“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” - Horace
That may have stirred hearts in the time of the Roman poet Horace but war has lost its glamor, and these days it would be a hard sell to convince many that dying in Iraq and Afghanistan is “dulce et decorum.”
Even a century ago, in World War I, when soldiers still marched off to war midst pomp and drum beat, British poet Wilfred Owens put lie to Horace’s quote with his famous poem by the same name describing the horrible realities of trench warfare and mustard gas.
Yet, the amazing thing is that today’s young men and women, with the luster of war long stripped away, still volunteer to go off and fight in increasingly unpopular wars – knowing there is a real chance they may be killed. And because of that – regardless of how I may feel about the wisdom of this or that conflict - they have my deepest respect and gratitude, especially those whom we honor this weekend for having paid the ultimate sacrifice.
It is aching to see their photos in the newspapers or marched across the television screen against a backdrop of mournful music. So young and fresh and full of life, they could be our children – or grandchildren. And now they are gone. If the true measure of life were its length and not its depth, it would be an unspeakable and unbearable tragedy for families and loved ones. But, we know – and I pray their families know - that their sons and daughters were involved in something deeply honorable and greater than themselves. And that is the true measure of a life’s value and worth, not just the accumulation of days and years.
As in so many other areas of life, poets capture these sentiments best of all, as did British poet Laurence Binyon in this excerpt from one of my all time favorite poems, “For the Fallen” about those who died in World War I.
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end they remain."
Gerald E. Lavey
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Getting My Groove Back
Ranting is like any contact sport, I suppose. If you don’t practice it regularly, you get flabby and lose your edge. It appears that’s what’s happened to me over the past few weeks. I haven’t posted anything on my blog since May 5, a period of almost three weeks, a virtual eternity in the blog and rant business.
It’s not that there hasn’t been enough material — political or ecclesiastical. Just Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump alone provide an endless supply. And, of course, there is never any dearth of material on the ecclesiastical side either. For example, long-time friend John Vezeau sent me a stinging critique of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, which you can read for yourselves.
I was as flabbergasted as John was when I read the news reports on the study, suggesting the moral climate of the 60s and 70’s may have been a major factor in the pedophile scandal. I couldn’t help but think of comedian Flip Wilson’s line which he used to explain his errant behavior: “The devil made me do it.”
On the other hand, I was heartened recently by the actions of theologians at Catholic University, where House Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic and graduate of a Jesuit university, was the commencement speaker. The theologians sent a letter to the Speaker beforehand reminding him that there is life outside the womb and being “pro life” means more than being opposed to abortion. They suggested that supporting a budget that would seriously harm the poor and the disadvantaged is not “pro-life” and is contrary to Catholic social teaching.
I use this example, not to beat up on John Boehner because I happen to like him and realize he is captive to the extremists in his own party as the President is, to a lesser extent, in his. Once again, my piñata of choice is the U.S. Catholic Bishops organization, which supplies me no end of material.
Contrast what happened at Catholic U. to what happened when President Obama was invited to be the commencement speaker at Notre Dame. Remember the reaction from the Catholic hierarchy, including several U.S. bishops, who expressed outrage that a Catholic university would invite someone so at odds with fundamental Church teaching on such a key moral issue as abortion?
And, yet when a Catholic politician is invited to be the commencement speaker at the United States’ signature Catholic university, and his public stance is at odds with the absolutely number one moral imperative of the Bible as well as Catholic teaching and the Church's social justice policy, the bishops are silent. Not a peep.
Need I say more?
Gerald E. Lavey
It’s not that there hasn’t been enough material — political or ecclesiastical. Just Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump alone provide an endless supply. And, of course, there is never any dearth of material on the ecclesiastical side either. For example, long-time friend John Vezeau sent me a stinging critique of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal, which you can read for yourselves.
I was as flabbergasted as John was when I read the news reports on the study, suggesting the moral climate of the 60s and 70’s may have been a major factor in the pedophile scandal. I couldn’t help but think of comedian Flip Wilson’s line which he used to explain his errant behavior: “The devil made me do it.”
On the other hand, I was heartened recently by the actions of theologians at Catholic University, where House Speaker John Boehner, a Catholic and graduate of a Jesuit university, was the commencement speaker. The theologians sent a letter to the Speaker beforehand reminding him that there is life outside the womb and being “pro life” means more than being opposed to abortion. They suggested that supporting a budget that would seriously harm the poor and the disadvantaged is not “pro-life” and is contrary to Catholic social teaching.
