The Disabled God - and some appropriately disjointed thoughts on resurrection

"In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.

I think I neglected to post this obituary for theologian Nancy Eieslund last month. I have finally ordered her book The Disabled God, which may be pertinent to next Sunday's sermon. (No preaching this Easter weekend, but I'm on for Low Sunday.) As may this, of course.

And then there's the rich reading in the book of Acts, the one about what we contemporary Christians mostly don't do. Except in some very poor communities, like the one I just read about in this book. Hmmm.

Kevin preached a kick-a** sermon at St. Mary's House this a.m. about the importance of how Jesus died (crucifixion) in relation to how we are to live post-Resurrection (in a way that subverts the powers that be - intentionally). There was more, but that is the part related to what I've been starting to think about for next Sunday. Of course, things could change between now and then.

This morning's sermon (one of them - I was also at the early Vigil at All Saints') also reminded me of Krister Stendahl's excellent essay "Immortality Is Too Much and Too Little." (Originally this essay was his 1972 Nobel Conference lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College. It is available in Stendahl's book of essays Meanings: the Bible as Document and as Guide.) Stendahl's point is that we confuse resurrection with immortality of the soul. We don't proclaim the latter. We proclaim the resurrection of the body - and the victory of God's justice. Not, as Stendahl in his inimitable way put it, "what this has to do with little me."

Alleluia. Go forth.

He Qi: After Resurrection

A little perspective: "Depression Survivors Remember Hope"

From the Los Angeles Times, some memories of the Depression of 1929 and onward. This is my parents' generation.

Xico on the World Social Forum

The ever thoughtful Francisco Silva, a.k.a. Francisco de Assis da Silva, a.k.a. Xico, at Kantinho do Rev (in Brazilian-accented English) has a post on the World Social Forum and why Anglicans should be there.

For those who don't know what the World Social Forum is, here is a website. (Not a sexy one, but an informative one.)

The Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil is at the World Social Forum. The rest of the Anglican Communion is not.

I hear from one of my students (from three years ago) who was there last time that many Forum participants tend not to have a positive view of religious organizations. Not surprising, but I'm curious to learn more. I do know religious activists who have attended and been involved, and the World Council of Churches is present.

And right before the World Social Forum, there was a World Forum on Theology and Liberation. Theme: water / earth / theology / for another possible world. The World Social Forum's motto is "Another world is possible."


Indigenous people at a march on the first day of the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil. Photo by Reuters.

Two days ago, women; today, labor unions, the middle class, and the poor

U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands after signing an executive order at the Middle Class Working Families Task Force event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, January 30, 2009. Photo: Larry Downing, Reuters.

It really is a new presidential era. Today President Obama signed executive orders that, in his words, "level the playing field" and do not view unions as an evil force in U.S. society. He also spoke of the poor and not just the middle class; as you may recall the poor were largely invisible in election campaign rhetoric.

For this, for the President's action yesterday signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and for yesterday's denouncing of huge bonuses to Wall Street executives, many of us are thankful. And, make no mistake, many will be angry. I don't mean to go all Manichean on you, but the opposition to this is not going to be pretty.

So, I rejoice, and I pray.

And I pray that those of us who, moved by our faith, our humanism, our experience, or our principles, support the rights of workers to organize, the dignity of the most poor, the equality of women and men, and fairness in finance, will be active as citizens.

Below, because we like him, Vice-President Joe Biden. He will head White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families . Photo: Ron Edmonds, AP.

A Pete Seeger P.S. - with video and all the words!

Enjoy.

h/t to truthout

Friday cat blogging: study with vacuum cleaner and sun

This was about two months ago.

As you see, the always extraordinary +Maya Pavlova, unlike most kittehs, does not fear the vacuum cleaner. But don't ask her to use it. She has her limits.

Too bad, I could use the household help. But I am only her humble and obedient servant.

The weather is cold (nothing like Boston or Minneapolis, but chilly for the Southland, below freezing) and I woke up with a cat draped over my arm on the flannel sheets. I am so dramatically broke that I have to keep the heat low since I can't afford heating oil till after the next paycheck (still two weeks away -- cable is about to be shut off, too; I may have to watch the Inauguration at a friend's) so we are piling on the down comforters and sweaters, but there is good healthy food in the house and snuggling with a cat is always nice. Today is bright and sunny and as in these photos, Her Grace is seeking out the sun patches and will not need to roll into a tight little ball until later in the day. I have gotten through the first week of classes with minimal stress and only have a couple of hours of desk work to do, after which I can tend to the backlog of non-school things for the rest of the day, here at home with a nice mug of something hot.

These photos are not of very good quality, but they do capture the mood.

"Nightmares from my father and reading history wrong" - an essay by my brother

It's publishing time in the Acts of Hope family this week.

On New Year's Eve, my father wrote us (his children and grandchildren and some cousins) a moving letter about his dreams of World War II and, more succinctly, his hope and wish --his daytime dream-- for peace.

