So China is now censoring internet searches of the word "Egypt." Why are governments so afraid of the people?
Here are some quotes my friends have been circulating:
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
Today I posted the few pics I took inside the Egyptian Museum and inside the Pyramids. I'm no longer ashamed I did it; I'm only sorry I didn't do more. And yes, I'm still planning to go back to Egypt in November. I have faith that these issues will have been resolved by then. I just hope Pres. Mubarak has enough sense to step down so they can be resolved peacefully.
Don't know why I don't feel like writing any more. But I don't....
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
EGYPT
I'm amazed at the things going on in Egypt right now. While there, all I noticed was intense national pride and pervasive poverty. What I'm imagining is that the poverty was a result of the government corruption everyone is now protesting. I sent myself a postcard from Cairo that said "one dollar, one dollar," and "one Egyptian pound," along with "how can I take your money today?" In retrospect, I suppose this was the voice of a very resourceful people making the best of a sad situation.
It was similar in Jordan, although in Amman we didn't see the poverty we saw in Cairo. I'm hearing that Bedouins in Egypt are providing ad hoc security services.. That's scary. I remember being in Petra (in Jordan) and having the cops there tell us not to be caught down inside Petra after dark, presumably because of the Bedouins.
It will also be interesting to see what happens with Israel after the emergence of this new Egypt, especially if the new Egypt is more aligned with hardline Muslims, Perhaps it will make the US recognize that Egypt is no the only stable democracy in the region, and perhaps it will make the US consider some of our other options there.
Time allowing, I'll write more (prayerfully with more reflection) in the days to come.
But I want to say two things before I close: 1) they say the internet is down there, but I can get to the site of our hotel, the Santana (http://www.hotelsantanaeg.com/); 2) I'm simply amazed to see items from the Egyptian Museum being looted and destroyed. People seemed so proud of it when I was there. I'll have to go back and re-post the few pictures I took inside -- I thought I took a picture of a boat that has since been looted....
we'll see. May God bless the people of Egypt as they struggle for peace and equality.
It was similar in Jordan, although in Amman we didn't see the poverty we saw in Cairo. I'm hearing that Bedouins in Egypt are providing ad hoc security services.. That's scary. I remember being in Petra (in Jordan) and having the cops there tell us not to be caught down inside Petra after dark, presumably because of the Bedouins.
It will also be interesting to see what happens with Israel after the emergence of this new Egypt, especially if the new Egypt is more aligned with hardline Muslims, Perhaps it will make the US recognize that Egypt is no the only stable democracy in the region, and perhaps it will make the US consider some of our other options there.
Time allowing, I'll write more (prayerfully with more reflection) in the days to come.
But I want to say two things before I close: 1) they say the internet is down there, but I can get to the site of our hotel, the Santana (http://www.hotelsantanaeg.com/); 2) I'm simply amazed to see items from the Egyptian Museum being looted and destroyed. People seemed so proud of it when I was there. I'll have to go back and re-post the few pictures I took inside -- I thought I took a picture of a boat that has since been looted....
we'll see. May God bless the people of Egypt as they struggle for peace and equality.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Seasons
Donald Lawrence's jam:
I feel seasons everywhere,
and I feel blessings in the air ...
Those seeds that you've sown you're gonna come into your own..
Seasons, walk into your season!
I feel seasons everywhere,
and I feel blessings in the air ...
Those seeds that you've sown you're gonna come into your own..
Seasons, walk into your season!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Standards
Why is it that in the United States, it is politically incorrect to have standards? Just saw a news spot on a woman who calls herself Tiger Mom, a woman of Chinese ancestry who reared her kids according to traditional Chinese standards. The kids were never allowed sleepovers or playdates or to watch tv or to play computer games or even to bring home grades less than an A. While yes, this is extreme, I think it's also a bit proactive. We live in a society where competition is off the chain. Our educational system leaves much to be desired (btw, the mother and her husband are both Yale Law profs). What's so wrong with cramming high standards into kids while they're still young and giving them the opportunity to excel when they grow up? Isn't life about having options? If young brains are, as we are understanding, capable of absorbing phenomenal amounts of information, then why not cram as much information as possible into those young brains? What, it's better to fill young minds with the drivel that passes for lyrics in rap music?
