Letters to My Mom

I wanted to start a new series on my blog called Letters to My Mom.  These will consist of letters I am writing to mom about how she influenced my life.  Here is the first one. 

Dear Mom,

I have been thinking about a lot of things recently as I watch Noah grow up.  I like seeing how I influenced his life, his choices and his hopes.  But I wonder what little things will make a difference later.  I remember things that you did that have never left me.  One memory is so clear I am not even sure if it is real, but it has been with me since I was very young.  I remember a sunny warm day and a man was working on the corner of New York and Rensselaer Avenue.   You ask me to go down and ask him if he wanted a beer.  He said he couldn’t but wanted water, I carried a glass of ice water and some kind of snack.  This story may not be true but it is you.  I remember so many times you helping others and as Mike Fourneir recently mentioned to me you were famous for bringing coffee to the fire fighters when there was a big fire in town.  It is ironic that the one I remember the most was the fire at the old Pepsi bottling plant. 

As you know, we grew up half a block from the old building and I always wanted to explore it.  I remember the house at 30 Rensselaer which was the last block before the literal other side of the tracks.  The abandoned Pepsi plant was one a several industrial buildings that sprouted up along the Oswegatchie River and the Railroad tracks.  Well it caught fire about a year after we moved to the other side of town.  It was a big fire and one that threatened a lot of houses that were built near it, including our old home.  You made several thermoses of coffee and we went over there.  I got to watch the fire but what I saw and remember is not the building that eventually burned to the ground, but you, making sure all the fire fighters here given a drink. 

I never asked you why you would do this.  It seemed so normal to me to offer something to people in community service jobs.  I lost that along the way.  One of my teachers recently brought a bunch of left over bagels to the local fire hall.  I thought of you.  I realize some of the work I did growing up was directly related to these moments that you reached out to help others.  Thank you for giving me a good foundation.  It helped me find my way.  

My Mom...she is always part of me...

So what I expected since June has happened.  They found a tumor on my mother’s brain.  Her particular cancer, though beaten back in the lung has a tendency to reappear and the brain is one of the favorite locations for it.  They can beat it back, radiation is a wonderful weapon. This will be an ongoing battle but my mom seems up to it.  I never bet against her.    Her life story is a series of battles some won, some lost, but in the end she is a survivor. 

But I was thinking about her influence on me.  A few years ago there was a study that suggested that teens moral development, among other things, were more a product of their peer group norms than their families’.  But what I hope the researchers will do is to re-investigate these subjects later in life.  I dare say while at the time of the research it would appear the peers have more sway but in the long run the foundation of our morality happens at the dinner table and on long rides to vacation stops and the daily actions of life we grew up with. 

I was struck by this many times over the years. Last year when I met one of the women who went south to fight for equality during the civil rights movement spoke about how at the time she didn’t realize the power of the values learned from her parents, but reflecting back, she clearly sees a straight line from her Jewish values learned at the kitchen table and while the culture at the time influenced her as well, the base was built in family conversation and action. 

For my mom, I remember the day I realized that it was my mom who helped create the radical I was in college.  Twice my mother encouraged me to protest as a young person, both times ironically around the issue of getting a haircut.  I always like having my hair long.  In 5^th grade I was going to join the Boy Scouts.  When I filled out the form the Scout Master told me that to be a Boy Scout I needed to get my hair cut short.  My mother made it clear to me that I would not join a group that requires uniformity.  Later, in high school, a similar thing occurred with National Honor Society.  My mother applauded when a got my pin with my hair in my eyes.  I wish I still had the picture.

So as I watch mom fight this battle I know her influence made me who I am today, and I am happy to be have been able to tell her.  Say a prayer for my mom and tell your own parents if you are able what they meant to you.  If you can’t tell them, then tell their stories.  Share their gifts with the world.  I hope to share all she gave me over time.   

