Black History Month: Less About, More Through

Black History Month: Less About, More Through

By David Ketchum, February 26, 2022

Watch the Video HERE 

   I don’t remember the exact words he used, but something I learned from my father was the link between history and current events. If you want to understand the world, to be able to read current events with insight, take the time to understand the history. This sounds so obvious, but it is a necessary reminder in a society that has struggled to learn how to remember and tell its history in a meaningful, truthful, and transformative way. No where is this more obvious in the US experience then in its observance of Black History Month.

“History is Boring”

Boston University welcomes students visiting their website who are interested in history with a page dedicated to dispelling myths of studying history. The first myth, and probably the one I encounter the most in conversations, is that “History is boring.” 

“Maybe you had awkward experiences in high school. You assume history is going to be all names and dates and ‘one damned thing after another,’ as the saying goes. Maybe, like Virginia Woolf, you’ve concluded that history is too much about old men and their wars or that it is ‘more or less bunk,’ as Henry Ford proclaimed. (Then again, Ford also called physical exercise bunk, so he might not be the best authority.)” (https://www.bu.edu/history/why-history/ )

I can certainly understand the aversion. My experience of history in public schools was largely negative, with a few bright points that had more to do with the idiosyncrasies of our teachers than any fascination with the content. And the content itself was often presented in a way that made it difficult to be interested, with a focus more on memorizing dates than understanding how the story of humanity had unfolded. Too often, the books were incomplete; they were missing key voices and perspectives, and even justified or promoted injustice, violence, and oppression. Usually, there wasn’t anyone in those stories that I could recognize, except for the people at the bottom who existed mainly to get crushed. When it came to White supremacy, the content was basically nonexistent. And probably the only thing more invisible than the existence and cruelty of White supremacy was the existence of people who were not White and their contributions to history and society. 

“Textbooks Were Like Syringes”

This trend is well-documented in books like James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me and in teaching resources like the Zinn Education Project. But we are continuing to get a fuller picture of just how wrong our history textbooks have been. Donald Yacovone is an historian who co-authored The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. back in 2013. A few years ago, he was researching another project when he came across a collection of about 3,000 US history textbooks. Encountering those books led him to a different project, a book that is scheduled for publication in September 2022 and titled Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History. 

In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Yacovone noted the trends in how these textbooks talked about White Supremacy, slavery, racism, and civil rights. To begin, early texts barely dealt with the institution of slavery, did not typically mention African Americans, and spoke about Black people in “extremely derogatory” ways, which Yacovone found shocking for a textbook. This trend showed that the writers of these textbooks “defined ‘American’ as white and only as white. Anything that was less than an Anglo Saxon was not a true American.” (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/harvard-historian-examines-how-textbooks-taught-white-supremacy/ )

Before the Civil War, textbooks followed a strict format that supported a political and Euro-centric narrative: exploration, colonization, revolution, creation of the republic, “and then every succeeding presidential administration.” The Reconstruction period saw some divergence from that strict format with its exclusion on non-White people in history, but that “dramatic change” was short-lived. As Yacovone put it, “the ‘Lost Cause’ mythology takes over academia and white supremacy reappears with full force.” By this, he means that, from the 1920s through the 1940s, textbooks are characterized by “positive assessments of slavery” that “taught that the African American’s natural environment was the institution of slavery, where they were cared for from cradle to grave.” The “legacy of African American writing about freedom” was not recognized by “the white power structure”. Instead, slave narratives were deemed propaganda, African history before slavery was erased, and the work of Black scholars, such as W.E.B. DuBois, was ignored. This remained common until at least the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement forced “a gradual reintroduction of the African American element in history textbooks.” (ibid)

Yacovone used a powerful analogy: “White supremacy is a toxin. The older history textbooks were like syringes that injected the toxin of white supremacy into the mind of many generations of Americans.” (ibid) And while there has been improvement, it is also obvious that these issues remain unresolved and contentious today. In 2020, the New York Times ran an article comparing social studies textbooks published in or after 2016. Each textbook had special editions prepared for California and Texas, the two states with the greatest influences on textbook content. This meant that the chosen texts were from the same publishers and had the same authors, but existed in two different versions – “customized to satisfy policymakers with different priorities.” There hundreds of differences, from subtle to obvious. And as you might expect, several of these differences were related to racial justice. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html )

        For example, in California, the sections describing resistance to Reconstruction after the Civil War focused on racism of people who “did not want African-Americans to have more rights,” backed up with primary sources. In Texas, that racist motivation is acknowledged but smoothed over with the additional justification that reforms are expensive and would result in higher taxes. And while both states had content about the Harlem Renaissance, Texas students were also taught that critics “dismissed the quality of literature produced.” In California, discussion of the largely White flight to suburbia acknowledged “a desire to get away from more culturally diverse neighborhoods.” In Texas, students learned that “Some people wished to escape the crime and congestion of the city.” And in a discussion on immigration, California students read “an excerpt from a novel about a Dominican-American family,” while Texas texts replaced that passage with “the voice of a Border Patrol agent.” The latter included a stern (and racist) warning: “if you open the border wide up, you’re going to invite political and social upheaval.” Other marginalized communities are treated in similar ways, including issues related to Indigenous rights; immigration; gender and sexuality; and class and wealth inequality. (ibid)

Importantly, even the Texas editions are improvements over past textbooks. It may be hard to believe that, but this is what happens when textbooks even in the recent past include such popular myths as “some slave owners treated enslaved people kindly and that African-Americans were better off enslaved than free.” (ibid) So let’s be clear: just because we have taken some steps in the right direction, that does not mean the journey is complete. We still have a lot of work to do. 

“The Heart of Historical Study”

Returning to Boston University’s invitation to study history, their web page points out that -

“the heart of historical study is a richly vicarious experience, teaching you to move beyond yourself and envision other worlds, to explore the interplay between material circumstances and human character. History is both a science and an art, combining the careful analysis of evidence with compelling storytelling. / Historical knowledge is powerful currency for the 21st century. History increases cultural literacy and sensitivity. You will learn to consider multiple points of view and changing global contexts. And you will get more jokes. It also offers a unique education in the curation of content, teaching you how to collect, evaluate, and arrange a variety of sources into persuasive arguments and narratives. By interpreting the past you will better understand yourself. And those who know their history help to shape how people see themselves in the present and what they hope for the future.” (https://www.bu.edu/history/why-history/)

        This is the invitation of studying history, especially history at the margins. The “curation of content” is the opportunity to center voices and points of view often excluded from privileged perspectives. If we are not listening at the margins, we are ignorant at the very least. Our understanding will be incomplete, and our vision of the future – and who is included in that future – is also incomplete. But it is also very likely that our understanding will also be wrong. In this instance, Black History Month is necessary both because Black history has been excluded from our social awareness (our understanding is incomplete) and because the history we have been taught is inaccurate (our understanding is wrong).     

