Sound and Fury

When Shakespeare had Macbeth describe life as "a tale told by an idiot: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," he could have also been describing the recent town hall health care "debates." As John Stewart of the Daily Show recently said, "one side is screaming so loud and so angrily that they've drowned out the other side's incoherence."

Yesterday an exchange between a woman and Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts was making the rounds of the Internet, radio, and television. The woman asked why the Congressman was supporting this "nazi plan," to which the Congressman replied by asking "on what planet" the woman spent most of her time and, then, saying that discussing this with her would be like trying to talk with his "dining room table."

I'll admit it -- I reposted that video when it showed up on my FaceBook wall and did so with glee. At last, I thought, someone talking some sense. But now I regret my response.

I regret it because that woman -- and the people who think as she does -- is not as stupid as a dining room table. No person is. In fact, although what she said in this particular instance strikes me as particularly stupid, I have no idea how intellegent she is. Many very otherwise intellegent people have been known to have held incredibly ill-informed ideas in one or another area.

The truth is that I know nothing about her save for this one small thing -- her comments at this town hall meeting. She may well be a good mother, a loyal partner, a loving friend, a patriotic American, and a caring individual who really wants what's best for this country. We might like the same movies and music, enjoy the same foods, practice the same religion, and care about the same social issues. It's obvious that we have some serious disagreements between us, but we may also have a great many similarities as well. The moment I dismiss her as a "dining room table," however, I remove any opportunity of our ever finding them.

I'll confess that I listen to Rush Limbaugh fairly regularly. I listen to him because he's incredibly good at what he does, because I want to understand "what the other side thinks," and because I know that if I only listen to people I agree with I'm severely limiting myself. (As the bumper sticker says, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know you still have one?") While I was feeling all self-righteous because of the Frank exhange Limbaugh was playing that same sound bite to his listeners as one more example of how Democrats are really the hate mongers Republicans are so often painted to be.

Once again I was reminded that my experience tells me that if the Left says that the Right spews only lies and hate, and the Right says that the Left spews only lies and hate, and they both insist this with equal vehemence -- which they do -- then there is probably some truth to it. And if you listen carefully -- that is, if you stop cheering when "our" side "scores" on "their" side and getting angry when "their" side takes a "cheap shot" at "ours" -- it quickly becomes painfully obvious that each side is doing precisely what it is deploring the other for doing.

And worse than the hypocracy of this -- which in and of itself is a bad thing -- is that both sides have things worth hearing that are getting lost in all of this "sound and fury." Let me say that again: both sides actually have valid points worth paying attention to, worth considering, worth actually discussing, yet the tenor of the "debate" seems that we are virtually guaranteed that that won't happen.

Recently the satrical parody newspaper The Onion ran a headline "Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care." Perhaps that's where we are. It's been said that our political process has become more about "scoring partisan points" than actually making a real difference. That's too bad, because there are real problems that need real solutions.

I, for one, want to stop cheering this game on and save my praise for the folks really doing the work.

In Gassho,

RevWik

A Shift in Perspective

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to take responsibility for other people's emotional health? We worry that something we're thinking about saying or doing is going to make somebody we care about angry or upset -- as though it is within our power to make somebody else feel one way or another. It makes sense, then, that it's also so easy for us to think that other people can do this to us -- we think that other people make us mad, or drive us crazy or, for that matter, make us happy.

Yet all of the great spiritual teachers tell us -- as do the wise psychologists and even the Twelve Steppers among us -- that the power and the responsibility for our feelings lie squarely within ourselves. You may do something to me but only I can decide how I will react to it. Whether I get annoyed or amused by what you've done is a choice, even though it's a choice I usually make unconsciously it's still a choice. You can't make me mad; only I can do that.

And once I recognize that you can't make me mad -- or crazy, or happy -- then I also realize that I can't do it to you, either. Taking responsibility for my own emotional states has the "equal and opposition reaction" of making me stop taking responsibility for yours. This doesn't mean I should become a callous jerk but, rather, that I should realize that I can't make you feel anything. I can only do the things I do and you will feel about those things whatever it is that you're going to feel.

