Category: Musings

Musing on a Wednesday_7/29/2020

Published by mhelbert on July 29, 2020

Yesterday was nice.
My wife and I took the day for a long drive. We found our way past detours and along county roads until we arrived in Loudonville, OH. Loudonville is a small town of around 3,000 people. It seems that the main industry is tourism. Every half mile or so there is another sign for this campground or those cabins. There are, perhaps, more canoe liveries per capita than any other place in the country. People, especially young people, travel from all over the area to canoe, tube, kayak, or raft down the Mohican River.
We went, besides for the ride, to check out a place that rents tree houses. My wife and daughter are big fans of anything HGTV. Apparently, one of the features on that network is some guy who builds tree houses that contain all of the amenities of home. He built 2 of the tree houses at this particular place. So, of course, we had to check it out! (yawn…)
It’s not that I don’t like the idea of taking a mini-vacation and staying in a tree house. Especially one that compares favorably to any hotel room. It’s that I really, really don’t like anything about HGTV or any of those home improvement networks. I mean, like, really.
After we saw those and decided that we will probably try to get down there for a stay this fall, we turned the nose of the car East. We drove along State Rt. 39 through the fertile farming country of Ashland, Wayne, and Holmes counties. Passing the towns of Nashville and Millersburg we came to what is commonly called “Amish Country.” There we stopped and bought some cheese. (Of course, that’s a necessary stop anytime we’re there. The cheese in the area is outstanding!) Eventually, we came to the little burg of Walnut Creek. There is a restaurant there that we try to stop at whenever we go down there.
As with most businesses in that area, there is a bookstand near the checkout. The stand contains all kinds of books about the faith of the Mennonites and the Amish of the area. If you want to learn about Amish prayers or read about the faith adventures of some hero of the faith, well, this is your chance.
For me, however, yesterday shined a spotlight on something that has been on my mind lately.
If you’ve followed some of what I’ve shared on this blog recently, you know that I have been studying and sharing the First Letter that Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth. One of the issues that Paul purposed to address in the letter was that of divisions and factions that had driven a wedge between the members of the young church. For Paul, this was unacceptable. His desire for all of the churches that he related to was for unity and to see them built up in the faith. Schisms and fractures were ‘fleshly’ things that could not be tolerated in Spirit-filled relationships.
The reason I bring this up is, as we drove throughout this very conservative and religious area there were dozens and dozens of churches of various denominations and confessions. There were, of course, the ubiquitous United Methodists. They appear like dandelions in my yard. They’re everywhere! The Mennonite and the ‘Amish Mennonite’ churches may also be found aplenty. There are Church of the Brethren, not to be confused with the Brethren Church, there are Presbyterians, and a myriad of non-denominational churched. These range in size from little storefront churches to the gargantuan campus of Grace Church in Wooster.
As I reflected on this, I was seized by sadness. Not because Jesus was not proclaimed in a way that I could personally relate to. Nor, because I have any huge problem with any of these groups.
No.
I was saddened because of the number of different groups.
Each represented to me a division, a schism, a ‘my way or the highway’ reaction that has broken the body of Christ.
I understand that the image of that body necessitates differences. After all, not all can be an eye or an ear or a big toe. There are different gifts that are important for the health and growth of the Body.
But, this denominationalism and factionalism is something entirely different. While some may agree on, let’s say, Piety like the Methodists and Nazarenes and most of those anabaptist churches I mentioned, there are distinctions that allow members of One to say to members of Another, “Well, WE do it this way!”
Or, “We believe that Communion should be this way or that.” Or, “we baptize THIS way! Your way is not right!”
That’s not evidence of a single Body with many gifts.
That’s more like several different bodies.
I know. I’m splitting hairs and being a crotchety old man.
But, that doesn’t make my take on this any easier.