  

   In preparing these reflections, I came across an article by Yaa Gyasi, “White people, black authors are not your medicine” from March 2021. She put into words this wondrous capacity for reading “to challenge, to deepen, [and] to change” us, which I experience in both literature and history. She shared: 

“I read Morrison’s The Bluest Eye for the first time when I was a teenager, and it was so crystalline, so beautifully and perfectly formed that it filled me with something close to terror. I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t fathom how a novel could pierce right through the heart of me and find the inarticulable wound. I learned absolutely nothing, but some minor adjustment was made within me, some imperceptible shift that occurs only when I encounter wonder and awe, the best art.” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/20/white-people-black-authors-are-not-your-medicine )

        This is the power of words to shape and change us. But it is in stark contrast to what often happens. Reflecting on her experience of being a bestselling novelist, she wrote about the contrast between how White male authors have been treated compared to her and her colleagues’ experiences as neither White nor male. Amid this discussion, she points out the failure of readers to allow texts “to challenge, to deepen, [and] to change” us:  

“When an interviewer asks me what it’s like to see Homegoing on the bestseller list again, I say something short and vacuous like ‘it’s bittersweet’, because the idea of elaborating exhausts and offends me. What I should say is: why are we back here? Why am I being asked questions that James Baldwin answered in the 1960s, that Toni Morrison answered in the 80s?” (ibid)

She answers that, at least in part, it is because those who need to do the work of being challenged and changed, are not doing that work. This is the habit of us well-intentioned White folx to reduce “buying books by black authors” to “a theoretical, grievously belated and utterly impoverished response to centuries of physical and emotional harm.” If we treat history and literature written by writers of color as “a kind of medicine” that we “have to swallow in order to improve [our] condition,” we do so in a way that communicates that: 

“they don’t really want it, they don’t really enjoy it, and if they’re being totally honest, they don’t actually even take the medicine half the time. They just buy it and leave it on the shelf. What pleasure, what deepening, could there be in ‘reading’ like that?” (ibid) 

I am not trying to discourage anyone from the joy of buying books you don’t currently have time to read. But some honesty is also important on this point: buying books is no substitute for doing the work, and there are many more effective ways of paying reparations than buying books. 

Through Instead of About

LaGarrett J. King helpfully describes the gap between the intentions and the impact of studying Black history, especially for us White folx: we are teaching (or learning) “about Black history instead of through Black history.” Teaching about Black history can be done without disrupting the current order of things, a perspective King calls “how white people imagine Black histories.” Teaching through Black history is a radical shift in power and perspective, adopting a “Black historical consciousness”. This requires “listening, writing, and teaching narratives from the actual historical experiences and voices of Black people.”  (https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-black-history-is-about-more-than-oppression/2021/01  ) This fundamental shift in how we read and listen is essential. It is a conscious practice that undermines the social conditioning we have received that automatically elevates White voices, actions, perspectives, and judgments over all others. Similarly, and as King notes, it invites us to “recognize Black people’s full humanity and emphasize pedagogical practices that reimagine the legitimacy, selection, and interpretation of historical sources.” (ibid)

        Finally, please note that the failure we are addressing is not with Black historians, writers, or educators, who have been doing this work for generations. The neglect is not with them. This failure rests within our broader culture, which has inherited and promoted the long tradition of centering Whiteness in social studies, often so blatantly that we cannot accurately call it anything but White Supremacy. As part of undermining and transforming that cruel tradition, King recommends six principles for studying Black history, and I highly recommend reading his article and exploring these important ideas and commitments. 

        Some of the principles have become increasingly familiar, such as bringing attention to the systemic aspects of “power, oppression, and racism”, and the importance of how multiple, intersecting identities shape the lived experience of Black people. Others have often received less attention, such as the importance of comparative studies “of Black histories and cultures across Africa and the African Diaspora worldwide.” But one seems especially important in reframing how we encounter, study, and are transformed by Black history: “Focus on Black joy through liberation and radical projects that defied oppressive structures throughout history.” (ibid)

        As we explored several weeks ago, we are more than our trauma, and Black people are more than the experience of racism. An approach that too narrowly focuses on oppression and trauma dehumanizes marginalized communities. Black joy is also Black history. Black art and culture are part of resistance and liberation. So study Black history that includes the whole lives of Black people, families, communities, and movements. Read Black literature that opens up different worlds of perspectives. We need to be challenged and transformed by the answers James Baldwin gave in the ‘60s and Toni Morrison gave in the 80s, so we’ll also be able to better hear the voices of people speaking today. 

        The people in control of textbooks may have made history boring, but they knew that controlling the story was connected with controlling the people. So remember: studying history and literature can also be a form of resistance, if we do so in a way that challenges and changes us. And there’s nothing boring about working together to create communities where justice and love can flourish in the hearts and lives of every human being.  

Reflections on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Reflections on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

David Ketchum, Feburary 26, 2022

Watch the video HERE

Since Thursday, I’ve kept a tab open in a web browser for updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The main feeling I had, and still have, is grief accompanied by powerlessness. Perhaps you have felt it, too. 

This newest invasion already has and is certainly going to result in even more terrible devastation. As Human Rights Watch summarized, the current invasion has been simmering, sometimes boiling over, since 2014: 

“The armed conflict between government forces and Russia-backed armed groups has taken a heavy toll on civilians in eastern Ukraine. The conflict, ongoing for almost eight years, has killed over 16,000 people, including both combatants and civilians, and has displaced close to 1.5 million. The fighting has also led to widespread damage and destruction of civilian infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, and schools on both sides of the 427-kilometer line of contact … .” (https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/23/russia-ukraine-international-law-occupation-armed-conflict-and-human-rights# )

We are witnesses of these things, of a situation going from bad to worse, and the terrible price that will be paid in life, wellbeing, and happiness. Yet we do not yet know the full price that will be paid; we grieve for this, too. 

