Target Practice: Politics and Public Service

When I taught middle school in the late 1990's, I became aware of the pervasive cynicism which flourishes in the minds of adolescents. And today I am seeing the same mentality in grown-ups, especially in reference to the public figures in American life.

I am consistently amazed that anyone with an ounce of self-respect enters the public arena in elective politics or government service any more. It's not that political office and non-elective jobs in the government are such an evil profession, right the contrary. It's just that Americans have become so cynical, hyper-critical and self-righteous about anyone who undertakes public service. The lone exception is military service, which retains a kind of romantic allure amid the tragic and brutal war we are now waging against civilian combatants. This renewed respect for the military community sounds almost like the US citizenry is attempting to atone for an unpaid debt of gratitude owed to Vietnam era veterans, men and women who bore the brunt of another failed foreign policy decision which led us to a war we should not have fought. As a Vietnam veteran, I rejoice that my countrymen are appreciative of soldiers today--better late than never. However, the best way to honor those who serve is by disengaging from conflicts which are none of our business and which cannot be settled by outsiders, like Vietnam and Iraq.

Although the military is finally getting the respect long overdue, the real tragedy of American consciousness is the brutal way our news media--and perhaps average citizen--attacks everyone else in public service. This pervasive cynicism is poison to republican democracy, where the people choose representatives to act in their place and to make decisions which affect the whole society. Frankly, I grow weary of the nit-picking way that pundits (i.e., political "experts") and news commentators (former traffic reporters and weekend weathermen) attack and castigate public figures and hold them to a standard of perfection which no reasonable person could demand of a friend, colleague or loved one.

Government workers are either "bureaucrats" or “political appointees” who mindlessly apply regulation and add processing burdens to every action for the express purpose of thwarting personal freedom and suppressing the expansion of commerce. Politicians are either crooks in it for personal gain or hypocrites who will say anything to get elected.

And what person of right mind would insist on linguistic perfection and a photographic memory in others? Granted, when John McCain confuses Iraq and Iran, that’s a little scary, but it was either a “senior moment” or a typical McCain goof-up. Nobody but Keith Olbermann actually believes Senator McCain doesn’t know the difference between two important Muslim nations with their widely divergent ethnic backgrounds, languages and histories. But the pundits had a field day at McCain's expense. Similiarly, when Barack Obama called his typical white grandmother a typical white grandmother, he was assailed as abusively lumping all Caucasians together. Then Hillary Clinton scrambled the details of a story about a plane landing 12 years ago, mistakenly recalling that they were under sniper fire. Of course, she was accused of lying, instead of simply having a faulty memory. America was born in a revolution, and we still enjoy overthrowing our leaders.

Don’t misunderstand my tone here. Some politicians abuse their trust. But there is a qualitative difference between Bill Clinton clumsily covering his adultery and George W. Bush pushing false intelligence reports for an excuse to take us to war. What has happened is that in this 24-hour-a-day-cable-news-cycle-blogospheric information society, and the stain on Monica’s dress has become as important as the 4,000 Americans and God-knows-how-many Iraqis who have died as a result of the criminal misconduct of this administration’s foreign policy. Brittany Spears' latest forray into rehab and the massive failure of the housing industry have merged into one dull ache. Americans can't tell the celebrities from the statesmen any more. No wonder people fear to enter public service.

Yet, I recall from my brief foray into elective politics, that most men and women who enter government service are decent, honorable, hard-working people who want to serve their communities, states and nation. This applies both to elected officials and public servants--dare we pronounce with a blessing the odious words?-- bureaucrats and politicians.

If I could wave my magic wand it would be to correct two excesses in the media and in society at large: people would turn from cynicism about ALL public figures to examine the behaviors of SOME officials which have serious consequences for all Americans. Corruption and deceit in high places should not be tolerated. However, when it comes to what people do in their private lives or whether they perfectly remember every incident of perfectly say everything in an inoffensive way--get real, grow up, live and let live, love thy enemies, forgive them for they know not what they do...pick your favorite cliché.

In any event, we need to take a lesson from Will Bowen and get a little more complaint-free when looking at people in public service. America would be a better place if grown-ups quit playing "Gotcha!" games. I could understand that in my middle schoolers, but isn't it about time we adults stopped arguing about what he said/she said and get back to studying ways to make this nation a better, healthier, happier place to live?

The Gospel According to Popeye

"I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam..."

I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam
I'm Popeye the sailor man. [1]

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OK...if you look at the b&w cartoon above and wax nostolgic, you're probably old enough to remember when TV cartoons were b&w and only available Saturday mornings. (The rest of you, bear with me...I'm not making this up.)

What brings this image to mind is Popeye the Sailor man's famous line, "I yam what I yam..." (Do any of you cable-TV-color-cartoons-on-demand kids need that translated?) I confess a certain degree of divine snickering inside the closet of my soul when I hear some metaphysical teacher rapturize about The I AM, identifying It with the divine-within and tying the whole package together with strings leading from Mount Sinai to Jesus in the Upper Room. I know, I know. It's irreverent, probably sacreligious, but whenever someone invokes the I AM, I can't help hearing a gruff-voice cackling, "Arf-arf-arf--well, blow me down!"

So, what is this odd use of I am--first person singular of the verb to be--all about, anyway? Who got it right, Emmet Fox or Popeye the Sailor Man? If you have a few minutes to spare, we can briefly stroll through the biblical landscape and see if any new shrubbery bursts into light.

First, let's visit Moses at Mount Sinai. You know the story from the book of Exodus:

[God said from the burning bush] "I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" [Exodus 3:10-11]

God has told him to head back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to set the Hebrew people free. But Moses doesn't want the job, so he starts weaseling like a middle schooler with an essay to write over the weekend:

Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, "What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" [vs. 13]

This was more than weaseling. In the ancient world, to be able to call something by its name was often considered as having power over it. Hence, Adam names the animals in Genesis as a sign of his dominion over the beasts and birds. (Nowadays, the way humans are mis-managing the planet, one could argue that the beasts and birds should have named us.)

So, if this Sinai deity tells Moses his name, it's like giving Aladin the secret word to put the genie back in the bottle until it does his bidding. But the God of Israel is no air-headed desert jin. He gives Moses a cryptic reply:

God said to Moses, "I am who I am." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.' " [vs. 14]

One can imagine Moses shaking his head, muttering, "Right...sure you are. But what's your name!?" Actually, there are a number of things happening in that odd juxtaposition of inactive verbs. First, one of the ancient Semitic names of God involves variations on the sound Ya, sometimes Ja. Many scholars believe the actual name of this deity may have been Yahu. This God-name was identified by First Testament writers who have come to be called the J-Source. So, when you hear a biblical name or place with a strong Ja or Ya in the word, you've got a link to the ancient root word for one of the deities in pre-Israelite times. Some examples include: Elijah, halleleu-yah (praise Ya), and Joshua (also Yeshua, Jesus = Yahu is salvation). Another ancient Hebraic name for God is El, and I'll leave you to search your memory for the many, many biblical names and places which use this expression.

Now, what does this have to do with the goofy response Moses got from God when asked for His name? Because the most common word for God is the tetragrammaton, which are four Hebrew letters transliterated into the English alphabet as YHWH. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, but the best guess about how this was pronounced is Yahweh (YA-way). And that name sounds like--you guessed it--a form of the Hebrew verb to be. It was a play on words in the Hebrew; I AM = Yahweh = I let be what I let be = You don't get to say my name out loud, Buster!

The name of God is so sacred to Judaism that to this day Jews will not speak the word Yahweh when they encounter it in the text. And it appears over 6,800 times in the Hebrew! When the Dead Sea scrolls came to Kansas City, I learned something amazing--the hand-copied ancient manuscript had set off the tetragrammaton in distinctly different letters, slightly larger, italicized, and written in an unmistakably different script. No reader could accidentally stumble across that Name of God and say it out loud, which Jews would consider taking the Name of the Lord in vain. When Jews come to that word, they read it as Adonai, which means the Lord, instead of Yahweh.

In the summer of my middler year at seminary I went on active duty with the US Army to take the Chaplain Officer's Basic Course in preparation for my eventual career as a military chaplain. One vivid menmory I have is the diversity of the students-in-uniform. Catholic priests, all sorts of Protestants, Eastern Orthodox clergy, and a good contingent of Rabbis. When we held an evening prayer meeting with the whole student body, whoever was in charge of putting the program together chose a psalm for the biblical reading, figuring it would meet everyone's needs. Except the Catholic chaplain who selected the reading used the Jerusalem Bible, which frequently uses the word Yahweh for God. When the rabbi got up to do his part in the program, he began by lightly chiding us for saying the Divine Name in public, something which they simply never do. It was a learning experience for all, and it harkens back to the ancient reverence for this peculiar set of sounds which many English Bibles translate "the Lord" except on Mount Sinai, where it is "I am who I am" or sometimes, and perhaps better translated, "I let be what I let be."

The Second Testanment writers were aware of this connection between the Divine Name and the verb to be. John's gospel records the following:

[And Jesus said] "Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad." Then the Jews [Judeans] said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM." So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

And why did they pick up stones to hurl at him? Because the context suggests he probably said, "Before Abraham was, Yahweh." It was abomination. John's Jesus was claiming divinity, an unthinkable, outrageous, blasphemous assertion of oneness with the God of Sinai, something even Moses had never done.

Of course, Unity people today understand this divinity is not specific and exclusive to Jesus but is evenly distributed through all God's creation. As good panentheists, New Thought Christians blithely affirm that there is only One Presence and One Power, God the Good, in Whom we live and move and have our being, like a fish lives in the sea.

The I AM is a sound-alike for the unspeakably holy Hebrew name for God. It is the true nature of every sentient being, if we could we perceive it. And this indwelling divinity is so pervasive that I can even hear crackling traces of the old burning bush in the laughter of a black-and-white cartoon character who had a fondness for cooked greens in a can.

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[1] http://www.theneitherworld.com/popeye/lyrics.htm Accessed 03-25-08. (Full text published below.) For the true nostolgiacs, midi version of music for "Popeye" available at: http://www.hamienet.com/midi13102.html

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,'Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm one tough gazooka
Which hates all palookas
What ain't on the up and square.
I biffs and I boffs them
And always outroughs 'em
But none of 'em gets nowhere.

If anyone's dasses to risk me fisks
It's "Bop!" and it's "Wham", understand?
So keep good behav'or,
That's your one lifesaver
With Popeye the sailor man.

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,
'Cause I eats my spinach
I'm Popeye the sailor man!

Spring Strikes Again

Can you relate to Spring, or do you live someplace nice?

I've again reached the age where I don't have to worry about speaking the Truth without offending anyone. (FYI: Intellectual independence is first achieved at age 13, lost at 18, and retrieved again at 62).

So, let me tell you the Truth about Spring: When winter departs the season to follow is amazingly beautiful. Warm, light-filled, flower-draped, and decked in pale green leaves. It is a salad bar with garnishing, a sunny day after the storm, a fluffy lamb romping-bounding across the meadow like they did in the Warner Brothers cartoons of my youth. (Yeah, the little woolly buggers actually go boing-boing-boing, stiff-legged bouncing. It's disgustingly cute.) Spring is crocuses and tulips and daffodils and tiny leaves that halo the trees in green mist. It is dogwoods and cherry blossoms and warm breezes stirring the wind-chimes. It is walking through the park in a short-sleeved shirt. Robins, Cardinals, yellow finches, and hummingbirds.

The only response to such natural unfoldment is a powerful, plaintive cry raised to the March kite-breezes, outgoing lions and incoming lambs: Spring sucks!

Well, not Spring itself, actually. But what we have to endure to get there...THAT is the rub.

Remember scraping windshield ice while your tailpipe smokes like a crack addict? Remember when you waddled across the snowpack like a penguin and hoped you wouldn't end up a frozen turtle on its back? Remember the brrr-cold wind howling at your exposed ears and the ankle-deep slush in the Wal-Mart parking lot?

Now, don't get me wrong. I actually love winter, or some aspects of it. New snow brightens up the world and makes everything look...well, clean. There's nothing as joyful as sitting by the fire while a blizzard howls outside, provided you don't have to drive out into the white tornado and pick up a stranded family member or get some forgotten essential ingredient for the winter feast in process in your kitchen. And there are those who enjoy winter sports, too, although I am certain these people are quite mad, or at least go temporarily insane when the ski slopes beckon.

But Spring is only a big deal because nature has deprived us for at least four or five months. And every Spring I ask myself, "Why don’t you move someplace where winter means different flowers in bloom?" And every summer I forget there is such a thing as winter. And then the autumn arrives in full color, and I actually begin to look forward to cold days and white flakes.

And then January, and I remember again...Oh, yeah. That's why Spring is such a big deal.

There is probably a great sermon outline somewhere in the whining paragraphs above, buried in the snowdrifts or hiding among clusters of new leaves. But it's Monday, late March, and it's cold again in Missouri, and I can't, for the life of me, think of anything profound or theological or metaphysical. So, I'll just sit here and affirm One Presence/One Power, and pray to Thor the Norse god of Storms to get this winter over so I can go sit in Myrtle's grove again.

Spring reminds us about those good things we have been missing, while holding out the prospect of a better world to come. Maybe that's what all religions are supposed to do...but I reiterate...it sucketh. Let's get on with summer.

Hmm...let me recall...wasn't last July really too hot and humid?

RevTom