What Do We Do with Our Grief?

What Do We Do with Our Grief?         May 26, 2019      Dr. Roger Ray   

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No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

William Shakespeare

In a fit of uncontrollable grief, I had one of those experiences you have heard so many people talk about. Armond had not told me that he was near death and so, when the news reached me, I fell to pieces, and in the midst of that pain, I had a vision of Armond speaking to me from heaven, saying sternly, “That’s enough now, get ahold of yourself.” Which I dutifully did. 

Years later, another dear church member died of a sudden heart attack and I was away and could not get back to preside over or attend the funeral. As barbaric as many of our funeral rituals seems to be, I can testify that when you don’t get to see the deceased, your mind can have some real difficulty in accepting their death as a fact. For years, in crowded situations, I would swear that I saw Don in the crowd, for just a moment, before he disappeared. 

Even as a very young pastor, I never believed that Armond spoke to me from heaven nor that Don was playing hide and seek with me at the mall. It was obvious to me that these visions, these waking dreams, were the product of my grief and my unwillingness to accept the finality of our shared mortality.

It has always been a curiosity to me, that if you have ever lived with a dog, you know that they will have dreams. You see their paws moving, the breathing gets, heavy: in their dream they may be in the hot pursuit of a backyard rabbit but when the dog wakes up, he looks around and does not seem to believe that there is a rabbit loose in the house. Dogs understand the difference between a dream and reality.

People, however, who have an experience such as those that I described, will often insist that they have proof of heaven or evidence for life after death. 

I just wish that we could get religious people to take a lesson from their dogs. Just because you wish it were so, doesn’t make it so. Just because you are struggling with your grief doesn’t mean that an alternative reality exists in order to comfort you or to help you to deny reality. 

Am I going too far to say that healthy religion helps us to deal with reality and unhealthy religion encourages us to deny reality?

A few years ago, when our friend, Mary McKenzie, lost her husband, Dan. The family decided to hold the funeral in his home church, a rural Baptist church north of town, but she asked me and Sean to come and conduct the service. It was a very honorable and respectful service, but I don’t make certain religious promises that no one can know and probably shouldn’t be mentioned.

After the service, the host pastor was visibly a bit shaken. He said to Mary, “I sure would have handled that differently.” And Mary replied, “I know, that’s why I asked Roger to do it.”

I am not unsympathetic. No one who has ever bought a lottery ticket doesn’t understand what it feels like to wish for an outcome that is so immensely unlikely that you don’t want anyone to see you making the purchase. Most of us do not readily give up our own lives and all of us have had to say “goodbye” to someone we loved very much long before we were ready.

In the overall evolution of religions, I am not certain whether we invented hell or heaven first. The desire to go on living in some idyllic state, contrasted with how much we might want others who have done us wrong to get what they so richly deserve, could be a pretty tight theological race. But even though most world religions have made unblinking assertions about either reward or punishment in eternity, it seems that no one was ever entirely convinced.

I took a Shakespearian sonnet as our wisdom lesson today in which the Bard encourages a friend not languish too long in grief when he has died but to accept death as an inevitable fact and to try to move on with your own life as long as it lasts. It is sobering more than it is comforting, but a helpful piece of reality orientation.

Most of us are more familiar with Hamlet’s graveyard soliloquy in which he speculates about death in a mixed bag of considerations of grief, murder, and suicide.

To die, to sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

In times when infant mortality has been very high or at the end of wars when huge portions of a society has been prematurely wiped out, people turn to one another, seeking to assure one another that the reality that are experiencing is not the last word. And yet, as Hamlet muses, who knows? 

In fact, we get so resistant to the idea of our own mortality that we will even project immortality onto our beloved pets. The movie that is currently in the theaters, “A Dog’s Purpose,” promises that though dog’s lives are comparatively short, that they are lovingly reincarnated, over and over again, as long as we need them. I hate this movie for two reasons. One is, because it is theologically stupid, and secondly because, even though I have not and will not see the movie, I have seen the trailer several times and I cry every time. Stupid manipulative dog.

I have a good friend who is one of the people who keeps the Renaissance Book Store in business. She claims to really believe in psychics, tarot cards, and in her own magical gifts of spiritual cleansing and various forms of the blessings and 

curses of witchcraft. I sometimes gently prod her to spend more energy on reality and she predictably replies, “Whose reality,” as if there were many and varied realities from which once could choose, like flavors at a Baskin Robins. And you may think, “so what, people can believe whatever they want,” which is typically true enough.

But I was sharing with a group of friends who were, shall we say, “over 50,” that even if you had received the vaccine against shingles before, that there is a new vaccine that is much more effective and that I had gotten it and everyone else should as well. My friend replied, “I don’t believe in vaccines.” Which, once you believe in tarot cards and horoscopes, you can already pretty well give up on every getting into an Ivy League school but when you categorically dismiss medical science, or climate science, or economics, or any other science, even though you might become president one day, you have a much greater chance of getting shingles. 

I’m not the kind of doctor that you should turn to for this advice, but I am plenty smart enough to tell you . . . get your kids vaccinated . . . it won’t cause autism and it will give them one less reason to talk to a therapist about you when they are grown. And all of us who travel and who have lived past a few decades need to keep our tetanus, Hepatitis, and shingles vaccines up to date.

