Hold

A silhouetted Celtic cross against a sunset backdrop over water, reflecting golden light, with a cloudy sky in the background.
Iona Cross that has seen kings and Bishops, saints and sinners come and go since 563

The polls suggest that people in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Alaska and Kansas seem poised to cast a vote that many would not have predicted. People of many identities will vote in revulsion against an unaccountable corrupt king. Bishop Scott Jones, who ordained the Reverend (and possible Senator) Adam Hamilton once described Kansas Methodists as the “extreme middle.” May we all be so extreme.

A few years ago a dull blade caught a knot in some walnut spinning at 800 revolutions a minute on my wood lathe. My hand was mangled before I could shout, much less comprehend. But it was blood, not bone, that flew across the room, so I lived to turn again, wiser for the injury. Lazy words are more dangerous than dull tools because it is our families, friends and neighbors that are spinning faster than we can discern.  I have four high voltage lights shining on the wood so I can see clearly. We need similar  bright lights for our civic language so we can see, not just to vote for, but who to work with afterwards to craft mercy in a hard-hearted time.

Most of our fellow citizens are not rejecting conservatives or embracing progressives. MAGA is not conservative; it is a radial attempt to change our system of government, especially who votes and how government power is distributed among different branches and levels of elected offices.

The issue at hand is not about conservatives or progressives. It is between those who believe in the rule of law based on one-person, one-vote representation and those who want someone with royal prerogatives to rule like a King. The royalists say we need a “unitary Executive”—same thing. This is a very old, very bad idea. But even at the time of our American Revolution, about a quarter of the colonists wanted King George. But even they thought the King should not steal.

Two groups I am part of have great challenges with words about the important things:  those in public health and those of faith. In July two brave friends bravely stirred both groups with an article in the American Journal of Public Health, suggesting that public health needed more conservatives. But what Conservatives, exactly? The ones about to vote for Hamilton and Talarico or the royalist radicals who reject democracy and basic public health services such as vaccination? They note six characteristics of conservatives that I doubt anyone in Texas or Oklahoma has ever heard of. Nevetheless, their simple point is that the field of public health would be better in these contentious times if it were easier for conservatives to be part of it. Karl and Tyler (they’re friends) are academics talking about the intellectual side of the public health movement. They barely note the vast majority of public health workers who labor in mostly dull anonymity doing the daily work of public health at the end of the road. Public health achieves its astonishing life-extending effects by what President Carter called “the mundane revolution.” We (I am of the tribe) focus on the obvious opportunities to conserve, protect and serve our fellow citizens (I’m borrowing the police motto on purpose).

Beside overlooking most of the people who actually do public health, they also ignored many leaders of the field who are and always have brought faith and science together in public service: Bill Foege, David Satcher, Jimmy and Rosallyn Carter, Soma Saha, Heidi Christensen, Christoph Benn, Howard Koh, Ray Baxter, Carl Taylor. Oh, and the fellow who spent at least a third of his time healing, Jesus (Martin Marty said that he spent three-thirds of his time doing that). Every one of these people knew that religion could warm the hearth or burn the house down in the hands of extremists, so they tended to talk with their hands, not from the pulpit.

A detailed bronze sculpture depicting a group of diverse figures engaged in reading and discussion, with some raising their hands and others focused on books, showcasing an intense moment of intellectual exchange.
“What is a country but the people?” Shakespeare. Sculpture in St. Pancras Station by Paul Day

They knew that academic squabbles are like pillow-fights compared to religious conflict that have often involved cages, bricks and fire. We were in Crete last week, where memory is still tender from 1823, when members of one religious group were burned alive in a cave by people of a different religious opinion. This is why we need  our religious language to reflects the hope for the world, not our tribal fears.

Some of the same friends are hosting another surprise in Boston where you’ll be able to attend a conference on Christianity and Public Health on October 24th. This is a long overdue dialogue across the wide spectrum of Christians about how public health science illuminates how to partner with a God who so loves the world—who so loves the public.

Public health science is inherently anti-royalist  because its focus is on the whole public, not just this or that tribe. And the field is not ashamed to advance health using strategies which increasingly include the social, psychological and, yes, spiritual, factors that shape the health of entire public over time. That science cannot help but pose questions about complexity, diversity and inclusion that are harder for some political theories and theologies than others.  This is no problem for conservatives who accept democracy.  But royalists have long preferred medieval Catholic theories about God and government. Recently we’ve seen any number of “Baptists,” sound more like 14th century Catholics: Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas says that the book of Romans “teaches that God has given government the role of protecting society.” And “when I look for somebody who does that, I don’t want somebody with a demeanor of Jesus necessarily — be nice if they did — but I want the meanest, toughest S.O.B. I can find.” 

Others like JD Vance find shelter in very old fashioned Catholicism for policies stripping healthcare from the poor and cruelty to the immigrants that no Pope for hundreds of years would recognize, certainly not the current one from Chicago. I’m on the Quaker side of the Christian spectrum but I agree with the Pope.

Words that might have shed some light ten or 40 years ago now cast shadows like dancing monsters on the walls. “ Liberal,” “religious,” “democrat,” “progressive” and, least helpful of all, “conservative.” Those words wear as poorly as bell bottoms or narrow ties. More seriously, dull words can mangle hands that could be joined to share the weight of a very heavy lift ahead.

An artistic illustration depicting a pair of hands cradling a landscape with mountains and a winding river interspersed with abstract elements.
Cagn Cochrane.

We need language to help us imagine what might be possible when one aligns the most mature faith with the most relevant science. Public health science helps. Conservatives like my father and progressives like me can talk a long time about both of those qualities and how to turn them into wise government policy for a free people.

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You can get the AJPH article from Karl Johnson, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Drive, CB #7469, 4105 McGavran-Greenberg Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7469. Reprints can be ordered at https://www.ajph.org by clicking the “Reprints” link.