I use this example, not to beat up on John Boehner because I happen to like him and realize he is captive to the extremists in his own party as the President is, to a lesser extent, in his. Once again, my piñata of choice is the U.S. Catholic Bishops organization, which supplies me no end of material.
Contrast what happened at Catholic U. to what happened when President Obama was invited to be the commencement speaker at Notre Dame. Remember the reaction from the Catholic hierarchy, including several U.S. bishops, who expressed outrage that a Catholic university would invite someone so at odds with fundamental Church teaching on such a key moral issue as abortion?
And, yet when a Catholic politician is invited to be the commencement speaker at the United States’ signature Catholic university, and his public stance is at odds with the absolutely number one moral imperative of the Bible as well as Catholic teaching and the Church's social justice policy, the bishops are silent. Not a peep.
Need I say more?
Gerald E. Lavey
Thursday, May 5, 2011
True or False?
(The following was written by a long-time friend, Ron Miller, who posted this on his blog site recently and sent it to my Facebook site on Tuesday of this week. Sadly, I got the news this morning that Ron died suddenly yesterday from an apparent heart attack while in New York for a speech. When he sent me this, I quipped that I would steal it and pass it off as my own. I won't do that, but I think it deserves a wider audience so I am posting it here.
Ron was Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College; Co-Founder of Common Ground; author and lecturer on various theological topics including interreligious dialogue, early Christianity and spirituality. An absolutely brilliant guy. RIP.)
"Ever since the western world fell in love with the scientific method in the 17th century, a fundamental confusion began working its way into how we think. Truth came to be identified with facts; myths came to be thought of as lies; and the methods of the hard sciences came to be regarded as the only paths to our knowledge of reality.
"And yet, to understand what religion is all about, all of these presuppositions need to be challenged. Let’s start with what we mean by true.
"Truth comes from the old English treowe, which indicates something that can be trusted. The German cognate of our word true is treu. But treu does not mean factual; this German word refers to something you can rely on, or someone who is trustworthy, faithful, or loyal. Ein treuer Freund is a loyal friend, not someone who really exists.
"The wise people in the ancient Celtic world were called Druids. The two elements of the name, dru and id, go back to the old Indo-European language, meaning “oak-seer”. The Gaelic word for oak is dara; the Greek word for oak is drus. And (w)id is the root of see, as in the Latin word vid-eo.
"What the Druids saw, what they knew, were not facts but reliable truths about reality’s deepest secrets. And these truths were true because they could be trusted. They were as reliable as the strong oak trees in their forests.
"So in the thought world of these ancient people, the fact that my office has one window is not true; it’s merely factual. But my trust that Jesus reveals the divine reality is true.
"When Jews affirm that the Torah reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true. When Muslims affirm that the Qur’an reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true.
"When Jews celebrate Passover, they are showing their trust in the most important myth in the Hebrew Bible, the exodus event and Sinai. This is the myth of being freed up from slavery and being freed up for a covenantal relationship with God. And whether or not these events as described in the Torah are factual, they are nonetheless true.
"When Christians celebrate Easter, they are demonstrating their trust in the most important myth in Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And whether or not the body of Jesus came out of a tomb or lives now only in the earthly elements into which it has been transformed, the myth is nonetheless true.
"A myth is not true because it once factually happened. A myth is true because it always happens. This is why the rabbis said that truly to celebrate Passover, Jews must understand themselves as escaping from slavery and standing at Sinai. And truly to celebrate Easter, Christians must experience in themselves the transition from death to life.
"As I heard one biblical scholar say: 'All of the Bible is true and some of it happened.' In other words, the basic spiritual message of the biblical texts, to love God and our neighbor, is always and forever true.
"Ironically, this is where atheists and fundamentalists make the same mistake. They both confuse truth with factuality--the atheists claiming that the facts are false, while the fundamentalists claim that the facts are true.
"But they are both wrong, because they both fail to see the nature of religious language, whose purpose is not to communicate fact but to communicate truth.
"And since the truth communicated by the sacred traditions is beyond the world of facts, it must use the language of myth. And a myth puts a metaphor in narrative form, like the Passover/Sinai myth or the Good Friday/Easter Sunday myth or the central Muslim myth of Abraham walking around the Ka’ba, the myth celebrated by Muslims when they make the Haj.
