Seeking A Homeland

Cursed is the man

    We don't expect profundity or brilliance from state politicians, but it seems like we should be able to expect basic decency. Here's one  who, as seen on a one of my local news programs, has failed that elemental test, and who unlike some of his fellow conservative lacked the canniness to cloak his cruelty. (Video here--.wmv file).
    Greeley is a city of about 90,000, about 30% Hispanic, 50 miles northeast of here. It's not that far, but far enough that the area around it is mostly agricultural. While I can't say for sure, I think it's likely that the local economy depends a lot on the contribution of agricultural workers, many of whom are Hispanic. Probably some of those are here without documentation, drawn by the irresistible lure of maybe $60 or $80 a day for backbreaking, dangerous work in slaughterhouses or farms. Greeley was founded in 1870 as an attempt to create a utopian community, but its rapid growth and diversification in recent decades have given it its share of problems and tensions. In 2004 62.7% of its voters supported Bush/Cheney.
    About a week ago, October 2, around 3:30 in the afternoon, a teenage driver there made a horrible mistake. Tanya Bustillos, 17, ran a stop sign in her Stratus and broadsided a pickup truck. Her 15 year old brother, her 12 year old brother, and her 3 month old baby were killed. Both boys were wearing seat belts. A tragedy, certainly, but we hear stories like it all the time. We are saddened briefly, then shrug and move on. (Slide show of the funeral--.mov file)
    Not Dave Schultheis, though. He's running for State Senate in District 9, some 130 miles south of Greeley, in Colorado Springs. District 9 is right across I-25 from the Air Force Academy, and if I'm reading the maps right it includes the headquarters of James Dobson's Focus On the Family. (No, I won't give you a link for FOtF. Go google it yourself, if you really have to see it.) In 2002 the vote for the seat Schultheis wants was 100% Republican.
    Ol' Dave isn't ashamed or bashful. He'll tell you just what he's thinking, or what in his case passes for thought. Among his questions in an email to a reporter were, "Was this person the child of parents in the U.S illegally ? Or was she here illegally?" No compassion, no offers to help, no respect at all. Just a base, contemptible attempt to exploit a family's loss for political gain by pandering to the most xenophobic, racist elements in our society. "Bustillos?" he must have said to himself, "Must be illegal. Serves them right. Got no right to be here." Of course, Colorado (a Spanish word) was Mexican territory long before it became U.S. territory as spoils of a nakedly imperialistic war, but don't get me going on that.
    It turned out, though, that even in his assumptions Dave was way off base. According to a decent column in the Greeley Tribune, at least two of the kids were just as much citizens as I am, and their family had been living and working in the area for 12 years.
    Dave, your constituents are, many of them, big on quoting the Bible. Try this from Deuteronomy 27 on for size:
Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.
       Then all the people shall say, "Amen!"

Ha! indeed

Over at elwoodicious james got a laugh from me with this picture. A laugh for a second, anyway, followed by a wince.

Bloodshed follows bloodshed

Besides the lectionary for Sundays, we Episcopalians have what is called the Daily Office Lectionary, which includes readings for every single day over a two year cycle. This exposes faithful users (of whom I am not one, I admit) to an even greater portion of the bible. Sometimes it may seem sort of routine, but other times it leaps out at a reader with startling pertinence.

The past week would have seemed violent anyway, with wars that drag on in Iraq and Darfur and with its quotidian allotment of domestic violence, plane crashes, and street crime. What sets it apart, though, is having three fatal school shootings that have killed seven people so far. And that is why today's reading from Hosea stood out so strongly for me:
"Swearing, lying, and murder,
   and stealing and adultery break out;
   bloodshed follows bloodshed. "

Hosea is not talking about a series of discrete events that happen to occur around the same time. He clearly is drawing a line from one dot to the next, connecting them: one begets another. It is hard to conclusively draw direct lines between these three events. Nevertheless many will make sound  observations about gun culture and there has been widespread speculation  that the Pennsylvania killings may have been triggered somehow by the Bailey, Colorado tragedy, in a line that also extends much farther back to an earlier Colorado massacre, Columbine.

I can't help but speculate, though, about wider connections. In that I am following Hosea, who connects misused sexuality, violence, and a degenerate religious establishment with environmental degradation and oppression of non-human species:
"Therefore the land mourns,
   and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals
   and the birds of the air,
   even the fish of the sea are perishing."

This leap challenges me and should challenge certain others in ways that make us uncomfortable. Does my roast beef dinner have some connection with the systematic slaughtering of Amish children? Do the images of girls my daughter sees on her Disney channel programs tie in to a man who invades a school with a backpack full of sex toys? And does waging a war to secure oil supplies, while blaming it on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, somehow help to legitimate killing a principal who makes you mad?

These are questions I am sure to think about over the coming days.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The wonderful thing about the way Episcopalian churches (among others) use a lectionary is that it exposes the congregation to large parts of Scripture and requires the preacher to preach on the appointed texts instead of just citing his or her favorite verses over and over again, as preachers in some churches are wont to do. Often this brings familiar passages up again in new circumstances and gives them the opportunity to be seen afresh, bringing new revelation. For me this morning was a case in point.

The following remarks will make more sense if you take a minute or two first to read today's Old Testament and epistle lessons.

We have the liberation theologians to thank for pointing out so clearly that the exodus cycle is central to the Old Testament as the story of a gradually evolving understanding of God as the One who liberates. I've read today's passage from Numbers many times, but until this morning it had never struck me how profoundly democratic it is. What makes it even more remarkable is that it was written in a time dominated by kings and empires, long before the Greeks supposedly invented democracy.

Does Moses want to be king? No; he would rather die on the spot than bear that responsibility. God's remedy is not to appoint someone else king, but to call for 70 elders to be selected from among the people, a senate of sorts, to whom the spirit of prophecy is given, however briefly. There weren't elections like we have today, but in a more organic way this is a representative democracy. What's more, the spirit is given not only to the elders sequestered in the tent but also to the two who remained in camp, among the people. I don't think I've ever noticed these two, Eldad and Medad, before at all. They're like  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-- one quick appearance and they're gone! They make the point, though that authority can reside among the common people. And when Joshua, whose lack of understanding  reminds me of Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration or in Gethsemane, tells Moses to rebuke them, Moses instead  wishes  that  the authority  of prophecy  were  distributed among all the people. That's radical.

The second part of the reading from James is such a philippic against the rich that it seems like it could have come from Amos instead. Let's not try to water it down by explaining it away in "spiritual" terms. "Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you." Their greed makes them exploitative and their need to defend their exploitation makes them violent. Sounds like a pretty good description of the modern world's geopolitics of petroleum.