Birthers Unite

Tonight Joe Biden will debate Paul Ryan and Martha Raddatz will moderated.  And yesterday the right wing noise machine lost their minds over the fact that 20 years ago Martha married a man that was a friend of the President's when they were in law school.  Raddatz has seen divorced President Obama's friend but to the right it is one more left-wing conspiracy.  They ignore that debates are organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.  This is the latest in a long line of fake outrage and quite frankly this is disgusting.  Anyone, and I mean anyone, who slanders and libels Martha Raddatz by suggesting she will be softer on Biden because the President is a law school buddy of her ex-husband should never again be taken seriously.  There is nothing in Raddatz's award winning reporting to suggest that she will not do the job in a fair way.  Tabloid rags like the Daily Caller who "broke" the non-story has just sought to pollute the way many Americans will make their decision on who will lead us for the next 4 years.  The sickness that somehow if the roles were reversed the left would be up in arms.  Yeah, because there is no media/GOP connection?   Fox News has been the propaganda wing of the Republican Party for years, once posting on their website as their own reporting a GOP talking points memo, including a type found in the GOP release.  There have been 23 OP-ED pieces in the Wall Street Journal that were written by paid and unpaid advisors to the Romney campaign that never mentioned that fact.  This is what happens.  The media and politics at the highest levels pick from the same basket.  That is just the way things are.  But think about this.  The outrage is about the fact that a friend of the President's ex is the person asking questions tonight.  Think about any wedding you went to in college where you were friends with one of the two getting married.  How many are divorced?  Will your friends ex do you favors because you gave them a punchbowl or a set of steak knives in the 90s?   Seriously this is as ridiculous as the birther crowd.  The right wing has become the voice of conspiracy.  They are the Ancient Alien crowd only their lies and craziness could have real results in our lives.  It is time we call them out.  If you are a Democrat, then respond when your right wing friend posts or says one of these crazy ideas.  If you are a Republican, hold your party to a standard of reality. We have to.  This is a Democratic Republic.  If we allow the lunatics to control the message we will only elect more lunatics.  There are those who always say "We Need to Take our Country Back".  We do, from those who build reality our of smoke and mirrors.  I would rather talk about the policies Obama and Romney are proposing than the pate the President ate at Cambridge Hilton in 1993.   

Ignorance is not a virtue...

Yesterday, the President of the United States dedicated the latest National Monument.  The burial place of labor leader and activist Cesaer Chavez and his home for the last 22 years of his life is now a new protected treasure of American History.  Chavez was a giant of the 20th century and an important voice.  But here's the thing, many people jumped on Twitter to be critical of the President for dedicating a monument to HUGO Chavez.  Think about that, someone heard somewhere that President Obama was dedicating a monument to the Communist Dictator of Venezuela and felt compelled to comment about it in the social media without thinking.  Let's just pretend you could believe that the President would be in sync with the man who once called President Bush the devil at the UN.  Does anyone believe in a highly politically charged country, during a close campaign for re-election, could anyone allow the President to do anything that would show support of a dictator.  The ignorance of anyone who could believe that is mind numbing.  Yet those people's vote count the same as yours and mine.  

This is the state of our country.  Large chunks of people of live in an echo chamber and seek out information uncritically and just vomit it back into the world.  It use to be this kind of a bizarre thinking that would only be reserved for those seeking the secret knowledge to undo the Kennedy Assassination or UFO cover-ups, now it penetrates everything in politics.  In the last 15 years we have been gifted with a segment of the population that believes, the 2000 election was stolen, Bush and Cheney were part of 9-11, and  President Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who has faked birth certificates and plans to destroy the economy.  Even smaller issues rise up, in the run up to the Republican nomination we heard about all manner of things like vaccines causing retardation from many of the candidates running for President, down ticket races have included "legitimate rape" and support for executing rebellious children.  

People running for office take advantage of this ignorance.  The Romney campaign convened a whole night of their convention around the "We Built That" theme, taking off on a line from a speech where the President expressed the role of government in making growth possible.  President Obama was speaking about roads and bridges but the right wing noise machine edited the tape and focused on 4 words creating a mythology believed by many.  Interestingly, that evening had a business woman running for office in Delaware as a Republican, Sher Valenzuela was speaking about her business she claimed to have built by herself.  However she received over $17 million in government support and is quoted when speaking to other businesses said "But where do I start?" Valenzuela wrote in a presentation to a group of women entrepreneurs at a Delaware business conference earlier this year. "With your BIGGEST secret weapon!" the presentation read. "You start with the no cost/low-cost resources that you, the taxpayer, have already paid for."

