The Way We Lived Then

I preached on these texts (Track 1) yesterday at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Conway. What a lovely correspondence they had to my gender and religious belief class this semester, to my work with older women in prayer shawl ministries over the past few years, to my obsession with the category of "widow" in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and to the raging war over the moral statuses of the poor and of women in our culture. I think the sermon turned out rather well.

Sermon for November 8, Proper 27 Year B

A few years ago someone recommended that I read Anthony Trollope, a prolific and very popular British novelist of the nineteenth century. His Victorian-era fiction turned out to be right up my alley, like a mix of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Most of his characters are marginal members of the aristocracy -- clergy with a parish granted by the local lord, baronets who gamble at London clubs and play at Parliament, widows with money besieged by suitors with none. The rules were different at that time and place, and among those people. A young man with a title was not supposed to stoop to earn money with a regular job, but at least if they lost all possibility of living off inherited wealth, they could go into law or finance, shameful as such a fate might be.

Trollope’s women, however, are in an altogether more desperate situation. Every now and then some spirited young lady will take it upon herself to explain to a male character that while he might not like his options, at least he has them. She has none. Her choices are: (1) marry, and acquire some share of her husband’s property and independence, (2) live with family members as a spinster until she dies, (3) become a live-in companion to a widow or a tutor to someone else’s children. Getting a job, much less a profession, simply isn’t a path that’s open to her. So when an offer of marriage evaporates because the man changed his mind, or a parent can’t afford to outfit a daughter for the social scene where potential husbands roam, these women stare into the maw of impending doom. It’s not just that they will fall off the approved track of their culture and into some disreputable state. It’s that their very lives have become insecure. Who will take care of them? How will they live?

Those women came immediately to mind when I read the passage from Ruth. “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you,” Naomi tells Ruth, before outlining exactly what that security means: a wealthy husband, a landowner. And how does one get such security? By “uncovering his feet” when he lies down to sleep. I have to keep this sermon G-rated, so I’ll just say that in this biblical euphemism, feet does not mean feet. You can find other examples of this delicate language in Exodus, regarding the circumcision of Moses’ son, and in Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim covering themselves with their three pairs of wings. I’ve seen some Bible commentaries that try to sanitize this story by claiming that Ruth was trying to wake up Boaz by making his feet cold. But Naomi specifies that Ruth is to wait until Boaz finishes partying at the threshing floor, put him in a state of undress, and lay down next to him. It’s clear that she is bent on creating a situation in which Boaz believes he is obligated to Ruth, and indeed, in the next chapter, Boaz takes it upon himself to make sure that Ruth has a husband -- a “guardian-redeemer” as the text puts it -- whether it be himself or another relative who has a claim on Naomi’s property. That is the only way a woman can find security. Faced with no way to fend for herself, her only option is -- by hook or by crook -- to get a man to accept her upkeep as an obligation.

The readings for today are unified by the theme of widows. Perhaps we gloss over that word without too much thought in our ordinary reading. Widows are women whose husbands have died; it’s a simple designation of marital status. But it’s anything but simple for women in the ancient near east. In both Hebrew and Hellenistic law and custom, a woman has no independent legal status as an individual. She can only be represented in society by a male guardian -- first her father, then her husband, and finally perhaps, her son. A woman without any of those people to protect and speak for her is the most vulnerable member of the community, with the exception of slaves. She literally has no standing -- no way to acquire a secure footing from which to lead a life that deserves respect and contributes to the community.

So when Jesus praises the widow who gives her mite at the synagogue, he was noting not just her financial contribution relative to her economic wealth. He points out that she is relinquishing the only thing that stands between her and nothingness. How is she to get something to live on? There is no one to procure it for her, and she has no respectable avenue of procuring it for herself. She is giving up the possibility, slender and temporary as it might be, of the pretense of membership in the community. And she does it, Jesus says, for the sake of a greater community in which she hopes to find a place.

I would like to think that those who heard Jesus’ words didn’t just watch the widow walk out of the synagogue with the vague thought that God would reward her bye and bye. Perhaps one of them ran after her and said, “My mother,” or “My aunt, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” After all, that’s what the community of apostles did, the author of Luke and Acts tells us, organizing a system of contributions and support for the widows and orphans among them -- a welfare system, a social safety net, if you will. They did not wait for the coming kingdom of God to make things right. They took responsibility for creating that reality in the here and now.

Too often the message “give sacrificially and trust that the Lord will provide” gets preached disproportionately to those for whom any giving is a risk. For these, a finger pointed to the Lord as provider is a finger pointed very deliberately away from those of us right here and quite able to provide for more than ourselves. I hope women have more and better options for finding security these days than tricking men into marrying them. (I’m terribly afraid that many do not.) But what I really see in these passages is a reminder that we are responsible for each other -- that when one of us casts off their last mite and throws herself on providence, they should find that God’s sheltering hands look a lot like my own.

A big week

It's been quite a week here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Tomorrow is Independence Day, and several Supreme Court decisions have transformed the emotions, opportunities, and political rhetoric of millions of people across the country, in all parts of the political spectrum.

