garygunderson Blog

Boss power

An abstract painting featuring vibrant swirls of colors including blue, green, yellow, red, and purple on a white background. — *The many paths of the Mississippi North of Memphis. Drawn by Kathryn Gunderson for the Cover of Religion and the Health of the Public (Cohrane and me, Palgrave).*

How does power work in a time of no boundaries, rules, or words that mean anything?

Robert Reich, who is normally pretty smart, said the other day that power is a zero-sum struggle; that is, if someone has more, the other has less. There is a limited amount of power; the only issue is who has it. This is a mistake as it turns our attention to taking power instead of making power. Generals usually prepare to fight the last war, unprepared for the one they are in. So are social change-makers. It focuses us backward, thinking we need the kinds of power that created the mess instead of building the strength to subvert or bypass with new power. Even the Mississippi River, when confronted with a new barrier erected by some foolish human, goes around or under it, leaving it behind as a monument to folly.

There is no taking back the money Trump and his awful dependents have stolen. But how many gilded hotels can a family rent to how many bit-coin suckers? Who is going to stay in Trump Gaza for $1,000 night? The stuff stolen is mainly circulating among other thieves, so let them stay in each other’s hotels, fly on jets and swap wives, too.

The techno-poofs of Amazon, Apple and Meta didn’t become big by preying on whales. They want to be whales by consuming teeny krill like you and me one download at a time. They are mass market consumer companies just as vulnerable as Tesla has been in the face of global revulsion against its owner.

Tim Cook, Zuckerberg and Bezos have surely joined millions of their customers in downloading Springsteen’s meteoric hit recorded live just days ago in Manchester, England about 50 miles south of where TC and I are at the moment. I ran into a woman at a Skipton store yesterday. She was SO disappointed that I was an American but I assured her I was a Springsteen patriot not, well, you know. “Oh, she said, I heard about his Manchester concert…..”

Download his four-song set from pretty much anywhere and thrill to the “sound of freedom ringing.” You’ll be reminded “it’s going to be a long walk home.” He is as vivid as Dr. William Barber: “the world’s richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the poorest children to sickness and death.” You’ll find courage as he quotes James Baldwin “In this world there isn’t as much humanity as we would like.” And you’ll probably follow him as he urges us to pray as a bridge into “this train.”

It’s not his best music, but surely his best speech. (The speech is My City of Ruins (Introduction) [Live in Manchester, May 14, 2025])

I believe when the Boss says that we’ll survive this.

But how? The Don taunts the courts and those who hope law prevail, “whose army will enforce your judgements?” Good question. Can new power be created enough to turn over a lopsided accumulation of old power?

You’ll be watching the answer happen June 14^th, which is when we’ll see two kinds of power face off—62,000 soldiers embarrassed to be disgracing themselves in the Don’s silly parade dwarfed by 6 or 10 million disgusted citizens. First time we’ve ever seen president with such weak self-esteem that he needed such a ridiculous thing; soldiers are for fighting not fawning. So even the soldiers will be be humming Springsteen, not Kid Rock. The organizers are calling this “no kings day,” which is really not fair to actual kings, which have agreed to submit themselves to the Law and the People for a thousand years.

Many, many of the citizens will be signing songs forged in the long walk to freedom of the Black Church. If you are of the faithful persuasion, you can register here to find the Interfaith Alliance march closest to your church.

Aerial view of a winding river with vibrant blue hues, showcasing its curves and natural patterns. — Landstat image of the Mississippi’s wandering ways–never ceasing to power around, never through.

Last month I noted a new song by my friend Sally Morris whose new hymn makes the same point as Springsteen (and millennia of saints): “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.”

You can listen here. My earlier blog has the words. Here’s the link to the full sheet music so your choir can sing it Sunday, if they can’t do Springsteen.

Is there new power in the world or are we left to scrape and struggle for scraps of the old? Jesus laughed at those who thought that God had already spent all the creative energies there were in the world. God can raise up new children out of dry stones (Matthew 3:9). And if children, why not citizens?

Bees politics

TC and I arrived in Skipton, Yorkshire (UK) Tuesday to live for a while near her twin sister Lisa. On Thursday an urgent pounding on the door revealed an anxious Royal Mail man gingerly holding a box of 10,000 loud bees that we had ordered from Abelo in York. He did not stay for the congratulatory selfie.

A person wearing a beekeeping suit and veil smiles for the camera, with a beehive visible behind them, nestled in a lush hawthorn hedge. — *Buckfast Bees nestled into the hawthorn hedge by the Leeds and London Canal.*

We introduced the bees into their box nestled into the hawthorn hedge bordering the canal behind Lisa and David’s home. The honeybees were a nucleus 5 frame hive of Buckfast bees, a distinctive species developed at Buckfast Abbey by Brother Adam after many years of careful breeding.

