"Children in Charge"

Don’t miss this column on what went into the House of Cards that got sold as bundles of mortgages, the collapse of which has led to so much economic pain for all the but the wealthy bankers who believe they are the “best and the brightest” – those doom-hawking hoodwinkers – whose toxic products have been gradually infecting every nook and cranny of our world financial and monetary networks.  It’s important to know their nefarious slights of hand, so we can protect ourselves from the coming attractions, as the money works its way ever deeper into the political system, thanks to the “inJustices” – those supremes so in love with the free market, that they are willing to sell out the Republic to the highest secret bidder in our current electoral advertising Hoodwinkery, which is simply another form of bundling toxicity as straw-spun “gold”.

There!  I hope that piques your interest!  Read it. Or don’t blame me if you didn’t see it coming….

Rent a friend?

Now I’ve heard everything!   Yes, you can rent a friend.

Commentary: Maybe people will think I am a snob, but honestly while I can chat with almost anyone, it isn’t every day that I run across someone with whom I can really talk, someone trustworthy, interesting, open-minded, empathetic, with a sense of curiosity, a sense of humor, a bit of wisdom.

Apparently some people need to impress others.  Impress with a rented stranger? Or they're lonely - and almost anyone will do.  This is very, very sad.

Just think, civilization has arrived at a point where fire protection is optional and "friendship" is a business transaction!

I recall during the years of bushco thinking, what else don't we know? Now I'm thinking, where is this all leading....???

Why I write

Cross posted from here.

I have these verses from Psalm 137 ringing in my head:

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
² On the willows^* there
we hung up our harps.
³ For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

⁴ How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
⁶ Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.

“On the willows there we hung up our harps.”  That’s the dry land. In metaphor.  Context of today’s world.  The desert ~ if you truly care.  Where somehow the “heart” often seems to be missing.  If you are an exile as I feel I am.  (I’m speaking metaphorically.)

If you pay attention to what’s going on the world, and keep your ethical principles tuned up, it is a painful lot you have chosen.

You could join those singing the tune of whoever pays the piper. Or you can join the mourners.  Keeping your spirits up by remembering you’re not alone, that even the psalmist knew your sorrow.

Movie hits generational nerve (updated)

I read reviews for restaurants I will never eat in, ballets I will never attend, movies I will never see.  You could wonder about the meaning of that.  So could I – being a shrink and all.  But that’s not the subject of this post.

I was reading this movie review.  For a movie I’m sure I’ll never see.  Well, ok, “never say never” and all that, but trust me, I see very few.  I might go and see that new one by Julie Taymore with Helen Mirren.  Because I admire both women.  But I digress.

I love the freedom of digressing in a blog…

Ok, back to the review.  Something tells me this movie has hit upon a huge fissure in our society.  Generational.  Ethical.  Here’s the quote from the review that piques my interest:

Many older people will watch the movie, which was No. 1 at the box office last weekend, and see a cautionary tale about a callous young man who betrays friends, partners and principles as he hacks his way to lucre and fame. But many in the generation who grew up in a world that Mr. Zuckerberg helped invent will applaud someone who saw his chance and seized it with both hands, mostly by placing them on the keyboard and coding something that no one else had.

Yup.  I’ll never see the movie but I am an “older people” and I totally identify with the description.  Made me wonder about Josh Marshall… I hate to say that, but it did.  Especially this part:

“When you talk to people afterward, it was as if they were seeing two different films,” said Scott Rudin, one of the producers. “The older audiences see Zuckerberg as a tragic figure who comes out of the film with less of himself than when he went in, while young people see him as completely enhanced, a rock star, who did what he needed to do to protect the thing that he had created.”

I know there’s not a huge overlap here.  But I think this speaks to a huge ethical gap in how some of us view integrity as a very high principle versus others (yes, I can see myself distancing from “them”) view success and fame and money as the objective and betraying people or principles as simply an unfortunate byproduct or worse,  simply inconsequential.