Funny, isn't it? We spend so much time -- and so much of our energy -- taking responsibility for something we have absolutely no control over, and so little time and energy on the one thing over which we do. Yet with a little shift in perspective things fall into place. This won't make everything easy, but it'll mean we can start to apply our efforts where they'll actually begin to do some good.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Get a Job? They've Got One, Thanks.

Three days a week I walk from South Station to my office on Beacon Hill. (The other two I work from home, lest you think I am a slacker or independently wealthy.) The walk takes about twenty minutes and is a decent workout for body, mind, and spirit.

The body has to move itself up a gradual incline at a decent clip carrying my lunch in one hand and my breifcase in the other. For me, in the shape I'm in, it's a workout. (Especially the last hill which is more than a "gradual" incline!) It's a workout for the mind, too, because I'm usually thinking about the projects on the day's to-do list, or the things I read on my commute, or I'm writing something in my head. And the spiritual workout? That's easy. It's all the people I pass -- especially the homeless women and men, asking for spare change.

On the bus ride in I generally do my prayer bead practice as part of which I say the words, "May I see your face in every person I meet this day . . ." And along this twenty minute walk I encounter half a dozen people or more who spend their days on the streets begging, and their nights on these same streets or in shelters. Some of them I've gotten to know. One celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday yesterday.

I've heard people say that these women and men should "get a job." I say that they have one. A hard one. Can you imagine how difficult it is to spend your day asking strangers for their spare change? To endure the rejection -- the passive and the more aggressive? The judgement? I tell you, this isn't easy work.

But what is the job they're doing? Remember, I said that I was engaged in a spiritual workout, so I am looking at this through a spiritual lens. And when I look through that lens I see people who remind me -- who remind us all -- that the world is far from fair. That those of us living comfortable lives do not represent the vast majority of people on the planet and that part of our comfort comes at the cost of their discomfort. They remind me that there is want and misery and pain and that, as Jesus himself is remembered as saying, "the poor shall always be with you." These people I pass each day put a human face on that proverb.

May I see your face in every person I meet, and find your fingerprint in every situation I encounter;
May I hear your voice in every form it takes, especially those I'd rather not hear;
May I open my hands and let go of trying to control things, and stop grasping after false security;
May I open my heart and live and love more deeply in you.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Happy Anniversary Monsieur Petit

Today is Philippe Petit Danced Between The Towers Day. (A high holy day in my house.) Thirty five years ago a combination of imagination, insanity, hubris, holiness, poetry, and prowess combined over a quarter of a mile above downtown Manhattan as a young French wirewalker named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire cable no thicker than your pinkie and began to dance between the towers of the World Trade Center.

He and his compatriots -- an odd assortment of friends and acquaintances who came together because of his passion for this "great adventure" -- had been up all night, having illegally entered the towers the afternoon before, rigging the wire for the walk. In the early morning hours he stepped out . . . and into both history and legend.

Why did he do it? Later, when he'd had time to think, he said something to the effect that when he sees three oranges he must juggle and when he sees two towers he must string a wire and walk. But at the time, immediately after the police arrested him, as the media were pushing their microphones into his face, he simply answered, "Why? There is no why."

And isn't that as it should be? Do we ask why we see a particularly spectacular sunset just when we need to be reminded that the world is full of beauty? Do we ask why we someone does us a good turn just when we were about to give up on the human race? Do we ask why when we fall in love? Or why when our baby looks up at us and smiles? Or why whenever we're reminded, however it is that we're reminded, that grace abounds and we're surrounded by miracles?

Actually, we do. But later, usually. While it's happening we just watch and try to take it all in. Just as the people who were lucky enough to have been there thirty five years ago did. No one was asking why until Petit was back on the street. While he was dancing, we just watched. And felt our hearts dancing too.