Yet we will still hear the GOP say "We built it" acting as if government is something that is hostile to growth.  This to me suggests one thing, the Republicans think the American people are stupid.  That they can lie to them and assume all those who will call them on their lies will be ignored.  The Romney campaign said as much when indicating that their campaign will not be dictated to by fact checkers.

This is not only true on the right, but certainly has been more starkly apparent from them in this election cycle.  We have seen Democrats exploit mythology of the big bad conservatives who will throw Grandma off the cliff, steal candy from babies and of course end all entitlements.  This is a real problem.

This more than anything is a threat to our Republic.  When we have no voices to trust.  News media has spent more time fighting for market share than giving information.  News and opinion are all wrapped up together in people's minds and while there are many more outlets of information, less is looked at critically.  In fact I bet everyone reading this can remember at least one story from the parody website The Onion that was reported as fact by a news agency.  This would be simply a good laugh and we can point at those caught and yell "Burned" or create a meme.  But these mythologies are cause real policy shifts.  Think new voter ID laws and restrictions on soda sizes.

I want everyone to vote, but I also want a voting population with facts.  Tell you what to my GOP friends, I will continue to hold my party to the simple standard of honesty and you do too.  Stop repeating myths that rise up and in the next 25 days let's see if we can have a discussion and not a fiction slam.  Oh, and maybe my guy will show up at the next debate to make some of that happen.

Interpreting Isaiah

On Yom Kippur we read Isaiah 57:14- 58:14 a call to action and a call to do right not look right.  Rabbi Shefa Gold, a great teacher and visionary has interpreted this section of the Yom Kippur service with a modern twist.  It is stunning and tough a few years old it clearly gives us the vision of what we can be if we rethought the liturgy and found meaning in the words of the ancients.  May your Yom Kippur be meaningful and complete.  May your fast give you just the right about of self-awareness as to motivate you but not so much that you feel hurt, lost or ill.  Yom Kippur is about renewal.  May you be renewed in both body and spirit for the new year.  

Isaiah Haftorah for Yom Kippur

by Rabbi Shefa Gold

(5764, 2003)

(translation/interpretation)

Out of my way, out of my way!

Clear away these damn obstacles from the way of my people!

This is what the High and Holy One says,

She says, Yes, I dwell in the High and Holy Places,

Yet you will find me with the lowly ones, the poor and humble,

I am with them to revive their spirits, to lift their hearts,

Sometimes a fighting spirit is necessary to wake you up,

But I won’t be angry forever,

After all, everything is made of my Divine spirit,

Wrapped in the garb of this world,

All is of my making.

But your greediness made me so angry,

I hid myself... so that your hearts might lead you back to me

And then I will heal you, and comfort your mourners,

Peace will come to those who feel far from me,

And to those who are near,

For all will be healed and all will be well.

But those greedy corporate warmongers!

They are like the troubled sea,

Whose waters stir up filth that pollutes the land,

For them there is no safety, there will be no peace.

Cry out! Make a stink for God's sake!

Let the people of this country of yours know

that they're making a big mistake,

They’re your people!

Oh sure, I hear their prayers every day,

They say they want to learn my ways. Hah!

As if you were a people doing righteousness,

Who has not abandoned decency and compassion!

You hold their ears against my voice,

And close your eyes to suffering,

While you ask to learn my way,

All the while saying you want be near me.

They say, "Don't you see we're fasting?

Don't you see how holy we have become?"

But on your fast day you wear clothes

that were made by Chinese prisoners,

And shoes that were cried over

by terrified children in loathsome sweatshops,

And the books you hold in your hands,

are filthy with the tears of dying forests...

And your investments fatten the rich,

who are destroying this land.

You think this is the kind of fast I want?

A day that will feed your self-righteousness?

You call this a fast?!

A day that will please your high and holy God?

Well, I'll tell you what kind of fast I would desire from you...

Unlock the chains of your greed and habit,

Free you from slavery of being blind consumers,

Let the oppressed worker go free

by raising the minimum wage.

It's a disgrace I tell you!

The fast I want is one that will inspire you

to share your food with the hungry,

To redistribute the wealth of this land fairly,

To build affordable housing for the homeless,

And to welcome back the people you have thrown out of your hearts,

Even the ones in your own family.