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Silent Seed

A group of people gathered outside a building, with a large pink banner that says 'Quakers for peace' in white text on the ground.
A thousand silent witnesses gather outside St. Martins of the Fields across from Trafalgar Square. https://quakervigilforpeace.org/

A riot of sirens and horns blared as tourists look the wrong way amid a dozen double deck red buses. A plaintive girl sang sincerely of Jesus beneath the gaze of massive bronze lions. And behind the lions a highly microphoned deep voiced man repetively shouts alleluia; could be Hebrew or Arabic (528 Palestinian protesters were arrested here in April). I’m guessing he’s a Nigerian evangelist going for YouTube. Another day in Trafalgar Square.

It would easy to overlook one silent person. But a thousand silent people snaking through the chaos like a spiritual conga line? That’s hard to miss. Dressed in white except for the scatter of bright blue “Quakers for Peace,” they shouted nothing. Didn’t really have to say anything once you read “Quaker” (…”for peace” is like Baptists for Baptism). But the organizers had warned us  to be silent only about peace; save our many affiliate enthusiasms for later; only Quaker and only Peace.

A bronze relief sculpture featuring two figures: a woman in a long dress with a cross and a hood, and another woman in a simpler outfit, holding a shield inscribed with 'Right Fears No Might.'
The pedestal of the Royal Engineer killed in Khartoum boasted that “right fears no might” which all Quakers (and the Taliban for that matter) would agree means the exact opposite of what he thought.

It is impossible to find a place for 1,000 silent people in London that is not over-arched by statues honoring somebody who killed strangers to extend an ever-sprawling empire of territories. We gathered for silent worship beneath the bronze gaze of the Queen’s perplexed Royal Engineer who died in Khartoum. His pedestal boasted that “right fears no might” which all Quakers (and the Taliban for that matter) would agree means the exact opposite of what he thought.

Walking with a thousand silent Quakers through the chaos of Trafalgar Square tunes one to the irony—even absurdity—about collective action of any kind. Why would we think that any protest could be heard by anyone who matters? Especially one without words.

The whole point of Quaker silence is so we can put two coherent thoughts together, then maybe a third. We hope for light, but not some mystical beam splitting the clouds—more like a flashlight so we can put one foot in front of another on a path to peace. You can walk a long way one flashlight beam at a time. Imagine a thousand of them!

A thousand Quakers asked for exactly that amid the din. We were, of course, silent amid a cacophony;  almost—but not quite—overwhelmed  by the Nigerian ompha ompha Jesus fellow. Given the ugly history of British slaving, cotton, sugar and oil theft, Nigerians should be free to say anything they choose in London.

But I think the actual Jesus would have been quiet, too.

A busy street scene in London with a large crowd of people waiting in line, red buses in the foreground, and Nelson's Column visible in the background against a cloudy sky.
A thousand silent people make a point that is hard to miss even amid the chaotid din of London.

A small island with a big history watches America make a “dog’s breakfast” of proper imperial power against tyrants such as Putin and Xi. The Brits subdued most of the planet, but what they have actually learned is humility. So they can hear the silence of Quakers who never give up asking about the things that make for shalom—the same things that made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, Tehran, Khartoum, London and Winston Salem.

You might say there is little evidence that silence “works.” But what else does? London is littered with statues testifying to the futility of violence, extraction and domination. All these proud “HighT” men as silly as our current pathetic Pentagon poof.  A thousand failed empires in a row. Tutu was right; anything war can do, peace can do better.

What works is collective action that emerges from the humble-spirited silent question, “What is the next right thing we can do now?”

We ended our moving worship march behind St. Martin in the Fields church. People have gathered on this site to worship since 1222 hoping for a clue to God’s work. Most of those 293,553 days people did find a clue and it was always about healing and helping someone else. Many of us went in after our worship to see that from the inside where there is now an oddly beautiful window that replaced the one blown out in the second world war. In that most sacred of all places was a few tables about a ministry that focuses on homelessness.

Architectural interior featuring an ornate window design with a grid pattern and an oval shape, framed by classical architectural details and a decorative ceiling ornament.
This most modern of windows above the altar in St. Martin’s of the Fields drew me in.

That’s the clue.

Find some people with whom to shut up and stop thinking about yourself. Ask a question worthy of your breath and then go do something with your one and only life, per Mary Oliver.

It’s not hard for an American to find some things worth doing. Make sure you are properly registerd to vote with a literally bulletproof plan to get that vote counted. Vote early and in person. Dr. Barber is organizing a thousand marches to the polls, probably not in silence, so walk along and lend your courage to others. If you fail to vote, you wil not be able to look your grandchildren in the eye on your deathbed. Do it.

On the other side of the election you may need some more silence to figure out where to give your treasure and time. But don’t think too hard; it’s only a life after all. The whole point of it is to give it away to something that matters more than yourself.

The afternoon before the silent witness, Jim and I met with Craig Stewart, one of the Leading Causes of Life Fellows who, with his wife Liesl, try to live relationship-sized efforts to meet global scale challenges. He works for World Vision,  responsible for helping 40,000 churches around the world do the same thing. She has quietly built a web of 60 farm-to-table cooperatives in Cape Town. And they figured out how to buy and operate a small apartment building to be available affordably for black and brown people with more to come. It happens.

It doesn’t really matter exactly what you do, since every good seed enables the other seeds to grow, too. Shalom isn’t the name of a magical beanstalk but the garden, watered with Jesus’ silent tears for shalom, so that our hearts might be tender enough to love what is still possible in this beautiful world.

Compound Extremes

Spring morning light at the bottom of the Canyon by Bright Angel Creek.

I have not walked the Himalayas but when the glacier collapsed, I had friends, students and pilgrims I feared were among the thousands dead. I have walked the canyons called Grand and slept with the phantoms of Bright Angels Creek. I can remember the morning light on the ragged cliffs even as I type. I have rested in prayer on Point Sublime high above the river.

And I have voted in every election since turning 18, proud to be among the citizens of an admired people, now as collapsed as any glacier, running as ugly as any flash flooded creek.

