Anyway, I got the book from the library and I was more than pleasantly surprised. It's the first time I've ever read a book where the forward/prologue/pre-chapter-one-author's-note (preface - that's the word I'm looking for) added any real value to the book. Dunham's totally defines her's. She wanted to write a book about life (in the vein of those plasticy-stepford-wives type women's guides of the '80's) the sort teaching women how to be perfect and have it all, Dunham just wanted hers to reflect real life. She truly does lay out her mistakes, failures, regrets, non-regrets, lessons, problems, and lack of solutions for all to see. It's exceptionally honest and mostly humble.
What was most intriguing (and refreshing) to me, was her early essays on sex. Granted, Dunham's perspective on sex and the rules by which she governs her sexual life are quite distinct from mine (as an evangelical minister), but I think they reflect some real truth, which is important for anyone to hear. Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but the message I got was that she'd had good experiences and bad experiences, but ultimately sex isn't something that should be used to define yourself or prove anything or learn anything - everything she needed to know she already knew.
That got me thinking about the Church and the ways in which we talk (or don't talk) about sex. Dunham's essay would never be acceptable discussion fodder in most churches because she only views some of the sex she's had as mistakes. The Church tends to take a pretty firm line on abstinence. We're pretty terrified of putting it into our children's heads that some sex isn't regrettable, even if it isn't wise. If they get the notion that sex might not be the entryway to hell, they might have sex.
This is not to downplay the importance of chastity and fidelity. Not at all. I believe that sex works best the more committed the relationship. I just think you're going to have less problems with the intricacies and nuances of sex if you're married to a mostly sane person who's committed to you beyond their own personal comfort. It's no guarantee things will work well, but, as I said, I think things generally work better the more committed the relationship.
I'm generally loathe to tell people what to do, but I certainly don't shy away from my conservative position on the matter. Conservative, in this instance, meaning that while there may be benefits to sex outside of marriage, generally the negative possibilities outweigh the positives. I don't believe things are necessarily cut and dry (even theologically), but I do tend to favor caution over risk where sex is concerned.
That's not a position most adolescents find very attractive (caution in general) and thus it terrifies the adults with impressionable youngsters around us whom we love. We all want our kids (or anyone we care about) to learn from our mistakes (or anyone's really), but in all honesty, most all of us need to make mistakes, even mistakes everyone was telling us about for years, in order to really decide for ourselves. Some warnings will go heeded. Others will go tested (sometimes repeatedly). That shouldn't stop us from sharing our perspective on things - giving the lessons anyway. They might not work the way we intend, but they'll work for someone, in some way - and those people will be grateful. Even then people who don't believe us and make the same mistakes themselves will thank us for caring enough to share with them (and might, possibly, if we're really lucky) listen to us more intently in the future.
What I think Lena Dunham was saying is that she didn't need to make sexual mistakes to know what she needed to know, but she did need to make them to know that she already knew it. She's got a liberal position on sex. Sex can be good, if it serves to celebrate the worth and value of both people involved, if it humanizes people rather than dehumanizing them. It's not a hedonistic, pleasure-hound kind of position (but I've never heard a defense of hedonism that wasn't entirely nihilistic at its core), but certainly one with more risk involved.
Choosing one position over another is not going to guarantee you anything. It's not as though the categories of "right" and "wrong" even make sense here. I've read too many of those articles with people bemoaning that what the Church taught them about sex really messed them up. People make different choices; people are both happy and unhappy with the choices they make, no matter what choice it is. Life works out well for some people and others get messed up. For church people, it might be a conservative messing up over a liberal one, but I hope we can all agree that it doesn't matter if the wind is blowing west or east when you spit into it.
It's the kind of dialogue that can deal honestly with real experience that will benefit people in the long run. I don't agree with everything Lena Dunham has to say about sex, but I applaud her honesty, her sincerity, and her willingness to speak against common perception and cultural norms.
The Church tends to teach kids sex is bad. We don't set out to do it, but it usually ends up that way. We say sex is good when you're married, but bad any other time, which becomes more confusing than explanatory. What we mean to say is that sex is important - when you have sex there are real emotional, social, spiritual, physical consequences. Some of those can be very good, others can be very bad. All in all it's pretty complicated and not necessarily something people can make sound judgments about during these later stages of human maturation.
