tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:/blogs/when-ef-talks?p=8
When EF Talks
2024-02-16T08:38:22-06:00
Eric Folkerth
false
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7363822
2024-02-16T08:38:22-06:00
2024-03-08T10:45:15-06:00
All That You Have Is Your Soul
<p>It’s now more than a week past <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/02/05/joy-at-the-joy-of-tracy-chapman/">Tracy Chapman’s incredible performance</a> at this year’s Grammy Awards Show. I can’t stop thinking about it. And it’s reminded me of <em>my</em> favorite Tracy Chapman song.</p>
<p>Most people’s favorite is likely the big hit she performed at the Grammy’s. But mine has always been <em>“All That You Have Is Your Soul.”</em></p>
<p>This song is, unquestionably, one of my top ten favorite songs of all-time. A “desert island” song. I’d like to tell you why because I think it helps us set the table for our Lenten Journey and week one of the Lenten season, which starts this Sunday…</p>
<p>I was in my last year of seminary when this song was released. That was, in fact, the year I first met Dennise. I was so inspired by Tracy Chapman and her story. But THIS song…it spoke deeply to my heart and spirit.</p>
<p>The chorus is what you see in the picture here:</p>
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<figure class="alignleft is-resized" id="yui_3_17_2_1_1709908669672_68"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/41376-tracy.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" style="width:336px;height:auto" /></figure>
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<p>Soon after graduation, our Bishop appointed me to the staff of the largest United Methodist Church in the country (at the time). This chorus came back to me. I saw this new job was both an opportunity and a danger; and that it might be very easy to be seduced by power and control.</p>
<p>I typed out this chorus and taped it to my desktop at church. I looked at it every morning, day after day, as a reminder to watch my power and privilege. Tracy’s words convicted me over and over. They still do. Frankly, our world (Church and Politics, specifically) would be immeasurably better if we kept these words in mind.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Check out Tracy’s version of the song…<br></p>
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8QwvqKMXhL8?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
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<p>On Sunday, we’ll read the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. (The assigned lectionary text for the day…)</p>
<p>Jesus is tempted three times to turn his back on his path, turn away from his calling, and embrace worldly power. He’s promised <em>“all the kingdoms”</em> of the earth by Satan.</p>
<p>Readers of the text should, of course, remember that –whatever you think about “personified evil” in the form of a “Satan”– the <em>character of Satan</em> is always portrayed as a liar. (Note: I do not believe in personified evil. But I do believe this story is extremely helpful to us in understanding how evil comes to us…)</p>
<p>My strong hunch is: “Satan” is offering something he cannot “deliver,” when he promises all earthly kingdoms. But Jesus stays true to his path, and true to his calling. He won’t divert from his mission to open God’s table to all people, regardless of their race, economic circumstance, or orientation. I would guess he also knows Satan is a liar.</p>
<p>I am very confident that I have made moral compromises in my life, and been tempted to veer from my path. But ever since it was first released, this chorus plays like a moral ear worm in my head. Time and again, it calls me back to my path when I think about straying.</p>
<p>I know this:</p>
<p><em>Whomever we are, and whatever our calling, God needs us to be <strong>servants</strong>, not those who <strong>seek power for power’s sake</strong>. </em>None of us are ever perfect. Nor does God expect the trap of perfectionism from us. But God does push us, like this song does, to stay on a path of seeing justice and truth.</p>
<p>For twenty years I’ve had an upfront seat to see under the hoods of the separate worlds of Church and Politics. Sometimes –OK, <em>often</em>— in both worlds, I am disappointed by what I see.</p>
<p>As we survey the general scene of both worlds today, we all see far too much seeking of power for power’s sake. Far too much belief that life is a “zero sum game” and that our calling is to control as much as we can. Pastors and politicians, privately and publicly, make far too many compromises with their core values, and get tempted by power. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched friends and acquaintences do it, over and over again.</p>
<p>But God would call us back to servanthood, to remember that power is an illusion, and control is a danger.</p>
<p>Tracy Chapman’s song actually mirrors Jesus’ story in powerful ways. The first two verses speak of a woman who compromises her values in order to please a man and have children. She comes to understand that this is mirage, that she can’t control either, really. Controlling others, even our closest family, is an illusion.</p>
<p>But I like to imagine the last two verses are Chapman speaking to our whole society. And it’s likely also a message to herself at exactly moment in her life she released the song:</p>
<p><em>“I thought, thought that I could find a way<br>To beat the system<br>To make a deal and have no debts to pay<br>I’d take it all, I’d take it all, I’d run away<br>Me for myself first class and first rate<br>But all that you have is your soul.”</em></p>
<p>Understand that when she released this song, Chapman <em>had</em> achieved success. In the very moment, she’s a Grammy winning artist, selling out arenas, and one of the most lauded of singer-songwriters in the world. But she knows the dangers too. And she’s self-reflective enough to admit them outloud. <br><br>Like Jesus and his temptation, she feels tempted to make the deal…to take the power… to <em>“take it all,” and “run away.”</em></p>
<p>But also like Jesus, she understands this is an illusion and a trap. Because, ultimately, all we have is our soul.</p>
<p>The final verse perhaps speaks to all of us in terms of a vision we could all use in our world today:</p>
<p><em>“Here I am, I’m waiting for a better day<br>A second chance<br>A little luck to come my way<br>A hope to dream, a hope that I can sleep again<br>And wake in the world with a clear conscience and clean hands<br>‘Cause all that you have is your soul.”</em></p>
<p>A pretty good barometer for your own moral compass is: Can you awake in the morning with a “clean conscience and clean hands?”</p>
<p>I won’t sugarcoat it…this is always challenging. I’ve come to believe it’s not possible to live as an adult and <em>not</em> come face-to-face with moments that test our resolve, and whisper seductively to us to cut moral corners, and make deals we imagine won’t have cost to our spirit.</p>
<p>But Jesus in the desert, and Tracy Chapman in this song, call me back time and again…and remind me that power is always a seductive illusion. And after all is said and done, all we have is our soul.</p>
<p>(revised and reprinted from a post at <a href="https://kpumc.org/blog/36cks4bmzgxc9g2tss4rgjkramnxmh">the KPUMC blog</a>)</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7349391
2024-02-10T18:08:13-06:00
2024-03-08T10:45:15-06:00
A Message from Sixty Years Ago, to the Old Farts of Today
<p>This very hour might be a really good time to re-read this editorial by Paul Jones. It appeared in newspapers, one day after The Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan, sixty years ago tonight.</p>
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/wtxr0b3.jpg?w=608" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1024" style="width:483px;height:auto" width="608" /></figure>
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<p>The cultural historian in me wonders: Did anybody ever go back to Jones later, and see if he changed his mind?</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter. My point is not what happened to him.<br>My point is what all of this should teach all of us “old farts” today.</p>
<p>As an added bonus, I’m throwing in this truly hilarious screaming headline from the Cincinnati Inquirer. This almost made milk come up my nose.</p>
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/70094d28-8365-44be-92b5-c8b51ca8c3a9_2758x1542.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="572" style="width:718px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
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<p>My Father would have been living in Dallas by the time these events happened in Cincy. And, as I’ve noted, I would have been a small baby. But even today, my love and affection for Cincy remains, and knowing what I know of them, these headlines seem completely unsurprising to me. I can imagine the copy editor, writing this in complete, and earnest, seriousness.</p>
<p><em>“Bless their hearts…”</em></p>
<p>But here’s the deal. Whether we are Boomers, Generation Jones, or the older part of Gen X, these images call back to us, a message to all of us old farts, as we pause to remember events, sixty-years-ago tonight.</p>
<p>Here is <em>MY</em> hot take…</p>
<p>I have now lived long enough to see the truth of this statement: Old people will always shake their heads and grumble about the music of the young.<br>Always.</p>
<p>Sixty years from the dawn of Beatlemania, some of those screaming young people are now old farts, shrieking a Paul Jones-like <em>“Get off my lawn”</em> at anybody younger than them.</p>
<p>Nobody in their right mind would pan The Beatles today. But I sure hear a lot of folks who watched Ed Sullivan that night now trashing Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lil Nas X, Billy Eilish…and more.<br>They have become the very same old farts they once despised as teenagers.</p>
<p>Sure, there are always exceptions. There are always “cool” older people.</p>
<p>Hint:<br>If you’re young, hang out with cooler old people, and make them your friends. They have wisdom to teach. Promise.</p>
<p>And if you’re old, <em>BE</em> them…be the cooler old people… hanging out with the young, learning from them. This is how we stave off this seemingly inevitable cycle. This is how we keep from becoming bitter. We do it, as I’ve been harping on lately, by taking “joy in the joy” of the young.</p>
<p>I’d like to believe that, to be the best of my ability, I am trying to live as an “exception” too. It’s hard, because the truly cruel hands of time, the inevitable bell curve of death, and the absolutely real specter of populist fascism…well, they make it hard to want to listen to anyone, young or old, really.</p>
<p>We just want to curl up in a ball, and put on some classic rock.<br>I know I do.</p>
<p>But, you laughed when you read those headlines, didn’t you?</p>
<p><em>“Teenagers revel in madness…”<br>“Young fans drop veneer of civilization…”</em></p>
<p>As we laugh at this, as we remember the joy of events of sixty years ago tonight, maybe we old farts should also look in the mirror too?</p>
<p>I’m just sayin….</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7346388
2024-02-05T12:37:07-06:00
2024-02-05T15:00:13-06:00
Joy at the Joy of Tracy Chapman
<p>I want to circle back to a theme that clearly resonated with people in my post on Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce last week. It’s a concept I’ve come to now understand has a name: “Freudenfreude.”</p>
<p>Loosely defined as:<br><em>“Taking joy/pleasure in other people’s joy or pleasure.”</em></p>
<p>It’s a concept defined as the linguistic opposite of “Schadenfreude.”<br><em>“Taking pleasure in other people’s pain or suffering.”</em></p>
<p>A part of last week’s post that clearly resonated with many was when I wrote the following:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“We have all lost the ability to simply “enjoy the enjoyment” of others.<br>We can no longer, it seems, ever celebrate any success of any other human being.<br>We have so completely swallowed the cruel lie that life is a “zero sum game,” that any success by any other human beings must be, de facto, “taking away from me.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>This is tragic, really. Deeply tragic. And dangerous. It’s dangerous because envy, jealousy, bitterness, and depression, can lead individuals and societies to some very dark places.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>——–</p>
<p>This leads me to write about last nights performance of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. For me, personally, it was a moment of profound Freudenfreude.</p>
<p>The performance of Joni Mitchel was as well; and a new song by Billy Joel, and performance by Annie Lennox, also made me verklempt. But I’d seen videos of Joni’s return to concert stage last year with the incomparable Brandi Carlile; and, they, Joel, and Lennox, were announced performers. I was ready for those moments.</p>
<p>It was Tracy Chapman’s unannounced return to the Grammy stage —playing the same song again, thirty-five years later— that got to me the most. It clearly got to the crowd too. Many of us, whoever we are, we reacted with great “Freudenfreude.”</p>
<p>I was bawling.</p>
<p>Let me back up a moment to this album (pic of my copy…) and the year 1989. I want to do this, because, also as of last night, I am newly aware of a cultural conversation that’s been going on, ever since the CIS gendered straight White Combs cover the most iconic song from the Black Queer Chapman.</p>
<p>I somehow I missed all of this —I mean both the cover and the controversy— when it first erupted.<br>Even now, I should disclose: I have never heard the Combs’ version of the song. I’ve heard Chapman’s HUNDREDS and hundreds of times. But even last night, I heard folks claiming cultural appropriation and injustice about Combs’ choice to cover this song.</p>
<p>This is going to eventually lead me back to “Freudenfreude.”<br>But first, let’s talk about “Fast Car,” 1989, and Tracy Chapman…</p>
<p>That year was the end of what, imho (and I have claimed many times), was the bleakest musical decade, ever.</p>
<p>Your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>I have many good friends, including my wife, who have fiercely debated this assertion for many years. There *were* true stars that I now truly appreciate. But I stand by how I feel. No need to lecture me. If that was your decade, rock on.</p>
<p>While my fondness for 80s music has definitely grown over the years, the general feeling still remains. The 80s were a horrible time for music. (Please, I beg you, don’t get lost in this tangent…I’m just inviting you to understand this is how some of us feel…) As a guy whose wheelhouse was always the classic songwriters of the 1970s, the 1980s were a wasteland.</p>
<p>On radio and on stages, acoustic guitars disappeared, replaced by keytars and overly permed hair. Every artist —even those who’d always centered lyrics and acoustic instruments— either chose, or were pressured to add, synthesizers, 808 beats…and, dear God, a freaking saxophone solo on every attempted hit song.</p>
<p>It was a rough time for any of us that loved acoustic music. A desperate time, really. It felt like some permanent shift had happened; banishing the music we loved to some forever cultural trash heap.</p>
<p>And then, at the very end of the decade, James Taylor makes a comeback, the Indigo Girls explode out of Georgia, and Suzanne Vega is hitting the charts from New York. And in 1989, an African American woman from Cleveland has a hit with a song that CENTERS the acoustic guitar…and is just a damn great story/song.</p>
<p>Along with the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman not only broke ground by being a Queer artist in the very Straight, very White, and very Male, space of acoustic and folk; she almost single-handedly recovered the acoustic guitar, and the ability to pause to enjoy the words of a song, out of the dustbin. At the the time, her race and orientation were critiqued in many folk/acoustic spaces. I cannot possibly fathom what it meant to her to keep going in some of those spaces. And I bet many of you can’t either. But the song was HUGE.</p>
<p>And people who were not Queer or Black sang it at the top of their lungs. My own girlfriend, later wife, and I went to see her in Fort Worth and did this. (We saw the Indigo Girls multiple times, belting out “Closer to Fine.”) We got such joy from these shows.</p>
<p>Millions of people came to love the song.<br>Including, I have now learned, the Father of Luke Combs, who passed on a love of the song to his son.</p>
<p>Because that’s what a good song does. It becomes universal. It becomes something that is birthed out into the world, and takes on a life of its own, transcending identities and even generations.</p>
<p>All songwriters (and good preachers) know this. You can shepherd the process of what you WRITE…but you cannot control how it will be HEARD…who will hear it…or what they will take from it. All of this is fully beyond our control, and enters back into the realm of the mysterious and mystical.</p>
<p>For example, years ago I wrote a song about moving out of our house (the one we live in now…), and my hopes that we might one day “Return” (The title of the song…). After a particular live show where I played this song, a woman came up in tears and said “I really loved your song about reincarnation…”</p>
<p>Did I try to correct or explain away her experience?<br>No, I did not.</p>
<p>Because that’s what the song meant to HER, and I do not, nor cannot, have any control over this.</p>
<p>This is music’s superpower. This is the gift and blessing of songwriting, to be the vessel for some universal human experience. Or, at least, common ones. I have every faith it’s a gift and mystery Tracy Chapman fully understands.</p>
<p>I have no idea how she feels about the Combs’ cover. Google searches reveal very little.</p>
<p>— But I know that this morning, the Tracy Chapman-version of “Fast Car” is RIGHT NOW, NUMBER ONE on the iTunes Charts.</p>
<p>— I know that Tracy Chapman has won a CMA for “Country Song Of the Year,” becoming the first Black Woman to ever win that award, thirty-five years after the song first appeared.</p>
<p>–I know that you can count on one hand the songs that EVER do anything like that…come back decades after their first appearance.</p>
<p>— I know that last night a Queer Black Woman and a Straight White Man bridged identities and genres on the Grammy stage…singing an iconic song.</p>
<p>— I know that the camera panned to dozens of people…who cut across dozens of musical genres, races and identities…who were ALSO singing along.</p>
<p>And I know I burst into tears for it all.</p>
<p>A musical moment where the Queer community and its allies, and the Country Music community and its allies, are BOTH SINGING THE SAME SONG?</p>
<p><em>Sign me up for that, friends.<br>Sign our nation up for that.</em></p>
<p>By the way, in full transparency, you should be aware that apparently there are German-language linguists who trash the linguistic construction of the word “Freudenfreude.” They say, rightly, that’s it’s a made up concept that doesn’t hold in the original German.</p>
<p>“<em>It’s not a real German word,”</em> they shriek.<br><em>“It sounds stupid if you know German,”</em> they opine.<br>Go ahead and Google all of this, if you want. It’s somewhat depressing.</p>
<p>Leave to GERMANS to be too literal, get too critical, of a concept that we all KNOW is real, whatever you think of the word. Leave it to them to try to destroy “Freudenfreude” before we can all even come to understand just how important it to our ability to be happy, and experience true compassion for others. (1)</p>
<p>And this morning…after the first version of this post…two friends have helpfully guided me to the concept of “<em>Mudita”</em> from the Buddhist tradition. (I’m not Buddhist, but it feel like there’s an intuitively true connection to what I’m saying, for sure…)</p>
<p>It’s always a beautiful experience to take joy in someone else’s joy. As I wrote last week, and as I think we probably need to say over and over, we have too little of this today.<br>We tear down so easily. We build up so slowly.</p>
<p>Years ago, I watched a backhoe tear down an entire church building in about an hour. It was the old building at Northaven UMC, and we were building up a new one.<br>My plan was to go out every hour or so, and chronicle the demolition in a series of pictures through the day.<br>But I watched in horror as the machine cut through red bricks and wood crossbeams that smelled of history…in about an hour. I stood, mouth agape, as decades of history disappeared in minutes.<br>Conversely, it took more than two years to plan and build up the new building to replace that old one.</p>
<p>What a metaphor.</p>
<p>Sure, some old things NEED to be torn down.<br>That’s not my point here.</p>
<p>My point here is —in our current social media driven culture where opinions fly around in nanoseconds— to consider this:</p>
<p>It takes almost no time to tear down, to tear through, the joy of others.<br>It can take months and years to rediscover joy.</p>
<p>The pandemic and Trumpism remind us of this; and we all still struggle to SUSTAIN joy in this very broken world.</p>
<p>So, no, I clearly have no idea what it felt like to be Tracy Chapman on that stage last night.</p>
<p>But for all the world, it appears that not only was she beaming, but that she too —like many of us, across so many cultural identities in our divided and broken world— was, in that moment, also on the verge of tears.</p>
<p>And here was my thought as she played…<em>can any non-musician (or, even most musicians!) fully understand what it must feel like to have a thirty-five-year-old song rediscovered by entirely new generations?</em></p>
<p>What a gift.<br>What a MOMENT of intersecting joy and mystical experience.</p>
<p>For me?</p>
<p><em>The most beautiful part of last night was my experience “Freudenfreude” …for Tracy Chapman herself.</em></p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/421920866_953596146128921_166034966274086206_n.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="635" style="width:1170px;height:auto" width="1024" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Pic from: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tracychapmanonline">Tracy Chapman online</a></figcaption></figure>
<p>————————</p>
<p>(1) To be clear: My last name is Anglicized German and my “Folkerth” ancestor came from there…)</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7344981
2024-02-02T15:09:54-06:00
2024-02-05T15:00:13-06:00
Wowza
<p>I’ve been writing longform over on Facebook for more than a decade now, but never had anything approaching the reaction to this week’s post on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TaylorSwift?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUBYr2JMy85_F6R_5QcbDjjhRMuycK2vFNFTOaSlg4TWFZhsddYcqxDiIynNGK90zVvLYwc6WYWknQOKj9I04LZsZrqOgHIkZ2hyfmQO6-AsARVpNHtZF6F0SSCZc_rR4OOa4vO3vUtFIqSdvZc5qDZOQJ8wrmk6GHWjsif2QT8mbM1n1zKZ7zL66RTXhP3IT0&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Taylor Swift</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tkelce87?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUBYr2JMy85_F6R_5QcbDjjhRMuycK2vFNFTOaSlg4TWFZhsddYcqxDiIynNGK90zVvLYwc6WYWknQOKj9I04LZsZrqOgHIkZ2hyfmQO6-AsARVpNHtZF6F0SSCZc_rR4OOa4vO3vUtFIqSdvZc5qDZOQJ8wrmk6GHWjsif2QT8mbM1n1zKZ7zL66RTXhP3IT0&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Travis Kelce</a>.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2024/02/img_5916-1.jpeg?w=744" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1024" style="width:325px;height:auto" width="744" /></figure>
<p><em><strong>10,000</strong></em> <em>shares</em>?<br>Are you <em>kidding</em> me?</p>
<p>Wowza.<br>So, thanks again to everyone for sharing/reading <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/30/what-taylor-and-travis-teach-us-about-men-and-their-dreams/">this post</a>…and for re-enforcing my faith in humanity. It’s very clear that, like me, many of you find this couple “adorable.” That’s heartening.</p>
<p>As often happens, the trolls lag behind a few days…and today, there are now more of them jumping in.<br>So, if you wander over there to read, just feel free to stop after the first 1,000 comments.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/teb/2/16/1f642.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="🙂" /></figure>
<p>But…that’s after a week of solidly positive thoughts from many folks….most of which were very kind, and extremely supportive.</p>
<p>This would probably be a good time to remind you that, as I found myself repeating several times this week, this kind of longform writing in my jam.</p>
<p>And as it happens, and somewhat simultaneous to this post, over here on this OG writing site <em>When EF Talks</em>, we <strong>recently surpassed 1,000 entries</strong>. One thousand bits of writing to read, or music to hear. Again. Wowza.</p>
<p>In its current and former incarnations, <em>When EF Talks</em> now has more than <em><strong>668,000 views</strong></em>.<br>Wowza, tambien.</p>
<p>So, just dropping in here to say a truly heartfelt…..<strong>thanks</strong>.</p>
<p>Thank you coming here to When EF Talks, year after year. Or, thanks for finding me recently.<br>Thanks for every subscribe, read, comment, or share. </p>
<p><br><strong>I;m so glad you’re here, and glad you keep stopping by.</strong><br><br>EF</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7344134
2024-02-01T09:22:34-06:00
2024-02-02T17:30:15-06:00
The UMC *and* USA are “Center-Left”
<p><strong>The United Methodist Church is now a Center-Left denomination.<br>America is a Center-Left Nation.</strong></p>
<p>These are the twin theses I want to put before you today.</p>
<p><a></a>After the past several years of bitter and partisan theological infighting, our separation into UMC and GMC is now complete. Studies show fully one quarter of former-United Methodist Churches have left our denomination for the new “Global Methodist Church.” Studies also show that those congregation tend to trend more conservatively.</p>
<p>I wish them well, and I don’t wish to offer any views of how successful, or unsuccessful, they will be going forward.</p>
<p>I simply want to point out to all reading this —United Methodist and beyond— the result of this shift. Our denomination now more clearly reflects where the United States people are, have been, and likely will be, for the rest of our lifetimes.</p>
<p>Let’s unpack…</p>
<p><strong>First, UMC is Center-Left, not far left.</strong></p>
<p>That’s an important distinction to not overlook. We have not, overnight, become “ultra liberal,” and I do not see any evidence that we will, any time soon. Personally, I’d like that…because my personal views/theology tend toward the more progressive. But this is not where we are, and I don’t see us going there.</p>
<p>Contrary to the Chicken Little hysteria of the GMC and their separation talking points, the New UMC is not planning a full scale invasion of America’s Small Towns with bands of queer clergy, waving rainbow flags, and seeking to “convert children.”<br>(Lest you think I am exaggerating, these were literal talking-points, apparently on some “one-sheet” of lies told about the “new UMC” during our separation, at many churches who subsequently left for the GMC…)</p>
<p>What <em>has</em> happened is that the center of gravity in the UMC…has shifted.</p>
<p>From “Center-Right” To “Center-Left.”</p>
<p><strong>For much of modern history, the United States has also been Center-Left.</strong></p>
<p>These graphs are my own creation, using publicly available data that anybody can fact check. (Knock yourself out…)</p>
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<p>For twenty years now, I have thrown down the assertion that “America is a Center-Left nation.” When I say this…I generally get a blank look, or a condescending one, as if I’m a sweet, misguided, imbecile.</p>
<p>I don’t blame anyone for this. The problem is what we see around us, in term of our elected officials. The make up of Congress, Presidency, and the Courts, often do not reflect a Center-Left reality.</p>
<p>But strip away everything and ask yourself one simple question: <em>“What’s THE BEST DATA SET on America’s true social/political views, over time?”</em></p>
<p>It won’t be polls…they’ve been shown to be off, time and again. They can be manipulated by partisans on both sides.<br>It won’t be actual elected members of Congress…Congress is clearly gerrymandered to favor Republicans in ways that are both brilliant and, imho, sometimes evil.<br>It won’t even be names of Presidents-by-Party…since the Electoral College interferes with our popular vote preferences.<br>It shouldn’t be, Supreme Court rulings, or who sits on the court, sorted by “ideology.”</p>
<p>It’s something far simpler…</p>
<p>Every four years, Americans give us the best data-set available: <em>the aggregate Presidential election results for the nation as a whole.</em></p>
<p>And since 1992 —for now <em>three decades</em>— Americans consistently tell itself that Americans as a whole are Center-Left.</p>
<p>Not FAR left…<br>Not center right…<br>Definitely not far RIGHT.</p>
<p><em>Center-Left.</em></p>
<p>Americans vote for candidates who fall on the left side of the political line far more often than they do candidates that fall on the right side. To be specific, Americans have cast 36,000,000 more votes, since 1992, for the Democratic candidates for president. The only Republican to ever win the popular vote in the past three decades is George W Bush in 2004. And that was as the nation was in the midst of (what many saw as) an existentially threatening war.</p>
<p>Democrats have won every popular vote for the past three decades, save one.</p>
<p><em>Why do I push this point?</em></p>
<p>Because I am very confident that both within the church and within the culture, we continue to fail to see this truth. Other, more conservative voices –in both church and politics– consistently outshout and oversell their own position. Mass media, unquestionably, conflates and equates <em>Christianity</em> with <em>Evangelical Christianity</em>. This means we all continue to make assumptions for ministries within the church, and public policy withing the world, that assume America is in some other place than it truly is.</p>
<p>But every four years –after all the partisan political speeches, after the vitriolic lies have been spun, after Russia, China, and other bad actors have attempted to sway us– Americans climb into a voting booth. And they tell us who they are.</p>
<p>Maya Angelou told us that <em>when people tell us who they are, believe them.</em></p>
<p>Americans tell us, time and again, for thirty years, that they are Center-Left.</p>
<p>But almost none of us —where ever we fall on the political spectrum— act or behave as if this data is true. But it is. It is the MOST true, most accurate, most factual way to understand who Americans are.</p>
<p><em>So, why do I belabor this point today?</em><br>Am I suggesting that United Methodists all become Democrats?<br>Far from it, and quite the opposite.</p>
<p>I am attempting to speak to all United Methodists, wherever they fall out on a spectrum of social and political views. I am <em>assuming</em> a future where many of our United Methodist Churches continue to be split among political partisan lines, very near the center point, but credibly, and slightly, to the left.</p>
<p>Whether you see yourself as a Conservative, Progressive, Libertarian, or “None of the Above” United Methodist…I am simply urging us all of us to keep “Who America Is” the back of our minds…to cut through all the other bs and posturing we might hear.</p>
<p><em>America is Center-Left.<br>The new UMC is Center-Left.</em></p>
<p><strong>To me, that means that —perhaps more than any other denomination still in existence today— we are incredibly well positioned to speak to, reach, and be in ministry with, the people of our nation. We are credibly better positioned than almost any other group in society to bring highly polarized Americans together, as neighbors, friends, and church members.</strong></p>
<p>That’s deeply encouraging and hopeful to me, and I hope it is to you too.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7342755
2024-01-30T08:25:57-06:00
2024-02-01T11:30:14-06:00
What Taylor and Travis Teach Us About Men And Their Dreams
<p>Let’s talk Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and a very specific freaking out happening right now. Because it’s a NEW kind of freaking out. It’s not the same old “Taylor-hating.”<br>And I think I know exactly what’s driving it.</p>
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<p>The world has been foolishly bagging on Taylor Swift for decades now. And all along folks like me have been reminding you how awesome she is:<br>She writes her own songs…<br>She plays her own instruments…<br>She now owns her own recordings…<br>She’s one of the most influential, and successful, artists and business people of our time…hands down.<br>Not even debatable.</p>
<p>So, no, I’m not going to defend Taylor Swift, because she honest-to-God doesn’t need me to. She’s at a level of success few artists ever attain, and anybody still debating her merits is a flat out idiot.</p>
<p>What I’m suggesting is that the current society-wide freakout is not just about Taylor Swift.<br>It’s about “Travis and Taylor” and what that cute young couple means to far too many men like me.</p>
<p>First, a rant, which will eventually come back around to my main point: <em>We have all lost the ability to simply “enjo</em>y the enjoyment” of others.</p>
<p>We can no longer, it seems, ever celebrate any success of any other human being. We have so completely swallowed the cruel lie that life is a “zero sum game,” that any success by any other human beings must be, de facto, “taking away from me.”</p>
<p>This is tragic, really. Deeply tragic. And dangerous. It’s dangerous because envy, jealousy, bitterness, and depression, can lead individuals and societies to some very dark places.</p>
<p>Not everybody gets to do everything in life.<br>People you know will achieve great things that you never will.<br>You might achieve things your friends never do.<br>Total strangers will have rags to riches stories.<br>Young people will fall in love.</p>
<p>That’s the way it works. One of the benefits of age is realizing just how true those last five sentences are, at a deep, existential level. This is where I am.</p>
<p>I happen to think Travis and Taylor are <em>adorable</em>.</p>
<p>What’s not to like?! It’s a fairy tale romance.<br>One of our most successful musicians with one our iconic NFL athletes? It’s super cool, super fun, and a salve in a hard and bitter world.</p>
<p>But…. “Taylor and Travis” —taken together as a unit— tweak a bitterness and envy, deep inside the psyche of far too many men my age.</p>
<p>Because when we were young, we had two dreams for our lives:<br><em>— We dreamed of being a Rock Star<br>—We dreamed of being a Famous Athlete.</em></p>
<p>Sure, some dreamed of being astronauts, and stuff like that.</p>
<p>I myself dreamed hard of baseball glory; and a few years later Rock and Roll glory. No doubt others dreamed of football or basketball. Almost all of us dreamed of playing guitars in front of adoring crowds, and especially imagined young women adoring us. (No need to laugh or slam these dreams…they are DREAMS…fantasies…)</p>
<p>For all but a small chosen few, our lived-lives eventually fall well short of those dreams. Most men eventually put them away —wash the sandlot dust off the uniform one final time— before mothballing it in a bottom drawer at our parent’s house. Most men sell the electric guitar, or stop practicing the ones we were lucky enough to buy. Still more of us never picked one up in the first place.</p>
<p>Because, we men eventually tell ourselves, dreams of artistic or athletic greatness are…just that…dreams.</p>
<p>And, we tell ourselves, the real world now expects things of us. Everything about our lives, our schooling, familial, church and civic subconscious messaging, teaches us that we are supposed to put these dreams away and get to work. We must get ourselves trained up in some reasonable, rationale, money-making profession.</p>
<p>“Tie the necktie noose around your neck.”<br>“Work forty years for a pension.”</p>
<p>Except, even <em>those</em> are now a dream…no, a lie…aren’t they?</p>
<p>All that hard work we were trained for —all those things we were told would be true for us if we put down our dreams— those are gone too. They are also, fantasy.</p>
<p>The “Company Job” is now a “ the gig economy.”<br>There’s no pension. Dream on.<br>And there’s no guarantees we’ll ever be able to retire.<br>The American Dream is farther and farther away for everybody.<br>And for the first time in history, many men are feeling this too.</p>
<p>I know, I know…break out the little violins for us, right?</p>
<p>I completely understand that everybody else has always had it way worse than men have had it. I truly and deeply get this.</p>
<p>I’m just suggesting this theory: That <em>if you want to understand this freakout over “Swift/Kelce” take a hard at the dreams that men themselves long ago put away.</em></p>
<p>Then, look at the ones that have been taken from them, when they put those dreams away, as they were told to do.</p>
<p>And now, look at young, virile Travis Kelce. Living the athlete dream. See how free he is with his emotions; throwing up hearts to Taylor in the stands. A jock openly showing his love for his woman from the field of play.</p>
<p>Then, look at Taylor Swift –a savy and brilliant billionare– living the musician dream….cheering Kelce on inside a clearly exclusive stadium box, like some junior high pom pom girl.</p>
<p>The combination of WHO THEY ARE, BOTH OF THEM TAKEN TOGETHER…cannot help but tweak deeply unconscious, and definitely unacknowledged, anger and bitterness in way too many men.</p>
<p>I’m not defending these men. I’m just trying to understand the WHY behind their ridiculous freak out.</p>
<p>But, speaking of you men…Let me end by speaking to the few of you men who have read this far, and are reading still…</p>
<p>Here’s a hard truth you need to hear:</p>
<p><em>Putting down, putting away our dreams? That was always a trap. It was always a lie. The world is NOT “zero-sum game.” You never had to just be one thing. Even now, there is still time for you to follow some dreams, and broaden your life.</em></p>
<p>It might even help you deal with just how badly your chosen job sucks.</p>
<p>Whatever you do to make a paycheck —however hard you have to work, and for however many years– if you were ever once an artist…dear God, in, heaven, do us all a solid, and get back to your art.<br>Because otherwise, you’re likely to just keep saying stupid, asinine things about the perfectly wonderful Taylor Swift.</p>
<p>If you were ever an athlete, find a way to move your body. Get off that couch. Ride a bike. Take a walk. Pick up a Pickle Ball Paddle. Sure, you’ll never make the NFL now. But your health still matters.<br>And the more you move your body, the less time you’ll have to be jealous of Travis Kelce.</p>
<p>In her seminal book <em><a href="https://juliacameronlive.com/the-artists-way/">“The Artist’s Way,”</a></em> Julia Cameron says there is no more lethal jealousy than the jealousy of a frustrated artist. In the now 30-years of my artistic life, I have founds this to be deeply true, over and over again. (About myself, and about others…)</p>
<p>It seems to me that almost as ferocious as artistic jealousy is athletic jealousy.</p>
<p>“Swift” and “Kelce” are as explosive as “hydrogen and oxygen” to men today precisely because <em>that couple</em> reminds us of not just one, but two dreams we men were told to put down; dream too many of us did. And there is danger in a world where men (or anybody, really) live without dreams.</p>
<p>And bitterness, envy, jealousy….these will never take us to any healthy place. And right now, some of you don’t even see that this is what you’re doing, or these are the emotions driving you.</p>
<p>If you still don’t get any of this —if this is all still way too subconscious in your life— then I’ll just ask you to quit complaining about these two for how <em>it makes all the rest of us men look like total idiots too</em>.</p>
<p>Maybe if you’d get out of the barcalounger a bit more —pick up that guitar again, push your heart rate higher than the sedentary zone— you’ll one day also say:</p>
<p><em>“Look at those two. Aren’t they just adorable?”</em></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7342756
2024-01-27T08:38:27-06:00
2024-01-30T09:45:15-06:00
“Give the People What They Want”
<p>We saw the “Tina Turner Musical” this week, and a brief moment of the narrative has stayed with me, touched me deeply, and seems to speak deep truth about our need to be entertained, and perhaps even our continued fascination with Donald Trump.</p>
<p>I know, that’s a lot.</p>
<p>You might think the Trump association has something to do with Ike. But that’s not really it. Yes, when they got to the part of the narrative when Tina leaves Ike —a real life event that happened within a mile of <a></a>where we were watching the fictionalized version— I was literally bawling.</p>
<p>That part of the story was soooo well done, and is still remarkable to consider. It seems important to remember just how badly it could have gone for Tina.<br>If that hotel clerk hadn’t given her a room…<br>If —as she stumbled across a highway I drive every day now— she had been hit by a car…</p>
<p><br>That’s what makes it such a powerful story now. Her July 4th “Independence Day” changed her life and would eventually the history of music.<br>The little scene I’m talking about happens just before all this.</p>
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<p>Tina is not doing well. She’s just overdosed. The narrative suggests a suicide attempt. She’s near death. And, of all people, her Mother is called back to the stage.</p>
<p>Her Mother who, according the narrative, has also been abusive and berating to Tina throughout her life, berates her one more time, in a move that somehow pulls Tina out of a drugged out stupor, just enough to get back up on a stage. What happens next is the moment that has stayed with me.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I need to now slowly describe what happened in about five real-time seconds of dialogue, action, music, and audience response…</p>
<p>Tina is still drugged, still recovering from the pills. The “Ike and Tina” review is back on. She is now behind the mic. She’s clearly groggy, clearly not well. Clearly in very bad shape.</p>
<p>But, the show is going on, and she’s dressed in that iconic shimmering, sequined, dress.</p>
<p>And as the character of her Mother exits the stage, simultaneously, a Telecaster chord starts an insistent and familiar rhythm. They are the slow, unmistakable chords to the “Ike and Tina” version of “Proud Mary.” Everybody knows them.</p>
<p>And these next few things things happen simultaneously…</p>
<p>The actual Music Hall audience recognizes the chords, and cheers…<br>Tina wavers behind the mic, in her drugged stupor…<br>And, over her shoulder, the character of her Mother sarcastically quips…</p>
<p><em>“Go on, Tina…give the people what they want…”</em></p>
<p>And I just burst into tears at the poignancy.</p>
<p><em>“Give the people what they want.”</em></p>
<p>It <em>is</em> what we want.</p>
<p>We, the audience that night, WE fell right into the trap.</p>
<p>Suddenly, it was all too real. Suddenly, our cheers and that quip become a metaphor for everything wrong with…well, everything in American culture.</p>
<p>WE…the audience…the public… we want that song…those chords…that hit of dopamine memory…<br>We want to be entertained, no matter the cost to the singer.</p>
<p>And suddenly, I just couldn’t clap along with the rest of the audience. I was literally crying. Suddenly, I felt convicted, indicted, for my own part in this exploitative infotainment culture we all swim in today.</p>
<p>It felt like a shot between the eyes. I was King David, and the narrative moment was the Prophet Nathan whispering, “You are the man.”</p>
<p>“Give the people what they want,” the Mother sneers. And I gasped at the prophetic indictment of us all.</p>
<p>None of us were blameless.<br>Not Ike.<br>Not her Mother.<br>Not all those audiences in all those “Ike and Tina” shows.<br>Not even us in that Music Hall that night, reflexively cheering those chords, despite Tina’s condition and her Mother’s sneer.</p>
<p><em>“Give the people what they want.”</em></p>
<p>——————-</p>
<p>We’re all a “brand” now.<br>We’re all always aware of the stage…even little kids are now.<br>From our Instagram feeds, to “reality” shows, we’re all both consumers and producers of entertainment now.</p>
<p>But at what cost?<br>To us?<br>To performers?</p>
<p>Bread and circuses.<br>Bread and circuses.<br>And we don’t even see it.</p>
<p>I am not saying that all entertainment is bad. Please don’t misread this. I’m all for good stories, great songs, and healthy ways to be transported out of the misery of the modern world. (This musical was a fine example of great entertainment)</p>
<p>But, dear God, our appetite to be entertained…it feels limitless.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is an entertainer.<br>He is a master at giving the people what they want.</p>
<p>He seems to have no shame about anything, because he has totally accepted the premise that being a character for our entertainment is far more lucrative than being an actual leader in the actual real world of things, ideas, and nations.</p>
<p>He’s PT Barnum, Huey Long, and QVC rolled into one. He’s the logical extension of all of them.</p>
<p>As I’ve said many times since 2016, our culture created Donald Trump. We called him forth, out the primordial soup of bits, bytes, and glowing screens. And if it wasn’t him, it would be somebody else.<br>He’s just the singer on the stage, playing a role. He’s not addicted to pills (that we know of) but is addicted to the adoration of an audience; which is his side of the sick dynamic of “giving the people what they want.”</p>
<p>And as long as enough of us are still cheering him, I’m very confident he’ll keep strumming his chords, and blowing his dog whistles.</p>
<p>I keep thinking back to something DL Hughley said, soon after Trump’s election. He said that Barack Obama was who America wanted to be, but that Donald Trump was who we are.</p>
<p>That still seems right to me. And while <em>“who we are”</em> is a culture still far too xenophobic and racist, perhaps even more lethally, “<em>who we are” </em>is also a culture that demands to be entertained, rather than informed. The nexus point between those two has always been a breeding ground for dangereous, populist, hucksters.</p>
<p>Trump absolutely, positively, knows how to give our entertainment-addicted culture what it wants.</p>
<p>As for Tina Turner, the second half of the musical tells her remarkable story of resilience and transformation. Even “Proud Mary” gets redeemed.</p>
<p>At the very end, in an encore, the band and lead character come back and play the song a second time. The <em>“Tina Turner Version.”</em></p>
<p>The message is that time has passed, Ike is gone, and SHE has redeemed this song just as intentionally and resolutely as she also claimed her name.</p>
<p>And what about us?<br>What will <em>we</em> do?</p>
<p>As this election season unfolds, can we really see and embrace the life and death choices still before us?</p>
<p>Democracy is still on the ballot.<br>The future of our Republic is still at stake.<br>Do enough of us understand this?<br>Or will too many of us get played again by the chords Trump strums so well?</p>
<p><em>“Give the people what they want…”</em></p>
<p>OK. Sure.</p>
<p>But it might still kill us all.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7334302
2024-01-15T11:16:48-06:00
2024-01-30T09:45:15-06:00
Our Baptismal Call with Houseless Neighbors
<p>Dallas awakes to snow and ice, and flurries continuing to fall as I write, and I’m here to update you again about our ministry helpful our houseless neighbors.</p>
<p>Yesterday, it seems to me, was one of those both beautiful and heartbreaking days…especially if you’re going to serve others.</p>
<p>We started with our primary mission (IMHO) as a church at KPUMC: We worshiped…and we <em>“remembered our baptism.”</em><br>We talked about our common authorization to work in Jesus’ name, and how we United Methodists —at least in our stated beliefs— honor the gifts and graces of all baptized persons…and seek to dissolve the hierarchical lines between “lay” and “clergy.”<br>(Transparancy: Sometimes, reality manifests differently than stated beliefs…)</p>
<p>We talked about our “mission field” in North Oak Cliff, and I passed out a years-old map with a circle that indicates our primary mission field. I ask us all to continue to pray about how we could, in all we do, be in mission and ministry to everyone there.</p>
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<p><strong>“How will we —authorized through baptism to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves”— do just that in Oak Cliff?”</strong></p>
<p>I knew full well what one answer would be: Our Inclement Weather Ministry, in conjunction with our partners like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OLUMC?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXyER7nL3rB7MHz4lMqo5Pcm_506g1FMYgugWngyob4tb7T0RcM6S_B_cWPd6spKr-mIMWIMOOfl7Q5mjDBGomfenYUtueXOrIr1p7UPE1_pw5gShq0vXAx99pGamLia_KCLbGpgVs5lm46CTC67i7Gc7l17KUaCWVVMujdPYG5pw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Oak Lawn United Methodist Church</a>.</p>
<p>Sure enough, even before church was over, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/oscar.brown.18007?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXyER7nL3rB7MHz4lMqo5Pcm_506g1FMYgugWngyob4tb7T0RcM6S_B_cWPd6spKr-mIMWIMOOfl7Q5mjDBGomfenYUtueXOrIr1p7UPE1_pw5gShq0vXAx99pGamLia_KCLbGpgVs5lm46CTC67i7Gc7l17KUaCWVVMujdPYG5pw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Oscar Brown</a> (Our Missions Chair) and I were getting text message that Oak Lawn would be opening as a night shelter, and they could use our help both in bringing them homeless folks with the van, and also with some meals. We made the announcement during worship itself…I mean, really, you can’t make up this timing…</p>
<p>So, instead of going straight to lunch, a group of volunteers met at the kitchen to plan out just how they would serve. Oscar went home to start roasting up of his legendary pulled pork.</p>
<p>Andrew McGregor and I committed to meet around 3 pm —slightly earlier than the previous two nights— to his the streets and see who we could get to come with us. Later today, those volunteers will meet at Oak Lawn to serve the meal to our new houseless friends.</p>
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<p>Last night on the streets —both Andrew and I agree— was one of our more powerful nights out.</p>
<p>We got <em>EIGHT</em> folks to come in with us…seven of whom were from Oak Cliff….most very near our church. (Either inside, or very near, that “mission field” circle pictured below…)</p>
<p>One of the highlights was one of the very first new houseless friends we met: a woman named Karen, who said she had been praying for help to come to her.</p>
<p>She was so excited to be picked up, and she prayed continually for our ministry…and all our church volunteers. She spoke very animatedly, in some rather traditional pentecostal language about Jesus, and faith, and other folks she knows. It wasn’t my kind of faith language, of course. But I could still understand the meaning behind her metaphors.</p>
<p>Karen also directed us to several more neighborhood spots that Andrew and I could never have found on our own. This is one of the blessings we have seen over these past few years…that folks TRUST us because the van has our church name, and I’m in my collar.</p>
<p>We get a benefit of TRUST from these folks that is something you cannot buy, to teach. It’s a precious thing. They seem to believe we’re not out to harm them, or “turn them in” to any authorities, but to simply help them in their time of great need.</p>
<p>Sure enough, we got several folks from some of the locations Karen took us. She was our navigator for several hours, all over North Oak Cliff.</p>
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<p>We also found our first folks ever who had very little English…at least little enough English that even my broken Spanish was little use. Maybe it was the cold and that we were both a little nervous, but I couldn’t seem to get the words out right. I am fairly confident these are folks with jobs…and they had car…but simply with not enough resources to have a place to live.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jon.campo2011?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXyER7nL3rB7MHz4lMqo5Pcm_506g1FMYgugWngyob4tb7T0RcM6S_B_cWPd6spKr-mIMWIMOOfl7Q5mjDBGomfenYUtueXOrIr1p7UPE1_pw5gShq0vXAx99pGamLia_KCLbGpgVs5lm46CTC67i7Gc7l17KUaCWVVMujdPYG5pw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Jonathan Campoverde</a> helped me translate over the phone (A small reminder of just why, in our mission field, Jon is going to be helpful to our team…).</p>
<p>They didn’t come with us…they had a car, said they needed to get to work early today (that seems doubtful to me now…) but we did drive back late last night, and give them the physical address of the shelter, since they could indeed drive themselves.</p>
<p>I hope they went.</p>
<p>Finally, there were some folks in a nearby park (I’m not gonna name it…) who were among the worst off we’ve ever seen. Two gentlemen who refused us two nights ago, and at first didn’t want to come in last night.</p>
<p>But when we finally convinced them to come with us, could BARELY STAND…their hands and feet were shockingly pale, and we had to help them walk, they shivered, and I don’t think they even warmed during the ride over to OLUMC….with the van heater full blast.</p>
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<p>Oscar had given us some gloves and hats, and both of those really helped those guys. The volunteers/angels at Oak Lawn were so gracious to them. It’s hard to describe just how grateful they seemed to be that somebody was giving them just a bench to sit on…hot coffee to drink…and the promise of a safe place with a meal and cot.</p>
<p>THAT pair…along with Karen, the folks she helped us find, and the info she’s given us…those were beautiful moments…</p>
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<p>So…all told…eight more souls off the streets.</p>
<p>I’m confident our volunteers will likely meet those new friends tonight at Oak Lawn when we gather later to serve the meal.<br>These stories are rich…and heartbreakingly beautiful.</p>
<p>As always is the case….not everybody came with us…for a variety of complicated reasons.<br>We now have ice/snow falling….which makes everything both harder and more urgent.</p>
<p>Continue to pray not for <em>us</em>…but for all those without shelter in this weather.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7330262
2024-01-08T11:32:52-06:00
2024-01-08T12:30:15-06:00
Unpacking WH Auden’s “For the Time Being”
<p>During this Christmas season, I’ve written meditations on one of my favorite literary works of all time:<br>WH Auden’s “For The Time Being.” (FTTB)</p>
<p>Here are links to each section.<br>Feel free to keep this page handy, for easy future reference.<br><br><strong>Unpacking WH Auden’s “For the Time Being.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>Section One:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/12/26/advent/">ADVENT</a>.”</p>
<p><strong>Section Two:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-annunciation/">THE ANNUNCIATION</a>“<br><br><strong>Section Three:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-temptation-of-st-joseph/">THE TEMPTATION OF ST. “JOSEPH</a>“</p>
<p><strong>Section Four:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-summons/">THE SUMMONS</a>“</p>
<p><strong>Sections Five/Six:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/04/vision-of-the-shepherds-at-the-manger/">VISION OF THE SHEPHERDS/AT THE MANGER</a>“</p>
<p><strong>Section Seven:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/05/the-meditation-of-simeon/">THE MEDITATION OF SIMEON</a>“</p>
<p><strong>Section Eight: </strong>“<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/06/the-slaughter-of-the-innocents/">THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS</a>“</p>
<p><strong>Section Nine:</strong> “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/08/flight-into-egypt/">FLIGHT INTO EGYPT</a>“</p>
<p>These are <strong>long</strong>, dense, pieces on each chapter of this work, citing relevant sections, and will no doubt best enjoyed after you’ve read the work itself. <br><br>If you’re interested in the work, my sense is that <em>the absolute best edition</em> came out about a decade ago, from <a href="https://ayjay.org/">Alan Jacobs</a> and Princeton University Press.<br>Get it <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691158273/for-the-time-being">here</a>.<br>It’s a wonderful edition, and I’m so grateful for it. <a href="https://ayjay.org/">Alan Jacob</a>‘s own “Introduction” has helped shaped, and flesh out, some of my thoughts. And for those of us who’ve long read this work every Christmas season, his “notes on the text” are a gold mine.</p>
<p><strong>It’s hard to <em>over-estimate</em> just how important FTTB has been to my artistic and spiritual life for many decades now.</strong><br><br>I read it almost every Christmas season. And every time, I learn something new and fascinating that I’ve missed before. It’s most definitely influenced many sermons.</p>
<p>I find it an important work because, as I like to say, I believe “Incarnational Theology” is vastly underappreciated in American/Western Christianity. It was through the story of Christmas…not the story of Lent/Easter…that Jesus’ story first “made sense” to me.<br>Or, as I like to say, theologically, “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2016/12/24/i-am-a-christmas-christian/">I am a Christmas Christian</a>.”</p>
<p>But in recent years, the work speaks to me in new ways about our world today…<br>Auden wrote all of this, in the United States, and during the horrors of World War II, during a time of the fear of rising global facism.<br>We too, of course, in our time, face the increasing threat of global fascism, and existential threats to our democratic ideals and society. Therefore, in ways I couldn’t have fathomed when I opened the text for my first reading as a young man…these words feel more relavent than ever.<br><br>Auden wrote this poem as a well-read, intellectual artist who was nevertheless drawn back to his own Christian roots.<br>And, we too live in a time of much cultural despising of Christianity (for very good and well deserved reasons…) as the culture equates the faith with Christian Nationalsim/and/or Fundamentalism.<br>Auden’s work is, imho, something of a balm for that…and perhaps a work that many who are going through their own “decontructions” might still find as a way “in” to the Christmas story.<br><br>And, finally, Auden was a gay man, writing about Christian theology, in a time when most people didn’t imagine that possible. As an LGBTQ-affirming United Methodist pastor of many decades now, it seems like this work ought to be considered a classic of both queer art and theology.<br><br>My first CD of original songs, released in early 2001, was an homage to the work, and titled “<a href="https://music.apple.com/us/album/songs-for-the-time-being/4276371">Songs for the Time Being</a>.” A direct referenced to this poem.</p>
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<p>And one of my songs, “The Sun is Gonna Show,” specifically references the final section of FTTB, and that marvelous soliquy by the narrator…which, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/08/flight-into-egypt/">as I write in the essay</a>, is my all-time favorite passage of verse.<br><br>The lyrics I wrote were:</p>
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<p><strong>“Oh they say that the Time Being’s our time now<br>And the poet says it’s the most trying, somehow.<br>God know he’s right, I believe it’s true<br>And there’s much more to come ’till we’re finally through.</strong><br><br><strong>So it’s one step forward, two from behind,<br>Standing at the hillside, ready to climb.<br>We bind our wounds, as the swords unsheath,<br>And we play our part in an enternal bequeath.<br>But out beyond the end…<br>And far behind the past…<br>Lie dreams that wake, as signs<br>Of a peace that ever lasts.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><br>This was my attempt to honor the “<em>feel</em>” of FTTB in terms of its acknowlege of both faith <em>and</em> the horrors of humanity as well…<br>The hope of the Christmas story… “and the “boredom” of each day in “The Time Being.”<br><br>Here’s a version of this song, where I read Auden’s original lines of verse and sing the song:<br></p>
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<p>So, that’s a brief explanation of why I felt compelled to do all this obsessively long writing now.</p>
<p>Thanks for stopping by…and I hope these essays provide a helpful way to deeper your own enjoyment of this classic work.<br><br><strong>EF</strong></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7330263
2024-01-08T11:11:16-06:00
2024-01-08T12:30:15-06:00
Flight Into Egypt
<p><strong>The Final Section of WH Auden’s “For the Time Being” (FTTB)</strong><br>(For the Previous Section: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/06/the-slaughter-of-the-innocents/">Click Here</a>.)</p>
<p>So finally, today, I offer a our final mediation on this great Christmas Play.</p>
<p>Those who celebrate the Commercialist Christmas —who believe Christmas ends on December 26th— you no doubt see it as ridiculous that I’m still writing on this stuff, all these days later.<br>Frankly, even those of you who honor the <em>actual</em> Christmas season —the “Twelve Days” that ended last Saturday— you too might just be thinking, <em>“Jeez, Eric, give it a rest…”</em></p>
<p>But there is a method to my madness, dear friends.</p>
<p>My strong belief is that WH Auden’s final words of <em><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691158273/for-the-time-being">“For the Time Being”</a></em> were written for a day like <em>today</em>.<br>Some midwinter day, when nothing particularly urgent seems to be happening.</p>
<p>While this section is titled, <em>“Flight Into Egypt,”</em> it’s not really the Holy Family that takes center stage. Yes, the first stanzas are indeed all about them. And in Auden’s telling of the tale, their narrative ends with their flight to desert-lands….to barren lands.</p>
<p>And then, the <em>“Narrator”</em> — the one who in my own mind, looks and sounds exactly like the “Stage Manager” in Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town”— steps back on stage, and returns for one final speech.</p>
<p>The lights dim. Perhaps a spotlight comes up. And we all focus our attention on their final words of wisdom. This voice will offer the very same kind of feeling of wisdom Wilder’s character also delivers.<br>It’s their job to sum <em>everything</em> up, and to close everything down.</p>
<p>And where The Narrator leaves us is, kind of, back where we started.</p>
<p>As I’ve said for decades now, Advent is time when time seems to fold back on itself, but also look off into the future.<br>There are really <em>three</em> senses of “time” that fold together during Advent…</p>
<ol>
<li>We look back…at the <em>“once upon a time”</em> coming of the Christ Child…</li>
<li>We look to the present…in the hopes that Christmas will somehow banish our seasonal depression, and bring us “<em>Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy”</em> today.</li>
<li>We look to some future time of “Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy” that might never end” and come <em>“once and for all.”</em>
</li>
</ol>
<p>This is the meaning of the liturgical affirmation:</p>
<p><em>“Christ has died…Christ has risen…Christ will come again…”</em></p>
<p>And for us today, and every year, as soon as Christmas comes…<br>It’s gone…<br>And it’s still middle of the freaking winter…<br>And it’s still freaking cold, with the harshest weather still to come…<br>(Just this week, of course, we’re all warily watching the first real “winter storm” of this year)</p>
<p>And so, we hope for some sense of Christ to remain in our lives NOW, and mourn the holiday that has passed.</p>
<p>This is <em>“Eschatological”</em> —in the true and best sense of that word.<br>(Escatology is the hope for Christ to <em>“come again.”</em>)</p>
<p>And yes, modern Evangelicalism has fairly well <em>ruined</em> this concept by insisting it means some bloody, violent, and rapidly approaching, end to the Earth.</p>
<p><em>“Jesus is coming,”</em> they seem to obsessively say, <em>“so why bother saving the planet, or stopping wars?”</em></p>
<p>But I think there is a DEEPER Eschatological view…and it’s something like this:</p>
<p>That it’s damn hard to maintain faith, not because the world is about to END…but because it’s <em>not</em>. At least, not today. Jesus very clearly says <em>“nobody can know the day.”</em> We were never meant to obsess on some bloody, final “end,” whether or not it ever comes. That’s a distraction.</p>
<p>The real works is the work of <em>TODAY</em>.<br>(This is also the theme of <a href="https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/now-the-work-of-christmas-begins/">Howard Thurman’s great post-Christmas poem</a>…)</p>
<p>The hardest days of our lives are not <em>“Feast Days”</em> like Christmas or Easter…like a wedding or a birth of a child…but all the very many days in between. Average days… when the monotony of our ordinary lives creeps in, and takes over.</p>
<p><em><strong>I have theory that perhaps we are attracted to both stories of Evangelical “Escatology,” and all the Hollywood Blockbuster “action” movies, for the exact same metaphorical reasons.</strong></em></p>
<p>Think about it.<br>How many of YOU…of us…are fascinated by these same celluloid tales of potential annihilation?<br>Thousands of us pile into theaters, or settle in at home with our popcorn, to watch humanity on the brink of some kind of Escataololigcal annihilation (Godzilla, Aliens, Disease, Terrorists…take your pick…).</p>
<p>How many of us LOVE these films…where some “hero,” some stroke of luck, or magical collective good will of humanity…saves us all, just in the nick of time?</p>
<p>It’s the SAME THING!<br>It’s Evangelical Escatology all over again…packaged by Hollywood, back to us, as our worst fears and fantasies of social and cultural annihilation.</p>
<p>And the reason we enjoy both…the theological and the celluloid…so very much is because in “ordinary life,” things get so damn “boring.”</p>
<p>Auden’s Narrator says as much in one part of this last, seminal section:</p>
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<p><strong>“Remembering the stable where for once in our lives<br>Everything became a You and nothing was an It.<br>And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,<br>We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit<br>Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose<br>Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,<br>We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father:<br>“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”<br>They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form<br>That we do not expect, and certainly with a force<br>More dreadful than we can imagine.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We go looking for suffering…for adrenaline-laced entertainment…when in fact, the suffering of our world is already all around us. There’s actually always PLENTY to do.</p>
<p>Remember, Auden is writing this during WWII. There was a BIT of anxiety loose in the culture then, yes?<br>(Much like our time…)<br>But, for all of us, the boredom of life can creep back in.</p>
<p>I still recall talking about this dynamic with a church member years ago….how life is chock-full of wonder, and yet how we get bored, anyway. She was a survivor of a very serious form of brain cancer, should not have lived, and came to understand the precious nature of every day.</p>
<p>But she once said to me, <em>“Eric, of all people, you would think I would appreciate every single day of life….and never be bored…but even I do…even I forget…”</em></p>
<p>Of course she does.<br>Because it’s part of our human condition.</p>
<p>We look to amuse ourselves out of this boredom, drudgery, and “same-ness.”<br>We hope to be shaken loose of it.<br>But the dust grows, the time passes…and day, after day, after day…just run together.</p>
<p>The post holiday-blues are all about the dawning realization that the “real world,” with all its mundane drudgery, is still there.<br>It’s why it’s hard to come back from vacation.<br>It’s why we keep talking about “The Big Game,” days after its over.<br>It’s why we share pictures of baby’s births, even when they become adults in their mid twenties.<br><br>We yearn for the SPECIAL times…the Feast Days.</p>
<p>And our adrenaline-fueled desires to escape ordinary life, however we attempted it —religion, entertainment, food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex— none of these can actually help us transcend this world for good…perhaps because transcending the world was never actually the point.</p>
<p>What we <em>all</em> need —what the world needs, I very strongly believe— is to embrace the Christmas message every day. To understand that even our most boring, monotonous days can, and are, filled with Holy Moments. That the <em>“Thin Places”</em> between heaven and earth don’t just exist in a select few spots…but all around our relatively “ordinary” neighborhood.</p>
<p>This is the challenge of living life through what I call <em>“Incarnational Seeing.”</em><br>I believe it must be very close to what Buddhists say when they counsel <em>“Be here now.”</em></p>
<p>Be here…see the holy…embrace Incarnation… in the NOW.</p>
<p>Don’t pine for the past (like Auden’s “Arcadians”).<br>And don’t get lost in some dream of the future (like Auden’s “Utopians.”)</p>
<p>Be here now…see the Christ Child now, all around you….<em>NOW</em>.</p>
<p>If I may, this is why the longest season of the Church Year is called “Ordinary Time,” because the longest, hardest struggle of our lives is the <em>internal</em> one…working to see with spiritual clarity, such that the world doesn’t just dissolve into pointless materialism.</p>
<p><em>“Ordinary Time”</em> perfectly describes most of our lives.<br>And it’s how, if you’ll recall, Auden started this poem too.</p>
<p>The very <em>first</em> lines of FTTB locate us in “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/12/26/advent/">Advent</a>,” and name the drudgery of “Ordinary Time”:</p>
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<p><strong>“Darkness and snow descend;<br>The clock on the mantelpiece<br>Has nothing to recommend,<br>Nor does the face in the glass<br>Appear nobler than our own<br>As darkness and snow descend<br>On all personality.<br>Huge crowds mumble-“Alas,<br>Our angers do not increase,<br>Love is not what she used to be”;<br>Portly Caesar yawns-“I know”;<br>He falls asleep on his throne,<br>They shuffle off through the snow:<br>Darkness and snow descend.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are the first first lines of the poem.<br>And, sure enough, some of the very LAST lines the Narrator speaks will sound much like them:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“In the meantime<br>There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,<br>Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem<br>From insignificance.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the very meaning of what the Church intends by “Ordinary Time.”</p>
<p>Auden locates our current time, our post-Christmas time:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“The happy morning is over,<br>The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:<br>When the Spirit must practise his scales of rejoicing<br>Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure<br>A silence that is neither for nor against her faith”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Auden <em>seemingly</em> comes back to this exact same point here at the end.<br>But this is actually another illusion.</p>
<p>Because there one <em>key</em> difference not miss.<br>One truly important thing that has changed.<br>And that key difference is held within the lines of verse that perhaps speak more to me than any others.</p>
<p>THESE next lines are the lines that inspired my song “Sun is Gonna Show.”<br>THESE are the lines that gave me the title of my first record, back in 2000.<br>THESE next lines, at a key moment in my life as a young man, shot me between the eyes.<br>THESE are the lines I come back to, year after year, and speak some very deep, spiritual truth to me:</p>
<p><strong>“To those who have seen<br>The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,<br>The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.”</strong></p>
<p>We HAVE seen the Child.<br>WE HAVE felt that sense of the complete and total unity of “heaven and earth.”</p>
<p>The curtian has pulled back to reveal Jesus’ story and the magnificent truth of Flesh and Spirit, unified as one.<br>But that incredible experience…fades…as “Ordinary Time” again creeps in.</p>
<p>Once we have seen the Child…once we have embraced a lifetime’s spiritual journey of “Incarnational Seeing,” the “most trying time of all” are not days filled with…</p>
<p>…horror or joy…<br>…sorrow or intense love…<br>…Feast Days or Famine Days…</p>
<p><em>“The most trying time(s) of all” </em>is/are/and always will-be… all the in-between days.</p>
<p>The hardest journey is the journey inward that constantly re-remembers that this world, right here, right now, is chock full of God’s holiness, and reanimates what we SEE as filled with spiritual delight, not just boredom and repetition.</p>
<p>Every walk in your neighborhood, every glance by your friends, every savory scent of every meal you ever ate (even your Big Mac), has the possibility of breaking open some holy experience.</p>
<p>But this is not how it feels.<br>We feel divided against ourselves…and we go yearning to fill that spiritual hole, instead of seeing the holiness already there.<br>The silence of Ordinary Time is neither “for nor against” our faith.<br>It’s not a bright morning.<br>It’s not a deep night.<br><br>It’s NOON.</p>
<p><strong>—————————</strong></p>
<p>And so, dear readers, our journey ends here.<br>Back with Auden’s Narrator.</p>
<p>What follows is a citation of the entire final speech by the Narrator…and then Auden’s “Chorus” closing the work with an interpretation of <em>“The Way, The Truth, and The Life.”</em><br>(A kind of final “Amen,” “Benediction,” or “Doxology.”)</p>
<p>As I hope this essay has suggested to you, The Narrator speech is a bit of verse for us today, and for every-everyday.</p>
<p>These are the lines that zapped me between the eyes, decades ago, and pushed me to read this work over and over, every year since.<br>And I hope they’ll inspire YOU on your lifetime journey toward <em>“Incarnational Seeing.”</em></p>
<p>Thank you for reading these essays…..EF</p>
<p><strong>“Narrator:<br>Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,<br>Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes-<br>Some have got broken-and carrying them up to the attic.<br>The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,<br>And the children got ready for school.<br>There are enough Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week-<br>Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot<br>Stayed up so late, attempted-quite unsuccessfully-<br>To love all of our relatives, and in general<br>Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again<br>As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed<br>To do more than entertain it as an agreeable<br>Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,<br>Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,<br>The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.<br>The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory<br>And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware<br>Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought<br>Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now<br>Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,<br>Back in the moderate Aristotelian city<br>Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry<br>And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,<br>And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.<br>It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets<br>Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten<br>The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen<br>The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,<br>The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.<br>For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly<br>Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be<br>Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment<br>We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;<br>Remembering the stable where for once in our lives<br>Everything became a You and nothing was an It.<br>And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,<br>We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit<br>Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose<br>Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,<br>We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father:<br>“Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake.”<br>They will come, all right, don’t worry; probably in a form<br>That we do not expect, and certainly with a force<br>More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime<br>There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,<br>Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem<br>From insignificance. The happy morning is over,<br>The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:<br>When the Spirit must practise his scales of rejoicing<br>Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure<br>A silence that is neither for nor against her faith<br>That God’s Will be done, that, in spite of her prayers,<br>God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHORUS<br>He is the Way.<br>Follow Him through the land of Unlikeness;<br>You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.</strong></p>
<p><strong>He is the Truth.<br>Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;<br>You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.</strong></p>
<p><strong>He is the Life.<br>Love Him in the World of the Flesh;<br>And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.”</strong></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7329402
2024-01-06T10:31:36-06:00
2024-01-08T12:30:15-06:00
The Slaughter of the Innocents
<p><strong>Section Eight of WH Auden’s “For The Time Being.” (FTTB)</strong></p>
<p>And so, after <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/05/the-meditation-of-simeon/">the theological/philosophical ramblings of the last section</a>, WH Auden returns us to the characters again.<br>Let’s get to it.</p>
<p>First, as I’ve done with other sections, a few words of what we know of the actual King Herod….</p>
<p>Herod was a puppet king, installed and blessed by the Roman Empire. Yes, he was “King of Israel,” but it’s not like he had full and total independent control of his kingdom. As I said the other day, Herod often saw himself caught between a “rock and a hard place.”
<br>The rock: The Roman Empire.<br>The hard place: His own people, and their desire for theocratic rule in the name of Isreal’s God.</p>
<p>Herod himself, we are to believe, was a <em>“Hellenistic Jew.”</em> This means that while he was culturally and religiously Jewish, he was also educated in Greco-Roman philosophy. He was an “elite” in every sense of the word, perhaps out of touch with common Jewish folks.
The historical Herod was, indeed, also a tyrant. He slaughtered members of his own family to preserve his political power. There are stories of common Jews being slaughtered near his ornate palace outside of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>I say all this to note this historical truth: While there is no historical evidence to suggest an actual slaughter of two-year-old boys in Israel…everybody who read this story…everybody who knew of the actual, historical King Herod, might have thought to themselves, <em>“yeah…that sounds like something Herod would do…”</em></p>
<p>So, Auden’s Herod is a bit more sanguine and calm than the Biblical Herod. In Matthew, Herod is described as being <em>“stirred up.”</em> And his being “stirred up” also stirs up <em>“all of Jerusalem with him.”</em></p>
<p>As I like to say when I preach on Herod, this is opposite of good leadership.</p>
<p>In my Christmas meditation of a few weeks ago. I reminded you all of what social commentator Naomi Klein has said about our age. That in a time of great distress:</p>
<p><strong><em>“<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/12/22/calm-is-a-form-of-resistance/">Calm is a form of resistance</a>.”</em></strong></p>
<p>But Herod is <em>not</em> calm.<br>Herod is “stirred up.”</p>
<p>And his own anxiety and fear stir up everyone else.</p>
<p>In this, the Biblical King Herod reminds me far more of Donald Trump than anyone else in modern times. Trump is an evil master at using the language of religion, and at “stirring up” his followers into a frenzy. That frenzy resulted in an actual attempted insurrections against the United States, three years ago.</p>
<p>For Christians —those of us who actually read these stories carefully— we have been struck by the paradox that “January 6th” now has an entirely new cultural meaning.</p>
<p>1,200 hundred people have been charged with crimes associated with that insurrection on that day.
Hundreds are already convicted, and hundreds more have pled guilty.</p>
<p>When I look at the Bible, and look at our insurrection I cannot help but see the parallels. These contemporary rioters were, exactly as Matthew describes, “stirred up” by a cesspool of pundits and social media sources…even our President at the time…convinced that the election had been stolen. They were so “stirred up” that they tried to take over our government.</p>
<p>This leads me to a tangent…before we come back to WH Auden’s King Herod…</p>
<p>This leads me to think of my own Father, and a story he told of his life as a young man.</p>
<p>Dad was a Goldwater Republican. He was —in college and in his twenties— a staunch “anti-communist.”
As such, he fell in with some folks who were protesting left-leaning politicians and celebrities. And one night, he found himself signing up to picking President Kennedy at an even in Los Angeles (where my Father was living at the time…).</p>
<p>The night of the protest, he and the anti-communist group showed up an an LA theater, where JFK was holding a political fundraiser. They no doubt had angry signs and anti-communist slogans.<br>Dad tells of how the protestors were shunted off to a side of the building, away from the main entrance. But, low and behold, that meant they had been pushed over to a side door, where a very famous guest had unwisely decided to try and slip out, undetected.</p>
<p>It was Frank Sinatra.</p>
<p>Sinatra had been at the fundraiser, and had mistakenly assumed the protestors were still near the front of the building. Instead, the side door he chose as an exit put him right in front of a bunch of young, angry anti-communist protestors…all of whom immediately recognized him and all of whom immediately started yelling at him and heckling him.</p>
<p>Dad says that this moment ended up changing his life. Because he got close enough to Sinatra to look at him, person-to-person.</p>
<p><em>“I saw the fear in Frank Sinatra’s eyes,”</em> Dad said, decades later.</p>
<p>And as he saw the fear in Frank Sinatra’s eyes, it was as if my Father’s eyes had also been opened too. While Sinatra’s eyes were opened in FEAR, my Dad’s eyes were opened to the fact that he was CAUSING that fear.<br>My Father vowed, then and there, never to be a part of another mass protest. In fact, over the years, he gradually retreated from any kind of social or political activism. Dad would say that this encounter helped him realize just how close to the line things can sometimes get, when everyone in a crowd is “stirred up.”</p>
<p>I think about that story a lot these days. I myself have certainly been part of a <em>lot</em> of protests. I seriously doubt I have attended my last.</p>
<p>But it’s also crystal clear to me that crowds can get “stirred up,” to a point where all control can get lost.</p>
<p>Thanks be to God that my Father, on that night in Los Angeles, somehow saw the <em>humanity</em> in Frank Sinatra. He saw the fear HE was causing. He no longer saw Sinatra as a “celebrity,” or a “liberal,” or a “political enemy.”</p>
<p>My Father saw a scared human being, with fear in his eyes, who just happened to be all those other things too.</p>
<p>My <em>own</em> fear is that we are losing that ability: The ability to see each other as human beings.</p>
<p>Those January 6th protestors were stirred into such a frenzy that it’s very clear they no longer saw the Capitol Police, the members of Congress, even the sitting Vice-President…as human.</p>
<p><em>You cannot mount that kind of armed insurrection without seeing your “enemy” as less than human.</em></p>
<p>Christ’s incarnation is all about seeing each human being as a child of God. It’s about seeing the inherent humanity in every person. It’s about understanding that every human person has a bit of God’s Spirit within them, co-combined with our human flesh.<br>But stirred-up King Herod, the story tells us, slaughters innocent children instead.</p>
<p>Which gets us back to WH Auden, and his own version of Herod.</p>
<p>In FTTB…Herod is a LIBERAL. Or, so he says he is. Herod is a believer in the myth of progress. Herod is clearly well educated, and finds fanciful religious beliefs to be foolish and ignorant.</p>
<p>What I think Auden gets RIGHT about Herod is that Herod would have been an elitely educated, government functionary who was passionate about helping keep “Pax Romana.” The Roman peace. Herod would have been proud of his achievements. And Auden makes clear that indeed he is.
<br>Herod describes the situation thusly:
</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“There is no visible disorder. No crime— what could be more innocent than the birth of an artisan’s child?”</strong></p>
<p><strong>“Barges are unloading soil fertiliser at the river wharves. Soft drinks and sandwiches may be had in the inns at reasonable prices. Allotment gardening has become popular. The highway to the coast goes straight up over the mountains and the truck-drivers no longer carry guns. Things are beginning to take shape. It is a long time since any- one stole the park benches or murdered the swans. There are children in this province who have never seen a louse, shopkeepers who have never handled a counterfeit coin, women of forty who have never hidden in a ditch except for fun. yes, in twenty years I have managed to do a little.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>But Auden’s Herod sees a threat….and that threat is the continued desire for belief what American Protestants would call <em>“a personal god.”</em></p>
<p>Herod sarcastically mimics the prayers of these folks around…and in doing so, Auden is of course parodying both himself and all who would believed in a personified Christ:
</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Leave thy heavens and come down to our earth of waterclocks and hedges. Become our uncle. Look after Baby, amuse Grandfather, escort Madam to the Opera, help Willy with his homework, introduce Muriel to a handsome naval officer. Be interesting and weak like us, and we will love you as we love ourselves.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is the problem with Incarnational Theology. It can indeed be seen as ridiculous….which it is.</p>
<p>Herod/Auden seems to issue some scathing critiques, not just of religious thought in general…but I cannot help but read into what comes next, the still very modern critique of modern Christianity and belief in “God.” Said another way, Herod is one of the OG <em>“Postmoderns.”</em></p>
<p>Herod notes this about the foolishness of belief in God, should this foolish belief in an Incarnational God not be stamped out:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are twenty years old. Diverted from its normal and wholesome outlet in patriotism and civic or family pride, the need of the materialistic Masses for some visible ldol to worship will be driven into totally unsocial channels where no education can reach it.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>“Every corner-boy will congratulate himself: “I’m such a sinner that God had to come down in person to save me. I must be a devil of a fellow” Every crook will argue: “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged.” And the ambition of every young cop will be to secure a death-bed repentance.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ouch…and yet, true, yes. This is indeed how religious faith gets understood in the popular culture, and why so very many reject it — as Herod does here— as preposterous. But after this, it seems to me we get at the heart of Herod’s concern. Herod is concerned that Jesus’ message will indeed turn over the accepted order of things.<br>
And of course, Jesus’ message IS supposed to do that.</p>
<p>As Mary sings in the Magnificat: </p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“God has shown strength with his arm;<br>God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.<br>God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;<br>God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jesus would later say: <em>“The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”</em></p>
<p>An Incarnational theology is an anathema to hierarchy, because in Christ <em>“there is no male or female, Jew or Greek, slave of free.”</em></p>
<p>Jesus’ message IS a threat to the status quo…IS a threat to anyone in power and privilege. It cuts right though all human caste systems of race, religion, economics, gender, class, orientation.</p>
<p>Of course, the Church of today is incredibly corrupted itself. No need to dwell on this. I’m talking here about the words of JESUS, not the actions of the CHURCH. The meaning of Incarnational Theology, not how the institution consistently, in every generation, corrupts that message.</p>
<p>Auden’s King Herod sees all of this, and sees is as the reason the troops must be sent in to slaughter in the innocents:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums, and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Tragedy when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>What a beautiful and indicting paragraph about the contempt of “Elites” for the common people.</p>
<p>But Auden’s Herod is a bit more cold and calculating than either the Biblical Herod or Donald Trump. And he puts it this way:
</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilisation must be saved, even if means sending in the military, as I supposed it does.<br>How dreary. Why is it that in the end civilisation always has to call in these professional tidiers to whom it is all one whether it be Pythagoras or a homicidal lunatic that they are instructed to exterminate.</strong></p>
<p><strong>O dear, Why couldn’t this wretched infant be born somewhere else? Why can’t people be sensible? I don’t want to be horrid. Why can’t they see that the notion of a finite God is absurd? Because it is.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>One thing I tend to think Auden misses about Herod is how much the <em>real</em> Herod was —like Donald Trump— about self preservation before anything else. Herod of the Bible orders the slaughter of the innocents (again: no evidence it actually happened) for the very same reasons ALL leaders try to cling to political power: their own self preservation, narcissism, and foolish belief they they are either special blessed or specially gifted to lead others.
<br>Nothing is further from the truth. God’s Incarnation destroys up and down. It assures us that common folks can do extraordinary things too. That ordinary humans are endowed with gifts and grace from God the world needs, more than it needs any “King” or “Empire.”</p>
<p>Auden’s Herod, and a majority of postmodern thinkers of our time, see religious faith such as an incarnational view as preposterous. But Auden’s Herod also CORRECTLY names the implication of Incarnational Theology too. Herod says:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“And suppose, just for the sake of argument, that it isn’t, that this story is true, that this child is in some inexplicable manner both God and Man…it would mean that God had given me the power to destroy Himself. I refuse to be taken in, He could not play such a horrible practical joke.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes! That’s exactly what it means!
It means God gives us the horrific power to not only destroy each other and our planet, but to also literally destroy a piece of God too. Because…God is in and through all these things. Rather than see all things as sacred…or as blessed with some holiness of the infinite God, we see them as disposable and expendable.</p>
<p>Herod is right: God HAS given us power to destroy. And it’s not a practical joke. It’s the horror of our God-given free will and choice.<br>We CAN destroy the planet.<br>We CAN Otherize whole races and religions.<br>We CAN foolishly believe our power is the only power there is, and our decisions “must” be “just.”</p>
<p>That’s exactly the horrible implication of Incarnational Theology. As I cited in an earlier chapter here, Incarnation is as Frederick Buecnher says: <em>“ultimate reality, born with a skull you could crush one handed.”</em></p>
<p><em>“Could and do,” </em>I would reply to Buechner. Dear God in heaven, we could…and we often do…</p>
<p>My only critique of Auden’s Herod is that he turns him into a semi-sympathetic character, ala “Pontius Pilate” in <em>“Jesus Christ Superstar.” </em>Both the “Pilate” of JCS and the “Herod” of FTTB are depicted as being filled with a sense of personal anxiety and conflict about their decisions. But, while I really appreciate the moral theology they are allowed to unwind, and the interesting character development, in both cases this is too soft and kind to the actual historical figures.<br><br>The real Pilate and Herod were cogs in the vast Powers That Be of the Roman Empire. And to preserve both “Pax Romana” and their own fiefdoms, they no doubt dispatched with Jesus without much angst or debate at all. Jesus was a tiny, minor, figure to them.
And they behaved as all Powers That Be, in every age, behave.</p>
<p>So….why did Auden mischaracterize Herod in this way? What was he intending?</p>
<p>More than equating Herod with the growing fascist threat of his day, I think Auden was trying to speak to progressive thinkers in the West…to urge them to give Christianity another look…as he himself had done. (In a moment, you’ll see that he has Herod exclaim <em>“I’m a liberal!”</em>)</p>
<p>In a review of a Rienhold Niebuhr book (Auden and Niebuhr became good friends…) Auden says a prescient line, which could be written about our own time:
<br><br><strong><em>“It has taken Hitler to show us that liberalism is not self-supporting.”</em></strong></p>
<p>We might say “It has taken American Christian Nationalism to show us that liberalism is not self-supporting.”</p>
<p>Liberalism…the theoretical kind, not the political kind…must be renewed in every generation.
Democracy takes a kind of effort and participation that perhaps our culture is tiring of?<br><br>
And perhaps our growing American fascist voices of our time feel weirdly comforting?
<br>Maybe we’re just all too tired of what democracy takes?
<br>Maybe we’re tired of corporate greed that sells our idealism back to us as products that, too often, kill us instead?<br>Maybe the system has beaten all idealism out of far too many of the poor and middle classes?
<br>Maybe a little of all of this…and more?</p>
<p>But, I keep going back to another quote by Auden, from an essay he wrote during World War II. It was titled <em>“Poetry and Total War.”</em> And in it, Auden wasn’t so much concerned with the Fascist threat —which he assumed must be defeated—as he was with what “democracies” might do to defeat it.<br><br>Auden said: <strong><em>“the danger is that, in order to win, the democracies will construct an anti-fascist, political religion, and so, by becoming like their enemies, lose the peace.”</em></strong></p>
<p>Read that quote over and over, until it sinks in, deeply. Like Eisenhower’s 1950s warning about the “military industrial complex,” it seems to me, dear readers, that this is exactly what has happened in the past eight decades.<br><br>Western Democracies, time and again, have violated their own core beliefs in horribly foreign adventures in Vietnam and Iraq, to name just two. Western Democracies have been infected by “Civil Religion.”<br>By a kind of creeping AMERICAN Nationalism.</p>
<p>We are, indeed, becoming like our enemies….because we far too often OTHERIZE our enemies.</p>
<p>Auden’s Herod isn’t so much the Biblical Herod as he is a supporter of a United Nation’s style World Order, where rationality and sensibility rule….where democracy magically springs forth. (The very kind of progressive leader our many conspiracy theories today fear, btw…)<br><br>
If there is one thing my past three decades of ministry has taught me, its that whether it’s Russia, Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, Central America…and any number of other places…democracy never “magically” springs forth.
<br><br>People of the Earth don’t <em>“hate us for our freedom.”
</em><br>They <em>“hate us for our hypocrisy.”
</em><br>They hate that we have so compromised our own core principles that we somehow believe democracy can be spread by guns or covert action.
<br><br>It cannot. These things, in fact, spoil the possibility of democracy. And I don’t think we’ve yet to fully understand this….to our, and our world’s, great misfortune.<br>(Hint: I think in their hearts, the insurrectists are correctly seeing this hypocrisy too…just choosing a dangerous, foolhardy, solution…)</p>
<p>And so, Auden’s Herod is filled with a guilt and remorse that the real Herod did not likely have.</p>
<p>But! It absolutely IS the guilt and remorse of Post-Modern Americans, as we foolishly attempt to use force to keep the <em>“Pax Americana.”</em></p>
<p>Guilt racked Herod says what perhaps every American politician/thought leader, who genuflexively believes their just cause, ALSO believes:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Why should He(God) dislike me so? I’ve worked like a slave. Ask anyone you like. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I’ve taken elocution lessons. I’ve hardly ever taken bribes. How dare He allow me to decide? I’ve tried to be good. I brush my every night. I haven’t had sex for a month. I object. I’m a liberal. I want everyone to be happy. I wish I had never been born.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eighty years ago, Auden wrote these words which —with each passing year— feel even more relevant to our time than he could have possibly imagined.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7329119
2024-01-05T12:39:52-06:00
2024-01-06T11:30:21-06:00
The Meditation of Simeon
<p><strong>Section Seven of WH Auden’s “For The Time Being.” (FTTB)</strong><br>(For the previous section: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/04/vision-of-the-shepherds-at-the-manger/">Click Here</a>)</p>
<p>I should say from the outset that in my many readings of FTTB, I often skip over this entire section. It’s always felt like a weird little interruption to the narrative, and a section of incredibly deep philosophy/theology that even I —with my own theological education— could not make heads of tails of.</p>
<p>But I am again indebted to Alan Jacob’s incredible “Introduction” to the relatively new edition of FTTB that he edited a decade ago. Jacobs has made this section make sense to me at last. (Or at least helped me make sense of why Auden thought it was a good idea…)</p>
<p>In the Bible, Simeon is a minor character who comes to us in the Gospel of Luke, just after Jesus birth. He’s a very old man who encounters Jesus on the eighth day after his birth, when Mary and Joseph present him at the Temple. This might well have been a time of his circumcision. According to Luke, Simeon has been gifted with a vision of the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. Somehow, when he sees Jesus, he believes that vision is fulfilled.</p>
<p>Luke’s Simeon says:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><br><strong>“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;<br>for my eyes have seen your salvation…”
</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>You get the clear sense that Simeon will indeed die soon after this, and that he’ll die contented he’s gotten the hoped for vision.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>But Simeon also blesses Mary and Joseph, and has special words for them. He says:<br><br><strong>
“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed…”
But then, it’s as if he looks straight at Mary, the Mother of this newborn baby, and he says “and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yikes.</p>
<p>Remembering that these Gospels are written decades after Jesus’ earthly life, we are being invited to see this as Shakespearean-like foreshadowing. Like those witches that appear in Macbeth, and give away the end of the story before it’s even begun, Simeon is telling us the whole story-arc, right here.
— Jesus’ is born, Incarnate God, as a baby.<br>— Jesus teaches a Gospel of love and radical inclusion of everyone, gathering Disciples and followers, and proclaiming that God’s kingdom is here NOW.<br>— Jesus runs afoul of the Powers That Be…who see him as a threat…and have him killed.<br>— God has some incredible “Last Word” in the matter, and raises him from the dead…rejecting humanity’s rejection of God.</p>
<p>That’s the broad literary outline of the Gospels. Luke’s Simeon foreshadows it all with this ominous sounding verse.</p>
<p>“<em>…a sign that will be opposed…”<br>“…a sword that will pierce your own soul too…”</em></p>
<p>Simeon to Mary: <em>“Congratulations, new Mom…you’re in for quite a ride…”</em></p>
<p>That the <em>Biblical</em> Simeon.</p>
<p>WH Auden’s Simeon is NONE of this.<br>And I suppose this is what always confused me.</p>
<p>Auden’s Simeon is a philosophical theologian, who speaks in $64,000 theological words. As Alan Jacobs describes him: “we hear from one who can discourse learnedly about Time and the Infinite, the Unconditional and the historically conditioned, the relations between Virtue and Necessity…”</p>
<p>Ok…but again…<em>why</em>?
<br>Why stick in this section of verbose intellectual ramblings?</p>
<p>As Jacobs also notes <em>“How Auden thought this meditation could be accompanied by music is not immediately<br>obvious…”</em></p>
<p>Indeed. If you’ve ever wondered why Ben Britten couldn’t set this poem to music, just flip ahead to Simeon and it becomes blindly obvious.</p>
<p>Jacobs suggest this section is almost like a palate cleanser for the narrative. It’s Auden’s attempt to poetically express what I would call “Incarnational Theology.”</p>
<p>It feels like a break with the narrative…because it is. It’s not a <em>story.</em> It’s philosophical/theology, expressed in poetry. Once we see it this way, this break in the story can make more sense.</p>
<p>So, having been given a new way to see this entire section, I have a growing appreciation for it. My sense is that it’s not only a character of SIMEON speaking…but Auden himself is breaking open a view into his own theology.</p>
<p>Let’s just cite a few passages that also mirror my own views of Incarnational Theology…</p>
<p>Simeon sees the meaning of Jesus’ birth in the following ways…</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“But here and now the Word which is implicit in the Beginning and in the End is become immediately explicit, and that which hitherto could only passively fear as the incomprehensible I AM, henceforth we may actively love with comprehension that THOU ART. Wherefore, having seen Him, not in some prophetic vision of what might be, but with the eyes of our own weakness as to what actually is, we are bold to say that we have seen our salvation.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><br>Auden here is mirror John Chapter 1, and Simeon’s own words in Luke. He’s also clearly cribbing Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosophical/theologian. Incarnation brings the Hebrew Scriptures’ “I AM”…God far off in the clouds…and helps us see God as “THOU ART.”</p>
<p>And through Incarnational Theology, we see God present in all human beings.</p>
<p>Simeon continues:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“…in Him we become fully conscious of Necessity as our freedom to be tempted, and of Freedom as our necessity to have faith, And by Him is illuminated the time in which we execute those choices through which our freedom is realized or prevented, for the course of History is predictable in the degree to which all men love themselves, and spontaneous in the degree to which each man loves God and through Him his neighbour.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I really love this section in a new way. My own sense of Incarnational Theology is that if we truly embrace it…if we deeply truly see all human beings as incarnated with little bits of God…then we can no longer see them as “The Other.”</p>
<p>Therefore, as Auden says here, each moment of life is a moment of CHOICE. (We covered this in the Annunciation section…) Auden/Simeon is connecting Incarntional Theology with the Great Commandment in this section. Which is wonderful, because of course, they ARE connected. Incarnation is shot-through the entire Great Commandment:</p>
<p><em>To love God IS to love neighbor and self…<br>To love neighbor…IS to love God and self…<br>To love self is to love God and neighbor…</em></p>
<p>There is no disconnection between any of it, because it’s all one unity of God and World….of heaven and earth.
We see it again in Matthew 25, the famous parable of the Last Judgment. When we love and serve the least, the lost, the left out…when love ANY human being, we are in fact also loving God.<br>It’s all one unity together.</p>
<p>This is the heart of Incarnational Theology.<br>The way I like to express it is:</p>
<p><strong>God’s Incarnation means there is no meaning to the words “God forsaken.”</strong></p>
<p>
We can SAY those words. But they have no meaning…they have no reference in reality as reality can be known.<br>The set of “God forsaken” people, places, and things, is ZERO.</p>
<p><strong>In God’s truth, there is no place, no time, no person…beyond or outside the presence of God.</strong></p>
<p>This is the heart of Incarnational Theology. This is its power, its breadth, its depth. This is the deep way of seeing and understanding the world that we all too quickly skip over.</p>
<p>Auden clearly embraces the full depth of this. He has Simeon offer some ridiculous examples of the implications of all of this, just to help make the point (a few examples, edited for space…):</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Every invalid is Roland defending the narrow pass against hopeless odds, every stenographer Brunnhilde refusing to renounce her lover’s ring which came into existence through the renunciation of love.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>“Every Cabinet Minister is the woodcutter’s simple-minded son to whom the fishes and the crows are always whispering the whereabouts of the Dancing Water or the Singing Branch, every heiress the washerwoman’s butterfingered daughter on whose pillow the fairy keeps laying the herb that could cure the Prince’s mysterious illness.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>“Nor is there any situation which is essentially more or less interesting than another. Every tea-table is a battlefield littered with old catastrophies and haunted by the vague ghost of vast issues, every martyrdom an occasion for flip cracks and sententious oratory.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Again, as I just said: In God’s truth, <strong>there is no place, no time, no person…beyond or outside the presence of God.</strong></p>
<p>And in the final analysis, an incarnational view of God helps us with the anxiety of modern life.<br>And I’ll let Auden/Simeon again have the final word:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.”’</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And all I can say is: <em>Amen</em>.</p>
<p>And yet…</p>
<p>We humans always have a choice before us…<br>To see God in and through all people, places, and things…<em>or</em> to see people, places, and things as “The Other” “The Threat,” “The Profane.”<br>We can respond in love for all God’s creation….<em>or</em> with anxiety and fear…</p>
<p>And, anxiety and fear are about to raise their heads again, as we run headlong into King Herod, in our next section…</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7328280
2024-01-04T10:08:34-06:00
2024-01-04T10:30:17-06:00
Vision of the Shepherds/At the Manger
<p><strong>THE VISION OF THE SHEPHERDS/AT THE MANGER</strong><br>Sections Five and Six of WH Auden’s “For The Time Being.” (FTTB)<br>(For section four: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-summons/">click here</a>)</p>
<p>Well, I’ve gotten a bit behind schedule, and so we’ll cover two sections today. But this isn’t bad, really, because it will allow us to continue the compare/contrast of two groups of characters.<br><br>As you might recall from last time, Auden juxtaposes the two groups —Wise Men, and Shepherds— as representatives of general types.</p>
<p><em>Wise Men = Utopians.</em><br>Future-focused. Believers in the “myth of progress.” Putting their ultimate trust in systems like commerce, science, and even theology/philosophy…believers that humans can perhaps leave behind their limitations if only we leave behind our past.</p>
<p>Our world today is still full of them…from Alvin Toffler in the 1970s, to Elon Musk today…we are still being sold the lie that some kind of <em>technical</em> solution to humanity’s problems will fix us.</p>
<p>Maybe some new app.<br>Maybe some new pharmaceutical.<br>Maybe some new “open market” somewhere, that will magically bring capital and wealth to formerly impoverished peoples, and banish all suffering and pain.</p>
<p>And, of course, the Utopians are always somehow right. Our technological abilities, our scientific advances, the advances of finance, really do make millions of lives better, don’t they?</p>
<p>But, they are also somehow wrong too. Because no system is going to “save” us. Our human problem has never, for one day, been technological, or scientific, or finance-related.</p>
<p><em>Shepherds = Arcadians.</em><br>Past-focused. Hopelessly nostalgic. Those who pine for some better time in the past. Small town folks who never left their home, and fear the rest of the world.</p>
<p>To me, I think of the folks I know in small town Texas, who watch helplessly as hospitals and schools close, as the young leave for the big cities. I think of the political movements —yes, even MAGA— that yearn to make us great AGAIN…as if the past was somehow some idyllic place we need to return to.</p>
<p>Auden posits the Shepherds as cogs in the wheel…as those who never stray far from their homes…unlike the Wise Men, who launch out into their future.</p>
<p>From the moment we meet the three shepherds, they seem to be well aware of who they are, and just what we all think of them:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“THE FIRST SHEPHERD<br>The winter night requires our constant attention, Watching that water and good-will,<br>Warmth and well-being, may still be there in the morning.</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE SECOND SHEPHERD<br>For behind the spontaneous joy of life<br>There is always a mechanism to keep going,</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE THIRD SHEPHERD<br>And someone like us is always there.”
</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Someone like us…that waiter who served your food…or even the farmer who grew it. The garbage collector. The water company crew that fixes your sewer line. Working class folks. Union folks. Small town folks. The folks we increasingly don’t notice, honor, or support –financially, morally, or spiritually– but whom we assume will always show up and do their job.</p>
<p>These folks used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. But one of the geniuses of Donald Trump has been to convince working class folks —at least enough of them to win one election— that Democrats are actually “elites,” or that all traditional Republicans are also. That “long con” still gets me, all these years later: How an alleged billionare who’s made a lot of his wealth extracting from the poor, failing to pay contractors, suing those who oppose him…that somehow enough of the poor and working class believed him when he said <em>“Only I can fix this.”</em></p>
<p>Or, maybe (as I’m fairly confident is true…) they didn’t believe him. But they just believe the system is so rigged, that they have been so forgotten, that <em>“why the hell not”</em> vote for a grifting TV real estate guy?</p>
<p></p>
<p>There is a despair and hopelessness loose in our streets that our present-day Utopians have helped us create. No, it’s not a global cabal “conspiracy.” Hillary Clinton never babies in the non-existent basement of a Washington DC pizzeria. JFK Jr. never came back, here at Dealey Plaza, to help Donald Trump retake the presidency. Nor, on the left, can yoga and deep breathing ward off COVID….and vaccines are not going to kill us all.</p>
<p>So many conspiracies on the right and left…so little time to debunk them all.</p>
<p>Where do they come from?</p>
<p>Increasingly, the middle class is shrinking. They know they’re not getting ahead. The wealthy and super wealthy continue to suck up all the oxygen and capital, and the poor and middle class are increasingly desperate.</p>
<p>Things like the opioid crisis, the water crisis in Flynt, cigarettes in a generation before….these things are real ways in which global elites really HAVE conspired to take advantage of every one else. They don’t sit in a cold, dark room, and spin out their “plots.” But the DO take every chance to take advantage of any “shock” (Naomi Klein’s conception) to make money and extract capital.</p>
<p>And yes, it can very easily start to feel like it’s all rigged. <br>And it is…it’s just not a conspiracy.</p>
<p>It’s not a “bug” (conspiracy), it’s a “feature.”</p>
<p>Auden’s shepherds are remarkable self aware. And they know just what the rich think of them:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“THE FIRST SHEPHERD<br>We observe that those who assure us their education<br>And money<br>would do us such harm,<br>How real we are<br>just as we are, and how they envy us,<br>For it is the centerless tree<br>And the uncivilised robin who are the truly happy,<br>Have done pretty well for themselves:</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE SECOND SHEPHERD<br>Nor can we help noticing how those who insist that<br>We ought to stand up for our rights,<br>And how important we are, keep insisting also<br>That it doesn’t matter a bit<br>If one of us gets arrested or injured, for It is only our numbers that count.</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE THIRD SHEPHERD<br>In away they are right,</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE FIRST SHEPHERD<br>But to behave like a cogwheel<br>When one knows one is no such thing,</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE SECOND SHEPHERD<br>Merely to add to a crowd with one’s passionate body,<br>Is not a virtue.</strong></p>
<p><strong>THE THIRD SHEPHERD<br>What is real<br>About us all is that each of us is waiting.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>These shepherd know their “place.”</p>
<p>And then, the angels appear to them with the good new of Jesus’ birth:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Sing Glory to God<br>And good-will to men,<br>All, all, all of them.</strong><br>Run to Bethlehem.”
Note how Auden phrases it: “All, all, all of them.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All means all. If Christ’s incarnation means anything to anybody, it means everything to everybody.</p>
<p>Luke’s angels say that they bring <em>“good tidings of great joy, which shall be the ALL people.”</em></p>
<p>Christians don’t OWN Christ’s incarnation, or have corner on the market for seeing God through other people. This powerful visitation benefits both Arcadians AND Utopians…the rich and the poor. People of all races, orientations, and economic circumstances.</p>
<p>And the shepherds —never ones to leave their homes— decide to launch out into the future:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>Let us run to learn<br>How to love and run;<br>Let us run to Love.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which gets us to…</p>
<p><strong>AT THE MANGER<br>(Section Six)</strong></p>
<p>And now, all our characters come together. It’s like every nativity scene you’ve ever laid eyes on.<br><br>Mary, Joseph, and the baby are there.<br>The Wise Men have come.<br>The shepherds are there.<br><br>And they are all overcome by the presence of LOVE…by the power of incarnation…God and human combined as one.</p>
<p>Mary speaks a beautiful stanza about the limits of our human ability to parent, teach, and shape our children. She seems to be aware of the awesome responsibility before her, and the total inadequacy of her human abilities:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“O shut your bright eyes that mine must endanger<br>With their watchfulness; protected by its shade<br>Escape from my care: what can you discover<br>From my tender look but how to be afraid?<br>Love can but confirm the more it would deny.<br>Close your bright eye.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sleep. What have you learned from the womb that bore you<br>But an anxiety your Father cannot feel?<br>Sleep. What will the flesh that I gave do for you,<br>Or my mother love, but tempt<br>you from His will?<br>Why was I chosen to teach His Son to weep?<br>Little One, sleep.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Dream. In human dreams earth ascends to Heaven<br>Where no one need pray nor ever feel alone.<br>In your first few hours of life here, O have you<br>Chosen already what death must be your own?<br>How soon will you start on the Sorrowful Way?<br>Dream while you may.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Isn’t that just beautiful?</p>
<p>And now, we turn to those Wise Men and Shepherds.</p>
<p>The Wise Men…having journeyed for days and weeks, find the baby and declare:</p>
<p><em>“O here and now our endless journey stops.”</em></p>
<p>The Shepherds declare how they have taken the opposite path.<br>They’ve never left. They never started down any path.<br>And so their declaration is:</p>
<p><em>“O here and now our endless journey starts.”</em></p>
<p>See how Auden is playing them off?<br>Then, theser two groups start to play back and forth in the narrative…each declaring what this remarkable LOVE has done for them.<br>
(Note: TUTTI indicates all of them speaking as one…)</p>
<p>Here’s what they say:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“WISE MEN<br>Our arrogant longing to attain the tomb,</strong></p>
<p><strong>SHEPHERDS<br>Our sullen wish to go back to the womb,</strong></p>
<p><strong>WISE MEN<br>To have no past,</strong></p>
<p><strong>SHEPHERDS<br>No future,</strong></p>
<p><strong>TUTTI (All speak together…)<br>Is refused.<br>And yet, without our knowledge,<br>Love has used<br>Our weakness as a guard and guide.</strong></p>
<p><strong>WISE MEN<br>Our lives’ impatience,</strong></p>
<p><strong>SHEPHERDS<br>Our lives’ laziness,</strong></p>
<p><strong>TUTTI (All speak together…)
</strong><br><strong>And bless each other’s sin,<br>exchanging here</strong></p>
<p><strong>WISE MEN<br>Exceptional conceit</strong></p>
<p><strong>SHEPHERDS<br>With average fear.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>God’s incarnation gives to EACH the gifts and the love THEY need.<br><br>It’s not “one size fits all.” God comes to each as each has need, and appears to each in different forms. The next section continues the beautiful back and forth between Wise Men and Shepherds, as they each appear to confess their own faults…and also continue to be overcome by LOVE.</p>
<p>For what they are BOTH seeing is: the power of love —God’s love, human love, all of it together— to cut through all of their pretense and failures. The Wise Men suddenly see love in the particular and the mundane…the Shepherds suddenly become <em>awake</em> and stop sleepwalking through their lives.</p>
<p>And I’ll end today with a beautiful vision that Auden gives us of them connecting together, as they all say in unison:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Released by Love from isolating wrong,<br>Let us for Love unite our various song,<br>Each with his gift according to his kind<br>Bringing this child his body and his mind.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Let us, indeed, whoever we are, bring all of our bodies and minds to the child.<br><br>As Christina Rossetti writes in the incredible song, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“What can I give him?<br>Poor as I am<br>If I were a shepherd<br>I would give a lamb<br>If I were a wise man<br>I would do my part<br>But what I can I give him<br>Give him my heart.”
</strong></p>
</blockquote>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7327404
2024-01-02T14:29:35-06:00
2024-01-04T10:30:17-06:00
The Summons
<p><strong>THE SUMMONS<br>SECTION FOUR OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)</strong></p>
<p>(For Section Three, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-temptation-of-st-joseph/">click here</a>)<br>After a break for New Year’s weekend, let’s continue with our conversation about WH Auden’s “For the Time Being,” (FTTB) and section four, in which we meet the “Wise Men.” I should note that this is all a bit out of sequence now…in that the Church calendar puts their arrival on January 6th…or as it’s otherwise known “Epiphany.”</p>
<p>The Christmas season is the twelve days between Christmas Day(12/25) and Epiphany (1/6). I won’t belabor this, of course. In a great many depictions of the manger scene, the Magi are already there…even though the text really does indicate they probably came by later.</p>
<p>I’m <em>slightly</em> disappointed that Auden doesn’t make more of the “Wise Men’s” interaction with Herod…although that is hinted at later. Further Auden calls them Wise Men. As you may or may not known, the actually Biblical text calls them “Magi,” which is where we get our modern word “Magician” from.</p>
<p>In terms of the Biblical text, these strangers are just “from the East” somewhere.</p>
<p>We don’t know who they were…but we do know they are most definitely <em>not</em> “Kings” of any kind. They are not “heads of state.” They are magicians, sorcerers of a king. They are definitely not seen as “Jewish,” but rather perhaps we might imagine them as from some other Eastern form of religion. Evangelicals seems to suggest that their appearance means that somehow renounce all their former ways…but there’s absolutely no evidence of this…they go “home by another way” and disappear from the story.</p>
<p>Auden makes them stand-ins for those who are “future looking.”
And in this next bit, I am completely indebted to a new copy of FTTB that I’ve just gotten this holiday season. A great edition, with a truly fantastic Introduction by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs notes that the “Wise Men” and the “Shepherds” are somewhat juxtaposed as those who are “future focus,” versus those who are “past focused.”</p>
<p>Jacobs says: “Auden uses the responses of the Wise Men and the Shepherds to illustrate what may well have been his favorite binary opposition, that between Arcadians and Utopians.”</p>
<p>Arcadians long for some perfect, nostalgic PAST…they hope to never leave home, maybe even “never left the place where [they] were born” as the poem says, and as Jacobs describes: “are afflicted by the “sullen wish to go back to the womb” and to have “no future.”</p>
<p>Jacobs continues: “By contrast, the Utopian temperament looks with “arrogant longing” towards a perfected future and therefore wishes “To have no past”; it is embodied in the Wise Men and, by extension, in all who seek shaping power over their worlds.”</p>
<p>So, let’s talk about “all those who by extension “seek shaping power over their worlds.”</p>
<p>These “Utopian” Wise Men….they are, IMHO, like all who in our world believe in the “Myth of Progress.”</p>
<p>As a progressive theologian myself, I suppose I believed in the “Myth of Progress” somewhere until the appearance of Donald Trump and the first few years of his presidency. I have written many times that the shooting at “Mother Emmanuel Church” of innocent Black worshippers, was a seminal event for me.
More recently, people were slapped awake by the killing of George Floyd, other mass shootings, the overturning of Rowe v Wade, the Othering of Immigrants and Trans people, the fear over teaching Amerca’s true racial history, and environmental voices like Greta Thunburg.</p>
<p>If you still embrace the “Myth of Progress” without any hints of concern for all the horrors that continue to unfold around us…you might not like this next section…ijs…and you might still be (in my opinion) dangerously naive….</p>
<p>I continue to believe progress IS possible.</p>
<p>But equating political, commercial, scientific progress with specific movements can be dangerous.<br>And no gain…no law…no change of heart…ever seems to be permanent. Every gain can be reversed.</p>
<p>Which gets us to Rome, and a reminder from me of my view that America is a modern Empire, and every American president (even the ones you like…) are like the Caesars of a great modern Empire. Again, if you don’t like this critique, you’re gonna feel SUPER lost in what I am about to say…</p>
<p>After introducing us to the Wise Men…those stand ins for all those who a “future focused” and believe in the “Myth of Progress.” Auden welcomes Caesar to his state. There are seven stanzas in which a chorus describes the greatness of Caesar, and they all being with this line:</p>
<p><strong>
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.”</strong></p>
<p>
And they end with:
<br><strong>“Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”</strong></p>
<p><em>“God must be with him.”</em></p>
<p>Here is the heart of the problem with equating earthly powers with heavenly powers. They are NEVER equivalent. Jesus didn’t want to create the kinds of “Christian Nationalism” that we see far too often today. That wasn’t Jesus’ plan.</p>
<p>As Jon Dominic Crossan suggests, one of the primary exclamations of the early Church was “Jesus is Lord…” with an implicit “…and Caesar is not” on the end.</p>
<p><strong>“Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.”</strong></p>
<p>That rings true to me. It still does.<br>And it even applies to America.</p>
<p>Of course, this all changes.</p>
<p>Christianity goes from proclaiming “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not,” to becoming the state religion of the Empire itself!</p>
<p>Constantine Christianizes his Empire, and the Church makes a deal with a Roman devil that continues to this day.</p>
<p>This becomes an apparently endlessly repeating cycle of how politicians try to “Christianize” their political movements.</p>
<p>Constantine puts crosses on all the shields in the Roman Empire.<br>Donald Trump holds a Bible up, outside a church for an offensive photo-op.<br>Even Hitler embraced the symbolism of Christianity, while simultaneously stripping it of all its actual teachings.</p>
<p>This is what tyrants and Empires…that’s what the Church does… when both collude with each other.</p>
<p>Church gets married to State, and vice versa.<br>They feed on each other, in deeply unhealthy ways.</p>
<p>It’s where we get all of America’s “Civil Religion” in its hard and soft forms.</p>
<p>Auden is writing in the early 1940s, during the time of both the Nazis AND the “Allied Powers.”</p>
<p>FTTB appears to be critiquing ALL OF THEM for the ways in which they assume “God must be with him(them)”</p>
<p>If I may, I think this is why Auden puts this section on Caesar squarely with his introduction of the “Wise Men”….because while the Wise Men seem to represent independent forward-thinking people, their ideas are constantly being embrace BY Caesar.</p>
<p>But not just by Caesar…also by “captains of industry,” and also by those who believe that “science can save us.</p>
<p>By those who put far too much “faith” in governments, scientific methods, or the “free market’s” ability to solve all our problems.</p>
<p>Again, NONE of these problems have gone away since Auden’s day. They have not gone away, because they are eternally a part of what I as a theologian suggest is our “human condition.”</p>
<p>Let’s look at some of the text in the Caesar sections…because it’s densely wonderful in its sarcastic critique….</p>
<p>The first two sections appear to eviscerate both the soft and hard sciences….theology/philosophy in the first, and and hard sciences in the second (I’m skipping the third section, but it kinda continues the science critique in the second section…)</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.<br>The First was the Kingdom of Abstract Idea:<br>Last night it was Tom, Dick and Harry; tonight it is S’s with P’s;<br>Instead of inflections and accents<br>There are prepositions and word-order;<br>Instead of aboriginal objects excluding each other<br>There are specimens reiterating a type;<br>Instead of wood-nymphs and river-demons,<br>There is one unconditional ground of Being. (Eric’s note: Auden seems to be making fun of his own friend, Paul Tillich!!!)<br>Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.<br>The Second was the Kingdom of Natural Cause:<br>Last night it was Sixes and Sevens: to-night it is One and Two;<br>Instead of saying, “Strange are the whims of the Strong,”<br>We say, “Harsh is the Law but it is certain”;<br>Instead of building temples, we build laboratories;<br>Instead of offering sacrifices, we perform experiments;<br>Instead of reciting prayers, we note pointer-readings;<br>Our lives are no longer erratic but efficient.<br>Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><br>The next two sections, four and five, it seems to me, are a pretty damning critique of Capitalism, and what I’d call “The Myth of Progress,” and our faith in it, which seems to still be pretty spot on today:
</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><br><strong>“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.</strong><br><strong>The Fourth was the Kingdom of Credit Exchange:<br>Last night it was Tit-for-Tat, to-night it is C.O.D.;<br>When we have a surplus, we need not meet someone with a deficit;<br>When we have a deficit, we need not meet someone with a surplus;<br>Instead of heavy treasures, there are paper symbols of value;<br>Instead ofPay at Once, there is Pay when you can;<br>Instead of My Neighbour, there is Our Customers;<br>Instead of Country Fair, there is World Market.<br>Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>What a slam of free market capitalism!!!</p>
<p>Section Five, seems to talk about those who turn our desires into marketable gadgets:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.<br>The Fifth was the Kingdom of Inorganic Giants:<br>Last night it was Heave-Ho, to-night it is Whee-Spree;<br>When we want anything, They make it;<br>When we dislike anything, They change it;<br>When we want to go anywhere, They carry us;<br>When the Barbarian invades us,<br>They raise immovable shields;<br>When we invade the Barbarian,<br>They brandish irresistible swords;<br>Fate is no longer a fiat of Matter,<br>but a freedom of Mind.<br>Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, finally, a section that reminds me of social media, popular culture, and the need for us all to be a “brand” today…for all the ways in which we are entertaining ourselves to death, and creating folks like Donald Trump…who it seems to me is a kind of Moloch arising out of our collective desire to be entertained and embrace simplistic answers to everything:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.<br>The Seventh was the Kingdom of Popular Soul:<br>Last night it was Order-Order, to-night it is Hear-Hear;<br>When he says, You are happy, we laugh;<br>When he says, You are wretched, we cry;<br>When he says, It is true, everyone believes it;<br>When he says, It is false, no one believes it;<br>When he says, This is good, this is loved;<br>When he says, That is bad, that is hated.<br>Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>WHEW.</p>
<p>There’s a lot to unpack there…feel free to read and reread until the critique starts to leap out at you.</p>
<p>Auden’s point seems to be…
Neither Empires, nor science, nor capitalism, will save us.<br>They are all capable of doing great things that help the human condition.</p>
<p>But for every progressive, forward-thinking political leader, there is a fascist waiting in the wings.<br>For every scientists who faithful follows the scientific method, there are Nazi scientists, Tuskegee experiments, and the atom bomb.<br>For every “free market” era, there are robber barons and oligarchs waiting to enslave us in our “pursuit of happiness.”</p>
<p>Empires always embrace all of this. At least, successful ones like the Roman, British, and American.
