Paul (it seemed like a safe idea considering it was FOX, and they’re all Catholics and conservative Christians there, right?).  I added a few words from Ghandi. Just to give it some balance. I put quotations around their words and kept my own thoughts brief.  I made mention of the vengeful mosque burning that took place earlier that morning, of which I disapproved.  When I clicked the button to submit my comment, I was given a warning that my comment would be reviewed by a “moderator” before it could be posted publicly.  So I waited.

And I waited. A guy named “fullmetalbasket” commented about Portland, saying “Sanctuary Cities Explode Nicely.”

Well, that wasn’t fair, or balanced—it wasn’t even nice. Actually, I’m quite happy they do not! I thought.

And I waited some more. A guy named “brb39” remarked how Portland’s gay mayor would calm the Bomb suspect’s Jihadist rage with “a nice soothing rectal inspection.”

Well, if he was allowed to post that, then I’m sure nothing will prevent my comment from posting, eventually. So I just kept on waiting.

Then I wondered. Should I not have said anything, you know…religious?  I mean, the freedoms of Speech and Assembly kind of go hand-in-hand.  And the right column of the website did state “ALL OPINIONS WELCOME.” And below that it read, “The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship.” So, on those grounds I should be fine, right?  Freedom of thought, expression, worship…

I knew religion had nothing to do with my now apparent disqualification when I noticed a new post. This time, someone copied a few quotes from Jihad Watch.org. Their quote had all kinds of references to the Qur’an—of course their’s tried to prove the Qur’an’s encouragement of terrorism.  (Whether or not Terrorism is on the heart of every Muslim, is an argument I don’t wish to wage at this time—it’s not the point I’m trying to make.)  To the contrary, my quotes from the Bible simply tried to link a few of our scriptures’ various messages of “peace, over vengeance”.  Is that what got my comment thrown out? I now wondered. (How can a man quote the Qur’an in order to prove its hostility toward Americans, but I can’t quote the Bible in order to prove its message of peace to all mankind? Not even at Christmastime. Was my message found to be too unpatriotic? Lacking the appropriate war rhetoric?)  Whatever the case, the longer I stared, the more I became sure that my message would never be heard—except by the moderator, of course.

Line after line of hate continues to this very day. In our workplaces, in our classrooms, in our Sunday school rooms, in our social get-togethers. In our hearts.  On our tongues—line after line of hatred.  Filled to the brim.  Overflowing—until somebody burns the mosque to the ground.

CALLING LOVE, HATE

Lately, I’ve been reading a book called “A Requiem For Love” by Calvin Miller.  It was a Christmas gift for Cortnie, but I stayed up late one night and finished reading it. (I highly recommend his works for anybody who wishes to shed new light and gain fresh context for those ancient biblical texts.)  In Requiem, Miller’s fictional version of the Garden of Eden—you know, the story about Adam and Eve and a few bad apples—he describes the birth of pure and perfect love shared between a couple and the Spirit that created them. The setting for this story, as in the Hebrew Bible, is a fertile untouched garden—still void of evil, immorality, nakedness, and so far, loneliness. Pure love—in a pure garden paradise. The couple spends their first days in all the passion and joy of new love. They run through the forest, they lie naked in the fields. They experience a wondrous unfettered relationship with eachother and their Maker—fully devoted: in love. But the Father-Spirit gives them the gift of free-choice, and soon they become bored with the perfect step of their existence and their devotion to the only God they’ve ever known.  For the first time in their short and perfect lives, they long for more knowledge and the freedom to choose for themselves—what is right and what is wrong.

Now enters the “Earth-hater,” the serpentine creature known as Slithe, who fills the young couple with fantasies of a new life beyond the walls of paradise, where Right and Wrong exist at their choosing. He entices them to leave their garden home (and the Creator who inhabits it, whom they worship with every thought and every breath) for the sands of the desert beyond—where no trees block the view of the warm sun by day or the beautiful moon by night.  Slithe often visits Regina (Eve’s character), who is full of doubt and curiosity—lacking faith despite her daily experiences with her loving Maker.  “There is power, Regina, in the things that I can teach you. For evil can be fair as love,” Slithe seduces her.  All she needed to do for the serpent to grant her this new enhanced existence—a life full of freedom and knowledge—was to utter a few, short, traitorous words…

…to call love, “hate.”