Which means we want our kids to wait until they've got a better foundation in the world and are far enough beyond the hormonal catastrophe of their teenage years to form some general opinions about how they want their life to go. We want to spare our kids some mistakes. This is a worthy goal. What we often fail to do is speak honestly enough to give them tools for making decisions. The odds of making mistakes tend to multiply exponentially when we don't have accurate information.
It's good to assume it's possible to go through life without making sexual choices you'll later regret. It's that kind of hope which infuses our faith with something vital and formative. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge the reality that regrettable situations will arise. I think, ultimately, we're afraid that in telling kids there's a chance (even if it's a small one) they can have sex and not suffer any life-altering consequences, we're giving them carte blanche to explore their desires. We refrain from discussing sex rationally or theologically because we feel young people are utterly incapable of controlling themselves and thus scare tactics are more effective.
We tell our kids to avoid alcohol. We give them plenty of reasons why it's not a smart thing to do at this stage of life. We explain, both rationally and (hopefully) theologically, why the Church takes the position it does. Some kids heed the warning, others find out for themselves how they feel. In either event, we don't tell kids their lives will be irreparably damaged if they make the wrong choice because we recognize the importance of redemption and restoration.
So why doesn't it work the same way with sex?
It's probably generational. No one is ever completely comfortable talking about sex in ways it needs to be talked about. We're also not always sure exactly what we believe or why, so it's far easier to walk an either/or black/white divide and pray our kid isn't the one who gets pregnant. We've drawn a line of risk, ironically, at one of the things most likely to actually have a huge impact on people's lives.
Even stranger, the conversations about sex from liberal and conservative positions aren't all that different from one another. The range of opinion and conversation isn't so starkly divergent as to be unbridgeable. Whether one advocates abstinence or exploration, pretty much everyone cautions people to make healthy choices that reflect both your own worth and the value of the other, while keeping hormones and emotions in check well enough to make smart choices. In the end, it's not really about the sex - it's about what we believe about ourselves and what our actions say about our understanding of the world. Most people agree there.
As the Church, we can't just confine our understanding of sex to marriage. It's fine and honorable to believe and teach sex belongs only in marriage, but we can't (or shouldn't) arrive at that conclusion without a long sojourn through the fields of grey. You want to have an interesting discussion - talk sex and marriage and scripture and the terminally ill teenagers of The Fault in Our Stars. That's a veritable minefield of grey on the way to black and white.
I'm not sure why us "church people" keep saying getting a handle on sex is easy or straightforward when it just simply is not. Things are complicated and confusing, even if they're not ultimately fluid and undefinable. Perhaps the answer for the Church is not in saying what we already say better, but in saying some things we often just refuse to say. What's wrong with being honest and trusting the relationships we've built with young people who actually care what we have to say? Teenagers may be pretty stupid sometimes*, but they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
*Aren't we all?
Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book for the purpose of review. My integrity is not for sale. Those who know me well are aware I would relish the chance to give a bad review in exchange for a free book. If I've failed to do so, it has nothing to do with the source of the material and only with the material itself.
This new book by Jon Twitchell is a revelation. A small, humble work of theology and practicality, helps pastors approach funerals, death, and grief from the experience of one who's officiated many hundreds of funerals in a variety of settings. I know Jon. We're friends, but even I was blown away with how well done the book is. Divided into four sections, covering context, theology, practics, and preparation, Presence contains much more than its subtitle suggests.
It is indeed a pastors guide and the audience is clear, but there is enough coverage of grief, mourning, and ministry to those in pain that anyone having to deal with such things could benefit. It is distinctly Christian, but in a way that can be universally applicable to funerals for all kinds of people. The writing style is careful and professional, but clear and mostly concise.
What shocked and impressed me most was the sheer volume of relevant, important information packed into just a few short pages. There are some sections I would have liked to be shorter and others I would have preferred to be longer, but all were useful and thought-provoking. The formatting was easy to use - short chapters, with associated pull-quotes from a variety of sources sprinkled throughout.
Frankly, I expected to provide a calm, quiet review of a mostly useful book. In the end, I am giving a more-than-ringing endorsement for a truly valuable tool. No pastor should go without having and reading this volume - even more so because it will only take an hour or two to read. Presence is not a how-to with lists of liturgies, prayers, and hymns (although there are some helpful appendices along these lines), it is a book of presence, as the title implies, helping pastors to find a place alongside grief as a representative of God.