Yes…American really IS an Empire too….<br>(I said this in a sermon once, and a worshipper literally shouted out “NO!” It’s a hard truth to hear, if you’ve never considered it…)</p>
<p>And I am reminded here of a jaw-dropping quote from Auden that I’ve found online several places.</p>
<p>The quote is from March of 1942….just months after Pearl Harbor…as World War II was raging around the globe, and as it was suddenly all too easy to see that war as an existential fight of “good verses evil.” (Which it was…)</p>
<p>That said, Auden seems clear that the “Allies” are Empires as well, albeit once fighting with a “just cause.”</p>
<p>And Auden writes an incredible essay about art and war for the Chicago Sun. This is the line that stops me in my tracks:</p>
<p>“I think it not unlikely that the aspect of this war which will be most reflected in the poetry of the next few years is the danger that, in order to win it, the democracies will construct an anti-fascist political religion, and so, by becoming like their enemies, lose the peace.”</p>
<p>This is a major theme/fear of FTTB, and of much of Auden’s political critique that comes ever after.</p>
<p>And in our world…</p>
<p>From Christian Nationalism in our country, Zionism in Israel, and “Jihad” in the Middle East, is it not clear that to this day modern Empires attempt to claim the “high ground” or “an anti-facist political religion,” can be coopted by politics, science, and commercial interests?!!</p>
<p>Again, there is a loss of innocence that can come to us when we realize this….when we come to realize that, to use our modern language…both Capitalism and Socialism have/can fail us.</p>
<p>Democracy can be twisted into Fascism…institutions we believed to be beyond reproach can be corrupted.</p>
<p>Science can tell us all we need to know about global warming, or how to live longer, healthier lives, and Corporations will still sell us crap that destroy our world and harm our bodies.</p>
<p>So…after this long critique of Caesar, modernism, progress, capital, science, theology…. the narrator comes back in, and begins to pull back the curtain a bit on all this.</p>
<p>Again, this seems like verse that fits our time too. These feel like words all of us could say in early 2024:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“If we were never alone or always too busy,<br>Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true:<br>But no one is taken in, at least not all of the time;<br>In our bath, or the subway, or the middle of the night,<br>We know very well we are not unlucky but evil,<br>That the dream of a Perfect State or No State at all,<br>To which we fly for refuge, is a part of our punishment.<br>Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,<br>For Powers and Times are not gods but mortal gifts from God;<br>Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,<br>For all societies and epochs are transient details,<br>Tiansmitting an everlasting opportunity<br>That the Kingdom of Heaven may come, not in our present<br>And not in our future,<br>but in the Fullness of Time.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This last part is the part that is so hard to embrace…that the “Kingdom of Heaven” cannot come to “our present,” nor likely to “our future,” but only in “the fullness of time.”</p>
<p>In some future, unimaginable time epoch.</p>
<p>Our attempts to equate Caesar with God, and God with Caesar….<br>To equate Commerce with God…and God with commerce…<br>To equate Science with God, and God with Science…</p>
<p>….all these are bound to fail and are bound to disillusion us.</p>
<p>And we know it. As Auden wrote then, we feel this existentially in our bones today.
Those of us who truly study American history know of our White Supremacy, the failures of science, the lack of will among politicians, the crushing greed of Oligarch and robber barons…</p>
<p>We can perhaps begin to embrace that our world’s cultural problems truly do come from “the sins of the Fathers.” (And they are almost always “Fathers”)</p>
<p>Even after all this cultural critique Auden ends this section of FTTB with a prayer, the last section of which is still, somehow, hopeful:
</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Inflict Thy promises with each<br>Occasion of distress,<br>That from our incoherence we<br>May learn to put our trust in Thee,<br>And brutal fact persuade us to<br>Adventure, Art, and Peace.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our faith in God <em>should</em> lead us…. not to Empires, Capital, or Science…but to the powers truly behind all three:</p>
<p><strong>“Adventure, Art, and Peace.”</strong></p>
<p>This is the mystical understanding of Incarnation that will can hopefully still trust in our day today. We can, and should, embrace politics, science, Church, commerce.</p>
<p>We really can’t live without systems. But we cannot and should not equate these with GOD…make them Gods, or fail to believe that, since they are all created by fallible humans, they will most certainly fail us. We have to simultaneously embrace and reject them…and this is what a Christian Incarnational theology can help us do…to trust that God works IN and through this world, but to not deify the world or our own thoughts about it.</p>
<p>As with myself and many other theologians in the modern era believe, the entire Gospel narratives are contrasting the idea of our earthly powers (Rome in the Gospels, countries like the United States in our time) with the realm that God promises.
</p>
<p><br><em>“Jesus is Lord…and Caesar is not…”</em></p>
<p><br>
There is incredible DANGER in equating earthly political power with heavenly power.</p>
<p>God works in and through ALL OF US…in these broken and fallible decisions we make.</p>
<p>I think Auden might be deeply right when his closing “prayer” here suggest that we should be focusing in mind is on more esoteric things like “Adventure, Art, and Peace.”</p>
<p>It is foolish to pray for these, to engage in these?
OF COURSE it is…</p>
<p>But it we don’t, we’re like to make gods of our earthly systems, and forget that “God is God, and we are not…and that is good…”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7327405
2024-01-02T14:21:20-06:00
2024-01-02T19:15:15-06:00
The Temptation of St. Joseph
<p><strong>“THE TEMPTATION OF ST. JOSEPH”<br>SECTION TWO OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)</strong></p>
<p>(For Second Two, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/the-annunciation/">click here</a>)<br>As I’ve already said previously, this is my favorite section of the entire poem, and a bit of writing/theology that’s been deeply influential to me for thirty years.</p>
<p>Auden’s depiction of Joseph here, to me, is spot on for what he must have no doubt been experiencing.</p>
<p>For the first ten years of ministry, during Advent, I preached some kind of sermon about Joseph —often as if it was a first person narrative of him speaking— and a lot of the overall character traits were 100% borrowed from FTTB.</p>
<p>To grasp the full power of the characterization, you have to put yourself back into Joseph’s historical time/place (best we can) and also recognize and remember a key difference between the visitations to Mary and the visitations to Joseph.<br>Luke depicts Mary’s encounter as some kind of real-world, awakened-world, encounter with the angel.</p>
<p>Joseph’s entire message from God comes him as a DREAM.</p>
<p>And what if the dream is wrong?<br>What if it was just indigestion, or his own fanciful imagination?<br>How hard it would be to believe this kind of message, if all you had was a dream?</p>
<p>Add to this, the message is that his intended bride is pregnant, not because of an affair with some other man…but through the Holy Spirit.<br>(All through this, I will continually invite you to embrace the non-literal sense of these stories…)</p>
<p>Joseph is being asked to not only believe such a thing might be possible…but also to endure the likely ridicule of the entire world.</p>
<p>Yes, it was a misogynistic culture. Yes, the very story speaks to this when Luke tells us Joseph decides not to “put Mary away” as was his highly gendered and sexist right as the man in this story.</p>
<p>But…he didn’t do that. He did something quite profound…</p>
<p>He trusted the dream, and he loved Mary as his Wife, even though no doubt the world imagined him a fool and cuckold.</p>
<p>Many literary scholars have noted that Auden may have also been using Joseph as a stand in for himself here too. Auden was madly n love with another man, and wished to see him as a husband (again: remarkable for 1941, yes?)<br>But…that lover was in fact “unfaithful” to Auden…or perhaps better said, just never saw the relationship the same way Auden did…</p>
<p>So…Auden too was working through his own issues with this section.<br>I apologize or the length of what follows…but I really do want you to get sense of the power of this section, and I’ll do that by citing large sections of it.</p>
<p>Many contemporary Feminist/Womanist theologians today might well say something like: “masculinity, To Nature, is a non-essential luxury…”</p>
<p>Auden wrote/thought this, in 1941.</p>
<p>Mary and God are the stars. Traditional CIS Gendered Straight Men?<br>Not super important. Joseph’s role is to <em>follow,</em> not lead….</p>
<p>The narrative begins with Joseph enjoying an average day at a neighborhood bar. He comes home to discover the news that apparently everybody already knows and is already gossiping about. While he describes his own feelings, the “Chorus,” the chattering, gossiping folks around him, say this:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Joseph, you have heard What Mary says occurred;<br>Yes, it may be so.<br>Is it likely? No.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>At later….</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><br><strong>“Mary may be pure, But, Joseph, are you sure?<br>How is one to tell?<br>Suppose, for instance … Well…”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And finally…</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Maybe, maybe not.<br>But, Joseph, you know what<br>Your world, of course, will say<br>About you anyway.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>What the WORLD will say is: Joseph is a fool.</p>
<p>Which leads to a beautiful section of Joseph calling out to God, and being answered by Gabriel, somewhat like Job and that “whirlwind.”</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Where are you, Father, where?<br>Caught in the jealous trap<br>Of an empty house I hear<br>As I sit alone in the dark<br>Everything, everything,<br>The drip of the bathroom tap,<br>The creak of the sofa spring,<br>The wind in the air-shaft, all<br>Making the same remark<br>Stupidly, stupidly,<br>Over and over again.<br>Father, what have I done?<br>Answer me, Father, how Can I answer the tactless wall<br>Or the pompous furniture now?<br>Answer them…</strong></p>
<p><strong>GABRIEL<br>No, you must.</strong></p>
<p><strong>JOSEPH<br>How then am I to know, Father, that you are just?<br>Give me one reason.</strong></p>
<p><strong>GABRIEL<br>No.</strong></p>
<p><strong>JOSEPH<br>All I ask is one<br>Important and elegant proof<br>That what my Love had done<br>Was really at your will<br>And that your will is Love.</strong></p>
<p><strong>GABRIEL<br>No, you must believe;<br>Be silent, and sit still.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Powerful….</p>
<p>Joseph wants a sign…like Mary got…like Elizabeth got…but he will get nothing.<br>And then, the “Our Townish” narrator drops back in…and delivers an AMAZING soliloquy which really presages much of more modern Feminist thought.</p>
<p>Joseph, Auden more than suggests, is being made to atone for the sins of Misogyny itself.</p>
<p>I’m going to let you read almost the whole thing, because it’s stunning…</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“NARRATOR<br>For the perpetual excuse<br>Of Adam for his fall—”My little Eve, God bless her, did beguile me and I ate,”<br>For his insistence on a nurse,<br>All service, breast, and lap, for giving Fate Feminine gender to make girls believe<br>That they can save him, you must now atone, Joseph, in silence and alone;<br>While she who loves you makes you shake with fright,<br>Your love for her must tuck you up and kiss good night.</strong></p>
<p><strong>For likening Love to war, for all<br>The pay-off lines of limericks in which<br>The weak resentful bar-fly shows his sting,<br>For talking of their spiritual Beauty to chorus-girls, for flattering<br>The features of old gorgons who are rich,<br>For the impudent grin and Irish charm<br>That hides a cold will to do harm,<br>To-day the roles are altered; you must be The Weaker Sex whose passion is passivity.</strong></p>
<p><strong>For those delicious memories<br>Cigars and sips of brandy can restore<br>To old dried boys, for gallantry that scrawls In idolatrous detail and size<br>A symbol of aggression on toilet walls,<br>For having reasoned-“Woman is naturally pure Since she has no moustache,” for having said,<br>“No woman has a business head,”<br>You must learn now that masculinity,<br>To Nature, is a non-essential luxury….</strong></p>
<p><strong>Forgetting nothing and believing all,<br>You must behave as if this were not strange at all.<br>Without a change in look or word,<br>You both must act exactly as before;<br>Joseph and Mary shall be man and wife<br>Just as if nothing had occurred.<br>There is one World of Nature and one Life;<br>Sin fractures the Vision, not the Fact; for<br>The Exceptional is always usual<br>And the Usual exceptional.<br>To choose what is difficult all one’s days<br>As if it were easy, that is faith. Joseph, praise.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, much more modern theologians of our day are still making these same points about Joseph. Perhaps if Auden were alive today, he’d be using the phrase “Family of Choice” to describe Joseph, Mary, and their little family.</p>
<p>It is indeed worth the meditation of modern Evangelical Christians that the Holy Family is indeed strictly “non-traditional.”</p>
<p>“Blood” is not as important as “relationship,” as Jesus himself would remind us time and again.</p>
<p>My dear friend, Charles Gaby, wrote a song for his step-daughter years ago that gets at this too:</p>
<p><strong>“They say that water ain’t as thick as blood…<br>But maybe blood, ain’t as thick as love…”</strong></p>
<p>In our time, we have spent so much time debating the role of women. I’m not a woman, so I’m not going to describe this whole, tortured history.<br>But I will say this: A part of why women’s roles and rights are still so much debated in our world is because MEN have yet to really come to terms with <em>their</em> changing roles.</p>
<p>Men truly need to wrestle with these big questions:<br>— What would mean to have marriages that are true partnerships? Where couples assign family roles based on our natural gifts and graces, and not assumed gendered ones?<br>— What would it mean for men to be a partner to our spouses and follow their lead…to stand back as they shine…to realize their own, independent wills, careers, and visions?<br>— What would it means for us to not “mansplain” every single little thing?</p>
<p>Friends, perhaps why I identify so much with Joseph here is that his kind of role is a model for what I’ve tried to be in marriage to my wife of 30 years.</p>
<p>When Dennise and I got married we looked around and realized that the kind of true partnership we intended to have would be hard work, precisely because: we had so few “role models” we could look too.</p>
<p>Even our own families…her’s and mine…far too often assumed so many gendered roles for us.</p>
<p>There were many times when I picked Maria up from school, or attended parent functions…where I was the only man in the room…and all the other Mom’s looked at me like I was a Martian.</p>
<p>There were times when career women…in both the law and the church…said or did stupid, stupid things that reinforced the very gendered roles that cause women so many career problems in the first place.<br>Women —career women and stay at home moms— were often the MOST baffled by what we were trying to do.</p>
<p>Men…mostly stayed silent, as men do…allowing them to not have to really consider the full weight of societal changes around them. Women shifted…argued…undercut each other.<br>Men mostly pretended not to notice.<br>The early years were super hard in this regard. We were navigating cultural differences….and we were navigating these kinds of gendered differences.<br>Many many times, we would say to ourselves: “This stuff is hard, because we have so few role models.”</p>
<p>Dennise no doubt felt more of those expectations that I did. And we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that sometimes it was just easier to have HER talk to other “Moms” about parenting stuff…play dates, etc…</p>
<p>We’re still in a deeply misogynistic world, for sure. And I sometimes wonder if the younger generation’s obsession with gender pronouns also comes because they see so little evidence, so little progress, breaking through traditional gendered roles in the generations before them.</p>
<p>Sometimes it feels like that what is being critiqued is a hard set of traditional gender roles, and the false belief that a “traditional” marriage must, de facto, reinforce these things.</p>
<p>Women will make the compromises.<br>Men will “lead.”</p>
<p>All I can tell you is: that’s just wrong. Plenty of folks walking around today are in “traditional” marriages that shatter those older norms.</p>
<p>And so now —speaking for me alone— we sometimes reel both at odd with those older classical “norms,” and also some newer pronoun-centered visions that also seem quite rigid and don’t still ever seem to fit the fullness of human experience.</p>
<p>(Hint: language will never do this…language will always trip us up..always…it must be so, else language…sign and metaphor…be assumed equivalent with actual lived-experienced…)<br>(Second clarification: I’m also not bashing being pronoun-aware. I’m only suggesting that language sensitivity and gender role changes are two different things; and one never guarantees the other. There are plenty of CIS genders straight folks who consider themselves “He/Him and She/Hers” and are absolutely cross-gendered, if we are assuming traditional gender roles as their assumed model)</p>
<p>OK…long tangent there…</p>
<p>The point is, I’d like to think we are also witnesses to the power of what a true partnership might look like…where some days she is <em>“Mrs Folkerth,”</em> and some days I am <em>“Mr Garcia,”</em> and most days we are neither of those things, but just partners together.</p>
<p>I think we’re here to tell you that is possible.<br>And if, in some small way, we’re now role models for a next generation, that will be wonderful trail to have walked all these years.</p>
<p>Auden imagines a world where this becomes….ORDINARY.<br>It is not ordinary…it still is not…not 30 years after our marriage..not 80 years after this was written.</p>
<p>But what if we acted like it was?!<br>What if we assumed traditional families were ok?<br>Traditional families in non-traditional gendered roles?</p>
<p>Non-traditional families, lesbians and gay men, in traditional families?<br>Families of choice, which is what The Holy Family were, creating their own beautiful sense of “home?”</p>
<p>What if we acted as if it was normal for women to lead and men to follow…or for couples to switch off “leading?”<br>And what of all this was “ordinary?”</p>
<p>Imagining a world where all this becomes ordinary…this is how Auden ends things.</p>
<p>This section of FTTB ends with a series of prayers for common folks.<br>Think Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender.”</p>
<p>In fact, the last section here is just like Browne’s line “say a prayer for the pretender…”</p>
<p>Say a prayer for the common, ordinary, life…that is, in fact extraordinary.</p>
<p>Auden says it this way, speaking of Mary and Joseph, of all common folk like them, in every age:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Blessed Woman, Excellent Man,<br>Redeem for the dull<br>Average Way<br>That common ungifted<br>Natures may<br>Believe that their normal<br>Vision can<br>Walk to perfection.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Section Four: “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-summons/">The Summons</a>“</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7327406
2024-01-02T14:20:50-06:00
2024-01-02T19:15:15-06:00
The Annunciation
<p><strong>“THE ANNUNCIATION”<br>SECTION TWO OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)</strong></p>
<p>(for section one, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/12/26/advent/">click here</a>)<br>Auden locates the Annunciation in “The Garden,” which we seem led to believe is Garden of Eden. In that Garden, each of the four Jungian “Faculties” — Sensation, Feeling, Intuition, and Thought— get a chance to speak.</p>
<p>As a licensed administrator of the MBTI, I have a warm place in my heart for this kind of metaphorical language. Yes, I know MBTI has fallen out of favor, been questioned scientifically, and been supplanted in religious circles by the now more popular Enneagram.</p>
<p>But I’ll continue to maintain that the basic concepts are still just as valid, if not more so, than any newer models that have come along since. You just can’t draw them too literally…as we do with all conceptual models.</p>
<p>I’m lookin’ at you, Enneagram fans…</p>
<p>The types are best seen metaphorically, symbologically, which is what Jung was after in the first place.</p>
<p>Auden suggests that part of humanity’s “Fall” might have been a separation of these faculties….that in a more “perfect” time perhaps they were undivided in our souls:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Over the life of Man<br>We watch and wait,<br>The Four who manage<br>His fallen estate:<br>are were Once but one,<br>Before his act of Rebellion;<br>We were himself when<br>His will was free,<br>His error became our<br>Chance to be.<br>Powers of air and fire,<br>Water and earth,<br>Into our hands is given<br>Man from his birth”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s an interesting thought, and whatever you take of the Eden story, again, I don’t take this stuff literally….it’s beautiful poetry and theology, friends. Because, don’t we all often feel like we’ve lost something along the way?</p>
<p>My favorite songwriter, Dan Fogelberg, wrote an entire album on this concept: “The Innocent Age,” and his previous song “Along the Road,” speaks to this:</p>
<p><strong>“A part of the heart, gets lost in the learning…somewhere along the road…”</strong></p>
<p>Which gets me to Mary and Gabriel in the Garden.<br>Gabriel just says one word to start their dialogue:</p>
<p><strong>“Wake.”</strong></p>
<p>They then have a pretty interesting, in which Gabriel says the following:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“Since Adam, being free to choose,<br>Chose to imagine he was free<br>To choose his own necessity,<br>Lost in his freedom,<br>Man pursues<br>The shadow of his images:<br>Today, the Unknown seeks the known;<br>What I am willed to ask, your own<br>Will has to answer; child, it lies<br>Within your power of choosing to<br>Conceive the Child who chooses you.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s right, Auden’s sense is that God is pro-choice.<br>God is pro-human will.</p>
<p>If we are truly to understand the incarnation as a melding of the divine and the human, this really must be so.</p>
<p>This is the part about belief in God that maddens so many of us…even the most devout of believers. That God could/would “allow” the commingling of “Earth and Heaven.”</p>
<p>Frederick Buechner once put a fine point on it all by describing Jesus’ incarnation as<br>“Ultimate reality, born with a skull you could crush one handed.”</p>
<p>Does that sound too harsh?</p>
<p>Or…isn’t it just about right to describe how any believe in God feels in our very broken world.</p>
<p>Auden will give Mary additional powerful words later in the narrative. But not here how Auden is drawing out the true power of Mary’s statement to Gabriel in the actual Gospel of Luke:</p>
<p><strong>“…may it be done to me according to your will.”</strong></p>
<p>Mary gets the CHOICE to say yes. God is pro-choice.<br>I’m sorry, I don’t make the Bible, I just read it…</p>
<p>It’s right there in the Gospel of Luke. And Auden correctly gets at this horrible power of choice that God gives us. Perhaps the abortion debate is but a scientific/theological stand-in for all the other moral debates we OUGHT to be having about the awesome power we humans wield?</p>
<p>The power to destroy millions of humans with one bomb.<br>The power to restrict the movements of millions more through our generally arbitrary “borderlands.”<br>The power to use pharmaceuticals to both heal us and addict us.<br>The power to reshape the Earth itself, and drive it to the brink of crisis.</p>
<p>I mean, forget abortion….that’s just a stand in for all these other ways we human beings wield the power of choice God has given us all.</p>
<p>If we really understand the Incarnation, we’ll see it as not just a “once upon a time story,” but as a message about how all of life, all of our planet, every human being…is touched and grace with the presence of God.</p>
<p>“Ultimately reality, born with a skull you could crush one handed…”</p>
<p>That’s our world. That’s the awesome power we humans wield in our post-Eden world.</p>
<p>Or, as Auden’s Gabriel says:</p>
<p>“it lies Within your power of choosing to<br>Conceive the Child who chooses you.”</p>
<p>We can choose to love each human, our very planet, as if it’s a holy vessel of God (which it is…) or we can crush any bit of the sacred we see and feel.</p>
<p>That’s the power Jesus’ story teaches us about…and when we get to Herod, we’ll be reminded of the banality and horror of our human choices.</p>
<p>And if you think ALL THIS section is heretical to traditional gender roles, just wait until the NEXT section…my personal favorite: “The Temptation of St. Joseph.”</p>
<p>Next Section: “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2024/01/02/the-temptation-of-st-joseph/">The Temptation of St. Joseph”</a></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7327273
2023-12-26T13:57:30-06:00
2024-01-02T19:15:15-06:00
Advent
<p><strong>ADVENT<br>SECTION ONE OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)</strong></p>
<p>Advent is the season we have just finished —the season the Consumerist Cultural Christmas calls “The Christmas Season.”</p>
<p>But, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and, like that earworm torture of a song, it does indeed run for twelve days.</p>
<p>But to counter that consumerist cultural Christmas narrative — and also to boldly urge you to keep those decorations up at least though January 6th— I thought I’d unpack “For the Time Being” (FTTB) in a series of posts during this “Christmas Season.” I know, you’re already thinking Christmas is over, but trust me, it’s not. And if you want to strike a blow against consumerists Christmas, join me in celebrating through January 6th.</p>
<p>FTTB, this long form work of poetry is truly one of my favorite literary works of all time.</p>
<p>So influential that my first CD title, and several songs on it, are homages to the work.</p>
<p>I would learn later that it was also the favorite of my pastoral mentor, Dr. Bill McElvaney….and that he and Fran would read it together every Christmas season.</p>
<p>This work is deep, dense, and powerful, if you take the time to dig in..which of course, we don’t tend to do these days. All the major Christmas story characters will make an appearance —Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi, Herod— and Auden will give them voices that bring true depth to their stories.</p>
<p>So, as we’ve said, Advent is the first section of the poem, and the season that just ended. There’s typically a very serious cognitive dissonance between what the CHURCH PREACHES during Advent, and what the CULTURE SELLS during that same Thanksgiving-to-Christmas time span.</p>
<p>Advent is all about waiting.</p>
<p>It’s not necessarily a cheery time at all. In fact, it’s a somewhat somber time, where the days draw shorter and shorter, and where we feel cold growing.<br>Auden certainly captures this in the initial “Advent section of FTTB.</p>
<p>He wrote FTTB in a tumultuous period in his own life and in the life of the world. It was 1940-41 when he started to work on it.</p>
<p>His Mother had died. A man he considered his husband did not reciprocate his affections. And, of course, the world was descending into World War II.</p>
<p><br>Everything seemed dark and disjointed…which is, of course, the point of Advent. At this very moment, Auden refound solace in Christianity. But not in fundamentalism or personal piety…in a robust faith that looks straight at the harshness of life.<br>And so, it seems to me Auden’s Advent section could apply to our world, as we wrestle with recovering from a pandemic, and with the still too real dangers of fascism in our time.</p>
<p>He wrote these words eighty years ago…but it seems like any poet could write them today:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“The evil and armed draw near;<br>The weather smells of their hate<br>And the houses smell of our fear;<br>Death has opened his white eye<br>And the black hole calls the thief<br>As the evil and armed draw near.<br>Ravens alight on the wall,<br>Our plans have all gone awry,<br>The rains will arrive too late,<br>Our resourceful general<br>Fell down dead as he drank<br>And his horses died of grief,<br>Our navy sailed away and sank;<br>The evil and armed draw near.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I mean, that’s not just 1941 friends.<br>That’s 2023….right?</p>
<p>The poem features a “Narrator” who drops in from time to time, like the Stage Manger in “Our Town.”</p>
<p>He’s in the middle of describing a simpler time that seems to have somehow slipped away from humanity again…as the Narrator says this:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“But then we were children: That was a moment ago, Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.<br>Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain<br>We noticed on certain occasions-sitting alone<br>In the waiting room of the country junction, looking Up at the toilet window—was not indigestion<br>But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?<br>Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:<br>We can only say that now It is there and that nothing<br>We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,<br>For nothing like It has happened before.<br>That the world of space where events re-occur is still there, Only now it’s no longer real; the real one is nowhere<br>Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen…”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This reminds me of the Indigo Girls’ great song, “Kid Fears”</p>
<p><em>“What would you give for your kid fears?”</em> They ask.</p>
<p>Near the end of the Advent section is a stanza I printed out with my own Macintosh 512 computer —very grainy dot matrix paper— and put up on the wall for decades.</p>
<p>In this last section is that even though we are all living in a world that feels deeply broken, the vision of wholeness is still inside us all.</p>
<p>And what it takes is embrace the paradox of faith, of the journey of faith….<br>Of holding doubt and faith in tension…as part of one process…<br>Of trusting that despair and love are part of the journey too…<br>Of taking a kind of “leap” to follow the path, even in the midst of our dark times.</p>
<p>I’ll let Auden have these last, powerful words that I kept on my wall for so long:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is<br>not a desert;<br>The miracle is the only thing that happens, but to you it will not be apparent,<br>Until all events have been studied and nothing happens that you cannot explain;<br>And life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.<br>Therefore, see without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking:<br>The Inevitable is what will seem to happen to you purely by chance; The Real is what will strike you as really absurd;<br>Unless you are certain you are dreaming, it is certainly a dream of your own.<br>Unless you exclaim — “There must be some mistake” —you must be mistaken.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The rest of our journey through FTTB will come back to these themes of lost innocence, lost trust in systems, lost FAITH…and what it might take to restore it…time and again… stay tuned.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7322869
2023-12-22T08:38:57-06:00
2023-12-22T10:45:02-06:00
Calm is a Form of Resistance
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<p><em>“Silent night, Holy night…all is calm, all is bright.”</em><br><br>Just days from now —and like Christians all around the globe— we’ll sing these words on Christmas Eve. We’ll light our candles, hold them high, and experience a brief, blissful moment of “calm.”<br><br>There is something in this ending to a Christmas Eve worship that always calms my soul, gives me peace, at a deep and abiding level.<br><br>But, of course, all is <strong>not</strong> “calm” in our world.<br>All is <strong>not</strong> still, or silent, or “centered.”<br>At least, not for long. Not ever longer for a minute or two for these kinds of moments.<br><br>— Our world is experiencing not one, but two, deeply horrific wars.<br>— Nationalistic fever has not yet broken in our own country, and far too many are saber rattling.<br>— We have major presidential candidate literally using words about “pure blood” that were last used by Hitler.<br>— Our own state government has passed law that drives fear into the hearts of law abiding People of Color —of all economic classes— that they might be stopped and frisked.<br>— Women have lost their bodily autonomy.<br>— The LGBTQ community remains a potent “boogy man” for far too many crass politicians.<br>— And the planet seems to be burning up, before our eyes.<br><br>And all the while, in all these issues and more, people in power drive “wedges” between various “identities,” causing them, far too often, to turn on each other, rather than fight against power and privilege in a common, united front.<br>And finally of course: our televisions and social media scream out headlines about all of this and more.<br><br><em>“Fear not, for unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior.”</em><br><br>These are the words of the Christmas Angels to those terrified shepherds.<br>Those shepherds were no doubt ordinary working folk of their day, no doubt pawns in the vastness of the Roman Empire.<br>Perhaps they were afraid of the angels.<br>Perhaps they were afraid of their own smallness and insignificance.<br><br>It doesn’t really matter.<br>What matters is: the Angels say…God says…. <strong>FEAR NOT.</strong><br><br>As many of you know, I have those very words tattooed on my arm.<br>“Fear not.”<br><br>It’s another way of saying the sung words of the hymn: “All is calm.”<br><br>This Advent season, as I mediate on all this, I keep thinking about <a href="https://www.facebook.com/naomikleinofficial?__tn__=-%5DK*F">Naomi Klein</a>, and her theory of “The Shock Doctrine.”<br>The theory goes that powerful interests exploit times of economic and social upheaval —wars, stock market crashes, global pandemics— and find ways to profit from them.<br>She says it’s a bridge too much to suggest that every cataclysmic events are controlled by small powerful cabals “behind the scenes.” That’s too conspiratorial for the way events unfold. (Although it is easy to see how conspiracies can feel like they must be true…)<br><br>But the real truth, she says, is always challenging enough, already….<br><br>The truth is that in a time of global or local crisis, powerful interests <strong>can and do</strong> exploit our fear, our division, even our righteous anger and desire for justice…for their own gain and profit.<br>Our fear, our division, our anger, can be leveraged against us.<br><br>As it happens, during Advent I have been reading Naomi Klein’s <em>new</em> book, “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610326/doppelganger">Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World</a>.” As she always does, Klein has again written a book I wish I could make everyone in the world read. And this one presciently gives us some powerful metaphors to look back at our last few years and see where we have been.<br><br>Using the fact of her own personal “doppelganger” (writer/thinker Naomi Wolff, with whom she is often confused…), Naomi Klein takes us on a journey of exploration of how in our world it seems that every thing that happens seems to have a “twin” or “mirror” in some opposite land she calles “The Mirror World.” In my own language, this is very close to the “Whataboutisms” I’ve written about for years… the fact that instead of looking head on at any one issue, our world always somehow produces a “whataboutism” that pulls our focus away from the issue at hand, dilutes our attention, and sometime calls us to question whether or not the facts, science, and logic we think we know really are true. <br><br>Think: Pandemic misinformation, and how “I can’t breathe” –a slogal of the Black Lives Matter movement– was somehow copted by anti-mask protestors. That’s the kind of “mirroring” she’s getting at here…and it’s a powerful analysis of where we’ve been the past few years. <br>Check out the book…please.<br><br>But for today, for Advent/Christmas I want to highlight one brief section where Klein talks about, of all things, <em>“Calm.”</em><br><br>Naomi Klein says that her writing often stirs readers up. With good reason! Because she regularly writes about all these kinds of societal ills I’ve mentioned above. Leaning about the vast social inequalities of our world can lead us to vast anger, or deep depression. Or sometimes both at the same time. It can lead us to paralizing hopelessness.<br><br>But one reader actually had a very different reaction to all. One reader, responding to one of her earlier books, said that instead of being “stirred up” by her words, he became strangely calmed by them. He said that the way Klein <em>named</em> the truths of our world, didn’t <em>“stir him up,”</em> it calmed him down.<br><br>He ended up writing these key lines, which might be the most powerful thing I have read in months:<br><br><strong>“When people and societies enter into a state of shock they lose their identities and their footing.</strong><br><strong>Hence, calm is a form of resistance.”<br>— John Berger</strong><br><br>“Calm is a form of resistance.”<br><br>As I read these words, it helped me name the continuing struggle I have personally faced—in preaching, in engaging the Biblical prophets, in being any kidnd social activist— in a time like ours. As I’ve said many times, ever since 2016 I have faced a steady challenge to know exactly <em>what</em> to say about all these destabilizing events of our world.<br><br>How can I speak of them, and not simply <em>“stir people up?”</em><br>And if things look hopeless, as they often do, how/where can any of us find a message of hope?<br><br>As I’ve struggled with all of this, I suppose I’ve also been drawn to the truth of this little phrase Klein has now given me.<br><br>In times like ours, <em>“calm is a form of resistance.”</em><br><br><em>“All is calm, all is bright.”</em><br>That’s what we’ll sing in just a few nights from now.<br><br>“<em>Fear not.”<br></em>That’s what the Angels sing.<br><br>There is a calm, there is a peace, that runs deeper than all the societal horrors were have named here, or the additional ones that keep you awake each night. But it’s <em>different</em>, perhaps <em>deeper</em>, than the “calm” our world often tries to sell us. It’s like there’s a surface calm that isn’t really calm at all…but instead, just a tamping down of our thoughts and feelings.<br><br>In another place, Klein describes this as the difference between being <em>“calm”</em> and being <em>“numb.”</em><br><br>That’s another helpful distinction. The world seeks to numb us in countless ways…mindless entertainment, shopping, food, drugs, sex, wedge issues that pull our attention and from deeper societal problems.<br><br>Our world doesn’t just want us to be <em>“dumbed down,”</em> far too often it wants us <em>numbed down.</em><br><br>The Powers That Be benefit when we give in to division and hate, or just “check out” and numb ourselves.<br><br>But God’s incarnational peace rests in some spiritual place that is beneath and beyond all this. God’s peace looks squarely all of the problems of the world, and does not avoid them. This is the heart of what it means to <em><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/12/13/incarnational-seeing/">“see incarnationally.”</a></em><br><br>Instead of being to “driven to distraction,” instead of fearing our divisions, we see God in all things, and all people….beneath all our divisions. We don’t sugarcoat our differences, or make others less than human. We humbly acknowledge our differences, and all continuing injustices. But because we know and understand that God moves inside each human being, our calling is to treat everyone with the greatest of respect and compassion.<br><br>As a Christian, this is what it means to see <em>“calm as a form of resistance,”</em> and simultaneously what it means to sing that famous Christmas hymn song with integrity.<br><br>So in the midst of it all, let us still light those Christmas Eve candles, and hold them high.<br><br>Let us sing that song.<br><br>And let us trust in a peace and calm beneath all the fear of our deeply broken world, that actually will help us, with the help of God to heal it.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7318616
2023-12-13T08:28:53-06:00
2023-12-13T09:30:12-06:00
Incarnational Seeing:
<p>The Sunday before Advent starts, we actually get a pretty good reminder of the power of Incarnational Seeing. Incarnational seeing is my language for what others call the spiritual practice of “paying attention.” There is a lot of buzz in the culture right now around the concept of “mindfulness” as a tool for reducing stress and coping with life. To my heart, though, Incarnational seeing goes well beyond this.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that we very rarely equate this parable with the Christmas season, there is perhaps no more powerful example of God’s incarnational nature.<br><br>Luke’s story gives us the “who, what, where, when” of Christmas. <br><br>John’s “prologue” gives us a bit of the “why.”</p>
<p>But the Parable of the Last Judgment puts it all together and reminds us that these things are not “once upon a time” events, but “every moment, every time” events.</p>
<p>It’s God’s roadmap for both our ethical and moral action in t:he world, and also how we are to SEE that world:</p>
<p>“<strong>I was hungry</strong> and you gave me food to eat.<br><strong>I was thirsty</strong> and you gave me a drink.<br><strong>I was a stranger</strong> and you welcomed me.<br><strong>I was naked</strong> and you gave me clothes to wear.<br><strong>I was sick</strong> and you took care of me.<br><strong>I was in prison</strong> and you visited me.”</p>
<p>Notice how *personal” Jesus makes this…<br>“<strong>I </strong>was hungry…”</p>
<p>Jesus teaches us that when we love and serve the least, the lost and the left out, we are not just doing nice or kind things; we are not just performing some perfunctory moral duty. We are, in the most literal way we can imagine, loving and serving God.</p>
<p>This is the heart of “incarnational seeing.” It’s the heart of what Jesus means when Jesus teaches us to “Love God” and “Love our Neighbor” in great commandment. This parable shows us just exactly how the rubber meets the road in that greatest of God’s laws.</p>
<p>Loving God <strong>is</strong> loving our neighbor and loving our neighbor <strong>is</strong> loving God.</p>
<p>Jesus wants us to develop just these kinds of spiritual eyes. Jesus wants us to see the world through Incarnational eyes.</p>
<p>It’s hard. Nobody sees this way all the time. In fact, in the Parable of the Last Judgment neither the “sheep” nor the “goats” seem to understand that they have been doing God’s will. </p>
<p>They say…<br><br>“When did we <strong>see</strong> you?”<br>“When did we <strong>not</strong> see you?”</p>
<p>You see? This parable is about SEEING. As I like to say it’s about understanding that there is no place, no time, no person, beyond or outside the presence of God. Every single time, every single place, every single person…has some bit of God in them. It’s just often very hard to see.</p>
<p>It’s entirely possible —even likely then— that many human beings are doing exactly what God most wants us to do without having any conscious knowledge that they are “loving God.” By this I mean, people who are not doing anything remotely “religous,” like attending church, reading the Bible, or even praying prayers.</p>
<p>This parable makes crystal clear that its absolutely possible to spend a life loving and serving humans….and in doing so, perfrom greatest of all religious work God wants from humans.</p>
<p>But, whether we are relgious or not, this is hard work. Because this takes seeing our “enemies,” our “adversaries,” and the least, lost and left out not as subhuman animals but as incarnations of God as well. We are so terribly adept –people who religious and non-religious, conservative and liberal, people of every culture, race and religion– at “seeing” our enemies and adversaries as “less than human.” Because they are other, because they belong to different “tribes” we have an almost genetic ability to “Otherize” people into “US verses THEM” groups.</p>
<p>But this is the very OPPOSITE of what Jesus wants, and is a negation of the power of incarnational seeing.</p>
<p>On Mockingbird Lane —just down from Love Field, amidst gun clubs and other strip mall shops— you can whiz past the statue in this picture (or a statue just like it). It’s titled “Homeless Jesus,” and it was installed just in front of Catholic Charities Offices there.</p>
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<p>Without a careful glance it appears to be an ordinary homeless person asleep on an ordinary park bench. But on close inspection, one sees the holes in the feet signifying that this is indeed a figure of Christ.</p>
<p>“Homeless Jesus” statues have caused quite a stir in other parts of the country. One that was installed on the grounds of a local church in a wealthy Ohio neighborhood led nervous neighbors to call the police…twenty minutes after it was installed!</p>
<p>You can’t make this stuff up…</p>
<p>But don’t judge that caller too harshly. The point of the statue, the point of the Parable of the Last Judgment, is to remind us that ALL OF US regularly fail to see God in the lives of other humans.</p>
<p>We fail to see God in the migrant, cut by State of Texas-funded razor wire barriers in the Rio Grande.<br>We fail to see God in the life of a child killed in Gaza or in a terrified Israeli family.<br>We fail to see God in a trans child and their families.<br>We fail to see God in MAGA hat wearing white men.<br>We fail to see God in the homeless person who right now sleeps under the bridge near where you live.</p>
<p>We do not SEE the way God hopes we will see.<br>We instead see an “Other,” an “Enemy;” a rival team or tribe.</p>
<p>Really seeing the way God wants us to see means we have an ethical obligation to treat all human beings as if we are encountering Godself. (Because we are.)</p>
<p>The ethical/moral responsibility of incarnation theology is immense and vast. As Thomas Merton once said:</p>
<p><strong>“Whoever believes that Christ is the Word made flesh believes that every person must in some sense be regarded as Christ.”</strong></p>
<p>Incarnational seeing, and the moral ethic inherent inside of it, is the true meaning of Christmas.<br>This is the true meaning of the “good tidings of great joy” from that holy night.</p>
<p></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7318061
2023-12-12T08:22:25-06:00
2023-12-13T09:30:12-06:00
Same Old Lang Syne (Fogelberg cover)
<p>“Die Hard” is to Christmas movies, what this song is to Christmas music.</p>
<p>Listeners will no doubt forever debate whether it is, or is not, a Christmas song. One thing is clear: It definitely creeps into playlists this time of year. Over the past few months, I been learning it on guitar (because that’s my jam) with the goal of this version, this holiday season.</p>
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<p>One thing beyond debate: “Same Old Lang Syne” is a remarkable bit of music, from my all-time favorite writer.</p>
<p>When you account for the way it melds together a wistful story and music (especially in the final verse and ending solo) it well be considered Dan’s best song. It’s a story-song that moves us steadily through time, ala “Cats in the Cradle.”<br>But unlike so many pop songs (even Chapin’s) please note how it does *not* “resolve” with a repeated final chorus at the end…but instead pushes us off in a whole new, surprising, direction…with that melancholy, yet beautiful, last coda about snow and rain…</p>
<p>It’s a song about “innocence lost,” and perhaps felt again, if “for just a moment.<br>Which was, of course, the overall theme of that incredible album.</p>
<p>Writer Sam Anderson wrote <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-dan-fogelberg-same-old-lang-syne.html">a great NYT piece</a> on the song and his family’s reaction to it the first time he/they ever heard it. His piece talks about their initial reaction, as it begins with smaltzy production and a perhaps corny first line.</p>
<p>But by the end, as happens to the best of us, the entire family gets caught up:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“Nothing earthshaking happens, because the song is an ode not to fantasy or salvation but to the actual complex grain of adult life: melancholy, emptiness, chance, failure, embarrassment, and — somehow, in spite of it all — meaningful human connection. Eventually the beer runs out, the ex-lovers part and the jazz giant Michael Brecker launches into a ripping sax solo on the melody of “Auld Lang Syne.” My family sat in the car in awed silence.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many of us have had these kinds of encounters with old lovers. I certainly have. We were even sitting in a car, and it was even raining at the time. That’s what makes a great song, great; this kind of “call back” to an all-too-human shared experience.</p>
<p>And so, if I may analyze a bit, the schmaltzy production, the potentially-groaner lyrics….these fade over time. Once the song burrows its way into you…all that shifts, and all you get is “the feels.” Years later as we hear this song again and again, all those memories of our own lives, all the memories we have of the song and when we first hear it, flood back.</p>
<p>And that is one of the greatest superpowers of music.</p>
<p>Like just about every single Bob Seeger hit, this song was wistfully nostalgic the first time you ever heard it. And the passage of time only deepens this for us all. The song itself, especially now that Dan is gone, becomes its own wistful, more innocent, memory.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the lyrics were inspired by an actual encounter Dan once had. And to this day in Peoria, Dan-fans make pilgrimage to the site. (I certainly did, on my Fogelberg trip there…) The DMN’s own <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/music/2017/12/21/dan-fogelberg-s-same-old-lang-syne-is-a-timeless-essential-that-resonates-through-the-years/">Michael Granberry tells the song’s backstory</a>.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.facebook.com/michael.granberry?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXNGAISE62gJGlgbRtcH93lFp1jF5wpqdoQqrxhM6UTXbah5Ad6goRdhxBNi2jpgKu8To8IIdLFPFvvHyxrN67N11gOjOOwree72Vh2PzjdqUZNHzI-f3FAEjcagTHc1ZrsDsxSVdq96JLndFZEXuCuoGfAVJmfDjWhgFD8CYnvIHiwxYFuY2nMF4AxyTSHqIk&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Michael Granberry</a>’s final thoughts on the song are also how I’ll end, because I really can’t say it better than this:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>“I’m not alone in saying how much I love “Same Old Lang Syne.” Sure, it’s corny and schmaltzy, and yet, it touches a deep nerve. It embodies the spirit of the holidays, of time and place and the past, as well as any song I know. It also serves as a tribute to the wonders of the saxophone, which plays a key element in punctuating the lyrics with its own je ne sais quoi.</strong></p>
<p><strong>As Anderson wrote in his piece, Fogelberg’s song “is simultaneously hilarious, sad, beautiful, corny and transcendent.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>And, sure, he writes, it is “a bit of a groaner,” but “this, it turns out, is one of the big jobs of adulthood: to find wonder in the groaning.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>I love the song for how it demonstrates the magic of creativity, which springs so often from life’s most ordinary moments. In the end, the song fills us with gratitude, for Fogelberg having written it and for the fact that he went out for whipping cream at the same time Greulich went out for eggnog.</strong></p>
<p><strong>From now on, our cars will be collectively parked on Fogelberg Parkway, as they should be.”</strong></p>
<p>—<em>Michael Granberry</em></p>
</blockquote>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7308836
2023-11-23T08:58:15-06:00
2023-11-24T11:45:10-06:00
Driving Gratitude
<p>On this Thanksgiving morning, I’m posting a picture that shows you what I see every day as I am driving home from North Oak Cliff. This pic from the great <a href="https://www.facebook.com/justin.terveen?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Justin Terveen</a> shows a much more swollen river than usual…I mostly post it for how the buildings look…because that’s how it looks, every night…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/405536224_10232428387756600_1589161017337080056_n.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="682" style="width:931px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>I think I probably have one of the coolest commutes in all of Dallas. Let me describe it for you, because it’s connected to my sense of gratitude today.</p>
<p><a></a>Almost every night, or afternoon (whatever time of day, it is honestly when I get to the place of this view) as I am crossing the Trinity and the panorama of Dallas is splayed out before me like the front range of the Rockies, I find a incredibly deep gratitude welling up inside of me.</p>
<p><em>“How lucky am I?”</em> I say to myself, and to God.</p>
<p>If Dennise is with me, we often say it together…<br><em>“How lucky are we?!”</em></p>
<p>Not a joke…we take a moment to breathe it in and say this out loud.</p>
<p>The answer is that we are incredibly blessed. Blessed is really the better way to describe it, than lucky. We are blessed, and this is the day to count those blessings.</p>
<p>It’s very easy to get bogged down in the day today of living.</p>
<p>And for me, personally, painful feelings of the past three years are blessedly receding —the pandemic, and then my Mothers’ illness and death last year. Just as everyone else in the world was “opening up” last Fall, my own soul was experiencing her crushing and painful loss.</p>
<p>And it’s not that any of that pain is totally gone. But it IS that it’s MUCH easier, this year, to “breathe in, breathe out,” and <em>notice</em> my blessings.</p>
<p>And so, here’s how my commute goes…</p>
<p>As I drive home, <em>I first see the stately Live Oaks and hills of North Oak Cliff</em>.</p>
<p>And I think of all the beautiful people here…<br>Bishop Arts.<br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/kesslertheater/?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-UK-R">Kessler Theater</a>.<br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/thetexastheater?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Texas Theater</a>.<br>Davis and Jefferson.<br>All the neighborhoods there.<br><br>I think of the incredible people at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Kessler Park United Methodist Church</a>. I think of how they are unafraid to stand for social justice, but also equally committed to serving the families of our neighborhood. I think of our racial justice series, I think of the young children on Wednesday night. I think of, as happened this week, all the many places that we serve our neighbors in our neighborhood.</p>
<p>Every day this week, because of the way the calendar falls, our members were out serving others outside the walls of our church.</p>
<p>And then, <em>as I am crossing the bridge I can see both the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thelonghornballroom?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Longhorn Ballroom</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Poor-Davids-Pub-151681771608693/?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=kK-R">Poor Davids Pub</a> off in the distanc</em>e.<br>And so I think of all my musician friends… those who live in this town, and the hundreds around the nation. I am so grateful to have <em>MUSIC</em>, and each one of them, in my life. Music saves me from despair so often, and I’m grateful for the creativity, and challenge, of my artist friends. These soul friends are part of the deepest part of me.</p>
<p><em>Then, I look ahead, and I see that front range of downtown Dallas’ buildings straight ahead</em>…<br>This is what you see in this picture…I pass ATT Discovery, and the way it glitters like a downtown should.<br>I pass City Hall and Farmer’s Market.</p>
<p>And so, I think of our City Council, and all the Judges we know, and all the people in county government we’re blessed to know. Some how, we manage to know just about every elected official in the city and county at this point in our lives.</p>
<p>That never cease to amaze either of us. I’m grateful to know them as friends and, in a sense, be a pastor to many of them too.</p>
<p><em>Then, I pass Deep Ellum.</em>..<br>And I think of all the memories, of the much younger me…of my night walks I still make through there to this day. And I can see Grace United Methodist Church off to my left, and so…I think of all the Reconciling Churches, and people deeply committed to social justice for the LGBTQ community that we have become friends with.</p>
<p><em>And then, in another blink, I am back in Old East Dallas…</em><br> amidst our old-growth trees, and stately 100 year old homes. And I think of all my neighbors, and our front porch neighborhood…of Garden Cafe, and all the crazy folks in our Hood and association.</p>
<p><em>And then, I am home…</em><br>to this ridiculously unique house we get to call home. And I think of how ridiculously blessed we were to move here, 30 years ago now. And how every night here is a blessing.</p>
<p>All this takes me no more than 10-12 minutes, of course. It’s a very short 10 minute drive through the very heart and soul of my city. Which ends up, if I am paying attention, being a 10 minute moment where I can allow this very gratitude I have just described to well up inside of me.</p>
<p>I know some of you are having a hard year…or maybe a hard few years. And so I am thinking of you too, where ever you are.</p>
<p>Hold on.<br>Breathe deep.</p>
<p>Trust that, even in the midst of whatever you’re going through, there are things *right now* to be grateful for…even if it’s just a roof over your head, central HVAC, and indoor plumbing.</p>
<p>These things are not nothing, of course. And last year, when I was in the midst of my deep grief, concentrating on such obvious, but overlooked, blessings, really helped me push through.</p>
<p>I know this: “the more we are thankful, the more we are thankful.”<br>The more we practice gratitude, the more we find to be grateful about. Brain science is now confirming the biological basis for this ancient spiritual truth.</p>
<p>Thanksgiving is actually our most spiritual of public holidays. Its origins come from ancient practice of being thankful to God, and thanksgiving has been practiced by religious adherents of every tradition for millennia now.</p>
<p>More than sacrifice, more than any other attitude of prayer, <em>THANKSGIVING</em> transcends every culture and time.</p>
<p>Scientists find it through the study of evolution and the discoveries of mysterious heavenly bodies, and tiny molecules a the cellular level. Artists find it through the beauty of a song, or a painting, or a play.</p>
<p>When we pay attention, we find so much to be thankful for. And whether you believe in a God or not, I believe God hears those gratitudes that you raise.</p>
<p>As the old Irish saying goes, <em>“Bidden, or Unbidden, God is present.”</em></p>
<p>My clergy brother, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7932395&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXI-e7gyqPYqnY-By-Pajk_LTOvU1rgWPIbQRIKpfUlvVseWZg17GL6RmJdfJAWE7OJpoQQ8BKdHaw13ZNTvoJ79LZguogzBTEG5PMFlokQV-gPfiNNyKdBvQ7srYoRjyy9gB1fsBJN-vuIzA09bF_NS-Rx4jNBMsZPDDbNHUCMrA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Marcus Womack</a>, noted the irony of this this week. He noted how in our culture today, we are accustomed to say saying “have a great Thanksgiving…”</p>
<p>In the church of course, “Great Thanksgiving” is what we call the prayer of holy communion! That’s literally the proper name for it. Marcus noted how that always seems a tad funny to him.</p>
<p>And if I was Groucho Marx, my response to our culture’s “Have a Great Thanksgiving” would be…<br><em>“Why thanks…I have a whole book of ‘em!”</em></p>
<p>Seriously folks…and I am being serious here…it’s no doubt that communion prayer is called “Great Thanksgiving” to remind ourselves of what this week is supposed to remind us of:</p>
<p>Find ways to <em>regularly</em> give gratitude for your life.</p>
<p><em>“The more you are thankful, the more you are thankful.”</em></p>
<p>As I take that ten minute drive, I often just let the gratitude wash over me. The feeling of abundance that is far larger than the Trinity River beneath me.</p>
<p>I am grateful for all of you, here online as well, who read all these always too long missives on my blog and Facebook. You’re a part of my gratitude today too.</p>
<p>And I end with one of my favorite prayers from the great German mystic, Meister Eckhart:</p>
<p><em>“If the only prayer you ever prayed in your entire life was ‘thanks,’ it would be enough.”</em></p>
<p>Indeed it would…<br>With gratitude and abundance, I say <em>“have a great Thanksgiving.”</em></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7307686
2023-11-22T08:33:10-06:00
2023-11-22T11:00:01-06:00
Sixty Years
<p>Today is the sixty-year anniversary.<br>Sixty years is a very long time.<br>But, for all of us who grew up here in Dallas, our city still lives with the legacy of the Kennedy assassination.</p>
<p>This is a very old song I wrote to name what it felt like to grow up here, in the shadow and shame of that day. Not what it felt like for me, because I was a baby at the time, but what it felt like for the other adults that I knew growing up.</p>
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<p>The reality is this: none of the adults in MY life ever talked about the Kennedy assassination.</p>
<p>Nobody.<br>Never.</p>
<p>It was years before I realized that it actually happened just a few miles from where I lived. It was years after that, when I could drive a car, that I found “The School Book Depository.”</p>
<p>And even that was hard, because in those days there was no marker, no acknowledgement, of any kind, anywhere near Dealey Plaza.<br>I grew to understand all this was, in part, because of this very shame, visited upon my city in the aftermath.<br>Dallas was blamed for this tragedy in a way that no other American city has ever been blamed for any other contemporary shooting, ever since. Maybe they’re just so ubiquitous now…but nobody ever tries to blame Las Vegas, or El Paso, or Columbine.</p>
<p>But it is absolutely true that for years after the shooting, people tended to blame Dallas. </p>
<p>Some of that came from the very church I served for seventeen years. I’ve written before about Rev. Bill Holmes’ sermon just after the assasination. It was the stuff of legends at Northaven UMC…that one sermon literally changed the trajectory of that church.<br><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2013/11/17/one-thing-worse-than-this/">Here’s the text and a brief video</a> excerpt from it.<br><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2013/11/18/looking-back-at-the-one-thing-worse-the-legacy-of-prophetic-preaching/">And here is my own sermon from the fifty year anniversary</a>, ten years ago this week.</p>
<p>We would hear about it on vacations, when folks learned where we were from. I even heard it from Russians in Russia.</p>
<p>I tend to believe this was because the Kennedy assassination was the first in a tragically, long line of American shooting events. And, as we still do to this day, we always go looking for “reasons” to make the non-sensical make sense.</p>
<p>To this day, we want to know about the shooters, their motives, their histories, every horrible second of every event. But we no longer blame the cities.</p>
<p>The fact that Dallas was indeed (as the song names) an ultra conservative place at the time…that no doubt played into all this it. I get it.</p>
<p>The blame no doubt led to shame, which no doubt supercharged Dallas’ desire to “look good,” ever since…to be the “city that works.” All of Dallas’ obsession with image, it all goes back to the blame and shame.<br>This has been said many times.</p>
<p>What has NOT been said very often is what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of all of this. So, that’s why I wrote the song…to talk about all of us from here who live here still.</p>
<p>But, sixty years is a loooong time.</p>
<p>For some perspective, do a thought experiment concerning Pearl Harbor. For me, Pearl Harbor is an event of the long-ago past. Although just 20-years after my birth, throughout my life it’s felt like ancient history. That said, the 60-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor was 2001…just in time for its memory to be eclipsed by a new, historic tragedy.</p>
<p>I suppose my point is, Pearl Harbor has always felt ancient…super ancient even in 2001…in a way that Kennedy does not…at least to those of us who grew up here.</p>
<p>Last year, I gave an oral history interview at the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SixthFloorMuseum?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza</a> with Curator Stephen Fagin.</p>
<p>I still maintain that this museum itself is the primary reason Dallas has started to heal from this tragedy. As a pastor, it seems to me it’s become holy site of memory…a place for natives to quietly come to terms with it all the things we never talked about….a “thin place” where we can name the unamable we all would rather forget.</p>
<p>But one of the points Stephen noted then was that as they began putting their 60-year commemoration together, they were finding fewer and fewer contemporary folks to interview.</p>
<p>I suggested to him that one of the stories at play here in Dallas is those of us in the “next generation;” those of us not “there that day,” but who grew up in the aftermath.</p>
<p>Those of us with Kevin Bacon numbers of “1” related to the folks involved, and the places involved. I mean, I don’t have to think too long and hard to find half a dozen connections.</p>
<p>— Oswald’s “rooming house” in Oak Cliff is still place you can visit, and msyelf and a church member did last year.<br>— The Texas Theater little over a mile from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Kessler Park United Methodist Church</a>, and is owned by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/barakepstein?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Barak Epstein</a>, a neighbor who lives two blocks away from where I’m writing this.<br>— My dear church member and friend, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brett.shipp.3?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Brett Shipp</a>’s Dad was one of the key reporters, on scene, telling the first horrible stories.<br>— The James Myers’ Father (James is with us on “Coffee on the Porch” each week) knew Jack Ruby.</p>
<p>But my best example of this “small world” quality is in the marriage of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/charles.geilich?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Charles Geilich</a> and Judge <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1539230323&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Mary Brown</a>. They’ve been our dear friends for decades, but in just their little family, they’ve got TWO connections…Mary’s grandfather was the judge in Jack Ruby’s trial, and Charles’ father was a doctor at Parkland.</p>
<p>My point is, there are fascinating connections still, because for those of us who grew up here, we remember that “small town” feel of Dallas <br>It WAS a small place…it still feels that way to us.</p>
<p>And we still interact with the ghosts of Kennedy, every day.</p>
<p>What the song and video try to capture is…the JOY of that day…the PRIDE of that day. The video helps us remember some this, since it all gets swept away with what came next.</p>
<p>Just take a look at all those smiling faces…HOW HAPPY THEY ARE.<br>That happiness was a real, if fleeting, thing. And deserves to be remembered.</p>
<p>Now, recall how, moments later, all these folks –and all their children and grandchildren, in very personal and lifelong ways– would live under the weight of the fact that it happened HERE…would always suffer those feelings of shame and blame.</p>
<p>The whiplash of that…this is what I’d hoped to capture in this song.<br>Much of the “shame” of the event has passed now, dying out with our parent’s generation.</p>
<p>But I will offer this song, once again, for of us who hail from here. This is OUR song.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/alan.gann.5?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXiMtTclpRzn1iZ-S_kbmytSi077KzHZwOOSArAwqxjfSOz6WCLL1k4OTvvnS-2yEoduJu1X7qvINoVr78SGj9S3oHr2I-tgDRn6S-UG6tT_yGMlMGW8pVkdbMLhdfzidNTqooIUV7jInpKm8V8ajmy_tJ1sEfvkvNHgd7TSYulRmar9RnWp87HgoNVILlD4L-H_TJqpzEIfSb_pAqmkguu&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Alan Gann</a> told me years ago, “only somebody from Dallas could have written this song…”</p>
<p>That’s probably right.<br>Write what you know.<br>And honor that past…</p>
<p>Coda: I’ve written seven other blog entries on the Kennedy assasination over the years. <br>You can find them all <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/echoes-of-1963/">here</a>.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7300009
2023-11-07T10:54:03-06:00
2023-11-07T11:31:21-06:00
It Really Happened, Didn’t It?
<p>Today’s trip down baseball’s memory lane are two Sports Illustrated covers, from this week in time, 50 years apart.<br>The first is from the first week of November 1975, following the thrilling victory of “The Big Red Machine” over the Boston Red Sox.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/screenshot-2023-11-07-at-7.38.23e280afam.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="508" style="width:1091px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>I don’t need to recount once more, but will of course, how the 1970s Cincinnati Reds were my inspiration for what a winning baseball team *could* be. That series was so important in our family’s life. Our Father bought a new <a></a>television just so we could watch it.</p>
<p>It was on that fresh, new television set that we watched Carton Fisk’s “walk off” home run in the sixth game…still one of the most iconic walk offs in the entire history of baseball.</p>
<p>I was thirteen-years-old, the pinnacle of a boy’s fascination with baseball. I was completely captivated by the heartbreak, struggle, and eventual joy that series gave me.</p>
<p>This week, *my* family went to YouTube and watched Fisk’s walk off all over again, just after Garcia’s glorious walk off against Houston the other night…because they felt similar to me.<br>But the Cincinnati Reds came back in game seven and cemented their place as the late 1970s baseball dynasty and as one of the greatest teams to play the game.<br>That series is still to this day considered one of the greatest of all-time.</p>
<p>As you can see, I detached this SI cover from my subscription copy. I taped it up to my boyhood room wall. Apparently, I also saved the magazine because…well, it told the whole marvelous story!<br>The magazine cover eventually came down from the wall, and went into a closet box, which has remained unopened for almost fifty years…until this week.</p>
<p>I loved those Reds teams. And despite the fact that they were our nemesis that year, I always loved the Red Sox too. I was so grateful that the Red Sox eventually broke their own curse in 2004, because unless you’re a Yankees fan, how can you hate the Red Sox?</p>
<p>Our family took a special sojourn up to Boston during an East Coast vacation —on a vacation really meant to center on New York and Philly— specifically so we could tour Fenway.<br>Which we did.<br>This was just a two years removed from Boston’s curse being lifted, and you could still feel the joy in the park. You could feel the history.</p>
<p>I bought a hat from the Fenway Park swag store that day, and I took it back to NYC. A few days later, I was at a game, squarely behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, with my Red Sox cap on.<br>(I did hide it on my subway ride to/from the ballpark, though. I’m not *that* crazy…)</p>
<p>I understand that Boston’s curse was a few years longer than ours.<br>Ok, twenty-five years longer.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say here is, though, we are experiencing a similar joy out of a longterm pain too. It’s the kind of story you tell, again and again. (In case you’re beginning to worry about all these posts from me…)</p>
<p>For example, Farrelly brothers made a movie about that 2004 season, starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore.<br>Originally, they just set out to make a film about a fan’s obsessive love for the Red Sox. But what they ended up with, in a way they couldn’t have foreseen, was a narrative of that storybook season which turned the Red Sox’s Hollywood ending into a celluloid one too.<br>(Two thumbs up. Check it out…)</p>
<p>A decade after THIS –ten years after 2004– James Taylor wrote his song, “Angels of Fenway.”<br>I’s a beautiful ode to long suffering baseball fans.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Oh my God, it was beyond belief<br>Down three, needing four in a row<br>Holding on by the skin of our teeth<br>Like a hungry dog on a bone<br>Angels of Fenway<br>Give them peace<br>They have been patient<br>Red Sox Nation”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The primary character of the song is a grandmother, a generational lover of the game, who was born in 1918, the last year the Red Sox won, and who finally gets to see Boston’s 2004 win, just as she’s about to take her last breath.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Praying to heaven for hell to freeze<br>Nanna watched from her hospital bed<br>She was there ’til the end of the race<br>I couldn’t hear the last words she said<br>But she was lying there with a smile on her face<br>Just a little smile on her face<br>It doesn’t feel like a long time ago”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My point in noting this is that James Taylor and Boston were still talking about this a decade LATER. Just in case you’re getting worried about me and these posts…<br>It’s a beautiful baseball song. As I understand, it’s become a classic all over Boston now. But I can’t help but note this….at the time of its release a Boston Globe reviewer called it a “hate-able, unfailingly mediocre song about the Red Sox…”</p>
<p>You gotta love those Boston fans.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not comparing us to them directly. But it’s a similar story, for sure. Like Boston fans, and as I’ve already noted, generations of Rangers fans are now gone, and only watching on as our angels.<br>This explains why I’m still writing this post, days later, and why I can’t give you a date-certain when these posts will stop.</p>
<p>But, I’m clear on this…I don’t imagine that any Hollywood movies will be made about the Rangers improbable World Series victory this year.</p>
<p>I don’t guess any major recording artists will write a rapturous ballad about it.<br>Despite DFW’s status as the fifth largest media market, the Rangers’ eleven straight road wins as a feat never before seen, and half a million fans at the celebration on Friday…</p>
<p>We must admit that our pure joy and excitement in this moment is being ignore by much of the nation. The series was among the least watched in history. I attribute much of this to the snobbery of the traditional markets, the newness of baseball’s generational love in DFW and Arizona, and the final fact that there is truly horrible news in the world that pulls our focus.</p>
<p>But here is what I know deep in my bones…</p>
<p>Here in North Texas, we will speak of 2023 the way Red Sox fans speak of 2004.<br>We got so much from this year.<br>We got ourselves a bona fide intrastate rivalry with the Houston Astros.<br>We completed a cinderella climb to the championship.</p>
<p>And this week, somewhere here in North Texas, some boy or girl —perhaps hundreds of them— are printing out this second Sports Illustrated cover; one from just *this* week.</p>
<p><br>They are taping it up to their bedroom wall.</p>
<p>Maybe, like me, they’ll find it fifty years from now, in some box their Mother saved for them.</p>
<p>And knowing this, gives me a deep, deep joy in the hope for the continuing generational joy of baseball.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7298200
2023-11-03T08:43:28-05:00
2023-11-03T10:45:25-05:00
Quadrophenia
<p>We interrupt this week’s baseball posts for: Quadrophenia.<br>The album was released fifty years ago this week. One of my all time faves, it’s at or near the top of my “Desert Island” list.</p>
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<p>Later, of course, the film version was released, and I bought this poster. I found the poster this week, in the same closet-box as all the old baseball memorabilia. Which somehow seems appropriate too.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/img_3544.jpeg?w=665" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1023" style="width:472px;height:auto" width="665" /></figure>
<p>As I <a></a>grew into a teen, *music* posters gradually replaced/supplanted most of my boyhood *baseball* posters, symbolic of how the art form also supplanted the sport during those years.</p>
<p>I’ll give Dallas/Richardson natives ONE GUESS as to where I bought this movie poster…ONE GUESS.<br>(IKYK…)<br><br>IMHO, Quadrophenia —the film and the album— are far superior to Tommy.<br>At least, they had a far more profound affect on me.</p>
<p>The sound effects of the ocean and rain set the feeling of an actual PLACE…<br>The introduction of the themes in the opening overture…<br>The jolting rock of <em>“Can You See the Real Me?”</em>…<br>(It shakes us into the narrative journey. “Buckle up,” it says, “it’s a confusing ride in here”…)</p>
<p>A story unfolding over two records and four sides…<br>The incredible culmination of <em>“Love Reign Or’ Me.”…</em><br>(Actually, the whole last side of the double album, as it drives the narrative and music to culmination in that song)</p>
<p>We’re invited into the head of a troubled teen, at the same time we are challenged by the omnipresence of the ocean and rain as comfort and message…and, somehow, beneath, inside, around it all….love?</p>
<p>To me, it’s the greatest “concept album” of all time, giving the ultimate shape to that format years before Pink Floyd thought about “The Wall.” (I know: your mileage may vary…)<br>Something about where I was in life in those years, about this cycle of songs around *this specific* common theme.</p>
<p>I had no clue who “Mods and Rockers” were. But I could understand enough to know the record was clearly about teenagers, the conflicting voices inside of a teenaged boys head, and even more enticingly mysterious….some kind of spiritual wrestling.</p>
<p><em>“Can you see the real me? Can ya?”</em><br>No, of course you can’t. That’s the point. Being a teenager is confusing as hell, and always has been.</p>
<p>But also: notice how the song moves…from “doctor,” to “mother” to “preacher.”</p>
<p>No matter that the preacher is apparently clueless…even there it’s just mirroring a 2,000 year old Biblical story of Hannah, begging Eli to help her understand her spiritual yearnings…only to find that he’s clueless as hell.</p>
<p>The point is: Townshend is telling us that the journey deepens as it goes…and ends as a spiritual one.</p>
<p>As I grew into a teen, my brain was trying on all sorts of “me-s” looking for ones that felt real and authentic. I switched from ball players…to guitar players; and the voices battled it out inside my head, just as they did for Jimmy.<br>And, yes, let’s all be honest with ourselves, they still do.</p>
<p>The ancient greeks gave us the concept of “personas,” and this record named that struggle/concept for 1970s teenagers, everywhere.</p>
<p>Just as those teens chose up “Team Mod” and “Team Rocker”….<br>Just as we late 1970s kids chose “freak,” or “jock,” or “geek”…and later “preppy.”<br>Just as adults today choose “Team Red” or “Team Blue” and rarely stop to think about how it’s all the same pattern of choosing personas…</p>
<p>As the prophet Pete would write again years later —in another spiritual opus that is also completely under appreciated— it’s all an “Eminence Front…It’s a put on…”<br>But, damn, it feels real, yes?<br>And damn, as we’re learning still in today’s news, we sure are willing to kill for our personas, aren’t we?</p>
<p>I’m not sure why I didn’t become a punk along the way, but that persona just wasn’t my path. But the angry, frustrated, confused teenaged yearning on this record…this was absolutely my journey too.</p>
<p>This record was an early spiritual text for me, and at times maybe more important than the Bible. I would put side four on the turntable, crank it to eleven, and fall asleep to the narrative and music.</p>
<p>And the OCEAN…. At key moments in the narrative, the ocean breaks in…and the rain….Somehow, Pete Townshend wanted to draw our attention to that too….over and over…to remember that it was there for comfort and to remind us that the world as bigger than our little problems.</p>
<p>That ocean breaking in was like God answering Job with, <em>“Where were you when the world was created?”</em><br>Nowhere, of course. We’re just muddling through, all of us down here.</p>
<p>And then, the culmination of the narrative …that final, incredible song, with the driving power chords, orchestration, and Daltrey’s iconic scream of spiritual longing:<br><br><em>“Love, reign or’ me….Love….”</em></p>
<p>Whether it’s an angsty 1970s teenager, an evangelical crying “Come, Lord Jesus,” or George Harrison singing, “I really wanna see you, Lord…”</p>
<p>There is, inside of us all, a similar journey. As St. Augustine said centuries ago, there is inside us all, a God-shaped hole.<br>And our hearts wrestle, struggle, and strive, to fill it with one thing or another, all of our lives.</p>
<p>This song, in its way, taught me what the Gospel is also trying to teach…</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>”Only love can make it rain<br>The way the beach is kissed by the sea<br>Only love can make it rain<br>Like the sweat of lovers laying in the fields</p>
<p><br>Love reign o’er me<br>Love reign o’er me<br>Rain on me, rain on me</p>
<p>Only love can bring the rain<br>That makes you yearn to the sky<br>Only love can bring the rain<br>That falls like tears from on high</p>
<p>Love reign o’er me<br>Love reign o’er me<br>Rain on me, rain on me</p>
<p>On the dry and dusty road<br>The nights we spend apart alone<br>I need to get back home to cool, cool rain<br>I can’t sleep and I lay and I think<br>The night is hot and black as ink<br>Ooh God, I need a drink of of cool, cool rain</p>
<p>Love reign o’er me<br>Love reign o’er me<br>Rain on me, rain on me</p>
<p>Love”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Desert island record.<br>Desert island song.<br>50 Years Ago….this week.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7297855
2023-11-02T14:39:57-05:00
2023-11-03T10:45:25-05:00
The Final Lesson of Baseball
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that I wept openly last night.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that as Dennise, Maria, and I leapt from our chairs, into the middle of the room —all in mutual tears, falling into a jumping bear hug— I clumsily and excitedly grabbed them so tight, it smashed their heads together like something out of the Three Stooges.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that this morning, I awoke and assumed it was all some cruel dream, or post-Halloween prank.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that I cried a few more tears just now, when I realized it was not.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that, just like me, the first post for dozens of my social media friends were to remember their Fathers and Grandfathers, Mothers and Grandmothers…to poignantly recall those loved ones, like mine, who died somewhere in these last 62 parched years, and did not live to see this day.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that I read those posts and weep all over again.</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that, as I tried to convey through all my writing this week, <strong>NONE</strong> OF US thought this was possible…and yet it is. Eric Nadel on the Rangers’ Network understood spoke for us all when, in his actual final call of the game, he said:</p>
<p><em>“Ranger fans, you’re not dreaming…the Rangers are the World Series Champions.”</em></p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say to say that I will read all these sentences a few more times before they truly sink in.</p>
<p>And finally, one more “it is not an exaggeration” before a few parting thoughts today….</p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that I do not have a single picture of my Father and me at a Texas Rangers game.</p>
<p>Maybe this doesn’t strike you as odd, until you realize that my Father took perhaps a billion and a half photographs throughout his life. Photography was my Dad’s true passion. More than a hobby. He won prizes for his pictures several times, including at the State Fair. His family picture sessions —we never used a “professional” photographer— for various holiday pictures, were/are the stories of legends in our family.</p>
<p>Dad took landscape photos.<br>Dad too hundred of pictures, even in high school, of the students at “Dixie High School” in Covington, Kentucky.<br>Dad took copious pics of all his kids at their sporting events, vacations, our Lakehouse, Kentucky, East Texas, birthday parties…everywhere we ever went.<br>He took those pictures of his three squigly young kids, who never quite wanted to sit still as long as needed to get the shot.</p>
<p>But, Dad apparently never took his camera to baseball games with me, or with anybody else for that matter. So, not only did he not take pics of me, or himself, this means he didn’t take any pictures of the Rangers’ warming up on the field, or “action shots” during a game….or of players lounging in the dugouts. As I posted earlier this week, I saved ticket stubs for dozens and dozens of games, but there is not one single bit of photographic evidence that we ever saw a Rangers game together.</p>
<p>This, friends, didn’t dawn on me until sometime this week when I went looking for them. As you might imagine, I thought some pictures of me a Dad at some games would be beautiful for these World Series Week posts. And so, I watched with some envy last night when I saw dozens of friends posting picture with they and their now-gone parents, because that was exactly the kind of picture I’d also assumed I must have…somewhere…</p>
<p>But the ONLY picture that gets anywhere close is <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/10/28/the-generational-joy-of-baseball/">one he took with MY camera</a> –one I did I post earlier this week– of me standing with Riverfront Stadium in the background. And that pic, I am quite confident, was taken with my little black and white Instamatic.</p>
<p>Therfore, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/eric.folkerth/posts/pfbid028zxCy5AN7Fvc7C1kW7qn7Y4YSepsdRbDAE4c4yHxpzFc4uG71pqH8fcUka3yYaiZl">the picture I *did* post last night</a>–just after the Rangers’ first World Series Champtionship–was of me and Dad on a campout, not at a ballgame.</p>
<p>This lack of a ballpark picture truly, deeply puzzles me given –and this doesn’t feel like an exaggeration– the billion and a half pictures my Father took over the span of his life.<br>A few possible reasons come to me…</p>
<p>First, Dad’s camera set up was clumsy and big. He didn’t shoot on a little puny instamatic. Dad had a big rig, a big lens, a big tripod, and as my sister Dianne noted with her eagle eye: a light meter always hung around his neck.</p>
<p>Dad FIDDLED with his camera. Figuring out the F-stop on each shot was just another of life’s many engineering problems. This is what made those family photoshoots so maddening. The tension went up, not just because fidgety jumping little kids, but also because of the fidgety fiddling of their Father.</p>
<p>And I distinctly have a memory of the huge irony of all that fidgeting: That even as Dad was working to capture and image that would permanently capture some moment, Dad was actually not IN that moment. His attention, his thoughts, his concentration…was only half-present in what was happening.</p>
<p>My friend, David LaMotte actually wrote a song about this very phenomenon years ago:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><em>“She’s living in his lens cap<br>He’s studying her light<br>Trying to find a still frame<br>Of the gracefulness of flight<br>Shooting up the pictures<br>Like a needle in his arm<br>Burning down the world around him<br>For a shot of something warm”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was the very paradox that always struck me about Dad and his passion for photography.</p>
<p>He was “there” for every moment…but never fully “there.”<br>As he did with much of life, Dad’s thoughts were divided, as he tried to engineer each photo.</p>
<p>Psychologists have a term known as “spectatoring,” where a person really isn’t present in the present moment, but their thoughts and attention are pulled away. As you might imagine, this has become endemic in our time, thought the immediate distractions of phones and social media…always tempting us to be somewhere….anywhere…else.</p>
<p>Even baseball itself is trying to speed things up to hold our frail and ever shortening attention spans.</p>
<p>But all this leads me to a tender, final thought that Dennise helped me see last night:</p>
<p>Maybe Dad chose to NOT take his camera, not only because the rig was big; but because —there at a baseball game— Dad was making the choice to…<br>JUST. BE. PRESENT.</p>
<p>I had not considered this until late last night.<br>But it feels lovely, and possibly deeply true.</p>
<p>At the ballpark, Dad was too busy to fiddle with a camera. Instead, he allowed the slow pace of the game to take him away.<br>I absolutely remember how this was true.</p>
<p>He forgot about his work for a while…all that over-engineering in his mind; which was always racing, always on, always “thinking.”</p>
<p>At the ballpark, Dad would crack open a bag of peanuts, order a beer, pull out the scorecard, and all other “time” and “place” would cease, as he spent hours “totally in the moment.”</p>
<p>Buddhist would call this: “Be here now.”<br>Christian mystics call it spritual attentiveness.<br>There’s an entire contemporary moved of “Mindfulness,” that, it seems to me, tries to get at much the same thing.</p>
<p>So, no, I it is not an exaggeration to say I have no pictures of my Dad and me at any baseball game anywhere….even as baseball became one of the greatest and more enduring connection points between the two of us…a connection so dear that it makes me cry last night and today.</p>
<p>Therefore, despite all the many pictures I have posted this week, all the trips down memory lane, there are no pictures with this post today.<br>Just beautiful memories; far more than I have had time to write here for you this week.</p>
<p>And Luke’s Gospel says of Mary, I will simply <em>“ponder these things in my heart.”</em></p>
<p>Today, I’m soaking it in, sitting with sixty-one-years the memories of this beautiful sport from the sixty-one years of my life…. and how one of its clear lessons is the need to pull away from our the endless thinking and fidgeting with life.</p>
<p>We practice it in baseball, so hopefully we remember to do it in life.</p>
<p>That just might be the last, most important lesson, my Dad taught me about baseball.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7297340
2023-11-01T10:18:43-05:00
2023-11-01T15:02:25-05:00
The Dream of a Screaming Baseball Headline
<p>Today’s blast from baseball’s past is this screaming headline from the Cincinnati Post, and more Cincinnati Reds memorabilia from the box in my closest.</p>
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/img_3545.jpeg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="768" style="width:806px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
</div>
<p>As we’ve covered previously, my Dad bestowed me with a generational a love of the Reds, which developed concurrently with my love for the Texas Rangers. It seemed perfectly logical, since one was National League, and one American. And, given my Rangers’ place as hopeless losers, with the physics of the baseball universe forever against them, it made total sense.<br>I would cheer for one perennial loser, and one remarkable winner.</p>
<p>As we’ve also previously covered, Pete Rose was my favorite player from that era. My Grandmother —who we called “Grandmother”— abetted this love by standing on line one rainy day to snag this autographed Rose shirt for me….a shirt I have never worn.</p>
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<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/img_3665.jpeg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="784" style="width:336px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
</div>
<p>We don’t need to belabor the point that Rose is a liar, cheat, and thief, and potential sexual abuser. There is no need to defend him in any way, and he continues to justly pay for his sins the ways current justice is available. I’m asking you to journey back to the time before anybody publicly realized any of this, when he was my greatest hero, and take a gander at this headline.</p>
<p>Google helps me determine that this screaming headline was Easter Week; so we must have been up in Park Hills, Kentucky –a tiny town, just across the Ohio River from Cincy— visiting my Grandmother.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I’ll come back to the screaming headline in a moment, but first to the other covers here. My love for the Cincinnati Reds helped me understand that SOME teams, somewhere, always had success. No, our Rangers never did. But THEY did, and I could piggyback on their joy</p>
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<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/img_3543-1.jpeg?w=768" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1024" style="width:626px;height:auto" width="768" /></figure>
</div>
<p>The Cincinnati Reds of the late 1970s were one of the greatest baseball franchises in modern baseball history. You can’t come at me with the Astros because, as we’ve determined, the Astros were cheaters. They were known as “The Big Red Machine,” and they captured our national sports imagination for those few years. I almost lost my friendship with Kevin Moore when he unthinkably chose to cheer for the Red Sox in 1975.</p>
<p>Cincy is not a big town, but it is a beautiful one. But they showed how the nation could fall for a sports team outside the traditional markets…which is one of the annoying things I’m hearing about this year’s series….that because Arizona and Texas are not marquee franchises, there is no interesting story line. I trust my posts this week are putting the lie to this.</p>
<p>My love for those Reds, my heartbreak for the Rangers, taught me another of baseball’s great lessons:</p>
<p><em>On the day of your greatest joy, it will also be the day of another person’s greatest sorrow.</em></p>
<p>This is similar to theme of yesterday’s post, but let’s zero in…</p>
<p>Every day *you* have had your greatest triumphs, somebody else has experience their greatest sadness. And vice versa.<br>That’s the way life works. That’s the way all championship sports works.</p>
<p>And that’s why, every Sunday in church, we pray for the “<em>joys and concerns”</em> of our community. Yes, the concerns are always a longer list, because as brain science shows us, we tend to embody our traumas deeper into our souls.</p>
<p>But it is demonstrably true that, on any Sunday, the community prayers BOTH <em>“Hear our Prayer”</em> (for the concerns) AND <em>“We give you thanks” (f</em>or the joys). This one of the powerful witnesses of a community, so gathered.</p>
<p>In our sufferings, we say <em>“Look…it might be better some day…it finally was for Mary, sitting over there…”</em></p>
<p>And in our greatest triumphs, we are challenged to temper our pride, and humbly recall how nobody stays on top forever….sufferings eventually come to us all.</p>
<p>This is the spiritual discipline of “Equanimity” that I wrote about some months ago now….to be encouraged to feel our highs and lows, allow them both, and seek to recall that it’s all part of the same ride.</p>
<p>My dual love of the Rangers and Reds in the 1970s first helped teach me this lesson.</p>
<p>And so, it gets me back to this screaming sports headline from the Cincinnati Post.</p>
<p>I kept this newspaper because even as a fifteen-year-old, I understood that it was a big deal for a print newspaper to run a headline just that big. I kept it for the pure community JOY it represents.<br>Just look at that. That’s Pearl Harbor, or 911, sized.</p>
<p>And all because Pete Rose signed a two-year baseball contract.<br>But that’s just how much Cincinnati loved those Reds in those days.</p>
<p>Here in DFW, we’ve never had a screaming baseball headline that big.<br>But we’re up 3-1 in this current World Series.<br>And that’s already a place no Rangers fan has ever been before, in our history.</p>
<p>What is it like to live in a town with a baseball headline that big?</p>
<p>We’ve never known.<br>But we’d sure like to find out.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7296816
2023-10-31T17:50:40-05:00
2023-11-01T15:02:25-05:00
Here’s To the Regular Season of Life
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<p>Today’s baseball blast-from-the-past is this actual line up card from a Texas Rangers game on Sunday, October 2, 1977.<br><br>I am sure I bought this at a memorabilia convention somewhere in the Dallas area.<br>Probably at a Holiday Inn with bad carpet, although I no longer remember. It was in the box with a lot of my other baseball stuff that I have opened up this week, as I wax nostalgic in the midst of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rangers?__tn__=-%5DK*F">Texas Rangers</a> World Series run.<br><br>I bought this because…. I wanted a major league game lineup card, of course!<br>Who wouldn’t?<br><br>This was during the height of my baseball card collecting habit.<br><br>It was only this week that I actually looked up the story of that game. I don’t know why it took my forty years to decide to do this.<br>Grateful for the miracle of Google here, as I’d never bothered to consider any of the backstory before, literally, TODAY.<br><br>As it happens, this was the last game of 1977. A paltry crowd of 5,770 fans watched the Texas Rangers defeat the Oakland Athletics 8-7. It was a Sunday game, probably like the many my Dad and I attended after church at Lovers Lane UMC.<br><br>But, wait. There’s MORE to the story:<br>This game was the only major league victory for rookie starting pitcher, John Poloni. Meaning, his only MLB victory, ever.<br>Even weirder…John Poloni’s name is not on this scorecard, anywhere.<br><br>For forty years, I had no idea, but apparently I had my own “Moonlight Graham” story, right here in front of me, just sitting in a box in my closet.<br><br><br>Playoffs and World Series baseball are full of excitement. Almost every pitch has the crowd on their feet, and you can feel the stress and the energy with every swing of the bat.<br><br>A regular season game like October 2, 1977 is different, of course. There are 162 of them, played every year. 162 times 62 seasons equals roughly 1,000 regular season games over the span of the Texas Rangers’ existence. Now, multiply all those franchises over more than 100 years and….well, it’s a LOT of regular season games.<br><br>That’s a whole lot of “October 2, 1977.”<br><br>So, one of the beauties and challenges of baseball is remembering that it’s a game of inches, days, months, and years. In the regular season, it’s a credible theory that no one game ever matters that much.<br><br>Except, of course, if it’s Sunday, October 2, 1977 and you’re name is John Poloni.<br>That game means the world to you for the rest of you life.<br><br>Friends, this is another way that baseball is more like life than almost any other sport. Most of the year, the daily grind tempts us to boredom, as we plod one foot in front of the other, working our way through the regular season we call “normal life.”<br><br>But now and then, we have a John Poloni day, one that’s totally boring to everyone else, but for us one we shall remember forever.<br><br>Like when our children are born, or our parents die.<br>Like when we get the horrible news from a doctor…or the good news.<br><br>We all have “regular days” that are John Poloni days.<br><br>Then, of course, we all have “the holidays” too; which are like the baseball playoffs season.<br>“Holidays,” of course, is a shortened version of “holy days;” which is to say that holidays almost always used to have some sense that they were “special, holy, time.”<br><br>Tonight is Halloween.<br>Soon on its heels will come All Saints, or “Dia de los Muertos.”<br>Before we’ll blink we’ll be at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and a dozen other mid-winter celebrations we humans use to push back the dark and cold of winter.<br><br>Like the “Playoffs” and “World Series,” our attention is peaked during these days. They’re easy days to get psyched for.<br><br>But here’s to the regular season we call life.<br>To every October 2, 1977…<br>To every “every day”…<br>To all the John Poloni’s who get up and go to work each day, like Jackson Browne’s “every man.”<br><br>Most of life is like this. Most people are like this. For every Verlander there are a million Polonis….and a million more who never even got the one win.<br><br>Which is why, even in the church we call most of the year “Ordinary Time.”<br>What a perfectly boring, perfectly brilliant name for the “Regular Season” of life.<br><br>Here’s to every “Ordinary Time” day, every “Regular Season” game; to all the John Poloni’s who remember those days in ways we never will.<br><br>One of the tricks to life is enjoying each “every day,” just like one of the tricks of baseball is learning to love those apparently meaningless regular season games. In both cases, there is a spiritual discipline of “paying attention” that can turn even the most mundane and boring into the memorable or sacred.<br><br>Most of life, like most of baseball, really is about showing up, putting on foot in front of the other, trusting in the journey; and trying our best to pay attention, on every “October 2, 1977.”<br><br>And, of course…Go Rangers</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7296098
2023-10-30T11:31:59-05:00
2023-10-30T14:30:11-05:00
The Rangers’ Icarus
<p>Among folks have a certain age in North Texas, saying you were present for the major league debut of David Clyde is akin to what folks say about Woodstock: A lot more people say they were there than who likely were even able to physically fit in that stadium.<br>I <em>think</em> I was actually there. But, see the above sentence. Memory is a funny thing.</p>
<p>I do <em>remember</em> David Clyde’s debut quite clearly. Here is my autographed picture of David Clyde.</p>
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<p>As I continue my World Series week of reminisence, we should most definitely incude the joy/heartbreak drama of David Clyde…for it too is one of the DNA strands inside every OG Rangers fan who still can’t dare to trust we might win this year.</p>
<p>Because…we know the story of David Clyde.</p>
<p>David Clyde was a teenage pitching phenomenon here in Texas in 1973. He was 18-0 in his high school career, and just 17 when he caught the eye of big league scouts. The Texas Rangers, our new local team, desperate for heroes and a story, drafted him first overall and immediately threw him into the major leagues without any kind of mental, physical, or emotional training.</p>
<p>To read the papers, and even to talk to adults like my Father, David Clyde’s debut would be something like the coming of Luke Skywalker. That night was indeed the first sellout in Texas Rangers history.</p>
<p>He was now just eighteen.</p>
<p>By the age of just 24 —an age when many players only then make their big league debut— David Clyde was retiring and out of the game.</p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t brag about being at Woodstock —too young for that— but I am pretty confident we were part of the 35,000 that game. I know I saw him pitch, maybe a couple of times, in those two years.</p>
<p>Something about the time– the years 1973 and 1974 were so rich in my boyhood memory. The music of the pre-disco 70s, the ballplayers whose cards I traded, they got burned into my brain like few other years ever before or ever since.</p>
<p>For Clyde, though, <em>it was because he was young</em>, that he rocketed to superhero status for myself, Kevin, and John…as we fungoed endless baseball back and forth in our seemingly endless front yards, on seemingly endless summer nights.</p>
<p>The David Clyde mythology was strong because he <em>really was</em> like us. We were kids, and he was a kid.</p>
<p>He was only a year or two older than Robbie Lomax’s older brother. Which meant he could have easily been one of those slightly older neighborhood boys who endlessly terrorized us; engendering not an anticipatory joy, but an existential dread, about what being “a teenager” meant…as was obviously, terrifyingly now, just about to happen to us all.</p>
<p>But in the summer of 1973, we were all still on the cusp of that. And here was a <em>different</em> teenager. One we could admire.</p>
<p>We were still kids who dreamed of making the big leagues.</p>
<p>Our parents didn’t have to say <em>“You could be President some day…”</em><br>What would that mean, anyway?</p>
<p><em>Our</em> Fathers said, <em>“You could be David Clyde some day…”</em></p>
<p>How could we deny it was true?<br>It clearly <em>was</em> true.</p>
<p>So in that endless boyhood summer, we rode our bikes down to Preston Hollow Park, playing on the two ballfields for hours, until the Sun fell.</p>
<p>Those two Preston Hollow Park ballfields are still there, although one does not appear to have been kept up in years. And while those two small ballfields survive, our childhood neighborhood did not.</p>
<p>Between that endless summer of 1973 and today, old Preston Hollow has become new Highland Park North, and the ranch style home and big front yards of our endless youth have been replaced by zero lot McMansions, and far too copious and increasingly questionable landscaping.<sup data-fn="3cced681-0e3d-41e5-9af4-a245e45a139f" class="fn"><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/feed/#3cced681-0e3d-41e5-9af4-a245e45a139f" id="3cced681-0e3d-41e5-9af4-a245e45a139f-link">1</a></sup></p>
<p>Whatever else they do today for fun, I am quite certain the kids of today’s Preston Hollow cannot play fungo across three endless front lawns, as we once did. (As if kids today would consider that “fun” anyway…)</p>
<p>And like those ranch style homes, David Clyde was also soon forgotten too, in all the but minds of the few faithful. I honestly did not recall what became of him and had to look it up.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the Rangers did honor the 50-year anniversary of his debut, earlier this year. But having endured FIVE shoulder surgeries (one quite recently) he couldn’t even throw out the ceremonial first pitch that day.</p>
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<p>Baseball eventually learned its lesson. And I suppose, upon reflection, so did we. Making the major leagues was a lot harder than our parents, and Ranger’s management, had pretended it to be. Clyde went from “The New Hope” Skywalker legend, to the cautionary tale of far too many others.</p>
<p>We North Texas kids never had to study Icarus in school, because we had David Clyde.</p>
<p>Only two other players since have made the immediate jump from high school to the major leagues.<br>Two in, what? Hundreds of thousands, now?</p>
<p>Other young potential stars, like Robin Yount and A-Rod, were somehow developed in ways that didn’t destroy their bodies and minds quite so quickly.</p>
<p>Even our current-day awe of twenty-one-year-old Evan Carter somehow feels different. He *seems* to have his head on his shoulders…I hope this is true…and feels to me like the second coming of Ian Kinsler on the bases.<br>I hope we don’t screw this up.</p>
<p>Clyde’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Clyde">Wikipedia page</a> somehow offers me a sense of beautiful longterm hope:</p>
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<p><em>“He(Clyde) worked in his father-in-law’s lumber business in Tomball, Texas for 20 years, which he called one of the best periods of his life, giving him a “peace of mind”. He retired in 2003 as vice president of the company and worked as a coach for a local youth baseball team. He is now a caregiver for his elderly father.”</em></p>
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<p>There is something deeply beautiful in this last sentence, yes? Well after the glare of the spotlight left him, honestly, this is the David Clyde we should all remember, and what no doubt makes him a hero.</p>
<p>As for what David Clyde himself thinks baseball should learn from his experience? In an interview around the time he was honored by the Rangers earlier this year, a reporter asked him.</p>
<p><em>“The biggest thing, and I think baseball has learned from it,”</em> said sixty-eight-year-old David Clyde, <em>“is let’s not do that again…”</em></p>
<p><strong>———————-</strong></p>
<ol class="wp-block-footnotes"><li id="3cced681-0e3d-41e5-9af4-a245e45a139f">It has been the strangest thing to be here in Dallas, and watch the slow-motion destruction/recreation of my boyhood neighborhood these past five decades.<br>Even more poignant: to serve, as an adult pastor, BACK IN PRESTON HOLLOW…for seventeen year front row seat for this transition.<br>While it’s factually true that most of my boyhood friend’s homes have been gone for decades, strangely, my friend Kevin’s, and our’s, persisted for years.<br>Our old house was finally raised and redone only about three years ago. Kevin’s Mom actually just died this Spring and, as a beautiful outlier, lived her entire life in that same house, decades after all the rest of us had long ago left Preston Hollow to what it has become now.<br>Kevin is slowly, methodically, going through the old house now. <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/feed/#3cced681-0e3d-41e5-9af4-a245e45a139f-link"><img src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/21a9.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="↩" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />︎</a>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7295104
2023-10-28T12:41:43-05:00
2023-10-30T14:30:11-05:00
The Generational Joy of Baseball
<p>This will be my first <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rangers?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Texas Rangers</a> World Series without my Dad. As I wrote the other day, I got so much of the joy/heartbreak of baseball from my Father. If I am honest, I put my baseball addiction away for months at a time. Sometimes it just gets to be too much. I only write about it in times like this.</p>
<p>I’ve thought of my Father often this week (in addition to the World Series, it’s also Dad’s birthday week) and at least twice I’ve cried for the memories.<br>I really wish he was here for this.</p>
<p>We went to so many games at Arlington Stadium, and later at the “The Temple.” In those early years, I wore the shirt in this vacation picture —the one with the OG Texas Rangers logo— until it wore out.<br></p>
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<p>My sister, Dianne has sent me a new version of that shirt this week, and I’ll wear it with pride tonight…maybe every game this week.</p>
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<p>So many baseball memories with Dad. As I wrote the other day, I really did cry a few years back, as Dennise, Maria, and I exited The Ballpark one final time, at conclusion of that final night home game. See how they’re smiling here? See how I’m not, really?</p>
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<p>Those tears were clearly at the loss of the <em>physical connection</em> of that beautiful place, my Father, and me. It was overwhelming moment, and it can still make me emotional, writing about it now.</p>
<p>And that’s where this week’s tears came from…the sadness that Dad’s not here to, hopefully, finally see his Texas Rangers overcome the physics of the baseball universe, win their first World Series, and banish their curse forever.</p>
<p>Baseball was a safe thing for Dad and me. One of the only safe things.</p>
<p>Safe from Dad’s far-too-copious and often oppressive life advice…<br>Safe from his enraging, hyperlogial way of argumentation; that could simultaneously be completely right, and emotionally wrong, and tone deaf of its effect on his family…<br>Safe from the vast sea in between our later political or social views…</p>
<p>Baseball was always SAFE.<br>Baseball was just pure JOY, and common shared experience, from my very earliest memories to the end of my Father’s life.</p>
<p>And a thought comes to me this week— so it was for he and his Father too.</p>
<p>My Dad and his Father, “Frankie,” were Cincinnati Reds fans. Dad grew up on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, and had generations of memories of the Reds, which he also passed on to me, the way I’ve now passed on Rangers memories to Maria.</p>
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<p>For example, our family’s TV broke in late 1974, and our family lived without one for months. But as the Reds made the 1975 playoffs, Dad finally broke down and bought a new color set. One of the first things we watched on it was the glory of the 1975 World Series, the greatest series of all time. (fight me)</p>
<p>As I’ve previously written, Dad took me to Reds games during “The Big Red Machine” era. As you see here, we’d park on the Kentucky side, and walk across the Roebling Bridge to see those games. (Thanks to Tim Wood for the reminder that this bridge is a twin to the Brooklyn Bridge. I didn’t know that at the time, but I remember in the moment sensing the HISTORY I felt it must represent…)</p>
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<p>Strangely, I don’t have a single surviving picture of me and Dad at the dozens and dozens of Rangers games we saw over decades. But I *do* have this BW pic of us outside Riverfront in Cincy. Go figure…</p>
<p>“Frankie” Folkerth was front desk staff at one of the most inconic old downtown Cincinnati hotels. It just so happened to be a hotel where many visiting teams stayed back in the day. As such, Frankie met almost all of the great National League stars of the 1950s. Carried bags for some of them.These visiting players would often have no local friends to give their ticket allotments too. So, very often, they would give them to Frankie. But because Frankie was often on the clock (working class, service industry guy) he often couldn’t get free for the games.</p>
<p>So, Frankie would give them to my Dad, and Dad and his friends would go. Dad had a line drawing of the old Crosley Field, the ballpark of that era, that he kept on his wall for most of his life. It’s one of the only possessions of his I’ve kept. Crosley was torn down years before I was born, but I’m looking up at on my wall right now.</p>
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<p>And here’s the generational truth: Frankie died in 1972…just before the glory years of the Cincinnati Reds “Big Red Machine.”<br>Frankie never got to see any of that glory, just as my Dad isn’t here for his Rangers this year.</p>
<p>I am thinking about this alot today.<br>As is the way of fathers and sons, Frankie and Dad also generationally clashed.</p>
<p>Frankie was a New Deal Democrat.<br>Dad became an Eisenhower/Goldwater Republican.</p>
<p>Frankie thought Dad should have been a lawyer.<br>Dad was 100% sure I should have been a business major.</p>
<p>As with us, apparently Frankie and Dad had epic arguments, back in the day. And when my Dad moved to here Dallas for his college internship, and never looked back, it wasn’t just because of his oft-repeated line that <em>“the weather is better.”</em></p>
<p>But Dad loved Frankie.<br>I know that.<br>Just as I loved Dad.<br>Baseball was their “safe” thing too.</p>
<p>And so, here I am today with generations of memories. Memories of my own life, of my Father’s, of the great players of baseball’s past and present; and that unique way the sport connects some of us to our own personal histories.</p>
<p>WP Kinsella was exactly right when he framed it in the novel “Shoeless Joe”:<br><em>“I don’t have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.”</em></p>
<p>We really DO steamroll our past…our ballparks, and our entire childhood neighborhoods. Our cities themselves desperately elevate “the new,” and tear down the old. But baseball helps us keep the score…not just of the game, but of our lives. Despite the social unrest and unrelenting change of every age, baseball keeps creating new heroes and stories in every age too. And just as surely as Fathers and Sons will always clash, they keep finding their “safe thing” in baseball’s constancy.</p>
<p>Just look how happy I am, in this picture outside of Riverfront! That’s not <em>just</em> because we’re about to experience the epic greatness of The Big Red Machine, but it’s also because of how this moment is being written down forever, deep into the box scorecard of my own personal history, as a joy I can call back, even now.</p>
<p>And here’s the question I’m left with…<br><em>As Dad shot this picture of me then, was he also remembering Frankie, as I am remembering him now?<br>A Father who never saw the glory of the Big Red Machine and Riverfront, just as I remember one who never knew Globe Life Field?</em></p>
<p>Has to be.<br>And in this, I find a deep, deep generational joy.</p>
<p>If the Rangers finally break the laws of the baseball universe this next week, everyone I know will have their own personal reasons for their current day joy.</p>
<p>Mine will be this…. they will have finally done brought it home for my Dad.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/worldseries?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=*NK-R">#WorldSeries</a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/worldseries2023?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=*NK-R">#worldseries2023</a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/texasrangers?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=*NK-R">#texasrangers</a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/texasrangersbaseball?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=*NK-R">#texasrangersbaseball</a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/goandtakeit?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYntUJ_jQpu0g1Te9cBHIl8k8qwk5qTipAQx4JXxHFSqrd93x0qcXJXr2jUgeCChHF850l6lB6-PCco8y0XYi-S-MsBYyOsLSsCB3a2243D6JdtvltOFgBz0QUmbGiugkHzBBWakDa3g_6QCvxpaQep9Nsk2SPEaq7MqumeHnXOA&__tn__=*NK-R">#GoAndTakeIt</a></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7295105
2023-10-25T11:08:00-05:00
2023-10-28T14:00:02-05:00
Sixty-Two Years. Two Times. One Game. One Strike.
<p><strong>Sixty-two years.<br>Two Times.<br>One Game.<br>One Strike.</strong></p>
<p>Whatever you think of our passion for our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rangers?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZW7c9-Q_FPbpKIqjr-0S-GjvrfawxTjeMxybvMDoInnY_rnMyO3T34opXYtHMTRbAPEellk0njAyr5Vze0vPvImYWceTRmxP9_IeYpqeTg6wxbbxPh7VJw6J-30dswHqKsdr_DSUyoXUnjBIAwTVmcRxsIKReivE2rMJu1C4A4a5w&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Texas Rangers</a>, I have more baseball math for you this morning.</p>
<p>You may still think we (me) are (am) too cocky, brash, and abrasive in our joy over the Texas Rangers’ trip the World Series.<br>Fine. I’ll stand in the box and take whatever pitch you want to throw.<br>Even if you want to throw AT me.</p>
<p>But I’d ask you to consider the following math:</p>
<p><strong>Sixty-two years.<br>Two Times.<br>One Game.<br>One Strike.</strong></p>
<p>Let me explain…</p>
<p><strong>SIXTY TWO YEARS.</strong><br>The franchise known as the Texas Rangers has never won a World Series in its now sixty-two years of existence. Created in 1961 as the Washington Senators, that streak is now longer than any other current baseball franchise by a factor of one to four decades.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s the longest World Series winless streak in all of baseball *history,* but at 62 years, it’s got to be in the running. (Somebody, somewhere, knows this, I am confident…)</p>
<p>Cubbies fans, Bosox fans…we feel ya.</p>
<p>If you ever wondered why we Rangers’ fans loved ya’ll so much…why we were SO happy for you in 04 and 16….this is why. We understand, in every fiber of being, what it means to root for a team that breaks your heart, again, and again…and again. After the Cubs win, my friend <a href="https://www.facebook.com/niki.leeman?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZW7c9-Q_FPbpKIqjr-0S-GjvrfawxTjeMxybvMDoInnY_rnMyO3T34opXYtHMTRbAPEellk0njAyr5Vze0vPvImYWceTRmxP9_IeYpqeTg6wxbbxPh7VJw6J-30dswHqKsdr_DSUyoXUnjBIAwTVmcRxsIKReivE2rMJu1C4A4a5w&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Niki</a> sent me a Cubs WS shirt, that I still wear with pride. I hope one day to return the favor. And I bought a Red Sox hat in Fenway, after their curse was gone, and proudly wore it the next week behind home plate at a Yankee Stadium game.</p>
<p>We <em>really do</em> feel ya.</p>
<p>And, may I gently remind you…Not to take anything away from the magnificent banishment of your OWN curses…both of your teams *had* previously won a championship, somewhere in their history.</p>
<p>Our Texas Rangers?<br>Sixty two years of NEVER.</p>
<p>For everyone else reading, again whatever you think of our passion, please know that the passion comes *from* the long suffering.<br>This is exactly why —as many of you know— I didn’t/couldn’t watch any of those first seven playoff games this year.</p>
<p>Sure, partly because I had a ridiculous baseball superstition that somehow I could will them into winning (I know, I know). But *mostly* –and this is absolutely true— mostly because I just could not stand the heartbreak again.</p>
<p>Our passion/heartbreak comes from very specific places:<br>It comes from watching the Cinderella stories of those Cubs and Red Sox and yearning for that kind of storyline here.<br>It comes from watching cheaters win, and remembering how we were denied a franchise for ten years.<br>It comes from every heartbreaking afternoon we spent in the 100 degree concrete/aluminum hell of Arlington Stadium.<br>It comes from the hope that the elegant “The Ballpark” gave to us, and then took away.<br>It comes from the Fathers and Grandfathers who first took us to games as kids…who taught us to fill out scorecards and bought us hotdogs, and always made sure we took our gloves to catch the foul balls…</p>
<p>Fathers and Grandfathers now gone…who did not live to see our curse lifted…who taught us the history of the game, and helped us to understand our place.</p>
<p>And whom we remember, with every current pitch.</p>
<p>Our place? The Texas Rangers’ place in the quantum physics of the baseball universe is as perennial heartbreakers. That’s the lesson is the *only* lesson you learn if you are a Texas Rangers fan.</p>
<p>I miss my Dad so much. And even though, according every known law of physics in the baseball universe, we are credibly about get our hearts smashed once again, I *still* wish he was here, so our hearts would break again together, one more time.</p>
<p>My passion, our passion, comes from thousands of ticket stubs like these you see here, kept in thousands of drawers like mine, representing thousands of dashed dreams and heartbreak….credibly and arguably historically more deep heartbreak than any other current franchise.<br>The passion comes *from* the heartbreak.</p>
<p>Even the other night…even in the bottom of the ninth —ahead of the Astros by *seven runs*— I assure you <em>NO TEXAS RANGERS FAN BELIEVED WE WERE GOING TO WIN</em>!!!<br>I assure you…just ask them.</p>
<p> I was in two separate text threads at the time, and NOBODY I was talking to in that moment believed it was over.A part of this was because of our notoriously rickety current bullpen. Part of it was the heartbreak of sixty two years.</p>
<p>But most of it was because of what I now move on to remind you of…</p>
<p><strong>TWO TIMES.</strong><br>We <em>have</em> gone to the World Series, twice.<br>Thank God my Father was alive to see those.</p>
<p>What a joy they were. What great years and memories. The Ballpark. Those red uniforms. (Still my personal faves…)</p>
<p>Wash.<br>Those great guys.</p>
<p>But those two years ended in losses too, both to teams who I hated fiercely in the immediately aftermath…and now both of whom I admire and respect deeply. (Having Boch as our manger now definitely helps….)<br>So, dear friends, I do not need to belabor this point too much.</p>
<p>Two appearances.<br>Two losses.</p>
<p>That said…journey with me now….deeper into the final hidden chambers, into the deepest parts of the broken hearts in every Rangers fan.</p>
<p><strong>ONE GAME.<br>ONE STRIKE.</strong><br>Actually “two times” has double meaning, connected to these last two facts. Two times, in one game, the Texas Rangers were one strike away from winning the World Series. Two times, our then 50-year curse was seconds —inches, as every true fan likes to say— away form being lifted; only to have the inevitable physics of the baseball universe enforce its crushing will once again.</p>
<p>Two times.<br>One game.<br>One strike.</p>
<p>We sat there…TWICE IN ONE GAME…and allowed ourselves to dare to think a few seconds into the future.<br>(“What is this going to feel like?”)</p>
<p>We watched a pitcher with the ball —eyeing the batter— as the inevitable unfolded…and for a brief, foolhardy second, we dared to hope.<br>But two times, in one game, with one strike left, the World Series hopes of the Texas Rangers were dashed.</p>
<p>THIS, dear friends, this is the deepest cut of all.<br>The ultimate example of Lucy pulling away that football on us. (Just go with it…)</p>
<p>Down inside all the chambers of a Rangers fan’s heart — far below all our current joy and braggadocio— there is THIS moment. Piled on top of it? All the other layers of archeological detritus and accumulated history I have just now described.</p>
<p>All of this, together, is why, as I’ve already noted, even with one strike left the other night, many of us could not dare believe, even then.</p>
<p>And so, I pull out these ticket stubs, and remember….</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/395722722_10232267273128835_922126340777536299_n.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="768" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>I remember how my Father bought them for me. (So many loved ones now gone, looking on with us. There is heartbreak there too….)<br>I remember the stomping vibration of the Arlington Stadium bleachers.<br>I remember seeing Hank Aaron in the flesh…the actual guy…the mythic figure.<br>I remember taunting Reggie Jackson from those bleachers.<br>I remember watching the debut of David Clyde, and my Jeff Burroughs poster that hung up in my room.<br>I remember Tom Grieve when he was a player.<br>I remember Jim Sundberg, and Pudge; both of whom, since I was a catcher, I had unusually strong connections to.<br>I remember the grace, style, and elegance of the Ballpark.<br>I remember how Wash talked about how his own heart was broken by our previous losses, and we all knew it was true.<br>I remember how happy everybody here was for him when he FINALLY got HIS ring….<br>I remember how Nolan Ryan was one of us for a while, and how now he is most definitely *not* once again.<br>I remember crying, the last time I left the Ballpark, because it was yet another lost of connection between me and my Father, and the many games we saw there together.</p>
<p>But most all of, beneath all we remember, we Rangers fans remember the heartbreak.</p>
<p>So, yes, we embrace the exuberant brashness of Doli.<br>We TELL you that we are daring to dream. But we don’t truly believe that.<br>Physics is physics.</p>
<p>Yes, we’re celebrating with a harsh edge that some of you find offensive. I get it. Keep throwing at us if you want. We’re used to it. Our skins and souls have hardened, perhaps, calcified from all I have just describe to you.</p>
<p>But, prick that braggadocious skin, and what we bleed is heartbreak…even now.</p>
<p>And so, I have yet to decide.</p>
<p>I might just be going on more walks this week.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7295106
2023-10-24T11:28:45-05:00
2023-10-28T14:00:02-05:00
Vandergriff’s 50-Year Vision Comes True.