We often speak from the viewpoint of the large scale of things: the history behind the Russia-Ukraine conflict; the political aspects, such as the role of NATO; the religious aspects, such as the tension between branches of the Orthodox Churches; the global trends, such as the rise of authoritarianism and the role of nationalism in Russia’s justifications. 

         But in these first days of the invasion, my grief leads me back to the humanity that is lost in war, both those who die and those who live to bear the scars. When I close my eyes, I see the masses huddled in subway stations seeking protection from falling bombs, and I remember the disabled and people with limited mobility who are unable to seek safety in that way. I read the proclamation barring all males aged 18-60 from leaving the borders of Ukraine as part of the general mobilization of the military. I see a human being kneeling beside the body of another human being killed by an air strike. I feel pride and fear for the protestors arrested in Russia. I think about the stream of refugees already fleeing the violence, numbering at least 120,000 so far. I hear the pleas of organizations like UNICEF to support the needs of vulnerable children and families, including “including 510,000 children — living in the Donbas region.” Amnesty International is already documenting indiscriminate violence against civilian populations and infrastructure, such as hospitals. And the invasion of Ukraine has also reminded us of the risks of living in an age of nuclear weapons. 

The injuries of past wars are still alive, largely untended and still tender, in our histories, cultures, and generations. These unhealed wounds are part of why it is so painful to observe the new wounds being made in Ukraine. As a pastor, I have worked with veterans who were still struggling with the cost of war decades after they were discharged. As a peace worker in Cambodia, I saw the trauma of war still living in people’s hearts, influencing cultures, and scarring the land itself, decades after the official end of war. The wounds of war are deep and last a long time, unless and until we decide, as a society, to do the work to heal them. In the current situation, we have both the immediate responsibility to help bring about an end of the war in Ukraine as swiftly as possible, and a long-term responsibility to help bring about healing and rebuilding for all who have been impacted.  

Part of this work is within us – in our hearts and in our communities. Those feelings of grief and powerlessness too often pass without any healing or resolution. We move from one crisis to the next, without changing either ourselves or the world. I hold close to my own heart the story of Maha Ghosananda, who tirelessly worked for peace in Cambodia. He was practicing at a temple in Thailand, and then became trapped there, when the violence broke out and the Khmer Rouge came into power. He learned that all of his family had been murdered. He learned of the many monastics who were killed. He struggled with what to do. To return to Cambodia at that moment would not accomplish anything, but he was also overwhelmed by his grief. It seemed all he had left was his tears. But his teacher, Dhammadaro, told him: “Be mindful. Prepare for the day when you can truly be useful to your country.” This became Maha Ghosananda’s practice, so that when it became possible for him to return to Cambodia, he would be ready to return. He taught: “The present is the mother of the future. Take care of the mother. Then the mother will take care of the children.” Maha Ghosananda did return to Cambodia, and the fruit of his efforts are still remembered and live on, especially in the renewed commitments of Socially Engaged Buddhists. 

Our grief is an important response to war. Our hearts should be tender. And we should also respond, even in our powerlessness. If you are inclined, contact government officials and support aid groups. Please act in whatever ways you can. But please also remember the lesson Dhammadaro taught Maha Ghosananda. What can you begin learning now, practicing now, that could help heal the last war or prevent the next war? How can you prepare now, so that when the opportunity to act reaches you, you are ready? Even in our powerlessness and grief, there is a way to move forward. “The present is the mother of the future. Take care of the mother. Then the mother will take care of the children.” 

Love Your Enemies

Love Your Enemies 

David Ketchum 

February 20, 2022

Watch the video HERE

    As a progressive community committed to peace and justice, we try to look honestly at what’s going on in the world, in our community, and in our hearts. We are oriented around ethics and praxis, asking: how does this change how we understand the world and ourselves, and how can we cultivate more kindness, compassion, and justice? This has never been easy, especially in a place like the Ozarks. Each of us must decide what we can do, and what we can’t do. Sometimes, we even come to different conclusions, but we do our best to keep listening, keep learning, and keep changing. It’s hard work, and so we also encourage each other to keep going. What I’ve felt inside of myself, and what I’ve heard from many others, is that this is increasingly difficult. The polarization in the United States, and in many other places, has combined with pandemic fatigue, and we are worn out. 

    The polarization is nothing new, and marginalized communities have especially been harmed by it. The history of the United States can’t be separated from the history of people in power dehumanizing entire populations, then using that hatred and bigotry to help tolerate or even justify exploitation and violence. You know the list: slavery; genocide and violent displacement of Indigenous peoples; exploitation of immigrants; Jim Crow, segregation, and mass incarceration; patriarchal violence and the gender gap; neglect and abuse of disabled and elderly; violence and discrimination against gender and sexuality minorities; class warfare and social disparities; and more.   

 But the last years have seen a deepening fracture even for a nation built on fractured lives and histories. Surveys by the Pew Research Center before the 2020 election showed that about 80% of voters, no matter their political affiliation, said that their differences “with the other side were about core American values” and about 90% “worried that a victory by the other would lead to ‘lasting harm’ to the United States.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/ ) Honestly, it’s hard to imagine feeling otherwise, especially when so much of the rhetoric aimed at marginalized groups is so exuberantly dehumanizing, and especially when hate crimes and bullying continue to rise. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are a significant number of people who hate us and consider us enemies. And it is important to acknowledge that we, too, can hate and dehumanize others. 

    The ethical questions that come to us are also nothing new: in such a situation, how can we be people who love – ourselves, each other, and even those who hate us? How do we respond to hatred and division? And having been deeply hurt by others, how do we love in a way that breaks those cycles of harm? This last question was the most pressing for me, especially as a young person growing up in a conservative Christian tradition. This saying by Jesus was especially confusing: 

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. … Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:27-31, NRSV)

These words were at once lovely and horrifying to me. It was easy enough to know who at least some of my enemies were, but what did it mean to love them? What did it mean to pray for someone who had abused me? What did that mean for me? Was this an indirect confirmation of what I had absorbed in my religious surroundings, that I had somehow deserved abuse? Was turning the cheek part of the punishment, something I deserved for being a genderqueer, bisexual kid? My teenage self struggled to make sense of it all - and decided against it. If that was what Jesus meant, I wouldn’t have any part of it. Don’t get me wrong; I was a true believer, and I coped largely by clinging to the emphasis on peace and justice in the messages of Jesus and the prophets. It was clear that speaking up against oppression was something that could and should be done, and I could follow their examples in whatever ways made sense in my life. 