I noticed some difference from my Italian-Americans in the Carolina’s. My home bees dispatch a line of sentinel bees to the opening, lift their rear ends high in the air and fan the scent of the hive to help its missing members find their way home. The Buckfasts maintain a very British dignity with no anal display at all. But within an hour all the bees that had been in the delivery box were enjoying their spiffy new hive with lots of room for new sisters and, eventually honey.

As if to welcome us and the bees, David Attenborough posted the very same morning about the ancient practice of “telling the bees.” He noted that “beekeepers in 18th and 19th century Europe and America believed that bees were not just insects—they were members of the family, messengers between this world and the next. And like any family member, they deserved to be told when something significant happened.

“When a loved one died, got married, or even when a child was born, the head of the household—or more often, the “goodwife”—would walk solemnly to the hive, knock gently, and whisper the news. They’d say the name of the person who had passed or wed, and even drape the hives in black cloth during mourning. Why?

“…it reflected a powerful belief that bees could feel joy and sorrow, that they needed to be included in the life of the household. The practice likely finds its roots in Celtic mythology, where bees were seen as spiritual couriers, able to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. Seeing a bee after someone passed away was interpreted as the soul in flight.”

A close-up of a green box containing live bees, with a warning label stating 'Live Bees', 'Handle with Care', 'Do not expose to Direct Sunlight', 'Do Not Drop', and 'Do Not Shake'. — *How would YOU like to the mail man delivering 10,000 bees?*

I’m a Baptist-Druid, which rounds out to being Celtic, so this all makes perfect sense to me. It is why a friend suggested I should tell the bees that the young experiment with democracy in the Colonies was dying.

The bees already know. For what democracy could survive in a culture willing to poison itself? The bees are not the vulnerable species here. They’ve survived many, many times longer than humans and seem certain to last millennia beyond us.

They are an untamable species without rulers, which is why they are smart. Dr. Tom Seely, the epic honeybee scientist from Cornell wrote Honeybee Democracy that documented how all major honeybee decisions are made after transparent deliberation of comparative data. (Here’s his great lecture.) Seely says that there is no boss bee expected to know everything. Male humans back to Aristotle thought the biggest bee ruled the hive who they assumed to be King. She is not a King or, really a queen. Despite her size and crucial role (birthing babies) she makes no more decisions than anyone else in the hive. It is a pure democracy so sophisticated we lesser species can’t figure it out.

No bee would imagine a process as flawed as American “democracy” in which fear of one deeply flawed person disables the thinking of millions so that he would not just be obeyed, but enriched with more honey than 1,000 hives could ever consume. They bees don’t need to be told about the death of this dumpster fire; they have seen it coming.

Not many humans in this part of England need to be told, either. They have seen actual kings, not the trashy American knock-off. They, like the bees, know about the certain suffering that follows from elevating one human so far above the others, wrapping them in layers of stultifying privilege and then letting them decide anything. They become stupid and then dangerous. The one in the gilded bubble inevitably make horrible decisions that damage and impoverish everyone. And then they, of course, go down, too as the consequences of their folly roll out.

View of a canal lined with boats and greenery, including a hedge, in Skipton, Yorkshire. — *The Buckfast Bees love the gardens but love the corridor of canal wildflowers even more.*

The English Magna Carta and closely linked tradition of habeas corpus were evolutionarily necessary for the human species to survive. They first established that nobody—certainly not the king—was above the law. The second established that no human could be judged without a fair trial. No human society that violates these can survive. Trust dies first, then facts, marked by random decisions that fuel greed, fear and loss of every certainty. There is no way to navigate or talk: nothing but raw violence as the single ruler and the tiny group he depends on run us all off the cliff.

It would be so convenient if it was possible for one person or a tiny group to manage all the vast interwoven complexities of life on this wild earth. Democracy is messy, inefficient and slow. But letting one person, especially a man decide things is dumber than any insect could survive.

The English figured this out about a thousand years ago, so this can’t be considered a “secret sauce.”

We don’t have to tell the bees. We should ask them.

Missionary Position

Not that one.

*Part of the historical mural at the Simms Community Center in Happy Hills. The mural was designed by Kayyum Allah, who also guided and instructed the students throughout the painting process.*

White progressives, wondering why the big resistance protests are mostly blue-eyed, are asking Black people, “could you run over that race stuff again?” Like 18^th century missionaries mumbling about their position on the Middle Passage.

This goes down poorly with the Black women who voted 92% for the Vice President as well as the vast majority of the Black men (who also had empathy for their brothers and sisters who could not vote for a prosecuting attorney of any hue). Black people have seen MAGA for centuries and know that serious violence waits just out of sight. And the dogs rarely bite missionaries. As a faculty friend said, “we have white colleagues; not comrades.”