Father of Acts of Hope is a World War II veteran, a Purple Heart with a ten percent disability who saw what is euphemistically called "action" in the Pacific Theater, in the Marshall Islands. He is now 90 years old, a gentle man --as he was when he signed up for the Marines in late 1942-- who loves and advocates for peace, and like most veterans, he still has nightmares. Not all the time, but they have never left him. He says you never forget the smell of death.

I wished at the time that I could share his letter with readers here, but since it was a family letter I didn't even want to ask. (Also, truth be told, my parents think I spend too much time blogging.)

Meanwhile, Brother of Acts of Hope, who was equally impressed and moved by the letter, was working on one of his columns for the Turkish Daily News (which has just merged with another Turkish paper) and he asked our Dad for permission to reprint his letter in the column.

So here, published two days ago in Istanbul for English-language readership, is our beloved and respected father's letter, embedded in a short essay by Brother of Acts of Hope.

It is called "Nightmares of my father and reading history wrong." (by Dennis Redmont)

There is no live link yet because the newspaper's website is partly in revamp mode, so the archive is still catching up. But I'm reprinting the entire piece here.

We enter 2009 already as the Year We Want to Forget.

Yet it is only a few days old!

We try to examine history for answers — or ask the Young Generation “Y” for future clues.

But when we do read history, the conclusions are often wrong or incomplete. Or we don’t learn our lesson.

Let's take the meltdown of the Financial World in 2008: Exactly 20 years ago, Michael Lewis wrote his classic "Liar's Poker," warning readers that Wall Street didn't know what it was doing. “It’s laissez faire until you get into deep sh..,’’ one high flyer tells Lewis. When things go wrong at Wall Street investment banks, the risks become the problem of the U.S. government.

Instead of a wakeup call two decades ago, the book turned into a business school best seller and thousands of young people deluged Lewis with letters asking his advice on how to make money fast — not how to get out of the roulette-rolling of the stock market. Read the magazine Portfolio’s “End of the Wall Street Boom” by Lewis this month for lessons not learned.

Now, let's take the Great Depression: It has been revisited this year in a bestseller by Amity Shlaes called "The Forgotten Man.” It punctures the ideas we had about the great reforms of the Roosevelt era and the masterful way the United States navigated out of the Depression. Actually two successive Depressions. That's maybe because history books are written by professors rather than entrepreneurs.

Closer to the truth might have been that economic ignorance among policy makers was much worse than we realized, and that government intervention helped make the Depression Great. And that Hoover and Roosevelt misstepped in a number of ways, Shlaes explains.

"Hoover ordered wages up when they wanted to go down... Roosevelt’s errors were equally devastating... he created regulatory aid and relief agencies, based on the premise that recovery could only be achieved through a large military style effort," Shlaes writes. Again a misreading — or better, a need to constantly reread and revisit history...

Finally a third example, from the Greatest Generation, the generation of Americans who grew up during the deprivation of theGreat Depression, and then went on to fight World War II. Those who survived went on to build and rebuild U.S. industries, and created the Baby Boomers, that is us, whose social values did not quite match that generation’s social values.

What were the lessons learned on a real, down-to-earth human scale?

As it turns out, the results were unexpected... or were they?

Seeking some acquired wisdom, I listened to some nightmares from my journalist father, Bernard Redmont, who reached the venerable age of 90 in 2008, after a life of reporting around the world for CBS and many other media titles...

Again, it seems we didn't quite read or reread history correctly nor learn our lessons.

Listen to him in his "DREAMS FROM YOUR FATHER:”

"I have a dream. It recurs. Sometimes in the guise of a nightmare. Dreams of my encounters with wars. And hopes, or reveries, of peace.

On the eve of the new year 2009, I dreamed again of Roi and Namur, the coral islands where I was almost killed.

War veterans often make pilgrimages to the scenes of their battles with life and death, like those you've seen on TV, on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. My own visions become a "virtual" pilgrimage, in memories and dreams, because I can't actually go to Roi and Namur, in Kwajalein Atoll, the Marshall Islands, in the south central Pacific, 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii.

I told most of the story of Operation Flintlock in my book, "Risks Worth Taking." That was where, from Jan. 31 to Feb. 12, 1944, as a "gung ho" marine, I earned my Purple Heart and many weeks of restful recuperation in hospitals.

But what of now? In my dreams, and on the Internet, I, and you, can go on a "virtual battlefield tour" of the two northern islets of the world's largest coral atoll.

We thought we were liberating that first of the Japanese-held territories in the war, looking forward to peace and no more wars.

Today, Roi and Namur stand nominally as part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

They are, nevertheless, the multi-billion dollar lethal scene of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, run by the Pentagon.

Here, where 3,500 bunkered and entrenched Japanese soldiers fought us, and barely 51 of them survived, and where thousands of American Marines became casualties too, it is not quite peaceful.

You can take a "virtual battlefield tour" on the Internet, but you won't see the missile sites or naval port, or hear the deafening blasts, or the constant drone of American military planes arriving and departing from the once Japanese, now Dyess US airfield which we captured.

