A Giant Step Forward in our Struggle for Human Dignity!

As a boy I never believed this would ever be possible. As a man I know what it has taken to make this possible. As a human being I appreciate both the liberation and spiritual wholeness that this represents.

As Rachel Maddow said: Mazel Tov!

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Demons, Coffee and Cheesecake.

In 1987 I was a young associate pastor at Saint Francis church in Bakersfield, California. One night, around 2 AM I received a disturbing phone call. It turned out to be the first in a series of such phone calls, all in the middle of the night.

The caller was not some abusive person; rather he was a Vietnam veteran suffering from extremely disturbing nightmares. In my extended conversations with him, I listened as he related his experience as an infantryman in Vietnam. “Walking point,” meant that he led his platoon down jungle paths on missions. The guy walking point was the person most likely to get killed, maimed, or seriously wounded by an enemy attack.

Additionally, he was the person who had to detect and disarm/avoid any traps that might have been set by enemy combatants. These could be ditches filled with hollowed-out, sharpened bamboo filled with human excrement and hidden with foliage. They could be spring traps that would pierce the sides of a person who unwittingly sprung them while walking on the path. They could be an anti-personnel mine that was discreetly buried just beneath the earth on the jungle path.

If you find reading this disturbing, imagine what it would be like to live through this not once, but on a daily basis for years. Imagine what it would be like to see a friend you had shared dinner or a beer with, impaled, shot or blown-up in your immediate presence. Imagine that, its latent effects, and the guilt you’d feel for having survived such an attack, while others were maimed or killed and you will begin to understand the meaning of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

These were some of my thoughts as I officiated at a Memorial Service for Vietnam veteran this morning. His brother had asked that I refrain from making the Service overly religious. “We don’t want to come off like hypocrites,” he said. John (not the deceased’s real name) was not very religious. I smiled when he shared that sentiment with me, because I have heard something similar on innumerable occasions. “I’m spiritual, but not religious.”

Nevertheless the deceased’s niece, who helped plan the Service, asked that I include some prayers and a reflection. I selected a passage from the First Epistle of St. John, Chapter 4, and Verse 16, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Those words are etched in my mind and heart, because they were written in illuminated gold leaf behind the high altar at my childhood parish church. As a child, that was my definition of true religion.

I added a commentary ascribed to Saint Francis instructing Franciscans, “Teach the Gospel always, use words when necessary.” The heart of authentic spirituality is love. A love expressed concretely and practically to those we encounter on life’s journey.

The deceased had lived through hell on earth. He had ample cause to become embittered and to close in on himself. It would have been completely understandable if he had developed into a closed and sullen person. Instead, he chose to be a loving uncle and to reach out to those in his retirement home. He chose to love and not become consumed with hate. Yet, he did not consider himself a “religious” person. Maybe not, but perhaps that is due to a distorted understanding of “religion.”

It seems that in contemporary America, and certainly in the political campaigns we are currently suffering, religion has become a code word not for loving; but rather, for judging/controlling thy neighbor. Has this seeped into the ranks of the clergy too? I would argue that it has seeped from the ranks of the clergy. A critical read of the Passion account in the Gospel leaves little doubt as to who were the prime movers in visiting evil upon on an innocent man, or upon the prophets who preceded him. Titles and garb may have changed, but motives of power, vanity and greed remain firmly unchanged.

At the luncheon reception following the Memorial Service, an open microphone was offered to anyone who wished to share personal reflections. One gruff bear like man came up wearing a Vietnam veteran’s baseball cap. He picked up the microphone and said, “John wrestled with his share of demons, but I have never met a more loving and generous man, and that’s all I have to say.” I smiled quietly over my cup of coffee and half eaten cheesecake.

On the drive home, I thought about priests with whom I have been privileged to serve over the decades. I recalled one priest who decided to leave active ministry about ten years ago. He decided to return after a year away. When asked by the Vicar General (the #2 man under the bishop) why he had decided to return to active ministry, the returning priest said, “Finances.” The Vicar General looked down briefly, nodded and told him that he would be given a new assignment.

At the Personnel Board Meeting (the priests who advise the bishop on assignment placements), one priest angrily protested, “He has been off living a carefree life, while we have been struggling with the unjust stigma of pedophilia and now he comes back and we’re going to give him a nice assignment?!” Ironically, the returning priest is a highly introverted person, who has a Victorian view of sex.

When I found out the identity of the Personnel Board Member who had made that statement, I was aghast. That Personnel Board Member was known to go up to San Francisco and pay hustlers for sexual favors. The bishop looked the other way, “there are things a bishop shouldn’t know” he once quipped. The returning priest was given a highly undesirable assignment.

Years later, the Personnel Board Member apologized to the returning priest. He confided that he was gay, but felt that his family would reject him if they knew the truth about him. He had lived in fear, self-loathing and lashed out at gay people as a result. Not for a year, or a decade, but for decades. As you read these words, he is still imprisoned in that living hell.

Like the deceased veteran and the Personnel Board Member, we all have to face demons in life. How we respond, and whom become is entirely our choice. Speaking the truth will set us free from fear, but only practical love will heal and make us whole.

