Closing time - open all the doors and let you out into the world

The theme of the day yesterday was "rocking out to my old jams."  Between eMusic and iTunes, I downloaded a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Everclear, and Sublime tunes, and then wound up staying up entirely too late watching VH1's "Top 40 One Hit Wonders of the '90s," which only reminded me of some epic-ly great songs I'd forgotten ("Closing Time," anyone?).


And man...I still know all the words to "Scar Tissue" and "Santeria" and "Santa Monica."  I drove to Ames, windows down, music blaring, singing along with the sun shining.  It was fairly well perfect.  It's amazing the power of music - to affects our emotions, to change our perspective, to dig up old memories.


I've been thinking about life a decade ago - 16, just got my driver's license, driving my dad's '94 S-10 (or my mom's '99 Malibu, if I got lucky), obsessed with trying to be in a rock band, and with trying to get with the same 5-6 girls who I liked (in revolving door fashion) all the way through much of junior high and high school.  I remember spring days, windows rolled down, blaring 94.5 (or 107.5, depending on whether the memory was before or after the big switch), Houston's best alternative rock serenading everybody I drove past whether they wanted to be serenaded or not.  I'd get home, eventually (in the days of $1/gallon gas, I drove around aimlessly a lot more), and get out my guitar...it was time to pretend I was Weezer, Third Eye Blind, the Red Hot Chili Pepppers, Everclear, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Cream all rolled into one convenient package.  I mostly substituted volume for tonality or skill when it came to my guitar playing.  I even jammed with two of my best friends; we had a "band" (originally Apollo 18, then Heina)...by which I mean we would have tried to have a band if we could have found a drummer.


And then, 8 years ago...closing time.  They opened the all the doors and let us out into the world, the Class of 2003.  Some days, I feel like I'm getting old when I think about how the junior high youth I work with in confirmation were starting kindergarten when I started college. But then, I think - my life is just getting started.

Finally...a sermon!

It's been almost a month since I've had a sermon to post.  For two weeks after Easter, I was suffering from The Crud, and accordingly opted NOT to record me coughing and wheezing my way through the proclamation of the Gospel.  Then, I was on vacation in Vegas...so I clearly was not around to preach.  But, this past Sunday...back in my groove.  Text referenced: John 14:1-14.  Lake Jacksonians, pardon the fake directions...I just started naming streets and decided to play it off.

I took a train to Chicago, thought I could clear my mind...

At long last, the entry on my complicated sense of "home."  I apologize to potentially offended family and friends in advance.


It is probably the biggest open secret in the history of humanity that I have the most thoroughly screwed up sense of "home."  I have lost count of how many family members and friends from southeast Texas I have offended, scared, saddened, or disappointed with my wholesale adoption of Chicago as my "hometown" since moving there in 2008.  Some have been amused, more than anything; others have thought me, whether that say so or not, as a bit of a Benedict Arnold...just like any other Texas native who does not believe that the Lone Star State is greater than every other place in the world combined.  Of course, this Texas native has no discernible Texas accent except when he's on the phone with his dad or grandmother; in fact, I discovered in Montevideo that my natural accent in English, when no other English speakers are around to influence it, is remarkably Northeastern.


The ways we define "home" and geographic identity are so bizarre.  I was born and grew up in Texas.  Does that make me a Texan?  What about having a mother from Philadelphia, who never QUITE fit in in southeast Texas, and who (as we both have realized) succeeded in raising a "Yankee" who hates sweet tea, doesn't say "y'all," despises being called "sugar" or "honey" by people he doesn't know, and doesn't look passers-by on the sidewalk in the eye?  For that matter, what about half of the Texas side of my family having its roots in central Indiana, with family in Oregon?  Or the Texas part of things being rooted in another part of the state than where I grew up?  And, on mom's side, how does her being a 2nd-generation American factor in, or that my great-grandfather was actually from Chicago (go figure) than Philly?  What's home even mean?