This discussion leads into another difficult one that I had with a friend the other night. She, like many of my friends, is not US-born, so perhaps her sensitivies are different; perhaps she's just more compassionate.
We started the conversation talking about the Republican push to create to citizenship statuses -- or the fact that US Citizenship might not automatically be granted to people born in the US whose parents were not US citizens. I happen to agree with that, to an extent. If you're not in the US legally, then I don't think the conference of US Citizenship should automatically go to your children. Why? For two reasons. 1) if you're in the US legally, you're already breaking the law. i don't think you should get rewarded for that, and I don't think your kids should be rewarded for it. My friend thought this was different from other countries in the world, but I don't think so. When I enter another country, I have to show that I have resources for the entire time I expect to be there and that I have a means to leave. If I were to remain there illegally and were to have a child, my thought is that, after birth my child and I would be immediately deported to our country of origin. 2) The second reason I don't think people should automatically get US Citizenship is because of the issue of responsibility. Once upon a time when the US had a greater share of the world's resources, it was an admirable thing to do to open our doors to everyone. That is not the case with the US today. We can't even take care of the people inside our borders. Why are we letting more and more people in? Why not take care of those who are here first?
Which led to another conversation, one I've approached before on this blog. I don't think it's ok for people to keep having babies and keep getting public assistance. I've had to make decisions about my ability to have and care for children; I don't understand why it's fair or equitable that not only do my tax dollars have to support people who have not been willing or able to make those decision, but that a greater percentage of my income goes to support such people. It's like we're rewarding people for being irresponsible and punishing people for being responsible.
I don't know what the solution is. You don't want to make the children suffer, but I don't want to subsidize a woman who's silly enough to go out and have child after child when she doesn't have a job or any way to take care of the child. If she makes one mistake, ok; but if she's not able to learn after two or three children, then what is the solution? No, we can't penalize the children, but we can't keep rewarding the parents, either.
I talked about how the African American community has lost direction since we lost God. It's as if we have no standards since God is no longer supreme in our communities. I was talking to my friend Kevin about it, and he compared it to Joseph, David, and Solomon -- Joseph and David always either came back or were drawn back to their iroots in God; they went through tests and trials, and always returned to God. solomon, on the other hand, never really was tested. He had a relatively easy life. And he was the one who turned away from God.
And maybe that's the answers for the other two questions. Maybe I should spend some time searching the Scriptures to see what God has to say about it. Let's see what God's standards are....
This discussion leads into another difficult one that I had with a friend the other night. She, like many of my friends, is not US-born, so perhaps her sensitivies are different; perhaps she's just more compassionate.
We started the conversation talking about the Republican push to create to citizenship statuses -- or the fact that US Citizenship might not automatically be granted to people born in the US whose parents were not US citizens. I happen to agree with that, to an extent. If you're not in the US legally, then I don't think the conference of US Citizenship should automatically go to your children. Why? For two reasons. 1) if you're in the US legally, you're already breaking the law. i don't think you should get rewarded for that, and I don't think your kids should be rewarded for it. My friend thought this was different from other countries in the world, but I don't think so. When I enter another country, I have to show that I have resources for the entire time I expect to be there and that I have a means to leave. If I were to remain there illegally and were to have a child, my thought is that, after birth my child and I would be immediately deported to our country of origin. 2) The second reason I don't think people should automatically get US Citizenship is because of the issue of responsibility. Once upon a time when the US had a greater share of the world's resources, it was an admirable thing to do to open our doors to everyone. That is not the case with the US today. We can't even take care of the people inside our borders. Why are we letting more and more people in? Why not take care of those who are here first?
Which led to another conversation, one I've approached before on this blog. I don't think it's ok for people to keep having babies and keep getting public assistance. I've had to make decisions about my ability to have and care for children; I don't understand why it's fair or equitable that not only do my tax dollars have to support people who have not been willing or able to make those decision, but that a greater percentage of my income goes to support such people. It's like we're rewarding people for being irresponsible and punishing people for being responsible.
I don't know what the solution is. You don't want to make the children suffer, but I don't want to subsidize a woman who's silly enough to go out and have child after child when she doesn't have a job or any way to take care of the child. If she makes one mistake, ok; but if she's not able to learn after two or three children, then what is the solution? No, we can't penalize the children, but we can't keep rewarding the parents, either.
