My statement in support of 10-A,

What I Said at the Revolution, My statement in support of 10-A, Presbytery of Central Nebraska, February 26, 2011.

(Approximate, I did not speak from a written text)

Mr. Moderator, I speak for the amendment.

I think everyone here knows that I have my past year has been very interesting.

I have learned three things in the course of this last year.

First, I have learned that I am richly blessed in my family and friends, some of those friends are in this room today.   They have supported me with love and prayers and actions.

Second, I believe that God is teaching me humility.  In my arrogance, I looked down on two things in this world, one is preachers who got in trouble; the other is the Big Ten.

Third, I have learned for the first time in my life, what it is to put your heart and soul into something and then to be told it is not good enough.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have lived my life up to know as an adored daughter of the church.  This is the first time I have known this kind of rejection.  As painful as this has been, it has made me think.

My gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in Christ feel this kind of rejection every day of their entire lives.  They are told they are not good enough just because of who they are.   They are friends, classmates and colleagues.  I graduated from seminary in 1991.  I know people who were at seminary with me who are still waiting for ordination today.

Mr. Moderator, it is time to bring our sons and daughters home.  We need to approve this amendment for justice.  We need to approve this amendment to stand against the violence in this country.  We need to approve this amendment because these sons and daughters just may be the spark of revitalization our denomination needs.

The Lovely Light

This is the text of a sermon I preached on January 16, 2011 at Community Presbyterian Church in Waldport, Oregon.   Great thanks to Kate Huey of the UCC "Weekly Seeds" blog for her thoughts and for that wonderful Madeleine L'Engle quote.

Isaiah 49:1-7

John 1:29-42

The American humorist Oliver Hereford once said, “Many are called but few get up.”  Today we heard about people who are not only called, they actually got up. First hear about the baptism of Jesus from John the Baptist, who tells the story of his own experience to his disciples, describing the presence of the Holy Spirit coming down from on high like a dove.  The next day when he sees Jesus again, he again announces this title for Jesus, “The Lamb of God” a title that comes straight out of the turbulent history of the Jewish people, a lamb that atones for the sins of the people. So these disciples of John decide to check out this Jesus guy.

So they go and Jesus asks them what they are looking for.  So they ask Jesus, where he lives.  It is almost like that game where you have to keep asking questions and the first one to make a statement loses.  Jesus is the first one to make a statement, so I guess he loses.

The answer Jesus gives is also no argument, no harangue, just something we should say a lot more when we are touting our mission, our churches: "Come and see."

Jesus is on to something.  He makes this simple invitation, come and see. 
Come and see not my house, but how I live.   He asks these two friends of John the Baptist to become his friends now. 

The great Christian writer Madeleine L'Engle said this, “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

I think L’Engle has a point.  Too often we try to harass or scare people into Christian faith.  Visions of hellfire and brimstone fill so much of Christian evangelism.  Instead we need to be that source of L’Engle’s lovely light, the light of Christ shining through our lives.

Just a few minutes ago, we sang the praise song, “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”  I was struck by how well the last verse said what I am trying to say to you now:

“As we gaze on Your kindly brightness.

So our faces display Your likeness.
Ever changing from glory to glory,
Mirrored here may our lives tell Your story.”

We think it is difficult to be that source of lovely light.  We don’t know where to start or how or we think that we need a revelation like John the Baptist had, a dove descending from the open skies.  It doesn’t work that way for most of us.  For most of us, showing the light of Christ in our lives is a journey, one foot in front of the other, praying, studying, worshiping, ministering as the lovely light grows stronger and stronger in us every day.  And you know what?  That was the journey for Andrew and Peter and all those others who have responded to the call of Jesus.

I’ve been thinking about that lovely light this week as our country has mourned and tried to make sense of the awful events of a week ago yesterday in Tucson, Arizona.  Those who died, from nine year old Christina Taylor Green to the older people including Presbyterian Phyllis Schenck and Dorwin Stoddard, a pillar of the Church of Christ, who put his body between the gunman and his beloved wife, to Judge John Roll were people who were committed to making their community a better place, who tried to shed some light in the world.  They lived lives that were not glamorous or famous, but lives that shed light in the world.  The same is true for Congresswoman Giffords, for young Daniel Hernandez who saved her life, for Roger Salzgeber, Bill Badger, and Patricia Maisch who disarmed the gunman, the first responders, the police and the EMTs, all good people who tried to do the right thing and in doing so, became sources of light. 

