You are What You Do... but not for a living.

This week the New York Times ran a front page story about the adverse effects on family life when a parent loses his job or remains unemployed for a substantial length of time. Several studies cited in the article found that in these cases the out of work parent takes a severe hit to his self-esteem, becomes emotionally remote from his family and his family relationships are strained to the breaking point. Children growing up in this environment, it seems, suffer from the stress over the course of their whole lives in both academic and professional performance. Significantly, it is the parent’s stress and emotional distance that affects the children in this way, not the financial impact. In short, we fail our children not when we unexpectedly lose our jobs but when we intentionally turn away from our families with a false smile and assurance.

The tragedy is that there is no reason to do that. Families existed long before job markets, depressions and unemployment. In fact, I would argue, families exist because of the stresses and demands of the world. And families are, at the end of the day, the only antidote, as well.

When we are stressed, when we are insecure or feel out of control of our environment, it is a basic human need to turn to a trusted friend or loved one for support. As children we climb into our parents’ laps when we are hurt. As adults we may get a hug from a friend or a lover. We shake hands and pat shoulders and say with a shake of our head, “That sucks.” We take comfort from these gestures, but we aren’t fixed. Our knee is still skinned, our heart is still broken or we are still out of a job. We are still loved, we are still valued. No part of who we are as people has been damaged beyond repair. But we feel better.

And there is something in it for the family member who consoles us as well. At a time when there is awfully, painfully and profoundly nothing to be done, they can take an action. They can say the words and make the gestures that help alleviate their own stress as well as ours. They get a chance to say aloud that these things don’t change how they feel about you; they don’t alter who you are in their eyes. And they are themselves comforted in knowing that if their positions were reversed, the same would be true of them.

It is when we internalize our stress that we damage ourselves and our families. We fear that they will think less of us for losing our position, while at the same time preventing them from allaying our insecurities. We fear that they think of us only or primarily as a breadwinner, but by closing them off from the realities of our lives, we give them very little more information to go on. When job loss makes it seem as though everything is crumbling down, the supportive arms of our families and friends can prevent us from being crushed.

The research cited in the New York Times piece indicated that children felt stress when their family dynamics were altered. They could plainly see their Dad at home and their Mom going off to work. They are not unaware of the cancelled family vacation. They feel, as do their parents, powerless and insecure. When we repress our stress and don’t talk about it with them, we deprive them of a chance to do something, even if it’s just giving a hug. When we withhold the truth from them, we deprive them of that little fraction of control that comes from being informed. We are telling them we have no faith in them; that they have failed in their jobs as our cheering section.

However, when we are honest about our feelings and our fears, we teach them something else entirely. We are telling them that we are not defined by our job or our income and we give them permission to be defined not by their test scores or the spiffiness of their cell phones. Most importantly, however, we are teaching them confidence. We trust them with our own insecurities; we cleave together when times are tough. Our membership in this family is more important, more resilient, and ultimately, more enduring than anything the outside world can bring on. We are telling them that love trumps fear.

All of the world’s great faiths are communal. We are not meant to bravely soldier on in isolation. Judaism and Islam originated in tribal families. Christ tells us that wherever two or more of us are gathered, there is love. And while we know what Christ, Moses, and Mohammed were trained to do for a living, it is for the way they loved their communities that we remember them.

Can you Be All You Can Be and be Muslim?

The Fort Hood shootings have raised questions again about how the military should handle the personal religious beliefs of its soldiers, whether they are evangelical Christians, Muslims, Wiccans, and so on. What is the proper role of religion -- and personal religious belief -- in the U.S. armed forces? Should a particular religious affiliation disqualify someone from active military service? How far should the military go to accommodate personal religious beliefs and practices?

The heart of this question is “can I trust a person of another faith to cover my back in battle”? Is there something in their religious text, in their beliefs or their practice that will prevent them from doing their job in battle? Or, in the reverse, if I know the soldier goes to the same church as me can I trust him more? In short, is he loyal first to his faith or to his country?

The answer is: neither, he’s loyal to his buddy.

Snappy recruiting slogans aside, long standing research has proven that in the heat of a firefight there is no such thing as an Army of One and that is intentional. From the day they are recruited, soldiers are trained to be part of a team. Over the course of their training they are subjected to rigors and abuses, sacrifice and exhaustion, and they emerge as a cohesive unit bonded by that transformational experience. They are “brothers in arms.” When this team is deployed, when they are under fire, they see not “a Jewish person” or “a Republican” being fired on, but a guy they’ve bled and sweat with, a guy they are committed to, a guy they can count on and who is counting on them.