I talked about how the African American community has lost direction since we lost God. It's as if we have no standards since God is no longer supreme in our communities. I was talking to my friend Kevin about it, and he compared it to Joseph, David, and Solomon -- Joseph and David always either came back or were drawn back to their iroots in God; they went through tests and trials, and always returned to God. solomon, on the other hand, never really was tested. He had a relatively easy life. And he was the one who turned away from God.
And maybe that's the answers for the other two questions. Maybe I should spend some time searching the Scriptures to see what God has to say about it. Let's see what God's standards are....
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
What in the world?
I wonder what in the world is wrong with our young people. It's 27 degrees outside, snow is all over the ground, and now I see not just the young men, but the young girls sagging -- their pants are down below their butts. It looks bad, I personally think it's unsanitary, I'm not concerned with their underwear or the stains that creep out of their backsides, but here's my primary question: Don't they get cold?!?! And how could they think that's attractive? Who in the world would go out with someone who's too stupid to pull up their pants when it's 27 degrees outside?
Maybe I'm old and bitter or jaded or evil or something. I just don't get it.
I am very happy to report that the City of New York was on top of the snow cleanup today. I don't know if it was 6 or 10 or 12 inches that fell. What I do know is that by 1 am the roads were white. By 6 am, I don't think they'd been plowed, but by the time I left the house around 11, the sidewalks and streets were cleared. There's been enough fallout from the last snowfall and the City's ineptitude (while Mike Bloomberg vacationed in Bermuda) that I guess they did a little overkill this time.
So I'm a little sad today. I'm sad because my fellow travelers from my first Israel pilgrimage are returning today. Yeah, I'll go back in November, and I'm planning return to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and of course I'll meet new pilgrims, but it would be nice to travel again with my friends. I wish them well. Perhaps we'll be able to all go together in 2012. Problem is, I usually go at the end of the year and they go near the beginning. So maybe I'll just have to go at the end of 2011 and again at the beginning of 2012. Maybe there'll be an independent Palestinian State by then!!! (a woman's gotta dream, right?)
The other thing that's on my mind is the lunacy represented by Sarah Palin. I won't regurgitate the horrible tragedy that happened recently in Tucson. OK, I will: this nutjob decided he wanted to kill people. AZ is a carry state (one of the reasons I left, incidentally: I still partied when I lived in AZ. And I remember seeing this guy who was drunk but pissed off. But he was strapped, cuz in AZ it's legal to carry as long as you don't conceal. There weren't a lot of black people in AZ at that time (I compared living there to living in MA -- Black populations of about 3%, and used to say they didn't hate black people in AZ because they were too busy hating Mexicans.) He didn't look like he had any love for black folk, and it occurred to me then that a drunk guy having a bad day could just pull out his gun and shoot people. Especially black people. I love AZ, but that and the fact that you don't have to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle, are two things about it that give me pause to wonder if maybe this "personal freedom" stuff hasn't gone too far.) But anyway. AZ is a carry state, and the nutjob carried an automatic weapon to a shopping center. While he did want to kill Congresswoman Giffords, he just took out his gun and sprayed everyone in his path. He shot Congresswoman Giffords through and through in her brain, and yet she lived. He killed several people, among them a lay preacher who threw himself on top of his wife, thereby saving her life, and a nine year old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001. The others who died are worthy of mention by name. They were: Dorothy Morris, Judge John Roll, Gabe Zimmerman, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwin Stoddard, the guy who gave his life for his wife. May God rest their souls.
So the shooting prompted conversations from several people in the media to tone down the rhetoric we use. We should stop the hate language, they said. Keith Olberman actually apologized for anything he may have said that was inciteful. Then you had the idiots get on and start talking about how there was no connection between language and people's actions, and how you couldn't blame politicians for one crazy guy. In the midst of all this, it was noted (and actually Congresswoman Giffords had spoken on this before) that Sarah Palin's website actually had gun target sights over several districts, among them Congresswoman Giffords' district. That was seen as an example of why divisive rhetoric should be toned down -- even if only crazy people react to it, putting a gun sight over someone's district can potentially jeopardize a life.