Then your radiance will burst through like the dawn,

And the miracle of healing will happen suddenly,

And true righteousness will be revealed in your faces,

As God shines through you again.

Then when you call, God will answer gladly,

And when you cry, she will reach out with her presence,

In each moment whispering, Hineni, Here I am!

If you banish corruption, hatred and apathy

from the innermost places of your heart,

If you stop blaming everyone else,

And instead extend your hand to the hungry,

And lift up the ones who have been beaten down

by this unjust system,

Then your light will shine forth, even in the darkness.

The presence of God will guide you always,

That Divine presence will slake your thirst when life seems too dry,

And give strength to your bones when you are weary of the work.

You shall be like a watered garden,

Like a spring whose waters never fail,

From your inspiration people will reestablish

the values that have been desecrated,

And restore the foundations of decency

that have been laid by your ancestors,

And you shall be called "Repairer of Brokenness,"

"Restorer of the Way,"

If only you would truly celebrate Shabbat,

And put down your business, your buying and selling and bargaining and scheming with the resources that were never yours to begin with,

If you would delight in the restful sanity of Pure Being,

Then you are delighting in Me,

Participating in the holiness of God.

Then I will set you on the high places,

So you can get some perspective,

So you can truly enjoy the precious inheritance

of the life I have given you.

This is what God tells me

Shana Tova

Tomorrow night is Rosh Hashanah.  The Talmud teaches that during the 10 days between the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur God judges us for our actions in the last year.  This is the home stretch to redeem one’s self for if one is judged to not have found favor with God, death awaits them.  The liturgy and ancient writing clearly sees this as God holding the people in jeopardy, deciding their fate.  We actually ask “who will live and who will die?”  The image of God is troubling.  On the one hand God is a loving parent, ready to forgive if we truly make repentance, but the other side is a vindictive God that will rain down pain and sorrow for not living up to a standard.  

Most of us don't believe this anymore. The words do not ring true.  Death and Life are not the results of how well we live up to the mitzvot, the commandments. But that does not mean we can't learn something from this metaphor.   The Torah is designed to guide us to build a just community.  The yearly reminder to take stock of what we have done over the last year is a worthy audit to do.  Perhaps over the next 10 days we can find one way that we can make the world a nicer place for our family, friends, and community.  Who knows?  Perhaps that is more what the ancients were hoping for, not frightened people acting good for fear of wrath of God, but that we would find a window of time to truly think about whom we are and how we walk in this world.  And isn’t that a better way to spend your time?  

WMD

Religious based hate has no place in our society.  But it lives here, thrives here and sometimes its ugly face makes us all wonder where we are in the story.  When I was young, some of my well spent youth was being into a punk scene listen to music that some found offensive.  There rang a stream of hard truth through much of the lyrics of bands like The Offs.  Everyone’s a Bigot was a song that promoted the notion that we all have a dark place where we demonize some group.  Those harsh words screamed at shows are echoed in more contemporary ways.  At the Democratic National Convention, The Daily Show sought out and found people willing to demonize gun owners and the religious right in the Republican Party.  The worst was a Jewish delegate who went off on Evangelical Zionist Christians saying all manner of stereotypical things about how they see Jews as a means to an end.  While this may be true for some, it certainly isn’t true for all.  What is true is that we are comfortable with our own biases while condemning the actions of others whose biases are different in detail but not in process.  This brings me to this morning.

I woke with a real sense of hope; I was attending two meetings today focused on education, one here in Indianapolis and the other in Kenya.  In both cases, the groups were purposefully diverse in religion and other ways.   But as my TV popped on the dominate image was the US consulate in Benghazi burning and the report that our Ambassador and members of his staff were killed in an attack.  A bad moment was made worse by the news that the embassy in Cairo was also attacked.   The question of why rattled in my head until I learned that the rioting that led to the murders was due to an internet movie, rumored to be released in wide distribution, degrading the Prophet Mohammad and Islam.  A 14 minute trailer had been posted on an Islamist website with Arabic sub-titles meant to enflame young Muslims in the two countries still trying to build a new world after the toppling of their former dictators. 

