Hello, I Must Be Going

Under the close supervision of Mr. Right I’ve just copied all of my posts over to the new site:

strangefigures.wordpress.com

As it turns out, I think I’m happier with the new blog design and the new name, so all’s well that ends well.  I hope that those of you who were subscribed here will go the added mile and subscribe there.  Or add me to your reader, ’cause I’ve got a nifty RSS button now.  In the spirit of the new blog title, and leaving behind, as I am, this barely used site, I bid you adieu with a ditty from our friend Groucho.

You Were Warned

The cold that I’ve acquired is kicking my fanny & I’m doing nothing but lolling around the house today, coughing and seeking sympathy.  So  it’s a minimal effort day in my postaday commitment and time for my first cute animals video.  Don’t anyone whine about it:  I told you in my very first post that I might share cute pet porcupine clips and such.  No porcupines today, but cats, which in real life I dislike intensely.  But I’m still entertained by this video which one of my friends shared with me.

Snooty types who imperiously lament the decay of western civilization and point to viral videos of cats as evidence should turn back now.

I’ve Finally Found a New Name!

Some of you know that I’ve been trying to find a new name for this blog since discovering that there is another word press blog with a very similar name.  There’s nothing unethical about the similarity, of course, and I have considered just leaving well enough alone, especially after this exchange with my mom:

Mom:  Have you found a new name for your blog yet?

Me:  No, I’ve come up with up with lots of ideas but every idea I’ve had is already taken.  It’s very hard to be original.

Mom:  Really?

Me:  Well, you know, I read that there are over 120 million blogs.

Mom:  Oh.  Then maybe you should stop trying to be original.

It seemed a sort of bluntly insightful comment, really.  In a world of (at least) 126 million blogs, who am I kidding to think I can be original about anything?  Maybe it’s not worth fretting over.

That said, I came up with a title the other day.  And I like it.  And it’s shorter than the current name, which is apparently a good thing in blogdom.  If you know of another blog with a very similar name, just do me a favor and don’t tell me.

So in short order I will be blogging at Strange Figures.  I’ve run the title by my focus group (well, okay, just Baph) and it has been found acceptable.  Why Strange Figures?  Well, it does hint at the same mood as onlyslightlyunhinged, and it also evokes a little Flannery-esque sense of the grotesque.  And you know how I enjoy the grotesque (in the literary sense).  But here’s the real reason:  I love the Marx Brothers, and “Strange Figures” is from a bit in “Animal Crackers”, which I post below.  The exact line is at 4:08.:

That’s it.  No deeper meaning.  I wear myself out sometimes, trying to find deep meaning in everything.  Perhaps it’s okay to name my blog after a movie line that makes me laugh.

I will be switching all of the posts over to the new address/title soon, but I want to do it under the supervision of Mr. Right or Baph, so that I don’t accidentally delete everything I’ve done here.  I’ll keep you updated.

Westboro Baptist and the Challenge of Overcoming Evil with Good

Running the gauntlet of protesters at the Cornerstone Festival, 2008, image courtesy flickr.com

The Cornerstone Festival, which my family attends every summer, often gets protesters.  Because we typically arrive early we seldom encounter them, but a few years ago we did have a lively time as we were slowly driving toward the main gate.  There were many signs and a bullhorn and some accusations about Mr. Right’s fitness as a husband and father, since he was bringing his family to such a pagan debauch.  I was more intrigued than upset, but it confused the kids and visibly rattled the father driving the minivan in front of us.  Mr. Right could see that the dad ahead was upset, weeping even, and put our car in park long enough to run up and say an encouraging word.  Mr. Right has a good heart.