"The Hebrew word mashal can refer to a proverb, a parable, an anecdote, or an allegory. In each case, however, we find a metaphor. Something is like something else. God is like a shepherd, a father, a king, a rock, or a mighty fortress. And these metaphors bring us as close to the mysteries as we can come. They bring us closer than any definition can.
"But the secret of understanding a metaphor is to handle it lightly. God is not really smelly and dirty like a shepherd; nor is he male like our fathers; nor does he generate offspring like our parents; nor does he sit on a throne like a king; nor is he made of granite like a rock; nor does he have a drawbridge like a fortress.
"I was at a conference where Dominic Crossan was asked if he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. 'Yes', he responded, 'and I also believe he’s the Lamb of God—but I don’t believe he’s white and wooly.'
"Not to understand metaphor, not to understand poetic language, means being barred forever from the realm of truths taught by the great religions. And it is sad to realize that both fundamentalists and atheists stand side by side outside the gates of that transcendent realm.
"If you’re telling a joke that begins with the words: 'These two guys went into a bar..' and someone interrupts to ask the name of the bar, not only should you not bother to finish the joke but you should take out paper and pen and ask the person to sign a statement promising that they will never open the Bible.
"Why? Because the person asking where the bar is will also ask where the Garden of Eden is, where Noah’s ark is, where the Tower of Babel is, where Jesus’s empty tomb is, where Muhammad’s footprint is, where the Buddha’s tree of enlightenment is, and where Arjuna’s chariot is.
"But asking those questions can never lead us to the truths that religion can teach us. They are based on the false assumption, so natural for so many of us, that the true and the factual are the same.
"And once we understand that they are not the same, we will also understand that the evidence for these truths is not at all like the proofs derived from the methods employed by the hard sciences.
"One of my faculty colleagues told me that he was an atheist. I asked him what it would take to change his mind. He said that he would need a scientific proof. I explained the confusion behind that kind of expectation. I suggested that if he wanted to know the truth of the divine reality he should take a sabbatical and spend some time in a monastery where he can walk in the woods, sing sacred chants, read sacred texts, meditate, and marinate in silence. He must listen to the admonition in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God.”
"And to know in ancient Hebrew did not mean to know facts. The word was a synonym for sexual intimacy. So we read in the words of the King James Bible (Genesis 2:1) “And Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.” The biblical phrase Daat Elohim (the knowledge of God) does not mean knowing facts about God but experiencing intimacy with God. And that’s who a mystic is, one who experiences the divine.
"So to know anything about the real nature of religion, one has to understand all those 'm' words—mysteries that are not problems; methods that are not those of the hard sciences; meaning that is not factual; metaphors that disclose meaning; myths that are true; and mystical ways of knowing that are not scientific."
Ron was Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College; Co-Founder of Common Ground; author and lecturer on various theological topics including interreligious dialogue, early Christianity and spirituality. An absolutely brilliant guy. RIP.)
"Ever since the western world fell in love with the scientific method in the 17th century, a fundamental confusion began working its way into how we think. Truth came to be identified with facts; myths came to be thought of as lies; and the methods of the hard sciences came to be regarded as the only paths to our knowledge of reality.
"And yet, to understand what religion is all about, all of these presuppositions need to be challenged. Let’s start with what we mean by true.
"Truth comes from the old English treowe, which indicates something that can be trusted. The German cognate of our word true is treu. But treu does not mean factual; this German word refers to something you can rely on, or someone who is trustworthy, faithful, or loyal. Ein treuer Freund is a loyal friend, not someone who really exists.
"The wise people in the ancient Celtic world were called Druids. The two elements of the name, dru and id, go back to the old Indo-European language, meaning “oak-seer”. The Gaelic word for oak is dara; the Greek word for oak is drus. And (w)id is the root of see, as in the Latin word vid-eo.
"What the Druids saw, what they knew, were not facts but reliable truths about reality’s deepest secrets. And these truths were true because they could be trusted. They were as reliable as the strong oak trees in their forests.
"So in the thought world of these ancient people, the fact that my office has one window is not true; it’s merely factual. But my trust that Jesus reveals the divine reality is true.
"When Jews affirm that the Torah reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true. When Muslims affirm that the Qur’an reveals the divine reality, that affirmation is true.
"When Jews celebrate Passover, they are showing their trust in the most important myth in the Hebrew Bible, the exodus event and Sinai. This is the myth of being freed up from slavery and being freed up for a covenantal relationship with God. And whether or not these events as described in the Torah are factual, they are nonetheless true.