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More Musing on Paul

Published by mhelbert on July 24, 2020

I’ve been having a lot of fun studying Paul in general and, right now, his first letter to the Church at Corinth. Every time that I open the text or read the commentaries something new pops out. The world in which Paul wrote is so very different from ours. Besides the language there are the customs and culture that we simply cannot fully understand from our vantage point some 2,000 years away.
Yet, people are people regardless of where, or when, we find them. In an old television program the announcer told us that the stories we were about to hear were true. The names, however, were changed to protect the innocent. We were then able to relate to the characters because, like the announcer said, “They were real”!
The Bible can sometimes be kind of like that. The people and their stories were real. Only in this case, it’s the Time that’s changed. We can still relate to those folks. They were just like us in more ways than, perhaps, we’d like to admit.
So, when I read something like 1 Cor. 5:10-11 I can see a reflection of myself in those words. These two verses contain a similar catalog of vices. I understand that these kinds of lists existed in many forms at that time. They were useful rhetorically to paint images that would be easily remembered by people in an oral tradition. They also gave people like Paul a base-line template from which to draw common vices that readers/hearers could easily understand and relate to. They were part of a “common lexicon” of terms.
The people in the Church would have absolutely grasped what Paul was trying to tell them regarding those who are “immoral” or “grasping” or “swindlers.” And, they would have realized that if they were supposed to stay away from such people, they would need to remove themselves from society.
But, Paul wasn’t talking about people who practiced any of those listed vices in general. His pen was not aimed at anyone who was not a part of the Church. He agreed that it would be impossible to live and work in society if we had to avoid indiscriminate mixing with these people.
Apparently, the folks in the Church chose to mis-read Paul. They looked at his instructions from what may have been a previous letter and said, “What a Maroon! He thinks that we should build walls around us and live like hermits not mixing with anyone who simply lives life like a normal person.”
Yeah, I’m taking some liberties here. But, it is not to far from the mark when we consider how the so-called “Wise” people of the Church were looking for any reason to denigrate Paul. They worked hard to discredit him because he wasn’t their Ideal as a wise person.
Paul, in these verses, clarified his position.
He told them that he was talking about any so-called Sister or Brother IN. THE. CHURCH.
Now, there are a couple things here that pop out. These are things that the Church today would be wise to grasp.
First, Paul is NOT talking about our obligation to be Prophetic voices in our culture. We are called, yeah, I wrote “called,” to speak Truth to Power. I’ve written this before and I’ll write it again in the future. The systems that are baked into culture are not immune to the rebuke of the Lord Jesus as it is spoken through His followers. Racism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, capitalism, socialism, and on and on and on all need to be addressed thoughtfully and, in the case of the Church, prayerfully. (**Prayerfully does not mean that action doesn’t need to take place. Prayerfully may help us discern WHAT action to take.)
Marching, protesting, boycotting, writing and speaking are all good and viable ways to speak to Power and, yes, judge it.
Second, Paul seemed to say that whatever my non-believing neighbor does that I would consider ‘sin’ is simply not my concern. If my neighbor is unfaithful to his wife, it’s not my job to go knock on his door and confront him. Of course, if the topic comes up in a natural discussion with him I may mention my opinion. But, I have no business judging him for it.
That’s God’s job and way above my pay grade.
However, if someone in the Church who is considered a Sister or Brother is involved in some illicit behavior or attitude, the Church does have a responsibility to deal with it. I have tried to emphasize Paul’s concern for the Church. He is ultimately concerned with Unity and with Building Up. Everything else is subordinate to those two things. And, in Paul’s mind what was happening at Corinth was damaging the Church, not building it up.
That’s part of my purpose, too. I truly desire that the Church become the best representation of Yahweh as is possible. Yeah, I get testy sometimes. I call out hypocrisy and error when I find it. I also encourage and root for those who are getting it right.
Unfortunately, there seems to be more error than not these days. Especially, when it comes to the Church’s responsibility to speak prophetically to culture AND in keeping its own house in order.
So, here I am with my little platform typing away day by day not knowing if anyone is actually paying attention. But, like I mentioned above, this is part of my ‘calling.’
I appreciate those who humor me by reading my ramblings.
Thanks!

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Ah, Those Were The Days!!

Published by mhelbert on July 22, 2020

I remember…
Memory is a funny thing. It lives somewhere in the mind alongside colors and taste and imagination.
When I was a kid, my friends and I would spend hours drawing flying saucers. In the early 1960s science fiction was a growing genre that was sprinkled like so much fairy dust on our growing and developing little gray cells. We drew them just like they were portrayed on T.V. and in the movies. One long, narrow oval with a small dome on top.
Think of the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” How cool was Gort! We all wanted him as a friend.
“Mom! Can I stay up and watch T.V.?”
“No, Honey. It’s time for bed.”
“Gort! Go get her!”
Oh, yeah, I coulda used a buddy like that!

That’s how memory works.
Our minds are imprinted with information from every minute of every hour of every day of our lives. All of that information is retrievable.
But, none of it can help us to actually relive that time.
We cannot go back to that place.
The colors and smells and Feelings we experienced are backed-up on hard drives of flesh that reside within a thin layer of bone and fluid.