<p>This morning, at the conclusion of a truly entertaining ALCS between the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rangers?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZX4lgb4WNEZXCIix97-aAJu13vUfkoaijLylm8PXnvt-tJ4cZ6YgSMlA9_PfiwsApD2OoaAc0I5MUVYBpAd8qtNqXjRLQWTfRpOzkZx9AktcgFxODki2R2FcFna8BbWtJP69R21Q5aOLKR1qr61BTw8U-XHcMl0b7U0BTQFwTx4dw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Texas Rangers</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Astros?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZX4lgb4WNEZXCIix97-aAJu13vUfkoaijLylm8PXnvt-tJ4cZ6YgSMlA9_PfiwsApD2OoaAc0I5MUVYBpAd8qtNqXjRLQWTfRpOzkZx9AktcgFxODki2R2FcFna8BbWtJP69R21Q5aOLKR1qr61BTw8U-XHcMl0b7U0BTQFwTx4dw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Houston Astros</a>, I am thinking of the visionary leadership of Tom Vandergriff.</p>
<p>Vandergriff was a visionary not only because of his work to get the Texas Rangers to DFW, but because of his even greater vision for the entire State of Texas: <strong>A TRUE BASEBALL RIVALRY.</strong></p>
<p>Whatever else you saw happen these past few days, this is the important “take away.”<br><strong>A TRUE BASEBALL RIVALRY.</strong></p>
<p>And whether your team won or lost, it was an incredible ALCS. FINALLY…at long last….so begins a true rivalry that befits our state.<br>Congrats HOUSTON ASTROS (we go back to referring to them by their actual name now…) on a great season.</p>
<p>I hope you trust that I would have gladly cheered for you in the World Series. I apologize for any hurt feelings that might have come from my trash talk (See: yesterday’s post…) I would cheer for you in any World Series…unless you ever play the Reds.</p>
<p>And given my trash talk this week, it feels important to say those last few sentences clearly.</p>
<p>Sure the winning and losing is important. But perhaps AS important are these baseball rivalries that give the game a depth for seven months, every year…for more than 100 years.<br>Yankees/Red Sox<br>Giants/Dodgers<br>Cardinals/Cubs</p>
<p>Am I comparing us to those storied franchises?<br>No I am not. I’m not an idiot. But I am saying: we, Astros and Rangers, can totally become that, perhaps in our grandchildren’s generation.</p>
<p>But before praising Tom Vandergriff for his vision, let us consider the sad truth of just WHY it took us so damn long to get here. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kevin.sherrington?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZX4lgb4WNEZXCIix97-aAJu13vUfkoaijLylm8PXnvt-tJ4cZ6YgSMlA9_PfiwsApD2OoaAc0I5MUVYBpAd8qtNqXjRLQWTfRpOzkZx9AktcgFxODki2R2FcFna8BbWtJP69R21Q5aOLKR1qr61BTw8U-XHcMl0b7U0BTQFwTx4dw&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Kevin Sherrington</a> wrote this up in the DMN very recently…but it’s behind their paywall and sadly that mean many non-DFW folks still don’t know this story.</p>
<p>Whether you like it or not this story gets us back to the story of Judge Roy Hofheinz, and how he *blocked* DFW from getting a major league franchise for more than a decade. All through the 1960s, boosters in Houston –chief among them, Judge Hofheinz– led this successful campaign.</p>
<p>So well known was Judge Hofheinz power and monopolitics control, that this Houston Chronicle editorial fairly well brags about his inpenetrable power:</p>
<p><strong><em>“The last time anybody looked, he(Hofheinz) considered all of Texas, part of Oklahoma and most of Louisiana his personal fief. If fans in that vast area want baseball, either live on television, it’s going to be Houston Astro baseball.”</em></strong></p>
<p>Check out thise political cartoon from that time. These weren’t secrets. These were things openly talked about in the Dallas and Houston newspapers. So open that they made numerous (more than these) political cartoons about it.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/hofheinz-hold-the-keys.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="630" width="1024" /></figure>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/hofheinz-sitn-out.jpeg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="827" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>Now, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/b7lu6a7tr6g7s6uh38mdm/Houston-Chronicle.png?rlkey=4uvyepqnuk7qwqs07h6xevqq3&dl=0">here’s a column from the actual Houston Chronicle</a> in that day. See how the condescesion drips from every word of this columnist? <br>This is the same newspaper whose columnists IN OUR DAY recently called our team <em>“The Arlington Rangers.”</em><br>You want my respect, Houston? You want me to stop dismissively calling ya’ll <em>“The Hofheinz Astros?”</em><br><br>You go first…</p>
<p>Even when we got a franchise, Houston and the Rangers still remained in different leagues until quite recently. Only in just the past few years have both teams finally seen the wisdom of this rivalry.</p>
<p>But now…decades after the fact…here we finally are.<br>Texans: We have ourselves an honest-to-god baseball rivalry.<br>And we should all love it and hope for more of what we got this week.</p>
<p>Which gets me to Tom Vandergriff.<br><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ry1pjdhklngr6q8zomd19/Vandergriff-Answers-Houston.png?rlkey=ce3qkewb78bh2jomw9faustxa&dl=0">Here’s the op-ed response from Tom Vandergriff</a> a few days later to that Chronicle columnist. Read it carefully. THIS was the vision we needed in our state, friends. It’s what we still need.<br><br>However you feel about this just concluded series, I would urge every Texan to carefully consider Vandergriff’s prescient, now fifty-year-old ideas. (This ran in an Arlington paper…back in the day, this was like a Twitter war…oppositive views, in different papers…)</p>
<p>Tom Vandergriff understood just how powerful —emotionally and economically— a true rivalry between Houston and DFW could be.</p>
<p>Vandergriff concludes his op-ed with this:<br><strong>“…we (DFW) can also make a great contribution to the League and, in the process, the two teams would prove to be the greatest box office asset for each other.”</strong></p>
<p>As this season has shown, he was 100% correct about this. Almost every game between the two clubs have been sellout. Its only taken the rest of us 50 years to catch up to his brilliance.</p>
<p>Now, some might say fans in the State of Texas still favor Houston.</p>
<p>OK. Sure. Even though the rest of the entire nation cheered for our Rangers, apparently the majority of Texans still favored the Astros.<br>Why?</p>
<p>Knowing the backstory told in these pictures and newspapers columns helps you understand the dynamic in the state:<br>1. For many of these early years, the Houston metro area was a larger media market.<br>2. Judge Hofheinz <strong>really did</strong> block the DFW area from getting that franchise, giving Houston a decade advantage.<br>3. The Astros’ therefore had decade-long unfair and monopolistic statewide radio network that self obviously created a generation of Astros fans by default…many of whom have never realized they always should have had a choice.<br>(Again: see the history in these columns for the factual basis of this statement)</p>
<p>Vandergriff by comparison, shows us a classic example of what ethicists call <em>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest">enlightened self interest</a>.”</em></p>
<p>Was he mostly interested in a franchise for DFW?<br>Of course he was!</p>
<p>But he understood the power of the potential rivalry, and he never feared it.</p>
<p>That’s <strong>vision</strong>.<br>That’s “enlightened self interest.”</p>
<p>So, as for me…do I hope the Astros stay a strong team for decades?<br>Of course, I do! I want, and expect, that they’ll beat our asses again soon.<br>And I expect we’ll do the same for them. And I hope to God both teams stay healthy and strong…forever.</p>
<p>Because Tom Vandergriff is my “leader.”</p>
<p>But, also…do I expect that eventually there will be more Rangers fans in our state than Astros fans?</p>
<p>Given that we are now the 5th media market, and Houston is now the 6th…yes I do. (But, we shall see…) Over the next decade, I anticipate a fascinating reshuffling of future state baseball fans, those who are children now, and those yet to be born. But honestly, if both teams stay healthy and strong, it won’t matter…we might even end up a 50/50 state…and that would be great too.</p>
<p>Buckle up, friends.<br>I hope we Texans are in for a long and fun ride of trash talk and amazing Fall baseball games.</p>
<p>At long last, we all deserve this.</p>
<p>(BTW: I wrote 95% of this <em>before</em> yesterday’s game…all but the parts that indicate that the Ranger won. This was going to be my post today, win or lose….EF)</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7295107
2023-10-22T08:37:00-05:00
2023-10-28T14:00:02-05:00
Baseball Remembers The Cheaters
<p>When I was a kid, my grandfather Mays gave me his copy of the “Encyclopedia of Baseball.” At the time, it was a one volume set that kept all the records of every team, every player, from the very beginning of the sport.</p>
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<figure class="alignleft size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/img_3403.jpeg?w=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" /></figure>
</div>
<p>More than perhaps any other sport, baseball is obsessed with its past, with its stats, and with its history. I used to love to scan through this volume to look up the stats on players of old, and compare them to players of the 1970s. (The height of my childhood baseball fandom…)</p>
<p>Much later, when I read WP Kinsella’s “Field of Dreams” novel, I was intrigued by the character of “Doc Graham” (Played in the movie by Burt Lancaster…). Something made me “look him up.” And, sure enough, there was “Archibald Graham” in the official stats of the Baseball Encyclopedia…an actual guy named …mythologized by Kinsella, but an actual player whose stats were preserved in amber for all to see.</p>
<p>It gave me chills, and still does.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/img_3405.jpeg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="339" style="width:1170px;height:auto" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>Baseball is a game governed by its rules, and baseball is a game that does not abide cheating. I learned this very hard lesson as a child, because of the behavior of my all-time favorite player, Pete Rose.</p>
<p>Pete Rose was, and is, a cheater, a liar, a thief.</p>
<p>He was also, next to Ty Cobb, the greatest player who ever played; and you could make an argument that his entire life was somehow channeling that Cobb legacy. But he was rightly banished from baseball for breaking the rules. Because of my own sense of forgiveness and compassion, I personally believe it’s past time to forgive him, and restore him to his rightful place in the baseball universe. But, he’s still unrepentant and still doing and saying outrageous things today.</p>
<p>Pete Rose will someday be in heaven, but I fairly well doubt he’ll ever in the HOF in his, or my, lifetime. This is the way it is…because of the respect for the rules of the game.</p>
<p>Which gets me to the Houston Astros.</p>
<p>They will, forever, be adjudicated cheaters whose cinderella World Series story a few years back was actually a lie. Perhaps even a demonstrably MORE egregious lie than Rose’s in that the cheating clearly benefited the actual team that year, and clearly harmed their rivals that year in game after game.</p>
<p>Their adjudicated cheating spanned two seasons, and an actual World Series, that they did not win fairly. It was not a century ago. It was SIX YEARS ago…a blink in baseball.</p>
<p>(Further footnote: the WSJ and other repudable sources have found credible evidence that their cheating spanned even MORE seasons than was officially adjudicated…)</p>
<p>God knows what moves *other* teams made, in terms of their personelle and future history, because they believed they lost to these cheating Astros. Meaning: It’s a scandal that didn’t just benefit *them,* it harmed every other team they played, and the choices those teams made.</p>
<p>Facts: <strong>Virtually every starter</strong> on their 2017 World Series team was cheating.<br>Facts: 7<strong>5% of that cheating infield was still on the team in 2022</strong> when Houston fans falsely believe their previous cheating was redeemed.<br><br><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/the-astros-edge/">Watch the documentary from FrontLine</a>, and understand…in an earlier era, *many* of these players would have been out of the game.<br><a href="https://signstealingscandal.com/">Check out the clear evidence</a> from an actual Astros fan, who proved the vast scale of this scandal. Yes, every player on their squad is talented. Yes, even without the cheating, they’d have been an amazing team these past seven years. But that stain in on them, even now, not matter what my Houston friends tell me.</p>
<p>Their fans, like too many Pete Rose fans, want you to forget that, and move on.</p>
<p>They’re not cheaters any more.<br>They play by the rules, so they tell us.</p>
<p><em>“Just look at Altuve’s sweet smile…”</em></p>
<p>During the last Astros/Rangers game, Bryan Abreu intentionally hit Adolis Garcia. Whatever you think of that last sentence, whatever “opinion” you have about it, here is the factual truth:</p>
<p><strong>This sentence —this assertion that Abreu intentionally hit him— has now been adjudicated by six major league umpires and a review of the MLB.</strong></p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/screenshot-2023-10-28-at-9.36.45e280afam.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="513" width="1024" /></figure>
<p>This is their ruling. In the world of baseball, this is the record that gets preserved.<br>Period.<br>Full stop.</p>
<p>Astros’ fans total unwillingness to cut ties with their cheaters is maddening. I mean, my Texas Rangers were deeply involved in the steriods scandals, and Rafael Palmeiro is still dead to me. Same with Caseco. And A-Rod? Just another of the many reasons we have to hate that guy. By the time we made our World Series’ runs, only two accused players remained, neither of whom was implicated as guilty by the official Mitchell Report, and both of whom have credible stories refuting any lingering allegations against them.<br><br>Altuve? He cheated. There is no question he did, and no sweet smile can hide it. <br>Abreu? He cheated too…and baseball officially says so.<br>Even Dusty Baker –sitting in that dug out– well after he’s been thrown out of the game…he iced our pitcher. He unlawfully delayed the game.</p>
<p>And today, Astros fans have the GALL to criticize Adolis Garcia’s brash play, suggesting Altuve (the cheater) is the better role model? These teams have bad blood that goes back to midseason. Everybody knows this. Garcia was RIGHT to be angry. Rangers fans are RIGHT to call Houston cheaters, even now.</p>
<p>Do you <em>want</em> to believe that the “Chicago Black Sox” were robbed?<br>Doesn’t matter what you think, the adjudication is that they were cheaters.</p>
<p>Do you <em>want</em> to believe that Pete Rose is a good guy who should be in the Hall?<br>Doesn’t matter what you think, the adjudication is that he was a cheater.</p>
<p>Do you <em>want</em> to say that the Houston Astros should be forgiven for their own past cheating?<br>Doesn’t matter what you think, like the Black Sox, <strong>that team will always and forever be…adjudicated as “cheaters” and anyone who factually reminds you of this history is absolutely within their rights to do so</strong>.</p>
<p>Whatever your opinion of what happened the other night —whatever Dusty Baker’s opinion or any other pundits opinion— the official record, to be preserved forever by MLB— is that Bryan Abreu intentionally hit Adolis Garcia.</p>
<p>Period.<br>Full stop.</p>
<p>It’s a painful thing when our heroes are adjudicated as cheats or rule breakers.</p>
<p>But “that’s the way baseball go.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7252598
2023-08-05T17:53:22-05:00
2023-10-16T09:49:23-05:00
Summer
<p>Thank you for gently tolerating my love of summer this year.</p>
<p>I hope you can recognize that I am generally reciprocating by not bloviating about how great it is every day. (Yes. This post is an exception)</p>
<p>I am incredibly aware that this is the kind of summer that tests the resolve of even the most faithful summer lover.<br>I am aware that it is truly miserable for many.</p>
<p>When I am in public, I absolutely nod and agree with anyone who tells me <em>“it’s just too hot out there…”</em><br><em>“Man, it sure is,”</em> I reply. Because if it’s midday, they’re totally right.</p>
<p>That said, I can still sit here on these mornings, and imagine some sub-freezing night of early February —the most miserable, pointless, month of the year in my estimation— when I am shivering, when I’m in the grip of SAD, and yearning for just one shred of warmth that is not the product of a throat/lung-drying furnace.</p>
<p>In that brief imagining, a gratitude for <em>this</em> day and moment wells up.</p>
<p>Again, I know, your mileage may vary.<br>Again, your mileage probably <em>will</em> vary…</p>
<p>And while my finger cut has slowed me down here for a bit more than a week, I look forward to getting back to my hot summer night walks. As I have said many times, <strong>there is such joy walking through the dark of a summer night</strong>. The air, the ground, and every living and non-living thing, is a part of some unified beating heart… It feels like everything is alive and moving together….<br>It is one of the things that makes summer most enjoyable.<br>(I get that you have to both love night <em>and</em> summer to experience this phenomenon, and therefore I get the heavy lift this would be for many…)</p>
<p><strong>I love the way the heat breaks right around sunset too.</strong> And how if I’m on my bike, my own sweat and the speed of my bike are like the evaporative coolers of my Preston Hollow youth. Which wells up a memory of childhood summers too.</p>
<p>It is good to sweat, friends. It’s good to feel your salt and sweat. Your body is meant to do this regularly. (Safely, of course…) We used to play outside for hours, and sweat our asses off. And those are some the sweetest memories of all. Anybody who loved their Texas kid-summers surely has some latent memory of this, before we all became adults and fled into air conditioning, hiding from the very things that used to bring us joy, for fear of our own sweat.</p>
<p>When I’m on the bike, sweating around the lake and yet also being evaporatively cooled, I can remember all those summers where the ground of Preston Hollow Park was cracked four inches wide, and when Kevin, John and I played fungo until the Sun’s light was completely gone.</p>
<p>Playing outside until 9 pm on a summer night?<br>Heaven… (Throw up a prayer for John, whose Father just died this week…)</p>
<p>I think of all those summers, and how great it was to be a kid, and the memory of summer play-sweat makes me smile.<br>It does make me wonder: Do we who grew up here really hate summer, or have we all just forgotten the joy of summer play sweat?</p>
<p>Also…<strong>I love the relief that comes when the direct rays of the Sun are very low in the sky during the golden hour, or when they have first </strong>disappeared during the blue hour. There is a transformation of the world that comes about in that moment that is unlike any other.</p>
<p>We Texans seem to like these evening hours too. For example, we called a meeting for some neighbors the other night (block captains), and scheduled it for 7:30 pm. Thirty-plus people, almost everyone invited, came and stood out on the Garden Cafe patio, drinking wine and having conversation for several hours as the blue hour faded.</p>
<p>The starting-time temp was 104°.</p>
<p>This is what we do here.<br>That’s how we cope.</p>
<p>And there’s a joy in seeing neighbors at the end of a hot day.</p>
<p>Midday?</p>
<p>Oh yeah, midday I am hiding from the rays of the Sun, just like everyone should. <em>Nobody</em> should be out then. It’s truly horrible and for those who have to work in the direct Sun, I truly worry about their safety. (Why in God’s name did Texas take away water breaks this year?!!!)</p>
<p>As my Father used to say <em>“stand in the shade, every chance you get</em>.”</p>
<p>I used to groan every time he said this, and he said it a lot. He would end conversations with it, like he was saying “See you later…”</p>
<p>Now, instead of groaning, as I did when a young man, I do it every single day as faithfully as I can —darting from sliver of shade to sliver of shade in zigzag patterns, like some Texas vampire. (In fact, I have a theory that the heat of summer might well have led to the creation of the vampire myth in the first place…)<br><br>And so every time I do this, almost every day of every summer then, I think about my Father. (Maybe this is another reason I love summer?)</p>
<p>So, thank you for not responding to this post by telling me how I am crazy, insane, or anything else.<br>You don’t have to tell me you like Winter or Fall or Spring. Trust me, I understand all of this.<br>(Translation: please do not say these things… Really, I know where you stand…)</p>
<p>Just as I will tolerate February, I hope that you will continue to tolerate crazy folks love the heat of summer and who miss it when it goes.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7252599
2023-07-26T18:03:00-05:00
2023-08-05T18:45:08-05:00
Jason Aldean’s Song
<p>With some trepidation, I’ll share a few thoughts on the Jason Aldean song controversy. I’d like to speak to what I’m hearing from all sides of this debate…commenting a bit as both preacher and songwriter. In this critique, I will only analyze the song itself…</p>
<p><strong>1: The song *might* be about lynching.</strong><br>It never mentions lynching, this is true. But, lest anyone thinks I am defending the song, quickly see the next two points…</p>
<p><strong>2: The song is DEFINITELY about vigilantism.</strong><br>This cannot credibly be denied by anyone on any side of this conversation. This song CELEBRATES and ENCOURAGES small town vigilantism…small town folks taking the law into their own hands.</p>
<p>I trust that even Aldean’s most vigorous defenders will admit that this is a song about vigilante justice. It speaks of a world where small town folks have the right to vigilante justice, and it names various crimes that, are allegedly so self obvious that the constitutional standard of “innocent until proven guilty” do not apply.<br>Small town folks, the song celebrates, have some innate ability to be cop, prosecutor, and judge…and that is the very definition of vigilantism.</p>
<p><strong>3: Vigilantism is directly tied to lynching.</strong><br>These last two points taken together are the transitive property and logical steps that, it seems to me, are getting muddied, not being separated enough, in order to analyze them.</p>
<p>The song <em>might</em> be about lynching…but the song is <em>definitely</em> about vigilantism, and vigilantism is <em>definitely</em> connected to lynching.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know how anyone can deny that vigilantism is connected to lynching: unless a. they are attempting to be intentionally naive, b. ignorant of actual history, or c. Are simply White Supremacists. (Those are the only three reasons I can see to fail to connect “vigilantism” with “lynching.”)</p>
<p>American history is rife with Southern Whites taking the law into their own hands and lynching People of Color. Whites have done this in one-off moments (Allen Brooks 100 years ago in downtown Dallas…we will remember him with a marker dedication tomorrow…) Whites have done this en mass in places like Greenwood/Tulsa.</p>
<p>But friends, we don’t have to go that far back. You can remind yourself of James Byrd, Trevon Martin, Ahmaud Arbury, and countless others. People of Color were/are indeed lynched in modern-day American. Byrd, Martin, Arbury didn’t “make it down the road,” because of the vigilantism of others who decided they were guilty of crimes they in no way attempted. Their vigilante/lynchers were absolutely convinced they were “raised up right.” They believed they were “taking care of their own.”</p>
<p><strong>4: I have sympathy for the need for small town self defense.</strong></p>
<p>I won’t name the place or store owner, but I frequent a family run store in rural Texas…several times a month. The owner there carries a gun for self defense. I completely understand why. His store is 30 minutes away from any town of size. He’s been robbed at gun point before. I totally understand his need for small town “self defense.”</p>
<p><strong>5: This song INTENTIONALLY confuses “self-defense” with “vigilantism.”</strong></p>
<p>This is, imho, an intentional artistic choice by the songwriters, in order to ding the lymbic systems of small town Americans.</p>
<p>Are people “burning the flag” in large numbers today?<br>No.</p>
<p>But they are “taking a knee.” And burning and taking a knee are not the same thing. The song intends to subtly remind folks of the “take a knee” movement, while making the “crime” seem worse. (Except it wasn’t that subtle, was it?)</p>
<p>Yes, now and then, folks spit in the face of police. And, guess what? Sometimes in the police themselves will admit they deserve the anger of the community.</p>
<p>We have just this week reminded ourselves of one such moment in Dallas…the murder of Santos Rodriguez….and this week I have heard multiple Dallas cops admit that they understood the community’s anger at such a moment. But, by framing the issues in one of the worst ways possible (spitting at a cop), the song completely dismisses the greater truth that anger at police has often been quite justified.</p>
<p>This is both the genius and sinister nature of this songwriting here…simultaneously diminishing two modern social movements (“Taking a Knee” and “Police Reform”) while also triggering the lymbic anger and tribalism of small town folks…and finally while still being able to claim “Oh…we didn’t mean THAT…”</p>
<p>You know what we call that, right?<br>“Gaslighting.”</p>
<p><strong>6: This song was a team effort. (kudos to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/amyspeacewood?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUYKOW2f6IoIFjWT6Mwkv6LmopxMF479IiV1sPrupaJjCvG2ksYQ9wS8vK3WTo5LJVywen_OmsUeAO99foxefzI7MaiB-OEOpKtNY-7W-sjy03KNhbUWuVRWrOjQv6-k90&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Amy Speace</a> for the first post I saw that noted this…)</strong></p>
<p>Aldean’s defenders defensively shriek that he didn’t even write the song.</p>
<p>But…how does that make this better?<br>Doesn’t it actually make it worse?</p>
<p>I mean destroying Aldean personally, making him into a martyr here, won’t solve a thing, and might even help his streams.</p>
<p>But this song was written by four writers, promoted by dozens of AR folks and record label types. A large team created this, just like a large team created the January 6th insurrection. I mention that here because it’s the last known major insurrectionist/vigilante moment in our history.</p>
<p>It’s easy to blame Aldean for the song, and Trump for January 6th. But the roots of both are far deeper than one human.</p>
<p><strong>7: The final and lasting harm of this song is the reinforcing of our Urban/Rural Tribalism.</strong></p>
<p>I believe Rural/Urban tribalism is at the root of many social ills today, and I believe it’s mostly a construct of politicians who benefit from its creation and dissemination.</p>
<p>Therefore, let me end, with some positive comments about all Americans.</p>
<p><em>Small town Americans are justifiably proud to be small towns Americans</em>. Most of them are hard working, law abiding, decent human beings. But they feel forgotten by our culture, and in many ways they are right. Their culture has been decimated by decades of brain drain, and horrors such as the opioid crisis. The opioid crisis helps us understand their distrust of politicians and the medical establishment…and why they distrusted best practice during COVID.</p>
<p>As with my friend the store owner, they work hard for every dollar, and they find themselves in need to self-defense because of the sheer distances between where they live/work and nearby law enforcement. They feel alone and abandoned in many ways.</p>
<p>But this song doesn’t help them, really.<br>This song, as I’ve said several times, presses on their lymbic fear and anger…things they see on their televisions far away. Our social media and TV culture makes Urban life seem like a constant war zone. It’s not, but that’s definitely the fear. I wouldn’t want the Urban world I see on TV either, But, that’s not the world I live in here in my big city. That created-narrative of constant violence and lawlessness simply does not exist. Most Urban folks have moments of peace and tranquility, just like small town folks do.</p>
<p>So, dear small town America: don’t worry, Urban folks are not zombies, headed toward you, bent on ruining your world. And, yes, I understand the need to feel pride in your world.</p>
<p>But, this song tells small town Americans that they are “good” not just for being hard working and seeking their own self defense, but that they are also good when they commit vigilantism. This is the heart of what is harmful about this song.</p>
<p>Urban folks hear this song, and falsely assume everyone in small towns will like it, or agree with the vigilantism.</p>
<p><em>And, therefore, this song unhelpfully reinforces stereotypes…social media and other narratives….about small towns in the minds of Urban Americans too. In that sense, it is harmful to the way Urban Americans see Small Town Americans too.</em></p>
<p>I totally understand the immediate leap to a fear that this song “is about lynching.” I can’t get inside the heads of the songwriters. So, I can’t with good conscience immediately jump to lynching.</p>
<p>But there are logical steps that cannot be denied:<br>— the song is about vigilantism.<br>— vigilantism is connected to lynching.<br>— lynching lives on in modern America.</p>
<p>Instead of drawing Americans together, this song has contributed to our continuing balkanization and division. It’s triggered the lymbic systems of <em>everyone</em> who hears based on their own urban or rural tribal groups.</p>
<p>Good art is simply enjoyed for its own sake, and doesn’t need to be analyzed over and over.<br>This song as been analyzed over and over.</p>
<p>Draw your own conclusions.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7227809
2023-06-16T12:33:13-05:00
2023-06-16T16:00:09-05:00
The 2023 NT Conference: “A New Day”
<p>Dear <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZX7NpKXRhSDSN5RtN66mfqRR5327vyorDRbVk7Qr1XcJkstqSUc0TpXoTtVweCPLHbFVnIPF042ZItJK1nzKKuNCl6h3_RKAhgPUmSanhogvsSbnr3r2rznbjF8gn-GRfr1KDk-0myYE6JWI9oiuSSq8HdCPk92lCj4MZFVHFP9Bg&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Kessler Park</a> Members and Friends:</p>
<p>What follow is a longish summary of what has just taken place this week as the North Texas Conference met in Plano, Texas. I can’t apologize for the length. Because, honestly, a LOT happened, and you need to know about it.</p>
<p>Let me start at the very end, because it illustrates the overall point, and my feelings about the whole thing.</p>
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<figure class="alignleft size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/img_5113.jpg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
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<p>Near the end, as we transitioned to the closing worship service, Bishop Saenz made made a seemingly off-the-cuff remark. He quipped about how a friend once shared with him that at annual conference it feels like we “leave a little piece of our soul in the room.”</p>
<p>When he said this, I must confess to you, I laughed out loud and slapped my hands on the pew in front me.</p>
<p>(so loudly, it startled my nearby colleague Rev. Mary Beth Hardesty Crouch…)</p>
<p>I laughed, I had this reaction, because this IS ABSOLUTELY how annual conference has often felt.</p>
<p>For thirty-plus years, I have attended annual conferences, and often have left feeling like I needed to take shower, because of the raw and ugly politics, or that I needed to spiritual bandages for my wounded soul.</p>
<p>The Bishop sincerely spoke a truth that was perhaps bigger than he even meant: It *does* often feel like we leave a little piece of our soul at Annual Conference.</p>
<p>But…NOT THIS YEAR.<br>Not this year.</p>
<p>And in that moment, I sincerely wept a few tears of joy and memory.</p>
<p>This year felt fundamentally different, in incredibly hopeful ways. In part because of the non-anxious leadership of our new Bishop, Ruben Saenz. Bishop Saenz masterfully led a thousand delegates through hours of complicated and potentially thorny conversations. And he did so with patience, humor, and without one visible shred of personal fear.</p>
<p>Beyond this, among our delegates, there was also a remarkable camaraderie among lay and clergy…rural and urban….liberal, conservative, and moderate.</p>
<p>There appears to be great joy that we are moving past a painful few years of disaffiliations, where church members were sometimes pitted against one another…and where baldfaced lies were told about the future of the United Methodist Church (and even about some of us personally!).</p>
<p>This week, it appears to me those who remain United Methodist in North Texas are ready to boldly move forward under the aspiration to be a “One Church” denomination.</p>
<p>Some years back, a small group of us led an effort to encourage the North Texas Conference to aspirationally live as a “One Church” Conference. This meant, we would be a denomination that made space, true space, for everyone…that became a “big tent” and respected theological, cultural, and contextual differences.</p>
<p>Despite fierce pre-opposition at the time (even from friends) that “One Church resolution” overwhelmingly passed at that previous annual conference.</p>
<p>I bring this up now, because I was deeply moved by the number of times it was referenced in THIS annual conference.</p>
<p>Regarding “Resolutions”…..some folks don’t like them. But, I have always said, “Annual Conference resolutions are like weather balloons.”<br>(Or, they can be…)</p>
<p>If the process is managed well, resolutions allow an Annual Conference to “check the weather” among the delegates…to understand where their neighbors in other churches land on important issues of the day. They are “aspirations” about how we intend to behave toward each other, and in our mutual ministries, in our various settings. It doesn’t mean everyone agrees on everything. It doesn’t mean that the margins of the votes at the Annual Conference would mirror the votes in the pews.</p>
<p>But as we can see from that “One Church” resolution process, a good one can reverberate down through the years, and become embedded into our spiritual DNA, and our personal behavior, in terms of the language we use to speak to one another, and also the way we TREAT each other.</p>
<p>And as pertains to that “One Church” resolution, I could not be more proud of this.</p>
<p>At the 2023 Annual Conference, we heard exciting reports about new United Methodist Churches that are being founded in towns where the old churches have left for the GMC.</p>
<p>We celebrated the ordination of KPUMC’s own Kurt Maerschel.<br>We talked about powerful ministries led by women and ethnic minorities. We talked about amazing ministries in our small towns and cities.<br>We talked about disaster relief, through UMCOR and our local efforts.</p>
<p>The BISHOP…yes, the Bishop in his address…noted the ministry of our churches who marched in the Pride Parade.</p>
<p><em>Said another way: we moved into a celebration of the true “One Church.”</em></p>
<p>But, what impressed me the most is how our delegates moved through THIRTEEN resolutions —some of which have to do with incredibly fraught social and cultural issues— and we did this with respect and without rancor.</p>
<p>My feeling of many years is even more strong now: Many lay persons feel disempowered and helpless in the face of large, cultural issues. They feel like their churches don’t speak out enough on important issues of the day. I understand *why* churches do not speak out…because there is often pushback and a cost.</p>
<p>So, this week, the North Texas Conference considered “weather balloon resolutions” on potentially conflictual issues such as LGBTQ rights, Trans families, Gun Control, and Abortion.</p>
<p>In almost any other year, any ONE of those could occupy hours of time and discussion…perhaps days. The North Texas Conference considered all these resolutions, and patiently moved through all of them in a matter of a few hours.</p>
<p>I did not sense frustration in the room over this, or a “Let’s just move on…” moment.</p>
<p>Quite the opposite, both in committees and on the floor, our delegates took this work seriously.</p>
<p>Again, these resolutions do not officially change United Methodist Church law. But…they DO help us self-understand who WE are as an annual conference, and they send important messages to all of our greater North Texas neighbors that United Methodists passionately urge all Christians to take the issues of the day seriously, and through the lens of our faith.</p>
<p><em>OK…so what did we approve?</em></p>
<p>What follows is a discussion of various issues. I’ve put the titles in boldface/double asterisk, in case you want to those that interest you most.</p>
<p>And, I should note: ALL OF THESE passed with either unanimous or 99% vote of the body. (That is not a typo…)</p>
<p><strong>** RESOLUTION ON FURTHERING THE CONNECTION</strong><br>First, my clergy brother, Rev. Edgar Bazan, and our conference lay leader, Kim Brannon, offered a resolution that summarizes the “One Church” attitude I have just described here:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“The United Methodist Church will continue to engage in respectful dialogue to understand differing perspectives of ministry in an effort to maintain unity and work towards resolving differences in a manner that is consistent with its mission and core values while upholding its orthodox doctrine and practices…that this body affirms the commitment of The United Methodist Church to remain diverse and contextual across the globe, embracing all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or any other form of differentiation, as full and equal participants in the life and work of the Church.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(I believe this resolution passed unanimously…)</p>
<p><strong>** RESOLUTION SUPPORTING MEMBERS OF THE NORTH TEXAS CONFERENCE EXPERIENCING DISAFFILIATION</strong></p>
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<p>“…we, the North Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, pledge to foster an inclusive environment that welcomes diverse perspectives and promotes dialogue and action to support The United Methodist Church as a big tent denomination in all our efforts moving forward.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This resolution named just how hard the past two years have been in many local congregations.</p>
<p>Again, note the clear reference to a “One Church” vision, where all who can walk “hand in hand” with others, are welcomed.</p>
<p><strong>** RESOLUTION SUPPORTING THE REMOVAL OF DISCRIMINATORY POLICIES</strong></p>
<p>My friends, I will now spend some significant time discussing this specific resolution. If this doesn’t interest you, skip ahead. But I know that it DOES interest many of you….and it deeply matters to me personally.</p>
<p>This resolution, which was supported by our General and Jurisdictional delegates, FLEW THROUGH….with absolutely NO negative or halting discussion. It was approved by 99% of the delegates.</p>
<p>The North Texas Conference overwhelmingly said that we aspire to:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“…a more diverse and fully welcoming UMC is a testament to a more complete image of God, which includes persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities; and a more diverse and fully welcoming UMC allows all United Methodists to offer their prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness, as followers of Jesus, to further Christ’s mission; and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God calls and includes all persons into the life and leadership of the Church, transcending the limitations of human categorization; and the current language in the Book of Discipline places limits on Christ’s teaching and example of God’s universal love; and the current language in the Book of Discipline falls short of embodying the spirit of John Wesley’s simple rules to do no harm, do all the good we can, and love God; and legislative changes to the Book of Discipline would reduce barriers and allow movement toward wider diversity and inclusion in our United Methodist Church</p>
<p>“BE IT RESOLVED that the North Texas Annual Conference supports the removal of all discriminatory policies and harmful language related to sexual orientation…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The resolution then cites the disciplinary lines where the language ought to be changed.</p>
<p>So, let me pause here. Because this very resolution has been part of the thirty year struggle of my ministerial career.</p>
<p>Sit back, and let me tell you what what I felt as this resolution passed…</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about Gene Leggett, Ed Upton</em>, and several other still unnamed Methodist clergy who lived in fear for decades, for their careers and ministries.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought of John Thornburg</em> (I will be calling him this afternoon…).</p>
<p>— <em>I thought of Nancy Kruh</em>, who in the late 1990s help Northaven UMC publish a book with the obviously “too soon” title of “Finishing the Journey.”<br>That book was sent to every General Conference delegate one year.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about those early years at Annual Conference</em> when we wore reconciling stoles, and were angrily told “you are being divisive.<br>(Btw: this was sometimes said by folks I saw proudly wearing an RMN stoles this week!).</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about DOZENS of lay persons</em> —many of them with deeply painful personal stories of rejection by their churches and families— who over a period of two decades volunteered themselves to meet with our North Texas Conference delegates. Not once, but after/before every General Conference for 20 years (To their credit, the delegates often made time with/for them over lunch or in their offices…)</p>
<p>This was a powerful movement of personal Christian lay witness —sometimes risky, and always vulnerable— to personalize the sharing the story of God’s working in their lives; only to have General Conference often kick them in the gut once again year after year.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about good and faithful people I have known who have left the United Methodist Church</em> over the years —thousands of them— because of this Disciplinary language.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about those who have passed on from this life</em> without seeing this change…Jack, Cody, Ed…dozens more I know personally…</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about my friend and mentor, Rev. Bill McElvaney</em>, whose last great act, just before his death, was to preside over a marriage of two gay rights icons and friends. I thought about times he privately shared with me his own struggles to even stay as a retired UMC clergy, given the harm our denomination was causing.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about some very lonely years, when there were only two RMN churches in North Texas</em>, and how we all walked around feeling like there was a target on our back.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about Sid Hall </em>and all the long conversations we used to have —he in Austin, I in Dallas— to bridge the miles and often keep each other from despair.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about the *many* clergy over the years</em>, who at many Annual Conferences, would sidle up to me privately (like they were sneaking into a liquor store…) and tell me, “My heart is with you, but I cannot speak out where I am…”</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about an awkward exchange between myself and a colleague on the floor of a District Conference</em>, over the right for LGBTQ persons to be fully welcomed as members, no matter the view of the pastor. (That pastoral brother has now come a looong way, in fairness to him…)</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about the sometimes politically and theological conservative people who would come to confidentially come to my office</em> to ask how they could support their gay or lesbian children; and how they were ultimately helped by RMN churches, PFLAG, other groups, many pastors… and how THEY often became powerful Christian witnesses to the power of true Christian repentance.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about the many churches who have now formally joined the Reconciling Movement</em>, and the dozens more who never will but are deeply supportive.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about all those clergy colleagues who in the past decade have now performed Same Sex weddings</em>…some of whom would be considered theologically moderate-to-conservative.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about the years when those of us who performed Same Sex weddings did so under the actual threat of being defrocked</em> and losing our ministries and callings…how we discussed this threats with our spouses and children, preparing *them* for the possibility that we could literally lose our jobs.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought about the good folks of Kessler Park, and how they have patiently held their breath for so many years</em>; hoping and trusting that pastors like David Carr, Tim McLemore, Wes Marguder, Kay Ash, and myself were not lying to them when we promised them “things really will change…”</p>
<p>— I<em> thought about the times an unnamed Bishops *yelled* at me</em>; that I being “divisive,” and accused me of trying to destroy the UMC.</p>
<p>— <em>I thought of older White men who in the 1990s told me “I will never support changing the Discipline,</em>” only to themselves later sit in General Conference committees trying *desperately* to do just that.</p>
<p><em>Finally, one more very old memory flashed back to me…. a time way back in 1994…</em>when I was a pastor just two years out from being ordained an Elder…and we held a clergy meeting to talk about gay people.</p>
<p>A very young-me, for some reason, felt called to speak out at an annual conference clergy meeting where were discussing queer people (outside of their presence, of course) and how the North Texas Conference would choose “define them.”</p>
<p>(Yes. Define them. Yes, without their comment or input…)</p>
<p>I later journaled about that moment….which helps me today recall<br>a) that it really happened and<br>b) what was said, and by whom…</p>
<p>According to my journal, at that meeting held at FUMC Denton, Revs. John Thornburg, Jack Soper, Lee Carey, De Wiksten, Mark Thurman, and Janice Virtue all spoke against the resolution on the floor.<br>(I hope you will note: This is such a small a cadre of voices —so few the number of churches that they represent— that you can trace more than half of these through a single progressive church at one point or another of their careers…)</p>
<p>I got up to speak, and talked about the hypocrisy of singling out gay and lesbian people; about the sheer ugliness of “defining” them solely based on their sex acts. (That’s what the proposal that day was…)</p>
<p>When I sat down, I noticed that the people on either side of me had quickly moved away…I now had a pew space ten feet wide on either side of my seat.</p>
<p>Weeks later, in May of 1994, my District Superintendent took me aside after a district meeting and said the following to me, pretty much verbatim:</p>
<p>“<em>Well Eric after we were done, I went over to the Bishop and said ‘I didn’t like the tenor of his comments”…To which the Bishop replied ‘I didn’t either.’”</em></p>
<p>I left that 1994 meeting with my DS, thinking seriously that I might have just ended my career. I can still recall the fear that coursed through my veins, the shame of being reprimanded by my superiors…but also the resolve that God calls us to speak out prophetically, even if it’s costly.<br>Of course, as we now know, this fear would turn out to be overblown.</p>
<p><em>And so…. on Tuesday afternoon, June 13, 2023 —as the North Texas Conference approved removing the harmful language in the Discipline by a margin of 99%— my mind raced quickly through all these memories.</em></p>
<p>Especially that prior vote in 1994….of how overwhelmingly the clergy of 1994 had *voted in* language harmful to LGBTQ people.</p>
<p>And as all these thoughts raced through my brain, I thought…</p>
<p><em>“How far we have come.”</em></p>
<p>And how many unacknowledged tears, how much pain, how much deeply hard work, led to this moment?<br>They cannot all be named. But they live in the heart of God.</p>
<p>This resolution is aspirational, of course. The General Conference still would need to act to remove this language<br><br>But based on the experience of the young-me in 1994…did I ever imagine 99% of delegates would vote to remove that language?<br>No…I could have never imagined what happened in Tuesday, on the floor of the North Texas Conference.</p>
<p>———————</p>
<p>We have come so far that not only did we pass THIS resolution, we also passed two additional ones in the same area of social justice for the LGBTQ community….so lets move on now.</p>
<p>(and thank you for tolerating this long recitation of my memories…)</p>
<p><strong>**A CALL FOR JUSTICE AND EMPOWERMENT.</strong></p>
<p>Our self-defined Queer delegates put forward a powerful resolution, which was supported by our General and Jurisdictional delegates, which said the following:</p>
<p>The NTCUMC:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Supports and amplifies the queer delegates’ call to justice and empowerment for the LGBTQIA+ community throughout the North Texas Annual Conference, within and beyond our local churches, districts, departments, centers, and committees. Implores our Bishop to resolve in a timely fashion through a the disciplinary process of just resolution any complaints against clergy regarding their sexual orientation or the officiating of weddings of LGBTQIA+ persons; Aspires to become a United Methodist Church in which LGBTQIA+ people will be protected, affirmed, and empowered throughout our life, mission, and ministry together.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How far we have come from 1994, when a group of mostly CIS gendered, White male clergy talked ABOUT LGBTQ/Queer people *outside* their presence or input…to this time when this resolution, submitted by them, passed with roughly 99% support!!!</p>
<p><strong>**RESOLUTION ON TRANS YOUTH AND FAMILIES</strong></p>
<p>My dear friend and clergy brother, Rev. Geoffrey Moore, submitted a resolution on trans youth and families. It got respectful debate, even from folks who are perhaps wary or not-fully understanding of Trans persons and their cultural situation.</p>
<p>It reads in part:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The NTCUMC: “oppose the criminalization of individualized best-practice, evidence-based, life-giving care for trans youth; and… our will be safe places for trans children, youth, and their families where they may find physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety and support; know respect, affirmation and dignity; and experience the abiding love of God; and while we acknowledge the obligation our clergy have as mandatory reporters (¶341.5), we do not, because of our convictions…consider gender-affirming care child abuse and will not report it as such.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, this passed with 99% or greater support.</p>
<p>(82 delegates signed on ahead of time as cosponsors of this resolution, including KPUMC’s Pastor Kay and myself….)</p>
<p><strong>**ABORTION</strong></p>
<p>The day after annual conference I read news that the Southern Baptists are *again* banning women clergy.</p>
<p>In OUR setting, three of our remarkable clergy women — Revs. Becky David-Hensley, Jessica Wright, and Katie Newsome— put forward a resolution in response to recent laws passed by the State of Texas.</p>
<p>Among other things, it said this:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Be it further resolved that we call upon the elected leaders who represent us to oppose the universal ban on abortion in the state of Texas and to strike down laws currently in place that restrict our observance of the United Methodist Social Principle ¶161.K.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Note: ¶161.K reads: “We recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures by certified medical providers…”)”</p>
<p>This resolution, again, passed with more than 99% of the delegates. 127 delegates —including KPUMC’s Pastor Kay and myself— signed on as initial cosponsors.</p>
<p><strong>** GUN VIOLENCE</strong></p>
<p>In response to the many mass shootings of the past year —but especially the shooting in Allen— seven pastors of United Methodist churches in and around the Allen area cosponsored a resolution on gun violence, and issued a call for ACTION.</p>
<p>I will say that I was especially moved by the witness of our clergy brother, Rev. David Lessner, an Allen native, who spoke passionately about his personal connections to that shooting…and also confessed his previous hesitancy to speak out on social issues.</p>
<p>It was a powerful model/example for clergy everywhere to remember that our people want/need us to show moral courage in the face of important issues of the day. And, I will note: it is an incredibly hard and courageous thing to do in a cultural context like Allen.</p>
<p>In the resolution, the North Texas Conference said:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“…we support elected leaders who are willing to represent us by taking action on gun violence by engaging in meaningful conversation and working across party affiliations regarding gun safety legislation toward a goal of reducing the gun violence Texans experience. Toward this end, we also support the advocacy work of Texas Impact; and</p>
<p>United Methodists in North Texas will choose one or more ways to “advocate at the local and national level for laws that prevent or reduce gun violence, including:</p>
<p>• Universal background checks on all gun purchases</p>
<p>• Ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty</p>
<p>• Ensuring all guns are sold through licensed gun retailers</p>
<p>• Prohibiting all individuals convicted of violent crimes from purchasing a gun for a fixed time</p>
<p>period</p>
<p>• Prohibiting all individuals under restraining order due to threat of violence from purchasing a gun</p>
<p>• Prohibiting persons with serious mental illness, who pose a danger to themselves and their</p>
<p>communities, from purchasing a gun</p>
<p>• Ensuring greater access to services for those suffering from mental illness</p>
<p>• Establishing a minimum age of 21 years for a gun purchase or possession</p>
<p>• Banning large-capacity ammunition magazines and weapons designed to fire multiple rounds</p>
<p>each time the trigger is pulled</p>
<p>• Promoting new technologies to aid law-enforcement agencies to trace crime guns and promote</p>
<p>public safety.””</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>**SUPPORT FOR THE CHRISTMAS COVENANT</strong></p>
<p>Finally, this resolution is “Inside Baseball” for Methodists, but arguably one of the most important steps still ahead of us.</p>
<p>As we’ve mentioned several times, all of these resolutions are “aspirational” in nature.</p>
<p>But this last one urges the General Conference to create a “regional” framework that would (among other things) allow US churches the same freedom on social issues that churches in other parts of the world now enjoy.</p>
<p>It will be an important step at the 2024 General Conference level. As with all the other resolutions, this one passed with almost unanimous support.</p>
<p>—————————————</p>
<p>Friends, thank you for reading whatever portion of this incredibly long summary that you did. Again, I can’t apologize for the length. Because I feel it’s important for you to be able to gather a sense of the gathering.</p>
<p>For these past several years, I have been telling all of us at Kessler Park my own sense of where the churches in the North Texas Conference were.<br>(Perhaps you recall us discussing this at a series of potlucks these past few years…)</p>
<p>It is gratifying to see that this “hunch” is so clearly being affirmed by the actual “weather balloon” votes of the Annual Conference.</p>
<p>We have more work to do, especially at the General Conference level.</p>
<p>But this week, more than one person said to me:</p>
<p><em>“Eric, it’s a new day in North Texas.”</em></p>
<p>And I will say with them: It most certainly is.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7203639
2023-05-05T12:01:20-05:00
2023-05-05T14:00:20-05:00
How Eric Ruined your Cinco de Mayo
<p>It’s Cinco de Mayo and so, like every stereotypical White person in America, I am thinking about Tex Mex.<br>Maybe I’ll go get some at one of my favorite places…</p>
<p>Maybe we’ll head over to “Acapulquena.”<br>Oh RIGHT…they CLOSED…</p>
<p>Well then, maybe we’ll walk over to “Matt’s Lakewood.”<br>Oh RIGHT…they CLOSED…</p>
<p>Well, then, maybe we’ll jump over to “Herrera’s West Dallas.”<br>Oh RIGHT…they CLOSED…</p>
<p>Well, then, maybe we’ll head up to “Blue Goose Greenville.”<br>Oh RIGHT…they CLOSED…</p>
<p>What follows is probably not the rant you wanted on this day. But I’ve been holding it in for weeks, and today feels like the day. I’ve been mulling on this, ever since the stunning and sudden demise of Matt’s. I was already reeling from the loss of these other three, since May 5th a year ago.</p>
<p>Look, I don’t care how old-manish, “get off my lawnish,” this will sound…I’M STILL PISSED.<br>Really pissed.</p>
<p>And beneath the anger is the sadness/loss of four places where I got “comfort food.” If I was making a list of “Best Tex Mex in Dallas, “ all four of these would have been (still are, and ever shall be) at the very top.</p>
<p>Unlike a lot of folks, who maybe only think about Mexican food on this May-day, we could reliably be counted on to frequent all these places quite regularly. We experienced so many important events in our lives over DECADES. (Even our wedding day!) Or, we just stopped by after a hard day. These were the places of great comfort. These were places we took dozens of friends to, especially out of town ones, to introduce them to the glory of the One True and Apostolic Tex Mex. Our daughter grew to love these places too.</p>
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<p>So, no, I don’t want some fusion food.<br>And, yes, I know there are other options.</p>
<p>Please don’t make a list.<br>Really, please don’t.<br>Don’t tell me “you need a new dog.”</p>
<p>Just make space here for this long held-in grief I am spewing today that has accumulated over this past year.</p>
<p>“Matt’s is gone.”<br>“Acapulquena is gone.”<br>“Herrera’s is gone.”<br>“Blue Goose is gone.”</p>
<p>Yes, I know that in some of these cases, they still have suburban locations that I suppose could drive an hour to visit.<br>Gee, thanks.</p>
<p>For me, I am sitting here, asking the question:</p>
<p>“<strong>What does it mean for the core of our city…East Dallas, West Dallas…that these four….which had been around for DECADES…over a hundred years of collective existence…are all suddenly GONE within one calendar year?”</strong></p>
<p>This does not give me hope for where our city is going, friends. It really does not.<br>It feels like a bad omen, as surely as all the ticky-tack apartments popping up everywhere.</p>
<p>So, other than saying “sorry for your loss,” please don’t tell me to “just get a new dog.”</p>
<p>And, dear God in heaven, whatever you do, if somebody jumps in here to defend “Mi Cocina,” swear I will defriend you.<br>Seriously, I’m *deadly serious* with this last part. Don’t try me.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how little regard I have for Mi Cocina. Any time some typically Park Cities/Preston Hollow White person defends Mi Cocina, my internal thought is: “I likely cannot trust this person’s judgment on a whole range of issues…”</p>
<p>Their chicken SUCKS….I mean really SUCKS….it’s cold, hard, soulless, tasteless cardboard. Which is exactly how I feel when I go there.<br>You can get a good Margarita anywhere.<br>And, oh yeah, you *do* know they’re owned by North Texas’ largest Trump mega donor, right?<br>(Pro tip for the quality of any Tex Mex restaurant: Not the chips, the margs, the salsa….it’s the CHICKEN. If they can’t do chicken, run —don’t walk— out the door…)</p>
<p>These four are gone, and Mi Cocina is still here?!</p>
<p>Mi Cocina is the new, ticky-tack apartment complex of Dallas’ Tex Mex universe.<br>Yes, I said that.</p>
<p>Sure, today is a festive day. And don’t get me wrong, all of this makes me even *more* grateful for good friends/folks like Jesus Carmona, Jimmy Contreras, Luis Olvera, the Urtecho Brothers…and, sure, dozens of others who are still offering amazing choices in our city.<br>(And perhaps this post helps explain for you my utter JOY at the opening of “La Comida”)</p>
<p>Just… hold space for the LOSS, friends.</p>
<p>Draw near.<br>Bow your head.<br>Sit for a minute with all of this.</p>
<p><em>Four in one year?!</em></p>
<p>What we are to do with such a loss?<br>You can’t just replace that kind of history over night. And it feels like a metaphor for a lot of other troubling cultural change.<br>I’m not just sorry for <em>my</em> loss…I’m sorry for <em>OUR</em> loss…our cultural loss here in the city core.</p>
<p>And I can’t see it anything but a very bad sign about where we are going.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7201778
2023-05-02T13:34:49-05:00
2023-05-02T17:00:15-05:00
Open Letter to Gov. Abbott (re: Cleveland shootings)
<p>Dear Gov Abbott, I am writing you as a Christian pastor, and calling out your inclusion of the phrase “illegal immigrant” in your tweet regarding the senseless murders of five innocent people in Cleveland, Texas.</p>
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<p>I would remind you how our common faith in Jesus Christ insists that “In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Slave or Free” (Galatians 3: 28); and that Hebrew Scripture repeatedly tell us that “there shall be one law for you and the immigrant.” (Duet. 28: 19).</p>
<p>God’s Biblical law does <em>not</em> draw distinctions between “citizens” and “non-citizens.” The witness of Jesus’ ministry shows how he cared for, and included, those from foreign lands in God’s Kingdom.</p>
<p>In short, God is very clear that anyone who claims Christian faith must treat citizens and immigrants alike —regardless of status— with Christian compassion.</p>
<p>Therefore, I ask…</p>
<p>Why in THIS CASE did you place the phrase “illegal immigrant” on the heads of these innocent victims?<br>Even small children?!<br>Why not a simply prayer for them, as human beings?<br>Why not a reminder to all Texans that their lives were of value?</p>
<p>Did you make reference to the legal status of anyone involved in the Uvalde shooting?<br>The shooting of a cheerleader at HEB?</p>
<p>Of course you did not.</p>
<p>But you and your administration continue to use otherize immigrants as pawns in your political games, resulting in their dehumanization in the eyes of their neighbors. We recall the callous and dehumanizing way you bused immigrants to freezing Washington streets, during the week of Christmas.</p>
<p>I can only assume your goal here is to turn attention away from the scourge of unregulated guns plaguing our state and instead stir up outrage against a marginalized group.</p>
<p>This is not leadership, and it is certainly not Christian.</p>
<p>No one deserves to die at the hands of a neighbor. No family gathering, no school day, no church meeting, no one going about their daily lives in the State of Texas —whether they be immigrant or citizen— deserves death at the hands of guns. Innocent victims such as these at the very least deserve our care and compassion.</p>
<p>I call on you to repent, and do better in the future.</p>
<p>Your brother in Christ,<br>Rev. Eric Folkerth</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7197397
2023-04-26T10:41:21-05:00
2023-04-26T14:00:03-05:00
We Are Bad at Seeing (The Emmaus Road and Stevie Ray Vaughan)
<p>I’ve read the “Road to Emmaus” passage from the Gospel of Luke for decades, but I’ve never really unpacked this phrase:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Jesus himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.”<br>LUKE 24: 15-16</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meditating on the Emmaus Road story this week led me to recall those four bystanders that got shot by so-called “good guys with guns, a book by Malcomb Gladwell, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.<br>Strap in, folks…</p>
<p>A primary insight this week was: “<strong>We are ALL bad at seeing.”</strong></p>
<p>As I hope I make clear often, this is also a primary point of Jesus’ entire ministry, throughout the Gospels. It’s also a point made plain by Malcom Gladwell, in his book “Talking to Strangers.”</p>
<p>Gladwell reminds us how we all <strong>think</strong> we are GOOD at seeing. We think we read the motivations, actions, outer-expressions of strangers. But, in fact, we’re terrible at it, and often it leads to terrible consequences.</p>
<p>We commonly recognize that we can misread our friend and loved ones. But, somehow, we believe we’ve been given a superpower when it comes to “strangers” and “enemies.” Far too often, we SEE “enemies” where none exist. Far too often, we fail to see help and hope when it’s right in front of us.</p>
<p>Our eyes are often trapped in a prison of their own making.</p>
<p>Take a close look at the word <em>“prevented”</em> in the Gospel passage, and SEE it in a new way, friends…</p>
<p>The word is <strong>Krateō</strong>. And its other uses in the Bible itself are fascinating, when compared to this text. Check it out:</p>
<p>In early Matthew, <em>Krateō</em> means “<em>arrested</em>”<br>(“Herod <em>arrested</em> John the Baptist….”)</p>
<p>In later Matthew, <em>Krateō</em> is translated “<em>seized</em>” in the Garden of Gethsemane story:<br>(“Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and <em>seized</em> Him.”)</p>
<p>I’ll just leave you with those two, but invite you to check it out, if you’re interested.</p>
<p>The point is: while it’s translated as “prevented” here, the far more common usage of Krateō (occurring dozens of times, not just these two) are things like…</p>
<p><em>“To be arrested.”<br>“To be detained or seized by force.”<br>“To be imprisoned.”</em></p>
<p>The Disciples eyes were “in prison.” Their eyes were “seized up” so they could not see. My own sense is, as the text suggests, that this is because they are grief. (“they stood still, looking sad…”)</p>
<p>Grief is one of the many things that can imprison our eyes, allowing us to miss what’s really happening around us. So can stress, anxiety, fear, and the like. And, of course, it’s quite possible for folks to just be “out of place” and for us not to be able to place them.</p>
<p>Which reminds me of a story about Stevie Ray Vaughan.</p>
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<p>Saturday, I attended the dedication of a park in his name, in Cockrell Hill…where his family lived for time, before moving to their nearby Oak Cliff home. It was a beautiful day, and I got to re-meet muralist Steve Hunter. Steve has now done two murals of my wife, Dennise (at the courthouse) along with our friend, Rawlins Gilliland (Deep Ellum) in addition to an SRV-series at this new park.</p>
<p>This story about Stevie Ray dates to the very late 1980s. Stevie had returned to Dallas, as a part of his seeking greater health and sobriety. Many people don’t realize this important final stop in his journey.</p>
<p>(No offense, Austin: But he actually *left* you, and came back here…”I’m just sayin’….”<img src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t22/2/16/1f60e.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="😎" height="16" width="16" />)</p>
<p>He moved in with his Mother in their Oak Cliff home…a wealthy, Grammy-award winning artist, back in the amazing neighborhood that all of us connected with it today know provides stability, comfort, and peace.</p>
<p>So…this meant you’d occasionally see Stevie Ray around town.</p>
<p>This happened to one of my RA staff during the 89-90 school year. She was at a yogurt place in Snider Plaza (Park Cities) when she noticed an unusually scruffy and (she said) ugly guy was in line with an absolutely gorgeous woman.</p>
<p>Her thought —she was later not proud of this thought— was <em>“what is that ugly guy doing with that supermodel?”</em></p>
<p>As they walked out the door, the clerk behind with counter hyperventilated as he said</p>
<p><em>“THAT WAS STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN! THAT WAS STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN!!”</em></p>
<p>The Disciples have their own moment like this at the end of the story. Their version of “THAT WAS STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN!” is when they exclaim <em>“Did not our hearts burn within us?!”</em></p>
<p>Suddenly, they realize this weird stranger on the Road to Emmaus was Jesus himself. Please recall also that this is STILL Easter day. Although we celebrated Easter fourteen days ago in church, this story doesn’t come to us until now. Theologically, and practically, I’m more convinced this chronological narrative separation is a mistake.</p>
<p>Because it allows us to <em>OVER FOUCUS</em> on the <em>TOMB</em> (Easter morning) while simultaneously “preventing us from seeing” how/where Easter day ends.</p>
<p>Which, in both the Gospel of John *and* the Gospel of Luke, is AROUND A TABLE. Dr. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/d.butler.bass?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZVrWPeZol_oR5zy7y-b3mOSKk43hkP37-GpZPJ0_efG6EH3He1XXGwCWJmJGJUO1mezyllhutfe8kTbcKVAEGk33ICcyrfxZJ8g7fiKlEUEgxRR8W7O-l1fEdd8sbFiAyPR7Sz2j22lJUXeXl8iwq8u&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Diana Butler Bass</a> taught me to “see” this last year, and ever since I can’t stop seeing it. On Easter Day, Jesus doesn’t “valorize” the cross. Jesus doesn’t invite folks to “meet me at the tomb.”</p>
<p>Instead, he visits the Disciples around the table in that locked “Upper Room.”<br>He visits these two around a small table in Emmaus.</p>
<p>“The table is the point,” Diana reminds us. Yes! This seems to be true.</p>
<p>Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he’s reminded folks how they are “bad at seeing.” He’s tried to call them to be BETTER at “seeing.”<br><br>He reminded his hometown friends (first sermon in Nazareth) that Prophets were sent to foreigners, not just observant Jews.<br>(“See them as a neighbor, not a foreigner…” The crowd tries to kill him for that…)</p>
<p>He reminded everyone that “your neighbor is the one you think is your enemy…”<br>(Parable of the Good Samaritan)</p>
<p>And finally, he reminds us all to SEE the poor, the outcast, the marginalized as not just “the least of these,” but as God within God-self.<br>(Matthew 25).</p>
<p>Jesus desperately works for three years to break down the tribalism between people, and to break their eyes out of prison. But time and again, as I wrote about last week, we tend to “Otherize” each other. We *see* “enemies” where we should see neighbors, friends, and children of God.</p>
<p>We are BAD at seeing. Our eyes are imprisoned by our own tribal identities, and our own implicit bias. Malcom Gladwell’s great book, “Talking to Strangers” makes this point incredibly well. I urge everyone to read it.</p>
<p>But you don’t have to go there for the proof. As I noted that week, friends, you can *see* it in the four shooting incidents that I referenced in last week’s essay.</p>
<p>CNN has called these events “ordinary blunders.”</p>
<p>— A young man walks up to the wrong door to pick up his brother…<br>— Young people make a u-turn in somebody’s drive way, when they missed their turn…<br>— A father/daughter retrieve a basketball that’s rolled of the court and on to somebody else’s property…<br>— A cheerleader gets into the wrong car at an Texas HEB parking lot.</p>
<p>NONE of these are mistakes.</p>
<p>They are correctly called “ordinary blunders,” because they are the kinds of things all of us do as human beings.</p>
<p>But! Our common horror is: Somebody ELSE chose to see these as “threats” and shot at the people in question. One woman is dead. Four so called “good guys with a gun” were, in fact, completely blind to the situation. Their eyes were apparently imprisoned by their own biases, fears, anxieties, and emotions.</p>
<p>Because of the prison of their own eyes, they didn’t read the situations as an “ordinary blunder.”<br>They read “dangerous threat.”</p>
<p>This is incredibly, and horrifically, predictable. Because, as I’ve been saying here, we all have our implicit bias, and we all have our tribal blinders.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, some of us have too many poorly kept, badly deployed, guns too. It is the presence of guns that turned these four “ordinary blunders” into far more than they should be. “More guns” on our streets isn’t the answer to stopping this epidemic of “ordinary blunder shootings,” because the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough guns. We have way too many.</p>
<p>Our problem is too many guns, AND too little “seeing.”</p>
<p>I think about the story of the Good Samaritan. Thank God none of those three that “passed by” had a gun! Because they clearly weren’t seeing clearly in the moment…that this injured man needed their help.</p>
<p>In our day, they might have shot at him instead! Only the Samaritan, a man of a different tribe, “sees” the injured person clearly and “has compassion on him.”</p>
<p>It’s a very human thing, perhaps even our “original sin,” to not see others for who they really are, to react in tribal and violent ways to “the stranger.”</p>
<p>But at the end of the Emmaus story, the two Disciples DO see.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us…?””<br>LUKE 24: 32-33</p>
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<p><em>“They recognize him,”</em> which is the powerful Greek word <em>“Epiginōskō.”</em> It would be a mistake to limit this to just “they know” him in some logical way…because this is, again, about their SEEING.</p>
<p><em>“Epiginōskō” </em>isn’t just some logical form of “to know” as if to know some logical propositions. Tt’s a more spiritually powerful word too.</p>
<p>It means: “To know…to understand to <em>BE AWARE</em>…to be <em>PRESENT</em>…. <em>TO SEE THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE</em>.”</p>
<p>This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite prayers from St. Thomas a’Kempis:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“O Lord, give me true heavenly wisdom, that I may learn to seek you and to find you, and above all things to love, and TO UNDERSTAND AND KNOW ALL THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE , after the direction of your wisdom, and not otherwise.” (Caps added by me…)</p>
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<p>See things as they truly are, as God sees, and not just through our tribal, lizard brains…</p>
<p><em>“See the stranger on our walk”</em> as an encounter with Jesus…<br><em>“See the least of these” </em>as God among us…<br><em>“See the injured member of another tribe” </em>as not a threat, but a child of God deserving compassion.</p>
<p>And, most of all, dear God in heaven, <em>AVOID</em> shooting at innocent people, who are just making “ordinary blunders.”</p>
<p>Even the most spiritually wise can too often find their eyes in a prison of their own making. It’s an all too human problem. But if we can see differently, sometimes we come to know that scruffy looking guy in the Yogurt line is actually a Grammy Award winning musician.</p>
<p>And ALL THE TIME, through God’s Spirit, our tribal eyes can be opened —our captured eyes, stuck in the jail of our anxiety and grief— can instead see “the other” for who they truly are, and not just as we fear them to be.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7190567
2023-04-14T11:32:00-05:00
2023-04-14T16:00:03-05:00
What Cornered White People Sound Like
<p><strong>Everyone needs to hear this leaked video. It reveals several things about America, all at once. It highlights our polarized and racialized politics…</strong></p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><img src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/26a1.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="⚡" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />NEW LEAKED AUDIO: TN House Republicans infighting over <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TennesseeThree?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TennesseeThree</a> votes.<br><br>CEPICKY: “You gotta do what’s right even when you think it might be wrong.”<img src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/1f914.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="🤔" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><br><br>Leadership says Barrett made them look racist, Cepicky says they're at "war", etc. must-listen. <a href="https://t.co/mUkzwWXvav">pic.twitter.com/mUkzwWXvav</a></p>— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1646548124272324608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2023</a>
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<p>It could have been recorded in any statehouse in the old Confederacy, as a conversation White men have when they think nobody is listening. There is no question that it reconfirms every fear that POC, women, and the LGBTQ community have about White men.</p>
<p>Finally, it serves as a classic, painful example of this: When White people <a></a>are so far inside their own un-seen White Supremacy, they have no conception of how they sound.</p>
<p>And, no doubt, anybody who is still in that place, will even hear that last sentence as an unfair accusation.</p>
<p>Because, to them, this is simply about “following the rules of the legislature,” or “protecting the institution.” This is how they will choose to frame the issues, and IMHO, there is almost nothing that can be done to change that view in the moment when they feel thusly “cornered.”</p>
<p>But, friends, this is how White people sound when they feel cornered.<br>When they feel their justified and rightful control of the levers of power are being threatened.</p>
<p><em>What is under attack is White control, and the final vestiges of White Supremacy in the halls of power. But they do not frame the issues this way. As such, they will always deny, always refused to believe any counter-narrative (a narrative that suggests White Supremacist control is the issue…).</em></p>
<p>They cannot believe it is so, because many of them live in siloed all-White communities, or represent highly gerrymandered conservative districts, listening to conservative news sources, that allow them to continue to live inside their pre-existing beliefs without ever having them challenged by anyone else.<br>And…they have a lot of guns.</p>
<p>As you hear here, they <em>do</em> feel “under attack.”<br>They <em>do</em> believe political rivals are “enemies.”<br>They <em>do</em> believe the future of the “Republic” is at state.</p>
<p>To be clear: It is <em>not</em> at stake.</p>
<p>What is “at stake,” threatened, are halls of power controlled solely by White people and those they believe under their “control.” That is the instructive part of this tape, actually…how much time they spend angry of the fact that they were not “unified.”</p>
<p>What is at stake is NOT the “Republic.”<br>What is at stake is <em>“control of the Republic by White people as the dominant power.”</em><br>(Hint: That’s a pretty good definition of “White Supremacy” within government)</p>
<p>In fact, a loss of their control would signify a birth of the multi-cultural democracy that American always should have —but never has— been.</p>
<p>There will still be a place for White people in that Republic, of course. But they do not believe this, because history shows them how their own ancestors only came to power through the oppression of others, and therefore the only path to retaining power is continued White control, albeit in “softer” forms.</p>
<p>But there IS a vision of a different way. America has a bright future, but ONLY if we can finally become the multi-cultural, multi-coalitional democracy.</p>
<p>Will we get there?<br>I have no idea.</p>
<p>But I know White people have a lot more work to do….and this tape shows that.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7190568
2023-04-14T11:17:01-05:00
2023-04-14T16:00:03-05:00
“Drag Bunch” and what REALLY “Grooms” Our Children
<p>I’m unlikely to regularly attend “Drag Brunch,” because it’s just not my thing.</p>
<p>But I know this: The Jesus who is my Savior would totally go to a drag show long before he would picket one.</p>
<p>He might not do either.<br>It might not be his thing either.<br>But he’d definitely not be in the picket line.<br>Of this I am confident.</p>
<p>I’ve had the blessing of knowing drag performers personally for more than twenty years. In a previous life, I had some as members of my church, and found them to be kind and gentle souls, deeply spiritual and faithful Christians.</p>
<p>That last sentence will no doubt blow the minds of almost everybody on all sides of this issue. But it’s true. At least, I’ve seen it be true in my life and ministry.</p>
<p>I mean, it’s not like drag performers walk around in drag all day. 95% of them look like the person in the grocery store line next to you. In fact, they probably are. Some of them go to church and Bible study. Some of them give generously of their time, talents, and resources to help the less fortunate.</p>
<p>They’re just <em>people</em>, people.</p>
<p>My daughter has been around drag performers since she first attended the Dallas Pride Parade in 2004, at age seven. I haven’t asked her, but I’m pretty sure that out of the dozens of Pride Parades she’s attended since, she never once felt groomed.</p>
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<p>But do you know what she and I <strong>do</strong> agree on is deeply disturbing grooming behavior?</p>
<p>Beauty pageants for very young girls, as represented by this picture. (In fact, if not for this issue, I would never post this deeply disturbing picture of a child…and feel the need to note this here…)</p>
<p>Come on, people.</p>
<p><strong>Can’t we see the deeply disturbing, highly sexualized messages these pageants reinforce?</strong><br><strong>If Christians were gonna picket anything, why aren’t we </strong>picketing<strong> THESE?!</strong><br>Why do we allow TV shows about them?<br><br><strong>Why are we not asking about the “grooming,” —the disturbing messages of sexually gendered roles— these shows reinforce for humans of all orientations….for little girls, for little boys, for mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters?</strong></p>
<p>Talk about “grooming behavior.”</p>
<p>Look, Drag Show Brunch is like anything else in art or entertainment: If you don’t like it, just don’t go to it.</p>
<p>I mean, I’m unlikely to go to a Taylor Swift or Kid Rock concert either, but you don’t see my out there picketing them.</p>
<p>I know, I know…all you Taylor Swift fans now have your hands firmly on your keyboards. You’re ready to slam me for slamming her.<br>But I’m NOT slamming her. She’s *uber* talented. She writes her own songs.</p>
<p>She’s AMAZING.</p>
<p>“Mad respect.”</p>
<p>I’m just owning how I’m unlikely to get out of my house to see her live, just as most of us are unlikely to ever frequent Drag Brunch.</p>
<p><strong>All of this</strong> is fake outrage.<br><strong>All of this</strong> is stirred up fear-mongering.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, these very same Evangelical “Christians” tried this very same ploy on the issue of Same Sex Marriage.</p>
<p><em>“It will destroy Traditional Marriage!”</em> they shrieked.</p>
<p>Remember?<br>They assured us the very foundations of society itself would crumble if Same Sex Marriage was allowed.</p>
<p>Guess what?<br>Nope.</p>
<p>Same Sex Marriage has been legal for almost a decade now, so we have documentary evidence to the contrary. ALL OF THAT mongering has been shown to be hyperbole and lies.</p>
<p>Same Sex Marriage, never for one day, almost crumbled our society.<br>But a January 6th insurrection almost did…</p>
<p>I now know hundreds of legally married, faithful Christian, Same Sex married couples. And guess what? Two weeks ago, I married a “traditionally married” couple too.</p>
<p><em>Gasp!</em> They’re still getting married too! (It was a lovely wedding…) In fact, I still do far more “traditional” weddings than same sex ones.</p>
<p>That example —the vitriol and fear-mongering prior to the Same Sex Marriage decision— should guide us now, as we consider Drag Brunch.</p>
<p>Drag Show Brunch isn’t gonna destroy the foundations of our society, or lead to a generation of Drag Show performers. Not one child will be, or has been, groomed by them; any more than one “Traditional Marriage” has been ruined by Same Sex Marriage, or one child was ever “trafficked” from the non-existent basement of a Washington pizzeria.</p>
<p>Good Lord people, stop wasting all your energy picketing Drag Brunch.</p>
<p>You’re feeling the need to picket things that are *really* harming our society?<br>I’ll send you a list.</p>
<p>But if you don’t like Drag Show Brunch, just don’t go.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7190095
2023-04-13T17:42:54-05:00
2023-04-13T21:30:10-05:00
Catfishing Bots, Fentanyl, and Deeply Frayed Community
<p>I’m simultaneously deeply annoyed and deeply saddened by the vast number of Bot-led catfishing proposals I get these days via social media.</p>
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<p>It started out as just annoyance. And then, as a way of dealing with that annoyance, I decided to save a week’s worth…not to read them…just “screen shot and save”…then come back later.</p>
<p>What distance helps emerge for me now, and perhaps for you dear reader, is a sadness.</p>
<p>A sadness that this scam must work on *somebody,* or else you wouldn’t keep seeing it.</p>
<p>A sadness that it reveals a deep isolation and disconnectedness so many feel.</p>
<p>A sadness about how desperately we human beings need *real* human connection, and apparently how seldom we must be getting it.</p>
<p>Rattling in my brain alongside of these thoughts is the book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Least-Us-Tales-America-Fentanyl/dp/1635574358">The Least of Us” by journalist Sam Quinones</a>.</p>
<p>I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a follow up book to his decade-old work on the opioid crisis and families like the Sacklers. He’s back, and now he’s moved on to the next stage of America’s drug issues: The scourge of Meth, Fentanyl…on what’s been happening to us *since* we first paid noticed the prescription opioid crisis. And it’s incredibly disturbing.</p>
<p>I remember as early as the late 60s, and how people talked about how heroin was a drug that would almost certainly kill you.</p>
<p>Fentanyl is like 100 times stronger. A few *grains* too much, and it will kill you. P2P Meth appears to be messing with the wiring in brains of its users. There’s credible evidence to suggest it’s driving some of the homeless encampments we’re seeing.</p>
<p>Without getting into too many details, as someone who’s become quite familiar with many homeless camps in our city, I must say this last point rings very true to me.</p>
<p>Addiction to these powerful drugs, and the culture that is created to procure them, is a significant part of the camps I’m seeing. (In other words “housing” is just one small part of the issue. This is my view…and Quinones’)</p>
<p>But maybe even more compelling for us all, Quinones suggest that driving all of this is a lack of genuine human community.</p>
<p>Please understand: It’s not that we’re defective as humans. It’s that corporations now know, all too well, how to tailor the messages to “ping” those pleasure-centers in your brain. And they’re doing it with a chilling amount of precision and skill.</p>
<p>The line he speaks, several times in the book, that rings true to me is:</p>
<p><em><strong>“Cartels are acting like corporations, and corporations are acting like cartels.”</strong></em></p>
<p>Quinones sews a compelling thru-line that our additions to harder and harder drugs, social media, sugar and processed junk “food,” porn…ALL OF IT….can be traced to just how desperately isolated we are becoming.</p>
<p>It’s all a part of one addictive piece of one addictive society.<br>It’s all a part of the story of our desperate isolation.<br>Here’s some of an interview he did about the book:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“…we see a lot of very scary isolation…We built this intense isolation into our suburbs, so it’s very difficult to actually go outside and meet neighbors. A loaf of bread requires a two-mile drive. A good amount of it has to do with our urban planning stripping away anything that brought us together. Of course we are “connected” more than any humans have ever been connected, and yet it’s the most superficial kind of connectivity. We’re constantly connected on social media and we’re constantly misunderstanding each other. You don’t have the nuances of tone on Twitter or Facebook that you have when you’re speaking face-to-face with a person. Something that ought to bring us together actually has us tearing each other apart.”</p>
<p>But here is the part I hope you read, over and over:</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“We have destroyed the very bulwark of defense that has allowed human beings to survive for eons now. What allowed us to survive was not that we viewed community as a nice thing to have around, but as something that was absolutely essential. Our brains evolved to require it. We die when we’re isolated far more quickly than when we’re with other people. Multiply that by an entire society and you get to a place where we are once again dying because we are isolated. In this case it’s drugs. As a society, we have stripped away all that stuff that brought us together.”</p>
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<p>Again, read that last paragraph over and over. It feels deeply true to me.</p>
<p>During the pandemic, we endured an enforced isolation for the good of saving lives. But Quinones is correct: We are not meant to live as permanent desert hermits. We need community. We need connection.</p>
<p>And, it seems to me, we’ve forgotten how do it. But, as the book compellingly shows, we didn’t get here all at once. We were fraying the bonds of community long before the pandemic; for example, replacing Mom and Pop stores with Walmarts. Just that move, alone, has likely led to the street thefts…that leads to money to buy drugs…that leads to more addicts.</p>
<p>It’s complicated. You can’t just look at the addict. You can’t just look at the drug supply. You have to look at how we’re systematically disconnecting communities and doing it with skill. The social fabric of churches, community groups, PTAs, government funded parks and arts programs…all those have been in steep decline for decades now.</p>
<p>Brain science is showing us that the same brain receptors that light up when rats are on heroin *also* light up when you’re on SUGAR. We’re more sedentary than ever, most isolated than ever.</p>
<p>So….</p>
<p>If we’re not addicted to Meth and Fentanyl, we’re addicted to alcohol.<br>If we’re not addicted to alcohol, we’re addicted to <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/01/13/recovering-from-time-release-suicide/">sugar and fat</a>*.<br>If we’re not addicted to sugar and fat, we’re addicted to binge watching TV.<br>If we’re not addicted to binge watching TV, we’re addicted to social media.<br>If we’re not addicted to social media, we’re addicted to porn.</p>
<p>Some of us are addicted to all of these and more, and they all tend to drive into an isolation where we no longer seek “pleasure hits” from being with other humans, but instead from these inanimate objects…and in increasingly higher does, and more lethal forms.</p>
<p>Fentanyl feels like the inevitable last step, in some kind of macabre devolution of human community. After the fast food corporations, social media conglomerates, and drug cartels have all had their way…here come Fentanyl…a street level drug that apparently any lone individual can cut (not well) and sell on their own. Cheap to make. Distilled from 20-or-so perfectly legal chemicals, making it almost impossible to centrally shut down production or distribution. SO powerful that just a few grains too many can kill you.</p>
<p>I also like the book because Quinones doesn’t sugar coat the “cure.” He doesn’t blame average migrants crossing the border. he doesn’t blame the houseless around us.</p>
<p>He doesn’t suggest we can wave a few magic wands and make it all go away. On the supply side, he insists that these problems are now at *least* tri-national…involving the US, Mexico, and China. Unlike just banning Sudafed before, the chemicals used for these newer drugs are readily available, and come with many legitimate uses. Solutions, therefore, at the level of supply will be deeply challenging.</p>
<p>(As you might also imagine, he suggests this is urgent, and because of the complication, less likely too…)</p>
<p>On the demand-side, he highlights dozens of hyper-local treatment options, and ways in which communities are attempting to stitch themselves back together.</p>
<p>The more community we create —real, human community, not dominated by the online world or addictive substance behaviors— the more our brains can revert back to getting pleasure “hits” from….OTHER HUMANS.</p>
<p>Community, as he says in the quote above, isn’t just a nice thing. It’s essential to our survival.</p>
<p>Friends, I think he’s totally correct in his entire analysis. And I think he’s also correct that it’s gonna be a hard slog to heal. Fast foods and hard drugs give us those brain “hits” more powerfully and quickly than does human connection. So we shouldn’t kid ourselves. This will be hard work requiring much patience.</p>
<p>Last night, we had another great evening with “Wednesday Night Live” at Kessler Park UMC. This program gives me hope.</p>
<p>It’s basically neighborhood kids, coming together to play, eat a snack supper, and hear a short Bible story from Pastor Kay.</p>
<p>These kids are modeling what we adults need more of: Time in community. With other humans. Coming to church gatherings, reaching out in service to others, eating a local restaurants where we know the owners and the staff.</p>
<p>You can’t point to a one-to-one rote formula… “this much community will reduce that much addiction.” But, it’s a credible theory that the more we connect with real humans, the less that cartels, corporations and Bot-generated social media accounts can catfish us into their traps.</p>
<p>I have a feeling this will be the work of all of us, for the rest of our lives.</p>
<p>———————————————</p>
<p>*That chicken nugget you love is not food. They are 60% fat and sugar and were created in a lab….the way Fentanyl was/is created in a lab. We eat it with a sugar sauce that combines three things our brain receptors crave: fat, salt, sugar. Again, the opioid receptors in our brains that light up when we’re on heroin, *also* light up when we’re on sugar.</p>
<p>This is an example of how “Cartels are acting like corporations, and corporations are acting like cartels.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7187356
2023-04-10T15:31:18-05:00
2023-04-10T19:30:09-05:00
Uncomfortable Metaphors
<p>It’s now Monday, and to my amazement, my hastily dashed-off post “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/04/07/good-friday/">Good Friday</a>” —about the original meaning of the crucifixion in Jesus’ time— continues to be shared at a stunning pace.<br>It’s now approaching 3,000 Facebook shares, and thousands of remarkable and kind comments. My best guess is: it’s still being shared around 100 times an hour.(*)</p>
<p>I’m sure this will die down, as all viral posts do. But this is well beyond any other semi-viral post I’ve ever made to Facebook.</p>
<p>This post obviously struck a chord for many.</p>
<p>Let me quickly note that while I am getting lots of praise for this post, please understand I did NOT think of any of these concept. The ideas in the post are not original with me, or even controversial for many contemporary Christian theologians outside traditional Evangelical and conservative Catholic circles.<br>(See the book: “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.amazon.com/Last-Week-Gospels-Really-Jerusalem/dp/0060872608" target="_blank">The Last Week</a>,” by Borg and Crossan. It’s excellent…)</p>
<p>Perhaps my favorite share comment is this one in this picture:</p>
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<p>I mean, who doesn’t want to be called “brilliant?!!”</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t22/2/16/1f60e.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="😎" /></figure>
<p>But it’s the “uncomfortable” part I truly love.</p>
<p>Many preachers cite a quote that, in fact, was actually first coined to describe journalism: <em>“The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”</em></p>
<p>Many preachers incorrectly attribute this thought to William Sloane Coffin. (It’s certainly the kind of thing Coffin would have said…)</p>
<p>That said, both reporters and preachers ought to live the meaning of this ideal, yes?<br>(Maybe I’m more passionate about this, since I was professionally trained in both fields…)</p>
<p>Our Christian calling —if indeed that’s a calling we claim— must be to comfort to those who are suffering, and to call for justice to those who are too comfortable. So, I’m back again today, to press the “uncomfortable” button once again… I want to drill-down into the TWO updated metaphors in that original post.</p>
<p>I hope you noticed there were two. Both updated metaphors are important, but the latter is tricky point to make well…so here we go…</p>
<p>In case, you missed it, the original post was actually trying to make two metaphorical points:<br><br>1. <em>“Roman Crucifixion” = “American Lethal Injection.”</em><br><br>That is demonstrably true. And, sadly, a connection that many American Christians either have never made, or actively resist.<br>But there is a second, trickier updated metaphor that’s equally important for our time:</p>
<p><em>2. “Religious Collaborators” = “American Christians.”</em></p>
<p>Today, friends, I feel called to spell out one final transitive property of this second metaphor:</p>
<p><strong>Constantine was to the Roman Imperial Church…what Ronald Reagan is to American Evangelicalism.</strong></p>
<p>I want to speak to this momentarily. But in order to get there —to even understand the concepts— we must take a deeply slightly long and deeply important side road…</p>
<p>If there is any legitimate concern about my original Good Friday post, it’s in naming <em>“Religious Collaborators”</em> at all.</p>
<p>When I preach from any of the Gospels, I often try to point out that the “Jewish leaders” of the Gospels play “characters” in a narrative story. Actual Pharisees of Jesus’ time were, as it turns out, pretty progressive and open folks. They, like Jesus, were often trying to reform their faith from the inside.</p>
<p>That said, ancient Jewish historical sources <em>also</em> note the historical truth of Kings and Priestly officials who 100% <em>did</em> “collaborate” with Roman Imperial power. There was a whole series of Jewish Kings whom ordinary Jewish folks saw as more “Greek” than “Jewish.” Again, many independent historical sources outside the Gospels speak to this truth.</p>
<p>There were very GOOD socio-political-religious reasons for this “collaboration.”</p>
<p>First among them being a clear understanding that Roman power could, at any moment, destroy the entire Jewish state and religion.<br>(Which, as it turns out, they eventually did…without any help of the tiny Christian Church…in 70 AD)</p>
<p>Both in our time, and back then, “puppet kings/leaders,” were a real thing; and American Empire has installed “friendly” leaders in nation states around our world as well.</p>
<p>If I had been a Jewish leader of Jesus’ day, I frankly don’t know what I would have done in their position. I bet you don’t either.</p>
<p>In the decades immediately following Jesus’ death (before and after 70 AD) both nascent Christianity and emerging Rabbinical Judaism were VERY TINY SECTS within the vast sea of the Roman Empire.</p>
<p>We <em>must</em> remember this.</p>
<p>Neither group was large.<br>Neither group had any political power or serious influence.<br>Early Christians and early Rabbinical Jews were like cousins, fighting it out for the same small group of followers in a vast sea of Roman culture.</p>
<p>The four Gospels we commonly read today all date to this period. And therefore, the “character” portrayals of “The Jews” and “Jewish leaders” reflect this conflict I have just described. Their portrayal may have reflected actual “collaborating” Jewish leaders of Jesus’ earthly life…but IT ALSO REFLECTS the emerging conflict between the tiny church and tiny Jewish faith.</p>
<p>All this changes with Emperor Constantine.</p>
<p><strong>All. OF. IT.</strong></p>
<p>Suddenly, Christianity is not a small, independent sect. But it’s sanctioned religion with state power backing it. Christian crosses now appear both in churches, and atop the maces of warring armies; on the high altars of cathedrals, and plastered onto battle flags.</p>
<p>Suddenly now, it is <em>CHRISTIAN LEADERS WHO ARE THE COLLABORATORS.</em><br>(Sorry, not shouting: just don’t want you to miss this…)</p>
<p>In this new environment, those passages about Jesus’ early Jewish opponents read *quite differently,* don’t they?</p>
<p>The Roman Empire seizes on those passages as “moral licensing” to kill and persecute Jews.<br>And the Imperial Church, filled with newly minted “religious collaborators” of its own, gleefully provides the theological “moral license” for this.</p>
<p>The growing Imperial Church AND the growing Roman Empire want this for different reasons:</p>
<p>— The Empire: wants “moral license” to persecute the Jewish religious minority.<br>— The New Imperial Church sees an horrifically easy path to eliminating its “competition.”<br>(Aside: this is exactly what corporations do in our day too: seek to “eliminate” the competition…)</p>
<p>And suddenly, <em>THE ENTIRE STORY OF JESUS’ CRUCIFIXION GETS FLIPPED.</em><br>(Again, I’m not shouting, I just don’t’ want you to miss this in this long essay…)</p>
<p>As I note in the original “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/04/07/good-friday/">Good Friday</a>” post, the Roman Empire gleefully embraces a theologically suffering Jesus who dies on the cross (sent to that death by God!) because that’s what the Empire wants its own poor citizens to do…suffer and bleed…join bloody battles…on behalf of the Emperor. The Empire is happy to help promote a “suffering servant” motif, which helps its people endure suffering not just for God’s sake, but for the Emperor’s.</p>
<p>The brilliant trick here is/was: To convince average Christians to forget Jesus’ crucifixion was ever “state execution,” and to simply put forth the “Cross” as a purely hybrid religious/political icon.</p>
<p>It’s like some Roman Wizard of Oz proclaimed: <em>“Pay no attention to that State Execution behind the curtain…just endure your earthly suffering like Jesus did.”</em></p>
<p>The “Cross” forever “flips” in terms of its meaning. Now, it’s used as symbol by BOTH Church and Empire to suppress the Jewish descendants of Jesus’ own faith!!! And people of many other cultures and faiths too.</p>
<p>It’s a brilliant and horrific metaphorical move. And it’s lasted, in hard and soft forms, for almost two millennia. To be clear: Millions of Christians were not anti-Semetic in any way, and simply saw the “Cross” as an object of religious veneration.</p>
<p>But…in my mind…LEADERS are a different matter. Leaders, especially political and religious leaders, and coopt religious devotion and twist it for their own benefit.</p>
<p>Hitler understood all of this too. This is why he was so enamored with Christian and non-Christian iconography, from the Swastika to the Cross. He understood how they could be coopted to <em>service empire itself.</em></p>
<p>As Dietrich Bonhoeffer showed us, the German Church collaborated with Nazi power, just as the early Imperial Church Leaders had previously collaborated with Rome almost two millennia before. Bonhoeffer and his friends provided “resistance” to this, and they were killed for speaking up.</p>
<p>As before, Nazi Germany again showed us how Jesus’ story of being executed by Imperial Power could be flipped so that everyone forgets about “state power,” and instead focuses on the “religious Otherizing” of innocent Jews.</p>
<p>So, friends, I only apologize slightly for this this long aside. It feels important to me, because it gets us finally to modern America….and a final updating I mentioned earlier:</p>
<p><strong>Constantine is to the Roman Imperial Church…what Ronald Reagan is to American Evangelicalism.</strong></p>
<p>For decades, American Evangelicalism was a small, quiet, pious part of American Christianity. In point of fact, much of American Evangelism saw politics as a dirty business, and its focus was on personal salvation. All that changed during the 1970s-80s, when Right Wing Politics and Right Wing Christianity realized the power of a new alliance….a new “collaboration.”</p>
<p>You could point to many “Constantine-like” moments, when American Empire finally blessed American Evangelicalism.</p>
<p>To my mind, a key moment was when Ronald Reagan —speaking to Christian Conservatives at an event in my own hometown— said to them: “I endorse you…”</p>
<p><em>“I endorse you…”</em></p>
<p>That’s a very good nominee for the “Constantine-like” moment that formalized the modern “collaboration” between modern politics and religion. Forty years later, the two movements have all but merged, much like Church and State merged in the time of the “Holy Roman Empire.”</p>
<p>American Evangelical Churches/Preachers supply theological “moral license” to Far Right politicians.<br>American Political thoughtleaders repay the favor by reinforcing theological views inside actual legislation in actual legislative chambers.</p>
<p>I don’t need to cite specific examples.<br>You know it’s happening.<br>I know it’s happening.</p>
<p><em>The technical term is “Christian Nationalism.”</em></p>
<p>I try to call it out when I can. It’s a dangerous mixing of Political and Religious Power that, in our time, threatens the very foundations of our Constitutional Republic.</p>
<p>When ex-Christians answer public opinion polls that “the church is too political” they aren’t talking about ALL Christians. They are specifically talking about Right Wing Religion’s marriage to, and collaboration with, Right Wing politics.</p>
<p>Sure, left-leaning churches and preachers (I am one) absolutely could *theoretically* become dangerously immeshed with progressive politics.</p>
<p>But! Do not miss the important differences inside the DNA of the two movements: There is a natural aversion (and outright hostility) in large factions of modern America’s progressive socio-political coalition to anything that appears “religious.” This serves as a natural barrier to theologically progressive preachers ever being welcomed to the front of the political line of the political left.</p>
<p>Further, the very nature of progressive people (The way their brains are wired. Their desire to avoid “top down” leadership) makes it non-credible to ever image a cadre of “Left Wing Megachurches” could dominate “Left Wing” political thought.</p>
<p>Let’s not kid ourselves about this: The Far Political Right not only <em>coddles</em> Far Right Conservative Christianity, it <em>actively seeks</em> to be married to, collaborate with, it.</p>
<p>Which gets us right back to the original post, suggesting that Jesus was killed by Roman “Powers That Be,” with an assist of “Religious Collaborators.”</p>
<p>It gets us right back to why we Christians —if we are to embrace our faith at all— must update our metaphors!!</p>
<p>Christians <em>are</em>, in large, part, the only credible group to play the part of “Religious collaborators” in our culture. We are the dominant religion, as Judaism was in Jesus’ time/nation.</p>
<p>Said another way, there are literally no living “Pharisees,” “Sadducees,” or “Scribes” today. It’s not credible to assume modern Jewish Rabbis, or your own personal modern Jewish friends, are in any way directly connected to the the Jews mentioned in the Gospels. They are no more directly connected to the characters in the Bible than you are to Peter or Paul.</p>
<p>We are all living 2,000 years down the road of those events. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge.<br>A lot of blood.</p>
<p>As such, when a Gospel story teaches of “Jewish leaders” who “pass by” an injured “Jew,” and a “Samaritan” who stops to help; we must update these metaphors.</p>
<p>Because there are only 700 actual known “Samaritans” in the today’s world, and you don’t know any of them.</p>
<p>The injured person by the side of the road are People of Color, the LGBTQ community, religious minorities, women.<br>Christian Preachers are the religious leaders who fail to stop.<br>Secularists, Muslims, Immigrants…they’re the ones who pause to render aid.</p>
<p>“The Parable of the Good Samaritan” is a prime example of one of Jesus’ most important visions for our world:</p>
<p>To see the “enemy” as my “neighbor” instead…<br>To short circuit our apparently innate and tribal human tendency to “Otherize,” with compassionate love for all instead…</p>
<p>That’s the revolutionary message that got him killed.</p>
<p>It’s still a revolutionary idea today, in our time, where most Christians have never considered how they unconsciously recreate the same “Otherizing” narratives Jesus came to destroy.</p>
<p><strong>“Crucifixion” = “American Imperial Power/Lethal Injection.”</strong><br><strong>“Religious Collaborators” = “Christian Preachers.”</strong></p>
<p>Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, right?</p>
<p>And if all this makes you “<em>brilliantly uncomfortable…</em>”</p>
<p>That’s probably right where you need to be right now.<br>———————-<br>(*) Both today and Friday’s posts originally were published on Facebook, and are permalinked here on “When EF Talks.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7185942
2023-04-07T11:14:05-05:00
2023-04-07T13:15:06-05:00
Good Friday
<p><em>“Um…so what’s that interesting necklace you’re wearing?”</em></p>
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<p>I am at the Kerrville Folk Festival, on a sweaty May afternoon. I’m with a group of fellow musicians, and one has again asked me a question I’ve been asked many times before. She’s asking about the necklace I wear every day.</p>
<p><em>“It’s a ‘Lethal Injection Crucifix,’”</em> I reply.</p>
<p>Awkward silence follows.</p>
<p>It usually does.</p>
<p>This silence has happened before, when I answer this same question, and almost always nobody is really able to think of what to say next.</p>
<p>So, I typically break the tension:</p>
<p><em>“I wear it to remind everyone that Jesus’ death was, first and foremost, a form of State Execution,”</em> I say.</p>
<p><em>“Everyone alive in the time of Jesus would have understood the cross *first* as an instrument of state execution, not as a religious symbol. The closest metaphor in our day would be the lethal injection table, because that’s how the American Empire kills people. And so that’s why I wear this. To break open the metaphor of the ‘cross’ in our time.”</em></p>
<p>Musicians are used to thinking metaphorically in deeply symbolic ways. So, on this day, as I give this answer, the tension is replaced by smiles and nods of recognition…and actually a pretty interesting afternoon-long conversation about religion and faith.</p>
<p>I regret to tell you, this doesn’t often happen with many church folks.</p>
<p>Sadly, when this very same question gets asked by Church folks —especially by those raised in evangelical traditions that sacralize the <em>“blood of Jesus”</em> and the cross— they typically react in horror to my answer. Or, just look at me blankly, and smile with face laced with terror.</p>
<p>My disdain for traditional “Atonement Theology” is well known…and if it isn’t to you, I’ll repost one of my most-read writings ever: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2009/04/09/confronting-atonement-theology/">“Confronting Atonement Theology” here</a>.</p>
<p>When I originally wrote it a decade ago, it was to push Christians to think deeply about what it means to say <em>“God sent Jesus to die.”</em></p>
<p>To summarize: If you really believe God sent Jesus to die with <em>intention</em>, and you affirm a Trinitarian view of God, it either makes God filicidal or suicidal.</p>
<p>I don’t think God is either, because I don’t think God <em>intended</em> to send Jesus to die. Period.</p>
<p>God sent Jesus, as it says in John 3: <em>“not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.”</em></p>
<p>Not through his DEATH, but through his LIFE….through his mission, preaching, teaching and healing.<br>(That’s why this story is at the beginning of the Gospel of John, to set the stage for understanding his life and ministry…)</p>
<p>What happened, of course, is that the POWERS THAT BE of Jesus’ day —Imperial and Religious— killed Jesus in an attempt to quash his message of love, compassion, justice and mercy for all God’s children. It was an <em>incarnational</em> message about how we are to live in this world.</p>
<p>God didn’t kill Jesus.<br>Imperial power did.<br>Religious leaders who collaborated with Imperial power did.</p>
<p>And, guess what? <em>It still does</em>.</p>
<p>In our time, American Christian preachers have become those religious leaders in the Gospels, far too often siding with the Powers that Be —governmental power, corporate power, police and military power– and against the poor and marginalized.</p>
<p>The crucifixion —a story initially understood by EVERYONE as a cautionary tale about the Power of Empire— has now been coopted and used by an “Imperial Church” for almost 2,000 years.</p>
<p>It’s morphed, in a truly twisted fashion, from a critique OF the Powers That Be, and into a rationale for why the poor should “bow” to power…to both kingly Jesus, and also Kings, Emperors, Presidents…why they should be willing to suffer and die for them. Jesus’ suffering has been used to justify the suffering of working class soldiers in every war from the Crusades to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>It’s mind-blowing, once you see it.</p>
<p>So, that’s why I wear “Lethal Injection Jesus.”</p>
<p>Because too many American Christians still believe in some kind of mystic salvation through Jesus’ death….even though Jesus clearly intended to DESTROY the idea of temple sacrifice, not re-create it for another 2,000 years.</p>
<p>God’s “intention” for Jesus was that Jesus’ message of love, compassion, justice, and mercy be accepted by human beings. (Note: It’s an incarnational message that can still “save” us, individually and collectively, without having to believe the “blood” and “cross” do the “work.”)</p>
<p>But, in every age, POWER kills that message…crucifies it…</p>
<p>By lethal injection…<br>By allowing assault weapons in schools…<br>By knees on the necks of Black men…<br>By laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community…<br>By men using coercive power over women in the name of God…</p>
<p>By whatever sanctioned power of Empire, blessed by religion, that you can think of, in every age.</p>
<p>To understand Good Friday, you’ve got to unpack the metaphor BEHIND the cross.</p>
<p>Those Kerrville songwriters clearly did on that day.</p>
<p>And…so did a hero to every one of us who is an American songwriter: Woody Guthrie.</p>
<p>Woody’s best song on the subject is called “Jesus Christ,” and the last verse says it all:</p>
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<p><strong>“This song was written in New York City<br>Of rich men, preachers and slaves<br>Yes, if Jesus was to preach like he preached in Galilee,<br>They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, Woody, yes.<br>So glad you understood too.</p>
<p>It’s not that the cross doesn’t have an important message for our day.<br>It’s that the message is so uncomfortable to earthly power that we don’t want to talk about it</p>
<p>Because, as Jesus showed us, it can get you killed.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7171636
2023-03-14T17:07:34-05:00
2023-03-14T20:00:15-05:00
Reflecting on “The Whale”
<p>Is it possible to have differing, but equally valid, moral and ethical positions on the film “The Whale?”</p>
<p>I sure hope so. I could be about to test this in what follows.</p>
<p>Whatever your views on the film, on food, on obesity, on “fatphobia,” —that entire constellation of issues— I invite you to read this essay as my own personal thoughts on my own personal journey over the past decade.</p>
<p>I was deeply moved by Brendan Fraser’s performance, in ways that struck me very personally and very painfully. I thought his performance was Oscar worthy, and I’m very glad he won. I found it to be a story worth telling.</p>
<p>I cried during the movie. I cried a lot afterwards, and found myself deeply identifying with the character of Charlie.</p>
<p>I suppose good art does that for us. We see ourselves in the stories. Even though there’s much about this story that differs from my life and journey, much of it existentially also hit home…perhaps even in ways beyond what the artists intended. (Again, that’s what art does…it stirs us up…)</p>
<p>I was never 600 pounds. But less than ten years ago, I was an “out of control” 300-plus pounds. Fraser’s amazing performance stirred up a wincing pain of personal recognition.</p>
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<p>I’ve written about my own journey toward a more healthy relationship to food, eating, and weight, in a journal entry called:</p>
<p>“<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/01/13/recovering-from-time-release-suicide/">Recovering from Time-Release Suicide</a>.”</p>
<p>It’s still painful for me to read, and was very painful to write, as it describes some deeply personal hard-learnings about myself, my life, and my history.</p>
<p>I have come to understand and believe that I have an addictive personality in relationship to food that, if left unacknowleged, could easily lead to being hundreds of pounds overweight.</p>
<p>It helps *me* to name it as addiction. (This, perhaps, is where some readers might differ with me…)</p>
<p>Therapy and lots of work on reframing my understanding of food-as-fuel, not as a drug, are helping me with this, every day. It’s a daily journey. My own journey entailed looking back through time too…addictive personalities run generationally in my family, often related to alcohol. Suicide also generationally runs in our family.</p>
<p>But as I look at our lives, it appears some of us in our extended family —myself, my Aunt, my Grandfather— have apparently chosen *food* as our soothing drug of choice.</p>
<p>My Grandfather spent his last half-decade in a bed, much like Charlie…alcohol and decades of over-eating to soothe his pain, had ravaged his body. He was a shell of man. It was hard to look at him, much as it was hard to look at Charlie in this film.</p>
<p>My Aunt was morbidly obese, and in and out of care facilities for a decade. She struggled with obesity in ways that were deeply painful to all of us who loved her; and who visited in the *dozens* of hospitals and long term care facilities she found herself in over those ten years. It was a slow decline. Yes, she had other health issues. But obesity made it all worse. Again, she was in and out of DOZENS of care facilities….and that example impacted me.</p>
<p>As a son, it was especially hard for ME to watch my Mother watch her only sister slowly die, and to vicariously feel her complete helplessness.</p>
<p>(Therefore, I also somewhat identify with the character of Liz too, as she helplessly watches Charlie…that felt familiar too…)</p>
<p>Here is what I believe…</p>
<p>Alcoholics can kill themselves in a few weeks-to-months of heavy drinking.<br>Drug addicts can kill themselves in single night, with one wrong dose or mis-labeled substance.<br>Those of us who soothe with food *may* be able to live healthy and productive lives for years. (Maybe even for all of our reasonable adult lives…)</p>
<p>But some set of us who soothe with food cannot.</p>
<p>Some set of us —I include myself in this set— slip into what I call “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/01/13/recovering-from-time-release-suicide/">time-release suicide</a>.”</p>
<p>We know exactly what we are doing to our bodies. We know exactly the potential physical costs.</p>
<p>But the addiction is so strong that we are “powerless” to make other choices. (To use AA language…)</p>
<p>I’ve read online criticism of the film related to scenes where Charlie is gasping to breathe, coughing, choking on this food, or having a heart attack. People have suggested that the Daniel Aronofsky over-reached in dramatizing those moments in ways that are “fatphobic.”</p>
<p>All I can tell you is… *I* did all those things too.</p>
<p>I never woke up after a night of binge drinking, wondering “what have I done?”</p>
<p>But I routinely experienced moments where I felt the kind of fear I saw in Charlie’s eyes during the film… a fear that thinks, “My God, what if I am dying, right now?”</p>
<p>When I was actively and slowly committing “time-release suicide,” I regularly gasped for breath. I ended up in the hospital with heart palpitations, thinking I was dying. I *physically* felt *terrible* much of the time. I knew all of this, even as I ate whole pound cakes, downed jars of peanut butter, and secretly scarfed hamburgers and burritos outside the view of loved ones and friends.</p>
<p>So, no, I didn’t find the performance overblown, nor did I (personally) see it as “fat shaming.” What I saw was a horrific dramatization of my own addictive personality; the one that lives in me still, and probably always will.</p>
<p>I felt gratitude for where I am now, but deep sadness at remembering “the fat guy inside me” and my own moments of physical terror at what my actions had wrought.(Moments when I thought I might die, or be very ill…)</p>
<p>So, that’s my view of my journey, and my reaction to this film. I would guess everybody’s journey is different.</p>
<p>Even in the years since I first wrote the essay on “time-release suicide,” I see shifts in how we talk about all of these issues in our culture. And so, you may see all these issues differently. You may believe the film, or even some of what I am writing here, is “shaming.”</p>
<p>I can only speak for myself: Everything shifted for me on the day I stopped looking at my eating issues as a moral failure, and started simply looking at them as health issues and a matter of how I can love myself. The key has been a shift in my understand of the question “what is the loving thing to do for my body?”</p>
<p>As I wrote in my blog, I just didn’t feel good, (physically good) most of the time. I wanted to feel better. So, I learned a lot about how the food industry TRIES to addict us to processed foods, like the liquor industry tries to addict us to alcohol…like drug pushers want us to be addicted to coke. Realizing that these so called “foods” in fast-food chains are DESIGNED TO ADDICT…that was a key lightbulb.</p>
<p><em>“Oh…those are <strong>my</strong> pushers…”</em></p>
<p>Getting old is hard enough without the metaphorical and physical weight I was carrying. I didn’t want to die young. Like Charlie, I also had a daughter. I was routinely gasping for air trying to keep up with her.</p>
<p>And it gradually dawned on me that I wanted to be around to see her grow into adulthood. It gradually dawned on me that my own self-destructive disordered eating affected other folks beyond myself. It affected her future. My wife’s. My friends and family.</p>
<p>Hell, the truth is I might get hit by a bus tomorrow.<br>I might get cancer.<br>I might get dementia.<br>I could still be a terrible burden on my loved ones as I age.</p>
<p>Life is risky.</p>
<p>But about ten years ago now, I made the conscious choice to frame my eating as a “time-release suicide,” and I realized that I didn’t want to do it any more. I wanted to live as long, and as healthily, as I could.</p>
<p>Like all addictive-behavior, I slip up. A lot. I try to be gentle with myself when I do, but I am not always gentle. One thing I now believe: it’s a lifelong journey.</p>
<p>If you’re on this road, please know that change is possible, but that the road is *hard,* and there are no magic bullets.</p>
<p>A hard “moral” of this film is that everyone gets “the position of choice for their own life.”</p>
<p>That means refusing medical care.<br>That means choosing a path you knowingly admit could lead to death.<br>That even means choosing “time-release suicide.”**</p>
<p>I truly believe there is much about life that is worth living. I believe there is hope for everyone. This film starts at the end of Charlie’s life…way too late for any change for him. I think that’s what hit me so hard…knowing that without certain changes, I could be that guy.</p>
<p>I believe my life is better when I consciously eat healthier foods, in healthier quantities. I truly grieve for anyone who believes they are in the throws of an addictive cycle. I would be happy to be support you from afar, any way I can…if any of you reading this believe I could ever be helpful.</p>
<p>So, in sum… your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>But, for me, this film hit me in a deeply personal ways. However it hits you, I thank you for listening to my perspective.</p>
<p>——————</p>
<p>** One final note, please do not hear that I am saying that all folks with weight/food issues are committing “time release suicide.” I am saying *I* was.</p>
<p>Some folks, without addictive personalities, wrestle with these issues for other biological and physical reasons.</p>
<p>Just as alcohol affects each person differently, so too does food.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7163999
2023-03-02T11:58:29-06:00
2023-03-02T15:45:16-06:00
Texas Independence Day
<p>Today is Texas Independence Day.</p>
<p>As a student at UT Austin, I remember celebrating this day with all the pride I could muster.<br>Today, years later, I’m thinking about what I didn’t know then, what I do know now, and the significance to all of us Texans today.</p>
<p>If like me, you took “Texas History” in the 7th Grade…<br>And especially if, like me, you are a White person trying to come to terms of our state’s true racial history…read on…</p>
<p>At the church I am proud to serve, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZXpY58K2Fgx18UFrr4anlAUzJ82p9HeUGBVxkgjHfVjZAi-sHDJ7yAiMNPZEKaiD6lANv0KEwLRVkFf2NDr91GN687l11zJthMQaBVcnhYWte-8W55xCOwzLV1kH1iGyjaYWm0GUGXPIy7wlHXnJNmhQ7t4hsWIGEc-TidjPTf4LA&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Kessler Park United Methodist Church</a> we seeking to learn about our city, state and nation’s racial history. At an event last night, one of our members briefly brought up the book “Forget The Alamo,” which was the subject of “controversy” in some circles in 2021.</p>
<p>So, what do certain people not want you to know about our history?</p>
<p>What do so many White Texans *still* deny today?</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>The don’t want you to know that many of our Alamo heroes were actually enslavers.</strong></li>
<li><strong>They don’t want you know that Mexico’s government was far more progressive in terms of outlawing slavery than the “Texians” who were leading the creation of independent Texas.</strong></li>
<li><strong>They don’t want you to know that the enslavement of black people was, part and parcel, crucial to “The Republic of Texas.”</strong></li>
<li><strong>And, finally, they don’t want to know that it’s all there for the world to see, in the very words of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas itself.</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s be clear, the “Texas Declaration of Independence” —the one we celebrate today on March 2nd every year— was modeled on the US Declaration of Independence. And it is <em>indeed</em> full of lofty and soaring language about the rights of humans.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/screen-shot-2023-03-02-at-11.50.13-am.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">“The Reading of the Texas Declaration of Independence” (1936) by Charles and Fanny Normann.</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p>If you take it out of context (meaning: just read its words, and stop there) it sounds like it was written by the very same kind of freedom-loving, tyranny fighting, patriots we like to pretend wrote the US version. I mean, yeah, as a stand alone document, it’s a bunch of nice words.</p>
<p>But, again, not the whole story…</p>
<p><a href="https://tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/imgs/constitutions/files/journals1836/1836_03_09_jnl.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Just a week after issuing this “declaration</a>” —while they all still assume the Alamo defenders were patriotically defending that structure— the Texas Constitutional Convention entertained a motion concerning slavery. While the motion introduced on March 9th was subsequently tweaked to some extent, the gist of what was proposed was eventually adopted into the Constitution of the Republic.</p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/c.php?g=815580&p=5820525" target="_blank">As you can read with your own eyes</a>, the screenshot below shows how the Republic of Texas was actually *harsher* toward enslaved humans and people of African descent, than certain parts of the United States at the same moment:</p>
<p></p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/screen-shot-2023-03-02-at-10.20.05-am.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><strong>Text of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas 1836, “General Provisions” Section 9-10</strong></figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p>Not only was enslavement formally legalized in the Republic of Texas Constitution, but an enslaver could not legally free their enslaved persons <em>without permission of the legislature</em>.<br>But! Read it again….the very line next to this says that <em>Congress will not have the authority to free slaves</em>!!<br>(Did your head explode too?)</p>
<p>Further, as you can read, it was not permitted for free persons of African descent to live as “citizens” in the Republic of Texas. To remind you again, this is harsher law than existed in either Mexico <em>or</em> some states of the US, at that very moment. The writers of the Republic of Texas constitution considered this language AT THE SAME TIME they believed the Alamo was under siege!!</p>
<p><strong>What we White Texans have done —for almost 200 years now– is mythologize beyond recognition the Battle of Alamo, and deny and suppress the truth of who the original White Texans were, and what they wanted Texas to be.</strong></p>
<p>Our gaze falls on that old mission church, and an allegedly mythic battle; while we simultaneously look *away from* that convention room in “Washington on the Brazos” to see what White Texas forbearers actually believed they were fighting for.</p>
<p>Sure, they wanted it to be a place of freedom…for White men. But they had absolutely no desire to be a place of freedom for people of African descent. They literally wanted a nation of free White men.</p>
<p>Let me ask you, White Texan friends, did you ever learn in school about how Mexican law was more progressive toward slavery than the Republic of Texas’?</p>
<p>Yeah…didn’t think so.</p>
<p>You see, *this* is a major part of why the book is titled “Forget the Alamo,” and why this causes so others just want you to “forget the book” instead.</p>
<p>If you are a modern day African-American or Latinx Texan, I apologize if any of this info is traumatizing.</p>
<p>I am writing this mostly for myself, and for all other White Texans.</p>
<p>I’m glad there is a place called Texas.</p>
<p>I am still proud to be a Texan.</p>
<p>But Texas’ future, like America’s, is as a multi-racial democracy. And the truth matters. If you’re a White person with plans to whoop it up, here on Texas Independence Day, I merely ask you to consider the whole story, not only the feel-good myth.</p>
<p>For me, I’m not whoopin’ this year.<br>I’m writing this instead.</p>
<p>Creating a hopeful Texas for our future means acknowledging the truth of our history too.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7160171
2023-02-24T08:58:12-06:00
2023-02-24T13:00:09-06:00
I Remember Too
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J6_3fKs9VrA?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation"></iframe>
</div></figure>
<p>Earlier this week, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2023/02/23/ash-wednesday-2/">I shared about Ash Wednesday</a>, a year ago…some time I spent by the Roberts Forest fire pit, praying, crying, playing guitar.</p>
<p>What I didn’t say then was that a song, in honor of my Mom, poured out of me that night. The whole thing took shape in about 20 minutes. I pulled out my phone and got down a first-version. But the words/feelings were too raw. I couldn’t really even sing it through without breaking down.</p>
<p>For year, I’ve lived with that version; a year later seems like a good time to come back to it. So, after I wrote my Ash Wednesday reflection this week, I also got down this video.</p>
<p>I played the song during “Coffee on the Porch,” and several folks said it was helpful. Maybe it will be for you too.<br>I honestly only wrote it for me…to honor my Mom, to honor the idea of “memory.” But that’s the beauty of art (and/or autobiographical theology… which is much the same thing as art, actually) can help others too.</p>
<p>As you might recall, “remembering” was the issue most prescient in our minds on that Ash Wednesday night. We didn’t know what else was wrong yet, but we knew Mom had lost lots of weight and spectacularly failed two congnitive tests.</p>
<p>Something was very wrong. As I say in the song, she knew us, “but didn’t know the day…” The sadness over her inability to remember things was hitting me hard that night.</p>
<p>Ash Wednesday is also about our memory: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”</p>
<p>As I said the other day, a year ago it was the existential truth of this line, not the church ritual, that hit me hard. And that’s the way it works, of course.</p>
<p>So all these kinds of memory and remembering —Mom’s, mine, Ash Wednesday’s— were all floating around.</p>
<p>Frederick Buechner has also written beautiful about “Remembering.” He say this:</p>
<p>“When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.</p>
<p>For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost. When I’m feeling most ghost-like, it’s your remembering me that helps remind me that I actually exist. When I’m feeling sad, it’s my consolation. When I’m feeling happy, it’s part of why I feel that way.</p>
<p>If you forget me, one of the ways I remember who I am will be gone. If you forget me, part of who I am will be gone.</p>
<p>“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.”</p>
<p>— Frederick Buechner</p>
<p>I also had these very words in my heart that last Ash Wednesday, as the song spilled out.</p>
<p>And… “I remember too.”</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Remember when you told that you’d love me to the moon.<br>Remember when you cleaned my lip, with a tiny spoon.<br>Remember when you picked me up when my knee scraped the ground.<br>Remember when you held me tight when friends could not be found.</p>
<p>Well I remember too.<br>Every single little “I love you.”</p>
<p>Remember when that college girl stomped on my poor heart.<br>Remember when you told me I should always work my art.<br>Remember when you smiled the day I finally found true love.<br>Remember when your granddaughter was your gift from above.</p>
<p>Well I remember too.<br>Every single little “I love you.”</p>
<p>Remember when remembering just slowly slipped away.<br>Remember when you knew my face but didn’t know the day.<br>Remember that I’ll say this you, til the final end.<br>And remember if you lose the words, I’ll say them once again.</p>
<p>I remember too.<br>Every single little “I love you.”</p>
<p></p>
<cite>Words and Music: © eric Folkerth. All rights reserved.</cite>
</blockquote>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7159432
2023-02-23T10:43:05-06:00
2023-02-23T13:15:08-06:00
Ash Wednesday
<p>A year ago Ash Wednesday…</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/332470781_749887140038032_7268823149042661002_n.jpg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
</div>
<p>It is about this time of night(1) I have not come home from church, but instead I am sitting alone in Roberts Forest at KPUMC. The fire pit is dying down. (This is an actual picture….)</p>
<p>I’m praying a lot.</p>
<p>I’m playing guitar.</p>
<p>And I’m doing some pretty intense crying.</p>
<p>We’ve just concluded our Ash Wednesday worship. In an abundance of caution over the continuing Omicron variant, our service was outside. Symbolically, this allowed us to gather around the fire pit and meditate on ashes and on fire.</p>
<p>I had told the staff I was going to stay just a moment more. That I’d put out the fire and quickly leave after then as well.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t really true. Instead, I settled in for my own personal Ash Wednesday quiet time. The reason was the slowly developing news about my Mother of the previous few weeks.</p>
<p>Just the week before, Mom had failed multiple cognitive tests. Her doctor determined she had lost about 35 pounds in four months.</p>
<p>We didn’t have a full diagnosis yet, but we all knew that something *was* wrong. Seriously wrong.</p>
<p>Not even a week after this night, tests would confirm the large mass on her colon that would end her life just five months later.</p>
<p>But that night, sitting around that fire, I knew enough. I knew that one way or another my Mother was gravely ill. I had an intuition that it was the beginning of the end.</p>
<p>And so, I cried and prayed to God. I asked that if it was the end, that the end would come quickly and with little pain.</p>
<p>I’m grateful that Mom’s last months were indeed, more or less, pain free and that her end was months, not years; even as my understanding of prayer is that God isn’t a personal cosmic slot machine.</p>
<p>Ash Wednesday is all about looking straight on at our mortality.</p>
<p>Our society is not very good at this. Some churches aren’t either.</p>
<p>But churches that commemorate Ash Wednesday look at mortality head on, as worshippers hear the words:</p>
<p>“Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”</p>
<p>Mom herself prepared me for her own death. On an Ash Wednesday decades before, when I was a young preacher, I’d said this very line to her as I applied ashes to *her* forehead. A string of other worshippers, were waiting in line behind her.</p>
<p>But she paused for a just moment with a deep look into my eyes that whispered…</p>
<p>“I know these words are true, Eric…do you? Are you ready?”</p>
<p>Now, eight months after her death –and years after that knowing glance she gave me– I still can’t say I *was* ready. But perhaps none of us ever really are. Even if we’re blessed to be a part of a faith tradition that acknowledges mortality, even when we have relatives who live self-aware of their own limits, coming face-to-face with death is a challenge.</p>
<p>Some years, we need the ritual, so that we “Remember we are dust;” because we’ve just gotten too busy for our own good and we need to be nudged to “remember.”</p>
<p>Other years, life puts our mortality right in front of us in full view and we know it in our gut.</p>
<p>The *point* of Ash Wednesday “remembering” is not macabre or gruesome fascination, but a reminder that our time is short.</p>
<p>Whether we have six months or six decades left, it goes quickly.</p>
<p>So, the second half of the Ash Wedneday message is:</p>
<p>“Live each day to the fullest. Turn away from habits and life that don’t bring life. Reconnect your spirit with God’s Spirit. Don’t put off your dreams, your goals, or waste precious time.”</p>
<p>Mom lost her own Mother when Mom was a young Mother. She lost a cousin who was like a brother at a young age too. And, finally, even her younger sister died well before she did.</p>
<p>So even as a young woman, Mom became well acquainted with an understanding that life is short and that therefore we should live each day to the fullest.</p>
<p>Therefore, long before I understood the Ash Wednesday duality —mortality, and living fully each day— as a church ritual, my Mother embodied it for me with her life.</p>
<p>She embraced sorrows and grief.</p>
<p>But she lived well and also knew great joy.</p>
<p>So a year ago tonight, on Ash Wednesday, I followed Mom’s wisdom to sit with my grief. Because I knew that’s what she would do.</p>
<p>I cried. Prayed. Played guitar. Cried again.</p>
<p>It was the first of many painful yet cathartic moments, spread out over the next months.</p>
<p>A year later, the wincing pain is gone, even as the memory of that night remains.</p>
<p>Therefore, the resolve of *this* Ash Wednesday is…</p>
<p>I am dust.</p>
<p>To dust I shall return.</p>
<p>And so, while I have life and breath, to honor my Mom, and the gifts I have been given, I’ll live each day to the fullest.</p>
<p>How about you?</p>
<p></p>
<ol>
<li><em>These words were written last evening, but posted here today.</em></li>
</ol>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7157607
2023-02-20T19:10:19-06:00
2023-02-20T23:15:18-06:00
Jimmy Carter Christianity
<p>Whether or not you are a Christian, if you’re looking for the kind of human I believe best exemplifies my Christian faith, look no further than Jimmy Carter. If you are increasingly convinced there is no such this as a “good and decent” form of Christianity, I would simply invite you to consider Jimmy Carter’s Christianity.</p>
<p>On this President’s Day, I’m still processing yesterday’s news that President Carter has entered hospice, and therefore is likely in his last days-to-weeks. And before I write anything else, I of course will trust that all of you who are praying people will offer a prayer for President Carter. I cannot fathom the emotions of their family, and especially Rosalynn Carter, as no doubt memories of decades flood back to them. Because I have time this morning, I thought I’d write my thoughts about him now…</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure how either I, or our nation, will navigate a world without Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p>No modern President has been more ridiculed and reviled as being irrelevant and out of touch.</p>
<p>And no modern President has done more to heal our world, while quietly embodying the true meaning of what it means to be a Christian.</p>
<p>I am convinced these last two sentences are connected. Meaning: a Christian who is truly led by both the Spirit *and* the challenging commands of Jesus —to love all humanity, to love and pray for one’s enemies— risks the constant ridicule and scorn of “the world.”</p>
<p>Evangelical Christians today are rightly scorned for their over-politicization of our faith, and for the compromises many have made with Right Wing power. But this is not the same scorn Carter endured.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter’s Christianity was criticized for very different reasons: for its humility, perhaps even naïveté, about the “ways of the world.” The world, then and now, rolls its eyes at such Christian do-gooders. Not because they are hypocrites, but precisely because this kind of Christianity is rare, precious, tender, and easily destroyed in much the same way Jesus’ own life was.</p>
<p>Modern Evangelical Christianity claims to be oppressed and persecuted for its faith. (Which is, of course, nonsense…) Jimmy Carter’s Christianity wasn’t ever persecuted either. But it was, and is, roundly laughed at and dismissed by atheists on the Left and muscular Christian Fundamentalism on the Right.</p>
<p>In that sense, Jimmy Carter’s Christianity gives full meaning to St. Paul’s admonition that we should be “fools for Christ.” Jimmy Carter quietly embodied and lived that faith. And that place where his faith resides, between the extremes I just mentioned, that is the place I humbly try to live too.</p>
<p>President Carter understood that Jesus’ call to us isn’t just about some world beyond this one. Jesus’ call is to love our *earthy* enemies, and to pray for them in the here and now. Jesus’ call is to expend our time, our talents, our resources, not to enrich ourselves, but to help the marginalized, sick, and oppressed, in the here and now.</p>
<p>Again, both in Jesus’ day and today, this kind of humble servant Christianity still feels incredibly rare. And its message can still get your ridiculed, or killed.</p>
<p>In a deeply personal way, whatever you believe about contemporary Christianity, it’s deeply important to ME to keep pressing this point. Because Jimmy Carter’s kind of Christianity has always been *my* Christianity too. Any social action you see me take in this world, any commentary about politics or social justice, those words and actions are first and foremost driven by my own abiding Christian faith. And my personal heroes have been Christians like Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Revs Bill McElvaney and Ben Marshall. They keep alive the thruline of true Christian witness I’ve always hoped to embody and deeply believe is important for our world.</p>
<p>While his tenure as President was brief, and while his presidential legacy has been forever tarnished by the propaganda of later Reaganism, it is Jimmy Carter whose quiet steady humanitarian work has done more good for more people, over more decades, than any other modern President. (And, whatever your age today, very likely more than any other President in *your* lifetime. Because of the depth of his commitment, and the length of his days, it is credible to believe that NO ex-President will ever surpass the humanitarian legacy of Jimmy Carter…)</p>
<p>Before President Carter, our ex-Presidents died or were quickly sick (JFK, LBJ, Reagan); or were simply culturally irrelevant (Nixon, Ford).</p>
<p>After Carter, Presidents have embraced some kind of continuing mantle of public service. (I am, of course excluding Trump from this…I trust I do not have to explain this)</p>
<p>President Carter set the standard for them all. He is, very truly, the OG template for our modern ex-Presidents.</p>
<p>He did this —again, I don’t think I can restate this point enough— not through a political calculation of how to redeem a personal legacy, or to expand his own social capital, but simply because Jimmy Cater understood this was the life Jesus called him (and us) to live.</p>
<p>Here’s a partial list of his post-Presidential accomplishments (lifted from the Carter Center website…)</p>
<p>— Leading a coalition that has reduced incidence of Guinea worm disease by 99.99 percent, making it likely to be the first human disease since smallpox to be eradicated<br>— Observing 113 elections in 39 countries to help establish and strengthen democracies<br>— Furthering avenues to peace in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, the Korean Peninsula, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Middle East<br>— Helping to establish a village-based health care delivery system in thousands of communities in Africa that now have trained health care personnel and volunteers to distribute drugs and provide health education<br>— Strengthening international standards for human rights and the voices of individuals defending those rights in their communities worldwide<br>— Pioneering new public health approaches to preventing or controlling devastating neglected diseases in Africa and Latin America<br>— Advancing efforts to improve mental health care and diminish the stigma against people with mental illnesses.</p>
<p>But it is President and Rosaylnn’s work with Habitat for Humanity that had the greatest abiding influence on me and my personal faith.</p>
<p>For many decades, there was an incredible synergy of committed Christians in and around his Georgia home. In nearby Americus, Clarence and Florence Jordan began “Koinonia Farms,” a Christian-based community farm and spiritual hub…and a movement that has spread and been copied throughout the world.</p>
<p>This week, as the Evangelical world peers in at “revival” happening at Asbury College, it would do well to also recall the incredible legacy of the Koinonia movement. It’s hard to find a rival in terms of social impact.</p>
<p>I urge everyone to read more about Koinonia Farms, and to perhaps check out some of the writings of Clarence Jordan…For out of it came not only Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s brand of servant Christianity, but also the incredible ministry of “Habitat for Humanity.”</p>
<p>The Carter’s involvement with Habitat for Humanity is legendary. Through their “Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project,” the Carters have now helped 4,390 families move into safe, affordable shelter in 14 countries. Over the years, more than 104,000 volunteers from all over the world have signed up to build alongside the Carters. (2019 figures).</p>
<p>Although Habitat now welcomes a broader cross-section of people of all faiths and no faiths, it started as a Christian ministry and its self-understanding was deeply committed to this. Founder <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2009/02/04/millard-fuller/">Millard Fuller</a> was crystal clear as to the importances of that commitment in its early years.** Fuller’s relationship to Habitat, and the Carter’s connection to both, helped propel the group to a level rarely seen by non-profits of this kind.</p>
<p>The Carter’s helped start, and were part of, the very first Habitat “Blitz Build.” A Blitz Build is where Habitat staff and volunteers descend on a particularly blighted area and build-out dozens of houses all at one time.</p>
<p>A few years after, the church I served in the 1990s, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2016/02/23/carptenters-for-christ-100-houses/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Highland Park United Methodist, was deeply involved in a major Dallas “Habitat Blitz Build</a>” in September 1997. Our Church built THREE houses in two weeks. Habitat Dallas built a total of ten that houses that week on Parry Avenue in Dallas, adjacent to the Jubilee Park neighborhood.</p>
<p>WE caught that same spirit of the Carter’s…to connect our Christian calling with making our neighborhoods a better place to live. They inspired us, and we “passed it on.”</p>
<p>The city and other non profits have now invested heavily in that neighborhood and it seems to stand as an exemplar for how neighborhoods can be revitalized *with* “affordable housing.” Those Habitat homes in September 97 were a part of the start of that longterm revitalization.</p>
<p>One of the three houses HPUMC built that week was Habitat’s 60,000th house. Another was the first house ever built with a Muslim Mosque and a Christian Church working alongside each another. I still go back through that area and marvel, with gratitude at what those initial homes have now brought to that neighborhood. Over my time at HPUMC, we built and equivalent of 13 homes with Habitat for Humanity and for our neighbors.</p>
<p>The Carter’s were a part of the first group that built more than 100 Habitat homes, over time. Millard Fuller would later directly challenge our HPUMC to do the same. (In a famous Thanksgiving-week sermon at the church…)</p>
<p>And one of the proudest moments of my ministry was negotiating, and signing on behalf the church, the agreement to build those houses. <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2016/02/23/carptenters-for-christ-100-houses/">In 2016, HPUMC fulfilled that mission to build 100 homes</a>. HPUMC’s “Carpenter’s for Christ” ministry continues to this day, has involved thousands of volunteers, and provided shelter and hope for thousands of Dallas neighbors. It stands as perhaps the proudest ministry legacy of my life.</p>
<p>But, friends, I’d invite you to center back down on the Carter’s themselves.</p>
<p>Because Jimmy and Rosalynn didn’t get involved with Habitat because it looked good. And we do well to remember this.<br>It wasn’t ever a “photo op” for them.<br>It wasn’t “mission tourism.”<br>It was living their faith.</p>
<p>On our own bookshelf, downstairs, we have many memoirs of former Presidents. But also alongside these, are devotional books, written over the years by President and Roselynn Carter. They have written many of them. I can’t think of another ex-President who has written more books on Christian theology and life…can you?</p>
<p>One of my favorites —that I am rereading at this moment— is called “Living Faith.” In a chapter titled “The Lord I Have Come to Know,” Jimmy Carter beautifully describes the combination of doubt, faith, experience, and knowledge that has led to his deep faith in Jesus.</p>
<p>At the end of a lifetime of wrestling with Jesus, and Jesus’ meaning, President Carter writes:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“…I came to realize that the apparent weaknesses of Christ are really what make him precious and give him a quality of authenticity that I now find convincing.</p>
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<p>In his last encounter with the disciples before his death, Jesus clearly described his intimate relationship with God, and emphasized his status as the Messiah. It is perhaps the most self-exalting statement he ever made (John 2:44-50).</p>
<p>But then he took off his clothes, wrapped himself in a towel, knelt down on the floor, and washed the disciples’ feet.</p>
<p>This kind of image is profoundly important to me as I try, in my own way, to follow Jesus’ example: for instance, when I go with a Habitat team to build a house in Los Angeles or Chicago, inhabited by the poorest Americans, surrounded by drug addicts and criminals, sometimes with gunfire resounding on nearby streets. (One of our Habitat volunteers, a teenager, was actually hit by a pistol shot as we worked on a house in Miami.) The awareness that my God walked this way before me makes it possible to sustain such an effort.</p>
<p>To me personally, Jesus bridges the tremendous chasm between human beings and the seemingly remote and omnipotent God the Creator. The more I learn about Jesus, the more complex and challenging are his teachings, and the more closely connected are God the Father and God the Son. It really comforts and satisfies me to equate the almighty Creator with the humble but perfect Jesus, and to remember that “God is love.””<br>(from “Living Faith,” pages 233-34)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Carter’s lived their faith by putting their own “sweat equity” into the houses they built. Therefore, I’ll close my thoughts about President Carter with a story Millard Fuller personally told me several times that seems to best embody who Jimmy Carter was.</p>
<p>During the very first Blitz Build, celebrities and other famous New Yorker’s stopped by the work site for pictures, and to do a little work. Some of them came and went, after their photo ops.</p>
<p>But…Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter *lived there.* The Carter’s famously bunked down for the week, in twin sized bunk beds, dormitory style, with all of the other volunteers.</p>
<p>No special entourage.<br>No special treatment.</p>
<p>They worked, ate, and slept like “common” volunteers. Not because it was good “optics,” but because it was their Christian calling.</p>
<p>When I think of President Jimmy Carter, THIS is my abiding image of him. I think not of a President who negotiated historic peace treaties, entertained at elegant White House state dinners, or fretted over captured hostages. I don’t even think of the teacher who greeted decades of Sunday School pilgrims to his home church in Plains, Georgia.</p>
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<p>When I think of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, they are in their Habitat work clothes, bunked down alongside those other volunteers in dormitory housing, looking for all the world like a couple of no-name RV vagabonds from the film “Nomadland.”</p>
<p>I mean, look at this picture I am posting. Can you imagine another ex-President being so unconcered by his horrific black eye? All the others would go home, hide away.</p>
<p>Good Lord…there is is, right there in that picture!!!</p>
<p>The Carter’s didn’t bunk up with the other volunteers because of how it looked.<br>They didn’t do it because of the accolades or praise that came their way.<br>They did it because their faith in Jesus compelled them to do it.</p>
<p>God bless Jimmy Carter’s legacy as the most “Christian” President we are likely to ever know.<br>May we, through God’s grace, live a faith like his.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/jimmycarter?__eep__=6&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZV6LyuLm2_rZQ9DElUYN1i7olK-IPSCQO87YP2H0Mi4jjTVMF_X7lAVpqQZ_w-m2iYB3sz_9Fa2sRL2HVmch77vxbbxXkSXdt09iHfvcy1JET7Y2EDwuZP8KhZK2BcHKe8&__tn__=*NK-R">#JimmyCarter</a></p>
<p>—————-</p>
<p>**(The legacy of Millard Fuller is, to be the kindest I can, problematic. It seems to me his desire to both spread Habitat’s message and expand its power, led to a hubris that was personally and professional harmful to many. I now assume this led to his taking advantage of his own power and influence in unhealthy and inappropriate ways. I cannot defend his actions. But I also acknowledge that the best parts of his Christian commitment was deeply contagious to, and has demonstrably helped thousands, if not hundred of thousands of people, have better lives. That good does in now way excuses the bad, and it must all live alongside it in our memory.</p>
<p>Therefore, I write this to simply acknowledge how I live with the tension of having known, and once upon a time, deeply admired him. That admiration now comes with this disturbing caveat I am now writing here. I know longer ever tell stories about Millard, or ever lift him up, except for this story here, because of its connection to President Carter, and because of a story he personally shared with me.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7155474
2023-02-16T14:51:19-06:00
2023-02-16T19:15:05-06:00
The God’s Honest Truth About “Revival”
<p>It’s likely that mainline United Methodists are only vaguely aware of the “revival” happening at United Methodist-adjacent Asbury College. But it’s an event that evangelicals across denominational lines can’t stop talking about, and so I’ll jump in a bit today.</p>
<p>Let me start with my primary ending point:</p>
<p><strong>If “revivals” are not a part of your religious tradition, if you don’t understand them, have never experienced them, or tend to feel vaguely uneasy about them, there is nothing wrong, missing, or defective about your spiritual life.</strong></p>
<p>I suppose that’s the one “take-away” point I would have you remember, and I really hope you do.</p>
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<p>Revivals and “altar calls” are only tangentially a part of my own religious life of sixty years. When I was a young person, I suppose I was rather critical of them and might have even had some spiritual FOMO about them.</p>
<p>But, at this point in life, I write today not to offer any kind of critique of the tradition, precisely because I have grown into a more confident embrace of my *own* spiritual journey and the ways in which God is richly present and important in my life.</p>
<p>And therefore, I have no real critique as to the “Asbury Revival” beyond:</p>
<p><em>“Well, good for them…I hope it’s helpful to them. I sincerely do. God bless them.”</em></p>
<p>Others online are, of course, offering critiques and perhaps even making excuses for why it’s happening, and why now. They suggest we wait to see what “fruit” comes of it. They’re suggesting that it was orchestrated ahead of time, or that it was planned by those affiliating with the GMC (To allegedly show God’s Spiritual blessing on that movement…) Still other critiques are simply opining about revivalism itself…as a movement and religious practice.</p>
<p>Again, I want to assert my deeply held agnosticism about the “reasons why it happened.” If you want to debate (pro or con) any of these critiques I’ve listed, or others that come to you, don’t bother. Take that somewhere else.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no idea <em>why</em> it’s happening, and I have not one iota of desire to assign meaning or purpose to it.</p>
<p>If it’s a “real,” spontaneous, and unplanned event, great.<br>If it’s an orchestrated thing, I honestly don’t even care about that either.</p>
<p>It makes no difference to me because, again, revivalism of this sort is not a part of my spiritual practice or personal identity. I understand —God has made clear to me time and again— that a great many Christians have rich, deep fulfilling spiritual lives without ever once experiencing evangelical revivalism.</p>
<p>Further, those who *never* experience it are not defective, lacking, or “missing something” as they journey through life. As deep as revivalism is in the American Evangelical experience, pretending that it must be normative for all is an absolute lie about how God moves in and through the world and human beings.</p>
<p>For decades now, I’ve very strongly held to the admonition of St. Paul that:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><strong>“…the depths of a person can only be known by their own spirit, not by any other person, and in the same way the depths of God can only be known by the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:11, JB)</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For me, this one verse is deeply important for both my interfaith understandings, and my inter-denominational ones too. And I apply this verse equally to both situations. This means that in both my *interfaith* understanding —Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, even Atheists– and also my *interdenominational* ones —evangelical Christians, other Christians in other branches of the Christian tree— God has taught me this:</p>
<p>I can’t <em>possibly know</em> what’s going on in their heads…and, guess what? <em>You can’t either</em>.</p>
<p>Paul was deeply right about the world of the Spirit, and that whole second chapter of 1 Corinthians is probably worth all of us re-reading way more than we do.</p>
<p>Time and again in Bible studies, I’ve been asked to explain <em>“What do Jews believe about (fill in the blank)?”</em> And only on rare occasions have I failed to say, <em>“Beats me…I’m not a Jew…I can’t begin to tell you what it feels to be a Jew, any more than I can tell you what it feels like to be a Latina or Queer…or anything else outside my own head.”</em></p>
<p>The same is true for evangelical Christians too: I am not an evangelical Christian. I can’t tell you what it feels like to be on the inside of their experience. There is a deep existentialism to spiritual experience that Paul seemed to understand and that all Christians should too.</p>
<p>I’ll say this…I have known beautiful human beings of other faiths —Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, etc— who exhibit, through the fruit of their actions, all the things Jesus calls us to be in the world. And I have known evangelicals and other Christians who are absolutely horrible people; whose actions contradict every teaching Christ invites us to follow.</p>
<p>Again, my view is that we must profess a deep agnosticism about what’s happening inside the heads of other people. Christians of all kinds, for far too long, have professed to have some kind of super-human ability to speak for all humanity, to understand what goes on in the head of other people. This is folly and, in the extreme, dangerous.</p>
<p>So, if you are a Christian who has never experienced revivalism, and have been made to feel bad about this: Just stop. There’s nothing defective, wrong, or missing in your spiritual life. If you are an ex-evangelical, and these stories coming out of Asbury are triggering to you, I understand this too. And therefore, let me end with three short stories about my family’s experience with revivalism.</p>
<p>My family has four generations of revivalism experience. My great-grandfather, Samuel Chesley Mays, was for much of his early adult life…no other way to say it…a real asshole. Abusive to his wife and two young girls. Owned a bar in downtown Atlanta, Texas. Probably was a “raging” alcoholic.</p>
<p>“Ches” Mays attended a revival meeting, preached by the great Methodist revivalist, Rev. Abe Mulkey. Apparently, it changed his life.</p>
<p>The story is that he came home from the revival that night, threw the keys of the bar on the kitchen table, and told his wife <em>“I quit.”</em></p>
<p>He later closed up the bar, and went into the grocery business. Decades later, that business would become my Grandfather’s business too. So important was this moment of spiritual reawakening, that “Ches Mays” named his next male child, his first boy, “Abe Mulkey Mays.”</p>
<p>All of this said, it would be a lie to pretend that life was always better for the Mayses. Many of the family members still struggled/struggle with addiction, depression, and even suicide. Unquestionably, a Methodist revival changed the trajectory of generations of our family. But, also unquestionably, it did not forever heal every old wound of the spirit, time, and experience.</p>
<p>Flash forward to years later, when my Mother was in high school in Atlanta. Another revival came to town. All the high school kids went. The preacher this night was a Baptist. He preached about the dangers of drinking. But also of….you might guess…dancing. He asked for all the kids in town to make a commitment to avoid drinking and dancing.</p>
<p>Mom was cool with the “no drinking” part (so she says…), but the “no dancing” part? She was a good Methodist girl, and dancing wasn’t actually against their faith. Further, she knew with rock-bottom certainty that every kid in town would be at the big high school dance the next weekend.</p>
<p>There was an absolutely certainty that they would *all* be dancing. Every single one.</p>
<p>That said, the revival preacher ended with an “altar call” inviting the kids to come down, commit/recommit their life to Christ, and to the “no dancing pledge.”</p>
<p>Mom decided she could not, in good conscience, “go down.” But one by one, she watched all of her classmates —kids she absolutely <em>knew</em> would be at that dance— go down for the altar call. She sat in her chair, stunned at the hypocrisy of the moment.</p>
<p>In the sweaty, humid, East Texas air, older heavyset Baptist woman sat down in the chair in front of her, and entreated Mom:<br><em>“Won’t you go down, honey?! Won’t you go down?!!!”</em></p>
<p>The woman was certain Mom’s eternal soul was at stake. Bless her heart… And bless Mom’s, too.<br>She <em>didn’t</em> go down. The only kid in the whole town who didn’t. It took a lot of personal fortitude and courage to make that choice.</p>
<p>After that night, Mom’s soul was not, for one second, in danger of eternal torment. And, as she tells it, everybody came to the dance.