As for me, you can all probably guess what my emotions and outlook are in the wake of this momentous week. But regardless of my personal views, as a Christian theologian I want to resist the framing of these issues as Christians versus Everybody Else. That framing requires us to distinguish between True Christians and Fake Christians (since people who consider themselves Christians are on all sides of the issue), and that leads us down a path that is untenable in light of history (Christians have always believed and behaved in a wide variety of ways; there is no one pure doctrine or creed to point back to).

I've shared a lot of resources on Facebook and Twitter over the past week that I think do a good job of raising issues, pointing out nuances, and providing perspectives that people like me, my family, my neighbors, and my students are likely to find helpful. I thought I'd collect them all here.

However, for those seeking to be faithful to the example of Jesus, to the prophetic strain of Jesus' message, and to the countercultural vision of the kingdom of God shared by Jesus and Paul (at what I consider his best moments), here are a few ideas you might find inspiring or thought-provoking.

A New Day (Jason Hines)

Let There Be Light (Don Bowman)

An Open Letter to My Fellow Christians Regarding Today's SCOTUS Decision (J. K. Doyle)

Some Advice on Same-Sex Marriage to US Church Leaders from a Canadian (Carey Nieuwhof)

Till Death Us Do Part: A Call to Unity Offered the Sunday Following SCOTUS Decision (Rev. Jeremy Troxler, UMC)

And a few takes that reflect some righteous anger, but which make points I needed to hear:

There's Only One Thing You Can Say to Ken Paxton, But I Can't Say It. Yet. (Jim Schutze, Dallas Observer)

After gay marriage, expect social amnesia (Jonathan Merritt)

Denying our rights denies our dignity (George Takei)

Apologia pro se voto

For almost all of my thirteen years as a educator, I've tried to stay outwardly apolitical. I felt that students might prejudge me as a teacher if I were open and free about my political leanings. So my only political activities, by and large, were voting and hoping. No bumper stickers, no volunteering, no social media posts. We felt strongly enough about the 2004 election to put a Kerry sign in our front yard, but I remember being slightly terrified that some student would see me going to the mailbox and know. I'm sure they all had their suspicions, but there's a difference between being thought to be liberal in this blood-red state, and declaring yourself openly. After Obama was elected in 2008, I got a "Yes We Did" sticker in the mail and took it to work, thinking I might be brave enough to put it on my bulletin board; it's still buried in a stack of papers, where I run across it occasionally and wish I had the courage to display it.

In the last couple of weeks, whatever fear has kept me in that attitude for more than a decade has quietly dissipated. I started retweeting political messages, commenting on the campaign news of the day. I slapped an Obama 2012 magnet on my car.

But that "coming out" wasn't the start of the change. It started back in the summer, when for the first time in my life I donated to a political campaign. I felt deeply attached to the Democratic cause, and to the president's re-election. And for the first time, I didn't want simply to vote and hope -- hope that other people were willing to contribute the time and resources to craft a victory.  If Obama lost, I told myself, it wouldn't be because I didn't do all I could.

I've donated regularly since then. The total is a bit staggering for modest-living folks like ourselves, to be honest. This week I've made calls to get out the early vote in battleground states. My vote is already registered. But if there's something more I can do to affect the outcome, I'm not going to leave it undone.

Some of my conservative friends surely believe that such a transformation from timid voter to active campaigner could only be motivated by hatred of my candidate's opponent. I've see some Twitter conversations about how apoplectic Obama supporters would be if Romney won because they find him so despicable. Maybe that's true for some, but not for me. I don't hate Romney. I don't even think he'd be an awful president. He's clearly not an ideologue on most issues -- just witness the way his positions on them have shifted over the past couple of decades, from universal health care to abortion rights. He's a politician who believes in the political process as a way to get things accomplished (again, Romneycare is the prime example). That lack of ideological rigidity, coupled with political facility, means that he's likely to govern much closer to the center than our last Republican president (who did not share those two qualities).

I object to three aspects of the Romney campaign, and three aspects only. They are important enough to  help bring me out of the closet, but they are not the basis of any hatred or revulsion.

First, I object not to what Romney himself believes or would do, but to the agendas of those to whom his candidacy and possible election would be beholden. Any honest observer will surely admit that many of these most prominent and influential supporters are dismissive of the poor in favor of the continued enrichment of the monied class, in favor of war as a preemptive solution in world affairs, and desirous of a return to times when women and people of color stayed in their place and didn't seek power over their own lives and destinies, leaving that instead up to the people who knew best. Those people will expect their agenda to be enacted if Romney is elected, and some of it no doubt would be.

Second, I object to the premise that Romney himself seems to have brought to this campaign -- the single most important principle, in my observation, that motivates him to run. That premise and principle is: It's my turn. I've paid my dues, I've worked my way up through the establishment, I've gotten the right people to pull the strings for me, I've kept my nose clean, and now I am owed.  As an argument to the electorate, even a Republican electorate desperate to end the Obama presidency, this smacks of presumption and fails to inspire.