Ecologists speak of “compounding extremes” that acerbate and accelerate where unstable phenomenon collide. Warming oceans destabilize rain patterns, which compound the instability of what seems eternal, the roof of the world.  It turns out those structures are fragile, not stable at all. They rose up quickly by geological time, but can begin to collapse in the breath like speed of a single human life.

Perhaps you are like me and wonder what to do in this wild unstable now.

The Fellows of the Leading Causes of Life Initiative have been thinking about this for quite some time captured in a small book a year ago, tuned to resilience and rebound beyond the collapse.

“Our friend Daniel Taylor is at home in the highest reaches of the tallest mountains in Nepal, pillars that reach into the jet stream as it whips past the peaks. After reaching a high glacier, he found it covered several feet deep in a crazy quilt of new boulders, released by the permafrost melting at elevations never anticipated before. Indeed, he had to shelter in caves during the day as the mountain fell around him. This land has always been dynamic but at tectonic pace; a slow catastrophe as the Indian tectonic plate continues to move north, diving below the Himalayan plateau, raising it even higher into the sky, the friction building over decades until it predictably releases some of the most severe earthquakes on the planet.

Silent morning light strikes Point Sublime a mile above Hermit Rapids in the Canyon called Grand.

“What Dan’l saw was not caused by the rising of the tectonic plates but something more like a planetary death rattle, the climate melting snow and ice quicker than even the highest mountains could withstand.

“Who could imagine the Himalayas falling apart? But then who could imagine 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the northern Arctic coast of Alaska? Or ice shelves the size of nations breaking off in Antarctica at the other end of the planet? Boreal forests turning into fire-storms? Hurricanes so regularly severe we need new measures? Extinctions accelerating at a rate unknown since the dinosaurs left town?

“Equally, who could imagine battle tanks, cluster bombs, and missiles raining down on European land in Ukraine only a generation removed from the ‘never again’ wars, or violence erupting like a spewing volcano in Palestine/Israel, in Myanmar, in Tigray, in Sudan, in far too many places, with threats of more to come? The United States Capitol under violent siege, an impossible act defended by people sworn to protect dialogue and deliberation – and then the next election voting in the instigator in chief? Nearly the entire miraculous South African miracle of a peaceful end of Apartheid desecrated by the most venal and brazen kind of state capture?[1] The impossible concentration of wealth in a handful of impossibly rich human lives and a new Feudalism delighting a few while hundreds of millions have no clean water to drink or a place to defecate (‘Let them eat tweets’)?

“We may be in the last tragic era of our young species. We are only a few generations into the period marked by what we may now call the Anthropocene.[2] We broke the world, it’s ours now, and as we see the collapse underway, we realize our fundamental human impact on the complex human ecosystems. Maybe the humbling gives us hope that we might yet act responsibly. We will need more than humility, though; we need to be deeply accountable for our presence in the world. That is what this compact book is about.

“How are we to grasp the totality so that we act in ways that lead to life? This is why this book, and the Fellows who helped shape it, ask how we can be deeply accountable in investing our relative handful of years, our small weight of influence, our inherent capacities to choose, to act and to move against the abyss. What could be more important?

“It’s not illusionary to believe that, together, we can achieve more than we might imagine. Paul Hawken, writing in Blessed Unrest in 2008,[3] estimated that by then two million non-governmental organizations had emerged over a few decades, each finding its way to lay hands, on and lend energy to, some hopeful possibility. The pace and urgency of that creative activity has only swelled since he wrote. Today almost every significant issue has attracted hundreds, if not thousands of life-seeking organizational energies. In the most preposterous and unlikely places, hopeful energy is finding voice and creating traction. We are not asked to be deeply accountable for something that isn’t possible. Everything we hope for is already happening.”

This autumn aspen on the North Rim is probably ash now but another is likely growing from burned over seed.

Do not try to outrun the boulders or cool the arctic. Look directly at the profound challenges, but with eyes wide open to be part of a Great Turning – a turning toward life. Things are not just breaking down; they are also breaking open. Sense that the quickening forces that threaten collapse may be matched, maybe more so, by an accelerating mesh of generative movements. We not only must, but we can use our most powerful human capacities to make the choices that lead to life, not just away from death.

How to signal to each other that we are not giving up on life?

  1. If you are an American, make sure you have a plan to cast your vote. Our government carries outsized impact on global phenomenon with many things simply impossible without a functional government in the United States. Voting may not be as easy as in the recent past. Make sure you do.
  2. Be generous with the many organizations and efforts throwing themselves into the torrents of pain and suffering, and into the rising tides of grace and hope. A vast portion of wealth is currently in the hard fists of mean-spirited people thinking of private islands and Mars. As the multi-billionaires act disgracefully, it is up to those of us thousand-aires and hundred-aires to pick up the slack. You and I have pockets that need to be emptied. Don’t think too hard; if someone is doing good and asks for help, give it. Now.
  3. Move together and into the streets. Be joyous, not angry; but be together. If you haven’’t been to church in a while, this is a good time to show up and breath in some hope. I’ll be moving in silence in the first ever Quaker Silent Walk for Peace in London September 19th. Worship in the Quaker manner but moving our feet (slowly) for peace. If you’re in a more chatty mood, find out where Dr. Barber is walking or Invisible or Interfaith Alliance. Don’t be alone.
  4. Go someplace green, put your hands in the soil—I mean into the soil where you can feel the life in the roots. Then find some moving water; look closely and really feel it. You will notice life hasn’t given up. You shouldn’t either.

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You’ll like the whole book: Taking Responsibility for the Life of Complex Human Ecosystems. Anthem, 2025. Please avoid Amazon for all the reasons you know: try here:

And subscribe for free. It helps me know what works.

Oh, and the footnotes:

[1]  Ivor Chipkin, Mark Swilling, Haroon Bhorat, Mzukisi Qobo, Sikhulekile Duma, Lumkile Mondi, Camaren Peter, et al., Shadow State: The Politics of State Capture (Wits University Press, 2018).