FREEDOM, SPIRITUALITY AND RESPONSIBILITY

Incredible popular demonstrations and political changes are occurring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iran. There is something about the protests that transcend culture, religion, and the various other adjectives that we employ in daily thought and conversation. Like the young student who stood squarely in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, these current protests are a testament to the human spirit. The use of the word “spirit” can be somewhat uncomfortable for non-democratic rulers, including religious autocrats.

Wounded or rejected by organized religions many often say, “I am spiritual, but not religious.” They have left the religion of their infancy due to rejection by religious leaders. People are thrown out or alienated from their faith for many reasons. Common reasons range from impossible marriages, institutionalized misogyny, and institutionalized bigotry/persecution of persons due to their sexual orientation or gender issues. In the case of Roman Catholicism, the pedophilia Cover-Up Scandal of the Pope and bishops is tragically another wound unjustly inflicted in the name of God.

Amazingly despite of, or perhaps precisely because of these attacks, rejections and wounds, people remain spiritual. In the silence of wounded hearts, in life’s great moments, we connect with our self, others and something that is paradoxically both transcendent and immanent. This happens for us on a personal level with the death of a loved one, illness, unemployment, or when our own imminent death confronts us. While such moments are painful and difficult, they force us to reflect and reevaluate life and its meaning. Joyful moments, such as falling in love, the birth/adoption of a child, etc can also accomplish similar reflection and reevaluation of life’s purpose and meaning.

The international events we are witnessing today accomplish this same existential reflection and sense of meaning on a collective level. These events are not just political, economic or sociological in nature. These events are tangible eruptions of the human spirit that unites us all. This is why people of radically different cultures can “feel” for and internally “connect” with people they have never met and with whom they have apparently very little in common.

The desire for freedom is part of what defines a human being. Freedom is necessary for full human development. Philosophically all people have this inner freedom. Even individuals living under the most extreme and cruel tyrants possess (and are sometimes tormented by) freedom of thought. The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, “I think, therefore I am.”

Freedom is also essential for authentic spirituality; however, it remains merely a starting point for authentic spirituality. “What do I do with my freedom?” Egypt and other newly liberated people must now answer this question. This question implies many things. It means that I am ultimately personally responsible for who I chose to become. My decisions, my words, my deeds shape who I become; once we arrive at conscious thought and we can make personal choices, we become responsible for who we are and who we become.

Consider the passage in the Bible depicting the liberation of the Jewish slaves from captivity in ancient Egypt. Exodus 12: 35-36 speaks of the Israelites using their newly acquired freedom to demand material wealth. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert. Forty years represented a lifetime in the scriptures. In other words, this life is a journey from slavery to true liberation. After they had left Egypt and found themselves in the desert, they expressed very different sentiments about freedom “Would that we had died…as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you [Moses] had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” [Exodus 16:3]

This reveals something very human regarding the reality of freedom. The sudden joy of attaining liberation from slavery (i.e. freedom) is quickly forgotten once the cost of freedom, personal responsibility, is revealed. The appreciation for freedom is replaced with a longing for the security of slavery. Winston Churchill quipped, “Those who would trade freedom for security, deserve neither.”

Many paradoxically fear freedom, precisely because it assigns them (me/us) personal responsibility for their actions. This is the seductive appeal of many ideologies and religious fundamentalism. In exchange for unquestioning obedience and conformity, they promise their adherents salvation. Additionally, the adherent is no longer personally responsible, since he/she had submitted himself or herself to the collective reality, the state or church.

In fact the adherent relishes this absorption into the state/church since it confers on them identity. A false, prefabricated identity, but an identity that requires no personal development. Specifically, it does not require them to face their own fears and demons. This also poisons adherents with a spiritual pride, a delusion that they are superior to those outside their belief system.

This is part of a spiritual seduction by some religious leaders and institutions. They are happy to assume such responsibility and in fact claim that God has bestowed it upon them, in exchange for power, influence and wealth. This also explains the growing divide between progressives and literalists within Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam.

The idea that individuals are exempt from personal responsibility for their deeds due to external factors was rejected at the Nuremburg Trials. “I was just following orders” did not work, as a viable defense at those trials and it will not serve as an excuse for people today. However, the chilling reality of such totalitarian regimes does posit a legitimate question. How does authentic spirituality deal with fear? The Roman Senator Cicero stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The Book of Numbers contains a fascinating treatment of this spiritual dilemma.

Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food! In punishment the Lord sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. … Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.” [Numbers 21:5-8]

Read carefully again that ancient text. It reveals something about the human condition. We will all be stricken with fear on life’s journey. It is only when we confront (look upon) what we most fear, that we are healed.

If we opt for the security of slavery, we may find it once more; however, our spirit will rebel against it once more. Freedom means walking through the desert, it means dropping into the sand those things we immaturely thought would be the cause of our happiness. It means facing our personal fears and in doing so, being healed and becoming whole.

In the case of individuals, this process takes a lifetime. In the case of nations, regions and humanity it can take several lifetimes. On both levels, the human spirit seeks freedom to develop and flower into personal and collective integrity.