21
December
2006
Progressive Christians Uniting’s new environmental justice project, Eighth Day, will co-sponsor a hike with the Sierra Club to Switzer Falls in the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains on January 20, 2007. We’ll have opportunities along the way for reflection, prayer, and education on issues important to an environmentally sustainable Los Angeles. Spanish speakers welcome — we will have bilingual resources available. Download a flyer here!
For more information about the Reflection Hike, please contact Jennifer Snow at (213) 989-1630 or call Juana Torres from the Sierra Club at (213) 387-6528 x226. We will be carpooling from the La Canada Rideshare point — take the 210 to the Angeles Highway exit, take Route 2 North, and pull over to the right immediately past the bridge over the 210 (much less than a mile after getting off the freeway). Meet us there a little before 9 AM! We should be back at our cars between 1 and 1:30. This beautiful hike, around 3 miles round-trip, is very suitable for young people, beginning hikers, and children with adults.
Please bring snacks, water, a warm jacket and sturdy shoes, and a Forest Adventure Pass if you have one. Trail has rocks and some uneven footing. Rain will cancel the event.
Posted: Happening in the World
18
December
2006
He doesn’t even cry. There’s one clue. “Away in a manger the sweet baby wakes; the little Lord Jesus no crying He makes.” No wonder women especially received Him with hosannas as the long-awaited Lord of Glory. Everyone should have such an agreeable boy child! The Nativity narratives satisfy pretty much everyone: from haute bourgeois art lovers to homeless folk, unwed mothers, anxious dads, lovers of animals, even astrologers. They don’t satisfy me, however, because in this culture they sweeten and sugarcoat a revolutionary message. Even the way heavenly portents are sugarcoated is problematic. Yes, peace on earth and divine goodwill to all persons of peace—but it’s a peace with justice that is intended.
If it weren’t for the all-but-buried justice message, I might be for chucking the whole thing. But the peace-with-justice angle seems to me worth excavating. Both Matthew and Luke provide a hint. Matthew has the Star in the East bringing Mesopotamian magi to Bethlehem, while Luke has the skies ablaze with Heavenly Host proclaiming Gloria in excelcis deo! Both writers mean to create an anti-imperial counterpoint to the apotheosis of Caesar Augustus. Everybody in that early Roman imperial time understood that major astral portents accompanied the birth of Somebody Important. And everybody in Rome-immiserated Palestine would also have understood the need for some powerful astral countersignifying, because while the Emperor Augustus brought a kind of peace it was hardly a peace with justice. So the portents invented by Matthew and Luke are plainly meant to suggest that this little baby boy will became the kind of peace-with-justice troublemaker that Jesus of Nazareth actually turned out to be.
Almost no American preachers will be taking the peace-with-justice angle in this year’s Christmas sermons, however. There are two reasons for this. First, the Roman Empire ended up co-opting an insurgent Christianity in the early 4th century (a very long story—you might want to Google “Constantine” or “”James Carroll”) so that Western Christianity itself became a mainly empire-affirming creed. Second, today’s American preachers all live under a Roman-modeled American Empire and thus tend to accept its premises and pretenses with little or no dissent. In Bush’s America it takes a gutsy preacher indeed to evoke the original context of oppressive empire for the birth of a messiah: literally, one who comes to rule in righteousness.
Everything spoken from our pulpits this year, as every year, is likely to be about stillness, beauty, heavenly joy descending, and (of course) a peaceable kingdom signified by the beasts that have gathered in a stable lowly, creating what would have been welcome animal heat for a very young unwed mom, the embarrassed father, and her haloed and hallowed baby boy. Only a cur would find want to take away the pleasures of these texts, images, songs, and social traditions.
Let me be that cur for just a moment. I don’t think ethical Christianity would suffer greatly if the fairytale birth narratives were done away with. They are, after all, what grammarians would call “back-formations”: stories added to round out the life of Jesus by people writing 60 to 100 years after his highly public death. The earliest gospel—Mark—omits any birth narrative and begins instead with a radical young rabbi embracing the outcasts. That is the major message, after all.
I do like Christmas music. I do like the posada tradition, I like the shepherds, the Three Kings, even those lowly beasts. All of it notwithstanding, I say away with the manger if it keeps people from growing up and seeing the grown-up Jesus in mortal conflict with Imperial Authority. And let’s challenge our consumerist empire, while we’re at it — take a look at David Roy’s blog on Black Friday and Christmas consumerism.
(And by the way, does anyone even know what a manger is? I do, but that’s another story.)
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
14
December
2006
George W. S. Trow’s landmark 1980 essay, “Within the Context of No Context,” has been on my mind lately not only because of Trow’s recent death but also because of the utter weirdness of the current Iraq discussion in the United States.
Just this morning NPR featured a series of interviews with top Congressional Democrats, none of whom–Ted Kennedy included–was willing to call for using the power of the purse to put an end to the catastrophic occupation. Cutting off Congressional funding for the occupation would “send the wrong message,” thrummed #2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois. “As long as our troops are there,” Durbin continued, “we need to see that they are well-armed and well-provisioned.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
13
December
2006
Perhaps you’ve heard the news…Wal-Mart wants to build a 177,000 square foot Super Center in Garden Grove…smack dab in the middle of a community known for small, family-owned businesses. As someone who has lived in a Wal-Mart community for many years, I know first-hand that unless this corporation changes their employment practices, the introduction of Wal-Mart to a neighborhood essentially guarantees that small businesses will vanish. This, in my opinion, is a virtual travesty and is simply immoral and unethical.
Now I’m about as frugal as anyone, so, of course, when Wal-Mart came to Foothill Ranch (where I live), I ran as fast as I could to see for myself the “falling prices.” But I quickly realized that the low prices came at a much higher cost. It meant that the little pharmacy where I filled my daughters’ prescriptions couldn’t compete. Within months of Wal-Mart opening, this small business-owner, who probably put the bulk of his life-savings into starting a business in a new community, hung up a “Going Out of Business” sign. I was devastated for him.
But I really wasn’t convinced Wal-Mart’s employment practices were utterly destructive until the grocery store strike/lock-out of three years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Happening in the World, Orange County
8
December
2006
In many moderate to progressive congregations, quite a bit of confusion still persists in respect to the difference between doing charity and doing justice. Many congregations have social witness or social action committees, but a closer look at what that the committee actually does reveals that its operational focus is more on the charity side: connecting church members with various volunteer service opportunities, collecting for the local food pantry, etc. Because these are good and noble activities, it’s easy to see why they would be counted as contributions to social justice. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Happening in the World
2
December
2006
With the Advent season upon us, it’s time to look again at why serious American Christians have no choice but to be part of the loyal opposition to the way our society is organized. None of this will be particularly new, but these numbers do show the particular harshness of prevailing trends. Why describe this as an “anti-Magnificat”? That’s easy. In Luke 2, Mary’s song presents as accomplished fact what the reign of God will do: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Director's Cut, Happening in the World
