Children, grow up

As a standup comic might say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  Begin with an NFL quarterback who claims that the colors in a Super Bowl promotion reveal the pre-ordained winners of the game, even before the playoffs have narrowed the choices of who will play.

  Move to some grousing about how the Kansas City Chiefs are becoming a football “dynasty” because they’ve played in the Super Bowl so often recently. Remember, this is a team that for years routinely won the “race to the cellar” award.

  Now pop music superstar Taylor Swift is linked romantically with football superstar Travis Kelce, and she starts attending Chiefs games. Because she is clearly (and maybe even deservedly) the most famous person on the planet, the TV cameras occasionally show her among other notables in the Chiefs viewing box.

  Now there’s grousing about how all this attention to her distracts from the purity of the game. Like the endless commercials, constant self-promotion and inane chatter from the broadcasters are not even remotely distracting.  

  Children, grow up.

  Now the political hacks get into it. Seems it’s all part of some huge conspiracy to swing voters to vote Democratic. Swift has jillions of fans who might do her slightest bidding. Kelce is known to drink Bud Lite, and he supports vaccinations. This all has cosmic implications.

  Children, grow up.

  It has been noted that real children are watching the behavior of the so-called adults in the room, and they are not likely to be impressed.

  The other day I noticed a long trail of beer cans along the side of an entrance ramp to a local highway. A very long line. This was no casual “aerial burial.” This was a deliberate act of vandalism.

  Children, grow up.

  Isn’t it past time for the cultural vandalism to stop?

  We who claim the name Christian say we are maturing in Christlikeness, growing into the image of Christ. Don’t we need to show the world this better way?

  I’m thinking beyond a snort and eye roll the next time you encounter a bizarre conspiracy theory being touted as truth.

  A simple, pointed, skeptical question might be enough. “How can you believe such a thing?”

  Arguing “facts” will only take you down the conspiracist rabbit hole. Don’t go there. Simply ask why the person believes such a thing can be true. This is about belief, not facts. It may be a superficial thing, or something far deeper and more personal. Push gently because you can’t know how much the person has invested in the lie.

  In the New Testament, we are told not to believe every spirit but to “test the spirits” to make sure they’re from God (1 John 4:1). In the context, John is arguing for the divinity of Jesus, against those who deny it. But there are many false spirits in the world, and there are many ways to be led astray.

  The best way to counteract any false path is to live faithfully and stay committed to the true Way without being distracted by the false spirits.

  Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will lead us to all truth (John 6:13). When you consider any assertion, ask what spirit might have led you to it. Can you be sure that you were led by the Spirit of Christ? Might some other agent have been at work?

  Here’s a basic litmus test. God is love, and the Spirit will always lead us to act in love. If the “truth” you proclaim is not loving, it cannot have come from God.

  Children, grow up.

Hard conversations

It started 14 years ago with a postcard and a simple invitation:

Race.

Your thoughts.

6 words.

Please send.

  Michelle Norris, a widely respected Black journalist, hardly expected the huge response she received – first on thousands of postcards, then an avalanche of electronic replies when she expanded the project to a website.

  The Race Card Project, as she called it, was intended to be a conversation starter. It has been that, and much more, and yet it can be argued that the conversation needs to be expanded so much farther. So many of our conversations remain hidden.

  Norris tells her story, and many others, in a new book, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Diversity. A friend kindly loaned me her copy (thanks, Patti!), and over the last week I’ve made my way through its 400-plus pages.

  Yes, it’s a big book, in a big format, on glossy paper with lots of color photos – a fitting format for its subject. Reading it blew me away. It is so much more than I expected.

  “I started this exercise because I thought no one wanted to talk about race,” Norris says. Turns out, a lot of people do – at least in the safety of the relative anonymity allowed by a postcard or an email.

  Norris says the six words of her invitation “could make you gasp or smile or wonder about the full story behind that brevity.” In her book she explores many of those stories more deeply.

  It is truly amazing what can be said in only six words, a miracle of compression.

·       I’m their Mom, not their nanny.

·       No, where are you really from?

·       That’s funny. You don’t look Jewish.

·       I forget I am not White.

·       I can’t help being born White.

·       Black babies cost less to adopt.

  And hundreds more. Plus, I learned these things, among others:

·       Jan. 1 was Heartbreak Day on the plantation, when families might be split up as slaves were sold to pay off debts.

·       One in five marriages in America is interracial.

·       The phrase “the real McCoy” is named after a Black inventor, Elijah McCoy, the son of former slaves who escaped to Canada. In 1871 he invented a lubricating device for steam locomotives that became the industry standard.

·       The phrase “cotton pickin’ ” was first used to describe slaves – and only much later, as when I first heard it as a child, as a euphemism for “goldarned,” itself a euphemism.

·       How do you define racism? If you’re Black or Brown, Norris says, you probably don’t need a definition, though a lot of White people do. It’s a lot like the question posed to Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” It’s an act of avoidance.