"When Christians celebrate Easter, they are demonstrating their trust in the most important myth in Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And whether or not the body of Jesus came out of a tomb or lives now only in the earthly elements into which it has been transformed, the myth is nonetheless true.
"A myth is not true because it once factually happened. A myth is true because it always happens. This is why the rabbis said that truly to celebrate Passover, Jews must understand themselves as escaping from slavery and standing at Sinai. And truly to celebrate Easter, Christians must experience in themselves the transition from death to life.
"As I heard one biblical scholar say: 'All of the Bible is true and some of it happened.' In other words, the basic spiritual message of the biblical texts, to love God and our neighbor, is always and forever true.
"Ironically, this is where atheists and fundamentalists make the same mistake. They both confuse truth with factuality--the atheists claiming that the facts are false, while the fundamentalists claim that the facts are true.
"But they are both wrong, because they both fail to see the nature of religious language, whose purpose is not to communicate fact but to communicate truth.
"And since the truth communicated by the sacred traditions is beyond the world of facts, it must use the language of myth. And a myth puts a metaphor in narrative form, like the Passover/Sinai myth or the Good Friday/Easter Sunday myth or the central Muslim myth of Abraham walking around the Ka’ba, the myth celebrated by Muslims when they make the Haj.
"The Hebrew word mashal can refer to a proverb, a parable, an anecdote, or an allegory. In each case, however, we find a metaphor. Something is like something else. God is like a shepherd, a father, a king, a rock, or a mighty fortress. And these metaphors bring us as close to the mysteries as we can come. They bring us closer than any definition can.
"But the secret of understanding a metaphor is to handle it lightly. God is not really smelly and dirty like a shepherd; nor is he male like our fathers; nor does he generate offspring like our parents; nor does he sit on a throne like a king; nor is he made of granite like a rock; nor does he have a drawbridge like a fortress.
"I was at a conference where Dominic Crossan was asked if he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. 'Yes', he responded, 'and I also believe he’s the Lamb of God—but I don’t believe he’s white and wooly.'
"Not to understand metaphor, not to understand poetic language, means being barred forever from the realm of truths taught by the great religions. And it is sad to realize that both fundamentalists and atheists stand side by side outside the gates of that transcendent realm.
"If you’re telling a joke that begins with the words: 'These two guys went into a bar..' and someone interrupts to ask the name of the bar, not only should you not bother to finish the joke but you should take out paper and pen and ask the person to sign a statement promising that they will never open the Bible.
"Why? Because the person asking where the bar is will also ask where the Garden of Eden is, where Noah’s ark is, where the Tower of Babel is, where Jesus’s empty tomb is, where Muhammad’s footprint is, where the Buddha’s tree of enlightenment is, and where Arjuna’s chariot is.
"But asking those questions can never lead us to the truths that religion can teach us. They are based on the false assumption, so natural for so many of us, that the true and the factual are the same.
"And once we understand that they are not the same, we will also understand that the evidence for these truths is not at all like the proofs derived from the methods employed by the hard sciences.
"One of my faculty colleagues told me that he was an atheist. I asked him what it would take to change his mind. He said that he would need a scientific proof. I explained the confusion behind that kind of expectation. I suggested that if he wanted to know the truth of the divine reality he should take a sabbatical and spend some time in a monastery where he can walk in the woods, sing sacred chants, read sacred texts, meditate, and marinate in silence. He must listen to the admonition in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God.”
"And to know in ancient Hebrew did not mean to know facts. The word was a synonym for sexual intimacy. So we read in the words of the King James Bible (Genesis 2:1) “And Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.” The biblical phrase Daat Elohim (the knowledge of God) does not mean knowing facts about God but experiencing intimacy with God. And that’s who a mystic is, one who experiences the divine.
"So to know anything about the real nature of religion, one has to understand all those 'm' words—mysteries that are not problems; methods that are not those of the hard sciences; meaning that is not factual; metaphors that disclose meaning; myths that are true; and mystical ways of knowing that are not scientific."
Monday, May 2, 2011
It’s not about the Birth Certificate After All
For months, I have been puzzled by the “birthers,” unwilling to believe there were that many gullible fellow citizens who believed the President was not born in the U.S. According to one poll, more than 40 percent of Republicans held that view. I thought to myself: Why go out on a limb for such an extreme view when all the President has to do is to release a copy of his birth certificate? It made no sense.
