Community of Iona – garygunderson Blog

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.

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe for free. It helps me know what works.

Dei, Image of God

Every morning for a hundred days the Trinity went silent as the breaking edge of the early sun sped past Iceland, Greenland and then onto American soil. Spirit sighed as Son complained, “I saved their ungrateful asses for this kind of behavior?” Godhead was silent as godheads tend to be, but noted that maybe they should have gone with the dolphins as the lead species. “These humans don’t deserve to walk by forests and rivers, much less have dominion.” The Three/One gave up and stepped back to let the foolish species simply erase itself. It would leave only a very minor archeological layer of plastic as evidence of an experiment gone awry. “It’s a lovely little planet; someone will come along and treat it right.”

Somebody has to remind God not to give up. That usually means an artist with a soul that could not be silent, even against all the evidence. This time it was my friend and colleague Sally Morris who noticed that DEI–the target of the most sophomoric obsessions of you-know-who—also spell the Latin word meaning “of God.” Once the phrase “imago Dei”—“image of God”—entered her thoughts, she knew that other Latin terms and elaboration on them would follow. She turned to her poet and theologian friend Mel Bringle to keep faith with the subtle nuances of Latin and, well, God. The lyrics:

Imago Dei is the image of God.

Diverse and cherished, we are made by one God.

Each gender, class, and race reflects God’s holy face.

To see your likeness, help us, O God.

Voluntas Dei is the strong will of God.

Of equal standing as we follow our God, no longer slave or free,

we join in unity.

To work for justice, help us, O God.

Caritas Dei is the wide love of God.

Included gladly in the arms of our God, of this, we have no doubt:

God’s grace leaves no one out.

To welcome others, help us, O God.

These simple lessons are the teachings of God.

Diverse and Equal and Included by God, we rise to righteous calls

each time we topple walls.

To live your Gospel, help us, O God.

Descant:* Imago Dei. Voluntas Dei. Caritas Dei. Auxilio Dei.

*English: Image of God. Will of God. Love of God. By the help of God.

As Mel explains, “The concluding phrase about toppling walls alludes to Ephesians 2:14, where we are again called to live as one in Christ, because “He is our peace [who] in His flesh has made [us] one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (NRSV).

Saul Alinsky said long ago to never go up against a group of people that sing together, especially when they are singing like their life depends on it.

*Table Mountain, South Africa. From the Interfaith Chapel of Goedgedacht.*

Every church and organization on the verge of forgetting its identity should sing this song five times a day. Every waffling Board of every faith-related university and hospital should, too, or else they’ll embarrass themselves as they scurry into some safe corner in which to hide from history and their own self.

Artists remind us who we are.

Sometimes the artist reminds God to live up their name, too. Don’t give up on us God!

Tomorrow another day unfolds, built on the shambles of previous bad decisions. But not without hope that even when we waffle and fail, someone will come along to remind us who we are.

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You can download lyrics and full sheet music with a better explanation by the artists on the GIA website. https://giamusic.com/resource/imago-dei-is-the-image-of-god-pdf-du01930

If you use it, please let Sally and I know, maybe with a video link. Gary.gunderson@gmail.com or morrissa@wfu.edu

Underbee

I walk through morning light among the apple trees to the circle of seven hives as a half-million bees begin a new day. I sit by the small hive over on the left looking for pollen saddlebags on the arriving foragers which will tell me there are babies being fed. This hive is a refugee remnant from one that fell prey to an infestation of wax moths. Many bugs beside bees are attracted to honey and wax—small beetles, ants, “destructor mites” too small to see. And, the most disgusting, wax moths that tunnel sideways through the comb leaving stringy goo the bees can’t remove and can quickly overrun the whole hive.

Bees are NOT supposed to do this, but they were refugees without options, so they build UNDER an empty hive.

The Mother and 6 or 8 thousand sisters abandoned the lost hive, flew 100 feet across the circle and attached underneath an empty box and built comb as if they were waiting for me to do something. This situation is not covered in my dozens of beekeeping books, which the bees don’t read. I was anxious about hurting the already traumatized refugee Mother so I gently picked up the bottom board under which they had attached themselves and put it on top of a small box with their new comb dangling down into a box. I added a bottle feeder to help them settle in.

