Dear Senator Alexander, Please Support the Health Care Law

Dear Senator Alexander,

As I have several times before, I am writing you as a citizen and small business owner firmly in favor of the present health care reforms. I support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act recently made into law by Congress, and support continued efforts on the part of concerned citizens and legislators to improve the law until it contains a government-supported, single-payer option.

I am therefore writing you to urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to please cease all efforts to undermine or repeal PPAC. Furthermore, I am asking you to work to continue the momentum begun by the passage of the Act into law. This health care legislation is not perfect, granted, but it is an essential and necessary start. Too many Tennesseans face dire consequences if the law is repealed or if the enactment of its reforms are delayed. Please, for their sakes and for mine, change your position and stand in full support of the Patient Protective and Affordable Care Act!

Your recent vocal efforts in the Senate to spearhead the repeal effort take us backward, not forward. It is the wrong battle, waged against the wrong enemy. Speaking as one of the working poor, as a person scraping every day to make a business work in this economy, we are not the problem. We need Washington to give us support and increased safety nets like the Health Care law, not take threaten to take them away!

I realize we deeply disagree on this issue. Therefore I am hopeful that, if nothing else, I can appeal to your conscience on this matter. I am a Christian, and Scripture clearly states we must protect the least of these among us. When we do so, we honor our Creator. I hope, even if we disagree on much else, we can firmly agree on this point.

At a time when so many dire issues face our nation, I hope you will lead your colleagues in the Senate, as you have so many times in the past, to a higher ground of conversation than I have seen these past two weeks. Now is *not* the time to attach anti-Health Care amendments to each new bill. Now is *not* the time to fixate on repealing Health Care as some sort of "mandate" from the recent election. Now is the time to help the economy by moving forward, not dwelling in the past.

Thank you for your service to the state of Tennessee, and please know that I speak for a great many Tennesseans when I say that I support the Health Care law, and that repeal is not the answer.

Cordially,

David Dault

Dear Senator Corker, Please Support the Health Care Law

Dear Senator Corker,

As I have several times before, I am writing you as a citizen and small business owner firmly in favor of the present health care reforms. I support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act recently made into law by Congress, and support continued efforts on the part of concerned citizens and legislators to improve the law until it contains a government-supported, single-payer option.

I am therefore writing you to urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to please cease all efforts to undermine or repeal PPAC. Furthermore, I am asking you to work to continue the momentum begun by the passage of the Act into law. This health care legislation is not perfect, granted, but it is an essential and necessary start. Too many Tennesseans face dire consequences if the law is repealed or if the enactment of its reforms are delayed. Please, for their sakes and for mine, change your position and stand in full support of the Patient Protective and Affordable Care Act!

Mr. Corker, two summers ago you and I spoke face to face at a town hall meeting. At that time you watched as angry voices heckled me because I asked you to help me and my pregnant wife by voting in favor of health care. That evening, you looked me in the eye and I had the feeling you were ashamed at what your constituents were shouting at me. Like me, I hope you feel we are better than that in this state.

Therefore I am hopeful that I can appeal to your conscience on this matter. I am a Christian, and Scripture clearly states we must protect the least of these among us. When we do so, we honor our Creator. I hope, even if we disagree on much else, we can firmly agree on this point.

At a time when so many dire issues face our nation, I hope you will lead your colleagues in the Senate, as you have so many times in the past, to a higher ground of conversation than I have seen these past two weeks. Now is *not* the time to attach anti-Health Care amendments to each new bill. Now is *not* the time to fixate on repealing Health Care as some sort of "mandate" from the recent election. Now is the time to help the economy by moving forward, not dwelling in the past.

Thank you for your service to the state of Tennessee, and please know that I speak for a great many Tennesseans when I say that I support the Health Care law, and that repeal is not the answer.

Cordially,

David Dault

Dear Senator Corker, redux.

Senator Corker,

I heard one of your Republican colleagues on NPR this morning saying that he thought the "American people had spoken" in rejecting health care reform. This is disingenuous.

When I looked you in the eye this summer at that rally and told you about the fears my wife and I had had as a young couple just out of school with no resources to pay for COBRA and a baby on the way, I appreciated that you seemed sympathetic to our plight. You were sympathetic despite the crowd around me jeering that we "shouldn't have gotten pregnant," implying, I suppose, that we should have destroyed or rejected our precious daughter, Maggie, instead of rejecting and working to change a system in which parents like us are forced to make tough and impossible choices for the convenience of maintaining the "status quo" of a health care system that is greedily and monstrously out of control.