After we’d set up camp I went back to the front gate and approached one of the protesters; not the obnoxious guy with the bullhorn, but one of the gentlemen who was just standing quietly with a sign.  I wanted to find out what was motivating them, and also to get a better view of some of the signs.  A word to protesters:   text-heavy signs are not as effective as something pithy.  They’re too difficult to read while on the move.  So I approached a reserved looking man holding a sign with a long list of things which are (if I am to believe the sign) an abomination unto the Lord.  One of them was “rebellious women”, and friends, I very nearly called this blog Rebellious Woman.  That’s how much I liked that one.  I said “Hello,” to the sign holder, asked him where they were all from, asked what they were doing, and was answered very courteously each time.  I left that conversation with the impression that the protesters were sincere fundamentalists actually trying to save all of us – the thousands of happy Cornerstone campers – from the fires of hell.  I thought then (and think now) that they were wrongity-wrong-wronger, but I didn’t feel any particular malice toward them.  They were doing harm, but I think not intentionally.  They weren’t hatemongers.

The folks from Westboro Baptist are another matter.  They have been around these parts often – they do get around! – most recently to protest a military funeral, and to protest a proposed limit on funeral protests.  I have seen them in person once, though I was again on the move.  I was driving to McDonald’s and rather obliviously forgot that it was the exact time of the funeral for Fred Winters, the pastor of Maryville Baptist Church who was shot and killed during a service in 2009.  Yep, the Phelps crew was there, protesting across the street from the church.  I drove by and saw two of the signs on display:  “God Hates America”, and “God Sent the Shooter”.  You see how well I remember those signs?  Pithy.  And so very evil.  Responding with all of the grace and maturity I’ve accumulated over a life time as a Christian, I burst into tears and screamed several colorful swear words.

I will admit that I am a Westboro Baptist watcher.  I am irresistibly drawn to trying to figure them out.  I’m not getting any closer to understanding their motives, but the longer I read about them, the less they remind me of the Cornerstone protesters.  Fred Phelps and his family (I refuse to think of it as a church) are not sincere fundamentalist Christians trying to woo the lost.  What they do is not even really protesting, as far as I can tell.  It’s political theater, and as such, requires only an audience to be considered a success.  For that very reason many news outlets give minimal coverage to the WBC when it shows up.  If this evil feeds on attention, we should starve it, right?

Except that’s not easy.  We’ve been told, all of our lives, that all evil requires to triumph is for good persons to do nothing.  And to ignore WBC when they invade a community with their hatred, to remain completely silent in the face of it, feels like a betrayal of our moral center as a people.  The problem is that our impulsive response is to respond to WBC’s manipulation with rage, just as I did when I saw them in action.  It’s understandable, but it’s 1) not helpful; 2) just what they want; and 3) not faithful to the gospel.  That third point may not matter to some, but it has to matter to me, as a follower of Jesus.  Christians are instructed not to “overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).  Here’s a thought experiment:  Westboro Baptist often uses children in it’s protests – sometimes very young children.  I have seen video of counter-protesters screaming and swearing at WBC groups that include small children.  In that scenario, where does the evil end?  Who has been caught up in it?

I won’t get into the legal issues surrounding funeral protests because I don’t feel up to the task, to be honest.  I don’t know what the proper response is when Westboro Baptist exploits the pain of a grieving family for their own twisted purposes.  But apart from  funerals – when they protest at courthouses, churches, campuses, corporations, conventions….I believe there is a better response than this:

counter-protesters at the St. Charles County administration building, 1-6-11

I’m not saying the angry, flag waving response is wrong, exactly.  But it seems to depend on the same weapons that Westboro Baptist is using:  not just attention, but fear, force, power, and rage.  And when some angry counter-protester takes those elements too far and strikes out at one of the WBC activists, Phelps and company get the payoff of filing yet another lawsuit.

The subversive response seems better to me.  Like Terry Jones, Fred Phelps is a small man who has made himself large in the eyes of the world through shock and manipulation masked as religion.  He has the power that we, as a society, have given him.  If we can’t ignore him, why not take that power away through other means?

