That 10 Books Thing

I keep seeing friends of mine putting up posts about the 10 books that they've read which have shaped them the most.  This is actually a moment where the interwebs came up with a good idea, so I think I'm going to do it.  The ten books that have impacted me the most in my life, with one exception.  The Bible, or any of the books within it, are exempt from the list.  I've never felt comfortable just putting "Bible" in my booklist; my interaction with it and its contents are so thoroughly different that it doesn't seem right to lump it in next to the novels and biographies and great works of nonfiction that I've consumed over the years.

So, here we go - the ten books that have most "stayed with me" since I've read them.

1.  All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque.
This was the easiest pick on the list.  I remember reading it and having my entire perception about one of the key realities of life - war and conflict - change.  It's the book that, more than anything else, created in me the desire to see the world not just through a black and white lens of "X is right; Y is wrong," but through the more complex lens of human lives and experience.  For a short, simply written book, it packed a punch.

2.  Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
I checked this out on the same trip to the library as All Quiet on the Western Front and read them both in a weekend.  8th grade Kevin's mind was blown wide open by the end of it all.  This one's lingered with me, much more so than the nightmarish vision of 1984 because, ultimately, Huxley's vision of an empty, vapid, hedonistic "eudaimonia" has proven more prescient, at least in the context of the developed world.  How often is the answer to our societal problems something like "a gram is better than a damn?"

3.  Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.
A childhood favorite.  I resonated with the theme of the smart, young Nathaniel Bowditch struggling to be understood and follow his passions...but life nonetheless taking him on grand adventures that make good use of those passions and gifts.  This one also probably helped turn me into a world traveler, too.  I still talk about rough times of my life as ones where I've had to "sail by ash breeze."

4.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain.
Beyond being my favorite novel, Huck Finn rocked my world in high school...and has done so since.  The core of the story is Huck's moral dilemma between doing what society says is right (turn in the fugitive slave) and what Huck realizes is right (recognize Jim's full humanity).  At least a few times, I've caught myself feeling trapped in the same sort of reality, and turning back to Huck's words when he tears up the letter he'd written to turn Jim in - "all right, then, I'll go to hell."

5.  Reading the Bible from the Margins, Miguel de la Torre.
Finally, something nonfiction.  This was a textbook for one of the theology courses I took during my first year at TLU, and I don't really think I'd grasped the notion that "what you see depends on where you sit," as a seminary instructor would later put it.  We read the Bible (and everything else, of course) in ways that reflect who we are and where we are coming from...and de la Torre would assert that those of us who stand in positions of privilege in society are in need of hearing the voices of people who live on the margins.  I've never been able to read scripture, or much of anything else, the same way since.

6.  The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Henry Fielding.
I read this one when I was in Ghana, and I immediately jived with the central struggle at the heart of the book - what makes a good person?  Is it somebody, like Tom, who is good-hearted and caring, but given to the occasional moment of folly because of his lusts and passions?  Or, is it someone like Mr. Bliffle, Tom's drab, hypocritical brother by adoption, who is outwardly excellent (from a moral perspective), but a cold, hateful person on the inside?  It's the question that, frankly, the Church needs to wrestle with a little more often, given how many more Bliffles seem to be calling the shots in many circles.

7.  Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Read in high school.  It made me ponder, for the first time, the nature of morality - is it something objective, or is it subjective?  What makes a person strong, or good, or wise?  How do we prove that to the world?  What role should ideology, or tradition, play in its formation?  Is it innate?  It made me think.  It still makes me think.

8.  God the Economist, M. Douglas Meeks.
This is probably the best book I've read on the intersection of Christianity and economy.  Meeks' vision of a "gift economy," which puts God's abundance and generosity at the center of what it means to follow Christ economically, has stayed with me and become a core principle in my own outlook.

9.  The Jungle, Upton Sinclair.
I read this one in 8th grade, too, now that I think about it.  Apparently, 8th grade was a good year for reading....not very good for much else than that, but at least I picked some good books.  Other than giving me my first impression of Chicago (and I still moved here), it was to my understanding of business and industry what All Quiet on the Western Front was to my understanding of war.  Not everyone who's out to make money is bad or views people as stepping stones or cogs in a gear...but some people do.  Human nature is ugly; greed is real.