·       Book burning is only the beginning. In a library in Berlin where Nazis once burned books is this bronze plaque: “’That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.”

·       The horrors of lynching are such that even today in the South some communities won’t allow plaques to mark the sites where lynchings occurred.

When Barack Obama was elected president, some people spoke of America becoming “post-racial.” That notion was shattered, of course, when a certain White man came to the White House.

  When George Floyd was murdered by a White cop whose smirk as he did it betrayed his conviction that he could get away with it, there was talk of a racial awakening or reckoning in America. Such a national conversation has not happened, though it must if the issue of race is not to be our national undoing. This book is a major step toward such a conversation.

  Read more about it at https://michele-norris.com/theracecard/ or https://theracecardproject.com/.

Vast — and empty

Lauren Groff has been hailed as one of the most talented young American writers of our age. Last year I decided to check her out, so I read the novels Matrix and The Monsters of Templeton and a short-story collection titled Florida. Most recently I read her latest novel, The Vaster Wilds.

  As I half-expected after scanning a couple of reviews, I found reading it a harrowing experience. It took me several weeks to finish because I could take only a chapter or so at a time. It’s a visceral read about a young woman trying to survive in the wilderness under conditions that are, simply, not conducive to human survival.

  She is known throughout as “the girl,” though she has gone by several other demeaning names in her short life. Now in her late teens, she’s the assumed offspring of a prostitute, possibly mixed race, bound as a servant since the age of four to a family that treats her shabbily most of the time.

  From England she’s hauled off to the wilds of America and the doomed colony at Jamestown, where deprivation, starvation, disease, plague and worse are commonplace. One late winter night she decides she’s had enough, and she slips outside the palisade through a hole so small that only she could slip through.

  Then she runs – and runs and runs. She runs because she fears capture by some fiend sent from the fort to kill her. She runs because she fears the “savage” Powhatan natives who have turned against the arrogant white settlers destroying their land. She runs because she keeps encountering wolves and bears and other dangerous creatures. She runs because she thinks she may find shelter among the French who live somewhere in the north – how far can it be?

  She runs because running is the only way she thinks she can survive. Her only tools are a knife, a hatchet, a pewter cup, a flint – and a fierce determination to stay alive.

  Groff writes with a sensual, poetic, attention to detail and the joys of life in the wild. Squeamish readers may wish for less detail in her descriptions of the horrid things the girl endures, and has endured all her life.

  Mostly unschooled but observant and keenly intelligent, she also has a fine memory; she seems to have absorbed the best of what she’s heard from the pulpit over the years. As she makes her way through the endless forest or huddles against the cold at night, she engages in sophisticated speculation about the nature of God and the universe and comforts herself with memories of the few truly happy moments she’s been allowed to enjoy.

  A sort of epiphany slowly dawns upon her. As the loss of a star does not dim the splendor of constellations, so she would not be missed in this world of grand and indifferent beauty. Still, she had felt the goodness of the sun and the wind against her cheek. Perhaps that was enough.

  Perhaps. But in the end I found such unformed metaphysical speculation to be both vacuous and unsatisfying — and that’s by summation of the book itself.

  The Vaster Wilds is not a happy tale. It’s often grim and hard to take. If you’re up to it, it’s worth the trek. If you have any doubts, best skip it. 

God’s dream lives on

If he had lived, Martin Luther King Jr. would be 95 this year. He was assassinated, in 1968, at age 39. Today he is remembered (and therefore most conveniently ignored) as an American saint.

A few racists still vilify him, of course. May they rot in the personal hell they create for themselves and others around them.

If I were a better follower of Jesus, I might wish for their redemption. But deep down I do believe that some people may be beyond redemption. So although I do pray for my enemies, as Jesus instructed, I do not hold out much hope for them. And, I admit, I also do not do much to help redeem them.

*  *  *  *  *

God planted a dream in King’s heart, and King followed it. Here are some signs that this dream is still alive.

*  *  *  *  *

Roeland Park United Methodist Church was the church that “sponsored” me in ministry. I served as an assistant to Pastor Wally Proctor during seminary. My family and I were supported in every way by every church member along the way.

Alas, the church closed last June – too few members, too many expenses. It was a great smaller church while it lasted. But the Great Plains Annual Conference still sees some potential in the location and the building, and the conference hopes to maintain it for future uses.

Thanks to a push by Resurrection UMC, the building has become a day shelter during our recent cold spell. May this church continue to serve our Lord even after its official demise!

*  *  *  *  *

Michele Norris is a respected longtime journalist who is now a columnist for The Washington Post. Since 2010 she has read thousands of responses to a post-card challenge she made back then:

“Race. Your thoughts. 6 words. Please send.”

In 13 years, her “Race Card Project” has collected 500,000 thoughts, many now in electronic form via a website: https://theracecardproject.com/michele-norris/

She says she finds the responses shocking in both their anger and in their grace. She tells more in a new book, Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity. Sounds like a tough but necessary read. I’m already on the library wait list.