And third, the only reason in my list that is rooted in one of Romney's personal positions that would doubtless affect the way he would govern: Mitt Romney has no interest in understanding or sympathizing with gay people. Of all the stories of his record as governor of Massachusetts that have been passed around, the only ones that sickened and alarmed me were the ones about his animosity toward homosexuals. He dismissed, in the most callous and cavalier terms, the human appeal of a mother in his office who happened to be seeking marriage to her lesbian partner. He vindictively blocked legally married citizens from obtaining accurate birth certificates for their children except through court order. He seems flummoxed by the very existence of gay people with ordinary human needs and desires, evincing a powerful urge to flee from their presence rather than have his cognitive circuits overloaded by the dissonance they represent.

I'm distressed that, whatever his religious convictions, a man who does not believe in the full humanity of a large swath of the American citizenry believes he should serve as their chief executive.

And I'm relieved that the candidate who has my vote, the president whose accomplishments I celebrate, represents the opposite of these objections. Look at the financing of his campaign. 34% of his campaign funds have come from small donors, those giving less than $200. That's not 34% of contributors, or of donation instances -- that's 34% of the total funds. More than $214 million from people who gave less than $200. At a minimum (if they had all given nearly $200), that's a million people who own a piece of the campaign. I don't even count as one of these, and I'm certainly not the kind of fat cat one thinks of as a "large donor." (The comparable statistic from the Romney campaign: 18% of his total individual contributions come from small donors, adding up to $70 million -- less than one-third of Obama's total in terms of both numbers of donors and money contributed.)

By contrast to Romney's "I've paid my dues, now give me the goodies" political career, Obama of course emerged as a political upstart, a surprise, even a distressing line-jumper for the establishment. The premise of his 2008 candidacy was anything but "You owe me this"; instead, whatever you think of the principles and ideals of that campaign, it was clearly based in what he would do, not what he deserved to be handed.

And in terms of being the president of all of America -- including people who don't pay individual income taxes (like the elderly, service members, and the working poor) and people who love someone of the same sex -- well, there's really no doubt.

I don't write this in order to impose my political views on you. I write it to explain why I've changed from vote-and-hope to vote, speak, act, and give.  And to insure that my vote can't be mischaracterized as a expression of class hatred or demonization of the other party. However you vote and whatever your political actions, I think they should come from love rather than hate, determination rather than fear. I write simply to say that for the first time, I'm trying to live that out in public and not just in private.

Thanks for reading. Most of you probably know me in real life, and the general thrust of the opinions here can't be much of a surprise -- but maybe the package surrounding them isn't quite what you expected. I don't expect to change any minds. I only make an explanation (an apology, in that antique sense) for myself. I appreciate the indulgence of my friends and family, especially those who disagree with me politically and on any of the specific points above, in tolerating a more divisive and partisan version of myself than is normally on display in this space.

Go vote, and if your circumstances and conscience permit, also speak, act, and give. Here is a scientific pumpkin made by my daughter; I hope that brings us back to the Union, Trueheart and Courtesy status quo.

A weekend away

For almost all of the last twelve years -- I don't think I've missed one since I moved to Arkansas -- I've been coming to Dallas on this weekend. It's the annual meeting of the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, an umbrella organization that organizes a conference for the members of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion in Texas and surrounding states.

Soon after I started attending, some of the organizers asked me to take leadership roles. I started as a chair of one of the program sessions, then served on the executive committee for the AAR's local branch, then agreed to become the AAR coordinator for the region. The six years of that job are almost up; next year will be my last in that position.

When I come to this meeting, I have a lot of jobs to do. Make decisions as a director of the Commission. Liaise between the AAR portion of the meeting and the meeting planner. Drum up attendance for the plenary. Give most of the reports at the AAR region's annual business meeting. And almost always, give a paper, moderate a session, sit on a panel.

This same weekend, my dad is going to a meeting that he's been attending for years. He's a member of the Kairos team that goes into a prison and spends three days with a group of inmates. The meeting involves months of preparation, like mine. It's packed with activities and a tight schedule, like mine. My dad has several leadership roles to enact, like I do. And there's a connection, too, with the premise of the meeting being religious. Mine is about the study of religion in an academic setting, and his is about practicing one religion's mandate to visit those in prison.

I'm sure readers will have their own opinion about which one is more in sync with their values and more salutary for society. As for me, well, we do good work here at the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies, but it's certainly neither as risky nor as courageous as the work of Kairos. I dare say that while our meeting may reach more people to advance their understanding in ways that improve their teaching of thousands of students, those people reached are already committed to that path, and so the advance is not revolutionary for most or all.

I dare say that the 40 inmates this Kairos weekend will reach are much more in need, and the effect on those men of being listened to and loved is potentially enormous, life-changing. College professors are used to being listened to. We have high social status. We are respected. The opposite is true, in all cases, for men in prison.

You might want to read about my dad's experience this weekend in his blog: http://walkinganewpath.blogspot.com. I am always humbled by what he relates. He may be the most self-critical blogger I read among the hundreds of feeds I follow. While serving others and seeking truth, he's always questioning his own motives and actions -- sometimes to a fault. I need to have more of that in my life, though. My confidence and ambition frequently lead me to believe that I'm a much better, more worthy person than anyone has a right to think themselves.

