(A sermon from a Fool on the occasion of the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell.)
But I must remember
I'm a hustler
I'm a full moon
I'm a tiger sleeping in your. . .
Would you call him
And tell him how I feel
I can make the payment
I can make the deal
Would you call him
And tell him how I feel
I can make the payment
I can make the deal
The Boxer
The Chemical Brothers with Tim Burgess
Get ready for a fight.
You were thrown headlong into it the day before you were born, and until you go down the final and everlasting time, you are in. You are in for all you are worth, whether you like it or not .
Was it fair you arrived in this world? Fair has nothing to do with it. For you to be you, this is the world you had to come into, for all its beauty and horror, for all its kisses and lacerations, for all its smiles and pitilessness. For you to be you, you had to come into this world, the world of death; because the world of death is also the world of life.
Is this “the best of all possible worlds?” This is the only world possible for me; whether it will be the best possible world depends a great deal on whether I will choose to be the best me I could have been. Theodicy? I will not lay the responsibility for this world at the feet of Almighty God. He needs no excuses from me or from you. This is the world we were given and along with it, as part of it, came the responsibility to make the world right if it is not to our liking and if it marred, filled with pain, death, lies, hatred, and betrayals with no purpose or point.
Was it fair you arrived in this world? Rather ask, was it fair to the world that you came here and were the person you have been, are, and will choose to be?
Oh, I will be honest with you: There are days I hate this world and most everything in it. I was raised to despise the world and think of it as a hateful thing passing away. I was raised to think that, any minute, Jesus would return to rescue me from this hateful mess into which I had been thrown. I was raised with many such notions, years before the rest of the country came under the influence of the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals.
I was raised to believe I was worthless, that I was born eaten with sin and went downhill from there. I had nothing to offer the world, much less myself or my loved ones or my neighbors. These beliefs left deep scars and I am the scar tissue that remains – these are my things to fight against, wrestle with. They are my angel, my sweet daimon. They are what made me who I am.
A long journey – from worthlessness to the realization that being imperfect only means I am human, not worthless. If I am worthless, if I have nothing to offer, I cannot be responsible for my part of the world, nor will I care what happens to it or those who inhabit it, neither today nor tomorrow after I am gone. Let them fend for themselves, right? And the memory of the dead, my responsibility to hold those who have gone before in some esteem, listen for their voices – why should I care? They are dust and were no more important than I ever have been, and I am worthless, right?
It does not surprise me we molest the graves of the dead and let their words, their books rot and go to nothing since we, as a people, are now as convinced of our collective worthlessness as much as I was of my own personal worthlessness as a child. It doesn’t surprise me we shrug at sending people off to senseless wars and stare straight-faced while we torment and murder people in the name of “security.”
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that so many of us look at our brothers and sisters and do not see brothers and sisters – we see “homosexuals,” we see “foreigners,” we see “freaks,” we see “the crazy,” “the poor,” “drug addicts” -- whatever. We have so little self-worth we refuse to recognize the inherent and glorious dignity in others.
Oh, the world is passing and so are we all; that is the essence of things, to change, to become other than they are. But as long as we are here, we are responsible for what happens in this world, all of us. We are responsible for everything, as Dostoyevsky once said, and we are all responsible for each other, the dead, the living, those yet to come. We cannot do anything we wish. We cannot hate the world, and the world is nothing more than the people who inhabit it, all of us. We cannot abandon it and pretend it is “God’s will” we hate His own creation and refuse to do our part in its ongoing manifestation.
Yes, the world is a thing passing away, but maybe those who taught me that missed the real point – it is passing away because God expects us to make Jesus present within it, to convert it, not to a religion, but from something horrid and marred to something transfigured and of great worth. We are to take its scars, its crosses, its hate, its blood drenched graveyards and the mire of all battlefields and convert them into something human and humane.