But speaking as a theologian, while there can be some palliative benefit to believing in things that cannot be known and for which there is no credible evidence, what I really wish for us all on this Memorial Day weekend is that we might remember those we love who have died. The grief is real and deserved. Mark recently buried his father. Sean and I were up in Pilot Knob on Thursday to help Paul Thomlinson with the memorial for his brother. At this point in my life, I have lost my grandparents, my parents, all of my aunts and uncles, and my only sister. Many of my high school classmates have preceded me in death and Paul’s brother, whose memorial we participated in on Thursday, was two years younger than I am. But I don’t have to look any further than my bathroom mirror to be reminded that mortality is real and closer than I might want to believe. 

But, if you can follow me, that reality does not beg for denial. It doesn’t ask me to engage in fantasies about what cannot be known. Rather it demands that I cherish the life that I do know, the days I do have. It allows me to grieve the loss of those whom I have loved, and encourages me to love those around me while I can. 

I was called upon to speak at the funeral of a good friend’s grandmother a few years ago. When it was over, I sat with Kim as she wept quietly and finally she said, “I wasn’t done with grandma yet.” I have really felt with my friend Paul this week because I know that he is heartbroken and that he just wasn’t done with his brother, Mark, yet. When I think back over the last few years of our shared lives here, I can tell you that I wasn’t done with Rev. Parnell, or Jim Price, or Nancy Pate. I wasn’t through with either Chuck or Ruth Snowden, Dan McKenzie, Terry Bacon, or Bob Green.

Time passes. Memory fades. Grief does not always go away entirely, it just becomes a dull ache, like a bad knee, that just goes with you wherever you go. But we are enfolded in the history of love. We have been taught, inspired, provided for, and healed by those who brought us to this point in history and today we remember them, we feel them, and we strive to deserve the confidence that they had in us.

I will close today with the honest and defiant sentiments penned nearly a century ago by Edna St. Vincent Millay, what I read at Paul’s brother’s funeral a few days ago:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

“Whitman on Orthopraxy”

“Whitman on Orthopraxy”   May 19, 2019     Dr. Roger Ray

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"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body".

- Walt Whitman (from the preface to Leaves of Grass)

We are obviously living through a very important and a very frightening time in American history when it seems that our nation is nearly hopelessly divided between conservatives and progressives and the conservatives are in charge; challenging the very nature of democracy and the integrity of our national character as well as our relationship with western democracies. In fact, this week,  German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that “Europe must reposition itself to stand up to the challenges posed by its three big global rivals, China, Russia and the US.” Three years ago, no one would have dreamed of seeing the United States as a threat, let alone putting us on the list of global fascists states, but, no one less than Angela Merkel, whom many now refer to as being the leader of the free world, lists the United States with China and Russia. If that doesn’t break your heart, then I humbly submit, you just don’t understand how dire our circumstances have become. 

Still, I find myself talking back to TV news pundits who call this the worst, most polarized time in American history. It is bad. Maybe even the worst in a century. But it is not the worst. I say, over my morning coffee, to my unresponsive flat screen TV, “You guys have heard about the Civil War, haven’t you?” 

No matter how much hand-wringing we do over the humiliation of the Trump administration, the Civil War remains the high water mark for how bad things can get in the United States and I don’t think that we are headed for a Civil War because there doesn’t seem to be much organized resistance to this fall into depraved fascism that can sustain its attention and passion for more than a few days of outrage. 

I turned this week to a unique American voice who did live through the Civil War. Who was affected by scenes of the wounded and the piles of amputated limbs he saw when he went on a desperate journey to the battle front to find his own brother, who was, thankfully, only slightly wounded.  After the war, Walt Whitman held several government posts, dealing with Indian Affairs and then conducting interviews with Confederate soldiers for consideration for Presidential pardons. 

He wasn’t always a poet but he became a poet, as he tried to say what it was for America and Americans to be truly great. His seminal work, Leaves of Grass, was a collection he initially published out of his own wallet but, after it received the praise of Ralph Waldo Emerson, it became a classic, even though his brother, George, whom Whitman had risked everything to find in the midst of the war, reportedly described Leaves of Grassas not being worth reading. I feel ya, Walt, I have a couple of brothers like that. 

In the crucible of the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the transformation that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, Whitman made some important observations:

While we find ourselves shocked by the moral depravity and the embarrassing ignorance of our legislators taking away women’s rights, a federal executive who tweets out through humiliating bad grammar and childish misspelling, a constant stream of ignorant prejudice, Whitman realized that, as he writes: the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors  . . .  but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage  . . .  their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—their Curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy.

Men and women, the Trump administration does not define who we are or what America is. The legislature of the state of Missouri does not define who we are or what Missouri is. Drawing on another genius whose insights were born in the crucible of war and unspeakable horror, the Jewish psychiatrist, Viktor Frankel, realized while in a Nazi concentration camp that:

 “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

I don’t really agree with Nancy Pelosi when she says that Donald Trump is not worth impeaching. Frankly, I’m not sure that he is good for anything else. 

If you cannot impeach someone like Donald Trump, what are we supposed to do with someone like that?