Needless to say, Regina forsakes her first two loves—the man, and the Spirit that fathered her. In her lust and ambition, she denounces their love—gladly choosing its opposite.  Miller continues that, “The greatest sin is calling love, hate.  The second greatest sin in calling servanthood, ambition.  The list need go no further.  There are no other sins of consequence.”   Those were the first sins ever committed, and they opened the way for the same evil and hate that surrounds us to this day.  There in that garden at the beginning of time, we exchanged a perfect love for a chance at freedom.  For a chance at knowledge, outside of a world that only knew what was Right—and what was Love.  And we’ve been making a mess of things ever since.  To believe otherwise, is to believe a deceptive lie.

We need to return to our first understanding.  We need to return to the God who was with us at our first breath, who shaped us out of earthen clay.  We need to remember the distant dream of His first intentions, there in that garden.  When we experienced His presence as often as the sunrise, and his words filled our ears instead of the pages of fairy tales.  No boundaries to cross—trapped inside his gates.  Still free to choose, but knowing of only one choice.

As the sun rises now, and we wake from our garden bed of leaves and earth, with our mate at our side and our God calling us from beyond the trees, we need to find release from the chains that imprison our hearts and create slaves from our passions. That rob us of the divine gift given on that day long ago, when we walked with our Maker and watched his plans birthed before us. Now as we wake, we must sing a song: an overture of life and a requiem for hate.

We need to call it for what it is. We need to call love, love.

No more giving in to anything less than perfection. Perfect and pure. No longer forsaking those divine gifts we’ve always carried but never used.  As we shake the dust from our hearts, trying them on as for the first time, may we hear distant whispers from the garden of our birth. Echoes of laughter. That remind us of our Maker. The face that stares back at us from the pool. The image of Love. The spirit, our Father. May we see his story etched through time. May we stand, and follow.

BLEEDING HEARTS

One final thought.

Now, whenever someone calls me a “bleeding heart Liberal,” a funny smile covers my face and a sense of peace fills my chest. Not so long after the story of that Garden and the couple who failed the wishes of their Maker, that same Spirit who was their Father plotted a grand scheme to restore that broken relationship for all time.  His son, was born on earth in flesh and bone.  Worshiped by shepherds and Kings.  Hunted by evil Empires.  Healer, lover, teacher.  Friend to evil and undeserved men.  Sharing his meals with tax collectors and money launderers (not unlike our politicians and business elite).   Mentoring adulterers and all kinds of sex-crazed individuals (gay city mayors, not excluded).  When hungry people came looking for the eternal truths he spoke of, he fed them with bread for their stomachs—and bread for their hearts.  He showed compassion to all.  All, except the religious elite—and the businessmen who made money behind the temple doors (not unlike those who turn a profit from the religious customs and fears of the American people).  He warned us of men who would come in his name, proclaiming truths while deceiving us with lies. Men who would once again call His love, hate—denying the example he lived, which would remain unmatched through the ages.  Making a mockery of his truth, while forgetting the very words he spoke.

The grand scheme, led the Earth-maker’s Son to a death at the hands of the Empire’s army and an embittered and occupied people.  Even as they drove metal stakes through his hands and feet—Jesus loved them all.  Even as the tax collectors, homosexuals and priests forgot of his love and began mocking him as he hung there in that sky—Jesus asked his Father to forgive them.  And as his last breath failed him, and his spirit stole from its earthly body—my savior’s heart bled.

Two-thousand years later, across the planet, in every culture—we are the hands and feet of that dream.

Bleeding hearts, poured out. Overflowing—

Living and loving as he showed us.

“Father, release our hearts of hatred.  And remind us of your touch.”

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“Drum Roll, please…” 

“It’s a BOY!”

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THE NAMES:

We enjoy giving our children names with significance. These are some that we chose.

FINNEGAN: “Fair” Young Finn

We’ve known for some time that if we were to have another boy, we’d name him Finnegan. We loved the sound of “Eoghan and Finn” and thought, “Wow, let’s name him that…no matter what it means, it sounds great!  So, we’re giving him the name ”Finn” for purely cosmetic reasons. It means “fair” (which won’t be hard to explain, since he’s sure to have our fair complexion and sandy-colored hair as a baby) and it’s traditionally an Irish surname, derived from Ó Fionnagáin meaning ‘descendent of Fionnagán’. The name has been made known to many by the comic novel Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish author James Joyce.