And that’s a good thing because in that moment, they are no longer soldiers whose individuality has been sublimated to the needs of the unit and who are meticulously machined into interchangeable uniformity. In that moment, they are Human.

There’s nothing new in this. We all know that the path to tolerance and acceptance is paved one friendship at a time. When we move from generalizations to personal relationships, we recover our humanity. My children recently saw television footage of a raid on what the voice-over said was “the house of a Muslim.” The mother and children in that home were terrified and crying and my own children responded in kind. “That could be Fakhra,” they said referring to a family friend of ours, “those could be her sons.”

We ask ourselves to what degree we should make accommodations for religious freedom in our military. The answer is “as far as possible.” This is our military, after all. It goes into foreign countries under our flag, it should represent our beliefs, including, literally at the top of the list, religious freedom. Because it is right, because it is humane, because an awful lot of the time it is what these brave men and women are fighting for.

There is a responsibility that comes with being created in “the image of God.” It is a responsibility to be righteous and go to war to protect the weak and preserve the good. It is a responsibility to be faithful, to look deeply at our motivation to be sure it stems from our beliefs. But most critically of all, it requires compassion: love for our fellow man and sacrifice for him if need be. It is in that sacrifice that we can finally “be all we can be.”

“What can I expect?”

Proposed health-care reform legislation includes a provision that allows Medicare to pay for "end-of-life" counseling for seniors and their families who request it. The provision -- which Sarah Palin erroneously described as "death panels" for seniors -- nearly derailed President Obama's health-care initiative. Some Republicans still argue that the provision would ration health care for the elderly.

Does end-of-life care prolong life or does it prolong suffering? Should it be a part of health-care reform?

“What can I expect?”

The critical issues at the end of a person’s life are dignity, compassion and respect. “End-of-Life” counseling is no more or less than a treatment option. To withhold information about a treatment option is disrespectful, demonstrates an appalling lack of compassion and ultimately deprives her of her dignity.

When any one of us goes to the doctor for almost any reason, the question we are asking is: “What can I expect?” If the answer is that we will get better over time or that we need treatment to get better, we ask again: “Then what can I expect?” And if the answer to that first question is, “You won’t get better” even then we find ourselves asking: “Then what can I expect?” Because it is our treatment path, we believe that our question should be dignified with an answer and that our wishes should be respected. We call this informed decision making and it is based on the elemental principle of respect.

Everyone has a right to know what their doctor knows about their condition. Say your doctor knows you have cancer. She must tell you, even if she thinks it will upset you, even if she is sure you won’t treat it, even if she knows you can’t afford treatment, she is duty bound to tell you what your options are. But let’s say your doctor knows the gender of the baby you’re carrying. You can instruct her to keep that information from you. That, again, is a decision she must respect.

If this all seems obvious to you, that’s because it has been public policy for years. Medicare already pays for Hospice care when families and patients request it. Medical professionals, clergy and social workers are paid by Federal funds in those cases. Hospice care, like any other medical procedure, can be declined by the patient or those speaking on her behalf. And we don’t call it a death panel, we call it compassion.

The essential element of end-of-life treatment is that, to the highest degree possible, it adhere to the patient’s individual desires. Our government, our insurance companies, our employers, our clergy and sometimes even our family may think they know what is best for us, they may be motivated by the most genuine desire to do what is right. But, as a 94 year old Rabbi recently told me, “In such a case, I do not want you to do what’s right. I want you to do what I tell you.”

This same Rabbi told me a story which is worth telling here. An ancient and well respected Rabbi of the second century was ill and close to dying. In keeping with the belief that only God decides when life should end, his students stood around his bed day and night and prayed for him and their prayers kept him alive. Day and night he lingered on and on. Then one day his dearly beloved nurse, who was not Jewish but who had served him faithfully for years, walked into the Rabbi’s bedroom, picked up a very expensive lamp and smashed it to the ground. The praying men were startled into silence and the Rabbi was permitted to slip away… with dignity, compassion and respect.

Too Good to be True

--Is there good without God? Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion? From where do you get your sense of good and evil, right and wrong?

Any person can aspire to Goodness. Any Christian, Any Buddhist. Any Atheist. God, or a belief in God, is not necessary. What is necessary to aspire to Goodness is religion. What is necessary to define Goodness, is love.

The desire to be good or to do good: that is morality. The intentional and dedicated pursuit of Goodness as a guiding principle in our lives: that is religion. It is important to note in that definition that the principle “guides” us, it does not determine for us what is Good. How we define what is Good is cultural, it is elusive and changeable, and ultimately it is emotional.