As one of your constituents, I have contacted you in the past to say that I am in favor of a SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM and a GOVERNMENT OPTION. I am in favor of radically reducing and curtailing the influence of health care lobbyists on Capitol Hill (including the donations they make to the campaigns of you and your colleagues), and that your poor and working constituents especially do not have time to wait while you and the Republicans obstruct and play politics.

I am writing to say that I am STILL for these "impossible" outcomes. Moreover, I know I am not the only one of your constituents writing to tell you this.

What I think, sir, is that when you and your colleagues refer to the "will of the American people," you are simply only attending to the polls you and your benefactors in the health care industry find most expedient.

I think you and your fellow Republicans' behavior these last months during the debate on health care has been shameful. We need drastic, not incremental change, and we need it now. People are dying, sir. They are dying from a system that denied them access to care and to affordability; they are dying from "preexisting conditions."

The rhetoric that has flown in the past months about "denial of choice of doctors" and "death panels" ignores the fact that these conditions are already in place with the system we have, only they are factors currently of the "free market approach" you love and esteem so much.

In rural central Tennessee and now in Memphis, as an educator and a pastor, I have seen with my own eyes the devastation the "business as usual" approach to health care has brought to honest and hard working families. At the Saturn plant, in Culleoka, in Nashville, and here in Collierville and Memphis, there are a whole bunch of hurting (and dying) folks that just want the kind of access to decent, affordable, effective health coverage and care that you and your colleagues in the Senate enjoy every day.

Whether you call it "socialism," sir, or just good merciful common sense, I am an American, and your constituent, and I am asking you to get off your kiester and work for it.

Cordially,

Dr. David Dault
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Christian Brothers University
Memphis, TN

Hell yeah.

Brother West, tellin' it like it is.

The Nicene Creed, Colbert style

Yep. The whole creed. You go, Stephen. Nice ending, too.

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Tales from the Health Wars

When I was in college, a good many years ago now, it was right around the time of the first Gulf War. You might not remember the name of Tom Costen, but I remember that name. Tom was the first American pilot shot down and killed when the conflict broke out. Tom was also a Sewanee graduate.

The Sunday after Tom was shot down, the pastor at All Saints Chapel on campus preached a sermon in his honor. Actually, it wasn't so much of a sermon as a full-on eulogy. I remember that Sunday morning, and Tom's name, because that church service was pretty pivotal in my life.

The pastor did a fine job with the eulogy, all things considered. He certainly was clear that what had happened - Tom's being shot down and having died - was a tragedy. I had no quarrel with that part of the sermon. It was a tragedy, and the whole war was a tragedy, and I and my male friends were scared to death we somehow were going to get caught up in it and die ourselves.

I was waiting, however, for the pastor to give the rest of the story. I was waiting for him, from the pulpit, to fix his eye on the congregation and remind us that - no matter how tragic the loss of Tom Costen was - it was equally tragic, and wrong, that he was sent to drop bombs on villages and towns and possibly (or probably) harm innocent civilians - women and children - in the process.

I waited for the pastor to do what I thought was his Christian duty, no matter how difficult, in naming that uncomfortable truth. However, he did not speak that truth. He finished the eulogy, and left it at that.

I wasn't a Christian then. Hell, I was just barely a theist. That was the morning I stopped singing in the choir at that Episcopal church (the chapel, being in the center of campus, was the center of life and arts, so I had joined the choir the year before, interested somewhat in the Christian mumbo-jumbo, but mostly baffled. By that point, however, I had at least figured out that Jesus would not be cool with the bombing part). So I left, and did not return. I wish sometimes that I had had the good sense to go talk to the pastor and confront him about it, but I didn't. A few months later, I happened upn the local Quaker meeting - but that's a whole 'nother story entirely.

Why I relate this old memory, here and now, is that last Sunday I saw a pastor be gutsy in a pulpit, and preach a homily with some balls, and it got me thinking about that old, old Sunday of my youth.

This past Sunday Father Val, our pastor here at the Cathedral in Memphis, preached a simple and straightforward sermon in which he reminded those present that Catholic social teaching about the protection of life does not end with the birth of a child. He reminded the congregation that the Church considers health care - for everyone - to be a basic human right.