I have no solution.  It’s painful to be older and look at young people and see this happening.  I wonder if the financial downturn will change things at all or maybe make them worse (worse by my definition of course).

It’s amazing sometimes how you can stay at home and just read the reviews.  And there it all is – whether you experienced it personally or not.  But even so, you’re affected by it.  Well, at least I am:  Someone concerned about principles and people.  Someone never motivated much by fame or money or status or power.  Yes, I’m in the group that’s deeply bothered here.   And I’m guessing maybe Josh Marshall, perhaps even unbeknownst to himself, is in this other group.

Update: Here's Paul Krugman a day later.  Different topic but same problem:

Arguably, this shouldn’t be surprising. Modern American conservatism is, in large part, a movement shaped by billionaires and their bank accounts, and assured paychecks for the ideologically loyal are an important part of the system. Scientists willing to deny the existence of man-made climate change, economists willing to declare that tax cuts for the rich are essential to growth, strategic thinkers willing to provide rationales for wars of choice, lawyers willing to provide defenses of torture, all can count on support from a network of organizations that may seem independent on the surface but are largely financed by a handful of ultrawealthy families.

Money talks.  And we've shifted the money to those willing to buy people!  People for sale.  Public offices for sale.  You name it.  Sold to to the highest bidder!
Only if enough people are willing to do what's right - for low pay - can we dig ourselves out of this hole!   Doctors.  Lawyers.  Professors.  IT people.  Electricians.  You name it!

Critique:  So part of it is generational.  But mostly it's human nature.  Greed is the key!  (And whether your ethics gets in the way of your greed.)

“inadequate fingerprints”

This is a true story.  The names are changed to protect the innocent.  It’s a story about Homeland Security:  Your taxes at work to protect you from a 71 year old person who spends time working on a 14th century manuscript – which is poetry.

The said individual, let us call him IF (for “inadequate fingerprints”), has been in the US for nearly 44 peaceful years.  However, due to allegiance to this person’s own nation, IF has never taken the trouble to go through the US citizenship process – thus has no little US flag.  Nor big one either.

Homeland Security is in the Federal Building.  Downtown.  To reach there you must have an appointment.  These are sent by mail.  You are given a time and only unless you have a medical problem can you change the date and time.  Even if you have a medical problem, their phone system makes it nearly impossible to reach them or arrange anything whatsoever.

IF has a medical problem.  Just going through security would help them see that.  They know that already.  For this is the second time IF has been summoned for “biometric” processing.

You might not know this, but Green Cards used to last forever.  No longer! IF found this out the first time when arriving back in the US after a family visit in a foreign land which is not named to protect the innocent.  Upon arrival and the showing of the Green Card, which had always been sufficient until that moment, IF was told:  “This card has expired.”

But wait… Right there and then a new one was processed.  Right there in an Airport not to be named.  You know why.

So now Green Cards have an expiration date.  Less than 10 years apparently.  Now here’s the interesting thing.  There is apparently no law that says they must be updated.  It’s only if you leave the country that anyone would notice – apparently.

In any case, even though IF has a medical problem (which possibly might be helped by surgery, but which makes it very difficult to travel, let alone visit Homeland Security), still the determination had been made to apply for the new card “just in case”.   (The medical condition is not life threatening, but merely life-disruptive.)

The medical condition necessitates a lot of washing.  IF thinks of them as “ablutions” – perhaps it’s a way of distracting self from the reasons… which involve very private parts of the body.  And hands of course.

Now hands have fingers.  And fingers have finger prints.  They also have arthritis.

Now on the appointed date, at the appointed hour, IF appeared for the appointed “biometrics”.  One would hope that Homeland Security, which makes use of the most modern methods, would have machines to capture the pattern of an iris.  Or perhaps would take a swab of DNA. But no… fingerprints were wanted.

The modern fingerprint is made on a glass plate connected to a computer.  This writer personally has no idea if ink is involved at all anymore.  That’s because only the person with the letter ordering one to appear for an appointment can even enter Homeland Security.