None of these things ever entered my mind until I moved away for college.  Before then, I felt comfortable referring to Lake Jackson as "home" (which is already a distortion; my home was in Jones Creek, but my school, friends, church, and blood relatives were all across the Brazos in Lake Jackson.  Again, what makes a "hometown?"), but after moving to Seguin...things changed.  Namely, my home disappeared as my parents divorced.  I had no connection to the place, southern Brazoria County - I had connections to people, and when the connections that really were "home" for me ceased to exist, then...well, I found myself homeless, but with a roof over my head.  So, like most college students, I created a fictive family for myself and turned TLU into a new home, of sorts.  That worked well, until I went to Ghana.


Ghana never felt much like home at all; that's not to say it wasn't one of the most profound experiences of my life, but it was always too Other to feel too comfortable.  But...the world moved while I was drinking cheap gin from plastic packets and having my assumptions about life and the universe ripped asunder.  I got back to Seguin, and found that it wasn't how I'd left it, and so I drifted again.


And then there was October 11th, 2006.  It seems strange to remember the date, but it was the day before Chicago's earliest snowfall on record, so it stuck (unlike the snow, which was only around briefly on the 12th).  It was the day I first went to Chicago.  I'd flown through O'Hare before, seen the skyline and the lake...but this was The Day.  The day that, for the first time since I was 18 and still a kid (contrary to what I thought at the time), I felt...home.  I can't explain it; more than anything, it was probably a sign of God's being present in my own darkest time.  After all, before getting on the plane, I had watched the sun set and realized that, at the moment, I no longer knew if I even believed in God anymore.  But God is real and was there, welcoming to the place where all my hopes, dreams, doubts, fears, and heartaches intersect in one snowy, loud, glorious mess - CHICAGO.


I can't explain why Chicago is home.  It just is.  It has been since the first time I sat down on the Blue Line from O'Hare, and a man getting on the L asked, in Spanish, if this was the train to the Loop...and I answered confidently, also in Spanish, that yes, it was.  It has been since I first had a Chicago dog complete with a Vienna beef frank, poppyseed bun, mustard, onion, dill pickle spear, neon green relish, tomato slices, two sport peppers, celery salt, and ABSOLUTELY NO KETCHUP, and since the first time I sat down at Giordano's and learned what pizza is supposed to be.  It has been since the first time I lost myself with abandon singing "Go Cubs Go" with 40,000 others believers that this is The Year.  It has been since the first time I caught myself mouthing "This is Randolph and Wabash.  Doors open on the right at Randolph and Wabash.  This is an Orange Line train to Midway" along with the CTA announcement.  It has been since I first recognized the world's most beautiful skyline anytime it appeared in a commercial, tv show, or movie.  It has been since I realized, in Montevideo, that I didn't miss Texas...I just missed my family and friends.  It has been since Cubs games on WGN and franks washed down with Old Style at Mustard's Last Stand got me through the longest summer of my life in Boulder, Colorado.  It has been since people, from native Chicagoans to lost tourists, have just assumed I must be a native because of my accent and my appearance of knowing what I'm doing...


Because I do.  I do know what I'm doing, whether it's navigating CTA routes across the city or walking around the Loop or talking smack with Sox fans or going down to the lake on a nice day.  I'm just making myself right at home in the only place on earth where I've ever fit in...and that's home enough for me.

Rapture, sweet rapture - won't you lay your hands on me?

Good music plug - if you've not listened to A.A. Bondy's American Hearts, DO IT.  NOW.  It is an excellent new folk album.


In other news, the internets (and other media outlets) have been abuzz with Rapturerama.  The biggest winner in this is probably Harold Camping who, assuming that he still gets to hang out with the rest of us after 6 PM PST passes, will be laughing all the way to the bank.  I wonder just how much money this guy has made off his Rapture prediction; if nothing else, he's managed to turn his name into a household catchphrase for the next few days yet...and free publicity, even this kind, is still good for business.  No wonder folks like Barb Rossing talk about a "rapture racket."


Since I'm assuming that I will not be floating toward the heavens without my pants in a few hours, I feel as if I have some time and space to reflect on this schpiel.  It's easy - far, far too easy - to make fun of Camping and his band of fundamentalist loons who have spent the past several months paying obscene amounts of money for billboards and the like.  There's one not too far from me, in Boone - at first, I thought it was a clever ad for a radio series ABOUT the end of days, rather than an actual ad FOR the end of days.  