Father Val went on to speak of Mother Theresa, of blessed memory, who would confront visitors to her mission in Calcutta, who wanted to help her, and challenge them to leave and find their own Calcuttas - not in remote India but in their own home cities. Father Val related this story and then challenged us - challenged us - to take that example to heart. He challenged us to remember that all human beings, as children of God, have the right to demand of us, and loot of our comfort and excess, for their basic health and welfare. He suggested that, following the words of Mother Theresa, that we might find some Calcutta right here in our midst, and that getting involved in these conversations about health care and getting right with Jesus and the poor might be a wise course to take.

I tell you, it was a gutsy homily. I left the church that morning with a feeling wholly different that the feeling I had, all those years ago, in the wake of the tragic death of Tom Costen.

You know, they say Lincoln once snuck into the side door of a church in D.C., and slipped out right as they were passing the collection plate. An aide accompanying him asked him what he thought of the sermon.

"It was fair," the Great Emancipator replied.

"Only fair? Not great?" pressed the aide.

"It was not a great sermon," Lincoln concluded, "because the pastor failed to ask anything great of the congregation."

I think last Sunday, Mr. Lincoln would have been pleased. Lord knows I was.

***

***

Dear Senator Corker and Senator Alexander

I am writing to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to change your position on the health care debate. Please become an advocate for the hard working people of Tennessee who are being bankrupted and ill-treated by corporate insurance companies who value profits over people, who deny legitimate claims made after years of premium payments on the basis of recission (i.e., retroactively applied "pre-existing condition" status found after a claim has been made), and who refuse to offer affordable coverage to all citizens. Senator Corker and Senator Alexander, I pray that you will come to support not only health care reform and health insurance reform in the strongest manner possible, but that you will also fully and visibly support the public option, to allow the people of Tennessee, and of America, the greatest number of choices for their health. Thank you for your service to this state, and please, for all our sakes, do the best for your constituents. Health care and health insurance reform, WITH a public option, NOW!

***

You can reach your representatives' offices by calling the toll-free switchboard at 1-866-210-3678, or by going to the Write Your Representative website.

***

Getting involved in something great feels good. You might should try it, if you haven't in a while. Just a suggestion from a good pastor I know. Thought I'd pass it on to you, friend.

The Iron is Hot

What, exactly, constitutes a "crisis" in this nation?

On the way to answering this, let's take a moment for a history lesson. A chartered corporation is, under American law, what is known as "juristic person." That is, in the development of legal precedent around the issue, corporations in America have, over time, been treated - from the standpoint of the law - more and more like human beings. There is a certain logic to this, of course. Corporations engage in commerce, just like real persons do, and therefore the "naturalization" of corporations as "citizens" is tantamount to the removal of impediments to commerce. Good business sense, there.

A strange moment happened in 1886, however. The Supreme Court that year heard a case known as Santa Clara County v.Southern Pacific Railroad. Prior to the rendering of the actual judicial decision in the case, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite stated clearly, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

While this opinion was not a proper legal precedent, it has been reported and repeated as if it were, resulting in a de facto extension of Fourteenth Amendment protections to American corporations.

Now remember, it took seventy years to begin to "fully" extend these rights to actual flesh-and-blood American persons (persons who happened to have the "wrong" color flesh or "non-white" blood), if we take the civil rights decisions of the mid-1950's as a benchmark. Of course, it could be argued that the Fourteenth Amendment has never actually been fully inclusive of the actual flesh-and-blood human persons it was (ostensibly) designed to protect. Our legacies of Jim Crow, and still-economically-and-racially-segregated cities, attest this fact.

Thomas Jefferson opposed the chartering of corporations, unilaterally, deriding them as "monopolies of commerce," and a threat to the health of the nation. So the 1886 "decision," and its effects, it can be argued, mark a radical change from the founding ideals of American government. The most radical effect of these changes is the preference of fictional persons over actual flesh-and-blood persons.

We see this effect writ large today, as our country groans and flexes its fear muscles over the pain being felt by many of these corporate "persons" - today mainly banks and financial institutions, yesterday semi-government loan agencies. We are being cajoled into swallowing a truly staggering amount of debt - nearly a trillion dollars - to assuage the suffering of these fictional persons.