In Gassho,

RevWik

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley." That's a line from a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, specifically, his, ""To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough." In English it's usually rendered, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray."

The last time I posted here I was committed to return to the practice of regular posting. I was aiming for weekly. When I was a parish minister, of course, I had a vocational discipline of writing sermons each week. And for a while I made a personal discipline of writing for thirty minutes in my journal each day. (Or, at least, for thirty minutes three times each week.) Yet since I left the parish I have not been doing anywhere near as much writing and I wanted to get back to it. So I determined to blog again.

And then I had a back spasm so severe that I was taken to the hospital. After a week of pretty heavy pain killers and muscle relaxants I had recovered enough that I tried my hand at a little gardening . . . and had a relapse. A week more of bed rest and I was feeling pretty good. As I was getting ready to go to my physical therapy appointment I thought I'd do one quick job around the house -- climb a ladder to take down our flag. The ladder collapsed underneath me.

Needless to say I haven't been up to writing. The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. Ole' Bobby Burns was certainly right about that. It does seem that whenever we set our minds to saying "this is how it's going to be" we virtually guarantee that it's going to turn out just about any way but that way.

Lately I've begun to engage again the Unitarian Universalist prayer bead practice I wrote about in Simply Pray. With one of the entering beads I say, "Open my hands, that I may let go of my attempts to control things and my efforts to grasp after false security." The last several weeks have given me MANY opportunities to practice this. You too, no doubt. I hope yours have been less painful.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Waking Up

In an episode of Mr. Deity -- the web-based, theologically oriented "sitcom" found at Mrdeity.com -- Mr. Deity (aka "God") and his assistant Larry are playing a card game in which they assign purpose and meaning to people's lives. "Why do we have to assign meaning to everyone's lives?" Larry asks. (And I'm paraphrasing here.) "Why can't they look for their own meaning?"

"Oh yeah. Right." Mr. Deity replies. "Like they're going to look for the meaning in life. They're going to watch TV. And I'm not talking 'Deadwood.' I'm talking about soaps, and reality TV. I'm talking about Public Broadcasting."

I haven't "mused" on this blog since the beginning of the year, and it's not just because I've been watching reality TV. (Although I'll admit to thinking that ABC's "Wipeout" is a hoot!) Life just has a way of "kidnapping" us, as my teachers at Shalem used to say. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day-ness of it all that taking time to muse -- much less write about those musings -- gets lost in the shuffle.

But as the Taoist maxim has it, "fall down seven times; get up eight times."

A Minister's Musings is back on line!

See you in a week.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Sitting Still On A Moving Bus

Since September I've been commuting in to Boston three days a week for work, and on these three days I've taken to meditating on my way in and my way out. Now some might think that this is not the right place to take up a meditation practice--it's not a quiet and peaceful place by any stretch of the imagination! It's cramped and crowded, there's all the bumping and jostling, there's the road noise and the noise of the other commuters. A zendo it is not!

But then I think of the Zen temple I visited in Kyoto. Outside the zendo there is a place where icy cold water falls from the mountain ledges above. I was told that the senior monks often meditate there, beneath the waterfall, because it helps them to stay free from distraction to practice in such a distracting place. So maybe a bus isn't such an odd location to set up your cushion after all.

And, when you come to think of it, where can you find stillness anyway? The earth upon which you sit is spinning around its axis at aproximately 1,000 miles/hour. And the it's orbiting around around the sun at about 67,000 mph. The sun is also rotating around our galaxy at 559,000 mph, and the galaxy itself is rotating at approximately 492,000 mph.

So where in all that movement is the stillness? That's what I'm sitting to discover.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Change

This is from a NY Times article titled, "A Portrait of Change: in first family, a nation's many faces" --

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

The inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday represents change in so many dimensions that I think it'll take quite a while for us to become aware of them all.

