Rick Warren and an Opportunity for Unity (?)
December 23, 2008 by Julia King · 4 Comments
Depending on whom you ask, President Elect Barack Obama’s decision to invite conservative mega-church star Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation is either brilliant — or a betrayal. In one day last week, I spoke with friends stunned and angered by the choice, and with friends gratified by the choice. All of them voted for Obama and all of them are members in good standing with the Left-of-Center Club.
So, is the choice fantastic, a great strategic play that will immunize Obama against the far religious Right? Or is it unfair, a dose of injustice meted out to the “least among us,” the easy mark, the relatively small gay and lesbian community?
To say that it’s “brilliant” is a little bit like saying that the feelings of millions of gays and lesbians don’t matter. Because regardless of the larger strategy, homosexuals will be grimacing through a Warren inaugural prayer (considering the pastor’s public stance against gay marriage and his comments that adult homosexuality is akin to incest or pedophilia). Yet, to say that the invocation pick is a “betrayal,” is to ignore the long, slow road that progress has always been.
The notion of Warren leading our entire nation in prayer doesn’t sit well in my gut; but I can’t yet say whether it is “correct” or “incorrect” because I don’t yet know if the event will put Warren under Obama’s wing… or Obama under Warren’s wing. I don’t yet know if Warren and his followers will be emboldened by a spot on the national (and international) stage, or if they will be humbled.
Will Warren speak words of genuine inclusion and justice – and finally convince himself they are true? Or will he pepper his speech with coded messages to his evangelical followers (as so many have done before him with phrases like “family values,” or “culture of life”)?
Will Obama make a point of saying on inauguration day that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law and that majorities don’t have the right to vote away the rights of minorities, regardless of faith? Or will he mistakenly think of his role as a personal host to Warren, imagining he must be especially gentle with his guest?
What is most clear is that Obama wants to be different from George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, Obama wants to reach out to those who are not necessarily his natural allies — and for THAT he deserves credit. Clearly, Obama will avoid making the same mistakes Bush made in the early days of his presidency… but that doesn’t mean Obama won’t make mistakes; it just means his mistakes will be different. Let’s hope Warren isn’t one of them.
This Dog is Gifted
December 18, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
This Dog is Gifted
When my daughter entered middle school some years ago, she came home one afternoon and told her father and me about the little laminated placard she would wear around her neck throughout her school day. We thought she was confused.
“If you get good grades, you get a bronze card,” she said, “but if you get Cs or worse, you get a white card. And the kids with good grades get to sit in a different part of the cafeteria.”
“Oh, honey,” I assured her, “they wouldn’t do THAT. It would be so… I don’t know, weird.”
Well, they DID wear color-coded placards and it WAS weird. When I complained about it to one of the school counselors, she told a story about a guy without arms or legs who made an incredible life for himself as an inspirational speaker. A bronze-card kinda guy if ever there was one.
My daughter agreed emphatically that the system was wrong, that it demeaned the average (and below-average) achieving kids in some fundamental way, but she clung to her bronze card and her comfy space in the school cafeteria. Those “other” kids were a little wild, she confided. While she sympathized with their plight, she was not exactly ready to sit with them and their exploding ketchup packets. After a while I gave up trying to convince her to take up her uncle’s advice and stage a mass protest, tossing the cards — Vietnam Vet style — over the lunch counter. And after a couple of visits to the cafeteria myself, I secretly loved the seating arrangements. My polite, obedient, skinny little daughter most definitely belonged on the “safe” side of the room partition.
It was classic Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally… acceptance. It’s no big deal. It’s how grown-ups live anyway. Trailer parks for some, and multimillion dollar houses behind gates for others. Teach them when they’re young, right?