But I will tell you what Donald Trump is not, he is not important enough, he is not smart enough, he is not powerful enough, to change who I am, He cannot dictate to you who you are. Anger, cynicism, even surrender, morally present themselves to us almost every day, like the heroin, meth, or fentanyl, on the streets that people use to just check out of a reality they don’t want to be a part of. We are not in a Civil War and we are not locked into a concentration camp, but we are in the flow of a somewhat more insidious social evolution that has become a sewage ditch that we don’t want to swim in anymore. 

I hate that the legislatures in Georgia, Alabama, and Missouri are in a race to the bottom in taking away women’s most basic right, to manage their own bodies, but most of all that they are using the Christian religion, the crucible from which most of us emerged, they are using the Bible, the church, to justify the most vicious and dishonest legislative attack on women’s rights, but we will not be tarred by that bigoted and anti-science brush. But no matter how much they try to define, control, and dictate what it means to be people of faith, they cannot take away from us, who we are, what we believe, and what our spiritual identity is. 

This is, in part, the problem of orthodoxy over orthopraxy. . . of beliefs over practices. For every woman who voted in favor of these restrictive abortion laws, seven men voted for them. In all of these southern states, men maintain the overwhelming majority of seats. In Missouri, our legislature is 75% male, in some other southern states, it is more than 80%. Those these men are voting on their beliefs about women . . . many of whom have demonstrated that they know absolutely nothing about women’s physiology and have only a rudimentary understanding of where babies come from. 

Missouri always seems to take the cake when it comes to stupid, as we made 

national news again this week when Republican Rep. Barry Hovis, of Cape Girardeau, said in the chamber that most of the sexual assaults he handled before retiring from law enforcement weren't strangers "jumping out of the bushes"but instead "date rapes or consensual rapes."

Out of the shallowness of their character, they are voting their uninformed beliefs into law but let me be very clear about this point:  These white men are dictating their rights of women formally but they all know that it doesn’t apply to them and not just because they can’t get pregnant.

It is more that they know that they don’t have to play by the rules they lay down for others. Just this week, 65 year old, Pennsylvania Republican, Tim Murphy, resigned when his 32 year old mistress called him out on his anti-abortion votes when he insisted that she get an abortion to end a pregnancy that he caused. And it isn’t just Republican anti-abortion politicians. I am not going to name their names or show their pictures here because they are just too disgusting, but a quick Google search reveals dozens of cases of Catholic priests who constantly beat the anti-abortion drum, who pay for the abortions caused by their child molesting and romantic entanglements with nuns. 

Here is the final hypocrisy. If abortions are outlawed in the United States, the women who will not be able to obtain an abortion are the ones who cannot fly to Europe for the weekend or take a week off of work and drive to Canada. So, none of this applies to members of congress, or to the clergy, for that matter, not to anyone in the middle class or upper class. This only applies to women who can’t lay their hands on one or two thousand dollars. So these largely white, male, Christians can act pious in public but inside they are full of sewage. 

I can’t say it here, but someone say it for me, they are just full of . . . . 

As Mark Twain said: Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. 

I can’t tell you not to get mad, but I can implore you not to allow small people, people of low intelligence and even lower morality, to force you into becoming someone you don’t want to be and never chose to be. Now, they can have impact, but they can’t dictate who we are.

The last time I drove a young woman to an abortion clinic, it was a four-hour drive to Kansas City, Kansas. If I have to drive the next one to Montreal, I’ll do it. Because I will not allow the likes of Barry Hovis, nor any of his right-wing peers, to dictate unintended motherhood to any of our folks. 

A hundred and fifty years ago, Whitman predicted: There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The new order Whitman refers to is, in a way, poets, but in a larger sense, it is thinking people . . . specifically, thinking Americans, who are not bound by ancient creeds of magical beliefs and values untethered to real life, but of a way of being that is honest, real, and full of virtue. 

I am inviting you to live above the swirling insanity of our time.

I will add my voice to Whitman’s and say:

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem . . . "

“Mother’s Day and Equal Rights”

“Mother’s Day and Equal Rights” May 12, 2019    Dr. Roger Ray, pastor                   

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“Equality of rights under the law shall not be 

denied or abridged by the United States 

or by any state on account of sex.” 

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, has not yet been approved.

One of the first times that I got in trouble in church was when, on my very first year, I failed to preach a Mothers’ Day sermon on Mothers’ Day. My rural Kentucky congregation was shocked, shocked I tell you, by my insensitivity. I had a whole bag full of reasons that I offered in self-defense, the first which was that I was a biblical preacher and there was nothing about Mothers’ Day in the Bible. I later excused my uncommon refusal to talk about Mothers’ Day by the more pastoral awareness that there are many people who don’t have a really good feeling about the greeting card holiday…. Some always wanted to be a mother and never had the chance. Others are mothers and children are estranged from one another. Some have recently lost their mother and some mothers have lost a child. All of which spelled some real need to just not assume that everyone was feeling the same loving and respectful nostalgia on this day as everyone else. 