A lot has happened since King and Malcom (who would have turned 100 this past month). And a lot has not happened, even between Black and White, hardly even begun with Brown.

This was all in the middle of the room during last week’s gathering in Winston Salem organized by Action4Equity, Love Out Loud and We In the World. We were trying to move toward “equity and liberation.” But what “we?” “We” can’t build mercy and justice out the trust we don’t have.

There has been strikingly little violence in these early MAGA days with the exception of the show bullying of defenseless Spanish-speaking dads and moms. Black people have seen this all before and know that once the resistance movement staggers to our feet—as it most certainly is—it will trigger white rage. They believe that white fragility justifies white violence.

*Modern heroine, Tonya Sheffield explains the Happy Hill story of gritty resilience to the regional visitors.*

The immediate issue is with the white moderates who may or may not be trusted once things actually get going. Who even begins to build the tools and tactics for doing good when we don’t trust?” Are we a we?

We were meeting in historic St. Stephen’s Missionary Baptist Church with the modern blend of religious folks and those of raw Spirit. Rev Dr. Paul Ford called us back to what Dr. King saw from his Birmingham jail 62 years and 15 days ago:

“If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

“Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world.” (read full text here).

But…. could you run over that race stuff one more time?

Paul also called my attention to these words form Rev. Dr. William Lamar IV in my Dean Corey Walker’s book on African Americans and Religious Freedom given to everyone at the meeting (I think Paul was the only one that read it):

“American notions of liberty, prosperity and the divine are ideas that can mean everything and nothing at the same time. Who defines these terms? The National Rifle Association supports liberty. The Black 43 African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities Lives Matter movement supports liberty. The Koch brothers are all for prosperity. So are Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky. Jerry Falwell Jr. believes the divine hand is upon America; so does Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. But this divine hand is not engaged in the same activities. These terms — liberty, prosperity, God — are blank screens upon which we project dreams and nightmares. For me, the concept of religious freedom is of the same dubious pedigree. It means nothing. It means everything.”

“Black people offer many unwanted gifts to the American empire — our hermeneutic of suspicion concerning all things American, our refusal to believe everything that the American empire says about itself and our creation of theology, art and culture that does not shrink in the face of perpetual assault.”

Every syllable of King and Lamar is true for the Spanish-speaking churches who are the main ones now within punching range of Miller, Bannon, Bondi and Noem. Few of us can even speak the language of their prayers. But God does.

We need no missionaries, no matter what policy position they take on this or that part of the MAGA assault on law, freedom and justice. Those of us low on pigment and high on privilege need to listen carefully to those who have been here before, seen the raw edge of power afraid of history, terrified of the radical diversity of the world God has created.

*The tree of life on the mural in Happy Hills teaches Marcus Garvey: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”*

As we find our feet to stand for law and functional government and modern science, we may find we need the full “we,” to build a future quite sharply different from the past. How? It is amazing to me the kindness with which an honest question is received.

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AFRICAN AMERICANS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR CONGREGATIONS AND COMMUNITIES, Sabrina E. Dent and Corey D. B. Walker. Available here for free.

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

Do not pass over the stranger

This is the week in which the Jews, seeking God, were taught empathy for the “stranger” over and over for a couple millenia. It’s not an easy lesson.

This is also the week when Jesus turned toward Jerusalem, showing empathy for the Palestinian before being killed by the empire and its complicit todies. Same thing would happen this week on the very same tortured soil. Whether this is week is sacred for you by its eternal consequences (the saving cross) or eternal lesson of empathy, honor it.

Say the name of the stranger most strange to you.

“Palestinian” for the Jews and Americans who provide the two-ton genocide bombs turning hospitals to bloody dust. Ask why a dictator would want their name silent and do not pass over the answer: if you cannot share the human vulnerability of any stranger, you have already lost your humanity for those you think you love. You have already given the King—or somebody who foolishly wants to be King—power reserved only for God. It is the Jews who teach this. Honor them this week by saying the name of their stranger and ours. “Palestinian.”

And the names of nations nearby speaking Spanish who we have treated despicably; propping up their cruel tyrants valuing bananas more than the strangers who lived there. And now paying blood money to get the weakest ones off our streets. Say their names.

Say the names of the strangers who need Medicaid, HIV/AIDS medicine and mental health care. And the thousands of honorable strangers employed to serve them, now humiliated and discarded in political blood circus across the globe; community health workers in Cape Town and North Carolina.

It is, of course, not enough to say their names. Esppecially not just for one week. Few of us drop the strangers’ bombs; but we pay the taxes tomorrow so that others can. Few of us fly the planes to El Salvador; but we are quiet as they take off. Few of us take medicine from a child; but we don’t even call the Senator whose job it is to ensure the government functions. Surely this week is a good time to call?