Get it. Read it. Time well spent.
Producers have always won awards. The Grammys and Oscars for Best Album and Best Picture go to the producers of those works, the people who put the team together and guided the process. For a long time (and maybe still), they are not necessarily seen as part of the creative team, if anything they are the glue that holds the creative types together. Producers form the structure.
Lately, though, producers are becoming the artists - or perhaps they always were. This is more common with movies - Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, and Reese Witherspoon all have successful production companies (it doesn't hurt that there's lots of money to be made there) - but it's happening more and more in music. Daft Punk won the Best Album Grammy last year for a record they essentially produced. Nearly every track has guest performers and much of the construction was collaborative, but they're given credit. EDM artists are doing the same thing - think Calvin Harris or Avicii - artists whose major work is compiling a track, often by sampling or combining the work of others. Sometimes the named artist on an album doesn't sing or play any instruments.
It's a different world, but there's also something viscerally familiar about it.
I had the opportunity to write for a book done collaboratively. A friend of mine started a publishing company, conceived of a book written by many authors, working in concert. This is not just a book pieced together from disparate chapters, but something with which each of us was involved from the very beginning. It was (and is) very much Keith's baby - he designed the parameter, the skeleton upon which we added our prose and editorial opinions - but it's certainly not his alone.
The publishing world hasn't quite figured out how to label something like this. They're still working in the real of authors and editors. The music business hasn't gotten it either, although there are enough rules about how to credit various contributors and the creative people themselves are fluid enough that recognition generally finds its way to the right people.
I am, from time to time, creative. I like to write. There is a real sense in which what I create is entirely mine (save perhaps the occasional divine inspiration). At the same time, my creativity belongs almost entirely to the people who, through relationships and shared experiences, have shaped who I am. I see the world in the way I do because of the people around me. I may individually express and nurture my ability to express myself creatively, but it would be foolish to claim any of that for my own.
This takes on a much deeper aspect when we consider our creation alongside the creation of the world. I'll never begin to grasp the intricacies of the universe or the ways in which it came to be what it is. I believe God created, although my understanding of scripture leads me to believe God involved the creation itself as collaborator almost from the very beginning. This tracks well with both our best understanding of creation from science and also from our own experience in life.
Creation is a collaborative endeavor. Even if we create just for ourselves, there is an added dimension which arises when others interact with what we've done. Creation is a form of communication. Help us to recognize the creative value of those around us. Help us also to recognize the importance those around us have in the ongoing creation of our lives.
Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book for the purpose of review. My integrity is not for sale. Those who know me well are aware I would relish the chance to give a bad review in exchange for a free book. If I've failed to do so, it has nothing to do with the source of the material and only with the material itself.
I think I read this book wrong. Marks of the Missional Church was written by three friends of mine for a publishing company with whom I've previously worked. Therefore, it's pretty difficult to say less than exemplary things about it. I wasn't super excited with the book. I didn't think the writing was particularly crisp and the chapters seemed to blend into one another pretty heavily.
About four fifths of the way through (how long it took my dense mind to process all of this), I realized I was reading the book wrong. It's not particularly (or generally) geared towards me reading it by myself on the couch in two or three sittings. It's not that kind of book. Marks of the Missional Church is meant to be read slowly and in community. The entire purpose is for people to come together, read the relatively short chapters together and then live with the material for a while, before coming back to repeat the process.
Organized around the characteristic marks of the Church from the Nicene Creed (one, holy, catholic, apostolic), the book explores each in depth as it relates to the life of a faith community. This is a book for the Church, but perhaps not for the churches we most commonly see. There is an understanding of the need to recapture the kind of Church which Nicea defined (1700 years ago) as a means of reclaiming purpose, place, and value within our society at large.
Many of the chapters use stories - both imaginative narratives and real life examples of faith communities - to illustrate the direction to which the authors intend to push the audience. It is a great book to work through in a congregation struggling to understand exactly what "missional" means in real life. The book is rooted in worship, with prayers provided to bookend each chapter and guiding questions for reflection and study. It's not going to go over the head of most parishioners (although the reading level seems a bit higher than most similar books - and that's a good thing), but it should also be a difficult read, in that it challenges us to think beyond the typical church answers that so often allow us to forget the real necessity of uncomfortable growth.
