the good people of iowa

the good people of iowa

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I’ll admit it. I’m a sentimentalist. I’ve been known to get teary-eyed at the end of a good movie … or sometimes even in the middle!

On the other hand, I’m no fan of reality television in any form, and I’m no fan of contrived and very public demonstrations of charity. (As Jesus put it: When you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them …)

So when I sat down the other night with my wife to watch Three Wishes with Amy Grant, I did so with some pretty low expectations and a healthy dose of skepticism. But I liked the show … and there were a few tears.

The format of the show is this: Amy and her crew descend on a town, set up a tent, and invite the townspeople to come and share their wishes. The hour-long show documents the efforts of Amy and company to grant three of these wishes. In this particular show, they rebuilt a dairy barn for a young couple who had lost their barn to a fire; they arranged to have the college loan debt of a young Iowa State graduate cancelled; and they staged a graduation ceremony for a young woman who had been severely disabled in an automobile accident just days before her original high school graduation.

I liked it … not because I was so impressed with the great generosity of Amy and her friends, and not so much because I shared the joy of these three people, these three families, who had the good fortune to get what they wanted. What stayed with me, what impressed me, was the good people of Lemars, Iowa, the town featured in this week’s episode. I was impressed by the deep loyalty and commitment to family, the courage of a young woman who had no family, the sincere affection and readiness to help of folks — young and old alike — for a neighbor in need. I was reminded of what has kept me here in Iowa for eleven years — the people.

The people of Iowa, like people anywhere, are by no means perfect. They have, as people everywhere do, their own particular, even glaring, flaws. But, on the whole, Iowa people do care deeply about family. They come through for each other in crunch time. And they aren’t shy about expressing affection.

Why? Because they have remained close to the land? Because of the necessary interdependence of an agricultural economy? Because of deeply ingrained ethnic and cultural traditions? Maybe for all these reasons. But I would like to think that at the root of the character of many a good Iowan is a genuine and most practical faith in God. It’s there and it shows …

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transforming memory

transforming memory

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We are a product of our memories …

I heard someone make that comment a few days ago. It’s true. We do not encounter the present moment with a “clean slate,” but with the blessing and the burden of our memories. Our memories shape the ways we interpret and react to the situations we encounter. And our memories direct our steps. We try to create or find situations that will duplicate our good memories and we try to avoid situations that may duplicate our bad memories.

When we accumulate enough of one or the other, they become solidified, as it were, into a mindset, an outlook, a way of being. Enough good memories encourage us to welcome the future with open arms, expecting more. But enough bad memories make us fear the future and despise the present.

So how do you change a mindset? Are we prisoners of our memories — good or bad?

Memories cannot be altered, but the way they are put together may be. A mindset is not the product of the memories themselves, but of the way we interpret them, the way we retell the stories. That is the key — storytelling. The story is the means of making sense of the memories, of understanding and assimilating their meanings. But we can learn a new story! We can retell our old stories in new ways!

That is what forgiveness is about … not changing the past, but changing the way we feel about it, changing the way we think about it, changing the way we tell its story. I once was lost, but now I’m found! Faith is about learning to see ourselves through the eyes of Jesus, of learning to see ourselves as Jesus sees us, of learning to love ourselves as Jesus loves us.

We cannot change our memories, but they may become good memories as we begin to comprehend the “big picture” of our lives and see the hand of God at work from beginning to end. It’s a good story … with a most happy ending!

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a test of national character

a test of national character

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Our initial response to the victims of hurricane Katrina was a test of our national character, a test we largely failed. Since then, government agencies and especially non-governmental agencies and groups and single individuals have distinguished themselves by acts of genuine compassion and timely help to dislocated families. But there is much, much yet to do.

Our long term commitment to the rebuilding of the ravaged Gulf coast and to the restoration of livable communities in that same region will also test our national character. Katrina exposed the nightmares within the American dream. Katrina revealed the huge disparities that exist among us with regard to wealth and opportunity and safety and access to health care. What we saw we could not deny … but we are capable of forgetting what we saw.

In a Washington Post column released today E. J. Dionne writes:

It has long been said that Americans have short attention spans, but this is ridiculous: Our bold, urgent, far-reaching, post-Katrina war on poverty lasted maybe a month.

Credit for our ability to reach rapid closure on the poverty issue goes first to a group of congressional conservatives who seized the post-Katrina initiative before advocates of poverty reduction could get their plans off the ground.

As soon as President Bush announced his first spending package for reconstructing New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the Republican Study Committee and other conservatives switched the subject from poverty reduction to how Katrina reconstruction plans might increase the deficit that their own tax-cutting policies helped create.

Unwilling to freeze any of the tax cuts, these conservatives proposed cutting other spending to offset Katrina costs. The headlines focused on the seemingly easy calls on pork-barrel spending. But some of their biggest cuts were in health care programs, including Medicaid, and other spending for the poor …

I was naive enough to hope that after Katrina the left and the right might have useful things to say to each other about how to help the poorest among us. I guess we’ve moved on. You can lay a lot of the blame for this indifference on conservatives. But it will be a default on the part of liberals if the poor disappear again from public view without a fight.