She went on to live another 70-ish years, as one of the most deeply Christian and deeply spiritual people I have ever known.</p>
<p>Her story imprinted on me, too. When I was a young preacher, I was invited to an event where revivalist worship was a part of the closing ceremony. I watched as the leader made an altar call. I watched as they dimmed the lights.</p>
<p>And all I could think was <em>“Oh no you didn’t! You didn’t just dim the lights!!”</em></p>
<p>Then, the tinkling sounds of an electronic keyboard, playing emotional music, wafted out, over the crowd.</p>
<p>And all I could think was <em>“Oh now you didn’t! You didn’t just starting playing that!!”</em></p>
<p>For me, the moment was ruined. It felt manipulated and strained….and I am a person who is led by my feelings. It should have been my kind of moment. Many people went down that night. And, God bless them, I am sure it was helpful to them. (My agnosticism about spiritual experience was true, even then…)</p>
<p>But I sat there in a growing and seething anger, feeling manipulated by the whole experience. I understood, right then and there, that it simply never had been, and never likely would be, a part of my Christian journey. There was nothing defective about me.</p>
<p>I never once doubted God’s presence in my life because of that moment, but I also never forgot the sense of spiritual manipulation I felt in that moment either. And have vowed to try (best I can) to avoid moments that feel manipultive my own leading as a pastor.</p>
<p>So, ironically, the moment <em>did</em> change my life! It showed me, beyond all doubt, that I didn’t <em>have to have</em> revivalism as a part of my journey…that me and God were good. I’m so grateful, and feel such freedom in my Christian walk, for that experience now.</p>
<p><em>Do I need to regularly repent of my sin, and confess to God?</em><br>Yes. Of course I do.</p>
<p><em>Do I need regular worship, and connection with others on the spiritual journey?</em><br>Of course I do!</p>
<p><em>Am I sometimes transported to a place of deep connection with God in Christian worship? In nature? In journaling and prayer? through music and art?</em><br>Yes. Of course I am!</p>
<p><em>Do I feel a deep and abiding sense that God is with me, through my good, bad, and ugly experiences?</em><br>Absolutely, 100%..and I’m so grateful for that presence!</p>
<p>But, like my Mother before me, do I feel spiritual lack, or loss, or “something missing” because revivalism is not a part of my experience?<br>No…not really. Honestly, and sincerely, I don’t.</p>
<p>Now, there might be others who would read this long essay and assume “Thou dost protest too much… revivalism must still be a thorn in your side, or else you wouldn’t write all this.”<br>Well, no, actually I’m not writing any of this for <em>me</em>. God and me settled all this decades ago.</p>
<p>I’m writing today for anybody who is watching what’s happening at Asbury and experiencing either Spiritual FOMO *or* PTSD.</p>
<p>I’m here with the following message that God has placed on my heart…things I urge you to consider:
</p>
<p>1. Wish those at Asbury well, hope and pray what they are experiencing is genuine. And consider the agnosticism of St. Paul as to their experience.<br>I invite you to say “Well, God bless them…”</p>
<p>2. Believe that YOU are perfectly fine; just where, and just as, you are.<br>You can have an incredible lifetime journey with God, without or without ever experiencing or embracing revivalism.</p>
<p>That’s the God’s honest truth.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7153157
2023-02-13T13:22:11-06:00
2023-02-13T15:00:02-06:00
Suspended in Air, Without a Net
<p>As I watched Rihanna perform her remarkable Halftime show yesterday —pregnant and suspended alone in mid air— my thoughts immediately went to both the new <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.hulu.com/series/the-1619-project-7ba3407a-299c-4a10-8310-bbcdd6ab4653" target="_blank">HULU 1619 Documentary</a>, and also a sobering study <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/12/upshot/child-maternal-mortality-rich-poor.html" target="_blank">reported on by the New York Times</a>, out Sunday morning.</p>
<p>I hope you saw them both. As I said over the weekend, we White people should give special attention to the new 1619 documentary. <a href="https://twitter.com/nhannahjones" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nikole Hannah Jones</a> and team devote an entire episode to the ways in which Black women were especially brutalized during the time of slavery, but also into the present day.</p>
<p>And lest we deny such truth, lest we believe they are “in the past,” along comes yesterday’s reporting by the New York Times on a deeply shocking study, that cuts to the core of many of our beliefs about race, class, and income.</p>
<p>Here’s a headline quote:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><em>“As a Black infant, you’re starting off with worse health, even those born into these wealthy families,” said Sarah Miller, a health economist at the University of Michigan.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The study found that wealthy Black women (those in the top ten percent of income) have *worse* health outcomes than even the poorest of White pregnant women.</p>
<p>(I will post a link to the reporting in the first comment…)</p>
<p>Meaning, not only is the health of their babies more at risk than comparably wealthy White women, the health of their babies is *even worse* than the poorest of *all* White pregnant women.</p>
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<p>And so, as I watch Rihanna fly through the air alone, I was struck by the juxtaposition. This reporting, which I had just read early Sunday morning, and her remarkable halftime show, came together in a unified message about how *all* wealthy pregnant Black women are, still to this day, suspended in air, on their own, denied the very health outcomes we pretend wealth would/should/could make available to them.</p>
<p>The 1619 documentary suggests that medical professionals historically have dismissed and ignored the pain of Black women. We all remember the story of Serena Williams, but I wonder if we White folks just pretend it was an aberration?</p>
<p></p>
<p>I can only say that I’ve seen this first hand, through the eye of my Latina wife. Over the past three decades, I’ve seen medical professional ignore *her* pain; in ways that education and income did not apparently mitigate. It was, and is, shocking.</p>
<p>So, I can only tell you: I wasn’t surprised by this study.</p>
<p>The point of my essay here is to again speak to White people and say what the Times’ reporting makes plain, but what we apparently still dismiss:</p>
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<p>“The new study demonstrates that disparities are not explained by income, age, marital status or country of birth. Rather, by showing that even rich Black mothers and babies have a disproportionately higher risk of death, the data suggests broader forces at play in the lives of Black mothers, Professor Rossin-Slater said.</p>
<p>“It’s not race, it’s racism,” said Tiffany L. Green, an economist focused on public health and obstetrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The data are quite clear that this isn’t about biology. This is about the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we sleep.””</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Americans —Left, Right, and Center— like to pretend that education and income magically overcome our still-deeply imbedded societal racism. This study suggests something much worse: that the issues are so deep and pervasive, and that even education and wealth have not yet overcome them.</p>
<p>My own sense is, this isn’t just about healthcare. Healthcare is just the “presenting issue” of this specific study. The deeper point is about an embedded deeply pervasive and embedded racism that cannot be “wished away.”</p>
<p>And it was all unintentionally there last night…</p>
<p>Rihanna — performing for tens of millions, all the while enduring armchair critics who (simultaneously, apparently…) thought she was too provocative and also not provocative enough; too boring and yet also too risqué.</p>
<p>Rihanna— doing every thing our society claims to value…being successful, self-motivated, living out the American Dream as so many other Black and Brown women do; and yet, as the Times suggests, still statistically floating out on her own.</p>
<p>Rihanna— Proudly announcing her pregnancy, yet statistically subject to the same racism that comes to all Black women, regardless of education and income.</p>
<p>I know she didn’t intend to create that visual ahead of time. She couldn’t have possibly imagine that her beautifully planned choreography would coincide with the Times’ reporting on Black pregnant women and health outcomes.</p>
<p>But, there it all was, all on the same day.</p>
<p>And I could not look away.</p>
<p>I could not *not* see the metaphor.</p>
<p>Especially if you are White, I hope you can see it too.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7151463
2023-02-09T11:35:07-06:00
2023-02-09T15:15:04-06:00
Jim Finley (CB)
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7151464
2023-02-09T11:27:18-06:00
2023-02-09T15:15:04-06:00
Joe Biden Coulda Done That All Night
<p>Congressional Republicans:</p>
<p>Decades ago, Joe Biden told you he was a fighter from Scranton.<br>If you paid attention at all, you knew this.</p>
<p>McCarthy warned you not to heckle, but you did anyway; and “Sleepy Joe” Jedi mind-tricked you into applauding Social Security protection.</p>
<p>People have misunderestimated Joe for forty years.<br>Keep it going if you want.</p>
<p>Or don’t. Whatever.<br>He’s ready for you either way.</p>
<p>What you fail to realize is —likely because some of you are political novices— is that for a politician like Joe, this stuff is like drinking Red Bull. It makes him younger. He could’ve stayed there all night.</p>
<p>And if you ever decide to stop acting like you’re at a WWF match, he’s ready for the <em>actual</em> political debate too.</p>
<p>Assuming you can ever do more than heckle.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7145785
2023-01-30T11:08:15-06:00
2023-01-30T12:45:03-06:00
Cody McMahan
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/cody.mcmahan.52?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZU5gAG1IGMZg41KM5LGDwFj1sH7ez6_zHtJKRlPjNzFYYIA3JrTZeiO0frIQl2HsUC0358PSf7B_hdWxMQCsLKafrym9F96AmmacEtDsZZNUTyuw5pahXf_AGDlwC5jLPs&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Cody McMahan</a> died Saturday. I had the privilege of knowing Cody for perhaps 15-20 years….I believe I’ve lost count.</p>
<p>I believe I first met him when Cody was still a member of Greenland Hills UMC. He later joined Northaven, and still later started dating and eventually married <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mike.house.3114?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZU5gAG1IGMZg41KM5LGDwFj1sH7ez6_zHtJKRlPjNzFYYIA3JrTZeiO0frIQl2HsUC0358PSf7B_hdWxMQCsLKafrym9F96AmmacEtDsZZNUTyuw5pahXf_AGDlwC5jLPs&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Mike House</a>.</p>
<p>One of the high honors of my ministry was assisting with their wedding. Even though it led to a tense and contentious “just resolution process” for me personally, the day was pure joy.</p>
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<p>Cody taught me much about the struggles of the LGBTQ community. His thoughtfulness, the way he wore his emotions on his sleeve, they pushed me to be a better ally.</p>
<p>Later in life, as he reflected back, he sometimes told me he felt like he had earlier come on too strong. I supposed folks do this reflection sometimes, as they are dying.</p>
<p>Quite the contrary, I told him. The strength of his passion often pushed me in ways I *needed* pushing, and I developed a deep love and appreciation for both he and Mike.</p>
<p>There were times —specific periods after specific General Conference sessions— where I almost could not look Cody in the eye, so ashamed was I of our denominations continuing discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Which leads me to repeat something today that I wish wasn’t still true.</p>
<p>I often say something that is *still* true about the UMC today:</p>
<p>“It is a miracle that any LGBTQ persons stays in the United Methodist Church.”</p>
<p>And it is. I find it as evidence that God truly IS working through our Church, that any LGBTQ persons stays in this struggle. It must be of God….AND…the beauty and pain of the struggle cannot be fully understood by those on the outside. The struggle has been, and is, costly…uneccesarily costly….</p>
<p>Progressive United Methodists have always been something of a “miracle;” and their patience TODAY must not be overlooked.</p>
<p>(I fear, no I am *certain,* it *is* being overlooked…)
</p>
<p>Straight people, even folks like myself who try to listen best we can, cannot possible understand how challenging it is.</p>
<p>Sadly, the above quote is still true this morning. LGBTQ persons, and their allies, still await the full realization of the “big tent” church we have envisioned for years, and that Moderates have assured us is “still coming.”</p>
<p>For all his sense of justice, Cody could search inside himself and find compassion for his “enemies;” because he was always self-aware enough about his own flaws and faults. That way he had… of leaning in to his own strengths and weaknesses…that actually made him stronger. And his sense of compassion never quenched his fire for justice and change, and a Church that more fully lives out its claim to be “Open Doors.”</p>
<p>As with Jack and George before them, Cody and Mike stand as a powerful reminder of just *why* same sex marriage is so important, and just why some of us straight Christians have advocated for it for so many years.</p>
<p>The companionship, love, and deep commitment between Cody and Mike was powerful to see. I knew them long enough to see both of them become disillusioned with love…and the church…and I knew them long enough to see both of them find one another. And that was a beautiful thing.</p>
<p>Even during Cody’s fight with cancer, I’d occassionally see pics of Cody and Mike, travelling to places they wanted to go…living the life they deserved to have…and it made me smile.</p>
<p>My deep prayers are with my brother, Mike today. And with all of us here in North Texas who are, and were, moved and affected by the life of Cody McMahon.</p>
<p>Cody did not live to see the full realization of a fully inclusive United Methodist Church, and this morning, this makes me incredibly sad. There will be many other days to speak of those issues. But today, I simply hold space for my friend Cody, and for Mike, and for all my memories of him, and of the ways he has shaped my life.</p>
<p>And —I can only speak for me— if and when a fully inclusive UMC *does* become realized, Cody will remain in my heart as a Saint of the Church; as one of those who, through the fire in his belly, the justice in his mind, and the compassion in his heart, made it all possible.</p>
<p>His name and his ministry will not be forgotten.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7143528
2023-01-25T18:20:12-06:00
2023-01-25T18:30:08-06:00
Thomas a Kempis (Credo-bytes)
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/thomas-a-kempis-meme.001.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" /></figure>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140873
2023-01-20T13:39:07-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
UMC Update
<p>Kessler Park Friends:</p>
<p>It’s been some time since I’ve updated you on the ongoing “split” in the United Methodist Church. I’ve been trying very hard not to “over-share” the play-by-play of almost daily developments, because it seems to me this could get exhausting.</p>
<p>Further, as a part of my own spiritual discipline, I’ve been trying very hard to not speak ill of those who are leaving, or of what they are saying about the United Methodist Church, United Methodist pastors, and even (in one case) things they’ve said privately about me.</p>
<p>In these past months, I’ve been trying to follow the wise admonition: “When they go low, we’ll go high…”</p>
<p>So, I’ll continue that effort in what I say here.</p>
<p>That said, almost every week, one of our members —or somebody I know in the greater United Methodist world— calls or emails me a question about these matters.</p>
<p>So, today, a brief update.</p>
<p>The calls I am getting are from frustrated and confused people, who are “hearing things” that trouble them.</p>
<p>They are hearing accusations being made about the future United Methodist Church, about what United Methodist pastors believe now, and will believe in the future. In some cases…and I know this is a strong word…there are lies being intentionally propagated by those who are leaving the UMC.</p>
<p>I don’t use the word “lie” lightly. But I honestly don’t know what else to call some of this.</p>
<p>Let’s back up a moment…</p>
<p>You might recall that many months ago, I<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2022/06/07/what-divorce-professionals-can-teach-the-umc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> shared with you my theory that the United Methodist Church was going through a “divorce” of sorts</a>. And, like divorces in our real-life families, the adult partners always have a choice as to how they will respond to the reality of the situation.</p>
<p>I also know divorce is a hard and painful subject for many, and even using the metaphor at all could stir up some people’s trauma. That is not my intention.</p>
<p>That said, I’m sure we have all seen how, sometimes, the parties in a divorce speak poorly about one another. Or, in some situations, it’s just one party who speaks poorly about the other.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, over the past few months, we’ve seen just that.</p>
<p>It’s become very clear to me that *some* (not all) of the pastors leaving for the more conservative “Global Methodist Church (GMC)” are choosing to speak poorly about those of us who will remain United Methodist.</p>
<p>You might immediately ask, “What are they saying?!”</p>
<p>But I’m not going to repeat the falsehoods and insinuations they are making, because I don’t want to give them oxygen. It is clear to me there is a “talking points” document being circulated in all sorts of cities and towns across the nation. A lot of what’s being said has an eerie consistency that indicates some “talking point” coordination.</p>
<p>Further, I will say that I do not believe that lay folks are leading this effort. Tragically, my observation is that almost all of these falsehoods and secret insinuations are coming from clergy (again, not all…), and most tragically, even from some Bishops.</p>
<p>Many months ago now, I urged all parties to not do this. I urged that, as this process unfolded, we not speak ill about one another.</p>
<p>I urged those who were leaving to just…leave…with our blessing and our prayers…and allow those of us who seek to stay to move on with our mission for Jesus.</p>
<p>Sadly, my sense is that what I feared might happen instead has come to fruition.</p>
<p>Because a congregation must meet a “Supermajority” threshold to leave (66.7%), some (again, not all) GMC-leaning pastors have felt the need to say ridiculous things about the UMC…in an attempt to sway votes toward leaving. Others have just “declared independence” from the UMC, without following the separation protocol.</p>
<p>Again, this was a somewhat predictable result of the supermajority requirement. It forces the rhetoric to become intentionally extreme, in an attempt to sway lay folks.</p>
<p>But, based on the calls I am getting from various layfolks (almost every week) it’s not working. Folks are *not* being swayed. If anything, they’re just sad and confused that pastors and bishops would behave this way.</p>
<p>They’re disappointed in the GMC-leaning pastors and Bishops who are resorting to such tactics. It feels unseemly and, frankly, gross.</p>
<p>And, it is. Even though it’s incredibly predictable, that doesn’t make it any less tragic.</p>
<p>So, friends, let me end by “going high.” Instead of becoming defensive about the UMC, or bitter about these tactics, let me again re-state what I’ve told you for several years now…</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/1fbb08b5-4364-4da5-96b8-2bee8280cc45_1_105_c.jpeg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
</div>
<p>Kessler Park UMC has a bright future.</p>
<p>We will continue be a beacon of light, love, and inclusion for all the people of North Oak Cliff. We will continue to believe Jesus is our Messiah, and continue to take the Bible seriously. We will continue preach and teach Christ’s resurrection, and uphold our Methodist doctrines and standards.</p>
<p>Every United Methodist pastor I personally know —conservative, moderate, or liberal— takes our polity, and our Book of Discipline seriously. I know I do. We all have and we all will.</p>
<p>(We may interpret the Discipline differently. We may disagree with how “complaints” are dealt with, but we all take the process seriously…)</p>
<p>Through the call of Jesus on our lives, we will *also* welcome with open arms people of all sexual orientations, races, nationalities, and economic circumstances.</p>
<p>This is consistent with our Mission Statement:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><strong>“We are a community of hope,<br>founded in faith,<br>fostering spiritual growth<br>and meeting human needs<br>by reflecting God’s love<br>in Christ’s name.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We will pray for those who are leaving for the Global Methodist Church. We will ask that they go quietly, and in peace.</p>
<p>We cannot control what others say about us. We cannot control what they do. But we *can* continue to focus on the blessings God gives us, and the mission field God places in front of us.</p>
<p>We will continue to offer worship that renews us for our journey. We will continue to welcome new members (several in the past few weeks!).</p>
<p>We will continue ministries for people of all ages, and acts of justice and compassion in North Oak Cliff. And we will trust that God will be with us in every step we take.</p>
<p>Grace and Peace,</p>
<p>Eric Folkerth</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140874
2023-01-06T11:40:44-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:19-06:00
Jan 6: “The Dream Repeats Itself”
<p>It’s time to reclaim January 6th. It’s time to remember that, for 2,000 years, this date had a meaning not at all connected with Donald Trump and the insurrectionist takeover of our nation’s Capitol.</p>
<p>I am not suggesting we “forget” the Insurrection and its murderous outcomes. I’m not suggesting we make the mistakes that the Capitol architect did, and erase all damage done by those who sought to overthrow the US Government. But I *am* suggestion that we remember what January 6th has always been (at least, for those of us in Western Christianity…)</p>
<p>Today is is the Feast Day of the Epiphany. It’s the date that comes after the end of the Christmas season. (That’s right, it’s only as of today that season is *actually* over)</p>
<p>Epiphany is the day we recall the coming of the Magi to visit Jesus. And, we also tend to recall all the associated stories around it.</p>
<p>For Christians, because January 6th always already had a clear association and meaning in our heads, the past few years have been shall we say, surreal. It’s like those poor folks who had birthdays around September 11th for the first years after that horrific event. For several years, nobody wanted to celebrate anything in September.</p>
<p>Thankfully, that has passed, and the joy of September birthdays has returned.</p>
<p>I’m suggesting two things:</p>
<p>— It’s time to reclaim January 6th’s Epiphany message and what it teaches us.</p>
<p>— Simultaneously, we must never forget the Insurrection either.</p>
<p>Every character in the Epiphany story is full of fascination for us all.</p>
<p>The “Magi.”</p>
<p>That’s their real name. Anybody who tells you that they were kings —along the lines of, say, Charles— is kidding themselves. The word “Magi” is where we get our word “magician” from. They were sorcerers of a sort. If Evangelical Christians didn’t like the story so much, they might condemn them as practicers of “dark arts” or “witchcraft.”</p>
<p>Please understand, neither I, nor anyone else, actually know who they were or what spirituality they practiced. All we know is they aren’t claimed as Jewish, and they are claimed as foreigners. Therefore by definition must have practiced a foreign spirituality of some kind.</p>
<p>They are the patron saints of “night people” like me.</p>
<p>They travel light, and only after the Sun has set.</p>
<p>Because the foolishly follow a special star sent to guide them.</p>
<p>It takes a special holy foolishness to “follow a star,” at night, down a trail you’ve never traveled before. But in this story, the God of Jesus is guiding these “foreigners,” and it’s another classic reminder of how the God of the Bible works in and through what seems to be a strange assortment of people.</p>
<p>Being especially religiously devout, in an orthodox way, is never a prerequisite for being a part of God’s story.</p>
<p>The other foolish thing they do visit the *current* King in order to see where the new King is.</p>
<p>In this, of course, reveals naiveté on their part. It illustrates that they can’t possibly be *real* kings; because every real king knows that he never gives up power willingly.</p>
<p>But they pay a state visit to King Herod, showing respect for his office.</p>
<p>Herod in this story appears to be much like Herod in real life. In fact, you can make a credible argument that we probably know more about King Herod than any other character that appears in the Gospels. There are more actual sources that cite Herod, and his actual reign as king, that cite any other named Gospel character (including Jesus…).</p>
<p>What we know of the “real life” King Herod actually tracts quite closely with how Matthew portrays him.</p>
<p>The Gospels accounts of Jesus are always told with the political context in mind. We are invited to make this comparison, because the story itself inserts political issues into the narrative. I’m not creating this comparison…it’s literally RIGHT THERE in the text.</p>
<p>Twelve days ago, I posted about Christmas and reminded you how Luke’s Gospel Christmas story very intentionally sets itself in the context of Roman power. Luke’s Gospel names the Emperor and Governor. It tells us that Mary, Joseph, and poor jewish peasants like them, are all traveling in a forced migration, at the bidding of the Empire.</p>
<p>Much is happening in this story of the Magi in Matthew’s Gospel. We must be honest, and say that there is no alternate source evidence to suggest that Herod murdered small boys. No one outside of Matthew tells that story. And many have suggested that because of this, it didn’t happen.</p>
<p>But let’s remember (while not allowing the next sentence to discount the horrific nature of the alleged act) the actual number of boys murdered would have “only” been 10-20…not hundreds and hundreds.</p>
<p>It’s credible to imagine that such an act, if it happened, would have never made to a broader audience.</p>
<p>But I’d suggest to you —since we don’t read the Bible as literal history— that whether it happened or not, the *tenor* of how Matthew portrays Herod is spot on.</p>
<p>The *actual* King Herod —described in other historical sources— murdered dozens of political rivals, gorged the eyes out of others. He murdered one of his own wives. He murdered three of his sons. He literally murdered one son as he, King Herod, was only hours away from death. He was described as bloodthirsty and deeply paranoid.</p>
<p>In fact, other historical source claim that when the Roman Emperor hears about all this, he quipped “It’s better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”</p>
<p>(This is a dig, of course. Jews of the time wouldn’t have touched pigs. So, ironically, the Emperor is joking that unclean animal is apparently “safer” than a king’s son…)</p>
<p>I mean, if a Roman Emperor thinks you’re murderous and paranoid, it must really be bad.</p>
<p>All this is to say: Whether the events of the Epiphany unfold as they are described, they speak to the actual King Herod’s actual personality.</p>
<p>Early readers of the Gospel would have said, “Yeah…that sounds like King Herod…”</p>
<p>Therefore, since the Gospels invite us to these comparisons, ever since January 6th, 2020… I haven’t been able to shake the eerie comparisons of actual King Herod to actual Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Here’s how it looks to me:</p>
<p>They are both deeply paranoid.</p>
<p>They both desperately ordered about subordinates</p>
<p>They are both desperate to keep power, and in denial when told it would be taken from them.</p>
<p>They are both “stirred up” a whole city.</p>
<p>They both baldfaced lied other guests about their culpability. (Herod lies to the Magi. Trump, to all of us…)</p>
<p>And finally, they both saw nothing wrong with flying into a murderous rage when he didn’t get his way.</p>
<p>I mean, the parallels are chilling.</p>
<p>The new film, “Amsterdam,” is set in the 1930s. Like the story of the Epiphany, it uses real-life events events to tell a story…a story of *another* murderous plot to unlawfully overthrow the United States government.</p>
<p>We would do well to remember that while Amsterdam is fiction, it borrows from actual, true events. Facists leaders within the United States REALLY DID try to overthrow our government.</p>
<p>Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, “Ultra,” provide even MORE chilling backstory to how our nation was threatened from facism from within….and how leaders, and the public, basically “forgot” the story.</p>
<p>In Amsterdam, the character played by Margo Robbie, says this:</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><strong>“The dream repeats itself since it forgets itself. That’s why it repeats itself. This is the good part. The bad part will repeat itself. But for now, this is the good part, in Amsterdam…”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>History doesn’t repeat.</p>
<p>But it damn sure rhymes.</p>
<p>These polarities echo down through history to us all…</p>
<p>Love and murderous tyrants…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-4.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Hope and paranoia…</p>
<p>Peace and acts of aggression and violence…</p>
<p>Joy and anger…</p>
<p>“The dream repeats itself since it forgets itself.”</p>
<p>And so we must tell stories that remind us, so that we don’t forget. We must never stop telling the story of the Insurrection, and just how close our nation came to falling.</p>
<p>We must remind ourselves, as David O. Russell does in the film, about other fascist take over plots.</p>
<p>But the Epiphany reminds us that the story has repeated itself for millennia….not just decades.</p>
<p>And the Epiphany points to the “way forward.”</p>
<p>It tell us “Pay attention to the foreigners, not the murderous king…be like those night-traveler mystics…”</p>
<p>Do what they do…</p>
<p>Follow a star…</p>
<p>Stay on the trail…
</p>
<p>Put one foot in front of the other…
</p>
<p>Don’t freak out.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140875
2023-01-04T11:31:06-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:19-06:00
Frightened Little Children
<p>We human creatures are deeply frail and fragile beings, and behind every tough exterior lives a frightened little child.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether we are “battle hardened soldiers,” or “bleeding heart artists.”</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if we are “brawny men,” “sensitive women,” or non-binary persons….or all the lovely configurations of all those descriptors with all of those beautiful genders and orientations.</p>
<p>My point is: That first sentence is true for all of us, no matter what exterior we have been given or have cultivated for ourselves.</p>
<p>And, if I may, one of the deep sicknesses in our society is that we’re tragically losing the ability to see this truth. Instead, we judge each other by the exteriors, not seeing the deep, common interior.</p>
<p>Inside every exterior, there lives a frightened little child.</p>
<p>Even inside the bodies of superhuman-looking NFL football players.</p>
<p>I don’t know what you saw the other night on that Cincinnati field —in those moments after “the hit” and before the ambulance drove away— but what I saw was a bunch of 300-pound scared, little children.</p>
<p>They were having exactly the same kind of reactions *any* of us would have, if we credibly believe we were watching someone die in front of our eyes.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/damar-hamlin-injury-nfl-reponse-scaled-1.jpg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Buffalo Bills gather as an ambulance parks on the field while CPR is administered to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) after a play in the first quarter of the NFL Week 17 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills at Paycor Stadium in Downtown Cincinnati on Monday, Jan. 2, 2023. The game was suspended with suspended in the first quarter after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) was taken away in an ambulance following a play.
Buffalo Bills At Cincinnati Bengals Week 17</figcaption></figure>
<p>Their reaction was, if I may, exactly what happened to *me* last summer, along Interstate 20 in Far West Texas. There, while traveling 80 mph (the legal limit), I saw the horrific sight of a body, tumbling over and over….a body that had fallen off its motorcycle, and was spinning like a boulder rolling down a mountain.</p>
<p>Except, there was no mountain. There was just the horrible fact of gravity and the truth that a body is going to spin a certain number of times before finally stopping, mere feet in front of my car.</p>
<p>I *still* don’t know if that man is alive today, and his bloodied frame and labored breathing haunts me.</p>
<p>As I slammed the brakes, gripped the steering wheel, all I could say, over and over, was “Oh my God…Oh my God…Oh my God…”</p>
<p>I said it…I screamed it…over and over…maybe as much as once for every tumble.</p>
<p>Because it was horrific.</p>
<p>I credibly thought I was watching somebody die.</p>
<p>When you hear the sports commentators, the professional pundits, talking about those football players and their reaction…</p>
<p>about how they were weeping…</p>
<p>about how they all knelt (because, what the hell else is there to do?)…</p>
<p>what you are seeing was their own “Oh my God…Oh my God…Oh my God…” moment.</p>
<p>These physical demigods —in pads and helmets that make them look for all the world like “Iron Man”— they wept.</p>
<p>They knelt.</p>
<p>They showed you, perhaps for the only time they ever will, their inner, scared, little child.</p>
<p>And whatever else you saw that night —whatever morality lessons you take from what happened on that Cincinnati field— I hope we all take the lesson that life is fragile.</p>
<p>For all of us. And, sooner or later, we all come face to face with seeing this truth with our own eyes.</p>
<p>Sure, if we play pro football, ride a motorcycle without a helmet, or refuse a COVID vaccine out of medical denial, we are statistically more likely to die than other humans.</p>
<p>But that moment of “Oh my God…Oh my God…Oh my God…” is coming for all of us.</p>
<p>I see that moment most often among family members of my church, as they summon me to be with them when their loved ones die.</p>
<p>In a little over a month, the Church will engage in one of its more healthy rituals. We’ll celebrate Ash Wednesday.</p>
<p>None of us like to talk about death, or to think too long about it. But once a year, many churches do a bold and ridiculous thing. We gather for worship and intentionally look each other squarely in the eye and say “you are going to die.”</p>
<p>Technically, we say “ Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”</p>
<p>Most of the time, we humans are not that honest with one another.</p>
<p>Most of the time, we have those walls up. We all do. We have the cultivated facades we all live behind</p>
<p>We keep up our guards, we don’t let our emotions show. And we like to pretend that we’ll live forever.</p>
<p>Football players are walking embodiments of this last truth.</p>
<p>They are young. (Young people believe they will live forever…)</p>
<p>They hit each other hard. (So, we create new technology for their pads and helmets, which paradoxically exacerbates their belief that they can hit even *harder,* and still live forever…)</p>
<p>You can criticize football as a sport all you want. And I will not speak pro/con in its defense.</p>
<p>What I will say is this: I saw something very tender, and very profound on that field. I saw that moment when people let their guards down, and for just a moment the scared, small child inside becomes visible.</p>
<p>Professionally, I’m blessed to to be invited into these kinds of tender moments with family members.</p>
<p>Monday night, millions of us got to see that moment, unbidden. For most of us, when that moment comes, it’s usually in the safety of a small group of family. (Or, in my case, a car on the highway…)</p>
<p>It’s pretty rare for millions of onlookers to be leering as your scared, inner child is suddenly revealed on national television.</p>
<p>Let me suggest… this is why some of you still don’t quite know how to feel about what you have seen. You don’t know what to feel, not just because it feels voyeuristic (of course it does…) but *also* because *you* are a scared, small child too.</p>
<p>So, I’ll do for you, what I hope you’ll continue to do for those players…I’ll hold space for the vulnerability of an “Oh my God…Oh my God…Oh my God…” moment.</p>
<p>Because one way or another, that moment will come to us all, whether our life-choices are careful, healthy, and measured; or reckless, thoughtless, and full of denial.</p>
<p>When that “Oh my God…Oh my God…Oh my God…” moment comes, however we got there, we all deserve a modicum of human compassion, from all who might be watching, at the sheer tender humanity of it all.</p>
<p>And whatever else you saw Monday night, I hope you saw that.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140876
2022-12-26T11:01:00-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
Christmas, Star Wars, and Greg Abbott
<p>This week, as I reread the first verses of Luke’s Christmas story, I thought about Rey (from Star Wars), and about my own governor, Greg Abbott.</p>
<p>Director JJ Abrams masterfully introduces the character of Rey to us in “The Force Awakens” in a sequence that is worthy of a careful look.</p>
<p>As John Williams’ brilliant score guides the action, Rey wordlessly scavenges inside the wrecked hull of a decaying Imperial warship.</p>
<p>First, we only see her face. Then, the camera pans back and we see where she is. The scale is overwhelming…her small, human frame set against the vast size of a massive, decaying imperial ship and the harshness of the Jakku desert.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-5.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Yes, the Empire has been long dead. But we already know that new imperial powers are rising. And the ominous message is inescapable:</p>
<p>Empire is always massive.</p>
<p>Empire is powerful in every generation.</p>
<p>Ordinary people are dwarfed by its scale.</p>
<p>And, every day, Rey lives her life in its shadow.</p>
<p>Whether you’ve ever realize this, Luke sets much the same scene with the very first verses of Jesus’ birth-story. They go by quickly. Many of us skip them, since we don’t understand the names or context.</p>
<p>But they serve the same function in the Gospel of Luke, as JJ Abrams’ opening scenes do with Rey:</p>
<p>“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”</p>
<p>Jesus, Mary, and Joseph —like Rey— are poor nobodies who live in the shadow of the power of Empire.</p>
<p>They are not resting, safe in their home when Jesus is born. They’re not even able to stay in a respectable rooming house. Jesus is born in a stable, nestled inside a trough where animals eat their food.</p>
<p>Luke pulls the camera back in these first verses, revealing the shadow of the power of the Empire, just as masterfully as Abrams pulls back to reveal that imperial ship. Greece’s original Empire has fallen to ruin, like that Star Wars destroyer. But Rome’s power has become the “First Order” of Jesus’ day.</p>
<p>Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are in Bethlehem *because* of the ubiquitous nature of imperial power.</p>
<p>Emperor Caesar Augustus has apparently decreed a kind of a “census.” We know nothing historically about this might have been. But Luke makes clear that it’s far more complicated than strolling down to some government office and filling out a form. (Something that would have been next to impossible anyway, since most folks couldn’t read…)</p>
<p>As Luke’s camera pulls back, it dawns on us this “registration” required the migration of thousands of imperial subjects, not just the Holy Family. Roman authorities demanded their subjects travel back to their ancestral homes.</p>
<p>This meant a long journey for Joseph and his pregnant fiancé. There’s actually no evidence that they had a donkey to ride. It’s likely that very pregnant Mary walked miles through scorching days and frigid nights, only to find “no room in the inn.”</p>
<p>There is “no room” because of the chaos of so many migrants, forced to make the same journey, and scavenge for the same scarce lodging in a town that wasn’t their home either.</p>
<p>This is how Luke pulls that camera back with these forgotten verses; to remind us of Empire’s power to oppress countless other poor migrants too.</p>
<p>We also don’t know anything about Governor Quirinius. We are left to assume he is some mid-level regional authority, working for seamlessly with the Empire to oppress the lives of those poor migrants.</p>
<p>Which gets me to Governor Greg Abbott, and his Christmas Eve stunt.</p>
<p>On a day when millions of Christians, in churches around the world, read these VERY verses —the story of migrant families oppressed by a regional Governor— our *actual regional governor* decided to it would be a good time to do the same thing.</p>
<p>Gov. Abbott thought it made good TV to send buses of migrants from my state into the jaws of the most bitter winter storm to hit the nation in years.</p>
<p>Gov. Abbott dropped poor migrants by the side of the road —wearing only sweatshirts and shorts, with no food, no plan for shelter— straight into the chaos and the cold of our nation’s 2022 Christmas Eve.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-6.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Even the good people of Buffalo New York were crying “uncle” in the face of this brutal storm. And they’re *used* to this stuff. Just imagine migrants in shorts and sweatshirts…</p>
<p>It’s a disgusting use of God’s children as political props for TV, for sure. But it’s also hard to miss literal one-to-one comparison to the Christmas story.</p>
<p>Gov. Abbott is not a shepherd.</p>
<p>Gov. Abbott is not “Magi.”</p>
<p>He’s not an expectant Father.</p>
<p>But Gov. Abbott IS an actual GOVERNOR.</p>
<p>And there’s a governor in Jesus’ birth story. And it’s pretty clear he’s not one of the good guys.</p>
<p>Abbott = Quirinius</p>
<p>You really couldn’t script this in Hollywood. Nobody would believe it. It would play like Mr. Potter in “It’s A Wonderful Life” …a villain almost too cruel to exist IRL.</p>
<p>But this all actually happened the other day…IRL.</p>
<p>Our governor really did this.</p>
<p>I can only imagine he believes this will fire up his political base somehow…I don’t know, I honest-to-god can’t get inside his head.</p>
<p>But I know this: it’s divisive.</p>
<p>It’s classic wedge politics, designed to turn Americans against one another…to “own the libs,” and to fire up his “base.”</p>
<p>Serious question: Are there really fellow Americans who cheer pictures of under-clothed, underfed, under-housed, migrants, shivering in the cold on Christmas Eve?!</p>
<p>Do folks get JOY from this?</p>
<p>Human being should never be used as political props. Abbott is picking on migrants specifically because they can’t fight back. Politicians tend to “Otherize” groups with the least amount of power and influence…precisely because they believe there is no blowback, no downside, to doing it.</p>
<p>If you are cheering this move by Abbott, you are cheering against the clear message of the Christmas story in the Gospel, and the Biblical mandate to “treat the sojourner like the citizen.”</p>
<p>There is no story in the Bible where God *cheers* the oppression of poor, ordinary people.</p>
<p>Quite the opposite. There are dozens of places where God calls for the power of Empire to fall, and the hope of the poor to rise. In dozens of Bible verses, God tells those who want to be seen as “holy people” to treat foreigners the exact same way they treat themselves.</p>
<p>Jesus is born as a migrant baby, into an earthly family subject to the power of an imperial governor. The baby born at Christmas was sent to stand as the ultimate reminder of how God moves in and through all human beings, not just the rich and powerful.</p>
<p>When he grew into an adult, he would tell a parable about how when we love the least, the lost, the left out, the Otherized, we are not just doing “charity,” but we are actually loving God. (Matthew 25). Loving the least and left out IS loving God.</p>
<p>Pay attention, friends.</p>
<p>The Christmas story has a lot to each us about the power of Empire, and God’s desire to stand with the migrant poor.</p>
<p>I wonder sometimes if my Governor has ever actually read it.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140877
2022-12-25T11:20:28-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
Christmas and Shit
<p>It’s Christmas Day, and so it’s the perfect day to talk about shit.</p>
<p>I’ve probably already lost some of you, because you don’t think preachers are supposed to use such words. But for those who aren’t already writing my Bishop (feel free) read along….</p>
<p>Artists can get away with such words better than preachers. That’s probably sad but true. So, please find two artistic renderings of the word “shit” in relation to the Christmas story…</p>
<p>First, this drawing from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/davehayward?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=-%5DK-R">David Hayward</a>, known to many of you as “The Naked Pastor.”</p>
<p>It’s one of my favorite renderings of the Nativity scene, ever. I love it because it strips away the far too holy patina that churches, theologians, and even secular culture place around the story.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>We draw these pictures of halos, throngs of angels, holy light. And Christmas is *most definitely* about light. But if we focus *only* on the spiritual light, that “holy patina” can get so thick, we fail to see the humanity. And the humanity of the Christmas story is a story that came to “Nobodies, Animals, Unclean, Foreigners” and yes…included a lot of shit.</p>
<p>What this should tell us is that God’s gracious incarnation doesn’t come to the perfect places in our lives, it comes into the places where everything seems shitty too, into places we humans decide are unclean and messy.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.facebook.com/frederick.buechner.5?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Frederick Buechner</a> once said, the problem with most Christians is that we spend too much time trying to be holier than God. He’s 100% correct in this. And that’s because of the very dynamic I’ve just been describing.</p>
<p>The big, fancy theological way to say it is: We humans fail to realize that God’s incarnation is alway mediated through people. And people are messy, because people are human.</p>
<p>From the time of the “first perfect garden,” there were *already* things like talking snakes inside God’s “perfect” creation.</p>
<p>I put “perfect” in quotes, because human perfection always includes things that not only feel less than perfect, they feel outright shitty.</p>
<p>Buechner —a Christian minister himself— once wrote a long treatise on all of this, in novels that collectively are called “The Book of Bebb.” In this section, Leo Bebb, a relatively shady evangelist, is talking with Antonio about a conversation he had with a third man, named Roebuck.</p>
<p>It’s pretty deep, if you have the ears to hear it…</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“Bebb said, “That man knows his history, Antonio. It’s his special subject, and he knows it inside and out. He reeled off a whole list of times and places where he said we’d met before. He told about the days they had children eight, ten years old and up working in mines like pack mules maybe twelve hours in a stretch till their pitiful little bodies were nothing but skin and bones and they couldn’t hardly se in the daylight while people like me went on looking the other direction and preaching they kingdom come. He told about the days they tore the living flesh off people with red-hot tongs and broke their legs with hammers because they didn’t believe like they should about doctrine. He went on how those old-time crusaders used religion for an excuse to rape women and raise hell and how back in slavery times there was ministers of the Gospel owned slaves just like everybody else and proved out of scripture it was the way things was meant to be. I don’t suppose there was a single miserable thing anybody ever did in the name of Jesus that Roebuck didn’t spell out chapter and verse before he was done. He enjoyed it. You could tell from the way he worked his face what a good time he was having…”</p>
<p>“”You take a word like shit, Antonio. A preacher isn’t even supposed to know there is those kind of words, and Roebuck, he thought he’d throw me a curve just using it. I said, ‘Roebuck, you think I don’t know about shit? What you’ve been telling me about isn’t even a millionth part of all the shit there is because you’ve stuck to just the religious shit, and that’s only one kind of all there is because piled up right alongside it there’s a million other kinds….You take anything people have ever done in this world, and the best you can say about any of it is that it’s maybe one part honest and well-meant and the other nine parts shit. If I close my eyelid down on all the shit there is in the world, I’ve still got to face up to all the shit there is in me, because I’m full of it too, Roebuck. I’m not denying it. And you’re full of it. It’s the shit in us is part of what makes us brothers, you and me.’ I used that word shit to him till it begun to sound like I invented it.”</p>
<p>“”He caught me by surprise. I caught him by surprise. A preacher talking about things like – Antonio, shit is what preachers have been talking about since Moses except the word they’re more like to use is sin. Only Roebuck didn’t know that. It shut him up for a minute. Then he said, ‘If the world’s mostly shit, Bebb, where’s God?’ Just like that – where’s God?‘</p>
<p>“”I said, ‘I’ll tell you about shit, Roebuck. Take it from an expert. There’s two main things about it. One thing is it’s stink and corruption and waste. The other thing is if you don’t pile it up too thick in any one place, it makes the seeds grow.’ I said, ‘Roebuck, God’s where there’s seeds growing. God’s where there’s something no bigger than the head of a pin starting to inch up out of the stink and dark of shit towards the light of day.’ I said, ‘Roebuck, God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son down here into the shit with the rest of us so something green could happen, something small and green and hopeful.’”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>———</p>
<p>This week, I’m aware that some churches I know have done some good stuff for the homeless in our world. Over at Oak Lawn UMC, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rachel.g.baughman?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Rachel Griffin Baughman</a> and a slew of volunteers have been housing our homeless neighbors. Myself and Andrew McGregor have been driving our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC/?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=kK-R">Kessler Park United Methodist Church</a> van around to try to find folks. Below is a pic of a place we visited this week.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-1.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>If you’re in Dallas and Oak Cliff, these places are very close to you. I’m also aware that up in Denver, our brother <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bahensley?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Ben Anderson David Hensley</a> has been housing folks in their church too, and you’ll see a pic of that too.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-2.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>On Christmas Eve eve, we were in Oak Lawn, talking to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ryan.wager.50?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZUSMyxy9fBJf9k93XFG856lAY8mX81Dz-AZaVRoSbF_82VLCHgPiKW_Ji94taGxEzmH7u_EK0lb4C4xHDi7k6rtMQOtpbCmouqEvTQTY95k74nk5LyqbQiSWFIfhNM-mSGFkeSFsHfx4dIc5zG4EqVVp838hS3sdkAFCTTV2BPl_Q&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Ryan Wager</a>, when a volunteer came up and said “Somebody just vomited in the bathroom.”</p>
<p>Yep…that’s it right there.</p>
<p>I’m not at all suggesting that working with the homeless is the only way to experience God’s incarnational grace.</p>
<p>But I’m hopefully reminding you that, whatever else is going on in your life, God is not only present in that holy, Christmas Eve moment when we sing Silent Night and light our candles. (Pic below of last night…)</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-3.png?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Yes, of course, God is present there. God, by definition, must be.</p>
<p>But God is *also* present in all times and places. God is present in the vomit of a church bathroom.</p>
<p>God is present in your home this holiday…whether everything has gone according to plan, or whether nothing feels as you think it should.</p>
<p>Buechner’s revisioning of John 3: 16 has it just right:</p>
<p>“God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son down here into the shit with the rest of us so something green could happen, something small and green and hopeful.’”</p>
<p>That’s the Christmas message of God’s incarnational love for all of God’s children and God’s world.</p>
<p>And whenever we Christians are blessed to stop trying to be “more holy than God,” we gain the tremendous blessing of seeing God’s Spirit working alongside human flesh, in all places and at all times, in God’s chaotic, beautiful world.</p>
<p>Merry Christmas, everybody.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140878
2022-11-23T12:00:44-06:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
“Remind Me Again…” (Thanksgiving 2022)
<p>“Now…remind me again….which of the Beatles are still alive?”</p>
<p>“Paul and Ringo, Mom.”</p>
<p>It is Thanksgiving Day, one year ago tomorrow. We are at our family’s Lakehouse, and we are watching Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary which has just dropped for streaming that very day.</p>
<p>More accurately, *I* am watching the documentary, and the rest of my family is tolerating it in levels of interest ranging from mild engagement to polite indifference. I’m watching it because…well, it was freaking awesome.</p>
<p>But as the show goes on, Mom asks again…</p>
<p>“Now…remind me again….which of the Beatles are still alive?”</p>
<p>“Paul and Ringo, Mom.”</p>
<p>And then, about an hour after this…</p>
<p>“Now…remind me again….which of the Beatles are still alive?”</p>
<p>“Paul and Ringo, Mom.”</p>
<p>And finally, one more time about an hour later.</p>
<p>Within 2-3 hours that day, she sits down to watch the show for a moment. She stands up to do other things. But she asks this exact same question, in exactly the same way, four times.</p>
<p>“Now…remind me again….which of the Beatles are still alive?”</p>
<p>“Paul and Ringo, Mom.”</p>
<p>Somewhere between the third and forth repetition, the adults in the room —Dennise, Maria, my Sister— shoot each other a worried glance.</p>
<p>In the weeks following Christmas, it would become clear what that glance feared: that Mom has dementia issues. A few weeks after that, a large mass in her colon would be discovered. Almost eight months to the day after her repeated questions about the Fab Four, Mom would be gone.</p>
<p>It’s now almost exactly a year later, and all this comes replaying back to my brain. It feels like those weeks following these questions simultaneously moved in slow motion, and also raced by.</p>
<p>For the first few months, I beat myself up about not noticing these signs; not acting sooner, not jumping into high gear to get my Mom checked out.</p>
<p>Specifically, it was this very set of questions —this moment one year ago— that wouldn’t let me go.</p>
<p>I’d be in bed, trying to fall asleep, and I’d hear…</p>
<p>“Now…remind me again….which of the Beatles are still alive?”</p>
<p>“Paul and Ringo, Mom.”</p>
<p>And I’d ask myself, “How did I…how did we…not see in that moment?! Why didn’t I do more?”</p>
<p>Part of the answer is that my Mom was always expert at changing the subject away from her. The reality is that, now and then, we all *would* ask about what seemed to be lapses in memory.</p>
<p>And sometimes, she would shoot back with some quip about how she was in her mid-80s, and how memory issues just happen when you’re that age.</p>
<p>OK, fair enough, actually.</p>
<p>That said, among the myriad of competing voices in my head, some comforting, some scolding; this “why didn’t I see this?” question still haunts me from time to time. Especially late at night, when I’m tired, or sad, or melancholy; and painful memories and voices decide to pay a call.</p>
<p>But as cancer also raced through her body, I also began to be able to look back with more realism.</p>
<p>Already, in the moment these Beatles questions were first asked, it was very likely that the final outcome was already fixed.</p>
<p>I just didn’t know it. None of us did.</p>
<p>All that was left was for us to catch up to that horrible truth.</p>
<p>For years —on this very day I am writing these words— our family would gather from across the state, to head to our family Lakehouse. In one configuration or another, some part of our family has been there almost every year.</p>
<p>This year, no one will be there. That house will be silent, and I can only assume we will all be gathering with our individual families.</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-medium is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/b0c26f11-462d-4d89-95f5-35d0ca216d29_1_105_c.jpeg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="The Lakehouse, Last Thanksgiving" height="322" width="431" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Forest @ Our Lakehouse, Last Thanksgiving</figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p>This, it seems to me, is as it should be. It’s likely time for some new traditions. I can only speak for myself and say, being at the Lakehouse tomorrow would just be too painful.</p>
<p>In the midst of all I’ve here described, I know this…</p>
<p>Somewhere in the midst of the competing voices in my head, is a comforting voice of God. It’s a voice that speaks to me the words of grace I have spoken to grieving people for more than thirty years now.</p>
<p>“Grief is like waves in the ocean,” God says, “sometimes a big one just comes out of nowhere and slaps you in the chest…and that’s just how grief works…”</p>
<p>“Holidays tend to be hard. Memories, traditions, joys and sorrows, come back in those waves, unbidden. And the only way through them…is through them…”</p>
<p>It’s been a very hard year. The only “normal” feeling weeks for me have been these past few precious weeks of September/October. After the sheer exhaustion of Spring/Summer, I celebrated my 60th Birthday, and have enjoyed many “normal in-person” events. Now and then this Fall, it almost felt like normal life is returning. Now and then the grief even recedes for a few precious days.</p>
<p>But the pace lately is also exhausting, too. I’m definitely out of practice, being back “in the world.” Even without my grief about Mom, this journey to some kind of “new normal” is not fun. And, as I have known for years, after a loss “holidays are hard.”</p>
<p>Tomorrow, we’ll gather with Dennise’s family, at our house, for a big Thanksgiving Day meal. We’ve done this before with them, but never on the actual day. There will be kids, and family, and laughter. Maybe it’s the beginning of another long tradition. Maybe it’s just what we’re doing this year.</p>
<p>Who knows?</p>
<p>Who can ever truly say when something good, or something bad, starts?</p>
<p>On that first Lakehouse Thanksgiving, we probably never envisioned we were starting a 25-year tradition.</p>
<p>A year ago tomorrow, I never imagined what the question “which of the Beatles are still alive?” would reveal about the months to come.</p>
<p>Frederick Buechner writes extensively about how out of seeming random life-events, meaning gradually emerges.</p>
<p>“You get married, a child is born or not born, in the middle of the night there is a knocking at the door, on the way home through the park you see a man feeding pigeons, all the tests come in negative and the doctor gives you back your life again: incident follows incident helter-skelter leading apparently nowhere, but then once in a while there is the suggestion of purpose, meaning, direction, the suggestion of plot, the suggestion that, however clumsily, your life is trying to tell you something, take you somewhere.</p>
<p>Or random sounds: the clock’s tick-tock, voices outside the window, footsteps on the stair, a bird singing, and then just for a moment a hint of melody.”</p>
<p>So, tomorrow, I will simply listen for the “suggestions of a plot;” the suggestion that life is taking me somewhere.</p>
<p>I give thanks for my Sisters and their families, and my deep and continuing gratitude toward them.</p>
<p>I’ll be giving thanks for Dennise, Maria, and the big Familia Garcia.</p>
<p>I’ll be giving thanks for the grace and patience of so many friends, and our Church, who have not only tolerated, but genuinely showed-up, and allowed me space for the awkward journey of this year.</p>
<p>I’ll be trusting in moments of grace, beauty, hope —trusting that moments of gratitude will well up— in the midst of what will likely still be a deep seasonal sorrow.</p>
<p>I’ll be thinking about many more of you, out in this big world, walking through your own moments and seasons of grief, and looking for the meaning and hope in them. As we continue to to recover from the pandemic, and from the losses it brought to us, many of you will have your own similar stories to these I’ve just shared. If so, I share these to remind you that you are not alone.</p>
<p>In fact, I know of a family dear to me, whose own patriarch is in the hospital today. (I’ll be heading to see them in a moment…) Instead of a big “home gathering” this family expected this year —flying in from around the country— they’ll gather around in hospital waiting area, and the fold-out couch beside beeping machines and IV bags.</p>
<p>Sooner or later, we all have holidays like this. This the way of life.</p>
<p>If the past year has taught me anything, it’s that it’s possible to find moments of peace and gratitude, even in the midst of trying times like these; by focusing on my gratitude and paying attention to the small graces as they come.</p>
<p>So, my prayer for you this Thanksgiving is: Whether you continue blessed family traditions, whether this year has thrown you curves you did not expect, may you find moments of peace and gratitude this Thanksgiving.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140879
2022-10-31T12:07:29-05:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
Democracy Really IS on the Ballot
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.””<br>Luke 15: 1-2</p>
<p>“Everyone who saw this grumbled, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”<br>Luke 19: 7</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve been thinking about Zacchaeus, I’ve been thinking about election, and I’ve been thinking about leaders who gaslight and morally license bad behavior, and the generally fickle nature of all those who follow them.</p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, Democracy is on the ballot this Fall.</p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, this is the most crucial issue in this election.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/vote-1.jpg?w=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Because all across the nation, election-deniers are on the ballot, promising that if they are elected they will forever change the way American votes are counted, and usher the very real possibility of future Constitutional crisis.</p>
<p>We should believe that they will do what they say they will do. Already we are seeing how sinister efforts at voter suppression are keeping voters away from the polls.</p>
<p>All across the nation, scores of other politicians who “once upon a time” supported Donald Trump, are running for re-election again; politicians who engaged in exactly the same kind of gaslighting he used for four years, or who sat quietly and allowed it to happen. They’re hoping you won’t notice any of that now, that you’ve moved on; hoping that when you pull the lever, you’ll focus on the economy or the price of gasoline.</p>
<p>I’m not at all making light of the very real suffering that’s out there right now. I understand that things truly are bad, and getting worse especially for the poor and working class. I’m not at all denying that both parties have failed the working class.</p>
<p>But only one party promises more voters suppression, and actively courts and supports those who *promise* to overturn the will of the American people in elections.</p>
<p>During the last years of the Trump presidency, I repeatedly said this: “We will be fighting against what has been unleashed here for the rest of our lives.”</p>
<p>My friends, we still are.</p>
<p>And maybe you no longer care about our system of government. Maybe you’re among those who believe we must “burn it all down.”</p>
<p>While I understand the impetus for these emotions, the very real concept that our Constitutional Republic could fall to totalitarianism is as possible, or more possible, than it’s ever been before. And should that happen, it is a fantasy to believe that the poor and marginalized will fair better. As we look back through history, there are no credible examples of totalitarian states that care for the poor and marginalized.</p>
<p>None.</p>
<p>Therefore, Democracy is the most important thing on the ballot this Fall. That is because of what I said before the 2020 election: That the fight against totalitarianism will take YEARS, not only one election cycle.</p>
<p>Today, if I’m being honest, things don’t look great.</p>
<p>Polls are showing surprisingly close races across the country. And maybe you have reasons for why this is so.</p>
<p>From the Right you can lecture me about the economy.</p>
<p>From the Left, you can lecture me on how the poor and marginalized feel so disempowered and despondent that there is no will-to-vote left, or trust in the system.</p>
<p>I get all of that.</p>
<p>And even after we’ve said all of it, none of it negates the obvious fact that democracy is on the ballot.</p>
<p>The ability to elect *any* politician from the center-to-left of American politics, in any future national election, is currently at stake. The fight against totalitarianism is very much alive. None of the last two sentences is hyperbole.</p>
<p>So, please vote.</p>
<p>All of that said, as I read my Bible lessons this week, these two verses leapt out at me. We’ve been reading lessons from the Gospel of Luke all through the Fall. And a reminder about leaders and their followers hit me right between the eyes as I compared these two verses.</p>
<p>In Chapter 15 of Luke, Jesus tells his three great “Parables of the Lost.” (Lost Coin, Lost Sheep, Lost Son).</p>
<p>But the three parables are framed by this verse: “All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.””</p>
<p>It is problematic to talk about Pharisees today, because of a history of Christian Anti-Semitism. But my worry is that our fear of that allows us to let modern *Christians* off the hook.</p>
<p>Because in OUR day, the most clear examples of Pharisees are among Christian Nationalists and their throught leaders. They gaslight the people. They sew dissension, discord and division in exactly the way Luke imagines Bible Pharisees do. (Again, not real Pharisees, but as they are portrayed in the Bible…)</p>
<p>Understanding the equation “Bible Pharisee = Christian Nationalist” is not only helpful, but essential.</p>
<p>If you’re still unconvinced by this, let’s just call them “Thought Leaders.” The Pharisees and “legal experts” of Jesus’ day were like contemporary pundits, preachers, and politicians. And they “grumble” at every chance they get about how Jesus is associating with the outcasts and the marginalized.</p>
<p>He’s welcoming women. He’s healing the children of Roman soldiers. And he’s even staying at the homes of “Tax Collectors.”</p>
<p>Tax Collectors, it’s widely believed, were even more despised in Jesus’ day than they are in ours. Regular Jews saw them as collaborators with Roman Imperial power. They were Jews, but they worked as a kind of contractor for Rome. And it’s widely believed they often took more tax from ordinary people than they should, and kept some back for themselves.</p>
<p>So, in Chapter 15, Jesus overhears the grumbling of these “Thought Leaders.” And he tells three stories because of it.</p>
<p>The stories are about how he has come to help find the lost.</p>
<p>In fact, the last line of the stories includes this: “He was lost and is found.”</p>
<p>These three stories even include a character designed specifically for these “Thought Leaders” —the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son— to remind them that God loves them too…but that Jesus has a special call to draw the circle wide and include even MORE folks at the table.</p>
<p>These “Thought Leaders” don’t seem convinced. They keep “grumbling.” They keep looking for ways to trip Jesus up.</p>
<p>Finally, in Chapter 19, we get to the story of Zacchaeus. He is one of those hated “Tax Collectors.” Only it’s even worse, because he’s a “Chief” tax collector…like being a mid-level Mafia Don.</p>
<p>Jesus rides into town in the midst of a crowd that looks to be very much the size of the Palm Sunday crowd later. It’s a lot of people. Jesus has to know that the authorities are still out to get him. But he stops when he comes to Zacchaeus The Chief Tax Collector.</p>
<p>He tells Zacchaeus to come down from the tree, and he insists that he is to be Zacchaeus’ overnight and dinner guest.</p>
<p>And suddenly, we hear the same line we hear in Chapter 15. Except different people are saying it.</p>
<p>Now when they see Jesus stop and honor Zacchaues, is says that EVERYONE grumbles: “This man eats with sinners…”</p>
<p>Did you catch what’s happened?!</p>
<p>Pay attention.</p>
<p>An important thing has just happened, and an important switch has been thrown.</p>
<p>The negative spin of the “Thought Leaders” in Chapter 15 is now being parroted by the ENTIRE CROWD.</p>
<p>The EXACT. SAME. PHRASE.</p>
<p>The people —apparently even the adoring crowds around Jesus— have bought into the critique of the Thought Leaders.</p>
<p>Friends, there’s no better example in the Bible of just how gaslighting works…of just how “moral licensing” works.</p>
<p>In our day, Right Wing politicians and pundits relentlessly parroted the lies of Donald Trump. So much so, that some of his followers attempted to overthrow the US government on January 6th. So much so that, even this week, they were still trying to kill Nancy Pelosi.</p>
<p>There is a deep sickness in our land. There is a potentially *fatal* sickness among the leadership class of our country.</p>
<p>For four years, far too many Thought Leaders defended the lies of our ex-President. They parroted his lies about President Obama’s birth. They parroted his hesitancy about the vaccine, or his crazy theories about bleach and COVID. They finally believed his “Big Lie” about the 2020 election.</p>
<p>Far too many will hear this recitation as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”</p>
<p>And that, friends, is part of the problem too. That, friends, is just how insidious these lies are, once they are repeated over and over. The leadership class of our world apparently believes that they can say anything they want, at any time they want, and not face any repercussions.</p>
<p>But the constant lies never just “die out,” they get reborn in a thousand ways among the people. They get “parroted back” in a thousand small ways in our present day. They are literally in the campaigns of people on the ballot today, all across the country.</p>
<p>Please also note: Jesus has to know exactly what he’s doing when he stops and greets Zacchaeus. He has to know that it won’t be popular to for him to stop and pay special attention to this guy everybody assumes must be a soundrel.</p>
<p>But Jesus does it anyway. And he finishes his encounter with Zacchaeus with the same consistent message of Chapter 15:</p>
<p>“The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”</p>
<p>In Jesus’ day, the lies of “Thought Leaders” eventually gets you a crowd of people parroting their spin.</p>
<p>In our day, it gets you a guy with a hammer trying to kill Paul Pelosi.</p>
<p>Democracy is on the ballot this November, make no mistake.</p>
<p>Lives are in the balance. The future of our Republic could well be in the balance.</p>
<p>There is only one true and final way to tamp down the lies that continue to be spread by Christian Nationalist Thought Leaders, and parroted back by their followers.</p>
<p>It’s not through brilliant logic.</p>
<p>It’s not through just waiting them out, hoping some die off of old age, or get bored or lose interest.</p>
<p>It’s not by putting your head in the sand, going back to “normal” life, and hoping for the best.</p>
<p>It’s through your VOTE.</p>
<p>Please. Get out and vote.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140880
2022-09-29T12:16:43-05:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
Mom’s Birthday
<p>Today would be my Mom’s 88th Birthday, and we miss her alot. Anniversaries are hard.</p>
<p>But, I’ve been thinking alot about her 60th birthday this month, since I just had mine. That day –right about this time of morning, on my birthday– was extremely hard for me.</p>
<p>September has always been “birthday month” for us. Especially since Maria came along and joined us twenty-five years ago. During almost every “birthday month” for the past twenty-five, we’ve have the privilege of all three gone to dinner somewhere.</p>
<p>So, yeah, this month is different. And there’s a huge hole.</p>
<p>But I am not only thinking about Mom’s 60th birthday because I just had mine, or because I feel old and miss her. I’m thinking about her because on her 60th she chose to throw a big party and invite all her friends. And that party had a special meaning for her.</p>
<p>She’d gone back to work, for some years at that point. She was a paralegal who traveled all over the country. She had a brand new set of “work friends” that she made in 50s.</p>
<p>Mom never expected to live to age 60. HER Mom, my grandmother, *died* at age sixty. She had breast cancer, and went through horrible, 1960s-era, treatments for the last decade of her life. In fact, one of the things I’ve re-learned about my few, faint, memories of “Mamaw” –they are mostly just feelings of a loving presence– is that she was dying the entire time she knew the little-boy-me. That’s a sobering thing to realize, looking back as an adult.</p>
<p>This early death of her own Mother provided both a deep grief and strong resolve that forever shaped my Mom’s life. It’s a part of what drove her cherish every day she had.</p>
<p>And so…It’s a part of why she wanted to throw this 60th party for herself…to celebrate the fact that she made it, and that she was now standing in a boat, at the edge of a great, unknown, ocean; for which she had no map, compass, or sextant.</p>
<p>That uncertain future lasted almost 28 more years.</p>
<p>A part of my dealing with estate issues has been to look through old family movies. I found the VCR tape –apparently filmed by me– of her 60th party.</p>
<p>Sure the hairstyles are a bit over-the-top. Hey, it was 1994…</p>
<p>You’ll see brief glimses of my sister, Dad, and Dennise. Dianne was in Bolivia, working in the Peace Corp, and embodying Mom’s message to seize every day. There are exactly THREE men present…me, my Dad…and third poor guy I don’t recognize.</p>
<p>The video includes a brief history of her life, written and narrated by Linda, pictures by Linda and Dad. This is well before iPhones and PowerPoint. The audio was a prerecorded cassette tape, and then the attempt was to manually synch to a carousel of slides…designed to play on repeat while folks drifted in and out of a room. The affect in my video here –since it obviously *didn’t* totally synch up– is kinda hilarious. Like I said, pretty impressive for a pre-iMovie world.</p>
<p>And also pre-grandchildren. Maybe the best, and humbling, reminder to me, in my sadness today, is just how much more time Mom had, and how some of her very favorite memories in life (her times with all her grandkids) hadn’t even happened yet.</p>
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<p>AFTER this 60th party, Mom had some of her greatest joys, loves, and celebrations. But she didn’t, and couldn’t, know that then. She was just grateful to be alive.</p>
<p>I’ve always been inspired by Mom’s willingness to celebrate life, even in the midst of her sorrow. Which is a part of my I went ahead with my *own* 60th Birthday Party last week.</p>
<p>I felt her presence all that day.</p>
<p>I feel it today, and I hear her message to us all.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140881
2022-08-25T13:07:21-05:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
“Are You Resentful Because I am Generous?”
<p>This morning, the world is on-fire with conversation regarding “student debt forgiveness.”</p>
<p>I am listening to this debate, as I also meditate on Sunday’s scripture from the Gospel of Luke (Chapter 14), and other Bible stories that speak to us today.</p>
<p>In verse 11 Jesus says, “All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.”</p>
<p>Later, Jesus says this: “…when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.”</p>
<p>The Gospel message, time and again, grates against human understandings of “fairness.” Time and again, Jesus pushes us to understand that what is truly compassionate sometimes feels deeply unfair from a human point of view.</p>
<p>The best example of this is the “Parable of the Workers in the Field.” Economically, this is a disastrous parable, about how people who work one hour a day get paid the same as those who suffer through a whole day of hot Sun.</p>
<p>When the workers who suffer through a full-days work complain about getting paid the same as those who worked one hour, the owner of the vineyard (clearly a stand in for God in this story) responds to them with these words:</p>
<p>“Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’ So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”</p>
<p>Remember as well the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the rank unfairness to the older brother of the Father’s forgiving the debts of the younger son. (The Father here is the stand-in for God…)</p>
<p>“All that I have is yours,” the Father tells that older son, trying to to appeal to his sense of mercy. We’re never told what the older brother thinks of his Father’s merciful response. But my hunch is, it probably still stings a bit.</p>
<p>Even in the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Jonah complaining about God’s mercy and grace. He wants to see Nineveh destroyed.</p>
<p>But God relents, so Jonah reacts with a *similar fury* as those workers in the field and the older brother.</p>
<p>God tries to reason with Jonah and asks him “Is your anger (at Nineveh repenting, and a shrub that dies) a good thing?”</p>
<p>Jonah is so far inside of his own righteous anger that he shouts back “Yes, my anger is good—even to the point of death!”</p>
<p>So, God, unable to appeal to Jonah’s compassion and mercy, simply says, “for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh…?”</p>
<p>So, I don’t know what to say about this decision from an macro-economic point of view. I am certainly not an economist. But I *do* know, as I’ve hopefully shown here, that the Bible is filled with stories about how God’s sense of justice often feels deeply unfair to we human beings.</p>
<p>I never had any student loans, although Dennise did. So our family did indeed pay off student loans for many years. Additionally, when it came time for our daughter to go to school, we spent decades saving for that. And finally, we found that because of the “Top 10% rule” at our state colleges, Maria didn’t get automatic admission to UT (where I went…) despite have better grades than some kids who DID get in.</p>
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<p>I *could* be bitter about all of this…about all that money WE saved for Maria, or paid back when we were young…about admissions rules that resulted in my far-smarter-than-me daughter not getting “automatic admission” into the state school I did….</p>
<p>But I am not. Instead, I see these policies as helping others who haven’t had the blessings our family has had. I see them as grace and mercy to those who need it, when we have been deeply blessed. I see them as responsible justice that will deeply help our state, now and in the future.</p>
<p>Let me illustrate..</p>
<p>Like thousands of other North Texas kids now do, our daughter went to an out-of-state school for college. There was never any doubt, for one second, that she would get a good college education. She, and thousands of other extremely smart Texas kids, now look far beyond the bounds of our state for their college choice.</p>
<p>These kids now have life experiences far beyond what I had at their age, when I stayed here in Texas for school. How is *that* bad?</p>
<p>And now? Twenty years of *other* kids —White kids from rural Texas, Black and Brown kids from inner city high schools— have been afforded the chance to get automatic admission to our Texas state schools.</p>
<p>That is a win-win for our society.</p>
<p>And now comes student loan debt relief.</p>
<p>I supposed I *could* be angry, since I paid most of my own way through graduate school, and since my wife had student loan debts. I suppose I could be angry that we spent twenty years saving for Maria’s college.</p>
<p>But, again, I am not.</p>
<p>Instead, this morning I’m hearing stats such as the following:</p>
<p>This new policy will likely forgive the student debt for HALF of Latino students. Half will find *all* of their debt paid.</p>
<p>BTW: please note what this statistic also means. It means that thousands of kids do NOT have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from “Ivy League Schools.”</p>
<p>The relief being offered here is but 1-4% of the total cost of an “elite” private school. So, please don’t take the bait today: Nobody is going for a four-year ride to SMU and Harvard and walking away with all their debt paid.</p>
<p>(Come on, people…)</p>
<p>But, don’t miss that stat: It could be that HALF the Latino students with debt get out from under their “big-to-them” college debt.</p>
<p>Taken as a whole, I see this…</p>
<p>My daughter got a great college education.</p>
<p>And many other kids, who never saw college as a possibility before, have been admitted to, or graduated, college…and now have more of a level playing field as they enter the workforce.</p>
<p>To me, that’s a win-win-win.</p>
<p>I know…I know…</p>
<p>There are plenty of downsides you can point out to me today.</p>
<p>You can talk about how college costs must be contained and are out of control.</p>
<p>You can talk to me about inflation.</p>
<p>Fine.</p>
<p>But my view is that the most important long range goal of our society today must be to move towards becoming a healthy multiracial democracy.</p>
<p>(For the first time in our history…)</p>
<p>And one way to help this are targeted policies that benefit both poor rural White kids *and* inner Black and Brown kids. As I look at these policies, these are “win-win-win” for many people, even if they do not benefit ME and my family.</p>
<p>And if you still want to say, “But…”</p>
<p>All I can say is, “I get it.” Some of this might feel unfair, and I’ve not at all addressed that unfairness, or maybe the unfairness to you personally.</p>
<p>But I know this, from my own experience and from the point of view of the Gospel:</p>
<p>God’s sense of justice and mercy will always feel unfair from a human point of view.</p>
<p>And that is why God is God, and we are not.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7140882
2022-08-16T13:22:23-05:00
2023-01-20T15:30:20-06:00
Remembering Buechner
<p>Stopping for a moment to read these words.</p>
<p>This old, yellowed quote from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/frederick.buechner.5?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZU82xXeE1LHxUyerBx518caIVZUnfIfSNmM9rs-38iIU09TFjATE9_lceNvPfT6qiJqNLDwJkoZgQZuQmJBDxbG5tOTtho0OQ0GBCYwEFsTEkpCWeNTEgtTKjXIkiJshOCSYdd5gai9daXG4UoJ9AYwK2qF7idrU1by3-RPxrWv_g&__tn__=-%5DK-R">Frederick Buechner</a> has been on the wall of every office study I’ve had for 30+ years.</p>
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<p>What’s YOUR favorite Buechner quote? (Copy/paste it in the comments…)</p>
<p>I can’t even begin to calculate the numbers of times I’ve quoted Buechner in sermons, Sunday Schools, retreats, etc…</p>
<p>I keep a copy of “Wishful Thinking” always nearby…because I find that his pithy and wise definitions are food for thought, over and over.</p>
<p>Like me, Buechner loved to write, and loved theology. And he spoke honestly and beautifully about life, theology, and the world.</p>
<p>Like many wise, deep thinkers, he wasn’t afraid of his own griefs and foibles.…speaking openly about his Father’s suicide, his daughter’s illnesses…and showing us how, as he said about eloquently, “theology is autobiography.”</p>
<p>These are lessons my Mother taught me too…and it stiles hard that both these great wisdom-keepers have died so close to each other.</p>
<p>I would imagine my reading list for the coming year has just gotten a lot thicker. I’d already considered diving back into the ”Bebb” novels.</p>
<p>But my favorite books…in no particular order…are:</p>
<p>Wishful Thinking</p>
<p>Whistling in the Dark</p>
<p>Sacred Journey</p>
<p>Telling Secret’s</p>
<p>Alphabet of Grace</p>
<p>This last one, IMHO, is a spiritual/autobiographical masterpiece in what it means to PAY ATTENTION to life.</p>
<p>His “Faces of Jesus” helps center true, deep incarnational theology for all of us, and helps remind us how our own Jesus is far smaller than the whole of who Jesus is.</p>
<p>Rest well…I would never have been the preacher I am with you.</p>
<p>“All moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7012523
2022-07-11T14:00:15-05:00
2022-07-11T18:15:02-05:00
Your Inner Good Samaritan
<p><strong>“AND…WHO AM I?”</strong></p>
<p>This is the unspoken question the religious lawyer quizzing Jesus never asks.</p>
<p>I really wish he had. Because I need the answer to this question, and so do you.</p>
<p>I’m talking about the Parable of the Good Samaritan.</p>
<p>Every time I preach on that parable —as happened yesterday— I’m struck by a question that never gets explicitly asked or answered: “Who am I?”</p>
<p><em>“Who do I need to be, to be the person I want—that God wants— me to become?”</em></p>
<p>Frankly, for decades I’ve been struck by an absence of “self-love” stories in the Gospels.<br>The Gospels talk a lot about GOD.<br>The Gospels talk a lot about NEIGHBORS.<br>But the Gospels contain almost <em>zero</em> stories that are explicitly about SELF.</p>
<p>And I’d bet good money that merely noting of this paradox leads some of you to leap to defensive responses…</p>
<p><em>“Well, our faith is supposed to be about GOD…”<br>“Well, our faith is supposed to be about how we treat the world…”<br>“The idea of self-love is implicit…”</em></p>
<p><br>Sure. I get that, and wouldn’t argue with any of it.<br>But read that Great Commandment slowly, one more time:</p>
<p><em>“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor <strong>AS YOURSELF</strong>.”</em><br>(CEB version)</p>
<p>Self-love and love of neighbor are, de facto, connected to one another. This also stated, in the same de facto manner, within “The Golden Rule.”<br>(“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”)<br>So, I want to go on a journey with you now. Imagine the parable contains a spiritually true answer to “Who am I?” that can help you deeply.<br>Here goes…</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/samaritan.jpg?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Portrait of You as the Good Samaritan</em> <em>• 30″X96″ • oil/canvas • by James B. Janknegt</em><br><a href="http://www.bcartfarm.com/newparables/samaritan2.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bcartfarm.com/newparables/samaritan2.html</a></figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>You have all the characters in this story —the wounded traveler, the violent robbers, the disconnected faith leaders, the compassionate Samaritan— inside your own soul.</strong></p>
<p>The moment you read this last sentence, I’m confident you know it is deeply and powerfully true.</p>
<p>Traditionally, we interpret this parable, and our relationship to it, externally. We look at the world, and ask, <em>“Am I a Samaritan, or am I a Priest?”</em></p>
<p>I’m saying that inside your very being, your soul, your mind, your heart, you are <strong>all</strong> of these characters, <em>at the same time</em>. Some of them are likely more obvious to you at times than others.</p>
<p>Further, I’m suggesting that the same moral answer the parable gives to the question <em>“Who is my neighbor?” </em>can also lead us to understand <em>“Who am I?”</em></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Sometimes, I am my own Inner-Wounded Traveler, and I foolishly travel a dangerous road alone</strong>.</p>
<p>Some days, I am my own worst enemy. My Inner-Wounded Traveler <em>knows</em> that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a dangerous road. (Everyone in Jesus’ time knew this…)</p>
<p>But I over-estimate my own ability to control myself and my own surroundings. I misjudge how dangerous the road is, and I set out on the dangerous road, alone, instead of asking for help.</p>
<p>I am sure you know how this is a distinct problem for many men. We tend to overestimate our powers and our ability to control ourselves and our surroundings. Sometimes we are admired for this; because, sometimes, all goes well when we risk taking dangerous road.</p>
<p>Other times, we crash and burn spectacularly.</p>
<p>Theologians have long surmised that the road described here was a known-haven for bandits and thieves. They’ve suggested listeners in Jesus’ day would have said, <em>“Well, serves that guy right…traveling a dangerous road by himself…”</em></p>
<p>And these are exactly the same harsh words my Inner-Wounded Traveler so often speaks to me, in my time of need.</p>
<p>When I am harmed, left for dead by the side of the road by own, cruel, Inner-Bandits, I victim-blame myself.</p>
<p><em>“You should have known better…you deserve what you got. You fool…you should have never tried to walk this road by yourself. You should have asked for help earlier.”</em></p>
<p>“You SHOULD have…”</p>
<p>There is nothing good that comes from this, of course.<br>But I do it to myself…and I know you do it as well. We do these things, not because we are flawed, but because we are human.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I am the Inner-Wounded Traveler, and have foolishly, or naively, walked a dangerous road alone.<br></p>
<p><strong>Sometimes, I am the robbers. I am my own Inner-Bandit.</strong></p>
<p>It could be that my inner self-harm comes from my own previous trauma….from generational harm that I have internalized…from messages my parents gave me, or some external abuser first visited on me.</p>
<p>But, some days, I engage in self-harm. I self-sabotage the best intentions of my Inner-Traveler.</p>
<p>I make goals. I have good intentions. (The Inner-Traveler often starts out hopeful and confident…)</p>
<p>But soon after, I “rob” myself of my own future. As Paul once said, <em>“I do the very thing I hate…”</em></p>
<p>My own Inner-Bandit, <em>“beats myself up.”</em><br>And then, I “beat myself up” for beating myself up.</p>
<p>It’s a horrible cycle of self-shame, self-recrimination, and self-loathing. But I bet you do it too. Again, not because you are flawed. But because you are human.</p>
<p>Instead of loving myself, some days I am my own Inner-Bandit, and my own worst self robs and beats-up my own best self.<br></p>
<p><strong>Sometimes, I am the religious leaders. I am my own Inner-Aloof Priest</strong>.</p>
<p>This is the part that all of us who call ourselves Christians need to really hear. Because instead of taking time to love ourselves —to stop and aid our bleeding, wounded, selves— our Inner-Priest just “passes by on the other side.”</p>
<p>When I am this character, I tell myself that I have have “important” work to do. I can’t stop for self-love or self-care.</p>
<p>I have family, ministry, and other people to care for. I mean, how can I stop to help some hurt part of myself? Somebody else is counting on me. I don’t have time for this.</p>
<p><em>“I’ll just power-through,”</em> my Inner-Aloof Priest tells me, <em>“I’ll be fine.”</em><br>“<em>Sure,”</em> I look down to note, <em>“I’m bloodied and in shock… but somebody else will come and help me….or maybe if I just ignore it…that gaping wound will go away…”</em></p>
<p>This next part is important to say:<br>My Inner-Aloof Priest often appears “together” to the external world.<br>My robes are clean.<br>My face is calm.<br>I can quote scripture.I can lead worship and say prayers.</p>
<p>This happens, as with the other characters, not because I am flawed, or because religious belief is flawed. But because I am human.</p>
<p>In point of fact, in those moments when my Inner-Aloof Priest is working very <em>hard</em> to keep up the outward appearance of having things together, I am not at all together. I’m actually a wreck, and only pretending to know what I’m doing.</p>
<p>This is the paradox at the heart of all religious belief…the difference between religious <em>knowledge</em> and religious <em>practice.</em></p>
<p>We all can <strong>know</strong> a commandment with our <em>head,</em> or even feel it our <em>heart,</em> (In this case, the command to “love of oneself”) but we can still fail to <strong>do</strong> the commandment with our “hands and feet.”<br>———————-</p>
<p>So, those are the first three characters:<br>My Inner-Wounded Traveler.<br>My Inner-Bandit.<br>My Inner-Aloof Priest.</p>
<p>Contemporary Christian mystic, Jim Finley once suggested that we sometimes act out <em>“violence on parts of ourselves.”</em></p>
<p>Jim Finley says…those competing “voices” inside your head?<br>Oh, they’re real.<br>And they are “at war” within you, and with your best self. Jim Finley says it this way:</p>
<p><em>“In meditation we catch ourselves waging violence on parts of ourselves. This is the seedbed of War. All violence is the act of acting out our own violence toward our own heart.”</em></p>
<p>Read that over several times, until the powerful truth of it seeps deeply into your being.</p>
<p>All external violence begins with internal violence inside ourselves. As Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once said the dividing line between good and evil <em>“runs through every human heart.”</em><br>This is why so many of us find prayer and meditation to be hard work.<br>Because, there’s always a lot going on in there…</p>
<p>To push the metaphor of the parable, then, Finley might suggest that “violence” begins with that struggle between the Inner-Wounded Traveler, the Inner-Bandits, and the Inner-Aloof Priest, who live inside us all.</p>
<p><strong>But, when I am in my “right mind,” ( to use Jesus’ phase…) I am <em>also</em> that one, final, and blessed character:</strong></p>
<p><strong>I am my own Inner-Good Samaritan.</strong></p>
<p>The Samaritan’s part of the story is powerful, and teaches us important parts of self-love as well as love of neighbor.</p>
<p>Jesus teaches that when the Samaritan looks upon the injured person, “he was moved with <strong>compassion</strong>.”</p>
<p>Longtime readers of mine will recall that <strong>THIS IS MY FAVORITE BIBLICAL WORD</strong>. (more <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2013/02/14/i-love-you-with-all-my-intestines/">here</a>.)</p>
<p>It is such an under-appreciated word. It only appears in the Gospel a few times, but it’s alway important when it does.</p>
<p>“Compassion” in this passage is the Biblical word, “<strong>Splagchnizomai</strong>.”<br>(Pronounced: “Splagh-Neats-Oh-My-ee”)</p>
<p>Compassion/Splagchnizomai here denotes a kind of deep-level love and compassion that far outstrips romantic love.</p>
<p>Compassion/Splagchnizomai means something like: <em>To be moved, as in the bowels, hence to be moved with compassion, to moved with compassion, to feel compassion. It denotes a deep seated “feeling” and “emotion,” a visceral reaction of love, compassion and empathy.</em></p>
<p><em>It’s an immediate desire to love, care for, help, “the other.”</em></p>
<p>When I am in my right mind, and when I see my own Inner-Wounded Traveler by the side of the road, my journey to healing begins with self-compassion. <em>It is only when I speak, and act, compassionately toward myself, that I will be truly healed.</em></p>
<p><strong>If I choose the self-critical voice of the Inner-Wounded Traveler, the self-harming voice of the Inner-Bandit, or the self-denying voice of the Inner-Aloof Priest, I will stay stuck in the ditch. It is only when my Inner-Samaritan’s voice of compassion speaks that I can truly find my way home.</strong></p>
<p>My compassionate Inner Samaritan understands that inner healing takes time, resources, and energy.</p>
<p>The Good Samaritan in the story <em>“bandaged his wounds, tending them with oil and wine. Then he placed the wounded man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two full days’ worth of wages and gave them to the innkeeper.”</em></p>
<p>Then, the Good Samaritan promises to show up the next day and check on the wounded man.</p>
<p>When I am in my “right mind,” then, and being loving and self-compassionate, my Inner-Good Samaritan does all these things for my Inner-Wounded Traveler too.</p>
<p>I take time..<br>I tend wounds…<br>I spend my resources…money, treasure..<br>And I do it again the next day too…</p>
<p>When my Inner Samaritan acts in self-compassion —and when I do it again and and again over time and with intention— my Inner-Wounded Traveler can heal.</p>
<p>Time and again, people tell me, <em>“Eric, sometimes I say things to myself that I would never say to another human being…”</em></p>
<p>We all do this. I do it. As i’ve said several times already: This is not because you are flawed. This is because you are human.</p>
<p>But, you know, and I know, those voices are relentless.</p>
<p>We are the Wounded Traveler.<br>We are the Cruel Bandits.<br>We are the Aloof Priest.</p>
<p>They all live inside you. And inside of me.<br>And they always will.</p>
<p>What I’m suggesting today is that this iconic parable not only gives us Jesus’ roadmap for: “<em>who is my neighbor?”</em></p>
<p>It also suggests Jesus’ roadmap for: <em>“Who are we?”</em></p>
<p><strong>When you own harsh inner voices rear their heads and rule your life —as they will always try to do— listen for the compassionate voice of your own Inner-Good Samaritan.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Their compassionate voice, and their loving actions, are the true voice of God in your life; and a crucial part of how your Inner-Wounded Traveler will heal.</strong></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/7001463
2022-06-25T08:59:43-05:00
2022-06-25T09:30:03-05:00
I am going down with the ship.
<p>“I am going down with the ship.”</p>
<p>I can’t speak for everyone. I can only speak for me. I can’t fault any other choice anyone else might make.<br>All I am saying is: If Texas goes down, I’m going down with it.<br>To the bitter end.</p>
<p>I’m here to stay and I’m ready to fight.</p>
<p>Ever since 2016, and with increasing urgency these past few years, I’ve seen Progressive friends either leave our state, or discuss it seriously. Some have already left for more friendly states.</p>
<p>Sometimes, it’s said as a joke.<br>Many times, nobody’s laughing.</p>
<p>Considering yesterday’s SCOTUS decision —and the “trigger law” coming soon to Texas— I trust an ever-increasing numbers of Progressive folks will now have these very same conversations once again.</p>
<p>It’s clearly a grim time in our state.</p>
<p>The rights of many people I dearly love —as a pastor, as a family member, and as a friend— are in serious jeopardy:<br>Reproductive freedoms…<br>LGBTQ freedoms…<br>Contraceptive freedoms…<br>Migrants freedoms…<br>The freedom of liberty (common sense gun safety, and police reform)…<br>The right to vote…</p>
<p>The freedoms of so many Texans are increasingly under assault on so many fronts. It’s hard to keep it all straight. The assault feels overwhelming and the situation might seem hopeless.</p>
<p>And, maybe it is.</p>
<p>To anyone who suggests that the fight is hopeless and that the ship is *already* sinking, I honestly can’t talk you down. Maybe it IS already too late.</p>
<p>I mean, we are armed only with ideas, values, and the power of the vote. The other side is increasingly armed with literal guns, massive financial resources, and a new decade of gerrymandered districts that grossly disenfranchises thousands.</p>
<p>But to any who wants to leave for “friendlier” places, let our experience be your warning.<br>Texas has never been different from America. It’s always just been America writ large. The same forces at work here are are at work there. Further, if our nation has learned nothing else since 2016, it’s that no right, even those we believe to be bedrock and fundamental, is ever fully forever guaranteed. There will always be those who seek to limit or take away your rights. And if and when Texas falls, they will most definitely come for your new state too. There is no permanently “safe place.”</p>
<p>That said, I cannot begrudge anyone any choice they make. I’m just speaking of the choice *I* will make. (I *will* ask one thing: If and when you leave what those of us who stay need from you is encouragement, not your backseat driving…we understand why *you* left…just help us with our struggle to stay, rather than pile the list of horribles we can already cite higher…)</p>
<p>Make no mistake, what is coming is a very grim time, and some very challenging years, where no outcome is guaranteed.<br>No march toward “progress” is assured. (Hint: It never was…)<br>The level of sacrifice called for could be extremely high.</p>
<p>Further, there is no dodging the truth that the struggle will be far more costly for some Texans than for folks like me. (CIS gender, straight White man…)</p>
<p>But…I will stand with Women, the LGBTQ+ community, People of Color, Immigrants, and Religious Minorities.<br>I will stand with doctors and nurses who fear being sued by fellow Texans.<br>I will stand with teachers, afraid they will be asked to carry a gun.<br>I will stand with children, asking what we will do beyond mere “words,” to keep them safe in school.</p>
<p>I will stay.<br>And I will fight.<br>And I’d the ship goes down, so be it.</p>
<p>All this is what I know I will do, deep in my bones. I can do no other. Because it’s what I’ve always done during my adult life. And for me, leaving is just not an option.</p>
<p>There will be other days, other posts, other moments…to talk about what this means…to talk social policy and elections…to talk theology or ethics…to look at gerrymandering and take a hard look at just how challenging this will be…and to work like hell between now and whatever future will yet unfold.</p>
<p>We don’t need to, and we can’t, solve everything (maybe anything) today.</p>
<p>All I am saying today is this: When it comes to the fundamental question of whether to stay in Texas, or to leave, I AM NOT LEAVING.</p>
<p>This is *my* state too. I love it, and I love all its people —even those with differing politics and social views— far too much to leave it.</p>
<p>I love all my big, beautiful, messy Dallas friends.<br>I love the diversity of our city’s core —the neighborhoods where I’m privileged to live and work— and the racial, economic, and gender diversity of the whole county.<br>I love my Austin friends, who consistently seem to forget that we have more Blue voters than they do (Bless their hearts…).<br>I love all our big cities: the humidity of Houston/Galveston, the cowboy history of Fort Worth, the deep beauty of San Antonio’s missions and riverwalk.<br>I love the suburbs where I was raised.<br>I love the breathtaking beauty of Big Bend, and the insanity of Marfa and Terlingua.<br>I love the beautiful small towns of East Texas, where my family is from.<br>I love the small towns, and family businesses we often visit when we go to our East Texas Lakehouse.<br>I love the Hill Country rancher/cowboys I met when I lived in Mason County, and the Hill Country hippies of the Kerrville Folk Festival.<br>I love the migrant workers in the Valley, and the old Germans in Central Texas.<br>I love the Texans who just got here from somewhere else, and those who (like my by-marriage family) were here before any White person ever breathed the word “Texas.”</p>
<p>And it’s your state too.<br>It’s ours.</p>
<p>Where ever you are from, and whatever your reasons are for loving it…or hating it…it’s your state too.</p>
<p>It’s our time to fight —with our time, our talents, our resources, our vote, and perhaps our liberty— for our lives, for our loved ones, and for our state.</p>
<p>THE SHIP MAY BE GOING DOWN.</p>
<p>BUT IT IF DOES, I’M GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP.