I wish there were more stories. It was impossible for those chapters to run together, even when reading the book incorrectly. I wish some of the language was a little less formal and a little more conversational; sometimes it sounds academic, even if the content isn't so much. It's not as good as perhaps I'd hoped for, and I'm not sure I can give it as ringing an endorsement as I'd liek, but it's a great format for Storian Press to embark upon and I hope to see other, similar titles in the future. Marks of the Missional Church is a unique work that should at least be considered by pastors and those responsible for leadership and guidance in faith communities seeking to make and be a real difference in the world.
Just remember, make sure to read it right.
There's no innkeeper. He doesn't exist. I know we see him in all the children's plays around this time of year - and he's become the unofficial scapegoat of Christmas, turning away a pregnant woman in the middle of winter - but there's no innkeeper. There's probably no stable either, but there's definitely no innkeeper. The Bible doesn't mention an innkeeper; we infer that because Luke Chapter 2 says "there was no room in the inn," or at least it says that in English, anyway.
The innkeeper doesn't exist, though, because the inn doesn't exist. That's the real problem. We make a poor inference because the translation makes no sense to us. People simply did not stay in hotels in Jesus' time. There were places we might call inns, but they were for the rare merchant or perhaps a military detachment headed some place without barracks. In Jesus' time, if people were traveling, they made personal connections. You arranged to stay with family or family of friends. You knew someone, who knew someone, who had a place. Often people would just show up at a relative's house unannounced - this kind of hospitality was infused into Jewish culture from the very beginning. The Torah even calls people to welcome strangers. If your cousin doesn't have room in his house, try the neighbor's, they might have room.
So what of the inn? Well, that's the tricky part. There was no inn. We're not just crossing language barriers, but cultural barriers, plus barriers of time (and we're doing it twice - once between Jesus' birth and 1611, when the King James Version came out, and another between 1611 and today). The King James Version twice translates a Greek word as "inn." Both instances are in Luke (very convenient for comparative purposes), but they're two different Greek words. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan takes the injured man to an inn, promising the innkeeper he'd pay for the man's care. In that instance, there is a word used which means "public lodgings." That's an inn, any way you cut it. The word used in chapter two, though, really means "guest quarters." The very fact that the same book uses two different words in what are really two different circumstances is good evidence that they're not meant to imply the same thing.
Here's where a nerdy working knowledge of traditional lodgings comes in handy. Most families, at the time, lived in one room, essentially. They had a kitchen or sorts, perhaps, with a work space, and some area where they could lay a mat out at night (the family would likely all huddle together as they slept). As the family grew - subsequent generations, cousins, uncles, parents, whatever, they would add rooms onto the home. In the cities, they'd build up (they still do in Jerusalem today), or, if there way space, maybe out. Then each nuclear family would have a place of their own.
Since homes were designed to be added on to at a later date, most reserved the roof for guests. If the family had some money, they might have a designated guest room, but there's not a ton of rain in Israel, so the roof would do. If they had my mother's manners, they might kick someone out of the "good room," so guests could use it and extra people would cram into the first floor (or main room, depending on construction).
So this leads us back to the scripture text - likely Joseph and Mary showed up at a relative's house, perhaps someone distant cousin or what-have-you, and requested hospitality. In reply, they were told the roof was full and there was no space for guests. This is where, if there was genuinely no room, they likely would have hopped next door or moved down the list of distant relatives who lived nearby and tried another place. They didn't, though (another pet peeve is when it's portrayed that Joseph and Mary tried a lot of hoteliers with no success), because they were offered an alternative.
While it's entirely possible the relative they visited had a barn out back, it's extremely unlikely. Those families with livestock (and almost everyone had livestock of one kind of another - eggs and milk and such didn't grow at Safeway, after all) would use them during the day for work (pulling carts and whatnot) or leave them outside to graze. At night, the animals were brought into the house, where they'd bed down on the other side of the main room from the family. Other rooms were guest quarters or the living spaces of older relatives because it was polite to not make people you wished to honor sleep with the goats.
Joseph and Mary likely found a relative with a full house, but one generous enough to offer space with his own wife and kids for this distant cousin and his poor, pregnant betrothed. The Bible mentions Jesus being laid in a manger (a feeding trough for animals), but there's no mention of a stable or a barn - I think, because there wasn't one.