[2]  The International Union of Geological Sciences has decided not to apply the term Anthropocene to a new geological age, but it notes that the term will nonetheless ‘remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the earth system’; see Raymond Zhong, ‘Geologists Make It Official: We’re Not in an ‘Anthropocene’ Epoch,’ New York Times, March 20, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html.

[3]  Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming (Viking Press, 2007).

Astrological

The eclipse drew a hundred of us to the ancient meadow hill that had seen earlier and better eclipses. This one got to about 90%, so the birds noticed and the light got weird. But the weather was so clear that we had to look at each other to decide if it had actually come and gone.

The eclipse drew a hundred of us to the ancient meadow hill that had seen better eclipses. This one got to about 90%, so the birds noticed and the light got weird. But it was still too sunny so we had to look at each other to decide if it had actually come and gone.

The last really good one was in 129 when the Romans had their boot on the neck of  Brigante tribe. They would probably would have watched from the hill across the Aire Valley where a modest neolithic stone circle has seen a hundred eclipses. The Romans huddled in their posh villa.

In 629 another eclipse darkened Skipton briefly. The Romans left a clutter of petty kingdoms when they left. The Vikings would come a bit later. Skipton was part of Craven that survived in the fluid boundaries of the Saxons and Anglos, with everyone keeping an eye on the crazies to the north later known as Scots. This was not really a “civilization falls in flames” situation like our squabble feels like to us. But maybe it was more what the formerly proud Americans will be living through for the next couple of decades. The people kept their name—still called Craven, 2,000 years after Hadrian visited the tribes. But everything changed.

Even an incomplete astrological phenomenon puts our little human squabbles in context. It briefly gets my mind off of how ICE is writing down license plates in church parking lots to track Christians resisting our wanna-be petty king. They can just ask for mine. In 70 days his chariot’s wheels will fall off when the new Congress is elected. It might take till next March for them to start cleaning up the shambles, but they will do so. This may may not seem of astrological scale, but it is our little tribe and it matters to us.

Fiddlesticks from about 300 feet above Bank Newton. Thank you DJI drone.

We fight among ourselves like the Brigantes did before the Romans, who rolled in like China with ascendant technologies. My new boat heater is Chinese and is powered by Chinese solar panels as is the drone that shot this picture of it.

America may not be of astrological scale, but it’s ours and we should do the best we can in our time. Lets start by ridding ourselves of this petty tyrant and his lesser spawn who are so shamelessly leaving our government a hollowed out shambles. This collapse of democracy is impossible to explain to our British friends, since the whole point of the revolution was to get rid of their shameless tyrant. The Brits are not naive about the self-serving American people, as he is not our first transactional leader. Churchill was fighting the Nazis with nothing but his oratory from his London bunker while we were callously turning away inconvenient Jewish ships and bargaining to trade destroyers for Caribbean islands. We did eventually show up to help, but only after a river of British blood had flowed out of a thousand villages. Even so the Brits still honor us in ways we are now radically disrespecting. Not easy to be an American in a pub these days.

And its a lot harder to be an American in a Quaker meeting! We’ll be part of the remarkable Quaker silent march for peace in London September 19th. And we’ll be back to North Carolina to vote. And we’ll be part of the people rising up to ensure the petty tyrant is peacefully ushered back to whatever golden rock he crawled out from. Let him keep all his stolen crap; just go away.

It is hard to describe the transcendent beauty of the natural life of the Dales, but we have paused in awe for millenia.

Humans have understood the movement of planets for millennia. The Aztecs, Mayan, Lascaux and Druids all had their versions of stone circles to precisely capture the first light of the new season. Our IPhones are just the latest technology to tell us when the totality would pass over us in the meadow as we stood in our moment of awe.

How odd it is that we continually forget the arts and crafts of human relationships that make life possible. Every generation has to relearn how to deal with Roman provincials and their tribal underlords. Or the petty kings of Craven. Or the brothers in the colonies who were so clever with their 3/5th of a human arithmetic, as they spoke of natural rights of all people. And our shambles of a government now.

We have unprecedented connectional tools that somehow fail to connect us at all.The tyrants and their entrepreneurial vassals seem so powerful. But maybe it too easy for us to speak truth to the power who have everything but truth to work with, so we underestimate how much power we have.  Blogs are like drones in this new era. They may not seem like much, but notice who is controlling Hormuz.

We must claim our lives in the places and predicaments in which we live now. The Brigantes couldn’t vote, but we can. So before reaching for the spear, make sure you are registered to vote and make damn sure your vote is counted.

It is not too late for money to matter for people you wish to govern. TC and I keep sending money to candidates like Roy Cooper and, locally, Amy North. It makes me happy to send funds to Talarico (my favorite seminary student) and Dan Koh, Howard’s son in Massachusetts. And Vote Common Good, William Barber, Interfaith Alliance and Move On. Don’t forget your local democratic party office. They are the ones that cross the finish line at precinct level.

It is always worth paying attention to important cycles from eclipses to elections.

And don’t just send your money, get on their websites, volunteer and show up.

Now.

Don’t wait for the next eclipse.

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Who we are

It was critical to the painter/prophets of Lauscaux to locate humans among other species. How much more important for us now?

You may have noticed that we live amid many ugly and cruel inhumanities in shockingly unexpected places, most weird of all, the land three religions call Holy. We seem to be getting worse. Last century was likely the most violent of our species long trail and this one is not shaping up well.

In 1940 Nazi-occupied Bordeaux, four teenagers stumbled across a cave near Lascaux that had been undisturbed for 18,000 years. One found it, looking for his dog, who had disappeared up on the side of an unremarkable hill, not mind-bending art. One of them was Jewish, living in the village hoping to be invisible. But the dog had gotten stuck in the entrance. Once all four crawled inside, they quickly realized they were in a limestone cathedral. They were the first humans in 18 thousand years to look up at Actual Intelligence.

I followed those boys along with TC and two grandsons and my daughter Lauren, who has written a play about the caves that will be premiered at the Roundhouse Theater next year. Ryan Rillette, the artistic Director, arranged the visit to the caves and walked in awe with us.