The one upside to this 700 billion dollar debacle is this: all talk of universal health care "costing too much" is, by my lights, instantly nullified.

I was just reading the New York Times, and they reported recently that the estimates for the cost of universal, comprehensive health care for (nearly) all Americans would be somewhere in the 60- 90 billion dollar range. That is somewhere in the range of one tenth the cost of the proposed bailout.

It is a bargain at that price, certainly, but it is a clincher when you add that real flesh-and-blood humans, not legal fictions, would be directly helped by such a move. That, it seems to me, is a clear mandate for enacting such measures immediately - especially since we now know the money and the means are obviously available.

On NPR's "Marketplace Morning Report" this morning, Scott Jagow used words like "crisis" and "peril" to describe the situation. Dan Gretch, commenting from Miami, talks about the man in Miami Lakes whose condo is now losing value.

Excuse me?

Come to Nashville, and I will introduce you to Steve, who occasionally lives in the Post Office at night when the weather is cold. Folks in my city - real flesh-and-blood people - don't have homes, and they don't have health care. Their concern is not about losing investment value or market share. Their concern is about losing teeth, getting beaten up or harrassed by police, or their kidneys failing.

I don't say this to diss the man in Miami Lakes. I feel for him, too. His losses, relative to his context, are significant. But in both cases - Steve and the man in Miami Lakes - we are talking about people.

It is a very different thing to talk about a fictional person, and its pain, and its groaning, as if it were equal in importance, or more important, than Steve. Steve - though insignificant by economic indicators - is a living human being. No matter how little he contributes, he is, he must be, considered more important than any legal fiction. His pain and hardship must be considered more real and more important than the pain and hardship of any legal fiction.

Let me put this in concrete terms. Imagine there is a burning building. Inside the burning building is a baby and a corporate charter. The firemen who rush into the building ignore the baby and use all their resources to secure and protect the piece of paper from damage.

Think about that for a minute, and then try and convince me that such behavior is not a textbook definition of moral perversity. Yet the equivalent of this abhorrent, evil, immoral action is being played out before our very eyes this very day.

I say, do not stand for it. Stand for something better.

I say, stand up for the health and safety of your flesh-and-blood sisters and brothers - the guy in Miami Lakes, sure, but especially for the "least of these" among us, the millions of Steves in the post offices and under the bridges of America.

Stand up by contacting your representatives and saying to them that if they vote for the bailout of fictions and against the healthcare of real persons, you will vote them out of office.

Stand up by saying "no" to the insanity that would protect the piece of paper and let the human baby burn.

Stand up to a news media that cries "crisis, peril!" in the face of corporate discomfort, while remaining mute, uncaring and unnoticing of the human disaster of health care and housing in our nation.

For God's sake, stand up.

"When did we see you, Lord?"

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing (from the Hippocratic Oath)

A couple of days ago I was on the phone with my Mother. She has recently undergone cataract surgery for both her eyes - a series of operations that have brightened her outlook, both figuratively and literally.

Because of a program in the city in which she resides, and because she is on a pretty fixed income right now, the procedures were very nearly free. During our conversation I made the comment, "Hooray for socialized medicine!" Mother, a lifelong Libertarian and congenital contrarian, was quick to chide me.

"This is not socialized medicine," she insisted. "Socialized medicine would be terrible!"

This is what I would call a typical conversation between my Mother and I on such subjects, and it is a disagreement we have had for decades. For her, the Market (always with a capital-'M') is the Answer (again, you can almost hear the capital-'A') to all problems - social and personal and all the potentially-unhygenic crevices in-between. I am inclined to disagree.

I was in mind of this conversation these past couple of days as I came across the following two anecdotes, related to me by various friends.

First, one friend, just recently returned from five weeks in China, told of getting a cut on her ankle, which then got badly infected. After a couple days of just trying to let it heal on its own, the wound began turning blackish, and so she went to see a Chinese physician.

At the clinic, she was immediately seen by a (female) doctor, who instructed the (male) nurse, who in turn cleaned the wound and bandaged it properly. The infection was treated with antibiotics and is now fully healed.

Total time in the clinic? Less than an hour, with a translator, no less. Total cost of the antibiotics? $1.50. Total cost for the visit itself? Fifty cents, American.