Take the example of an Eco-Friendly acquaintance of mine. Environmentalism informs every aspect of her life: how she dresses, what she eats, how she votes, who she marries, etc. That sounds like a religion. She avidly pursues the Good without ever considering God.

But what if her “religion” excludes on moral grounds testing that might save human lives? What of my religion, which permits medical testing but pollutes the planet irrevocably? If either of us gets our way, the other is trampled, surely such a thing cannot be Good.

Surely the Good is a compromise between what I believe and what she believes, what I am willing to surrender to her and what she is willing to surrender to me. Goodness exists in a space between us, we define it communally and since we are both avidly pursuing it, we can hope to achieve it together. We do this with humility, with compassion, with a desire to please and to be pleased. We do this with love.

And when we reach a loving compromise in this way, it means that we have experienced Goodness without either of us achieving that elusive Good we desired.

When we speak of Christianity as a religion, we acknowledge that the ideal of Christ, his life and works, infuses what we do. Christ does not TELL us what to do, but an intentional determination to lead a Christ-like life guides us. But in every action we take toward that goal of Christ-like living, we must know that He would never want us to trample those in our path. That would not be Christ-like, it would not be Good. We believe we are created in the image of God and that our moral fiber s a reflection of that “drop of perfection” in our souls. I believe that. I just don’t think it’s necessary to believe it to aspire to Goodness.

Nothing I have said here is new. Plato, Kant, Keats, Eckhart all have explored it more thoroughly and intelligently. None, perhaps, so well as Iris Murdoch, the British philosopher and author of many brilliant novels and essays including “The Sovereignty of Good” in which she argues every nuance with elegant simplicity. That books ends with the conclusion that we should not try to define Goodness, or Love, for that matter, but be aware that humility is the road to both.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….

The Vatican has offered to create a loophole in Catholicism through which Anglicans and conservative Anglo-Episcopalians can slip into their pews with little or no adjustment of principle. That simply cannot be true. The Conservative Anglicans may wish to distinguish themselves from Catholics, and those who care enough to ask may see the distinction, but out in the real world of generalizations and rounded off numbers, they will be counted as Catholics.

While that isn’t a bad thing, per se, be careful, I say to my Anglican brethren, that you are joining a Church not only that will accept you, but that will represent your values to the world.

If disenchanted Anglicans add their numbers to the Catholic Church’s count, they throw their weight behind the Catholic Church’s agenda. With their inclusion, statistically more people will, for example, believe in the supremacy of the Pope. No, they may say, we are Anglicans, but on a grand scheme, in the real world, who is going to know or even care about that distinction. The next time there is a poll of religious affiliation and political activism will there be an asterisk by Catholic? Or a box between Episcopalian and Catholic marked “Walks like a Duck but not a Duck.”

As an Episcopalian, I am not a duck. I believe in ordaining women and homosexuals. When the Pope pardons clergy who deny the Shoah, I don’t have to own it. When he states that the distribution of condoms in Africa contributes to the spread of AIDS there, I get to be outraged.

Now, in my experience, most Catholics read the Papal declarations, but then they do what they want. From the perspective of personal piety, I am hard pressed to discern between my conservative Anglican friends and my Catholic friends. As far as I can see, Catholicism is not addressing the current realties of the lives of Catholics. Nor is the Anglican Community satisfying the needs of its conservative congregants. If my Anglican brethren join the Catholic Communion, I pray that their critical mass will be felt and not subsumed by the church, that both communities will converge to form a new species that is clearly being called for.

In a previous blog, I argued that worshipers should feel free to change churches to fit their needs. I want to rephrase that now to say that worshipers, when they feel their churches do not meet their needs, should change the church. As was saliently said by Diana Butler Bass last week, people of faith have been voting with their feet since the dawn of time. You might call it Religious Darwinism: churches adapt or they disappear. I love and admire the Catholic Church. I just think it could use a wee smidgeon of evolution.

Plenty Good Rooms

This week the Vatican announced its intention to make a place at its table for Anglican and Episcopalian brethren who are discontented with recent trends in their own denominations. The Vatican’s stated objective is to increase their numbers and they have been accused of “sheep stealing” by various pundits and commentators. Regardless of the motive, the Vatican is performing a fundamentally Christian act: reaching out to brethren who feel disconnected and welcoming them into the fold of fellowship and worship in the Church. What matters is that a people of faith find a place where they can worship in community and without compromising their closely held values. In the words of that beautiful spiritual, there are “plenty good rooms in my father’s kingdom” and these Christians feel that they are at liberty to “choose their seat and sit down.” I would argue, however, that they feel that way because they are at the end of the day, fundamentally not Catholic.