It is difficult to simultaneously give the accolades that loving and sacrificial mothers deserve, while consoling all of those who spent years in the greeting card isle looking for a card that, rather than saying, “you were always there for me,” or “you will always be my best friend,” and are, instead, looking for the one that just says, “You’re my mom.” So, applause for the mothers who loved, encouraged, emboldened and defended your young! Congratulations to those of you who won the “mom lottery.” Just try to be aware that your experience is not universal. . .  and maybe it isn’t even the norm.

And for the rest of us, the first round is on me!

But if I may be allowed to go behind the curtain of the original sentiment of Mothers’ Day, that is really more about appreciating women generally than it is throwing roses at women for doing the one thing that men can never do. 

In the 21^stcentury, I am less concerned about applauding the often invisible and unappreciated work of mothers and housekeepers, as laudable as that obviously is. What concerns me in 2019 is the women who go to office buildings and businesses and do the same work that men do and yet still make significantly less.

There have been arenas of real progress over the past half century. Discrimination is harder to hide in union shops where there is a specific job description or in government employment. But even when you take those equal pay situations into account, on average, women will make significantly less than men who are doing the same jobs.

Before their romance began, when Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were becoming the most popular morning news co-hosts in the country, Mika became aware that Joe was making 14 times as much money as she was. 

Of course, Joe was making $8 million dollars a year, so still, her salary was nothing to sneeze at, but the incongruity was outrageous and it has spawned a whole industry of “Know Your Value” books and conferences in which she encourages women to fight for more equitable compensation. And, it is true enough that pay differences in the whole of the Hollywood and TV industries has been criminal. But I am more concerned about the millions of employed women who are not famous, who are not, like Mika was, fighting the injustice of only making $570,000 per year when Joe was making $8 million. It was wrong, but still, when I hear Mika say that she couldn’t pay her babysitter and keep up her on air wardrobe for a half a million dollars a year, I still throw up in my mouth just a little.

Where people like us want to stick our fork into the injustice shown to women, daughters, aunts, and nieces is the fact that in family own businesses there is not only a gender pay gap but a racial and gender pay gap. In the average office where a white man makes a buck, the white woman next to him just made 77 cents, the black woman made 64 cents and the Latina woman made 56 cents. 

The difference between a half a million and 8 million dollars a year is unjust, unfair, and indefensible . . . while being misogynist and insulting. But the difference between making $15 an hour and making $8 an hour can be a difference between barely getting by and suffering the ravages of the violence of poverty. 

None of this is hard to see. There is no one here, no one listening to our podcasts or watching this on YouTube who doesn’t get the point and I doubt that there is anyone who would defend the status quo. So why, in 94 years of trying, have we not passed the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States?

On the wonky side, it will take 38 states to ratify the amendment for it to pass.

In the 1970’s, it looked like it had a good shot, but we never got past 35 states until 2017, when Nevada became the 36^thstate, and last year, Illinois became the 37^th. 

So, we need just one more, right? And Missouri is one of the states that has not ratified the ERA, which is why it is in the news all of the time? Right . . . the states we are waiting for are, predictably: Missouri, and our neighbors - Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and our political cousins in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and, of course, Utah and, sadly, Virginia. Again, as much as many people like to say that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, it should be noted that of the 13 hold out states, they all have Republican controlled legislatures.

I spent the first 30 years that I was in the ministry, never putting a political sign in my yard, never commenting on candidates, and trying my best to believe that there were good people on both sides of the aisle. But facts are stubborn things. It is not that we have a good party and bad party in our two-party system. It is that we have a pro-business, pro-military, party that fosters a tax and economic system that favors the rich, and then we have the Republican Party that does all of that and adds misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia to the mix. 

I am inclined to believe that Plato was right, we should be ruled by philosopher kings . . . we would have a judicial system that was just, an economy that was fair, and we could root out prejudice but then everyone would have to listen to rulers quoting Kierkegaard and Bertrand Russell all of the time, so everyone would still be unhappy. But I digress . . .

Legislators in these conservative controlled states go into hysterics saying how our country would fall apart if women were guaranteed constitutional equality but, the fact is, we are the only western constitutional government whose constitution does not include such a provision.  The French constitution provides that the law guarantees in all spheres the rights of women are equal to the rights of men.

The German constitution provides that men and women have equal rights and that nobody shall be prejudiced or favored because of their sex. The constitution of India provides that the state shall not discriminate on the basis of sex. 

And, you know, after WWII, when we were guiding many nations in the writing of a democratic constitution, we always included a provision for gender equality. We just never brought that insight home. Experts in this arena say that 94% of Americans favor gender equality. The problem is that most of them think we already have it, so a small minority of largely right-wing religious misogynists keep southern states trapped in the 14^thcentury. 

It will not always be this way. I was in Jefferson City this week with several of you and hundreds of others from around the state, to lobby our legislature to restore Medicare reimbursements to Planned Parenthood for medical care given to poor women. I didn’t actually get to speak to our representatives but if I had, what I wanted to say to him is that I am not asking him to switch parties. I just want him to think about the future of the Republican Party rather than the past. 

The next generation of Republicans will be pro-business and they will predictably keep trying to shift the tax burden onto the poor and the middle class as they have for the past century, but they will not perpetuate this anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, racist stuff that mobilized voters in their base in the past.

