Public health holds many inconvenient truths. Some demand highly technical digging to find the evidence buried in the behavior of living microbes. The vaccines built on that train of evidence interrupt that behavior in ways that are near miraculous, but with variations that infuriate those who want certainty and someone to blame. Bullets lace the CDC encouraged by the lies of our tragic disgrace of a secretary of health, appointed and tolerated by a tragic disgrace of a president.
Most of what public health inconveniently knows is not as subtle as a vaccine, but self-evident. People die in predictable patterns marked by race, gender, language, zip code, religion and what nation they were born in. These patterns not in the genes and not of God, but created and sustained over time and across generations by human choice. Individual behavior makes a difference, of course. Don’t smoke, walk around the block and stop with the sugar. Leviticus had this figured out 3,500 years ago. But neither the Bible nor public health is about about the micro-ethics of individual choice. It is about the choices we make as a people toward patterns of mercy, justice and health for all as God intends.
Public health is the name of that disciplined thought that points out the way, like a honeybee finding its home hive. If you’ve ever actually watched a bee, you’ll notice they don’t actually fly in a straight line. A “bee line” is constant course correction accounting for the wind and drizzle and the fact they don’t see very well beyond 18 inches. Public health is constant course correction, too. That’s what the science is about; it figures things out along the way.
The people who give their lives to this work are poorly paid by the standards of hospital-based healthcare. Nobody in public health has ever earned in two years what many hospital CEO’s make in a month. They don’t have jets, three homes or minions to write their speeches and books. They do science for the same reasons poorly paid pastors do ministry; they love giving their lives to the lives of others beyond themselves.
I have worked among these sacred servants for many years, sometimes blessed to pray with and for them:
“What both faith and public health view as sacred, blessed, honorable, worthy of praise and sacrifice are the choices that lead to life, protect it, enhance it, extend it and spread its blessings widely across the people. We don’t think God is done; and we don’t think science is done. Thus we love to work together, even when some of us don’t care about God and others don’t care for science.
“Our beloved field of public health can never stop talking about facts, analytics, determinants, vectors, patterns and predictors. This is because of our crazy love for the people–the public.
Sprouts find their way through the bullet holes in an old refrigerator in North Georgia.
“We can not stop talking about why we continue to hope for better, hope for more and simply won’t quit hoping no matter what. You can take our money, put us in the dumpiest offices and cut our staff. You can treat us as pitiful, hardly even as honorable as a primary care doctor, which in hospital world is hardly on the map. We won’t quit. Why? Because we are in a lovers quarrel with the public we love.
“This is the time for those who just can’t stop loving the messy, disappointing, ever-muddling gaggle of humans called “the public.” We are in JUST the right work at just the right time. While others rant, we must speak out of that love. Bring our facts and laptops, as we know that science is a friend of humans and what we are possible of.”
God will never waste the life of an honest scientist who brings data to power without apology for its inconvenient demands for mercy and justice. Science is a gift of a loving God for all the people. May God bless and protect those sacrificing today for doing the right thing for the public. Shame on those who persecute them.
// photo credit CNN. And me.
Please subscribe here for free. It helps me know what isworth doing.
Sunday night on our canal narrowboat often involves sunsets and pub music. But Monday morning usually finds me trundling down the towpath a quarter mile to dump our 35 pounds of the week’s waste. The technology involves a plastic cassette and a special little building to which we have a key. Still, not much different from thousands of African townships in which this is done with open buckets.
Likewise, we keep an eye on our fresh water that lasts about a week. But TC, unlike African women, does not have to walk miles with the water tank on her head. It is my job to fill up our 200 liter stainless steel tank by hose from either the common tap or, sometimes through the hedge from David and Lisa’s handy home. We have three big solar panels and deep batteries, but I am sharply aware that my three minute hot shower draws down 10% of the battery and a few gallons of precious water. My pot of tea draws less, but still some. Unlike propane both pleasures are quickly replenished by the sun.
Still, the floating tiny house teaches us about living gratefully within limits. We sold our Bolt electric car and electric bike to help buy this little boat. I now pedal under my own power for scones, tea and pub. An upgrade. We move slowly enough to appreciate the hand-dug canals with stonework for coal, slave cotton and trade.A quarter millennium later we layer on sophisticated solar electronics but still learn all about the cycles of change.
Few Americans even know there are any limits at all; much of the current political savagery is aimed at the very thought. But any grown up knows that. Every religious tradition of any duration at all knows. It is cruel to hide that from our children from whom we borrow every single thing we consume. This thing I think of “my life” is entirely and only what passes through—”dissipative creatures,” said Capra. Not a single cell will be with me as I finally turn to compost. Ridiculous poofs perched on golden toilets, the nameless poor with metal buckets or me with my plastic cassette; all same at the end (pun intended).