I am so moved.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Inauguration Day

What an experience we, as individuals and as a nation, have just gone through! I was sitting with a number of my collegaues here at UUHQ, watching together as the 44th President was sworn in--I won't hesitate to acknowledge that I had tears running down my face.

I also had words running through my ears, other words than those being spoken on the dias. With apologies (if necessary) to my colleague the Rev. Kathleen McTigue (who wrote the original), I offer these words:

The inauguration of President Barack Obama is another day dawning, the sun rising as the sun always rises, the earth moving in its rhythms, with or without our calendars to name a certain day as the day of new beginning, separating the old from the new. So it is: everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound.

Yet also we stand at a threshold, the new Administration something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands: what shall we do with this great gift of a new era?

Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year, we are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people. This new Presidency can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.

Let us take the step forward together, onto new ground, planting our dreams well, faithfully, and in joy.

May it be so.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Amazed and Greateful

A colleague recently shared these words, apparently the conclusion of Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope (which I’ll admit I haven’t yet read). I responded that, issues of race and heritage aside, I am amazed that we elected someone so eloquent. Amazed, and deeply grateful:

At night, the great shrine is lit but often empty. Standing between marble columns, I read the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I look out over the Reflecting Pool, imagining the crowd stilled by Dr. King's mighty cadence, and then beyond that, to the floodlit obelisk and shining Capitol dome.

And in that place, I think about America and those who built it. This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent. And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union. And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.

It is that process I wish to be a part of.

My heart is filled with love for this country.

On January 20th we are inaugurating the presidency of a man -- a human man with flaws and failings like us all. I do not expect President Obama to be a messiah or some kind of political wizard or superhero who will make everything okay again. He is a human being, like any of us.

But he appears to be to be a very intelligent man. An eloquent man. A man who understands what oppression and intolerance look like from the inside and who still sees the potential and promise in our nation and our world.

I am amazed, grateful, and filled with hope.

In Gassho,

RevWik

It makes sense

I have always thought that a response to the various ballot initiatives and referenda that have been proposed to curtail the civil rights of homosexuals would be to start an initiative to outlaw synthetic blend clothing. (After all, Leviticus 19:19 tells us not to wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.) Here's a video with a different message but the same point of view.




May sanity one day prevail.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Bringing it (and us) all together

A while ago (July 14: Strangely Moving) I posted a video of Matt Harding dancing his way around the world--one person, one strange dance, hundreds of different countries and people coming together.

The video below seems to me to tell the same story of our human community yet in a very different way.



You can find out more about the incredible project that gave birth to this video at the website of Playing for Change

Peace.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Which Moves--the Train or the Station?

One of my goals in life has been to be the kind of father that was in the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip--the kind who is always messing with his kids' heads. This past week we were all in Boston and took our first ride as a family on the T.

I told them, "You know what's weird? It's the stations that are moving. We're just sitting here while everything else moves around us." And, of course, with a certain perspective that's just how it seems.

My kids, of course, immediately recognized this as one of Daddy's "jokes," yet I've been finding myself thinking about it more seriously lately. I've been reading a number of books all of which have made at least passing reference to the idea that the passage of time is something of an illusion. The past, as it were, is only a memory and the future is only a dream. This moment--right NOW--is all that exists. And even the sense that this moment flows into the next "this moment," that one NOW passes into the next NOW moment is an illusion. There is only NOW.

So do I "move" through time or does time "move" around me? Is NOW a series of moments, like stations on a line, through which I move, or is there only NOW, still and stationary, like a train that remains motionless while the stations move past?

No wonder I liked Calvin and Hobbes.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Sometimes You Need No Words

I've been trying to decide how to respond to the "other" news from election night. I can add nothing to this:




In Gassho,

RevWik

And now . . .

It happened. The forty-fourth President of the United States is going to be a young, inspiringly articulate, keenly intellegent, African-American father of two.