Those people are all quickly exiting to some version of Memorial Gardens and no matter how hard they try in the Carolinas; it is becoming increasingly difficult to vote from the graveyard. What I would say to my legislator, who is a man about my age who learned about government by doing swimming pool maintenance . . . I guess the Harvard Kennedy School was all full when he applied . . . I would say to him, “Craig, if you want to keep being re-elected for enough terms to draw a pension from the state of Missouri, you are going to have to think about future voters rather than past voters.” I have all but given up on compassion and reason with our legislature, but surely some measure of enlightened self-interest is bound to be persuasive at some level.

Twenty years ago, I found myself toe to toe with a conservative Catholic president of our local state university who was refusing to consider including sexual orientation in the university’s employment policy. Because, you know, Jesus wouldn’t want the same sex partner of a college professor to have the health insurance coverage as the professor across the hall who had an opposite sex partner, cause, you know, Christianity and stuff. It must be in the Bible somewhere, probably in 1^stOpinions, or something.

But I caught myself before I started yelling, realizing how pathetic his position on this matter was. And I just told him, you have already lost. You are on the wrong side of history. Justice will come to the gay members of your staff, either now, or in the near future when you have been removed from this office. And that is where we left it, and, as you know, I was right, and he was wrong. It happens more often than you might think.

You may recall that Missouri was the first state in the union to pass a constitutional amendment in 2004 defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. We led the way in denying civil rights to gay people. We are now one of the 13 holdouts preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. I would love to see Missouri go from being the first to institutionalize homophobia 15 years ago, to becoming the last state to push the ERA over the goal line . . . what I saw in Jeff City this week did not give me much hope of that, but I believe that Virginia may do, this fall, what we have refused to do. But whether it is Virginia, or Missouri, or Utah, somewhere, the mentality of patriarchy will fall, and America will join the ranks of civilized nations. 

Now, let’s not be naïve, passing an amendment will not change the way that people think over-night, but just like the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage did not end all discrimination against gay people, but it sure was an important mile stone and it pointed our feet in the direction of progress. 

I am aware that today, those of you fortunate enough to spend the day with your mothers will probably be taking them out to lunch somewhere and maybe you got a nice card, or even flowers or a gift. I just want you to remember when this day is over, what mom really wants is equal rights.

“Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor”

“Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor”   May 5, 2019   Dr. Roger Ray

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By Eleanor Goldfield, 

60 years ago, President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1st Law Day. According to the American Bar Association, it was to be “a national day set aside to celebrate the rule of law.” Even compared to the more frivolous holidays, this one seems particularly arbitrary. How does one celebrate Law Day? By high-fiving a lawyer? For once not crossing the street on red even though the coast is clear? The truth is, no one celebrates it. And even for those who first constructed and proclaimed it – celebration wasn’t the point. Rather, the point was to cover up and malign those who demanded justice over an oppressive and violent law and order. With this new day proclaimed, the powers that be could spray-paint “Commie” on the fight for worker’s rights so that all who labor here fall in a capitalist line, afraid of being thought unpatriotic if they demand justice. In the midst of the Cold War, Eisenhower and his Red Scare buddies tried to red-wash and smooth out the jagged edges of a powerful day when people rose up against the same powers that were now trying to erase their stories from history. But that weak palimpsest couldn’t fully erase those stories – and they spread, like bleeding ink that couldn’t be contained. With this, new stories were written – ones that crossed borders and time; another line on the front lines of worker’s rights movements worldwide.

Today is May 5^thor as it is known more commonly on college campuses and among tequila and beer enthusiasts of all ages, “Cinco de Mayo.” Which has carried with it the implication that the 5^thof May is either Mexican Independence Day or some holiday of similar importance on the south side of Trump’s imaginary wall. But it is not. Pretty much, it is cultural appropriation but around here, any attention given to Latino culture is sometimes just taken with a grain of salt, or at least, a salt rim. 

Mexican Independence Day is September 16^th, “Diez y Seis,” and that is a day that is generally ignored around here unless Andrew Hernandez tries, once again, to get me to go out to menudo, which, I fear will not happen again this year. 

Some holidays are seriously intended to help us to remember significant historical events and some are purely frivolous or even manipulative, such as Valentine’s Day or other greeting card holidays. 

This week, in 66 nations around the world, May Day was observed as an international holiday recognizing both the labor of workers and a celebration of workers’ rights, particularly as earned through unions and collective action. As noted in our wisdom lesson today, May Day is not an official holiday in the United States because it was too closely associated with communism. So, in an effort to hide May Day observances, President Eisenhour declared May 1^stto be “Law Day,” which was meant to stress our American value for following laws rather than having strikes and riots such as the Haymarket incident that created May Day. 

To the best of my knowledge, Law Day is not actually celebrated anywhere except for Drury University, here in Springfield. About 20 years ago, the president of Drury called me and asked me if I would say the invocation at their Law Day observance and share the platform with Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. Dr. Moore was shocked that I declined to be a part of that event and he told me that it would be a huge honor for me to be a part of it. I thanked him and assured him that he would find some ordained whore who would do it but that I wouldn’t be caught dead there. I believe that it was a local Methodist pastor who took my place. . . but I digress.

Let me remind you of how May Day became important as a labor observance: In the early stages of the American Industrial Revolution, the average worker was expected to work about 60 hours a week. Strikes and riots were taking place all across the country, in 1886, demanding an 8-hour work day.

Gun fire was exchanged between striking workers and the police and eventually a bomb was thrown that killed a dozen people, many of whom were police, and wounded dozens more. In reaction to the riot, the city arrested eight labor union activists, most of whom had nothing to do with the bombing, but 4 of them were hanged before the Illinois governor stepped in and commuted the sentences of the rest, publicly criticizing the bogus trial.

The most famous image used in the media at the time was this, depicting the bomb going off just as Rev. Samuel Fielding, an anarchist and Methodist pastor, was finishing his speech to the striking workers. Methodists were apparently rather more liberal in the 19^thcentury. 

The Haymarket riot created martyrs for the labor movement, and though the event took place in Chicago, it became the rallying anniversary for workers throughout the world except for the United States because here, there was a fierce resistance to labor unions and labor activism. Our fall observance of Labor Day, which was offered in the years following the Haymarket riot, was intended to be a more peaceful alternative, tipping the hat towards labor and hoping for parades and cookouts rather than riots. It has, sadly, worked pretty well. 

Regardless of what was declared by the Citizens United decision in the Supreme Court, corporations are not people. Corporations do not feel compassion. Corporations do not have your best interest at heart. Corporations are not concerned about the environment, human rights, living conditions, or the survival of the species beyond their future concern for profits. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “freedom was never voluntarily granted by the oppressor.”

Please do not let this point slip passed you. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Ben Franklin didn’t believe in slavery, but he didn’t free his slaves during his lifetime. Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe in slavery, but he didn’t free his slaves during his lifetime. George Washington didn’t believe in slavery, but he didn’t free his slaves during his lifetime. The founder of my former denomination, Alexander Campbell, was an anti-slavery delegate to the Virginia legislature, but, you guessed it, he did not free his slaves during his lifetime. 

It is not that we hate employers or corporations, it is that we understand that people who are in power, the people who own and control assets, whether that is financial capital or human capital, will not voluntarily give up their wealth or power unless they have to. The laws are written by and for those who control wealth and power. The poor, the workers, the middle class, must work in collective bargaining, primarily through unions, or the wage gap that threatens to destroy both capitalism and democracy, will destroy our nation.

Labor unions exist, not because corporations are inherently evil but because employers, always looking to lower the cost of production and increase profits, need to have a united front on the side of labor to be forced to treat workers well. 

The work week did not go from 60 hours and six days a week to 40 hours and five days a week because employers were feeling generous. So, there has been a concerted effort on the part of employers, supported by the courts and by government, to drive union membership down. And they have been very effective. As you can see, union membership has been in a deep dive for most of a century and, it should come as not surprise, that, as collective bargaining and union negotiating power diminishes, income floats to the top 1%. Income disparity in the USA will destroy capitalism if this trend continues but the solution will not come from the 1% saying, “Hey guys, we can’t keep taking 88 cents of every new dollar forever.” Look, folks, we have more than enough money and resources to take care of the needs of the world, we just will never satisfy the greed of the 1%. 

I spoke a bit last week about how both our government and corporations are trying to stoke up fear of socialism, which is why the corporate owned media will almost never say anything nice about either Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and why most Democratic candidates will act like they don’t know that the American economy is already a combination of capitalism and socialism. 

Our economic system, and it is not going too far to say that it is either fascist or right next to being that, depends upon a constant stream of dishonest propaganda because once people become aware, once the powerless, the poor, the workers, begin to unite, then their money grabbing days are limited. 

Former Secretary of Labor, economist, Robert Reich, pointed out that as much as conservatives use a denunciation of socialism as a scare word for their base, the fact is that America already practices socialism for the rich, and capitalism is reserved for the vulnerable and the poor. For example, during Trump’s time in office, General Motors has been given $600 million in federal contracts while receiving $500 million in tax breaks, while employees suffer the brunt of capitalism when, by the end of this year, they will lay off more than 14,000 employees… an act for which their CEO will be rewarded with more than $50 million in bonuses. 

Wall Street Banks receive more than $80 billion in subsidies, of which, more than $30 billion is set aside for bonuses for the executives. All while their employees are subjected to layoffs and wage freezes. Who believes in socialism now?

Around 60% of America’s wealth is now inherited by people who have never, in many cases, never worked a day in their lives. Even though who have amassed a great fortune through ingenuity and invention, say, Bill Gates, for example, only became wealthy because our copyright and tax laws are written by the rich, for the rich. We all agree that hard work and ingenuity deserve reward, but do they deserve elevating single families into the role of god-like oligarchy? 

The Trump administration’s dismantling of EPA regulations, de-regulating banks and investment houses, and relaxing regulations on industry, all happen under the cover of more salacious stories about their family intrigue, affairs, and bluster, but the true damage being done is hardly covered by the news. 

Washington Post headlines this week declared that Trump has passed a new mile post, having publicly told more than 10,000 lies since taking office. It reminds me of my grad school training in working with the families of alcoholics and addicts: you believe the lies because it is better than facing the truth. He tells lies about tax cuts, jobs saved, crime, the wall, climate change, and Russian help in winning the 2016 election and holding the door open for their help in 2020. The simple, in desperation, believe the lies. Those of us who are aware that he is nearly always lying, just get tired, and in hopelessness, just stop paying attention.