The second story, slightly less rosy, involves a graduate school colleague of mine, who has taken part of the year off for medical leave. The leave is official, recognized by the University, and is, in effect, simply a "pause" in her studies. In other words, she is still a student.

However, she was recently informed, by the administrator of the school's insurance plan, that she would not be eligible for school medical insurance while she was on school medical leave. Never mind that (to quote the Book of Esther) it was for such a time as this that medical insurance was invented in the first place; my friend has been caught up in a bureaucracy with its own illogical logic.

While I am not privy to all the details of the discussion that followed, I am reasonably certain that the frank absurdity of this was noted to the administrator by my colleague.

The points I want to make here are the following:

1) as much as I may dislike the practices of the People's Republic of China on issues of liberty, I cannot fault them for having an inexpensive health care system that seems, at least on my limited knowledge of it from my friends who have been there, to work.

2) the argument often made against socialized health care - by my Mother and those of her mindset - is that such a system would be mired in bureaucracy and inefficiency, such that those who need care might not get it at the time they most need it. What I am observing, however, in my own health care and that of others, is a similar bloated inefficiency - with the added insult of an obscene price tag.

My evidence is all hearsay and anecdotal, I admit, but the physicians I have known who are idealistic and truly concerned for the full health and wellbeing of their patients were all encouraged by the partners in their practices to leave. One now works for the public health establishment. I have been acquainted with other doctors, as well, who were concerned chiefly with dollar signs. One such soul was recently involved in callously dispossessing Kira and I of our apartment when it became profitable to turn them into condominiums. So let the reader be aware I do have a bias in these discussions. Caveat emptor.

"Health care for profit" is not simply an oxymoron - it is a blasphemy. I think of another image - a college classmate, weeping openly at graduation, not for joy, but because she had both diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis and no job yet, and therefore no job-related insurance to replace the school's plan by which she would no longer be covered. She was weeping because, despite all the high talk of the Market and its forces of supply meeting demand, she was simply uninsurable - even if she could have paid the premiums, private insurance would have refused to cover the very conditions for which she most needed insurance.

I am aware that this is a complex issue, and I am aware that the answer is not simple charity. The Nazi's, after all, gave bread to the poor. But there must be a point at which reason - and reasonable kindness - prevails, mustn't there?

I do not care what it is called - whether it goes by the name "socialized medicine" or not - but there are countries all over the globe, of every stripe of politics and resource, that are delivering efficient and affordable, if not free, health care to their citizens. The quality of this care beats the best that the American medical market seems to provide; in fact, we're pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to the effectiveness of our care system.

So, to be blunt, call it what you will, but I am tired of waiting. Health care, by my lights, should be readily available, highly effective, and free. I have little interest in discussing anything short of that anymore. We can do it, and we aren't, and that is simple foolishness and petty jingoism.

So often humans are made to suffer so that the word choice of a few can be untarnished, or for some idiocy of ideological resistance. Systems put in place to preserve the systems themselves and not the lives put in their care.

We will be judged, I am told, by how we have cared for the least among us. They deserve better than we have offered them so far.

Riding with the Driver

So I was walking through Hillsboro Village yesterday morning - it was early and my car was being fixed at the local repair shop - and I was walking out of the art gallery at the end of the street when I was the recipient of some free-wheeling evangelism.

I say "free-wheeling" because said evangelizer was in motion, leaning out of a car window as it went through the heart of the Village block there. Also free-wheeling because it was sort of "gamble" evangelism, guerrilla evangelism. Shot-in-the-dark evangelism.

Here's how it went down.

I own a lot of t-shirts, and (as many of you know) a goodly percentage of these are Superman t-shirts. So I had one on yesterday, and its hard to miss - big red "S" and all. And as I walked out of the gallery this dude leaned out of the car window and shouted - near as I can tell - "Hey, bud, even Superman needs Jesus!"

As is my wont, I reacted as I usually do. I raised my fist triumphantly and shouted back, "Amen."

But then I was given to ponder, as his car continued to slowly pass me by. I noticed the "Got Jesus?" bumper sticker on the back of the car, and noted as well his goatee and the foreign make of his sedan. Who was I dealing with, exactly? A born-again Emerger? A backsliding Baptist who feels guilty he got drunk last Friday and is trying to do penance? What assumptions was he making about me, anyway? What assumptions did I make about him?