    But the Sermon on the Mount still lingered, with that difficult word about loving my enemies. I wanted to love everyone. If for no other reason, I wanted to be able to love myself, and hatred made that difficult. And as a true believer, I wanted to be able to take Jesus’ words seriously in a way that made sense. I was around 20 years old, just beginning to understand all the work involved with healing my own personal trauma, let alone how to engage with the larger suffering of the wider world. This is what I was wrestling with in life when I first encountered the works of Walter Wink and learned a new way to understand unlearning hatred and even loving my enemies. 

    To begin, Wink’s voice was immediately relatable. “When I took a long look at all the violence and rage within me,” he said, “I found I had a tremendous amount of work to do. If we can’t deal with our own personal violence, how can we expect to deal with the violence of nations?” This was my own situation. I felt rage and despair in my own heart, both for my suffering and for the suffering of others. And I felt powerless, especially since my childhood religious tradition didn’t offer a clear way to heal. Wink also put that into words; he criticized popular understandings of “turning the cheek” as an invitation to endure mistreatment like a doormat, to be “cowardly and complicit in the face of injustice.” (https://www.lutheranpeace.org/articles/transcript-of-walter-winks-nonviolence-for-the-violent/ )

    This felt even more explicit in Matthew’s version, with the addition of: “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:41, NRSV) Growing up, “going the second mile” just meant to put my needs last and not hold it against someone who took advantage of me. Wink pointed out that this interpretation could even lead to “collaboration with the oppressor.” Later, this possibility was vividly described by a friend of mine who told me she had been taught this verse growing up as an encouragement to be kind to the overworked soldier who just needed a helping hand – with never a word that he represented both the violent, cruel occupation of Jesus’ homeland or the symbolic power of Roman imperial might. 

    Further, Wink put my own rejection of these interpretations into words that I could recognize: “Jesus’ teaching, viewed this way is impractical masochistic, and even suicidal. An invitation to bullies and spouse batterers to wipe up the floor with their supine Christian victims.” (ibid) For me, “turning the other cheek” was functionally inseparable from “looking the other way.” It was the powerful’s way of guilting us into silence and inaction. It protected their power by helping keep in check what Wink called the “natural reaction to being slapped, sued, or forced to carry a soldier’s pack,” which was “irritation, outrage, or violence. / The structure of violence is quite simple. Do unto others as they have done unto you.” (ibid) 

    This latter insight showed me where I had been caught. “The structure of violence is quite simple. Do unto others as they have done unto you.” I could feel the power of outrage and anger inside of me. It was a protective force, but it could also consume me. By itself, I would just repeat the harm. I would enter into that same cycle, and likely hurt others in the same way that I had been hurt. I could feel the trap: fight back, and become like those who had harmed me, or do nothing, and allow myself and others to get hurt again and again. Wink offered an alternative that opened up a way to stay grounded in goodwill without giving into the demands of oppressors. Although Wink’s work on this subject has now been around for at least three decades (I first encountered it in Engaging the Powers, published in 1992), I still meet enough people who are unfamiliar with these ideas that I think it is worthwhile to repeat them again today. (His books go into much greater detail on historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts to support these conclusions, which are not without controversy. I’m offering them here more as an introduction.)

In the case of turning the other cheek, the setup is that the first blow would be a backhanded strike, the back of the right hand striking the other person’s right cheek. The point was less to cause physical injury than to humiliate and degrade, “inserting a person back in the social role … as an inferior.” Wink suggested that this was a common method for those in a position of power – masters, husbands, parents, Roman occupiers – to assert their dominance over others – slaves, wives, children, and occupied Jews. In this way, the power structure could be reinforced through humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing the marginalized. “The whole point,” Wink taught, “was to force someone who was out of line to get back in line.” But when you turned the other cheek, a backhand was no longer possible: 

“The left cheek now offers a perfect target for a blow of the fist. But only equals fought with fists as we know from Jewish sources. … By turning the cheek then, the inferior party is saying ‘I’m not inferior to you. I’m a human being. I refuse to be humiliated any longer. I am your equal.’” (ibid)

  A similar dynamic is behind the second example, giving up your shirt. The setup here is a poor person has been taken to court to collect a debt. We know the person is poor because their only collateral is their outer garment. The Hebrew scriptures (in Deuteronomy 24) put a limit on this, requiring that the creditor had to return the cloak before evening so that the poor person could sleep in it and not risk exposure in the night. But Palestine in the first century was overflowing with economic injustice, supported and encouraged by Roman imperialism. With the system set against them, a poor person in debt had little hope – with “nothing left but the clothes on their backs to use the system against itself.” By offering their inner garment, effectively their underwear, the poor person turns the shame of this situation against the wealthy and powerful creditor: 

 “He has said in effect, ‘you want my robe? Here! Take everything! Now you’ve got all that I have except my body. Is that what you’ll take next?’ Imagine the debtor leaving court naked. His friends and neighbors aghast, inquire ‘what happened?’ He explains. They join his growing procession which now resembles a victory parade. / This is guerilla theater folks. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been [publicly] unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution.” (ibid)

The third example is going the extra mile. The military was often on the move across the empire, and Roman law allowed a soldier to impress a person to carry a load. This was no small requirement, as packs often weighed 60 to 85 pounds, plus weapons. Some higher-ranking soldiers had slaves or donkeys, but forced labor of subjugated people “was a constant feature in Palestine from Persian to late Roman times.” Wink reported that this compulsory service was so despised that, at times, a whole village might flee to avoid “being forced to carry soldier’s baggage.” However, it seemed that even the empire recognized the physical limits of human beings and limited carrying gear to only one mile. A soldier who compelled a person to carry baggage more than a mile could be subject to a centurion’s discipline, from paying a fine to enduring a flogging. So what would a soldier do if a person refused to give up the pack and went the second mile? Wink taught: 

“… from a situation of servile impressment, the oppressed have once more seized the initiative. They’ve taken back the power of choice. They have thrown the soldier off balance by depriving him of the predictability of his victim’s response. … Now he must make a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him. … Jesus does not encourage Jews to walk the second mile in order to build up merit in heaven or to be pious, or to kill the soldier with kindness. Rather he is helping an oppressed people to find a way to protest and neutralize [an] onerous practice despised throughout the empire.” (ibid)

    As a student of biblical studies, I am aware of the arguments over the legitimacy of Wink’s exegetical conclusions. Those discussions are interesting and even important. But as a student of my own heart, what was - and is – important to me was finding a pathway out of that trap: fight back, and become like those who had harmed me, or do nothing, and allow myself and others to get hurt again and again. Wink’s alternative approach, to both Jesus’ words and more generally to breaking the cycle of violence - made sense of, provided a vocabulary for, and pointed toward some practical skills to deal with what I was going through in my life and in the world. And this is the understanding I took with me into the broader world, as an activist, teacher, peace worker, and pastor. 