Sarah Palin gets on TV last night. Or this morning, I forget because I was half asleep. But I remember her saying some nonsense about the media being guilty of blood libel (blood libel, incidentally, is a term used to describe the assertion that Jewish people murder children and use their blood in religious rituals.)-- she goes on TV and says that "journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
OK, so let me get this straight, Ms. Palin: it's ok for you to put gun sights over a Congresswoman's district. And when that Congresswoman (who, by the way, has a Jewish father and though technically is not Jewish has said she embraces her Jewish identity) -- when an attempt is made on the life that Congresswoman of Jewish descent, your response is to attack journalists and pundits for inciting hatred and violence, while remaining completely oblivious to pictures that may have appeared on your website and that do, in fact, appear to have precipitated not only violence, but a violent and fatal attack on several people? Am I understanding you correctly?
And this is a woman who was considered a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the Western World?
May God have mercy on the United States of America. And may there be a very special place in ignoramus hell for all the TeaPartiers. We've always known the Tea Party was just a front for organized racism -- so I guess now they're just proving they're stupid. Which is sorta superfluous since we know they're racists...
I wish I could say I feel better now that I've written this, but I don't. I'm feeling like the thought of a retirement home in Costa Rica might have to become not just a dream, but something I act on. At this rate, it may not be safe for me to think about living in North Carolina, which is a Red State. It's not a stupid state, but it is still a Red State. For now. Historically, I guess it's purple, sorta like Florida.
Maybe I'm old and bitter or jaded or evil or something. I just don't get it.
I am very happy to report that the City of New York was on top of the snow cleanup today. I don't know if it was 6 or 10 or 12 inches that fell. What I do know is that by 1 am the roads were white. By 6 am, I don't think they'd been plowed, but by the time I left the house around 11, the sidewalks and streets were cleared. There's been enough fallout from the last snowfall and the City's ineptitude (while Mike Bloomberg vacationed in Bermuda) that I guess they did a little overkill this time.
So I'm a little sad today. I'm sad because my fellow travelers from my first Israel pilgrimage are returning today. Yeah, I'll go back in November, and I'm planning return to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and of course I'll meet new pilgrims, but it would be nice to travel again with my friends. I wish them well. Perhaps we'll be able to all go together in 2012. Problem is, I usually go at the end of the year and they go near the beginning. So maybe I'll just have to go at the end of 2011 and again at the beginning of 2012. Maybe there'll be an independent Palestinian State by then!!! (a woman's gotta dream, right?)
The other thing that's on my mind is the lunacy represented by Sarah Palin. I won't regurgitate the horrible tragedy that happened recently in Tucson. OK, I will: this nutjob decided he wanted to kill people. AZ is a carry state (one of the reasons I left, incidentally: I still partied when I lived in AZ. And I remember seeing this guy who was drunk but pissed off. But he was strapped, cuz in AZ it's legal to carry as long as you don't conceal. There weren't a lot of black people in AZ at that time (I compared living there to living in MA -- Black populations of about 3%, and used to say they didn't hate black people in AZ because they were too busy hating Mexicans.) He didn't look like he had any love for black folk, and it occurred to me then that a drunk guy having a bad day could just pull out his gun and shoot people. Especially black people. I love AZ, but that and the fact that you don't have to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle, are two things about it that give me pause to wonder if maybe this "personal freedom" stuff hasn't gone too far.) But anyway. AZ is a carry state, and the nutjob carried an automatic weapon to a shopping center. While he did want to kill Congresswoman Giffords, he just took out his gun and sprayed everyone in his path. He shot Congresswoman Giffords through and through in her brain, and yet she lived. He killed several people, among them a lay preacher who threw himself on top of his wife, thereby saving her life, and a nine year old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on September 11, 2001. The others who died are worthy of mention by name. They were: Dorothy Morris, Judge John Roll, Gabe Zimmerman, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwin Stoddard, the guy who gave his life for his wife. May God rest their souls.
So the shooting prompted conversations from several people in the media to tone down the rhetoric we use. We should stop the hate language, they said. Keith Olberman actually apologized for anything he may have said that was inciteful. Then you had the idiots get on and start talking about how there was no connection between language and people's actions, and how you couldn't blame politicians for one crazy guy. In the midst of all this, it was noted (and actually Congresswoman Giffords had spoken on this before) that Sarah Palin's website actually had gun target sights over several districts, among them Congresswoman Giffords' district. That was seen as an example of why divisive rhetoric should be toned down -- even if only crazy people react to it, putting a gun sight over someone's district can potentially jeopardize a life.