My dad has always been my role model. These days we often start from different premises in terms of our political and religious stances. The measure of our sincerity and effort surely is that sometimes we end up in the same place.

Those who are with Dad on his Kairos weekend don't have the same doctrine or politics as he does, either. Kairos is interdenominational, and folks participate from the liberal mainline churches, the nondenominational fellowships, the evangelicals and fundamentalists. When they read the Bible, some are reading God's dictation while others are reading human efforts to bear witness. But all are convinced that following the example of Jesus and Paul to pay special attention to society's outcasts is a good idea, good enough to take lots of time and effort and risk to undertake.

I'm convinced of it, too, and convicted. Here I am doing the work given me to do, and I'll do it with all my might, and I know it will make a difference and be appreciated. But how thankful I am that those rockier fields have found their laborers, too, and that I have some insight into their efforts through my dad.

Knitting is a political act

In honor of International Women's Day, I'd like to consider not only how women have risen above their culturally designated "station" to change the world -- and those are often the women we recognize and celebrate, like Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Madeline Albright, and Eleanor Roosevelt -- but also those who have changed the world by doing what society has assigned them to do.

 

The sneaky secret of empowerment is that it doesn't have to consist in grasping after a power beyond our mandated reach. It doesn't have to smash any ceilings. Not to belittle those who do; they are heroines, courageous beyond most of our imaginings. The backlash they suffer for daring to be more than what their peers imagine them to be is not something most of us would sign up for, or endure if we did.

But delving into the history of women's work, of the domestic sphere, as limiting and degrading as women can experience it to be (when it is all they are allowed to be), one finds powers that the defenders of the status quo have consistently overlooked.

The making of things empowers all of us. But it empowers women especially because the things we have been assigned historically to make are so fundamental, and therefore so radical. The cloth that we wove, the food that we cooked, the family structures we defined -- these are the root experiences of the human being. They are what we point to when we seek to differentiate our culture-bearing ancestors from their animal relatives.

As culture became more complex, women could chafe at being left on the ground floor, as it were. But oh, what a central position, what a powerful position that hearth and home can be. I'm not talking just about being a force behind the throne, influencing the men who go out into the world unwittingly carrying our ideas. I'm talking about shaping the physical world -- bending it around a needle, transforming it over a fire, shepherding it from helpless infant to independent adult.

When we knit, when we weave, we claim not only the powers that our politically active sisters gave to us over the past century. God bless them and what they did; no one in touch with their own humanity could wish it otherwise. But we can claim and exercise something deeper and more basic: the connection between our power to bear children and our power to beautify, adorn, warm, protect, and craft meaning into the world. Those powers meet at the hearthfire, where women inherited the jobs that were compatible with childrearing by virtue of being interruptible, not too dangerous, and practiced close to home. We found our pride and purpose there, something no one gave us and no one can take away. No matter how far we travel from that fundamental place, from those roots, we will always be able to call it back with the simple act of taking up the needle or the shuttle.

I'm following the Twitter feed of @RosiesWWII, the diary of a Seattle housewife who goes to work at Boeing after her husband joins the Army.  Rosie's friend Betty is constantly knitting for the troops, including during the bus rides to and from the factory, and during her lunch break. Rosie tries to learn, too, but finds it confusing. So much for the notion that all women are born with those domestic skills in our genes. Like riveting, it's a learned skill.  Like military training, it is passed from knowledgeable people to novices. Like all human occupations, it's a particular form of the urge to create merged with the imperative to survive.

Try telling Betty or Rosie that knitting is not a political act. That it's a hobby, a pastime, an unimportant and accidental aspect of life. Do it or don't do it -- you are making a political statement, about the way you want to be a woman. Be proud, be ashamed, be aggressive, be passive, keep it in a closet, take it out in the board room or the halls of government. They are all political acts. Because how we choose to be women, what we embrace and reject and leave behind and pick up again, our pasts and our futures, are political realities. They are our 95 theses, posted on the doors of our houses and offices and churches and trailing behind us as we move through our communities.

Whatever choice you make, do it consciously. I am not entirely comfortable with the new domesticity. I judge the way some women promote it or live it out. I am suspicious of their motives or their stance. Yet I recognize more and more every day that this is limiting and counterproductive. I realize this partly because of the judgment on whose receiving end I have been. When I continue on my path of making and connecting with the history of women in these crafts, I do so with the newly sober knowledge that the path has meanings I didn't choose.

Yet the only way to change those meanings is to keep choosing to enact the ones you believe in. Does my knitting limit me? No. Not being a knitter, being helpless before the tools and materials of the craft, laughing off my inabilities as if they were charming ineptitudes, afraid to begin lest I fail not only myself but my gender ... that was what limited me. And all those realities were my choice. They were not imposed on me by history or culture.

We are freer to acquire skills in this internet age than we ever have been before. Ignorance is no longer an excuse; the lack of a teacher in close proximity makes no difference. What inspires me and empowers me is that my connections are not only person to person as our bodies occupy the same time and space. We can be given power, inspiration, courage by people we will never meet in the flesh, thousands and millions of them, living out a way to be woman or man that we find freeing and creative -- and we can turn it into material reality. That's the key. Not just psychological liberation, but transforming matter, shaping the physical environment. Making it real.

How does participation in craft, especially those traditionally associated with women, give you power?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks for reading the manifesto.

The hut theory

We went out to dinner tonight prior to heading over to Archer's school for a math and science exhibition. As we left the restaurant, we started talking about the Republican primaries.

I happened to have heard a piece on NPR about the history of the primary system, so I told the kids about how primaries changed after 1968. Noel then talked about what happens if a candidate, like Newt Gingrich, drops out of the race -- the delegates become free to support someone else.

"It's like if the delegates are in little huts," Cady Gray began explaining. "And if one of the huts gets knocked down, the people inside are free to roam around the village."

"Usually the person who drops out endorses one of the other candidates," I explained, adding that the delegates are then likely to go to that person.

"It's like, to continue my analogy," Cady Gray went on, "the prisoners in the hut that is destroyed have a chance to go to any of the other huts that they want."

Archer followed this up with another primary metaphor -- that it's like playing Coin Runners in Mario Kart, where when a person drops out all their coins become available for the other players to pick up. But to be honest, I doubt I'll be able to think of the primaries from here on out without picturing delegates locked in a series of huts.

I still believe

An old friend sent me a link to this YouTube video.  It's getting passed around to snickers about its earnest optimism and era specificity, I'm sure.  But the thing is, I still feel this way.

 

It's the question that the 2012 elections will test, the question that the Tea Party was formed to answer in the negative.  Can our government be more competent and honest?  Can it do good?

I know that the structures of bureaucracy and power are inherently corrupting; I agree that they need to be restrained by a vigorous defense of individual liberty.  But I also know that there are things only government can do -- ensure the effective flow of interstate and international commerce, protect the public health, invest in infrastructure for the benefit of all rather than the few.

It's striking that the two presidents who campaigned most squarely on that promise, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, were both victimized by economic crises not of their own making that caused the public to question their effectiveness.  There's another name that belongs on this list of "saying yes," and that's Bill Clinton, one of the most successful presidents with regard to centrist governing and effective budget management.

Our cynicism about government is based on the failure not of the institution, but of some of the people within it.  I still believe that the right people with the right determination can do good and do right.  Like Jimmy, I say yes.

What government is for

Many of the students in my academic unit are in student government.  In fact, it's kind of nuts how large a preponderance of the Student Government Association is made up of the 2% of the student body that I teach.

Seen another way, though, it's not so surprising; we recruit and serve the most involved concentration of student leaders on campus.  Tonight I had a chance to watch them in action.  The student senate was taking up a resolution introduced by my senior seminar members, supporting permanent protection for the Jewel Moore Nature Reserve.  It's the penultimate step in the project we've been pursuing all semester long, the political follow-up to the media event we mounted last Thursday.

Listening to three solid hours of reports, debates, and parliamentary procedure, I was reminded of what student government is usually tasked with doing.  People come to them asking for money, or for their blessing in the spending or collecting of student money.  The other big agenda items tonight were a resolution to support the administration's proposed tuition increase, and the approval of the distribution of student activity funds (notably to a fraternity appealing the decision to deny them funding for a pig roast off-campus).

We came to student government looking for leadership, not money.  And although the vote ended up closely divided, for a solid hour the elected students debated exactly that.  How to show leadership when it comes to preserving campus resources on the one hand, or preserving facilities options on the other?  How to show leadership when thinking about recommending a commitment not just for our lifetimes, but for generations to come?  How to show leadership when petitioned by thousands of community members, attempting both to represent their wishes but also exercise independent and informed judgment about the common good?

I'm thrilled that the result came out in our favor; I believe the senators made the right decision and that their resolution, along with the demonstrated commitment of so many project supporters, will prompt the Board of Trustees to think differently about the issue.  But even more than that, I'm glad that these governing students had an opportunity to think, talk, argue, and commit themselves to an exercise of leadership, and accompanying personal ideals and visions for their individual roles, that don't often arise in their line of work.

Beauty in the ruins

Today is September 11.  I never completely lost sight of that anniversary; I had a conversation with some students about it this morning, and the Twitter and Facebook reminiscences throughout the day kept the subject close at hand.

But today is also one of the most successful days I've ever had at this freshman retreat event, in which I've been participating for ten years.  It's one of the first of those days that I actually didn't want it to be over, and stayed out talking with others long past the point where most of the students had packed up and headed back to their bedrooms.

I'm stuck between elation at the rather magical connectionsI witnessed emerging here, and despond at the seeming impossibility of connection in the public square these days, directly related to the direction we've taken in the past nine years after September 11, 2001.  There's so much hope in the spontaneous way these students supported each other today, in various settings.  But the mountain of animosity and inertia they would have to climb to spread that more widely in the world seems steeper and craggier than ever.

I wonder if they know just how much of a miracle they represent.  I wonder if those of us standing between them and a more productive civic life can remember to get out of their way.  Like we did today, standing on the sidelines, cheering them on as they took the initiative and made beauty out of the day's remembered chaos.

Your last chance

Tuesday is primary day, and we have some hotly contested seats here in Arkansas. The biggest race is the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Blanche Lincoln. She has a fierce challenger in the Democratic primary: Bill Halter, currently the Lieutenant Governor.

I definitely need some help in this race. I'm registered Democratic and intend to vote in the primary, as does Noel. I'm disinclined to vote strategically -- that is, to vote for the candidate I think has the best shot to win the general election in November -- because I think the situation could be entirely different by then, and the mood of the electorate unpredictable.

So I'm choosing between these two candidates based on their merits. I'd like nothing better than to vote for a genuine progressive. National interest groups are trying position Bill Halter as that candidate. But the man has no voting record, having been a bureaucrat up until winning the Lieutenant Governor position in 2008. And he won that based solely on his pro-lottery platform -- a platform I deplore with a white-hot hatred. There's no way to tell what his positions will be once elected, as far as I can tell. There is an easy way to see what he's foisted on this state almost single-handedly: a state-sponsored crapshoot to fund scholarships for which there is no political will as an honest entitlement, spawning a bloated and overpaid bureaucracy that holds the legislature hostage by clucking its tongues over the poor students who will go without their $5000 a year unless the lawmakers give them everything they want, resulting in a depressingly few years (I confidently predict) in a plateau of revenue and corresponding hysterical pro-gambling propaganda lest the scholarships be reduced.

Lincoln, on the other hand, has a wishy-washy record in support of the Obama agenda, and played an annoyingly obstructionist role in the health care reform process over the last year. But she's a veteran, has seniority and the corresponding committee power, and has been endorsed by both Obama and Bill Clinton here in the waning days of the race.

The debates and the ad campaigns have been ugly on both sides. Lincoln came out in favor of massive exemptions to the estate tax in the latest debate (ugh), but Halter has consistently portraying her as a tool of health insurance interests (almost certainly untrue).

So I'm asking for help from my Democratic buddies, especially those of you in Arkansas. (If you have no recommendations for this race except "Go GOP in November!", I will take your comments as read.) Is there any good reason to choose Halter? Are there merits I have overlooked that don't have to do with predicting the race six months from now? Or is the anti-Lincoln case so strong that it doesn't matter whether Halter has anything going for him at all -- is "anyone but Lincoln" really a defensible position?

My vote hangs in the balance. I await your arguments.

44

Over the last few months, every so often I would turn to Noel, apropos of nothing, and say: "Our next president is Barack Obama." And every time it sounded so implausible. A black man with a foreign name; how the heck did this guy get elected? How did the American electorate overcome all the reasons not to vote for him -- and vote for him?

I know the answers. On the one hand, things were so bad, so astoundingly bad, that a black guy with a foreign name was preferable to more of the same. On the other, a singular political voice with the power to inspire came on the scene suddenly and changed the entire equation. And yet despite all the sense that makes, the outcome never ceased to astound me.

Today as I watched the inauguration, letting out involuntary whoops and fist-pumps in my empty living room, I wondered whether this is all truly as extraordinary as it seems. Is it just me, or does the joy surrounding this election, this inauguration, the promise of this presidency seem to emanate not just from one party or one race, but from the country as a whole? Doesn't the celebration appear to be all-encompassing, transcending all the myriad reasons for rejoicing and coalescing in one singularity of hope and triumph? Isn't it like everyone, all at once, sees a new age dawning?

I'm aware that this isn't strictly true. I'm surrounded by people in Arkansas who went the other way, in larger numbers than they did in 2000 or 2004. Yet it seems to me that the emotion isn't just relief that it's over, or resignation that it hopefully won't be too bad, but an active sense of thrust, of movement, of people swinging onto the train as it chugs purposefully toward something new.

Those who drive history forward, the President said, are "the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things." Today I want to be in that number. And let all the people say -- amen.

Three, two, one

• Archer has suddenly developed an obsession with the presidential election, spawned when he realized that it relies on electoral vote totals. He now spends his time telling all of us how many electoral votes we have, and acting as some kind of election master of ceremonies: "The voters are voting for 30 minutes! And the score right now: Donna Bowman has 75 electoral votes, Noel Murray as 98 electoral votes, Cady Gray Murray has 150 electoral votes, and Archer Murray has 150 electoral votes!" (To keep peace between the siblings, Archer has learned that he and Cady Gray need to be tied.) "And now there is no voting because the voters have all gone to lunch. But there are baskets on the table so they can keep voting while they eat their lunch!"


• There's been a lot of talk about Obama's somewhat subdued acceptance speech Tuesday night. I think the real reason is the burden of governance -- the heavy responsibility that he is assuming. But I also think, in retrospect, that it's a good thing to be subdued in victory during a moment of such multidimensional crisis. Obama supporters were dancing in the street, but the man himself seemed to demonstrate that it's not about doing a touchdown dance, but getting ready for a very hard road ahead.
  