Over and over again I find myself returning to the creation myth J.R.R. Tolkien wrote for the Silmarillian. In it--and this is the short version--Illuvatar, the One, sends out a chord which the Ainur (think angels) turn into a harmonized melody. Again and again, as Melkor introduces dischord, Illuviaar sends out new chords which incorporate the dischord, and on and on the Ainur sing.

At the end of all their singing, Illuvatar tells the Ainur to open their eyes, to see what their singing created. They behold the universe--their song made manifest. And then, of a sudden, all that they have seen vanishes from their sight. "Now go," says Illuvatar, "and make what you have seen."

Barack Obama's election shows us--many of us, at least--a vision of what the future of America can me. But we cannot rest in that. The success of the ballot initiatives in California, Arkansa, Arizona, and Florida which restrict the rights of lesbians and gays are stark reminders that it is not simply "a new day for America."

The vision which many of us see through Barack Obama's election is both beautiful and powerful Yet President Obama will not be able to fulfill this vision, will not be able to realize the dream on his own, just as Senator Obama was not able to bring about his remarkable victory without a groundswell of support.

We must now go forth and make what we have seen.

If we want affordable healthcare for all, we must work for it.

If we want civil liberties for all of nation's citizens -- and not just the ones who look like the majority, or love like majority, or think like the majority -- then we must work for it.

If we want the United States of America to be a shining example to the world of what a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, truly diverse society can be, then we must make of our lives--each one of us--such an example.

Barack Obama is not the Messiah. (And even the one who holds that title didn't "magically" make "everything okay.")

We must realize the dream.

WE must realize the dream.

We MUST realize the dream.

In Gassho,

RevWik

I Can't Resist

I was going to write a serious piece this morning, but I came across this clip and just can't resist the urge to do what little I can to help it get seen as widely as possible.

I love the satrical online "newspaper," The Onion, "America's Finest News Source." Their foray into "TV" is equally inspired. As an example, this report:



Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

If that tickled your fancy, here's another:


Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad Against McCain

My work for the day is done.

in Gassho,

RevWik

Good? Bad?

There's a well known Taoist story about a farmer and a series of events that bring his neighbors out to alternately console and congratulate him. He loses his only work horse; the horse returns with several young wild horses. His son breaks his leg while trying to tame one of the horses; the broken leg saves him from being drafted into a battle in which every other young man from their village is killed. At each turn of events, as the neighbors weigh in on how "good" or "bad" the situation is, the farmer replies only with the words, "good news, bad news, who's to say?"

I thought of this story when Colin Powell came out as endorsing Barack Obama's candidacy. Here he is, a standard bearer for the Republican party, a decorated general, former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that, McCain's rhetoric aside, he believes that Barack Obama is the man with the right stuff to lead this nation. At one time Powell, himself, was discussed as a possible candidate for the Presidency, and Democrats and Republicans alike were excited at the prospect.

So this is good news, right? Well, who's to say? During the lead-in to the Iraq war Powell was excoriated by liberals as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration. His reputation as a man of principles, a reputation earned during the first Gulf War, seemed to have been permanently obliterated. And yet here we are, a few years later, celebrating his endorsement of Obama. Is Gen. Powell a good man? A bad man? It's hard to say.

And let's not forget that John McCain himself was once the darling of the Democrats. A straight talking maverick, he was seen as a potential running mate for John Kerry in 2004, and the possibility electrified many. So is he a good man or a bad man? It's hard to say.

I'm not advocating for a complete moral relativism. I am wanting to remind us--myself included--that in our rush to judge people "good" or "bad" we generally, usually, almost invariably, overlook the myriad shades and hues between black and white. Simple answers are almost always wrong; oversimplifications always are.

In Gassho,

RevWik

"Out beyond concepts of right-ness and wrong-ness there is a field. I will meet you there."
~ Rumi

The Springer-fication of the Electorate

This morning I sent out this letter to the editor to a number of local and national papers. I thought I'd post it here as well:

I am frightened for my country.