A little detour to describe Homeland Security.  Many people work there.  Few people are called to show up.  The last time IF was there (ah, yes…”last time” – you can see where this is going…) there was only one other person with an appointment.  There were 3 security guards.  Guarding.  And a bevy of … well… I guess they’re bureaucrats.  Officials.  Maybe like in some Kafka novel.  Naturally the guards do a careful security check.

So there was IF.  Willing to give finger prints.  With hands that were swollen from so much washing….  The lady tried and tried!  Indeed, IF’s “significant other” (someone you would never suspect) wondered where IF was… since it had been hours and hours and no IF was returning from the Federal Building.  What had occurred in the Homeland Security interview?  Had they suspected IF’s involvement in the long ago protesting of a dictatorship in a foreign land?  Indeed, IF had been careful when the Patriot Act was passed, nervous that his significant other had chosen to protest this and that. (Living in a dictatorship had had its effect.)

Well, long story short… the female Homeland Security Official pushed so hard on the fingers for the fingerprints, that poor IF had to plead for her “not to push so hard” due to “I have arthritis in these fingers”.  To no avail…

Finally, after seeking assistance from a supervisor, the official was given leave to accept the “finger prints” and allow IF to go home with the swollen, painful fingers, following the stern warning that if there was any need after the application was processed further, the FBI would contact IF.  Hmmm…

This is the kind of individual your taxes are protecting you from!

Now comes the letter… NO, not from the FBI.  (not yet…)  Homeland Security had determined that the fingerprints were “inadequate” and new ones must be taken.  This time they would not be taken in the afternoon, a good time to find parking (perhaps) near the Federal Building.  But at 8 am.  Together with the warning that the time could not be changed “unless there is a medical reason” – came the stern warning:  If you do not show up for this appointment, your case will be closed.

Case would be closed… What would that mean? 

Mind you, a poor person could not apply for a new Green Card in this day and age.  It costs no less than $370!!!  Oh, yes…  Poverty and Green Card do not mix!

So, now what?  One would hope that if the fingerprints are inadequate, Homeland Security would consider that perhaps the methods or the means or the goal of fingerprints is inadequate.  And some other “biometrics” might be considered.  But apparently, in this day and age, when guards are paid to guard and officials to officiate, well…. the procedures must be followed!

My heart is broken (9/12/10)

It was on Saturday evening that I realized my heart was broken. Sounds like the first line of a novel.  It would be so easy to make this post fiction.  Instead of face the reality.  One so stark I’m not even sure as I write this where this post is going.

My heart is broken because there’s never going to be even the slightest inquiry into the “torture” – a depravity called by so many euphemisms, instead of its truthful name.  But even worse my heart is broken by the centuries and the thousands of centuries of equal inhumanity to man.  The punishment of so many innocents.  The going to war and justification of killing and torture and rape and pillage by so-called “virtues” as if using words could ever make this ok.  My heart is breaking, not just because of these particular tortures and wars, but also because I can look into myself and see the same potentials, the same anger, the same kinds of justifications within my own torn and divided heart.

My heart is broken because we’re never really going to get health care like we really need health care.   Health care for all – where the money goes for “care” and not for corporate welfare.  But even worse my broken heart cries out for the fact of ill health itself.  For sickness and disability and dying alone or unloved or on battlefields or other places of carnage, so different from medical settings where lives are valued to such extremes that the unwell are inflicted with “treatments” that make them suffer all the more.  It’s the pain of life leading to death and the path along that strewn with illness and suffering.  And the inability to ultimately alleviate these truths from my mind.

My heart is broken because national ideals and religious ideals are too often just words and pageantry.  Because greed is so rampant.  And because people have figured out ever better ways to disguise that and package products and ideals and sell them.  For riches.  For power.  And I can see those same pulls contending within my own heart – so I can’t cast stones or I’d have to cast them at myself.