Recently, a researcher in Vienna, Austria discovered (or maybe we’ll just say “documented”) jealousy in dogs. Dogs were taught to reach out their paws and when they did, they were given a treat. Then they changed the rules, gave some dogs delicious treats (like sausage) and others slightly boring treats (like bread), until finally they took the treats away entirely from some of the dogs — and gave the other dogs sausages right in front of the snouts of the unrewarded dogs. Eventually, the unrewarded dogs stopped trying. They rolled paper into spit balls and threw them at the researchers. They started skipping class and smoking pot. Okay, they totally would have if they could have.
Probably there is a dog somewhere (without legs or legs) that would not have given up. That dog would be an inspirational barker for other dogs.
Most kids are at least as observant and sensitive as dogs. Finally, after many years of teaching and observing them (kids, that is), the Montgomery County Maryland school system has figured this out. They have decided to stop giving some kids sausages and some kids nothing, meaning they will retire that loveliest of all lovely school terms — “gifted.” They will still offer a range of school work, some less and some more challenging; they just won’t publicly label the children. Not surprisingly, some of the parents whose children were so-labeled are disappointed. These people will no longer be able to toss the term around at dinner parties, which is the best thing about labels.
*Update (Jan. 2009): After the initial article (about Montgomery County Schools dropping the “gifted” label) appeared in The Washington Post, a school official wrote to the paper and said the claim was untrue. Sausages, Anyone?
When Someone Throws a Shoe, it’s Time to Care
December 15, 2008 by Julia King · 2 Comments
If nothing else, President George W. Bush is agile. When those shoes went flying at his head, he was smooth, even relaxed as he ducked not just once, but twice. He looked a bit surprised maybe, but generally in control, his famous smirk intact.
“I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by it,” Bush said in the following minutes, brushing aside the Iraqi journalist’s actions as, “a way to get attention.” And with that attitude and those words, the outgoing president of the United States demonstrated yet again why he was unable to govern.
Not the least bit threatened? Not bothered? When a grown man is enraged to the point of throwing shoes, it behooves other men to take notice, to be bothered. I am reminded of President Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” refrain, the one that drew such mockery from the political Right, as though empathy is a weakness, a sham, or both.
Whether one believed in Bush’s Iraq war or not, there is little question that Iraqis have suffered during the occupation, lost more than most Americans can imagine. Yes, they suffered before we invaded their homeland; but it’s different to suffer at the hands of strangers than at the hands of countrymen. If you don’t believe that, go beat your neighbor’s kids and see how well that goes over.
Long ago, George W. Bush promised Compassionate Conservatism. Compassion is “sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help.” It was a great plan, this compassion, but one Bush was never fully qualified to carry out. He ducked and he smiled, he avoided the proverbial shoe; but he never learned how to care.
Where (Oh, Where?) Will All the Obama Supporters Go?
December 9, 2008 by Julia King · 7 Comments
Here in freshly Blue Indiana, Obama supporters are doing what Obama supporters are doing everywhere. We are trying to figure out how to best capitalize on our success. So last week, a handful of local dynamos who helped put Indiana on the political map invited area residents to a brainstorming meeting at the public library.
There were jumbo-sized papers taped to the walls and magic markers and a room full of people eager to “organize for change” as the invitation had said. The attendees that night were probably much like attendees at other Obama-inspired meetings across the country: a longtime mayor, a city council person here and there, the head of the local Democratic Party… and plenty of people still new to the political scene, many of them initiated into the democratic process during the 2008 presidential campaign.
In no time, fat, colorful words were scrawled on the newsprint: “health care,” “war,” “education,” “environment,” along with the categories, “local,” “state,” “national,” “international.” There was even a list of ideas for specific service projects (something the Obama campaign is encouraging, clearly as a means to keep the energy and newly forged political relationships alive until he gets into the White House). There was talk of possible monthly meetings, of leadership within the group, of civic education. Finally, there was a paper with the heading, “Organizational Structure,” or something to that effect. This meant that when all the ideas were put into words (even spelled correctly, which truly says something about the caliber of the people running the meeting), there was still one enormous question remaining: HOW?