The film, whose production currently is in question, is being promoted by a man who is known for his anti-Islamic rhetoric, a Pastor named Terry Jones.  Jones is infamous for wanting to publically burn a Qur’an and for staging protests outside of mosques.  His hate, fed by political hacks using anti-Islam sentiment as a tool to gin up their base, almost feels like parody.  Yet there he was promoting a film that incited violence that took the life of a patriot working to make a better world.  Christopher Stevens, the Ambassador to Libya, was described by a friend of mine who knew him as a thoughtful and compassionate man.  His work on behalf of our countries interests in the chaotic post-Gadaffi Libya was not celebrated in the media but truly showed him to be a patriot of the highest order.  He died a victim of an unnecessary war fueled by ignorance. 

Let me be clear.  The movie maker and Terry Jones are not responsible for the deaths but they are not blameless.  I am tired of the stupid meme that they were just expressing their first amendment rights.  Of course they were and if someone tried to outlaw attacks on religion I would stand up for their right.  But that does not free them of understanding there may be consequences to exercising their freedom.  The first amendment does not protect you from being called out for your stupidity and hate.  They committed no crime but they acted immorally.   The film, or at least the small part I have seen, is riddled with lies about Mohammad and Islam.  The only point I see for this video to exist is to cause people to rise up against an entire faith tradition.  The movie is a dog whistle to those who thrive on hate and it fed an Islamist strain of thinking that leads to this kind of violence. 

Ignorance and hate are weapons of mass destruction.   This morning we saw more victims of these weapons.  But as the day closes I still have hope.  I have hope because I know there are more people who believe in a God that is too big for a single path of seeking than one that demands followers to attack all other paths.  That is the best defense against these WMD.     

Jewish Women are Doing it For Themselves

The event was called a “Jewish BLT:  Bagel, Lox and Tefillin.”  I stood there holding the newly purchased and never used tefillin in my hand as I unfolded the instructions ready to tackle this ancient ritual.  It turned out the instructions looked as though they had been written after an office party.  Baffled, I held the leather straps, looking for shock and awe more than for Shacharit. A hand touched my shoulder, and my friend Sharona offered to walk me through the process.  At each step she slowly, deliberately, and patiently helped me understand not only the how but the why of tefillin.  She made sure I could recite the prayers, and in the end I was impressed by the perfect Shin the straps made across my hand. 

When the service was over and the bagel and lox came out, a man in the congregation leaned over to me and said, “I still find it weird that women are putting on tefillin.” For this man, it was an uncertain change in the practice of our people. 

I was reminded of this experience while using the lesson on Tefillin Barbie on the Jewish Women's Archive website.  http://jwa.org/teach/golearn/jan08/ What would that guy think of her or the woman who created her, Jen Taylor Friedman, a Soferet ( ritual scribe), who had challenged the age-old male tradition of that profession?  Friedman is among the latest in a line of women who are embracing Jewish values and traditions and re-creating them for a new age so that women can fully engage in Jewish life.   

For young people, it is easy to forget that the first woman rabbi was ordained in the United States only 40 years ago. ( http://jwa.org/blog/ celebrating-the-first-lights-of-women-rabbis) Today women are at the helm of a revolution that is helping make ritual, theology, and everyday Judaism more relevant to our contemporary world.  Of course, there are also men doing the same thing, but I find myself learning more from the women who are challenging long-held ideas and traditions to create a thriving 21^st century Judaism. 

I suspect that women have always had something to say about Jewish life, but that only recently has our community allowed the influence of women to be publically acknowledged.  I imagine, for example, that the women in the lives of the great rabbinic sages probably influenced their writing.  Today, however, women do not have to hide behind a man to get their voices heard but rather can bring their wisdom into the open. 

There are so many examples of women shaping Judaism today. I’m thinking of women like Marcia Falk http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/falk-marcia   and the writers and editors at RitualWell.org , who have called on us to reclaim a rich and evolving prayer tradition to find new ways to approach prayer and ritual, giving us options and freedom to find our own words and thoughts.  These writers are also creating and sharing new rituals for today’s changing Jewish family, providing a starting place more suited to our contemporary values and ideals. 

I’m also thinking of rabbis like my own, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/19/1974/sandy-sasso   the first Rabbi to be a mother, who has written a series of children’s books bringing “God talk” to young children in a way that doesn’t insult the readers’ theology.  Her writing gives us a new way to look at childhood spirituality. Another teacher and friend of mine, Rabbi Janie Grackin, explores how the traditions of Judaism can be made fun using socio-dramatic play and shared family events.  Her work has enabled many to step outside of their comfort zone and experience Jewish ritual in exciting and lively ways. 