So, if this is true (and while I think it makes sense, I might be entirely wrong), how did this inaccurate portrayal of the event get passed down so thoroughly through the years? I have no proof of this at all, but I suspect it has something to do with how these words might translate to seventeenth century England.
The King James Version came about at a time when scripture in the common language was just emerging. It was written for the common people (if you had money, you were educated, and thus could read scripture in Latin, if you so desired), and I'm guessing "guest quarters" would have been entirely foreign to the common people. People of the time rarely traveled - most would never get more than six or seven miles from the house in which they were born FOR THEIR ENTIRE LIVES! Houses were hovels - and anyone you knew lived nearby and could stay at their own house. Inn - a public housing option for travelers without the means to call upon the local noble - was likely the best they could do to convey the message to the people at the time.
Subsequent English translations were loathe to change the words, which had become so familiar to people in such a familiar story (although the newest version of the NIV does say "guest room," as Luke intended). Today, we all just assume, I guess, that there was a Motel 6 on every corner in Jerusalem and Joseph didn't have the money to spring for an Embassy Suites.
I'm not sure what the point of this whole thing was, really, other than to explain my frustration with the way we tell this story.* Perhaps it's simple to illustrate the importance of further questions, of not taking everything at face value. Investigation is good for the soul - and, at the very least, it may keep some of us from perpetuating the tale of the anachronistic innkeeper to another generation. Merry Christmas!
Just be thankful we didn't delve into the historicity of the census that drives this journey in the first place - you do not want to go there!
She does make an overall point - and my praise of it will immediately look like hypocrisy, given the way I ended that last paragraph - that resonates with me deeply. My two favorite quotes come in the same section. The first, "Success is full of MSG." The second (maybe credited to David Simon) is "Ambivalence is the key to success." Her point being that striving for something will never be fulfilling and almost always disappointing. Live life for life. Do things you're passionate about, things you believe it. Make your own life, not yours or someone else's expectations of what life should be.
When we seek for something, we'll never be happy, even if we find it. It is in those moments where we don't need anything that whatever we're looking for seems to have arrived. Of course, once we start seeking an absence of seeking, we enter an existential death spiral that will eventually fry our brains.
But anyway... it was an interesting book that produced in me a profound ambivalence, which seems to be (unless there's some insidious sadism lurking inside that tiny comedian) exactly what she was going for.
Chris Rock is a comedian. He's also a really smart dude. He comes to things from an interesting perspective and he's always got something to say that's been well thought out. He doesn't shoot from the hip. I really enjoyed this recent interview with him. They cover a lot of things (including his new movie, that I think may be very good) like politics and race.
He's got a great line when asked about the difference between the black civil rights movement and the one currently happening with the LGBT community. "I always call Ellen DeGeneres the gay Rosa Parks. If Rosa Parks had one of the most popular daytime TV shows, I’m sure the civil-rights movement would’ve moved a little bit faster too."
There's a lot of good stuff there about Obama and politics in general. I've seen a few places pick up his take on racial progress.
Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.
So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.
Chris Rock doesn't do interviews unless he's promoting a movie (even though he barely talks about the movie), so enjoy it while it lasts. You can find lots more Rock at Grantland, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Hollywood Reporter. He can do whatever interviews he wants because he's so unavailable, but also because he's one of the few celebrities entirely free to speak his mind. He's made tons of money and his audience won't care what he says. He's also got five lifetimes worth of street cred, so he can speak honestly both from and to his place as a prominent African American.
Another person in a similar position is Killer Mike, a rapper (currently of Run the Jewels). There's a great podcast with him on Grantland. Here he engages on topics of importance to the black experience, but not in the sort of monolithic way so many of us (white people) are used to hearing it. There's only a few minutes at the beginning about music, the rest (and it's more than an hour) is unique, intelligent, and challenging for anybody.
When speaking of racial progress, I have to agree with Rock: it's about white people changing. One of the things I notice about racial discussions in this country is that they're less about race, especially among younger people. This is not the old trope about class being the new race (class will always be a divisive topic), but something different about the motivations behind our discussions of race. This is really in the generation behind me (and although I'm 33, there is at least one, if not two full generations of adults, distinctly different, younger than me), but race seems less about race. We can't deny the shocking numbers of racial disparity, but in the end, when (younger) white people are upset about Ferguson these days, it's not because a black man was denied justice, but because a human being was.