(Read the entire column)

I worry that the focus will be on rebuilding cities instead of on rebuilding lives, that we will make this an opportunity to fashion a new New Orleans, a new Gulf coast, and forget about the problems and the people of the old one.

We cannot forget what we saw. We cannot just “move on” and fail to deal with the social and moral and political liabilities that so magnified Katrina’s capacity to cause human suffering. We must not fail this test of our national character.

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it’s about who we are

it’s about who we are

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Last Wednesday evening, the United States Senate overwhelming passed an amendment sponsored by John McCain to be attached to a defense spending bill. The amendment specifies that: “No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.” It further mandates that: “No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The Bush administration has indicated that it would likely veto the bill since the amendment is “unnecessary and duplicative” and “would limit the president’s ability as commander-in-chief to effectively carry out the war on terrorism.” In other words, extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions, and we cannot preemptively “bind the hands” of the United States military if we hope to win the war on terrorism.

In fact, the opposite is true. When we “unloose the hands” of our military, we lose the war on terrorism, because we will ourselves have become no different than our enemies. As Senator McCain said about his amendment: “But this isn’t about who they are. This is about who we are.”

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the malice that lies hidden within us …

the malice that lies hidden within us …

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From The Christian Century magazine:

THE MIND OF THE BEHOLDER: Racist intent is often hard to prove, but what else explains why two similar photos distributed by the Associated Press (August 30) received very different captions? One photo shows a black male wading through chest-deep floodwater in New Orleans; the caption says he has just finished “looting a grocery store.” A similar photo of a white man and woman has a caption that says they were wading in water after “finding” food at a grocery store.

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words with(out) meaning

words with(out) meaning

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So much of language is just “fill” … words to fill empty space, words to comply with the rules and expectations of social interaction, words to avoid an awkward silence, words to avoid a more threatening eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul contact. We have to use so many words just to get through a day, words not well thought out, revealing nothing particularly profound, revealing nothing much of what is “really real” about ourselves.

And yet, even these “throwaway” words carry meaning. Even these “lightweight” words make a real and valued and valuable connection to another human being. The words we may “toss off” may well be received as a true gift and a blessing.

The same is true of the language of prayer. So much of my praying to God may be “going through the motions,” words to comply with the rules and expectations of a viable faith, praying so as to be able to say I have prayed. Not well thought out, not particularly focussed, not fully engaged.

And yet … To have prayed, however we have prayed, is to have made a real connection to the living God, a connection I dare say that brings delight to God and untold blessing to us.

So pray! Don’t wait for the right time or the right words or the right mood. Just talk to God. And when you do, those startling moments of profound self-revelation and unexpected intimacy that happen from time to time in your human conversations will happen too in your conversation with God.

So much of language is “fill” …… but not all of it!

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genuine faith

genuine faith

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Genuine faith can be such an elusive thing …

So much of what we believe derives from childhood experiences, from our parents’ faith or lack of it. We “inherit” our faith just as we inherit so much of what we think and feel and believe. Or we learn when we are young to despise or distrust the protestations of faith that seem so disingenuous. We want to be like mom or like dad, or we want to be anything but like mom or like dad.

Faith can be a hedge against fear or doubt, a way to avoid staring into the emptiness … of a vast and incomprehensible universe, or of a dark and incomprehensible soul. Faith can be a security blanket, a means of cobbling a sense of order onto the chaos of our lives. Faith can be a tool of denial, a means of avoiding questions and bypassing uncertainty.

Faith can be a wall, a wall to stand between us and our shame, a wall to stand between us and those parts of ourselves that baffle us and frighten us and resist our control.

Faith can derive from so many different roots and thrive for so many different reasons. Which makes it all the more amazing, truly amazing, that genuine faith does exist among us! Faith that is unselfish, that is humble, that seeks above all else simply to honor God and follow where God leads. Faith that knows itself, that knows its weaknesses and fragility and acknowledges them. Faith that is teachable and agile and always enlarging. Faith that does not have to have all the answers because the presence of God is answer enough. Faith that does not have to maintain control, because it knows enough to know that it can’t. Faith that is gentle. faith that listens … to God and to other human beings. Faith that is full of joy, not because all is well or all is in order, but simply because God is. Simply because God is …

Genuine faith is such an elusive thing. But it does exist … and it is a beautiful thing indeed!

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just enough

just enough

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Is it sinful to spend money on yourself? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to spend money only on yourself? Yes, I do think so …

Is it sinful to want more than you have? I don’t think so …
Is it sinful to be ungrateful for what you do have? Yes, I do think so …

The gospel is about grace, about freedom, about freely enjoying the blessings of this world and sharing freely them, about living day to day without anxiety and with generosity. Things, money, wealth may come and go; let them! We cannot serve both God and wealth. We make an idol of wealth both by having to have it and by having not to have it! If we are preoccupied with accumulating wealth or preoccupied with guilt about having “too much,” in either case, we are preoccupied with things and not occupied with serving God.

Paul knew the secret, the secret of always having “just enough.” The secret is Christ. Having Christ is enough.

    I know what it is to be in need and what it is to have more than enough. I have learned this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.
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