I’m trying to rise above all this.  I think of the Buddha, raised in a comfortable palace, protected from all by enjoyment, ultimately shocked when he ventured out and saw sickness and death and suffering.  It wasn’t that he didn’t care to try and alleviate them.  But he saw them as the human condition and he set out to try and find release from the fears and the wishes that prompt our inner suffering, as well as from the negative feelings like anger or resentment or revenge which ravage the world around us when they are unleashed by you or me or those we oppose.  And then to save all beings through sharing  that realization.

Jesus was murdered for trying to get people to care about each other.  I think of him now as the Man of the Broken Heart, the Man of Sorrows so many have called him.  A man who died for Love.  And I take comfort in sharing that Broken Heart.

There’s a line from one of the psalms that says “a heart broken and crushed, oh, God you will not spurn.”  I guess I’ve arrived there.  Andre Louf calls that a place of true humility.  A place where you admit your total powerlessness.  Your brokenness.  Failed ideals.  Failed efforts to live up to them yourself.  A place where you look around at the rubble of what you’ve tried to do and failed to do.   How all of us fail.

So I’m not looking for sympathy.  I hope you understand that.  There are no words of comfort that have not been said before.  For the Man of Sorrows, the Man of the Broken Heart, even the Buddha, they’ve been there too.  And the psalmist, the psalmist has been there.  A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) as TS Eliot describes it.  Followed by the comforting words of Julian of Norwich that “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well” – but that is on a spiritual plane:  When the tongues of flame are infolded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one. (whatever that means… it can’t be easy!)

Oh, yes, stilli… I know your sense of alienation…

A Melange (9/10/10)

In case you were wondering, yes I have a firm handshake! 

Thus, I shake your hand across the miles.  Firmly.  I grasp it.  It's good to have hands to grasp.  And it sometimes takes a crisis for us to realize how much we appreciate that.  How much a helping hand means when people feel stranded, or about to be, and suddenly a hand reaches out.

People trapped in earthquakes must really understand that.  That human hand that that appears to reassure.  Maybe with a bottle of water at a time when they might have felt all was lost.  You can see how carefully hands hold babies.  Not just when they're rescued.  But all the time.

A hand is the first thing we feel when we're born.  Never thought about it till now. 

Did you know that when medical students learn to dissect the human body, the last things they dissect are faces and hands?  Hands are that personal.

When you fall in love, you love to hold hands.  We use a hand to reach out, even to strangers, with a helping hand.  Interesting how we define it that way.  That the hand that helps stands for the help itself.

Hands are so personal.  If you see a photo of even one hand, you feel you've got a glimpse of a person.  When I was teaching young children, I was always reaching out to them.  I had this theory about education, that it all depends on forming relationships and that if you can connect with a child, that child will learn.  I never realized it till now, but maybe one of the most important things I did as a teacher was to reach out with a caring hand.  Whole new theory of education right here in this post....

LisB, I'm sure, could make all this into a lovely poem.  I might try - but it would take me a long time.  Stratofrog could also do interesting things with all these ideas here.  I wish she'd come and try....

I honestly didn't intend to write all this about hands.  Just the first sentence.  But that's what came.   (In high school I learned that if I could just get that first sentence, the rest would follow.)  I actually intended to tell you about the dishwasher, in case you were wondering:  The one that died 6 years ago.  The one Mr. TheraP has been "installing" for nearly 2 weeks now!  It's nearly installed...  ;)

Maybe you were wondering about other things.  Perhaps you can tell us about that in the comments. 

(And don't miss this wonderful tribute blog by Amike:  HANDsomely done, TheraP)

And it came to pass... (9/10/10)

Here is a sobering assessment of the state of our country, from a young person who responded to Frank Riches latest Times column,

Freedom’s Just Another Word.

Aside from recommending that you not miss Andrew Bacevich’s article in the New Republic (recommended by Rich), don’t miss Joe’s comment below (recommended by over 2500 readers!):

Joe

Ann Arbor, MI

September 5th, 2010

6:20 am 

I am a 35 year old man who had an interesting set of perspective shifts from 2001-2002. I started 2001 a Republican; I ended 2002 a vocal anti- Bush anti-war Democrat. And now I’m not sure I even want to be an American anymore. I speak for many of my friends.