One of my favorite counter-protests took place outside the Twitter office in San Francisco last year.  You may have seen some of these images already, but if not, here are a couple of my favorites:

Also responding in some very creative ways were the folks at Comic- Con this past summer (Yes, WBC protested Comic-Con, with signs saying that “God hates nerds”).  It’s a hardly a surprise that a bunch of geeks came up with such clever signs, is it?

My absolute favorite image comes from the Twitter protest, and has since been repeated at protests elsewhere.

That’s right, WBC got rick rolled, and the sign holders expressed the gospel in a more powerful way than angry voices or flags ever could.

I share all of this (which is admittedly old news) because today I stumbled upon a new response to WBC, and I think it’s fantastic.  The movement is called God Loves Poetry and their strategy is simple.  They black out words in Westboro Baptist press releases in order to create poems.  Here’s an one example:

And another, crafted from Westboro Baptist’s press release following the shootings in Tuscon:

Does it matter to WBC?  They seem impervious to every strategy used against them.  But I think it does have the effect of changing the climate of distress that Westboro Baptist helps to create.  The website for God Loves Poetry contains a statement more powerful than anything I’ve said in this post – and a good deal more pithy:  “Art, humor and love are three of the most powerful tools used to combat hate.”  BEAUTIFUL!  CAN I GET A WITNESS?!?

Okay, I’ll quit yelling now.  Not only are art, humor and love powerful, but I believe they are powerful against hate and evil  precisely because they reflect who we were created to be.  We were created in the image of God, and as for what He is really like, I’ll leave the last word to one of the writers from God Loves Poetry.

Put away

your evil imaginations.

God

is

love.

Civil Religion Archives: Haitian History, Beyond Robertson and Limbaugh

It seems appropriate to share this today, the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti.

Originally published January 19, 2010

Here’s an embarrassing little secret among American Christians with a connection to Haiti:  most of us have heard the story of Haitian revolutionaries selling their souls to the devil.  I heard it long before Pat Robertson clumsily passed it along on television last week.  The story was told to me years ago, while I was in the process of adopting from Haiti.  It was told to me, as fact, by someone living in Haiti and I accepted the story as such.  I didn’t question it, either historically or theologically.  Like I said, it’s embarrassing.  All I can say in my defense is that, thank God, over the years since then I’ve rethought a lot of things.  The story of Haiti’s cursed history is one of them.  I can now say, along with my fellow blogger Adam, that Pat Robertson doesn’t speak for me.  But I do feel a certain empathy for him.  We are all tempted to try to make sense of history through simple narratives in which bad things happen for good reasons, in which evil is punished, good triumphs in the end, and it’s easy to identify the white hats and the black hats.  I don’t believe that Robertson sees contemporary Haitians as evil, at least not as a group, but in his narrative the sins of the fathers are still being visited upon the children – this time, in an “act of God” of biblical proportions.

I find Rush Limbaugh’s narrative even uglier.  Pat Robertson may believe that Haiti is cursed, but at least his account leaves room for acts of compassion.  For Limbaugh, everything is political warfare.  If helping Haiti may benefit Limbaugh’s political enemies (the Obama administration), then Haiti must not be helped.  Limbaugh also used the earthquake in Haiti to give us his version of Haitian history: Haiti is poor now because Haiti has always had corrupt dictators, and because money donated to Haiti has undermined the notion of self-reliance in Haiti.  So whose fault is it that Haiti lacks the infrastructure to respond to disaster?  The Haitians, of course.  And while Robertson may think that God is still punishing Haitians, Limbaugh seems to think this is as good a time as any for us to start punishing them.

There’s no denying that Haiti’s history is tragic, though tragedy is never the whole story.  Westerners like myself are often unaware of the rich tradition of visual art and music in Haiti, but there’s no reason to remain unaware.   For starters, check out the kompa music on YouTube and you may be hooked.  People are always more than their hardships, and Haitians are no exception.  But still, what lies at the heart of the poverty? Is it the history of corruption in government?  Dependence on foreign aid?  Satanic oppression?