We like to think that memory is 20/20.
That those images and other sensory data that was stored within the folds of our minds is infallible is one of the fallacies that those same minds produce.
No one’s memory is infallible.
I think that even people with perfect recall, those who have what’s called a ‘photographic’ or long-term eidetic memory may see images or recall data. But, the ability to truly relive any given moment in time by remembering it doesn’t really exist. At least not for us mere mortals.

If true and complete memory does not exist, what about something like Nostalgia?

We all have moments when we glance back into our history and feel a touch, a longing for the ‘Good Ol’ Days.’ Don’t deny it! You do, too!
For a lot of folks these feelings create warm and fuzzy feelings. That’s what nostalgia does. Particularly, when society and culture are in flux.
I think back to my youth in the 60s when Civil Rights, the Viet Nam war,and Feminism were in the news cycle daily. My Dad and his friends longed for the days of Eisenhower when houses with white picket fences surrounded gardens of bright flowers and there was an apple pie cooling on the kitchen window. It so much better then! There wasn’t any of this demonstrating or riots or uppity Women.

Nostalgia.

One scholar, Svetlana Boym, quoted in https://thewayofimprovement.com/2020/07/22/nostalgia-for-a-past-that-never-existed/
wrote, “inevitably reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals.”
With that in mind, we can think of Nostalgia kind of as a fear response to progress.
Progress = Change and
Change = ???
I think that we human critters are by nature afraid of change.
At least, it takes an effort to make a leap and embrace it.

Why mention all of this?
Yesterday I wrote a rather scathing piece about White Evangelicalism and politics.
Both groups that I accused of being in bed together are steeped in, c’mon you can guess!
Yep!
Nostalgia!

I don’t want to over-simplify a very complex issue involving feelings and memories and life experience.
However, if we even Could turn back time and flip all of those calendar pages back, we wouldn’t find that idyllic streetscape with all of the flowers and birds and dogs yapping gaily around us. We wouldn’t find Mr. & Mrs. Cleaver in their suit and dress with impeccable hair.
We would find reality.
A place where bullies roamed the schoolyard and bosses assaulted their secretaries.
We would find grit in our eyes from the nearby coal-fired power plants and the newspapers and T.V. news would reveal the dark underbelly of business and politics.

There is no going back.

Period.

Society and culture move forward to some as yet unknown vista.

With the support of family, friends, benevolence, and most of all Love we must look past the Past and, together, embrace God’s future.

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Religious Right: Hangin’ With Hookers

Published by mhelbert on July 21, 2020

Sometimes I feel like that proverbial “Fish Out Of Water.”
Most of my vision and attention is on Christianity, specifically the Bible, and how it intersects with culture and church.
So much damage has been done to people because of the weaponization of both theology and Biblical study.
How many LGBT young people have been shunned by family and community as so-called religious leaders use the Scripture as a bludgeon to hammer these young folks like a blacksmith shaping iron?
“Hey, you Pious Pricks! These are humans made in the Image of God! Not something that you may objectify and form into your own likeness in the way that you have molded your god!”

Yet, sometimes I’m drawn out of the world of religion and into the world where people actually live and breathe. Hell, many of us argue that this ‘real world’ is the only place that religion is able to find its true footing. After all, Yahweh came and pitched God’s tent right here on Terra Firma in order to prove Divine Love for the Cosmos. When you think about that, it’s pretty amazing!

Today is one of those days that I find myself drawn into the world where faith and praxis intersect with culture. I am committed to trying to shine the Light of God and Faith into the darker recesses of our humanity. Places where injustice and oppression find themselves attempting to grow in God’s Garden like weeds and thistles.
(As an aside, I have been waging war on real thistles in my yard and garden. These intrusive weeds are ubiquitous to our area and are damned hard to kill. We have finally found a treatment for them. But, it requires cutting each individual plant and ‘painting’ the curative on the newly cut stem. Time consuming for sure. A pain in the back? Yep! But, it is effective. I’ve noticed a huge reduction in new sprouts. Maybe, just maybe, I can win this battle!)
That image is really quite relevant to the growth of weeds in the church at large. And, White Evangelicalism in particular.
Since the early 1980s when people like Jerry Falwell, Sr., Jim Dobson, Kenneth Copeland, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, and others christened the so-called ‘Moral Majority’ and began to tout their brand of christianity there has been a decided shift in the winds of politics.
White Evangelicalism seemed to be drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of power. Since so much of their dogma was relegated to the outbox of relevancy, they chose to fire weapons of faith at their newly created Culture Wars.
In actuality, it wasn’t all that new. Religious powers had tried to enforce their particular brands of culture and morality on the world for pretty much Ever.
In the 1980s, however, their reach, or overreach, hit the airways of mass communication.
In a way that was good. It gave the wider world a chance to see the immoral power struggles that embraced religion in real time.
It was also, however, a means to ‘rally the troops.’ These conservative religious people sounded the clarion call to alert everyone that the world was on fire with atheists and communists and all sorts of mean & hateful people who were going to eat babies and wreak havoc on Mom, apple pie, and the ‘murican way!
Heaven have Mercy on us all!

What actually happened, though, was not a rescue mission to save the culture. It was not, in fact, even a religious call to repentance and faith.
The primarily White, conservative, Evangelical church became the de facto religious wing of the Republican party.
They traded their birthright, and absolutely abdicated any claim to the moral high ground, for a bowl of oatmeal.

The apostle Paul wrote, (you really didn’t think that I could resist bringing the Bible into this, did you?), a lot about how faith and culture should interact.
One image that I found while studying Paul is that of a person paying for sex with a prostitute. Paul was NOT writing to people who weren’t part of the Church. He wrote specifically to those who claimed to follow Jesus. And, while he was writing about a person actually interacting with a prostitute, the image, I think, bears on what is happening in the world of White Evangelicalism.
Paul wrote, “Don’t you know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6, NRSV).

I want to be clear that I believe that conservative religious people, particularly White Evangelicals, have climbed into bed with conservative politics, especially the Republican Party, and have engaged in relationships that have made you One Flesh with them.
How far can you fall before you reach the bottom?

I adjure you to consider the position that you are in. It’s precarious to say the least.
God is NOT for or against any political party or position.
God seeks the fruit of truth and justice.
All other fruit is tasteless and rotten.

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What Will It Take?

Published by mhelbert on July 20, 2020

Earlier this summer we in the U.S. were witnesses to something that purported to be a “Movement.” Black Live Matter was written across our nation in ALL CAPS. Many of us who had lived through an earlier Movement during the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s as well as that of the Viet Nam war resistance viewed this new thing with, I think, a tinge of nostalgia. We were there. Our black and white, rabbit-eared televisions put us in the mix of the struggle.
Of course, most of us were mere children at the time. But, even we could sense the electricity in the air and smell the ozone of the sparks it created.
Many of those sparks erupted into full-blown conflagrations as Watts and Hough caught fire and burned.
I will never forget watching the police in Chicago press the ‘Suppress At All Costs’ button out in the streets during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.
Nor, will I ever stop mourning four dead young people on the campus of Kent State University when Gov. James Rhodes allowed the Ohio National Guard to use lethal force against protesters.

Many changes came about during those moments in history. Voting rights were gained by the disenfranchised in America. A war in some far away jungle was fought on nightly television news. And, we saw the end of an era on April 4, 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. Was murdered.

I say an end of an era because in many ways it was.
People in this nation had seen and experienced enough.
Enough anger; enough hate; enough killing.
It seems as though there’s only so much chaos that we humans can endure before we simply stop and close our eyes.

So, we convinced ourselves that we had all done a great job of addressing the many issues of the day. The good results we kept. The not so good we chalked up to ‘experience’ and walked away from.

In most places that process has a name.

Complacency.

That one word describes a sense that All Is Well. Or, at least it’s Not Terrible and we can live with it.
It reveals a people who are tired and who have no desire to press the struggle to its actual terminus.
“We’ve done pretty good! Well, at least pretty OK!” we say as we turn on the ball game and open a fresh bottle of Heineken’s.

Perhaps I’m just voicing my own cynicism.
I’ve seen this process happen so many times.
People mobilize and march and stage boycotts and the news carries this or that spokesperson for the “Cause du jour.”
Then there are the rebuttals that must be shown. Equal opportunity and all that.
Soon, the news cycle shifts to the high price of chicken because of some bacterial thing that made someone in B.F.E. puke.

Then, gone.
Forgotten.

It seems that only when people break windows and burn cars and yell and scream and throw things…it’s only THEN that people pay attention.
I read the NY Times for Sunday.
There was a lot about the late John Lewis. As there rightly should be. He was a giant among Humanity.
However, the causes that he fought for were conspicuously missing.
Black Lives Matter?
The only coverage was about the Federal Government’s illegal activity in Oregon.
I haven’t seen a word about any marches or rallies on local media.
In fact, the absence of coverage for PEACEFUL and NON-VIOLENT activity, the very things that Congressman Lewis gave his life for was deafening.

Seriously, folks.
Do we need to burn the country down in order to secure some semblance of Justice for what the Bible names, “the least of these?”
Will it take more deaths and disaster to finally show us that we are all Equal in God’s eyes? So, dammit! We should be equal in one another’s eyes as well?
What will it take?
We’ve been at this a long, long time and the same issues are still raising their Hydra Heads.

I don’t know.
I hope that I will be able to see some life in our culture before mine ends.
But, that hope hangs on a thread.

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Friday Musing_7/17/2020

Published by mhelbert on July 17, 2020

I used to wonder why, if God desired love and justice in the world, why were we church folks only concerned about what happened after we left the world.
I know, it seems like a silly question. But, that’s exactly how many people who say that they follow Jesus think.
The rationale was that saving people from eternal, conscious torment was more important than providing for a good education or a leg up in the world.
If you ask many churchy people, they will say, “Well, duh! Of course eternity is of greater value than an education that will ultimately pass away!”
And, from within that religious bubble, that’s hard to argue with.

But, what if, as I’ve argued before, there is no Hell where people are toasted for eternity?

The African American Church can guide us here.
Born out of the true Hell of chattel slavery, they found a way to embrace the God of their captors. They found hope and love within the very same Bible that those who held the chains of their bondage.

For them, however, God was not a pious white man on a gleaming throne away off in some heaven. The streets of which mere mortals could never tread. The white god of those who imprisoned their bodies was only interested in keeping things the way that the white people always wanted them. That god sanctioned slavery. The white god cursed all who were NOT white. “The sin of Ham caused all of his seed to be dark and cursed,” this god exclaimed!

No. The God that the African Americans found was a God who walked with them in the fields as the chopped cotton or hoed the rows of tobacco. The God they knew promised to lead them from the bondage of slavery just as this same God rescued the Children of Israel all those many years ago.
They KNEW God as their friend, benefactor, and ultimately, their deliverer.

And, they have never forgotten that God.

Suffering was reality. Pain constant.
Yet, Jesus had come to this world to put an end to suffering.
His death and resurrection was the final act of redemption that rejected suffering as the way that life must be. As one writer put it,

“Through the Suffering Servant, God has spoken against evil and injustice. The empty cross and tomb are symbols of the victory.”
[Townes, Emilie M., A Trioubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil & Suffering, Emilie M. Townes, ed., Maryknoll, NY, 1993, p.84.]

With this hope in their hearts, God was the Agent of Transformation where justice and hope were not some pie in the sky dream. These things became the real, tangible call for all who would put their hand to the plow of Faith.

Yet, the White church continued to hold up their Bibles and cry, “Foul! We must obey what the Word of God says! Slaves, obey your masters!”

How far from the mark of God’s Glory were they!!!
The White church abdicated its responsibility to be light and salt in the world in order to fill their barns with the bounty of the harvest.
And, like in that story Jesus told, God said,

“You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?”
[New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Lk 12:20). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.]

Emilie Townes wrote

“Obedience that is blind to the world and only follows directions has divested itself of all responsibility for what it is commanded to do.”
[Townes, Emilie M., A Trioubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil & Suffering, Emilie M. Townes, ed., Maryknoll, NY, 1993, p.87.]

That blind obedience to ancient texts taken out of context and applied with an iron and unbending arm is what has happened, and continues to happen, in so, so many white churches.

It is past time to awaken the Church. Until we heed God’s call to provide justice to the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and all marginalized people we have no right to say that we are fully and truly disciples of Jesus.

We just can’t.

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Un-Fathered

Published by mhelbert on July 16, 2020

Unseen vistas reveal themselves with every step I take into the world of God. I have walked the oft-trodden, yet rarely observed paths of the Spirit as She blows through the brilliant flowers, trees, and grasses that form the lines of the Scriptures.
It seems that the more I observe and marvel at, more and more beauty and grace appear.