We are to forgive and change ourselves and the world, and this, for Christians, is the very work and fruit of the Holy Spirit. Wherever I find that work, whoever I find doing that work, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Shintoist, Taoist, Wiccan, Pagan, Christian, atheist – I do not care what name they go by: there I find God at work, and Goodness, and Christ, and Jesus becoming present in the world. He calls whosoever He wills, however He will, and accomplishes His work in His own way, in His own time – but through us, through us all, as many as will simply take up the burden and become who we are.
Welcome to the fight. We will all fall and fail, but as the Sufi mystic, Rumi said, get up and come, as many times as you have broken your vow. You will not be rejected. Your work is here to be done as long as you desire to do it and beyond.
It is all that simple – and all that difficult. God forgive us for our hatreds and judgmental habits. The next time a disaster comes, please remind us, if we wish to point a finger, to first go look in the mirror for the only guilty party we ever need be concerned with. The Devil has only one face: mine when contorted in anger and flushed with the acid of intolerance.
God forbid we lay our burdens on others, and God forbid we see “the other” as a stranger to be despised. Help us make the table and welcome in the stranger that he may become our brother, that we may serve him and not curse him because he is of a different race or belief, that he loves in a different way than we do, that he has been injured and tormented in ways we haven’t.
This is jihad, the Holy War against . . . ourselves – against our own weaknesses and prejudices, against despair, against devaluation of God’s world and God’s people, and all people are God’s whether they know it or not. Whether we know it or not.
It is a fight and you are in, whether you like it or not, whether you pass through the world without ever figuring it out or not, without ever caring or not.
“Pray for the dead, and work for the living,” said Mother Jones, saint that she is.
Amen, and amen. Amen forever.
Richard Van Ingram
15 May 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Sarcastic Venom in a Fruit Jar, Straight From the Mountain
"No man quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man."
H.L. Mencken
"The Skeptic"
. . . And then I sat silent for a couple of weeks, listening.
It’s awfully easy to become demoralized if you are not a brainwashed True Believer and starry-eyed servant of the Bush family.
Where to begin?
Over the past several days I have sat, head in hand, with the realization that, come 2008, once again a Republican nut case will be sitting the White House. Why? Because the Democratic Party is led by selfish idiots.
Here we are, at one of the most dangerous moments in human history: countries are coming apart at the seams; resources such as oil are now dangerously scarce while demand is on the rise – with all of the attendant environmental difficulties this brings; religious fanatics are delivering their sermons on the heads of guided missiles, punctuating them with IUDs; human beings are treating human beings as so much meat to be ground up and disposed of at will, and they are all acting as if the planet is just tinder for one fantastic marshmallow roast to be had at the Gotterdammerung.
Our Supreme Court is now stuffed with Right-Wing zombies who believe in sending the country back to happier times before the Voting Rights Act was passed and the grounding for various individual rights was recognized within the Constitution, and before people began to consider strange ideas such as that women and men might be equal and that straight and non-straight people deserve equal protection before the law.
We’re faced with hordes of Neo-Cons who think the New Deal was a Commie Plot and say so out loud; they are no longer concerned people will call them on it because they have succeeded in mis-educating and propagandizing the public for a solid quarter century now. They have convinced the American people we have no responsibilities except to ourselves and to protecting the "rights" of big business. Anything else is "socialism" and socialism, as we all know, is the greased stripper pole straight into Hell and equality.
Okay. Let’s say that’s the short version of the world’s and America’s woes. Let’s say 2008 is election year after two terms of George W.’s rule, two terms of ridiculous, wicked, pure-out insanity and greed which the Democrats could not end even with the President’s approval ratings in the toilet in 2004 – 2008 rolls around and it is paramount that we get these Neo-Con proto-fascists out of office and work on dismantling their "initiatives," "laws," and "policies," such as the Patriot Act, before they become permanent. So what do the Democrats do? Run a field of candidates that cannot win.
Worse, they run a field of candidates that will make it possible for the Republicans to take the White House even if they decide to run a lobotomized slobbering Baboon plagued with the habit of masturbating vigorously in public.
Of course, he’d have to carry a Bible, but I digress.
What do we have from the Democrats? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
What’s wrong with them? Nothing. Nothing at all. But that isn’t the issue; the issue is that there is something wrong with our country, a slight issue we call "prejudice," both racial and gender oriented.
In short, the front runner, Senator Clinton, is unelectable because she is a woman and Senator Obama is unelectable because he is black. The simple and unfortunate fact is that we cannot hope to reform a country in the middle of a Presidential race – we cannot change people’s minds about such matters in a campaign they are not prepared to change them about ahead of time. The Democrats as a party must get into office first, then work on changing people’s minds, not the other way ‘round.
And the sad reality is that the only way a black person or a woman will see the Oval Office in ’08 will be if the Neo-Cons decide to run Condoleeza Rice against Hillary Clinton; in that case, even Trent Lott and his Mississippi Klansmen will turn out to stuff ballot boxes in favor of an African American simply to retain power. They would resurrect the dead back to the Civil War to get enough names, strange times as these are.
Senator John Edwards? He is pro-union, pro-worker, and no one knows who the Hell he is as he has no money, comparatively.
What are the Democrats thinking? They aren’t, as usual. What they ought to be thinking is: If we can take the White House and hold onto Congress, we can pass legislation; we can override dangerous Supreme Court decisions; we can have coherent foreign and domestic policies.
What the "frontrunners" each ought to be thinking is this: Hillary needs to throw in the towel and say, in return for my money and support and a cabinet position, I’ll support whoever we come up with that can be our figurehead and get elected; Barack should say I’ll do the same and I expect to see the Democratic Party to make a concerted effort to pay attention to me and my issues for the next four years; John needs to follow suit.
The Democrats then, as a united party, need to put it to the American people that the Far Right Conservatives have gotten us into an unbelievably dangerous mess based on principles not geared toward the good of most people, and that we need to come together in the middle to start working on some compromises we can all live with, move away from this far Right-Wing and far Left-Wing extremism, face our future more or less together, and get on with living.
Otherwise, there will be no way Hillary or Barack or John – or their supporters – will be effective at all. That is, unless the majority of Americans suddenly snap to their senses and realize the Republican Party is corrupt from toe to top and is more frightening than that 10-headed Beast of the Apocalypse Jack T. Chick liked to write about in his little Bible Tracts. One more term in office and they’ll have cameras in your houses and microphones in your bedrooms and National I.D. cards in your pockets – geeze, people, they already have your phone and e-mail and financial records and were willing to snag them illegally. They already have dungeons and torturers and murderers on the payroll and have such nebulous definitions for "terrorists" and those who "aid terrorism" that it wouldn’t take much for anyone who asks too many questions to find herself in Camp X-Ray wearing an orange jumpsuit, chained to the floor listening to Megadeath so loud it makes her nose bleed.
It can’t happen here? It would take the American people realizing that such evil can happen anywhere there are humans and governments.
It would take the American people realizing that every other word out of George W’s mouth is a lie and that every word in between is either an excuse for having been caught lying or an attack on those who caught him; and it would take us collectively realizing we’d be better off with Senator Clinton, or Senator Obama, or Senator Edwards in the White House for any of them to get elected.
But I don’t think we’re there yet.
No, we’re still listening to Dick Cheney continue to claim against all facts that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and that we’re "winning" the War in Iraq which is an
extension of The War on Terror. No, really.
And none of it was about oil or Halliburton. No, really.
We’re still listening to the President throw his support behind corrupt functionaries like Alberto Gonzalez and Paul Wolfowitz. The President is still claiming his new Federal Attorneys, replacements for the fired ones, were not chosen for political reasons, because that would be illegal, not to mention just bad policy. "Good job, Brownie!"
The American people are still buying the Star Spangled showbiz bullshit from the White House and from Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, and as long as they do so they won’t be able to bypass their prejudices towards women and black people (or candidates without a lot of cash) and elect one of the three main Democrats to the presidency. The American people, as little as they like Bush, as much as they tend to grasp by now that he and his bunch are vile and corrupt, aren’t as concerned as they ought to be about the regime that has generally ruled this country starting with Reagan that inevitably led to George W. They know they don’t much care for Bush – but they don’t truly know why they ought not like him and his party yet.