What changed from 2001-2002? A number of things: The blatant dishonesty and warmongering of the Bush administration over spy planes in China, the creepy giddiness of the administration over 9-11 and the rush to war, and the horribly wrong coverage of all of the above by our “liberal” media. One more fact: I lived in London from late September 2001 through the end of 2002. From there, I read reports about the IAEA and Scott Ritter, Hans Blix et al. over and over again saying there were no WMD in Iraq. When I got back to the US, it was like a fascist nightmare. Flags festooned everywhere, people literally calling you a traitor for opposing the war, etc.

Through all of this time — from all of the disgusting crimes of the Bush years now through the Dems’ despicable capitulation to corporations (Andrew Jackson’s nightmare) — I’ve wondered what I’m still doing in this country. I’m finishing an advanced degree at the University of Michigan and honestly I feel like leaving and never coming back. I’d like to live in a humane place where democracy still means something. I would miss the comfort of the familiar, friends and family, my sports teams…but little else. Our country is no longer a place I’m proud of. I could fight to make this place better, but that’s a life’s work, and honestly I’m not sure if this place isn’t beyond repair. Regardless of my education, I think I speak for many my age and younger.

How bitterly ironic that so many people — including our absolutely execrable media elite, save for a few of you at the Times and here and there — actually thought we were such champions of democracy, beating the drums of invasion.

We no longer live in a functioning democracy. That is not the grim pronouncement of a dour hippie (not that there’s anything wrong with that). That is a sober account of the state of America today, spelled out by a skilled guy with a future and a solid moral foundation, someone that should be encouraged by some credible accountable leadership to stay and help make this country better. Rahm Emanuel dropping F-bombs to liberals and the UAW, Larry Summers running economic policy and Harry Reid grabbing his ankles for the GOP: not change I can believe in. And no more dear to me is a country where multitudes descend on DC to listen to a Weimar Republic beer hall speech at the Lincoln Memorial, listen to a fork-tongued Jabba the Hut seething chaos over public airwaves on a daily basis, or vote for a lobotmized governor in Arizona or openly racist senator in Kentucky. Where a “liberal” president convenes secret meetings to dismantle the last shred of fairness in American society, Social Security.

Do I stay and do my tiny part to make it work? If I were an entrepreneur capitalist I might be tempted, but you know I’m actually like most people in this country: I just want meaningful work as part of a team that gives me a decent standard of living, something I’m far more likely to get in northern Europe, Australia, Singapore, Germany, or Canada than here. Utopia means “no place” — but there are places are far more congruent with my secular moral values, with highly regulated free markets, robust public services, democratic freedoms and a sense of shared sacrifice.

What does motivate me to work for change here, whatever small part, is the danger of an even more arrant and errant USA in the world than what we have now.
But regardless, the fact that I’m a skilled young person very seriously questioning whether to give up my citizenship should concern some principled leader. Our misbegotten tragedy in Iraq is where it all started, but it’s been all downhill from there.

My sad commentary is that I wish I were in a position to do the same.  Indeed, our son, born with 3 nationalities but living in the states, has recently activated his citizenship papers for the two other countries.  I also read that the brain drain is reversing itself - with people returning to places like India and Pakistan.  I worry that corporations are, in effect, controlling the levers of power throughout the world.  Corporations lack souls.  Something the young man above has in great abundance.  And a world with its soul sucked out is not a place where humanity flourishes.  Maybe that’s why I’m more focused on the “soul” these days. It’s like keeping a flame alive.

Welcome

When I began posting at TPM Cafe,  I had no idea it would at times become almost a full time job.  Had I realized that before starting, I might never have embarked.  Seeing these blogs, just the ones I've pulled to post here as a digest of the entire group, truly astounds me!