I wonder sometimes what sort of image I present to the world. What does the casual observer see when their eyes behold me. I honestly have no idea. In my life I have run a curious gamut: atheist, to eastern-spiritualist, to christo-pacifist, to evangelical protestant, to somewhat-traditional-somewhat-crypto-somewhat-militant-catholic. No matter where I've been, or thought, and no matter where I've landed, I guarantee you there's always somebody somewhere still thinks my ass needs to be saved.

Not that I mind that. Somebody somewhere is likely right, at any given moment.

But what about this moment, yesterday? This drive-by proselytizer, this missionary in a Mazda? The interaction was so brief, I still don't know exactly what was happening. Was it merely an affirmation of the lordship of Christ, even over cartoon characters? I can get behind that (just please let's don't sing about it, please). Was it some sort of Isaiah gig, denying the reality of the false powers and the idols of the world (as represented by that trademarked and TIME/Warner besmirched "S" I was sporting on my pecks)? I can get behind that, too.

Was it a gesture, an assumption, that I was lost? Needed to hear the Good News? Perhaps. But how effective is such a shouted, probably mis-heard soundbite over traffic noise and a million other distractions? Wouldn't it have been more classy to stop the car, in a sort of reverse-Eunuch-on-the-road deal, and actually get to know me for a minute, find out where the scripture was sticking in my craw, if at all?

I think of the old story the radio evangelist Bob George tells, about how he would grill his young son after school, whenever the boy mentioned a new friend. "Did you tell him about Jesus?" George relates this story to illustrate the danger of evangelism-by-the-numbers, of when "spreading the good news" feels more like the point-spread in a football bet. (He doesn't ask his boy that question anymore.)

I guess what I'm saying, both to that long-gone guy in the car and now to all of you, is this: Yes, when the time comes, even the stones will shout. The cars will shout, too, of their own Accord (sorry), and proclaim the real Order of the world and who is in charge. Everything will. Every tongue confessing, every knee bowing.

But we don't live in that time, yet. Here and now, it is not enough to shout a platitude. Here and now, the way forward is the same as its been for the last two-thousand years: the conversation on Mars Hill, the feet dusty from the road (not the accelerator), one cloak, no pouch. Slow time and needy interactions - mutually needy. Not the kind of "I've got the answer you've got the need" jazz that so often gets passed off as compassionate Christian "being in the world but not of it."

I hope, when my moments come - to witness, to "spread the Good News," to even (God forbid) join the ranks of the martyrs - I hope I'm moving slow, and doing a lot of listening, and hearing where this soul is coming from before I start trying to act all high and mighty about where its going. I hope.

And I read somewhere that hope might not be in vain - so maybe there's hope for me. And for the guy in the car.

That'd be super.

You've got raisins on your knees!!

So we are one week into the whole Massanetta Conference experience, and one conference is over and done. It was a real learning experience, and I made a lot of weird turns along the way, but on the whole I'd say it was a good time had by all. I planned way too many songs the first couple days, and didn't do a good job teaching them to the crowd (I just sort of jumped right in), so some folks felt a little lost on the whole singing-along part. Such is my learning curve.

By midweek, however, we all seemed to have gotten our stride. Things ran a lot more smoothly from about last Friday on. On the last day there were Many Enthusiastic Folks who came up and talked to me and said I did a good job (I even got a half-serious offer for a pastor position, which I appreciated very much, but politely declined. Small matter of the dissertation to finish).

The next day, however, the co-director and I sat down with the evaluations, and darker clouds returned. So there was a stack of pages, each a distillation of a given groups comments. It was about half-way through that one page read, and I quote: "Play less songs" followed immediately by "Play more songs" as part of the comment stream.

I had not been aware that Franz Kafka was a conference participant, but apparently both he and Joseph Heller were in attendance, masquerading as 6th graders.

I am not complaining. The co-director and my fellow staff have been nothing but supportive of me during this, my first time as a music leader. I am just hard on myself. I want to get it right, y'know?

But let me tell you this (it's my favorite part). In additon to the 'middlers' (a polite name for middle schoolers) and the adult leadership (a group I nominally belong to, given my mentality and general hyperactivity) there is a group of twenty high school kids here, the 'Enablers' (yes - an unfortunate name for those of us still in twelve-step, but still).