And, trust me, I have done plenty of mocking.  Schadenfreude is my middle name, and when right-wing Christian nutjobs are involved, you can bet I will be on the front lines of the Humor Brigade...after all, I grew up in the sort of spiritual climate in which apocalyptic-minded fundamentalists sprout up like mushrooms in a humid basement.  It's my own personal version of scream therapy; I have a tremendous amount of fun at the expense of the sort of people who made my spiritual life a living hell of guilt, confusion, and self-hatred as a child and young adult.


But...at the end of the day, this whole "the Rapture is coming!" malarky is just sad, for three reasons.  One - the whole Rapture crap theology load of "organic fertilizer" is just that...a load of non-biblical BS.  The fact that so many people have been deluded into thinking that it's in the Bible breaks my heart.  If you'd like some good historical perspective on this, I recommend reading two books - one is The Rapture Exposed by Barbara Rossing; the other is Mysterious Apocalypse by Arthur W. Wainwright.  Also, if you have a Scofield study Bible...please, for all of our sakes, STOP reading his heretical nonsense.


Number two - people are making tremendous amounts of money off Rapture fear-mongering.  Just think of how much money the Left Behind series made - the things sold like sex novels (to steal a phrase from Kurt Hendel).  Never in the history of humanity have two people made so much bank from books that combine awful writing with awful theology.  Others, like John Hagee, fund their entire ministries from book and video sales that combine this sort of abyssmal (in the fullest sense of the word) distortions of scripture with a radical Right Wing political agenda that, ultimately, aims at ushering in the "end times" by encouraging Zionism so as to provoke conflict in the Middle East.  These people don't love Israel; they want to use Israel as a means to an end.  I, personally, feel as if the biblical mandate to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" means including all of its residents, including Arabs, in that prayer, and it ought to preclude supporting the sorts of actions that involve trampling on people's human rights.


Number three - ALL of this, probably including my own overly volatile writing on the subject, does not do ANYTHING to improve the reputation of the Church.  On one side, the Harold Campings and John Hagees of the world make the rest of us look like neanderthalesque buffoons whose "Christian love" only extends to those who look and think and act and speak and believe just like us.  On the other, those of us who feel the need to speak out against the madness that has infected too much of the Church end up perpetuating the image of Christians as a bunch of contentious, quarrelsome children (of the Heavenly Father).  I claim my own guilt in this.


I suppose change starts with me, with learning to tone down the snark and the angrily impassioned outcries about the corrupting of the Gospel that, sadly, has come to define what it means to be "Christian" in the eyes of too many people.  Maybe someday, I'll learn.

This is my song, o God of all the nations...

We were practicing, as a choir, for the Memorial Day service.  Not surprisingly, we're singing patriotic music - My Country 'Tis Of Thee and God Bless America.  There is something about patriotic singing that causes such an incredible mix of (not entirely pleasant or complimentary) emotions to rise up in me.


Before I get tarred and feathered, let me explain.  Part of the conflict comes from deeply loving my homeland.  The United States of America, throughout its history, has held at its core a set of values that it is impossible for me not to find stirring, inspiring, and worth investing myself in upholding and advancing to the fullest possible degree.  The notion that all people are created equal and are entitled to freedom, justice, equality before the law, self-determination, and participation in the process of collectively defining those values is beautiful; it is the beating heart of democracy.  The nation itself is a marvel; the diversity of its people is matched only by the diversity of its landscape.  This is a great nation.


But, another part of me always leaps up, too - the part of me that studied U.S. history in great depth at college, and the part of me that has lived and traveled abroad.  It's as if I know too much.  When we sing My Country 'Tis Of Thee, I don't share the sense that we ought to be celebrating the "Pilgrims' pride" because I'm fully aware of the horrors that they, and even more so the Puritans who followed them to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of North America, and upon anybody who held different religious beliefs - how ironic that those who felt compelled to leave their homeland for religious freedom proved so unwilling to grant it to others, like the Quakers.  We celebrate our ideals, but too often, the reality of life here has failed to measure up - after all, the same documents which enshrined the notion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights also barred anyone but property-owning white men from voting, and defined black people as only 3/5 human.  I also can't help but think of all of the people across the world who we have willingly crushed underfoot in our pursuit of imperial goals.  It hurts me; it hurts to sing the praises of my nation, that I deeply love, precisely because I can't love it with the wide-eyed innocence of a child.  