I have no idea if people will actually come back here to read.  But at the very least I have this for myself and for a public record.  A record not only of a time in our nation but of a time in which a group of strangers formed a community and learned from each other while having amazing discussions.


Peace to all who enter here.  The blogs were placed on a single day.  To find them you have only to check the archive to the right sidebar.  Click on the month of September.  And you'll see the entire list.  Nearly all the blogs now include the comments - after the jump.  (Many comments are from Lux - during Oct - Dec of 2008 - each blog title includes original date.)

Namaste.

Should you wish to find my other blogs, I will continue to maintain Nothingness (on blogger) as well as the two new blogs (on WordPress):  Casting Words to the Wind and Heart Streams in Dry Land.

PLEASE NOTE TABS above (under blog title).   Tab marked 9/9/10 contains blogs from the "last day" - before the lights went out.... (or so it was expected)

Sanctuary and Betrayal (4.28.10)

Part I

The Case for "Sanctuary" 

Sexual abuse by ordained and vowed religious?  What a contradiction in terms!  What a heinous misuse of power and spiritual authority!

We - the anguished and horrified bystanders to daily reports which grow ever worse - stand in sharp contrast to a Vatican hierarchy which is tap-dancing as fast as it can, trying to spin the crisis as perpetrated or enabled by anyone but them, the pope nonsensically urging laity to have absolute faith in priests, pinning his hopes on a revival of obedience to fussy old men dressed in red satin, with long trains, and people bowing to them like to idols.

(And let's  not forget the story going on within our own borders:  Seeking to question and arrest aliens, people whom the good book insists be offered hospitality.  Are we too a wealthy hierarchy, lording it over lowly peasants?)

You know the sordid story...  So what's gone missing?

Well, humility for one thing.  But let's think about care, compassion, concern for the least among us.  Let's consider the concept of sanctuary.  Not just as a place of refuge, but as a virtue, a call, a commitment.  Transcending belief or unbelief.  Threading its way through politics and religions and ethics and morality, it reminds me of a series of blogs I did on Erikson's stages of development.  Using these stages, sanctuary is necessary for a sense of basic trust.  Plus, sanctuary as a virtue is indicative of higher developmental stages, particularly Wisdom.  Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, sanctuary (considered as physical safety and psychic security) is a basic need, essential for normal human life.  Thus, sanctuary must be provided for all people.

Therapy is about sanctuary.  Though I never noticed that till Bwakfat's brilliant insight (see Part II) left me pondering.  While I could easily make my case based upon the Old Testament or the New Testament, mostly I'm going to confine myself to describing a social good, a common endeavor, a ground to stand on in order to ensure the psychological and physical well-being of human persons, from birth to death, in every culture as well as in the natural world.

Sanctuary is what parents and schools and hospitals and social services, indeed anyone in the caring professions, is really engaged in.  Sanctuary is a place or process - for extending compassion and providing refuge.  It's a virtue or an ideal to strive for.  Even to fight for.  Perhaps to die for.  It's that important!

Without sanctuary, safety and trust are impossible.  Indeed, I think they have no meaning.  Without ensuring sanctuary, civic or religious trust breaks down, predators of all types are given free rein, and the small and weak and frail and elderly become nothing more than pawns, easily sacrificed to the gods of power and greed and appetite - to the twisted impulses of some who have clawed their way to positions of authority.

Sanctuary simply cannot work unless it is for all.  Leave one person or group out and you thereby violate its basic principle:  For denying safety, security, care, compassion to anyone leaves us all vulnerable to be preyed upon - maybe not now, but at some future date.

And lest you think I'm advocating that criminals get off "scott free" - not at all.  Indeed, I'd prefer prison reform too.  What great prisons we could have, if sanctuary for the human person, even the most hardened and vicious criminal, were the guiding principle.