These guys are just amazing. I am used to Montreat, where the youth from all over are cool and all, but this is just another level. These young folks remind me entirely wonderfully of the youth group I used to work with back in Decatur that made such a tremendous impact on me. The first day of the first conference I watched as they leaned out the windows of the conference center, calling to the middlers who were waiting outside to come in for the first event. There was this great sense of welcome and anticipation, and I loved watching it. The Enablers were bridge-building, making a space for these gawking and gangly about-to-be teenagers and allowing them to feel wanted and appreciated - a set of feelings not often conveyed to this age group by adults, let along by high school kids. Watching that happen - without an adult suggesting it or anyone being forced to - watching it happen naturally - has done more for my knee-jerk cynicism this past week than anything I have seen in the past year. It is a warm memory I will take with me and treasure for a long time.

I think we - the adults and the Enablers - have become a solid team. We work well together, and there is a lot of respect running both ways across the age divide. I've had several of the teens help me out with songs and I've pitched in to help with clean-ups and other responsibilities that normally fall on their shoulders. Their energy is infectious, and the adults I work with are stellar, as well. A good cross-section of recent seminary grads, seasoned pastors, and outdoors-y types. I feel like I am making friendships that will last a long, long time. I hope so.

Here's the last bit. So part of my task in preparing for this gig was to write the conference theme song, and I did. It ends with the proclamation, "Massanetta, you've got reasons to believe!" which is greeted by an enthusiastic cheer by the Enablers (again, very supportive). But the other morning, between conferences, I walked through the lobby of the lodge where I'm staying and was serenaded by Enablers and staff, singing (to the tune of the theme song), "Massanetta, you've got raisins on your knees!" (This was apparently composed by one of the Enablers while she was in the shower a couple mornings ago, and it has spread like any good meme does)

Tonight, at the kick-off of the new conference, as I reached the end of the theme song the first time through, I couldn't be completely sure... but I think I heard that being sung at me from both sides of the hall, where the Enablers stand. And from the back, where the adult leadeship sits.

It was hard to finish the song, because I was laughing pretty hard at that moment.

I am very glad I came here.

I'm the Guy that does that Thing

So I am AWOL from my normal life again, this time for a good two weeks. I have fled, once again , to the wilds of Virginia - but this time to the mountains, not to the sea. Oh, and I am about to be surrounded by 300 some-odd middle schoolers.

Because, you see, I have skills. Arcane and strange skills that involve the ability to make a fool of myself in front of large groups of people without collapsing into embarrassment, which comes in handy when you are wanting to do things like, oh, get hundreds of twelve-year olds to sing along with you.

I am, once again, doing that youthworker thang.

This time, though, it's a little different. Instead of being a grunt, I am actually the music leader at the Massanetta Springs Middle School Conferences for the month of July. Which means, hallelujah, I am being paid to be a musician (as most musicians will tell you, this is a rare and wondrous honor).

I've never done anything like this before. I've done some small-scale song leadership, but here I am hooked up with wireless microphones and power-point projectors and I am referred to in the planning schedules as one of the "Big 3" (along with the Keynote leader and the Recreation leader) and I get my own room. If you've never been to a youth event before, lemmetellya - your own room is worth more than gold.

So I have gotten my callouses back from playing guitar so much, and I have learned or re-learned about forty songs of various stripes from traditional hymns to "contemporary Christian" hits. Plus I've written one of my own - the theme song for the conference (which is standard practice for the music leader to do).

I premiered it for the staff this morning, and they were very enthusiastic about it, which was a very good thing (as I was and remain quite nervous about the whole enterprise. But hopeful, and prayerful, too).

So tomorrow the youth arrive, and this thing gets off the ground for real. I'm quite excited. And hopeful. And nervous.

And prayerful.

A Reflection on Romans 16:18

For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. [KJV]

I don’t know if you ever listened to punk rock. I did, and do today as well. For over two decades I’ve been listening to the music and going—sometimes at ungodly hours and in some ungodly parts of town—to small old warehouses or old buildings (generally referred to as “clubs” or, more neutrally, “venues”) so I could have my eardrums pounded flat by yet another series of bands. On the whole I find it an enjoyable activity, and it keeps me in touch with my wilder, younger self now that I am a slower, older person. During this decade (and then some) I have observed some things that relate to the passage from Romans above.