There are women like Rabbi Jill Jacobs of Rabbis for Human Rights  rhrna.org   and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service, /ajws.org who challenge us to think about our responsibility to love our neighbor and do righteousness.  They teach us that Mitzvah Day is not enough, calling on Jews to do tzedakah and tikkun olam in a meaningful and impactful way.  They remind us to focus not only on our own experiences of community service but on what we are actually accomplishing for the people we are trying to serve.

At a recent meeting of Jewish educators, I heard an old axiom about the roles of men and women:  “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck; she points the head where she wants it to go.” The Jewish women leaders I see around me demonstrate that women are no longer relegated to being the neck, to peeking through the curtain of the mechitza, to looking down from the balcony, to scrawling notes in the margins of the prayerbook.   Women have carved out their place of leadership in American Judaism and are shepherding it into the future.   

How Can You Hire This Man?

A while back I was interviewing a candidate for a job opening at work.  She was the third interview in that day and I was running late so I pulled up her resume and joined the conversation already in progress.  I had highlighted two points on the document that I was excited to see how well she presented herself.  When it was my turn to ask a question I referenced one of my highlighted points.  She looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.  So I hit my second point and the same results.  I assumed I had the wrong candidate and apologized for the mistake and ask her name again.  It matched the name I was looking at.  Confused, I asked about the points I was hoping to learn about when she said, “You see my friend made my resume, he must have gotten that wrong.”  And that was when I checked out of the interview and moved on.

I was reminded of that story earlier this week when the GOP’s likely VP candidate, Paul Ryan, this fall was talking about the 2009 stimulus package that President Obama and the Democrats used to turn around the collapsing economy.  You see the intent of the stimulus was to save of create jobs.  On more than one occasion Ryan was asked about stimulus and whether he could be counted among the hypocrite GOP members who screamed on TV about how the stimulus was socialism that wouldn’t work.  He clearly said he never asked for stimulus money and that it would destroy the economy.  However that proved not true.  He did in fact asked for it at least 4 letters in which he said that he was hoping to create or save thousands of jobs.  So a lying hypocrite proved and he of course did what any good upstanding person would do, blamed his staff.  The problem, like the woman in the interview with me was that his name, like hers, was right there on the paper.  They owned it and the fact that Ryan, like the woman’s resume, lied means they should be treated the same, Ryan’s interview for his newly sought job should be over. 

Now it is unlikely that I would ever vote for a member of the modern Republican party for their strange obsession on social issues, but how can anyone help this man become the number 2 most powerful man in the world, when he so easily lied about something so easily checked.  He padded the resume and if you hire him then you simply are rewarding deceit.  And that would be stupid. 

Diversity is a difficult thing to navigate...but we try.

America is a great country and we have moved forward a great deal in embracing our diversity.  But we do have a long way to go but let's not focus on the negative.  This is my response to something I read that did.

We, as a culture, have a long way to go, but we are better than many places in the world when it comes to our multicultural nature. We were created as a multicultural country with the sense that what being American meant would change with each group that came to add to the mix. The Melting Pot was not a theory that we would all become the same white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cookie cutter, but some tried to force that and still do. Instead of embracing the other we fear or ignore it. But as a country we evolve. The Stonewall riots were in 1969 and today we have gay marriage in places like Iowa. Selma was in 1965 and today we have a Black President. Yes there is hate in our country but yes there is a growing trend to undo the hate as we learn about others.

The bottom line is we must see those who are different from us as being part of the grand tapestry of what it means to be American. The killer at the Sikh Temple had a history of White Power movement involvement. I don't know his mind, but I can guess that he was striking out against what he saw as an attack on what he thought was his America. That is ignorance turned violent. And that ignorance is what we must combat. Tolerance is not the solution. I was tolerant of the 100 degree weather this summer but if I had a magic wand I would make it go away. Understanding should be the solution.