Sarah Palin gets on TV last night. Or this morning, I forget because I was half asleep. But I remember her saying some nonsense about the media being guilty of blood libel (blood libel, incidentally, is a term used to describe the assertion that Jewish people murder children and use their blood in religious rituals.)-- she goes on TV and says that "journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
OK, so let me get this straight, Ms. Palin: it's ok for you to put gun sights over a Congresswoman's district. And when that Congresswoman (who, by the way, has a Jewish father and though technically is not Jewish has said she embraces her Jewish identity) -- when an attempt is made on the life that Congresswoman of Jewish descent, your response is to attack journalists and pundits for inciting hatred and violence, while remaining completely oblivious to pictures that may have appeared on your website and that do, in fact, appear to have precipitated not only violence, but a violent and fatal attack on several people? Am I understanding you correctly?
And this is a woman who was considered a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the Western World?
May God have mercy on the United States of America. And may there be a very special place in ignoramus hell for all the TeaPartiers. We've always known the Tea Party was just a front for organized racism -- so I guess now they're just proving they're stupid. Which is sorta superfluous since we know they're racists...
I wish I could say I feel better now that I've written this, but I don't. I'm feeling like the thought of a retirement home in Costa Rica might have to become not just a dream, but something I act on. At this rate, it may not be safe for me to think about living in North Carolina, which is a Red State. It's not a stupid state, but it is still a Red State. For now. Historically, I guess it's purple, sorta like Florida.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
HAPPY NEW YEAR
It's been waaay too long since I posted; the holidays and exams have had me swamped. I wanted to post today over the $110 copay I had on a GENERIC medication, or on how our students are grade-driven rather than knowledge-driven, but there's just not enough time in the day. I wanted to post on the Knicks win over San Antonio last night and how I got to sit in a Box Seat, and how outrageous the prices were (no, I didn't have to pay. It was a seat given to us by the Liberty. But they didn't pay for food. This was the box seats, and everything was catered. The cheapest thing on the menu was popcorn: a 6-person serving was $33.00. Caesar salad was $71.00. Not sure I looked at any more prices; suddenly the $4.00 water and the $5.00 hotdogs they sold 4 floors beneath us seemed reasonable. Amit and i went down and we got: an Iced Tea, a bottle of water, an order of onion rings an order of fries, and a caesar salad. He paid $28.00 and change. And he had a ball.,)
But instead of writing on all that, I'm going to copy in something from a paper I wrote in seminary in 2001. (note: the original paper properly cites sources with footnotes. Those footnotes did not copy over here. It is not my intention to present all of this as my original work; I'm just too lazy to copy in all the footnotes. This is a seminary reflection paper, and the original is properly sourced and cited. So please don't lift this, and if you do, don't attribute it to me because I cited my original sources). The paper mentions Rev. Jesse Jackson, but could easily refer to numerous public clergy figures. It makes me long for my seminary days, when I was actually TASKED with reflecting on things. Perhaps I should do it more often. Anyway, I wrote:
This paper is not meant to be a personal attack on Rev. Jackson, but one must look at him -- not to judge him, but to evaluate how effective he can be at galvanizing and motivating the black community after having engaged in behavior that have resulted in division of that community. I return now to Barth’s idea of humanity, that it is a “fellow humanity,” that a human creature is “defined by divine promise to be the covenant partner of God,” and that “...the human creature in his or her own sphere of activity ... should reflect and correspond to this destiny as covenant partner by living with others in fellowship. The normative human life is never expressed in lonely isolation ... it is rather a being-in-encounter in which one’s distinctive life is qualified by and fulfilled in connection with the life of the other.” To my knowledge, Rev. Jackson has understandably been silent about alleged financial and personal indiscretions. I happen to believe that everyone is entitled to a private life; I understand and normally would agree with such silence. But Rev. Jackson is a public figure who chose to remain in public life. The Barthian view on fellow humanity is that “each fellow must be open to the other with a view to his or her benefit .... he or she must be seen realistically as bearing particular needs and a particular point of view. Mutuality of speech and hearing requires that each party try to interpret him- or herself to the other, in order for both to discover in particular a common sphere of live and interest. The discovery of this intersubjective space is directed towards assistance – each party helps and is helped by the other from within the shared space. Human creatures ought to bear responsibility for their lives, but they are also essentialy dependent. Self-responsibility and dependence are acknowledged and coordinated though patterns of mutual help, and the “secret” of humanity is that this qualification of the action of humans manifestly fulfils them. The relationship is enacted on both sides with gladness"(CD III/2, pp. 250-72). I guess that’s where Rev. Jackson’s humanity comes out. He engages in the very human behavior of remaining silent, but in that silence, he fails, both by Barthian theology and by the estimation of my aunt, some of my classmates, and untold other African Americans – he fails to engage with his fellow humans as one of humanity. I would be much more comfortable with him issuing a statement about the allegations of financial misuse, or issuing a statement about the child out of wedlock, taking a stance as having been human and having done something less than perfect. That way, the drama could be over and we could focus on his work rather than on his personal life.