Sanctuary for all.  If some of us were to go around Galilee (or your city) - like Jesus or maybe like the Buddha -   appealing to people's better natures, seeking to heal society, I suppose wes could do no worse than cry out:  Sanctuary is at hand!  Already in your very midst.  Come, all of you who feel burdened.  Learn compassion, seek and share sanctuary.  And you will find rest for your souls - your yearning for inner peace.  (Please be advised: I'm not arguing for a dogma of the soul here.  I'm just riffing off the bible and Buddhism.  So by "soul" I simply mean whatever you hold as deepest and truest, even most sacred - if you can go there - within all of us, each and every human person.) 

I'm appealing to this concept, because I think instinctively the entire world is troubled and horrified by what's been done and not done within the Roman Catholic Church.  I think "sanctuary" is an implicit yardstick we're all using - when we daily face the fact that this issue is not disappearing from the news and indeed is more like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering more and more snow - headed directly for the Vatican - its expensively-dressed men demanding obeisance and a status above the law - and for the sycophants and hypocrites in their entourage. 

As I've said previously, it's not that I'm full of unfocused rage and willy-nilly grabbed onto this issue - like  one of the rings they used to hold out on a merry-go-round.  No, this crisis landed in my lap - because I care.  And like so many in the whole world, catholic or not, I simply can't turn my back on the victims (past, present, and god-forbid future) of a perverted travesty claiming to be the divinely appointed heirs of a venerable spiritual tradition.  I can't turn away!  And until this whole putrid edifice is dismantled, I too am squarely on the cross - sharing the sufferings of victims and anyone they've branded untouchables - unable to get off!

We're all upset - wondering how to bring these clerical criminals to justice - people under the protection of a so-called state, who are trying to avoid the long arm of the law by providing "sanctuary" for their own - while abandoning victims and the rest of us to our suffering (as just collateral damage).

And I'm just counting all the ways.... 

Part II

Betrayal: The Concept of Sanctuary Perverted

I love it when somebody distills a tangled series of problems into one brilliant thought.  Bwakfat did that for me.  And this post is an attempt to tease out her insight (below) - one, which I think crystallizes the Roman Catholic Church's current crises (sexual abuse, abuse of authority, failure of responsibility, betrayal of trust) into one powerful overarching image.  And beyond that, I want to consider how the church, using fuzzy logic, turns the essence of "sanctuary" inside-out.  Bwakfat's insight:

For me, the bigger issue is ... the concept of "sanctuary," the giving of protection ... It has a rich history in the church, and traditionally for the most noble of reasons. The church has kept safe people fleeing from political persecution and other injustices. That they must face the consequences of doing so, is a given, and one of the most powerful aspects of the concept of sanctuary.

What the Pope and others have done in this instance is to corrupt the concept of sanctuary, and endanger it. To me, this is unacceptable. It goes far beyond the heinous abuse of children. It's so wrong on so many levels, I have problems wrapping my mind around it.

Wrapping one's mind around it.  That is the subject of this blog.

I suspect Bwakfat is getting at the incredible hypocrisy going on.  First of all, what happens when a religion assumes the power of a state, even a tiny, so-called city-state?  Because inherent in Bwak's concern about sanctuary is a contradiction between a faith tradition calling itself "holy" as well as demanding all the rights, power, and privileges - but none of the responsibilities, I might add - of nation status.

Only one religion claims to be a nation - when it suits the pope.  And pretends it isn't - when it also suits.

Something tells me that when the Vatican began to view itself as both Holy City and nation-state it sold its soul.  It expected papal visits, for example, to be state visits.  It expected other nations to listen to its religious dogmas as if they were diplomatic messages, handed over from one head of state to another.

First a little background.