That's not to say race isn't a component and an important one (white human beings still have a better time of it in the justice department), but I think white people may actually starting to view people who look different as people first. I think (hope) this will allow for us to hear and express a true diversity of opinion. So that when Chris Rock or Killer Mike speak to the public, they can do so AS black men, but not ON BEHALF of black men.
When a black man in a suit is on CNN, 95% of the time, the audience assumes (or is supposed to assume) he's speaking on behalf of black people. It's the black opinion. That doesn't happen with white men - we all assume they speak for themselves or perhaps a specific group with whom they hold a position (like the NRA or Greenpeace). Obviously, the hope is for that to change. I'm sure even Al Sharpton would love (well, wouldn't totally mind, might be more like it) to fade into a chorus of diverse black voices with access to mainstream media.
I share all these links today in the hopes more people can gain access to the kind of perspective we don't always hear, especially in a world where everything is condensed into soundbites. There's no "us vs them" stuff here. It's two men, with their own unique identities, expressing their own individual opinions in public forum. I wouldn't necessarily agree with everything said and they certainly don't necessarily agree with each other. Race is a part of who they are, it informs their perspective and opinions, but they don't allow it to be the defining aspect of what they have to say.
Neither should we.
If we manage that, well, then it might just be some small step on whatever Chris Rock will call racial progress.
Anyway, over the last couple of weeks, Eva's comedy has changed slightly. Now, when she's asked or is asking a question, she'll often replace one word with something else. What's your favorite food, Eva? Headbands, she'll answer, then laugh at her own joke.
I realized today, though, that this is comedy. She's figured it out. At its core, all comedy - at least spoken comedy - is saying something people aren't expecting. Everything from the classic, "Take my wife, please, take her," to Seinfeld-ian observational humor (What's the deal with airplane bathrooms...), even to vulgar or gross-out comedians (Did she just say that?), is just timing. It's saying something people don't expect. The key to being great at it is figuring out exactly the right unexpectedly thing to say at exactly the right time.
Obviously my daughter is not going to be headlining in Vegas anytime soon, but she's got all the tools.
**Yes, this was short, but it was an interesting notion, just a bit too long for a Facebook post, plus everybody loves it when they see pictures of my daughter. Win-win-win all around.
One of the things that's been most troubling for me about all of this (and not just "this," but all of the similar controversies over time) is what it says about our underlying assumptions of law and justice. I know I've written about it before, but it boggles the mind that people (and its almost all people) so completely equate the two, law and justice.
It seems that everyone (or almost everyone) works on the assumption that the laws themselves are bedrock. If things don't work out, it's not the fault of the law, but something gone wrong in carrying out the law. We seem to think the law is inherently justice and only its enforcement can be corrupt.
Sure, there are unjust laws, but those are big things, which are ferreted out by society. Things like that don't sneak up on people; they're not spurned by individual incidents or specific situations. When laws are the problem, we fight wars. When execution of the laws are wrong, that's when we riot. We read into the judgment or law with out own biases. A black man can't get a fair shake with all these corrupt cops out there. These cops risk their lives to do their job - it's not always pretty, but somebody's got to do it.
These attitudes don't help anyone, they run headlong into each other, often in violent ways, but they're ultimately rooted in the same problem. Laws are not the bedrock for society. They may be the bones upon which society rests, but there is something deeper, some ethereal morality that governs how we live and interact with each other. Laws try to approximate it in technical ways; religions approach it with mystic vagueries (and sometimes laws of their own), but we all sort of know there is a right and wrong out there, even if we can't always touch it.
So we do have to have laws. We have to have some concrete way of putting into practice that thing out there we can't fully explain. WE must have laws, but we must also recognize them for what they are: approximations of morality, not the definition of it.
I've talked about this analogy a lot, for a lot of things, but our justice machine seems to be putting out faulty products. Whatever society we've constructed from the laws we have is producing results that look like Ferguson. Now the results most people get most of the time are within the bounds of acceptability, so we avoid blaming the machine itself. We attempt to tweak the results, manipulate them a little, throw away the truly unsalvageable, make the product workable for more people. We're focused on changing the results.