I have friends; smart, educated, aware, friends, who are nearly bragging when they say that they just don’t watch the news anymore. They wear their refusal to read newspapers as if it were an accomplishment to be uninformed. They don’t want to waste energy on a hopeless situation. They want to be happy. So they have handed the reigns of the world’s greatest democracy over to a tyrant as if they were powerless to do anything about it.

There is a lot to be wary of about the comedian and commentator, Lee Camp, who now hosts a Russian television show, but his concluding advice is worth repeating: Stay angry my friends.

“The ‘is’ and ‘is not’ of the Green New Deal”

“The ‘is’ and ‘is not’ of the Green New Deal”  April 28, 2019   Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

Taken from legislation proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the creation of a Green New Deal

(i) The select committee shall have authority to develop a detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan (hereinafter in this section referred to as the “Plan for a Green New Deal” or the “Plan”) for the transition of the United States economy to become greenhouse gas emissions neutral and to significantly draw down greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and oceans and to promote economic and environmental justice and equality. In furtherance of the foregoing, the Plan shall: (a) be prepared in consultation with experts and leaders from business, labor, state and local governments, tribal nations, academia and broadly representative civil society groups and communities; (b) be driven by the federal government, in collaboration, co-creation and partnership with business, labor, state and local governments, tribal nations, research institutions and civil society groups and communities; (c) be executed in no longer than 10 years from the start of execution of such Plan; (d) provide opportunities for high income work, entrepreneurship and cooperative and public ownership; and (e) additionally, be responsive to, and in accordance with, the goals and guidelines relating to social, economic, racial, regional and gender-based justice and equality set forth in paragraph (6). 

In the history of our planet, there have been five major periods of extinction. These have been caused when the earth suddenly gets too cold or too hot to sustain the species of plant, animal, and marine life that had evolved up to that point in time.

The last major extinction took place 65 million years ago when a large asteroid struck the earth just off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula, sending so much dust into the air that we experienced the equivalent of a nuclear winter, killing off the plant life on which the very large species of dinosaurs depended, spelling their demise but making a hole in the animal life footprint for small mammals to flourish and eventually send up, through evolution, the naked ape which became human civilization. 

The largest of our five previous periods of extinction, the one that happened 250 million years ago, and is called “The Great Dying,” wiped out 95% of plant and animal life and nearly ended all life on our planet. The Great Dying was caused by volcanic activity in the middle of a massive coal reserve in Siberia. The coal was ignited, and it burned for years, filling the atmosphere with carbon greenhouse gases, making the earth hotter and hotter. 

It took millions of years to get all of that carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it in polar ice caps and in the earth. Now, these are things that could happen again. Tectonic movement, volcanic activity, another giant asteroid, could set another mass extinction in motion and, in spite of what sci fi movies predict, it is anything but certain that we could do anything to stop it.

But we are now on the leading edge of what can only be called the 6^thperiod of mass extinction. Humans have always burned wood, oil, and coal for light or to keep warm, but about 150 years ago, as we began a modern era of industrialization, the amount of carbon we were releasing from the earth and putting back into the atmosphere began to escalate. We are now pumping carbon out of the ground and into the air ten times faster than that burning Siberian coal field did during the “Great Dying.” 

Obviously, the rapidly expanding use of coal produced electricity and the burning of oil to operate our cars and heat our homes has rapidly increased the amount of carbon we are releasing but, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is a huge amount of sequestered methane in the polar ice shelf near Siberia that is about to be released in what scientists call a “pulse” or, literally, a continental burp, that will release as much carbon into the atmosphere as we have in the past 100 years of the industrial age. Apparently, this is going to happen, no matter what corrective measures we take now. Which is to say, no matter how dramatically we choose to address global climate change, it is going to get worse before it gets better. So, say “no” to plastic straws and recycle your empty cans, and get ready for more massive wild fires in the west, rising sea levels, more deadly and destructive hurricanes and tornados, and massive die-offs of thousands of species of plants and animals. And if you ever wanted to see a living coral reef, plan a tip now. 99% of coral reefs will be dead in our life time.

These are not “ifs” or “maybes,” these are scientific facts. The question is whether we will be able to change course in time to curtail the rising sea levels and temperatures, and to save as much of our biodiversity as possible. A crucial thing for us to understand is that we cannot continue in this direction, telling ourselves that the worst affects will come after we are gone. There is, in fact, another generation to be considered. The now 16 year-old climate activist from Sweden, Greta Thunberg is telling the world how things really are:

(show 1:20 video)

The youngest member of congress in American history, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, proposed the “Green New Deal” on her first day in Congress. It is not legislation and it isn’t even a plan. It is a 14-page long resolution that you can read in less than 10 minutes that simply outlines goals and presents only the broadest suggestions of methods. 

Though critics have called her crazy or stupid and have told all manner of lies about the resolution, saying that it will ban all air flight, private automobiles, the production of beef and pork, none of this is in the Green New Deal. These are all just lies.