</p>
<p>Who’s with me?</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6996398
2022-06-17T13:21:49-05:00
2022-06-17T16:00:11-05:00
White American Christianity’s Tribal Flaw
<p><em>“Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.”</em><br><strong>— John 16:2</strong></p>
<p>“<em>When your icon of the enemy is complete<br>you will be able to kill without guilt,<br>slaughter without shame.<br>The thing you destroy will have become<br>merely an enemy of God, an impediment<br>to the sacred dialectic of history. </em>“<br><strong>— Sam Keen (Faces of the Enemy)</strong></p>
<p>I can’t stop thinking about the pastor (here in North Texas) who called for gay people to be shot. (I shall not name him, or his church, and I certainly hope you don’t visit his website…)<br>I can’t help thinking about the thirty one White Supremacists, arrested near a Pride celebration in Idaho.</p>
<p>One of them was from the same town as that North Texas preacher.<br>Did he go to that church?<br>Had he heard the message of that church?</p>
<p>I don’t know. But I know it doesn’t really matter. Because White American Christianity is in the air. It’s in the culture. And it plays a key role in theologizing, in giving permission, to all manner of homophobia, racism, and real and potential violence. It was in the action of Dylan Roof. And it’s in the words of this “preachers” from North Texas. It’s being loosed and given permission time and again in our present day.</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/125365981_2ca79084-72e9-4b39-8776-f3f45cd9fb4b.jpg?w=976" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>Last Sunday in church, we read this chilling line of scripture in the Gospel reading:</p>
<p><em>“Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.”</em></p>
<p>That is a line that horrifically describes the heart of White American Christian theology….except much of White American Christianity has no idea that it’s a line about <em>THEM</em>.</p>
<p>But make no mistake: killing, threatening, harassing, abusing others is the complete opposite of Jesus’ stated mission as Messiah. Paradoxically, Jesus wanted to destroy the <em>idea</em> of “The Enemy” or “The Other,” not give it oxygen and new life for two thousand more years.</p>
<p>Jesus very clearly teaches that we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves…and that our neighbor is the one we think is our enemy. Jesus <em>meant</em> for his words to push and challenge <em>everyone in every age</em>. And in our age, no one more than White Christians, themselves.</p>
<p>But time and again, in our day, the Church fails to see how those words apply to the Church itself.</p>
<p>Time and again, instead of understanding the challenging call that Jesus gave us to us, the Church itself becomes inward-looking, racist, homophobic, xenophobic.</p>
<p>This is not a flaw in Christianity.<br>I mean, it IS. But it’s not <em>just</em> a flaw of just Christianity.</p>
<p><em>This is because of a flaw in the human animal.</em><br>And we see this illustrated in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%204:16-28&version=NRSVUE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the very first time Jesus preaches</a> in the Gospel of Luke.</p>
<p>I come back to this story time and again, and I am sure the good people of my Church are sick of me reminding them about it. But, to me, it matters deeply because it sets the tone for everything else that happens in the Gospels. It helps us see that Jesus’ life was in danger…from the very beginning of his ministry…and for a very clear, and specific reason.</p>
<p>We present-day Christians would do well to unpack the reason. To ask WHY that crowd suddenly wants to kill Jesus that day.<br>And we would do well to see that, more often than not, WE have become the “crowd” today.</p>
<p>Did the crowd went to kill Jesus because they refused to recognize him as “Their personal Lord and Savior?”<br>(This is common, false interpretation: “They were unsaved Jews…they resisted him as Messiah…”)</p>
<p>No, it’s clearly not that. In point of fact, their initial reaction to him as Messiah is SUPER POSITIVE.</p>
<p>Jesus reads them a passage from Isaiah, and says “today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”</p>
<p>They’re SUPER excited.<br>They’re SO PROUD of their hometown prophet.</p>
<p>But a moment later, he adds an important clarification. The great prophets, Jesus reminds his hometown friends, were called to love and serve all people…even foreigners.</p>
<p>And at this exact moment, the text says, the the crowd turns from ADORATION to RAGE.<br>They literally go from idealizing Jesus to wanting to kill him.</p>
<p>We must again be clear about this: <em>This is not because of some flaw in the Jewish people of his hometown. This is because of a flaw in the human animal itself.</em></p>
<p>We are, all of us, deeply tribal in our bones. We defend our tribes with irrational zeal. We “Otherize” those we deem on the outside.</p>
<p>Much of White American Christianity is built on from a foundation of Otherizing entire groups of humans: African-Americans, the LGBTQ community, Immigrants, Foreigners.</p>
<p>This is where Sam Keen’s powerful poem comes in. One of the most important books in my life as been Sam Keen’s “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Faces-Enemy-Reflections-Hostile-Imagination/dp/0062504673">Faces of the Enemy</a>.”</p>
<p>Keen unpacks the hard truth of how the human species creates “The Other.” The book does so by analyzing war propaganda posters from the past 100 or so years. (He looks at how propaganda posters portray OUR tribe…and how they portray the “Other”)</p>
<p>Keen’s thesis is that it’s actually quite <em>hard</em> to train-up humans to kill each other at scale. That’s why armies work so hard to “train” soldiers, because the natural human inclination is to <em>not</em> kill other humans at scale.<br>(And, it’s why some soldiers have a hard time with “re-entry” into every-day life…)</p>
<p>Theology has an important part in this enemy-making process. (All theology, of all religions, btw, not just White American Christianity…)</p>
<p>Theology provides the final, horrific step; where the “Other” becomes not just a sub-human animal…but literally “the enemy of God.” It is when an enemy becomes a subhuman enemy of God that the tribal-switch flips and our tribe suddenly feels the freedom to kill your tribe.</p>
<p>Which gets us back to Jesus’ hometown crowd, wanting to kill him…and then, later, the chilling line in the Gospel of John:</p>
<p><em>“Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.”</em></p>
<p>By the time the Jesus of John’s Gospel says this, he’s well aware of the tribal nature of the human animal, and the all-too human threat to his life. So, he turns to his Disciples and delivers this bone chilling warning.<br><br>As always, theology matters. Different theologies get you to very different understandings of how we should treat other human beings. Every major world religion has myriads of theological “schools” and views that result in quite different outcome in terms of real-world ethics and morality.</p>
<p>For example, “Atonement Theologies” —theologies that suggests God somehow intentionally sent Jesus into the world to be crucified and die— let humanity <em>off</em> the hook, and put God on it. The over-emphasis, present in almost all atonement theologies, on the cross being “cosmically necessary” in order for God to “save” humanity, allows humanity to look away from the truth:</p>
<p>Humans killed Jesus, not God. (Execution at the hands of the State…)<br>Some humans were out to kill him from the first time he spoke.<br>And all this is because of humanity’s deeply tribal core, not because God requires cosmic sacrifice.</p>
<p>In every age, Jesus’ true message of radical inclusion —turning away from the process of enemy making altogether— is a threat to the tribal lizard brain deep inside of us all.</p>
<p>White American Christians have a special responsibility to acknowledge the continuing harm White American Christianity does to people of color, the LGBTQ community and others.</p>
<p>Two of my theological heroes, Brian McLaren and Nadia Bolz-Weber, <a href="https://brianmclaren.net/the-innocence-of-the-pro-life-movement/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">have written eloquently about the lethal “innocence”</a> that many White Christians have about their faith, its history, and its practice. I think they are spot on about this. Our pretended “innocence” as White People…our willingness to excuse white Supremacist Christian theologies as “not like us” is unhelpful, dangerous actually, today.</p>
<p>To our dear LGBTQ community, I say:<br><em>I am sorry you must contend with the homophobic actions of so many wrong-headed Christians. Please know, during Pride Month and every month, that we love you and support you….without reservation or hidden agenda. And that we do so because Jesus calls us to love and serve all humans, with no preconditions.</em></p>
<p>To other White Christians: I invite you on the journey of unpacking the harmful theology of our “tribe.”</p>
<p>I invite you to unpack that horrific line of scripture from the Gospel of John.</p>
<p>In our time, in our culture, those who kill, and believe they are “offering worship to God,” very often claim to be Christian.</p>
<p>The scripture also implicitly reminds us that standing up to White American Christianity will not be a journey without cost.</p>
<p><strong>As Jesus knew from his very first sermon, when we stand up to our own tribe, that is the time when we are most at risk, most at danger.</strong></p>
<p>But it’s the true calling of Jesus.</p>
<p>And if Christianity is to have any real meaning at all, it’s a journey you will take.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6989634
2022-06-08T10:41:05-05:00
2022-06-08T15:00:15-05:00
Open Letter To Our Pride Flag Vandal
<p>To the Pride Flag Vandal,</p>
<p>I don’t know who you are.</p>
<p>I don’t know your motivations.</p>
<p>I don’t know why you chose to cut down our KPUMC Pride Flag from the flagpole on our property.</p>
<p>But I thought I’d write you a short note today.</p>
<p>Please know that we, the members and staff of Kessler Park United Methodist, are praying for you. We can perhaps intuit from your actions that you disagree with our sincerely held religious belief about God’s love and acceptance of the LGBTQ community.</p>
<p>At KPUMC, we have heard the painful stories of our LGBTQ members and staff, and how they have been shunned and rejected by other churches and sometimes by their families. Our experience is that we have been blessed by their ministry, their commitment to loving God and serving our North Oak Cliff neighborhood. Our LGBTQ members and friends strengthen our church. They are faithful Christians.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/screen-shot-2022-06-08-at-10.36.51-am-2.png?w=1024" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>We believe with St Paul that “all are one in Christ Jesus our lord.”</p>
<p>We believe, with Jesus, that we are called to love and welcome all our neighbors.</p>
<p>That means the LGBTQ community…and it also means YOU. (Which is why our sign says “All Are Welcome.”)</p>
<p>Especially among young people, that sign and pride flag is a symbol of our embodied welcome to all God’s children.</p>
<p>So, please know that while the flag had been now been vandalized 4-5 times (maybe by you? maybe by a series of vandals?) we have an endless supply ready to replace them.</p>
<p>And we will.</p>
<p>Because: we have the right to live in peace and to celebrate our sincerely held Christian values, through the leading of God’s Holy Spirit.</p>
<p>And I would gently remind you that Jesus’ “Golden Rule” calls us to respect your right to your beliefs and values, even as I am here asking you to respect ours.</p>
<p>So, I end as I began…assuring you that we will continue to pray for you, even as we continue to witness to God’s grace and love in the world for all God’s children.</p>
<p>Grace and Peace,</p>
<p>Rev. Eric Folkerth</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6988437
2022-06-07T07:21:01-05:00
2022-06-07T07:30:10-05:00
What Divorce Professionals Can Teach the UMC
<p>For some years, I’ve been telling you I sensed a “split” was coming in the UMC, but that I couldn’t predict just <strong>how</strong> that would happen. Ideally, a split would be affected by an orderly process, authorized by the General Conference. But, as all Methodists know, that meeting is again delayed</p>
<p>Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and the conservative wing of the UMC has announced the “Global Methodist Church.”</p>
<p>Therefore, my current view is that we are in an awkward period of “divorce.”</p>
<p>Divorce is an imperfect, and perhaps painful, metaphor to use in this situation.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/12866-gettyimageswildpixel-1.jpg?w=800" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="208" width="398" /></figure>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>As someone who’s been married to a divorce attorney and judge for thirty years, my one learnings is: There are better and worse ways for divorce to happen.</strong></p>
<p>Some are painful and continue to perpetuate harm. Others are more open, transparent, and dispassionate; where the parties focus on their long-term goals, rather than scoring points or placing blame.</p>
<p>Having seem this process close up —having watched, with some awe, how lawyers, judges, and mediators navigate the challenging waters— more than most Methodist Ministers, I can tell you that many divorce attorneys and judges get a bad rap.</p>
<p>Many of them see their jobs as a “calling,” and they spend a good bit of time fretting over just how to <em>reduce</em> conflict for all parties involved.</p>
<p>This is, in part, because <em>some</em> lawyers DO perpetuate anger, bitterness, and jealousy.<br>And in part because <em>nobody</em> ever wants to be in divorce court….and almost nobody ever leaves happy.</p>
<p>Consider this: Divorce Court is the one legal situation where, almost always, neither side leaves “happy.”</p>
<p>I would therefore encourage us all to take the following attitude toward our current situation, and humbly suggest that these professionals have a good bit to each all United Methodists in our current situation:</p>
<p><strong>1. We are in a period of “No Fault” Divorce and we should act like it.</strong><br>One of the best things Texas did was to institute “no fault divorce.” This mean that no longer would one partner have to prove “wrong-doing” of another in order to get divorced (infidelity, financial malfeasance, etc…). Instead, the courts and lawyers would concentrate on questions such as: “What is the best division of the assets? What is best for the children?”</p>
<p>These are never easy questions, in the best of times. And when two partners are angry with each other, filled with accusations and recriminations —or, worse of all, convinced that they are blameless and their partner should be punitively punished— the outcomes and the process can be horrible for everyone.</p>
<p>Lawyers and judges can make this better or worse for their clients and the parties involved. Some are VERY GOOD at what they do…deftly mediating conflicts such that the couple’s resources are not drained by the legal fight (this can happen!).</p>
<p>Couples that WANT to keep fighting can literally drain away all their resources and assets, and some lawyers seemingly encourage this to run up their own fees. This, of course, harms their children along the way, and accomplishing nothing except continuing to stay “connected to the conflict.”</p>
<p>And the only ones who benefit in that situation are…the lawyers.</p>
<p>In the case of our denomination, it might feel righteous to be gleeful about the departure of Conservatives —or, for Conservatives to gloat about their new denomination, as if will be some magical Ecclesiastical Eden.</p>
<p>It might <em>feel</em> nice to “blame the other partner” for what is happening.</p>
<p>But at this point, and in this moment, I cannot do this, and I will not do this. I invite everyone to join me in simply making space for Conservatives to leave under as fair a set of terms as possible.</p>
<p>This also means that those seeking to leave must stop catastrophizing the true nature of the United Methodist Church.</p>
<p>Their characterizations of who the UMC is, and where it will likely go in the future, have in some cases simply not been true.</p>
<p>(But, I will soon point out one very obvious reason for those extreme characterizations…)</p>
<p><strong>2. It will not help us to fight about “stuff.”</strong><br>I still recall a divorce I heard about years ago, from an attorney involved in the case, who is a good friend. A couple had a multi-million dollar estate that they had worked to divide over three years, with hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to the lawyers. They had agreed on terms for the custody of their children, several houses, cars, etc…<br>They headed to their final hearing, to sign their papers, and it all fell apart.</p>
<p>The problem?<br>Deciding who would get a ceramic ashtray one of their children had made in kindergarten!</p>
<p>No joke.</p>
<p>They eventually resolved the conflict, but not without even more conflict, and more money paid to the lawyers.</p>
<p>Let’s NOT do this as a denomination!
Let’s not fight over “stuff!!”</p>
<p>Yes, there will be some painful conversations over property and assets that serve annual conferences and the entire UMC. But let us commit work through those issues with as little anger and recrimination as possible.</p>
<p>I’m not going to call anyone out here. But I continue to hear folks on the left and center complaining about how conservatives will leave with too much stuff…how the terms are “generous.” Unfortunately, logical analysis will not be what makes a difference here. Emotion and feeling will. And if Conservatives feel the terms of are too harsh, they will stay and fight, perpetuting harm and forcing a continued fight over stuff, rather than launching us all into a bright future.</p>
<p>Finally, this assertion on my part, which I trust some may not like:</p>
<p><strong>3. Let us create “terms” that are as favorable as possible for as many Conservative Churches to leave as possible.</strong></p>
<p>In saying this, I am neither gloating or “spiking the ball.” There is no joy in this.</p>
<p>But Conservatives say they want to leave and that the “marriage” is over. As Maya Angelou once said, <em>“When people tell you who they are, believe them.”</em></p>
<p>We should BELIEVE they want to leave, and we should give them the most charitable terms that we can. We should “believe them.”</p>
<p>But I am hearing that the current terms —set out by the General Conference in 2019— seem too onerous to some Conservative churches.</p>
<p>Frankly, I agree with parts of their concern.</p>
<p>As noted above, those terms were set back at a time when a time when the strategic goal of the General Conference was to “keep everyone together until a plan could be worked out.”</p>
<p>Well, that didn’t happen.<br>And we’re all still “holding our breath.”<br>So, into this vacuum has stepped the “Global Methodist Church.” And that “is what it is.”</p>
<p>The WORST case for these next two years?</p>
<p>— Churches with significant majorities of members who want to leave, but can’t financially afford to…</p>
<p>— Churches that stay with the UMC, but are bitter and frustrated, and continue to fight over issues of human sexuality….causing further harm to the LGBTQ community, and the general mission of all Moderate-to-Progressive Churches…</p>
<p>Should this happen, this will not help anyone.</p>
<p>As I noted, already there are some characterizations of United Methodism being made by Conservatives that are simply not true, and that no doubt anger many in the Center and Left of our denomination. I get that. I angers me that lies are being told about the UMC. </p>
<p>But, guess what? Divorcing couples tell lies about each other! (See the “no fault” divorce section for how the legal systems has attempted to reduce this issue…)</p>
<p>I would urge anyone on the Left or Center to avoid reacting in anger or bitterness toward these often too-broad generalizations about who we are, or what we believe, even as I call on Conservatives to desist from making them.</p>
<p>However, I will point out this simple and obvious fact: The harsher the terms for leaving, the harsher the rhetoric will be.</p>
<p>If Conservatives must meet a threshold of super-majority votes of their congregations…<br>If Conservatives must pay excessive and burdensome financial sums…<br>If they are not allowed to take the properties currently administered by their own Trustees…</p>
<p>Then….<em>we should then EXPECT harsher and harsher rhetoric from them!</em><br>This is simple “Game Theory.”</p>
<p>In this situation, we should <strong>expect</strong> painful and divisive words from the Conservatives. Because in order to raise the funds and make the vote-count, they will be forced to make extraordinary divisive, and sometimes untrue, proclamations about the United Methodist Church and why they want to leave.</p>
<p>Therefore, I’m urging us to avoid this, as much as humanly possible.</p>
<p>Right now, Annual Conferences have the ability to lessen the burdens set by General Conference in 2019, under other rules of separation that predate that decision and have been in our Discipline for years.</p>
<p>This procedure leaves much room for each Annual Conference to discern what the right “terms” are for their local situation.</p>
<p>I am not wise enough to know what the exact “terms” should be for every church and every Annual Conference.</p>
<p>(Something shy of ⅔ majority vote, but much more than “simple majority?” Something not intentionally financially burdensome, than what was designed to “keep everyone in place?”)</p>
<p>But I AM wise enough —and have seen enough— to know what the outcome will be, should the terms of too steep and feel unfair to Conservatives:</p>
<p>That will simply mean continuing harm, fighting, recriminations, and blame.</p>
<p>And the time for all of that is passed.</p>
<p><strong>Look, none of this will be easy. In the “best” situation, divorce never is.</strong><br>It is likely —in fact, we should expect— that some terms, some statements from one “side” or another, will often seem “unfair.” People in divorce are often angry and sometimes lash out.</p>
<p>Remember: Almost no one ever leaves “Divorce Court” happy on the day of their divorce, and almost nobody ever wants to be there in the first place.</p>
<p>But providing for fair, equitable, and just separation is a serious “calling” undertaken by many lawyers, judges, and mediators I have been blessed to know. They awe me with their deft skill in negotiating compromise. We should seek their wisdom and counsel, and follow their moral example.</p>
<p>This is hard, because all of us have a stake and a “position” in this; and the hardest thing to do in that case is to see the “big picture.”</p>
<p>Therefore…<br>Pray for everyone in our denomination —Left, Right, and Center— that we might find a reasonable path for everyone to be released for the powerful future ministry God has in store for us all.</p>
<p>A future where —wherever our individual churches “land”— that puts God’s people and God’s call, not a fight over “stuff,” first.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6901828
2022-01-06T01:29:00-06:00
2022-02-19T05:45:05-06:00
Rock Hammer To The Stone
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/niY49swSvB0?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation"></iframe>
</div></figure>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6762750
2021-09-25T11:25:00-05:00
2022-02-08T11:42:59-06:00
Once Upon A Time
<p>Today, all over America, fans will pour into stadiums to watch their favorite college teams.<br>In many locales —urban and rural, in Red and Blue states— fans will submit to a “clear bag” rule, and possibly even a scan or search of their person, as they enter the stadium.<br><br>At no time today, anywhere across our football-loving country, will anyone claim that it’s “tyranny,” or that the government is trying to control them, or that “clear bags aren’t safe.”<br><br>No politician today will hold a presser, to announce new laws outlawing clear bags.<br>No one asked to use a clear bag today will respond by saying “clear bags are political.”<br><br>Because once upon a time in America, we understood that our “absolute liberty” is sometimes balanced with the needs of the greater community.<br>Once upon a time, we understood that there is a price to participating in public events where others are gathered.<br><br>Once upon a time —regardless of our political party or jersey color, and even as we grumbled about such policies— we willingly did them to keep ourselves and others safe.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6632660
2021-05-17T09:26:03-05:00
2021-05-17T14:00:05-05:00
Faithspotting: Echo, Part 1
<p></p>
<p>Pretty excited to be a part of this podcast, with friends Kenny Dickson and Mike Hatch. Since I’m both a songwriter and preacher, they invited me to to talk about the great documentary “Echo in the Canyon.”<br>It traces the roots of an amazing tradition of music in the iconic “Laurel Canyon” area of LA.</p>
<p><img src="" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" /></p>
<p>Listen to Part 1 (where we talk about the film) here:</p>
<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.faithspotting.com/faithspotting-echo-in-the-canyon-pt-1/?" target="_blank">Faithspotting: Echo, Part 1</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Part 2, where we’ll unpack the faith issues of the film, will drop this week. You can find Faithspotting at all your favorite podcast providers.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6526934
2021-01-21T11:48:57-06:00
2021-01-21T13:30:06-06:00
Connecting the Dots of Yesterday
<h3>Don’t ever again tell me <em>“the parties are the same.”<br></em>Don’t ever again tell me <em>“non-violent action doesn’t work.”</em><br>Don’t ever again tell me “<em>elections don’t matter.”</em>
</h3>
<p>These are the three biggest lies — the three greatest disincentives to voting and activism — that I have heard during the past four years. Time and time again, I’ve heard them repeated online, by those seeking to minimize the unprecedented non-violent social action of the past four years, or by those seeking — one way or another — to suppress the vote.</p>
<p>Friends, Joe Biden has not been President for 24-hours, and he has buried these lies on the ash heap of history.</p>
<p>I hope you were paying attention.</p>
<p>Yes, the swearing-ins were nice, and cathartic. Yes, the party last night was calming. But I hope you paid very close attention to the seventeen executive orders that President Biden signed yesterday.</p>
<p>Seventeen.</p>
<p>With the stroke of a pen, Biden was able to undo many of the continuingly-damaging things that President Trump has wrought over four years.</p>
<p>Here is just a partial list:</p>
<p>— Border Wall construction stops, by terminating the national emergency declaration used to fund it<br>— Reverses the Muslim ban.<br>— Cancels the Keystone XL pipeline<br>— Fortifies DACA<br>— Rejoins the Paris Climate Accord<br>— Rejoins the World Health Organization, and sends Dr. Fauci to a meeting of that group…<em>today</em>.<br>— Requires non-citizens to be included in the Census and apportionment of congressional representatives<br>— Extends the existing nationwide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.<br>— Rescinds xenophobic 1776 Commission, and instead directs agencies to review actions to ensure racial equity<br>— Prevents workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity<br>— Requires masks and physical distancing in federal buildings.<br>— Extends the existing pause on student loan payments and interest for Americans with federal student loans until at least September 30</p>
<p>Now, take a look at these six pictures. Because I want to draw the line of what some of us have been doing these past four years, and what happened yesterday. Each of these pictures is from an actual non-violent protest with connected to change that has already happened, either through the stroke of the pen, or the swearing-in of Biden/Harris.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/9bfdf-1etx7w1vti77ssssdu7dvdq.jpeg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p>From top left, to bottom right, the “protest,” and the outcome already manifested:</p>
<p>“Women’s March” — Election of first Woman Vice-President.<br>“Border Protest in Matamoros” — Defunding the Border Wall.<br>“Airport Protests” — Reversing the Muslim Ban.<br>“Rally Against White Supremacy” — Rescinding of the xenophobic 1776 Commission, and direction on Racial Equity.<br>“Keystone XL Pipeline Protest” — That project now cancelled.<br>“Arrest at the White House” — DACA fortified for now.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not posting these to say “look at me.”</p>
<p>Nor am I posting them declare “victory” on ANY of these causes.</p>
<p>I’m posting them because I know how many of you were at one or more of these protests…or how you protested non-violently this past year during the pandemic. I know how much you worked to turn out the vote. The money you gave, the organizing you did.</p>
<p>I know how much each of the disparate non-violent protests in these pictures stand for the real heartbreak you’ve wanted our nation to heal…and the real desire for change that you have in your hearts.</p>
<p>So, I’m not saying: <em>“Look at me.”</em></p>
<p><strong>I’m saying: “Look at you.”</strong></p>
<p>You marched.<br>You voted.<br>It mattered.<br><em>Don’t forget that.</em></p>
<p>Pay attention.</p>
<p>Pay attention to <em>just yesterday</em> and see how…<strong>boom</strong>…already so many things are different.</p>
<p>Is everything solved?<br>Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.</p>
<p>In fact, let’s be clear…all that’s really happened here is that the most dangerous continuing-harm of the Trump Administration has been wiped away with the stroke of a pen. But, that is also because most of the so-called “successes” of Trump were affected in this same way…through Executive Order.</p>
<p>So, Biden comes in and just reverses them.<br>Boom.</p>
<p>There is <em>much more</em> harm to be reversed. There is far more work to do.</p>
<p>But <em>now that the table is reset</em>…the actual hard work begins…through the legislative process. Legislation proves to be change that actually lasts.</p>
<p>Take Obamacare, for example. Do you recall how hard it was to get <em>that</em> passed?<br>Do recall how much the opposition tried to destroy it these past four years?</p>
<p>Legislation is more resilient than Executive Action. And legislation like Obamacare — though riddled, flawed, and now wounded by compromise and opposition — that is where permanent change happens.</p>
<p>So, yes, hard hard work is ahead to effect more permanent and serious change on all these issues, and more. You can’t do that with the stroke of a pen, or even the election of a more representational executive team.</p>
<p>Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice for President. He actually probably wasn’t my fifth or sixth choice, either. My point today, however, is that even if he was your twentieth choice for President on the Democratic side, he had already proven —<em> in less than 18 hours </em>— why he was a better choice than any Republican.</p>
<p>Which sends me back even further in time, to how we got here in the first place. It sends me back to 2016, and all those on the Left who crowed — time and time again — <em>“the parties are the same…it doesn’t matter who you pick.”</em></p>
<p>Don’t you dare again — after the example of four years of Trump and just eighteen hours of Biden — suggest that <em>“the parties are the same.”</em></p>
<p>Fight for your positions.<br>Push America farther toward what you believe is just.<br>Organize to elect leaders who will do just that.</p>
<p>But, no, the parties are not the same.<br>And they never were.</p>
<p>Then, meditate on all those protests.</p>
<p>Yes, the past year…but also the past <em>four</em> years.<br>All those non-violent actions.</p>
<p>Remember the thousands of times that millions of people have taken to the streets, in order to express their views.</p>
<p>Now, with that image still in your head…remember that <em>in spite of that</em> 72 million Americans still voted for Donald Trump.</p>
<p><em>In spite</em> of all the bleeding that Biden attempted to cauterize with that pen yesterday, 72 million voted for Trump, <em>with their eyes wide open.</em></p>
<p>And even with the broken windows as visible reminders of the Capitol Hill insurrection, a goodly number of them would do it again today. (Maybe even a few more once they read through this list of things Biden did yesterday…)</p>
<p>Friends, <em>it took every single one of those protests to get us to Biden’s pen signing those orders</em>.<br>So, yes, that’s a lot of work to do.</p>
<p>Therefore, before you want to criticize “establishment Democrats,” or Moderates (or whoever your favorite target is…) for not going far enough…<em>meditate again on those 72 million voters</em>.</p>
<p>Imagine the challenging legislative task ahead for Biden/Harris to negotiate change with the <em>legislators</em> those 72 million represent.</p>
<p>I remain quite confident and hopeful that America is “changing” (not permanently changed) and moving to the Left. Elections are where the process of change <em>starts</em>, not where it stops. The struggle for social change that’s been the streets for four years is now a “fight” that now goes on in the halls of Congress, through the challenging compromises that legislation always entails.<br>(After Jan 06, I believe I should always put “fight” in quotations…)</p>
<p>Finally, never again believe that your vote doesn’t matter.<br>VOTING MATTERS.</p>
<p>It makes a difference in terms of who gets elected, representationally, and what they stand for, legislatively.</p>
<p>No stroke of a pen can bring back 400,000 dead Americans.<br>It cannot reunite those children in the cages with their families.<br>It can’t repair the damage done to Muslims, Women, People of Color…over the past four years.</p>
<p><em>But a stroke of the pen can clear the deck and bring us back to a kind of a starting place, where we now move forward.</em></p>
<p>Now, the work can begin. The hard slog of legislative negotiation begins…not a march in the streets, but a march toward more permanent change.</p>
<p>And, as we take that march:</p>
<p>Don’t ever again tell me <em>“the parties are the same.”</em><br>Don’t ever again tell me <em>“non-violent action doesn’t work.”</em><br>Don’t ever again tell me “elections don’t matter.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6526204
2021-01-20T16:02:03-06:00
2021-01-20T19:15:15-06:00
Our Flag Is Still There
<p>I’ve been dubious about The National Anthem and our flag, for several years now…having been stunned to learn the Anthem’s racists verses (the ones we never sing…) and having been deeply impressed by the “Take a Knee” movement regarding the flag.</p>
<p>(“America The Beautiful,” and This Land…” are both better choices, imho…)</p>
<p>But this morning, as Lady Gaga sang “…our flag was still there,” as her voice crescendoed upward, she turned and looked upward too…and gestured toward the actual flag flying over the actual Capitol Building. <strong>I have also just now realized, looking for the video, that several networks missed the moment! Here’s the best video I’ve found</strong>. (check out the 2:10 mark and following…)</p>
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<div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"><iframe class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZAe02qarUFk?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation"></iframe></div>
</div></figure>
<p>I am sure I am not alone when my thoughts quickly flashed to two weeks ago…<br>…as a <em>Confederate</em> battle flag waved through our Capitol Building (for the first time in history…)<br>…as insurrectionists tried to take <em>down</em> the American flag, and put up a <em>Trump</em> flag.</p>
<p>But my also thoughts flashed to today…<br>…as Women, Blacks, and South Asian Americans are now forever folded in to the very heights of executive power for the first time in our history.</p>
<p>All of this flashed before my eyes,this happened, as Gaga sang and gestured. I fell into heaving tears.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/99c85-1ulhle5s7po7tline8tkqvw.jpeg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></figure>
<p><em>“My God…our flag is still there…”</em> and…</p>
<p><em>“My God…it almost wasn’t….”</em> and…</p>
<p><em>“My God…that all REALLY HAPPENED, just two weeks ago…”</em></p>
<p>President Biden later said “Democracy has prevailed.”</p>
<p>Years from now — when we read those words — we must never forget that “Democracy has prevailed” was no hollow rhetorical flourish.</p>
<p>This is literal truth. For a few horrific hours, this was an open question. But, Democracy has prevailed.</p>
<p>And as tarnished as the legacy of our flag is — as genuinely dubious as the Anthem always will be — that flag is more “our flag” today than it’s ever been in the 200-plus year history of our nation.</p>
<p>This day was both symbol, and embodiment, of the hard work before us all, still.</p>
<p>But, thank God.<br>Democracy has prevailed.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6524596
2021-01-19T00:53:49-06:00
2021-01-19T02:30:14-06:00
What White America Taught Me About Martin Luther King.
<h3></h3>
<p>Because I grew up as an “average” White American, my learnings about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have mostly come from White America. I was in my mid-20s before I first understood this. Only now, in my mid-50s, can I actually look back and see the lessons more clearly.</p>
<p>With the benefit of hindsight, I can now look back and see the selective and curated messages that White America taught me about Dr. King over the years. If you are a White American, I invite you to look back with me today.</p>
<p>F<strong>irst, White America Taught Me To Ignore Dr. King.</strong></p>
<p>As a child of the late 60s, my experience of Dr. King was much like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnR4boJJD98" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">the Don Henry lyrics in “Beautiful Fool</a>.” :</p>
<p><em>“Walter Cronkite,<br>Preempted Disney one night,<br>And all us kids got so upset. <br>We thought that you were<br>A trouble instigator<br>Marching through our TV sets.”</em></p>
<p>This was true for me. No White person — no teacher, relative, mentor — ever talked to me about Martin Luther King Jr. during my childhood. At least, not in any way I consciously remember now. The adults in <em>my</em> life vainly attempted to extend a Disneyesque vision of 1950s America into the late 1960s, and mostly ignored the tumultuous changes, all around us, as we grew up in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas.</p>
<p>Looking back, I believe these adults had no way to process what was happening. The way of life they’d assumed would be there forever was challenged by a younger, more diverse, generation. Civil Rights, Vietnam, Women’s Rights…none of these existed in my childhood world.<br>Nor did Dr. King.</p>
<p>This is a lesson we should pay attention to again, of course. Once again, we are living through a tumultuous time, and far too much of White America is either ignoring, or actively resisting, the demographic changes that will soon assign White people to permanent minority status, politically and socially. Far too few of us have meditated on what these changes will mean for us, and far too many of us have spent time actively resisting and fighting the inevitable “browning of America.”</p>
<p>I believe that last instinct — to resist rather than understand these demographic changes — was assisted by the fact that too many of us were first taught “ignore” Dr. King.</p>
<p>W<strong>hite America Taught Me To Conflate Dr. King with Traitors</strong></p>
<p>The next conscious-thoughts I had about Dr. King were connected with the push to create the MLK Holiday. While that holiday now folds into our national story, and is an assumed part of every year, it’s important to remember that its very creation was a struggle.</p>
<p>Many states — including my own State of Texas — actively opposed the King Holiday. White people suggested King was not of great-enough stature to deserve a holiday. He was not a “Founding Father,” for example.</p>
<p>But, even worse, once it became clear that the King Holiday <em>would</em> be approved, White people advocated for continuing celebration of the Confederacy on this very weekend too. “Confederate Heroes Day” is <strong>STILL TO THIS DAY</strong> actual state holiday in Texas that falls the day <em>after</em> MLK Day. Lawmakers at this very legislative session, are <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/15/texas-legislature-confederate-heroes-day/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">still fighting to eliminate it</a>.</p>
<p>All of this, of course, creates an unhealthy unconscious analogy in the minds of White Americans:</p>
<p><em>“Sure,”</em> we tell ourselves, <em>“Jefferson Davis was a traitor to America…”</em> But then we apply a “Whataboutism” to Dr. King: <em>“He *also* stirred things up…both men fought for ‘their view’ of our country, and there is nobility in both.”</em></p>
<p>Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Jefferson Davis and his compatriots led armed rebellion against the United States.<br>Dr. King stood for non-violent protest against unjust laws, and at no time called for an overthrow of the government.</p>
<p>Without question, the events of “01–06” have now given us a far more accurate comparison to the Confederacy. Donald Trump is now more comparable to Jefferson Davis than any American leader in the past 100 years. And the insurrectionist actors and sympathizers, are our new emboldened Confederacy.</p>
<p>But friends, make no mistake: a part of <em>their</em> learning — the education of these contemporary White traitors to America — came from this willing conflation of Dr. King with Confederate insurrection. This unconscious and unhealthy analogy, and false equivalency, minimized Dr. King’s work and legacy, while simultaneously morally licensing White People to keep “Lost Cause” mythology alive.</p>
<p>It is not an accident that — for the first in our history — White people waved a Confederate flag through the halls of Congress, two weeks ago.<br>That happened, in part, because of this continuing — sometimes intentional, sometimes unconscious — conflation of Dr. King with American traitors for the past sixty years.</p>
<p>W<strong>hite America Taught Me To Minimize Dr. King’s Successors and Successes.</strong></p>
<p>White America taught me to laugh at Shirley Chisholm. This derision is so complete, very few contemporary Americans today even know who she was. White America taught me to deride Jesse Jackson as an opportunist who soiled and tarnished Dr. King’s legacy. To be crystal clear, White Democrats were a major part of both these derisions. Yes, we must name this.</p>
<p>Republicans, of course, simply ignored issues of race and social justice. For decades, and into the present day, they sit on their hands, pharisaically pointing back their supposed key role in passing Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.</p>
<p><em>”Lord, we thank you,”</em> they continue to say, <em>“that our 60s Republicans were not like these 60s Democrats…”</em></p>
<p>As they float and repeat this last talking point among their “base” — thereby inviting current White Republicans to nurse an overblown sense of their forebearer’s moral role in Civil Rights — their party has <em>actively</em> courted racists through “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/26/what-we-get-wrong-about-southern-strategy/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The Southern Strategy</a>” of the 1970s and 1980s, and engaged in harmful “Voter Protections” strategies and myths today. (I urge you to watch “<a href="https://www.riggedthefilm.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook</a>” on this last point…)</p>
<p>One of the most twisted parts of White America’s misuse of Dr. King are conservatives who continue to appeal to his legacy, while actively supporting a political party that engages in these last two political strategies.</p>
<p>For me, personally — <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/08/07/jesse-jackson-had-it-right/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">as I’ve written about previously</a> — Jackson’s presidential runs in the late 1980s were seminal. Jackson was the first Democrat I ever voted for, and his vision of the “Rainbow Coalition,” I will continue to remind you, is <strong>THE</strong> path forward for America. It’s a 40-year-old vision, still unrealized.</p>
<p>But we are on the cusp of it now. Every single Presidential election, save one, since 1996 has been won by the Democratic candidate and a coalition of voters that looks remarkably like Jackson’s original “Rainbow Coalition.” But, to this day, it seems to be very little acknowledgement of this truth, or anyone who consciously traces it back to the successors of Dr. King, such as Jackson and Chisolm.</p>
<p><em>Dr. King’s “successes” are also minimized and discarded.</em><br>White America only ever tepidly embraced The Great Society, complaining all the while about “takers” and “welfare cheats,” before abandoning it all together. (And in this, ignored the factual evidence that it was working…)</p>
<p>White America proudly quotes Dr. King’s “dream” of Black and White children playing together, but actively fought the integration of public schools, and to this day has never really taken seriously the call to dismantle White Supremacy.</p>
<p>White America kept alive a fear of Black men, through the meme of “Willie Horton,” and foolish terms like “Superpredator.” (Please note the bipartisan White American blame here…)</p>
<p>In short, at just the moment when Dr. King’s “successes” were being codified into law, White America fought against these laws. White America minimized both the spiritual and moral underpinnings of these laws, and also minimized and demeaned the role of government in enforcing them.</p>
<p>The entire Conservative enterprise of “smaller government” is not simply a philosophical point of view, it’s also been a practical strategy for dismantling, delaying, and denying the government programs which trace their origins to the time of Dr. King’s social activism.</p>
<p>However, today we note two significant cultural milestones. This week, we will have our first Black Woman Vice-President. This week, the successor to Dr. King’s actual pulpit becomes a US Senator. These are both real, and metaphorical, moments for White America to understand.</p>
<p>White America, these changes you have so long fought are eventually inevitable. They will, and are, happening now, with or without you.</p>
<p>What White America has taught us about Dr. Kings successors and successes must be discarded for a truer view of where are going and who America will be.</p>
<p>W<strong>hite America Taught Me To Selectively Read Dr. King</strong></p>
<p>There is little doubt this is true, and every year on this weekend people note this fact.</p>
<p>White Americans — of all political parties — love to quote Dr. King. I myself love to quote Dr. King. But, White America loves to quote Dr. King on “peace” and “love,” and fails to quote him on “justice” and “action.” As such, the vision of Dr. King that White Americans carry in their heads is dangerously out of balance.</p>
<p>I can only encourage White America to do the following:<br>1. Read and quote more of <em>“Letter From Birmingham Jail”</em> and less of <em>“I Have A Dream.”</em><br>Understand that the former is written to you, me, and all of us…and is remarkably prescient, even today.<br>2. Read and quote Dr. King from the LATE 1960s, not the early. By the late 1960s, Dr. King was embracing a broader vision of social justice that is much needed still today. He had courageously opposed Vietnam. He was actively planning <em>“The Poor People’s March.”</em> This latter point is not to be missed.</p>
<p>When King died, this vision of a Poor People’s Campaign was dealt a horrible blow. It is <a href="https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">only now being rebuilt</a> through the powerful work of leaders like Dr. William Barber. That campaign visioned a multiracial coalition that brought together people of all races. Black people in urban centers, and White people in Appalachia. Of all the dreams that “died” or fractured in the wake of King’s assassination, this one has been the most harmful to our nation.</p>
<p>Again, we White Americans had a chance to create these kinds of coalition through the work of Jesse Jackson. We didn’t take that chance.</p>
<p>Then, we had the hope of an actual Black President in Barack Obama. Instead, we wasted that time on stupid and unfounded <em>“birthirism”</em> on the Right, and foolish crowing about a mythical “<em>Post-Racial America”</em> on the Left.</p>
<p>Our selected reading of Dr. King has been incredibly dangerous, not just for Black Americans, but also for White Americans too.</p>
<p>W<strong>hite America Taught Me Political Non-Violence Is Optional</strong></p>
<p>This is self-obvious after the events of “01–06.”<br>But it had been obvious long before.</p>
<p>*White America taught me that the political violence of police brutality was always acceptable, when applied to African-Americans.<br>*White America taught me that the violence of mass incarceration was reasonable, so long as it was justified as a deterrent to crime.<br>*White America taught me to focus on <a href="https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">the relatively few incidents of violence</a> in <em>“Black Lives Matter”</em> protests, rather than the millions of peaceful protestors in the streets, literally marching in the legacy of Dr. King’s non-violence action.<br>*White America…as they have done with King, Chisholm, Jackson, Obama…continues to change the subject and engages in harmful “whataboutisms” to avoid looking deeply at their own racial culpability both now and in the past.</p>
<p>And, finally and most chillingly, White America — far too much of it, in my opinion — is currently justifying and coddling mostly White domestic insurrectionists who tried to overtake our government and murder its leaders.</p>
<p>White America — far too much of it, in my opinion — is excusing their behavior, and refusing to look at their words and actions that morally licensing that event. This excusing and licensing, of course, is also directly tied to the false and distorted things White America teaches, and has taught, all of us about Dr. King.</p>
<p>Let me boil it down:<br><em>White America appears to be fine with violence when Police are harming Black bodies.<br>White America also seems to be fine with White People beating Cops with “Thin Blue Line” flags.</em><br>(Meditate <strong>very deeply</strong> on both the metaphorical and literal truth of these last two sentences…)</p>
<p>It doesn’t make any sense.<br>It doesn’t have to.<br>White People clearly believe — not just through historical examples of decades ago, but through our contemporary actions today — that Dr. King’s political non-violence is optional.<br> — — — — — — — — — — — — —</p>
<p>You will note that, throughout this essay, I have not quoted one line of Dr. King’s actual words. That’s intentional.</p>
<p>My goal today is not to idealize the words of Dr. King, but to demythologize the <em>LESSONS</em> we White Americans have taken from him.</p>
<p>Some of these lessons, as you have no doubt now surmised, turn the actual words and legacy of Dr. King on their heads. Some of them have, incredibly, been used to justify the continuing coddling and support of White Supremacists in America over the past few decades, and into our current day.</p>
<p>One of the deep learnings I’ve had this past twenty years, is to not speak <em>“on behalf of”</em> others….People of Color…the LGBTQ community…Immigrants…Women. I’ve learned, and relearned that I have a place as an <em>ally</em> with these groups, but not a place to speak <em>for</em> them. This is hard lesson I continually relearn.</p>
<p>More recently, I’ve started to take hard looks at the lessons I carry forward of me…most of which was taught to me by White America. That’s why this essay doesn’t talk about the <em>actual</em> Dr King, but instead tries to address what we White People <em>seem to believe about him</em>.</p>
<p><em>So, on this King Holiday, dear White America, don’t just throw out random quotes from King, or spend your time doing a service project. Look back at your own life, as I have tried to do here, and take seriously what you learned, and what you have not learned, about Dr. King during your life’s course.</em></p>
<p>Most of it, for far too many of us, comes to us distorted through the lens of our own White point of view.</p>
<p>Get to know what Dr. King actually said. Especially his later writings. <br>Listen quietly and carefully to what African-Americans can teach you about his legacy today.</p>
<p>Understand that his vision is still deeply important today, if America is yet to survive.<br>But must to come to terms with what White America taught us about him in the first place.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6522873
2021-01-16T14:08:33-06:00
2021-01-16T15:45:09-06:00
The Tribe of Everybody Else
<h3>A Message To White America</h3>
<p><em>“Let me put it this way, there were a number of folks who got up on the floor and gave the same speech, you know that night…while there was a crime scene investigation and a dead woman’s blood drying just a few feet outside the door….they were giving the same speech that was written that morning…maybe a throw-away line about condemning political violence…but I mean, just the dissonance…it was just staggering.”<br></em><strong>— Rep. Peter Meijer (R) of Michigan</strong></p>
<p><em>“But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, </em><strong><em>he was moved with compassion</em></strong><em>. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.”</em><br><strong>(Gospel of Luke 10: 33–34)</strong></p>
<p><strong>DEAR WHITE AMERICA,</strong></p>
<p>For several years, quietly, and not-so-quietly, I’ve pushed the notion that what’s truly sick in our society today is a lack of compassion, empathy, and understanding. These are themes that are especially relevant during Christmas and Epiphany, because compassion and empathy are most easily comprehended when we can “see the Christ” in another person, incarnationally.<br>(Or, “see the “Divine,” if that’s better language for you…)</p>
<p>The extent to which we see all human beings — and all life, the earth itself — as touched, graced and kissed by God…that is the extent to which we will be able to generate true compassion, empathy and understanding toward others.</p>
<p>The extent to which we “Otherize” human beings — or see the Earth as a commodity or an exploitable resource — that is the extent to which we will diminish and devalue the lives of others, and even fail to care for the world itself.</p>
<p>Seeing God in all things…in all people…is not just a huggy-touchy-feely, Kum Ba Ya sentiment. One of my enduring frustrations is how society ridicules this profound and important spiritual belief and pollyanna or shallow, instead of seeing it for what it is: a driving force behind all ethical behavior.</p>
<p>Because, if I truly “see the Christ (God)” in another, then I not only cannot <em>harm</em> or Otherize another, but I am instead morally compelled to <strong>love</strong> them…to show compassion for them…to see them as <em>like me</em> and like God.</p>
<p>The Parable of the Good Samaritan is an enduring spiritual teaching that’s now two thousand years ago. Jesus implicitly names the “Otherizing” of his *own* historical culture and time:</p>
<p>A conflict between “Team Samaritan” and “Team Jew.”</p>
<p>Each group saw the “other” as apostate and unclean. Each group saw themselves as “morally right.”</p>
<p>Jesus sets up the story by positing us that three Jewish religious leaders simply walk by the injured man. Keep in mind…they are walking by a member of their own “Team” (Team Jew). The implication is clear, yet unstated: Whatever religious training these so-called learned leaders claim to have, they <em>fail</em> at the task of truly being spiritual and ethical in that moment.</p>
<p>All their book learning, their seminary degrees, their accumulated years of power and authority…have clearly not helped these men truly become compassionate and loving toward God and others.</p>
<p>But, when a member of “Team Samaritan” comes by, Jesus says that man “was moved with compassion” for the injured member of “Team Jew,” and stops to help him.</p>
<p>And here, we come face-to-face with my favorite Biblical word…with the word that, I am convinced, most describes what is missing in far too many of us today….<strong>COMPASSION</strong>.</p>
<p>The Biblical word here (“<em>Splagchnizomai</em>”) is only used a few times in the New Testament. But its meaning is deep. It means <em>“to be moved in the bowels, in the gut…a deep and visceral feeling of love, empathy, and compassion.”</em></p>
<p><em>That</em> is what is most missing in our world today.</p>
<p>I have been deeply influenced by the writings of <a href="http://ezr" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Ezra Klein</a> as his book “Why We’re Polarized.” Klein suggests that the major divide in our world today is between “Team Red,” and “Team Blue.” The data shows how the polarization of America has deepened over the past 50 years, as the two major parties have become <em>less</em> “cross-sorted.”</p>
<p>Plenty of us reject dividing human beings into two categories. Plenty of us pretend that we “see all sides.” But the reality is, at an emotional level, often we do not.</p>
<p>Often, we have visceral, sub-conscious reactions that drive in surprising ways…and push us to see the “Other Team” as “THE ENEMY.”</p>
<p>Such thinking is, of course, a disaster for our innate sense of compassion and empathy.</p>
<p>The above quote from Representative Peter Meijer (R), Michigan, shows a man who is both aware of the divides between our “Teams” in America, and also aware of the disturbing lack of empathy in our nation.</p>
<p>He notes a lack of empathy and compassion in his own Republican colleagues in the form of speeches they gave on the House floor, deep into the night on January 6th. Some of them, he said, gave the <em>exact same speech</em> they had planned to give earlier in the day…while, now, “a dead woman’s blood (was) drying a few feet outside the door.”</p>
<p>This is literally the story of those religious leaders walking on by. </p>
<p>As Meijer says, the <em>“dissonance is staggering…”</em></p>
<p>Meijer — a first-year member of Congress — voted for impeachment, knowing full-well that this very first major vote of his congressional career might <em>end</em> that career. He now claims he is living with the fear that he and his family’s lives might be in danger. He and all members of Congress have been advised that body armor is a “reimbursable expense.”</p>
<p>To be clear, the “threat” he now feels is the threat from his own “Team Red.”</p>
<p>And so, my empathy goes out to him. I do not doubt for one bit that his life <em>is</em> now in danger.</p>
<p>I feel this compassion for him, because I know too many friends, colleagues, and activists on the Left who have dealt with these same threats of violence for <em>years</em>.</p>
<p>I have personally received threatening messages over the years (including a three vaguely threatening anonymous calls to our church voicemail this week. None that feel super-serious…)</p>
<p>But how many times have we seen these threats over the past few years in our culture? On our TVs?</p>
<p>How many times have those threats been dismissed as “over-reacting.”</p>
<p>And I mean, far before the attack of last week, or the attack on Governor Whitmire in Meijer’s home state.</p>
<p>Several Republican lawmakers — Meijer’s colleagues in the Republican caucus — have posed with actual fire arms, and threatened to “come after” the “Squad” and other Democratic members of the House.</p>
<p>I also recall, some years ago, Sarah Palin posting pictures of Democratic lawmakers with bulleye targets on their faces…</p>
<p><em>Therefore, I ask:</em></p>
<p> — How many times have we seen violent memes with pictures of “The Squad?”<br> — How many times — during these last few years — have we White people heard People of Color speak of how <em>unsafe</em> they feel to just walk down the street?<br> — How many times — during these last few years — have we heard the “Me Too” stories of the women we love?<br> — How many times — during the past few years — have we heard the despicable things said of Muslim friends? Or LGBTQ friends?</p>
<p>My message to Meijer, then, is:<br><em>“Welcome to the club, friend. Welcome to the club. Pull up a chair. Look around. Not only are you *not* alone, but there’s a shit ton of folks in here already.”</em></p>
<p>Far too many People of Color, far too many LGBTQ friends, far too many religious minorities, far too many women, <strong>already</strong> know what it’s like to be a target.</p>
<p>Therefore, while I have sympathy for these newly minted targets of Right Wing Republican Wrath, I also invite them to consider just how <em>many</em> of Americans have already dealt with these threats for <em>years</em>.</p>
<p>(And, yes, a Bernie Sanders fan did try to gun down Republican members of Congress. I am not forgetting or minimizing this. “Otherizing” is possible on both sides…hope you hear this. But equally possible, and more common, is a paralyzing “Whataboutism” that keeps us from confronting real root issues as they happen…)</p>
<p>So…this morning, my <em>own</em> empathy extends in all sorts of complicated directions.</p>
<p>For decades now, my primary empathy has been toward the oppressed groups I’ve just mentioned…People of Color, the LGBTQ community, Women, Muslims, immigrants…and it is still my primary empathy today.</p>
<p>But this morning, it also extends to all of us White Americans who are now seriously, and with intention, confronting the “dissonance” we have with that portions of “our tribe”…White Nationalists and Racists…who tried to forcibly overthrown our government two Wednesdays ago.</p>
<p>If this is you, let me just say: I feel like I know a bit of your journey and the dissonance you now feel.</p>
<p>The hardest journey of my adult life has been the journey of turning my back on the White Conservatism of my youth and young adulthood. (I’m not looking for any violins or participations medals by saying this…)</p>
<p>I was raised in the “tribe” of “Conservative, White Straight Man.” But I consciously began to leave that tribe in the late 1980s, and my journey toward being a new kind of man continues to this day. As I’ve written before, I fail at it…often.</p>
<p>So, Dear White America, let me state it plainly:</p>
<p>The “MAGA” and “Trump” brand is forever now tied to insurrection against the United States. That may not be how <em>you</em> see Trump flags and bumper stickers, but that’s how <em>everyone else</em> sees them. Fifty years from now, almost all Americans will look at those Trump flags as they do the Confederate flag today.</p>
<p>Some of you are not “MAGA” Conservatives. You’ve already left that train, or were never on it in the first place. But you were raised “Conservative” and “Republican,” and are now even questioning those allegiances.</p>
<p>If you are a generally conservative White American who is now seriously, and with intention, confronting your own “dissonance” with portions of our “White tribe” — the White Nationalists and Racists who control your party — let me say that I empathize with the dissonance this journey can stir up.</p>
<p>Some of you had your eyes initially opened this summer, during the protests after George Floyd’s death. For some of you, that was the first time you seirously wondered <em>“Is this really my tribe?”</em></p>
<p>The events of last Wednesday have no doubt caused some of you to come back to these questions again.</p>
<p>Don’t push down the questions.<br>Don’t immediately leap to the rationalizations, justifications and “whataboutisms” that your rational mind wants to throw out. That response comes from your discomfort, and from your own tribal mind trying to defend itself.</p>
<p>I’d invite you to <em>sit</em> with the discomfort. Because that discomfort, dissonance, and heartbreak you feel right now can lead you to the door of a new and larger tribe: <em>The Tribe of everybody else.</em></p>
<p>(Note: I did <em>not</em> say, it leads you to become a Democrat…)</p>
<p>For years, I’ve joked that there are two kinds of people in the world…those who divide everyone into two kinds of people…and everybody else.</p>
<p>That’s a joke, but it’s also somehow true. I often — as Jesus did — use the shorthand of “Tribes” to name this fundamental flaw in our human nature. Jesus used “Samaritan” and “Jew” as shorthands. Later, Paul would mimic this and name three binaries: “Jews and Greek, Slave and Free, Male and Female.”<br>And he would state the hopeful truth: <em>“You are all one in Christ Jesus.”</em></p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because <em>we all have that imprint of God’s presence in us.<br></em>There is no “Other,” there is only “<strong>US</strong>.”</p>
<p>I have to trust that there is a future American where there will be a diverse, “Conservative Tribe” that separates itself from White Supremacy. That’s not where we are right now, “Republican Party” as it now stands.</p>
<p>Conservatives, and especially White Conservatives, have a challenging journey ahead of them.</p>
<p>For White people in America, this can be harrowingly challenging journey of finally waking up. I genuinely believe this a spiritual journey, primarily, and only tangentially a political one. At least, that was my experience of the past three decades. This is a journey of ‘repentence,” in the truest Christian use of that word…meaning, <em>“to turn in a new way…”</em></p>
<p>As Ezra Klein notes, one political party in America is doing a much better job at being open and welcoming to all people (Democrats) than the other (Republicans). He quickly notes that Democrats are clearly not at all perfect, suffer from many flaws, and still must overcome their own supremacy and paternalism. But they are, at least consciously working on these issues (some) and rejecting overt White Supremacy. </p>
<p>There will always be conservative <em>people</em> of genuine faith, good will, and compassion. But that is not where the Republican Party is right now, and many of you are seriously questioning what that means for you.</p>
<p>Take the journey, White friends.<br>Take the journey.<br><em>The nation needs you to take the journey.</em></p>
<p>Take the journey of “giving up” the idea that our lives, our bodies, our souls, are more important than everyone else’s. It’s a terrifying journey…not just because the journey means a loss of power — realized or unconsciously internalized — but also because there are still so few good <em>models</em> for us White people (especially White men) as to where the journey leads.</p>
<p>Many of you are privately asking: <em>“If I am NOT a White Conservative Straight Republican Man, than who am I?”</em></p>
<p>It’s hard to know what we are “not” if we don’t have a clear sense of “who we are.”</p>
<p>White America is, right now, having an identify crisis about who it will be, as American finally — at long lasts —groans toward becoming the multi-cultural Democratic Republic we were always called to become through the best of our founding documents.</p>
<p>And in this emerging world, many of us don’t understand our place. We know what we <em>don’t</em> want to be, but who we are in the future is still yet to be determined.</p>
<p>After the events of “1–6,” I’m more convinced than ever that, at the heart of this journey is <em>a terror at the loss of our SOCIAL TRIBE</em>…our White identity…an identity that for far too many of us has also been connected to one specific <em>POLITICAL TRIBE</em>.</p>
<p>I personally believe that this unacknowledged “loss of tribe”, buried in deep their subconscious, is what also drives much of behavior of these Right Wing Zealots who tried to steal our government on “01–6”; even as I’m equally convinced they are so tragically “<strong>un</strong>self-aware” that they cannot realize this.</p>
<p><em>But the way THROUGH is THROUGH.</em></p>
<p>You may never become a “Democrat,” or a “Liberal.”<br>Those labels…those “Tribes” still may not be your place.</p>
<p>But take the journey of leaving behind this deeply sick and disturbed <em>Team</em> that is so lacking in basic human compassion.</p>
<p>Take the journey toward the tribe of everybody else.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6517239
2021-01-09T12:22:20-06:00
2021-01-09T16:00:06-06:00
When “Public Service” Gets Crushed
<p>Everybody is haunted by the images of this week.<br>The Nazi shirts…the Confederate flag…the man with zip ties in military gear…the wild-eyed looks of these insurrectionists.</p>
<p><br>But I’ve been deeply stirred by two images.<br>One, of this Capitol police officer being crushed.<br>The other, of Representative Andy Kim cleaning up the trash.</p>
<p><br><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/governmentisus.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" style="width:800px;" /><br></p>
<p>I know that this is a hard year to defend police in any way. I know…there are deep questions to be asked about the Capitol Police. (As somebody who once myself was arrested by them…I have a few questions about HOW the insurrectionists got in…)</p>
<p><br>But take a look at this officer being crushed. Whatever you think of law enforcement as a whole, they are —first and foremost— public servants.<br><strong>And a PART of what’s being CRUSHED in our world today is the whole idea of PUBLIC SERVICE itself.</strong></p>
<p><br>The Trump era is the pinnacle of a fifty-year era of diminishment and demoralization those who serve the public.<br>From the time of Reagan onward, major portions of the Republican Party have told us that “government is the problem.” That concept has been internalized into a political strategy of literally doing <strong>nothing</strong>. If government is the “problem,” then the “solution” is for government to do as little as possible…or, as Grover Norquist once famously said…get it small enough to drown in the bathtub.</p>
<p><br>Think about that metaphor for a moment.</p>
<p><br>If you drowned the government, <em>who gets drowned</em>?</p>
<p><br><strong>Answer</strong>:<br>Members of Congress, sure. (I’m sure Norquist meant them…)<br>But also dog catchers and garbage collectors in your neighborhood.<br>Clerks, adminstrators and government scientists.<br>Yes, your local police too.<br>Military.<br>Judges, baliffs, court reporters.<br>Cashiers at the DMV.<br>Teachers and principals and social workers.<br>Public health workers.<br>Folks who keep the water on.</p>
<p><br><strong>They</strong> drown….because the government is always <strong>US</strong>.</p>
<p>“The government” is not some strange, other-wordly cabal of mystically all-powerful humans.<br><strong>WE</strong> are the government.<br>The “government” is real human beings.</p>
<p><br>Those doors that cop was defending were the doors to “The People’s House.”<br>And, somehow, things have gotten so twisted-up that some of our citizens believe they were called to take it by force.</p>
<p><strong>Eventually, if you internalize the message of drowning government-workers in a bathtub deeply enough, it leads directly to a crushed cop and wild-eye insurrectionists hunting Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence with zip ties.</strong></p>
<p><br>Since I am married to an elected public official, I spend far more time meditating on these issue than the average preacher. I see the dangers they face, first hand. Not every day, but some days, I worry about my wife’s safety has she leaves the house.<br>We’ve dealt with harassment and stalkers, physical and virtual. We don’t talk about those moments, publicly, very much. But pictures like that crushed cop bring them up. Understand, what we face is nothing like other public servants face on a daily basis. But, I see it.<br></p>
<p>So, today, I am not absolving all police, or inviting you to excuse inaction or malfeasance on the part of any public official. We <strong>should</strong> hold them accountable…all public officials.</p>
<p><br>We should also realize that there is a literal and spiritual cost to “otherizing” government workers as sub-human.<br>And we have all done that, far more than we should.</p>
<p><br>Many government workers see what they do to “serve the public” as a “calling.”<br>I’m blessed to get to see them here in Dallas, first hand. We are blessed to personally know many city and county officials here…elected, appointed, and hired. I see how seriously they take their jobs, and their dedication is a constant source of inspiration to me.<br></p>
<p>I see the <strong>crap</strong> they put up with, from “We The People.” How we all —regardless of party— tend to complain about them and very rarely praise them for anything. We are quick to critize them (I am too, understand. First among the hypocrites, am I…).<br>But we don’t see them doing what Rep. Andy Kim is doing in this second photograph.</p>
<p><br>Does this second photo move you?<br>Of course it does. It’s servant-leadership at its best.<br></p>
<p>But friends, you need to understand that every day there are hundreds of thousands of unsung Andy Kim’s, <strong>always picking up the trash</strong> (some, literally) that “We The People” leave.<br>They serve us.</p>
<p><br>We must acknowlege that over these past fifty years, a basis respect for our institutions at all levels has faded.<br><strong>BUT</strong>! We must admit that it has not just magically waned from weariness or cynicism. That fading respect for institutions has been <strong>NURSED</strong>, curated and encouraged…most explicitly by some portions of the Republican Party, but internalized by us all.</p>
<p><br><em>“Government is your problem,</em>” is a 50-year mantra of the Republican Party.</p>
<p><br>Eventually, that gets you a government of no ideas, and no desire to do anything except gum up the works so that nothing is ever accomplished.<br>Eventually, that means enough folks say “Why <em>not</em> elect the narcissistic businessman as President…what have you got to lose?”<br>Eventually, that gets you people who are so frustrated and angry (on all sides) that their government doesn’t do more for them.<br>Eventually, that gets you a public that has a *profoundy cynical* view of public service.<br>Eventually, that gets you a crazed, radical fringe who will believe almost any conspiracy theory, mimic the narcissistic delusions of their leader, and decide they can just take over Congress if they feel like it…and murder or arrest anybody who gets in their way.</p>
<p><br>That is what 50 years of this message gets us.</p>
<p><br>If we’re going to move to a new place, some new found respect for all those who serve us —even as we we still hold them accountable— will have to be a part of the solution. If not, we are in for not just more crushed officers, but more “crushed” DMV clerks and dog catchers too.<br></p>
<p>It’s time for us to re-center our sense of not only accountability, but also respect, for all who serve us in the institution we call “the government.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6515691
2021-01-07T10:45:21-06:00
2021-01-07T13:15:06-06:00
Choose wisely
<p>If you are a Trump supporter who condemns yesterday’s insurrection against the United States, if you believe yourself to be a Christian or a decent person, today is a day to forever take down your Trump flags and put away your MAGA hats.</p>
<p>Whatever you believe these symbols mean, or *want* them to mean, they are now forever linked to armed insurrection against the United States. That is what those symbols will forever now mean.<br>So, unless your goal is to be a part of a continuing insurrection against our government, today is your day of choice.<br>Choose wisely.</p>
<p class="has-text-align-justify">Yesterday, Confederate battle flags and Trump flags flooded into the Capitol. Some insurrectionists even tried to replace the AMERICAN flag with the TRUMP flag. If you watched this in horror from your homes, if you have any desire to continue as a citizen of our Constitutional Republic, and not forever be associated with treason, today is pretty much it.</p>
<p>Today is your final day of choice. Because today, *everyone else* in America —Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, Socialists, Independents— will all begin to reclaim America and our Republic.<br>Questions will be asked and answered.<br>Arrests will be made of those responsible.</p>
<p>And anyone who chooses to remain on the side of MAGA hats and flags will forever be seen as party to, associates of, treason against the United States. As they sing in Hamilton:“History has its eyes on you…”</p>
<p>Today is your day of decision.</p>
<p>Choose wisely.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6512445
2021-01-02T21:41:43-06:00
2021-01-02T22:30:14-06:00
As We Go On
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<p><strong>As We Go On</strong><br>Words and Music: Eric Folkerth<br><br>the turning of the year<br>the turning of a page<br>listen and you’ll hear<br>all this restlessness and rage<br>sadness in our eyes<br>hearts still in grief<br>we say our goodbye<br>to the Orange-headed thief…<br><br>as we go on…we go on…<br>we go on…we go on…<br><br>so nurse up your aches<br>but listen to that rage<br>and follow your heartbreak<br>for all those children in a cage<br>find a forward road<br>but keep the question why<br>the story we were told<br>of how thousands had to die…<br><br>as we go on…we go on…<br>we go on…we go on…<br><br>old acquaintance<br>are forgot<br>and never brought to mind<br>so drink that cup,<br>but keep your thought<br>on who we left behind<br><br>so promise that you’ll mean<br>a promise that will last<br>a promise to redeem<br>all these failures of our past<br>for all yet to come<br>for pain we can ease<br>for the race we still run<br>for the ones who still can’t breathe…<br><br>as we go on…we go on…<br>we go on…we go on…<br><br>the turning of the year<br>the turning of the page<br>listen, and you’ll hear<br>the restlessness…and rage<br><br>as we go on…<br><br>(Copyright, Eric Folkerth ©2020. All Rights Reserved)<br><br><strong>NOTES:</strong><br><em>I’m as sick of 2020 as anybody.<br><br>But I keep hearing folks talk about the turn of the year like it will solve everything. And to me, it feels like there’s so much unfinished business…or so much business that we’ll carry forward with us into 2021.<br><br>In fact, I truly believe that we’ll be reckoning with the year 2020 —politically, socially, spiritually, MEDICALLY— for the rest of our lives.<br><br>So, while we go on…as we must…let us remember the lessons 2020 needed, and still needs, to teach us.<br><br>And let’s commit ourselves to all of its unfinished business…EF</em></p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6505670
2020-12-22T13:09:23-06:00
2022-05-11T13:35:18-05:00
Coffee on the Porch: 12/22/20
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<p><strong>Conversation:</strong><br>We talk about “Love” and how our pandemic Christmas will be different. Eric unpacks the classic song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” as the perfect song of this season.<br><strong>Featured Songs:</strong><br>“Love is There,” by Grace Pettis.”<br>O Little Town of Bethlehem,” by Phillips Brooks & Lewis Redner.”<br>Silent Night,” by Joseph Mohr & Franz Gruber.”<br>Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blaine.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6499989
2020-12-15T12:18:52-06:00
2020-12-15T13:00:11-06:00
Coffee On the Porch: 12/15/20
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6497463
2020-12-11T13:32:41-06:00
2020-12-11T17:00:26-06:00
See Like a Hawk
<p class="has-text-align-left">We’ve had a small, juvenile hawk hanging around the house the past few weeks. It might explain the sudden disappearance of rats on our late-night security cameras. (That might also be due to the neighborhood cat that apparently likes to sleep on our front porch rocking chairs…)</p>
<p class="has-text-align-left">I snapped this picture of him/her this morning. I think you can make it out, through the trees.</p>
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<p class="has-text-align-left">It also spurred a little conversation about hawks on Facebook…which got me thinking about this amazing picture that hangs here in the study/studio. This was a gift from the people of Northaven when I left there after seventeen years of ministry.</p>
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<p>What’s cool about it is that the picture is made up of thousands of small pictures of Northaven members over the years.</p>
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<p>April Hull —an amazing graphic artist in that congregation— made this for me, and it was gift on my last Sunday. She, and the congregation at large, were well aware of my feelings about hawks, and how I regard them as my “spirit animal.” (Here’s some of the <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/hawk/">writing I’ve done on hawks</a>….)</p>
<p>What struck me today is the metaphor of all those people, and how they make up the picture as a whole…and how this speaks a truth about both hawks and ministry.</p>
<p>Hawks soar above everything…but they can see mice on the ground hundreds of feet away. They both take in the whole, and see the individuals as well.</p>
<p>That’s a pretty great metaphor for ministry. Our calling is to see the “whole picture,” but also to focus on the individual too. And, like the hawk, we are constantly pulled back and forth between the two.</p>
<p>This year has forced us to look at big picture issues, like safety and health. We’ve been pushed, time and time again to “Do No Harm.”<br>But it’s also pushed us to learn new skills…try out new technology…to look at the small details of ministry…and at individual people….as never before.</p>
<p>As the year comes to a close, I’m so grateful to the pastor of the beautiful people of Kessler Park, and to share ministry with all the folks of North Oak Cliff. I hope and pray I will continue to lead them by both focusing on both “the big picture,” and the “individuals.”</p>
<p>Ministry calls us to see like a hawk.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6403612
2020-08-06T11:23:48-05:00
2020-08-06T11:45:11-05:00
Music News: August 2020
<p>Hi Friends,<br>It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a music update. In this time of pandemic, there’s not a lot of live music happening out there. A few reminders of things I’m doing in the online world, to help keep us connected in this unusual time.</p>
<p class="has-medium-font-size"><strong>New Website!</strong></p>
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<p><strong>First, my music website has a whole new look. You should check it out.</strong><br>New music.</p>
<p>New pictures.</p>
<p>New videos.</p>
<p>And most of all, a slick new design. I’m really happy with it and I hope you play around at the site for a while.</p>
<p>Check it out: <a href="http://www.ericfolkerth.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.ericfolkerth.com</a></p>
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<p class="has-medium-font-size"><strong>Coffee on the Porch</strong></p>
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<p>Also, every Tuesday morning during this time of social distancing, I am doing a livestream hour from my front porch called, <strong>“Coffee on the Porch.”</strong></p>
<p>Join us every Tuesday, 9:30 am Central, for an hour of music and conversation.</p>
<p>You can find us on Facebook live <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ericfolkerthmusic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.</p>
<p>If you don’t have Facebook, you can navigate <a href="https://ericfolkerth.com/coffee-on-the-porch">here</a> on my website and either watch each week’s live broadcast, or the archives of all previous weeks.</p>
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<p class="has-medium-font-size"><strong>WhenEFTalks</strong></p>
<p>And, as always, don’t forget about this blog, “<a rel="noopener" href="http://www.wheneftalks.com" target="_blank">WhenEFTalks</a>,” where there are always many essays to read on music, politics, spirituality and life.</p>
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<p>I hope and pray you and all your loved ones are safe in this unusal time, and that you’re navigating life as best you can. I look forward to connecting with you all in person whenever that time comes.</p>
<p>Until then, breathe in and breathe out and keep yourself centered in thoughts of hope, peace and love.</p>
<p>Eric Folkerth</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6367385
2020-06-26T10:01:59-05:00
2020-06-26T12:45:31-05:00
White Privilege Illustrated: The HOLC Maps
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<p>Far too many times, I hear White people say White Privilege is a myth or a creation of the Left. But there are ways to VISUALIZE it…to illustrate it…show show its pernicious effects beyond shadow of dout.<br>
Exhibit A: The HOLC Maps.</p>
<p>This is a long blog. I can’t apologize for that, because you need to understand the history before we get to the punchline.</p>
<p>The blog ends with a personal admissions, which move toward my goal in all of this:</p>
<p><em>To invite White people to look at issues of race and class, and how we fit into this American problem.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/32.784/-96.925&city=dallas-tx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At this link</a>, you will find the “Home Owner’s Loan Corporation” map for Dallas, from 1937, digitized by the University of Richmond’s “Mapping Inequality” project.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/white-metropolis2.001.jpeg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="White Metropolis2.001" /></p>
<p>The HOLC maps are important for several overlapping reasons:</p>
<p>1. They’re where we first encounter the oft-used term “red-lining.”<br>
2. They show de facto segregation already present in 1937 in Dallas.<br>
3. When coupled with information about mortgage loan policy, they show how that segregation would continue for decades, into the present day, aided by the government.<br>
4. When coupled with stories of the terroristic bombings of African American houses in the 1950s, they become part of what nurtured racial hatred against African Americans, years after they were first drawn.</p>
<p>Two books are rattling around in my head as I write this post to you all today. These are books I hope every White person will read:<br>
1. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Color of Law</a>” by Richard Rothstein.<br>
2. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stamped-Beginning-Definitive-History-National/dp/1568585985/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stamped from the Beginning</a>” by Ibram Kendi.</p>
<p>Kendi’s book suggests that racial hate is often exacerbated and accelerated <em>by the law</em> itself, and not the other way around. He suggests that American law is consistently “stamped” with racist ideas, and that <em>this law itself</em> has increased racial hate, division, and White Supremacy.</p>
<p>Rothstein’s book, is a primer in just how that happened in America, detialing law after law, in generation after generation, that favored Whites over African-Americans.</p>
<p>If I could make White people read ONE book, it would be “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Color of Law.</a>”</p>
<p>The story I’m about to unfold is but an example of one town –my home of Dallas– and how the themes of those two books actually happened here.</p>
<p><strong>WHAT ARE THE HOLC MAPS, AND WHY WERE THEY CREATED?</strong></p>
<p>The “Home Owner’s Insurance Corporation” was a “New Deal” Depression-era program, designed to help pull America out of its our economic stagnation. The “FHA” was created about the same time.</p>
<p>According to Rothstein, before the New Deal, home ownership was virtually impossible for anyone in the middle class. Loans terms were so ridiculous most folks could not afford them. (Things like 50% down and only five to seven years for the rest…)</p>
<p>These New Deal programs were designed to help American’s buy homes and build home equity. And they did just that. White Americans look back fondly on those programs as having saved the US economy and, in many cases, as being the moment when their middle class families started building home equity and generational wealth.</p>
<p>This was not the the case for African-Americans. The HOLC maps are “Exhibit A” of this. They show how this much beloved “liberal” program had a massive bias on the question of race.</p>
<p>Before the Federal Government was willing “back” home loans the Federal government created maps –the HOLC maps– for almost every major urban area in the country. (Click around on the interactive link…there should be a map for your city…)</p>
<p>We are familiar with the current use of the term “red-lining” as an expression for neighborhoods (mostly Black and Brown) where credit is hard to come by, schools are bad, where businesses seldom locate, etc… But the term dates back to <em>these maps</em>.</p>
<p>Only HOLC didn’t just RED line…the HOLC actually created FOUR distinct categories for American neighborhoods. And race was absolutely a distinct factor in all of them.</p>
<p><em>The four categories were:</em></p>
<p>GREEN: “Best”<br>
Blue: “Still desirable”<br>
Yellow: “Definitely Declining”<br>
Red: “Hazardous”</p>
<p><strong>HOW WERE THE HOLC MAPS USED?</strong></p>
<p>Generally, banks would quite willingly provide loans to “GREEN” neighborhoods. (Little money down, for example. Very good interest rates…)</p>
<p>They would cautiously provide loans to “YELLOW” and “BLUE” neighborhoods. (More money down, less favorable interest rates…)</p>
<p>And it was virtually impossible for anyone —mostly African-Americans and Latinos— to get a loan on a home in “RED” neighborhoods.</p>
<p>That meant that in neighborhoods where Whites lives (Green, Yellow, Blue) is was possible to buy a home, build equity and generational wealth…) Meanwhile in RED neighborhoods, most homes were rentals, and generational wealth could not be acquired or passed down.</p>
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<p>On the interactive maps…click on a specific “area.” You will see detailed notes about the racial make up of the current residents.</p>
<p>AND! A line on the government form called “<strong>Infiltration</strong>.”</p>
<p>“Infiltration” indicates the level to which a neighborhood was considered to have been infiltrated by one race, or or mixed by several.</p>
<p>Generally, the “YELLOW” and “BLUE” neighborhoods on the map are shown to be experiencing “Infiltration,” while GREEN neighborhoods are shown to be generally 100% White.</p>
<p><em><strong>This, friends, is factual data for how the government aided and abetted *not only* racial segregation, but *also* assisting White families in creating generational wealth, and simultaneously systematically *prevented* African-American families from doing the same.</strong></em></p>
<p>When I use the term “White Privilege,” where ever I am using it, this is a critical part of what I mean. It’s why I insist that “White Privilege” is not simply a term of psychological or social supremacy (it IS that too…) but that throughout our history, it has also been based in the LAW too.</p>
<p>The vestiges of “Red Lining” have been receding (somewhat) in recent decades.</p>
<p><strong><em>But make no mistake, this government enforced policy is a major part in what leads to the current wealth gap between Black and White families in America.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>If you are White —and if your parents and grandparents have bequeathed property or assets to you in the form of a family home— it is entirely LIKELY that you have benefitted from this very system in ways that African-Americans, on average, have not. That is a factual part of what “White Privilege” is, that is beyond any social or psychological debate.</em></strong></p>
<p>(According to Brookings, in 2016, the wealth gap between White and Black families was TEN TIMES. ($171,000 vs. $17,000).)</p>
<p><strong>WHAT THE DALLAS MAPS SHOW</strong></p>
<p>The Dallas maps clearly show the beginnings of a racial division that continues into our present day, in terms of where people in Dallas live.</p>
<p>Again, you’re gonna want to <a href="https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/32.784/-96.925&city=dallas-tx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">keep the interactive maps open during this next part</a>, so you can see for yourself what I’m saying here…</p>
<p>Click on some of the RED areas and some of the GREEN areas…and compare and contrast the comments.</p>
<p>I’ll provide some here…</p>
<p><strong>Section D4</strong> (Bonton and Ideal Neighborhoods) RED<br>
“100% Negro.”<br>
No “infiltration” listed…because it’s impossible to “infiltrate” an all-black neighborhood.</p>
<p><strong>Section D1</strong> (West Dallas)<br>
Predominant race is “Italians and Mexicans.”<br>
Under “infiltration” the comment is “already there.”<br>
Yes, apparently, it would be impossible to stop “infiltration” in this already ethnically mixed neighborhood.</p>
<p><strong>Section D8</strong> (“Little Mexico”) RED<br>
Listed as predominantly “Mexican” which everybody who knows Dallas’ history would know.</p>
<p>But! Get ahold of this shocking comment on the form:<br>
<em>“Almost no sales as properties are being held as future business and industrial sites.”</em></p>
<p>Catch that?<br>
The fix was in, with Dallas’ elites, even in 1937.<br>
<em>The White leaders of Dallas planned the destruction of “Little Mexico,” by intentionally holding properties as rentals.</em><br>
We now, of course, call that area “Uptown,” and the planned “future business” use of 1937 is absolutely complete, and the name “Little Mexico” is dissapearing from much of the public consciousness.</p>
<p><strong>Section C6</strong> (Today’s “Fair Park” area…) YELLOW<br>
This is an important area to look at, as we consider how the LAW often aided and abbetted increased racial hatred.</p>
<p>The maps describe it as <em>“An area of old houses, not well kept, mixed population, unpaved streets, with practically no outstanding features in its favor.”</em><br>
In another part of the map, it described the population as “Italians, Russians, Greeks” predominating.</p>
<p>If you dig into Dallas’ history, you discover that THIS part of town — *because* it was YELLOW— became a hotbed of racial animosity in the years that followed the creation of these maps.</p>
<p>Middle class African-Americans <strong>did</strong> try to move into these neighborhoods. They got loans. They bought houses, scrapping their way out of “redlined” areas.</p>
<p>But during the 1950s, the area suffered a shockingly high number of bombings of African-American homes.</p>
<p>Here’s a screenshot from a documentary produced by “Citylab” about the history of Bonton-Ideal.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/white-metropolis2.002.jpeg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="White Metropolis2.002" /></p>
<p>It shows the shockingly high number of bombings of African-American homes during the 1940s and 1950s that happened in the “YELLOW” area of “C6” (Just outside Bonton-Ideal…)</p>
<p>You can watch the Citylab documentary <a href="https://www.bcworkshop.org/bontonideal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a></p>
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<p>The bombings in this section of Dallas clearly illustrates Dr. Ibram Kendi’s thesis that racist and supremacist <strong>law and policy</strong> tend to GENERATE AND PERPETUATE racial hate in subsequent generations.</p>
<p>Yes, racism and supremacy were a part of the law’s initial creation in the 30s. By the law itself helped to later inspire these bombings, as African-Americans sought to move out of Bonton-Ideal and become a part of the so-called “American Dream.”</p>
<p>Finally, let’s look at some <strong>GREEN</strong> areas of town…</p>
<p>I’m going to lump many of them together, because they tell the same story over and over…this is where White people lived.</p>
<p><strong>A1 (Stevens Park) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A2 (Kessler Park) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A3 (Forest Hills) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A4 (Lakewood) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A6 (“M Streets) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A9 (University Park) GREEN</strong><br>
<strong>A10 (Preston Hollow-first addition) GREEN</strong></p>
<p>At the times of these maps, almost all of these areas are described as all 100% White. Further, <em>many</em> of these areas are described as having “deed restrictions.” In many cases, a deed restriction was an explicitly racial clause in loan documents. They were restrictions that prevented the property from ever being sold to African-Americans.</p>
<p>“Deed restrictions,” as Rothstein’s book shows, were <em>patently against the intent of US law</em>. But time and time again, federal and state courts upheld them across the country. White neighborhoods were allowed to keep them, sometimes for decades.</p>
<p>For example, you might recall when President George W. Bush moved back to Dallas after his presidency, he bought a property adjacent to Area A10 on this HOLC map. (Just outside it, actually…)</p>
<p>There was a minor media sensation when it was revealed that the home he and Laura purchased still had a racial “deed restriction” in the legal papers…in theory “preventing” it from being sold to African Americans.</p>
<p>People across the country were horrified, even though many legal documents –of homes sold in previous deacades– still have these same racist clauses in them.</p>
<p>Many of my liberal friends derided Bush as the time for this.</p>
<p>But! If we look at where White liberals live in Dallas today, we find that many of THEM live in neighborhoods that previously held racialized deed restrictions against Black people as well.</p>
<p>Be careful throwing stones, White People…</p>
<p>Some of these “Green” neighborhoods were only newly developed in 1937. (Lakewood, Preston Hollow, Forest Hills).</p>
<p>But in decades after, the Baby Boom these neighborhoods would EXPLODE with White families…including my own.</p>
<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS AND CONFESSIONS</strong></p>
<p>In the 1960s and 70s, I grew up just adjacent to A10, in the heart of old Preston Hollow, in a spacious ranch-style home with a massive lawn.</p>
<p>I spent illdyic childhood summers there, and remember that well, as a blissful and carefree time of my life. The lawns were huge. The houses were wide and long, and they were filled with families just like ours.</p>
<p>Our family lived there until I was in the seventh grade, at which point we moved to Far North Dallas (During the late 1970s…) and the height of the busing tensions that roiled Dallas at the time.</p>
<p>Our family by then had accumulated enough generational wealth to buy a newer Far North Dallas home, and sell the old Preston Hollow home. (That house is now gone, replaced only last year by a zero-lot monster…apparently netting zillions of dollars to the family we sold the lot to in the late 70s).</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576">
<p>Therefore, I am a part of the story of these maps. Our privilege allowed us to make that move.</p>
<p><strong><em>If you grew up in Dallas, and you are White, YOU are a part of this story too. The story of these maps allowed some of YOUR families to make that same move “North.” Or, it allowed you to live in “GREEN,” “YELLOW,” and “BLUE,” neighborhoods to this day, continuing to create generational wealth for youself and your descendents, as the values in many of these neighborhoods skyrocking from generation to generation.<br>
</em></strong></p>
<p><em><strong>Maybe you’re a suburban family. Maybe you never lived in the city. If so, the schools, houses, and cities you grew up with were built in large part by the generational wealth of Whites moving in during “White Flight,” again, benefitting you and your family, even if you never personally “fled” a city core.</strong></em></p>
<p>Finally, maybe you lived in a small town or another town. The same dynamics illustrated in these maps took place in YOUR town too.</p>
<p>Far too often, White families were allowed to benefit from New Deal programs that created generational wealth, while African-Americans were economically and legally prohibitted from the same…and when they *did* move out of the “RED,” areas, too often they were harrased and bombed back into “submission.”</p>
<p>My parents never explicitly told me that their decision to move was raced-based. I doubt it would have entered their mind, knowing them. To them —and especially my Father who has hyper-rational and deeply nonemotional— the choice was no doubt about good schools and a bigger house for their family.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is factually true that we were a part of the exploding “White flight” to North Dallas, Richardson and Plano. That migration, it is agreed by almost all observers, was driven in large part by fears of “substandard schools” and racial integration. (Of course, those schools were only substandard because of the very racial segregation we are talking about in this post…)</p>
<p>In the 1970s, then, White families no longer bombed African American homes, nor would they ever had considered something so horrific. They just <strong>moved</strong> with their hands and their feet…North.</p>
<p>So, dear friends, what has been a “factual” post for most of this entry, becomes deeply personal and intensely painful admission, here at the end.</p>
<p><em><strong>Dear White Friends:</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>It is not enough for we White folks to admit that our grandparents were “once upon a time” members of the KKK or overt racists and are now dead. We must, with humility, and on bended knee, admit to the generational privilege our nation has afforded so many of us.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>The generational wealth gap in America has nothing to do with assertiveness, ambition, drive, and gumption.</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>It was PLANNED.</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>It was DESIGNED.</strong></em></p>
<p>While the laws changed, as Kendi shows in his book, the <strong>attitudes</strong> became internalized by everyone.</p>
<p>It becomes a part of the story that White people tell ourselves about how we have exceptional ambition, drive, and gumption. But it was DESIGNED from the start, and “stamped from the beginning.”</p>
<p>Once upon a time, the great Ann Richards said of GHW Bush, <em>“He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”</em></p>
<p>It was a funny line, and we White liberals laughed at the classism of it.</p>
<p>But, dear White friends, in a very real sense, that applies to <strong>ALL</strong> of us.</p>
<p>Please read Rothstein’s book. I BEG all White people to read it.</p>
<p>It’s the painful history of how –not only with respect to the homeownership we are discussing here, but also with respect to jobs, education, training, opportunity– the “Color of Law” has favored, and continues to favor us over People of Color generally, and African-Americans specifically.</p>
<p>I could have written similar posts about the interlocking issues of education and policing. And we need to, and will, talk about those issues too.</p>
<p>But the HOLC maps allow us to factually show the roots of White Privilege as it still manifests itself into our present-day world.</p>
<p>“The Color of Law” is the nexus of our factually-based White Privilege, which society then interpolates into psychological and social White Privilege.</p>
<p><em>What is the answer?</em></p>
<p>I don’t know, honestly.</p>
<p>Humble admission of the problem is the first step, though. Humble admission of our place in the story, as I hope you will read me doing here.</p>
<p>We White people —a whole lot more of us— must begin to look at our own histories and make the kind of painful admission I am trying to make to you here about my own history.</p>
<p><em><strong>Therefore, I am writing these final paragraphs, because I am inviting you, as White people, to this same journey. Don’t just fret that you might have a Confederate Soldier in your family tree, “once upon a time.” Take a hard look at how law, as demonstrated in this post, has preferenced you and your family. (Even if you live in the “North” or a rural area…)<br>
</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong>And if homeownership and generational wealth is not the issue that has “privileged” you, then take a hard look at schools, policing, and employment policies. “The Color of Law” has benefitted you in one way or another. Promise.</strong></em></p>
<p>In addition to this journey, we must listen to People of Color as they share their own experiences. We must understand that when they say <em>“the system is rigged,”</em> there is FACTUAL evidence for this statement. It’s not just a feeling.</p>
<p>My HOPE is that the United States, in a painful and too slow fashion, is being reborn into a multi-racial democracy, the likes of which we have never truly seen. America tried and failed to become truly multi-racial once before in the few short years following the Civil War.</p>
<p>But, decades of Jim Crow, the rewriting of state constitutions, lynchings and terror put an end to that. Our modern world has seen the rise of military policing policies and the mass incarceration of Black men. White Supremacy and Privilege was restored, through new kinds of laws and their enforcement.</p>
<p>And even if we White people say we no longer morally *believe* in White Privilege as principle…we benefit from it as a fact.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I pray we will somehow transform into a truly multi-racial democracy that honors all our citizens, regardless of race.</p>
</div>
<div class="_5pbx userContent _3576">
<p> </p>
<p>Honestly? White Supremacy is so ingrained into our society, that I fear we might not actually be able to make that transition. The fight against it –especially as we ask White people to look at historical issues like those covered here– will be filled with White denial and anger.</p>
<p>I think either we WILL make the transition…or there is little future for the US, and we will come apart at the seams. I honestly don’t know which way it will go.</p>
<p>If the United States <em>does</em> complete the slow birth of a true multi-racial democracy, we White folks have a roll to play…but just one small part of that future story, as we stand shoulder-to-should with people of every race.</p>
<p>That roll starts with an honesty about how we, as White people, got to where we are today.</p>
<p>Our horrible legacy of law, policy, and inherited social belief has for far too long allowed we White folks to believe we hit a triple.</p>
<p>But, honestly, we were just born on third base.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6360559
2020-06-19T08:54:04-05:00
2020-06-20T13:30:37-05:00
Juneteenth and the “Power of Power”
<div id="js_wh" class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576">
<p>Two thousand Federal troops.<br>
I keep coming back to that number.</p>
<p>That’s the number of Union soldiers that accompanied General Gordon Granger into Galveston on the day Juneteenth was proclaimed in 1865.</p>
<p>We White people barely understand Juneteenth to begin with, and what we do understand is often whitewashed.<br>
Yes, General Granger read that proclamation on the streets of Galveston, Texas.<br>
And, yes, that set off a celebration that is commemorated among African-Americans to this day.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/juneteenthhistory.jpg?w=300&h=188" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="juneteenthhistory" height="188" width="300" />But, my dear White Siblings, I would invite you and I to remember those two thousand un-named Federal troops. Granger wasn’t just standing there like some swashbuckling Lone Ranger. The law wasn’t magically enforced because of mystical power in the words themselves. The words were —by that day— quite old.</p>
<p>Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years before.<br>
The Civil War had literally been over, more than two months before.</p>
<p>We White folks like to dismiss to this by saying “Well, news just didn’t travel very fast in those days.”</p>
<p>But there is credible evidence that in fact slave-holding Texans resisted freeing their slaves, perhaps believing the law didn’t apply to them. There are even accounts that suggest the Federal government willingly delayed the announcement to allow those slaveholders one final “season” of picking. Or that the original messenger was murdered on the way to Galveston.</p>
<p>It’s never been totally clear exactly WHY it took so long.</p>
<p>My point, dear White Siblings, is:</p>
<p>It doesn’t *matter* why it took so long. We White folks are once again asking the wrong questions and noticing the wrong details.</p>
<p>What it TOOK —what finally made the difference— were those two thousand Federal troops. It wasn’t until *they* showed up that the full freedom of African-Americans Texans was insured.</p>
<p>Dear White Siblings, we know so very little about our history as a nation. And we are only able to live in our denial and ignorance *because* of White privilege. So, let me push my point today a little further…</p>
<p>There is a very credible understanding of American history that says that the Union won the Civil War, but that the South has generally won a “guerrilla war” that has continued for 150 years since. I first came across this concept in a jaw-dropping 2014 essay by Doug Muder, titled: “<a href="https://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-a-confederate-party/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party</a>.”</p>
<p>This is not a comfortable proposition to consider. Here are a few paragraphs from his essay.<br>
Dear White Siblings, see if you don’t recognize your experience in these first sentences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“In my high school history class, Reconstruction was a mysterious blank period between Lincoln’s assassination and Edison’s light bulb. Congress impeached Andrew Johnson for some reason, the transcontinental railroad got built, corruption scandals engulfed the Grant administration, and Custer lost at Little Big Horn. But none of it seemed to have much to do with present-day events.</strong></p>
<p><strong>And oh, those blacks Lincoln emancipated? Except for Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, they vanished like the Lost Tribes of Israel. They wouldn’t re-enter history until the 1950s, when for some reason they still weren’t free.”</strong><br>
———————-</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Does that ring a bell?<br>
Yep. That’s the history I was taught too.<br>
I mean, when I was in school, we didn’t really talk at length about any of that stuff. It whizzed by us in the blink of an eye, with little context or discussion.</p>
<p>But! Somehow, we DID have time to watch the film version of “Gone With the Wind” in English class.<br>
Not a joke. It’s such a long film, that my memory is it took several days for us to watch the whole thing.</p>
<p>What did THAT teach us White kids?</p>
<p>Need a refresher?<br>
Check out the opening scroll of “Gone With The Wind,” and how it wistfully recalls a time of “Cavaliers,” “Knights,” and most disturbing of all, “Master and Slave.”</p>
<p><strong>THIS</strong> is what I learned in school.</p>
<p>Doug Muder continues, and here is where he gets at the harder truths of America:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“Here’s what my teachers’ should have told me: “Reconstruction was the second phase of the Civil War. It lasted until 1877, when the Confederates won.”…..</strong></p>
<p><strong>…After the U.S. forces won on the battlefield in 1865 and shattered the organized Confederate military, the veterans of that shattered army formed a terrorist insurgency that carried on a campaign of fire and assassination throughout the South until President Hayes agreed to withdraw the occupying U. S. troops in 1877. Before and after 1877, the insurgents used lynchings and occasional pitched battles to terrorize those portions of the electorate still loyal to the United States. In this way they took charge of the machinery of state government, and then rewrote the state constitutions to reverse the postwar changes and restore the supremacy of the class that led the Confederate states into war in the first place.</strong></p>
<p><strong>By the time it was all over, the planter aristocrats were back in control, and the three constitutional amendments that supposedly had codified the U.S.A’s victory over the C.S.A.– the 13th, 14th, and 15th — had been effectively nullified in every Confederate state. The Civil Rights Acts had been gutted by the Supreme Court, and were all but forgotten by the time similar proposals resurfaced in the 1960s. Blacks were once again forced into hard labor for subsistence wages, denied the right to vote, and denied the equal protection of the laws. Tens of thousands of them were still physically shackled and subject to being whipped, a story historian Douglas Blackmon told in his Pulitzer-winning Slavery By Another Name.</strong></p>
<p><strong>So Lincoln and Grant may have had their mission-accomplished moment, but ultimately the Confederates won. The real Civil War — the one that stretched from 1861 to 1877 — was the first war the United States lost….</strong></p>
<p><strong>…Black equality under the law was guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. But in the Confederate mind, no democratic process could legitimate such a change in the social order. It simply could not be allowed to stand, and it did not stand.</strong></p>
<p><strong>In the 20th century, the Confederate pattern of resistance was repeated against the Civil Rights movement. And though we like to claim that Martin Luther King won, in many ways he did not. School desegregation, for example, was never viewed as legitimate, and was resisted at every level.”</strong><br>
——————————————</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within the past year, the ideas of this essay have been expanded upon in two important books by imminent historians: Heather Cox Richardson (“<a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-South-Won-Civil-War/dp/0190900903/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PSA8J46B917D&dchild=1&keywords=how+the+south+won+the+civil+war&qid=1592661483&s=books&sprefix=how+the+%2Cstripbooks%2C158&sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How The South Won the Civil War</a>“) and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (“<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525559558/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stony The Road</a>“). I urge we White people to read them.</p>
<p>White Supremacy desperately needs to be confronted and dismantled. But we White people seem to have a fantasy that if can be solved through law, the “changing of hearts,” or electing a Black president.</p>
<p>And, certainly, all these help. But White Supremacy is deeply embedded in our nation, no matter what we hope to believe. As Muder alludes to, almost 100 years after those two thousand soldiers disembarked into Galveston, another set of nationalized troops escorted African-American children into a Little Rock school.</p>
<p>Once again, the law —the proclamation— was not enough. And if you really look carefully, ever since those federalized troops fled the South in 1877 they have only showed up for People of Color in sporadic and shockingly rare moments.</p>
<p>In between Juneteenth and Little Rock, American history is filled with one hundred years of lynchings, Sundown Towns, the resegregated cities and schools, Confederate Monuments…and the so-called “Great Migration.” (Nope, it wasn’t just about economic opportunity…)</p>
<p>All of this, created and maintained by the combined force of laws (local, state, and federal) and the blind ignorance and complicity of far too much of White society.<br>
So, I can’t speak for African-Americans. But, if I was them, events like Juneteenth and Little Rock would remind me that the promised equity for all Americans never comes *just* by the power of proclamation and law. It comes through the power of power too. History shows that those who had it, tend to use it. Those who don’t have it, tend to either get angry or give up. And too many of us White folks, just never pay attention either way.</p>
<p>Therefore, as we meditate on how how our nation might move forward on issues like Police Brutality and White Supremacy, it’s important for we White folks to really take a hard look at our racial history. White people, especially, desperately need some remedial education in the racial history of the post-Civil War America through the modern period. And once we have that –and time is of the essence, our ignorances have lasted too long already– we must commit ourselves to change “the power of power.”</p>
<p>Because we like to pretend that changes to law have always magically made everything “all better.”<br>
Yes, law *has* changed.<br>
And our racist grandparent’s generation is dying out…so racism is dying out, right?<br>
Why can’t we leave this all behind us now?</p>
<p>The answer seems to be that disabling White Supremacy has also always taken two thousand Union troops.</p>
<p>For every new change of old law or hard heart, there is a new Dylan Roof.</p>
<p>Remember him? Yes, I’m meditating on him a lot this week, as we also remember the Mother Emanuel slaughter, just two days before Juneteenth in 2015.</p>
<p>Dylan Roof was a young White man, newly radicalized by the internet. And the Mother Emanuel Massacre was THE modern event that shook *me* to *my* core. It woke me up in a new way from a progressive slumber I’d allowed myself to fall into.</p>
<p>Dylan Roof taught me anew that racism doesn’t just “die out” because old people die out. It gets reborn among young White people. Which means that we never “move past it.” We are constantly called to confront White Supremacist ideals in every generation.</p>
<p>Maybe you didn’t see this truth until Charlottesville, and President who called those young White supremacists “very fine people.”<br>
Maybe you didn’t see it until George Floyd, or one of the countless other unarmed People of Color murdered in modern times.<br>
Maybe you didn’t see it until the President gassed protestors for a photo-op, in a week when violence seemed to wash across our nation.</p>
<p>Maybe you still don’t see it.</p>
<p>But, my dear White Siblings, on *this* Juneteenth, awake to the idea that there is a portion of White society that only understands the “power of power” itself.</p>
<p>Our African-American siblings are counting on us to engage in the current struggle too; not just to change laws, or “hearts and minds,” but to ensure that the power of our government —the power of power at all levels— truly and finally starts to represent all its citizens.</p>
<p>This is a promise still far too often still unfulfilled in America.<br>
And, far too often in our history, only realized when 2,000 Union troops show up to make us White folks do what we should have already done.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6348043
2020-06-09T17:57:29-05:00
2020-06-20T20:07:42-05:00
$20 Bill (For George Floyd)
<p>On this day of George Floyd’s memorial service in Houston, a repost of my version of Tom Prasada-Rao’s powerful tribute song.</p>
<p>Tom’s song has now been covered 20-30 times by a beautiful assortment of musicians.</p>
<p>This version was a part of my “Coffee On the Porch” Livestream on June 4th, 2020.</p>
<p>(Lyrics below. Thanks again to Tom for allowing so many of us to spread the word about this powerful song…EF)</p>
<div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" class="youtube-player" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SUBX60r1kdI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" style="border:0;" width="750"></iframe></div>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><strong>$20 Bill (For George Floyd)</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Some people die for honor</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">
Some people die for love</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Some people die while singing</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">To the heavens above</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Some people die believing</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">
In the cross on Calvary hill</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">And some people die
In the blink of an eye</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">For a $20 bill</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Some people go out in glory</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">(Yeah) with the wind at their back</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Some get to tell their own story</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Write their own epitaph</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Sometimes you see it coming</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">
Sometimes you won’t know until</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">You run out of breath</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">With a knee on your neck</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">For a $20 bill.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">O Brother, I never knew you</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">And now I never will</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">But I make this promise to you</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">I’ll remember you still</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Take, eat, let this be our communion</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">It’s time to break the bread</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Do this in remembrance</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Just like the good book said</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Sometimes the wine is a sacrament</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Sometimes the blood is just spilled</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Sometimes the law</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Is the devils’ last straw</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">The future unfulfilled</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">…
Like the dream they killed</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">
For a $20 bill</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">5/28/20 Silver Spring MDn</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Words and Music By Tom Prasada-Rao</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">Copyright Tom Prasada-Rao ©2020. All Rights Reserved</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6341121
2020-06-03T14:09:55-05:00
2020-06-03T16:15:33-05:00
Don’t Look Away
<p>White Siblings,<br>
Don’t look away.<br>
Don’t avert your eyes.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a danger even in reposting these because of the moral license they may give other racists who see them.</p>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/georgefloydchallenge.jpg?w=295&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="GeorgeFloydChallenge" height="300" width="295" />But you….dear White sibling…</p>
<p>You who are still more concerned about property damage and protesting “the right way”…</p>
<p>You who every time there is a one shred of anger from the justifiably angry launch into endless “Whataboutism….”</p>
<p>YOU need to see this.<br>
YOU need to meditate on this, deeply.</p>
<p>THIS is WHY people are in the streets. This is one of the twin poles of the protests and anger for African-Americans. One of those poles is Police Brutality.</p>
<p>The other is White Supremacy.</p>
<p>Far too many of you continue to insist that White Supremacy doesn’t exist. That it’s a myth. That you’re not racist. That you don’t know any.</p>
<p>But don’t look away.<br>
Don’t avert your eyes.</p>
<p>It DOES exist, and this is the evil fruit of its tree.</p>
<p>I was blessed to stand with a group of several hundred young people, about the age of these young men last night on the streets of North Oak Cliff. Yes, many were people of color, but overall the group was beautifully diverse…and very unified in their anger at both Police Brutality and White Supremacy.</p>
<p>The White Supremacy that “stamped us from the beginning,” and that has continued even through our present-day in far too many laws (and far too many ways laws are unevenly enforced…) THAT is what leads to this.</p>
<p>Don’t look away.<br>
Don’t avert your eyes.</p>
<p>This is not just some stupid “Tide Pod Challenge.”</p>
<p>These are pictures of White people who have been raised without basic human compassion, in a time when we are led by a President who not only doesn’t understand compassion, but who also talks of “good people on all sides.”</p>
<p>Or, these are White people who have been raised to think this is just “funny.”</p>
<p>Here’s what we <strong>don’t</strong> need. Here’s what <strong>I</strong> don’t need…</p>
<p>We don’t need you to just comment on this post…</p>
<p>“OMG! That’s disgusting!”<br>
“OMG! I am not lilke that!”<br>
“OMG! My heart is breaking.”</p>
<p>I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need to hear that you condemn this on my social media thread.</p>
<p>No Black person needs just your broken heart over this.</p>
<p>What they NEED –what they are telling all of us, what they have been telling for DECADES– is to for you to confront each and every person you know in your life who thinks this is either “just funny” or “acceptable.”</p>
<p>It’s neither, and as White people, <strong>THE SPECIAL BURDEN TO FIGHT THIS IS ON US.</strong></p>
<p>This is not time for “Well, I’m not like this,” any more than “Not My President” absolves us all of where we are as a nation.</p>
<p>This is who we are.<br>
THIS is a part of America.</p>
<p>Don’t look away.<br>
Don’t avert your eyes.</p>
<p>Don’t virtue signal how much we all find this disgusting. Do something different.</p>
<p>Do all you can to speak to other White people. Of course, on social media…but way more imporantly in real life.</p>
<p><strong>THAT</strong> is on US…that is what <strong>WE</strong> can do.</p>
<p>So, do it.</p>
<p>Make it clear…<br>
<strong>THIS. IS. NOT. OK.</strong></p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6339824
2020-06-02T13:08:13-05:00
2020-07-13T12:56:47-05:00
Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not (Part II)
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<p><em>“I don’t know about that…”</em></p>
<p>Do you even remember when Donald Trump said this?</p>
<p>I know. It’s a big ask to recall one line.<br>
He says so many things, and one day’s horror is “trumped” by the next.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/5e4627443c3abec9eb35dfaa7cf1c3e01c-trump-with-bible-dc-protests.2x.rsocial.w600.jpg?w=300&h=158" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="5e4627443c3abec9eb35dfaa7cf1c3e01c-trump-with-bible-dc-protests.2x.rsocial.w600" height="158" width="300" /></p>
<p>But it’s important to remember this specific line this morning, as we try to process Donald Trump’s sacrilegious photo-op yesterday.</p>
<p>And yes, I meant to use the word “sacrilegious” just now, and not as metaphor.</p>
<p>Donald Trump said the line <em>“I don’t know about that…”</em> at the National Prayer Breakfast.<br>
Ring a bell now?</p>
<p>Conservative scholar, Arthur Brooks had just delivered a very sound theological rendering of Jesus’ command to “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”</p>
<p>That’s what Jesus, Brooks pointed out, wants us all to do.</p>
<p>Just after he finished, Donald Trump got up and said “I don’t know about that…” and then launched into a long tirade about he actually thinks it’s *fine* to go after your enemies.</p>
<p>The point is —and I hope this is not really surprising to anyone— Donald Trump really doesn’t know shit about the Bible. He doesn’t know shit about what Jesus said or didn’t say.</p>
<p><em>Do you remember when all this happened?</em></p>
<p>February. 3 ½ months ago.</p>
<p>See? So much has happened, we forget.</p>
<p>But I <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2020/02/07/jesus-is-lord-and-caesar-is-not/">wrote</a> about this moment at the time, because it deeply disturbed me then and does even more so today.</p>
<p>It didn’t deeply disturb me at the time that Donald Trump doesn’t know shit about the Bible. I actually wasn’t surprised by that.</p>
<p>It disturbed me that when Donald Trump said “I don’t know about that…” a room full of allegedly Christian ministers…<strong>laughed</strong>.</p>
<p>They chuckled at the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t know shit about what Jesus said.</p>
<p>Flash forward to yesterday. The events of the 6 pm hour are seminal, and whatever you remember about this past week, I am begging you to take a cold, hard look at that hour.</p>
<p>Trump holds a Rose Garden press conference.<br>
WHILE he is holding that press conference, he has ordered troops to teargas peaceful protestors across the street. You can hear the pops of the tear gas over his words.</p>
<p>Why did he gas them?</p>
<p>So that once the smoke cleared, he could cross the street to St. John’s Church, for no other reason than to get a Photo-Op of him holding up a Bible.</p>
<p>That’s it.</p>
<p>That’s <em>WHY</em> Donald Trump order peaceful protestors gassed. So he could get a Photo-Op.</p>
<p>Friends, this is the predictable outcome —totally predictable— of a president who doesn’t know shit about what Jesus said.</p>
<p>The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington was so angry she could hardly speak to reporters afterward. Because Donald Trump is USING religious iconography and imagery for political purposes.</p>
<p>And do you know who else did that?</p>
<p>Hitler.</p>
<p>Yeah, I went there.</p>
<p>Fuck Godwin’s law.</p>
<p>A broken clock IS right twice a day, and sometimes is really IS midnight and “<em>Night Cometh</em>.”</p>
<p>Friends, DICTATORS around the world do that.</p>
<p>They wave holy books around, looking for the moral authority of religion to do things like gas their own people.</p>
<p>Hitler was *obsessed* with religious iconography and symbolism, and often used it in rallies and speeches to further his political ambition.<br>
(FYI: There are photoshopped images of Hitler waving a Bible on the internet today, next to Trump….I will not be posting those here…)</p>
<p>I am asking every person who claims to be a Christian and yet still supports to Trump to look long and hard at things this morning.</p>
<p>Because THIS IS NOT OK.<br>
This is not normal.</p>
<p>And if you are Christian, your faith calls you to stand and say: “This is not Christian.”</p>
<p>Maybe you were OK when Trump scoffed at “loving our enemies.”</p>
<p><strong>Are you really OK with Trump gassing people for a Photo-Op?</strong></p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>Because I’m not.</p>
<p>And it causes me to pull out the line I spoke of back in February when I wrote about that Prayer Breakfast fiasco:</p>
<p><strong>“JESUS IS LORD, AND CAESAR IS NOT…”</strong></p>
<p>This phrase is one of the key insights I’ve ever learned from Dr. John Dominic Crossan. And, honestly, one of the key insights I’ve ever learned in life. Crossan suggests that when the early Christian Church popularized the phrase “Jesus is Lord,” there was an understood second-clause: “Caesar is not.”</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/untitled.001.jpeg?w=300&h=169" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="Untitled.001" height="169" width="300" />Crossan deftly reminds his readers how the Romans worshipped their Emperors like gods. In fact, he cites authorities which actually call Caesar “lord.”</p>
<p>It was too dangerous for many in the Roman Empire to boldly assert “Caesar is not.” In many places (at least through the 400s) they faced persecution at the hands of the Romans. The famous legend about how early Christians used to draw a fish symbol in the sand is an example of this.</p>
<p>And so, when the early Christians said “Jesus is Lord,” there was an expressly POLITICAL dimension to that statement. It was a rejection of the Powers That Be. It was a rejection of the Roman Empire and all its trappings. Further, it was a rejection of religion that collaborates with Empire to suppress and harm people.</p>
<p>As I have said and written many times, the closest thing we have in our society to the Roman Empire is the American Empire.</p>
<p>America is a great and vast Imperial Power. America —and all the trappings of both its government and civil religion— are THE Powers That Be in our culture today.</p>
<p>President Trump is the head of those Powers That Be, by right of being the American President. So was Barack Obama. And, lest you think I’m about to be hypocritical…there’s no “but” that comes next.</p>
<p>America’s President is the head of the “Powers That Be” whether they are an orange-haired blowhard, and African-American man…and, God willing, one day a woman.</p>
<p>This is a fact I stated repeatedly to my mostly-liberal congregation, back during the Obama presidency. They didn’t always like it when I said it to them. It didn’t make it any less true.</p>
<p>Christians —real ones— have a duty to stand up to Empire. They have a duty to reject making Caesar into Lord.</p>
<p><strong>Dear Christians: THIS IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO DO THAT.</strong></p>
<p>Like, literally, today.</p>
<p>Boldly stand up and declare “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not…”</p>
<p>If you think this is hyperbolic, I just need to tell you that moments after Trump’s press conference I got a text from a dear Jewish Rabbi friend, sharing how deeply troubled he was by the scene of Trump waving that Bible.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because it fucking looks like Hitler.</p>
<p>That’s why.</p>
<p>And because Trump literally <strong>GASSED</strong> people in order to get that Photo Op.</p>
<p>That’s why too.</p>
<p>And, oh yeah, one more thing…</p>
<p><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/500598-customs-and-border-patrol-deploys-troops-to-dc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trump has order parts of Border Patrol to be deployed to Washington DC</a> to held quell the riots. Lest you forget, Border Patrol is *exclusively* under the purview of the President. They are not accountable to anyone else besides him.</p>
<p>He can do this…he can send them anywhere he wants.</p>
<p>We are at a moment where all Americans will be called to stand up for our deeply held beliefs, whatever those are. Those decisions will not be easy ones for some, especially those in law enforcement.</p>
<p>For example, I was grateful to read, late last night, that <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arlington-county-virginia-officers-washington-dc-tear-gas-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a county in Virginia has WITHDRAWN their forces</a> from Washington DC in the wake of the gassing and press conference. They say they are now “re-evaluating” their shared-force agreement with the White House.</p>