If you are an idealistic sap (like me) you’ve been in a room like this before, one crackling with human electricity, full of capable people and good intentions. And if you’ve been in a room like this before, you’ve encountered the question sitting in the middle of the room, the question of HOW.
How do we usher in this change? Real change? You know, Change We Can Believe In?
We could begin by acknowledging that if it was very, very simple (like taking a nap or eating ice-cream), we probably would have done it by now. The fact is that creating significant societal change is much more like trying to cook a butternut squash in the toaster.
The beauty of Barack Obama’s campaign was that it (he) inspired and attracted new and unusual voters to the political process. People who never dreamed they would do such things wrote letters to newspapers, knocked on doors, and made phone calls for a candidate, actually spoke aloud about… politics. The catch is, now that the election is over many of them are reverting to their old ways, hesitant once again to embrace a system they see as inherently dirty (or at the very least, broken). Some of them prefer the speed and flexibility of small-scale, private sector projects and others prefer the safety and intimacy of congregational life to the rough and tumble nature of political parties. And the real rabble rousers root for the Ralph Nader route (why couldn’t his last name be “Rader”?), an end of the two-party system.
In this small community, it’s easy to catch bits and pieces of conversations – and even e-mails – that weren’t necessarily intended to be public. It’s easy to know that some people are talking (and typing) in favor of serious change, but against involvement in “politics.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I think it means that things go back to the way they were before we elected the first African-American president, with each of us flitting about in our separate-but-equal realms doing what feels good.
Somewhere along the way Americans took the word “politics” and rolled it and squeezed it until it turned into an unrecognizably small thing, sort of like what children do to slices of white bread. Then we put it in a box and closed the lid.
“Oh, I’m not interested in politics,” is both a familiar and popular American refrain, but one that never ceases to surprise me, particularly after 8 years of George W. Bush, two wars, a flailing economy, soaring education and healthcare costs. Is there really a way to work through any of these problems without an interest in “politics”? Politics is about power and influence. It’s about keeping watch over our elected officials, about encouraging the good ones and putting road blocks up when the bad ones go astray. It’s about local government budgets and state budgets and national budgets, about police and firefighters, the justice system, about school boards and what’s served in our kids’ cafeterias, about pot holes and bike paths and traffic and literally anything you can think of. To claim a disinterest in politics is to claim general disinterest in the human condition. Staying out helps no one but your ideological adversaries.
So, where to from here? What sort of structure could provide a place to explore and pursue varied interests, but also nurture a shared sense of purpose? How can we duplicate our Obama success and move toward the ideals that inspired us in the first place?
We can make something all our own, something from scratch (like anchovy cookies with mint icing – no one’s done THAT before), or we can follow in the footsteps of a grassroots community organizer turned leader of the free world. He knew what many of us still need to learn, that sometimes the most radical place to be is smack in the middle of the establishment. The point is that big change takes a big organization. And, seriously, how does one clean a house from the outside? If we pack up all this energy, all our brilliant ideas and our commitment to social change and to hard work… we can transform the Democratic Party (unless someone thinks it would be easier to change the Republican Party).
(Holiday) Shopping as Though it Matters
December 6, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
Once, long ago, I asked a Wal-Mart employee if he could tell me anything about a certain $4 shirt in the store. I actually just wanted to know about the person who made it, or more specifically, about the working conditions under which the person made it.
My recollection is that he said something along the lines of, “Ummm…,” before turning his head first in one direction and then in another, slowly eyeing the sea of merchandise that surrounded us. I let him tread water for a minute before I tossed him an, “Oh, never mind.” Together we nodded our heads and shrugged our shoulders, silently agreeing on the absurdity of my request.
Somehow, mentioning a worker on the other side of the world as I stood in a Wal-Mart in Indiana made me feel like a nun at a swinger’s party. As an official Fair Trade goodie-goodie, what was I even doing in a place that preaches rock-bottom prices for shoppers?
It reminded me of the time my mother stepped up to the counter at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and asked, in her best health-conscious voice, “Do you have anything that isn’t fried.”