The painter prophets of Lascaux were us, minus IPhones, our plastic avalanche and 2,000 pound bombs dropped mindlessly on strangers. But they were probably no better or worse, smarter or dumber, than we. About the same size, same vocal chords, brains and posture with which to speak, sing, dance and do art of a very high order. They ate a lot of reindeer, which they did not think any more sacred than we do chickens, so did not paint them. Standing below the paintings, I see that while we’ve learned a lot, we have perhaps forgotten more.

The point wasn’t to celebrating killing the deer, but to SEE the animal in its vitality. Notice the breath!

The cave was painted by people set apart by such sophisticated nuance that they inspired Picasso. They painted animals so vivid they moved, swam and leaped on the walls. You can almost smell the breath of the bull and draw back from the bear’s claws. They didn’t just paint on the rock; they studied it so closely that they used its texture to give perspective and dynamism. It was part of their palette: the calcite in one place made the pigments leap; the limestone in another gave a different aura to the animals.

They seem to have chosen the cave partly because it was oriented so, at the summer solstice, it would catch the sun to make the cathedral vibrate and dance.

Why would they pour time and energy into something in the ground?  It would be arrogant to think we know. But the auroch, buffalo, bear and elk our fellow humans painted shows it was important to them to know who they were as humans among a complex order of species. That is exactly what we have forgotten.

See how the animals are in and among each other in such muscular vitality and presence.

With such high technical proficiency, they would probably like our IPhones. But they would pity us for not knowing who we are and where we live.

Who are we? We are animals among a pantheon of other animals, from auroch to earthworms, who together keep the world fit for all. All of us—every one—is made for good and made to be good for all. That is the moral point of the painting that can’t be missed as we see it 18,000 years after the pigments were blown onto the rock so carefully.

There is only one human in Lascaux, an odd stick-figure missing the grace and detail of all the other animals.

These were artists of Michelangelo skill, so they could have made a human of monumental towering grace. Instead, they left us a fellow with an impressive erection,  a bird-like head and staff, falling backward. Maybe he had disemboweled the charging massive buffalo, or maybe the other way around. Not triumphal; kind of pathetic and small, really.

If you laid just 200 of my lives end to end you’d be among those artists who saw a world of dynamic nuance, Spirit and energy. They knew they were as weak and slow as we are,but maybe also  prone to exaggerated pride and privilege. So they said to stop and be still. Consider the creatures of grace and rippling power. See how they move and breath, swim and leap. Notice especially their breath that later Greeks would call Spirit. They—and dare we say even we—are alive.

The artists did not leave a single moral mandate, no ecological tips and tricks, no guidance on dealing with damaged tyrants, no user manual for the world. There are symbols among the paintings, but we do not know what they mean. But we can’t miss the point: pay attention.

Once we know with whom we share the world, we can figure everything else out, although it is late, frankly. There are no aurochs or cave lions left. We proud penis people have disemboweled entire continents, even turning ocean currents bent and flaccid. None of the species painted on the rock exist anymore. In only 200 of my lifetimes, all were killed leaving behind weak domesticated imitations. Maybe it is too late for us, too, and we should find a cave built for sorrow at what is lost so that some boys in 40,026 can begin again.

But maybe not because the natural world is coiled to spring back.

River Six guides our view over the Broughton Estate land finding its way back to normal after 32 generations.

As we visited Lascaux I was reading about the movement to “rewild” the earth. The leading icon is Knepp Estate in southern England, that turned back toward life only a quarter century ago. And only three miles from where we sleep in our narrowboat, the Broughton Sanctuary turned onto the same path seven years ago. William the Conqueror (THAT one) gave the estate to the family in 1097. The 32nd “custodian” had a daughter and realized that she—the 33rd—needed a whole different plan. He knew who and where the family was. His daughter’s 3,000 acres is early in the process of releasing the wildness on land, nearly eaten to the root by sheep for centuries. I’ll write more about this in a later blog. But I’ll just say that the message written on the recovering moorland is the same as that on the Lascaux walls.

Alive because of the mycelliar web, and already giving birth to a young ash beneath its branches.

The ecologist, River Six, guided us through Broughton. We stood next to a 300 year ash that almost died down to its last leaf, now healthy and even casting seeds (one of which is already 7 feet tall). He casually noted that it lived on the mycelliar web that crossed over beneath a path to the nearest Ash about 200 feet away.  He said that a normal tree in a normal season produces way more nutrient and energy that it consumes, so is happy for its excess to flow to kin species and then to others nearby, such as the Hawthorne. “Are trees made for generosity?,” I asked. He liked the thought and agreed, noting you can see it even in a violated and degraded landscape where you’d think it was every tree for itself. A normal open forest is a thriving web so generous it even welcomes–depends on–grazing animals and beavers to live.

Once we see where we are and who we are, we realize the big surprise is not the consequences of centuries of rapacious behavior, but the capacity of the natural systems to spring back with astonishing speed. Our intelligence can make us good partners—the biblical word is steward—to help the systems do what they are made to do. If the beavers are missing, a steward can go find some and introduce them to the the ruined watershed.

What if you, like me, have not inherited a three thousand of acres estate with capital and connections? My brother and brother-in-law have a quiet clue. Wild what you do have. David and Lisa live in a 150 year old Victorian home next to our canal in Skipton with a front yard about 20 feet by 40 feet. Half of it is now wild with the miniature riot of bees, bugs and volunteer plants—Broughton in a microcosm (without the beaver).

David and Lisa Lumb’s half wild front yard in Skipton. The bugs are happy with the start.

My older brother Ron invested 10 years to lead his otherwise normal Presbyterian church near Baltimore to restore their two acre overgrown back lot into a miniature native wilderness. Long lost birds have found it and raise their young.  People from miles around come to walk its paths and remember who they are. Wild!

“Only a drop in the  ocean,” you might say. But what do you think an ocean is?