You may be able to patch something workable together that way, but it can't last. You've still got a broken machine. Unless and until we're willing to admit, really admit, that it's the machine that's the problem, not the outcomes, we're going to keep having the same results. We're patching together a broken machine and with each passing year it takes more effort to make the results look like we want them to look. Eventually the whole thing's gonna fall apart.
I have no doubt the grand jury in Ferguson studied the evidence, deliberated in good faith, and honestly followed the instructions given them to the letter of the law. There's some debate over just how robust the prosecution was in presenting a case, but ultimately the system seems to have worked as it was intended to work.
Of course, if this is true, then the system's got to change - not just to amend the result into something we'd like better, that's a fools errand, but wholesale reform, redesign, re-engineering the way these laws and customs work so that everyone, police and protester alike, can be happy with the result.
I recognize we've been sold the notion this kind of result is an impossible pipe dream simply because it's never happened before. To that I'd say, things have, generally, always gotten better over time. While I have hope in the promise of unity, even those skeptics have to believe there's a possibility for improvement (at least as much as they believe it won't happen).
GM makes a lot of cars. For a while there, they knew the cars were coming off the line faulty, but they were content to fix them after the fact. Only now are they having to go back and fix the whole production process. It's not enough to just fix the results, we have to go back and fix the machine that produces the results we don't like.
Even if most of the people like their results, when some don't, we can always work to make things better. Constantly improving, not settling for pretty good - at least not when it comes to human lives. That's not to say everyone must end up equal, but there is some baseline for sufficiency in society - when people fall below it endemically, the machine has to be rethought.
If the result of these events in Ferguson is status quo, we're not going to make it. Even if this one event blows over, the compound effects will eventually catch up to us. The outrage testifies to the fact something is wrong. The Grand Jury has shown it's not the police officer himself, perhaps it's his training or the culture and influences that shape it. That's the next step. Riots, at this point, can be debilitating if they're too overtly focused on the results and not the machine. The message has been sent; now the hard work of moving forward must begin.
[Edited 12-3-2014 to add] This was posted yesterday. Today a grand jury in New York decided not to prosecute a police office for choking Eric Garner (who died of a related heart attack) over suspected illegal cigarette sales. The incident was captured on video. The office in question was already facing charges of abuse in previous incidents and any number of policy and procedure violations were admitted to by both police officials and medical responders. It's an almost entirely different situation from Michael Brown, but it turns out to be very much the same. The machine is broken.
I realized in that moment, the full extent of my hopes for fatherhood. I can remember vividly, even as a teenager, seeing a young child walking with her dad, holding just one of his fingers in her hand and feeling some sense of longing or completeness. A baby grasps your finger that way from almost the first day they're alive. Grabbing is something we're pretty good at. It happens to often, I know I've come to take it for granted.
But in that moment last night, it all came back to me. There's something visceral in that little hand, the trust, the lack of pretext, which communicates something beyond words. There are a lot of fears in parenting. Mostly they stem from the inevitability of your child's life being out of your control. Things will happen to her - school will be bad one year (or ten), the neighbor kid will push her down, some jerk of a date will treat her undeservedly at prom - and there's nothing I can do about it. I wasn't prepared for those moments, when life is just impossible to figure out and you're paralyzed with what to do, but know you must do something. That's scary.
At the same time, there's the little hand, holding my finger. Even if I'd never had kids, the image, the idea of it would still echo through my mind, reaching for some part of me born to connect in that way. Reproduction is biologically ingrained within us, after all. When people ask what I think about kids, I typically tell them I'm still intellectually against the idea, even though I love the one I've got an awful lot. That answer is a vague attempt to relate with words the experience of early this morning.
Having children doesn't make much sense; there's far too much that can (and will) go wrong. But there's also something - something indescribably right - about the whole process. It's this "rightness" that drives animals to fits of rage if separated from their young and it's also what prevents neglectful, irresponsible parents from putting their kids in a situation that's better for them.*
I suppose this can all be explained scientifically, biologically - a child is vulnerable and an appeal to the self-satisfaction of a parent aids in survival. That may be true, but if we're going the way of explanation, I'll just stick with the memory of my thirty-third birthday, laying beside my daughter while she fell asleep holding my hand.
*And why I'll once again affirm that parents who do give up their kids for the kid's own good are the greatest heroes on the face of the planet.
