Monthly Archives: December 2019

I honestly thought narwhals were mythological creatures.

Not only are they real, but apparently some are stuffed and mounted on restaurant walls.

Ever since reports came out that the man who attacked people last Friday on London Bridge was fended off by a narwhal tusk, I have been thinking about the weirdness of that tragic story.  What’s not weird is that there was a terrorist attack.  That’s – sadly – the most normal part of this true story.

What’s unusual about the story:

• Ten ordinary bystanders helped subdue an attacker who wielded knives taped to his wrists.
• The ten people – now hailed as heroes – include a kitchen worker, two non-profit volunteers, two tour guides, two “coat check girls” and a convicted murderer.
• The “weapons” they used to overpower the attacker included a fire extinguisher, a metal pipe, their own bodies to block doors, and the aforementioned narwhal tusk.

We can learn something from this event in terms of how to be community with and among each other.  Listen up, Church.

1. Terrible things happen.  Terrible nonsensical things.  And sometimes they even happen when we are trying to do the right thing.  Jack Merritt was a coordinator for Learning Together – a rehabilitation program for formerly incarcerated people.  Saskia Jones was a volunteer at the Learning Together event that day in Fishmongers’ Hall by London Bridge.  Both Merritt and Jones were murdered by the attacker.
2. When people need help, it might be our turn to step up.  The people who dropped what they were doing to run towards the danger are indeed heroes but they were also everyday people.
3. We should not judge others by the worst thing they’ve ever done. James Ford was a hero on the day of the attack but in 2004, he murdered a woman.  He served his prison sentence and was out and about the day of the attack. For which event will he be remembered?  As the guy who killed a mentally disabled woman?  Or as the guy who saved the lives of innocent people?
4. In times of crisis, don’t worry about criticism.  Whoever ripped the narwhal tusk off the mounted narwhal did not think, “I wonder who will get mad at me for breaking this wall mounting?”  He just took it and used it.  The guy who used the fire extinguisher didn’t stop and say, “I hope the fire department doesn’t mind me using up the foam.”  Times of crisis require in-the-moment creativity.
5. It’s not about us.  Most of the heroes that day have not been identified in the newspaper.  The kitchen staffer corrected the media when he was credited for using the tusk.  (He actually used the pole.)  The “coat check girls” have not been named even though they slowed down the terrorist.  These brave humans will be honored with medals and might be invited to Buckingham Palace (except for Mr. Ford.  Apparently ex-convicts are not allowed at the Queen’s house.)  But the story is not about individual bravery.  It’s about working together.

We in the Church can learn from this, especially as we are stuck in an alternate universe that is neither real nor holy:

Sometimes we in the Church don’t want to hear about terrible things.  We want happy stories, and yet the reality of the world is ugly and God calls us to address the ugly. Sometimes we in the Church are quick to assist our friends and family, but we are slow to help strangers (unless we can control the way we help them.)  Sometimes we in the Church are the judge-iest judges in the neighborhood.  Sometimes we in the Church worry more about what the congregation thinks of us than what God thinks of us.  Sometimes we in the Church make it all about us.  We want to dominate the program.  We want to control the financials.  We want to command the power.

Adventures in missing the point.

Like the wielding of a narwhal tusk, we have been called to be and do something rare and unusual.  It looks like this:

Go out into the world in peace. Have courage. Hold fast to what is
good. Return no one evil for evil. Strengthen the fainthearted,
support the weak, help the suffering. Honor all people. Love and
serve the Lord your God, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s more than a benediction at the end of worship.  It’s a way of life that ten strangers exhibited on a Friday afternoon in London.  As it usually happens, there was something terrible and – still – there was also something beautiful in the midst of that terror.  Because God uses everything.

Image of a narwhal.  Source here.

*From “Samantha’s Journey Into the Alt-Right and Back” on the 11-22-19 New Yorker podcast.

What we believe to be true these days is based on everything from our “feelings” to “fake news” to unadulterated trust in strangers.

Who and What do we trust?

When I order decaf coffee in a restaurant, I’m trusting servers with my sleep patterns.

When I take a Lyft from point A to point B, I’m trusting a stranger with my safety.

When my second grade teacher taught me that the first Thanksgiving involved people in Pilgrim hats eating side by side with Indians in peace, I trusted her to share real history.

When I read in 2019 that – actually – the Wampanoags were enslaved and murdered by the English settlers in 1621 and that Myles Standish beheaded a Native man named Wituwamat and displayed his head on a spike for many years, I trust that the writers of these articles are sharing the real history.

Or are they?

Trust isn’t everything but it’s a lot.  I depend every day on people trusting me in my work as a professional minister.  Either people trust me or they don’t as I do background checks on other pastors or counsel church leaders through conflicts.

