quote, quote

Because television can make so much money doing its worst, it often cannot afford to do its best. -Fred Friendly

The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention--the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress. -Maggie Jackson

9-14, The New 9-11?

Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Sometimes, the lectionary (a listing of public worship readings assembled over 2 decades ago) can be eerily prescient. Across the nation, church going folks will be hearing this pithy tale Jesus told, on the subject of economics. How amazingly timely! Will preachers take the opportunity to remind folks that the terrorists are not the only ones who are implicated in the figurative fall of the twin towers? Or will this become yet another appeal for parish fund raising? As Abraham Heschel reminds us, "All are guilty, some are responsible." Listen and pray for the prophetic voice in your local pulpit this week.

“The kingdom of heaven is like the owner of an estate who went out at dawn to hire workers for the vineyard. After reaching an agreement with them for the usual daily wage, the owner sent them out to the vineyard. About mid-morning, the owner came out and saw others standing around the marketplace without work, and said to them, ‘You go along to my vineyard and I will pay you whatever is fair.’ At that they left. Around noon and again in the mid-afternoon, the owner came out and did the same. Finally, going out late in the afternoon, the owner found still others standing around and said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day?’ ‘No one has hired us:’ they replied. The owner said, ‘You go to my vineyard, too.’ When evening came, the owner said to the overseer, ‘Call the workers and give them their pay, but begin with the last group and end with the first.’ When those hired late in the afternoon came up, they received a full day’s pay, and when the first group appeared they assumed they would get more. Yet they all received the same daily wage. Thereupon they complained to the owner, ‘This last group did only an hour’s work, but you’ve put them on the same basis as those who worked a full day in the scorching heat. My friends’: said the owner to those who voiced this complaint, ‘I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, didn’t you? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this worker who was hired last the same pay as you. I’m free to do as I please with my money, aren’t I? Or are you envious because I am generous?

Apres moi, le deluge

Our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, and our capacity for injustice makes democracy necessary - Reinhold Niebuhr

It is equally illegal for rich and poor to sleep under bridges. - French Proverb

Louis XIV’s prescient words are the metaphor for our time. His reign as the King of France built the nation into an international power while simultaneously bankrupting it. Le deluge reminds us that the raw pursuit of power and influence have their costs. That seems to be the lesson of history and of recent politics.

The deluge came to mind as over 9 inches of rain fell on us over the weekend. While we live on a ridge, our front hallway was flooded, just on some of the runoff from the driveway. It was a cloudburst.

My attention soon turned to a contemporary deluge, a regieme fixated only on power and influence. It is the ultimate self defeating behavior in governance. That focus has failed to have any impact on the hurricanes, market collapses and wars of choice that have come our way. The failure of Louis XIV and of the current occupant are, at root, theological in nature. Each have rejected a balanced stewardship of the whole of a nation’s life as too complicated. They substitute simplistic power formulae in place of a solid understanding a complicated world. The Hebrew Prophets*, along with the ancient Greeks agree that our misguided aims can bring on le deluge. And the stakes continue to build. Global Climate Change will challenge our best efforts. But the ancients warned us of this sort of excess.

At bottom, we need to grasp reality “as it is” with all its complexity. It is not enough to be satisfied with our preferred formulae. A bipolar world of good and evil, simply cannot get its arms around the nuanced real life situations we face. It creates synthetic verities, truthiness as Stephen Colbert calls it. We need to pull our economy, the environment, our military forces and our politics back from the precipice.

The adage goes, “even a blind pig comes up with an acorn now and then.” Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.

*See especially the prophet Amos for a vivid description of contemporary politics.