As President Obama said so movingly this week at the Memorial Service, “These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle.  They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength.  Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned -– as it was on Saturday morning.”

The President went on to say, “The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better.  To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents.  And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.”

That is very much what it is like for us, disciples of Christ, ordinary Presbyterians who go to churches, work at our jobs, volunteer in our communities.   In doing so, we make our lives a memorial to the living Christ.  We must seek to make our lives more Christly every day in a way that would, for lack of a better term, make Jesus proud.  What would Jesus do cannot just be a slogan for a bumper sticker, it must be the model for our lives.

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it.  There is old saying, God doesn't call the qualified; God qualifies the called.  When God calls us to service and work, God equips us as well.

These two disciples of John came and saw Jesus and one of them, Andrew, went and found his brother, Simon and brought him to meet this new source of God’s light.  Jesus looked at Simon and gave him a new name, Cephas, Peter or in our language, Rock.

Peter’s future with Jesus was rocky indeed, even denying Jesus when Jesus faced the cross.  But this Rock would be equipped by God to go out, and just as his brother Andrew carried the good news to him, Peter carried it out into the wider world.

So tend your own lovely light, a light that will shine the love of God through you, God’s own unique creation.  So others will come to the light and the story will go on and on.

Amen.

Shoot

Shoot

I apologize for not blogging sooner.  Those of you who keep up with me on Facebook are aware of my brother Tom’s long and continuing recovery from a fall.  I’ve also been distracted by my job search and the hurly burly and travel of the holiday season.  I’m still in Lincoln City, OR but plan to return to Omaha at the end of the month so I can find a job before my severance ends.

The events of this week have caused me to take up my pen (laptop?) once again.

This post was heavily influenced by Rev. Victoria Weinstein’s sermon from this morning, http://tinyurl.com/2bzrool and by Keith Olbermann’s special comment from last night, http://tinyurl.com/39644hk

But this post is dedicated to my friend Joan Brubaker, not only for being a sane and wise voice in this world, but for nudging me until I started blogging again.

Shoot

This week I was getting a cut and color at the place I am supposed to relax, the salon.  I was relaxing, reading my Tweets while the talented Jeremy worked on my hair.  Suddenly, I felt that dreadful iciness in the pit of my stomach as a read these words from someone in Omaha:  “Millard South shooter still at large.

Millard South?  As in the school just two miles away from where my brother and his family live and two miles away from Millard West where my nephew Bob is a junior?  Millard South? Nice school in the suburbs that counts Heisman trophy winner Eric Crouch among the alumni?  Millard South?

First thoughts:  Is Bob safe?  Were other schools involved?  How many wounded or killed?  What the hell has happened in Omaha? 

I was quickly able to contact Bob through text messages, yes, he was fine, his school, along with all the Millard Schools, were in lockdown.  It was scary, but he was never at risk.

I also learned the details as everyone else did. A 17 year old senior Robert Butler, Jr., the son of an Omaha Police officer, took his father’s gun and fatally shot the vice-principal, Vicki Kaspar and seriously wounded the principal, Craig Case.   Butler was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his car in a parking lot about a mile from the school by Omaha police 45 minutes after the attack at the school.  Butler had been suspended by Dr. Kaspar that morning for driving on the football field during the Christmas break.  Both Dr. Case and Dr. Kaspar sound like the kind of educators we can’t afford to lose, utterly dedicated to their students.

While Omahans near and far were mourning and trying to make sense out of senselessness, another shooting grabbed the entire nation’s attention.  Yesterday, Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford was shot in Tucson, Arizona at a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway along with 19 others.  Gifford is fighting for her life at a Tucson hospital.  Six other were killed including Federal Judge John Roll and Christine Taylor Green, 9 years old.  Christine, who had just been elected to her school’s student council, was interested in politics, went to event with a neighbor.  Link to a Washington Post blog that details the lives of the six who were murdered: http://tinyurl.com/2ch94mt Everyone of them, someone we can’t afford to lose.  The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, 22 displayed a troubled history with rambling and incoherent posts to the Internet warning of “mind control.”  Documents were found in Loughner’s home in which he claimed his “assassination” of Giffords.

What can we learn from this circle of sin and misery and death?  What have we ever learned?  In the sermon I linked to above, we are called as people of faith to speak out oon these issues.  Here is what my poor thoughts are.