The Skipton “elsan” site where boaters have a key to dump our waste cassettes. The second door is a bathroom and the gate opens to rubbish bins. The ambience is all you’d expect.
As I walked this morning, I thought of Rev. Dr. Steve DeGruchy one of the creative founders of the Africa Religious Health Assets Programme who died tubing in one of his beloved rivers in 2010. He knew sh-t, including its profound theological implications. He imagined a Jordan River theology “that invites a spirituality of taking responsibility for the land for one’s children and one’s children’s children. It is a rules-based tradition in which law binds the rich and the powerful, reminding them that they are not gods. It gives rise to a prophetic tradition which speaks truth to power. It reminds us of the gift of the earth, and of the importance of the common good, celebrating those who find their vocation in serving this wider good. It is a spirituality of song and dance and art, responding to the rhythms of the earth’s seasons. In recognizing that we all live downstream, it knows that freedom from bondage is nothing if it does not come with the responsibility to tend one’s garden, respect both the neighbor and the stranger, and deal with one’s own shit.”
He sought an “olive” program and ethic that blended the brown poverty agenda with the green ecology movement as he saw that water and sh-t made them inseperable. Gary Machlis recent book “Sustainability for the Forgotten” is following the same intellectual current that should be drawing us toward everything worthy. We must see an even broader unity among what must be built as those who see the links among what must be suppressed.
In these toxic times we must nurture the vision of graceful lives given to the service of the whole—the whole people, all we need, have and pass through, including all our sh-it. Says Steve: “The development of public capacity is therefore crucial. Those who believe in freedom have to encourage good people to take up vocations as public servants, scientists, engineers, technicians, public health workers who can provide the leadership and knowhow to protect our water and deal with our sewage.”
We are awash in a flood of shamelessly childish behavior. But only the most damaged souls are proud of the reckless cruelty and feckless waste. Tragically they have most of the billions and the silicon. We forget that most people pick up after their dogs even if tiny a minority does not. I expect the rise of the normies who do.
I have come to learn, albeit slowly, that limits are gifts as they help us savor what we have, hardly noticing the absence of what we never needed in the first place.
///
Find Steve’s amazing 2009 paper here. Steve de Gruchy. ‘Dealing with our Own Sewage: Spirituality and Ethics in the Sustainability Agenda’. In Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 134 (July 2009) 53-65. Republished in Steve de Gruchy, Keeping Body and Soul Together: Reflections by Steve de Gruchy on Theology and Development, ed. Beverley Haddad (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2015).
And do subscribe here for free: it helps me know what works.
Gawflat Meadow in Skipton, Yorkshire, retrieved from decades of trash.A good place for a prayer about trash collectors.
More lives have been saved by trash collection than all the pills and stainless steel combined. I find this comforting guidance as I wonder how to be relevant in our social political dumpster fire.
It has always been inconvenient to know that public scale contagion is unnecessary. And deeply annoying that this makes it immoral. Many deadly phenomena have patterns: vehicles injuries (hence seat belts and motorcycle helmets), the long gestation of cancer (hence smoking and environmental laws). Handwashing and food inspection is still really important.
Now, we see more and more clearly the long-term pathological effect of the micro-aggressions of being devalued all the time and having that be treated as normal in the toxic media soup we all slurp down. In recent decades we have learned to put these patterns on maps which makes the knowledge almost too clear for comfort (thank you Bill Davenhall!). Where to begin? Look on the map you are living on.
The whole point of “public” is that it includes everyone—everyone—and that all the relationships matter. The beginning of public health profession began with the Broad Street Cholera epidemic that everyone thought was caused by smelly air (miasma). A physician with a knack for data and a pastor who people trusted figured out it was being spread by a contaminated well. They took off the pump handle and that outbreak stopped. Cholera still breaks out whenever government forgets its duty to inspect the water.
What does that mean for you and me?
Take the handle off the pump. We are already turning from the last election to the mid-term elections. It’s only the legislative branch but a start. The executive branch another two years. The courts will take a decade or two.
Think like a sanitation engineer. Notice the people picking up your trash! These are our heroes and guides. Remember that Dr. King died on their behalf in Memphis teaching that all work is honorable if done in a spirit of service. I’ve left a prayer inspired by them at the end.
Think about your own trash—the insults, divisions and aggressions done on your behalf and in your name. The political grenades tossed from “your side” at others. The actual bombs being dropped on people who will never forget that your tax dollars purchased them.
Pick up what you can. Tom Peterson once told me of how he was evermore affected by reading about a Nobel prize winner who made a habit of cleaning up any restroom he visited. I think of that and often pick up the paper towels thrown by somebody else that missed the trash can. So minor! And there are so many other trashy aggressions that also missed the mark. Pick up your own trash. And why not others’?
Jesus was a trash collector sent to retrieve the human possibility. God starts every day dealing with the trash we have left to sort out. Some can be recycled, some buried. God never seems surprised or disheartened; never quits or gives up on the possibilities that all the damage and disrespect could yet turn toward healing, even beauty.