I read the Contrarian, founded by Washington Post journalists who quit rather than drink from the timid complicity of its owner. Jennifer Rubin wrote about why Pesash matters now. She referred to to ProPublica’s bone-chilling reporting, that flight attendants on deportation flights were told that in case of an emergency, “evacuating detainees was not a priority or even the flight attendants’ responsibility.” It is hard to escape the conclusion that evacuees are treated as being less than human. (“Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact,” attendants were told.)

The empathy is not lacking only among those who tend toward red hats. I have worked in the organizations and universities who gathered their (our) privileges and wealth in the name of helping strangers. But we have often not been zealous, efficient, effective or much less empathetic. We have been bad or lazy managers at turning empathy into program and program into mercy and mercy into justice. We made it easy for cynical people to hurt the those we are supposed to serve.

Passover—Pesash—is for all of us own our lack of empathy and to own our complicity in the resulting cruelties.

Pause this week. Let you-know-who do whatever dumb and venal thing crosses his mind. But don’t us be dumb and venal. Listen for the stranger; do not look away. Call their name.

Riding the rift

There is an ever-pregnant crack that runs down the Atlantic Ocean called the “rift.” The word focuses attention on the separation of the continents in exactly the way the fear mongers try to focus us on what drives us apart. Look closer at an actual rift and you’ll see nothing but molten possibilities welling up. New earth forces through the thin part of the crust millimeter by inch by yard by mile as new rock grows between the Americas and Europe and Africa. A rift connects by rearranging power and place.

*Most of the way to and from Cape Town we ride the rift.*

We flew one way down the rift from Washington to Cape Town as a human politician looked invincible, forcing proud law firms and universities to the knee. Two weeks later we flew back the other way just as four million citizens from around the world rose up like new lava. One man dividing with emergencies and fears. But as lava does, people rose up in the thin places with new land to stand on. where he pushed us apart.

All human fields of thought is connected by the upwelling of change: academic disciplines, political theory and movements, racial identities, nations, peoples, skills and techniques that seem stable enough to imagine even a few decades of time called “career.” It is easy to gin up fear of the new lava, people and relationships. But fear has so little to work with, really.

We were in South Africa where the Leading Causes of Life learned to walk over the past three decades. We met at Goedgedacht Farm and retreat center whose name means “well thought.” This is difficult land getting harder; Mediterranean climate until twenty years ago; now moving rapidly toward dry and hot, semi-desert. The Karoo is just over a few ridges and coming closer.

*Honeybees and olive trees adapt to the challenging and changing environment.*

The farm has deep Christian roots, but now it has an interfaith chapel and a vision increasingly tuned to life logic. It is a laboratory of mercy, justice and, well, life. And it is a real farm growing olives for market just like Koinania Farms grows pecans. In COVID-19 they had no money for pesticides and fertilizer. Peter, their Afrikaner farmer, had to look with new eyes at the dirt, bugs, trees, bees and all that rots. He liked what he saw and learned how to live in the rift between old ways and new regenerative ways. He is now the happiest farmer of olive trees I’ve ever met.

*Pieter describes falling in love with the regenerative dirt.*

Leading Causes of Life grows well here, too. LCL-I is about more than Faith and Health, or as we learned in Lesotho, FaithHealth. Peters says that when you see something that troubles you, look closer; pay attention and do not look away. Good advice for growing olive trees near the Karoo or democracy in times of rift. Whenever we gather it feels like Iceland; molten, connectional, expectant, unfazed by the structural uncertainties.

Some time ago The Carter Center built an Interfaith Health Program built on the upwelling of Faith and Health. We didn’t have to pull them laboriously toward each other one footnote at a time. They were already linked by new energy the way Iceland works, riding lightly on the lively connectional rift. That can be hard to navigate as the field look broken with fractures and gaps. I don’t know Icelandic, but in the Appalachians a gap is the way through the otherwise impenetrable barrier. A gap is a geological fracture that allows one to walk through; not unlike walking on lava once it cools. The gap is the place to head to what comes next in your life. Gaps connect.

This is practical way to navigate in a time of radical rifting. Personally, I’m happy with as big a gap as possible between me and Proud Boys. But even there, it is hard to miss all sorts of new molten organizations, networks, and such emerging. My favorite new upwelling is the organization “Indivisible” which helped liberate the global energy on April 5^th movement. Hold.Health, We in the World and Rethink Health the also rise up out of space in between.

The five gaps helped us to look more closely at the rifts so we can head toward those people, ideas, places, values and perspective we could build with.