I’m not a scholar on Haiti, just someone whose life is irrevocably tied to the country through my son.  I’d like to pass on a few pieces of Haiti’s story that Limbaugh and Robertson’s narratives overlooked.

1)  What is probably the worst case of depopulation in history took place on Hispaniola (the island now comprised of Haiti and the Dominican Republic).  The original inhabitants, the Taino indians, were almost completely wiped out by both disease and violence after the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.  The decimation of the native population led to the importation of 790,000 African slaves.   Tiny Hispaniola accounted for one-third of the entire African slave trade between 1783 and 1791.

2) As a measure of the brutality of slavery in Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue), the majority of slaves, at all times in Haiti’s colonial history, were African born.   Both labor conditions and harsh treatment prevented the slave population from growing, so a constant influx of new slaves was required.  This helps explain the strong, lasting influence of African culture among the slave population, particularly in the area of religion.

3) The colonial period in Haiti instituted a complicated form of racism that continued to shape the country long after the revolution.  At the bottom of the ladder in Haiti were African slaves.  Above them were the gens de colour (people of color), the offspring of French colonists and slaves.  Gens de colour were free under colonial law, and could hold property and amass wealth.  Some even became slaveholders themselves.  However, they were banned from marrying whites, or mingling socially with them, as well being prevented from wearing European clothing, holding certain jobs.

4) The Vodou ceremony which is believed to have launched the Haitian revolution in 1791 is a widely (though not universally) accepted piece of Haitian history.  But let’s give this story a little context, whether it’s historically true or not.  The African slaves of Haiti had been forced to convert to Roman Catholicism by brutal oppressors.  Is it any wonder that they turned to the gods of their traditional religions, not the god of the colonists, when seeking the power to free themselves?

5) The struggle between France and the revolutionaries of Haiti lasted for 13 years.  All warfare is brutal, but the war between France and Haiti rose to a level of cruelty that has seldom been seen in the United States.  The French tried to terrorize Haiti into surrendering – I’m talking about burning alive, boiling in molasses, burying in piles of insects – but the Haitians repaid each act of brutality, blood for blood.  If the history of free Haiti often seems marked by government-sanctioned torture and terror, I have to ask – when did that begin?  And whose sins, exactly, have been visited upon the children of Haiti’s revolution?

6) France refused to recognize Haiti as an independent country until 1825, in exchange for a payment of 90 million francs.  That payment was for “lost property”, by the way, property which included the former slaves themselves.  So why did Haiti pay?  To end a crippling embargo against Haiti by England, France and the United States.  The U.S. certainly had a vested interest in punishing Haiti for it’s independence, lest its own slaves get ideas.  In fact, the United States did not recognize Haiti as an independent republic until 1862.   As I said, Haiti did make the payment to France, but it was forced to take out high-interest loans in order to do so.  It took Haiti another 122 years to pay off those debts.

7) Remember the high number of slaves in Haiti before the revolution?  Essentially, France was continually overpopulating Haiti because of the death rate among the slaves.  After the revolution the Haitian population finally began to grow as would normally be expected, but in an area about the size of Vermont.  This is critical to understanding how densely populated and environmentally depleted Haiti is today.

8 ) I’ll skip over the American occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934, except to say that it was done for the economic and military interests of the U.S., not to stablize the Haitian government, which was admittedly chaotic at the time.  There  were certainly benefits for Haiti, particularly in terms of infrastructure, but they have to be weighed against the violence, forced labor, and racism that came with the occupation.

photo courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

9)  Thirty years ago, Haiti imported no rice, one of the staples of the Haitian diet.  Today, almost all of the rice consumed in Haiti is imported.  Why?  Because when Haiti borrowed money from through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, it was forced to open its markets to the world.  The U.S. then destroyed the Haitian agricultural system by sending heavily subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti.  When food riots broke out in Haiti in 2008, after a spike in worldwide rice prices, an article in the New York Times scolded that Haiti, “it’s agricultural industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.”  No mention was made of the global market forces that helped to destroy that industry.  It’s a pattern that has been repeated in many countries.  To understand it even better, watch the documentary Life and Debt and see what the IMF and the World Bank did to the economy in Jamaica.  The “help” that is offered to struggling economies is ultimately a tool for the benefit of economic powers – particularly the United States.