Today we seem to trust each other sparingly.  People who get their news from Fox and people who get their news from MSNBC do not trust each other in terms of political “facts.”  And why would anyone trust church leaders when stories of misconduct are rampant?

Samantha – the woman who left the Alt-Right in The New Yorker podcast noted above – is a great example of someone whose understanding of what is true and what is not true can be molded by people whose “truth” is based on ignorance and bigotry.

What is our truth based on?  (We tend to be lazy fact checkers.)

If we love this country, we have a responsibility to discern facts from misinformation.  Here’s one resource.  Here’s another one.  Here’s another one.

Do your research.

If someone tells you that the Holocaust never happened or Christopher Columbus was a good guy or enslaved people were happy to be enslaved, please read legitimate historians about these things.  Note the authorship of your news sources.  Are they independent journalists or television personalities?  Is our intake of information one-sided?

In whom or in what do we trust?  Discernment requires effort.

Image the book A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and The Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum which is a good but depressing read. When someone tells you that “people are saying ____” without identifying what people, check their sources.

PS Today is Giving Tuesday. Give generously to organizations you trust.

These men are the wealthiest billionaires in the United States of America:

Jeff Bezos: $114 billion
Bill Gates: $106 billion
Warren Buffett: $80.8 billion
Mark Zuckerberg: $69.6 billion
Larry Ellison: $65 billion
Larry Page: $55.5 billion
Sergey Brin: $53.5 billion
Michael Bloomberg: $53.4 billion
Steve Ballmer: $51.7 billion
Jim Walton: $51.6 billion

Note that one of these guys is running for President.

I can’t get my head around what $1 billion looks like much less $114 billion, but here’s what Money Magazine said in 2018:

Bezos’ net worth on Jan. 1 (2018) was $99 billion. On May 1 (2018) it was $132 billion, meaning it rose $33 billion. If you divide that difference by the 120 days in that period, you find that he made $275 million a day. Divide that by 24 hours in a day to get about $11.5 million per hour, the equivalent of roughly $191,000 per minute or — the clincher — $3,182 every second.

Jeff Bezos increases his wealth by over $3000 every second.

Billionaires are not inherently bad people.  Some have worked hard for their money and some have been generous.  But most have not been generous in terms of proportional giving.

The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board asked a couple weeks ago:

Who would do more with $1.08 billion—Bill Gates or Elizabeth Warren? 

Yes, Bill Gates has donated millions – billions even – of his wealth towards public health initiatives.  But he is the exception.  No matter what you think of Elizabeth Warren – or any other candidate for President – I would trust her with $1.08 billion more than Kylie Jenner.

FedEx is an example of one multi-billion dollar corporation which has benefited from the 2017 tax cut (i.e. they pay zero taxes) and they have not kept their promises about investing back into their own company much less contributing to the common good. FedEx obviously uses the nation’s highways but they contribute zero to the upkeep of those highways.  They earned $69.7 billion is 2018 and yet they are “struggling.”

In fact, here is a list of U.S. companies that paid zero taxes in 2018.  Zero.

I met a new neighbor recently who hopes to find space in the men’s shelter here in Charlotte, but chances are slim because the shelters are full and will most likely continue to be full.  Local overnight accommodations hosted by houses of faith did not open for business until last night.  D. has been sleeping in the woods near my apartment.

D. can’t get a job because he doesn’t have an address.  He has a phone, a charger, and a social services card that allows him to ride the bus for $1.  He depends on strangers for food.

There are enormous political and administrative issues which keep us from offering enough homes, enough school lunches, clean water, livable wages, and affordable health care for every human being in this nation.  The truth is that we could offer these things if we wanted to.  We just don’t want to.

The financial divide in the United States will be our downfall as a nation.  It used to be true that you could live a comfortable middle class life working one full time job as a barber or a firefighter or a public school teacher.  This isn’t true in many places because – while unemployment rates are low – wages are also low.

Jesus weeps.

These are not merely political or economic issues.  These are spiritual issues.  How are we – as people of faith – addressing them?  Is it really democracy when elections can be bought?  Can we call ourselves “a good nation” when we ignore the needs of the poorest Americans for the sake of corporate tax cuts?  As one GOP voter said recently: “We have no moral compass, but, hey, we have conservative judges!”

Our nation will be judged for this.  God came into the world once already to help us see the truth.  I believe God will come again and it won’t be pretty – especially for those of us who have congratulated ourselves for being such good people.

PS Prosperity Gospel is a heresy.

Image of Bill and Melinda Gates by Jon R. Friedman seen at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC