Tree of Life

Sunday morning, I read of Western science and Eastern spirituality agreeing that everything, every thing is interrelated, and dynamic, in ceaseless change, and that anything that seems unchanging is illusory.

Sitting on our deck, I look up from my book and experience this truth firsthand: leaves drop one by one from the tree in our backyard against the backdrop of a vibrant blue sky and an intensely green lawn on this crisply cool fall day that has followed the weekend rain. The azaleas are in lively red bloom as the dead brown leaves collect.

Last week I witnessed an old friend dying in a hospital bed. The next day around 3 a.m., I awoke in my own bed thinking of him, unconscious, mouth agape, yet breathing on his own, and I felt for him. And I also thought, this could be me or Wade or my sister or brother. Later I would learn he died within the hour I unknowingly sat vigil.

That had been a hard week, nation-wise. Probably world-wise too, if we Americans could look beyond our own troubles to see others’ suffering as well. It was a week that started with the federal government planning an attack on the rights of transgender and intersex people, continued with pipe bombs mailed to progressive leaders from a right wing fanatic, included another hate crime against blacks, the disenfranchisement of voters in advance of the midterm elections, troops being sent to intercept those on a pilgrimage for asylum, and a week that ended with a massacre of Jews worshiping in their Pittsburgh synagogue, Tree of Life.

As I read the news story of the Tree of Life, I could not stop crying. It may have been grief accumulated over that week, but I think also it is the grief that accumulates over generations of virulent anti-Semitism, unintelligible to me. Several of those who died there were survivors of the Holocaust.

My LGBT community and its allies have often gladly utilized the work of the late Yale medieval historian John Boswell, documenting the treatment of Queer people in Europe and the church through the Middle Ages. But many miss the overall theme of his short life’s work, which was the treatment of minorities at the hands of majority cultures. Maybe his work was inspired by horrific scenes he witnessed as a youth as an “army brat,” like the heads of a hated group stuck on spikes along a road in the Middle East. Undoubtedly it was also inspired by his own experience as a gay man.

On one of his several trips to give the Lazarus lectures in Los Angeles that I organized, we arranged a lecture at UCLA that I took him to. He began the talk by announcing he would be describing the treatment of a minority in medieval Europe. He wanted the audience to discern if he was talking about the mistreatment and prejudices of Jews or of gay people. His ironic conclusion was that his description covered both groups!

When asked about gay rights in another context, he said it would be better if the LGBT community fought for rights across the board rather than for just ourselves, because it was too easy for a dominant culture to pick off one group at a time, as is happening now in the U.S. with transgender and intersex people, as well as current immigrants.

Boswell’s most memorable story came during that same series in a lecture entitled, “Why Bicycle Riders?” Just before WW II, A British gentleman and a German Nazi were forced to share a room. The German went on and on about all the troubles the Jews were causing. As he listed each false “truth,” the British gentlemen egged him on as if he were agreeing with him. Finally, at the end of the German’s diatribe, the Britisher adamantly agreed, “Yes, all the troubles of the world are caused by Jews and bicycle riders!”

The German looked surprised and confused, and asked, “Why bicycle riders?” To which the British man simply said, “Why Jews?”

Yesterday I eulogized my friend, Thom Hayes, as “good, civil and kind.” I said that if all people were like him, the midterm elections wouldn’t be such a worry for us. I said that if our national leaders were like him, they would talk out their differences over coffee or drinks. I said that if world leaders were like him, they would go to lunch rather than to war.

Thom was unassuming, I said, but he did assume everyone just needs somebody to see them as a person with their own story and a desire for human connection. A mutual friend had told the story of him and Thom getting stuck somewhere, and decided to enter a biker bar, in which the gaily dapper Thom proceeded to meet everyone in the place before they left.

Everything is interrelated, and dynamic, in ceaseless change, and anything that seems unchanging is illusory. Those of us who are “good, civil and kind” must lean in to change history’s trajectory. God’s kingdom come!

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Make America Great Again

What makes me most proud of the United States of America is not its competent armed services, not its vibrant economy, not its “alabaster cities” or “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain.”

What makes me most proud of America are our values, values too many have forgotten.

And we share those values with many other nations around the globe.

Welcome, not mere tolerance. Diversity, not mere democracy. Compassion, not mere duty. Justice, not mere equality. Liberty for all, not just the privileged.

We grapple with our sins, whether the displacement of native peoples, the still open wound of slavery, the distrust of difference, the despoiling of our land, income inequality, and our uninvited intrusions into other countries.

We stand shoulder to shoulder with countries who share our values, including our neighbors to the north and south.

We share our abundance with one another, after all, in Jesus’ words, “to whom much is given, much is required.”

We protect one another from ignorance, from want, from illness, from harm, from bigotry, from bullying, even from despair.

We invest in our future generations by celebrating knowledge, science, the arts, values, faith, wisdom, and the environment.

This is the America I know and love. This is the America of which I am most proud. This is the America which brings tears to my eyes when rising for our national anthem, seeing the Statue of Liberty, or witnessing the “naturalization” of immigrant citizens.

This is the America closest to my own values as a follower of Jesus.

Thanks to Raymond Moorea Jones of CNN for the photo.

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

White Supremacy: Fifty Shades of White?

Courtesy The Star.

Since the Unite the Right demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have alternated between rage and tears.

Why do Jews become an automatic scapegoat? Why are blacks and Muslims and immigrants viewed as “stealing” our country? Why are liberals the “bad guys”? Why has the Confederacy become for some the icon of American values? Why should Anglo-Europeans have a corner on American culture?

When it comes to white supremacy, I want to ask which hue of white? Off-white? Ivory? Cream? Eggshell? Almond? Vanilla? Manila? Navajo white? Are freckles allowed? How many? How deep a tan is permitted? Would I have to be an albino to qualify? White supremacists should consult interior designers and fashionistas to list fifty shades of white that are welcome in their movement.

All those classified as “white” come from cultures and countries that managed to create angry divisions all on their own, long before they stepped onto the global stage to conquer and colonize and “civilize” peoples of color, including the only Americans who can claim they were here first, Native Americans.

And white “civilization” could not make it on its own, but depended on slavery and spreading their empires to succeed, exploiting the resources of other civilizations that were not recognized as such. Granted, Anglo-Europeans were not alone in the world doing this, but why elevate any civilization that did so?

And for those white supremacists who claim “Christian” as their religion: Jesus was a Jew from the Middle East, and more than two-thirds of the Bible are Jewish scriptures. Even most of the New Testament was written by Jews.

Jesus lauded faith where he found it: the Gentile centurion who sought healing for his servant, the Good Samaritan who rescued one who had been brutalized, the Samaritan woman at the well to whom he revealed his mission, the Jewish widow who gave all she had to the Temple treasury, even, after a little hesitation, the Canaanite woman who sought mere crumbs.

From the cross, Jesus assured a criminal that they would be together in paradise, and he prayed God’s forgiveness for his executioners.  For generations, white supremacists have mocked Jesus by burning crosses to terrorize people, acts of domestic terrorism.

From those who claimed President Obama was not born in the United States to those who lynched minorities, whether by rope, weapon, or jury, white supremacists are anything but supreme. They are threatened not by external factors, but by their own insecurities and inadequacies.

On the radio Sunday, I heard an African American theologian say we must not believe anyone is beyond redemption. From her lips to their hearts.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

What I Pray for These Days

Hindus at prayer on the Ganges, 1983. 

A Facebook friend puzzled over my last post, wondering if it implied a kind of us-vs-them outlook. What I intended was assurance to those of us apprehensive about the Trump-Pence inauguration, including possible Trump voters, who may themselves now face loss of health care coverage, rising prices, diminished Social Security and Medicare benefits, reduced personal safety, and international insecurity.

That’s not to mention immigrants, refugees, women, minorities, and the environment who may suffer as a result of everything from current executive orders to future Supreme Court decisions.

To me, these are not simple “political” issues, but more vitally, moral and spiritual concerns.

I find myself praying for President Trump more intently and regularly than any previous president. And I am praying for the electorate and the electoral process that put him in office.

I am praying for our healing, and I am praying that our demons will be cast out.  It’s easy to point to our leadership in Washington as possessed by ideologies or ideologues at odds with our American dreams, but demonic possession, as cultural anthropologist René Girard has pointed out, is as communal as it is individual. It takes a village to make a person crazed with fear, prejudice, self-absorption, and self-certainty.

It’s easy to judge another; harder to judge ourselves. In my first parish after seminary, on Holocaust Remembrance Sunday, I gave a sermon entitled, “The Holocaust of Our Minds and Hearts.” The gist of my talk was that we can easily point to historical expressions of hatred, violence, and prejudice, but we are less inclined to examine our own minds and hearts. Within us there is another Auschwitz and another Selma: a place where we curse, confine, scourge and crucify those different from ourselves.

Those who deny the Holocaust or the cruelties of slavery or the indignities suffered by women over the ages or the inequities of class are likely those most fearful of confronting the Holocausts in their own minds and hearts.  That’s something the LGBT movement surfaced as we recognized those most opposed to us were fearful of their own sexuality and gender expectations. 

Though, with the poet Robert Frost, “there is something in [us] that doesn’t like a wall,” we build our own walls to exclude those of different cultures, faiths, races, gender, gender identity, and sexuality. The contemporary examples of this ghettoization are our social networks, which often serve as echo chambers for our limited perspectives.

Our better natures—God’s own image—often keep such feelings in check, and our spirituality may redeem and transform misguided passion, making it instead work for justice and peace, sisterhood and brotherhood. That’s what conversion is all about. But conversion is not a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience: it is a constant effort of the will to align with God’s will that we love our neighbor as ourselves, and that we find ways to love strangers, even enemies.

The demons of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, nationalism, nativisim, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, and more, need to be cast out. Like the Gerasene demoniac, their names are Legion.

Another response to my post suggested a “yes, and” to its spirit, which I never intended to exclude. We are not only to be comforted that “this too shall pass” or that God or Jesus are with us “in the mess” (to quote Evelyn Underhill)—we must be challenged. We must be challenged to speak up, not to silence others, but to encourage others to tell us what’s on their minds and hearts, what are their needs, fears, hopes, and dreams.

We are also challenged to actively resist the demons and temptations of our time, in ourselves, our communities, our nations. Naming them in others will put them on the defensive; confessing them in ourselves may lead to conversation, if not conversion.

And we must put our bodies, voices, resources, and votes in the direction that our better selves urge us to go.

This is what I’m praying for these days, in myself, in others, and in our leaders.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Dead White Men

Some of my best friends are dead white guys!

This blog’s delivery problems had the silver lining of hearing from a lot of subscribers about your appreciation of its posts. Thank you!

But I received one negative comment, and of course, like Jesus’ parable of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to pay attention to the one, I felt compelled to respond. It stuck in my craw, as a grating grain of sand an oyster defensively covers with pearl. Well, this post ain’t no pearl.

This live white guy wrote, “Your blog is a real low point for ‘progressive.’ How about sourcing it with someone other than dead white men?”

He did not sign his name, but I had his e-mail, and could figure out who it was. I waited a day to respond, considering whether I should. But I wrote back that actually I did “source” it with other than dead white men, offering multiple sample names he could find using the blog’s search engine in its upper left corner. Then I wrote: 

I also think dead white men have much to offer, especially as I am nearly one myself. And they include Jews, gays, and other marginalized groups that have perspective on the spiritual life. 

I could have added the many who died of AIDS, perhaps my single largest source of contemporary spiritual wisdom and inspiration.

Of course he had struck a nerve. Believe me, I’ve noticed how much a product I am of my European/British/American heritage. But I read outside that genre, and sometimes others’ words and actions stick and sometimes they don’t.

I also think it’s a mistake to think of dead white men monolithically. It reminds me of my church during college years thinking the Chinese family and the Korean family would want to sit together at social functions—after all, both families were Asian! Church members were blissfully ignorant of their (sometimes hostile) differences historically, culturally and ethnically.

Neither are dead white men of one piece. I’m not even of one piece. My Irish ancestors were treated harshly when they immigrated to the U.S., giving me empathy for immigrants today. “The luck of the Irish” was among the ethnic slurs used to describe them—after all, an Irish man or woman could only achieve success through luck because we didn’t have the skills or brains to do it on our own.

My German ancestor left Germany in the 1800s, because, he wrote in a letter, Germany was becoming too militaristic and he did not want to serve in its armies. Given my last name, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he was a Jew who felt compelled to assimilate when coming to the U.S.

My Swedish ancestor came to the U.S. because she fell in love and married someone of the “wrong” class, unacceptable to her family.

And I’m a gay man, meaning I have always viewed the dominant culture as an outsider and as one who doesn’t meet my gender “specs.”

Obviously the person I “source” most is Jesus. To some he’s just another dead white man. But for most of us, each of those designations is up for discussion.

P.S. The subscriber responded to my e-mail with a thoughtful and considerate one that included some thought-provoking questions about my beliefs, which I happily answered in kind. All’s well that ends well! (I know, quoting another dead white guy named Shakespeare!)

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.