We often focus on the examples of hate.  Violence and vandalism at mosques, synagogues, and even churches. Radio screamers saying things that 20 years ago were barely whispered in polite company. With the ubiquity of the internet rhetoric is higher than it ever was and people are proud of their bigotry. But I look elsewhere as well. I look to a stormy night this week where Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Baha’i and others all gathered in support and memory of the victims of Sikh tragedy. I look at efforts like the Interfaith Hunger Initiative to feed the hungry of Marion County and Western Kenya through an effort led by a variety of clergy and lay people from various houses of worship. I saw a diversity of football fans and those who love the city welcome the country to our city in January for the premier sporting event of the year. We are stronger together but our diversity is not without complications. America is a human endeavor with human failings. However to focus on the failings is to focus on the worst of us. Let us also acknowledge that we are moving forward, sometimes it looks like it is glacial but in my lifetime I have seen a black man with an Arabic name get elected President beating one of the most powerful political machines (one I supported) in the primary and a war hero in the general election. We have a long way to go, but we have come a long way. Clichés are good for bumper stickers. I am betting most of America is sick as I am of those damn things.

We All Must Weep

This week a community wept.  A community so misunderstood and unknown that even in the well wishers I have seen online have referred to them as Hindus.   Of course there is evidence that this attacker may have been thinking he was attacking Muslims.  For many after 9-11 there was no interest in understanding anyone who they thought could possibly be linked to the terrorists.  Sikhs were just seen as another form of Islam and in that ignorance the first person killed in the attempt at some kind of revenge was a Sikh.  Here we are in an information overload era and we still know so little about our neighbors.  But just to be clear even if the people killed were Muslims there is never a place for revenge on a group for the sake of few members of it.  But when September 11^th took place there was fear, anger and ignorance which too often led to hate and violence. 

However one of the byproducts of 9-11 was that Americans woke up to the fact that living among us are a large and growing population of American Muslims.  Practically in every community Muslims have a presence.  But before the horror, now more than 10 years ago, most Americans knew little of their faith, traditions and diversity.    However at the same time since then a large and vocal minority have smeared all Islam with lies and distortion of the sacred texts and used intimidation and violence and in some cases the power of government to attack Muslims.  So the current battle in our cultural landscape is between those who have discovered an understanding of Islam and can separate the terrorists who abuse Islamic law for their own gains and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who practice the faith in peace. 

But, how much more ignorance can our country endure?  The death of those in Wisconsin can never be seen as anything but a tragedy.  I will not add to the pain by saying something good can come out of it.  But like 9-11, we all have an opportunity to stretch ourselves.  To better understand the wonderful tapestry of our national community and to seek out information and understanding of others.  You can do it by simply reading about other people, this is not a great way, but it is the easiest.  A step further could be attending a cultural community event like the several offered by Spirit and Place Festival which demands interfaith cooperation.   Join an interfaith group working on a community cause you feel is important, like fighting hunger through work with the Interfaith Hunger Initiative or Global Interfaith Partnership.  Or you may simply ask your co-worker, your neighbor or the guy you but your coffee from everyday that you pretend to have a friendship with, about their weekend.  You will be surprised what you find out.  It isn’t hard.  People do it every day.  But don’t do it like an explorer seeking out the exotic.  The thoughts, language and practices of a people may seem unusual, but remain mainstream religions are not immune to appearing odd.  For example there is a religious tradition where a large tree is cut down, brought into the home and decorated like the gaming floor of a casino.  Another invites friends and family over 8 days after a baby boy is born to witness the snipping off of the foreskin and then all have egg salad.  When you see your traditions apart from context they too seem weird.  I also caution you to not let that one individual be a representative of all of that particular faith.  Remember for every faith tradition there is a wide variety of practice and belief.  Learning about a person and his traditions is not the end of the journey but a beginning.  But each drop of knowledge you can consume will you’re your bucket of understanding. 

We are a great country.  We have overcome slavery, huge waves of immigration, discrimination against Germans, Catholics, Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, and Japanese and on and on.  We fear the unknown but America has always faced its fear directly and struck a blow against it.  We may always have to wage the fight, but this kind of fight is sacred.   It will be good for America, it will be good for your city, your neighborhood, your home.  And it will be good for your heart.

May the memory of those killed at the hands of hate be blessing for their families and may they find rest in the eternal and may their families find comfort from their community and their relationship with God.