Then, all of a sudden last week, things began to click. It’s not really about the birth certificate at all because even when the President announced the release of his birth certificate – long form, no less — showing he was born in Hawaii, some “birthers” didn’t back down. Comedienne Paula Poundstone quipped that now they were demanding the placenta. Some claimed that the certificate was a forgery, but others, led by Donald Trump, just shifted ground: They are now questioning the President’s intelligence and academic qualifications.
Trump reportedly alleged that Obama was not a good student and, if so, then how did he get into Columbia and Harvard, he asks? And how did he become President of the Harvard Law Review? Hard to believe that Trump could come up with something so bizarre, but attack politics has always played out in the twilight zone. And I would bet anything there are a sizeable number of people who are now going to jump on that bandwagon.
In case that doesn’t work, though, there’s always the Muslim card to play. Case in point: Fox News recently reported that the President failed to issue an Easter Proclamation although he did issue statements on major Islamic holidays during 2010. Fox failed to note that no President over the past 20 years has issued an Easter Proclamation. Nor did they mention that the President had a Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Easter, and he and his family attended Easter services at a local Baptist Church.
Do you think this line of questioning would be happening if the President were not African-American? I think we all know the answer to that. What this campaign of vilification is all about is de-legitimatizing Obama’s right to be President of the United States. Social etiquette no longer allows us to say he is not qualified because he is African American. So, the racists have to come up with other reasons for accomplishing that same goal: Questioning his citizenship, his academic credentials, his religion, for example.
While at the FAA, I remember listening to a Civil Rights champion of the 1960s — whose name I have forgotten — speaking at a Black History Month celebration. She said racism was still very much with us. It had just gone underground and gussied itself up with the exterior trappings of social correctness and thus was harder to spot. It’s almost easier to face the fire hoses and Bull Connor’s police dogs, she said; at least you knew who your enemies were.
Still, they’re not that hard to spot — especially the extreme cases — if you’re paying attention at all. But, it’s one thing for opponents to question the President’s birthplace, but when they now shift ground and question the intelligence of arguably the most intellectual President we have ever had, certainly in recent memory, they’ve let their mask down and revealed who they really are.
As heavyweight champion Joe Louis once famously said, “They can run but they can’t hide.”
Gerald E. Lavey
Then, all of a sudden last week, things began to click. It’s not really about the birth certificate at all because even when the President announced the release of his birth certificate – long form, no less — showing he was born in Hawaii, some “birthers” didn’t back down. Comedienne Paula Poundstone quipped that now they were demanding the placenta. Some claimed that the certificate was a forgery, but others, led by Donald Trump, just shifted ground: They are now questioning the President’s intelligence and academic qualifications.
Trump reportedly alleged that Obama was not a good student and, if so, then how did he get into Columbia and Harvard, he asks? And how did he become President of the Harvard Law Review? Hard to believe that Trump could come up with something so bizarre, but attack politics has always played out in the twilight zone. And I would bet anything there are a sizeable number of people who are now going to jump on that bandwagon.
In case that doesn’t work, though, there’s always the Muslim card to play. Case in point: Fox News recently reported that the President failed to issue an Easter Proclamation although he did issue statements on major Islamic holidays during 2010. Fox failed to note that no President over the past 20 years has issued an Easter Proclamation. Nor did they mention that the President had a Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Easter, and he and his family attended Easter services at a local Baptist Church.
Do you think this line of questioning would be happening if the President were not African-American? I think we all know the answer to that. What this campaign of vilification is all about is de-legitimatizing Obama’s right to be President of the United States. Social etiquette no longer allows us to say he is not qualified because he is African American. So, the racists have to come up with other reasons for accomplishing that same goal: Questioning his citizenship, his academic credentials, his religion, for example.
While at the FAA, I remember listening to a Civil Rights champion of the 1960s — whose name I have forgotten — speaking at a Black History Month celebration. She said racism was still very much with us. It had just gone underground and gussied itself up with the exterior trappings of social correctness and thus was harder to spot. It’s almost easier to face the fire hoses and Bull Connor’s police dogs, she said; at least you knew who your enemies were.
Still, they’re not that hard to spot — especially the extreme cases — if you’re paying attention at all. But, it’s one thing for opponents to question the President’s birthplace, but when they now shift ground and question the intelligence of arguably the most intellectual President we have ever had, certainly in recent memory, they’ve let their mask down and revealed who they really are.
As heavyweight champion Joe Louis once famously said, “They can run but they can’t hide.”
Gerald E. Lavey
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