<p>Good.</p>
<p>They SHOULD do that.</p>
<p>We need more moments like what happened in Fort Worth last night, and fewer of what happened in Dallas on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.</p>
<p>In Dallas an awkward standoff took place on the the Bridge, where hundreds of protestors, including my clergy brother, Rev. <a class="profileLink" title="Ray Jordan" href="https://www.facebook.com/rayjordan?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARAwRrOFmGADXskcFIsUK4s0NAiNXnGN6ToiIiwDFdsYRPWa7J3bpHaI4M10adCK1Ts1MCknYvdyybNi&fref=mentions">Ray Jordan</a>. Smoke bombs were deployed. Folks were restrained. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and everybody went home.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, a group of police officers “took a knee” at the request of protestors. The protestors had promised to disburse if they did so. The officers “took a knee” and moments later protestors and officers were hugging each other like old friends.</p>
<p>It was a moment that brought tears of joy to my eyes. And if you need moment of hope in these dark days, take a look:</p>
<div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"><iframe class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_Ef6Wa7JxJE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;"></iframe></div>
<p>We’re gonna need a lot more moments like <strong>THIS</strong> if we are to survive as a Republic. (And that is not guaranteed at this hour…)</p>
<p>And every single peace officer in the nation —every single member of the military— may soon be called to their own “gut check” moments.</p>
<p>So, Dear Christians: who will you follow, if Trump *really* turns our military on our own people?<br>
Deploys CBP in a broad way?</p>
<p>America’s “peace officers” have been militarized beyond belief in the past few decades. This has been justified time and time again. But if you have a hammer, everything can look like a nail. And if you have a President who doesn’t give a shit about “loving your enemies,” watch out.</p>
<p>MY deeply held beliefs are my Christian faith. They are at the core of my being. My faith teaches me to follow Jesus as Lord and reject the Caesars of this world. I love to talk politics. I’m blessed to know many politicians. But I’ve never been shy about speaking to politicians when I think they are in the wrong.</p>
<p>Now is the time for all Christians to do this.</p>
<p>Therefore, to close this essay, I have four specific questions now for all Christians reading this…</p>
<p><strong>1. Trump has threatened to call out the military on American civilians.</strong><br>
<strong>Does that bother you?</strong></p>
<p><strong>2. Trump has GASSED peaceful protestors in Lafayette Park.</strong><br>
<strong>Does *that* bother you?</strong></p>
<p><strong>3. Trump used OUR Christian faith to justify these very acts.</strong><br>
<strong>Does *that* bother you?</strong></p>
<p><strong>I have now used the words “shit” and “fuck” gratuitously and intentionally in this essay.</strong></p>
<p><strong>4. As Christians, are you more bothered that I have used the words “shit and fuck”….or are you more bothered by the previous three questions?</strong></p>
<p>OK. That was set up. The *last* question is the important one for all you Christians out there.<br>
(And, no, I didn’t make this up…it’s an old preacher’s meme…)</p>
<p>Because if you are more concerned by my cursing, my dear Christian siblings, you have a real problem right now.</p>
<p>If you are more bothered that I would say “shit’ and “fuck” in this essay (to TRY to shock you) than you are bothered by the genuinely shocking actions of our President…then YOU have a problem.</p>
<p>A…very…serious…problem. And I pray to God in heaven you look carefully at that.</p>
<p>Hitler became Hitler, in part, because too many “good” Christians stood by and justified his increasingly troublesome actions. That is historical fact.</p>
<p>No, we are not a place of concentration camps. This is not Germany in 1945. But it sure feels like Germany in the 1930s.<br>
And, yes, it’s time to say THAT.</p>
<p><em>Therefore, REMEMBER those laughing clergy at the Prayer Breakfast…and then REMEMBER Trump waving his Bible yesterday, just after gassing his own citizens for no reason at all.</em></p>
<p><em>Trump has kept human beings in cages.</em><br>
<em>Trump has gassed his own people.</em><br>
<em>Trump has made it clear that he intends to come after his political enemies, and he “doesn’t know about” loving them.</em><br>
<em>Trump has committed sacrilegious use of our Holy Bible.</em></p>
<p>When will YOU stand up, and say with me:</p>
<p>“JESUS IS LORD, AND CAESAR IS NOT…”</p>
<p>Because if now is not the time, when in God’s name is?</p>
<p>Wake up, dear Christian friends.</p>
<p>THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6333469
2020-05-28T10:57:33-05:00
2020-05-28T13:30:24-05:00
White Privilege
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<p>My struggle to adequately describe the murder of George Floyd ended when I saw this picture late last night.</p>
<p>Take a hard look at this picture, because if you let it sink in deeply it will help you see much of what is wrong with America today.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/whiteprivilege.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="WhitePrivilege" /></p>
<p>One frame: Armed protestors, effectively taking over the Michigan State House…protesting the *lawful* order for them to stay home in the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic.</p>
<p>Another frame: Tear gassed protestors last night, understandably angry at the police, because of the murder of George Floyd by officers earlier in the day.</p>
<p>Friends, if you don’t understand White Privilege, take a good, long, hard look at these two images. Because this is it, right here.</p>
<p>Black and Brown people, and their allies, continue to point out that the deck is consistently stacked against them in ways that the deck is *not* stacked against people like me, or against any other White person reading this.</p>
<p>And if you will say, <em>“But they were unlawfully protesting, so they deserved the tear gas….the Michigan protestors were obeying the law…”</em></p>
<p>I will say to you: Yes….that is true…but <strong>WHY</strong>…why are the things in both images “lawful?”</p>
<p>Imagine, if you will, hundreds of armed African-American men, storming *your* statehouse with guns, even if it were legal under your state law.</p>
<p>How would they be treated?<br>
Would the police simply stand there, and allow themselves to be spat upon?<br>
Allow the protestors to SCREAM at them, within inches of their face?</p>
<p>You know the the answer.</p>
<p>They might not use tear gas, but the response would look at awful lot like that second picture.</p>
<p>In point of fact, only ONCE in American history have armed Black people stormed a statehouse. It happened decades ago in California, and arguably was *the* event that led to *both* the first gun control legislation in American….AND the creation of the modern NRA.</p>
<p>No joke. Look it up.</p>
<p>Black and brown people in American are not allowed the privilege of their understandable and justifiable anger, in ways White people are. That’s one side of the equation.</p>
<p>The other side is that White people are allowed —time and time again— to behave in ways that no other race is allowed to behave.</p>
<p>We are allowed to yell at cops, at point blank range.<br>
We are allowed to effectively shut down a statehouse.<br>
We are allowed to call the police on African-Americans at a picnic, a swim party, or even when they are asking *us* to follow the legal law and put a leash on our dog.</p>
<p>Far too many White people believe the law does not apply to them. That is a part of Trump’s popularity, of course. While there are many reasons White people support Trump, some of White people support him because of his willingness to show, day after day, how he believes the law does not apply to him…and therefore, not to them either.</p>
<p>For far too many White people in American, everything in their life —their personal histories, and even in the codified laws of our nation— has convinced them that they are above the law that applies to everyone else. This is not simply an historical truth. This is a *continuing* contemporary truth about our nation.</p>
<p>If you, dear White siblings, do not understand that you walk around with this privilege every day, I would suggest that you have not looked hard enough at your life.</p>
<p>As John Gorka sings in the song, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp_Yez3ZhJs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ignorance and Privilege</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“If the wind is at your back</em><br>
<em>And you never turn around </em><br>
<em>You may never know the wind is there </em><br>
<em>You may never hear the sound</em></p>
<p><em>I was born to ignorance, yes, and lesser poverties </em><br>
<em>I was born to privilege that I did not see </em><br>
<em>Lack of pigment in my skin, won a free and easy in </em><br>
<em>I didn’t know it, but my way was paved.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those officers were using a kind of training that they had been given, and a kind of training that many officers around the nation have been given. It might not have been the *current* training that they were supposed to use. (I expect that is what we will hear in coming days…)</p>
<p>But as I have said before, police have increasingly been trained to use military-style responses on American civilians….armed personnel carriers that police have literally bought FROM the military, or a knee in the back of the neck.</p>
<p>The combination of White privilege and that kind of aggressive, military-style response to Black and Brown bodies is deadly.</p>
<p>I hope those officers are held accountable. I hope they are charged with murder. I hope they get long prison sentences.</p>
<p>These are strange things for me to say out loud. But increasingly, I am convinced that it will take perhaps *dozens* of convictions like this for law enforcement to genuinely change their behaviors. And that, in itself, troubles me. Because what I am saying it, that it could be that perhaps as many as a dozen more Black and Brown bodies must die in the street before White people will wake up.</p>
<p>I hope that is not true.<br>
I fear it is.</p>
<p>Again, ask yourself…how is it that officers stand by and allow White people to SPIT on them in the Michigan capitol?</p>
<p>Aren’t you outraged by THAT too?</p>
<p>Because *I* am!</p>
<p>That’s White privilege.<br>
That’s total disrespect of the police.</p>
<p>And, friends, when mostly White armed thugs can effectively shut down a statehouse, our democracy is in real peril. We are swimming so deeply in an ocean of White privilege that we don’t even SEE how dangerous that moment really was.</p>
<p>Of course, the dangers of White privilege to Black and Brown bodies is far more existential.</p>
<p>Like those spitting armed thugs in MIchigan, George Floyd had a voice too.</p>
<p>He tried to USE his voice.<br>
In fact, he said the same thing that far too many other African-American men have said in recent years,<br>
<strong>“I can’t breathe…”</strong></p>
<p>Did the police hear HIM?<br>
Do you?</p>
<p>I’m not going to post the video of his murder, because a part of the ongoing pornography of violence against Black and Brown bodies is that we all watch these images of their murders over and over. We see their bodies splayed out on the concrete. And maybe you need that in order to get outraged. Maybe you need those dozen-more corpses before you’re ready to change things.</p>
<p>But for me, it dehumanizes their personhood in ways that I will not participate in. I’m ready for things to change now. I’ve BEEN ready.</p>
<p>Are you?</p>
<p>Dear White siblings, there is no secret knowledge you are going to gain from watching that whole video, even though I know that many of you will watch it.</p>
<p>You are not going to find an answer to what HE did to deserve it, because he didn’t do *anything* to deserve it.</p>
<p>Finally, I’ve heard White people say several things in the past day that I would like to confront in quick succession…maybe they are things you will say in response to this essay…</p>
<p><em>“Talking about this is divisive.”</em></p>
<p>I myself am mostly conflict-phobic, which is a truth I am sure some of you cannot believe. But it IS true. I don’t LIKE talking about *any* of this.</p>
<p>But I have listened very closely to beloved Black and Brown friends over the years. They are BEGGING us White people to talk about this more. And more than talk, they are begging us to use our privilege to change the law and behavior of our fellow White people.</p>
<p>They are absolutely convinced that unless and until WE speak up, act up, and truly confront the scourge of White privilege and power…nothing will change. I think they are right.</p>
<p>So, I am speaking up here…and if it makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself… “WHY?”<br>
And don’t be satisfied with the easy answer…go deep.</p>
<p><em>“Those officers don’t represent me.”</em></p>
<p>I’ve seen posts that say this too.</p>
<p>Actually, yes they do. They represent *all* of us, just like Donald Trump does. Just as I reject the idea of “Not My President,” I also reject the idea that these are simply rogue cops.<br>
Do I believe they represent ALL officers, or even the majority?</p>
<p>No, I do not believe they do.</p>
<p>But as long as the law and training they receive allow them to respond as they did (with knee on the neck), as long as armed thugs in Michigan can spit on cops and shut down the statehouse with their guns, I will point out this, which is the beating heart of this essay:</p>
<p>The law itself is out-of-balance.</p>
<p>You may not WANT these to represent us all as officers. But they do. And they must be held accountable.</p>
<p>What happened in this horrific murder, once again, is the all-to-lethal intersection of White privilege and police power. And if you are unclear about either, keep looking at the two images here.</p>
<p>Ask yourself how it can BOTH be true that armed and angry, spittle-tossing thugs can shut down a statehouse, while police can murder a Black man on the street.</p>
<p>And if you get to the place of asking, <em>“How can EITHER of these things happen?”</em></p>
<p>Then, hopefully, the evil of White privilege —how it is enforced, codified, and accepted in LAW— is starting to dawn on you.</p>
<p>And then hopefully, dear White siblings, you are ready to do something about it.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6282840
2020-04-14T21:15:21-05:00
2020-07-13T12:58:40-05:00
A Time to Refrain
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<p>Here’s a new song I wrote last night, about our collective “sheltering in place.”<br>
Debuted it this morning on “Coffee on the Porch,” and spent later afternoon recording a better version.<br>
Hope you enjoy it….feel free to share.</p>
<p>A TIME TO REFRAIN</p>
<p>Sheltered in our home<br>
Dread outside our door<br>
We move through this alone<br>
And we wonder what it’s for</p>
<p>A thousand voices speak<br>
And echo in our ear<br>
Those talking heads, they shriek<br>
And fill us with their fear</p>
<p>But there’s a time to embrace<br>
And a time to refrain<br>
There’s the loneliest space<br>
That always knows your name</p>
<p>But there are hands still reaching out<br>
And a voice still calling you<br>
There’s faith inside your doubt<br>
And hope…to pull…you through</p>
<p>So we’re zoomin’ with our friends<br>
It’s all that we can do<br>
Though we need a little skin<br>
Spirit pulls us through</p>
<p>So we’re wavin’ at their face<br>
And wonderin’ where and when<br>
We can fall in their embrace<br>
And just hold on until then.</p>
<p>But there’s a time to embrace<br>
And a time to refrain<br>
There’s the loneliest space<br>
That always knows your name</p>
<p>But there are hands still reaching out<br>
And a voice still calling you<br>
There’s faith inside your doubt<br>
And hope…to pull…you through.</p>
<p>Words and Music @ Eric Folkerth.</p>
<p>All Rights Reserved.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6249376
2020-03-14T12:29:07-05:00
2020-03-14T14:30:30-05:00
Faith, Not Fear, Is Calling us to Close
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<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">I’m gonna push back against churches boldly proclaiming that they intend to meet tomorrow and, by insinuation, calling the rest of us chicken or “afraid.”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Because of the lack of wide-spread testing, because we don’t *scientifically* know just how widespread this pandemic goes, churches, schools, community groups, etc…are making the decision to close to the public.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">SOME pastors, including Robert Jeffress at First Baptist —whom, as I have written about several times, is an absolute idiot— are boastfully proclaiming that they will continue to meet Sunday.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">This is akin to old evangelical “snake handlers.”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">(If you don’t know what this is, look it up…)</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Spiritually, God does tell us to “Fear Not.”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">I have that tattooed on my arm, from Luke 2, just to remind me.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">God *does* call us to live without fear.</div>
<div><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/fearnot.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="fearnot" /></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">But God also gave us our brains. God gave us science. God gave us our ability to reason. And, above all, God gave us the ability to look beyond ourselves and to do what’s best for the COMMUNITY, not our own selfish wants and desires.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">I respect any decision churches make, theologically.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">But when preachers conflate choosing to meet with “faithfulness” and choosing to *not* meet with “fear,” you have lost me.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">And it pisses me off so much that I want to let loose…well, a string of words I probably shouldn’t say here.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Look, here’s the thing…</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">We have a lack of leadership that starts at the very TOP of this crisis. It’s well documented now that the United States is WAY behind on “testing,” and that the Trump Administration REFUSED the help of the WHO to begin more widespread testing back in *January.*</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">(Go ahead, look it up….)</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">That lack of scientific knowledge means that everyone else who is a public leader —City, State, County Governments, Preachers, School Administrators, Business Owners— we are *all* left to struggle with a moral an ethical question, somewhat BLINDLY:</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">— “What is safe?”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">— “What is harmful?”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">— “What is over-reaction?”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">— “What is under-reaction?”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">The lack of basic scientific information as to the exact extent of this pandemic in the United States means that we are flying BLIND.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Therefore, many houses of worship, schools, governments, etc., are acting with extreme caution.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Is this “over-reacting?”</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Please understand this: NO ONE CAN SAY.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">And if they *say* they can, they are LYING.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">But, because of a lack of actual information, reacting with *caution* becomes the “default” choice of any thoughtful, caring leader.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Read that last sentence again. Read it again and again if you think everyone is now over-reacting.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Any leader who is closing or limiting their organization’s public access is making a THOUGHTFUL, COMPASSIONATE AND COMMUNITY BASED choice.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Teaching God’s lesson of “FEAR NOT” involves also looking at science and using our rational minds. Closing worship tomorrow is actually *not* a fear-based choice. It’s a calm and rational one.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">Further, this choice points to the amazing ability of leaders to look beyond their own self-interest to what is best for ALL. Business, Schools, Houses of Worship, will all financial suffer in this time. And yet…they are *choosing* to self limit…</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">It speaks to the BEST of thoughtful human nature. It speaks to something proudly RIGHT about our human nature: The ability to see beyond ourselves, for the good of the whole.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">And…to be clear…it is NOT a “fear-based” over-reaction.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">So, if you are a preacher, and you are planning to be open tomorrow to the public, I say to you….</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">You are the snake-handlers of early evangelicalism.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">You are NOT showing your fearlessness.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span>You are making this about YOU.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span>And our faith is *never* about us. It’s about serving God and about serving the world.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"><span>Your grandstanding –claiming you are acting “fearlessly”– is both untrue theologically and shows your LACK of compassion for the community you claim your church serves.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj">So there.</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="_1mf _1mj"></div>
</div>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6244443
2020-03-10T14:52:55-05:00
2020-03-10T18:05:07-05:00
Eminence Front
<p>For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the Muse compelled me to record a acoustic cover of The Who’s great song, “Eminence Front.” Somehow, I got it in my head that it’d be fun to try and mimic the guitar, synth and bass parts on acoustic guitar.</p>
<p>Why?<br>
Because!<br>
So, scroll click the link, and enjoy. (Find some big speaker…where you can really crank it…)</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F773738722&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&color=ff5500"></iframe>
<p>I’ve always loved this song. To me, it’s a deep and biting commentary on the vacuous nature of modern life.</p>
<p>And even 40-years after it was written, it still lands. Our current moment, of carefully curated social media personas, is the same world that Pete Townshend eviscerated back then.</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>“Drinks flow…and people forget…</strong><br>
<strong>Forget they’re hiding…</strong><br>
<strong>Behind an Eminence Front…</strong><br>
<strong>It’s a put on…”</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>In every age, we human beings “forget” who we really are…sometimes on purpose…sometimes by accident.</p>
<p>In every age, we seek out the “distractions, the “bread and circuses” that help us “hide” us from focusing and living a deeper life.</p>
<p>And, I will note again, how ironic that at every Dallas Maverick’s home game, they use THIS SONG to introduce the players.</p>
<p>While Pete’s synthesizers loop plays and guitar work sizzles, strobe lights pop, and the crowd screams, the Mavs Dancers writhe and gyrate on the floor.</p>
<p>I get that it’s a great groove for a bunch of basketball cheerleaders. But did anybody stop to read the lyrics that LITERALLY say:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>“Girls smile…and people forget…</strong><br>
<strong>Forget they’re hiding…</strong><br>
<strong>Behind an Eminence Front…it’s a put on…”</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>The the whole song is about eviscerating a world of smiling, skin-deep beauty. And every home game, the Mavs Dancers smile and dance away…for decades now.</p>
<p>Pete Townshend has to wryly smile at the irony, yes?<br>
(I’m not the only one who sees this, right?)</p>
<p>We’ve been “forgetting” and “hiding” as a species since we first told stories of an allegedly perfect first garden.</p>
<p>The story goes, that once upon a time there was a talking snake in a garden that somehow convinced those first two humans to do things that later made them feel shame.</p>
<p>Too many interpreters of that story sexualize take that *general* shame and reduce it down to sexual shame. (Probably because the story says that “they were naked.”)</p>
<p>But that’s too reductive. It’s much deeper than that. That’s not to minimize sexual shame, which is very real for some. But that’s a way too literal reading of a clearly metaphorical story…and I fear that too often this narrow reading *creates* sexual shame! Which the of course keeps us all from considering the deeper meaning we were supposed to get from the story in the first place.</p>
<p>All of us carry shame within us. Some of us tend to walk about the world feeling shameful and unworthy all the time. Some of us are self aware of this dynamic. Others are not.</p>
<p>Either way, almost all of us end up “hiding” at one time or another. Some of us hide behind elaborate “fronts” and “personas” that we curate and create over years.</p>
<p>Our jobs can be a “mask.” Being a clergy can be a mask. Being a tough and rugged man can be a mask. Being overly sexualized (man or woman) can be a mask. Being prudish and overly moralizing can be a mask. Being a doctor, lawyer, truck driver, Mom, Dad….can be a mask.</p>
<p>We all, in one way or another, hide from our true selves, and for many complex reasons. Much of this hiding behind masks and “fronts” are so we can project a feeling of power…often from moments when we feel powerLESS.</p>
<p>I’ve got a theory that much of the “hiding” in the world —the kind that we eventually see as vacuous and empty, the kind Townshend was writing about— comes from some sort of deep and primal shame that we all carry. That’s probably why shame is a part of that very first Bible story.</p>
<p>If we live behind our “fronts” too long, we can even “forget we’re hiding,” and can falsely believe that the surface life is all there really is, or that our “masks” are really who we are.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry your little head about the deeper meaning of life” —the world calls, mimicing the snake in the garden— just “come and join the party, dressed to kill.”</p>
<p>Lent wasn’t inspired by a Pete Townshend lyric. But the point of the season of Lent is much the same self-reflection the song calls us to. The point of Lent is also to tear away the false and fake facades that we walk around with most days.</p>
<p>We remember that “we are dust” and that our time is short. Lent is a time to remember that there’s no time for hiding. And, there’s also no time for shame either.</p>
<p>Far too many people associate shame WITH God and religion. But what if —like a too sexual reading of the garden of Eden story— that’s actually a misreading that’s been given to us?</p>
<p>What if God is the one who wants to take AWAY our shame, instead?</p>
<p>I think that’s the real truth, and I think its the truth of this week’s Gospel story of Jesus and the Woman at the Well.</p>
<p>Jesus asks the Samaritan Woman to go get her husband. Whereupon she responds that she doesn’t have one.</p>
<p>But, somehow, Jesus already knows this. In fact, Jesus says, she’s had FIVE husbands, and the one she’s living with now is not one of them.</p>
<p>At this point, there is a lot that this woman could have felt a sudden shame about.</p>
<p>She’s been married five times.<br>
She’s a Samaritan…somebody the story carefully notes, Jews don’t associate with.<br>
And, she’s a woman…and men and women in that day didn’t relate to one another as equals. (Some things never change in the minds of some…)</p>
<p>All three of these thing could have inspired shame in the Samaritan Woman, or those around her. For example, when the Disciples show up and see him talking with her, you get the sense that maybe *they* are ashamed for him…ashamed that he’s talking and associating with her.</p>
<p>But note that she has NO shame.<br>
Further, note that Jesus does not shame her either.</p>
<p>When she later says that she’s met a man who “told me everything I ever did…” It doesn’t seem like she’s saying this in deep remorse and shame.</p>
<p>Quite the opposite.</p>
<p>It sounds like she’s finally found somebody who accepts her for who she is, and is NOT shunning or shaming toward her. She seems to sense a joy and lightness for being seen and accepted for exactly who she is, and as she is.</p>
<p>My faith tells me that this is the real Jesus. The is the true God.</p>
<p>Jesus is the one who sees whatever our secret shames and secrets are. Whatever the things we try to hide are. And far from rejecting us, God loves, accepts, and liberates us from our shame.</p>
<p>Lent is about stripping away the “Eminence Front” we hide behind.</p>
<p>We then stand naked and afraid.</p>
<p>But instead of judgment and damnation, God sees our secret shames and accepts us anyway.</p>
<p>I know that that last line sounds like a platitude. It sounds like a throwaway preacher’s line.</p>
<p>But what if it really is a deep truth about the true nature of God?</p>
<p>What if God loves and accepts Samaritans and Jews?<br>
Gay and Straight?<br>
Women and Men?<br>
People of all orientations, genders, and races?</p>
<p>What if God knows not only the five marriages of *that* woman, but also secret shame YOU carry…whether it was given to you by someone else, or simply something you’ve always existentially felt?</p>
<p>What if God loves you, even when you fail at being perfect, and living up to your “fronts” of projected power?</p>
<p>And what if God loves and embraces us you, anyway?</p>
<p>God knows “everything we’ve ever done.” But God loves us anyway. (Yes, even that thing that just flashed into your mind when you read that sentence…even that shame YOU carry…)</p>
<p>There’s no more need to hide behind endless distraction.</p>
<p>So, let Lent be your Eminence Front. Let it be a time that strips away the distractions and reveals the real and true: YOU.</p>
<p>If your religion has always been about feeling shame for simply being yourself, the way God created you, then I’m sorry. That’s not the ever message God intended you to hear.</p>
<p>That is a message other *people* distorted about God. That’s religion’s fault, not God’s.</p>
<p>There is a place of spiritual peace, available to you still, where you realize that God sees ALL of you….knows “everything you’ve ever done,” and loves you anyway.</p>
<p>This Lent, consider letting that truth to dwell deep within you. You are God’s good child, and God sees and loves you for who you are.</p>
<p>You can still go the party.<br>
You can still dress to kill.<br>
(And enjoy that Mavs game)</p>
<p>But you don’t have to hide, or forget, your true self, just to try and please God or anyone else.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6237699
2020-03-04T17:10:17-06:00
2020-03-04T20:01:10-06:00
Democratic Identities and Super Tuesday
<p><em>“All politics is identity politics.”</em></p>
<p>I keep mulling over this key learning from Ezra Klein’s new book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TRNVTZQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Why We’re Polarized</a>.”</p>
<p>The classic formation of “identity politics” is used as a slam against liberals. But Klein’s book turns that on its head, and suggests that ALL of us have identities…MULTIPLE identities.</p>
<p>Black, White, Latino, Asian.<br>
LGBTQ+, Straight.<br>
Woman, Man.<br>
City, Country, Suburban.<br>
Working Class, Upper Class.<br>
Democrat, Republican.<br>
Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Parent, Child.<br>
Young, Old, Middle aged.</p>
<p>And COUNTLESS MORE I have not even mentioned.</p>
<p>To review, Klein’s book suggests that in the past 40 years, two MEGA identities have been formed in America:</p>
<p><strong>TEAM RED.</strong><br>
<strong>TEAM BLUE.</strong></p>
<p>Klein calls these our new MEGA identities.</p>
<p>He says that 40 years ago, the political parties were *cross sorted,* across identities.<br>
There were Liberal Republicans. There were Conservative Democrats.</p>
<p>(BTW: He doesn’t think we can, or should, go back to “old days.” Those cross-sorted parties excluded almost all people of color, women, LGBTQ+. In fact, the whole thesis here is that historical Whiteness is ALSO an identity…often a toxic one, historically…)</p>
<p>But, over the past forty years the <em>cross</em> sorting of our identities has greatly diminished. It’s now very rare to find a “Liberal Republican” anywhere.</p>
<p>Instead, our identities now get “stacked” within TEAM RED and TEAM BLUE.</p>
<p>There are exceptions to every rule. And, within each human being, we still cross-sort within our individual personhood.</p>
<p>But the TEAMS are very *stacked,* and no longer cross-sorted.</p>
<p>That explains why we feel so polarized.</p>
<p>The Democratic Party has always been a coalitional one. And when they have won, they have won because some candidate manages to bring along the greatest part of that coalition. The coalition is ALWAYS weak and tenuous.</p>
<p>Last night, Joe Biden showed the nation how that’s done.</p>
<figure data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_4192" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4192" style="width: 1660px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/bidenindallas.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="BideninDallas" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-4192" class="wp-caption-text">A Key Moment in Super Tuesday Was Biden’s Dallas Rally</figcaption></figure>
<p>Whatever you think of him, whatever you think of this campaign, you have to admit, it was an incredible night for Joe.</p>
<p>He won dozens of states he didn’t even spend a DIME in. (Talk about getting $$ out of politics…)
It was built on *relationships* and trust that he has built over 40 years.</p>
<p>One of these days, I hope that somebody finally starts listening to us here in Dallas County. Because coalitional winning is what we’ve been doing here.</p>
<p>I know, I’m horribly biased. But we also flipped a solidly RED stronghold in Texas to a solidly BLUE stronghold fifteen years ago….so….</p>
<p>Seriously, though, we’ve been trying to get a message out for over a decade now. <em>Dems ONLY win when they run a coalitional campaign that brings along *everybody* in the coalition.</em></p>
<p>Or, if it does not bring them along, at least it does not explicitly <em>exclude</em> them.</p>
<p>African-American voters are a <em>huge</em> part of that block. I don’t dare speak for them, but my understanding of them, learned over 15 years of watching them vote, is that they are extraordinarily PRAGMATIC in their votes….</p>
<p>MUCH more pragmatic than White liberals.</p>
<p>Another important learning is: They don’t necessarily trust White candidates…even White liberals.</p>
<p>To all of my White friends, I hope you will read this very thoughtful piece by Elie Mystal, titled: “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-black-vote/">Black Voters Didn’t Vote for Biden in South Carolina Because They “Lack Information</a>.””</p>
<p>It’s a mouthful. And it’s orignally written about that one contest, but I think it explains a bunch of last night’s result too. I hope you find it as helpful as I have. I’ve re-read it about five times now.</p>
<p>I think Bernie misunderstood this how pragmatic Black voters are. And, I KNOW he misunderstood how much he needs the ENTIRE Democratic coalition in order to win.</p>
<p>Bernie did *not* bring everybody along, despite his rhetoric claiming to do so.</p>
<p>Specifically, he fell into a lazy and unfortunate narrative of blaming the “Establishment Democrats.” That was a stupid, stupid move….</p>
<p>Whatever you think about “Establishment Democrats” (And I’ll be happy to argue my case that, except for the actual DNC members, they don’t actually exist…) it’s foolish to pit ONE part of a coalition that you need to win against ANOTHER part of a coalition that you also need in order to win.</p>
<p>(Before anybody shrieks: Yes, Joe Biden will have this same issue, on the other side of the Moderate/Progressive coin…and that will be an important conversation for another day…)</p>
<p>There is very tenuous trust…and often a MIS-trust…between the various parts of the “Democratic Coalition.”</p>
<p>There always has been. I’m beginning to think there always will be. African-Americans and Latinos are sometimes pitted against each other. That is NEVER good.</p>
<p>As I said before, both African Americans and Latinos often distrust White leaders. They have reason.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-black-vote/">the Elie Mystal</a> piece:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“Some people on Twitter, including people who weirdly think of themselves as part of Bernie Sanders’s coalition, chalked up Biden’s win to “low information voters” in South Carolina. The argument would be offensive if it weren’t also so dumb. Older black voters in South Carolina have a lifetime of education and experience dealing with the most persistent threat to their safety and rights in this country: white people.</strong></p>
<p><strong>My read of the South Carolina vote is that black people know exactly what they’re doing, and why. Joe Biden is the indictment older black folks have issued against white America. His support is buttressed by chunks of the black community who have determined that most white people are selfish and cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They believe if you make white people choose between their money and their morality—between candidates like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who somehow finished fifth in South Carolina, behind Pete Buttigieg) and candidates like Biden and Michael Bloomberg—they will choose their money every time and twice on Election Day.”</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It continues:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>“So when you ask older black people what the white electorate, Democratic or Republican, are capable of, they remember. They remember that this country has spent the better part of 40 years lauding the racially destructive policies of Ronald Reagan. They remember that actual progressive choices, like Jackson and Edwards, were rejected by white Democrats. They remember that white people failed to turn on George W. Bush, despite his legacy of incompetence and torture, and instead reelected him. They remember that the majority of white people did not vote for the first black president, spent eight years attacking his every move, and then replaced him with the most small-minded bigot they could find, rejecting an immensely qualified white woman in the process.”</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>Bernie completely failed at understanding this facet of Black identity in America. I’m hearing, for example, that he didn’t even TRY to get Clyburn’s endorsement in South Carolina.</p>
<p>Bernie committed many other mistakes that no doubt will be analyzed in coming days. But to my mind, his campaign against the “Democratic Establishment” was the most foolish of all.</p>
<p>Are traditional Black voters across the South the “Democratic Establishment?” (Clyburn made this point…)</p>
<p>Is anybody wiling to say that they are uninformed or voting against their own interest? I hope not. If so, read the piece below again, several times. Again, I hope all White people, and especially White liberals, will read this piece carefully.</p>
<p>African-American voters did *not* vote against their interest or their indentity. Neither did Warren voters. (And anybody who blames her in coming days really needs to shut up…)</p>
<p>Warren voters, African American voters –and apparently also a good number of White voters– voted for their interest, as they understood them. It will be a serious mistake for any Bernie supporter to claim that either they, or Warren supporters, voted against their interests last night by not supporting him.</p>
<p>Again, a winning Democratic message will always try their best to bring as much of the coalition together as possible. I tend to think last night proved what I’m still fairly certain is true: That coalition breaks down roughly 55-45% along a Moderate-Progressive divide. That has been my guess for some months now…I think last night showed that. (It might even still be 60-40…lets see where we are in a few weeks…)</p>
<p>For a candidate who clams he wanted to bring everybody along, Bernie’s constant railing against “Establishment” Democrats was absolutely foolhardy.</p>
<p>It didn’t even apparently work in California…so how they hell was that supposed to work in Texas?</p>
<p>Dems *only* win when they can put aside their differences and stand together as a coalitional political movement.</p>
<p>Let me end with this…</p>
<p>I LOVE Bernie’s idea of expanding the party base, and bringing in new voters. That message is DEEPLY needed. The coalition has to continue to expand…and by definition the coalition will continue to get more liberal as time goes on.</p>
<p>Bernie did an *amazing* job reaching young Latinos in Texas. I had hoped this might be the big story of the night. And it IS a big story. But it’s only part of the whole story, as much as I personally am eager to see that part of the coalition expand.</p>
<p>At some point, if Bernie ever wants to lead the Democratic Party, he’s got a lead a part of *everybody* who calls themselves “Democrats.”</p>
<p>And as we’ve been saying, he’s not only shown no sign of doing that, and has actively ridiculed it in his own language.</p>
<p>Back to Biden….</p>
<p>I never expected the frontrunner to be an old White man this time. As I’ve written many times, none of my top original FOUR candidates are going to win this election.</p>
<p>The original Democratic coalition that excited ME was Jesse Jackson in 1984-88. His campaign helped change my life and politics. His “rainbow coalition” is still the fundamental metaphor on what Democratic politics looks like…and has room for EVERBODY.</p>
<p>This time, I was hoping for a coalition that could be led by somebody from a different identity…somebody younger…somebody of another race…a woman….</p>
<p>That’s not going to happen at this point. The stacked Democratic identities are lining up behind Joe Biden. It’s not a plot. It’s not a conspiracy. (Joe did this, again, with little money…)</p>
<p>It’s people lining up all their various identities and making what seems to them to be a very pragmatic choice. It’s all happened *stunninglly* fast, within past few days.</p>
<p>I understand completely why it’s happened.</p>
<p>Last night’s turnout was almost on par with 2008’s history primary in Texas. That happened elsewhere in the country too.</p>
<p>That bodes VERY well for the fall.</p>
<p>But! (And here’s the but that we learned in Dallas fifteen years ago….
the message I’ve been harping on for YEARS….)</p>
<p>Only if all the various parts of the coalition turn out at record numbers.</p>
<p>Given the likely 55-45% Moderate-Progressive split within the party still, I understand why what is happening is happening.</p>
<p>But it will remain to be seen if ALL the coalition will show up in the Fall.</p>
<p>Pop more popcorn.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6234558
2020-03-02T10:47:10-06:00
2020-03-02T11:35:04-06:00
Mayor Pete
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<p>Early in the campaign season, Pete Buttigieg made a stop here in Dallas for a big Democratic event. I was asked to deliver an invocation for the evening, which I was honored to do.</p>
<p>During Mayor Pete’s keynote speech, he was interrupted at several points by hecklers, in what was clearly an organized plan to disrupt both him and the evening. They were clearly Right Wing Christians.</p>
<p>These hecklers were situated at strategic points throughout the room. The room would grow quiet, when another would jump up and begin shouting at the stage and gesturing wildly. I’ve slept since then, but my memory is that several of us got up to escort the hecklers out of the space. I seem to recall Shawn Terry and Erin Moore jumping in to help.</p>
<p>After every heckler was escorted out, a period of calm would then settle in. Soon, yet another heckler would jump up and start yelling. It threw off everyone in the room, and there was an unsettled feeling among all the guests for the rest of the evening.</p>
<p>Mayor Pete was completely unfazed.</p>
<p>He paused calmly at each interruption, and waited until the commotion ceased before pickup up right where he had left off. He never once encouraged audience members to “rough ‘em up a little.” He never even had one bad word to say about what was happening.</p>
<p>I’ve thought about night a lot in the past few months, and it comes back to me powerfully tonight.</p>
<p>Pete’s candidacy certainly had flaws, which we do not have to get into here. It was especially fascinating for me to hear sometimes biting comments about Pete from my progressive friends, and even some from the LGBTQ community. I heard women begrudge him because he was a man, albeit a gay one.</p>
<p>All of us vote from our personal identities, and all of have multiple identities that we rank in various levels of importance when it comes to choosing a candidate. I get that. We *all* do that.</p>
<p>Worse, presidential politics demand that we whittle our choices down to *one,* eventually. Which can put those identities and values at odds, even within individual voters. Never before have we seen so many worthy “identities” played against each other in a primary contest as we have this past year.</p>
<p>Even further, Pete’s moderate politics slotted him at a certain place in the pantheon of candidates this cycle, and that opens him up to criticism from the Democratic left and beyond.</p>
<p>Having said all this, as he drops out of the race tonight, I’m left feeling like we have somehow minimized the importance of the fact that we have all just witnessed the first openly gay Presidential candidate.</p>
<p>Further, a candidate who many of us here in Dallas saw take that heckling with incredible grace, poise and ease.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/pete-buttigieg.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="Pete-Buttigieg" /></p>
<p>I wonder if it’s not a symptom of the general trauma and PTSD that we all feel during this administration…along with a relentless news cycle that washes everything older than two hours out to sea…that this relatively historic moment feels like it’s just gonna get swept away.</p>
<p>I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Mayor Pete.</p>
<p>And finally, I don’t think that even with all the positive change in our society over the past two decades, anyone should underestimate the specific challenges it took to run for President as an out gay man.</p>
<p>Pete Buttigieg met those challenges with grace, calm, and —dare I say—a presidential demeanor.</p>
<p>Thank you, Mayor Pete.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6234559
2020-02-27T10:39:21-06:00
2020-03-02T11:35:04-06:00
At-ONE-ment
<div id="id_5e5d3661ed3f46580113765" class="text_exposed_root text_exposed">Lent is *supposed* to be about “turning a new way.”<br>
Unfortunately, for too many people, we grew up believing it was about “feeling bad.”
<p>There’s a big difference between the two. And that difference is summed up in this year’s theme for Lent at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/KesslerParkUMC/?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARB3OHB0DGkDD-eorY4g2DQ01DbU4PfQMHsSiiUR62j-8D1GE0fKshkLY2naWmqPeUSD-jHNWOlFIVyRsD9zCEQiTeZRgs0TbSOcRYCCP8pJZw16dIHwnW--5JWvNW2tTd5sAlczBF5ZWb9TWDv7j4DiokfxfgNnFpHjGIkYHQxg7WyV0GH9gwdaspyD-MAVUez-1b7Lw6FapvN40g&__tn__=%2CdK%2AF-R&eid=ARCePFaTEOfPEnVXjLtxZezjRVDWXZvEBr10wltaIrCjNZn3_ruomUtSjD3O3jIcHwQWXI1GjnpaQi25">Kessler Park United Methodist Church</a>:<br>
<span class="text_exposed_show"><br>
“At-ONE-ment.”</span></p>
<p>The word that gets thrown around a lot during Lent is “repentance.” And unfortunately, perhaps this word, more than any other, has messed up Christians along the way.</p>
<p>To “repent,” for far too many of us, has come to mean “to feel feel bad.”</p>
<p>But that’s not actually what repentance is. The word’s most literal meaning is “to turn in a new way.” There’s no emotional baggage to it, whatsoever.<br>
(Or, there doesn’t, by definition, have to be…)</p>
<p>It’s a decision, or a calling by God, to move in a new direction in life, through our actions, and how we live.</p>
<p>Somewhere over the years, though, that whole meaning got lost. My fantasy is that hundred of years ago, there were clergy who felt like people weren’t feeling bad ENOUGH. So they doubled-down on making people feel bad for their choices during Lent, and the whole season became pretty dark and depressing.</p>
<p>Somewhere along the way, the Church took the whole season of Lent into a very somber and serious place. “Turning in a new way” got replaced with “feeling bad.”</p>
<p>Please understand me, all this is not to minimize feeling sorrow for our past-actions, regretting past mistakes, and most importantly apologizing and making amends with those we have harmed. They are DEEPLY important for us and for those around us.</p>
<p>But too often we stop before we are done. Too often, we get caught in what psychologists sometimes call a “shame spiral.” We *excel* at feeling bad. We spiral down into shameful thoughts that paralyze us. We can’t stop thinking and ruminating on past actions we regret. Even worse, others of us feel an overwhelming sense of shame about our personhood and life, that come from harmful messages we internalized from others. Some of us feel shame ALL THE TIME.</p>
<p>Some of us feel shame all. the. time. For things we haven’t even done….sometimes we feel the shame of society, or the Church, or parents, or some other internal voice that never stops.</p>
<p>So, Lord knows, we don’t need the CHURCH piling on.</p>
<p>The “shame spiral” is paralyzing.</p>
<p>But, don’t miss this huge irony….it also keeps us from true “repentance!” That is, shame can keep us from turning in new ways that lead to live, health, wholeness and love.</p>
<p>So, this Lent, we’ll be focusing more on “repentance” in its original meaning: “To turn in a new way.”</p>
<p>And we won’t be focusing at all on it’s cultural meaning —“To feel bad or shameful”— at all.</p>
<p>When we “turn in a new way,” when we reconnect with God and feel God’s presence in our lives, it creates “At-ONE-ment.” with God….being ONE with God…connected to God at a deep and real level. We remember that, however God created us, we are GOOD children of God. God wants us to do things that give us life, freedom and happiness. God wants us to be AT ONE with God.</p>
<p>That’s the real meaning of Lent. And I hope you’ll join us for worship this season as we unpack all of this over the coming weeks.</p>
<p>Grace and Peace,</p>
<p>EF</p>
</div>
<div id="photosTruncatingUIButtonGroup" class="_51xa _3-8m _3-90"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/at-one-ment.001.jpeg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="At-ONE-ment.001" /></div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6228424
2020-02-26T08:45:33-06:00
2020-02-26T09:30:42-06:00
Stop. Wait. Think About This.
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<p>Sometime this morning, maybe even as I write this, the “Leaning Tower of Dallas” will finally come down.</p>
<p>(Note: Obviously, the timeline is much longer now…EF)</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/leaningtower-1.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" />I’ve been captivated by our fascination with this wreck of a wreck ever since it happened a week ago.<br>
I always love metaphor, and tend to believe everything can be a metaphor if you let it.</p>
<p>So, I asked my Facebook friend the other day:<br>
“What is the metaphor of the ‘Leaning Tower.’”</p>
<p>The answers were predictably brilliant. (Because I have smart friends…)</p>
<p>“Your inner core is stronger than everyone realizes it is”</p>
<p>“Measure twice, cut once.”</p>
<p>“Even when we blow it up we don’t let go of the past”</p>
<p>“How long are you going to leave that problem up and established in your life before you decide to deal with it?”</p>
<p>“Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?”<br>
SHAFT.”</p>
<p>“You only had one job.”</p>
<p>All week, as I passed by the site, I’d see dozens of folks taking selfies and wandering around the open field, just North of the wreck. Our city was CAPTIVATED by this. It’s likely that over the past week, THOUSANDS of people have gravitated to that site, to take pictures, walk around, and just smile at the ridiculousness of it all.</p>
<p>As you can see from these pictures, I did that Saturday. (And, you can see the field and the dozens of folks there while I was there)</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/leaningtower-1-2.jpg?w=750&h=251" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="251" width="750" /></p>
<p>Let’s be clear…this was not an “historic building.” It was a fairly nondescript office building.</p>
<p>But the “Leaning Tower” manifested itself in a Dallas that is undergoing a HUGE reshaping of the buildings in its central core.</p>
<p>North Oak Cliff, where our church is, is exploding with growth. As a pastor, trying to listen to the people of North Oak Cliff, I’m hearing much debate as to whether it’s good, bad, or both.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on East Side, where we live, there is *also* an explosion of TONS of new high density apartments. Some seem well built and appropriate.<br>
Others look thrown together with masking tape and Elmer’s Glue.</p>
<p>It’s all dizzying and fast.</p>
<p>Therefore, MY favorite metaphor for the “Leaning Tower” is this….</p>
<p>“One lone building —surrounded by all this “change” and “progress”— looks around and said,</p>
<p><em>“Stop! Wait! Think about this…””</em></p>
<p>The “Leaning Tower,” captivates us because we all feel the same way sometimes.</p>
<p>Please understand me, I’m not a nostalgia buff, and absolutely not an historic preservation nut. Our neighborhood is an historic preservation district. (Largest in the nation…) I generally *like* that, given the ridiculous number of apartment buildings going up, all over the East Side. I like the idea that our neighborhood’s 100-year-old homes will likely survive and be revitalized. I’m now *very* glad the neighborhood took that vote some fifteen years ago now.</p>
<p>However, I live with a very personal conundrum…IF the historical preservation rules had been in effect when *our* house was dreamed up, it never would have been built.</p>
<p>So, while I like the idea of preservation, and while I think we should honor the past, I’m not a zealot about it.<br>
I get that development is somewhat inevitable if our city is going to continue to grow and thrive.</p>
<p>It’s foolish to pretend all growth is bad, and just as equally foolish to pretend that “no growth” is a good idea either.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/leaningtower-1-1.jpg?w=750&h=563" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="563" width="750" />Maybe the “Leaning Tower” just wanted us to stop for a moment, meditate on the ridiculousness of its own existence; and also perhaps on the ridiculousness of our own existence too.</p>
<p>I tend to see “both sides” when it comes to historical preservation. To a point.</p>
<p>Take our neighborhood again, as an example.</p>
<p>What we’re seeing is that home prices are continuing to rise as younger families move in. Yes, they’re preserving these historic homes. And that’s good. But let’s all be clear: historic preservation doesn’t STOP gentrification.</p>
<p>It’s just “gentrification with rules.” It’s just gentrification by another name, and designed for people with more money and a lot more time than many of our long-term neighbors around here have.</p>
<p>Historic preservationists who are more hardcore than me would say that Dallas *never* really honors its past. And that is definitely true. We bulldoze our past. We widen our freeways, right into Freedman’s cemetery. (And only move the graves when the public pressure gets too much…)</p>
<p>Little Mexico is completely gone, for example.</p>
<p>We don’t even call it “Little Mexico” any more.<br>
We call it “Uptown.”</p>
<p>The house where my Father-in-Law, Richard Garcia, was born was on Payne Street in Little Mexico. And it was probably the third-to-last house left standing there. No joke. And, true story, the house was probably bulldozed within WEEKS of his death a few years back.</p>
<p>For years –decades, really– that little house on Payne Street was dwarfed by all the high rises of “Uptown” around it. We use to drive friends by it just to marvel at the changes in the area.</p>
<p>But a few weeks back, we drove our friend, Joe Jencks, around there and we realized that it’s really now impossible to even describe what the area looked like to a visitor.<br>
I mean, except for El Fenix, Santos Rodriguez Park, and the restaurant that’s now St. Anne’s, there is nothing in “Uptown” to remind you that Little Mexico ever existed.</p>
<p>A part of why Little Mexico went away is that families moved away. Dennise’s family moved to West Dallas, and then South Irving. Based on what I know, they did that by choice, hoping with each move for a little bit better opportunity for their family. We still have lots of family in West Dallas to this day.</p>
<p>So, yes, gentrification drove folks out, but so did the hope of other opportunity too.</p>
<p>Speaking of West Dallas, is it “La Bajada?”<br>
Or, “Trinity Groves?”<br>
Right now, is it still both?</p>
<p>This dynamic of knocking down our past seems epidemic all over the city.</p>
<p>Take my OWN childhood home, on Prestonshire Lane, in the heart of Preston Hollow.</p>
<p>It was ALSO knocked down within six months of my own Father’s death. We had left in the late 1970s. My Mom and I went back and walked thorough it one last time before it was bulldozed.</p>
<p>Two decades ago, a decade after *we* left, all my childhood friend’s parents started moving out of Preston Hollow. They all got ridiculous sums of money for their homes. In many cases, enough to guarantee their own future security for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Many of them moved into smaller homes, and lived comfortably the rest of their days. (And then, watched their homes scraped for a “McMansion.”)</p>
<p>So, in some ways, that was a GOOD thing for them.<br>
(Hold that thought…)</p>
<p>So, just a year or so ago, our old house was *the* last house remaining on its block too in Preson Hollow….just like the house where Richard Garcia was born in Little Mexico.</p>
<p>It makes you pause and think….</p>
<p>I must say —and I feel more unchained to say this now that I’m no longer pastoring a church in Preston Hollow— I find all that growth there RIDICULOUS. I’ve said it quietly for years. I’ll say it loudly now.</p>
<p>The homes of Preston Hollow were always very nicely sized ranch style homes. They were spacious for their day. The lots are HUGE.</p>
<p>But “big” is not “big enough” any more, I guess?</p>
<p>So, we as a society even knock down “the big” to make way for “the huge.”</p>
<p>Why not just add on?</p>
<p>If you need McMansion size (and I’m pretty sure you don’t) why not just add on? Why knock down?</p>
<p>This is a pointless, and now mostly rhetorical question since in Preston Hollow, like in Little Mexico, the original neighborhood is pretty much gone too….or going.</p>
<p>Point being…NOWHERE in town do we seem to respect our past at all.</p>
<p>Back here in East Dallas, just about every month of two, I see a friend post that their childhood home was knocked down. Several friends have posted eloquently and painfully about it.</p>
<p>And, just this week, perhaps the most chilling story yet. A 100-year-old home was knocked down…by MISTAKE.</p>
<p>(It was a banner week for Dallas demolition…)</p>
<p>They had the wrong house number and wrong street. News reports say that neighbors watched helplessly while the bulldozer made quick work of the old building.</p>
<p>See? That’s what the “Leaning Tower” knows about Dallas.</p>
<p>The Leaning Tower knows us.</p>
<p>The Leaning Tower has been watching us.</p>
<p>And that’s why it said,<em> “Stop! Wait! Think about this…”</em></p>
<p>Maybe in ways that are subconscious, the “Leaning Tower” isn’t *just* a funny metaphor about how our best plans go awry, or how science doesn’t always know how much explosives actually blow up a building.</p>
<p>Maybe we’re attracted to this story, not only because its funny, but also because it’s kind of metaphorical and architectural protest of the myth of progress as lived out in our city.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’ve learned over the years…<br>
And these next sentences are both literal and metaphorical:</p>
<p>Destruction is always quick and easy. Building things, that is hard.</p>
<p>When we built the new Northaven Church (2004..and, yes, we also tore down something old in Preston Hollow…), I went out with my video camera to film the progress of the old-building demolition.</p>
<p>My plan was to film every 15-20 minutes or so, come back and film some more, and create a kind of “time lapse” film of the demolition throughout the day.</p>
<p>I never went back inside.</p>
<p>It took the one bulldozer about half an hour to smash through all the bricks, walls, and roof trusses of building that was 10s of thousands of square feet.</p>
<p>Old weathered wood —that had stood the test of time for 50 years— was crumbled and crushed in 30 minutes.</p>
<p>It was horrific and awe inspiring.</p>
<p>Destruction is always quick and easy. Building things, that is hard.</p>
<p>Here’s what I worry about.</p>
<p>Many of the houses being bulldozed these days are rent houses. (not all, obviously, but many).</p>
<p>They’re being replaced by HIGHER rent apartments and condos, pushing out working class families that have lived in our city’s core for years.</p>
<p>Those with the generational wealth of home ownership —the parents of my childhood friends in Preston Hollow— are able to sell out, move on, and be stable for the rest of their lives. (Remember: I told you to remember that point…)</p>
<p>Those older folks lived comfortably the rest of their lives. (Most are now gone…)</p>
<p>But what about renters in East Dallas, and North Oak Cliff, and West Dallas today?<br>
What about the working class?<br>
What about young families?</p>
<p>Back to us….we are HYPER-aware that we could not afford to buy a house in our own neighborhood today.</p>
<p>So, what about young families just starting out?</p>
<p>How will THEY possibly find a place to live in Dallas’ core?<br>
(We need them…)</p>
<p>Say what you will about Scott Griggs and Philip Kingston….<br>
But together with the rest of Dallas’ last council, they gave Dallas a very PROGRESSIVE housing policy that was intended to help mitigate this dynamic.</p>
<p>Scott Griggs was the architect of that plan, and it’s still on the books today.</p>
<p>I’ve asked many smart friends lately: Are we actually FOLLOWING that plan?<br>
Or are we just making exception after exception?<br>
I honestly don’t know.</p>
<p>The folks I’ve asked don’t seem to really know either, so I’m ending this long essay by honestly asking.</p>
<p>Feel free to comment if you’re a smart friend who knows.</p>
<p>(Maybe we are. But, I gotta say: Eight story apartments off of Lower Greenville, anyone? Hmmnnn….)</p>
<p>I’m asking because I LIKE the idea of economically, racially, and culturally diverse neighborhoods.</p>
<p>That’s *why* we live where live, and why we bought here in the first place.</p>
<p>And, thanks be to God, that’s why I work where I work.<br>
(How lucky am I to live and work in very similar urban areas?)</p>
<p>It’s an intentional choice we made a long time ago, because study after study shows that everybody does better when we all live mixed up together.</p>
<p>So, what’s happening in our city now?</p>
<p>Are we honoring our housing policy?</p>
<p>Or are just just making exception after exception?</p>
<p>I sincerely don’t know.<br>
Somebody enlighten me.</p>
<p>Until I get some answers, I’m with the “Leaning Tower.”</p>
<p><em>“Stop! Wait! Think about this…”</em></p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6207896
2020-02-07T12:34:45-06:00
2020-02-07T12:45:40-06:00
Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.
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<p><strong>“Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not…”</strong></p>
<p>This phrase is one of the key insights I’ve ever learned from Dr. John Dominic Crossan. And, honestly, one of the key insights I’ve ever learned in life. Crossan suggests that when the early Christian Church popularized the phrase “Jesus is Lord,” there was an understood second-clause: “Ceasar is not.”</p>
<p>Crossan deftly reminds his readers how the Romans worshipped their Emperors like gods. In fact, he cites authorities which actually call Ceasar “lord.”</p>
<p>It was likely too dangerous for many in the Roman Empire to boldly assert “Ceasar is not.” In many places (at least through the 400s) they faced persecution at the hands of the Romans. The famous legend about how early Christians used to draw a fish symbol in the sand is an example of this.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/jesus-is-lord.jpg?w=300&h=227" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="jesus-is-lord" height="227" width="300" />And so, when the early Christians said “Jesus is Lord,” there was an expressly POLITICAL dimension to that statement. It was a rejection of the Powers That Be. It was a rejection of the Roman Empire and all its trappings. Further, it was a rejection of religion that collaborates with Empire to suppress and harm people.</p>
<p>Jesus speaks some harsh words in the Gospel. But we miss something crucial if we forget that his HARSHEST words are aimed at these very collaborators. Those leaders happened to be Jewish, because Jesus was Jewish. (Not all Jewish people, or leaders, were collaborators. Most, were also victims of the Roman Empire too..)</p>
<p>These collaborators were not “evil” because they were Jewish.<br>
But to the extent that they collaborated with Empire, Jesus condemns them in the Gospels.</p>
<p>And he encourages HIS followers to “Love your enemies….” and “Pray for those who persecute you…”</p>
<p>As I have said and written many times, the closest thing we have in our society to the Roman Empire is the American Empire.</p>
<p>America is a great and vast Imperial Power. America —and all the trappings of both its government and civil religion— are THE Powers That Be in our culture today.</p>
<p>President Trump is the head of those Powers That Be, by right of being the American President. So was Barack Obama. And, lest you think I’m about to be hypocritical…there’s not “but” that comes next.</p>
<p>America’s President is the head of the “Powers That Be” whether they are an orange-haired blowhard, and African-American…and even, God willing, one day a woman.</p>
<p>This is a fact I stated repeatedly to my mostly-liberal congregation, back during the Obama presidency. They didn’t always like it when I said it to them. It didn’t make it any less true.</p>
<p>I am a Christian. I am a Liberal. I tend to support the Democratic Party. All these things are well known.</p>
<p>But hopefully those who know me know that I’ve been willing to stand up to Democrats when needed. The most famous example was being arrested outside the White House during the Obama years….protesting his lack of action to protect “Dreamer” families. When we were arrested in Washington, I was protesting OBAMA…not the Republican Congress.</p>
<p>I try to do the same thing in more local settings too….using the ability and moments that God gives me to speak to local officials….sometimes privately…to encourage them to behave kindly and justly. (I have done that even this week…)</p>
<p>I say none of this to try and get a pack on the back from any of you. I say it to hopefully indicate what I believe to be true: Christian leaders….Christian followers…Christians of all sorts….are called first and foremost to remember that “Jesus Is Lord….and Caesar is not.”</p>
<p>This gets me, as you might imagine, to yesterday’s Prayer Breakfast.</p>
<p>I could slam the President’s remarks here. But that’s too easy. That’s fish in a barrel.</p>
<p>Did anybody REALLY expect Donald Trump to be repentant yesterday?<br>
When confronted with the actual words of Jesus —telling us *all* of us to “love and pray for your enemies,” did you REALLY expect him to break down in tears and say…</p>
<p>“Oh…I’m sorry…I was wrong…” ??</p>
<p>Of course not. Donald Trump doesn’t know and understand enough about the Christian religion to do that.<br>
(“Two Corinthians,” anyone?)</p>
<p>What disturbs ME….to my core….is the laughter of the collaborating evangelical Christian leaders in the room.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you caught that moment.</p>
<p>When Donald Trump, got up to speak —clearly responding directly to Jesus’ admonition to “love your enemies” and “pray for your those who persecute you” — he said…</p>
<p>“I don’t know about that…”</p>
<p>And the room LAUGHED.</p>
<p>Allegedly Christian LEADERS laughed.<br>
Ministers who serve allegedly evangelical congregations around the nation….laughed.</p>
<p>Friends, there is no kind or vague way to say this: These leaders are collaborators with Empire. They are the closest thing we have to the the collaborating religious leadership of Jesus’ day.</p>
<p>And they don’t even see it.<br>
Or, maybe they do and, worse, they don’t even care.</p>
<p>Evangelical Christianity —a branch of our faith I have always observed at as an outsider— has been totally taken over by these collaborators.</p>
<p>And almost nobody in Evangelical circles is standing up to them.</p>
<p>Well, a few do.</p>
<p>The editor of Christianity Today did so in December. And he was DESTROYED by the Evangelical Powers That Be.</p>
<p>I will say this….To all of you out there who are not Christian, “I am sorry.”</p>
<p>I will apologize for these leaders, even as I don’t understand them either. Because their collaboration stains us all.</p>
<p>For some reason, they can’t see how deeply *they* need to apologize and repent. (I’ll leave it to other evangelicals to explain more why they can’t see it…but my guess, “power.”)</p>
<p>I’ll also say: their collaboration with the Trump Administration does *not* represent all Christians….nor do I tend to think it represents most Evangelicals.</p>
<p>I belive it’s this very collabortion that is a primary reason so many people are “done” with Christianity. This horrid stain of their words and actions soils all of us who dare call ourselves “Christian.”</p>
<p>So, I’m sorry, anyway, even if I can’t speak for them.</p>
<p>And, like Jesus did once, as he looked over the city of Jerusalem, I believe God WEEPS at all of this.<br>
God weeps at how corrupted and complicit a religion that operates in his name has become.</p>
<p>True Christianity is always willing to hold itself to account.</p>
<p>True Christianity takes seriously that most *challenging* scripture of all: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.</p>
<p>True Christianity understands that religion itself can always be co-opted by Power, and therefore seeks to *advise* power, but never *become* power.</p>
<p>True Christianity loves neighbor as self, and seeks to do justice, love kindness, and walk HUMBLY with God….and with ALL God’s children.</p>
<p>What I heard in that laughter yesterday?</p>
<p>That is, in no way, true Christianity.</p>
<p>Therefore I say today…and I invite Christians of all branches of our faith to say with me:</p>
<p>“Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not.”</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6083113
2020-01-10T11:58:21-06:00
2020-01-10T14:30:49-06:00
“Be the Dog On A Walk”
<p>One of the most important life lessons Dennise and I have ever learned, we learned from our dog.</p>
<p>The lesson is: “Be the Dog On a Walk.”</p>
<p>We learned this lesson observing our dog, Daisy. And I should describe it by first describe the opposite… “Daisy in the yard…”</p>
<p>When Daisy is in the * side yard,* and sees another dog pass by our front windows, on a leash…<br>
Or, when Daisy in the house, sitting inside the front windows, and sees the same…</p>
<p>She FREAKS OUT.</p>
<p>She jumps up on the windows, causing them to rattle. (She a big dog…) She paws the windows forcefully. She barks in a low, gutteral growl that terrifies anybody who hears it. I mean, it is no joke that she literally *broke* the front window in our old house doing this. (We replaced it with unbreakable plastic…)</p>
<p>Her entire attitude is one of *attack.* You get the sense that if there was no window, or fence, between her and the offending dog, she would race to them and tear out their larynx in one horrendous bite.</p>
<p>But!<br>
When Daisy is on a *walk,* it’s as if she is an entirely different dog. It’s almost like Jekyll and Hyde. Now, the *other* dogs behind the window, rattle the walls and bark terror.</p>
<p>Does Daisy acknowledge them?<br>
Does she look right or look left?</p>
<p>Nope.<br>
She just keeps on walking.</p>
<p>She’s as cool as a clam.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/img_0376.jpeg?w=300&h=162" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="162" width="300" /></p>
<p>She knows she’s the dog on the walk. She knows she’s doing what very other dog *wants* to do.</p>
<p>She doesn’t have to bark. She doesn’t have to growl.</p>
<p>She doesn’t even have to look sideways at them. (Although I think sometimes it feels like she tosses them a sideways, Funky Winkerbean glance, that says… “Hey…”)</p>
<p>So, the moral is this. In life, if you are “winning,” if things are going well, if you are feeling the blessing and abundance of life:</p>
<p><strong>“Be the dog on a walk.”</strong></p>
<p>Don’t taunt those who don’t have what you have. Don’t brag about your success. Just cool-y enjoy the walk, enjoy the ride. Because one of the days, the leash will be on the other neck. One of these days, you’ll be the dog, stuck in the yard. No success lasts forever. Nothing you have is guaranteed.</p>
<p>Despite what players says after the championship win, God didn’t specially bless you more than your opponents, or answer *your* prayers while dashing theirs. Sometimes, life just works out. Sometimes there are good times. Sometimes you’re immeasurably blessed. When that happens, don’t rub it in.</p>
<p>Another way to say this, of course, is “Be a good winner.”</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this a lot during the Trump Presidency, and how damaging it is to our nation’s moral character to have a leader who is, so often, *not* a good winner. Donald Trump is never content to just “win.” He seems morally compelled to categorize his foes as “losers.” He dualistically divides the world into these binary categories, and nobody (besides him) appears to have a guaranteed a spot among “the winners.”</p>
<p>This is, of course, ridiculous. Most folks I know are kind of laughing at him now. But as President, it’s a moral lesson that others watch. There are *plenty* of people out there, soaking in this lesson about what it means to “win” and what it means to “lose.”</p>
<p>I don’t know why he’s like this. I couldn’t begin to guess, other than perhaps he’s never really dealt with his own pain or loss, or understood just how privileged his life and existence has been.</p>
<p>But he’s not alone.</p>
<p>Social media turns us all into little narcissists, fronting a highly curated “image” (masks) of ourselves as more successful, more beautiful, more accomplished, more happy, than those around us.</p>
<p>Even those of us who *should be* humble servants do this. I’ve seen too many politicians I’ve personally known win elections, and then privately engage in vendettas against their former foes, rather than just let the “win” be the win. I’ve seen too many preachers get the appointment (Church) of a lifetime and then act as if they were smarter, harder working, and more “faithful” than their peers.</p>
<p>Ugh.</p>
<p>To me, the word I most use to describe my life is “lucky.”</p>
<p>Time and time again, I say “I am the luckiest guy in the world.”</p>
<p>Theologically, I’d call it God’s grace. I often feel an overwhelming sense of God’s grace. I know just how privileged I have been, by my birth, by my race and gender, by sheer coincidence and luck sometimes. It causes me to feel even more inspired to help others, to use my privilege to broaden the table, and include the outsider.</p>
<p>This is a hard concept to learn, and we all fail at it from time to time.</p>
<p>About a year ago, we were talking about this life-value with Maria. We said to her, “Do you know what it means to ‘be the dog on a walk?’”</p>
<p>She replied, “You get to poop anywhere you want?”</p>
<p>We all laughed for five minutes.</p>
<p>Look, I know when things go your way, you should rightly be proud. You should rightly want to share good news with others. Don’t stop doing that.</p>
<p>But when you share on social media, when you are rightly proud, remember to look around you. Remember that there are others around you going through a hard time.</p>
<p>The opponent you vanquished? You didn’t physically “kill” them. They will live to fight another day. Maybe they’ll come back and beat you next time, and be inspired to do that because they feel humiliated by you.<br>
(There’s a credible theory that Trump ran for President because of a humiliation he felt at the hands of Obama at the Correspondence Dinner….)</p>
<p>As those who are in the public eye more than most, Dennise and I have come to understand just how many people live on the edge all the time. We see how many folks feel frail, and are just getting by. We’ve personally experienced how our own curated public image can push folks to come after you. (Even as we know that, when they do, they are coming after an image or mask, not a real human being…)</p>
<p>Every waitstaff you lord over can spit in your food.<br>
Every store clerk, or staff at the government window, is dealing something you can’t imagine.<br>
Every “enemy” you vanquish can come at you again.</p>
<p>And, yes, they may do it anyway. But why give them a reason?</p>
<p>Live by the Golden Rule, and treat *all* those like you would wish to be treated.<br>
When you “win,” be more like Mary who “ponders all these things in her heart.”<br>
Jesus reminds us that even the Gentiles love their friends. So, love your enemies too.<br>
That means *during* the “battle” with them, and I think it especially means when you have “won.”</p>
<p>And finally, remember the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, which teaches us that there’s a time for success and a time for failure.<br>
Both will come to you soon enough.</p>
<p>So when things go your way in life, watch what dogs do.</p>
<p>“Be the dog on a walk.”</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6061929
2019-12-26T10:12:56-06:00
2020-01-05T11:45:53-06:00
Be Here Now
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<p>I’ve got my Apple Watch set so that when I don’t have a calendar event, the phrase “Be Here Now” pops up on the calendar app.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/81606568_10221610006383827_3108842928236134400_n.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" />There aren’t many days when “Be Here Now” is the only thing on my schedule. But yesterday was one of those days. Today is too.</p>
<p>Just about every minister you know —if you sat them down and shot them full of truth serum— would tell you that they are always worried about the “other” thing they are supposed to be doing.</p>
<p>Like, *always* worried about it…all…the…time…</p>
<p>The nature of the job is such that there is always another call or visit to make, always an upcoming program to plan, always something administrative that didn’t get done. It always feels as if you’re failing somebody at the church, or your family, or yourself.</p>
<p>Always.</p>
<p>Some years back, this dynamic was so overwhelming in my life that I rarely slept well. It was a part of the thing (not all, just one part) that gave me the excuse to not work out or eat well (“I don’t have time to exercise, I’ve got to do….”).</p>
<p>And then, something broke in me. I realized I could not live this way much longer. As I wrote about last year around this time, a big part of that “break” was realizing that I needed to care for my own physical health, and “recover from time release suicide.”</p>
<p>You would think that ministers would be good at self care, since we’re always telling everybody else how they should do it too. And, although I’ve only mentioned clergy here, my sense is that anybody in the “helping professions” falls victim to this. Lots of folks struggle at this.</p>
<p>So, that’s where “Be Here Now” came in for me.</p>
<p>I’m thinking about the phrase a lot this week, since its creator, Ram Dass, died a few days ago.</p>
<p>I did not know him. But I know spiritual friends who knew him. He was such a fearless spiritual seeker, and moved through so many complex stages of development, discovery, and rediscovery.</p>
<p>He was something of a spiritual Father to all of the first-cohort Baby Boomers…who were/are so much like much older brothers and sisters (or young Uncles/Aunts) to me.</p>
<p>And by the end of his life, he’d tried drugs and moved away from them…rejected traditional religion, and then rediscovered it…been through three or four major periods of life transition…</p>
<p>In other words, he’d done that classic spiritual seeking that is/was so much a part of all those older, first-cohort Baby Boomers’ experiences.</p>
<p>And the part of his teaching that’s most important to ME is:</p>
<p>Be….Here….Now….</p>
<p>It means something different to everyone.<br>
Here’s what it means to me…</p>
<p>“Be present where you are. Take the time to breathe in and out, and exist in the moment where you are now. Find the beauty and presence of God in THIS moment.”</p>
<p>“Don’t fret about the past, or worry the future. Look around you. Turn off the “to do” list in your head. Put down the iPhone.”</p>
<p>“Turn off the music, even. Pause.<br>
Be where you are….not where you WANT to be someday…or where you wish you had been before…or where you FEAR to be later.”</p>
<p>“Be. Here. Now.”</p>
<p>With the advent of social media, we’ve never lived in a time where this spiritual practice is more challenging.</p>
<p>We are ALL so immediately able to “spectator” on our own lives….to pull out of our bodies and be somewhere else…</p>
<p>Watch a cat video…<br>
Channel surf the TV…<br>
Stream music…<br>
Curate our *own* Instagram pics…<br>
Facetime with somebody halfway around the world…<br>
Respond to a “hair on fire” email from work…</p>
<p>In other words, be anywhere *else* but where we are, now.</p>
<p>And I love all that stuff, don’t get me wrong.</p>
<p>But it pulls me (and you) out of where you are NOW.</p>
<p>So…Breath deep.<br>
Be. Here. Now.</p>
<p>I’ve also got my Apple Watch set to assist me with this. (Part of my effort to turn my device back into something that helps me unplug from my devices…)</p>
<p>Once an hour, sends me a me a tiny alert, and pings “Be Here Now” as a pop up.</p>
<p>What I HOPE happens next is that I STOP…take three long, deep breaths, and reconnected with the people and and things going on around me RIGHT NOW.</p>
<p>Sometimes, this is easy.<br>
Sometimes, it’s quite hard.<br>
Sometimes, there is suffering or pain in my life, or the world’s, and who wants to consciously BE in that?!<br>
Sometimes, it pisses me off because I’m either deep in thought, or deeply invested in the “spectatoring” that I am doing at the moment.</p>
<p>But, all in all, it helps. My awareness of the NOW is actually better, overall, than it was before I started this practice.</p>
<p>I still don’t achieve it as much as I’d like. I would put my success rate…even with all this practice…at maybe 30-40 percent. (Like any good habit, that’s better than nothing…)</p>
<p>Again, you’d think we spiritual teachers would be better at this.<br>
Guess again.</p>
<p>The old expression seems to be right: Those that can’t do, teach.<br>
(Or, preach).</p>
<p>Jesus was an expert at BEING in the NOW.</p>
<p>The sense I get of Jesus in the Gospels is that he was always able to be WITH people, where ever they were…<br>
Suffering with the suffering…<br>
Drinking with the joyous…<br>
Eating with the common folk…<br>
Telling stories to the confused and contemplative…</p>
<p>When Jesus tells us to “Consider the lilies…Think about the birds…do not worry about your life…”</p>
<p>This is very much the same teaching as “Be Here Now.”</p>
<p>Jesus, through the mystery of incarnation, teaches us to look around and see the beauty of God’s incarnate world; and “Therefore, do not worry about your life…”</p>
<p>Tomorrow has its own trouble, Jesus says.<br>
“Be here now.”</p>
<p>And so, today is yet another day where there’s nothing on the calendar but “Be Here Now.” And in this moment, I’m enjoying the view of the thick fog out over the lake.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/80720606_10221610007543856_917015881798647808_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>And I’m grateful that I now take this moment of quiet back with me (much more than I used to) into my every-day life.</p>
<p>And for this moment, I think of Christmas and the Incarnation.<br>
I think of Ram Dass’ spiritual seeking and his remarkable phrase that has so indwelled our culture.</p>
<p>And I think of all of YOU today, and hope and pray that this season will renew your spirit, and lead you to live out BE HERE NOW in your every day life.</p>
<p>Peace….EF</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/6059517
2019-12-07T17:15:20-06:00
2020-01-03T20:30:40-06:00
30 Years of Watching Divorce Court: Part 1
<p>Heads up, Methodist friends.<br>
Pay attention to <a href="https://www.umnews.org/en/news/jurisdictional-conference-sues-smu?">this news about SMU</a>.</p>
<p>What does this mean?<br>
Plain and simple, this is not a WCA plot.</p>
<p>This IS an attempt by SMU to “protect its assets.”<br>
Pure and simple, that’s what this is.</p>
<p>And nobody should be surprised by this.</p>
<p>Nor should they be surprised that the South Central Jurisdiction (SCJ) has pushed back, legally.</p>
<p>What I’m here to suggest, however, if that pushing back legally MIGHT be a mistake.</p>
<p>What SMU knows is that the future of the UMC is uncertain, and could be headed for divorce. What SMU Trustees, and Gerald Turner know, is that they have responsibility for a assets of several billion dollars. (Not hyperbole…) What they finally know is that is during a divorce, couples fight over assets.</p>
<p>SMU does NOT want to be fought over in a coming UMC divorce.</p>
<p>Do you blame them?</p>
<p>That is why they are doing this.</p>
<p>And I can speak with some confidence about this, because I was a part of a similar group of Trustees that recently came to similar decision.</p>
<p>Two years ago (and still today) I was a member of the Board of Trustees for Mount Sequoyah Retreat Center in Fayetteville Arkansas. At the time, Mount Sequoyah and SMU were both technically owned by the UMC….and specifically by the SCJ. The Bishops of the SCJ approached us to say they wished that Mount Sequoyah be sold off.</p>
<p>So, while it wasn’t our *first* hope for the mountain, we agreed to a separation. But! (And this is the relevant point here…) as a part of our own internal deliberations as a Board of Trustees —as we debated whether or not to separate from the UMC— we *absolutely* discussed this same issue I’ve written about just now. We realized we did *not* want to be fought over in any future “divorce” involving the UMC. We decided it was in OUR best interest to advocate for an independent future for Mount Sequoyah, as an independent retreat center.</p>
<p>And, that’s what happened. Basically, the Bishops and SCJ let Mount Sequoyah go.</p>
<p>Now, interestingly, they have NOT done this with SMU.<br>
Almost exact SAME situation.<br>
Very different choice of response from the SCJ.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>BILLIONS of dollars, baby…</p>
<p>————————————————————</p>
<p>Ever since General Conference 2019, I’ve wanted to write a blog titled:<br>
<em>“What I’ve Learned as a Pastor, Watching Thirty Years of Divorce Court.”</em></p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/635700891114324453-0616-bailiffs01_1831917_ver1.0.jpg?w=750&h=422" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="422" width="750" /></p>
<p>I still might write it. But, let me take a moment to make the primary point below…</p>
<p>Because being married to a family lawyer and now Family Court Judge for more than 25 years has taught me many things about divorce and marriage. My wife and I have far more more interesting and rich conversations about the nature of divorce and marriage than perhaps the average UMC clergy and their spouse do.</p>
<p>One of the chief lessons I’ve learned is:<em><strong> “Don’t fight over stuff.”</strong></em></p>
<p>Sometimes divorce is a healthy thing. Sometimes it allows couples to move on with their lives, if they will take that chance.</p>
<p>But, far too often, I’ve seen and heard of couples fight a death-match with each other, arguing over their “stuff.”</p>
<p>Even worse, sometimes they are so ANGRY with one another that they spend all their energy, and literally all their money, fighting one another.</p>
<p>Couples sometimes spend hundreds of thousands…if not MILLIONS of dollars…staying connected through the anger and bitterness of court proceedings….rather than choosing to move on and start again.</p>
<p>There are lawyers, of course, who feed their anger and bitterness. There are other lawyers, more wisely, counsel their clients on exactly these issues.</p>
<p>“You can pay ME all your assets,” they tell their clients, “or you can find a way through this and start over…”</p>
<p>It’s a wise family lawyer who counsels their future, and does not feed their present anger.</p>
<p>It doesn’t always work. Sometimes the anger is too fierce. Literally, sometimes couples spend millions of dollars, fighting over an ashtray their kids made in kindergarten. (This has literally happened…not hyperbole…)</p>
<p>When you feel that your side is RIGHT and that the other side is WRONG, you tend to be suceptable to this kind of thinking.</p>
<p>I must be clear here.</p>
<p><strong>I AM NOT INTERESTED IN FIGHTING OVER STUFF.</strong></p>
<p>I think there’s an almost 100 percent certainty (maybe 95 percent certainty…) that the UMC will split, break apart, or reorganize in some way in the very near future.</p>
<p>As I have put forth in *countless* writings over the past few years, it’s time for us to put PEOPLE first.</p>
<p>As Bill McElvaney said before his death: “I am no longer willing to maintain the unity of the Church on the backs of gay and lesbian people.”</p>
<p>Whatever future there is for the UMC, our PRIMARY focus must be on what serves people.</p>
<p>I will have NO tolerance for arguing over stuff.</p>
<p>Yes, for me, that includes things like SMU.<br>
Yes, for me, that includes the United Methodist Building in Washington DC.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody say in recent months “I just don’t want those WCA folks to get the UMC building.”</p>
<p>Let me say this now: They want it. They’ll fight for it. All I’m saying is: To me, while the loss of the UM Building would be tragic, I’m not willing to allow it to be the ashtray that spoils a divorce agreement here.</p>
<p>The WCA might even fight for SMU too.</p>
<p>Hell, it’s BILLIONS of dollars. If I was as mad for power and control as leaders of the WCA seem to be, I’d fight for it too. But I don’t feel the need to fight for SMU because:<br>
1. Progressives haved no need to control SMU and<br>
2. SMU has a lot of smart people working on this. They will be fine without my defense of them.</p>
<p>I’m just saying what I’M willing to do, based on my 30 years of watching divorce court.</p>
<p>I’m not willing to fight over stuff.</p>
<p>If divorce is coming —and a great many people left, right, and center continue to believe it likely— then I am simply telling you were I am.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that it’s too pointless to fight over stuff.<br>
Life is too short.</p>
<p>So….what’s SMU doing here?</p>
<p>Protecting its assets.</p>
<p>What does it mean for the future of the UMC?</p>
<p>It means the thinking people at SMU think the UMC’s future is uncertain at *best.*</p>
<p>Perhaps there is some chance for one more, one final Hail Mary, here in our second “overtime” period of the game to save the denomination at the general church level.</p>
<p>I think it unlikely, though. Hail Mary’s fail more than they succeed.</p>
<p>And it’s pretty clear to me that SMU knows that too.</p>
<p>Change is coming.<br>
Pay attention.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5944518
2019-10-30T16:52:19-05:00
2019-10-30T18:15:23-05:00
The New AGSV Bible Translation
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<p>Exciting news, friends!</p>
<p>I’ve been given an advance copy of a new Bible translation, hitting the market soon. The translation is called the <strong>“American Government Standard Version.”</strong> (AGSV for short…)</p>
<p>The AGSV is a new and carefully sourced translation from the original Hebrew and Greek texts, with one incredibly helpful addition. The texts are also redacted to fit the most current United States Federal immigration and migrant status policies.</p>
<p>Friends, this is a monumental task. As you know, those very laws appear to change daily. So, keeping up with the constantly changing regulations has been an incredible feat for the team of 40 scholars. (I’m sure they’ll be more revisions before the text goes to press!)</p>
<p>As you might imagine, the entire text is far too long to cite. But I thought I’d pull out some of the new AGSV highlights…some key passages of interest that refer to migrants and immigrants that are now much cleaner, in ways that remove their former, pesky, moral ambiguity.</p>
<p>See samples below…</p>
<p><strong>ABRAM LEAVES HIS HOME</strong><br>
<strong>(Genesis, Chapter 12)</strong><br>
5 Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “This is not your land, and you have no asylum claim, therefore your offspring will have no legal status in this land. Abram returned to Haran.”</p>
<p><strong>JOSEPH REVEALS HIMSELF TO HIS BROTHERS</strong><br>
<strong>(Genesis, Chapter 45)</strong><br>
5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Unfortunately, Pharaoh has strict laws against chain migration. Therefore, I say unto you, return to your land. But, please give our father my warmest regards.”</p>
<p><strong>BABY MOSES IS DISCOVERED AT THE RIVER</strong><br>
<strong>(Exodus, Chapter 2)</strong><br>
5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “No.” This child should be immediately taken to a detention center, and classified as an unaccompanied minor. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take the child there now. I would send money with you, but the center is not accepting donations of in-kind supplies.”</p>
<p><strong>RUTH PLEDGES TO BE FAMILY TO NAOMI</strong><br>
<strong>(Ruth, Chapter 1)</strong><br>
15 So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said,</p>
<p>“Do not press me to leave you<br>
or to turn back from following you!<br>
Where you go, I will go;<br>
where you lodge, I will lodge;<br>
your people shall be my people,<br>
and your God my God.<br>
17<br>
Where you die, I will die—<br>
there will I be buried.<br>
May the Lord do thus and so to me,<br>
and more as well,<br>
if even death parts me from you!”</p>
<p>18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said “It’s really out of my hands, my daughter. I appreciate that you want to come with me, but my country has a ‘Remain in Moab’ policy.’ Therefore, I must insist you stay…”</p>
<p><strong>EQUAL TREATMENT UNDER THE LAW</strong><br>
<strong>Exodus 12:49</strong><br>
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron:<br>
49 there shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you. 50 Except for laws regarding immigration. That’s obviously totally different, and you should definitely have two laws then.”</p>
<p><strong>THE HOLY FAMILY ESCAPES TO EGYPT</strong><br>
<strong>(Matthew 2)</strong><br>
13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and headed toward Egypt, 15 but when they arrived at the border, they were turned back by Egypt’s ‘Remain in Israel’ policy. 16 And so it was that Herod slaughtered Jesus, along with the other young children of Bethlehem. 17 Thus endeth the Gospel.</p>
<p><strong>THE PARABLE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT</strong><br>
<strong>(Matthew 25)</strong><br>
34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger —who had completed the appropriate visas and asylum process— and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’</p>
<p><strong>JESUS APPEARS IN HIS HOMETOWN</strong><br>
<strong>(Luke, Chapter 4)</strong><br>
25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 so Elijah ministered to them. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and he healed them all.” 28 When they heard this, spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”</p>
<p><strong>PARABLE OF THE GOOD INNKEEPER</strong><br>
33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 But the innkeeper, realizing who the Samaritan was, called ICE and reported him to the authorities, whereby the Samaritan was taken into custody. 36 Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The Innkeeper who followed the law.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”</p>
<p><strong>JESUS AND THE WOMAN AT THE WELL</strong><br>
<strong>(John, Chapter 4)</strong><br>
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “Oh, you are a Samaritan?” 11 The woman said to him, “Yes, I just said that…” 12 Whereupon Jesus contacted ICE and turned her in for deportation.</p>
<p><strong>JEWS AND GREEKS</strong><br>
Galatians 3: 28 “There is always Jew and Greek, there is always slave or free, there is always male and female; for all of you are quite different in Christ Jesus.”</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5938839
2019-10-25T10:47:45-05:00
2019-10-25T12:15:24-05:00
Let’s Help Jesus Not Throw Up
<p><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">“If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”<br>
— Woody Allen</span></span></p>
<p><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption"><br>
<img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/img_9061.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" />What am I supposed to do with the fact that, apparently, Robert Jeffress and Woody Allen agree with one another?<br>
Besides being men who —many believe— carry sexual secrets, what else do these two have in common?</span></span></p>
<p>These questions have been boggling my mind all week.<br>
I mean, Jeffress is a Rightwing Fundamentalist preacher, and Allen is an agnostic Jewish comic. But they both apparently agree that there a point at which we might do things to make God ill.</p>
<p>I was in seminary when I heard the Woody Allen quote.<br>
My best school friend, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bill.frisbie.3?__tn__=%2CdK%2AF-R&eid=ARAS1ae7cmzc4mtUbk2_9BPFz9ylNOmv9lOVO97LFJMGdln-TieWfQ12cVV1RpR5UJLUxlFw8PySBFBw">Bill Frisbie</a>, and I went to see “Hannah and Her Sisters.”
It was the new Woody Allen flick at the time, at least a decade before folks started asking serious questions about Woody. (I won’t, and can’t defend him, fyi…)</p>
<p>The scene from the quote is with Max Von Sidow’s character, Frederick the Painter, a reclusive artist apparently mostly holed up in his studio. His wife returns to their apartment, and he talks about how he’s been up all night, watching the television.</p>
<p>“You see the whole culture,” Frederick the painter says, “Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers…beauty contestants, the talk show….Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?”</p>
<p>He grunts.</p>
<p>“But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers….third-rate con men, telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak for Jesus…and to please send them money…”</p>
<p>And then, came the line. The line I have remembered all these years…</p>
<p>“If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”</p>
<p>Max Von Sidow’s character says the line, and in the movie theater all those years ago (the Inwood, I think…) Bill Frisbie and I both burst out laughing.</p>
<p>Not just a giggle…but side-splitting, uncontrollable laugher. Laugher so hard that other people in the theater were startled. Laugher so hard that I didn’t really hear what happened next. i think we might’ve laughed for two minutes straight.</p>
<p>“If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”</p>
<p>Strangely, I tend to agree with both of them too. Both Jeffress and Woody Allen.</p>
<p>I have a fantasy that in his Sunday sermon, Jeffress is probably going to say something along the lines that God vomits because of churches like the ones I’ve served for decades now…</p>
<p>Churches that welcome all God’s children.<br>
Churches that embrace the LGBTQ community or immigrants.<br>
Churches that readily admit that we are all broken and all in need of each other.<br>
Churches where we gather not to talk about how “great” we are, but where we gather to find support for the hard journey of life.</p>
<p>Rather than cause God gastric issues, I tend to believe those kinds of churches are exactly what God always hopes for in the Church, but what we get far too seldom.</p>
<p>Jeffress, of course, is a pastor who fully embraces the horrific policies of the current administration. He apparently has no problem with children in cages. (The ACLU is now saying today that apparently a thousand more children have been separated from their parents…) He apparently has no problem with make-shift refugee camps along the border, despite the Biblical admonition to welcome the sojourner.</p>
<p>Jeffress has *repeatedly* excused Trump’s horrible language and his documented abusive actions toward women. Jeffress has slammed and slurred religious leaders who are friends of mine…literally, he’s gone on national television and defamed actual personal friends of mine who I happen to know are doing much good in the world.</p>
<p>I tend to think THAT is the kind of stuff that makes God hurl.</p>
<p>But, what do I know?</p>
<p>Maybe I’m wrong.</p>
<p>Maybe…<br>
…despite Jesus’ admonition to love the least, the lost, and the left out…<br>
…despite the fact that Jesus says when we do this, we are actually loving God…<br>
…despite Jesus’ strident word to his own hometown that they should love the foreigner…<br>
…despite the countless times he chastises religious leaders of his day…really, the only people he ever seems super-pissed at…</p>
<p>Maybe despite all this, Jeffress is right, and I’m wrong.<br>
Only God can know, for sure.</p>
<p>But I do recall one more thing from the dialogue in the film “Hannah and Her Sisters.”</p>
<p>Before Frederick the Painter starts his diatribe about preachers, he says he’s also been watching a documentary about the Auschwitz concentration camps.</p>
<p>He describes that it’s “…more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions…”</p>
<p>Then, he offers…</p>
<p>“The reason why they could never answer the question ‘How could this possibly happen?’ is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is ‘Why doesn’t it happen more often?’ Of course it does, in subtler forms…”</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how many people tell me privately how worried they are that our nation is sliding toward totalitarianism.</p>
<p>No, there is no modern Auschwitz, they admit. But, they say, it feels like 1930s Germany. The Germany where Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsys and the like were denigrated and despised. Where White Nationalism was on the rise.</p>
<p>And..where all of it was aided and abetted by either the silence, or the support, of religious leaders.<br>
I gotta say, for months I could not agree with them.</p>
<p>But, after my trip to the border to see the crisis we are *creating* there…after more stories of more children being separated…after watching the President abandoned the Kurds (but! as of this morning, protect the oil fields!)…I have a harder and harder time denying the notion that we are in a situation that is a LOT like 1930s Germany.</p>
<p>Ultimately, human nature doesn’t change.<br>
All those Nazis didn’t just vanish in 1946.<br>
All the racists didn’t have a change of heart in 1866…or 1966…<br>
Laws don’t change human nature, and human nature is remarkably consistent. It’s created GOOD, but can be quickly, and methodically turned and twisted.</p>
<p>I happen to believe we are created in God’s image, all of us, but that this original goodness get twisted up in a thousand ways. In every generation, hate gets imprinted into our spiritual and psychological DNA. We are tribal, way down in our old lizard brains. And that will NEVER go away.</p>
<p>The huge mistake “Progressives” often make is believing that progress in terms of law or social contract means that there will be some fundamental shift in human nature. We will, somehow, leave behind our lizard brains. I used to believe that. The last decade has convinced me otherwise.</p>
<p>Religion is neither all good nor all bad. It can be either.</p>
<p>Like politics —like any other human endeavor, really— it can be used to broaden our hearts and deepen our compassion. It can be used to PUSH us to move beyond our tribalism and embrace our shared God-goodness. It can challenge us to see God in everyone. (Like Jesus wants us to). It can deepen our compassion for the “other.”</p>
<p>Or, it can push us to further tribalism.<br>
It can support tyrants and amoral despots.<br>
It can be used to further their goals and objectives.<br>
It can CREATE, not dissipate division, fear and mistrust.<br>
It can speak TO our lizard brains, not challenge us to move to use our whole body, mind and soul.</p>
<p>So, maybe it’s not surprising at all that Jeffress and I would both believe there’s a kind of “Church” that would make God vomit.</p>
<p>He’s probably gonna say it’s a lot like the churches, and the people, that I love to the depths of my soul.<br>
I tend to think it’s preachers and churches like his.</p>
<p>Again, you might find this maddening. But can you *really* say that it’s surprising from humans?</p>
<p>We humans who create Auschwitz <strong>and</strong> cure polio?<br>
We humans who put kids in cages <strong>and</strong> help neighbors after a tornado?</p>
<p>For me?<br>
I’m gonna pick the Churches that open their tables, pull up more chairs, forgive more than they condemn, and seek to lift up the left out.<br>
Because…although I’m humble enough to say I can never be sure…I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus wants from us.</p>
<p>And I’d love to live in a world where Jesus can finally stop throwing up.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5930218
2019-10-17T14:20:11-05:00
2019-10-17T16:45:26-05:00
Thoughts on Today’s #TrumpRally
<div id="js_1an" class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576">
<p>I want to follow up on my prayer of a little earlier, and talk a bit about today.</p>
<p>My prayer earlier was:</p>
<p>Dear God,<br>
May everyone in our city be safe and may the day be violence free.<br>
Amen.<br>
<a class="_58cn" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/trumpdallasrally?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz" aria-label="hashtag">#</span><span class="_58cm">TrumpDallasRally</span></span></a></p>
<p>For many of us in Dallas, given our history, we hold our breath any time any president visits our city. Every time.<br>
Today, I’m feeling the tension especially strongly. We know that in addition to all those attending the Trump Rally today, there is a contingent of “OathKeepers” who are armed vigilante civilians who claim to “protect” those in attendance.</p>
<p>We also know that there will be counter-protestors who may seek to engage rally goers.<br>
We know in other cities there have been violent conflicts between the “two sides.”<br>
And, finally, we know that the Dallas Police are feeling especially beleaguered during the already tense aftermath of the Guyger trial, and the ongoing State Fair.</p>
<p>I’m going to *trust* that everyone will be OK.</p>
<p>But, to be clear, I will not be on the streets tonight.</p>
<p>Many of my friends joke that I never met a protest that I didn’t like.</p>
<p>However, today feels like one of those times —for me— when I will choose to stay away from the AAC and its surroundings. I fully understand that others may feel differently, and certainly respect the right of peaceful assembly that we all have. I’m simply speaking for myself.</p>
<figure data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_4121" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4121" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/72678620_10215034549119955_1769347700693663744_o.jpg?w=750&h=501" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="501" width="750" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-4121" class="wp-caption-text">Photo: Justin Terveen. White Rock Late at dusk…</figcaption></figure>
<p>Here’s how *I* see the day…</p>
<p>Fact: Dallas County is one of Texas’ BLUEST Counties. In the most recent election, the County voted by more than 60 percent *against* the President and his policies.</p>
<p>Fact: North Texas is *trending* Blue in just about every statistical poll (when looked at over the past 20 years)</p>
<p>Friends, Consider these two facts in tandem, when considering why Donald Trump is holding a rally in the HEART of a solidly Blue stronghold in Texas. I believe it’s a *deliberately* provocative act on his part. He, or some part of his election team, is HOPING that there will be violent confrontations here. That is a belief on my part. It cannot be proven.</p>
<p>But, consider this, there are far more “friendly” counties for Trump supporters than Dallas. It’s an attempt at provocation.</p>
<p>My Father taught me many things. One of the most important lessons he taught me was: “Don’t give a bully what they want.”<br>
Unlike many other Fathers, he taught me to walk away from bullies; to not be “drawn offsides” by them.<br>
I think that is very good advice for everyone today. Please know and assume that there will likely be those who are on edge.</p>
<p>But, let’s also be clear about this AHEAD of time…</p>
<p>If there IS violence, if there is provocation, I will lay this at the feet of the Trump Campaign.<br>
The question has to be asked, again: why hold a large political rally in the heart of Texas’ most solidly Blue large county….IF YOU ARE NOT HOPING FOR PROVOCATION?</p>
<p>I understand that many people feel the need to speak up and “do” something.</p>
<p>Let me offer things that could help:<br>
1. Register to vote.<br>
2. Register OTHERS to vote.<br>
3. Give to the candidates of your choice.<br>
4. Block walk, organize, and encourage everyone to let the ballot speak for them, not violence.</p>
<p>Provocation and violence is what Trump and his supporters want.</p>
<p>I hope and pray that nobody gives it to them.</p>
<p>Please pray for our city today, friends.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5921351
2019-10-09T15:57:06-05:00
2019-10-09T18:15:31-05:00
Has Homosexual Always Been in the Bible?
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<p>In our Methodist tradition, we (wrongly) claim “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”</p>
<p>The research behind this story tells us: That does not appear to be true. We are lying to ourselves about what historical Biblical teaching actually said.</p>
<p>Before we get into it, and for those who are confused….there’s an old joke about a Catholic monk, buried deep in a library somewhere…</p>
<p>He comes across a passage in an ancient Greek manuscript and screams loudly such that everyone comes running…</p>
<p><em>“It says “CELEBRATE” not “celibate!””</em></p>
<p>That’s a funny joke. But it also gets at a REAL issue…and something that literally happens in this story.</p>
<p>The issue is the accuracy of modern Biblical translations.</p>
<p>Most layfolks (and many pastors) seem blissfully unaware that every English translation we use today is based on previous translations from more ancient texts.</p>
<p>At issue here: the Greek word “arsenokoitai.”</p>
<p>In many contemporary English Bible translations, it is translated “Homosexuality.”</p>
<p>But, for many years now, learned Greek scholars have shown that the word actually is often translated as “pederasty” not “homosexuality” in non-Biblical ancient Greek. (They document this by referencing other ancient Greek texts…non-Biblical texts…where the word is used).</p>
<p>Thus, they argue, translating the word as “homosexuality” is simply incorrect.</p>
<p>I have found this scholarship credible for about 20 years now.</p>
<p>But, now comes something even MORE compelling…something that confirms and provides copius data-points for this view.</p>
<p>It’s work by scholar Ed Oxford (Yes, that’s really his name…). This, as reported by the great folks at <a href="https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/8/what-about-romans-124-27">Forge</a>.</p>
<p>Ed decided to ask:</p>
<p><em>“What did translators of OTHER non-English versions of the Bible believe about the word “arsenokoitai?”</em></p>
<p>In other words, <em>when Europeans of hundreds of years ago translated THEIR Bibles, did they translate the word “homosexuality” or “pederasty?”</em></p>
<p>He’s been stunned to find…time and time again…they translate it “pederasty.”</p>
<p>So, everybody I know is against “pederasty.” And, apparently, you’ll be pleased to know, so is the Bible. And it’s a provable fact that pederasty is what the Bible meant in the passages that use this word.</p>
<p>Here’s a most salient quote from the <a href="https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/8/what-about-romans-124-27">story</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><em>“For most of history, most European Bibles taught the tradition that these 4 verses were dealing with pederasty, not homosexuality. I am saddened when I see pastors and theologians cast aside the previous 2000 years of history. This is why I collect very old Bibles, lexicons, theological books and commentaries – most modern biblical commentaries adjusted to accommodate this mistranslation. It’s time for the truth to come out!”</em></strong></p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed.</p>
<p>Read the whole article <a href="https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/8/what-about-romans-124-27">here</a>.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5913674
2019-10-02T20:41:29-05:00
2019-10-02T22:01:54-05:00
Forgiveness and Justice: Hearing Both of the Jean’s
<p>Botham Jean’s brother, Brandt, offered a remarkable moment of forgiveness toward Amber Guyger today in the courtroom. But his Mother said deeply important things too. We must hear them both.</p>
<p>Brandt offered forgiveness and an embrace to Amber Guyger. As DA John Creuzot said, almost nobody in the judicial system sees moments like that, ever.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that it was heartfelt and sincere on his part. If he is going to move forward with his life, finding a way to forgive her and let go a hate is essential.<br>
Hate can truly destroy us from the inside. As Frederick Buechner has said, hate is like a feast where you’re enjoying eating the meat…only to realize that you’re eating yourself.</p>
<p>On a PERSONAL level, then, that moment between those two human beings was holy and beautiful and brought tears to our eyes.<br>
Unless we find ways to offer personal forgiveness, we are sunk as a society.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/brandtandallisonjean.jpg?w=750&h=563" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="563" width="750" /></p>
<p>I’m seeing come criticism of the moment on social media tonight.<br>
But, who am I…or who is anyone…to judge the sincerity of that moment between the two of them? Only God can create moments like that. He just might have reacted in anger and rage. If he’d done that, would we judge and critique him? I’m going to take it as an honest and sincere moment between two human beings, in a world that is desperate for that.</p>
<p>But, Botham’s Mother also had a righteous call too. Maybe you missed it? It was about 20 minutes after her son spoke from the stand. We deserve to hear her too.</p>
<p>HER statement was about our city, and about policies of policing that need to change. Her call was for us to make SYSTEMIC change.</p>
<p><em>“There is much more to be done in the city of Dallas…”</em><br>
<em>“Our lives must move on, but our lives must move on with change…”</em><br>
<em>“There has got to be a better day, and that better day starts with every one of us…the City of Dallas needs to clean up inside…”</em></p>
<p>In a real sense, you saw these two family members saying quite different things. But each in their own way, quite necessary things too.</p>
<p>To truly honor Botham’s memory, we must somehow do all of what they are both calling us to do.</p>
<p>We must find a way not to demonize ANYONE personally.<br>
And, to the extent that God gives us the calling, we must forgive. (Forgiveness, however, can never be demanded or insisted upon…and perhaps no one outside the person who offers it can truly understand it…)</p>
<p>But, to honor him, we must *also* name that certain systems of training also caused harm not only to his life but also to officers such as Amber Gugyer. Those systems must change.<br>
Botham’s Mother is absolutely right about that. Not just, however, to keep the innocent safe, but also to keep *officers* safe too.</p>
<p>There is work to do in our city.
Personal work…justice work…</p>
<p>My Lord, what an afternoon we have seen.
What a metaphor for it all.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5909259
2019-09-27T07:51:24-05:00
2019-09-29T03:45:23-05:00
“The Greater Empathy” Thoughts on Guyger Trial, Week One
<div id="js_1ls" class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576">
<p>What if our opinions on the Amber Guyger trial comes down to a question of “who do you feel empathy toward?”</p>
<p>It may not come down to this. This may be a foolish question to ask. But the question keeps popping up in my head this week, as I’ve listened to the testimony…and especially as I listened to *her* testimony yesterday.</p>
<p>I’m a pastor, first and foremost, so creating empathy and inviting us to be empathetic toward others, is a part of my calling. So, I’ve been thinking about this question of empathy in this case, and how of our empathy is toward one or more of the “sides.”</p>
<p>Many people in our community have felt an especially strong empathy toward Ms. Guyger. That has been clear from months now.</p>
<p>First, some people feel empathy toward her because she believed she was defending her own apartment that night. They put themselves in *her* shoes.<br>
<em>“How would I feel if I thought an intruder was in my apartment?”</em></p>
<p>The problem, however, as I mentioned earlier in the week, is that she was *not* in her apartment. I mean that in two ways:<br>
a) She was mistaken about where she was…it literally wasn’t her domicile, and<br>
b) She literally was not IN the apartment when she first claims to have heard rustling noises inside.</p>
<p>She was not “in” the apartment when all this starts.</p>
<p>When well meaning observers say “that could have been me,” I believe they are mistaken. The vast majority of human beings, especially those not carrying firearms, would NOT enter an apartment…even their OWN apartment…if they heard rustling noises inside. They would call for police. They would be concerned for their safety.</p>
<p>Amber Guyger had a gun. She had a badge. THAT’S why she had the hubris to enter that apartment.</p>
<p>Secondly, many of the other people who feel empathy toward her do so because they too have made a mistake about “place” in their lives. They’ve thought they were somewhere else, other than where they actually were.<br>
They say, <em>“That could have been me.”</em></p>
<p>But there’s one key difference: None of them have shot someone dead because of their mistake of place.</p>
<p>Therefore, with all respect to those who have empty toward Guyger as a *person,* I would invite you consider this: She is not you. She did not react as you might have reacted in this situation, especially if you were an ordinary person without a gun. And finally, please don’t misunderstand…she was not “defending” her apartment, because she was not “in” her apartment when the incident began.</p>
<p>The second primary way people have empathy toward Amber Guyger is because she is a police officer. And being a police officer is a hard job. Some people have a natural empathy and bias toward police that allows them to excuse almost any action of a police officer.</p>
<p>But, I come back to this question of why she went into the apartment. The prosecution pushed *hard* on this point yesterday afternoon. Let’s review…in logical sequence…</p>
<p>1. She says she hears sounds inside the apartment.<br>
2. She chooses to go inside and engage instead of calling for backup.<br>
3. She is at a location that is literally ONE BLOCK from police headquarters.<br>
(In other words, there are TONS of police around, even at that hour…)<br>
4. Once she called for assistance (after the shooting) help arrives within two minutes.</p>
<p>I point out these factual truths because it’s important in my own assessment of how much empathy I have for her. She IS a police officer, and it IS a hard job. And I am one of the folks who has empathy for just how hard a job it is.</p>
<p>But…she didn’t HAVE to go into the apartment.<br>
She had a clear “other choice” (staying outside) that would have assured her own safety, and the safety of Botham Jean inside his own apartment.</p>
<p>She could have stepped back, called for back up. And waited for them to arrive. Not only is it a choice she had, but had she made *this* choice, she likely would have realized her “mistake about place” while she waited those two minutes.</p>
<p>But, friends, this next part is also important…this next part where I remind you of her police training…and therefore, this next part is a part of my empathy toward ALL police officers.</p>
<p>I don’t WANT our officers to be in situations of unknown peril. For her OWN safety, and because I have empathy for her and all police, I want her to call for back up. For HER safety. As we have already covered, also for HIS.</p>
<p>So, yes, I have deep empathy for her. I am very sorry that she made the mistake that she made. However, SHE made mistakes that put her life, and his, in peril.</p>
<p>This brings me a broader point that must come out of this trial, regardless of the verdict. Regardless of the out of this trial, the conversation we must have in our city is about HOW WE TRAIN POLICE….and, even more, how they USE the training they are given.</p>
<p>No one needed to die that night.</p>
<p>But having covered my empathy for her and for all officers, there is also the empathy that I have for Botham Jean.</p>
<p>And that is the greater share of my empathy.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Amber Guyger talked about the moments she spent alone in the apartment with him after she shot him. She described this as “the scariest thing” she could imagine.</p>
<p>The moment she said it, I winced with anger.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the prosecutor pushed back on this during his cross examination.</p>
<p><em>“That’s the scariest thing you can imagine, right?”</em> the Prosecutor asked.</p>
<p><em>“Yes, sir,”</em> Guyger said.</p>
<p><strong><em>“Can you imagine Mr. Jean’s perspective? An intruder barging into his apartment…And then having been shot and fallen and being alone in that apartment — can’t you imagine that being a little bit scarier than you just being alone at the moment?”</em></strong></p>
<p><em>“Yes, sir,”</em> she said.</p>
<p>You see?<br>
Empathy…</p>
<p>Can you see the other’s point of view?<br>
If not, why not?</p>
<p>And that’s where *I* end up.<br>
I end up where the Prosecutor ends up.</p>
<p>Botham Jean was sitting alone in his own apartment, watching TV and eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and an unknown woman barges in the door and shoots him dead.</p>
<p>Then, she didn’t administer CPR. She didn’t use the combat-level gauze, or first aid kit, she had with her.</p>
<p>MY greatest empathy in this case is with HIM, and what must have been his terrifying feeling, dying on the floor of his own apartment, likely never understanding what had just happened.</p>
<p>For those who have supported Guyger through out this trial, for those who have a predilection to support the police before anything else, am not saying: “Your empathy is misguided.”</p>
<p>I will, however, suggest and invite you to a GREATER empathy for the victim.<br>
I merely ask you to look up, broaden your gaze, and consider these truths…</p>
<p>— She did not *have* to enter the apartment.<br>
— If she doesn’t enter, she doesn’t shoot him, and probably realizes her mistake before anything else happens.<br>
— Her police training (what we should want for all officers) should have been to keep herself safe and wait the less-than-two minutes it would have taken for backup.</p>
<p>Again, you can have empathy for her (as I do now) and still believe (as I do now) that she should be held to account for her actions.</p>
<p>While I “hear her” when she says she feared for her life, she did not fear this until she entered the apartment. And she never *had* to enter the apartment.</p>
<p>SHE caused her own fear.<br>
And she caused it because she chose to enter the apartment in the first place</p>
<p>Therfore, for all who have empathy toward her, I simply encourage you to broaden the gaze of your empathy toward Botham Jean too.</p>
<p>As the prosecutor so painfully asked: Isn’t dying alone on your apartment floor…having just been shot by an unknown intruder…isn’t THAT the “scariest thing” we can all imagine?</p>
<p>Yes. Yes it is.</p>
<p>We cannot fully plumb the depths of this case until we fully search our feelings and fully understand empathy for all “sides.”</p>
<p>And once we do this, we can be empathetic toward all, yet still come to logical judgments about what happened.</p>
<p>Nobody….NOBODY…deserves to be shot while eating a bowl of ice cream in their own apartment.</p>
<p>Ultimately, that’s where my greater empathy lies.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5909260
2019-09-24T11:00:07-05:00
2019-09-29T03:45:23-05:00
The Guyger Trial: First Day Thoughts
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<p>The murder trial of Amber Guyger is underway here in Dallas. For those of you outside the city, or not paying attention, sufficed to say our city is tense and anxious about the trial and upcoming verdict.</p>
<p>Last Monday, I was at a meeting of about 40 clergy with Faith Forward Dallas. There was extended conversation about the upcoming trial. It would be fair to say that there was deep concern in the room about the ramifications of the verdict, whatever the verdict may be. That concern arose from a tacit understanding that we are deeply divided along lines of race and class in our city, and geographically divided along “North” and “South.”</p>
<p>We noted that whatever the jury decides, there will be high emotions from our community. There will be strongly held opinions. There will be screaming headlines in the media that feel to many that they twist the story, sometimes beyond recognition. There will be “spin.” Already, as I go on social media last night and this morning, there is macabre rehashing of details of the case. (I myself am not immune from this…) We are all…North and South…Black and White…rich and poor…leering in on these proceedings like Roman spectators watching gladiators.</p>
<p>That is not to say I do not have opinions myself…which I shall share momentarily…</p>
<p>But it is to say that the “Hunger Games” atmosphere…the fact that every spectator becomes a commentator and “legal expert.”</p>
<p>I must say, there is something about this aspect of it all that makes me a little ill.</p>
<p>Whatever you believe about the facts of the case (again, my opinions coming shortly…) let us pause to remember that there are real lives behind the headlines. Botham Jean’s family is here in the city. No doubt, Amber Guyger’s is too. They must now walk the gauntlet of this social and paid media frenzy, each and every day. I pray for them. I hope you will too, whatever you hope happens in the case.</p>
<p>One of the most powerful moments in that meeting of clergy last week was when one colleague said that our “calling” post-verdict, must be to allow people the space for whatever reaction they have. To not judge, criticize, or explain away the feelings of anybody.</p>
<p>I think that’s a very powerful observation.</p>
<p>Simply know…there are clergy of all faiths, across this city, who are ready to hold space for the emotion and feeling that will come from the verdict.</p>
<p>————————</p>
<p>As I’ve tried to listen carefully to the “two sides” of this case, I hear two things being said by folks…</p>
<p><em>“No one should be shot dead in their own apartment, by police or anyone else. It’s murder.”</em></p>
<p><em>“This was all a tragic ‘mistake’ and not murder at all.”</em></p>
<p>There are nuances to those arguments. But those are the basic “sides.”</p>
<p>I will say this. I am *strongly* in the former camp, and not the latter.</p>
<p>NO ONE deserves to be sitting in their apartment, eating ice cream and watching TV, and simply be shot dead by the police, or anyone else.</p>
<p>NO ONE.</p>
<p>There must be accountability for these actions.</p>
<p>I understand that policing is very difficult. I understand that she’d worked a long shift.</p>
<p>But…NO ONE should fear being shot dead in their own apartment.</p>
<p>Much has been made, in defending Amber Guyger, of the allegation that the door was unlocked…or that she worked a long shift….etc…</p>
<p>The suggestion has been made that *because* she feared for her life, therefore she was justified in shooting him.</p>
<p>But that would only be true is she was IN her own apartment. If you are in your own apartment, and you shoot someone you believe to be an intruder, but it turns out to be your daughter, it’s unlikely this would be murder, because you have the right to defend your property. (By the way, as an aside, what I see in this is another great reason to not have guns at home…)</p>
<p>But she was not in *her* apartment. She was in *his*. It doesn’t matter how mistaken she was. She was in HIS apartment. And she shot him dead. And NO ONE deserves to be shot dead in their own apartment, while watching TV and eating a bowl of ice cream.</p>
<p>Amber Guyger says two things, over and over, in the crucial moments just after the shooting. In my opinion, what you believe about this case depends upon what you HEAR in what she says.</p>
<p>First, she says, repeatedly, that she thought she was in her apartment. She says that over and over. If you are a defender of hers, I believe THIS is what you are hearing too. You are hearing <em>“This is all a tragic mistake.”</em></p>
<p>But that’s not what I hear. I hear that as her rationalization.<br>
(And I apologize in advance for the cursing in what follows…)</p>
<p>What I hear as more important is how she says, over and over, “I am fucked.”</p>
<p>She says that to the 911 dispatcher.<br>
She apparently texts it to her partner/lover too.</p>
<p>“I am fucked.”</p>
<p>NOT… “I fucked up.”</p>
<p>Which would be “I made a mistake.”</p>
<p>But, “I am fucked.”</p>
<p>She’s saying: “I did wrong, and I know it…I understand, in a flash of insight and horror, what I have just done…”</p>
<p>Friends, this is what I read in this her immediate understanding, just following the shooting, that what she had done was wrong, and that she would be held to account for it.</p>
<p>Let’s review, to be clear…</p>
<p>She did not allow any time to de-escalate the situation.<br>
She did not ask him who he was.<br>
She did not wait for him to explain himself. (It’s HIS apartment, though….SHE’S the one who must explain herself…)<br>
She did not notice that the decor, the paint, the carpets, were different from her own.<br>
She did not wait in the hall and call for back up.</p>
<p>She literally shot him dead as he rose from the couch, while he ate a bowl of ice cream and watched TV in his own apartment.</p>
<p>She looks back at all of that, and she says “I am fucked.”</p>
<p>That’s rightly charged as murder.</p>
<p>Recently, I binged-listened to Malcomb Gladwell’s new book, “Talking to Strangers” twice now. I find it a deeply compelling book. His central thesis is that we are all bad at “reading” strangers. We all make the mistake of believing that “reading” strangers is easy. But it’s not. Our social, verbal, emotional cues….our personal histories….make each of us more complicated than we often allow for in what passes for conversation today.</p>
<p>One of the things he covers in detail is the idea of “default to truth.”</p>
<p>In order for society to function, Gladwell says, we “default to truth” around strangers. That means that we often get taken advantage of, of course. Because there are real criminals, con artists, and psychopaths in the world.</p>
<p>One of the powerful points Gladwell makes late in the book is that we have trained an entire generation of police to NOT default to truth in their interactions with “strangers.” We have made the foundations of policing such that they are LOOKING for violations, instead of assuming that most of us are not lying about who we are and what we are doing.</p>
<p>This is the attitude that leads to “stop and frisk” for example.</p>
<p>Gladwell suggests that this faulty training is what led to the death of Sandra Bland. That the officer in question in *that* case had been trained to assume Bland could be a criminal, rather than what she was…a woman from out of state who had just taken a job in a new town.</p>
<p>Friends, it seems to me this applies to Amber Guyger too. Guyger did NOT “default to truth” about Botham Jean. She assumed he was a danger, and she NEVER checked that assumption. She did not give him a chance to explain, or try to understand what was happening.</p>
<p>She simply shot him dead.</p>
<p>Two things can be, and are, true at the same time:<br>
— Police have a hard and dangerous job.<br>
— No one deserves to be shot dead in their home.</p>
<p>We need vastly new and different training for our police. That is true. We must continue to have compassion for the difficult job law enforcement has. That is also true.</p>
<p>And Amber Guyger must be held to account for this murder.</p>
<p>That is the final truth of how I see it.</p>
<p>Like everyone else, I pray for our city, and for the reaction to this verdict.</p>
</div>
<p>(see my thoughts <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/09/27/the-greater-empathy-thoughts-on-guyger-trial-week-one/">at the end of week one</a> of this trial)</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5876756
2019-08-31T16:40:03-05:00
2019-08-31T19:00:46-05:00
What Will YOU do?