For much the same reason that I wanted you to hear Greta Thunberg’s voice, I want you to hear the goals of the Green New Deal in the voice of a person who will be affected by it much more than most of us:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that— 

(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal— 

(A) to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers; 

(B) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; 

(C) to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century; 

00:0
(D) to secure for all people of the United 

States for generations to come— (i) clean air and water; 

(ii) climate and community resiliency; (iii) healthy food;
(iv) access to nature; and
(v) a sustainable environment; and 

(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, com- munities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’);

We have seen this crisis coming for decades and any suggestion that we take the radical steps necessary to correct our course has been met with objections that economic and standard of living impacts would be too great. And, maybe that is true, so that the only reasonable way to address that very practical concern is to combine the climate saving changes with changes to our economic system so that the two support and feed one another. It is not that it cannot be done. In fact, it must be done, but the two factors of environment and economy must be transformed simultaneously. 

Critics say that the economic changes are socialist and I am getting about as tired of hearing that word used as a scare tactic as I became of hearing all of the reasons why schools couldn’t be desegregated, why homosexuals had to act straight, and why women can’t have equal pay. As Harry Truman said,

Though where he says “20 years” we have to hear “80 years.” Truman said: Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. 

Socialism is what they called Social Security. 

Socialism is what they called farm price supports. 

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. 

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. 

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

It should be easy to see that given so many lies, so many misrepresentations, and so much childish name calling, that the right is afraid of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but even more, they are afraid of the powerful logic behind the necessary changes listed in the Green New Deal. But, possibly our more serious challenge, is opposition from those we would like to think of as being allies. 

I want to be careful about criticizing legislators who have decades of success under their belts. Both Senator Feinstein and Speaker Pelosi have a lot of legislative victories to their credit, but both have tried to be dismissive of the Green New Deal by saying that it goes too far. . . that it is too ambitious, that it will never be passed. They want to offer their own versions of a Green Deal that will be scaled back and easier to get passed.

Now, I want you to hear me out on this. You may not agree with me, but I implore you to think about it:  When you propose something big, something really life changing that can both save the planet and restore a middle class in a secure economy, that’s exciting. That’s worth fighting for, worth pounding the pavement, marching, knocking doors, donating, voting for. But the more you trim the proposal, the less enthusiasm you inspire. 

When you get it down to changes that won’t really save the planet and won’t create living wage jobs in a changed economy, then you will get the people to come out and vote who vote for the lesser of two evils but you make it very easy for the idealists to stay home.

Again, I’m not trying to make anyone mad and you have every right to disagree with me, but in 2016, we were told that things like tuition free college and universal health care were just too much, in fact, it was crazy to say that we could have it. The DNC gave us a “safe choice” that was better than the other choice but a choice that would still favor big banks, big pharma, big insurance companies, and corporate interests and the safe choice lost. 

Pelosi and Feinstein want to hold the middle ground and stay safe. I am not alone in feeling like the middle of the road is for yellow stripes and dead armadillos. My position is this:  Aim high because the future of the human race is at stake. Aim high, because aiming low has never, never, never, never worked. 

I am asking you to think beyond identity politics. Yes, I was very glad that in 2008 we got our first black president, but folks, in spite of all of the class, and soaring speeches, you know that Obama was not really a progressive. You know that, right? He was a moderate at best and in many ways, a corporate conservative.

It is time for a woman to be president. I would love to see a woman of color become president. But it would also be great to have an openly gay president. Shoot, I could get excited about having our first Jewish president. 

But I think we have to get past identity politics. 

You know that I am on shaky ground when I try to use a sports illustration but let me try this just once: Think of the issues we see in the Green New Deal that can save our planet and our economy…. Retrofitting all existing buildings and building new buildings to be energy efficient and carbon neutral. . . investing heavily in mass transit, replacing a lot of air travel with train travel, . . . building a power grid that can make renewables replace all oil, gas, and coal power generation . . . instituting new farming techniques that till less and produce less greenhouse gases, and see this collection of issues as a football that we want to get over the goal line. 

If you are the coach, do you care if a white person or a black person carries the ball over the goal line? Do you care if it is a younger person or an older person? Do you really care if the person who can carry the ball over the goal line is a man or a woman, straight or gay? If you are a sane coach, what you want is to get the ball into the end zone, right?

Right now, we have 20-plus players on the bench and that is a lot of players. By and large, I am excited by the field of candidates we have to choose from, and I don’t want to dismiss any of them out of hand because I just want to get the ball over the goal line. Now, some of these players have already said that they don’t want to carry our ball… and they can just head on back to the showers. I like all of them, but I am not married to any of them . . .  is Tulsi Gabbard single? . . . stay focused! It doesn’t matter who carries the ball, we just need to get the ball over the goal line this time. 

They say that in the primaries we fall in love but in the general election we fall in line. I don’t like the sound of it, but, like most of you, most of the time I go to vote, I have to hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils but as Ralph Nader has

famously said, “If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.”

Men and women, we and our ancestors over the past century have lit the fuse on the 6^thmass extinction of life on this planet. This is no time for half measures. This is no time for compromise or premature surrender. How is my English? Do you understand me? Sometimes I am forced to wonder. 

(Play video)