TABOR: The Sleeping Volcano

One day, Eoghan and I were hiking in Forest Park (I wrote about this day in The Final Adventure), and near the end of the hike I was thinking about a few different baby names and I had an idea. I knew of a guy named Tabor who came into my coffee shop with his friends every Friday night, and I stopped to briefly consider that name for our baby.  Mount Tabor is the name of a dormant volcano here in Portland, the only volcano within city limits in the US ( it’s named after a mountain in Isreal believed by many to be the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus).  It’s a modest hill that rises in the middle of Southeast, between downtown and Mount Hood (for all of you Donald Miller fans out there: it’s also the same hill that he writes about it Blue Like Jazz, where he’d ride up to the top and watch all the city lights at night). Many cute houses sprawl their way up the base of Mount Tabor, and there are many trails and bikepaths on Tabor as well. Some of these trails we took to pick blackberries after TESOL last summer (Finn was there with us then), and there’s a favorite playground near the top that has amazing lighting when the sun is setting over Forest Park and the light is reflecting on the tall evergreen trees of Tabor.

As I was hiking in Forest Park I thought about the significance of this name, Tabor.  I smiled to think about naming him after a landmark here in Portland. We’ve enjoyed our time here so much that naming him after the city in this way seemed fitting.  But more than this, I relished the idea that is Tabor–a volcano at heart. There is so much [crazy, ridiculous, insane!] potential that comes with the presence of a sleeping volcano in the middle of this city. Potential for beauty, for disaster, for awe.  I wanted our baby to know that he held that same potential sleeping within his chest. That he had our blessing to one day wake from his slumber and surprise us all.

EMMAUS: Burning Hearts

When Eoghan and I returned from our hike I was a little anxious to tell Cortnie about the name Tabor.  Before I was able to tell her, she asked me about this name, Emmaus.  This is the name of a village mentioned in Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (Luke 24:13-35). As a few men are walking toward the village of Emmaus they meet Jesus along the way, but  they don’t recognize him as they spend the rest of the day with him. They have him over for dinner, and as Jesus is blessing the meal and sharing the food with them they finally recognize him…as soon as they understand who he is, he vanishes in front of them. It’s then they powerfully describe the effect his presence had on them that day, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”  For these people, encountering Jesus and spending the day with him placed a burning in their hearts.  A feeling that Cort and I, and many of our kindred friends and family can associate with at one time or another. 

As Cortnie and I talked about the name Emmaus, we read the passage one more time, exclaiming at how much we’ve always enjoyed this intimate story about a few men’s burning hearts.  Then I tell her how I had thought of the name Tabor on the trail earlier that day, and it only took a few seconds before we made the link between the fiery embers building below Mount Tabor and the embers that were burning in the chests of those men that day on the road to Emmaus. Let’s use both of these, we thought. We discussed fusing Emmaus & Tabor into one name, calling him “Embor”, or Embry (which means “ember”), but for now we like keeping them seperate and individually significant.

An interesting note about the name Emmaus comes from the first century historian, Josephus (3o-c.100 A.D.).  In describing Tiberias on the Lake of Gennesaret, he writes that there are warm baths not far away in a village named Emmaus. In another place he says that the name Emmaus may be interpreted as meaning “warm baths,” being derived from a spring of warm water within the city. To date however, there is no trace of there ever being a hot spring at Emmaus (for all we know, the Romans in Emmaus heated their baths artificially, as was often the case). But it’s intriguing to me to consider the possibility of a hot spring existing somewhere beneath Emmaus.

It just hasn’t come to the surface yet. But it will, one day.

THE POLLS HAVE CLOSED regarding the baby’s gender. Team “BOY” won the race with just 51.46% of the vote (just one vote more than Team “GIRL”)  But–just for fun–we’ll leave the rest of the questions up for a while. Thanks to all our voters and blog-visiters for making this so much fun for us…we love you guys!  [ANDREW & CORTNIE]

THE POLLS HAVE CLOSED regarding the baby’s gender. Team “BOY” won the race with just 51.46% of the vote (just one vote more than Team “GIRL”)  But–just for fun–we’ll leave the rest of the questions up for a while. Thanks to all our voters and blog-visiters for making this so much fun for us…we love you guys!  [ANDREW & CORTNIE]

ALSO, DON’T MISS THE “GENDER RELEASE PARTY” HAPPENING RIGHT HERE: FRIDAY @ 3:00PM