First, we have to stop stigmatizing mental illness and its treatment in this country.  The shooters in these cases were both kids from nice suburbs.  Butler apparently showed few signs of trouble other than vandalizing the football field.   That seems more like a teenage prank than an indicator of anti-social behavior.  (Full disclosure:  When I was in college, I vandalized a golf green after a few too many.  I have never shot or attacked anyone, but I was never found out, either.)

Loughner, however exhibited numerous signs of trouble, including paranoid ramblings on the Internet and troubling behavior and statements in his college classes.

Would either of these tragedies have been avoided if either young man had received help?  I don’t know.  The problem is we may never know.

Second, we must stop using violent rhetoric in all political discourse.  “Don’t retreat, reload” “Second Amendment remedies” and putting bull’s-eyes or target sights on top of political districts or politicians faces.  This kind of rhetoric, wherever it is found on the political spectrum needs to be unacceptable.  (See Keith Olbermann’s special comment on this, above.)  We cannot or and we should not try to regulate free speech, but we as individuals and as a society must repudiate and politely correct those who violate this standard.  It cannot be a law; it must be a standard of human decency.  Did violent rhetoric contribute to either of these tragedies?  I don’t know.  The problem is we may never know.

Third, we must do something about guns in our society.  79 Americans die every day from gun violence.  That is 13 Tucson shootings, every day!   In 1998, 3,792 American children and teens (19 and under) died by gunfire in murders, suicides and unintentional shootings. That's more than 10 young people a day.  That is a Columbine every two days!     We don’t notice these shootings because they come in single spies, not in battalions.  We need to start paying attention because it has to stop.  In my home town of Omaha, 44 people were murdered in 2008, the last year that statistics are available for from the Omaha Police department.  May of these were victims of gang violence including drive by shootings in Hispanic or African American neighborhoods, noted by the local media, but becoming a run of the mill occurrence in Omaha and in other communities.

Humorist Andy Borowitz posted to Twitter today, “I make the modest proposal that it should be harder to get a gun than a Facebook account.”  I would make a less modest proposal that it should be as hard to own and operate a gun as it is to own and operate a car.  You cannot drive a car in this country without passing a test to prove you know how to use it safely.  You cannot drive a car in this country unless you carry liability insurance to protect those you may injure with that car.  Right now, through the “gun show” loophole anyone can go to a gun show and buy a gun without a background check.  People who own guns in homes with children should be required to keep those weapons in a gun safe or use a trigger lock.   Robert Butler, the son of an Omaha police officer, took his father’s service weapon from an unlocked closet in the forty minutes his father was out of the house.  According to an anonymous Arizona law enforcement source, it seems that Jared Loughner purchased his gun legally.  Would tighter gun regulations including gun locks have stopped Loughner or Butler.  I don’t know.  The problem is we may never know.  Would it stop future tragedies?  I sincerely believe it would.

Finally, the small piece of hope from these events:  There are always more heroes than villains.  Hundreds of doctors, nurses, EMT’s and medical professionals used all their skill to try and save the victims of these shootings.  Loughner probably would have killed many more if a wounded woman grabbed his magazine as he tried to reload.  His next magazine failed and he was tackled by two other men who subdued him until police were on the scene.  Daniel Hernandez, a twenty year old intern with Giffords, ran toward the bullets when the shooting started and staunched her wounds, elevated her head so she could breath, and kept talking to her.  Dorwin Stoddard, killed in Tucson, blocked the gunfire with his body, saving his the life of his beloved wife.  Thousands have and will continue to gather at memorial services, vigils and prayer services.  Millions more have and will mourn and offer prayers and condolences and will observe the national moment of silence tomorrow.

Perhaps, these people are the people we should be celebrating instead of the actors and athletes, socialites and loudmouths we usually celebrate in this country.  Perhaps we can’t do it nationally, but we certainly could start noticing, thanking and celebrating the people in our communities who can and do make a difference, who make our lives better through their vocations and avocations. 

Would it make a difference in these shootings?  Probably wouldn’t have.  Could it make a difference in our world if we start today?  Oh yes.

Blessings,

Cindy

I have used numerous news sources including AOL News, Omaha.com, MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Huffington Post.  Handgun statistics come from StopHandgunViolence.com and the Omaha Police Department.