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Impossible Things

“I cannot think it,” says the gullible ones who find it impossible to imagine shameless perfidy. (a small part of Paul Day’s amazing sculpture in St. Pancras Station, London.

Impossible things happen all the time, but they usually don’t last long enough to celebrate. You’d think that once a people protected by deep water on east and west had settled on way to manage their land, they would be able to fend off the waste and pillage of tyranny. But the centuries after the magna carta had finally brought tyrannical kinds to heel, England fell prey to tyrants more than one time. It’s offspring—the United Colonies of America—has learned about tyrants more quickly—didn’t even it make it 250 years. Citizens rise, forget and get distracted allowing the most remarkably unfit people to seize absolute control.  How it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant?

A century and a half before the colonial experiment produced a fragile democracy that would wobble and totter for another 250 years, Shakespeare explored this question in a number of plays about tyrants. I didn’t fully grasp how much he could help us until I visited Stratford-upon-Avon a few weeks ago and discovered a book by Stephan Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power. Greenblatt is an impeccable scholar who, like me, was distressed following the election of you-know-who. “Under what circumstances do such cherished institutions, seemingly deeply-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile?” The answer lay not just with the tyrant but those complicit. With uncomfortable precision Greenblatt identifies five types of complicities that would read like CNN, if it had not fallen into the control of one of the types.

The gullible are only one: “Such people find it almost impossible to resist the big bold lie, shamelessly reiterated. The young and inexperienced are a relatively easy mark. When the murdered Clarence’s son is told his uncle Richard’s grief is fraudulent, the child replies , ‘I cannot think it.’ (Richard III 2.2.31.33). “I cannot think it” serves as the motto for those who simply cannot get their minds around such perfidy.

Paul Day sculpts in bronze with the penetrating vision of Shakespeare. The most radical humanity is at the bottom of the massive work most walk past. St. Pancras Station, London.

But why does it work? “Why would anyone be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers? Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying and doing anything he likes, his spectacular indecency.”

Good question much on my mind this July 4th.

Shakespeare was an entertainer more like than Stephen Colbert than a research scholar. He knew where the line was and did not get cancelled or, as was common in the time, tortured, drawn and quartered. Fortunately for him, he didn’t need to be current; history is littered with tyrants to write about. That is Greenblatt’s first point: tyrants always look unique, but they are just a type that slithers through political cracks now and then before quickly collapsing in humiliation and always alone.

Paul Day attracts with romance but knows the pedestal is the politics. St. Pancras Station, London.

MacBeth says, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” (5.5.19-28) Greenblatt stresses, “It is important to understand that this devastating experience of utter meaninglessness….is not the existential condition of humankind. The play insists that it is the fate precisely of the tyrant.” Normal people are not condemned to this bleakness; we can—and most of us do–choose decency, love and community.

The Bard would not be surprised that the American experiment’s multilayered checks and balances could Such people find it almost impossible to resist the big bold lie, shamelessly reiterated.

“There are periods, sometimes extended periods, during which the cruelest motives of the basest people seem to be triumphant. But Shakespeare believed that tyrants and their minions would ultimately fail, brought down by their own viciousness and by a popular spirit of humanity that could be suppressed but never completely extinguished.

Any hope? “He imagined the best hope lay in the sheer unpredictability of collective life, its refusal to march in lockstep to a one person’s orders. The incalculable number of factors constantly in play make it impossible for an idealist or a tyrant…to remain in charge of the course of events.”

“What is the city but the people?” Shakespeare

“The best chance for the recovery of collective decency lay, he thought in the political action of ordinary citizens. He never lost sight of the people who steadfastly reminded silent when exhorted to shout their support for the tyrant. “What is the city but the people.”

Happy 4th.

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Speaking of the banal evil complicity note that you can buy Greenblatt’s book almost anywhere, but on July 4th do so anywhere but Amazon.

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Way

A picturesque view of a green field surrounded by trees, with rolling hills and a clear blue sky in the background.
What is most interesting is how you get from here to there. Stepping through the hawthorn to the meadow. Or from who I was to who I am becoming.

We were in the Beer Engine—our preferred Skipton pub—talking with three men from Liverpool who detected we were not from nearby. I tried on Canada and then admitted to North Carolina with Memphis sauce, ending with an apology for all that is America these days. “Don’t worry, mate; everyone has a rough patch; this is yours, but we know you’ll come out the America we know.” Generous people who have seen Kings, despots and even Beatles come and pass in time.

Everyone paying any attention these days is a former whatever they used to be. Whoever you were 5 years ago tells me nothing about today, much less tomorrow. We are all in motion; those who grieve what has been lost and, interestingly, those who thought they won. This is true for those clear about ideas and identities they left behind and, interestingly, those who thought they were snug in a new intellectual, spiritual or political home.

Several rabbits grazing on a grassy field adorned with yellow flowers, with one rabbit in mid-leap.
My grandson Charles took this of bunnies on the hop. It’s all about the motion.

We are all in motion.

We are former something.

We are all hyphenated.

Some of us have more than one hyphen: Methodist-Baptist-Quaker, with a side order of Celtic, Buddhist and Bhai influence all the while thinking the agnostics have a point.

Hyphens don’t hold things apart; they mark where the energy is most alive, where the intellect is dynamic. The hyphen, like a boundary, is where the life is emergent, testifying to where former and future engage. The Quakers speak of the “absolute perhaps,” refusing to stop creation of any kind. In the early 1600’s they risked their lives to “seek” and have not quit.

The hyphen is a witness to life-in-process. Giving up on the binary this-or-that in favor of the dynamic flow.

Network theory used to stress the nodes; Ingold’s more advanced meshwork theory emphasizes the knots where lines of relationship stabilize. Both can be transactional, focused on mere exchange, but brilliant Dr. Thandeka Cochrane noticed in Malawi that the complex human mesh is influenced by affection, not just exchange. Hyphen theory is most interested in what is happening in between stable states, nodes or knots. In our current time—and as far ahead as I can see—we will live in between. We. must not dispare our former selves, not fully landing on our new names as we know there is another hyphen to come as politics, theology and life itself move.