*  *  *  *  *

          Sometimes welcome but hard truth appears in the most unlikely places, such as a review of a TV series. The series is HBO’s anthology series “True Detective.” The reviewer is Nina Metz of the Chicago Tribune.

          Here is part of what she says. Wait for it.

There’s a compelling story buried in here, about the town’s indigenous Iñupiaq women, and how and why they operate on the margins. “True Detective” mostly keeps them on the edges of the story, as well. The finale suggests a more interesting story that could have been front and center.

          But then, “True Detective” isn’t designed to go against the grain. Over its four seasons, we watch as problems are caused (or ignored) by individual cops. But existing structures go unchallenged – the proverbial bad guy is always external, rather than baked into the system itself.

          Did you catch it? She’s talking about the “powers and principalities” that the Apostle Paul warned us about 2,000 years ago. These “bad buys” who are “baked into the system itself” happen to be the system itself.

They are far harder to root out that the individual racists we might encounter, such as those I mentioned earlier, who are so hard to love. If we despair of individuals being redeemed, what hope must we have for redemption of the system that creates and supports such twisted human beings?

Racists are not born, you know. They are created. They are groomed, to use a right-wing bogey-word. The system creates and grooms them. We must fight the system while loving them and working to redeem them.

*  *  *  *  *

Finally, a cheerful note from Stephanie Bai, as associate editor at The Atlantic. This appears in a weekly kind of potpourri column in which an Atlantic writer talks about things that interest them. Bai writes:

I’ve been reading the Bible several times a week since I became a Christian at 19, which means I have read certain Psalms or Gospel stories dozens and dozens of times. And yet, I’m still struck by things I didn’t see on earlier readings.

Just last week, for example, was the Feast of Epiphany, which celebrates the story in Matthew 2 of the wise men coming from far away to visit Jesus. And reading the passage again, I noticed a connection I hadn’t made before: These foreigners worshipping Jesus were the first beneficiaries of the exhortation Jesus would later give his followers to “make disciples of all nations.” Jesus’s “Great Commission” was already being fulfilled when he was just a baby.

*  *  *  *  *

          Great observation! Thanks for sharing it in a secular magazine!

          I noted at the beginning that Martin Luther King Jr. would be 95 this year. As was said of Lincoln, now he belongs to the ages. Now he is eternal, for he lives with Jesus Christ his Lord.

Here, kitty

A recent study discovered that, contrary to expectation, some cats like to play fetch. Well, duh.

          True, a lot of cats don’t like to play fetch. You toss something across the room, and they just look at you. You want it back? Go get it yourself.

          We once lived with a cat named Gretchen. She was part Siamese, one of the breeds the study says is most likely to enjoy playing fetch. Gretchen loved to play fetch – when she was in the mood. But only then.

          Same with dogs, by the way. If they’re not in the mood, they just look at you. If they want to play, they’re all in. Of course, they always want to play when you just want them to go away.

          Before she came to live with us, Gretchen lived in a house with other cats and a dog or two. She probably saw the dogs playing fetch and decided it could be fun. Another dog trait: She begged at the table for food. (House rule: “Never make eye contact with the cat at dinnertime.”)

          Of course, cats are well known for bringing you gifts, such as dead mice or baby rabbits. They bang at the door, you let them in, and they deposit their gift at your feet. You try to look appreciative as you look for a way to dispose of the gift, but it’s hard to feel appreciative about receiving a dead bunny (or one that’s still twitching).

          By the way, I don’t think you can teach a cat to play fetch. I don’t think you can teach a cat most anything. But cats are very observant, and if you model the behavior you want, and they decide it looks like fun, they’ll try it. Not right then. No, no. Only when you’re not looking.

          Why did it take a formal study to discover that some cats play fetch?

          Probably because an awful lot of people are ignorant about cat behavior, even science nerds who supposedly know a lot.

          Many people seem to think that cats are aloof, unloving and unappreciative of the people who care for them. These people have obviously never lived with a cat.

          Having lived with many cats over the years, I can testify that they can be delightful companions. They are affectionate, even caring. You can read to them, and they’ll listen. You can even preach to them (says the retired preacher), and they’ll listen. Who knows what they’re getting out of it? Who knows what anybody in the pews is getting out of what you’re preaching?

          True, cats can be dismissive and even haughty at times. (Hint: So can dogs.) Go away for a few days, and kitty may punish you by ignoring you for a time, or by leaving you a little “gift” outside the litter box. Our cats always knew when we were getting ready to leave for awhile, and they sulked until we left, or occupied they the suitcase until we booted them out.

They liked having us around. Leaving them lots of dry food was not good enough. They wanted us, no substitutes. They were OK living without food for awhile. But they craved relationship with their people.

          Obviously, I could tell you a bajillion cat stories. But I’ll spare you. Point is, cats are people, too. That is, cats have personalities. They’re not just a bundle of instincts wrapped in fur. Like dogs and many other animals, they’re intelligent enough to relate to you in a meaningful way.

          You might even say they have a soul. Actually, the Bible does say that. And that’s another story.