I’m not writing this to portray Haitians simply as victims of European and American aggression and exploitation.  That would also be too simple a narrative.  For those looking to blame Haiti’s troubles on someone, there’s plenty of culpability for everyone.  If I believed in a God who would still be punishing the people of Haiti for a spiritual act by their ancestors over 200 years ago – I repeat, IF I believed in that kind of God – it would seem reasonable that he might also want to punish the descendants of slavetraders, brutal plantation owners, imperialist governments and those would exploit the weak for economic gain.

Yesterday I listened to Dr. King’s “I Have  Dream Speech” and was struck by the line in which he acknowledged whites who had “come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny”.  Listening to the conjecture about Haiti over the past week, I marvel as how quickly we forget that it’s not just our destinies, but our histories that are tied together.  The world helped to create Haiti as it is today.  The world will help decide what Haiti will be like 50 years from now.

Note:  A reader directed me toward a transcript of the Rush Limbaugh broadcast that I linked to above.  The transcript includes more of the broadcast than the clip that I linked to, so I pass that along to you here.



The End of Civil Religion

That post title sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it?  Let me explain.

In the spring of 2009 I saw an announcement in the religion section of St. Louis Post Dispatch.  The paper was seeking to add new writers to its online site, Civil Religion, in an ongoing effort to build a diverse coalition of bloggers.  Blogging sounded like fun to me, and I replied with information about myself and my particular spot on the religious spectrum.  To my surprise I was selected, and entered some very impressive company.  I joined several clergy members, heads of religious organizations, a law professor, an author, people with advanced degrees – and as for me, I brought my own vast store of expertise.  Joking!  When I attended the  training session at the newspaper office I was greeted by one of the veteran bloggers, a no-nonsense conservative Catholic.  She had the information sheets on each of us and after she glanced at mine she said, “It says here that you are a Christian and an anarchist.  I think your have some explaining to do.”

That was the beginning of my blogging adventure at Civil Religion.  It was a bit like learning to swim in the deep end of the pool.  I quickly learned that some of the atheist readers were going to treat me like an idiot for being a Christian.  And some of the conservative Christians were going to accuse me of heresy.  And some of the political conservatives were going to accuse me of being a “loony left-wing liberal” (one of my favorite comments).  But the important lesson in all of that was that I could do very little to change those perceptions.  Certain people cannot be cajoled out of their animosity.  They will hate you on principle.  That was actually a freeing realization, once I got past the “Wah!  There are people who don’t like me!” stage.  Having a voice in the world – through writing or teaching or simply being engaged in relationships – means I will be disagreed with, sometimes strenuously.  I may even be disliked.  It is not, contrary to what I used to think, the end of the world.

Yesterday we Civil Religion writers received notice that the site is being put down like Old Yeller.  I wasn’t surprised, because for whatever reason, readership had dropped sharply in recent months.  On some level, I’m even relieved.  I haven’t been living up to my commitment to Civil Religion in the last couple of months – partly because of my heavier involvement at church, partly because I started this blog for pleasure.  But I’m also feeling a pang of sadness.  On a purely selfish level, Civil Religion gave me a platform that I didn’t have to create.  There I could get hundreds, even thousands of views and dozens of comments on a post.  Here I get excited if I have ONE comment.  There I felt that I was writing for an audience.  Here I am learning to write as a discipline regardless of whether I have an audience or not.