Wink also pointed out that these were just examples, not rules to be followed in a rigid way. In fact, they might only be effective once or twice, since oppressive systems have proved to be incredibly adaptable over time. The examples, then, are meant to spark our imaginations and give us confidence that we can respond to difficult situations in a way that exposes injustice, recovers our agency, asserts our humanity, and also provides the enemy with an opportunity to join us in transformation. This last point is how these creative acts of resistance relate to loving our enemy. Hating our enemy and responding violently dehumanizes the other, while passively accepting oppression dehumanizes ourselves. Creative resistance allows me to respond with goodwill, without demeaning either myself or the other. It provides a space for change to happen, breaking out of the patterns of hatred and violence. At least for me, unlearning hatred for my enemy became part of setting me free to love myself and my community. All the energy that hatred and despair burned through, I could receive back as a gift, and share it with others who had also been wounded and marginalized. As bell hooks wrote,  

“Without changing structures of domination, we leave in place the culture of lovelessness. / Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains.” (Salvation: Black People and Love)

    Over the years, I have found other words and other paths and tools to help me heal from trauma, resist oppression, and build community where solidarity, justice, and joy are the norms, rather than the exceptions. But in many ways, my journey started here, with Jesus and Walter Wink. This is where I learned that it was possible to love, even amid hate, and break the cycle of violence in my own heart, even if it was not broken anywhere else. That hope – and commitment – put me in touch with a long history of people forming just and compassionate communities in the face of hatred and oppression, and continues to carry me through life today. Whatever path we take to get here, I am convinced that this is the way forward, and I am glad to be here with you.  

A Wonderful Life Should Not Be Exceptional

A Wonderful Life Should Not Be Exceptional
 David Ketchum
 February 13, 2022

 Watch the Video HERE

A topic of conversation that comes up more and more in my circles is that of grief, especially complicated and collective grief. In particular, most of us have not had much of a break to recognize and grieve the loss we’ve experienced over the last several years. The litany is long. The pandemic brought us into contact with loss both intimate, with experiences unique to
each of us, and unfathomably global, with at least six million deaths (https://covid19.who.int/ ), a number that is already likely much greater (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8 ). We also need to take into account all the other losses we’ve experienced along the way, from a deterioration of democratic ideals; to the terrible strain on our education, health, and caregiving systems; to the shocking and deadly ignorance and disregard of public health; and more. 

Unfortunately, we did not enter the pandemic with nothing else to think about or do. It is sometimes difficult to remember that the first year of the pandemic was also the last year of the Trump administration. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has a timeline of that administration’s near constant efforts to aggressively “turn back the clock on our nation’s civil and human rights progress,” from the Muslim ban in January 2017 to the 1776 Commission report in January 2021. (https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/ ) I copied and put the list into a document with standard margins and 12 point font; it required 28 pages and more than 14,000 words. This graphic is what the timeline looks like if you shrink down the text small enough to fit onto one slide. 

It is a tragic visual reminder of what we, especially any of us belonging to marginalized communities, have endured.

All of that is a lot to process, and most of us have not had the opportunity to stop, reflect, and grieve. Meanwhile, the experiences of loss continue to pile up. This is especially true when you consider that all the pre-existing suffering didn’t courteously pause so that we could focus on surviving a pandemic. Even before the barrage of the last six years, we were already – and still are - working to resist oppression and transform our selves and communities. 

“It’s Hard to Be Yourself”

The result for many people is a sense of alienation, and our broader culture doesn’t provide a clear way of healing from that. Telling the truth about the world and how it impacts us is a practice, and not an easy one. As Lindo Bacon pointed out, “It’s hard to be yourself and feel belonging in a culture that is hostile to your existence.” (https://lindobacon.com/lindo-linda/ ) This is both biologically and psychologically true. We’ve known it experientially, but it’s always nice when we get scientific data to affirm it and further deepen our work. We know, for example, that marginalized communities are more likely to suffer from social exclusion and isolation, which in turn is linked to poor health and life outcomes (https://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJD_2014082708532413.pdf ). We know that social exclusion limits opportunities in employment, education, and civic participation. (https://gsdrc.org/document-library/social-exclusion-social-isolation-and-the-distribution-of-income/ ) 

 

   George Monbiot summarized some of the best documented impacts of social exclusion, and its resulting isolation and loneliness, on human health. Beyond the more commonly known associations, such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, and fear, he also noted that: 

“Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neoliberalism-creating-loneliness-wrenching-society-apart )

 

For a concrete example of how these health impacts are directly related to oppression, we can look back to 2012 study published in the  American Journal of Public Health titled “Discrimination and the Stress Response.” It detailed the impacts on Latina participants who anticipated racial discrimination or prejudice in an interaction. Those who braced themselves for encountering prejudice had a psychological and cardiovascular stress response. The authors explained: 

“If members of minority groups experience a stress response from the mere threat of discrimination, even in the absence of behavioral confirmation, over time, the repeated sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation can contribute to allostatic load. This load, in turn, has been shown to be a predictor of a number of mental and physical health outcomes, including increases in anxious and depressive symptoms, as well as exacerbated cardiovascular response and decreased immunological functioning, both of which have deleterious consequences for long-term health and functioning.” (https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300620 )

Put in layman’s terms, when a participant anticipated discrimination, they had a stress response. Previous studies of that stress response linked it with a number of long-term risks for poor health. Psychologically, the response was correlated with anxiety and depression. Biologically, it was correlated with heart problems and a weakened immune system. The implication is that even when a marginalized person doesn’t have a direct experience with discrimination or violence in a specific instance, just the awareness of that possibility and its likelihood takes a toll on the person’s wellbeing.