The Gap between people we know and those we do not yet know, or could know if we wanted to.
The Gap between knowledge we already have and the new knowledge that might extend or complete what that knowledge might make possible.
The gap between places we think of as separate from places that we now see are actually quite intimately connected.
The gap between values we have and new implications and possibilities to fulfill those values.
The gap between what we think we need now and what our childrens’ childrens’ children’ childrens’ childrens’ children will need. That’s a seven generational span, counting us and our parents, long enough to expect radical difference, but short enough to imagine caring.

Each of the five gaps is a fluid emergent connection on which we can live like Icelanders or sub-Karoo farmers. Each gap is a way through something that feels like a dangerous barrier. Each gap is a kind of opportunistic connection that might shape our curiosity and active search. We can ask and follow the answer through each kind of gap.

On the harsh South African land our thoughts turned toward the cause of life we call generativity, intergenerativity or simply blessing. This focuses on how we find our life by the flow of life among the flow of people. This speaks to finding our way when we know we are poised appropriately on the rift between what has been and that which is still potential.

*Sunset in Hout Bay is sun rise in Brazil on the other side of the rift. (photo by Jim Cochrane)*

We can navigate the unknowable time between stabilities by looking for the new relationships, new relevancies of existing values, new knowledge, long term needs of those who will live on the other side of the rift.

Leading Life

*The health of the public is the work of life; fibroblasts for broien bones, Leading Causes of Life for the broken public.*

When all is turbulent, take care of the mind, heart and soul of those who will build whatever comes next. Teach, evoke, give courage. Liberate the rising ones to find their words and ideas fit for their hard labors. Help them move boldly toward joy. They might let you come along.

Dr. Linda Alexander, the Chief Academic Officer of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) of does every bit of that first paragraph.

That’s why she teed up Howard Koh, Soma Saha and me to bring the Leading Causes of Life into the group probably more in the bullseye right now than any group of educators in the land. These faculty and institutions lead the research, teaching and formation of the core functions of public health and, well, public everything. Duck and cover? Not around Linda.

LCL was born in, and born for these people and times. Conceived at The Carter Center, but birthed in the tough streets of Memphis and the townships of southern Africa where ideas better be tough or they get mugged—before noon.

The Leading Causes of Life help teachers and the students into the positive social complexity of the ever-muddling gaggle of humans we call “the public.” Public health is the academic discipline and daily practice to help every person and neighborhood live into its dignity, freedom and abundant life. As Howard Koh quoted William Sloan Coffin, “the glory of God is a human fully alive.” But how do humans fulfill that promise? Not by dodging all the leading causes of death, or avoiding anything.

We move boldly toward life. How?

The basic purpose of LCL language is to help you navigate in the right direction—toward life; away from death, even—especially—in confusing times.

Connection: we live because of how we are together. No such thing as a single human, ever. Endless vital mysteries in the radical complexity. But there are always living surprises in between the words for family, gender, members, citizen and and and ….

Coherence. Not the list of things we think we believe (that hides how much we don’t know). The sense in the gut of the Big Story in which we find life. “Salutogenesis”—still up on the NIH website that opens up the mystery of health.

Agency. The human capacity to act, choose, do, not do, move, find, care—even amid radical turbulence when the connections fray and coherence evaporates.

Intergenerativity or Blessing. Linda’s teachers find their own life by being in generative relationships with their students—transgenerational, is the key. And in doing so finding the life that flows to them from those that shaped them. Most grown-ups experience this with their children and extended families when they give their lives to those more important than themselves. Normal people of faith.

Hope. Not optimism, although even that works better than the pills about a third of the time (placebo effect). Hope is like a memory that guides us … but for living into the future. For the people God so loves—the public, not just me. It animates our connections, focuses coherence, drives generativity and puts our agency to work.

The five causes hold open space like tent poles keep to avoid premature simplicity. Not a road map of the whole journey, but a way to keep you from tripping over your own feet and dithering over the first 10 minutes of the rest of your life.

Since LCL was born it has spawned a whole library with continued application (leading-causes.com). You can see life in the practical language of the Vital Conditions that many communities are turning to amid contentious turbulence. LCL is being integrated into the remarkably hopeful work of Interfaith America as it convenes dozens of universities to sharpen the crafts of faith and health.

Life logic works best in really tough times when we realize our silicon gizmos cannot save us. Heather Wood Ion, our friend and LCLI Felllow, once gave Jonas Salk a bit of a meteor that had all the amino acids, the chemical base for life. He already knew that “life finds a way.” But we all need friends to remind us.

If this resonates, you have people. Hold.Health, Leading Causes of Life Initiative, We In the World, Community Initiatives, ASPPH, Partners for Better Health, and Goedgedacht and many, many more; Even a School of Divinity!

That’s how life works.

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TC and I left ASPPH and flew 14 hours to Cape Town to be with the deep southern contingent of the LCL Initiative Fellows. We will celebrate the final release of the Handbook on Religion and Health: Pathways for a Turbulent Future with a global web event at the University of Cape Town. Rising Amid the Storm will be streamed live from the University of Cape Town Wednesday 2nd April 2025 17:00-19:00 (SAST)( 11am Eastern Time).

Join us at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82836382633

Humble power

Here in the People’s City, the one where our government tries to function as best it can. We went to the the National Museum of the American Indian which tells the long history that is a useful lense through which to view the radicalism of white greed in the place called the United States. Here we see the long trajectory of shameless bullDOGEing any idea, perspective or fact that stands in the way of taking. Here we see the highly inconvenient truth of a people who decided democratically to “remove” another civilized people who were in the way. White people are charmingly surprised. Even liberal like me are embarrassed. People of color, not.

Eisenhower monument in front of the Department of Education. He second inaurgural: “We look. upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose the building of peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.”

Do facts matter in this raw play of power, taking, suppressing, denying? Do facts matter? Does theory matter; ones that allow us to see and act on patterns of fact? Does thought matter; the capacity to move close enough to see and far enough for perspective? That’s what academic institutions are for and why a radical minority must distract and instill fear into them.

For such a time as this to be with the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) talking about the Leading Causes of Life with the one who basically invented Obamacare, Dr. Howard Koh and Soma Saha of We In the World (WIN)

We had shared in the writing of the Handbook of Religion and Health, edited by Jim Cochrane, TC and me, who also wrote a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health. That’s a lot of typing in the midst of a catastrophic meltdown of democracy. Shouldn’t we be in the streets?

Power rests on facts, which is why any usurper of authority must suppress the facts, the story, the rhyme and reason they find unpleasant. They usually think that power rests on money so they round up some billions and billionaires and expect their way. But watch how the usurper spend that money to gain power. They spend first on suppression of reality to comply with the way they wish it was.

Facts are so inconveniently sticky. Just when one thin they are safely squashed them, they pop up again. Congress actually forbade disclosure for a half century the treaties with the Native Tribes. Now there is a museum on the National Mall about them.

Smithsonian museum pictures of Native children forced to pray to the christian nationalist god in the government boarding schools.

Fact: there really is too much carbon in the atmosphere to sustain human civilization. There really is way too much sexual diversity, which is why we have so many shades beyond pale pink in the human array. There really is more to life than buying stuff on Amazon—spiritual, family, neighborhood—so can’t be bought or sold. Life is too complex for rich people in a hurry to be richer.

Sorry.

How do we live in such a time? Focus on discerning the truth and then living in its light. TC, me and Jim Cochrane wrote in the American Journal of Public Health about crating deeper partnerships between faith-driven and public health networks. We hoped to move beyond simple project-oriented collaborations of convenience (parking the medical van in the church lot) to a deeper sense of shared mission for the people God so loves—the messy public. Deep partnership is slow. It grows from intellectual humility about facts, not unlike that underneath the museums on our national Mall.

Our book grew mostly in the brilliance and energy of Africa. “Carrying out this work on the ground in Lesotho confronted researchers with a problem: Similar to other Nguni languages, there is only one Sesotho word, bophelo, to cover both health and religion. It refers to a total ecology of the household, encompassing the person, family, clan, nation, those who have gone before (ancestors), the land on which one lives, its animals, and its crops, all honored in the hearth of the household. Hurt or harm one element, and you harm the whole.

“This respectful, curious engagement in Lesotho is important, not just for the uncovering of the word and concept of bophelo,…but because that process modeled three key factors in successfully navigating the relationship of faith and health. First, the learning came from an intentional approach in which we assumed we (the experts) might not know something important. Secondly, we moved in humility born of respect for the people, partly because two of our research team had grown up in the region. Thirdly, we took their language seriously and did not try to translate for the people into our language, which could not express the most important insight: English encourages the separation; the Sesotho language makes it impossible. These three principles are relevant even—maybe especially—when the cultural divide is less obvious, as when a public health practitioner looks the same, but is not the same, as the local public.”*

We are told change happens when power “moves fast and breaks things.” Not a fact. Instead, we get broken things, people, ideas and emptiness. Actual power moves slow and builds things…..on facts, properly understood in a theoretical framework that accords to reality. Took a while to make it through that sentence, didn’t it? Doesn’t quite fit on a bumper sticker?

Sorry.

Facts matter. Theory matters, or you won’t know what to do with the facts. And vision—seeing clearly– matters, or the people will die.

Dr. Stacy Smallwood of Wake Forest School of Divnity speaks about religion and health at the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health. @WakeDiv

Inconvenient Jesus

As institutions and norms we thought solid melt, we all have to figure out what reality grounds our lives. It is ultimately money, power, violence and the grab? Does my family’s life depend on me wearing a red hat while being silent as park rangers, doctors and elected allied leaders are humiliated? Is that how it works? An unknown number of Americans think so; about half are silent.

The current administration have had an impressive 5 weeks ploughing through the American institutions like the Germans through Belgium. That Reich, expecting 1,000 years, disappeared in five. But it took a global war, Holocaust and vaporizing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end it. The revulsions produced the United Nations, World Health Organization, Marshall Plan, NATO, the European Union, liberating colonies around the world and a hundred other laboriously wrought agreements.

But if all those agreements are just undergirded by overwhelming US military force, why bother pretending otherwise? If we want “rare earth minerals,” why not just kick Ukraine to the Russians and take them? Is reality just that way?

Raw power isn’t just “over there.” I’ve never been mugged over my politics or faith. But the same thugs who attacked our Capitol are disrupting policy meetings in Washington now. Some time this Spring tens of thousands of normal Americans who miss democracy (or their Medicaid check) will be marching. They will vastly outnumber the thugs, but so was the Klan, and people got hurt.

It takes a vast outpouring of coordinated civil resistance to overwhelm the violent outliers. It works. As Tutu said, “anything war can do, peace can do better.” But this isn’t a video game. Some of the non-violent folks get injured; some die. So, you’d better be sure you want to bet your life on a loving God who guarantees mercy, justice and decency. Or go find a hat.

Most bands of thugs claim to have God on their side. The Klan burned…crosses. Putin has an obsequious Bishop. The Afrikaners had Christian Nationalism, as does MAGA.

This brings us to Jesus, the most inconvenient figure in all history; a vexation to every king, and pretender to royal privileges (I’m looking at you Bezos). Jesus has always tripped up bullies coopting the name “Christian.” The actual Jesus had a very inconvenient idea about power—don’t use it for yourself.

After an earlier blog, an actual Gideon told me that I needed a better Bible. They have warehouses full of them; I’ve only got a few dozen. But I have read mine, so let me be clear about three exegetical moves I am recommending in this radical moment:

First: Read Jesus before you skip to Christ. The latter is a nuanced theological construct that may or may not have anything to do with the Jewish Jesus who taught and was killed in Palestine. There is more than one “Christ” found in the New Testament, much of which was written a century or more after he walked. We’ve had hundreds of conclaves across millennia to sort this out. Most of those meetings ended up taming Jesus to be more useful to the Emperor Constantine or another one like him at the time. Every wannabe king has not only a chaplain, but a customized Christ.

Jesus life has cosmic implications which take a lot careful theology to figure out. Hence, seminary professors of different sorts.* That’s not blog work. And it doesn’t go fast.

My point is that, as important as it is, Christology and all the other -ologies can distract us from the basic call to follow Jesus’ Way of non-power, non-violence, pro-compassion healing.

Second, if your mental Jesus looks like you, you’re wrong (unless you’re a Palestinian Jew). He was from Nazareth, which was barely on the map of ancient Israel; rubble at the moment. Barn-born among the sheep, remarkable for all the privileges he did not have. Good news to the poor because he exposed the powerlessness of power. So, the King wanted him dead and slaughtered every boy under two to get him; his canny parents believing a dream about a different kind of power ran across the border.

Why bother with this old history? Jesus actually looked like the ones Christian Nationalism wants us to fear, despise, humiliate and, in the end, allow to be slaughtered in silence.

Third, the Jesus in the Bible wants it all. No to violence, but also to possession (one cloak for decency, but not two). Makes me a little nervous about my life. But it’s totally impossible to justify a violent kleptocracy on him. That’s why they talk vaguely about “Christian,” not Jesus.

This Jesus has implications for the movement now rising up to restore the damage to norms of modern constitutional democracy, checks and balances and law. Jesus didn’t enjoy any of those things. But he did pay taxes and ate with an IRS employee. So, he was ok with functional government as long as it wasn’t perverted to serve the rich. What make him angry were those who sold out the Temple to steal from anyone God so loves.

Find another god, if you must. But those who follow Jesus–even in a soft modern American kind of way—will stand against you without fear. Because love drives out all fear when you believe, as Jesus showed us with his life, that love of all is the ultimate power.

—–

*I am part of a Divinity School with some very smart colleagues, if you want one.

Rising

I don’t think I’ve I’ve ever seen the church awake, but I’m only 70-ish. This week makes me think that I will soon. It’s a long blog because of all the signs of the rising.

Students lead chapel at Wake Div School on Tuesdays which never fails. Afterward I went to a secret meeting of local clergy organized by Forsyth Sponsoring Committee of the NC Industrial Areas Foundation, which traces back to Saul Alinsky. We had to use an encrypted “Signal” app to disclose the location and met in an actual upper room, which has a long history in the Church.

The times force IAF to reverse how its normal focus on highly public events to hold local government accountable. But now those potential friends are highly vulnerable. And we can’t expect local government to do anything the faith folks are not. So, we focused on the churches can do nitty gritty tasks to protect our Spanish-speaking neighbors. The church is really good at practical collaboration: lining up lawyers, using our vans to move kids to school, training moms. Our hospital was and still is involved in the “Faith Action ID” which for years gives people without US documents a picture ID so the police can validate identity (and avoid arrest for petty things). It’s all underway.

Later the same evening Ardmore Baptist hosted Christians Against Christian Nationalism. I expected a couple dozen activist friends. Not so. Four hundred middle class, middle age, middle everything white people organized by the youth minister were in aflame about what is being done by MAGA Christians. Normal, normal, normal, even the beige fellowship hall. I even liked that the group wasn’t great at organizing. This is the what the rising of the middle of the long-slumbering church looks like after decades of rust. There will be 800 next time and we’ll walk somewhere (a “march”).

The next night I watched the A team online as Paul Rauschenbusch let a webinar of the Interfaith Alliance in a crisp, info-loaded practical deluge of encouragement. Asked if we are in a Bonhoeffer moment of radical resistance in small cells of disciples, Paul noted that we’re in the majority; we simply need to act like it. . You can watch it here along with the thousands who saw it live. This is not just IA, but a web of collaborating networks. A-team.

The next day Hold.Health posted “Purple.” Although I am bright blue, Hold.Health is more complex with many who care about health more than politics, so it took some editorial help to get it closer to purple. Not unlike a church committee, come to think of it. In these days we are leaning into our faith way more than operational health care Purple is a sacred color, especially now, but not just for chaplains. Faith-health folks view the work of health science researchers, community health centers and policy wonks as sacred, too.

Other national networks are tuning into the faith channel in different ways. Winston is working with We In the World to host a regional gathering the first weekend of May. In these parts working on justice so that we can be better ancestors is all about Spirit and sweat. We may start in Raleigh at Shaw University which was started by White abolitionists after the war to end white supremacy. It began training clergy but those students quickly turned to building the medical school because healing the soul, body, mind and community are the same thing. We’ll drive back to Winston to stand on Happy Hill which once—and still is—a place where you can see the whole city—soul, body, mind and community and imagine what God might want us to do. We’ll pray and sing at “Rising Ebenezer” at the top of the hill where prayers do rise.

Another one: David Docusen is a voice of hundreds—maybe thousands—of younger clergy embracing Neighborliness in a purple kind of way. They sound like evangelicals because they really like Jesus; but have no time for anything coopted, dumbed down and stripped of compassion. He calls ike Nehemiah to rebuild the broken walls of the city, with each of us focusing on our part. Right here on Patterson Avenue.

Thursday was “Founder’s Day” at Wake Forest University, which, like most liberal arts universities is trying to be invisible, terrified at losing federal funding. We met in Wait Chapel named for our slave-holding founder, which is awkward. But we took the occasion to name another campus building after the Hopkins’, two African American alumni doctors. Larry was fierce for justice, but nobody even alluded to anything timely until Corey Walker, our Div Dean at the very end channeled Dr. King’s voice, rhythm, cadence from Memphis the night before he was assassinated: “all we are asking is for you to live up to what you put on paper.” (skip to 1:26.21 mark.)

The week ended with stern instruction from our local Ministerial Association:

“A 24 hour BLACKOUT has been scheduled as the first of multiple counter measures to the attack(s) on Diversity Equity and Inclusion.

“TURN IT OFF Fri, Feb 28 from 12:00a to 11:59p.
WHAT NOT TO DO:
• Do not make any purchases.
• Do not shop online, or in stores
• No Amazon
• No Walmart
• No BestBuy
• No McDonalds
• NOWHERE!
“DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON FOOD:
• Fast Food
• Gas
• Major Retailers
• Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending.
•If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.
“WHY THIS MATTERS: Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line.
• If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message.
• If they don’t listen, we make the next blackout longer.
• This is our first action.
• Our numbers are powerful.
• This is how we make history.”

////

No idea how. this bee found pollen in February at 40 degrees. But the babies needed it.

It finally got above freezing today. As it rose past 42 the tougher honeybees took flight. The queens had started laying eggs around the inauguration, so there will soon be tens of thousands of new bees ready for the rising of life and power in a couple of weeks when the maples bloom.

All they—and we—need to do is be who God made us.

Illustration by Phillip Summers about the obvious fact Jesus and his family were immigrants fleeing from an overreaching despot..