In 1989 an Atlanta club like the Metroplex was not a smart place for a seventeen-year-old to be. Forget the fact that I’m larger than average. That didn’t matter. There was such a variety of unknowns—unknown people, unknown temperaments, unknown substances fueling unknown angers—that size, strength, or desire to get along peacefully with everyone else were not always relevant. I was, however, aware of the risk, and had identified some good places within the club to avoid.

Chief among these was “the pit”. A pit at a punk club is the area directly in front of the stage, where the volume is loudest and the density of people is usually the highest. You might have heard of “slam dancing” (also known as “moshing”)—the practice of people gyrating and careening into one another in response to the emotional tenor of the music and the moment. This would occur in the pit during the more frenzied portions of a show, along with an activity called stage diving.

The stage divers were a breed apart. Sometimes they were drunk or stoned out of their minds, or perhaps they just got caught up in the excitement of the moment. They would (somehow) manage to get up on stage with the performers, linger a moment there before the bouncers caught up with them, and then they would take a running leap off the stage into the empty space above the heart of the pit.

I stayed on the fringes of the clubs, more as observer than participant. This allowed me some opportunity to reflect on these strange goings-on. Of course, from the outside, the pit of a club appears the most lawless, violent, crazy place on earth. And there were occasions when the violence was there and genuine. But what I saw, for the most part, was a bizarre form of community.

Those in the pit sought catharsis, to be sure. They were pursuing a sort of Dionysian release that comes from risking life and limb. What was less apparent—but still very present—was camaraderie. Community.

When a punker dived off the stage, the pit would surge together, en masse, with arms raised and catch him (or her. Usually him). The diver would be held aloft, “surfing” the crowd until there was an opportunity to come down. Similarly, when a slam dancer fell in the midst of a mosh, arms would shoot down and set him upright again. There were bruises and scrapes, but not brawling and malice (for the most part). To an outsider, the pit seems like chaos, but it’s more like the ideal of anarchy: folks looking out for each other in a space beyond rules.

Now I’m older. The clubs are older, too. Punk has been absorbed into the mainstream, and the kids I see at shows now are several generations away from the scenes of ten years ago. They’re cleaner, hipper, and more sedate. Or maybe they’re just terminally bored.

The boredom shows. Not many pits in the clubs anymore. The shows these days are more like TV, with the audience passively consuming. Even at shows where the band is on fire and you can feel the energy in the air, the kids remain aloof. They’re too cool to bump into each other, maybe. Or maybe they’ve never learned how to yearn for catharsis.

At a show once back in 1999 I watched as a lone stage diver braved the bouncers, streaked across the stage, and leapt into what, twenty years ago, would have been the outstretched arms of the pit. Instead of surging forward, the crowd drew back, and he hit the concrete floor full-force.

Welcome to the America of the New Millenium. You jump and nobody catches you.

The point here is that civility and safety are not necessarily or ultimately one and the same. The pits of a decade ago evoked a weird community that looked out for its members. That concern is lacking in the “safer” shows of the late ‘90’s and early 'oughts. In the pits of the Reagan years arms flailed outstretched, and hence available to assist others who had fallen in the fray. Here in the new century, the crowd stands with arms folded, avoiding the possibility of touch as much as possible. A group of individuals but not the community I observed in years past.

Pits—and churches—can be risky places. They should be. A community that risks together can learn to care for itself in a way that a collection of individuals merely occupying the same space cannot.

Punk rock is not equivalent to the Gospel, of course. But I think the enemy of each was the same: a belly-ruled quietism that prizes comfort over risk, and safety of self over welfare of others. This is the very voice of the status-quo, of anesthesia, and it makes for lame churches and lame shows.

Categories: theology, musings

Time passes. That is all. Make sense who may.

It is not lost on me that my final passage to the Roman communion of the church roughly coincides with the centennial of Samuel Beckett's birthday. These are certainly unrelated events in the way that all events are unrelated.

Still, there is something strangely incongrously pleasing about it all. The anniversary snuck up on me. About a month ago I recieved this amazing DVD box set I had ordered, Beckett on Film, and have been exploring that. The plays are both nice to watch and nice to sleep to. I have done both.

Good Friday. Birth, death, new life. Trying to figure things out long after you're well into the process of each. This is appropos of my experiences with Catholicism, with Beckett, with much.