The pope resides in Vatican City.  It's a tiny area the size of a neighborhood.  With churches, museums, seminaries and residences for those who live and work there.  Whether this neighborhood constitutes a "state" or "quasi state" has never exactly been settled.  And the Vatican seems to operate according to fuzzy logic, shape-shifting according to needs of the Papal Palace at any given point.  Indeed,  one wonders if the Roman Catholic edifice isn't perched precariously upon the same fuzzy logic, the shifting sands of casuistry and dogma and self-protection that it deems an unchanging, infallible rock.  Inside this tiny enclave the Pope is a virtual Dictator or Monarch.  Though the Vatican exchanges ambassadors with most nations, it actually only holds an "observer seat" at the UN.   Nonetheless it claims diplomatic immunity and privileges.  Even asserts mystifying rights, for example the right to secret church tribunals in lieu of open courts, an exalted position above the law, and the right to meddle in the internal affairs of nations, by virtue of its claim to heavenly wisdom and the divine right of popes to expound on that. 

But let me skip over geography and history.  And go right to the matter at hand:  The pope is in the dock!  And the long arm of the law is creeping ever nearer to the Vatican, which claims the title of Holy City or Holy See, (tiny holy diocese).

And that brings us closer to the heart of the matter.

Let's consider a little parable.  A teaching story.  About Jesus.  Back in Jerusalem.  2000 years ago.

Jesus went to the Temple.  And threw the money-changers out!

He cried out, in a loud voice, that his Father's House was a House of Prayer.  That the Temple was a Sanctuary.

Not a place of business.  Not a museum.  Not a bank.  Not a fashion show.  Not a gift shop.  Not a seat at the UN.  Not a diplomatic site.  Not a palace.  Not a den of thieves.  Not a house of prostitution.  Not even a place of celibacy.  None of that!

The Temple was Holy.  A refuge of intense longing.  Of festal pilgrimage.  A place between time and eternity.  Lovingly described, over and over, in the Psalms as:  Presence of Holy Mystery. 

Of sacred rest.  Of peace.  Inner joy.  Beauty.  Deep contemplation.  Where the psalmist longed to spend "all the days of my life."  That kind of place.

Now this may be way more than Bwak was thinking.  But she gave me leave to ponder her words and their import.  And the more I think about this, the deeper my thoughts bore into the mire, the filthy stench of something rotting - a decay process - an institution, which has strayed far from its roots, far from the words of its anointed founder.  (Fact:  Christ means anointed)

And where are those roots today?  From acamus I think we find an answer:

One of the coolest people I ever met was [at] my first place when I moved out from my parents. My neighbor in this triplex was a nun who spent most of her time down in Central America. I was seventeen and was focused on partying and such, and I definitely didn't think anyone associated with an institutional church had anything to say to me that was worth listening to.

But one day I found myself talking with her out on the front steps. She told me about the work she was doing with the people down in the villages, dealing with things like clean water and government militias. I asked her why she did what she did. I can't remember what she said exactly, but she responded by saying in effect "it was the right thing to do. It is what my faith tells me I need to do."

And yet, contrary to sanctuary the Vatican is investigating and trying to intimidate these same nuns!  Women who clearly "get" the Good News, whose lives are witness to sanctuary.  Turning inside-out the very "faith" the faithful value and yearn for - as the psalmist yearned:  Lord, I love the beauty of your house; the place where your glory dwells.  And where is that place of glorious sanctuary today?  Surely not the Vatican!

The Vatican:  Place that gives abusers and their enablers sanctuary.  Preferring the love of power over the power of love.  Source of misbegotten shepherds, who have defiled and betrayed and perverted and corrupted a sacred trust - and have thereby destroyed sanctuary.

Yet there is reason for hope and I love this from evildoer:

Think of the pitchfork as you think of the cross.

The cross is the sign of an event, a transformation. That event was the resurrection...

The pitchfork is the sign of another event, an insurrection, the peasant revolt.

Between resurrection and insurrection there is the common ground of the event, the eruption of a new possibility which divides time into before and after. After the event one can be true to it by totalizing one's labor under its sign. The event makes life (spirit) possible to those who follow it, because it allows for the reconciliation of being and mind, which the life of submission (death) separates.

But of course, one can carry the pitchfork in vain just as one can carry the cross in vain. "by their fruits you shall know them."

This is where we are right now.  Stuck in the mud of this crisis.  Between resurrection and insurrection.  Standing on the ground of a new possibility.