Wake Forest University School of Divinity – Page 2

Sh-t

A scenic view of an open field with tall grass under a bright blue sky and the sun shining in the upper right corner. A wooden fence line is visible in the foreground, surrounded by greenery.

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).

View of a canal with a small building for waste disposal beside it, shaded by a large tree, under a partly cloudy sky. — *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.

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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).

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Collecting trash

A scenic view of a lush green meadow filled with wildflowers, with rolling hills in the background and two birds flying overhead under a clear blue sky. — *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.

A scenic view of a meadow at sunset, with vibrant yellow flowers and silhouettes of trees against a cloudy sky. — *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.

Here’s a prayer about that: Collecting.

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That prayer is in the book God and the People: Prayers for a newer new awakening.

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Praying

Silhouette of an old stone building against a twilight sky, with a window framing a sunset. — *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.

Book cover for 'God and the People: Prayers for a Newer New Awakening' by Gary Gunderson, featuring a silhouette of a figure next to a tree with intertwining roots and branches.

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.

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The book is available on Amazon, of course. All the money goes to Partners for Better Health, which is home to the Leading Causes of Life Initiative and Hold.Health

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Seed after fire

A solitary tree with green leaves emerges from a barren landscape, under a bright sun and pale blue sky, symbolizing hope and renewal. — *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.

A stone carving depicting a hand raised with a small star above it, textured surface with moss and lichen. — 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 20^th 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.

A sunset view showing the Statue of Liberty silhouetted against a vibrant orange and blue sky, with industrial cranes visible in the background. — *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.

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Democracy is a meadow

A scenic view of a vibrant, green meadow filled with wildflowers, extending towards rolling hills under a clear blue sky. Two birds are seen flying across the horizon. — *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.

A patch of yellow wildflowers growing between stone slabs, surrounded by greenery. — *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.

A serene meadow at sunset, featuring a variety of wildflowers and silhouetted trees against a cloudy sky. — *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?”

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From Deeply Woven Roots (Fortress, 1997)

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?

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.

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