Mother might have time for two three cycles of babies before frost. The sisters don’t hibernate, but they’ll quite raising babies and push the drones out to save food and bother. The girls form a tight ball to keep Mother warm until February when she’ll rev up again if—a big if—the hive can recover its strength. I’ll always pull for the underbee.

Meanwhile, the other half million sisters around the circle need treatment for those damn mites. This involves a 14 day regime of stinky chemical pads inside their hive which makes them grumpy as I check carefully for other bugs. The only nectar around is goldenrod so I’ll feed them after this treatment with a last shot of formic acid till we tuck them in for the Winter.

We say “beekeeper” but I am the one being kept. Why do all this? Not the honey, although I did harvest 18 gallons from four of the hives this summer; should be twice that If I can nurse these hives along. But the longer I am kept by the bees, the less I think about the honey. These sisters have watched mountains, oceans and glaciers come and go—taking lightly the latest annoyance, we silly humans. I savor being inside their generous circle on a season of their 30-million-year journey.

Moon rising through the Nunnery on Iona.

On every one of those 11 trillion days, they read their environment and adapted to the unexpected. They focuses on the babies who thought only of the babies after them. Bees will let you have honey, but sting for brood. On the other hand (bees have six) their survival depends on radical diversity. Honeybees are impossible to tame; certainly not be me. The mother mates with 10 boys a few seconds each 50 feet in the air. She flies right past the neighborhood boys to those a couple miles away. Her daughters have random fathers so every bee and every hive is a slightly different mix of inherited traits. Don’t worry about their survival; some hive somewhere will have the traits to survive the worst we dumb humans can do. We humans on the hand (we only have two) are far less likely to survive. We don’t think about the babies, resist diversity and have tamed ourselves.

But now and then an improbably wild human hive emerges with traits fit for the future. Last month TC and I took rail, ferry, bus and footpath to the rocky island of Iona on the western coast of Scotland. People have come here for millenia to experience its “thin veil” between human and the Ultimate. The abbey was built 1,460 years ago and Druids worshipped here a thousand before them. Its Christian phase attracted pilgrims and, unfortunately, my ill-behaved Viking kin for centuries until succumbing to the protestants who let the rubble crumble. In the 1930’s until a muscular Presbyterian, George McLead, founded the Iona community restoring the abbey, and more importantly, built a movement for enspirited mercy and justice. My Norwegians gave them the lumber for the ceiling they had burned earlier. Now Iona is a hive of radical spirit. If honeybees invented humans, we would look like the Iona community—women leading with maybe 15% men allowed, as long as seemed relevant to the babies.

Late summer fields surrounding the Abbey of Iona.

About a mile across the strait from Iona is the pink granite “island of the strong women.” The founding priest Columba shipped the women and cows over there, which didn’t last long as boy energy is too brittle for the harsh climate. Today the spirit and practice of the Iona community is distinctly feminine, unafraid of the bitter winds or the venal proud boys now having their day in so many places around the world. Spirit with sting ,if the babies are threatened. And they are.

Aaryaman Singhal, one of the brilliant young leaders of the Sunrise Movement. Count me in.

Iona tunes my ear for the songs of freedom rising up where you don’t expect it. An unlikely young hive, the Sunrise Movement, rose up in Texas demanding the government to reinvent the depression era Civilian Conservation Corp to fight climate extinction. It is led partly by Aaryaman Singhal, who reads his environment like the a honeybee. After slogging through steaming heat in east Texas and Louisiana, this week he stood by President Biden and AOC announcing the American Climate Corps infuriating the republicans (who rather remind me of the wax moths the way they go sideways). It will set another 20,000 people free to give themselves a chance to give the world a chance.

This is how life works. Hope comes from the edges, from the experiments you’d least expect to work. Look to where the veil is thin between human and ultimate; where you can see the inbreaking of the future.