10.  A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.
This was a college read...and ties in nicely with the previous entry, and with de la Torre.  Zinn simply flips the perspective; instead of telling the story of the U.S. from the perspective of the "winners," who typically dictate the national narrative, he focuses in on those who weren't ultimately wielding social power - slaves, workers, women, the disenfranchised and cast aside.  Is his the whole story of the nation's history?  Of course not.  But, then again, neither is the other side of the coin; they're two perceptions of the same reality.  What you see depends on where you sit.

So...what about YOU?  What books have stuck with you over time?

Free Floating Ice in a Bucket, Or Scattered Thoughts on the ALS Challenge

This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm fairly opinionated.

Now that we've stated the fairly obvious reality...I have had fits trying to make my mind up about the ALS ice bucket challenge that has taken over the Facebook newsfeeds of the world.  Or at least the developed world.  Normally, I'm pretty good at analyzing what I see and reaching a conclusion - good or bad, right or wrong, I at least usually know where I stand.

This one has been different.  I've been flooded (see what I did there?) with all kinds of feelings, most of which have a corresponding thread showing up on Facebook.  Generally speaking, they can all be reduced down to one of the following ideas:

-ALS is a horrible disease; we should be doing more to find a cure for it.

-Water is a precious gift; it's disgusting to waste it so frivolously.

-This is a big distraction from the REAL news of the day, from Ferguson to Gaza.

-Isn't it good that social media is getting people to step up to the plate and give?

All legitimate points, in their own ways, and I don't think the truth of one necessarily cancels out the truth of other points. My hang-up hasn't been in the realm of logic.

I think, for me, the place where I've been stuck is much more personal - let's call it a tale of two cities.  Dayton, Iowa and Dakola, Burkina Faso.  They are a world apart from each in other in...well, just about every way, but equally important in my life story.

Dayton is where I spent a year of my life as an intern pastor, serving at Emanuel Lutheran Church.  Part of my ministry there was accompanying our congregants in the local nursing home; I was there at least once a week to lead Bible Study, and usually tried to pick up another afternoon a week to do some visitation.  One of the people I very often spent time with was a man named Carrol, who had late-stage ALS.  In addition to watching Hawkeyes games and making jokes about the quirks of some of his neighbors, in our time together he also shared some of his pain and frustration about his disease.  He died barely two weeks after I moved back to Chicago for my last year of seminary.  His face is the one I see when I hear people talk about ALS.  ALS, certainly, IS a horrible disease, and I've seen it up close.

Dakola, meanwhile, can hardly claim nearly as large of a share of time in my life, but for a tiny town that I passed through twice, it's had a disproportionately large impact on me.  I spent a semester in Ghana as a junior in college; thanks to a light schedule, I traveled quite a bit.  One of my trips took me to Burkina Faso and Mali; the latter was where I spent most of my time, and is certainly a sexier travel destination, but the former...well, read on.

Ghana in 2006 was not a wealthy nation, by any means, but it was then (and still is now) probably the most prosperous nation in West Africa with the highest standard of living.  I saw poverty - extreme poverty, even - but even Ghana had not prepared me for what I saw across the border in Burkina Faso, which regularly makes the short list for "world's poorest nations."  It is a dry, fairly barren-feeling stretch of savanna and sahel where water is not often seen, and not taken for granted.  In Dakola, which is basically a crappy little border post with a bit of village around it, I saw another horrible disease - malnutrition.  I remember being confronted by a group of kids, begging for change.  They were in tattered, 4th-hand clothing; they were covered in dirt and dust because water is foremost for drinking, not bathing, in a place like Dakola.  Their stomachs were distended; their eyes were hollow, empty, dead.  I saw them every night before I'd finally pass out into restless sleep once I returned to the U.S.  Their eyes left me unsure whether or not I believed in God for a while; the questions I wrestled with, and still wrestle with, because of them have formed me into the person I am.

