All we need is love?

Glenn Beck is coming to Anchorage this Saturday, September 11.  Our former governor, Sarah Palin, will join him.  The event’s promoter says that the date is a coincidence.

In 2008, when then-governor Palin was the GOP’s vice presidential candidate, progressives in Alaska coalesced in ways they’d rarely done before.  One Saturday, almost exactly two years ago, I went to my first-ever protest.  I parked behind the ACS office building, and walked toward the library, wondering how many others had decided to show up.  I turned the corner, and stopped in my tracks.  The crowd was huge (by AK standards).

With Glenn Beck’s appearance less than a week away, I started hearing rumbles from Anchorage progressives.  ”Should we do something?”  ”Gather at the Park Strip at 11.”

But the tone is different this time.  Weary.  A sense of obligation, not passion.

And after those first, faltering proposals, there has been something new.  People say they want to do something positive.  People want to sing, and dance, and pray, and love.

I don’t know what the practicalities of this would look like.  But I do know one of the first steps, at least for me.  Ironically, it was inspired by Glenn Beck.

My first step is to learn more about the work  of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are a few of his words.  May they kindle a fire of love in your heart.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Paying the karma fairy

On our way home from Anchorage today, we stopped for gas at the last reasonably-priced station, the Carrs’ on Huffman Road.  I pulled up to the pumps, nose to nose with a Prius.

As I started filling the tank, I overheard a conversation between the Prius driver (a middle-aged woman) and the young man filling up his Ford compact pick-up (marked “For Sale–$900 OBO”) on the other side of the pump.

“Here’s two more dollars,” she said.  ”You’ll get a little more for that.”

When she finished filling the Prius, she took the gas hose from her car and started filling his truck.

She started to pull away as I was tearing off my receipt.  The young man called after her, “Ma’am?  Ma’am?”  The cynic in me thought he was going to hit her up for something else.   The romantic in me was worried that this beautiful interchange would be marred in some way.

“Your gas cap’s not closed,” he said.  And there it was, dangling, bouncing against the side of her car.

She stopped, he closed the gas cap, she thanked him, and went on her way.

The high cost of covert evangelism

Two days ago ten members of a Christian medical team were killed in Afghanistan.  The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying that the volunteers were trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The medical team was organized by the NGO International Assistance Mission.  IAM is a signatory to a Red Cross/Red Crescent code of conduct which, among other things, includes a pledge that “Aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint.”  In other words, IAM pledges not to proselytize.

I can understand why it might be difficult to trust that promise.  And I also can see how easy it would be for the Taliban to capitalize on that mistrust.

I’ve been thinking about world religions lately, recognizing that when I interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, I will need to know more than I know now.  So when I was in our local used book store a few weeks ago, and saw a paperback copy of Reza Aslan’s No God but God in the new arrivals section, I snapped it up. I also decided to take a trip down the world religions aisle.

In the Islam section of that aisle, one title in particular stood out.  There were about six copies, all brand new, of Unveiling Islam: An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs.  Further investigation confirmed what I suspected–that this book should have been shelved with Christian apologetics.

When I was in college, belonging to a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was an important part of my journey out of fundamentalism.  One year I went to IVCF’s Global Missions Conference, Urbana, where I remember learning how to be a missionary in the 10-40 window, and specifically how to work covertly within Muslim countries where proselytizing is illegal.  A quick trip to IVCF’s page about Urbana showed me that this is still something IVCF is doing.

Christian missionaries who go into Muslim countries as undercover evangelists probably think long and hard about the personal risks they are taking, and they probably call it “counting the cost.”  But I wonder if their accounting considers the risks their choices create for others.  I wonder if they realize how their covert evangelism erodes trust, breeds suspicion, and endangers those whose mission is simply mercy, and not conversion.

Follow the Water: Immigration & the Colorado River

I like that the UU General Assembly’s choice to study immigration has provided a kind of filter through which I’m hearing the news.  Today on NPR’s Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal spoke with photojournalist Brian Frank about his journey along the Colorado River.  Here’s Kai’s intro to the segment:

The Colorado River flows from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado down through Utah and Arizona, along the border with California to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Flow might be too generous, actually. Because we use so much of the Colorado’s water in the American Southwest for both irrigation and development, what used to be a river is actually just a trickle by the time it crosses the Mexican border. Some years, it never even reaches the sea.

It feels to me like I’m engaged in a layer-by-layer unfolding of the issue of immigration.  It’s not as simple as “you didn’t come here legally so we’re sending you back.”

There are other things to consider.  Winona LaDuke’s Ware Lecture, coming on the heels of the decision to study immigration, reminded me to think about the issue in the context of how Europeans came to the United States.  How can we complain about people coming here illegally, I asked myself, when so much about the way “we” came to “own” this land was immoral?

This story about the Colorado River also prompts a question.  What moral high ground do we have to refuse to allow people to follow the water that we have stolen?  The answer, for me, is none whatsoever.

It’s easy to be so busy being self-righteous about other people not obeying little rules that we lose sight of our own transgressions.

Jesus had something to say about this:

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

Plans Change. Don’t Plan.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?  If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.   –Henry David Thoreau I grew up in high-octane New Jersey, and then lived for a while in hard-working Ohio and Michigan.  After those formative environments, Girdwood feels alien–and often frustrating.

In Girdwood, almost everything is firmly up in the air.  Plan to meet someone, and he may show up.  Or not.  Someone agrees to get something done, and it may happen.  Or not.

A friend and I talked about this way of living as a side effect of hyper-individualism.  People don’t mean to be rude.  They are simply following their own path, skiing their own way down the mountain.

There are team players in Girdwood, people who meet deadlines and get things done.  But even they have a element of que sera sera to their style.

Coming to terms with this way of living feels like a spiritual practice.  Let down?  Let go.  Fists clenched in frustration?  Uncurl your fingers.  Breathe.  Trying to force something to happen?  Learn to influence flow by leaping into the water.  Glide through the river with an otter’s grace and joy.