This is not to say that the paths that the Breath of God leads me along are always pleasant for me. No, sometimes I am stung by some insect that follows me. Buzzing in my ear, brushing against my hair and skin, it is a reminder that the paths we walk are still real and within the bounds of this present life.
I read in those ancient texts stories of people who, like me, worried their way along these same pathways. They were led by the same Spirit. Perhaps, they were even stung by that same bothersome insect.
And, while their time and place are foreign to me, I can still feel what they felt and sense what they sensed.
We are, after all, born of the same stuff.

That’s why the text that we looked at last Sunday in the Bible study at St. Barnabas became alive to me in a brand, new way. There was a new vista revealed as I crested the hill.

We have spent the last several weeks working our way through the first 4 chapters of St. Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth. Paul wrote that he had been made aware of divisions and factions that had broken along the fault lines of honor and shame. The folks there seemed to find their own sense of honor and worth by casting their lots with one apostle over against another. This one follows Paul; the other Apollos. Paul would have none of that and wrote that the system they used to measure worth was deeply flawed. Through example, irony, and metaphor he urged them to seek the One True Measure which is God through Christ. If the folks at Corinth desired true Wisdom, they need look no further than the Cross of Christ. That, alone, exemplified God’s Wisdom.

In chapter 4, Paul seems to shame the people in that young Church. He pointedly revealed the foolishness of the path that they were taking.
But, he switched gears and told them,

“I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children.”
He continued,
“I became your father through the gospel.”

There it was!
A new sun rising above the horizon of my limited understanding.
Paul wrote this letter, not to wield a rod of correction. It was not so that he expound some great, spiritual truth to them. It wasn’t even really to cajole them into following his instructions.

It was to remind them that he was their father in the faith.

The folks in Corinth had Un-Fathered Paul.

And, that was the cause of much of his pain and concern.

I was reminded, then, of another story like this.
In the Gospel According to Luke the writer related a story about a father and his two sons.
This story is commonly referred to as the story of the Prodigal Son, although the Father is the main character.
The story begins with the younger of the two sons going to his father and requesting his inheritance. This may not appear all that big of a deal to those of us inhabiting the 21st century. However, at the time this story was told, that request would have been scandalous. What we miss is that the request was, in fact, the younger son’s wish that the father was dead so that he could take what he deemed was his.

“Father, I want my inheritance!”

To that the father could reply,

“When I die you will receive it!”
“No, Father, I want it NOW! For, you are dead to me”

That’s how this story would have been heard by those Jesus told it to.
How much this reveals about the Father’s love later in the story!
But, that’s a story that must wait for another time.

The younger son un-Fathered his own father.
He wished that his father HAD died.
His only concern was his own life and desires.

I saw this story brightly reflected in Paul’s response to his Children in the Faith.
I could feel his sense of loss and betrayal.
I could understand his heart as he tried to reveal the potential danger that these children of his were running toward.
“Stop! Wait! There’s a cliff there and you’re about to run off of the edge!”

For those who have experienced the pain of this type of loss, I don’t need to explain it.
For those who haven’t, well, let’s all just hope and pray that you never do.
It is pain above any other. Especially, because of the helplessness that is alive and biting, boring into the heart and soul.
Yeah, I get what Paul was doing here.
He was simply being a loving father to those who owned a piece of his heart.

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There Is Hope

Published by mhelbert on July 15, 2020

I opened my eyes on the horizon before me. The path that I walked led inexorably toward a reckoning. While I could not foresee all that lay beyond my vision, my mind’s eye caught snippets and scraps of the possibilities.

I was clearly aware that injustice had engrafted itself upon and within the very fabric of our shared reality. Powers that insinuated themselves as Masters of Destiny flowed into our culture as deadly gas permeates even the very walls that we try to hide behind.
So blind had we become to even the existence of these Powers that they could reach out and touch us without any nerve conducting the pressure to our conscious minds.

Yet, here I am.
So many years later looking upon the wreckage of dreams unseen; hope unrealized.
For the World that we inhabit is a world of our own creation.
It has been built brick by brick. The mortar mixed with the blood of the innocent.
The constructs of Race, Gender, and Class form the superstructure of this World.
The steel girders welded and riveted together in order to bear the weight of those Powers.

And yet, here we are today seeking to put a new facade on that structure. Powerwash the block and marble that reflects the Sun and creates a spectacle of beauty and truth.
Black Lives Matter.
Yes, they do.
The Glass ceilings that separate us by Gender, that hold Women in thrall to man-made servitude must be shattered.
Those enslaved by poverty, both economic and of the soul, cry out for emancipation.

There is a thing that Augustine, that august Bishop of Hippo once named. As he looked around at his World he saw the many Powers that existed even then. He pronounced judgment on them and named them:
Original Sin.
While his attempt to cast the Light of God on what he believed was humanity’s underlying curse, he was, alas, wide of the mark.
For the Original Sin that he saw was that of Innocent Humanity turning its back on the Paradise and Blessing of God.
No, Humanity has never been innocent.
In one version of the story when God announced that Humanity was to be created, the Heavenly retinue cried out,
“No, no, no!”
They knew that humans would be disobedient and headstrong and muck up the Very Good Creation.
Yet, God told them that they were correct. But,God would provide a way of deliverance.
God declared that all of the Cosmos would rejoice when Humanity came into its inheritance.
That inheritance is to share in the Reign of Jesus who is the King above all kings.

I saw in this that the Powers believed that they had all of the strength and wisdom necessary to make them invincible to all of those who would seek to usurp their authority.
They held Spirits of Politics, Economy, Culture, and all of the lesser gods in their hands.
“Nothing can stand against our might,” they cried!

Yet, in the depths of the hearts of the Slaves a spark burned brightly.
The Heart of God, that is Jesus, had been the point of ignition for these lights that burned within the humble breasts of all of these People.
And soon, a great conflagration had erupted.
It was a fire without heat that did not consume.
Within it was the Voice of the Almighty who proclaimed judgment against the Powers.
Their might was thrown down and destroyed.

A nice story, eh?
I could end it with,
“And they lived happily ever after.”

The reality IS that the might and strength of the Powers have been cast down.
Yet, the structure remains to this day.
It is this structure that is yet to be dismantled and hauled out to sea where it may be useful as a haunt for fish.
Then, perhaps, we will all find freedom.
Until then, we must continue to let the fire that has kindled within us grow. We fan those flames as we march and sing and hold each other up, not simply as equals, but as Sisters and Brothers with Love and Respect and Honor.

The good news is that the Powers have been disarmed.
The better news is that we are ABLE to stand against the structure that the Powers thought was too strong to fail.
It has.
Now we must work to tear it down.

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Tuesday Morning Musing_7-14-2020 Version

Published by mhelbert on July 14, 2020

Call it Information Overload.
Call it stuck in the News Cycle.
Call it George.
Whatever it’s called, it has caused my brain to be constipated.

Eyes have not seen; Ears have not heard all of the crap floating around in the air.
Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate.
After all, there is truly nothing new Under the Sun.

But, all at once?
I find that I must bore a hole in the back of my brain in order to let some of that stuff that’s clogging up the neural pathways to leak out.
I had a Bag-O-Poop stuck to my belly to catch and dispose of the waste.
Now, I need one of those to stick to my head to catch the crap that I must allow to escape.

To wear a mask, or to NOT wear a mask.
That is the question.

Do Black Lives REALLY Matter?

How many verifiable lies have flowed from the halls of power today?

The Russians did WHAT?!?

How many people died in the last 24 hours from Covid?

Are those our local police? Or, is the the local Militia?

Who to trust; who to listen to?

Am I stuck in an echo chamber in which the same ideas that I hold simply bounce and rebound around the walls until I am lulled into a stupor, a complacency that renders me useless?

At what point must I scream,
ENOUGH?!?!?

I don’t know.
Truly, I don’t.

So many thoughts about Justice and what it might look like in our culture.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandia….Wait…
No, Where in the World is God?
Has the Holy Spirit gone to Jamaica for a vacation and a sip of rum?
Where are the people who claim to follow Jesus?
You know, the ones who have stood up at the altar with tears streaming down their faces calling out and professing their personal fealty to the King of kings?

All is silent.

All is calm.

Except for my soul.

It twists and turns trying to see the promised redemption of the Cosmos.
It cries out to Yahweh in hopes of an answer; a whisper of hope.

It is beyond my strength to sit and do nothing, though.
For me that would be to seriously Miss the Mark and fall short of the Glory that God prepared for all of us to share in.
But, I must admit that I am tired.
My brain is saturated.
I don’t know where or how to start to release all that is pent up within those Little Gray Cells.
Perhaps, this is a start.
Just maybe simply sitting and throwing words up in the air to see where they may fall will begin a cascade of something meaningful.

Or, maybe I’m just kidding myself.

We’ll see.

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Color Blind?