• I'm talking to Malcolm Gladwell tomorrow for the A.V. Club (unless the interview gets scheduled for the two hours I'm unavailable). If you've got any questions for him, leave me a comment.
  

Yes we can

I know those of you who read this blog are of varying political persuasions. But let's take our cue from John McCain today:

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

Whatever you think of President-Elect Barack Obama's policies or convictions, he -- and the moment that spawned him -- has transformed the American electorate.

And whatever you think of Senator John McCain's policies or convictions, in the end he did his best to rise above a desperate, attacking campaign and counteract the fear strategy. This one moment is what I will take away from his run for the presidency:



Most Americans do not want to be divided. Most Americans do not want to be cleaved by strategists and herded into opposing fortresses. And in this unscripted, honest moment, John McCain stood up for the truth and for most Americans, even though many of his supporters seemed to desire otherwise.

Election Day agenda

Today I led a class discussion about democracy and virtual worlds.

I ate barbecue for lunch and discussed tenure.

I kept one ear open at a staff meeting while posting announcements for upcoming programs on the Honors online community front page.

I made suggestions to improve the personal statement of a former student who's applying for graduate school.

I answered questions from freshmen about sources and topics for the paper that they have due on Friday.

I invited a hundred of my closest Facebook friends to the Chuck Klosterman reading and signing two weeks from now.

I heard about Noel's successful Dennis Hopper interview today, and about a possible Malcolm Gladwell interview I might be doing on Friday.

I asked Archer about his good-as-gold sticker while taking him to speech therapy. (He said he got it for doing "really hard math problems" like 5 times pi.)

I took cookies to the local homeless shelter.

I ate hot dogs and watched a game show.

I took a walk with my family.

I marvelled at the golden leaves on our huge oak tree, which rebounded after the dry summers of years past.

I knit a scarf for charity.

I braced myself for change.

I took a deep breath on the cusp of history.

Fix it!

We watched the final Saturday Night Live Thursday edition last night. Then I read my colleague Nathan Rabin's post about it this morning.

I'm not sure I saw the same episode, to be frank. I don't believe I've laughed more at any SNL-produced piece of television in the last year. Part of it, I'm sure, is just a difference in perspective. For example, while I understand why Seth Myers rubs people the wrong way on Weekend Update, I have a very different experience, because I filter his performance through Amy Poehler. I trust Amy Poehler. I believe she's funny, and she knows what's funny. I think she has a great sense of humor. And because she clearly enjoys what Seth Myers is doing, I tend to give Myers a huge break.

But the part of Nathan's review that really runs counter to my perceptions is his accusation that Kenan Thompson's economics commentator character. He describes the shtick as a one-note idea that has been run into the ground by having him appear three times in a row. No clips appear to be on YouTube, so if you haven't seen it, you're out of luck. The character, upset about the economy, demands that somebody "fix it!" He offers a three-step plan. Step 1: Fix! Step 2: It! Step 3: Fix it! Thompson pronounces it more like "Fiss it! and yells it in a screechy staccato of frustration.

Yes, there's only one joke. But it's precisely because the economic news gone from bizarrely bad to bizarrely worse that the repetition of the gag week after week strikes me as brilliant. When Thompson came on this week, he was trembling with fear and anger. What can any of us do in the face of this massive boondoggle but yell to "them" to "fix it!"? Thompson's impotence seems to speak volumes at this moment in time. And without the recurrence of the bit week to week, that fuming, combined with the inability to offer any particular plan, is exactly where all us viewers find ourselves.

Military smokescreen

In today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Letter Of The Week!, the most charitable interpretation one could make is that Olen Grant of Hot Springs is trying to argue that John McCain, being ex-military, is best qualified to lead the country in a time of war. But on the off chance that charitable interpretation isn't merited, I must say that the copy editor was quite astute to give this letter the headline "White men only, please."

It’s really sad, and I hate to say it, but our Founding Fathers were not perfect and therefore did not create a perfect political system.

What they did do is lock us into an iron-bound document of stagnation. Though it freezes us in time, it does not prevent change—the wrong kind of change. If we would take the path left open to us, we would amend the document when it becomes necessary. Congress needs more leeway, more power.

Never in our history has this need been greater. Napoleon created in his world the fear of military rule, that it couldn’t be trusted with political power. But war calls for military thinking if we are to continue to let wars settle all of our disagreements with our neighbors.

To settle the question of who should be the commander-in-chief in time of war, it would seem fitting that the leader of our armed forces should take responsibility for making military decisions. As for fear of a junta by the military, that may be justified if it is all professional. But in World War II at least 75 percent were street lads, and I can assure you that their only desire was to exit it as soon as possible and get back on the streets once more.

I shudder to think that the recently liberated female or freed slave as civilian president would one day command our military. Can they be trusted?

OLEN GRANT
Hot Springs

Castles in the sky

Our lieutenant governor, elected in 2006, made the inauguration of a state lottery the centerpiece of his campaign. Now that he's in office, he's spearheaded a petition drive that will put a constitutional amendment on this year's ballot -- Arkansas has a constitutional prohibition against gambling (with exceptions for the Oaklawn racetrack and West Memphis dog track, and a recently-crafted one for charitable bingo).