(An important practice related to this research is to believe marginalized people when they tell you that living in an oppressive society is harmful, even when they aren’t experiencing direct violence or discrimination. Our lives bear witness to this and research confirms it. Be patient if you get called out, too - even if you think you’ve been misunderstood. The pain of being misunderstood is not greater than the pain of anticipating discrimination or violence.)

These insights help us understand ourselves and also how we can most effectively work for change. It is obvious that directly experiencing oppression, marginalization, discrimination, and violence is harmful. But this research reminds us that even anticipating those experiences is also harmful. The stress of having to be constantly vigilant and alert undermines our wellbeing, both in our bodies and our minds. We talk about this frequently, and it is one of the main reasons people who belong to marginalized communities so often move away from places like the Ozarks. Living in a place like this, where marginalization is so often present, is exhausting and literally bad for our health. This is an important part of the meaning of Lindo Bacon’s words: “It’s hard to be yourself and feel belonging in a culture that is hostile to your existence.”

Unmet Needs & Public Health

Changing this is very difficult, not least because we are often pressured to focus on – and settle for - individual changes. But self-help is insufficient. Even when individuals among us succeed in breaking free of the pattern, the pattern still exists, ready to marginalize more people. To put this another way, exceptions exist, but we don’t want a wonderful life to be exceptional. We want the good things – medical care, education, employment, housing, food, the arts – available to everyone.

    Monbiot wisely puts this social exclusion and isolation into the context of oppressive systems, particularly noting the ideological impacts of neoliberal economics: “Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neoliberalism-creating-loneliness-wrenching-society-apart ) These same ideas are intertwined with and instrumental in sustaining and perpetuating other oppressive systems, too, such as racism.  (https://www.businessinsider.com/roosevelt-institute-director-how-neoliberalism-sustains-racist-systems-2020-7 ) This injustice and inaccessibility creates chronically unmet needs, especially in marginalized communities. 

    In a supportive community, meeting our needs is something that occurs almost without thought. We recognize when we have a need, know what options we have for meeting it, and choose the strategy that we prefer. This is where humans flourish, feeling grateful, safe, and surrounded by kindness and care. The social exclusion that accompanies marginalization and oppression breaks this healthy cycle, resulting in chronically unmet needs. We have to create all sorts of ways to creatively meet our needs in spite of the obstacles, or try to find ways to cope with the distress when we simply do not have the necessary resources. 

    Our physical needs and the injustice of poverty are the most obvious gaps, as so many people in our communities go without adequate housing, nutrition, and transportation. However, the study on “Discrimination and the Stress Response” highlights how other chronically unmet needs may be essentially hidden by our society’s systems and cultures. But just because they are hidden does not mean they don’t exist. They do exist and create conditions that make us more vulnerable to the impacts of stressful living conditions and crises. This also means that oppression, marginalization, and discrimination are public health issues; addressing them is essential to the long-term health of all of us, as individuals and as a society. (https://ph.ucla.edu/news/magazine/2015/autumnwinter/article/unhealthy-treatment ) To quote Lindo Bacon again, 

“This isn’t to say that we should give up tugging on our own bootstraps or reaching for that next ladder rung. Rather, I’m pointing out how much easier it is to achieve when you have support networks. Our success depends more on our ability to leverage support and change our environment than it does on changing ourselves.” (Radical Belonging)

“To be Themselves, be Loved, and Flourish”

My modest goal with this reflection is to bring these concepts back into – or more into - our awareness. We talk a lot about justice here and advocate for changing ourselves, policies, institutions, and cultures. We also reflect on how and why social change is so often difficult and slow. Our chronically unmet needs are one part of that circumstance. The difficult reality is that many (most?) of us have spent our lives in communities that made it more difficult for us to thrive and flourish as human beings. And it is very likely that we have picked up on those very habits, learning to mistreat ourselves, others, and the earth. We add to that the exhaustion that comes from suffering from, resisting, and transforming oppression, and the odds seem to be stacked against us. Being in community is hard work, especially if we are breaking destructive patterns that have lived around and even inside us for a long time. It is just really difficult to sustain movements for change when you can’t, to return to Bacon’s words, “be yourself” in a wider “culture that is hostile to your existence.”

    And yet we still carry inside of us this conviction that it is possible for us to live together in such a way that everyone can flourish, and the aspiration to make it so. Each of us can look at our lives and communities to find ways in which we can “leverage support and change our environment” so that everyone, especially marginalized folx, get more space to feel and be safe, get some relief from the constant stress, and grow in confidence that our needs matter and can be met. The exact changes will vary according to our circumstances, but the aspiration itself is something we can each develop. For example, Bacon did not stop by observing that it’s tough to “feel belonging in a culture that is hostile to your existence.” They also invited us to:

“Think of someone you love. I’m willing to bet that when you think about the people you cherish, it’s probably your dearest wish that they have access to every tool and opportunity possible to be themselves, be loved, and flourish in a welcoming world.”  (Radical Belonging)

This is a simple practice we can cultivate in order to train our minds to pay attention both to marginalized voices and needs and to opportunities to realign resources and opportunities that allow everyone “to be themselves, be loved, and flourish in a welcoming world.” The best way for the person you cherish to “have access to every tool and opportunity possible to be themselves” is to make sure everyone has that access. We can use this standard of human flourishing to measure how well we are practicing justice, equity, and goodwill as a community. 

    Shifts like this are part of creating communities and movements that aren’t as vulnerable to burnout, internal conflict, and similar issues. The world was already difficult, filled with oppression and injustice. But we have collectively faced some of our deepest fears, anger, uncertainty, and loss over the last six years. In the midst of that pain, many of us are teetering on the edge of giving up. Becoming sensitive to and understanding the very real pain that comes from exclusion, marginalization, and its resulting loneliness is an important step in making belonging possible again. Being increasingly sensitive to and aware of both how we are hurt and how we are complicit in hurting others helps us deepen that commitment to break harmful patterns. Healing takes time and effort. Trust takes time and effort. Belonging takes time and effort. We let go of that which harms us, even us we take up that which frees us to live, love, and enjoy deeply meaningful lives. 

I began by mentioning that complicated and collective grief has been a persistent topic of conversation in my circles recently. And I have felt my own fragility as I sit with people who are hurting. I wanted to share some stories about that, but I didn’t even know how to begin. But maybe a story gives me a place to end. 

    One night this week, I sat with a good friend. After a particularly difficult (and hopefully healing) conversation processing hopelessness, loneliness, and loss of meaning, we sang folks songs by Malvina Reynolds and Leslie Fish, playing hand drums and laughing as we remembered (and misremembered) the lyrics. Malvina’s song “God Bless the Grass” particularly moved me:

“God bless the grass that grows thru the crack.
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back.
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do,
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru,
And God bless the grass. …

“God bless the grass that grows through cement.
It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent.
But after a while it lifts up its head,
For the grass is living and the stone is dead,
And God bless the grass.”    (https://www.malvinareynolds.com/mr053.htm )

    By facing that grief together, we could transform an opportunity for isolation into an opportunity for connection. Moments like these are part of that process where, step by step, we learn to create communities where a wonderful life is not just for a few of us - where a wonderful life is not exceptional. Instead, we can create a world where everyone can “have access to every tool and opportunity possible to be themselves, be loved, and flourish”.  This is why we keep working together, honestly facing our losses, and moving forward, despite being bent by grief. We know that this is possible: we can create communities where each of us is lifted up and a wonderful life is accessible to everyone. Thank you for being part of a community committed to doing just that. 

War Is Inconceivable

War Is Inconceivable      Feb 6, 2022    Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

Horace (1^st century BCE), Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria Mori 

"It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland." 

 

1989 was a very seminal year. It began, for me, in January when my daughter was  born on the other side of the world in South Korea. The anticipation of her arrival inspired the completion of my doctoral dissertation and she arrived at the Memphis airport just in time for me to carry her in procession at my commencement at Vanderbilt. 

As Valerie was taking her first hesitant steps that fall, 1989 became a seminal year for most of the world as the Berlin Wall, that symbol of global division, tyranny, and threat of global war, was finally taken down. 

Those of you who grew up during the era of school drills, hiding under our desks to protect ourselves from the falling debris of a nearly inevitable nuclear war will understand why I have kept this piece of the Berlin Wall in my office these past 33 years. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the certain signal of the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. 

 

I remember writing sermons in those years about the much anticipated “peace dividend” that would result from the lowering of international tensions. Now, surely, we would be able to gut the bloated military budget and reallocate those resources to housing, education, health care, mass transit, and safer roads and bridges. I was young and naive but let me not get ahead of myself here. 

As you may recall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, was not all cotton candy and rainbows. As the eastern bloc nations began to seek independence, they were not leaving the Soviet Union empty handed. The Ukraine had the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Western nations were rightly concerned about the potential for those weapons to find their way into the wrong hands…. As if there are good and right hands to ever have a stockpile of nuclear weapons. . . but I digress.

In 1994, the Russian Federation, Great Britain, and the United States persuaded the new governments of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for promises from the west that if Russia ever tried to invade their sovereign territory, that we would come to their aid. This was called the Budapest Memorandum. If you can’t remember having ever heard of the Budapest Memorandum, don’t feel bad. Evidently no one in any major news source seems to remember it either because no one ever mentions it. 

 

Obviously, if the Ukraine had not agreed to give up their nuclear weapons, Crimea would still be a part of the Ukraine. But in 2014, Putin had his soldiers dressed in these green uniforms with no national identification and sent them into Crimea, while denying that they were Russian soldiers. I’m telling you the truth. You can’t make this stuff up. 

 

Putin tested the metal of the Budapest Memorandum and found that it was nothing but straw. 

Frankly, I’m surprised that he has waited this long to take another bite of the apple. With obvious preparations for invasion mounting up on the Russian side of the border there are some of us who still dare to talk about diplomacy. But, folks, diplomacy means that you are trying to understand one another, that you are listening and trying to find a rational solution that solves the problems on both sides of the equation.

 

I hope that diplomacy is taking place in private conversations, but the public reporting is disheartening. It is like the people who talk about Pearl Harbor as if the Japanese just decided to attack our naval base in Hawaii with no provocation. Most people I meet don’t even know that we had embargoed Japan, stopping all shipments of iron and steel to the island nation, metals that were crucial to their industrialization. We wanted their silk and pottery, but we didn’t want them to compete with us in the global market.

 

Most people, even the veterans of the Vietnam War, don’t know why we took over that colonial war from the French. There was no “domino theory” that made us send troops to Vietnam. Southeast Asia had been colonized and turned into rubber tree plantations because the growing auto industry needed rubber for tires. Folks, nothing happens in a vacuum. No country risks resources and lives to start a war for nothing; and since the Crusades, no one has really started a war over religion. It was always money. And, if you scratch the surface of the Crusades, a lot of brainwashed people may have gone to fight for religious reasons but, trust me, their monarchs didn’t send them to fight for Jesus. Jesus doesn’t need soldiers. 

 

As soon as we learned how to make tires without so much rubber in them, and the supply was no longer an issue, we never talked about the domino theory again. 

In fact, even though almost all of the world’s rubber still comes from Southeast Asia, can you even tell me which Southeast Asian nations became communist: Is Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, or Thailand currently communist? The answer is: Just Laos and Vietnam. Folks, America is not typically altruistic in our use of our armies. We are not always the liberators. We are not always the heroes. 

 

In recent years, we have not so much fought over natural resources as we have fought simply to fight. It is the money spent on the war that is the treasure. War is the product that is bought and sold to transfer America’s resources into the hands of the corporate war machine. I wish that I was exaggerating, but I am afraid that this is not just my opinion, I happen to be entirely correct about this. 

I have been slowly reading this book for the past 6 weeks: David Vine’s “The United States of War.” I have been reading it slowly because it is painful to read. Vine chronicles the growth of the number of American military bases abroad and the growth of our military budget. 

 

Not counting the number of military bases we have on our own land, how many would you guess we have abroad? You could name Germany, Japan, Guam, maybe a few more if you have served in the military. But when I pose this question to experienced veterans, most will guess three or four dozen. The correct answer, as of today, is 850. Most of which serve no purpose in keeping the peace or preventing war. Most are placed strategically to safeguard our corporations’ access to natural resources. 