So, I've felt stuck between two poles, two horrible realities...neither of which I want to help perpetuate.  I can't blow off the ALS ice bucket challenge; I can't dump a bucket of water over my head.  More than that, I don't want to be "that" person who smugly condemns others for the way they choose to navigate this one.

My solution: I'm donating both to ALSA and to Water to Thrive, a faith-based organization out of Austin that partners to dig wells in sub-Saharan African communities that do not have regular access to clean drinking water.  That's what works for me; it's not my place to tell you what to do.  Whatever you do, I hope you're able to find a way to make a difference, no matter how small, with the gifts God's given you.

Ferguson: Time to Break the Silence

Or at least my own silence, both on the matter and in this blog.


Let me preface this all by stating that my father was a police officer for several years, admittedly before I was born.  I grew up on his cop stories – and his were ones which taught me the values of fair play, respect for all people (regardless of any of the labels we stick on them), and finding the balance between justice and mercy.  I have tremendous respect for those who choose to put their safety at risk in order to protect and serve the rest of us; whatever problems I have come down to those people and those times when police force is used to harm and exploit.  To interpret anything that comes after this as a dismissal or denigration of our police forces is wrong. 

But there is a wrong that needs to be discussed.  The death of Michael Brown – rather, the murder of Michael Brown.  I cannot think of a different word than murder to describe the shooting (six times) of an unarmed teenager, regardless of whatever stories are told about his possibly being involved in a robbery.  A teenager.  Shot dead by a police officer for reasons that remain unclear.

One of the saddest, and most infuriating, aspects of all of this is that, even without a single reference to race, I’ll bet that every single person reading the “A teenager.  Shot dead by a police officer…” phrase above  would have already imagined a black youth being shot by a white cop, even if this were two weeks ago, before Michael Brown was killed.  Because, at least in this country, nearly all the teens shot by police are black, and the police who shoot them are nearly always white.

A quick Google search for actual crime statistics reveals that the usual arguments – “black people are just more involved in crime!”  “Self-defense!”  “Drugs!”  “Thugs!” – all break down.  The contention that Brown was fighting back, or was being pursued as a suspect in a crime, still fails to justify the use of deadly force against a person who is unarmed.  As someone who was raised on cop stories, I grew up with the very distinct impression that a police officer should only discharge his (or her) a firearm in a situation of extreme duress, and should only shoot to kill when the perpetrator's intent to kill had already been displayed.  Six shots is not an accident; six shots is not a product of confusion.  Six shots is proof that the officer who shot Michael Brown made a conscious choice that Brown needed to be shot dead.  Given the lack of any meaningful evidence that Brown was a serious threat to his life, that equals misconduct…which equals murder, in this case, at least as far as I'm concerned.

But, then again, he ONLY shot an African-American teenager.  Let’s be honest – that’s what a lot of us in this country thought.  “Just” another black kid shot…you know how it is.  Probably into drugs, and in a gang, and a baby daddy, and likely to have been carrying a gun, and dropped out of high school, and…the profusion of “yeah, but…” never ends.  As long as the dead person is of African descent.  All of this ignores the fact that Michael Brown was, as far as we know, none of these things, but even that shouldn’t matter.  An unarmed man was shot dead by a police officer for the shoddiest of reasons; that should be problematic enough on its own without having to play the game of re-casting Brown as a “good kid.”  Even an unarmed “bad kid” doesn’t deserve to get shot dead in the street by the police.

The inescapable reality is that this would not have happened in a white community with a white teenager…and we all know it.  You want to know why people are mad?  Why people are protesting, and rioting, and taking to social media to vent their fury?  Because it’s that simple – Michael Brown would be alive today if he were white.  Because he was black, though, he’s dead.   He’s dead because his dark skin makes us assume that he’s a “bad kid” without any more evidence needed.  He’s dead because we assume that all young, black men are criminals against whom we need to defend ourselves.  He’s dead because we are a society defined by racism.

Before you cry out about how YOU’RE not racist, hear me out as I define what racism is, and is not.  I differentiate between “racism” and “prejudice.”  Prejudice is exactly what it sounds like – pre-judgment of a person based on a characteristic of their identity.   Racism is prejudice plus power – social power.  Prejudice said that Michael Brown was a “thug” because he was young and African-American; racism is why this kind of event never happens in a white neighborhood, and why each year scores of young, African-American men are shot by police, but all white criminals seem to make it to court unscathed.  Racism isn’t just “I don’t like black people;” racism is “I don’t like black people…and because people like me have the power and benefit from the system as is, I can do what I want to a black person and probably get away with it.”  Racism is why the War on Drugs has filled up our prisons with people from black and brown communities, even though white people are every bit as likely to use and sell drugs.  Racism is why a town that is 70% African-American is patrolled almost exclusively by white police.

Racism, in other words, has less to do with any of our individual, conscious prejudices and more with the system.  If you are white and live in the U.S., then you benefit in all kinds of ways (seen and unseen, known and unknown) from racism.  You want an example?  I’ll give you one.  People have made jokes and comments about my “ethnic ambiguity” since the day I was born – comments about how Mexican I look, and so forth.  I grew up in Texas.  One at least a few occasions, people in stores in my old stomping grounds have assumed (just from looking at me) that I must be Mexican…and therefore need to be watched like a hawk because I’m poor, a thief, and a threat.  The moment I open my mouth and speak fluent English with an accent that betrays only that half my family is from the Northeast, I’m suddenly a “safe” shopper again.  My whiteness is my ticket not to have automatic assumptions of criminality layered over me.  People’s prejudice leads them to respond to difference negatively (“he’s going to shoplift!”), whether they consciously recognize it or not, and racism provides the social support to act on that prejudice.  You might not consciously parade around your prejudices, and you may in fact have done the work to make yourself aware of them so that you don't act on them...but that doesn't make you, and me, and every other white person in the U.S. not a beneficiary of racism.  It's as American as apple pie, and as ever-present in the social fabric of the U.S. as oxygen molecules are in the air we breath.  Racism, actually, IS all around us, and a part of every life lived in this nation whether you're aware of it or not.

That’s why Ferguson happened; that’s why Trayvon Martin is dead and George Zimmerman is acquitted;  that’s why Amadou Diallo was filled with bullets; that’s why lynch mobs and police violence and antebellum “pattyrollers” have always reaped a harvest of black lives with near-impunity.  Frankly, if that is not a reality worth the sort of uprising we are seeing on the streets of Ferguson, than I don’t know what is.  And, don’t forget – if this had been a white teen, Congress would already be writing and debating legislation to rein in police violence…but since too many of us, consciously or otherwise, think Brown “had it coming,” the streets are the only public forum where change even seems possible.

But..you don’t have to take my word for it.  Read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  Learn about why Ferguson is Ferguson, and why so many people are so deeply upset.  If you see this for what it is, then speak up.  Speak out.  Racism lives on largely because of silence and ignorance; if you don’t talk about it, then who will?  If you don’t make yourself aware of it, as a societal force, then who will ever change it?  If you don’t work to undo it, bit by bit, then who will?  Racism traps us all; it enslaves all of us, regardless of our skin color or privilege, in a system that snares some of us in living prisons of discrimination and others of us in a gilded cage of fear and paranoia.  It will keep on killing more Michael Browns and destroying the lives of more people on every side of the issue, black and white alike.  Racism will thrive as long as we ignore it and focus more on “colorblindness” and insisting that “I’M not racist!”  It doesn’t have to be this way; it can be rolled back…but not without you.

There are lots more conversations to be had that intersect with the events in Ferguson – the militarization of police forces and its effect on civil liberties; the “War on Drugs” and its destructive effects on life and society; the interrelatedness of race and opportunity for socioeconomic advancement.  Too much for one blog post, and plenty of people (from multiple points along the political spectrum) are putting out some good thoughts on various other facets of all of this.  At the end of the day, though, the death of Michael Brown comes down to one thing, and one thing only.  It wasn’t police militarization, or failed drug policy, or even denial of opportunity for advancement that killed him.  It was six bullets from a police officer’s gun that would never have been fired if Michael Brown had been white.  Until we wrestle with that, until we finally deal with our national reality of racism, then it will just happen again and again and again and again – more black bodies dead in the street for no reason other than being born.