I don’t think most folks will figure it out before November ’08 short of yet another mishandled and botched disaster, God forbid, that the Republicans try to convert into even more opportunities to "make lots of money," as the Pet Shop Boys sang.
The American people won’t figure it out and the leading Democrats won’t admit it’s their responsibility to sacrifice personal ambition in order to avert further destruction and corruption. Just like a bunch of damned politicians all around.
I’m beginning to feel like a Roman. I’m smelling smoke on the wind and I think I hear the Emperor’s fiddle in the distance. It’s far off – but not too far now. Not at all, not at all.
Richard Van Ingram
7 May 2007
H.L. Mencken
"The Skeptic"
. . . And then I sat silent for a couple of weeks, listening.
It’s awfully easy to become demoralized if you are not a brainwashed True Believer and starry-eyed servant of the Bush family.
Where to begin?
Over the past several days I have sat, head in hand, with the realization that, come 2008, once again a Republican nut case will be sitting the White House. Why? Because the Democratic Party is led by selfish idiots.
Here we are, at one of the most dangerous moments in human history: countries are coming apart at the seams; resources such as oil are now dangerously scarce while demand is on the rise – with all of the attendant environmental difficulties this brings; religious fanatics are delivering their sermons on the heads of guided missiles, punctuating them with IUDs; human beings are treating human beings as so much meat to be ground up and disposed of at will, and they are all acting as if the planet is just tinder for one fantastic marshmallow roast to be had at the Gotterdammerung.
Our Supreme Court is now stuffed with Right-Wing zombies who believe in sending the country back to happier times before the Voting Rights Act was passed and the grounding for various individual rights was recognized within the Constitution, and before people began to consider strange ideas such as that women and men might be equal and that straight and non-straight people deserve equal protection before the law.
We’re faced with hordes of Neo-Cons who think the New Deal was a Commie Plot and say so out loud; they are no longer concerned people will call them on it because they have succeeded in mis-educating and propagandizing the public for a solid quarter century now. They have convinced the American people we have no responsibilities except to ourselves and to protecting the "rights" of big business. Anything else is "socialism" and socialism, as we all know, is the greased stripper pole straight into Hell and equality.
Okay. Let’s say that’s the short version of the world’s and America’s woes. Let’s say 2008 is election year after two terms of George W.’s rule, two terms of ridiculous, wicked, pure-out insanity and greed which the Democrats could not end even with the President’s approval ratings in the toilet in 2004 – 2008 rolls around and it is paramount that we get these Neo-Con proto-fascists out of office and work on dismantling their "initiatives," "laws," and "policies," such as the Patriot Act, before they become permanent. So what do the Democrats do? Run a field of candidates that cannot win.
Worse, they run a field of candidates that will make it possible for the Republicans to take the White House even if they decide to run a lobotomized slobbering Baboon plagued with the habit of masturbating vigorously in public.
Of course, he’d have to carry a Bible, but I digress.
What do we have from the Democrats? Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards.
What’s wrong with them? Nothing. Nothing at all. But that isn’t the issue; the issue is that there is something wrong with our country, a slight issue we call "prejudice," both racial and gender oriented.
In short, the front runner, Senator Clinton, is unelectable because she is a woman and Senator Obama is unelectable because he is black. The simple and unfortunate fact is that we cannot hope to reform a country in the middle of a Presidential race – we cannot change people’s minds about such matters in a campaign they are not prepared to change them about ahead of time. The Democrats as a party must get into office first, then work on changing people’s minds, not the other way ‘round.
And the sad reality is that the only way a black person or a woman will see the Oval Office in ’08 will be if the Neo-Cons decide to run Condoleeza Rice against Hillary Clinton; in that case, even Trent Lott and his Mississippi Klansmen will turn out to stuff ballot boxes in favor of an African American simply to retain power. They would resurrect the dead back to the Civil War to get enough names, strange times as these are.