Everything that lasts–faith, meadows, democracy–does so because somebody at some point picked up the trash.
TC and I live on a tiny narrowboat in a canal at the bottom of a stunning meadow. The soil was too poor for proper farming, so it had become the village “tip” where people just dumped their broken stuff. In the British way, a “civic society” arose and decided to honor the queen by cleaning the tip up, planting a proper hedge of trees and nurturing the meadow that had always somehow stayed alive beneath all of it. It turns out that the little plot of land had never tasted pesticide or RoundUp. Beneath the trash it was pristine—organic across the centuries—just waiting for some responsible grown-ups to give it a chance.
You can’t grow a meadow or a people. But you can give them a chance.
Sunset through the chapel of the women’s chapel on Iona, Scotland. Women prayed here long before the Christians showed up in 563.
I wrote this about praying for justice Sunday morning. Still a good read. But today is Moral Monday in Memphis You might want to jump right to the. prayer inspired by John Lewis. Here it is.
Now back to the brief blog:
Plague and contagion are a recurrent part of human life at every scale. During the last plague—COVID-19– the humans were more or less on the same side. At least they were until some saw political profit to be made in disabling the social body so that we lost our mind. COVID-19 killed somewhere north of 6 million people and it’s not over: 1,001 died yesterday. It dropped me to my knees. The current political plague seems harder in which to pray, oddly, although there is no shortage of loud religiosity. Nobody with any actual Spirit wants any of that, but we risk the wellspring of hope, resilience and kindness by not praying at all.
During COVID-19 I wrote a book of prayers, Prayers for a Newer New Awakening inspired by people like us a hundred years ago. They, too, were struggling with a society gone mad with unaccountable corporations, intentionally ignorant politicians and a church split between those who wanted the simplicities of an imagined past and those who leaned into the modern social implications of the Gospel.
The social gospel folks got so much wrong. They were naïve, just as we have been. They managed to overlook the dynamics of gender and race! And they were annoying with their righteousness (easy pickings for the Right). But still, much of the social infrastructure of America was created in the early 1900s by people blending the Spirit with the gifts of health technology and exploding science. They built hundreds of hospitals, public health departments in every county and a vast array of social service organizations. They created the politics that enabled serious government policy. Altogether they advanced life expectancy by decades. It is what Jimmy Carter once called the “mundane revolution” and it succeeded until now, of course.
My point is not the politics, but where politics come from. That is, the Spirit that tried to bring some of the promises of God into reality as justice, mercy, kindness and generosity. They prayed and did their best. We should, too—pray, that is.
So, the small book of prayers I wrote in COVID-19 may be even more relevant now.
The point is not to read my prayers, but maybe to kindle your own. And to do so with people who share the hope of a new awakening.
Every couple of days, I’ll point to a video. Here’s an interview about the prayers that Walt and Elliott Peterson did back then about praying in times like this.
Seeds fulfil their role when released by fire. And wise humans can help them. So we learned at the McElvoy Ranch in Montana.
“The arc of history bends toward justice,” promised Dr. King. I was saved for the church and America by that promise. I had decided as a Vietnam era student at Wake Forest to turn from my military family, suburban Jesus and American war-making when chaplain Richard McBride stopped me. He noted that I was nearly ignorant of my faith tradition beyond the tiny suburban rivulet I had dabbled in till then. He gave me a book by Berrigan and another by King; I am still living out the implications of that intellectual and spiritual metanoia.
But, since I had not grown up Black, I did not know that the bend toward justice would include savage reversals. Tulsa, Wilmington, Emmet Till. King himself spoke as that arc seemed hopeless. It was always faith, not logic, that those without power could hope for justice.
So I am new to cruel men laughing with alligator teeth, ablaze with disdain for the weak, all the time preening about their mean God. Maybe the arc needs fire to bend.
Maybe without fire nothing changes.
Pyriscence is an ecological phenomenon some plants have adapted to release their seeds in response to fire which can melt the resins that seal seed structures like cones closed. I learned of this in an odd CNN piece about some tech guys that had developed an artificial pine cone that would only signal in the presence of fire to help with early warning. Pine cones figured this out over 300 million years, so we can be forgiven how little we’ve learned in a handful of thousands, much less the paltry 250 of our adolescent nation.
Maybe faith works more like Pyriscence than the gradually bending arc of my moderate hopefulness.
We will see soon, as people like Stephen Miller are busy setting the modern civilized nation state ablaze. Libraries, scientific research, healthcare, citizenship and the statue of Liberty all on fire. No need for white robes. But the ones doing the worst work are ashamed enough to wear masks as they bully their neighbors.
Maybe this is how the arc works. We are the ones fired and bent; our faith released like seeds that need the fire to find the new soil.