Evangelical forces have always been able to block lottery proposals in the past, but it looks like their ability to mobilize against it on the grounds of personal morality have been crippled by the economy, continuing news about education in decline, and the belief that millions of Arkansas dollars are flowing into border states with lotteries.

I was heartened today, however, to see that the United Methodist Church in the state announced its opposition to the lottery -- not because gambling is a sin, but because (a) it's socially irresponsible and (b) it doesn't deliver on its promises.

My own opposition to state-run lotteries was solidified while I was living in Virginia and read an illuminating newspaper series about the disappointments of its lottery. Here are the dirty secrets:

• Lotteries earn impressive profits when they are new, but the revenue plateaus after a few years. The only way to goad the public into buying more tickets (to meet the projections of ever-growing revenue on which budgets have already been based) is to raise the payouts and introduce new games. Soon the enormous jackpots start eating away at the cash that's supposed to be flowing into the state coffers. Once it's joined a multi-lottery coalition, like Powerball, the state has just about run out of ways to finance the outrageous jackpots that motivate players to spend more. Georgia's lottery, always touted as the success story on which other states model their pitches of scholarships for all, forever, cut its scholarships several years ago and proposed tightening eligibility requirements for them because of declining reserves.
• In order to get people to play, the state must advertise. Those who live in states with lotteries are inured to the constant promotion of the games in all media; it's a fact of life. Yet the state thereby becomes a gambling promoter, hustling as hard as it can to get people to ante up. My moral objection to the lottery is that the state should not be hawking snake oil. Sure, I know that the state isn't always on the up and up with its citizens. But a program that puts the government in the position of a carnival barker, desperate to fleece as many people out of as much cash as possible just to make its nut, is demeaning at best and close to fraudulent at worst.
• And of course, it's been well known for decades who plays the lottery -- poor people. Maryland's lottery is funded at a rate of 3 to 1 by people with incomes below the poverty line. Just ten percent of the players produce 50% of the revenue. You can argue about voluntary taxation all you want, but combine the state promotion of effortless wealth with a group of people in desperate need of said wealth, and who exactly were we expecting to play?

Slowly but surely, basic functions of government are being moved off-budget, and the burdens to finance them are being placed disproportionately on the people who have the least ability to pay. If the lottery revenues are used to finance college scholarships, as its Arkansas proponents propose, what's bought with that medicine-show money will go to the middle and upper classes far more frequently than the poor. Now that's wealth redistribution with a vengeance.

Lotteries are not mysterious, untried enterprises. There is ample data. Yet most of the debate rests on appeals to common sense, hope, and fear (people are going to play anyway -- they should spend their money at home; we can give scholarships to everybody; without lottery money our education system will inevitably fail). When nobody's talking about the facts, you can bet that the facts aren't on the side of public opinion -- the one thing nobody wants to be against.

Citius, at least

I've been an Olympics buff ever since I can remember. ABC's Wide World Of Sports, with its frequent broadcasts of international sporting events, was a weekend staple on our TV growing up. I loved the pageantry and exoticism of the unfamiliar sports, and the international cast of characters. The Olympics were like a two-week smorgasbord of that feeling, and I gorged myself every four years.

In 1984, my family went to several events at the Los Angeles summer games. When Atlanta got the bid for the 1996 Centennial games, I celebrated by geeking out at the Olympic stores that opened around town, stocking up on memorabilia featuring Barcelona's superbly cute mascot, Cobi. Noel and I attended the games in '96, too. I always look forward to sixteen days of round-the-clock Olympic broadcasting glory on the TV -- heck, I wish they'd bring back the Triplecast.

So it's with deep fascination and ambivalence that I watch the massive turmoil surrounding this year's torch relay. In one sense, it's thrilling to see such a large population come together in solidarity to protest the world's collusion in China's Olympic farce. The country does not deserve a free propaganda platform in light of its regime's disregard for the Olympic ideals of peace, equality, and brotherhood. You can feel the excitement of activists sensing that for once, they have the upper hand -- that they control the message of this moment, not the managers who sought to carefully orchestrate it.

I even look forward to seeing how NBC handles the touchy political and publicity issues of the Beijing games -- how much attention will they give to the controversies and contradictions, and how much will they seek to downplay the conflict in favor of Wheaties-ready stars in waiting? It would delight me to no end to see an opening ceremony pockmarked by boycotting teams, a spectacle crippled by the refusal of the world to collude in its lies.

But of course, I want my Olympic drama, too. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. The up close and personals. The unlikely heroes and tragic falls from grace.

The Olympic torch has now been extinguished and rerouted to keep it from falling into the hands of the people it is supposed to inspire. How much of my Olympic idealism will follow suit?

Thoughts on church and state

John McCain: "I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?' ... I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it. I think one of the great tragedies of the 21st century is that these forces of evil have perverted what's basically an honorable religion. But, no, I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles.... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn't mean that I'm sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president. I don't say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would--I just feel that that's an important part of our qualifications to lead. ... I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."

Mike Huckabee: "[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

James Madison: "If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another. ... What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance."