And now for something completely different: Spicy Shrimp Orzo

So, my last post was about as heavy on the serious sociopolitical reflection as they come.  Today, how about something a little lighter to take into the holiday weekend, even if life itself continues to feel every bit as heavy if you've been reading the news?

As we all know, I love very few things more than playing around in the kitchen; lest we forget, it was a closer call than one might imagine between seminary and culinary school.  I love cooking.  No, it's more like: I LOVE COOKING.  All caps.  Super love it.  I can't imagine being unhappy in my kitchen; it's my refuge from a crazy world.  I've come to love it even more since I started gardening; now, I feel connected to my food from ground up, quite literally.  It's how we're SUPPOSED to be eating, dear people - close to the ground, close to home where possible, actively co-creating with God in our gardens and in our kitchens.  It sounds odd, but sometimes, I like to think of the thud-thud-thud of my chef knife against my bamboo cutting board as I mince garlic and onion as a hymn....sing to the Lord a new song.  Minus the loud boiling test-tubes.

So, in my kitchen-play/kitchen-prayer (food as spiritual discipline, anyone?), I've been making this recipe lately.  It's been partially in response to Colleen's mom sending me home with a generously-filled bag of salsa peppers (a hybrid similar to a Fresno pepper in color, size, and heat) that needed to be used, partially in response to my tomatoes going bonanza, and partially because everything in it is just pretty damn tasty.  So, here's how to whip up some Spicy Shrimp Orzo - a little heat, a little creamy, and surprisingly full of things that are good for you!

You'll Need:
1/4 standard size box of Barilla orzo (it's the little pasta shaped like grains of rice)
2 Tbs goat cheese
1/2 small-to-medium red onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 salsa pepper (or Fresno, or jalapeño), seeded and finely chopped
2 small tomatoes (or 1 medium-to-large tomato), diced
8-10 medium-to-large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 shot of brandy
olive oil
salt and pepper

Get the pasta water boiling; be sure to salt it once it's boiling!  As the water heats, drizzle olive oil into a saute pan (a nice, big one; you'll be putting everything in it) over medium-high heat; add the chopped onion and peppers and let saute for 4-5 minutes before adding the garlic and tomato.  As the vegetables saute together, add the orzo to the water.  After adding the orzo, put the brandy in the saute pan and let it reduce (cooks off the alcohol and enriches the flavor).  Add the shrimp, stirring regularly to ensure they cook regularly.  Once the orzo is done, drain it, then add it to the saute pan, lower the heat to low, and then add the goat cheese.  Stir until all the goat cheese has melted.

Buon appetito!

An Open Letter to the People of the U.S.

My fellow Americans,

Please stop this.  I opened up the Tribune app on my iPad this morning (coffee and the morning paper for the 21st century), and the top two stories greeting me - a shooting outside the Empire State Building which killed two and wounded ten more, and NINETEEN shootings in my beloved Chicago overnight.  Please.  Let's stop killing each other.

And, for the love of God, let's start having a mature conversation about this.  Conservatives, nobody wants to take away your all of your guns.  There is not going to be a civil war if Obama is re-elected.  That big panic in 2008, when many of you went on a gun-and-ammo buying spree before Obama's inauguration?  You can still buy all of those things.  OK, yes, some of us would like to see military-grade assault weapons taken off the market, but let's all be honest - you don't need those to go hunting, or really do much of anything other than go into movie theatres and shoot scores of people.  That's why they're assault weapons - they're designed for that.  Creeping tyranny will not take over because you do not have enough AR-15s in your woodshed to arm a platoon of counter-insurgents.  Conspiracy theories look just as bad on reasonable people who lean right-of-center as they do on oddball left-wingers who think that Wall Street and the military are colluding to take over the country and set up death camps in the desert for all the liberals, atheists, people of color, and homosexuals.  Start acting reasonable, stop believing everything that big money NRA lobbyists throw out at you, and let's have a conversation about how, perhaps, we DO need reasonable gun control policies so that law-abiding citizens like you can own guns without having to fear for your lives in public when somebody packing more heat comes along.

Liberals, stop acting like every conservative and/or gun owner is some sort of Wild West caricature who wants to walk around with "a big iron on his hip" to be more macho.  OK, there are probably a few of those types out there, but not many.  Let's agree to make the reasonable assumption that 95%+ of gun owners are hunters and people who enjoy target shooting and, ok, yes, probably do feel safer with a gun in their home, but also have no intention of using it.  Let's also acknowledge that the 95%+ of those people are not the inbred hillbilly redneck stereotypes that many liberals like to perpetuate, and that many of them are reasonable, educated people who happen to like hunting deer, shooting clay pigeons, and keeping their guns securely locked up in a secure location.  A person who owns a gun is not some sort of primitive, lesser person who doesn't know better; a person who owns a gun is a person who owns a gun, probably for a very legitimate reason, and is probably smart enough to handle that with appropriate responsibility.

And, all of us - let's stop talking only about gun control as the solution.  I absolutely, 100% agree that we will be safer as a nation if we ban sales of assault weapons, if we require all firearms to come issued with an ID number (like cars) to facilitate ease of tracking the source of illicit firearm sales, if we close gun show sale loopholes that make it easy for people to buy mass numbers of firearms and then sell them on the black market to people who would NOT otherwise legally be able to purchase a weapon (a common practice in Illinois, and probably plenty of other states), and if we come up with reasonable restrictions on where and how one can carry a gun in public - contrary to conservative belief, conceal/carry laws are NOT proven to improve public safety.  After all, all three states which have seen mass shootings this summer have them.  However, we can have a conversation about this, and we as a nation can reach sensible compromise positions that will promote our general welfare - I believe this.  I'm willing to talk.

But, we also need to do some soul-searching and have a conversation about why we're in this mess to start with...and it's not only because guns are easily accessible.  While easy access to guns is a fueling factor for gun violence, people don't just shoot other people simply because they have a gun and can use it.  We need to start talking about why our inner city communities have become jobless hellholes full of drugs, gangs, and guns and devoid of opportunities for employment and any real sense of hope.  Why aren't we having that conversation?  Why, as a city here in Chicago, are we willing to bend over backwards to create white-collar jobs in the Loop for Motorola and Boeing, but seem utterly incapable of creating community-based jobs initiatives in places like Englewood and Garfield Park?  Why are we willing to be complicit in the transformation of Detroit into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which a person a day is shot to death on average, and where pizza deliveries after dark require an armed guard in the car, if the pizza place is even willing to DO deliveries after dark anymore?  We seem to be alright with letting go of all our manufacturing jobs while blaming our unions for daring to ask that employees get fair wages and a good standard of living; have we not sowed the wind and started to reap the whirlwind by stripping places like Detroit and Gary of jobs that allow people some sense of upward mobility, or at the very least decent standards of living?  By killing our working middle class, we're killing all of the rest of us...sometimes far too literally.

And, why is it so thoroughly difficult to obtain mental health care?  Why do we create a culture that views mental illness with suspicion, as if it's not disease but is something that should just be toughed through?  Would you just try to "tough it out" against cancer?  No?  Then why on earth should people have to "tough it out" against bipolar disorder or schizophrenia?  Why do we treat mental illness as if it's not illness, but personal choice?  Why do we not have nearly enough programs for people who suffer from mental disorders, or who need support in recovery from addiction?  Why do we in the Church do an especially bad job of this?  We condemn millions of people to lives of misery and instability, and then seem shocked when a very few them lash out violently against a world that offers them no support or love.

Please, let's have a conversation as a nation about this.  Let's stop judging each other, let's stop distorting each other's words, and let's stop jumping to irrational conclusions and resorting to jingoism and mockery.  Let's have a legitimate national discourse on why we lead the developed world in violence, and for the love of God, let's please find a way to stop this.  Please, let's stop killing each other.

"Bring on the roasted potatoes!"

The foodie/wanna-be chef in me loves this.  LOVES this.  Some of it is because somebody out there is brilliant enough to turn Julia Child clips into a really rather catchy bit of electronica, which alone is worth the price of admission.  But, there's more to it than that.

I think a big part of my love for this is coming from the fact that it is a beautiful celebration of a woman whose life is a living testimony to how we can take the incredible gifts we're given by God and share them with the world.  She could have just celebrated being an amazing chef, ran restaurants, and made a fortune without giving a thing back to the world, but Julia Child chose instead to show everyone that, yes, you too can cook.  You don't have to be wealthy, or have two tons of free time, or a culinary degree to be a world-class chef.  You can eat amazing food at home; you can build community around a dinner table, no matter who you are or where you are.  That's the whole ethos of Julia Child - like the chef in Ratatouille (my favorite Pixar film...surprise surprise), "everyone can cook!"

And, isn't that what our gifts are for - to share with the world, to show others that they, too, have gifts that are useful for building the Body of Christ, building community, building a better world?  Would that we were all Julias, sharing what God's given us to build up others and leave the world better than we found it.

Besides, she helped the OSS (precursor to the CIA) during World War II, including helping on a project to develop shark repellant.  Really: Julia Child's Shark Repellant

If that doesn't make you a professional badass, then I don't know what does.

Pissing Against the Wall, or Why I Love the King James Bible

If you have taken the time to slog through that entire video, bravo - it's 4 and a half minutes of one of the best/worst sermons I've ever encountered.  Best in that it is memorable and invaluable as a source of comic relief; worst in all other regards.

However, it makes use of one of the more, shall we say, colorful examples of the King James Bible's brilliant usage of the English language...and I'm not being facetious when I say brilliant.  OK, "him that pisseth against the wall" is perhaps a smidge ridiculous, but the KJV is one of the three most important works in the history of the English language, right up with the works of Shakespeare and The Canterbury Tales.  That trio made the modern English language - it cannot be denied.

And...I love the King James.  There, I said it.  I am about to embark on a Ph.D. in New Testament, fully aware of the (in many instances) poor quality of the KJV as a translation of the original languages, fully aware of how its translators lived long before the wealth of early manuscripts that have been discovered in the last century and a half and thus had to make do with the Textus Receptus (which is a relatively poor version of the New Testament that strays significantly from what is likely to be the earlier, most original text)...and I get that.  I don't make extensive use of the KJV as a scholarly tool.  It is not the primary text I sit down with for my sermon prep.  But...I love it just the same.

There is a majesty and timelessness to the King James that no other translation of the scriptures in English possesses.  It is beautiful and poetic; much more than most modern, much more accurate translations, the King James Bible SOUNDS like holy scripture.  Perhaps that's because of several centuries of social conditioning to expect scripture to sound like the King James, but nonetheless, when I hear the King James, I hear the voice of centuries of faithful people joined with the words on the page.  Maybe it's the historian in me.

I mean, let's compare - the 23rd Psalm from KJV versus the 23rd Psalm from the NRSV (used in most ELCA congregations) and the CEB (the most recent, most intentionally modern translation).  For the record, I deeply appreciate all three of these translations.

KJV: 

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

NRSV:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.  Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.   Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

CEB:

The Lord is my shepherd.  I lack nothing.  He lets me rest in grassy meadows; he leads me to restful waters; he keeps me alive.  He guides me in proper paths for the sake of his good name.  Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no danger because you are with me.  Your rod and your staff— they protect me.  You set a table for me right in front of my enemies.  You bathe my head in oil; my cup is so full it spills over!  Yes, goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the Lord’s house as long as I live.

See the difference?  Feel the difference?  The NRSV is much more accurate to the original text, and the CEB feels more like natural, 21st century North American spoken English...but the King James feels sacred and timeless, and there is NO contest as to which has more literary value.

All this said, I would never introduce the KJV as the primary text for Sunday worship.  NRSV or CEB all the way...I'd even contemplate the ESV over KJV because, even though I find the ESV's intentional lack of sensitivity to gendered language (which then renders certain parts of the text LESS accurate in contemporary English), it maintains a sense of the poetic nature of KJV while still being in modern English, and has used more recent presentations of the original Greek New Testament than the Textus Receptus.  KJV, for all its timeless beauty, is still not the translation which is closest to the original texts, and I value that for public proclamation.

But...think of what a poorer language English would without having been shaped by the KJV!   In an age where txtspeak is murdering the beautiful intricacies of English, I wish I could put a KJV and copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare in every single house and mandate that everyone must spend 15 minutes a day reading each of them.  As a family, at that...teach your children well.  

So, I invite you - join me in a crazy challenge.  Fifteen minutes a day with King James, starting at Genesis 1:1 and not stopping until Revelation 22:21.  Slogging through it.  Sticking with it.  Not caring about how long it takes, but just reveling in the joyful challenge of it, and celebrating when it comes to a glorious end.  Let's do this; let's grow our faith AND our depth of appreciation for the English language!

More Senselessness

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about the horrific shooting at the Sikh house of worship in Wisconsin.  I contended, maybe a little boldly, that racism and religious hatred is so widespread that the amount of public outrage over the massacre has been muted, especially in comparison to the movie theatre shooting in Colorado a few weeks ago.

Today, we have exhibit B that racism and religious hatred is on the wax in this country.  Dateline: Joplin, Missouri - the same community devastated by a huge tornado last year.  The town's mosque and Islamic community center was burned to the ground last night; this is the second fire to hit it in less than two months.  The first fire was confirmed arson thanks to video surveillance; the video cameras were destroyed in last night's fire, but arson is again suspected.  

This, of course, isn't the only mosque flap in recent memory.  Since 2010, a mosque just outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee has been hit with legal challenge after legal challenge just to open its doors - it's set to do so.  In the meanwhile, they've been victims of all sorts of vandalism.  And then, of course, there's the whole "Ground Zero Mosque" debacle.

I am not Muslim.  I have no interest in becoming Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, Shinto, Mormon, Pastafarian, Methodist, or anything other than what I already am.  But, even with my Lutheran identity firmly established, I still don't get why on earth we can't, as a nation and as Christian citizens of a nation which gives religious freedom to all its people, live and let live when it comes to the existence of non-Christian religious communities.  OK, we don't see eye-to-eye on plenty of key theological issues with Sikhs, Muslims, and others. But, if I have the right to go to my quirky little Lutheran church on the corner of Fullerton and St. Louis, then then why do we work so hard to deny neighbors of other faiths that same right?  

And why, dear Jesus, do we attack them?  Is this some sort of twisted notion of evangelism - if we burn their mosque, then they'll come to our church and find Jesus?  Can we not grasp the seemingly easy concept that not everyone with a turban is Muslim, and 99.9%+ of Muslims aren't terrorists, but are instead people like the ones next to you in your church pew who just want to make a living without having their place of worship turned into charred ruins because they don't believe that Jesus is their savior?  Have we decided that, somehow, we're God's new avenging angels and are called and entitled to burn the infidel?  Have we ever considered that the sort of attitude that undergirds the shooting in Wisconsin and the arson in Missouri are in no way, shape, or form different than the sort of attitude that drives groups like al-Qaeda?

I just don't get it.

Senseless

Details are starting to emerge about our latest mass murder, this time at a Sikh place of worship rather than in a movie theatre.  The shooter: former military, connections with white supremacist groups.  The victims: people of South Asian heritage (Punjabi, presumably) gathered for worship and a meal.

This is an act of violence every bit as pointless, stunning, and horrific as what happened in Colorado just a few weeks ago.  The body count is lower, but so much is the same - a gunman entered what is supposed to a perfectly safe space and killed innocent people.  In this case, we have a presumed motive - these were people of color murdered in cold blood by a man who seems to have believed that only white people authentically count as people, and that everyone else is inferior.  I don't know much else yet - if the gunman thought that Sikhs were "terrorists" simply because "all them A-rabs look the same," or what.  

I do know some things.  First, Sikhism is the 5th-largest religion in the world, and the average U.S. American had probably never heard of a Sikh prior to yesterday.  Almost nobody knows that their religion is monotheistic, that they were a popular reaction against the excesses and snobbery of the clerical classes of both the Hindu brahmins and the Muslim moguls which began to coalesce roughly concurrent with the Protestant Reformation in the West, that the center of their faith is a sacred book of poems about God which has been mostly set to music.  Their traditionally distinct appearance - beards, well-maintained long hair typically beneath a blue turban, silver bracelet - usually get them labeled in this nation as "Indian," "A-rab," or worse.  They are our neighbors, and we know nothing.  Of course, Islam is the 2nd-largest religion in the world, with Buddhism and Hinduism rounding out the top five (Christianity is on top in the numbers game)...and how much does the average person know about any of those, for that matter?  Other than that, of course, they're not white people religions.

I also know that the outpouring of grief and rage I've seen over this one in the world of social media has involved a conspicuous lack of grief and rage from conservative Christians.  For that matter, the number of people posting about this latest shooting has been almost nothing compared to the Colorado massacre.  Part of it is that the average person can more closely relate to going to the movies than going to worship at a non-Christian house of worship.  To a certain extent, the violation of the the movie theatre's safety is more immediately jarring, as at least houses of worship of all kinds have been targets in the past.  I get that.

But, I think there's more to it than just body count and the novelty of a mass murder at the movies.  I quite frankly think that most white Christians in this country are more disturbed when people who look like them are killed in a movie theatre than when non-Christian people of color are killed at worship.  I think subtle (or perhaps overt, for a minority of people) racism and religious exclusivism are at play here.  Again, I say - I think most of us in the church care a whole lot more about what happens to white, middle class, "God-fearing" people than to non-Christian people of color.  It doesn't matter that they were gathering for worship, much like how a Christian church would be gathering on a Sunday; they're not right enough with Jesus, and don't look like us, so they probably had it coming.  The shooting was  a senseless act of violence...but so is the sheer silence of white people of faith.  Every bit as senseless, and in its own way, every bit as violent.

One Big Damn Puzzler

It's the name of one of my absolute favorite novels - everybody should go to amazon.com now and buy a copy of One Big Damn Puzzler.  Do it.  NOW.

OK, now that you've bought it, and hopefully read the wonderfully funny, moving, and thought-provoking tale of cross-cultural experiences that makes one wonder about the nature of charity, justice, and civilization, we can take up that conversation.  Oh, wait, you just now ordered the book and it didn't instantly download into your brain?  Well, crap.

Ridiculousness aside, the book addresses just those themes, with the central question that lingers for me being perhaps one of incredible importance - what does it mean to be committed to justice in a cross-cultural context?  How do I, as a white U.S. American, authentically stand in solidarity with others in the world who have been wronged by the U.S. government or U.S. economic interests when those very people who have been wronged hold to a different idea of justice?  What if my idea of justice in fact poses a greater threat to their well-being than the initial injustice did?

In the novel, the people of the island have been victims of atrocities from a now-defunct U.S. military base - most notably, a rape and dozens of injuries from land mines.  A do-gooder lawyer from the U.S. comes to seek redress for the islanders, but he doesn't get that providing financial reparation for a society that uses yams as their de facto currency is likely to cause more harm than good...and it does.  The artificial limbs formerly used to replace mine-shattered legs are, by the end of the book, used to replace amputated limbs of the island's many diabetics, as the influx of cash and goods from the U.S. (like Coca-Cola and junk food) destroys the formerly healthy way of life on the island.

In its heart-breakingly funny way, the book is a cautionary tale for all of us who proudly bear the label liberal or progressive in this world, and who care about issues of international justice.  When working for justice, make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease itself - stand in solidarity, be a voice...but dear God, keep your eyes open and listen to the people.  There's no solidarity without authentic dialogue, and without solidarity, there's no justice.