Gradual improvement over time makes the tree brittle, prone to storm, wind and then fire. Much of our public and non-profit structure grew more than a bit satisfied with ourselves. It has created an entire class of workers who make more money than those they are serving, setting the kindling for wrong but powerful accusations from those who find all mercy inconvenient and any talk of justice anathema.
Now the fire burns hot and unpredictable. Once alight, it follows wind, not logic. It creates its own storm as we saw in the LA fires, burning the poor and rich alike.
At the very moment the fire is triumphant, we can sense it is melting our resistance to being blown to new soil. We are the seed released by the fire to become our new selves the only way we ever could.
How, exactly? The Germans and South Africans are our best teachers.
The Reich was far more frightening than Mr. Miller’s little band of colleagues could ever hope to be. A sinking plurality supports him and his sad boss which is why they are in such a desperate hurry. In Germany those who resisted by showing compassion for the despised ones are now honored. I have written before about how the children place bronze “stumble stones” marking the homes from which Jewish neighbors were dragged. Cruelty morphed to shame which released the seeds of new generations that honor those who stood for justice. Not fast, but sure.
One of 128 stone is a collective sculpture The the young people from Graben who designed this stone wanted to warn and remember:“A raised index finger signals to the viewer that they have to pay attention. It demands attention and urges vigilance. The string on the finger is barbed wire.
South Africa teaches that it takes more than one fire to forge a new arc. One impossible bend after another. The raw power of the Christian Apartheid state, falling before the peaceful miracle of Mandela, Tutu and Hani. But then pandemic AIDS, and ugly failure of the ANC to prevent the capture of the state (the Gupta family inspiring the Trumpian scourge). And now a bend toward collaborative governance. All while the tiny white minority owns most of the assets, whining all the while. Each fire, another bend, more seeds finding new soil.
But ever fire is different. And the seeds must be many variations on hope. No one seed starts a forest. Most seeds fail entirely. But this is the only way forests happen.
This political fire focuses on immigrants of color, a typical feature in American history. But I think this is the first time featuring people fed to alligators. Evil evolves, so we must, too.
This reign’s attack on the poor, immigrant and dark are a wicked tangle. The evisceration of Medicaid will undermine the capacity of healthcare, community health and public health to provide even the most basic of 20th century medicine—while forbidding them to track the results. To keep the lights on, hospitals will seek revenue anywhere they can and cut everything without a billing code. Forget chaplains, translators and social workers. Ash on the wind.
These fires are burning away the vanity of wealthy non-profit healthcare organizations that have treated mission as a hobby. The community expects little of substance from them and will not protect them from the blaze. Instead, community organizations with fiery passion like Action4Equity and Love Out Loud are forming alliances with community health centers and local government networks. You can see this scrappy practicality in Winston-Salem. It works and is attracting national funding, such as the bold Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Justice Squared grant. Fire, seed, good soil.
As the LA firest still smoked and smoldered, The Randal Lewis Fellows of Partners for Better Health formed teams to envision a whole new way forward integrating all the assets, public, private, faith and neighborhood grit.
I don’t think the Germans ever had $45 billion dollars to spend on “the ultimate solution.” Mr. Miller does, which is more money than any racist in history; more per deportable victim than is possible to spend. He literally can’t find enough people to be cruel to. So he’ll look silly, which morphs quickly into performative cruelty. Expect horror; it’s the point. People kidnapped at emergency rooms and churches. And the alligators.
What is the opposite of fire? Not water; it is the seed. And what is vital kernel of the fire-born seed? Tell the truth. Which does not mean poking “like” to a Facebook post. It means getting close to reality and then tell the truth with your life. Don’t let evil keep its mask on. Talk to Hispanic pastors. Do what they say will help them.And yes, be generous with cash and time. We are seeing new channels emerge more efficient than the big old non-profits. Intermediary organizations like Love Out Loud and Neighborliness Center are giving shelter to smaller neighborhood scale ministries close to those in most extreme need. This is how TC and I help Una Bendición. Don’t “like”—give cash. All you can.
Statue of Liberty which welcomed my ancestors. It has been mocked before and still stands.
Don’t romanticize fire; a cruel hunter. But we have no reason to fear it. A fire fears itself more than water, for its very nature it to burn out its fuel. In the same way cruelty consumes itself. It builds nothing, plants nothing, grows nothing. Fire falters even in the presence of a shift in humidity. In politics that is sort of like a shift in the polling that we are seeing now. It is realistic to not be afraid of the cruel.
Be the seed after fire. Cultivate your deep kindness, your most fierce love of the truth. You are born for what comes next and you will be ready.
//// Consider subscribing to this blog for free. This helps me know what is most valuable and helpful to you and others sort of like you.
I have some thoughts about July 4th but will save mine for a couple of days. I can’t possibly do better than Dr. William Barber and Fannie Lou Hamer.
TC and her twin sister Lisa were born in Sunflower County, Mississippi 500 feet from where Hamer is buried, delivered by the same doctor who identified Emmet Till after his heinous murder.
White liberals (like me) should hold silence on this day and listen—then follow—the courageous prophets such as Dr. Barber who know what to do. The following was his post today:
“When Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer decided to join the freedom movement in Sunflower County, Mississippi, she knew two things: the majority of people in Sunflower County despised the policies of Senator James O. Eastland and Eastland’s party had the votes to get whatever they wanted written into law. The day she dared attempt to register to vote, Ms. Hamer lost her home. When she attended a training to learn how to build a movement that could vote, she was thrown into the Winona Jail and nearly beaten to death. Still, Ms. Hamer did not bow.
“Instead, she leaned into the gospel blues tradition that had grown out of the Delta, spreading the good news that God is on the side of those who do not look away from this world’s troubles but trust that a force more powerful than tyrants is on the side of the oppressed and can make a way out of no way to redeem the soul of America. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” she sang, and a generation of college student volunteers came to sing with her during Freedom Summer. Their mission was to register voters and teach the promises of democracy to Mississippi’s Black children in Freedom Schools.
“On July 4, 1964, Ms. Hamer hosted a picnic for Black and white volunteers who’d dedicated their summer to nonviolently facing down fascism on American soil. They celebrated the promise that all are created equal even as they faced death for living as if it were true. Those same young people who were at Hamer’s July 4th picnic went on to launch the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and take their challenge all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City that August. “I question America,” Ms. Hamer said in her testimony that aired on the national news during coverage of the convention. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”
“Hamer and the MFDP didn’t win the seats they demanded at the 1964 convention, but Atlantic City would be the last convention to seat an all-white delegation from Mississippi. Just a year later, as part of the War on Poverty, Congress passed the Medicare and Medicaid Act, expanding access to healthcare to elderly and low-income Americans – an expansion that Trump is rolling back half a century later in an immoral betrayal of the very people he promised to champion in his fake populist appeal to poor and working people.
“There’s nothing un-American about questioning a fascism that defies the will of the people to terrorize American communities and assert total control. It has been the moral responsibility of moral leaders from Frederick Douglass, who asked, “what to the slave is the 4th of July?” to those who are asking today how Americans are supposed to celebrate when their elected leaders sell them out to billionaires and send masked men to assault their communities. Ms. Hamer is a vivid reminder of the moral wisdom that grows out of the Mississippi Delta. It teaches us that those who question America when we allow fascists to rule are not un-American. They are, in fact, the people who have helped America become more of what she claims to be.
“So this 4th of July, may we all gather with Fannie Lou Hamer and the moral fusion family closest to us – both the living and the dead – to recommit ourselves to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Yes, America’s fascists have the power today. They will throw a party at our House and desecrate the memory of so many who’ve worked to push us toward a more perfect union. But they will not own our Independence Day. As long as we remember the moral tradition that allowed Fannie Lou Hamer to host a July 4th picnic while she battled the fascism of Jim Crow, we have access to the moral resources we need to reconstruct American democracy today.
“This is why today, as all American’s celebrate our nation’s declaration of liberty and equality, we are announcing that the Moral Monday campaign we’ve been organizing in Washington, DC, to challenge the policy violence of this Big Ugly Bill is going to the Delta July 14th for Moral Monday in Memphis. As we rally moral witnesses in the city of Graceland and the Delta blues – the place where Dr. King insisted in 1968 that the movement “begins and ends” – delegations of moral leaders and directly impacted people will visit Congressional offices across the South to tell the stories of the people who will be harmed by the Big, Ugly, and Deadly bill that Donald Trump is signing today.
“Yes, this bill will kill. But we are determined to organize a resurrection of people from every race, religion, and region of this country who know that, when we come together in the power of our best moral traditions, we can reconstruct American democracy and become the nation we’ve never yet been.
“Today’s neo-fascists have passed their Big Ugly Bill, but they have also sparked a new Freedom Summer. We will organize those this bill harms. We will mobilize a new coalition of Americans who see beyond the narrow divisions of left and right. We will lean into the wisdom of Ms. Hamer and Delta’s freedom struggle, and we will build a moral fusion movement to save America from this madness.
These radical non-conformist Quakers built this very first meeting house where we met this morning in 1689. That’s a lot of stupid wars ago. Two hundred Quakers are buried in these stunning gardens, their lives continuing to nurture the lives and hopes of us now.
So, what could go wrong? A 79 year old man surrounded by people who cannot possibly stop him just busted a bunker of an 86 year old man surrounded by advisors with the identical intellectual and spiritual bandwidth.
Of course the world is better if Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. It would be better if the US, Russia and Israel didn’t, either. It would be better if those with constitutional responsibilities obeyed their oath, didn’t steal and put the people first.
And Jesus, Mohammed and every Hebrew prophet are screaming in one voice that It would be better if religious leaders led out of the peaceful side of their particular faith. Among the tragedies is how all three of these old men have tethered themselves to the radical tribal versions of their faith in the US, Israel and Iran.
There really was nothing to say, so I walked over to be silent with the champions of sacred silence, the Quakers. These radical non-conformists built this very first meeting house where we met this morning in 1689. That’s a lot of stupid wars ago. Though known for silence, they can turn a phrase: To King Charles II in 1660 they said, “We do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever…The Spirit of Christ…will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons.”
Don’t skip past the nuance that predicts Gandhi, King and Lewis: no outward weapons. So how do you get the inward weapon? Ah, that is what Islam and Quakers agree is the great Jihad, the truly lifetime struggle.
Over the entrance of the meeting is a simple sign, “Think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Quakers once held slaves and participated in the cotton, sugar and chocolate industry which to this day is built on exploitation. But they don’t bluster, pose and “Whatabout….” They consider and try again to be more deeply accountable.
The 19 quiet people this morning did not look radical; sort of grey and drab, actually. I lowered the average age when I walked in. But there are young ones asking for the heart of radical faith to beat again. With such a remarkable past it is easy to miss the fact it is already beating in scientists, activists, politicians, actors and doers of good of many kinds. It lives and hopes, not just remembers.
Only last year the “school for moral ambition” kicked off in Amsterdam offering the age old promise of giving your life to something that matters most. Not religious but full of the radical spirit of practical hope that makes God happy. The young have not given up on the planet and are radicalized by the obvious weakness of 30,000 pound bombs.
There is another way.
Inward power is tectonic. Spirit, truth, humility gather slowly but irresistibly.
Will it be enough or in time? No. In the short term a handful of quiet people is not going to stop a runaway man-child who can send billions of dollars of deadly tech around the world when he needs a political distraction. Five million noisy witnesses did not seem to have much affect last week. But 10 might. Fifteen, more likely. Twenty?
In the back of the church where saints have sought the other way for 335 years is a copy of a book written by Jim Cochrane, me and the Leading Causes of Life Fellows, illustrated by Cagn Cochrane, “Mobilizing Religious Health Assets for Transformation.” I have no idea how that book, written in South Africa found its way to Skipton, but it speaks to the way living systems work. It was drawn from an academic book* by the Barefoot Collective because leaders need good theory to work with. This same ensemble is honing the same body of logic for Interfaith America’s Faculty Summit in Chicago in 5 weeks hoping to provoke another wave of deeply grounded imagination
This is, oddly, a time for humble silence in the light of generations that have sought mercy, justice and peace. Silent, but not alone; conscious of all who seek the way of peace, undistracted by those who want us disoriented and afraid.
Down a side alley, easy to miss. But George Fox and the founders of the Quaker Movement knew it well.
We should focus exactly where the authoritarians want us to look away. Rule of law, free civil voice, no stealing or lying. Legislation for the good of all. Science. Almost all of the citizens of Iran, America, Russia and every other people on the planet want that. You don’t even have to sit in silence for an hour to realize that.
But you might consider spending some time quietly being clear with yourself about how you can be part of the healing and lend not the weight of your one and only life to the forces of outward power.
// Consider subscribing for free. It helps me keep track of what seems to be useful and ensures you get each post instead of being lost in the social media fog.
Democracy is like a meadow, dependent on grown-ups acting wisely over time, which creates space for radical abundance. Gawflat Meadow, Skipton, North Yorkshire.
Maybe you’re thinking that the tanks, drones and bunker-busters have a point. If something needs crushing, there are tools at hand that crush. And their promise seems so oddly clean; “once and for all.” Bust the bunker and be done. Why bother with the dubious prospect of persuading people to think differently, be they Iranians, MAGA, or my deep blue peeps.
But it never works. Ever. Not once.
Even the most obvious thing that deserve crushing (nuclear bombs buried in a mountain)—
who could argue against that? Nope. For millennia we have learned over and over that humiliating defeat metastasizes infinitely into generations of more bitter violence. Three big guys trading in fear, 75, 79 and 86. Our big guy could kill their big guy whose last breath would be to issue a permanent fatwah on every American daughter and grandson using knives, not nukes.
Tutu was right, “anything war can do, peace can do better.” So obvious that it’s not even that smart. Just not 30,000 pounds of dumb.
It is possible to grow things, even peace. But the way is hard, like threading a camel through the eye of the needle; but only if the beast kneels.
Nature never misses an opportunity for beauty, even amid the bricks.
The lazy urge to crush is driven by one unforgiveable sin: believing God has made a world in which there is simply not enough for all. If that is true—that God just miscalculated—then everything violent follows; it’s not even wrong. If there isn’t enough hamburger, water and whatever to go around, there will absolutely be a fight over the too-little. This what you-know- simply must sell in order for his fear to remain powerful: “Not enough! We’ll be replaced! Our children will never have jobs!” There’s not even enough sex and fun to go around as those damned gay blue people are having way too much for any to be left over for the normies.
All that’s wrong. But not entirely wrong. There is not enough for everyone to stay in gilded hotels, graze a stable of prostitutes and play golf every day. Peace is only possible in the presence of mature grown-ups that know when enough is enough for everyone. Peace needs the simple virtues of modesty, kindness, patience, forbearance, generosity and empathy. Sex is still okay, but not for rent.
Peace, like democracy, is something of an unnatural act among adults.
Peace, like democracy, is more like nurturing a meadow, than dropping a bomb. This occurred to me as I came across a rare urban meadow just a thousand steps and up a small hill from where our narrowboat is resting. Gawflat Meadow is a few acres on a small clay hill left by the glaciers 8,000 years ago, topped with too little soil to be worth a farmer’s bother. For hundreds of years the meadow grew enough grass to be mowed and thus resist the encroaching woods. And in the last 50 years as 97% of Britian’s other meadows disappeared beneath the crush of high intensity farming, this little patch caught the attention of the Skipton Civic Society, which looked after it—legally, by getting it included into an adjacent park and practically, by organizing volunteers to tend to it. Grown-ups.
A meadow, like democracy and peace, is something a bit unnatural. Even small human towns are easily overrun by blustery principalities and powers. When there is no law, process or civil norms, the venal and violent have their way. And how modest are the powers of law; mere agreements to not presume or take or suppress those who annoy by simply being in the way. How could that ever work?
A meadow never sleeps. It holds open a place for constant activity of hundreds of kinds of life—rabbits, voles, bees, nematodes and owls from the barn next door to swallows from South Africa finding their way year after year after millennium. Building peace is also everyday labor, making sure that the abundance we have to work with gets into the lives of everyone who needs it. The food—to all. The vaccines—to all. The books—to every daughter and son. There are far more people doing that work every day than in all the armies, commanded by all the impatient fearful commanders combined.
It turns out that meadows need little than the annual mowing. All the little plants and animals thrive; but they do need someone to keep the big trees from taking all the sunlight. This too needs some modesty and restraint. You can pour on fertilizer and grow stuff that looks like grass that can be mowed three times a year, but not for two hundred years. The grass of a long-tended meadow is rich with nutrients and the soil gets better every year. To rift off Tutu—anything chemicals can do, nature can do better.
Like a meadow, democracy is beautiful when the light is right. You can almost see the joy of people behaving naturally toward each other, celebrating the thriving of normal relationships of respect and delight in the wild variety of people creating the next horizon for their childrens’ children. It’s not all dull labor. Distinctive human qualities like ironic humor, multi-generation vision, curiosity and delight are there to see now and then. Like last Saturday, in thousands of places where citizens congregated stand up for the most obvious things—peace, law, decency for all.
Everything that lasts–faith, meadows, democracy–does so because of their adaptive complexity. They change, but slowly. Not rigid, so as to be easily busted.
Everything that lasts–faith, meadows, democracy–does so because of their adaptive complexity. They change, but slowly. Not rigid, so as to be easily busted.
The most mundane of all social structure—the congregation—in this way. Its strengths lie in the complexity of the social relationships over time.
“This all sounds so somber, dutiful, and full of heavy purpose. That is not at all what it feels like. It feels like life, surprising life.
“I have heard it said more than once that you can tell if anything lively and new is happening in a research laboratory by the laughter. Humor and discovery are closely linked because both thrive on surprise. So does a living congregation. It turns out that God has hardwired a joke into the universe that you only get once you have been to the breaking ground and been flipped upside down. Like all humor, this cosmic joke rests on unexpected reversal, and it is a good one: Humility endures, while pride dies in the dirt; sacrifice endures, while acquisitiveness ends with death; knowledge remains incomplete, while love fulfills and is never wasted.
A laughing God nudges us in the ribs: “Do you get it?”
Belle Vue Cotton Mill used to dominate for miles with thread wove of slave-raised cotton. All gone, but the building is good for techies now. Our boat way down in the lower left corner on the canal that used to bring the cotton.
We live only if we are connected.
The FaithHealth networks in Winston Salem were so woven into the neighborhoods that somebody on the team knew every single homeless person by name. And where the Mayor ate lunch (West End Cafe). Thin filaments of trust, subtle as the forest mycelia, threaded every neighborhood including even into the Sherriff’s Office and, yes, ICE. Every now and then we’d host a lunch with ICE agents and Hispanic clergy so that the humans knew each other, not as cartoon characters.
The very first of the Leading Causes of Life is connection because all life flows across relationships, as real as the grittiest street in the toughest neighborhood.