“Coleslaw,” I had said loudly in my best 40-year-old-teenager voice, “and baked beans, and biscuits. Those things aren’t fried, MOM.” Then I smiled at the kid behind the counter and attempted to telepathically send him the universal cuckoo sign.
The good news is that with so much information at our fingertips, Americans expect more of it all the time. Is that organic? Decaf? Low sodium? Is Jolie pregnant? Sure, a lot of what we seek is inconsequential, but we’ve definitely developed an appetite for information. Eventually our desire for cheap goods will bump up against our desire for information; and when that happens, the marketplace will change.
Happy Holidays! Shop like you mean it.
(More later on consumers, product labeling, and capitalism…)
Dear Lord, Why Must People Pray at Me?
December 3, 2008 by Julia King · 4 Comments
A couple of nights ago, my husband and I attended an Obama victory party. We sat at our table drinking beer, chatting with friends about the President Elect’s latest Cabinet picks and admiring the Obama logo ice sculpture on the buffet.
Just before we were released from our tables to partake of the shrimp cocktail and strawberries, a minister made her way to the front of the room to offer an invocation.
Here in the Midwest, prayer before food (regardless of the venue) is customary. Restaurants, private parties, public school potlucks, all gatherings where food is present are seen as opportunities to pray. My big city coastal-dwelling friends and family find this hard to believe, but it’s true.
So, the minister walked to the front of the room and asked us to bow our heads while she talked about the faith that got us this far and about God’s role in our political victory (I’m paraphrasing here). Then, in Jesus Christ’s name, we ate.
And as I chewed my food I wondered for the thousandth time why so many people believe their desire to pray with me should override my desire not to pray with them. My problem is not with God, mind you, but with the people who claim to speak for God. They know not what God thinketh. They only thinketh they knoweth.
The content of the prayer that night left me shaking my head in disagreement. The notion of angels that guide the faithful to the polls or a God that reaches down and pokes holes in butterfly ballots makes a mockery of democracy. Additionally, thanking God for my new president would require that I curse God for my last president, something I’d rather not have to do.
The point is that God resides so deeply in our individual souls that to invoke Him in the midst of everyday life — with people who have not gathered for that purpose — is to forever challenge someone else’s unspoken, but equally strongly held version of Him (or Her or Insert Other Name).
Prayer has been with us since the beginning of time… and will be with us until the end of it. Textual, meditative, musical, visual, ancient or modern – whatever its shape or size, its power is undeniable. And because of that power, it should be handled with the utmost care. Prayer should be sacred and heartfelt, entered into gladly and without reservation. To utter the wrong words at the wrong time and with the wrong people is to chip away at its holiness.
When I (and presumably others) visit a place of worship, I do so with a heightened respect for the various traditions unique to that particular religion. My heart is open to the message, even if my head doesn’t always understand or agree. The same holds true of a private home, where I happily welcome a prayer from a host or hostess. Such experiences become intimate ones, the result of spiritual exploration or friendship (or both).
Now, I’ve known enough devout people in my life to realize that religion is often inseparable from a person’s identity, that asking someone to pipe down about The Lord Jesus (or Allah, or Krishna, or the Goddess) while I eat my chicken breast is like asking me to stop expressing my opinion. If loud prayer is your thing, by all means, have at it. Just remember there are always people in the room bowing their heads and praying that you will soon be done.
The truth is that despite my discomfort with prayer that’s thrust upon me without my prior consent, I’m sincerely interested in the spiritual beliefs of others. I care about what moves people – and expect them to care about what moves me. Unfortunately, one person purporting to speak to God for an entire group is hardly the best model for mutual understanding.
The faithful or religious don’t need to be silent, but they do need to consider the purpose of their prayers – especially those uttered at events not planned specifically for religious expression. As far as I can tell, there are two basic reasons to speak prayers aloud. One reason is to influence those within earshot, to steer them in the “right” direction; and the other is… (?) Is there another reason?