Published by mhelbert on July 6, 2020

Last week I wrote how my Dad reacted to the murder of MLK.
My Dad grew up in a small town where there were few, if any, African Americans.
He was a child of his time.
Jim Crow was still the rule of the Land, if not the actual Law.
Blacks were viewed not only as “Other,” but as “Less Than.”
Outside of a few city slicker, bleeding hearts no one even thought twice about it.
Most folks were like my Dad simply trying to get their piece of the American Pie.
They really had no time to think about things like Equal Rights and Red Lining.
Hell, I’m pretty sure my Dad went to his grave having never heard of Red Lining!
No one cared.
Period.
They had their own worries and concerns.
“Blacks? Who cares? Let them worry about themselves. That is, as long as they don’t show up in my neighborhood!”

My first contact with Blacks was when I was a very young child. I lived in a lily-white world. Except, on garbage day.
That’s when the Negroes came down our street with the garbage truck to collect the stuff that we no longer wanted.
The Garbage.
Imagine my young, white mind seeing this.
My dad went to work somewhere magical every day.
Negroes collect garbage.

Of course, my parents never said anything to dispel that thought.
As far as they were concerned my observations were spot on.
Negroes collect garbage.

Throughout my youth I never had any other real contact with African Americans.
Oh, yeah, they showed up on the news fairly regularly.
But, with Dad’s commentary in my ear, there were no positive images seen or understood.

That is, until Music.

I remember the first time I heard “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MG’s.
Holy Shit!
What was that sound?
Do you feel that?

First the ears, then the eyes Opened!

Later, who’s that guy with the ‘fro?
Jimi Who?
Oh. My. God.
Is that a guitar?

Mind. Blown.

The circuits in my brain began to search for new pathways to describe and explain the cognitive dissonance that I experienced.
I had always heard that Blacks were something, (note “something,” not “someone”), to be at best ignored. They had no talent or ability that would interest a white person.

But, Bloody Hell!
That guy could Play!

I picked up B.B King, and Albert King.
Fats Domino and, of course, the King of Soul…James Brown.
(My Dad had no use for Brown. He referred to him as a Screaming N-R.)

Once on a journey to the hinterland of Cleveland Public Hall to relish the sweet sounds and harmonies of Three Dog Night, I heard nature’s call. When I got to the Relief Portal I found that all of the stalls had a coin slot on them. So, now it costs a buck for a coke and a quarter to get rid of it. They had us coming and going.
However, one young man, about 6 feet tall and ebony of hue, wearing a sheepskin vest and a wide-brimmed hat held the door open for me. “No way someone should have to pay to piss.”

More of the instilled hatred that my Father tried to pass on to me was flushed away.

Yet, my destiny seemed to be in following my white forebears through life. I got a job with a mostly white business. That business busied me for the next 40+ years. I had limited contact with folks who did not look like me.
I found myself engulfed in the cultural tsunami that was Ronnie Reagan.
Yes, I have repented of my youthful foolishness. My back striped from self-flagellation.
But, the mantra of that time was, that nothing was more important than the economy. And, that economy is ‘Color-Blind.’
That meant that everyone and anyone had equal access to the same prosperity. All you had to do was work hard at it.
See!
Color Blind!

Unless, of course, you were one of those Welfare Mothers who became baby factories for no other reason than to suckle on the Government Teet.
Or, you were one of those crack head, absentee fathers who stuck his dark wick into any willing receptacle. Of which, there were apparently an endless supply. (See Welfare Mother.)

No. Racism didn’t die when the laws changed.
White folks thought it did.
That’s why white folks invented the term Color Blind.
You see, Lady Justice wears a blindfold. So, if the Law says ‘Equal,’ then that means that 400 years of oppression suddenly vanishes. Just like that White Jeannie with the skimpy harem outfit and the blink and nod thing. Gone!

Now that I’m older, so much older…
I see that the only color that white folks are blind to is White.
Yeah, I know that technically White is the absence of all color, but play along.

Who was it that affixed the moniker “Red Man” to indigenous Americans?
What group of people colored the Asian “Yellow”?
What enlightened culture labeled an entire continent, “The Dark Continent”?
Oh, you thought that was because of the deep, dark jungle?
Yeah, probably not entirely.

White people, the squeaky-clean, sparkling progenitors of everything good and worthwhile in the world have done more to demean and destroy anyone, or any culture, that may seem to set them in a poor light.
White folks can’t stand to be “Losers” or “Also Rans” or anything less than King of the Hill.

But, in more ways than we care to admit.

We are.

Actually, that pretty much sums this up.

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