A few years ago we realized there were more people who chose “none” as their religious identity than any of the name brands—about 100 million people in the United States alone. A closer look at the “nones” shows that only about 10% are actively hostile to religion with another 20% simply so done with religion as to not care about the question. About that same number are confused by the categories or disappointed by the religions on offer, But they have the same prayer life as most Protestants and Catholics. The study calls these “NINO—Nones In Name Only.” The largest group have few religious behaviors, but continue active curiosity about things spiritual—classic “spiritual but not religious.”

Interior view of a grand hall with wooden arches, featuring a large globe suspended from the ceiling and numerous busts displayed along the walls.
The Long Room, Trinity College, Dublin where thinking has been in motion since 1712. They raised the roof in 1860 to make room for new thoughts. They added four women to the statuary and the globe more recently.

These last two groups are the hyphenated people in dynamic motion from who they were to who they are becoming. These are the people I meet in every movement doing something good, from delivering food to terrified immigrants in Minneapolis to patiently knocking on doors to register voters. This is who goes to theater. It includes almost everyone in a school of divinity like Wake Forest.

A vibrant garden scene featuring colorful flowers and greenery, with a wooden sign displaying the words 'Simple. Radical. Spiritual.'
Two hundred seekers–Quakers–are buried in this garden of the Skipton Friends Meeting that still seeks here 350 years on.

The hyphen marks an upwelling of energy. It is much more interesting and lively than adding or subtracting an opinion. A hyphen inevitably draws one into working relationship with other people who are also hyphenated and in motion.

My friend Wayne Merritt taught me Greek a long time ago. He translated Jesus as “you shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd.” Followers find a Way, not a place; a Way between.

How do you know which Way? Do not follow someone else’s anger. Head toward life; head away from death. Follow your deepest joy.

You will not be alone.

Deciding for life

One day the bees came home. They chose a hive box by the canal that had been abandoned last Fall by a cousin hive. Who knows why was it just right for these sisters now. Honeybees make every decision in a radically social manner; perhaps the most studied of any insect, we humans can simply not grasp how the bees think.

A farmer on a quad bike herding sheep alongside a canal under a bridge, surrounded by lush greenery.
TC and I live on a narrowboat on the Leeds to Liverpool canal where many interesting things happen from sheep,swans and honeybees.

Bees almost choose well with a social intelligence we humans always wrote off as mere instinct. But recent writing suggests we have more in common and more to learn than we thought. A recent article What’s it Like to be a Bee,” notes “the decision-making process is broadly diffused among all the scout bees in a swarm,” and their final choice is “based on the actions of hundreds of individuals, each one an autonomous agent capable of providing unique information for solving the house-hunting problem.”

“As they search independently, widely, and simultaneously, the hundreds of scout bees from a swarm bring back to the group diverse information—knowledge of mediocre, superb, and even lousy sites—which are shared with the other scouts by means of waggle dances. Every discovery of a potential nest site is “freely reported,” and “no scout is stifled.” In this way, “a swarm takes full advantage of its inherently collective nature to assemble rather quickly—often in just a few hours—a profusion of alternatives from which to choose.”

Honeybees have long lived close to humans, but are entirely untamed—less violent, but more wild. We humans may be evolving backwards these days, as we are often tempted to think that somebody smarter, stronger or wiser can be trusted with the wickedly complex decisions of our  hostile world. It is hostile even for 10,000 sisters with stingers which is why they make sure all of them are involved in important decisions. Ultimate democrats.

Humans got two things wrong about bees. First, they thought that the largest bee was a king, not a queen. They missed an even more important fact, which is there is no single bee that makes any decision at any consequence. Honeybees make great decisions—solely—because they have no elites of any kind at all. The crucial decisions depend entirely on the integrity and credibility of the scout bees whose only job is to tell the truth. These are the older bees who know the neighborhood; good at finding blossoms; and most likely find a new home.

A close-up image of bees buzzing around a white beehive entrance against a green background.
Not long after moving into the new box, some bumble bees tried to get into the hive after noticing the fresh honey accumulating with baby bees in their cribs. Some bouncer bees had to persuade them to go away.

Scouts knows what to look for, like scientists recognise clean data. Bees want a dry 10 gallon cavity with about a 1” hole, 10-14 feet off the ground, ideally with some old honeycomb. Scout bees rank their findings by the enthusiasm of their “waggle dance.” If compelling, their report encourages until other scouts go, look and give their opinion. Eventually the collective agrees to risk splitting the hive, sending half the bees and old queen to its new world. This is a massive risk only taken after thousands of bees have weighed the decision.

Bees live or die on the quality of this decision process, which is the point I’m heading toward: scientists are the scout bees for humans. Bees need scouts because there is always something new to learn about the neighborhood. Humans need scouts for the same reason. If we screw up the peer review process, we die.

Our scientists trusted to scan our global neighborhood so we can make decisions based on undiluted fact.  Although some scientists achieve fame (Salk, Foege, Fauci) they have to earn their trust by integrity and credibility over time. Scout bees have no academic degrees, and everyone has the same mother. Scientists are better than their last waggle and that must be validated by another scout. A hive that disables their scouts is doomed to perish.

As are we.

You could see hive death happening at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) this week. This disease drives a large fraction of early death and vast public cost, nearly all of which is preventable by social and individual behavior choices. One of the older and most validated scout scientists is Dr. Steven Kahn, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, who also serves as the editor in chief of the association’s flagship journal, Diabetes Care. He  was thrown out for handing out one of his editorials protesting NIH abandonment of many preventive policies. This is as close to an enthusiastic waggle as academics get. But very large bumble bee who leads the NIH feared competing waggle dancing so had the ADA throw Dr. Kahn out. Big Bumble Bee Bhattacharya was too timid to waggle himself and sent a lesser bee in his place. Why trust a bee like that? Why trust a professional association afraid of a good waggle?