Senator John Edwards? He is pro-union, pro-worker, and no one knows who the Hell he is as he has no money, comparatively.
What are the Democrats thinking? They aren’t, as usual. What they ought to be thinking is: If we can take the White House and hold onto Congress, we can pass legislation; we can override dangerous Supreme Court decisions; we can have coherent foreign and domestic policies.
What the "frontrunners" each ought to be thinking is this: Hillary needs to throw in the towel and say, in return for my money and support and a cabinet position, I’ll support whoever we come up with that can be our figurehead and get elected; Barack should say I’ll do the same and I expect to see the Democratic Party to make a concerted effort to pay attention to me and my issues for the next four years; John needs to follow suit.
The Democrats then, as a united party, need to put it to the American people that the Far Right Conservatives have gotten us into an unbelievably dangerous mess based on principles not geared toward the good of most people, and that we need to come together in the middle to start working on some compromises we can all live with, move away from this far Right-Wing and far Left-Wing extremism, face our future more or less together, and get on with living.
Otherwise, there will be no way Hillary or Barack or John – or their supporters – will be effective at all. That is, unless the majority of Americans suddenly snap to their senses and realize the Republican Party is corrupt from toe to top and is more frightening than that 10-headed Beast of the Apocalypse Jack T. Chick liked to write about in his little Bible Tracts. One more term in office and they’ll have cameras in your houses and microphones in your bedrooms and National I.D. cards in your pockets – geeze, people, they already have your phone and e-mail and financial records and were willing to snag them illegally. They already have dungeons and torturers and murderers on the payroll and have such nebulous definitions for "terrorists" and those who "aid terrorism" that it wouldn’t take much for anyone who asks too many questions to find herself in Camp X-Ray wearing an orange jumpsuit, chained to the floor listening to Megadeath so loud it makes her nose bleed.
It can’t happen here? It would take the American people realizing that such evil can happen anywhere there are humans and governments.
It would take the American people realizing that every other word out of George W’s mouth is a lie and that every word in between is either an excuse for having been caught lying or an attack on those who caught him; and it would take us collectively realizing we’d be better off with Senator Clinton, or Senator Obama, or Senator Edwards in the White House for any of them to get elected.
But I don’t think we’re there yet.
No, we’re still listening to Dick Cheney continue to claim against all facts that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and that we’re "winning" the War in Iraq which is an
extension of The War on Terror. No, really.
And none of it was about oil or Halliburton. No, really.
We’re still listening to the President throw his support behind corrupt functionaries like Alberto Gonzalez and Paul Wolfowitz. The President is still claiming his new Federal Attorneys, replacements for the fired ones, were not chosen for political reasons, because that would be illegal, not to mention just bad policy. "Good job, Brownie!"
The American people are still buying the Star Spangled showbiz bullshit from the White House and from Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter, and as long as they do so they won’t be able to bypass their prejudices towards women and black people (or candidates without a lot of cash) and elect one of the three main Democrats to the presidency. The American people, as little as they like Bush, as much as they tend to grasp by now that he and his bunch are vile and corrupt, aren’t as concerned as they ought to be about the regime that has generally ruled this country starting with Reagan that inevitably led to George W. They know they don’t much care for Bush – but they don’t truly know why they ought not like him and his party yet.
I don’t think most folks will figure it out before November ’08 short of yet another mishandled and botched disaster, God forbid, that the Republicans try to convert into even more opportunities to "make lots of money," as the Pet Shop Boys sang.
The American people won’t figure it out and the leading Democrats won’t admit it’s their responsibility to sacrifice personal ambition in order to avert further destruction and corruption. Just like a bunch of damned politicians all around.
I’m beginning to feel like a Roman. I’m smelling smoke on the wind and I think I hear the Emperor’s fiddle in the distance. It’s far off – but not too far now. Not at all, not at all.
Richard Van Ingram
7 May 2007
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