That’s enough pining.  I’m sharing this news with you (my small but precious readership) because the end of Civil Religion is going to make only slightly unhinged get very weird, very quickly.  We’ve been advised to move any posts we want to keep, and I will be relocating many of my old posts here.  Most of them will seem dated (because they are), but they are worth keeping and, I think, worth sharing.  So prepare for a jumble of old and new posts in the days ahead.  I won’t cheat on my postaday2011 commitment, though.  I’ll continue to put up something new every day.

How to Know If It’s Going to Be a Rough Day

IF, hypothetically speaking, you wake your child for school and he immediately tells you, “I had a nosebleed,”

and

IF you glance at his bed and it looks like a crime scene

and

IF you realize that he not only had the normal amount of bedding  but for inexplicable reasons was sleeping with 4 sheets and 5 blankets and they are all soaked

and

IF you look at your child and say, “You’re shirt is cov – WAIT!  That’s not blood!”

and

IF you lean in close and realize that (along with the blood) your child is covered in melted chocolate…

Yes, it is going to be a rough day.  And your life sucks.  And you are being punished for something, possibly for being a witch.

What If I’m Really a Witch?

My apologies to the genuine witches out there.  I know you’ve had a rough time recently, what with all of the Christine O’Donnell nonsense.  I’m not talking about you.  I mean “witchy”, as in an unpleasant woman, as in…well, I’m trying to keep the language clean on my blog, but I’m sure you get the point.  I’ve been muddling along in some relationships lately and I’m trying to figure out why things are so difficult.  I’m a little fixated right now on the word “insight”.  This is a word I’ve heard counselors bat around a lot:  “So-and-so lacks insight,” meaning that the individual under discussion doesn’t have a clear view of her own motives and behaviors, doesn’t understand the source of her difficulties.  She is not self-aware.

We all know people like this, don’t we?  Think about the person who perceives of himself as the life of every party, while those around him wish he would pipe down and quit showing off.  Or consider the poor soul who feels she is providing valued critical analysis in the work place, while everyone around her – including her boss – sees her as an annoying nitpicker.  C.S. Lewis delivered a classic line on a particular kind of person who lacks insight:  “She was the sort of person who lived for others.  You could tell the others by their hunted expressions.”  That joke is an old favorite of mine, and yet I can’t read it without feeling sorry for the woman Lewis described.  To see yourself in such noble terms and to be so very wrong – well, it’s a painful and humiliating thing to contemplate.

But I am contemplating it.  What if I lack insight?  Perhaps I’m not as honest as I suppose.  Perhaps I’m more passive-aggressive than I will acknowledge, even to myself.  Maybe there is more manipulation in my dealings with others than I can really grasp.  Maybe I have strategies for getting my own way.  Maybe I’m self-aggrandizing.  Maybe I make others feel small.

Maybe I’m a witch.

So I’m thinking, thinking, thinking, but I’m also praying.  There is a prayer in Psalm 139 that seems fitting:

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

It may be that the Psalmist was trying to argue his case with God – “Look, I have nothing to hide!  You can examine me and you won’t find anything offensive.”  But for me, the prayer works as a plea for insight.  “God, I know that you know me better than I know myself.  Look hard at my character, show me where I’m screwing up and damaging my relationships, and lead me on the path to reconciliation.”

I may not know the whole truth about myself, but I know this:  I don’t want to be a witch.

You Are Not Alone

I’m sure I need this more than you do today, but I’m sharing it anyway.

The Amazing Larry at the Cathedral Basilica

Dear Larry, our guide:

We walked into the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica today knowing nothing about the church except that it is beautiful.  You made our visit infinitely richer by answering dozens of questions, explaining the dense symbolism that I never would otherwise have understood, and sharing with us your story.  All day I have been remembering your description of the Easter Vigil, and the beautiful lines you quoted from the Exsultet.  You, Larry, were fantastic and I hope we see you again.