A more systematic process of hive murder is visible in radically changing the rules governing funding of research. The Office of Management and Budget wants to impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities. As Melissa L. Finucane says in the NY Times, “The proposed rules be “corrupting the conditions under which rigorous science operates for the public good.”

Silhouette of a lone tree against a hazy sunset sky, with rolling hills in the background and a faint sun peeking through the leaves.
Life is possible only when you see your neighborhood clearly. It always takes friends to help.

I find many aspects of the current US administration repellent. But the corruption of research will well and truly kill us all. Nothing is more cowardly than suppressing honest data about race, gender, language, sexuality, poverty and ethnicity. Read their proposed rule here: Federal Register :: Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance. And comment here: open for public comment until July 13.

We will never be able trust our scouts to find home again.

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Consider

Colorful stained glass window depicting various biblical scenes and figures, featuring angels and characters in historical garments.
We must all protest at some risk, artist, writer, citizen.

I pray for any man with a tortured soul, whether hiding in the bamboo forest behind Walmart or awake all night in the White House. And I pray for all those within range for the courage to protect others from his actions. We have emergency centers for the fellow behind Walmart; 25th amendment for the other one.

I do not know whether the military of my nation will follow orders they know to be war crimes. They are bound by oath to say no because it is wrong and it is stupid.

Text Box: Figure 1 We must all protest with visibility and risk.They know we cannot live in a world where political differences permit one to starve civilians or deprive them of water. Why should not the Iranians feel justified to dump a bucket of poison in my town’s Salem Lake?

I remember my disgust and shame at the Vietnam pictures and the eventual trials that stained an entire people. This current abomination in Iran is worse–premeditated, taunting, wrapped in childish sacrilege and swagger. We will never know all the names of all the innocent dead.

We the American people elected this man twice, so all this is our shame. When the war crime trials go forward we will feel shame. Ask any German.

I am among the Quakers these days in my spirit. Theirs is an inconvenient,odd and quirky witness, odd and quirky. Hundreds died in cold English prisons for those quirks; generations were refused access to university, medicine, law and elected office. They are still regularly arrested even today for Palestinian protests. Hard people, these. But they have been exactly correct for 350 years about state violence. They said that preparing for war creates war. No Christian may participate. How does one—me— unravel that participation while living in the most militarized and now lawless empire in the history of the species?

I write this before his deadline threats about something he said he didn’t care about three days ago for which he is now willing to erase a whole civilization. We’ll be relieved if he declares victory and goes onto something else. But this is still a Nuremburg moment; the whole thing violated law from the start. It has already been a warm crime that will trigger trials to come. Nuremburg prosecuters—Americans– accused everyone involved in the design, planning, construction and administration of the death camps. Everyone was tried, not just the person pushing the button to turn on the gas.

All of us must protest at some risk. In Weil der Stadt, Germany, a wartime stained glass artist risked everything with a window panel showing Jesus sending Satan away — with Hitler depicted as Satan! (You can see him in the upper right panel above.) Eight decades later the powerful witness resonates.

I only blog and teach, which seems not so brave. When I flew from LaGuardia Saturday morning a young ICE agent fed my backpack through the scanning machine. He could have taken my phone, read my blog and detained me. Next week, after the war crimes make the government even more afraid of its citizens, he may well be ordered to do so. I hope I write clearly enough to trouble him.

It is never enough to just withhold endorsement of an illegal act, however.

Christians find ourselves entangled with heretical nutters doing violence in Jesus name have a special problem. We just celebrated the miracle of new life born anew! Not enough. We should send money to Central World Kitchen to feed people in Gaza (remember that war crime?) TC and I sent $500 hoping that our daughters and grandsons will live to see a world of law and justice that Jesus and Mohammed (peace be their names) might recognize.

Pray for that man and those who care for him before he hurts even more people.

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A note about the stained witness: The artist, JoKarl Huber, who was considered ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and faced a three-year work ban, completed the window in 1940, so it was definitely a risk! Thanks to Jim and Reneta Cochrane.

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Do this

Panoramic view of the Statue of Liberty at sunset, with an orange and blue sky and silhouettes of cranes in the background.

This is no time for clever turns of phrase, new fundamental insights, clarifying metaphors, quotes pulled off the internet from this or that repurposed sage. You can find your latest reason for outrage for yourself.

Any American ashamed of the state of our despoiled democracy needs to do one thing this week. Pick one of the more than 3,000 No Kings Events near you Saturday and show up. Rather like voting, you just need to plan that one day so that you do the one thing that matters most.

This isn’t asking you to face down ICE at 20 degrees below zero as our Minneapolis patriots did for weeks on end. This isn’t even asking you to stand in one of the artificially long lines snaking through airports, also gift of ICE. It’s not asking you to ride on one of the humanitarian ships bringing medical supplies to Cuba in protest of the runaway tyrant’s casual swagger.

Just show up with your fellow American neighbors and, with your body, say no.

Your presence–and that of 15 millions of other Americans–will be the largest and best organized protest in our nation since the tea party in Boston. What difference will it make? This will not end the dumpster fire of democracy, which will burn for the rest of my life, at least, but hopefully not my children’s lives. We will experience the kind of hope that wells up among free and brave people on the move. We will realize this energy will be channeled into the nitty gritty political organizing till next November and all the school board, county clerk and agricultural commissioner roles on which a free people depends.

It is our fault that the astonishing machinery of democratic systems was taken for granted, left vulnerable to subversion by people filled with fear, mistaken religious delusion and sadly venal opportunism. Let them savor their stolen billions while they stew in the blood of thousands.

Brooklyn Bridge illuminated at dusk with a flag on top and city buildings in the background.
The red sign says “welcome.”

TC and I will be at the main march in Winston-Salem at Union Station near Winston-Salem State University.

Find your local site and register here.

And, just in case you think this is a show, not work, here’s the link for the call about the next step that comes after the massive day or protest. I told you these folks are organized. Here to rsvp.

And, of course, if you need some music to tune up your soul: Jesse Wells “No Kings.”

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