You will see the Japanese concrete pillboxes and bunkers, some four feet thick, still standing despite their "pulverization" by cannon and naval gunfire. You can't actually visit all this now, without special military clearance, or see the former Japanese submarine base.

But you can see the torpedo bunker, still standing, where our fellow marines dropped in a satchel charge of demolition explosives, and 20 of them died from the blow back blast.

You can also see an undemolished Japanese five-inch gun on a concrete emplacement, and a plaque commemorating the Japanese dead, some scattered American graves and a brass plate labeling the place a "National Historic Site."

For those cleared to visit, the authorities offer beautiful palm trees, a small golf course, a scuba diving club and trips to wrecks of Japanese warships, planes and even a heavy cruiser.

So ends the spiel of your 'virtual tour guide.'

Alas, wars rage all over our world. Yes, we yearn for peace on earth, good will to all.”

Dennis Redmont, an executive at the Council for the United States and Italy, is an American journalist and consultant who divides his time between Rome and Istanbul.

Alert Bay Area folks: Café de la Paz is closing

We interrupt this alleged blog break with a communiqué especially for Bay Area people and their friends.

Click to enlarge.

One of my favorite neighborhood restaurants is closing. Alas. I have had many fine meals there with good friends, and I know the owner. See below. And go there before the finale if you can. Also note the sale and the catering business. And the employee transition fund.

* * * * * * * *

Café de la Paz
P.O. Box 9144 Berkeley, CA 94709
510/843-0662
FAX 510/843-0669
cafedelapaz@yahoo.com

Dear Friends and Cutomers,

Sadly, after 15 years of operation in North Berkeley, Café de la Paz and Country Joe's Café & Music Hall are closing their doors. The recession turned the Café's moderately profitable business into one with unsustainable losses. We simply ran out of money and we're having difficulty refinancing. Given the dour projections for the economy in the coming year, there didn't seem to be any real alternative but to say farewell to our location at Cedar and Shattuck in North Berkeley.

There have been many joyful and memorable occasions and moments at Café de la Paz over the years. I thank everyone who has been part of that for their support. We will be continuing our catering business and perhaps the spirit that has animated the Café will re-surface in the another form and location in the time to come.

January 4 will be our final day of operation. We hope you will make it in to enjoy your favorite dishes once or twice more before we close. If you will pay with cash or personal check it will help. We will be open every night for dinner through January 4 and also for weekend brunch/lunch December 27, 28 & January 3, 4. There will be no more weekday breakfast and lunch except by reservation.

New Year's Eve Celebration. Come Ring in the New Year, next Wednesday evening, December 31, with music, dancing, poetry, great Cafe food and a festive countdown to midnight and then celebrate Country Joe McDonald's 67th Birthday (January 1) with cake. Country Joe will also be one of the featured performers (please see attachment).

Country Joe McDonald's Tribute to Woody Guthrie, Saturday, January 3, at 7:30 PM. Joe McDonald has kindly agreed to give a final, benefit performance of This Land is Our Land in support of the Cafe's Employee Transition Fund. Joe premiered this one man show of stories and songs at Café de la Paz in January of 2007 and has since gone on to perform it around the country to much critical acclaim. Tickets for concert style seating are $25 ($35 for front rows). Dinner reservations at 6 or 6:15 PM, before the show, are encouraged.

Open House, Goodby Party, and Garage Sale, January 4th, 12 Noon to 5 PM. On our final day of operation, in addition to regular Café dining upstairs, we are going to have a Farewell Party in the Fiesta room and Bar featuring:
· Free live music.
· An Everything Still in Stock Buffet including many Café favorites for the bargain price of $10 per guest
· à la carte Sangria, Wines, Margaritas and Mojitos
· A fabulous Garage sale of most everything still in the Café.

We have lots of things to sell. You can buy everything from Huichol yarn art to Fiesta Ware, tables and chairs, an espresso machine, remaining wine inventory, etc. If you would like a list, please send your request by reply email. If you have interest in the Huichol yarn art particularly, you don't have to wait. Everything we don't need to serve or sit on is for sale now.

We are going to publish a Café Recipe Booklet. Several people have asked for various signature Café recipes. A publisher friend has offered to help us produce a recipe booklet of the Café's favorite dishes, salsas and desserts, which we are using to help us raise money for a Transition Fund to pay some severance benefits to our staff during this difficult transition. We are therefore asking our friends to make a donation of $25 to $100 to provide a fund for helping all the Café's staff. You can mail a check (made payable to Café de la Paz, write "Transition Fund" in the memo space) or make donation by cash or check when you come to dine. We cannot accept credit cards for this.

It has been our profound privilege to serve North Berkeley and the East Bay progressive community for the past 15 years. This is a very special place on the planet and it has been great to be part of the fabric of its everyday life. I thank you for your patronage over the years and for many cherished memories.

If you'd like to talk about dates and locations for a catered event or any aspect of this transition, please give me a call: 510 843 0662.

Best wishes,

Russell Bass