Half of America’s discretionary budget goes to military expenditures. Why do other western nations have tuition free higher education, universal health care, and admirable mass transit systems? Because they don’t have 850 foreign military bases to pay for. Our military budget is larger than the next 10 nations combined and 8 of those are our allies! Our defense budget is, in a word, indefensible.

 

But, speaking of a peace dividend, we have finally ended our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we even have a Democrat in the White House, now, surely, the military budget will be dramatically downsized. . . but no, Biden’s first Defense budget is larger than the budget we had while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is economic insanity, but it makes perfect sense to the military industrial complex. 

 

But as we turn to the present crisis, with Russia amassing troops on their border with Ukraine, do you know anything about the back story . . . like our embargo of iron and steel being sent to Japan, or the demands of the automobile industry for rubber out of Vietnam? Why is Putin demanding that the Ukraine not join NATO?

Even at my estimable age, I can barely remember the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviet Union planned to put nuclear weapons on a base in Cuba, just 234 miles from Miami! We were ready to go to war to prevent this and very nearly did! There was no way that we could feel secure with Soviet military arms that close to our country. But do you know where NATO has nuclear weapons that are pointing at Russia? In Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium and in Germany.

I would say that we have them surrounded with military bases, loaded with long range nuclear missiles but I don’t think China will allow us to build a base on Russia’s eastern border. Key to Russia’s concern about the Ukraine is that when the Soviet Union was falling apart, Russia was given promises from the west that we would not try to move military bases into the former eastern bloc nations because, wait for it, . . . . if we did, that would be a military provocation and would rob Russia of security, setting the stage for future military invasions.

 

The diplomatic offer that Russia has made to turn back from invading Ukraine is to be given assurances that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO, an assurance already given 30 years ago but now we are telling Russia that this is a non-starter and Ukraine can join NATO if they want to. Which, as I understand this global game of Risk, makes the Russian invasion of the Ukraine almost inevitable. 

 

You have heard me say this before, if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. We are so invested in military might that it becomes inevitable that we will use it. No arms race ever preserves the peace. Even though we say we are seeking peace through strength, look how that is working out for Ukraine. Our powerful defensive posture in Europe will possibly cost them their freedom. This is wrong-headed on a very stupid level. We could do so much better.

 

Folks, I realize that I am just a dumb country preacher and that I am talking about things that are way above my paygrade right now, but I do know this, as much as I don’t like guns and security cameras, if my next-door neighbor sets up missiles aimed at my house in his front and back yard, some counter measures may be in order. And if diplomacy fails, well, you can follow that line of reasoning to its necessary conclusion. 

 Since WWII, we have encircled the globe with military installations, all under the guise of a defensive posture, but no other country in the history of the world has done this at such an empire building scale. It is virtually impossible to invest so heavily in military hardware and armies and to not use them, even if we gaslight every other nation into believing that in spite of our provocations, they are the bad guys.

 

I am leaving later this week to spend a couple of weeks with my scuba buddies in Central America. We are going to an island where I have never been before, the Roatan. But without having ever seen it, I can bet right now that the best grocery stores on the island are Chinese. Because, from Bonaire to Belize, every Caribbean Island I have visited over the past 30 years, the best grocery store is Chinese, run by a Chinese family, funded by the Chinese government to spread Chinese language and culture around the globe. Grocery stores, not military bases.

 

Eighty years ago, Americans were afraid that Germany would invade our east coast and Japan would invade our west coast. But there are no Japanese naval installations in California or German air bases in South Carolina. There are, however, Japanese automobile plants in 11 states and German car makers employ 50,000 Americans in South Carolina making cars that are better and cheaper than American cars . . . while Detroit falls into decay. 

 

Can you imagine how the world might be different if we closed a few hundred bases and moved that labor and money back into our idle manufacturing plants and began to build electric cars, high speed rail roads, solar panels, and wind turbines? 

Sort of like what they are doing in the rest of the developed world, while we continue to impoverish our nation with foolish military spending. 

 

But, of course, the real issue here is not about economics. We have tracked human history, often citing the advancement of our weapons. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, each marking the ascension of superior weapons that allowed one tribe or culture to dominate others. 

The inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, who left his fortune to establish the famous Nobel prizes, thought that dynamite would make warfare unthinkable because of the potential for mass killing with explosives. But he underestimated the human capacity for accepting violence.

About the same time, Richard Gatling invented the Gatling Gun which he thought would make warfare unthinkable because you could use it to kill so many people so quickly. He thought his invention would end the Civil War but it just increased the casualty count. 

Albert Einstein is credited with being the genius who made the atomic bomb possible and he deeply regretted his part in the project, saying that if he had only known that the Germans were not going to succeed in developing an atomic weapon, he never would have lifted a finger. He added, “If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

 

I titled this sermon, “War is Inconceivable,” but maybe I should have titled it, “War Should be Inconceivable.” Because, no matter how deadly it becomes, someone can conceive of it. Vladimir Putin, Dick Cheney, but Barak Obama too, Harry Truman and Senator Josh Hawley. 

 

For more than 2000 years, old men have quoted Horace to new generations of young soldiers: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria Mori 

"It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland." 

After the carnage and horror of chemical warfare used in WWI, the modern poet, Wilfred Owen, suggested that if only you could see young men choaking and dying in the trenches, you would never again tell the old lie, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Because it isn’t sweet or fitting. It isn’t honorable. It is a nightmare, a nightmare from which we are waiting for the world to wake up. Owen writes:

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

It is time, isn’t it, to stop lying about “thank you for your service” and to start telling the truth about warfare.

 

Some commentators have said that it is impossible to conceive of a ground war in Europe in which one nation seeks to occupy and take another. I don’t know why Russia or Europe is viewed that differently from the invasions that have been taking place in other parts of the world. How is a Russian invasion of Ukraine different from the American invasion of Iraq? That war should have been inconceivable too. 

 

The larger truth, men and women, is that we must stop marking human progress by the invention of superior weapons and begin to measure it with planet saving innovations in renewable energy. The development of an economy that redistributes wealth in a way that ends poverty. . . that spends the world’s resources on healthcare, housing, education, clean water, nutrition, and peace. 

I do not know if Russia is going to invade and occupy another large portion of Ukraine this week. But I know this, until we change our priorities, until we start building hospitals, universities, train stations, and wind farms instead of military bases, someone is always going to be invading someone and that madness must stop.