Economically, we are in the midst of what many experts are calling the worst financial crisis since the great depression; not just here in the US but around the world economies teeter on the brink of disaster.

Militarily, our nation is involved in two wars, and our foreign policy over the past eight years has significantly reduced our standing in the world making us less, rather than more, safe in these troubling times.And culturally, here at home, we're seeing what I've come to think of the "Springerfication" of the electorate.

Think back to the Democratic National Convention--throughout you saw people looking up at the dais through glistening eyes which revealed a spirit of hope and inspiration that permeated the convention hall.

Think of the Republican National Convention--all loud booing and derisive laughter that conveyed a mean spirit, an angry spirit. And in recent days some people at rallies at which Gov. Palin has been speaking have shouted "terrorist," and "Obama bin Laden," and "kill him" when Senator Obama's name has been mentioned. I feel like I'm watching the Jerry Springer Show.

Are Senator McCain and Gov. Palin responsible for the actions of the people who attend their rallies? Of course not. But they must take responsibility for not immediately and in no uncertain terms condemning such behavior. And we, each and every one of us, Republican and Democrat, must take responsibility for ourselves. We are America, and if America is to continue to be the great nation it boasts of being we must be a great people. Let us look for the best in one another and stop calling for blood.

In gassho,

RevWik

Happy Birthday Gandhi-ji

Today is the 139th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known in his day as both Mahatma (Great Spirit) and Bapu (Papa). Once, when asked what his message was to the world he replied, "my life is my message."

I once preached a sermon of that title, noting that Gandhi was not always the fearless figure of modern memory. In his young adulthood, as he studied at a London law school, he broke strict Hindu custom by eating meat and drinking alcohol. (In his autobiography he said that he had noticed that all of the British boys of his same age were much bigger and stronger than he was, and he thought meat might be their secret. The alcohol? He said he just wanted to fit in.) He smoked cigarettes. He even flirted with becoming a Christian.

And the first time he got up in a courtroom was a fiasco. He said that he became so terrified, so panic stricken, that he could think of nothing to say and ran, sweating, from the room. His client lost.

Yet at his death Albert Einstein uttered these memorable words: "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this in flesh and blood did walk upon this earth."

His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, makes clear that we should not dismiss Gandhi as some sort of superhuman saint. "What can be done I will try to do," he said, and his life--his message--is that much, much can be done by those who are willing to try.

Two sites worth exploring:

• The Wikipedia article on Gandhi
  
• The "Complete Site on Mahatma Gandhi"

In Gassho,

RevWik

Would You Step Over Here Please?

Shortly after speakers at the Republican National Convention, including Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, made sport of (get ready to chuckle) community organizers, T-shirts appeared bearing the message:

"Jesus was a community organizer;
Pontius Pilate was a governor."

That got a laugh out of me, as well as the encouragement to stop and think for a moment. Many moments, actually. I'm still thinking about it and what it says about the state of our nation today.

I haven't written in a while -- I've been acclimating to the dynamics of my new life working for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. One thing that's new, and is taking some getting used to, is the three hours of commuting by bus (round trip) three days a week. But it does give me time to think.

Yesterday I was thinking again about that Jesus/Pilate thing when I remembered this picture. It is an artist's rendering of what Yeshua ben Miriam might have looked like. A forensic artist from the University of Manchester used the 2000-year-old skull of a Jewish man from Israel to recreate the face, and based the hair and skin color on third century frescoes of Jewish faces. All of this was done for a Discovery Channel documentary about the historic Jesus. That's right, this is an artist's rendering of what the actual Jesus might have looked like.

And not only was Jesus a community organizer, but if he were to walk through an airport today the screeners might well ask him to step out of line.

Again and again I find myself facing the same question: with whom am I standing? It's a question that comes up in my personal life; it's a question that comes up in my work life; and it's a question that echoes in my head as I listen to the politicians and pundits this election season.

It's a question for you, too.

In Gassho,

Rev. Wik