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<p>As we crossed back to the US yesterday, I snapped this first pic of a sign placed by Border Patrol: “CPB Welcomes Your Comments.”</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/70144475_10220495441280396_193716064570310656_n.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" /></p>
<p>We had just spent time listening to the stories of migrants camped out on the Mexican side.<br>
Cubans.<br>
Hondurans.<br>
Salvadorans and Guatemalans.</p>
<p>All of them have been pushed back across our border and are now sleeping on hot concrete or, if they’re lucky, a few of the tents being shared by multiple families. We saw many many very small children. We heard heard stories of hope, but also many stories of heartache.</p>
<p>So, we’d literally just finished speaking and praying with them, when I saw this sign walking back across the bridge.</p>
<p>And I thought, “No…no, you really don’t want my feedback…not right now…”</p>
<p>Then it hit me.</p>
<p>That sign was for all of YOU.</p>
<p>For all my blog friends, reading this post and watching-in on our trip here on the Border.</p>
<p>YOU are the ones God is calling to give feedback to our government.</p>
<p>YOU are the “people.”</p>
<p>So let me ask you a few questions, and elicit your response below…leave a comment.</p>
<p>Are YOU happy with our government’s “metering” policies, which now compels the desperately poor migrants of Central America to camp out in 100-plus degree heat, waiting weeks or month for a court hearing? Sleeping on hot concrete with no water or toilets? Are YOU happy with this?</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/70404364_10220495444560478_3911035363342155776_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>Are YOU happy with a system that’s not allowing migrants physical access to their attorneys, as is their right under our law?</p>
<p>Are YOU happy with children separated from families in detention centers?</p>
<p>With migrant children suffering from potentially fatal diseases being deported mid-treatment?</p>
<p>With reports of outbreaks of communicable diseases at these facilities?</p>
<p>Are YOU happy with your government’s lawyer arguing IN COURT (arguing on behalf of you, the people) that things like “soap” are not “basic necessities” and defending people sleeping in cages in concrete floors?</p>
<figure data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_4080" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4080" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/69551920_10220495443840460_6396320706023391232_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-4080" class="wp-caption-text">My friend, Rev. Owen Ross, talking with Migrants at the Border</figcaption></figure>
<p>Are YOU happy with ICE raids, deporting hardworking people and tearing apart their families, and not just targeting those with criminal records?</p>
<p>What, dear friends, is YOUR “comment” to the CBP?</p>
<p>Leave it below.</p>
<p>And then, when it’s well formulated here, don’t stop there. Call your Member of Congress and Senator and tell THEM.</p>
<p>Or, call the feedback phone numbers on the CPB sign in the pic.</p>
<p>Apparently, they’re asking for it. <span class="_5mfr"><span class="_6qdm"><img src="https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/wpcom-smileys/twemoji/2/72x72/1f60e.png" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="?" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /></span></span></p>
<p>These policies…these are “who we are now.”</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/69294891_10220495441480401_112671861350858752_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>You don’t just get to say “This is not my President.”</p>
<p>It’s not enough to say “I am not like that. My friends are not like that.”</p>
<p>What are YOU going to say?<br>
What is YOUR feedback?<br>
What are YOU going to do?</p>
<p>YOU are “the people.” If anything changes, it will be because you make the change.</p>
<p><em>In God’s name, do it. </em><br>
<em>This a fight for the moral soul of our nation.</em></p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/69285459_10220495444200469_7518485945528614912_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>(We were encouraged to *not* take pics of people directly, as posts of them on social media could either jeopardize them or their relatives in their home country. That’s why many of these pics are with our group members or buildings, and not with the people we saw…)<br>
<a class="_58cn" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/pastorsinaction2019?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz" aria-label="hashtag">#</span><span class="_58cm">pastorsinaction2019</span></span></a><br>
<a class="_58cn" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/texasimpact?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz" aria-label="hashtag">#</span><span class="_58cm">texasimpact</span></span></a></p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5876067
2019-08-30T17:18:14-05:00
2019-08-30T21:15:31-05:00
The Crisis We Are Creating
<p><strong>As we cross the border today, I’m struck by the predominance of FEAR. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Fear of “The Other” is fundamentally what drives the kind of policies we see now. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>We must understand the real dynamic of the past two years:</strong></p>
<p><strong>1. While our immigration laws have needed reform for decades, there was never any “invasion.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>2. The new “metering” process that keeps migrants out of the US has CREATED a MUCH WORSE crisis along the border than ever before. The fear that created this Federal Government policy has —in a self-fulfilling way— created the crisis they told us existed before (but didn’t really, at the scale we are now). </strong></p>
<p><strong>3. Calling these policies “Migrant Protection Program” is offensive propaganda worthy of an Orwellian novel. We are not only NOT protecting migrants, we are HARMING them, predictably creating de facto tent cities at a size we’ve never experienced here along our border. This is a moral issue, regardless of your politics. We need preachers to speak against this. We need politicians to change the policies. </strong></p>
<p><strong>4. The current policies are *unsustainable* and will continue to create a violent and unhealthy situation along the border. WE —our Federal government— is creating this new crisis. And it will eventually also harm US citizens with unintended consequences. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>God teaches us to FEAR NOT, even when we are told to be afraid. Even when there is danger. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>These are moral issues for all of us as Americans. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Finally today, as I cross the border and see migrants living in squalor, because of our government’s policies, I think of my FB friend Noggy David Jaen. We’ve cycled around White Rock Lake together. A Salvadoran immigrant, he recently became a citizen, and has just today announced this joyful news online. It strikes me as a perfect example of hope and who we are called by God to be as a nation. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>He is who we are CALLED to be. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>The “metering” policies that are worsening the humanitarian crisis…</strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>This is who we are. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>May we have the courage to again become who we are called to be. </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>#pastorsinaction2019</strong></p>
<p><strong>#endfamilyseparation</strong></p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5875597
2019-08-30T10:40:29-05:00
2019-08-30T12:45:34-05:00
Today on the Border
<p>Today, we cross the border to see the violence/damage that the “metering” policy has wrought.</p>
<p>God calls us to love the neighbor as we love ourselves. To have one law for the migrant and the citizen.</p>
<p>Instead, we created a new “metering” that is subjecting migrants, Mexicans, AND US CITIZENS to new and dangerous crime and squalor along the border.</p>
<p>It also adds to the fear of our Latinx citizens, who (like in El Paso) are now targets of racial hatred in ways that cause fear and insecurity.</p>
<p>Texans especially have always understood how much we coexist with our friends to the South. For example, my Mother-in-law was born here in the RGV, in a town a few miles from where it sit now. Her Father lived in Mexico at the time of his death. Meanwhile, my Father-in-law traces part of his lineage five generations back onto Texas.</p>
<p>The point is, for decades many of us who live in Texas has worked hard to create a multi-racial society that coexists, respects, and supports each other.</p>
<p>Now, our Federal Government is creating fear, even among our citizens.</p>
<p>We have coexisted for decades.</p>
<p>We never *had* a crisis on the Border before. But we do NOW.</p>
<p>WE have *created* this crisis.</p>
<p>This is who America is.</p>
<p>It is our moral shame.</p>
<p>#pastorsinaction2019</p>
<p>#endfamilyseparation</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5872770
2019-08-27T08:02:33-05:00
2020-07-13T12:58:09-05:00
Thomas Merton Had It Easy
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<p>I spent a good bit of my twenties pissed off at Thomas Merton.</p>
<p>I was pissed off by a very specific thing in his writings. Merton writes beautifully about the need for regular time in prayer, quiet, and contemplation. He also writes scathingly about the chaos, noise, and confusion of everyday life for most people who live in cities.<br>
(The examples he had in mind back then are, no doubt, deeply quaint now…)</p>
<p>I was on my Perkins internship, nearing the end of it, when I first got pissed off at Thomas Merton.</p>
<p>I was sitting on the top of Enchanted Rock, in the Texas Hill Country. It was my day off. I’d been reading Merton’s words on these very things…that we all needed time for renewal…that city life was too busy and often too vacuous…</p>
<p>I knew that, very soon, I would be leaving this quiet, calm place and returning to the big city…a place where I had always struggled to find quiet. It seemed to come naturally for me in the Hill Country, just as it seemed to come naturally for Merton at Gethsemane Monastery.</p>
<p>And so with some anger, I wrote in my journal about how “easy” it must be for Merton…there behind the walls of the monastery. He *had* to take the time out for renewal, self-care, and prayer. It was a part of the calling.</p>
<p>What about the working class guy, with a time clock job? What about the Mom with three kids? What about the worker with a two hour commute each day?</p>
<p>How the hell were THEY supposed to find time for self-care, prayer, reflection and renewal?!</p>
<p>Thomas Merton, I decided, had it easy.</p>
<p>It was easy for him to say the things he was saying, with a life surrounded by the trappings of prayer and reflection. It seemed to me that it was much *harder* for all the rest of us in the real world.</p>
<p>And so it was that twenty years later, I was on a retreat with Jim Finley, who had been a student of Merton’s decades prior. I got up the courage to talk to him about this about this very issue.</p>
<p>Jim listened carefully to what I had to say, and then replied, “Yes, Merton would definitely say that it’s harder…”</p>
<p>“Oh…” I thought to myself.</p>
<p>And I felt both an immediate sense of vindication, and also a sense of “So, now what?”</p>
<p>Yes, it IS hard to take the time out to do self-care, prayer, exercise, surrounded by a life of noise and appointments and clocks.</p>
<p>Do it anyway.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_7580.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" />This morning, I had two insights as I journaled at the writing desk.</p>
<p>The first was that there might be a lot of folks reading these words who have the same anger toward *me* that I once had toward Merton. I take time for prayer and reflection. I have a job that, you’d assume, insists that I do that.<br>
(But, you know what you do when you assume…)</p>
<p>I can sit on the back porch, as I did this morning, and watch the rain while drinking my coffee, and pray prayers of deep gratitude for life. I can spend 20 minutes journalling after that, here in the study.</p>
<p>These things are my spirutal tuning fork. I keep the very first tuning fork I ever had on my desk to remind me of that…</p>
<p>Far too many of us have lives controlled by the clock, and not the other way around. We punch in and out at work. We “fight” through traffic. (What does it mean to “fight” traffic, btw? Does traffic have an actual battle plan to defeat us?)</p>
<p>Some of you might hear my call to take time out for prayer, meditation and self-care…and you might be pissed off at ME, just as I once was at Thomas Merton.</p>
<p>“Easy for YOU…”</p>
<p>Actually, no, still not easy.</p>
<p>You see, the hidden secret is that even if you have a life that allows you the time for prayer and contemplation, it doesn’t mean that you’ll take that time. We are all —me included— addicted to our clocks, our busy-ness, the noise of our world. I mean that word “addicted” literally. We are junkies for these things.</p>
<p>Addicts, when they first get into recovery, sometimes find themselves bitter at the rest of the world, and assume that everyone else has it easy. Eventually, God willing, they realize that everyone else has their struggles too. And while they may have to always struggle to avoid the liquor store, or eating the whole pound cake, they realize that everybody else is also struggling with their own stuff.</p>
<p>In other words, comparing your own struggles with what others are going through isn’t going to get you very far.</p>
<p>In addition to being pissed off at Thomas Merton, I spent decades being pissed off at my Mom too. When I was really young kid, before any sisters were born, I have memories of getting ready to go shopping, or to the park, or to…who knows where…</p>
<p>The memory is this…I am ready to go. And Mom says, “We’ll go just as soon as I’ve finished my coffee…”</p>
<p>As a five-year-old, I have a very clear memory of throwing a tantrum, and feeling like I was waiting DAYS for her to hurry up and finish her damn coffee.</p>
<p>It was probably five minutes.</p>
<p>The point is, I was sitting on the back porch this morning —praying some prayers of gratitude for the morning rain— when it struck me “Oh…maybe THIS is what my Mom was doing…”</p>
<p>She wasn’t taking time for her coffee just to annoy the hell out of her five-year-old. (Why in God’s name would she do THAT?!)</p>
<p>She was modeling being tied to life and not tied to the clock.</p>
<p>Even in my fifties, I’m re-learning how she was never quite as dumb as I thought.</p>
<p>Most of us are addicted to our clocks, our noise, our screens, our busy-ness, just as much as others are addicted to crack, or a bag of Doritos, or a pint of Jager. We need to find…to MAKE…the time to breathe, pray, meditate, re-create.</p>
<p>YOU need to make that time….even if you have screaming kids, an angry boss, and a list of “to-dos” a mile long.</p>
<p>It may piss you off to hear me say this.<br>
You may think, “easy for him to say.”</p>
<p>But it doesn’t make it any less true for your life.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5865051
2019-08-21T08:40:08-05:00
2019-08-21T09:45:32-05:00
The Guilt that We Survive
<p>Survivor’s Guilt.<br>
Imposter Syndrome.</p>
<p>Two words for relatively similar experiences that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized many people have. Including me.<br>
The older you get, you start to look right and left, and sometimes you see folks who used to be standing beside you…aren’t. Somehow, you’ve “made it through” some life-trial, or tragedy. Somehow, you got the break, and they didn’t.</p>
<p>And it makes you ask “Why I am the one, and why not you?”</p>
<p>There are very *good* and clear reasons why in some cases of course…they had addictions you didn’t…you worked harder…</p>
<p>But then, there’s just the part that’s pure dumb luck. Or blessed luck. There’s the good timing you had, and the bad they did.</p>
<p>You can’t spend you life, of course, looking backward like Lot’s Wife. But it’s foolish to believe you never will or do. And if you’re honest with yourself, it can call up a wistfulness. Hopefully, that wistfulness can lead to a gratitude. As Stephen Colbert said in that interview the other day, “It’s a gift just to exist…”</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>So, I love this song, and feel it speaks to these pretty deep issues. Been in the studio off and on the past few month, and am very please with how it’s come out.</p>
<p>The point of the song is that these are universal experiences, not unique ones.</p>
<p>There IS a guilt that we survive.<br>
And…it’s a gift to exist.</p>
<p>These are two sides of the same coin of existence that God calls us to embrace and wrestle with throughout our lives.</p>
<p>Hope you enjoy it.<br>
I mean…the song…and life of course…EF</p>
<p> </p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5864358
2019-08-20T13:16:17-05:00
2019-08-20T16:30:52-05:00
What Sufferings Are Not Gifts?
<p>Watching this interview between Colbert and Anderson Cooper, I am reminded of the great quote attributed to Charlie Chaplin:<br>
“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it.”</p>
<p>Colbert is one of the masters of this, and always has been. And it was years ago now that I first read a magazine piece about the deaths they talk about in this video.</p>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<p>That deep pain is one of the things that has driven him throughout his life.</p>
<p>But, as you can see in this interview, it’s also the thing that has driven him forward to become the person he is today.</p>
<p>I talk a lot about the concept: “Follow Your Heartbreak.” What does it mean?</p>
<p>Rather than running from suffering and pain, listen to it and allow it to speak to you. That’s what Chaplin was saying in that quote. Or, that’s what Jesus does during Holy Week.</p>
<p>Chaplin, Colbert…and yes, even Jesus…knew that there here is no way *around* suffering…only “through” it.</p>
<p>But, there is a “gift” that comes.</p>
<p>The suffering doesn’t happen “so that” we can get the gift. The suffering just “happens.”</p>
<p>Happens, as Colbert reminds us here, to ALL of us.</p>
<p>The gift that comes is…compassion…love…empathy…and understanding that, eventually, suffering is universal and no one escapes it.</p>
<p>This is the powerful meditation on the “gift” of suffering causes Anderson Cooper to tear up. (He, of course, has his own story of overcoming suffering. And you can’t help but wonder if that was on his mind too…)</p>
<p>You see, this is why I’ve always said that I can’t trust folks who can’t laugh at themselves and the world.</p>
<p>Because if you can’t at some level laugh at the ridiculousness of it all —even the suffering of life— then you are probably still not reconciled with your *own* suffering. Even worse, you are likely to manifest that denial by projecting your own suffering on to others in harmful ways.</p>
<p>Comedy…theology….music…writing…art….it’s all getting at a common thread of our humanity– How do we come to terms with the suffering of our world, and what are we going to do about it?</p>
<p>Are there ways you can redeem your own suffering —by the things you do with your life and time— that can create something beautiful for the world?</p>
<p>That’s what it means to “Follow Your Heartbreak.”</p>
<p>Stephen Colbert is a perfect example of this, and I hope you’ll watch this beautiful little video clip.</p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YB46h1koicQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;"></iframe></div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5850869
2019-08-07T17:55:45-05:00
2019-08-07T18:30:24-05:00
Jesse Jackson Had It Right
<p>I voted for Ronald Reagan twice to be president.<br>
The next time I could vote, I voted for Jesse Jackson.</p>
<p>If I was to write the story of my spiritual, social, and political transformation in two short sentences, those two would be it. Those two sentences are the metaphor for a social transformation that continues inside of me, even to this day.</p>
<p>This essay is the story of that journey.</p>
<p>What follows is a winding tale that could very easily been seen as one long and self-aggrandizing exercise in “virtue signaling.”</p>
<p>That’s not my intent at all, and I want to say that clearly at the outset.<br>
I am not looking for praise, or scorn.<br>
I am not looking to be comforted with “attaboys.”</p>
<p>My intent is <em>confessional</em> in nature, and I hope you can read what follows in that light. My intent is to hopefully be helpful in a national dialogue we are currently having in our nation about White people, and especially about White men.</p>
<p>Therefore, the primary “audience” here is other White men, but I certainly welcome any and all who wonder about how White men might, “evolve” on issues of issues of equality, justice, and inclusion.</p>
<p>For several years now I have said that I believe America has a “White man” problem.</p>
<p>The more blunt way of saying this is that we have a “White Supremacy” problem.</p>
<p>Some White men are working to understand their power, privilege and position in our country. They are working to come to terms with the concept of White Supremacy and their own internalized sense of superiority.</p>
<p>Some of us are listening to others —Women, People of Color, the LGBTQ community— and are “working on our stuff” to one extent or another. We are trying to find their place…standing next to others, and not lording over them.</p>
<p>But, if I may be blunt, not many of us are not.</p>
<p>Certainly not enough of us.</p>
<p>Many of us White men are still very much overly sensitive to criticism and prone to what has been rightly called “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-sociologist-examines-the-white-fragility-that-prevents-white-americans-from-confronting-racism">White Fragility</a>.” I have most certainly been guilty of “White Fragility” from time to time. No doubt even recently. (As I said: this journey is ongoing…)</p>
<p>But I do I understand myself to be privileged in ways that Women, POC, the LGBTQ and other religious faiths are not.<br>
I try to work on my privilege.<br>
I fail often.<br>
I work on it some more.<br>
I fail some more.</p>
<p>In other words, <em>in no ways do I intend to be seen as someone who has “arrived,”</em> or has found great wisdom that others must embrace. What I intend to do is to share my journey, in the hopes that others might be willing to share theirs…so that we might further a desperately needed conversation among White men.</p>
<p><em>So, again, I hope you read this entire essay as confessional, and not an attempt at gaining your sympathy or virtue signaling.</em></p>
<p>In fact, because of my own self-identity today, sharing some of this feels very vulnerable and embarrassing. Those of you know have only known me as a progressive minister and activist may be disturbed by some of the following.</p>
<p>I suppose my overall point is that I believe in “conversion” because I have experienced it. (To use a theological term…)</p>
<p>Over the course of my adult life, I’ve been in a long process of social and spiritual conversion….and of unpacking my own sense of privilege and power. (Remember: I am a Christian and a minister. I completely understand that this language feels foreign, fake, or like a cop-out to those outside my tradition…)</p>
<p>My journey can be told in terms of my theological and social views. And it can be told using the markers of presidential campaigns. This essay does both.</p>
<p>I’m in no way attempting to suggest that Republicans are evil, or that Democrats are perfect. In fact, one of the insights that’s come to me in writing this is just how far way both parties truly still are from multi-racial, multi-gendered, and multi-faith society. (More about that near the end…)</p>
<p><em>Therefore, I will speak about a political transformation —about those first two sentences on this essay— because those sentences are but a METAPHOR for the deeper social and spiritual transformation…and not the other way around.</em></p>
<p>With all that tortured prolegomena, let’s begin…</p>
<p>Now and then, when some White man says something especially insensitive or does something horrific —like shoot up a Walmart— my dear Wife will turn to me and say,<em> “How did you get to be the way *you* are?”</em></p>
<p>Which is another way of saying: <em>“How come you’re not like those other White guys?”</em></p>
<p>I grew up in very conservative Far North Dallas. Everybody I knew was a Republican. Everybody I knew was a “Conservative.” It was the the late 1970s and early 1980s. I graduated high school a year into Reagan’s first term. I was eighteen on election day, and so I voted for Ronald Reagan in my first election.</p>
<p>I would have never occurred to me to vote for anyone else. I did not know any Democrats. I did not know any People of Color, although we had a few at Richardson High School where I was a student.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the one bit of my life that was more “moderate” was church. I was very active in my Methodist church young group. But we were most definitely not “liberal” by any means. And we we also most definitely not evangelical or fundamentalist.</p>
<p>(I’m grateful to have completely avoided organized fundamentalist religion and an adherent, even though it was clearly growing at the time…and even though Dallas was something of an epicenter…)</p>
<p>My sense is that most of the Conservatives I knew considered themselves “moderate Republicans.” That was certain my Father…at least by that time. He had been a rabid anti-communist in the 1950s. He went to demonstrations as a young man.</p>
<p>But Nixon had deeply troubled him. Nixon had burned him out on politics and social movements. By the time I was in high school…like most of the parents and children I knew…we were all “moderate Republicans.”</p>
<p>That followed me to college. I was still quite conservative. Ronald Reagan reigned supreme.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/dvrifuvu8aej11k.jpg?w=226&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="226" />During my time in school, I literally had a poster of a Nicaraguan “contra” up on my wall of my dorm room. I found that very picture on the internet recently, and post it here for you to see.</p>
<p>Again, I am not proud of this. In fact, I am deeply ashamed to for you to see it. Many of my more progressive friends —especially my mentors who have been involved in the struggle for justice in Central America— may be <em>horrified</em> to see this poster, and imagine what it means that I had it on the wall of my dorm room.</p>
<p>This is, as I’ve said, this is a part of my confession.<br>
This is to help you see my journey.</p>
<p>You should know that I did not think very deeply about any of the issues in Central America. My Father had been an anti-communist, therefore I was too.</p>
<p>I suppose, looking back, I thought the picture of this “contra” was cool…in a kind of “Apocalypse Now” way. Yes, that movie was supposed to be a meditation on the horrors of war. But as a high school kid, I’d seen it as “cool.” This “freedom fighter” was like Martin Sheen, in my mind.</p>
<p>The honest truth is that it was all “image” to me. (This in itself is only possible due to White privilege, of course…)</p>
<p>Again, I really didn’t know much about the war, I didn’t send any money to support “Charley.” I never attended college Republican meetings. I didn’t know much about what Reagan was doing, or the illegality of supporting it through a poster like this.</p>
<p>It was what young men, in my conservative tribe, were doing back then. I share this picture, because more than anything else I could write, it helps you see who I was then.</p>
<p>But during that time, I started attending church at First Methodist in Austin. I would eventually become very active there, serving as college class president for two years. Sunday after Sunday, I sat in the balcony of that church and heard Rev. Jack Heacock preach sermons on liberation theology. He would talk about the struggle in Central America. He would talk about the poor people of El Salvador and Nicaragua.</p>
<p>I made fun of him in my head.</p>
<p>But another part of me was also listening.</p>
<p>I had two campus ministers who were incredibly important to me… Revs. Susan Sprague and Claudia Highbaugh.</p>
<p>They talked about their experiences as women…clergywomen…and Claudia about her experience as an African-American. Claudia, especially, listened to me. She loved and supported me…even as it was clear she thought I was young and naive. She didn’t <em>judge</em> me, but became my first real ministry mentor. Claudia Highbaugh, an African-American clergywoman of another denomination, is the single most important reason I ended up in seminary and as a minister today.</p>
<p>Even as I was making fun of Jack Heacock’s tortured pronunciations of “Nicaragua” and “Honduras” I was also listening. A part of it was seeping in. The theology of liberation was challenging me….angering me…pushing back on my little conservative, White male bubble.</p>
<p>I eventually took the Contra poster down. I started to question my values, even as I was afraid to admit that publicly.</p>
<p>But at the time the 1984 election, I was still a Conservative.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s more complicated.</p>
<p>Even by that time, I had cleary started to yearn for something different. I am fairly confident that I was looking for an alternative. I believe it would be fair to say I was becoming disaffected with Republican social views.</p>
<p>It was my Christian faith that was leading me to question those “Conservative” social views.</p>
<p>It was reading, studying, and really learning about what Jesus said about ministering with the poor, the marginalized, the outcast.</p>
<p>I somehow became fascinated with Jesse Jackson. Jackson was not only a politician, he was also a preacher. Jackson spoke, theologically, a language of liberation that I now realize was very similar to the sermons I was hearing from Jack Heacock.</p>
<p>Jackson talked of a “Rainbow Coalition,” and I was listening. HIs candidacy was the first time anyone seriously spoke to our multi-racial and multi-faith future. (A future we have still not realized, decades later…)</p>
<p>He was talking about a coalition of African-Americans, yes…but also of White, Brown, Women….the gay community…</p>
<p>It felt revolutionary to me. I was fascinated because not only was it so much more diverse than anything I’d ever experienced in my White-conservative life, but also <em>because included a place for me</em>. Jackson’s Christian faith, I believe strongly, was the basis for this. Yes, he was a Black man. But his rhetoric was about including everyone.</p>
<p>And what could be wrong with that?</p>
<p>It was very appealing.</p>
<p>Jesse Jackson came to UT Austin quite a lot during primary season. I remember shaking his hand on a rope line at the “East Mall.”</p>
<p>And, I remember hearing him speak at the Student Union.</p>
<p>It was November 22, 1983. My friend Ed (another White guy) and I had decided to go and see Jesse speak. (I recently obtained a copy of the Daily Texan write up of the day, to insure that I was not exaggerating what had happened. I’m happy to say that the write up confirms my hazy memory…)</p>
<p>Looking back, that day changed my life.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/jessejackson-1.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>We had seats back halfway back on the left side of the auditorium. It was <em>PACKED</em> to overflowing. The Daily Texan says there were 1,200 in the auditorium, and many more outside the closed doors.</p>
<p>For fear of a riot, the organizers had closed the doors. As Jackson took the stage, 500 <em>more</em> students pounded on the doors, rattling them and making a commotion over which Jackson could not heard. The doors were glass, and you could see the huge crowd…and how they were POUNDING on those doors and yelling.</p>
<p>I had never been in a situation like that. It felt like it might turn violent.</p>
<p>Jackson stopped his speech, walked down the long aisle (much to the chagrin of his own security and Secret Service detail) and opened the back doors. I could not hear what he said, but he was clearly addressing the crowd outside in the halls.</p>
<p>It became clear he was trying to get them to calm down enough so that the doors could be left open for all to hear.</p>
<p>The crowd agreed. The doors were opened so that all could hear and be included.</p>
<p>Jackson came back to the front of the room and re-started his speech.</p>
<p>I thought to myself, <em>“Who IS this guy?!!”</em></p>
<p>Who has the power to confidently wade into that kind of tense situation, to diffuse it, and to all the while, keep his cool?</p>
<p>I’d never seen anything like it.</p>
<p>Again, I was so naive that I had no idea of his connection to Dr. King and the great civil rights struggle of the 1960s.</p>
<p>Jackson led the crowd in the <em>“I am somebody”</em> chant. And Jackson connected what he was doing with the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1960s.</p>
<p>The Daily Texan cites several quotes from his speech that day…</p>
<p><em>“In the 1960s we could not use the Woolworth, we could not use hotels and motels and students risked their lives to make America, America for everybody. That generation was great….This generation must never give up its right to dream.”</em></p>
<p>I was mesmerized.</p>
<p>Here was a man who was inspiring people in a way I had never seen from any politician or preacher…and who was talking about a multi-racial, Rainbow coalition…and one that might even have a place for ME. White men would not lead this coalition (clearly a Black man would be the leader….) but that the invitation he extended was to <em>everyone</em>…genuinely everyone.</p>
<p>That was revolutionary.</p>
<p>And the image of Jesse Jackson….walking to the back of that room…opening those doors…calming that crowd….that moment has stayed for me for three decades.</p>
<p><em>“Opening the doors for everyone…”</em></p>
<p>That —theologically, spiritually, socially— has been the primary calling of my life ever since.</p>
<p>Did I vote for a Democrat in the next election?<br>
Did I suddenly identify as a “liberal” all of the sudden?</p>
<p>No.<br>
I did not vote for Walter Mondale.</p>
<p>Mondale was <em>boring</em>.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/il_794xn.1603910901_80j8.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" />I could not imagine voting for somebody as boring as Walter Mondale. In fact, those same college Republicans —ever able to “spin” opinion, created this poster…which also hung on my wall in the months prior to the 1984 election. Again, I’m a bit ashamed of this poster now, but the images helps you see where I was.</p>
<p>The main line that I resonated with was <em>“he’s more boring than ever…”</em></p>
<p>Again, I am not proud of this. I am not proud of fact that I allowed something so shallow to affect my political vote. I was attracted to what Jesse Jackson said. But Jackson hadn’t won the nomination, and I could not vote for such a <em>boring</em> guy.</p>
<p>This is the level of thought that I put into my vote.</p>
<p>But, friends, I was stirred up…by Rev. Claudia Highbaugh…by Rev. Jack Heacock…by Jesse Jackson…Something was changing.</p>
<p>It would break open on election night, 1984.</p>
<p>That night, that same friend (Ed) and I decided to go see the a college Republican celebration at the Texas Union ballroom. (Again, we didn’t really attend these things regularly. But we were politically and socially curious kids…)</p>
<p>Walter Mondale had been crushed by Reagan. I had voted for Reagan once again.</p>
<p>We walked up to the bar that was in the ground floor of the Student Union (the drinking age was eighteen). And there —watching the returns on a first-generation big screen TV— were a bunch of blue blazered, khaki and top-sider wearing, college Republicans. They were mostly young White men, they were drinking a lot of beer, and they were yelling <em>lustily</em> at the results.</p>
<p>I cannot describe for you now just how disturbing it felt to me in that moment. Reagan had won in a landslide. Everybody KNEW he was going to win. (Mondale was <em>boring</em>.)</p>
<p>But these guys were shouting like a football team having just sacked the quarterback. There was a <em>lustiness</em>, in their crowd, like soldiers putting a head on a pike outside the castle.</p>
<p><em>“It was a LANDSLIDE, for Christsake,”</em> I thought to myself….<br>
<em>“What the hell…”</em></p>
<p>There was something about that moment that <em>broke</em> me.</p>
<p>This <em>should</em> have been my tribe. I should have been right there in the midst of their testosterone-fueled celebration. But I watched them from the hallway, and call I can say now is, that I thought….</p>
<p><em>“This is not my tribe…”</em></p>
<p>I’m not cool with that kind of reaction to LANDSLIDE of that magnitude. I’m not cool with laughing at Walter Mondale, or making fun of Jesse Jackson and Black people. I was suddenly embarrassed by my Contra poster….that Mondale poster…all of it…</p>
<p><em>“This is not my tribe…”</em></p>
<p>It was a <em>feeling</em>, not a verbal thought I could have expressed.<br>
I knew it in an instant.<br>
I knew I had changed.<br>
I knew I would never go back to that group, and to that room.</p>
<p>But, there was immediately a new problem…</p>
<p>Who <em>was</em> my tribe?</p>
<p>Who were my people?<br>
Where was my place?</p>
<p>I didn’t have one.<br>
I felt adrift and confused.</p>
<p>I knew what I <em>wasn’t</em> any more. I didn’t know what I was.</p>
<p>Then came Perkins School of Theology.</p>
<p>(Actually, what came first was having my heart broken open by a girlfriend who dumped me. That helped break me open, as I entered Perkins in the Fall of 1985…)</p>
<p>Perkins helped push this evolution into over-drive.</p>
<p>Now, I was studying liberation theologians. I was writing papers on Jon Sobrino and the Central American theology I had previously mocked.</p>
<p>Now, it made sense to me.</p>
<p>I was in a study group my first year, with women, a gay man, and an African-American man. And in that group, we wrestled with identity, power, gender, race….we did much more than just “study” for class.</p>
<p>That group prayed together. Argued. Pushed each other. Sought to understand each other.</p>
<p>I was listening…I was growing.</p>
<p>I became a Hall Director in the Residence Halls. I remember specific two events that transformed my social views even more. One was an “in service” where Rev. Michael Piazza, then of Cathedral of Hope, spoke to our residence hall staff. It opened my eyes to the plight of the gay and lesbian community.</p>
<p>Another seminal moment was a two-day training with Dr. Charles King. Dr. King was a nationally known trainer in race-relations. His method (I later learned) was to push, cajole and even berate White participants in his seminar. To the point at which he <em>intentionally</em> made them angry.</p>
<p>He then was able to show those White participants that our emotional reaction was exactly like the reaction of POC to White Supremacy. (In those days, nobody used either of those last two terms…)</p>
<p>A write-up I recently found online of Dr. King explaining his process this way:<br>
<em>“I have manipulated you. I have cut you off, I oppressed you, not let you speak. I made everything go according to my system. It dehumanizes a person. You felt guilt, shame and anger you didn’t show.You slowly lose your dignity . . .</em></p>
<p>That’s what he did for me in that seminar.</p>
<p><em>“Oh, crap,”</em> I said.</p>
<p>Again, we didn’t use the words “White Supremacy.” But that’s <em>exactly</em> what he was modeling for us. For a few short minutes, he put us White people in the position of seeing how White Supremacy <em>feels</em>.</p>
<p>Again, scales fell off my eyes. My world was rocked. My knees buckled.</p>
<p>And in the midst of this, I first met Bill McElvaney.</p>
<p>If you know me well, you’ve heard me speak of just how important Rev. Bill McElvaney has been to my life. Next to my Father, he is the most important man I’ve ever known.</p>
<p>Bill was the man who showed me the way to a new “tribe.”</p>
<p>He modeled…he lived in his very being…what it means to be a different kind of White man.</p>
<p>Bill had his own story —a similar story of transformation— that captivated me and gave me hope. Bill had moved from being a young college student at SMU, who defended his fraternity’s segregationist policy in the 1950s, to a lone White minister marching from Grand Prairie to Dallas in MLK’s Poor People’s March in 1968.</p>
<p>Bill was also compassionated and committed to real justice for Central Americans as well.</p>
<p>He was my spiritual Father.</p>
<p>I have joked for many years that <em>“Bill McElvaney showed me that you could be a White man from North Dallas, and turn out OK…”</em></p>
<p>That’s not really a joke. There’s a sense in which it’s literally true.</p>
<p>I desperately needed the hopefulness of his own confessional journey, so that I could take my own.<br>
I could not have done it without him. (which is part of why I’m writing this, of course…)</p>
<p>And so it was that my theology, my politics, my entire cultural vision shifted.</p>
<p>I had a new vision of what it meant to be a White man, and how I fit in relation to everyone else around me. I had White male role models. I’d had experiences of my own privilege and power that had humbled me. (Some of which, I have not shared here for brevity…)</p>
<p>And so, when it was time to vote, in the primaries of 1988, I voted for Jesse Jackson. Proudly. And openly. And with no reservation.</p>
<p>Jesse Jackson was an inspiration to me, and to other White young men like me, not just to a generation of African-Americans.</p>
<p>And at that 1988 Democratic Convention, as he gave that incredible speech, as the rapturouse applause rose, and he thundered <em>“Keep Hope Alive…”</em></p>
<p>I wept.<br>
I wept for his courage and conviction.<br>
I wept at how elusive his coalition and his dream clearly was…</p>
<p>It’s still far away, even today, of course. And that’s the point not to miss here. The Democrats of 1988 were <em>not</em> totally kind to Jesse Jackson. Some privately mocked him, even as he brought huge numbers of African-American voters permantely into the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>It’s a reminder of what I said at the outset. This whole essay is not an attempt to make Republicans look bad and Democrats look great, or to suggest superiority of one over another. In fact, quite clearly, both political parties are quite a long way from truly embracing the “Rainbow coalition” of Jackson’s dream.</p>
<p>But <em>that</em> dream?</p>
<p>It captured me then…and it still does now.<br>
And it changed my life and gave me hope.</p>
<p>And that’s the story, right there.</p>
<p>That’s the long journey that I tell of the first two sentences in this essay.</p>
<p>I supposed it’s really just “chapter one.” A lot of time as passed since then, and the journey never ends. Being married to a Wise Latina has opened my eyes even further. I’ve heard her stories, and the stories of her family.</p>
<p>I’m constantly learning what I don’t know. I still failing. I’m sill surprised by the way White privilege rears its head in my life today.</p>
<p>I’ve listened to so many painful stories from church members and friends over the years —Women, People of Color, the LGBTQ community. They have taught me so much I did not know.</p>
<p>I could write <em>five times</em> as much as I have here about other times when I have failed —in the decades that have followed, or even the past few months— to live up to this new identity I believe I now have. And, there are other embarrassing stories about how my own White Privilege has reared its head…in ways that humble me and buckle my knees.</p>
<p><em>But I tell this story, because I am confident I am not alone.</em></p>
<p>Maybe you are a White man with a similar story. Maybe you are a White man who is, right now, for the first time, considering that you might be looking for a new “tribe.”</p>
<p>In the past year, I’ve been blessed to meet, off and on, with groups of White men who have similar stories of similar transformations.</p>
<p>I believe that when the Bible talks about “repentance” that this is what it is talking about. The Bible is talking about this kind of transformation and “turning in a new way.”</p>
<p>Whether the issue is homophobia, racism, sexism, White Supremacy…when the Bible speaks of “repentance,” that is the “turning in a new way” that believe it’s talking about.</p>
<p>It is, at the core, a <em>spiritual</em> process.<br>
It takes constant work.</p>
<p>In Wesleyan language, it’s “going on to perfection,” and knowing that you might never get there completely. We are never done, especially in a society so completely dominated by White supremacy.</p>
<p>In my experience, the journey has not been of one, lightning bolt moment, that forever changed my life. Instead, it’s God working on me, through faith, to live as a different kind of White man…and as a White man for who HAD NO MODELS.</p>
<p>It’s this last point I want to end with.</p>
<p><em>White men need new models.</em></p>
<p>We need a PATH through which we can see ourselves in a new way…and through which we can behave in a new way. In a society that still affords us great privilege, it’s very hard to do.</p>
<p>It’s still hard to see all the ways our privilege puts on “third base” and helps us believe we “hit a triple.” (Ann was talking about ALL of us White men, really…not just George…)</p>
<p>Look, many of you know me as very different from the man depicted in this essay.<br>
Some of you, as I’ve said, may even be disturbed by some of what I’ve said here.</p>
<p>You perhaps know me as a progressive preacher who…<br>
Was arrested in DC, in support of immigrants…<br>
Performed Same Sex weddings in alleged violation of my church’s teaching…<br>
Served on Planned Parenthood’s religions advisory committee…<br>
Marches in a crap-ton of marches…and speaks out against White Supremacy…<br>
Writes copiously on all these topics and more from a progressive spiritual point of view.</p>
<p>The point is, that to my Wife’s question <em>“How did you get this way?”</em></p>
<p>Well, it’s complicated.</p>
<p>I know that I thank God those around me have allowed me the space to grow, change, and move to a new place. I thank God that they have seen my “repentance” as genuine…and they have judged me by my actions, and not by my past.</p>
<p>What I’m trying to illustrate is that it’s a challenging path to find..because, really, <em>society does not give White men mentors and role models to take this kind of a journey</em>.</p>
<p>Society certainly does not <em>reward</em> this kind of journey. Perhaps this is why relatively few men feel either the desire, or the willingness, to take it.</p>
<p>As for me, I thank God for all the mentors and moments along the way…<br>
For Revs. Susan Sprague, Claudia Highbaugh, and Jack Heacock…<br>
For Jesse Jackson…<br>
For Dr. Charles King and Rev. Michael Piazza…<br>
For Rev. Bill McElvaney…and Dr. Zan Holmes…<br>
For Dennise and all my social justice friends from the present day.<br>
For small groups of men I know on similar journeys, with whom I can share stories and experiences.</p>
<p>They’ve allowed me “in” to a new “tribe” where I don’t have to act like the boss, or be in charge, but where I can —in the language of liberation theology— “accompany” everyone as we move forward together.</p>
<p>I see my calling as being that of using the platform God has given me to do just this kind of ministry and sojourning.</p>
<p>I do wonder, however: <em>What might have happened if I had been *condemned* along the way?</em></p>
<p>What might have happened to me if I <em>hadn’t</em> had all these mentors and s/heroes? What might have happened to me, if compassionate people of color, Women, gay people had not only pushed me out my comfort zone, and forgiven me when I badly stumbled?</p>
<p>I might be in a very different place.<br>
I shudder to think, but maybe I’d be a Trump guy. I can’t rule it out.</p>
<p>Marc Maron said something that’s stayed with me for months in his podcast with Brene Brown. It was a throw-away line that I’ve been pulled back to, time and time again.</p>
<p>He said that <em>in modern America it seems that conservatives “never apologize” and that progressives “never forgive.”</em></p>
<p>There was something that struck me as deeply true about that.</p>
<p>On the left, there can be a terribly unforgiving streak.</p>
<p>White men deserve to be scorned for much of our history, and our current behavior. But it’s the “never” part that gets me.</p>
<p>I’m no longer a conservative. (and I haven’t been for decades now…) So I can’t speak to the “never apologize” part (although it rings true…).</p>
<p>But the “never forgive” part rings true on the left. There’s a hardness on the left, and I wonder if (and here I’ll become a theologian) we can really move forward unless we can find space for White men to apologize…space to move to a new place….space to stumble and fail. (Yes. It has to be genuine…of course…)</p>
<p>Isn’t that what we all actually hope for?<br>
That we all “progress” in some way, to some new place?</p>
<p>Progressivism, in its very nature, implies a “moving forward” to a “new place.” That, by definition, will mean leaving behind an old place and old ways of being.<br>
But that process, in and of itself, seems to move circuitously…not in a straight line.</p>
<p>Two steps forward. One step back.</p>
<p>I believe in progress. But I also now believe the idea of “straight line” progress is a dangerous fantasy.</p>
<p><em>If we have learned nothing else the past few years, it’s perhaps this last point. We are constantly learning and re-learning —at a societal and personal level— the lessons of how to live into a truly multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-faith…diverse future.</em></p>
<p>I thank God that I am not judged (by those who know me today) by my actions in the past.<br>
Maybe some <em>will</em> judge me now.<br>
Maybe you will think my “conversion” has not been painful enough, or that this is all an exercise in “virtue signaling.”</p>
<p>Maybe all I know in the end, is this…</p>
<p><em>Jesse Jackson had it right.*</em></p>
<p>He did.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/jessejacksonshirt.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="225" />I’m not talking about the vision of a specific political party or presidency. I’m talking that vision that captured so many of us back in the day…of a Rainbow coalition with room for all.</p>
<p>In the end —whomever we are—we all need some kind of hopeful models that we can aspire to…some kind of hopeful future that we can embrace that includes a place for us all, so that we can leave behind our past. Or at least, so we can move forward in some way.</p>
<p>All those years ago, Jesse Jackson was speaking to a kind of multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-faith coalition that America is only NOW starting to make real. We haven’t made it real YET. But we’re at least having interesting conversations about it. I think we’re starting to see it from here.</p>
<p>But that very vision, which I saw as so hopeful in the primaries of 1988, is deeply threatening to White men. It’s certainly threatening to White supremacy.</p>
<p>I’m confident —nearing 100 percent certainty— that this is what’s created the phenomenon of Donald Trump. His moral licensing is giving permission to a new generation of White nationalism and racism that should disturb us all.</p>
<p>I don’t have all the answers. Or maybe <em>any</em> of them. I know White supremacy will be a continuing challenge, and that it’s very existence could lead some to suggest that White people be silenced completely and be ushered of the stage.</p>
<p>If I may…and I do this very carefully…I think that would be a mistake.</p>
<p>All I can tell you is decades ago now, Jesse Jackson spoke to <em>me</em>. I watched him quite literally open the doors and welcome in <em>everyone</em>.</p>
<p>And that has been the abiding “dream” of my spiritual and political journey ever since.</p>
<p>That is the hopeful, and still unrealized, future of our nation.</p>
<p>Our future coalitions will undoubtedly be led by African-Americans, Women, members of the LGBTQ and Latinx communities, and many others. And that is good, and beautiful, and HOPEFUL.</p>
<p>So, to all of us whomever you are, whatever your politics, would suggest that at least from a “vision” point of view:</p>
<p><em>Jesse Jackson had it right.</em></p>
<p>If you are a White man, I invite you to join me on this continuing journey of repentance and living in a new way.</p>
<p>If you are everyone else, I cannot tell you what to do, or how to treat us White men.<br>
We deserve much of your scorn and anger.<br>
But I hope you can believe that some of us are trying.<br>
Failing.<br>
Trying again.<br>
Failing.<br>
Trying again.</p>
<p>When you can, I hope you might offer some of us your forgiveness as you see us living in a new way.<br>
Even if you cannot, or even if the language of forgiveness makes no sense to you, I commit to continuing with walk with you, to “accompanying” you, anyway.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the ways you can hear this story, and can fold it in to American’s multi-racial future.</p>
<p>* (with all his own flaws and foibles, and I do NOT mean to minimize his personal flaws by praising his strengths…)</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5841748
2019-07-30T09:51:43-05:00
2019-07-30T12:30:37-05:00
Kessler Park Welcome Video
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5835368
2019-07-24T13:03:11-05:00
2019-07-24T16:30:38-05:00
What Do We Do With the Case of Francisco?
<div id="js_i" class="_5pbx userContent _3576">
<p>Dear White Friends,<br>
Can we talk again?</p>
<p>I can’t shake the story of Francisco Erwin Galicia.<br>
He’s the 18-year-old American citizen that was detained for almost a month by Border Patrol and ICE.</p>
<p>I can’t shake the story, because it play directly into a narrative that I have been preaching about for perhaps a decade now…that the *way* we treat immigrants, refugees —especially those from Central America— directly affects People of Color in our own country.</p>
<p>Keeping children in cages, failing to provide them with even basic necessities like soap and toothpaste, these affect how ALL of us see brown and black people.</p>
<p>It’s been happening for years, far before the Trump Administration chose to accelerate the caging of children and adults in concentration camps.</p>
<p>For YEARS, I have been saying that the process through which Border Patrol enforces border check-points…<br>
The process through which a Sheriff in Arizona caged brown people some years back…<br>
The process through which they used to routinely harass South Texas school children…<br>
The process through which Border Patrol and ICE routinely speak about brown people (as evidenced in their own intercepted emails and Facebook messages)….</p>
<p>All of these, dear friends, have a corrosive effect on our culture. They “Otherize” POC. We —people of all races— get the message very clear message that they are sub-human. The message is that they DESERVE to be treated poorly.</p>
<p>And our law enforcement, and now our President, routinely use language and engage in conduct that reinforces this view.</p>
<p>Over the years, I have shared here on Facebook and in sermons how POC of color are routinely concerned and afraid to even leave the house without ID. Almost every time I do, some Facebook friend (often a person of color) writes me to privately admit that this is a fear of theirs.</p>
<p>Friends, this is at all levels of our society. I’ve heard from doctors, lawyers, judges (multiple) who describe the concern they have, as POC, when it comes to law enforcement and the police.</p>
<p>This was an eye-opening learning for me some years ago. Perhaps, dear White readers, some of you are still unaware of it.</p>
<p>Two examples stand out poignantly.<br>
One was Dr. Brian Williams, a trauma surgeon at Parkland Hospital, Dallas. Dr. Williams was tasked with treating the wounded officers shot on our streets in 2016.</p>
<p>But during his press appearances in the days that followed, he noted how, as an African-American, he also shared the concern of potential being harassed and stopped by the police.</p>
<p>The suggestion was that without the “signaling” of his white doctor’s coat, he too could be subject to the same harassment that had been protested that very night on the streets of Dallas.</p>
<p>It’s the same for those who wear the black judicial robes too.<br>
I’ve shared this before, but I share it again here because it’s so on point to the conversation about Francisco Erwin Galicia.</p>
<p>Years ago now — probably early in our marriage— Dennise and I were going for a walk. She was insistent that we couldn’t leave until she found her driver’s license.</p>
<p>“Why?” I groaned…<br>
“We’re just going around the block. We’ll just be out for a moment.”</p>
<p>And it was then that she told me how she NEVER leaves the house without ID.</p>
<p>This was revolutionary to me. As a CIS gendered straight White man, it had never occurred me to be concerned about having ID on the street. It seemed like ridiculous worry.</p>
<p>So, she told me about her experience as a small girl, on a Saturday, when she was helping her Dad mow yards. Richard Garcia was a yard man, and once-upon-a-time, while they were working, Immigration agents walked up to Dennise while they were working on a yard.</p>
<p>Who was she?<br>
Did she have documents?</p>
<p>Of course, she was a kid. She had no idea how to answer the questions. Very quickly, Richard showed up from around the corner and pushed back, and the authorities left.</p>
<p>But it left Dennise with an unsettled lesson that she carries to this day. The lesson was that even though she routinely benefits from the “signalling” of her black judicial robe, it’s still not safe to go out without your ID…EVEN IF YOU ARE AN AMERICAN CITIZEN.</p>
<p>Me?</p>
<p>I *still* forget this lesson. Just this morning, I set out to walk to a local coffee shop, got almost all the way there, before I realized I’d forgotten my wallet.</p>
<p>This. Morning.<br>
You can’t make this stuff up.</p>
<p>And so, dear White people, you can say that perhaps Dennise, or Dr. Williams, or the countless other POC who are American citizens are being paranoid.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/1563842457-francisco-erwin-galicia.jpg?w=268&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="268" />Then what are they, what are we, to do with the case of Francisco Erwin Galicia?</p>
<p>Francisco Erwin Galicia is an American citizen, born in Dallas Texas on Christmas Eve in 2000 at Parkland Hospital.</p>
<p>His mother faxed his birth certificate, and other supporting documents to Border Patrol officials last week, and he was *still* held until after the Morning News broke the story on Tuesday.</p>
<p>But, it’s worse that this.<br>
As reported by the Dallas Morning News, when he was picked up by Border Patrol a month ago?</p>
<p>Wait for it…</p>
<p>HE HAD ID.</p>
<p>He HAD a STATE ISSUED identification card.</p>
<p>Read that last sentence several times, until it deeply sinks in to your soul.</p>
<p>HE. HAD. ID.</p>
<p>And they *still* took him and held him almost a month. Rather than assume that the Texas ID “signalled” citizenship, they allowed alternate facts to cloud their judgement. Francisco was told that he was detained because, they said, he was not carrying a US passport.</p>
<p>Stop, and let that sentence sink in too.</p>
<p>So, black and brown people must carry a *passport* in order to not face harassment from Border Patrol?</p>
<p>Are you paying attention?</p>
<p>We have a deep and abiding problem in our country. The problem is racism and White Supremacy. It’s a problem as old as the founding of our Republic, and one that manifests itself in every new generation.</p>
<p>We will either find a way to develop a truly multi-racial democratic society, or will we devolve back into warring tribal groups. Sometimes, it feels to me that we are very close to this now.</p>
<p>My eyes have been opened by listening to POC themselves. And I have been pushed to action by my Christian faith, where Jesus was always pushing his own people to accept the “other” and the outsider. You may have your own motivations for speaking up, or shifting away from our latent White Supremacist culture.</p>
<p>But, it’s incumbent on White people to speak out on these issues, to express outrage when POC are “Otherized” in this way. It’s incumbent for us to vote for candidates who also speak out, and who do not simply look the other way or minimize these issues.</p>
<p>We must find a way to police our border that *reduces* and does not *increase* the Otherizing of People of Color. It’s such a deeply embedded problem that most of us don’t even notice it.</p>
<p>I’m not sure most of us White folks are truly clear on just how much fear and anxiety there is for the average POC today. I’m sure I only know a part of it myself. And I’m sure I reinforce White supremacy in many ways that I still am unconscious of in this moment.</p>
<p>I implore you, however, to open your eyes to this.</p>
<p>Ask yourself what it means that Border Patrol can detain a US citizen for almost month.</p>
<p>Ask yourself how we got to this point, and how much you don’t see as a White person.</p>
<p>And when you see your black and brown friends, dear White people, think of Francisco Erwin Galicia, and how what happened to him could happen to them.</p>
<p>They are not paranoid. They are not hyperbolic. This is who we are as a nation right now.</p>
<p>Pay attention, White friends.<br>
Please, pay attention.</p>
<p>(Photo from the Dallas Morning News)</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5829287
2019-07-18T21:32:34-05:00
2020-11-04T23:19:27-06:00
This is How Liberty Dies
<p>I thought of a scene from “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” as I watched the Trump Political Rally in North Carolina last night.</p>
<p>In the film, Senator Padme Amadala and Bail Organa are watching as Emperor Palpatine engineers an effective coup within the Senate. It’s met with cheers.</p>
<p>And as she surveys the scene, she says, <em>“So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.”</em></p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/67413929_10220126913427430_8685470263984259072_o.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="67413929_10220126913427430_8685470263984259072_o" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>I thought about that, as a frothing crowd of mostly White North Carolinians began a chant of “Send Her Back” during the rally.</p>
<p>I thought: “So this is how liberty dies…”</p>
<p>A sitting President of the United States allowed a frothing crowd of White people to suggest that a sitting member of CONGRESS —therefore a United States citizen— should be “sent back” to some other country.</p>
<p>He elicited this response through his own rhetoric and words. He called out BY NAME the Honorable Ilhan Omar. He spoke disparagingly about her. And then, he stood by and allowed the crowd to shout “Send Her Back.”</p>
<p><em>“So this is how liberty dies…”</em></p>
<p>Some of you reading will think I’m being dramatic.</p>
<p>But, I’m not.</p>
<p>In the history of disturbing moments at Donald Trump rallies, this has got to take the cake.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to roast your political opponents for their convictions. It’s another to suggest that a United States Citizen AND duly elected member of Congress, should be expelled from the country.</p>
<p>I know, I know…Trump today is saying he didn’t “like” the chant.</p>
<p>Excuse my language, but that’s bullshit.</p>
<p>He totally allowing and encouraging it. How can he *possibly* say he didn’t like the crowd saying it, when it’s EXACTLY what he said in those Tweets?!!</p>
<p>If you don’t understand that this is INTENTIONAL on his part, if you don’t see that he is appealing to the basest instincts of the crowd, then you are not paying attention.</p>
<p>Friends, it’s what I’ve beens saying for several years about Donald Trump…it’s “moral licensing.”</p>
<p>I will post links in the comments to remind us all of what “Moral Licensing” is. It’s encouraging the bad behavior of others…sending dog whistles to them (But this time, not even silently). It’s “good people” who do bad things and then insist they are not bad.</p>
<p>It’s *exactly* in the script of moral licensing to ENCOURAGE chants like “Send her back” and then *deny* that you have anything to do with it.</p>
<p>That’s what moral licensing IS.</p>
<p>Friends, Donald Trump is sowing deep divisions and dissension among Americans. He’s not just exploiting wedge issues; he’s pile-driving the sledgehammer, and watching in glee while others pick up theirs.</p>
<p>And remember the context.<br>
This all comes in the same week that the ICE raids were scheduled to start all across the country. The cumulative and net effect of these vile policies and words is to create an environment where People of Color feel anxiety and fear about their own “status” in our country.</p>
<p>THAT’S. THE. POINT.</p>
<p>Anxiety…fear…dissension…division….distrust…</p>
<p><em>THIS is how liberty dies.</em></p>
<p>Early this week, on Facebook, I tried to elicit some responses from “Friends of Color” as to whether they had ever been asked to “go back to where you came from…”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I didn’t phrase the question well, instead got a lot of responses from White people telling stories of their rejection in various regions of the country…</p>
<p>They were Texans, and told of how New Yorkers told them “Go home.”<br>
They were New Yorkers, and told of how Texans told them the same…</p>
<p>I must admit, even I have done this. I can recall after a Texas-OU game, while leaving the stadium after a “win” I’ve gleefully shouted “Go Home!” to the Sooner fans…some of whom no doubt lived down the street from me.</p>
<p>I was younger then. I wasn’t thinking clearly.</p>
<p>The point not to miss, however, is this…</p>
<p>Regionalism among White people is nasty and petty; but at the end of the day the “Home” to which we are attempting to banish someone to is STILL a part of the United States of America. In the modern time, there are very few White people who experience anyone telling them to “Leave the country.”</p>
<p>Telling somebody to “go back to your country” is an entire magnitude of vileness greater than telling them to go back to Oklahoma.</p>
<p>And, dear God, to do it to a sitting member of Congress?!</p>
<p><em>“This is how liberty dies…”</em></p>
<p>My Christian faith teaches me to treat all human beings with dignity and respect. I am called —all of us who claim Christianity are called— to love and accept all people as being made in the image of God.</p>
<p>Further, we are grateful for the right to worship God as we wish, and are grateful that there is no religious or cultural “test” for public office.</p>
<p>The Honorable Ilhan Omar is, in fact, a living embodiment of everything our nation is called to be. To call for her removal, to stand by while a crowd chants for it to happen, violates the core values of America *and* of my Christian faith.</p>
<p>And I guarantee you, a great many of the folks in that room…chanting that slogan…probably consider themselves God-fearing Christians.</p>
<p>THAT’S what terrifies me. And if you are POC, or a person of another faith or no-faith, all I can tell you is that I am terrified right along with you.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is taking the lid off a vileness that will become a sickness in our land for years to come. All of us who care about building a multi-racial, multi-faith society will have YEARS of work to do, repairing and recovering from the damage.</p>
<p>In closing, all I can say is this…</p>
<p>If you disagree with this crowd, and this President…then…<br>
Vote. Organize. Canvass. Give money.</p>
<p>Vote out any and all persons who equivocate on the language of this crowd.<br>
They are unAmerican.<br>
Period.</p>
<p>America and its institutions are officially in peril, in ways that I don’t feel I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve been slow to say that last sentence.<br>
I am saying it tonight.</p>
<p>We must stay vigilant, and not allow fear to overcome us.<br>
We must organize and VOTE like never before.</p>
<p>For if we do not, then this is how liberty dies.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793057
2019-06-08T22:50:26-05:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
Realism, Not Cold Water
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<p>Realism, not cold water.</p>
<p>That is my message to all my friends in Metho-nerd land today.</p>
<p>For the past two weeks, we’ve had the breaking news of General Conference delegate elections from all across the country. It is fair to call it a “wave election,” toward the Moderate-Progressive side. It’s STUNNING in some places.</p>
<p>My DMs are blowing up with “Did you see this?!!! Did you hear that?!”</p>
<p>And, yes, it’s all <em>AMAZING</em>….AH-<em>May</em>-Zing.</p>
<p>Let us pause and give thanks to God for this awakening of God’s Spirit, happening (by no accident, I am sure) during the week of Pentecost.</p>
<p>God’s people are rising up, all across America, and RESISTING…</p>
<p>But.</p>
<p>But, we have to immediately make sure we understand what the result of this will be. I’m already hearing lots of friends (here in North Texas and across the nation) mistake this wave for a sign that the United Methodist brand can be “won back” from the Traditionalist Plan.</p>
<p>The math is something like….<br>
Flip 50-70 delegates or so, and the Traditional Plan can be defeated, and something else can pass.</p>
<p>Let me push this….here comes the “Realism, not cold water” part…</p>
<p>Let’s pretend we can flip 150 delegates. (Far beyond what *any* observer believes possible…)</p>
<p>What does that get us?</p>
<p>A “winning” margin of perhaps 55-58% percent.</p>
<p>And while, yes, that’s an impressive swing, what it means is the UMC will STILL be deeply divided.</p>
<p>We cannot “win” this battle legislatively, with plans for a unified United Methodist future. I hope you have all heard me say this consistently and carefully since the afternoon General Conference ended in February. That fight is OVER.</p>
<p>Continuing it….fighting to “flip” delegates to get a “winning” percentages into the mid 50 percent range…means signing up for a protracted Vietnam-style land war….fighting hill-by-hill…for decades yet to come.</p>
<p>Friends: No progressive I know, in our part of the country, will sign up for that war. We know the costs. We know that people are more important than brand, and we will not fight and die for a brand.</p>
<p>These amazing results DO point to something postive, however. They show that the American Church is decidedly Center-Left. This is a statement I have been making for over a decade now. The American Church, however, has (to borrow a phrase from politics) been a non-voting area.</p>
<p>Now, the true social views of the American Church are being revealed. We are Center-Left. We need a Center-Left polity.</p>
<p>These elections show us that we have the political strength to come to the negotiating table with the WCA and work out a future for us all…one that ends the land war for all time.</p>
<p>That last sentence…that’s the deeply hopeful message of these elections.</p>
<p>And, make no mistake, it’s deeply helpful and hopeful.</p>
<p>Negotiated peace? Yes, please.</p>
<p>Protracted, decades long land war? Hell no, we won’t go.</p>
<p>So, friends, I simply offer this reality check, which I hope does not strike you all as cold water…but as warm and hopeful realism.</p>
<p>There is indeed a hopeful future for American Methodism, and we are seeing it be born in front of our eyes.</p>
<p>It makes me more hopeful than I’ve been in years.</p>
<p>How about you?</p>
<p>I’ll end by posting the questions from my last post (analyzing the elections in our own annual conference….)</p>
<p>What does it mean to *really* include all of our people of color as full partners in a church of the future?<br>
What does it mean to fully support and welcome our LGBTQ brothers and sisters?<br>
What does it mean to potentially still be in different theological places, and yet maintain that very Wesleyan desire to “walk hand in hand” with those whose hearts are the same as ours?<br>
What does it mean to support our rural churches, which have different contexts from the city?<br>
What does it mean to listen to the feedback of the Minneapolis and Kansas City gatherings, and incorporate some of the values and goals from those gatherings into our future dreaming in our conference?</p>
<p>I will hope and believe that all these delegates being elected are ready to dream a new church based on these questions…</p>
<p>Buckle your seatbelts.</p>
<p>You’ve never seen anything like what’s about to happen in American Methodism.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793058
2019-06-05T08:42:31-05:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
An Historic Annual Conference
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<p>Let me provide a bit of context for the past few days in the North Texas Conference. It’s just my one perspective on what felt like an extraordinary few days. (So, take it or leave it…)</p>
<p>First, the NTC ordained the first openly lesbian woman in the South. (Meaning: In any conference in the Southeastern or South Central part of the nation…) My dear friend, Jane Graner, who I have been honored to watch journey through this process, like the Jackie Robinson of North Texas.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/61921743_10219761672376632_7368763969705607168_o.jpg?w=750&h=563" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="563" width="750" /></p>
<p>Today, we elected a slate of clergy delegates that was decidedly more to the “center-left” than previous delegations.</p>
<p>We elected a virtual *sweep* of progressive lay delegates. It is, without question, the most progressive group of lay delegates in our conference…and, therefore, almost certainly the most progressive in the South as well.</p>
<p>Approximately 50 of us —lay and clergy—attended an impromptu prayer vigil and press conference, lamenting the spate of murders of African-American Trans Women in our city. This was led by an African-American clergywoman, and attended by a beautiful spectrum of queer and straight, and people of all races. (News story link in the comments…)</p>
<p>And finally, by a stunningly high margin of 80% in favor, the North Texas Conference approved a resolution stating its intent to live NOW as a “One Church Conference.”</p>
<p>Among other things, we have said that we wish to be a conference that:<br>
“grants space for traditionalists to continue to offer ministry as they have in the past; space for progressives to exercise freely a more complete ministry with LGBTQ persons; and space for all United Methodists to continue to coexist without disrupting their ministries.”</p>
<p>And we have agreed that we intend to:<br>
“allow for contextual ministry and pastoral care and not impede the work of others in ministry. We will seek to find common ground and actively be in ministry with people who are different from us. We will not speak ill of one another and model that all people are of sacred worth .”</p>
<p>Again…and I want you to pause on this for a moment…this resolution passed not by 51% percent…or even 65%….but by 80%!!</p>
<p>It literally exceeded all of our expectations for an outcome.</p>
<p>Friends, only three years ago did we ever pass our first resolution that spoke positively about the LGBTQ community.</p>
<p>Now, three short years later, we have exceeded a supermajority.</p>
<p>It’s Pentecost on Sunday.<br>
I see God’s Spirit at work here today.</p>
<p>After General Conference, I wrote a blog asking “What do we know now about General Conference?”</p>
<p>Tonight, we can ask: “What do we know about North Texas?”</p>
<p>It seems to me we know the following:</p>
<p>— Our delegation is more progressive than ever, and it was already the most progressive in the Jurisdiction.<br>
— That you can ordain a lesbian woman and the sky will not fall. In fact, that most folks will be happy about it.<br>
— That you can hold a press conference to support Trans people, and 50 folks will show up.<br>
— And finally, that 80% of us are interested in finding some way to live together.</p>
<p>Of course, the “devil is in the details” as to what this last point means.</p>
<p>Over the past weeks, I have heard from many progressive friends who believe this resolution does not go far enough.<br>
My answer to that has been to say…I agree.</p>
<p>African-American friends, and other People of Color, have justice and equity issues that must be addressed in any future Methodism that were not at all mentioned in this resolution.</p>
<p>The LGBTQ community and allies are right to note that this resolution does not nearly go far enough in working toward a fully inclusive space for them. The language is not as strong as statements coming out of Minneapolis or Kansas City.</p>
<p>Therefore, we must see this resolution is a *starting point* for conversation over the next weeks and months, as we continue to imagine the “new thing” that is coming in Methodism. Many of us have been saying for some time that a “new thing” is coming in Methodism.</p>
<p>Many observers have conjectured that as many of 70% of American Methodist might desire to live together in some future alignment.</p>
<p>Today, we showed, with data, that this number COULD BE as high as 80% percent here in our area.</p>
<p>Hopefully, what happens now is an ever-broader table of up to 80% of North Texas Methodists who wish to live together in some way. This should be a inclusive conversation that takes places over the next few months, as we look toward GC 2020.</p>
<p>We should get down to brass tacks, and start asking tougher questions like…</p>
<p>What will it mean to *really* include all of our people of color as full partners in a church of the future?<br>
What will it mean to fully support and welcome our LGBTQ brothers and sisters?<br>
What will it mean to potentially still be in different theological places, and yet maintain that very Wesleyan desire to “walk hand in hand” with those whose hearts are the same as ours?<br>
What will it mean to support our rural churches, which have different contexts from the city?<br>
What could it mean to listen to the feedback of the Minneapolis and Kansas City gatherings, and incorporate some of the values and goals from those gatherings into our future dreaming in our conference?</p>
<p>We here in North Texas now have some GREAT data to justify swiftly engaging this bold and robust conversation with as many has 80% of North Texas Methodists.</p>
<p>Don’t you think?</p>
<p>We continue to also know that it will continue to be a chaotic time, with many possible ideas being tossed around.</p>
<p>That has to continue to be OK for a while.</p>
<p>Just know, it’s a broad swath of folks who appear willing to keep talking and dreaming together.</p>
<p>And for now, that’s an interesting conversation that I look forward to having.</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793059
2019-05-13T07:16:32-05:00
2020-10-17T06:08:11-05:00
An Open Letter to Reverend Robert Jeffress:
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<p>An Open Letter to Reverend Robert Jeffress:</p>
<p>This morning, again I preached from one of the many passages where religious leaders try to trick Jesus with his words. (John 10: 22-30…It was the suggested “Lectionary” text for this Sunday, in my Methodist tradition…)</p>
<p>Time and time again, as you are undoubtedly aware, this theme recurs in the Gospels of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>Time and time again, Jesus Christ heals, teaches, and preaches. And time and time again, the religious leaders of his day try to trick him by his own words. They try to trick him into saying something they can use against him.</p>
<p>Moments after I finished preaching, I read today’s Dallas Morning News op-ed by my dear friend <a class="profileLink" href="https://www.facebook.com/Imam-Omar-Suleiman-1947189988832655/?__tn__=K-R&eid=ARDp8ZGAMUD2Xss3lSjln4vajInbseefVy0d8v4n6c-OHjEE5nCr2BKg3iX7QqnbbIHdcUpJ_-V-md4t&fref=mentions&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARDxSqD4HOqYs4V2DE_KEOxJRWsLgmpVQ1P0Qugj8h9M-5Tyri_Kx00Muob-45Z0MA7XHhzviIQjmj17EaYDjhUt39OTGbp4KDxPqBHP6EGvCPyxxBpCeTc7cnoPCXHzM6F292R-qW_xXRNNRa2p89Fb9VaczN5p7tcQ3bjxn2PIcJkV-yR2gQcxQvuvGz12T2rKavclwEzvr2aN9g">Imam Omar Suleiman</a> in which he details some of the vitriol that has come his way during the past few days, following a prayer he delivered before the US House of Representatives.</p>
<p>Among the many vitriolic words that have been spoken about him by politicians and pundits on the right, he named you specifically. So, I looked up the video clip, and saw that indeed my Brother Omar was correct: You have denigrated this man of peace, love and faith. You have attempted to twist his words against him, in ways that do not at all reflect who he is in our Dallas community.</p>
<p>Finally, my dear Christian brother, you have cherry-picked his words in PRECISELY the same way that the Gospel Pharisees seek to do to our blessed Lord and Savior!!</p>
<p>Can you not see, dear Brother Jeffress, that YOU have become a Pharisee of our time?</p>
<p>Can you not see, dear Brother Jeffress, that leaders like YOU are the reason that so many young people leave our faith, never to return?</p>
<p>When will you see the harm that you are not only causing, not to people of a man of peace like Omar Suleiman, but also to the very witness of our Christian faith in today’s world?!</p>
<p>YOU, and judgmental preachers like you, are the modern Gospel Pharisees of our world.</p>
<p>Here is the final, and most damning truth…</p>
<p>You, myself and Omar Suleiman live in the same town. You cannot *possibly* have missed his presence at countless rallies for justice, standing up for the rights of the poor and the oppressed, standing alongside Christian pastors like myself.</p>
<p>I’m sure you must have seen his deeply comforting and pastoral presence after the police shooting two years ago…comforting police officers and the public…speaking at rallies at Thanksgiving Square and nationally televised rallies. I’m sure you’ve seen him standing arm and arm with Rabbis and other Jewish leaders.</p>
<p>I mention this because it makes it all the MORE damning that you try to twist his words for a national television audience beyond the town where we know his true witness for justice, peace, and faith.</p>
<p>Truly contemptible.</p>
<p>In the lectionary reading from today, Jesus does not answer the religious leaders directly when they ask him who he is. He does not do so because he knows that, like you, they are not interested in actual dialogue and conversation…but they are instead interested in “gotcha theology.”</p>
<p>So, Jesus does not answer them directly.</p>
<p>But! Our Lord and Savior does say this deeply important thing:<br>
“The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me…”</p>
<p>Jesus invites those who seek to catch him in his words —those who seek to play “gotcha theology” with him— to understand that his ACTIONS testify more powerfully to who he is than an answer to some trick question they pose.</p>
<p>I would suggest the same is true for Imam Suleiman.</p>
<p>His record of supporting people of all faiths, including Christians, is well known. In fact, I’m attaching one of my all-time favorite pictures of a ministry-event that I have ever been a part of. I love it so that it hangs on the wall here in my study, mere feet from where I type these words.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/35123507_10216937738260044_1153002679488741376_n.jpg?w=750&h=500" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="500" width="750" /></p>
<p>It’s a picture of many Dallas’ faith leaders that, in one feel swoop, destroys the demeaning insinuations you made about Omar. It’s many of us, marching arm in arm, in the “MegaMarch” for immigrant rights a few years back. In this picture, you will see Imam Suleiman marching arm in arm with Jews, Christians, Men, Women, People of Color, Gay and Straight.</p>
<p>The powerful diversity of Dallas’ faith leaders show up for one another, and for all of Dallas’ people. We know Omar as our brother in action and justice.</p>
<p>The final, pitiful truth is, you do too. You can’t possibly NOT know it, it seems to me. Which is what makes your words disgusting in two ways.</p>
<p>First, that you would do the same thing to ANYONE that the Gospel Pharisees did to Our Lord.<br>
Secondly, that you would do it, knowing full well that your words must be a lie.</p>
<p>If you can tear yourself away from your gig as a Gospel Pharisee on national TV, maybe you can join us all at the next march.</p>
<p>We’ll save you a seat.</p>
<p>Grace and Peace,</p>
<p>Rev. Eric Folkerth<br>
Dallas, Texas</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793060
2019-03-17T12:15:09-05:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
Our Open Letter to the LGBTQ+ Community
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<p>Let me pause for a brief moment and reflect on this day when 177 of my clergy siblings here in North Texas have signed on to an open letter addressed to the LGBTQ community that appears in today’s Dallas Morning News.<br>
Let me tell you what I remember…</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/53522473_10219142335253591_5716922420997128192_o.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>I remember a “Day of Listening” in the mid 1990s, where our clergy came together to debate gay clergy among us. Only a very FEW dared speak in defense of gay clergy that day. I was “foolish” enough too…as were John Thornburg and Jack Soper. I was alone among clergy who were associates and under 35-years-old.</p>
<p><em>But today, 177 clergy from the North Texas area have signed this letter.</em></p>
<p>I remember the week after that event, when my District Superintendent pulled me aside to privately admonish me for my comments in that gathering…and how he made sure I also understood that my Bishop was also upset with me too.</p>
<p><em>But today, 177 clergy from the North Texas area have signed this letter.</em></p>
<p>I remember being appointed to one of only two “Reconciling Congregations” in North Texas in 2001. While deeply grateful, I remember the feeling of being very alone in those years.</p>
<p>In those days, clergy would often privately say “I am with you in spirit.” But it was clear they would not offer their public support.</p>
<p><em>But today, 177 clergy from the North Texas area have signed this letter.</em></p>
<p>I remember how, at General Conference 2008, “big church pastors” (who shall remain nameless) literally turned the other direction when they saw me coming, because they were unwilling to debate the issues of inclusiveness with their other big church pastors.</p>
<p><em>But today, 177 clergy from the North Texas area have signed this letter.</em></p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/55563375_10219142334453571_2726529266240978944_o-e1552886443954.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="55563375_10219142334453571_2726529266240978944_o" /></p>
<p>And I remember the dozens and dozens of beautiful LGBTQ siblings, who have made appointments with pastors all over North Texas, over the past twenty years…to tell their stories and claim their place as God’s good children.</p>
<p><em>So today, 177 clergy from the North Texas area have signed this letter.</em></p>
<p>As the letter notes, the General Conference is broken. <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2019/03/02/we-know-what-we-know-about-methodism/">As I have written in recent weeks</a>, it is likely broken beyond repair. There must be a new way for Methodism.</p>
<p>But even in the midst of this horrible time, don’t miss the good that God has done in the hearts of North Texas Methodists, over the past 30 years.</p>
<p>Lent is the time for “repenting,” and moving in a new way. Thousands of North Texas Methodists have repented of their unwelcoming ways…this letter is a symbol of that.</p>
<p>I give thanks for the honor of standing with all these clergy siblings, and many more who perhaps would have signed had they known. And I give thanks for the movement of God, over many years, that this letter represents.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/54041338_10219142335133588_128173308855189504_o.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793061
2019-03-16T12:45:59-05:00
2020-11-17T14:22:35-06:00
The Height of Hypocrisy
<p>This week, the New York Times ran <a href="https://nyti.ms/2UCvzRu">a story that proves corruption and cheating</a> among African delegates to the recent General Conference of the United Methodist Church. The story promised follow-up stories to come.</p>
<p>I hope they do follow up. Because there are a host of issues that have needed to be addressed for at least a decade now.</p>
<p>These issues may or may not make any difference for the future of the United Methodist Church itself. In fact, as a friend told me yesterday, to him it’s just further evidence that the “brand” is “broken beyond repair.”</p>
<p>This may be.</p>
<p>But for more than a decade, it’s been the case that there are serious issues that needed to be addressed regarding the African Church. To be clear, NOBODY has wanted to ask these tough questions.</p>
<p>Conservatives don’t want to, because they clearly benefit from the current system and possible corruption.<br>
Liberals don’t want to, because they are afraid of being called racists.<br>
Moderates don’t want to, because they’re sometimes terrified of conflict.</p>
<p>Well, it’s time to rip the bandaid off, and ask the tough questions.</p>
<p>The REAL paternalism and racism is in the subtle racism of low expectations. With respect to LGBTQ issues, Conservatives talk about “faithfulness to the covenant” and “accountability,” but they consistently refuse to truly hold the African delegation to the same high standards that apply to other delegates. There is little or no administrative accountability to the “order of the church” when it comes to African membership statistics. And, there is clear evidence of possible corruption in other areas.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">In addition to the issues of the NYT story, other issues that need to be addressed:</span></p>
<p>1. Are financial payments made to delegates from Africa? If so, who pays these? How are they reported?</p>
<p>2. If African delegates attend a pre-conference briefing and retreat (many do) how much of those costs do they bear? Or are those costs completely paid by outside groups? And if so, who?</p>
<p>As to these first two questions, let me just remind you that the US Congress —to take another example of a legislative body similar in structure of General Conference— has detailed reporting rules about gifts and financial benefits given to elected officials. My wife, as an official in the State of Texas, has similar reporting standards which apply to her.</p>
<p>There is NO required reporting for General Conference delegates, even though there is evidence going back a decade that points to corruption in this area. (<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2008/04/28/the-cell-phone-debacle-and-what-it-should-tell-us/">This is a blog from 2008</a>)</p>
<p><em>Friends, it’s a bad day when you realize that CONGRESS has better ethical standards on these issues than does your denomination.</em></p>
<p>Finally, the biggest unaddressed issue…The alleged dramatic membership growth of the African Church.</p>
<p><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2012/04/29/questions-for-general-conference-delegates-about-the-global-church/">I first wrote about these issues</a> in 2011 and 2012.</p>
<p><strong>When, in God’s name, are we finally going to be honest about the absolute lack of accountability over the church membership numbers in the African Church?!!!</strong></p>
<p><strong>It has been clear for more than a decade that the reported membership number (the number used to apportion delegates) is in some cases simply made up, grossly inflated, and that no one can actually verify or document what the real number is.</strong></p>
<p><strong>The LACK administrative accountability of the African Church to the entire UMC smacks of a paternalism and a racism of low expectations.</strong></p>
<p><strong>And it has real world implications for our denomination.</strong></p>
<p>You may argue that the American Church, at times, also inflates its numbers.<br>
But! The American Church has a FINANCIAL INCENTIVE (apportionment payments) to keep generally good membership numbers.</p>
<p>Therefore, without that financial incentive, and because the WCA desires the African Church’s membership number to be large and growing, we as a denomination have FAILED to truly ask the tough questions.</p>
<p>I will concede the theory that the African Church *is* growing…at some level….</p>
<p>But everyone else must concede that NO ONE knows or can produce documentation to support the number that is claimed. That is a FACT.</p>
<p>This last point has huge implications for our denomination, and is a major part of why we are in the mess we are in now.</p>
<p>Again, getting to the truth on these issues may or may not change anything about the future of the United Methodist brand. In fact, as my friend noted, it’s likely just more evidence of how broken, and possibly corrupt, the current system is.</p>
<p>And, there is a deep colonialism and paternalism that runs throughout our entire history, that got us into this mess in the first place. The American Church is most definitely paying for its past colonial efforts. But some are exploiting that colonialism too.</p>
<p>We know this right now, without any equivocation: <span style="text-decoration:underline;">The same rules don’t apply between Africans and Americans branches of United Methodism</span>.</p>
<p>And we look the other way, to either avoid the charge of racism, because we don’t like conflict, or because the current situation benefits us. Meanwhile, we insist on the “accountability” for the American Church.</p>
<p>And I know this…</p>
<p>This is the HEIGHT of hypocrisy.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793062
2019-03-13T09:42:32-05:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
Our Sick Culture of Competition
<p>Before we roast these college cheating scandal parents on the scapegoat-altar of our media culture…<br>
Before we throw too many self-righteous stones…<br>
And even before we get too high and mighty about the privileged and the wealthy and how they get special treatment (which is all true, of course)…<br>
We must turn a harsh light on our culture as a whole. We must acknowledge that our society has created a deeply sick culture of competition for our children, especially among the children of the upper-middle-class and the wealthy.</p>
<p>This scandal didn’t fall out of the sky. These parents didn’t develop this attitude about competition all by themselves. They soaked up the sick culture of competition all around them, and they pushed that culture to its logical extremes. You can roast them on the altar of self-righteous scapegoating, if you want. But just realize that the problem is far deeper than forty parents and a mastermind. Their actions are the twisted, but somewhat predictable, result of this sick culture of competition.</p>
<p>Somebody asked me yesterday if i thought these parents are now embarrassed and ashamed.</p>
<p>I told them, quite the opposite. I believe, without any doubt, that some of them are simply angry that they got caught and would do it all again. Far from being remorseful, they live deep inside a world view that “everybody cheats,” and that “any parent” in their position —with their finances and privilege — would have done exactly what they did.</p>
<p>This is the “dog-eat-dog” and “winner take all” attitude I see among far too many parents today.</p>
<p>This sick culture of competition, without question, is predominantly a disease of wealth and privilege. It’s a disease that runs rampant among those who already have a lot of social, economic and educational capital.</p>
<p>Said another way, it’s a disease of those born on third base.</p>
<p>By the way, lest you assume I’m being all judgey here, I put *myself* and our family in this category. And many, but certainly not all, of you reading this will be too.</p>
<p>Our daughter attended what is arguably one of the premier public high schools in the nation. There are a bunch of similar schools here in North Texas. She grew up with kids who went to these schools, or the bevy of elite private schools that have popped up alongside of them. The heart of this world is in North Dallas, and our northern suburbs…places of extraordinary social, economic, and educational capital.</p>
<p>We saw this world first-hand, as we sought to raise our child in this environment. Our first stunning insight about this culture was that some parents didn’t see the public schools as “good enough.” Keep in mind, these are, by all measure, *exceptional* public schools.</p>
<p>But, apparently, the weren’t good enough for some parents. They enrolled their children in elite private schools instead. Mind boggling to us, but there you go.</p>
<p>My first clear personal memory of the sick culture of competition came at “kindergarten round-up” That’s the meeting where you meet you child’s kindergarten teacher and principal.</p>
<p>As the meeting began, the literal first words that the principal said were, “Welcome, we are so glad your child is here…and we promise that they will be more than ready for the standardized tests in the third grade…”</p>
<p>We thought, “Wait….THAT’S the first thing you want to tell us? What about recess or play time? What about learning our ABCs?”</p>
<p>It was a telling and revealing moment, and it did not indicate any flaw in that specific principal. It was the CULTURE. It was the driven, sick culture of competition that led her to lead with a worry about competition and achievement to a room full of five-year-old’s parents.</p>
<p>All throughout Maria’s growing up, we saw parents enrolling their children in scads of “activities,” not because they thought they would help their children be more well-rounded, but because they would look good on a college application.</p>
<p>Maria moved up through that elite system…elementary school, junior high, and high school. And our general attitude was: <em>“Our child was born on third base…she’s almost certain to go to college…and from there she will be launched into society in a way that many other children never experience…”</em></p>
<p>We didn’t worry too much about *which* college, and we knew that her high school was so incredibly super-competitive that she might not make the “top ten percent” that would guarantee her admission to UT or A&M.</p>
<p>Sure enough, she had amazing grades. She had a 94-something overall GPA in high school.</p>
<p>But! As we expected, in that rarified atmosphere a 94-plus GPA was NOT high enough to qualify her for the top ten percent.</p>
<p>Yes, read that over that last sentence another time…</p>
<p>That school is SO super-competitive that a 94 did not get you in the top ten percent. I tell this not out of bitterness, but out of a desire to illustrate the nut of the problem, and that which tends to create this rarified, sick culture of competition.</p>
<p>Instead of taking a truly impressive GPA such as that, and being happy that your child will almost DEFINITELY go to college somewhere, far too many parents push even MORE.</p>
<p>They are *not* satisfied that their children will “launch” well, and land well, at some truly fine American university. That’s not enough in the sick culture of competition.</p>
<p>Instead, they hire private tutors and private coaches to help not only with schoolwork, but also with college admissions themselves. They push those aforementioned “extracurricular activities.”</p>
<p>I am pretty confident that some parents even push their kids to attend a church youth group or campus ministry…not because they are concerned about their child’s spiritual life, but because they believe it will look good on a college application.</p>
<p>It’s from this hyperdriven culture soup that the sick culture of competition grows. And like the frog in the pot, those who live inside of it gradually assume that “every parent does this…”</p>
<p>Which is not true, of course. But IS true in that rarified atmosphere.</p>
<p>We haven’t even talked about the affects of all this on the children and parents of the poor and middle class. They look at scandals like this, and I assure you they are NOT surprised. It reaffirms the belief that the game is fixed, that the playing field is not level, and that we do NOT live in a “meritocracy.”</p>
<p>Which is all horribly true, of course. Scandals like this just rip that bandaid off, and expose the privilege that those among the upper-middle-class and wealthy still have today.</p>
<p>And what is the actually POINT of all of this sick competitive culture, anyway?<br>
Does anybody ever stop to ask that question?</p>
<p>I mean, it can’t be to launch healthy kids. It can’t be to insure that your kid does well in college. Because, if you cheat to get there, then what? What do they do on that first day when Mom and Dad aren’t around any more?</p>
<p>This is the logical conclusion that apparently far too few parents think about.</p>
<p>Because, eventually, Mom and Dad *won’t* be there to clean up every mess. These kids are actually LESS ready for college that previous generations….because they haven’t learned to fail…they haven’t learned to experiment and dream. They have been regimented and scheduled during each and every waking hour of their lives.</p>
<p>They don’t know how to THINK for themselves. They don’t know how to REASON.</p>
<p>I remember hearing that Dr. Gerald Turner, the President of SMU, has talked about this very thing over the past few years. He says that these current students applying for school have some of the most impressive resumes ever, and yet on average they are “least college ready” the university has ever seen.</p>
<p>All colleges know that, in case you were not aware. This is a system-wide crisis in higher education. Universities know that this sick culture of competition is NOT really preparing kids to excel in college…it’s just trying to get them in the door.</p>
<p>Dr. Turner told us once that the old expression “Helicopter Parent” no longer applies. Now, the joke is, they are “Lawnmower Parents.”</p>
<p>They operate that close to the ground.</p>
<p>He said a generation ago it was common to have parents call the administration offices to complain about their child’s treatment. Now —perhaps more than once— the first call is not from a *parent,* but from the family’s *lawyer.*</p>
<p>Again, to what end?</p>
<p>What do these parents —what do we— believe the actually END GAME is, here? If you are protecting, coddling, and sheltering your child all along their educational path, how do you expect them to actually grow?</p>
<p>Think about, as one horrible example, these kids in the cheating scandal. It seems to me they awoke to two horrible lessons this morning:</p>
<p>1. “I never deserved to be at this college.”<br>
2. “My parents never believed in my ability.”</p>
<p>How is THAT good for a child?!!</p>
<p>Life is full of disappointment and failure. Or, it should be. That’s how we grow. We learn the most when we have to resist against obstacles and overcome them. In the case of college, the best students learn to think for themselves, reason for themselves, and formulate their own opinions.</p>
<p>And if parents are constantly moving ALL obstacles out of the way…and making the path super straight and easy….the result will not be super-successful children, but culturally diseased ones. Children unable to really operate in the real world.</p>
<p>And how is THAT a good goal?</p>
<p>I keep going back to what Jesus might say about all of this…</p>
<p><em>“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life,”</em> Jesus says, <em>“what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes?”</em></p>
<p><em>“If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?”</em></p>
<p>You see, I believe that one of the tragic underbellies of all of this is that it indicates a fundamental lack of faith in God’s goodness, grace and mercy.</p>
<p>We create our sick culture of competition because we fail to believe that God will provide all we need. We believe we must do it all ourselves, and that if don’t, nobody else will. And we believe everybody ELSE believes this way too. WE believe the world is a harsh, dog-eat-dog place. We believe the unless our children are a the “top of the pile” their lives will be somehow ruins.</p>
<p>And while we may criticize the parents who cheated in this scandal, we should probably take a look at the logs in our OWN eyes…the logs of fear, competition, and mistrust that drive far too many of us every day, even if we never overtly “cheat.”</p>
<p>Many of you reading this have children who were born on third base. But you can’t see that, because you’re always so worried about the future, and what’s in front of you. You never stop to look around and see just how good you already have it.</p>
<p>So, take a breath. Consider the lilies.</p>
<p>Trust that your child will have a wonderful life. Don’t miss their life *now* by over-scheduling the few precious years you have left with them.</p>
<p>Let them fail. Let them learn how to deal with disappointments. That’s how they’ll get strong. Remind them that their own hard work will help them achieve their dreams, and that social status and achievement is ephermal and unstable.</p>
<p>And, above all, don’t worry so much.</p>
<p>Your kid will be fine.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793063
2019-03-02T13:41:16-06:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
“We Know What We Know” About Methodism
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<p><em><strong>“Demography is Destiny”</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>— Auguste Comte</strong></em></p>
<p>Thursday afternoon a United Methodist clergy colleague called me while I was driving to church. I spend a lot of time in the car these days. We talked for about 25 minutes.</p>
<p>He was pretty amped up. He told me he’d stayed up until 3 am the night before, crunching numbers on General Conference delegates and the recent votes on the “One Church” plan. He’d divided them up, and sorted them into various “camps,” and was tying to make sense as to why the vote failed, when just about everyone he personally knew supported it.</p>
<p>It was a lot to keep track of, as he hurriedly tossed out numbers and percentages while I tried to keep my eyes on the road.</p>
<p>But at the end of his calculations, he had concluded: <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Change on LGBTQ issue can never happen at General Conference</span>.</p>
<p>I agreed with him.</p>
<p>Then, he asked “<em>So, why are we not talking about this more?”</em></p>
<p>I think the simple answers this are:</p>
<p><em>— Some of us HAVE been talking about this for a long time.</em><br>
<em>— Others, for all sorts of reasons, have not been paying attention.</em></p>
<p>But, now?</p>
<p>Yes….before we move on to anything new, we must make sure everybody understands these facts. Like my friend, there are a lot of folks waking up to this same realization.</p>
<p>My fear is this: The group of folks who’ve <em>been</em> talking about this a long time, and also the group that is just now finding out about this, are very small even when put together.</p>
<p>Together, they are all “Metho-nerds.” Folks who pay attention to church polity, or who write blogs for the past decade</p>
<p>(Raises hand…)</p>
<p>They are all of the dedicated and faithful Reconciling UMs, Queer UMs, and their many allies.</p>
<p>And they are *also* a growing number of moderates, who are —as I said, for various reasons— only *now* really paying attention.</p>
<p>For years, people routinely either disbelieved what some of us have been fearing about the demographics of the General Conference vote. Others have believed that even with a stacked demographic deck, change might still be possible, if we could only change enough “hearts and minds.”</p>
<p>I want you to hear this: I am not being critical of that response or belief. It has absolutely been where my heart, soul, and spirit has been for years. It has been my sincere belief and the way I have led in ministry. I am here to say, it’s clear I was wrong. It’s clear we ALL were wrong.</p>
<p><em>And as a faith-belief, as part of my theology, I absolutely believe in theory of changing hearts and minds. Or, said, better, that God changes hearts, through our witness and ministry. And! I have SEEN it genuinely happen. Nothing has changed that belief.</em></p>
<p>Too many times, I have heard unbelievable and truly moving faith-stories of straight people, whose hearts have changed on the the issue of LGBTQ inclusion. Some of them frame it in spiritual terms as repentance, which it absolutely is.</p>
<p>Many people in the American Church have changed their hearts and minds on these issues over the past twenty years. It has been a beautiful thing to see.</p>
<p>Friends, <strong>NONE</strong> of these efforts were wasted, foolish, or misguided. I want to be very clear in this. (Up to, and including, this valiant three-year effort of “The Way Forward.”)</p>
<p>For some, it has been a painful journey of decades. No more so than for our LGBTQ siblings.</p>
<p>But strategies and expectations must now change. Because now, <em>“we know what we know”</em> about the actual electoral demographics of General Conference.</p>
<p>For years we have said “Stop the harm,” and by this we have meant “Change the polity, so that the harm will stop.”</p>
<p>Now, “Stop the harm” must now mean: “Abandon the belief that change will happen through General Conference.”</p>
<p>So, I want to unpack those assertions, and also the wonkish numbers that my friend was throwing at me. Because I have a very strong sense that there are a lot of people who are in the same boat that he was.</p>
<p>BTW: In what follows, I fear I am violating my own core value of talking about “people” before “structure.” But for decades, too much of the conversation has been too focused on structure. A part of the way forward now will be to see how future strategies cannot just be about structural change, via General Conference.<br>
With that caveat…</p>
<p>More than in any other human endeavor, ELECTIONS are about demographics. Electoral demography really is destiny. You can make a theological argument that General Conference is, in some way, “holy” (Hard, but you could…). But the MECHANISM of change is a political and electoral one.</p>
<p>The clear and unalterable fact is that no one should credibly believe that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church will ever change on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion.</p>
<p>The cause has been “right and good.”<br>
The efforts have not been lacking.<br>
It’s plain and simple math and demography.</p>
<p>Here’s a breakdown of General Conference delegates over time:</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/generalconferencedelegates-new.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></p>
<p>You can see the clear trends.</p>
<p>So, let’s do some projections….using the 2016 delegate counts.</p>
<p>Let’s build a very crude and wonkish Nate Silver-like model, and pretend we had the same 2016 delegates at this recent special called General Conference. (Which, mostly, we did…)</p>
<p><em>Let’s make assumptions in our model that most highly FAVOR the One Church plan….</em></p>
<p><em>Let’s assume that 70% of US-based GC delegates supported “One Church Plan.” (probably higher than reality)</em><br>
<em>Let’s assume that 20% of International-based GC delegates do. (Maybe, maybe not, lower than reality…)</em></p>
<p>Therefore, these are likely a BEST case scenario for the “One Church Plan.”</p>
<p>When you re-sort delegates based on the actual 2016 delegate numbers, plus those assumptions, the breakdown is:</p>
<p><strong>One Church: 49%</strong><br>
<strong>Traditional: 52%</strong></p>
<p>Now, as you know, the actual vote was a little *worse* than this.</p>
<p>More like:</p>
<p><strong>One Church: 45%</strong><br>
(the high water mark for it, during the vote to bring it as a “minority report”)<br>
<strong>Traditional: 53%</strong><br>
(The actual vote for final passage of this item)</p>
<p>It’s not surprising that the actual vote was a little worse than our crude model, because our crude model is generous toward the “One Church Plan.”</p>
<p>Now, let’s pause for a moment, and consider how some people (including me) could have believed (or at least hoped) that the “One Chuch” model had a chance.</p>
<p>Given that modeling we have just done, it was reasonable to assume “Maybe some votes will flip, if we work hard at that…”</p>
<p>Also, given the overwhelming support for “change” among US Delegates, it was easy to believe that One Church was more popular than it actually was among the voting delegates.</p>
<p>That’s where my friend was, when he called me the other day.</p>
<p>Literally everybody he knew supposed “One Church.” <em>How could it fail?</em></p>
<p>What the actual vote tells us is that no real substantial “vote flipping” happened this time. Therefore, what had to happen for it to pass…just didn’t.</p>
<p>And how does it look going forward?</p>
<p>If you look at the announced 2020 delegate count (based on allotments already announced) the basic assumptions I’ve used yield this result:</p>
<p><strong>One Church: 48%</strong><br>
<strong>Traditional: 53%</strong></p>
<p>Which is, again, using best case scenarios for One Church…which means the actual vote will likely be <strong>wider</strong>.</p>
<p>BTW, the WCA knows this too. In an incredibly pompous and tone-deaf Tweet (given the timing) John Lomperis tweeted this…</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/img_4291-2.jpg?w=169&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="169" /></p>
<p>I will say this, and I don’t care who hears me: <strong>John Lomperis is an asshole.</strong></p>
<p>So, <strong><em>“We know what we know…”</em></strong></p>
<p>We know that after three years of incredibly valiant effort, sweat, blood, toil…</p>
<p>After decades before THAT of trying various structural fixes, and appeals to conscience….</p>
<p>After hoping that votes would “flip”…</p>
<p>We clearly know that almost *no* votes did. And we know that this is likely to continue into the future.</p>
<p>I said at the start, for some of you, this is old news. Reconciling Methodists have labored for decades under either full, or proportional, hope about all of this.</p>
<p>And as we’ve noted, for the past three years a very large, well organized group and faithful group of Moderates have come alongside us and also worked very hard to flip votes.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>As for my own part, I deeply apologize to all Queer and LGBTQ persons, for any harm that has come from me during these years. Please understand that up to, and including last week, there was sincerely a place in my heart that believed change was possible through the General Conference. (At least some part of my heart)</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>I was mistaken, as were we all. Whatever anyone else does, or does not say, to apologize for their own over-optimism, I apologize for mine.</em></strong></p>
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<p><em>We know that…Good ideas…faithful ideas….Biblical and Methodist values…are not enough to overcome demographic destiny in <span style="text-decoration:underline;">that</span> room.</em></p>
<p>I have been a part of a trend like this once before in my life in actual political elections. No, not the recent Presidential election. It was here in Dallas County, during the period of 2004-2006.</p>
<p>Prior to 2004, Dallas County had been considered a reliably “Red” and Republican County. For perhaps a decade Democrats did not field candidates in any local elections, that how dominant the Republican Party was around here.</p>
<p>But my wife was a pretty savvy political watcher. What she, and many of us, saw was an emerging trend. The basic facts were that the the “straight ticket” Democratic vote was trending upward, toward 50% in every election. Conversely, the Republican vote was inching downward every election cycle too.</p>
<p>So, sensing that a “flip” was coming, she decided to run for State District Judge in 2004, as a Democrat.</p>
<p>Friends, during that election cycle, everyone we knew thought she was crazy. It was unheard of.</p>
<p>People told her that it was career suicide to do it. Some were actually incensed that she would dare waste the time of a sitting incumbent judge when there was no hope of a win.</p>
<p>But she DID win.</p>
<p>And afterward, there were two reactions:</p>
<p>— Some thought it a fluke that would “flip back” next time. (“Her name is Hispanic,” they said…)<br>
— Others thought it was a miracle.</p>
<p>It was neither.</p>
<p>It was watching —and making sure to catch the front edge of— a demographic wave that was coming. And you can only make sense of it in retrospect and hindsight.</p>
<p>BTW: Dallas County now votes almost 60% Democratic, and people are losing the memory of just how remarkable that “flip” was…it now simply looks like it was inevitable…which everybody knows now, but almost nobody knew in 2004…</p>
<p><strong><em>The recent vote at General Conference was not a fluke.</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>It was not a miracle either. (I’m using “miracle” sarcastically)</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>It was not the result of a more “Biblical” or more “Orthodox” theology.</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>It was not an indicator of where American Methodist stand on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion.</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>It was the result of a demographic shift that’s been under way for many years.</em></strong></p>
<p>None of that matters, of course, to actual gay people, who are hurt, shocked, or simply worn out and unsurprised by yet another rejection.</p>
<p>None of this matters to the general public, who are more confused than ever that the “live and let live” Methodists they thought they knew “suddenly” look like the Southern Baptists of twenty years ago.</p>
<p><strong>This vote stains us all.</strong></p>
<p>It stains the word “Methodist” with a bigotry that those of us who choose to remain must now confront and reject.</p>
<p>I’ve said for years the the “incompatible” language has always placed us one the same side of the theological spectrum with “Fred Phelps” and his bigoted family church. People used to HATE that analysis.</p>
<p>But it’s true that we are on that “side” of a continuum. And, friends, our theology literally just moved TOWARD Fred Phelps, not away from him this week.</p>
<p><em>We are all stained by this, and it is a great sin.</em></p>
<p>So, if we can’t assume change at General Conference, what can we assume?</p>
<p><em>We should assume that the WCA will bring forward a constitutional version of their Traditional Plan in 2020.</em><br>
<em>We should assume that it will pass.</em><br>
<em>We should assume that everyone else —Moderates and Progressives— are today feverishly looking at ALL options for their future.</em><br>
<em>We should assume all sorts of contingencies, most of which will not happen.</em><br>
<em>We should assume a confusing time of many competing and varying options for our future.</em><br>
<em>We should assume that this group of American Methodists could be as large as 65-70% of all American Methodists.</em><br>
<em>We should assume that some will publicly leave, or separate from the use of the words “United Methodist.”</em><br>
<em>We should assume that some Progressives will no longer even be tolerant of “live and let live” and believe the only full inclusion can fix this horrible “stain.”</em></p>
<p><em>We should assume that, because of all these competing previous assumptions, this process will be messy.</em></p>
<p>Above all, the point of this post is: We should assume that these options cannot, and will not, include legislative change at General Conference.</p>
<p>Everyone needs to get on this last train FIRST, so that we can work through all the other messy assumptions prior…</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">The very first rule that Methodists ever had for themselves was <em>“Do No Harm.”</em></span></p>
<p>For years, we Reconciling Methodists have suggested that the vote of the General Conference causes harm. Today, I am pushing that idea further, and beating the drum extra loudly, so all are sure to hear:</p>
<p>To suggest a legislative remedy, through the General Conference…THAT is now the harmful idea, given what we know.</p>
<p>If we are Methodists, then, we are always called to stop harm.</p>
<p>What are all the future options for us?</p>
<p>I’d simply implore that we make space for ideas…for questions….with the bedrock faith that:</p>
<p><strong><em>Something new is about to be born.</em></strong></p>
<p>For now, don’t shoot down, or edit any idea, or anyone who wants to join the conversation. There will be a “sorting” that takes place, for sure.</p>
<p>Increasingly, we must listen <strong>TO</strong> queer people themselves, and not lecture <strong>AT</strong> them. We must increasingly put PEOPLE first, not structure.</p>
<p><em>The only thing I really know is that our best solutions will be person-centered solutions.</em></p>
<p>I also pray that this very process also not cause harm either. I hope and pray that as we enter this messy season, we are all mindful of causing additional harm in the process itself.</p>
<p>“We are where we are,” and “It is what it is..”</p>
<p>We know now that everything has changed and is never going back.</p>
<p>Now the only question is: <em>What new will God birth among us?</em></p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793064
2019-02-26T22:14:13-06:00
2020-08-04T16:12:43-05:00
Methodism: Post-Mortem and Pre-Vitae
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<p>This week’s General Conference <a class="_58cn" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/gc2019?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz" aria-label="hashtag">#</span><span class="_58cm">gc2019</span></span></a> is the result of a slow-moving train wreck that’s been happening in the United Methodist Church for some thirty years. Most centered in my mind today are all those who are experiencing pain, most especially of all, my dear Methodist LGBTQ friends across the denomination, and all of those who are watching from the outside.</p>
<p>We must talk about people FIRST, before polity or structure or building. We must always do that. People are more important that structure and polity. (I“ve tried to say that time and time again…)</p>
<p>And so, let me do that. Let me start by talking to people.</p>
<p>Dear LGBTQ Friends:</p>
<p>Mark Miller’s great song is as right today as it was the day he wrote it:</p>
<p><strong><em>“No matter what the church says,</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>Decisions, pronouncements on you,</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>You are a child</em></strong><br>
<strong><em>You are a child of God.”</em></strong></p>
<p>That this the Biblical, Gospel truth for all of you, dear LGBTQ friends. That is the word of the One True and Holy God. You are God’s GOOD child, and God loves you just as you are.</p>
<p>Please hear that word, more than anything else that is said today. Today, the United Methodist Church has continued great sin against you, as it has for the past 40 years. Today, that great sin has gotten more strident, dangerous and harmful.</p>
<p>Even as this Traditional Plan is very likely to be ruled unconstitutional, it passed the body….which was a shock to many. (Not me…I didn’t EXPECT it, but I don’t find it shocking either…).</p>
<p>Here’s what I can tell you, Dear Queer Friends… with the passage and affirmation of this traditional plan, the “United Methodist Church” is NOT a church that I recognize. With all of our Progressive United Methodist friends, and with even many of our Moderate friends, we say:</p>
<p><em>“We no longer recognize this church and what it has become.”</em></p>
<p>All I know to say is this…Something new will be born out of the ashes of this day. I am sure of that. Exactly what is yet to be determined, or perhaps even imagined.</p>
<p>But simply know that you are a child of God and that many are standing with you. It is time to give up believing that structures of the General Conference will give justice and compassion to LGBTQ persons.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/52788169_10218592283859883_1722588052439695360_o-e1551241022341.jpg?w=300&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="52788169_10218592283859883_1722588052439695360_o.jpg" height="300" width="300" />To Progressives and Moderates Friends:</p>
<p>Or, to anyone who is bewildered and saying “What happened to my church?”</p>
<p>I’ll repeat my first sentence…this is a slow-moving train wreck that I have watched building for twenty years.</p>
<p>I know that today is a horrible gut-punch to so many of you. I know that your understandings of your denomination is has been permanently altered.</p>
<p>If I may….as some of our LGBTQ siblings tell us: “This is how we feel EVERY day…”</p>
<p>So, just know —dear straight allies, moderates and progressives— that this horrible feeling of having your Church taken from you, of not knowing whether or how you belong….That feeling of abandonment? Your LGBTQ siblings and their long-term allies can help lead you through this forest.</p>
<p>We’ve been hacking our way through this underbrush for decades. We can see that there are trails, if you look hard.</p>
<p>But! It is deeply important to realize that this great institutional sin cannot be simply be put at the feet of THIS General Conference or THESE particular delegates.</p>
<p>Quite the contrary. The delegates and the Bishops of this General Conference were engaged in ways that they have never before been. There has never been a three-year period where so much energy and commitment was expended toward creating an inclusive church.</p>
<p>They (some of them) put their own lives and reputations on the lines. They (some of them) boldly stated their desire for the inclusion of all people. The worked HARD. And while their grief is different than the grief of LGBTQ persons, their grief is also real and I acknowledge and name their pain too.</p>
<p>This decision did NOT fall out of the sky over night. As I said, this has been a slow moving train wreck.</p>
<p>So having addressed people *first* let me now remind you of the failed strategies that led us to this place. Strategies that go back years and decades now. You can’t know where you need to go if you don’t understand where you’ve been.</p>
<p>(As I go through this essay, the links will lead to very old entries from this blog where I unpack some of the issues of the day…)</p>
<p>The first General Conference where I felt the kind of punch-to-the-gut many are feeling today was 2008. That year, there was a proposal to create a US Central Conference, which would mirror the Central Conferences in other parts of the world.</p>
<p>The second strategy was to change the Constitution of the UMC.</p>
<p>Those were the primary “strategies” in 2008.</p>
<p>They didn’t work.</p>
<p>Had moderates been paying attention —had they truly played out the future of the denomination, leading up to this day today— they probably would have pushed hard for that change that year.</p>
<p>In retrospect now, IMHO that was probably the last year we had a viable chance of making a *structural* change, to the global church. (That can only be seen in retrospect…)</p>
<p>BTW, that conference also first opened the eyes to the strategy of the Conservative American Methodists to *leverage* and *use* the African vote for their own purposes. Some called it the “<a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2008/04/28/the-cell-phone-debacle-and-what-it-should-tell-us/">cell phone debacle</a>.” The Good News caucus distributed hundreds of cell phones to African delegates, so they could tell them how to vote.</p>
<p>We (read: Methodists across the Connection) should have been paying attention to all of the things that happened at this General Conference. We did not. Too many people were in denial. (Including me)</p>
<p>In 2012, the main drum people banged was “restructuring.” Many started questioning the legitimacy of the African Church’s numbers.</p>
<p>TO THIS DAY, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2012/04/29/questions-for-general-conference-delegates-about-the-global-church/">many of us are convinced that the membership numbers of the African Church are dramatically overblown</a>. (Every church leader I’ve ever talked to about this privately agrees). That affects the number of delegates in the room. It’s what allows the Conservative American Methodists to control things.</p>
<p>The big plan that year was “Plan UMC.” Actually, there were big debates about competing structural plans. Again, not a fix to directly address the issues of LGBTQ persons. Instead, United Methodists argued, again, about “structure.”</p>
<p>It didn’t work.</p>
<p>In a crushing defeat that will likely mirror *this* year, Plan UMC was ruled unconstitutional as the General Conference closed.</p>
<p><a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2015/06/27/the-journeys-never-over/">Same Sex Marriage became legal</a> the next year (2015), and the chasm between our unchanging polity and the American Mission Field broke open even wider.</p>
<p>Then, on to 2016. Because Same Sex Marriage had already been legal for year, some argued that <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/2016/04/13/its-time-past-time-really/">time had already run out then</a>, and change was needed to ‘restart the clock.”</p>
<p>The big ideas were all over the place. Some were still focused on fixing Plan UMC. Others were hoping for a “live and let live” compromise that appeared to be similar to The Way Forward we’ve just discussed for the past three years.</p>
<p>And then, on one fateful night, word broke of a private meeting. An important meeting between representatives from many “sides” of the debate. The word was: We were going to split.</p>
<p>It was over.</p>
<p>Adam Hamilton got up the next day, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXWu2WILmiI">and even told a group of young people</a>, “Yep….we are going to split, and the Bishops will announce this later today…”<br>
(Link below)</p>
<p>Only problem is, they didn’t announce.</p>
<p>Instead of announcing the split, Bishop Ough implored the General Conference to keep working. They said the Bishops couldn’t agree on a split.</p>
<p>So, they did. The General Conference kept worked by turning right back to the Bishops and saying, “OK, Bishops, you want us to work…we are telling you we are broken, and you must lead us.”</p>
<p>And THAT is how “The Way Forward” was birthed.</p>
<p>Many of us had legitimate and unanswered questions about The Way Forward from the day it was announced:<br>
— How could some new plan pass, even with three years of study, with the same voting factions as before?<br>
— If we didn’t have the votes for change in 2016, how will we in 2019?</p>
<p>Repeatedly, we were asked to “trust the process,” and not cause problems. We were encouraged to be patient and let the process work.</p>
<p>So., we mostly did that.</p>
<p>But that process is now over.</p>
<p>While noble, and while many many people worked very hard for that idea, it clearly failed in spectacular fashion. I’m grateful that so many tried so hard. I too thought they had a chance.</p>
<p>But Conservatives controlled conversation ahead of the Conference.<br>
They controlled debate order.<br>
They controlled the votes, and they ultimately passed The Traditional Plan (Which will definitely be ruled unconstitutional…)</p>
<p>It is clear that *no* votes “shifted” during those three years of study. It is clear that the Conservative block controlled every vote by a 55 percent margin.</p>
<p>Most importantly, this hard truth: It is unlikely that this will ever change. Barring the Conservatives simply leaving, this will be the case going forward for *all future General Conferences.*</p>
<p>And why WOULD they leave now? That seems unlikely, given this vote.</p>
<p>So, this is a description of the slow motion train wreck. It didn’t happen this year. It built over decades. Time and time again, some of us tried to raise the alarm that everyone needed to pay attention to this. But that never happened.</p>
<p>Maybe it had happen this way for everybody to fully see and understand it.</p>
<p>I don’t know. That’s a horrible thing to say, really.</p>
<p>But maybe the pain of things has to get THAT bad before we make changes in our lives.</p>
<p>We no know this, with no possible way to debate it’s truth:</p>
<p>Barring some unforeseen exodus of Conservatives (and, again, why would they?) they will control the votes of any future LGBTQ-related issues in any conceivable future General Conference going forward.</p>
<p>Therefore, for Progressive and Moderate United Methodists, it is time for something new. It is time for something new and inclusive to be born.</p>
<p>And that conversation must happen much more quickly than no doubt anyone believes it can or should. Everyone is in pain right now. Nobody WANTS that conversation.</p>
<p>Heck, the One Church Plan folks had buttons that said “No Scism.”</p>
<p>So, given that clearly stated value, I get that it’s hard to even fathom what I saying.</p>
<p>But that 55 percent number? On those votes?</p>
<p>That’s a datapoint that is not gonna change. If it didn’t change with all the amazingly hard sweat and blood that was poured into the fight this time? It’s no gonna change in 2020 either.</p>
<p>So, it’s time. All those who fought for the One Church Plan were just, kind, and compassionate. The goal was good. The strategy was good. But they, and we all, were mistaken about the playing field. It will not be enough going forward.</p>
<p>It’s time to envision what a divided future will look like, not only so that we may stop the harm, but also so that we may create a positive and mission driven Church of the future. I don’t know how quickly this happens. But I hope and pray it happens publicly and openly…soon.</p>
<p>I’m not smart enough to know all the who’s, what’s, where’s, and how’s of what comes next. I have not been involved in ANY planning or conversations.</p>
<p>I simply know that, de facto, something knew MUST and WILL come next. The majority of American United Methodists…likely most of the ones you know and love…cannot not abide a world where a constitutional traditional plan could pass in 2020. That’s not the church they know.</p>
<p>The pain of this day is great.<br>
What it teaches us is that there must be something new.<br>
There MUST be.<br>
There is no other way through but through.</p>
<p>God will lead the way, and it time to listen for the signs that God doing something new.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793065
2019-02-21T09:37:08-06:00
2019-06-15T17:03:26-05:00
Straightsplaining in the UMC
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<p>For three years, the United Methodist Church has been engaged in a denomination-wide process of “straightsplaining” to the LGBTQ community.</p>
<p>Actually, you could make a strong case that we’ve been straightsplaining since 1972.</p>
<p>What is “straightsplaining?”</p>
<p>Go ahead, Google it.</p>
<p>It’s exactly what you think it is. It’s the rainbow flag community’s version of “Mansplaining.”</p>
<p>“Straightsplaining” is straight CIS-gendered people “explaining” what is best *for* gay people, *to* gay people, but without actually talking *with* gay people.</p>
<p>With a very few and notable exceptions, this is what the United Methodist Church has been doing for three solid years. And it’s time for that to stop.</p>
<p>Need proof that most of the talking going on is “straightsplaining?”</p>
<p>“Methodists in New Directions” are actually hosting a forum titled, “What, You Haven’t Talked to a Queer Delegate Yet?”<br>
Their posts then includes: <a class="_58cn" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/withnotabout?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz" aria-label="hashtag">#</span><span class="_58cm">withnotabout</span></span></a></p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes…to this hashtag… “With, not about.”</p>
<p>After Tuesday — after whatever does or does not happen in St Louis— we need pastors, lay leaders, ordinary lay folk, and members of the hierarchy who will covenant to *stop* the straightsplaining.</p>
<p>Imagine, if you will, this kind of three-year conversation —the one we have just had in our denomination— happening about *women,* not gay people.</p>
<p>See? You can’t even do it. Because that would LITERALLY be mansplaining.</p>
<p>You can’t imagine it, because you know that women themselves, and the men and queer folk who love them, would rise up in unison and say “That’s sexist!”</p>
<p>What about African-Americans? Can you imagine a three-year conversation ABOUT the future of African-Americans in the United Methodist Church where, predominantly, the conversation was White people talking to White people?</p>
<p>Time…and time…and time again, I have witnessed the same thing over the years. I have witnesses straight, CIS gendered United Methodists talking about United Methodist *structure,* rather than LEADING WITH about their actual support, love, and care of and for actual gay people.</p>
<p>Time and time again, for three years, I have witnessed something like the following, from CIS gender United Methodists.</p>
<p>Question: “What do you believe about LGBTQ persons?”</p>
<p>Answer: “I believe we should all live together as one church.”</p>
<p>But, see, that’s not an answer to the asked-question. That’s like being asked “What do you think about African-Americans?” and answering, “You know, I’ve always loved mid-century modern architecture…”</p>
<p>It’s a non-sequitur.</p>
<p>Truth is, the entire *process* of these past three years was DESIGNED this way.</p>
<p>On the precipice of what some leaders believed to be a disaster at the 2016 General Conference, the process on “A Way Forward” was birthed. But that process, predominantly, has been concerned with STRUCTURE, not PEOPLE. No matter which of the four plans you advocate, they all provide a structural change to a people problem.</p>
<p>Gay and lesbian people are *not* an issue, and not a problem. They have NEVER been our problem. Our polity is.</p>
<p>No matter what happens next week in St. Louis, all United Methodists will still be left with a basic question:</p>
<p>How will we incarnate the love of Jesus for and with LGBTQ people? What specific things will we do? What will we say to make sure they understand they are truly welcome in our congregations, regardless of the St. Louis outcome?”</p>
<p>If you are frustrated by what I am saying, or if you are confused, perhaps analogies to other social movements will help.</p>
<p>It’s widely accepted today that racism stops when WHITE people stand up to racism, when they acknowledge it, instead of just saying “I have a black friend, and we get along just fine…”</p>
<p>I recently wrote about the situation with Virginia politicians and “blackface,” and I suggested that it could have ended quite differently for Northum if he’d just acknowledged how he’d changed over the years. If he’d said, “Yes, I did racists things in my past, but God has changed my heart, and I know now I was wrong.”</p>
<p>I’ve heard many pundits of color say that this would likely have made a HUGE difference in the way this situation would have played out.</p>
<p>We need folks in the UMC to do this. The Bishops, for example, put out a pretty decent letter addressed to the LGBTQ community, acknowledging the harm that has been done through this process. This was a very good step.</p>
<p>I do know individual delegates who have also done this. For years, I’ve told the story of my dear friend, Richard Hearne, and how beautiful and powerful his story of changing his heart on these issues. I won’t recount it here, but it’s a powerful example of the confessional change of heart that we need from straight people.</p>
<p>And after that, we need denominational leaders to say, “Here is how we will all live together now…now that we are in this new reality.”</p>
<p>This is different from saying “We should all live together.”</p>
<p>We need *specifics*</p>
<p>“Here is HOW we will live together…”</p>
<p>We have got to, got to, got to stop protecting institutions over people. We will lose *both* the institutions *and* the people, if we continue to do this.</p>
<p>Everything I have learned in past twenty years of ministry has led me to this inescapable truth of the previous two sentences.</p>
<p>By the way, it’s also in line with what Jesus said about how we should live.</p>
<p>Jesus said that we will lose the things we try the most to keep, and we keep the things (including our lives) that we are most willing to give up.</p>
<p>Jesus also told us to love “God, self, and neighbor.”<br>
Jesus never said to love “God, self, and buildings.”</p>
<p>Dear United Methodists, whatever happens this week: Lead from your personal convictions about actual gay people. I hope that means coming out in full support of LGBTQ persons in the life of the church.</p>
<p>And understand that straightsplaining is only ever possible from our incredibly “privileged” position. And that, like all privilege, it’s the failure to recognize it that causes us the most problems. My dear friend, Rev. <a class="profileLink" href="https://www.facebook.com/mikebaughman?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARBjV1ofBQfNpM3Cw1a7GHjS3T_8YKnqYJWDhq7KhftVOFPHgUR-fU5CN5RAhfwlNzETPTtm64cc_SBz&fref=mentions">Michael Baughman</a> said this better than I ever could, in a post yesterday:</p>
<p>“Those of us who are heterosexual and in places of authority in the United Methodist Church need to own privilege in saying that whatever happens next Wednesday, the church is going to be okay. Privilege allows heterosexual church leaders to retreat from the anxiety experienced by LGBTQ Methodists.”</p>
<p>Amen and amen. I am genuinely convicted by these words. I hope all straight preachers are.</p>
<p>I *get* that this is hard time in the life of the church.<br>
I *get* that the future of the denomination is at stake.</p>
<p>But I’m pretty sure that in midst of our massively overblown worries, Jesus would tell us, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than a building?”</p>
<p>Love people. Put people over institutional preservation, and it will never be easy, but you can never go wrong. (And you’ll sleep better at night too…)</p>
<p>So….what do I think is going to happen in St. Louis?</p>
<p>My strong hunch is: Nothing.</p>
<p>I’ve believed this from the first day that The Way Forward was announced. I was encouraged to give the process time. OK, we all have.</p>
<p>So, now that we’re on the brink of the called session, while I’m confident there is a *path* to change, it seems to me the most statistically *likely* result is four days of arguing and, once again, no change. (I have reasons for this belief which I will post in the comments section, so as not to make this any longer than it already is…) I basically put the likelihood of the *any* plan being adopted at about 20 percent.</p>
<p>But the day after General Conference, the one thing I know is clear is this: the time for anyone who claims to be supporter of LGBTQ persons to remain silent and only say “we should all live together” will be OVER AND GONE. The time for holding our breath will be OVER AND GONE.</p>
<p>It will be time EVERYONE, regardless of theology, to LIVE FROM THEIR CORE VALUES. Edwin Friedman, and systems theory, would say that until we can do that nothing can, or will, ever change.</p>
<p>Friedman reminds us that true leaders self-differentiate around their core values. They can love, serve, and respect those who see things differently than they do. But they alway state and live from those values, and they live with the consequences of living from those values.</p>
<p>Mike Baughman models this in his post of yesterday. He lists off the following bullet points about the post-General Conference world, and calls us to remember:</p>
<p>* God will still call LGBTQ persons to ordained ministry.</p>
<p>* Queer children of Methodist families will still need a church home that sees their sexuality as a gift from God.</p>
<p>* Gay people will still fall in love, desire to make a life-long commitment to one another and welcome God into their marriage. They will naturally want to be able to make those vows in the churches they have built, sustained, and grown up in. Some will just want to hold hands in church without worrying that it will create an “issue” for their pastor to deal with.</p>
<p>* Gay couples will still want their children baptized and spiritually formed in a church that doesn’t claim the baptized child’s parents’ love is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”</p>
<p>* LGBTQ persons will still die (alarmingly earlier than heterosexuals) and their families will need to know that the church accepts their family in death even if it didn’t in life. (Sadly this is *still* a problem in some United Methodist Churches).</p>
<p>* LGBTQ persons in the state of Texas can still be legally discriminated against in the workplace. They will look for places of sanctuary against discrimination.</p>
<p>* LGBTQ teens will still be the highest US demographic to attempt or commit suicide. The church will still be an accomplice to these deaths.</p>
<p>Amen and amen to all of these bullet points. I could not have written it any better.</p>
<p>So, specific prayers for all of us over the next week…</p>
<p>— Pray for all those General Conference delegates.<br>
— Pray for an end to straightsplaining.<br>
— Pray that people might *own* their core values, and live from those core values the best they can, regardless of the cost.<br>
— Pray that we place people above institutions.<br>
— Pray especially for LGBTQ persons, who for these past three years have again found themselves a topic of debate, rather than a partner in ministry.</p>
<p>Pray for a miracle.</p>
<p>“All means all.”</p>
<p>“It’s time.”</p>
<p>Way, way, way past time.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5793066
2019-02-11T12:15:49-06:00
2019-06-15T17:03:27-05:00
White Men and Yearbooks
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<p>The following is a list of pictures of me in my High School and College yearbooks from the 1980s, excluding the standard yearly posed picture…</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/52057105_10218852888617606_5611177933872824320_n-e1549909071197.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="52057105_10218852888617606_5611177933872824320_n.jpg" height="225" width="300" />— Picture of me at a Young Life meeting…<br>
— Picture of me at Key Club formal, with the other officers, in a dapper all-white tux…<br>
— Picture of me as the “masked man” (aka The Lone Ranger) in our Senior Play…<br>
— Picture of me with the RHS student council…<br>
— Picture of me with the UT Austin student senate* and senate committee…<br>
— Picture of me with our Moore-Hill dorm government…<br>
— Picture of me with our Moore-Hill RA staff…</p>
<p>And….that’s it…</p>
<p>Important aside to this post…<br>
None of this takes away from the even very serious allegations against Justin Fairfax. “I believe the women,” and I hope these allegations are thoroughly investigated. It sounds like he should step down, to me…</p>
<p>But, as a White male who was in high school and college just after the time of Northam’s “incident,” I am more fascinated and stunned by HIS story. But not at all surprised.</p>
<p>I can recall a frat party at SMU during my seminary days, where all the kids dressed up as (and this is their words) “Wetbacks.”</p>
<p>I am sure this kind of thing happened at UT too.</p>
<p>But! I was shocked about it *then,* and so therefore unsurprised by it now. I am not at all claiming that I never said or did anything offensive. (more on that, momentarily…)</p>
<p>Some say everyone is being too hard on Northam.</p>
<p>But remember: His picture is from the mid 19-EIGHTIES.<br>
Not mid-1950s.<br>
Within just a few years of all the pictures I list above.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/51848095_10218852888737609_8866958101396324352_n.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="225" width="300" /></p>
<p>Which brings me to a story I always remember about my dear mentor, Rev. Bill McElvaney.</p>
<p>As many will recall, Bill was a lion of social justice. Bill was/is beloved by many African-Americans in Dallas for his ministry and solidarity with them. He was the *only* White preacher to march with MLK’s “Poor People’s March” — from Grand Prairie to Dallas— when it came to our area in the late 1960s.</p>
<p>That was the Bill most folks knew.</p>
<p>What Bill also used to regularly admit and confess was where he came from.</p>
<p>Bill was raised in Highland Park. His undergraduate years were at SMU, and he was a KA there. Bill would tell how he had, as a young man, stood in the middle of a fraternity meeting one night, and publicly defended the frat’s ban on black members. He had planned out his defense, and he had passionately advocated FOR the segregation of his fraternity in that very public way.</p>
<p>I would guess that most folks who knew Bill (perhaps some of you?) would be shocked to hear this.</p>
<p>That was the Bill of the 1950s.<br>
A decade later, he would be that lone White preacher, marching in MLK’s “Poor People’s March.”</p>
<p>Bill would tell this story to make a point: It’s not where you’ve come from, it’s where you end up, and how honest you are willing to be about who you are, and who you’ve been.</p>
<p>To those who argue that we are being too hard on White folks such as Northam, I think the answer is:<br>
“No…just on those who never acknowledge their own pasts or talk about how they’ve changed.”</p>
<p>Bill told this story because he understood that all of us, as White people, very likely have things in our past that we ought to confess, or acknowledge. And that very acknowledgement of it was a part of what made him “trustable” to African-Americans.</p>
<p>People CAN change. People DO change. You don’t have to wear your past on your sleeve, but it’s never a good idea to hide it, either.</p>
<p>All us White men of today would do well to take that same journey.</p>
<p>Said in the language of the day, we all most certainly have the “White privilege” of a society whose laws have favored us and our ancestors, and who blessed us with a kind of White affirmative action that has systematically given us a leg up on most African-Americans.</p>
<p>Even if we have not committed overt past-acts like Northam or McElvaney, we have benefitted from this system over generations. Our ancestors benefitted. All of us, even poor Whites, Northern Whites, non-slaveholding Whites. (If you wish to argue with any part of this paragraph, I’d invite you to at least listen to the “White Affirmative Action” episode of the powerful podcast “Scene on Radio” before responding…)</p>
<p>Certainly, Northam had ample chances along the way to self-confess…as Bill did…to his own racists actions in the past.</p>
<p>But he never did. And that’s why folks are justifiably troubled. Not that White men have to be perfect, and be without blemish. They don’t, and they can’t.</p>
<p>But that kind of picture (and nickname) in a yearbook conjures up the very embodiment of the White privilege I have just described. It cuts the legs out from under the trust of others.</p>
<p>What matters is where we end up, and the particular “sins” we are willing to confess and own. Bill named and claimed his own past as “sin.” He described it as sin.</p>
<p>He told the story about the fraternity meeting, to illustrate his own journey of “repentance;” which does not mean “feeling bad,” but simply “turning in a new direction.”</p>
<p>He told it humbly, in order to invite other White peoiple to the same work and journey. This is the work God did in him, and he had a firm belief that God called all of us, as White people, to a similar journey.</p>
<p>As a White guy from North Dallas, Bill’s story had a profound and life-changing impact on me.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, I don’t have any Northam-like moments I can recall. But given where I grew up, I would not be surprised to hear that once-upon-a-time I said or did something offensive.</p>
<p>I say this, because as I try to live more aware to my privilege, I still sometimes see ways in which it flares up. I can look back at my past and see examples of things I have done as a younger man (interactions with the police, as one example) that I now realize stand as proof of my privilege then and now.</p>
<p>So, I <strong><em>do</em></strong> acknowledge the sin of White privilege and seek to live in a new way as an especially privileged White male today.<br>
It’s a form of repentance too, just as sure as Bill’s journey was.</p>
<p>I’m certain I am not perfect in this. And, no, it doesn’t make me “better than” anyone else. No, I am not claiming any kind of super-moral superiority. And, now, I am not turning my back on my own history or “people.”</p>
<p>In fact, quite the opposite.</p>
<p>Perhaps the way to describe it is: the attempt to be “self aware” of my own culturl history, and my willing to continually confess and admit my privilege as that awareness comes to me.</p>
<p>It’s a continuing, and continual, act repentance that I’ve been engaged in since just after all those yearbook pictures were first snapped, decades ago now. (Remember: “Repentance” doesn’t mean “feeling bad.” It means “living in a new direction.”)</p>
<p>In the late 1980s, just after all those shots, my entire spiritual and political world-view changed, to the awareness I have just tried to describe in this post. And I started a journey of life-long repentance, led by the Spirit of God in Christ.</p>
<p>I hope and pray that White men continue to make that journey too, and are willing to acknowlege either their overt past acts, or their continuing privilege today.</p>
<p>My eyes continue to be opened to racism, day by day, in ways that are not always easy or painless…but are always a blessing of God.</p>
<p>*Note: ONE, just one, African-American on the UT Student Senate that year….</p>
</div>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5578040
2018-12-25T09:20:45-06:00
2019-01-02T16:45:34-06:00
Merry Christmas, Everyone
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5511540
2018-11-13T13:57:02-06:00
2018-11-13T14:30:37-06:00
Pass It On
<div id="js_d" class="_5pbx userContent _3576">
<p><em><strong>“It only takes a spark</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>To get a fire going</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>And soon all those around</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>Can warm up in its glowing</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>That’s how it is with God’s love</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>Once you’ve experienced it</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>You spread His love to ev’ryone</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>You want to pass it on”</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>— Kurt Kaiser</strong></em></p>
<p>The early history of me and the guitar is inextricably tied to my early history with the church, and with one very special song by the great Kurt Kaiser.</p>
<p>I’m not alone in this.<br>
There are very likely millions of folks my age who remember Kaiser’s iconic song, “P<em>ass It On</em>.”</p>
<p>We sang that song every week, at the conclusion of our UMYF song-time at First UMC, Richardson. And for a few short, glorious years —which somehow feel like they still go on forever— I was one of the kids who led the singing with my guitar.</p>
<p>It was the late 1970s. And as the great Dr. Dick Murray used to teach at Perkins, in those days youth ministry was comprised of “folks who believed you had to hold hands and play guitar.”</p>
<p>The Eagles and Jackson Browne (and, eventually, Dan Fogelberg) were kings of the radio. And Kurt Kaiser was the king of Christian youth music.</p>
<p>And to <em>me</em>, it was all one piece. One “thing.”</p>
<p>I never grew up with the hard separation between “secular” and “sacred” music that I later learned other people did. I played it all –the stuff on the radio, the stuff from Youth Group– sitting in my room, on my Yamaha guitar, practicing for hours and hours. It was all “music.” It all moved me, spoke to me, and nobody shamed or told me anything different.</p>
<p>I mention this last point because, as I grew, I came to understand others grew up differently in their faith/music experience as teenagers. People in more fundamentalists backgrounds grew up believing that Pop/Rock music of was of the devil, and that only Christian music should be played. I have, to this day, never understood that division. I mean, I understand the <em>words</em>. I just can’t understand the experience, because it wasn’t mine.</p>
<p>For me, it was all one thing. It was Music. It was Spirit. It was sometimes silly, and sometimes sacred, and sometimes moved you to tears…and there was no hard division between the two.</p>
<p>I took my first guitar lessons in the 8th Grade at Westwood Junior High (note: Yes, they offered <em>guitar</em> in public schools back then…). That led to hours and hours, practicing “<em>Peaceful, Easy Feeling</em>” and “<em>Take It Easy</em>” in my bedroom by myself. I had songbooks of 70s Country-Rock, and a copy of Yohanne Anderson’s book, “<em>Songs and Creations.</em>”</p>
<p>The latter was the Bible of Youth Group music. The Sargent Pepper’s of 70s youth group guitar players.</p>
<p>And I loved it all. I especially loved The Eagles, early on; because, since their guitar was dominant, you could strum the chords in your bedroom, and vaguely approximate the recordings you loved from the radio.</p>
<p>It makes me laugh a bit to realize how the barely pubescent me belted out, “<em>I wanna sleep you with in the desert tonight…</em>”</p>
<p>I know I had no idea what I was singing about.</p>
<p>But the idea of sleeping under the stars?<br>
That sounded awesome.</p>
<p>I practiced and practiced this stuff. I started writing songs…really BAD songs….those lyrics sheets are still on a shelf behind me here, somewhere.</p>
<p>It was my friend, <a class="profileLink" href="https://www.facebook.com/stu.roberts.58?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARAqc47a8oQr2rETrhThgBOKzGzCFc_xm6Ui1ItBQKxFWlYrlKPDTo1EvhvurcyMcCs6TKnk3VHifxVn&fref=mentions">Stu Roberts</a>, who first invited me to play guitar in public, at church, at the youth group. We idolized the kids who were just a few years older than us, playing guitar and leading the group. And, as we grew older, we <em>became</em> those kids. And, <em>to this day</em>, I run into friends from that era, who tell me they remember these moments, and our playing guitar.</p>
<p>At our weekly UMYF Group, we spent 15-20 minutes a week in a gathered group before splitting off by grades. Yes, by grades. It as HUGE group. Sometimes 150 kids or so on a Sunday night (not an exaggeration), all gathered together in the upper room of Middlebrooks Hall.</p>
<p>We called it “<em>SingSong</em>, and we would sings songs out of “<em>Songs and Creations</em>.”</p>
<p>Again, it made perfect sense to me. In that book, there were “secular” folk songs, and Christians songs too. There was no separation. The book contained songs from Peter Paul and Mary, and the Beatles. There were folk songs by Bob Dylan, and John Denver.<br>
And….there was “Pass It On.”</p>
<p>“<em>Pass It On</em>,” was the “<em>Take It Easy</em>” of Christian youth group songs.</p>
<p>Whatever else we sang, we always “closed” with that one.</p>
<p>We guitar players would stand in the midst of the circle, Stu with his twelve string Guild, me with my gut-string Yamaha, and we’d lead the kids in this song.</p>
<p><em><strong>“What a wondrous time is spring</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>When all the trees are budding</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>The birds begin to sing</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>The flowers start their blooming</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>That’s how it is with God’s love</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>Once you’ve experienced it</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>You want to sing it’s fresh like spring</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>You want to pass it on”</strong></em></p>
<p>When I pause to think back, there is really no more deep and abiding imprinted musical memory inside my soul than <em>this</em> one. I can still picture the moment…</p>
<p>Us with our guitars.<br>
Boys in their muscle shirts.<br>
Girls in their “short-shorts.”<br>
Everybody with their summer tans, and their John Travolta and Farah Fawcett feathered hair.<br>
Kids wearing “Boston” and “Kansas” t-shirts.<br>
Kids wearing church youth group t-shirts, “Richardson Eagle” and “Pearce Mustang” shirts.</p>
<p>And the hundreds of kids, holding hands, and swaying together to the music as we sang this song.</p>
<p>Kurt Kaiser died this week.</p>
<p>This is, of course, what causes all these memories to well back up into my soul. A few posts from old fogie-friends around my age have helped the memories come flooding back.</p>
<p>I haven’t thought about Kaiser, or about “<em>Pass It On</em>,” for a couple of decades. Heck, I haven’t <span style="text-decoration:underline;">played</span> “<em>Pass It On</em>” for a couple of decades.</p>
<p>I doubt there are many Youth groups at all who still play it. It sort of fell out of favor over time. I’m sure folks got sick of it. It happens.</p>
<p>I mean, when was the last time you heard anybody play “<em>Blowing in the Wind</em>” non-ironically?</p>
<p>Newer generations always create their own traditions, and this is as it should be. Soon after, both Contemporary Christian and Pop/Rock music moved toward the synthesized and away from the folkie. Interestingly, I sort of drifted away from contemporary Christian music in the that period.</p>
<p>“Christian culture” became more exclusive during the 1980s…more willing to critique, in soft and hard forms, the alleged “mushiness” of a theology that would embrace both Bob Dylan and Kurt Kaiser.</p>
<p>Christian music became the balkanized form it remains to this day. But, that balkanization was but a symptom of a broader cultural movement that can be seen as…</p>
<p><em>“Secular” = “Bad”</em><br>
<em>“Christian” = “Good”</em></p>
<p>Those messages were just starting to seep into the culture, in the late 1970s, as we strummed those guitars.</p>
<p>This was increasingly the message of the 1980s “Christian culture.”</p>
<p>Again, as I’ve said and written many times, this message didn’t make <em>sense</em> to me. It was not then, nor is it to this day, <em>my</em> experience. But that harder division increasingly led me in two outwardly ironic existential directions:</p>
<p><em>Toward</em> a calling as a clergy person…<br>
<em>Away</em> from the increasingly balkanized format of “CCM.”</p>
<p>I was not a fan of 80s Pop, nor 80s CCM. Musically, the 80s felt like (and still does) a wasteland to me. (Sorry, Gen Xers, this is the one sharp dividing line between us…)</p>
<p>I hibernated into the world of folk music, and for myriad reasons –much having to do with the increasing division I’ve just described– landed on the “secular” side, musically. And that’s pretty much where I’ve been ever since.</p>
<p>(Although, I must observe, much of the <em>newest</em> Christian stuff seems to be very acoustic-driven, like “Mumford and Son” wanna-bes. And that makes this old folkie smile…)</p>
<p>So, even though I have not played “<em>Pass It On</em>” for decades, as soon as I hit “send” here, I’m gonna pick up my guitar and play it today.</p>
<p>Because I realized this week that I <em>must</em> include “<em>Pass It On</em>” in the list of my all-time favorite songs.</p>
<p>Without “<em>Pass It On</em>,” I would never have learned how to play guitar in front of a crowd.<br>
I would never have <em>kept playing</em>, or had a reason to practice.<br>
I would have never have eventually written/recorded my own songs, which are decided <em>not</em> CCM, but definitely <em>do</em> speak of Spirit and holiness in exactly the way the “Songs and Creations” book first taught me.<br>
I would have never found my way to my folk music tribe, and places like Kerrville.<br>
I would have never have had the courage to play the live shows I play now. (Youth group taught me that I <em>could</em> play in front of people…)<br>
I wouldn’t be playing with <a href="http://www.connectionsband.com">Connections</a>….with whom, ironically, I’ve been able to perform almost all of my <em>other</em> “all time favorite songs” from 1970s classic rock.</p>
<p><em>NONE</em> of that happens, without Stu asking me to play guitar at youth group, and without the two of us and our friends, time and time and time again, playing “<em>Pass It On</em>” for those youth group kids.</p>
<p>I’m confident I’m not the only one with this kind of story about this one song, which is what drives me to post this today.</p>
<p>So, God bless you, Kurt Kaiser.<br>
May you rest in peace.<br>
And I hope you have a sense of just how important you and your song were, and are, to so many of us.</p>
<p>You most definitely changed my life.</p>
<p><em><strong>“I wish for you my friend</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>This happiness that I’ve found</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>You can depend on Him</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>It matters not where you’re bound</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>I’ll shout it from the mountain top</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>I want my world to know</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>The Lord of love has come to me</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>I want to pass it on”</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>— Kurt Kaiser</strong></em></p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<p>Here’s a video of Kurt Kaiser talking about his life and musical legacy.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5438591
2018-08-25T13:36:44-05:00
2022-05-17T21:32:44-05:00
My Set at Uncle Calvin’s
<p>Here’s video of my set at Uncle Calvin’s last night. There are a few problems. The lighting is weird….I look ghostly.</p>
<p>And my pickup went dead, so we had to switch to a mic, which threw me off a bit. But, overall, it gives you a sense of the night.</p>
<p>So great to open for Grace Pettis. Many thanks to my Calvin’s family for having me back again.</p>
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Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5438592
2018-08-15T11:59:04-05:00
2018-09-21T15:45:37-05:00
Icarus Ascending
<p>So, I’m a few days late, but here’s a tribute to Dan Fogelberg, in honor of what would have been his 67th Birthday this week. It’s a cover of what became one of my favorite Dan-songs, following our weekend in Peoria some years back.</p>
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<p>I still recall that weekend with such fondness.<br>
— To meet his wife, Mom, family and friends….<br>
— To be invited to play some with some great musician friends, who are all in their own way keeping alive Dan’s musical “legacy,” and watch while his wife and friends rocked out to our homage to him.<br>
— To attend the dedication of the memorial in his honor overlooking the river.<br>
— To connect with musical friends who also admired this amazing soul and talent, gone too soon.</p>
<p>It was a truly amazing experience. “Icarus Ascending” got stuck in my head that weekend. I think it was my earworm the entire way back to Dallas. Dan calls it his song in honor of artists. (I’ll post an extended quote from him about the song in the comment section below…)<br>
Anyway, I’ve worked up a version with the Looper, which I think is kinda fun. Hope you like it.</p>
<blockquote><p><em><strong>“There is no darkness in this place that we’re bound,</strong></em><br>
<em><strong>Love the only thing that matters….”</strong></em></p></blockquote>
<p>Happy Birthday, Dan. You’re still my favorite, and always will be.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5437434
2018-02-09T15:49:22-06:00
2018-09-20T21:00:43-05:00
The Guilt That We Survive
<p>Here’s a new song from me. Hope you like it.</p>
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<p><strong>“The Guilt that We Survive”</strong><br>
It’s the rookie who just made the team
Whose old friends now just watch and dream<br>
It’s the CEO who’s upward bound
With a brother stuck in her hometown<br>
It’s the Dreamer with her new degree
Whose Abuela still long to be free<br>
It’s the Soldier on that National Mall
Who runs his fingers down that Wall.<br>
It’s the price we all pay, the longer we’re alive
Ones who fade away, and the guilt that we survive.<br>
It’s the singer with that sidewalk star
Whose old band still plays run down bars<br>
It’s the drunk who fingers his bronze chip
While his roommate’s on his seventh slip<br>
It’s the one who’s five years cancer free
Whose friend dies unexpectedly<br>
It’s the Mother in her shelter bed
Whose bunkmate went back home instead<br>
It’s the price we all pay, the longer we’re alive
Ones who fade away, and the guilt that we survive.<br>
So these questions, they rattle through my mind
With answers I can never seem to find.<br>
Why am I the one that fortune found?