In my estimation, Rev. Jackson makes the mistake that many leaders make. Accustomed to the mini-deification that we give to our religious and civic leaders, they then display a lack of willingness to acknowledge mistakes, to “get down and dirty,” perhaps feeling a need to maintain a certain ministerial distance. But in maintaining that distance, Rev. Jackson fails to embrace that intersubjective space, fails to use, build upon, and be sourced by that common human space from which we all understand and empathize because of some mistake or indiscretion in our own past. By failing to embrace that space, Rev. Jackson becomes the Emperor with no clothes.
Historically, I think that the naked Emperor has become a characteristic of our African American clergy. Aside from presenting an ironic juxtaposition of imperial pomposity with unintentionally unconcealed nakedness, failure to embrace that shared intersubjective space is a failure to embrace all that is common among humankind. And that is why I think that the message of the church is perhaps not as effective, or perhaps not reaching as many people, as it could be.
Later on, at the end of the paper, I wrote:
And, then, what about empowering the people? I know that I have cited Barth all through this discussion, but now I am going to switch to Paul Tillich for a moment. I am throwing in Tillich because of his theology about economic production. Tillich equates participation in and contributions to an economically productive society with giving us a sense that our lives have value have value and meaning. We participate in our culture through our productive progress, and economic participation is a condition for participation in our culture’s power. Only as participants can we confront the anxiety of non-being. But if we come to a place where we regard our participation in the production process as senseless, then we will not be empowered to confront the anxiety of meaningless.
This puts the good Reverend in a place where, as a leader, he needs to do some damage control, or at the very least, needs to not set himself up for further ridicule. When I first heard of the economic literacy program, I was very excited. I was shocked and surprised when I attempted to speak to people about it. The reaction in the Black community was very mixed, with 66% of the people I spoke to attacking Rev. Jackson personally. About half of those were simply uninterested to hear anything he had to say; others wanted to hear it, but only to ask about past allegations, or to discredit him. It is unfortunate, since I happen to think economic literacy is a good plan, but I also think that these concerns are valid and need to be addresssed. Isn’t it ironic that you’re teaching people how to be accountable and responsible with money, but no one’s listening because of your lack of accountability and responsibility with public finances? This is a serious issue that demands an answer. Rev. Jackson needs to be able to lead the people again, not just for Rev. Jackson’s sake but, according to Tillich, for the sake of the people, so that they might “be saved” to economic productivity.
But instead of writing on all that, I'm going to copy in something from a paper I wrote in seminary in 2001. (note: the original paper properly cites sources with footnotes. Those footnotes did not copy over here. It is not my intention to present all of this as my original work; I'm just too lazy to copy in all the footnotes. This is a seminary reflection paper, and the original is properly sourced and cited. So please don't lift this, and if you do, don't attribute it to me because I cited my original sources). The paper mentions Rev. Jesse Jackson, but could easily refer to numerous public clergy figures. It makes me long for my seminary days, when I was actually TASKED with reflecting on things. Perhaps I should do it more often. Anyway, I wrote:
This paper is not meant to be a personal attack on Rev. Jackson, but one must look at him -- not to judge him, but to evaluate how effective he can be at galvanizing and motivating the black community after having engaged in behavior that have resulted in division of that community. I return now to Barth’s idea of humanity, that it is a “fellow humanity,” that a human creature is “defined by divine promise to be the covenant partner of God,” and that “...the human creature in his or her own sphere of activity ... should reflect and correspond to this destiny as covenant partner by living with others in fellowship. The normative human life is never expressed in lonely isolation ... it is rather a being-in-encounter in which one’s distinctive life is qualified by and fulfilled in connection with the life of the other.” To my knowledge, Rev. Jackson has understandably been silent about alleged financial and personal indiscretions. I happen to believe that everyone is entitled to a private life; I understand and normally would agree with such silence. But Rev. Jackson is a public figure who chose to remain in public life. The Barthian view on fellow humanity is that “each fellow must be open to the other with a view to his or her benefit .... he or she must be seen realistically as bearing particular needs and a particular point of view. Mutuality of speech and hearing requires that each party try to interpret him- or herself to the other, in order for both to discover in particular a common sphere of live and interest. The discovery of this intersubjective space is directed towards assistance – each party helps and is helped by the other from within the shared space. Human creatures ought to bear responsibility for their lives, but they are also essentialy dependent. Self-responsibility and dependence are acknowledged and coordinated though patterns of mutual help, and the “secret” of humanity is that this qualification of the action of humans manifestly fulfils them. The relationship is enacted on both sides with gladness"(CD III/2, pp. 250-72). I guess that’s where Rev. Jackson’s humanity comes out. He engages in the very human behavior of remaining silent, but in that silence, he fails, both by Barthian theology and by the estimation of my aunt, some of my classmates, and untold other African Americans – he fails to engage with his fellow humans as one of humanity. I would be much more comfortable with him issuing a statement about the allegations of financial misuse, or issuing a statement about the child out of wedlock, taking a stance as having been human and having done something less than perfect. That way, the drama could be over and we could focus on his work rather than on his personal life.
In my estimation, Rev. Jackson makes the mistake that many leaders make. Accustomed to the mini-deification that we give to our religious and civic leaders, they then display a lack of willingness to acknowledge mistakes, to “get down and dirty,” perhaps feeling a need to maintain a certain ministerial distance. But in maintaining that distance, Rev. Jackson fails to embrace that intersubjective space, fails to use, build upon, and be sourced by that common human space from which we all understand and empathize because of some mistake or indiscretion in our own past. By failing to embrace that space, Rev. Jackson becomes the Emperor with no clothes.
Historically, I think that the naked Emperor has become a characteristic of our African American clergy. Aside from presenting an ironic juxtaposition of imperial pomposity with unintentionally unconcealed nakedness, failure to embrace that shared intersubjective space is a failure to embrace all that is common among humankind. And that is why I think that the message of the church is perhaps not as effective, or perhaps not reaching as many people, as it could be.
Later on, at the end of the paper, I wrote:
And, then, what about empowering the people? I know that I have cited Barth all through this discussion, but now I am going to switch to Paul Tillich for a moment. I am throwing in Tillich because of his theology about economic production. Tillich equates participation in and contributions to an economically productive society with giving us a sense that our lives have value have value and meaning. We participate in our culture through our productive progress, and economic participation is a condition for participation in our culture’s power. Only as participants can we confront the anxiety of non-being. But if we come to a place where we regard our participation in the production process as senseless, then we will not be empowered to confront the anxiety of meaningless.
This puts the good Reverend in a place where, as a leader, he needs to do some damage control, or at the very least, needs to not set himself up for further ridicule. When I first heard of the economic literacy program, I was very excited. I was shocked and surprised when I attempted to speak to people about it. The reaction in the Black community was very mixed, with 66% of the people I spoke to attacking Rev. Jackson personally. About half of those were simply uninterested to hear anything he had to say; others wanted to hear it, but only to ask about past allegations, or to discredit him. It is unfortunate, since I happen to think economic literacy is a good plan, but I also think that these concerns are valid and need to be addresssed. Isn’t it ironic that you’re teaching people how to be accountable and responsible with money, but no one’s listening because of your lack of accountability and responsibility with public finances? This is a serious issue that demands an answer. Rev. Jackson needs to be able to lead the people again, not just for Rev. Jackson’s sake but, according to Tillich, for the sake of the people, so that they might “be saved” to economic productivity.