We're singing this hymn, as a choir, on the Sunday prior to Memorial Day.  I think it captures my heart right now.  And yes, the melody is totally jacked from Sibelius' Finlandia; if you're going to steal, then steal from the best.

On the plains of Jordan, I cut my bow from the wood of this tree of evil, this tree of good

If you're not familiar with "Empty Sky" by Bruce Springsteen, you should be.  As time has gone by, it has become my favorite song from The Rising, Springsteen's musical response to the events of 9/11.  This is a stripped down, acoustic version of it that might just be better than the full band version on the album...

I think this sums up how I feel about the events that everybody's been talking about for the past few days.  I just feel...empty.  I have no energy, or desire, to celebrate; I lack the passion to be bold and prophetic in the face of some of my fellow citizens' shameful displays since Sunday night.  Nearly a decade of hunting down the person who, more than any other human in my lifetime, has been the face of evil, and his death means...nothing.  We've said, for coming on ten years, that what we want is an eye for an eye, and when we get it, we find that it won't put those towers back in the sky, or bring back the thousands of people (business people, soldiers, innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan) whose deaths we've mourned.


I wish we'd all just shut up about it.  For once, we could stop the jingoistic facebook posts and sanctimonious tweets, and just pray.  That's what I'm going to do today...just live with the emptiness and pain and mouth "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The morning after, and all we've got's this lonesome day

So, I probably don't need to recap the news, but just in case you emerged from beneath a rock and decided to read my blog before going to about any other site on the internet, it was announced to the world last night by President Obama that Osama bin Laden has been killed by U.S. forces.


There have been a lot of reactions.  Even before the president had a chance to make his address, there were crowds outside the White House, waving flags and chanting "U.S.A! U.S.A!" and singing the national anthem.  There's plenty of that sort of response.  Others have been quick to take the nation to task over it - likening those displays to the scenes from the Middle East on 9/11 where (a very small number of people) chanted things like "Death to America!" while ululating, asking if the human and fiscal costs of the War on Terror were worth it for this moment, putting up Bible verses that exhort us not to celebrate our enemy's misfortune and to love our enemy.


And then there's me, stuck in the middle.  I don't really appreciate either response, to be frank.  On the one hand, the jingoism and flag-waving really IS reminiscent of the same sort of ugliness of spirit which, almost 10 years ago, were enough to lead some people to label all Muslims or Arabs as hateful people.  Sure, there are some major differences to be found, but it looks like the same attitude, just wearing red, white, and blue instead of black, green, and red.  I can't get on board with jubilantly celebrating somebody's death.  I love my country, and I am profoundly grateful for the sense of justice that comes with this news, but I really just don't think "Osama is dead" parties are the right way to commemorate that.


On the other hand, I'm disappointed by the seeming lack of empathy among a lot of my fellow progressive Christians for those of us who, even though we know it's wrong, ARE pretty damn happy that bin Laden is dead.  I certainly can't claim the same depth of emotion or connection to 9/11 that people who lost loved ones can, but I was one of the folks who had to pass several nervous days waiting to finally hear confirmation that all of my family was safe - I have an aunt and uncle who worked, at the time, in Manhattan (one at the NYSE, another Midtown), and three aunts working in the DC area (one of whom was across the river from the Pentagon).  Even with a relatively mild degree of personal connection to the events of 9/11, it is VERY difficult for me not to feel a profound sense of relief, closure, and (I'll say it) happiness that the murderous fiend who came entirely too close to taking part of my family from me in the name of a hateful "God" that no sane person could believe in is dead.  Frankly, even as much as I say I'd like to see all people saved in the end, I won't be too upset if bin Laden gets to go find out for the rest of us if hell is a literal place of torment or not.


I fully recognize that my feelings on this matter are not necessarily the most Christ-like.  I do not love Osama bin Laden as myself, even though he is my neighbor and created in the image of the same God whose image I bear.  Give me a few days to sort through my own lingering anger, hurt, and hunger for vengeance and justice, and then remind me to love my neighbor.  For today, just let me be, and we can be prophetic again tomorrow.