Once, local ICE agents rescued a woman being trafficked and didn’t know where to put her safely. FaithHealth paid for a hotel (I didn’t ask the hospital CFO!). And when we convened the undocumented, we had enough trust to tell the ICE folks which church to stay away from. I am sad for these friends’ as they are debased by venal “superiors.”
Every human structure—church, hospital, university, Marines and ICE exists like honeycomb for the bee to help us attain our God-given capacity to thrive. This behavioral structure is hard-wired in the bees; no queen ever goes rogue to subvert her hive. Humans go rogue all the time debasing themselves and those with less power they coerce. Jonas Salk wrote, The Survival of the Wisest, about how our lack of hard wiring made us capable of adaptive choice. And, of course, it makes possible the corruption of power you can now see at your neighborhood Home Depot. Bees don’t have to think about being true to their purpose; we do.
Walter Wink observed that a) all human structure is designed with a Spirit for good that b) always tends to be corrupted and twisted against good so that c) the work of every human is to redeem and restore the structure to make mercy and justice possible.
When a damaged person obtains power, they can debase structure built for good and twist it to serve perverse ends. Social Security—one of the moral icons of the last two centuries—can be twisted into a weapon against vulnerable working people whose payroll deductions leave a trail. This is what Musk was doing. In the same way, our highest principle of free speech makes it possible for Journalists trained to articulate the truth debase language to confuse, distort and inflame. Marines trained to risk their lives to defend democracy become like Halloween clowns, threatening citizens who are protesting the violation of the Constitution they swore to defend.
This happens. Most of us just didn’t think it could happen in the constitutional democracy of the United States. At least most of us who are white. I don’t know anyone Black or Hispanic who is even surprised by the amoral vacuity of Musk/Bannon/Miller/Marco, serving a guy who hasn’t even read the constitution, much less a whole book about it. They have seen this for centuries.
This happens. But it never sticks.
TC and I live for now, for a season, in northern England on a canal dug by shovel 250 years ago by poor people who were valued little more than the sheep shorn for wool. The workers were guided by exquisite engineers working for rich families. They were digging for the same reason the container ships come to LA and deliver all the Chinese tools and Canadian lumber to the Home Depot that is put on shelves by people who mostly speak Spanish. I doubt if anyone in the White House has ever shopped in one personally. But they might wonder where their golf balls come from. Same ship.
It was—always has been—one world. But in the last two hundred and fifty years, the pace and scale has escalated profoundly. Even in those simpler times the relationships were woven in cotton and tobacco. Slave grown cotton from the Carolinas traveled to Liverpool on the same ships that had brought them from Africa to work the clay soil. Just west of Winston was the largest plantation in the state developed by British bankers from Liverpool. Our canal is known as Leeds to Liverpool, but it really runs to the hot fields of the Carolinas, across the South to Mississippi. A Manchester cotton company still owns thousands of acres of cotton land surrounding where TC was born, including the barn where Emmett Till was killed by some thugs way down the debased food chain of power.
Leading Causes of Life leads with connection. If you want to kill something–say, a democracy–disconnect it.
We grow ever closer to each other, which makes some afraid and thus easy for those who twist power to inflate those fears. LA shows us one structure of power in a last desperate ill-considered rush to hold on to its privileges, debasing all and everyone to the very last Marine.
Webs of power never last because the soil wears out or some technical gizmo changes everything again. The Belle Vue Cotton Mill behind our boat dominated everyone for miles around, spinning slave cotton into thread that was shipped around the world, even unto India where they conspired to make it illegal to spin cotton themselves. The rich built big houses thinking they would be lords of industry forever but did not imagine Gandhi who taught the people to spin for themselves and be free. Today the mill is full of flats and offices with people wearing shirts made in Vietnam spinning little bytes around screens built in China.
Human structure dissolves when it ceases its proper work and is bent to evil. The Marines pointing guns against citizens violate their own oath and become something else, sadly. Many in my family took that same oath, some buried at Mt. Vernon. They swore to serve only the People. So did all the people in Our White House, but you expect more from a Marine.
Why such a rush to scour the Home Depots anyway? There is more violence at an average English soccer league game. The desperation is so obvious as to be sad. They have already lost when they have to pretend that Home Depot needs the Marines.
Stand strong lady in the harbor. We will not debase you.
They have to finish their debasement quickly before the People can vote again. Once we get within a year of voting, even the most emasculated Republicans will hesitate to risk everything for a 79-year old lame golfer. So they are right to hurry. It is said that if you go at the King, you must kill him. And what if the wanna-be king goes after democracy? He must kill it, too; and so completely that we will not remember it. Our job is to follow the Constitution and make it clear that the only insurrection is the one behind the Resolute Desk in the People’s House.
If you or a family member are in the National Guard or active-duty military and you believe you are being ordered to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, call the GI Rights Hotline for advice and support, at 877-447-4487.
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 14th, 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.
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
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?