In the Anglican Communion, we believe that God speaks directly to us, not through an intermediary. In the Anglican Communion, the denomination is driven from the pews and not the Pope. As a result we are “messy.” We disagree on clerical qualifications, we argue about inclusive language, heck, we can’t even decide whether to sit or stand during the prayers at communion! We argue about these things sometimes so heatedly that we have to agree not to talk about them for years at a time, as was done at a recent convention. And yes, sometimes it makes us look absurd, extreme or disjointed. That is because our denomination is predicated on the ability of the laity to discern and determine the call of the church as a body. Growing pains are a natural side effect of an institution that is growing.

I am a Theology and Ethics major at a Methodist Seminary. When my colleagues tease me about being an Episcopalian, I say that we are indeed one step away from Catholicism… but it is a step to the left. I think that means that we applaud our Anglo-Episcopalian and Anglican fellows for having the integrity to acknowledge their discomfort with trends in our denomination and desiring to align their worship with their convictions. I hope it means that they will always feel they have a place with us, that they are welcome in our churches, in our homes and at our tables in the understanding that we are all guided by the same desire for authentic faith. I hope for them, as I hope for all of us on any journey in any faith or community, that their discernment is as thoroughgoing as their commitment to their faith. “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart.” May his word be as a lamp unto your feet.

Throwing Christians to the Lions in the 21st Century

This week my daughter’s high school had standardized testing. Out in front, meticulously restrained to the sidewalk pavement and therefore not on the grounds of a public school, representatives of The Gideons, handed out to the entering students, pocket sized copies of Christian Scripture. The books are quite small, they are bound in one of the school colors and they were thrust into the hands of the students just as casually as if they were flyers for the sandwich shop down the street. The students took them, too, just as casually. Inside the school, however, these little books were tossed in the garbage, used as projectiles, defaced, defamed and disrespected.

Now I am not one who proclaims the sanctity of the book. Frankly, that smacks of idolatry to me. The Word is sacred, the book paper. My own Bible has writing in the margins and dog eared pages. Isaiah was once soaked in coffee and smells like Kona Blend to this day. This, to my mind, is a good thing. No, it is not the defacement of the icon that concerns me.

Nor do I want to give the impression that every one of the kids who took a book from the Gideons subsequently abused or disrespected it. Most were bemused but respectful and either set them aside or crammed them into the bottomless pit that is a high school locker. Really, the vast majority of kids couldn’t care less either way.

And I am sure that the hearts of the Gideons outside were in the right place. . These good men reached out in accordance with their mission to “promote the Gospel of Christ to all people.” They intended to offer support and consolation on an incredibly stressful day. Perhaps they thought that, going into that Algebra AP, the feel of the recitation of Scripture might make a student more calm. In point of fact, the recitation of the Pythagorean Theorem might make them calmer, but whatever. They might even have imagined that in a moment of crisis or despair someone might open the little book to the Gospels or the Psalms or the Proverbs and have their lives changed by the Scripture in that moment. These are worthy aims, I have no beef with this.

What concerns me is the Christian in the crowd. I am thinking of the teenager who is just at that age where going to Church Camp or Youth Group outings is really fun to do, but a little embarrassing to admit. This is the teen who is right at that moment in their faith life where they wonder if the obvious and pervasive stupidity that they have just begun to notice is a part of every single adult of their acquaintance extends to their pastor and therefore their faith. This is the teen who is deciding how religion will fit on the horizon of their emerging adulthood. What this child sees inside that building is that his faith is a liability. His peers jeer at the Scripture, they read the words with dripping sarcasm and the laugh at the dopey language and tired parables. The Christian student in this scenario is in the horrible position of having to stand up for his faith in the face of the loudest of his peers, or to deny his faith and slink away, resenting the Scripture for having put him in this position in the first place. The Gideons who lovingly handed out those scriptures in the hope of reaching the Christians inside the building have only succeeded in throwing the most vulnerable of their brethren to the Lions.

Scripture could very likely help a person who is anxious and unsure as he or she enters a testing situation or an interview room or an application process, but in order for the Scripture to do that person any good, he has to have read it before hand, to have processed it, incorporated it into his bones and made it his own somehow. That isn’t done on Testing Day, on the sidewalk outside of school by a stranger with a blaze orange book. By all means minister to the youth of our community, evangelize right up until the very last day, but do it with compassion, thoughtfully and intelligently. Possibly, on the day of the SAT’s, hand that sweating sophomore a role of Tums and a card with an inscription that says, “I’m hoping for the best for you.” That seems like, well, what Jesus would do.