Why am I the one who’s still around?<br>
Why am I the one who made it through?
Why am I the one, and why not you?<br>
It’s the price we all pay, the longer we’re alive
Ones who fade away, and the guilt that we survive.<br>
Words and Music, Eric Folkerth. Copyright, 2018.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/5432449
2017-12-29T15:26:55-06:00
2020-01-23T06:59:00-06:00
Eric Featured in the Lakewood Advocate
<p>So, this happened.<br>
A nice feature on me and my music, in the current issue of the Advocate Magazine. I believe it’s running in both the Lakewood (near home) and Preston Hollow (near church) editions.<br>
Thanks to all the good folks at the Advocate, to Patty Vinson and Kathy Tran.</p>
<p>It’s an incredibly generous feature. And I thank them. The title is beyond ridiculous.</p>
<p>Read it <a href="http://So,%20this%20happened.%20A%20nice%20feature%20on%20me%20and%20my%20music,%20in%20the%20current%20issue%20of%20the%20Advocate%20Magazine.%20I%20believe%20it%E2%80%99s%20running%20in%20both%20the%20Lakewood%20(near%20home)%20and%20Preston%20Hollow%20(near%20church)%20editions.%20Thanks%20to%20all%20the%20good%20folks%20at%20the%20Advocate,%20to%20Patty%20Vinson%20and%20Kathy%20Tran.%20And%20to%20Renee%20for%20these%20pictures." target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.</p>
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4886472
2017-10-10T23:56:29-05:00
2017-10-11T02:01:14-05:00
Shower The People (Cover)
<p>As the last horrible week unfolded, amidst the mass shooting, hurricanes, and the usual daily Tweets, I had the overwhelming urge to play this song. Life is just so heavy right now, and we’re all in such need of hope. This song has always given me hope. You can’t help but feel a little better when you sing along. So, feel free.</p>
<p>Thanks to the great <a class="profileLink" href="http://www.jamestaylor.com/">James Taylor</a> for writing it (the “original” JT, I must always remind my daughter…)<br>
Fun with the looper….hope you enjoy…share if you wish.<br>
(It seems to sound best through headphones…)</p>
<div class="jetpack-video-wrapper"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="750" height="452" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z7bBMa-Jb1I?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;"></iframe></div><br>Filed under: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/worth-repeating/">Worth Repeating</a> Tagged: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/acoustic-music/">acoustic music</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/boss-rc-300/">Boss RC-300</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/cover/">Cover</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/cover-song/">Cover Song</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/james-taylor/">James Taylor</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/loop-station/">Loop Station</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/looper/">Looper</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/shower-the-people/">Shower the People</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/singer-songwriter/">singer-songwriter</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3643/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3643&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4795163
2017-06-01T20:29:02-05:00
2017-07-28T01:33:43-05:00
Kerrville 2017
<p>I’m a day back from the Kerrville Folk Festival now. In previous years, I used to write long entries from the fest. I’d post videos, pics, wax philosophically and theologically about the experience. I would name-drop my songwriter friends, and those I wanted as my friends. I would, as I pretty much do most days in the real world, Facebook-overshare.</p>
<p>Perhaps you noticed, I didn’t really do that this year. I’ve got an emerging spiritual discipline at work within me that calls me to live within my own skin. To not worry about what others think of me, and to resist the temptation to either over-share or run about with rampant “FOMO.”</p>
<p><em>“Live in your skin, Eric….don’t live outside or beyond yourself…It’s enough…”</em></p>
<p>This is something I’m telling myself all the time these days, and it’s a kind of wakeful meditation that I practiced a lot this week. Little social media. NO news coverage.</p>
<p><em>Just…BE….just be present…just remember to not live outside my experience…</em></p>
<p>It was kinda awesome. Every year for the past several festivals, I come away saying <em>“This was my favorite festival, ever.”</em></p>
<p>And that happened again this year.</p>
<p>But unlike years past, I’m not gonna overshare a ton of specific details about it. Let me just tell you the general impressions racing through my soul tonight…</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/kerrville2017.jpg?w=750&h=563" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="563" width="750" /></p>
<p>I spent hours in song circles (an afternoon at Coho, most memorably) that stunned me when I realized the time that had passed. I thought it had only been a few minutes. But FIVE HOURS had passed.</p>
<p>I got the chance to sit with several small groups of the New Folk writers, and be wowed at their talent and passion.</p>
<p>I hugged the necks of dozens of friends, and got to feel the true sense of their joy to see me and my joy to see them.</p>
<p>I spent late nights at “Camp Jews Don’t Camp” and laughed until my belly hurt.</p>
<p>I heard a half dozen songs from writers I know and respect, and writers I just met, that moved me so deeply there were tears.</p>
<p>I sang songs in the rain with Coho, and huddled with my Nashbill Peeps in Paul and Susan’s trailer during the same storm. (Yes, I still have a little FOMO)</p>
<p>See, there I go, dropping names.<br>
Sorry.<br>
I just know that some of you know them, and that the context helps.</p>
<p>Anyway…continuing…I had deep conversations with a writer friend over HOW songs communicate….over what metaphor is and how we walk around, day to day, failing to realize that ALL language is metaphorical language, really….and how, whether you are writing a song, a sermon, or a speech, once you toss it out into the ether, what becomes of it has more to do with who’s listening than your own brilliance and control.</p>
<p>It keeps you humble.</p>
<p>This was a writer I’ve known of for a long time, but had never actually *talked* with, deeply. We were actually making coffee, and suddenly…. and I mean, in less than five minutes, we were talking communications theory at a level that would have made George Lakoff proud. It was was SO deep we apparently failed to realize that we were in the midst of making the worst pot of coffee in the history of the bean.</p>
<p>We didn’t care. It tasted good.</p>
<p>I played my song about my Dad a ton. And I was gratified that it broke open several conversations about family with men and women….people sharing their own struggles to live in their own skins with their parents and families. I think it was healing for them. I know it was for me.</p>
<p>I went up the hill one night in a specific quest to find Steve Fisher. Steve is not known to venture down into the meadow. So, as if I was hunting an Abino Rhinoceros, I went looking for him, and found him outside a trailer. We got to spend about an hour together.</p>
<p>I love to watch/listen to Steve sing. He’s a freaking brilliant writer. But I also love to watch Steve *listen* to songs. He looks like the Buddha when he does it. And then, he just leans his head back, with his eyes closed, and breathes a deep breath…like he’s drawing in the final essence of the waning song from the ether.</p>
<p>He played a song just for me that he wanted me to hear. It’s freaking amazing song. It’s genuinely haunting me now. I’ve listened to it about 20 times today.</p>
<p>I LOVE being haunted by good songs like this one. (More on this soon…)</p>
<p>I had perhaps a half dozen men —writer friends from around the country— who greeted me with…</p>
<p><em>“How are you, brother?”</em></p>
<p>I don’t have any biological brothers. Hell, there are very few men in my family at all, in any direction, and for multiple generations. So, to have these men call me “brother”….and to KNOW they mean it…I can’t really explain what that means to me. It’s very special.</p>
<p>I just soak it in with deep gratitude.</p>
<p>But that does bring up one final story.</p>
<p>It’s one that stuck with many of us who were there to experience it. A few nights ago, somewhere between 2:30 and 4:30 am (my SWAG) a young songwriter came by during a particularly awesome song circle at “Camp Jews Don’t Camp.”</p>
<p>If there was such a thing as a folk music “poser” he might have been one. Leather hat. Cool clothes. Beat up guitar. Requisite harmonica.</p>
<p>He said he had a song he wanted to sing us.</p>
<p>He was invited to sit with us, several times, but he didn’t want to. He was reminded that “circles” are what makes Kerrville, Kerrville. That made no difference to him. He was offered that he might be surprised to find he made friends by sitting down. He said he didn’t want to be in a circle, and didn’t want friends.</p>
<p>His presence inspired heated conversation for about 20 minutes after he left….and even the next morning around breakfast. I won’t recount it now. And I still maintain that we’ve probably thought a lot more about him than he did of us…</p>
<p>But more than once, somebody said <em>“that kid has no idea what he’s missing.”</em></p>
<p>And that’s true.</p>
<p>And it’s also true you can’t make anybody eat from even the most scrumptious buffet.</p>
<p>But then, the next night, there was another circle. It was only a handful of us. Our Nashbill peeps…and four or five players. It was late. The regular Nashbill circle had broken up, the four or five players didn’t feel like being in the big circles still going. So, Teresa brought out some candles, and Jaime, Joe, Bruce, Jack and me played quiet songs under the stars, with the reflected faces of some of our dearest friends in the candlelight. It was beautiful…and peaceful…and “a moment.”</p>
<p>And somewhere in the midst of this, Verne Crawford walked up and sat down. (I’m not name-dropping…it has to do with the story…) Verne is a lovely old man with grey hair and beard….who looks like Santa Claus and is kinda like Kerrville’s Dumbledore.</p>
<p>So, he sat along in the quiet of the night with us.</p>
<p>And at a certain moment of quiet, after looking up in the sky, Verne said to all of us, <em>“How lucky are WE that we get to do this?!”</em></p>
<p>Meaning…sit out under the stars at 3 am…with our friends…..listening to music.</p>
<p>I mean, he’s right. There are very few human beings in the entire world who get to do that. And it takes a special kind of crazy to do it year after year.</p>
<p>I thought about the Poser Kid and Verne. I thought about how one couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hear any suggestion as a kindness, or invitation to a richness beyond his wildest imagination…and another who understands what it means to be filthy rich in songs and friends…and was ridiculously glad just to SIT for hours and soak in all the beauty.</p>
<p>In our debates as to he existential meaning of this kid, I continued to assert that by the end of the week, the Poser Kid would sit down in a circle. Most of my friends seemed to think not. We should have taken bets, although I’m not there to see how it might yet turn out. I’m thinking I would have lost.</p>
<p>But although it’s not evidence of him sitting down, and while I’m pretty sure the kid doesn’t “get” it…I did happen to see him once more…and that has stayed with me too.</p>
<p>Two days later, sometime after dinner, about five of the New Folk folks were sitting out by the road of their camp. I was standing up, just listening to them. They were about to break up when up walked the Poser Kid….in exactly the same outfit I’d seen him in two nights before.</p>
<p>He had a flash of recognition for me from “Jews Don’t Camp Circle,” and gave me the “Sup” nod that guys give each other.</p>
<p>He asked them if he could play them a song. And, since they were about to break up anyway, they said, “Sure.”</p>
<p>They had no idea of any of the drama from the night before. I’m not sure he had any idea that they were about to break up anyway, and were probably feeling magnanimous.</p>
<p>So, he played his song. They folded up their chairs to leave, and headed back under their canopy. He stood there, readying to walk back up the hill. But first, he looked at me, moved toward me, offered me a hug, and said “Thanks, brother.”</p><br>Filed under: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/kerrville/">Kerrville</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> Tagged: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/kerrville-folk-festival/">kerrville folk festival</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3597/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3597&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4707558
2017-05-13T10:05:56-05:00
2017-05-13T11:06:04-05:00
A NEW Dan Fogelberg Record
<p>Yesterday, I listened to a new Dan Fogelberg record. A new, old one.<br>
In case you haven’t heard the news, Dan’s concert at Carnegie Hall, from 1979, is being released as a live record. Even better, it’s a solo-live show. And it’s amazing.</p>
<p>I pre-ordered the digital download some weeks ago, and it popped up in my iTunes yesterday morning. Just in time for the long trip back from Fayetteville with my daughter.</p>
<p>Got a chance to listen, uninterupted, to the whole thing, and then to listen back to several songs.</p>
<p>O my, did it transport me back. What a time capsule!</p>
<p>I remember listening to Dan’s original records as I drove to and from college….especially the first four records…pre-Phoenix, if you will…</p>
<p>Now, I am driving my daughter back from college, and listening to a live record of the very same material. A-MAZING.</p>
<p><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/liveatcarnegiehall700.jpg?w=750" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="liveatcarnegiehall700" /></p>
<p>What an incredible treat for all us fans. This concert was from a seminal time in his career. His early albums had become obsessed-fan favorites. He was on the cusp of releasing “Phoenix,” which would begin a string of smash hits that later continued with “The Innocent Age.”</p>
<p>But this show captures that moment of pre-superstardom…the incredible artist that true “Dan-fans” know and love.</p>
<p>It’s just him and his guitars and keyboard. Which, of course, I love. Musically, I hang out in the folk/singer-songwriter world most of the time. And for years my favorite artists have always been those who write/sing/play their own stuff.</p>
<p>Dan loved doing that. I saw Dan in a live solo show twice, both after the historical time of this record (Irwin Center in Austin, and Starplex in Dallas) and both times were absolutely amazing evenings.</p>
<p>The record captures what I remember of those live performances…how Dan could hold an entire audience of THOUSANDS with just his guitar, keyboard, and voice….how BIG the sound was….how he could capture the essence of his songs.</p>
<p>Again, folk artists do this all the time…which is why they are my friends. What I love remembering is that Dan did this too.</p>
<p>Two observations from the listening…<br>
First, I kept thinking of the recent blog post “Dan Fogelberg is an Underrated Guitarist.” Google it. It’s a music writer who goes back and finds little gems of Dan’s over the years…the amazing stylistic diversity in his writing and playing….rock, folk, jazz, bossa nova, pop, blues…the writer argues that far too many people just stopped with the big hits and never saw all this talent.</p>
<p>The reason I bring this up is that this record does the same thing. It takes you on a musical journey through hits and obscurities,..and all sorts of styles.</p>
<p>Second, as I listened, I kept hearing alternate tunings! Almost everything I’ve written for the past fifteen years has been in alternate tunings. For a long time, I assumed it was David Wilcox who inspired me in them.</p>
<p>But listening to this record, and realizing I’d heard those live show, it dawns on me that it was Dan. The alternate tunings LEAP out at me on this record….I’m gonna have field day trying to figure them out. I got so excited, I called <a class="profileLink" href="https://www.facebook.com/sheldon.felich">Sheldon Felich</a> to talk to him about it as soon as I got done listening…because I knew he’d understand.</p>
<p>What kept blowing my mind as I listened was to think, “He was just 27 at the time…”</p>
<p>He was just 27, and he’d ALREADY put out all that amazing music…music that has been a soundtrack of my life.</p>
<p>And the big hit, superstardom, was literally just about to burst upon him. All the hits that captured the attention of the masses are yet to come as you hear this record. In fact, “Same Old Lange Sine” is on here. And in a little gem, Dan suggests it will be on his new record…which seems to be Phoenix. (And therefore, must have been released mere months later?) But, of course, it was not….it waited until “The Innocent Age.”</p>
<p>I love that….artistry in real time…big songs, huge hits that are concretized in our memory and history, played here, from back in the moment they were still in flux and creation. Other big hits…the stuff most of the world knows Dan for….isn’t even a glimmer in his eye during this set list.</p>
<p>I LOVE that…</p>
<p>A HUUUGE and copious thanks to <a class="profileLink" href="https://www.facebook.com/jean.fogelberg">Jean Fogelberg</a>, for shepherding this project to birth. It’s been a labor of love (You can read about it at the link), and it becomes a tender gift to the whole world. Thanks so much, Jean.</p>
<p>So, if you’re a Dan-fan, you MUST get this record. Period.</p>
<p>And if you’re one of the many folks who never moved past the hits to get to know him, this record becomes “Exhibit A” for what you’ve been missing all these years, and your best shot at redemption.</p>
<p>Point being, either way, you should get this.</p><br>Filed under: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/folkerth-on-fogelberg/">Folkerth on Fogelberg</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3548/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3548&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4135892
2016-04-14T07:00:25-05:00
2017-01-10T07:25:20-06:00
Let It Be
<p><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9NBqwOW19R4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;"></iframe></p>
<p>I believe sometimes our loved ones visit us in dreams, after they are gone.</p>
<p>This happened to me when I was about ten. Just after my grandfather Frankie died, I dreamed he drove down to Dallas in the 1965 Mustang that, in the waking world, would eventually become mine.</p>
<p>He woke us up and gathered us in the living room. And we were all so happy that we danced around the room, holding hands. Which is ridiculous. Because nobody in my family, least of all my Dad’s Dad, danced.</p>
<p>And then, he looked at me and said that he had to go again. But that he was going to be OK. And that I was going to be OK.</p>
<p>And that was it.</p>
<p>But it was the most vivid and real dream that I perhaps have ever had. I woke up with the strong sense that I’d been in the presence of his very spirit. It was so terribly reassuring.</p>
<p>I thought about this, when I later read <a href="https://mattandjojang.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/the-story-behind-paul-mccartneys-song-let-it-be/" target="_blank">the story of how Paul McCartney wrote this song</a>.</p>
<p>It was near the end of the Beatles’ time together. They were quickly growing apart. The other guys all had girlfriends or wives. Paul was feeling like life might pass him by, and wondering what in the world his future would be, given that his world seemed to be falling apart.</p>
<p>And then, he had a dream about his mother, Mary, who had died when he was very young. As he tells it,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So in this dream twelve years later, my mother appeared, and there was her face, completely clear, particularly her eyes, and she said to me very gently, very reassuringly: “Let it be.”</p>
<p>It was lovely. I woke up with a great feeling. It was really like she had visited me at this very difficult point in my life and gave me this message: Be gentle, don’t fight things, just try and go with the flow and it will all work out.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe these kinds of things are real. I not only believe in God, but I believe God sends these kinds of spiritual messengers to us. But we have to listen carefully.</p>
<p>Because Paul’s words say it right. Those spiritual voices of wisdom? They <em>whisper their words</em>. They don’t shout.</p>
<p>So, remember to quiet down your mind, now and then. Don’t be too quick to explain it away as something you ate, or a desire of only your unconscious mind.</p>
<p>And listen…to what they tell you…</p>
<p>“There will be an answer.”</p>
<p>“Trust.”</p>
<p>“Believe the doors will open.”</p>
<p>“Know that the reality of reality is gracious.”</p>
<p>“Let it be.”</p>
<p> </p><br>Filed under: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/angels-and-pins/">Angels and Pins</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/category/worth-repeating/">Worth Repeating</a> Tagged: <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/beatles/">Beatles</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/beatles-cover/">Beatles Cover</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/eric-folkerth/">eric folkerth</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/let-it-be/">Let It Be</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/mccartney/">McCartney</a>, <a href="https://wheneftalks.com/tag/paul-mccartney/">Paul McCartney</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3211/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="https://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3211&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4043167
2016-02-15T14:44:00-06:00
2017-01-10T07:25:20-06:00
Thanks Again, James Taylor
<p>We’re still tabulating expenses and computing exactly how many folks came to Friday night’s big show (We think: 500-600) in Allen. And we’re still figuring out just how much we raised for our beneficiaries.</p>
<div data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_3132" style="width: 292px" class="wp-caption alignleft">
<img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/12733409_10153931335314100_6221258353930418905_n.jpg?w=282&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="12733409_10153931335314100_6221258353930418905_n" height="300" width="282" /><p class="wp-caption-text">James Taylor Signs the Guitar</p>
</div>
<p>But one thing we do know: the heart and generosity of James Taylor helped us tremendously. In case you missed the incredible news, James Taylor (Yes, THE James Taylor) heard about <a href="http://www.connectionsband.com" target="_blank">Connections</a>‘s big show with the Allen Symphony Chorus and orchestra. He sent us an autographed guitar and some concert tickets to upcoming shows.</p>
<p>You can’t imagine what a thrill this was for all of us. Before the show, several of us in the band got to play the guitar a bit. Rusty ran through “The Secret O’ Life.” I threw down a little “You’ve Got A Friend.”</p>
<p>And we all said, <em>“Holy Crap, we’re playing JT songs on a guitar that JT touched!”</em></p>
<div data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_3134" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
<img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/ericandjtguitar.jpg?w=225&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="ericandJTguitar" height="300" width="225" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Eric Considers Running for the Door…..</p>
</div>
<p><strong>All told, the items James Taylor contributed raised an additional $4,000 for our causes!!</strong> How amazing. Thanks again to James….we are so grateful to him for thinking of us.</p>
<p>Turns out, the guitar found a good home. Dave Sherman and Beverly Sharpe ended up taking it home. I know Dave from song circles, down at the Kerrville Folks Festival. Nice that this “connection” got made.</p>
<div data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_3133" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">
<img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/february-2016-128.jpg?w=300&h=225" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="February 2016 128" height="225" width="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Dave and Beverly</p>
</div>
<p>If we get some decent video of our two James Taylor songs, we’ll post those in coming days. But thanks again to Dave and Beverly….and especially to James Taylor!!</p>
<p>EF</p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3119/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3119&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4040422
2016-02-13T12:40:05-06:00
2017-02-05T04:01:45-06:00
Our Living Legacy
<p>As many of you know, <a href="http://www.connectionsband.com" target="_blank">Connections</a> started with Dan Fogelberg. At the “core” of what drove us to ever get our crazy band together ten years ago was a chance to play Dan’s music, and to do in a BIG way…with a big band that could recreate some of the lush instrumentation that you’re used to when you hear his records. Many of you also know that he’s my all-time favorite songwriter.</p>
<p>We had a BIG show in Allen again last night….Connections…the Allen Symphony Chorus…an orchestra of about 20…approaching 70 musicians onstage. (I’m not sure we actually counted!)</p>
<p>We covered many great artists, and had some incredible support from James Taylor…yes, THE James Taylor….)</p>
<p>But the show also gave us the chance to pull out a show-stopper from our last big show: Fogelberg’s great opus <a href="http://www.danfogelberg.com/infoinnocentage.html" target="_blank">“Ghosts” from the “Innocent Age” record</a>.</p>
<p>This is a BIG song….it’s deserves to be played big, like this. I think we did the song proud…</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dTppgtSGHBI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></span></p>
<p>It gave me chills to hear it last night…especially how the Chorus nails the ending…and I can’t believe how great this recording sounds here. (Thanks to Alison for capturing it…)</p>
<p>If we get a nice full recording of “The Reach,” I’ll add it to this post….and I’ll likely post additional video from the show, as it become available.</p>
<p>When <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/2016/01/18/glenn-frey/" target="_blank">Glenn Frey died</a>, I took the liberty of paraphrasing an old spiritual adage that gets passed around from time to time…</p>
<p><em>“a person dies three times: the first time when your heart stops; the second time when you’re buried or cremated; and, for songwriters, the last time your songs are played, sung, and heard.”</em></p>
<p>That’s true for Dan too.</p>
<p>It’s such a unique honor to be a part of Dan’s “living legacy,” the fans, musicians, and friends who honor his memory and keep his music alive. And…to be able to do so in such a bold and big setting…</p>
<p>How freakin’ lucky am I?!!</p>
<p>Last night, then, as I was singing, I was thinking of all our DanFan friends/family from around the country…many of whom were with us the last time we did a big show like this. I was most definitely thinking of Dan, and of Jean and her generous support to all of us who try to honor Dan.</p>
<p>I was thinking especially of our buddy, Sheldon Felich, whose <a href="http://www.danfogelberg.com/infoinnocentage.html" target="_blank">own killer band</a> is also one of the great “living legacies” to Dan. (Sheldon and Dan’s actual orchestral arranger, Glen Spreen, shared with us these arrangements you hear on this recording…)</p>
<p>But most of all, as I said from the stage, just after this video cuts off….</p>
<p><em>“That was for you, Dan.”</em></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/folkerth-on-fogelberg/">Folkerth on Fogelberg</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3103/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3103&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/4006142
2016-01-25T11:36:01-06:00
2017-02-05T03:01:46-06:00
Frank’s Cafe
<p>I continue to remember my Dad in all sorts of ways. One way is by pulling out, and finally finishing, this song I started years ago after a visit back to the place my Dad grew up (In Kentucky, just across the river from Cincy)</p>
<p>So, here’s a demo. I really really like how it’s coming.<br>
And I’m glad I finally finished the song. Hope you like you….EF</p>
<p>(BTW, this picture actually <em>is</em> from Frank’s Cafe….New Years Eve, 1950. Taken by my Dad)</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F243392613&visual=true&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false"></iframe>
<p>FRANK’S CAFE<br>
The Sun’s not shining bright,<br>
On the road back to the old Kentucky home,<br>
Tree coated with ice,<br>
And across each field, a light dusting of snow.</p>
<p>And with every mile, old ghosts reappear and gather round.<br>
And I’m suddenly aware of what is lost and what is found.</p>
<p>And those voices from the past are all around me<br>
And they echo up through time, right to today.<br>
So say hello, and say goodbye<br>
And sing, “American Pie,”<br>
And toast it all tonight at Frank’s Cafe.</p>
<p>An hour down this road,<br>
I find the old red brick house I still recall<br>
Giant in mind, but today in real life<br>
Strangely small.</p>
<p>We used to walk across that bridge to watch the “Big Red Machine.”<br>
Rummage through that attic, filled with old Time Magazines<br>
Sled Devou Park hills in a deep midwinter snow<br>
And watch the seasons turn, as Ohio River flowed</p>
<p>And those voices from the past are all around me<br>
And they echo up through time, right to today.<br>
So say hello, and say goodbye<br>
And sing, “American Pie,”<br>
And toast it all tonight at Frank’s Cafe.</p>
<p>Now, once upon a time,<br>
This old bar and grill bore my grandfather’s name.<br>
I step inside for just one night<br>
To the sounds of karaoke Don McLean.</p>
<p>And these locals raise their beers to a barkeep they’d never known<br>
And the guy behind the tape machine hands me the microphone<br>
As they gather in that pub, like they’ve done a thousand nights<br>
I stand in that small spotlight, and sing with all my might.</p>
<p>And those voices from the past are all around me<br>
And they echo up through time, right to today.<br>
So say hello, and say goodbye<br>
And sing, “American Pie,”<br>
And toast it all tonight at Frank’s Cafe.</p>
<p>Copyright Eric Folkerth, ©2016.<br>
All Rights Reserved.</p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/about-dad/">About Dad</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/acoustic-music/">acoustic music</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/cincinnati/">cincinnati</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/original-music/">original music</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/original-song/">Original Song</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/singer-songwriter/">singer-songwriter</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3091/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3091&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998695
2016-01-18T22:56:11-06:00
2020-06-22T05:45:23-05:00
Glenn Frey
<div>
<div class="_45m_ _2vxa">
<img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/obit-glenn-frey_byun1-1024x680.jpg?w=300&h=199" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="Obit-Glenn-Frey_Byun1-1024x680" height="199" width="300" /><br>
Been away from home all day and now that I’m home, I’m feeling the full weight of Glenn Frey’s passing.
<p>Unreal.</p>
<p>So strange to come home, open up the computer, and see that the Wikipedia entry already says <em>“Glenn Frey was an American singer, songwriter…”</em></p>
<p></p>
</div>
<p>Wait. <em>Was</em>?!</p>
</div>
<p>Jeez…</p>
<p>Can’t they give us a few days before they change that?</p>
<p>This one is gonna take some time for me to really accept.</p>
<p>I was a child of the 70s. We’ve become used to icons from the 50s and 60s dying. That happens all the time. But, I am sorry, but sixty-seven is waaay too young. And not just because it’s only a fifteen or so years from my generation.</p>
<p>I’m feeling so heartbroken for Don Henley. The two of them were like a Lennon/McCartney for those of us who grew up in the 70s. Some of you are groaning and assuming I’ve just lost all credibility at that last statement. I don’t care. They were. And the facts of their hit songs bear out such comparisons. Look it up.</p>
<p>I’ve said for years that the singer-songwriters of the 1970s form the heart of my musical DNA. Folks like James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne…</p>
<p>And, yes, of course Henley and Frey. They were songwriters first, who just happened to be in an incredibly successful band.</p>
<p>One of the real joys of watching “The History of the Eagles” last year, was the segment where Frey talked about this very thing….about how they took writing seriously….about how early on he lived in the same small apartment building with Jackson Browne and learned some of songwriting from him….listening to him play/sing a phrase over and over through the walls.</p>
<p>Eagles songs are story songs…. “New Kid in Town”….”Lying Eyes”….”Hotel California”….they paint pictures with the words and music. They’re memorable songs, and they work their way into your heart and life.</p>
<p>As some of you know, Connections does an Eagles-cover show, now and then. My own observation is that folks might dance and move more to other artists. But they <em>sing along more</em> to the Eagles songs than almost any of the dozens of artists we’ve covered. The songs are deep in the hearts of millions of us.</p>
<p>I was fifteen-years-old when “Hotel California” came out. My vinyl copy has so many pops and skips that its hardly playable any more. As with the whole world, I listened to “Hotel California” over and over….and over…</p>
<p>Even as I kid, I got that this song was about something more…some deeper social commentary…even before I fully understood what was happening in the adult culture of the time.</p>
<p>But the song that really spoke to me on that record was “The Last Resort.”</p>
<p>I’d put on “Side B” of the album, and fall to sleep listening to this song. It’s such an amazing anthem. And such a commentary about the worst of who we are, as Americans. It was one of the first times I realized songs could be BIG….could have big and important themes…lyrically and musically….and socially relevant themes that spoke to something deeper.</p>
<p>As a team, Henley and Frey excelled at giving us those kinds of songs. And that’s why they’ve lasted so long. That’s why thousands of artists have come and gone since they first hit the scene…but they remained.</p>
<p>Except for a few notable exceptions….Dan Fogelberg, Harry Chapin…most of the folks from that generation are still around. Which makes Frey’s loss all the more heartbreaking.</p>
<p>Thank you, Glenn Frey, for all the incredible songs. For so many songs that are a soundtrack to our lives. We’re heartbroken for you and your family, for the Eagles, and for all of us. But I am so deeply grateful for your craft, for how it stays with us, and for how it always will for many of us.</p>
<p>And tonight, I’m remembering Laurie Anderson’s tribute to Lou Reed at the Rock and Roll Hall induction this past year. She quoted a spiritual saying I’d heard before:</p>
<p><em>“a person dies three times: the first time when your heart stops; the second time when you’re buried or cremated; and the third time when your name is spoken for the last time.”</em></p>
<p>For songwriters, it seems to me we must change the third time to<em> “when your songs are played for the last time.”</em></p>
<p>By that measure, Glenn Frey will be with us for a long, long time.</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N_hbqIP7aa0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></span></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/balcony-people/">Balcony People</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/3077/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=3077&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998696
2015-07-21T12:29:35-05:00
2017-01-10T07:25:18-06:00
I Am A Man
<p><post href="https://www.facebook.com/eric.folkerth/posts/10207467196262413"></post></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/life-happens/">Life Happens</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/worth-repeating/">Worth Repeating</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/kerrville-2/">kerrville</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/men/">men</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/music/">Music</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/neale-eckstein/">neale eckstein</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2778/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=2778&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998697
2015-04-07T09:16:08-05:00
2017-01-10T07:25:19-06:00
Brand Spanky New Website
<p>A quick word to say that my website has been completely updated. It’s mostly a website that supports my music, and it’s got new pictures, soundclips, videos, and more. (Or, at least old ones…finally collected together.)</p>
<p>Check it out at <a href="http://www.ericfolkerth.com" target="_blank">www.ericfolkerth.com</a></p>
<p>While you’re there, sign up for my email list, check out the links to all my other social media sites, and enjoy a few sound clips and videos.</p>
<p>Hope you enjoy the music!</p>
<p>EF</p>
<p><a href="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/1795716_10153120681549100_924186399196630298_n.jpg"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/1795716_10153120681549100_924186399196630298_n.jpg?w=300&h=200" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="1795716_10153120681549100_924186399196630298_n" height="200" width="300" /></a></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/music/">Music</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2645/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=2645&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998698
2014-11-17T10:20:17-06:00
2017-02-05T02:49:15-06:00
Honor Dr. Salia on Friday at Connections’ Show
<p>Connection is playing <a href="http://connectionsband.com/event/1081110/98070520/connections-tribute-to-chicago-and-eagles-at-northaven" target="_blank">a show this Friday at Northaven</a>. We’re again raising money for a good cause: fighting the scourge of Ebola in Africa.</p>
<p><a href="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/ebola-dr-salia-01-582x388.jpg"><img src="https://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/ebola-dr-salia-01-582x388.jpg?w=150&h=99" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="ebola-dr-salia-01-582x388" height="99" width="150" /></a>But this morning, the show became a little more poignant. Hours ago, Dr. <a href="http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/sierra-leone-surgeon-with-ebola-arrives-in-us" target="_blank">Martin Salia died from Ebola in Nebraska</a>. What you may not know is that he’d been working in Africa, at our United Methodist Kissy Hospital in Sierra Leone. Recently, Dr. Salia gave an interview about his sense of calling to minister to those in Sierra Leone’s poorest neighborhoods.</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VfAKd7V_tcE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></span></p>
<p>Friday’s show was already poignant, in that Dallas had been affected by Ebola. In part, we were pledging to fight Ebola in Africa as a way of remembering how we are now Ebola free. Now, we also remember the true sacrifice that those fighting Ebola, through the United Methodist Church and may other NGOs, truly make.</p>
<p>Come to enjoy the music. But also don’t forget the truly important cause.</p>
<p>Your presence Friday, and your gifts, will make a difference.</p>
<p>Show information <a href="http://connectionsband.com/event/1081110/98070520/connections-tribute-to-chicago-and-eagles-at-northaven" target="_blank">here</a>. See you Friday.</p>
<div class="text_exposed_show"></div><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/angels-and-pins/">Angels and Pins</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2455/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=2455&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998699
2014-05-01T11:49:55-05:00
2017-01-10T07:25:19-06:00
Friday’s Show: Please Spread The Word!
<p><a href="http://imgur.com/0JWhe6C"><img src="//i.imgur.com/0JWhe6C.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" /></a></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/arkansas-tornadoes/">Arkansas Tornadoes</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/connections/">Connections</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/music/">Music</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/2048/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=2048&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998700
2014-01-27T09:49:56-06:00
2017-02-05T02:49:16-06:00
Jimmy Pankow Was Right
<p>OK, I’m not proud of this post. But I can’t help myself.</p>
<p>Everybody needs to rewatch Chicago and Robin Thicke at the Grammys last night, for the hidden gem of the night.</p>
<p>Right as they transition to “Beginnings” the camera pans out just enough to catch Jimmy Pankow (trombone) mouthing some words to Keith Howland(guitar).</p>
<p>With a big smile, still in full stage persona, he unmistakably he says “What an *$$hole!”<br>
Just when I thought I couldn’t love that band any more.</p>
<p>Also, notice that Robert Lamm (keyboards) thinks he’s supposed to sing verse two of “Beginnings,” but drops out when Thicke keeps singing over him. Classy, and smiling all the time.</p>
<p>Again, Jimmy Pankow was right.</p>
<p>Watch it all below, although this link will probably vanish eventually. It’s at about the 1:05 mark:</p>
<span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7g0pX9mrK0M?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></span><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/worth-repeating/">Worth Repeating</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/chicago/">Chicago</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/grammys/">Grammys</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/robin-thicke/">Robin Thicke</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1846/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=1846&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998701
2013-12-31T08:44:55-06:00
2017-01-10T07:25:19-06:00
Woody’s New Years Resolutions
<p>Even though I’ve made it crystal clear that <a title="Resolve To Not Resolve" href="http://wheneftalks.com/2011/12/31/resolve-to-not-resolve/" target="_blank">I do not make New Year’s Resolutions</a>, I’ve reposted these several years on this day just because they’re so awesome. This list is from 1942 and the great Woody Guthrie.</p>
<p>Click the pic to enlarge.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/woody.png"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/woody.png?w=487" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="Image" height="306" id="i-1641" width="487" /></a></p>
<p>As I’ve said before, I don’t “do” New Year’s Resolutions. I have found that not making them has actually helped me achieve <em>more</em> of my primary life goals.</p>
<p>It’s something along the lines of Yoda’s wisdom, or Nike’s. Or both. I’d love for you to consider the logic by reading this blog: “<a title="Resolve To Not Resolve" href="http://wheneftalks.com/2011/12/31/resolve-to-not-resolve/" target="_blank">Resolve To Not Resolve</a>.” Then, consider joining the non-resolving movement.</p>
<p>But as general life-goals, you can’t get much better than Woody. I started seeing this list float around the internet about three New Year’s ago, and I’m glad folks are reading his folk-wisdom. Although, this year when you Google it, the top link is no longer <a href="http://www.woodyguthrie.org" target="_blank">Woody’s own great website</a>, but “<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/woody-guthries-new-years-resolutions-2013-12" target="_blank">Business Insider’s</a>” repost.</p>
<p>Not quite sure how to fathom that “Business Insider” has embraced Woody Guthrie.</p>
<p>Don’t think he would reciprocate.</p>
<h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size:1em;">Related articles</h6>
<ul class="zemanta-article-ul">
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<a href="http://blogscottsdaleaz.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/woody-guthrie-really-knew-how-to-do-new-years-resolutions/" target="_blank">Woody Guthrie Really Knew How To Do New Year’s Resolutions</a> (blogscottsdaleaz.wordpress.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li">
<a href="http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/12/31/woody-guthries-33-new-years-resolutions/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Woody Guthrie’s 33 New Year’s Resolutions</a> (aerogrammestudio.com)</li>
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<a href="http://knittingskeet.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/new-years-resolutions-and-other-foolhardy-endeavors/" target="_blank">New Year’s Resolutions and other Foolhardy Endeavors.</a> (knittingskeet.wordpress.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li">
<a href="http://nyceducator.com/2013/12/new-years-resolutions.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">New Year’s Resolutions</a> (nyceducator.com)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li">
<a href="http://irresponsibility.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/woody-guthries-new-years-rulins/" target="_blank">Woody Guthrie’s New Years Rulins</a> (irresponsibility.wordpress.com)</li>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/travel/in-search-of-woody-guthries-america.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">In Search of Woody Guthrie’s America</a> (nytimes.com)</li>
</ul><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/balcony-people/">Balcony People</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/poetry-in-motion/">Poetry In Motion</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/worth-repeating/">Worth Repeating</a> Tagged: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/new-year-resolution/">New Year Resolution</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/newyear/">newyear</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/nike/">Nike</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/woody/">Woody</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/woody-guthrie/">Woody Guthrie</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/tag/yoda/">Yoda</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1639/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=1639&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998702
2013-10-29T15:42:00-05:00
2020-12-31T10:07:34-06:00
A New iTunes Single and Reflections on 50 Years
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/9b8bb-tradehallcover.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/9b8bb-tradehallcover.jpg?w=200&h=200" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<p>I’m pleased to announce that my song <b><i>“Sitting In the Trade Hall (11.22.63)”</i></b> <span style="font-size:xx-small;">(1)</span> is <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sitting-in-trade-hall-11.22.63/id730563686?i=730563694" target="_blank">now available on iTunes</a> as a single. This song will eventually be on my new CD, whenever it’s finally done. But given that we’re a month-out from the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I thought it was a good time to release a single now.</p>
<p>I’d be honored for you all to give a listen, and pleased to have you download it for yourself.</p>
<p>Link <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sitting-in-trade-hall-11.22.63/id730563686?i=730563694" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>It’s a song I wrote some years ago, from the perspective of adults who lived in Dallas at the time of this horrific event.</p>
<p>Here’s a video for the song:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"></div>
<p>But since I love blogging, I thought I’d not only announce the song, but also talk more about both it and my own thoughts on the Kennedy assassination.</p>
<p><b>Fifty-years is a long time.</b><br>
Think of it this way:1963 is to <i>Now</i>.<br>
What <i>1913</i> was to 1963.</p>
<p>And, as we know, time moves even faster now than it did back then. World events –assassinations, murders, shootings– come at us like water out of a fire hydrant. I’m not saying this is good. I’m just saying, “it is.”</p>
<p>Like September 11th in the present day, the Kennedy assassination was the most deeply scarring domestic event of a generation. Nobody escaped being changed by it. And, everybody alive at the time remembers it.</p>
<p>Well, everybody but me…</p>
<p>One of the strange facts about us late-generation Baby Boomers (the President and Michelle Obama are others, btw…) is that even though we are generally lumped together with the “Boomers,” the memories we share are with our younger “Buster” brethren and sistren.</p>
<p>We have few conscious memories of most of the world events and trends that shaped the lives of most Boomers, even though they tell us we are one. This was always very very strange for me, growing up. And never stranger than when it came to the Kennedy assassination.</p>
<p>Yes, I lived in Dallas at the time (ten minutes from the scene). But at fourteen-months-and-one-day-old; there’s no conscious memory for me.</p>
<p>So, while everybody I grew up with has a “<i>Where were you?”</i> story, I don’t. Stranger still, the stories I grew up hearing were first hand.</p>
<p>The people I grew up with –some of my parent’s friends, and friend’s parents– have memories of being in the parade route, or at Market Hall waiting for the lunch. (I’ll talk more about them in a moment…)</p>
<p><b>Dallas’ Silent Burden</b><br>
I think it’s important for folks beyond Dallas to understand this: <i>While the Kennedy assassination no doubt changed you, it specially changed our whole city. It stayed with us in ways that it did not stay with you.</i></p>
<p>When I was kid, everywhere we traveled around the nation, people would say to me,<br>
<i>“Oh…you’re from Dallas….that’s where Kennedy was killed…”</i></p>
<p>And whether they meant it or not, there was a patina of shame woven into their words.</p>
<p><i>“Oh…you’re from <span style="text-decoration:underline;">that</span> place…”</i></p>
<p>Everywhere I went, I grew up feeling the shame from an event I didn’t remember. Even when we went to Russia in the early 1990s, the people there knew Dallas for two things:<br>
1) The Dallas Cowboys.<br>
2) Kennedy.</p>
<p>New Russian friends –with whom we shared no language– mouthed the word “<i>Kennedy</i>” to us, and then stood before us in awkward silence no words could have ever vanquished.</p>
<p>But here’s the point not to miss: As a kid growing up in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, in the shadows of both the physical buildings and the historical time<i>, <span style="text-decoration:underline;">nobody ever talked about the Kennedy assassination</span>.</i></p>
<p>If adults around me ever <span style="text-decoration:underline;">did</span> mention it, it was in hushed tones. Hushed, pained, perhaps even humiliated, tones. It was unmentionable. It was a heavy pall, a weight in the shoulders of every adult I knew.</p>
<p>And the message I learned and intuited, as a kid, was that I was not to talk about it either.</p>
<p>So it was that I was almost out of high school before I knew for sure which of those downtown buildings was the “School Book Depository,” or where “Dealey Plaza” really was.</p>
<p>The biggest, most momentous thing ever to happen in my hometown.<br>
Something in our backyard that was debated, discussed, and lamented the world over.</p>
<p>But not here. Nobody ever spoke in words about it here. But everybody <i>felt</i> it.</p>
<p>And it was horrible.</p>
<p><b>It was that sense of guilt that inspired my song.</b><br>
I wanted to write a song about these adults I knew, growing up. My parent’s friends. My friend’s parents. All those adults who never, ever talked about it, but whose guilt and shame I could palpably <i>feel</i> as a child.</p>
<p>For better or for worse, average folks in Dallas took the Kennedy assassination hard. They took it to heart. Afterwards, there was, in some national circles, a kind of <i>“What’s wrong with Dallas?”</i> debate.</p>
<p>As I’ve said, today however –in the light of dozens more crazed lone-gunmen over decades that have come and gone– we understand that these things just <i>happen</i> sometimes. They happen just about <i>everywhere</i> now, it seems. Crazed gunmen strike lots of places.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/d26ff-parklandgrief195.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/d26ff-parklandgrief195.jpg?w=320&h=214" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
<p>But there was a kind of all-pervasive Kennedy guilt that overcame Dallas in the years afterwards. You can ask anybody who was an adult here at the time, and they’ll tell you about it.</p>
<p>You could make a very very strong psychological argument that Dallas’ reputation as a city that always wants to “look good” can be traced back to that very day. You could make the strong argument that, although everybody knew it wasn’t really Dallas’ fault, that many adults here still secretly prayed the last line of the song,</p>
<p><i>“O dear God, don’t let ’em say it was our fault…”</i></p>
<p>When I started writing songs, I knew I’d write about this. Not about the assassination, or even really even about Kennedy, but about the <span style="text-decoration:underline;">people of Dallas</span>. The people with the heaviness in their shoulders, and the fear that they might, somehow, really <i>be</i> guilty.</p>
<p><b>The Truth of Dallas in 1963</b><br>
For the record, I don’t think Dallas killed Kennedy. But, as I’ve just said, we’ve always felt the <i>guilt</i> the song hints at.</p>
<p>And, if we are totally honest, some of the guilt had real basis events in and around Dallas at the time. I know that sounds contradictory. So, bear with me. You see, the song itself gets at some of the deeper truth.</p>
<p>The deeper truth is that, in November of 1963, Dallas was an <i>extremely</i> conservative place. The John Birch Society had one of its largest outposts in Dallas. As the song notes, people had, in fact, <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1917&dat=19631022&id=MnUhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_4gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5988,4423922" target="_blank">spit on Adlai Stevenson</a>. Others had pushed around LBJ and Lady Bird on the streets of downtown. The day of Kennedy’s arrival, there were “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wanted_for_treason.jpg" target="_blank">Wanted for Treason</a>” posters on light poles around the city. There were many other things I could mention. As Casey Stengal said, “<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/reflect/20131012-extremists-in-dallas-created-volatile-atmosphere-before-jfks-1963-visit.ece" target="_blank"><i>You can look it up</i></a>.”</p>
<p><i><b>UPDATE!</b></i><br>
<i>I have recently found the incredible new book, “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dallas-1963-Bill-Minutaglio/dp/1455522090" target="_blank">Dallas, 1963</a>” which chronicles all of this with staggeringly accurate footnotes and detail. I know of no greater source for understanding the Dallas I grew up hearing about all my life. Details behind the headlines I always knew…</i></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/0f085-jfk-and-jackie-in-dallas-on-11-22-63.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/0f085-jfk-and-jackie-in-dallas-on-11-22-63.jpg?w=200&h=159" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="159" width="200" /></a></div>
<p>These were known parts of local history. In 1963, “liberals” were, in fact, not tolerated very well. Average folks? They were giddy and uncomfortable that the president was coming.<br>
Dallas was a conservative place.<br>
He was a northeastern liberal.</p>
<p>But! He was also <i><b>the President</b></i>. They were glad to see him visit. Puffed up with civic pride.</p>
<p>But, the visit was also controversial. And as the song ironically suggests, I imagine the average person would be pleased to have him back in Washington the next day. Dallas wasn’t a very big city as of yet. It was not the teaming, international city of today. This was the biggest thing ever to happen in anybody’s memory. But nobody was quite sure how to handle it.</p>
<p>So, that’s what I tried to capture in the song…<br>
… That sense of real pride…<br>
… That sense of warriness over a “liberal” coming to Dallas…<br>
… That horrible sense of guilt that descended like a 50-year pall.</p>
<p>I’m very proud of the song. It’s said that the best songs are about what you “know,” and those of us here know this event better than anyone. My friend Alan Gann once told me, <i>“Only somebody from Dallas could write that song.”</i></p>
<p>I’m grateful for Tim McLemore’s great piano track in the song, and for the unbelievable fiddle-work of the incomparable Reggie Rueffer. He did that fiddle solo in about two-takes. It was amazing to watch/hear.</p>
<p>As I’ve said, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sitting-in-trade-hall-11.22.63/id730563686?i=730563694" target="_blank">hope you like the song</a>.</p>
<p>But, wait, there’s more…</p>
<p><b>The Past and Future Collide</b><br>
This history, this song, and even my ministry, would collide in ways I could not expect, when I was appointed as Senior Pastor of <a href="http://www.northaven.org/" target="_blank">Northaven Church</a> more than a decade ago now.</p>
<p>Having grown up here –just up the road from Dealey Plaza, and just down the road from Northaven Church– I suppose these worlds were bound intersect.</p>
<p>For once I was at Northaven, I was reminded of a story I’d heard, years before. In fact, the story was in my mind when I’d written the song, fifteen years before coming to Northaven.</p>
<p>Three days after JFK was gunned down in Dallas, Rev. Bill Holmes, Northaven’s Senior Pastor at the time, preached what became a quite controversial sermon.</p>
<p>The title of the sermon was <i>“The One Thing Worse Than This.”</i> And while I won’t repeat the whole thing here, the gist of it was that this assassination was, truly, the “worst thing” that had ever happened to Dallas.</p>
<p>But, to Holmes, “the one thing worse that this” would be for Dallas not to take a hard look at the harshly polarizing rhetoric and politics of its time…the things I’ve just mentioned…the spitting at Stevenson…the pushing of LBJ…etc…</p>
<p>And Holmes listed one thing he’d been told about that week: that schoolchildren had “cheered” when told of Kennedy’s assassination. It was this last example of intolerance that garnered the most attention. News folks heard about the sermon, and a crew from the CBS Evening News stopped by the church early the next week, and filmed Bill Holmes re-preaching the sermon to an empty sanctuary. (Remember: no videotape in those days…)</p>
<p><i><b>UPDATE!</b></i><br>
<i>I have found a video clip of the sermon! Please watch it below.</i></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"></div>
<p>Here’s a few quotes from that famous sermon:</p>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<p><i>“We, the majority of (Dallas) citizens, have gone quietly about our work and leisure, forfeiting the city’s image to the hate mongers and reactionaries in our midst. The spirit of assassination has been with us for some time. Not manifest in bullets but in spitting mouths and political invectives…”</i></p>
<p><i>“We have many graces and human decencies of which I am extremely proud. But we cannot, month after month, year after year, sow the seeds of intolerance and hate, and then upon learning of the President’s visit – just throw a switch and hope all rancor will disappear. The vocal, organized and unorganized extremists have captured us – while we were sleeping in the night…”</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Walter Cronkite ran lengthy excerpts of it on his newscast.</p>
<p>Then, the you-know-what hit the fan. Holmes got death threats and, at the suggestion of the Dallas Police, went into hiding for a week. City leaders quickly rose to deny that “children had cheered.”<span style="font-size:x-small;">(2)</span></p>
<p><i><b>UPDATE!</b></i><br>
<i>I have found video of the event in 2007, where Holmes finally reveals the name of this teacher, and compellingly answers the critics who claim this never happened. Find it <a href="http://emuseum.jfk.org/view/objects/asitem/items@:26532" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p>
<p>It became one of the seminal events, if not <i>the</i> seminal event, in the history of Northaven Church.</p>
<p>Folks left. Others who stayed were shocked.</p>
<p>They wondered, <i>“Why the outcry?”</i> Holmes had done nothing but speak the truth, after all.</p>
<p>And, even if you somehow choose to deny all the things Holmes listed, the mere fact that he was forced into hiding for a week proves his point, doesn’t it? <i>The reaction <span style="text-decoration:underline;">to</span> the sermon proved the point <span style="text-decoration:underline;">of</span> it.</i></p>
<p>Now, it is sometimes said that “timing is everything,” and some have suggested that perhaps Holmes’ timing for such a prophetic sermon was questionable. Three-days later…while everyone was still grieving…was that the time to make such prophetic statements?</p>
<p>Timing aside, Holmes’ main point reverberates down with us to this day. Hateful speech can contribute to hateful action. As I pointed out two years ago, we don’t like hearing this any more <a href="http://wheneftalks2.blogspot.com/2011/01/word-and-our-words.html" target="_blank">today</a> than we did back then. But it’s always been a truism, in every generation.</p>
<p>No, Dallas didn’t kill Kennedy. But that <i>guilt</i>, that feeling that we <i>might</i> have something to feel guilty about, has driven this town ever since.</p>
<p>Since being at Northaven, I’ve met actual people who were actually there. Meaning, folks who were in the room at the Trade Mart, awaiting President Kennedy. Our friend and Northaven member, Jan Sanders, was among them. I must tell you, it’s been surreal to actually meet folks who were actually there, in that room I picture in the song. Jan says they huddled around a few radios, trying to figure out what was going on….and only did it gradually dawn on them that something truly horrible had happened.</p>
<p>The truth is, the balloons would never fall. The city would never really say, “<i>Welcome to Dallas</i>!”</p>
<p><b>“Everything Is Different Now”</b><br>
<b>Or, Is it?</b><br>
Don Henley sings that line. And everything <i>is</i> different in Dallas now.<br>
But is everything different <i>everywhere</i>?</p>
<p>One thing that’s different is that after decades of silence, people started talking. All credit to the <a href="http://www.jfk.org/" target="_blank">Sixth Floor Museum</a> for that. Opened in 1989, it’s one of the only places I always strongly encourage out-of-towners to visit.</p>
<p>I know it’s been a healing place for everyone who has visited, but especially for us Dallas folk. I cried, almost heaving tears, the first time I went through…just recollecting all this stuff…remembering all that silently-carried burden of all those average folks who lived here…remembering the senseless loss of a great President; who might have merely been tolerated here, but who was deeply loved elsewhere.<br>
So, yes, Dallas finally learned to start talking about it.</p>
<p>But the other thing not to miss is that Dallas is also much different now. Everybody in the city, including the long-timers at Northaven, struggle to remember this. It’s so easy to get caught up in the past you know, and “assume” you know Dallas now.</p>
<p>Politically, for example, Democrats win every county-wide election now, and have for a decade. And as I’ve written numerous times, <a href="http://wheneftalks2.blogspot.com/2013/11/presidential-voting-in-dallas-county.html">this is a shift unlikely to reverse itself in any seismic way</a>. Put another way…with all apologies to Austin, <a href="http://wheneftalks2.blogspot.com/2013/11/hey-austin-dallas-is-texas-bluest.html"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Dallas is Texas’ “Bluest” city</span></a> (In terms of the sheer number of total voters, not percentage…).</p>
<p>Dallas is a genuinely multi-ethnic, international city. Hundreds of thousands of people have moved into the area from elsewhere, bringing with them values that have nudged out our old provincialisms.</p>
<p>Until you understand facts like these, you won’t “get” where Dallas is now.</p>
<p>This means that Northaven –deeply scarred by the reaction the Holmes’ sermon– is no longer a tiny fringe progressive oasis in a conservative desert. If you asked longtimers, that’s really how they’ve seen themselves all these years. In fact, just in Methodist circles, there are easily a half-dozen genuinely “progressive” congregations popping up around the city today.</p>
<p><i>Northaven</i> haven’t changed.<br>
But<i> Dallas,</i> has around us.</p>
<p>It’s become more like Northaven, and Northaven is less of the odd duck in its midst. (Personally, I believe this is a part of why we’ve grown some in recent years…)</p>
<p>So, as I said at the start, fifty years is a long time. It would be a mistake, deeply wrong, for conservatives or liberals (or anybody in between) to believe Dallas is the city it was fifty years ago.</p>
<p>Having said that, I look around at extremists like Ted Cruz and some in the Tea Party, and I wonder<i>:</i></p>
<p><i>“So, how different <span style="text-decoration:underline;">are</span> we, really?”</i></p>
<p>And what it seems to me is: the hard core, ultra-conservatism that infected Dallas in 1963, now moves freely in our national politics.</p>
<p>Tea Party rhetoric often sounds very John Birch to me. Or, Google the name “National Indignation Convention,” and be amazed at how similar it is to the Tea Party movement.</p>
<p>More often that I’d like, Ted Cruz sounds like Bruce Alger.<br>
More often that I’d like, unelected leaders like Sarah Palin sound like General Edwin Walker.</p>
<p>And if you didn’t grow up around here, and don’t know those historical leaders, Google them. Or, better yet, give a read to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dallas-1963-Bill-Minutaglio/dp/1455522090" target="_blank">this book I mentioned earlier</a>. It’s amazing.</p>
<p>One more thing is similar then as now, and it’s something that really drove the anger of Bill Holmes in that famous sermon: <i><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Ordinary people often refuse to stand-up against their own extremists</span></i>.</p>
<p>In the 1963, Holmes noted that the average Dallasite was not a “John Birch conservative.”<br>
Nor is the average Republican in our nation today a “Tea Partier.”<br>
(Furthermore: not all who agree with Tea Party principles are “extremists”)</p>
<p>And yet in both cases, in both historical times, a silent majority allowed extremists to be “out-sized” in their political and social influence.</p>
<p>The case of the recent government shutdown is “Exhibit A.” We know now that there were <i>always</i> plenty of votes among moderate Republicans to keep the shutdown from happening in the first place.</p>
<p>But it happened anyway. The extremists in the Tea Party pushed for it, nobody stood up to them, and they got their way.</p>
<p>And what I keep hearing from Republican friends is this:</p>
<p><i>“Eric, everybody I know is afraid of the Tea Party.”</i></p>
<p>Let me be clear, I am not afraid of them. I am annoyed by them.<br>
Everybody <i>I</i> know is <i>annoyed</i> by them.</p>
<p>But I know this. What Bill Holmes said in 1963 is still true today: <i>until people stand up to them, nothing will change. </i></p>
<p>This was precisely the situation in 1963, when Bill Holmes’ called for regular citizens to stand up and reclaim their city. And through a twisting and turning five-decade path, that <i>did</i> happen here. Dallas changed.</p>
<p>But what Holmes said to <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Dallas</span> 50 years ago, we can say to the <span style="text-decoration:underline;">nation</span> today:</p>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<p><i>“It is not too late for us to learn that men can agree to disagree in love and still hold partisan persuasions. Where do we begin?</i></p>
<p>We have our children.<br>
They were not born hating the President of the United States. They soon learned to imitate their parents. It is not only important that we nurture them in political ideas, but in the even more fundamentals of understanding and respect for those who old a different point of view.</p>
<p>We have our neighborhoods.<br>
When the extremist across the street, or down the block, starts spewing his epithets and hate, he must soon discover that he has a contest on his hands as we confront him with sanity and love.</p>
<p>We have our precincts, where live and vital issues are discussed.</p>
<p>It is time both liberals and conservatives took responsibilities for the reactionaries and extremists in their own parties.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Everything has changed here. But old issues seem to rear their head in every new generation.</p>
<p>We can learn from the past, though.</p>
<p>Thanks be to God, we don’t ever have to repeat it.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">(1) I realize that this was not actually the name of the venue. Kennedy was to be the guest at a lunch in the Dallas Trade Mart. The actual room was called “The Great Hall” which, lyrically, would have worked. But I didn’t know this fact when I wrote/recorded the song. Also, I wanted to have the name “Trade” in there, to hint at where the room was. So, yes, I knew what I was doing when I titled the song this way.</span><br>
<span style="font-size:x-small;">It’s just a song…go with it…</span></p>
<p>(2) I, for one, have always been puzzled by the tempest over “children laughing.” City leaders, and sincere Dallas historians, continue to deny that it ever happened. However please do not miss this inescapable point: Bill Holmes and his family went into hiding for a week after the sermon. Even if you choose to deny the truth of children clapping, you cannot deny that the reaction to the sermon proved the point of the sermon itself.<br>
<span style="font-size:x-small;"><i><b>UPDATE!</b></i></span><br>
<span style="font-size:x-small;"><i>I have found video of the event in 2007, where Holmes finally reveals the name of this teacher, and compellingly answers the critics who claim this never happened. Find it <a href="http://emuseum.jfk.org/view/objects/asitem/items@:26532" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">Beyond this, another teacher, Joanna Shields (who you can still find in the pews of Northaven every Sunday, to this day) also reports children cheered at her school too.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">All the other stuff…spitting on Stevenson…pushing LBJ…the “wanted for treason” poster with JFK’s image…the large John Birch group….<i>all</i> these are undisputed by anyone studying the history. So, it seems patently silly to pretend that debunking the “children cheered” story changes Rev. Holmes’ main point.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">It didn’t then. It doesn’t now.</span></p>
<p><i>(As always, if you like this post, then “like it” or “share it” on Facebook by clicking the box below, or send it to your friends…so others can see too…and leave a comment…EF) </i></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/angels-and-pins/">Angels and Pins</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/echoes-of-1963/">Echoes of 1963</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/favorite-entries/">Favorite Entries</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/northaven/">Northaven</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/thoughts-from-purple-land/">Thoughts from Purple Land</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/1031/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=1031&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998703
2013-02-23T15:34:00-06:00
2017-02-05T02:49:17-06:00
Near as Breath, Yet Untouchable: Reflections on Fogelberg Weekend
<p><span style='font-family:"'><i><b>“Sometimes in the night I feel it,<br>
Near as my next breath and yet untouchable.<br>
Silently, the past comes stealing,<br>
Like the taste of some forbidden sweet.”</b></i></span><br>
<span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> </i></span></p>
<p>A week ago <span style="text-decoration:underline;">right now</span>, we were rehearsing for that night’s Dan Fogelberg Tribute Show. It feels like just yesterday. It’s taken me a week to come down from the high enough to clearly write my thoughts. (That, and the fact that’s it’s been a busy week in the real world too…)</p>
<p>As I noted from the stage last Saturday night, you could argue that all sorts of incredible things started with the Dan Fogelberg song, “<i><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/old-tennessee/id198153713?i=198155068" target="_blank">Old Tennessee</a>.”</i></p>
<p>It was on a night many years ago, as I played that song for the first time with Rusty King, that something dawned on me.</p>
<p>We were at a clergy retreat, and I had never met Rusty. I knew we were both Methodist ministers. He, Paul Escamilla, and John Fleming brought their guitars up to my room to play music, while other friends just played games and talked the night away.</p>
<p>We started out playing songs we all knew, but that quickly drifted into Dan-songs. Then, into <span style="text-decoration:underline;">obscure</span> Dan songs. Songs you’d only know if you had a copy of <a href="http://amzn.com/0634050745" target="_blank">this</a>. One of those songs was <i>“Old Tennessee,”</i> and Rusty not only played it note-for-note, he also matched the harmonies.</p>
<p>And I thought, “<i>Who <b>is</b> this guy? He knows as many Dan songs as I do.”</i></p>
<p>That night of <i>“Old Tennessee”</i>-like songs, eventually led to a crazy <i>“what if”</i> from Rusty:</p>
<p><i><span style="text-decoration:underline;">“What if we did a Fogelberg “tribute show” to raise money for mission?”</span></i></p>
<p><a style="clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2a718-firstshow.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2a718-firstshow.jpg?w=200&h=150" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="150" width="200" /></a>I thought it was a crazy idea. Who would come?<br>
But Dan was <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/2006/02/16/dan-fogelberg/" target="_blank">my favorite singer songwriter</a> of all-time. Do you think I was gonna turn down the chance to sing his music, backed by a 20-piece band?<br>
Not a chance.</p>
<p>So we did the show. And what I assumed was pure self-indulgence on my part became two hundred and fifty people who belted-out the closing chorus of “Gambler” at the top of their lungs, and donated over $2,500 dollars to missions.</p>
<p>After a few days to allow the adrenaline to work itself out, we said, <i>“Hey. Maybe we’re on to something…”</i></p>
<p>What we were “on” to was Connections. The clergy members who founded Connections(1) were soon meeting to dream of a future, and asking…</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><i>“What if we kept the band going, did 70s Shows, and raised money for mission?”</i></span></p>
<p>That question, and the ability to dream increasingly larger <i>“what ifs,”</i> has kept <a href="http://www.connectionsband.com" target="_blank">this wild and crazy band</a> going now for seven years now. We’ve played over 40 shows for tens of thousand of people and we’ve raised $240,000 for some really fine causes.<br>
<span style="font-size:small;"><br>
</span><br>
<span style='font-family:"'><span style="font-size:small;"><i><b>“Down the ancient corridors,</b></i></span></span><br>
<span style='font-family:"'><span style="font-size:small;"><i><b>And through the gates of time,</b></i></span></span><br>
<span style='font-family:"'><span style="font-size:small;"><i><b>Run the ghosts of days that we left behind.”</b></i></span></span><br>
<span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> </i></span></p>
<p>We weren’t the only folks dreaming <i>“what ifs.”</i> Over in Peoria, Illinois, the family and friends of Dan Fogelberg were asking…</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><i>“What if we create a memorial to honor Dan, and invite fans/musicians from around the nation to come for the dedication?”</i></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/59e1f-img_0941.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/59e1f-img_0941.jpg?w=320&h=239" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
<p>There’d never been a public memorial service after Dan’s death. And as time passed, it seemed more and more like something needed to be done to publicly honor him. So, a group that has now morphed into the <a href="http://dfpeoria.com/" target="_blank">Fogelberg Foundation of Peoria</a> was formed. Some really fine folks like Hugh Higgins, Eric Mills and Deb Jelinek worked to create a powerful weekend, where a memorial would be dedicated, and “DanFans” and musicians from around the nation could come and participate.</p>
<p>Deb asked me if we could come. Rusty, Mike Sheehan and me were all a part of that initial year. It was incredible. We played for 300 passionate DanFans from around the nation, for his Mom, wife, and family. It was electric.</p>
<p>So our little tribute band had led to being part of the very first “Fogelberg Weekend,” and new “connection” with souls around the country who keep the “legacy” alive.</p>
<p>Time passed. We kept doing shows. Mostly non-Dan shows, truthfully. (I think we’ve done the Fogelberg show five times?) Rusty got a new job in Allen, where he not only works for <a href="http://www.fumcallen.org/" target="_blank">the church</a>, but also with the Allen Symphony Chorus.</p>
<p>Ever the dreamer, Rusty asked his craziest question yet…</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><i>“What if we did a Fogelberg show, with a twenty-five piece orchestra, the Allen Symphony Chorus, and our band? And what if we invited DanFans around the country and had a “Welcome Party” like Peoria?”</i></span></p>
<p>The result of that craziest <i>“what if”</i> yet was last Saturday night at the Allen Performing Arts Center.</p>
<p>I added my one of my own <i>“what ifs,”</i> when I learned that he just lived down the road in Lago Vista…</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><i>“What if we invited Glen Spreen (Seven-time Gold/Platinum Record recipient for his work with Dan. Orchestra composer on almost all his most-known work) to come direct our orchestra?”</i></span></p>
<p>And so, the Fogelberg Weekend in Allen came together.</p>
<p>Days after our very first Dan Fogelberg Show in March of 2006, I wrote a blog called “<a href="http://wheneftalks.com/2006/04/01/a-magical-night/" target="_blank">A Magical Night</a>.”</p>
<p>So, what do we call last Saturday?</p>
<p><i>Ridiculous?</i><br>
<i>Awesome?</i><br>
<i>Beyond words?</i></p>
<p>What do you call a Tribute Show to Dan Fogelberg with Connections, a 25-piece orchestra, a 50-voice chorus, a thousand people listening, DanFam and musicians from around the nation, <b>AND</b> Glen Spreen?</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/69e5f-wholestageshot.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/69e5f-wholestageshot.jpg?w=640&h=480" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
<p><i>“All of the above?”</i></p>
<p>We’re still pinching ourselves.</p>
<p>Here’s a pretty fine video of Nether Lands from the show. The balance may seem a bit off in parts…but all-in-all, it’s wonderful…</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"></div>
<p>On behalf of our little band, let me offer some “<i>Thank Yous</i>” we said that night and elsewhere, but that we cannot repeat enough…</p>
<p><b>First, thanks to Connections and our core members.</b><br>
When Rusty pitched the Fogelberg Weekend, I think that even many bandmembers didn’t realize just how cool the whole thing would be. So, thanks to Connections, and its core members, for being willing to to continue to dream these big “what ifs.”</p>
<p><b>Thanks to the DanFam members who spent their own money/time to drive/fly to Dallas to be with us.</b><br>
It meant a great deal to have you here, and we’re really pleased you got to be a part of it all and see what we do. The “connections” are now even stronger! Special thanks to Diane Panasci, who helped host a whompin’ load ‘of these folks.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to the Tribute Musicians from around the nation.</b><br>
Thanks to <a href="http://www.myspace.com/donniemills" target="_blank">Donnie Mills</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/JayDH100" target="_blank">Jay Hennesey</a>, <a href="http://steverodmanmusic.com/" target="_blank">Steve Rodman</a>, <a href="http://www.bomarandritter.com/" target="_blank">Bob Ritter and Mary Bomar</a>, <a href="https://www.reverbnation.com/timbotunes" target="_blank">Tim Pastor</a>, and Lee Giardina-Foran. Thanks for spending your own money and time to fly/drive here, and share your talents with all the folks in Dallas. It meant a lot, especially to me, Rusty, and Mike to have you with us.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/816ac-composite-gambler.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/816ac-composite-gambler.jpg?w=640&h=224" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="224" width="640" /></a></div>
<p>Thanks to our own members, Mike Sheehan and Paul Simonson for doing yeoman’s work all through the Friday night show and the Saturday one. Jesse Plymale sat in on keyboards during all of the Tribute Show too.</p>
<p><b>Special thanks to Sheldon Felich.</b><br>
Sheldon organized Friday’s show, and brought all the tribute artists together, played with us Saturday, and behind the scenes has done so much to continue the work of keeping Dan’s musical legacy alive, including our show. Y’all should check out <a href="http://riverofsouls.net/home.cfm" target="_blank">his great tribute band too</a>.</p>
<p>Here is Sheldon and our own Wendy Curran, doing “Only The Heart May Know”</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"></div>
<p><b>Thanks to Deb Jelinek for all her continued support.</b><br>
Thanks for singing with us, and for being a part of the <a href="http://dfpeoria.com/EventArchives.html" target="_blank">Fogelberg Foundation of Peoria</a>. Thanks, from afar, to good folks like Hugh and Eric Mills. We love you guys.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to the Allen Symphony Chorus and members of the Allen Philharmonic Orchestra for also being a part of this big dream.</b><br>
Thanks especially to all the behind-the-scenes work of Kathy Litinas, and other chorus members who worked hard to staff the Welcome Party.<br>
Thanks to Caryn Fecht who directed the chorus during the show.<br>
After the show, more than one chorus member said to me, <i>“We should do this again.”</i><br>
(That’s how the big-crazy “what ifs” start!)</p>
<p><b>Thanks to Glen Spreen.</b></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/97dee-glenspreen.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/97dee-glenspreen.jpg?w=200&h=156" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="156" width="200" /></a></div>
<p>You can’t imagine what a thrill it was for you to be with us, and to have you conduct our orchestra. You are a kind and wonderful spirit, and we’re so pleased you seemed to enjoy the night as much as we did. We’re pleased the crowd gave you that well-deserved standing-O.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to James Miller, who wrote a whole ton of charts for this show.</b><br>
It was all wonderful, and the music wouldn’t have been there without your work.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to <a href="http://www.fumcallen.org/" target="_blank">First United Methodist Church of Allen</a>.</b><br>
They deserve <i><span style="text-decoration:underline;">copious</span></i> and <i><span style="text-decoration:underline;">overflowing</span></i> thanks. FUMC Allen put thousands of dollars into this production. They contributed the resources of several of staff members. They did publicity, provided dozens of volunteers for meals, set-up, refreshments, and many other behind the scenes tasks. All of you deserve <b>much</b> of the credit for this success.<br>
Thanks to our friend, Todd Harris, and to bandmates Brian McPherson, Rusty, and all the rest of the staff there.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to Rusty.</b><br>
Keep throwing out those crazy, <i>“what ifs”</i> my friend.</p>
<p><b>Finally, all thanks to God. </b><br>
Thanks to God for allowing us to continue this incredible work. With this show, we raised $12,000 for <a href="http://www.umcor.org/" target="_blank">United Methodist Committee on Relief</a>, and work they are doing to alleviate the suffering of Hurricane Sandy. We’re grateful that God keeps opening these doors for our band. We’ll try to keep walking through.</p>
<p><a style="clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/f8d27-danfogelberg.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/f8d27-danfogelberg.jpg?w=131&h=200" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="200" width="131" /></a><b>And thanks to Dan.</b><br>
Thanks to Jean Fogelberg for being a gracious human being. We miss Dan a lot. Those of us who are “DanFans” miss him in a way that tugs at the gut.</p>
<p>Those of us who are privileged to play his music –across the nation, as solo acts or in large bands– we find ourselves with the feeling that we’ve been given a “legacy” to maintain. It’s a calling to make sure that others keep hearing the incredible music of this incredible artist and soul.</p>
<p>In fact, probably 90 percent of the audience Saturday night hadn’t heard a lot of this music. Most came knowing just “the hits.”</p>
<p>I’m <b>so</b> warmed by messages I got –one while we were still tearing down just after the show– from audience members who’ve said, <i>“I just downloaded some of the songs I’d never heard.”</i> They were downloading Dan’s music to their phone on the way home from the show!</p>
<p>That makes me smile. I’d hope it would make Dan smile too.</p>
<p><span style='font-family:"'><i><b>“Death is there to keep us honest,</b></i></span><br>
<span style='font-family:"'><i><b>And constantly remind us we are free.”</b></i></span><br>
<span style="font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> ∞</i><i> </i></span></p>
<p>I know I speak for me, and probably for everybody else on stage during Saturday’s show, but we knew in the moment that it was a one-of-a-kind night.</p>
<p>Many of you have mentioned our version of <i>“<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/ghosts/id201407149?i=201413402" target="_blank">Ghosts</a>“</i> last Saturday. Some have said it was a highlight of the show. (btw, it’s one of the songs folks have told me they’ve now downloaded for the first time!!!)</p>
<p>When Rusty first pitched the idea of a show with orchestra/chorus, I told him I only had two real “musts”:<br>
a) We have to do “Ghosts;” and<br>
b) I want to sing it.</p>
<p>Here’s a video. It’s never gonna capture the moment as it was, but it gives you an idea…</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="620" height="379" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I0qiI1x21IQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></span></p>
<p>I used to listen to <i>“<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-innocent-age/id201407149" target="_blank">The Innocent Age</a>“</i> on my record player while falling asleep my senior year in high school. I’d been a DanFan for several years(2), but that seminal record came out during that seminal year of my life. Many times, I’d put on “Side Four,” and allow myself to drift off to “Ghosts.” So, it’s always been a personal favorite. (In fact, I just noticed that I cited it in <a title="Follow Up on Fogelberg" href="http://wheneftalks.com/2007/12/19/follow-up-on-fogelberg/">a previous blog</a>, written just after Dan’s death…)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/fa7ba-dan_fogelberg_-_the_innocent_age.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/fa7ba-dan_fogelberg_-_the_innocent_age.jpg?w=200&h=200" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<p>Without drifting too far away from the general point of <span style="text-decoration:underline;">this</span> blog, let me opine that “<i>The Innocent Age</i>” was perhaps the last record of its kind.</p>
<p>Very few records would ever again be “double albums.” Very few records by singer-songwriters would ever again have that impressive a combination of chart-topping hits <b>and</b> richly artistic numbers.</p>
<p>In fact, I have made the case before that Dan Fogelberg was the last of the great chart-topping “singer-songwriters,” and that unbeknownst to all of us at the time, “<i><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-innocent-age/id201407149" target="_blank">The Innocent Age</a>,”</i> was the last great popular “singer-songwriter” album. Ever. (3)</p>
<p>“Ghosts” is an amazing song. The past, the present, the future, all morph into one in that song. And, I’d like to believe, all three came together on that stage, in that moment, last Saturday.</p>
<p>The morning of the show, I hurriedly penned a two-page journal entry. Knowing that nerves might well be a problem that night, I prayed:<i> “Let me just be in the moment…”</i></p>
<p>During the whole show, but especially during <i>“Ghosts,”</i> I really felt like that happened. Like we were <span style="text-decoration:underline;"><b>all</b></span> aware of just how special this was, and what an honor for each of us to play our parts.</p>
<p>It felt like we left it all on the stage.</p>
<p>For me? In that moment, I recalled all those nights, listening this song in the dark of my high school room. I thought of all the beautiful souls who love Dan’s music, gathered into that hall for one evening.</p>
<p>I even imagined Dan himself, having stepped into life beyond life, singing back to us: <i>“Death is there to keep us honest, and constantly remind us we are free.”</i></p>
<p>Now and then, past, present, future all <b>do</b> come together in one Kairos moment.<br>
<i><br>
</i><i><span style="font-size:small;"><b>For all of you who were a part of this special weekend….</b></span></i><br>
<i><span style="font-size:small;"><b>Thank you….thank you….thank you.</b></span></i></p>
<p><i><span style="font-size:small;"><b>(BTW…check <span style="font-size:small;">back, as I will add video clips to this blog as I can work them in….EF)</span> </b></span></i></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/d0d51-fogelbergshow-rustyericdoc.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/d0d51-fogelbergshow-rustyericdoc.jpg?w=640&h=424" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="424" width="640" /></a></div>
<p>Notes:<br>
<span style="font-size:x-small;">(1)Rusty King, Me, Frank Rahm, Paul Escamilla, John Fleming, Ann Willett</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">(2) First, through the<span style="font-size:x-small;"> “FM” soundtra<span style="font-size:x-small;">ck, and “Gambler.<span style="font-size:x-small;">” That led to buying “Sou<span style="font-size:x-small;">veni<span style="font-size:x-small;">rs,<span style="font-size:x-small;">” to hear the original<span style="font-size:x-small;"> context. Then, I went back to “Home Free<span style="font-size:x-small;">” and worked my way forward in time.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span><br>
<span style="font-size:x-small;"><br>
</span><span style="font-size:x-small;">(<span style="font-size:x-small;">3</span>) This is not to say that Dan did not have success after this. He did. Nor is it to say that others have not had it since. They have. But in the early 1980s, pop music was just about to change <span style="text-decoration:underline;">drastically</span>. The era of the singer-songwriter dominating the airwaves of pop radio…which you can trace all the way back to folks like Dylan, and then through folks like James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin, Jackson Browne, Stephen Bishop…even bands like Eagles…that era was drawing to <span style="font-size:x-small;">a</span> close.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">Dan, being among the youngest of this generation, produced IMHO, the last, great opus of that era: “The Innocent Age.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;">Again, all these artists continue to produce excellent work to this day. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, <span style="text-decoration:underline;">the combination of their artisanship being rewarded with hits on the pop charts</span>…that era was drawing to a close. Dan, I have argued many times, was the last of the great American singer-songwriters on pop radio, and “The Innocent Age” was the last great singer-songwriter record. It’s a tour-de-force, and a fitting end to that era. He didn’t intend for it to be this, but with 20-20 hindsight, we can say this now.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;"><span style="font-size:small;">(<i>Leave a comment below via your Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account. </i></span><i><span style="font-size:small;">And, if you like this post, then “share it” or “like” it on Facebook by clicking the box below, so others can see too…) </span> </i></span></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/folkerth-on-fogelberg/">Folkerth on Fogelberg</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/917/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=917&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth
tag:ericfolkerth.com,2005:Post/3998704
2013-02-17T00:50:00-06:00
2017-01-10T07:25:19-06:00
Tell Us What You Thought of the Show/Weekend
<p>It’s late at night, after the Fogelberg Tribute Show in Allen tonight.<br>
I’m still exploding with adrenaline and love for how it came out…</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em;" href="http://wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/516f6.jpg"><img src="//wheneftalks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/516f6.jpg?w=400&h=300" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>1,000 of you came.<br>
We raised over $12,000 for the relief of Hurricane Sandy.<br>
80 musicians did our best to honor the musical legacy of Dan Fogelberg.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’d like you to do:</p>
<p><b>If you were there, tonight, or last night, please leave a comment HERE at the end of this blog.</b></p>
<p>Yes, some of you have probably already commented over on Facebook. But those comments sort of vanish away forever. And we’d like to be able to keep your thought in a file for future savoring.</p>
<p>So…</p>
<p><i><b>What did you like?</b></i><br>
<i><b>What will you remember?</b></i><br>
<i><b>What feedback for any of us band, orchestra, chorus folks do you have?</b></i><br>
<i><b>Would you change anything?</b></i></p>
<p>Thanks in advance for leaving your thoughts here.</p>
<p>(<i>Note: comments are “approved” on the blog. That can take hours, really. So, if they don’t show up right away, patience. The next time I’ll sign on, I’ll get to them….EF</i>)</p>
<p><span style="font-size:x-small;"> (<i><span style="font-size:x-small;">Leave a co<span style="font-size:x-small;">mment vi<span style="font-size:x-small;">a your Twitter, Facebook or Google+ sign<span style="font-size:x-small;">-in. </span></span></span></span>As always, if you like this post, then “share it” or “like” it on Facebook by clicking the box below, so others can see too…) </i></span></p><br>Filed under: <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/connections-news/">Connections News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/folkerth-on-fogelberg/">Folkerth on Fogelberg</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/music-news/">Music News</a>, <a href="http://wheneftalks.com/category/my-music/">My Music</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/"><img src="//feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/wheneftalks.wordpress.com/915/" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" /></a> <img src="//pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=wheneftalks.com&blog=61211481&post=915&subd=wheneftalks&ref=&feed=1" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="1" width="1" />
Eric Folkerth