January 2009

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Nothing Beyond Forgiveness

January 30, 2009 in Family & Life | No comments

“In family, nothing is beyond forgiveness.”  Already in an emotional state as I watch the movie Ebb Tide, the words startle me.  The internal debate erupts but is quickly over-run as my perspective turns away from the other and toward me and I consider whether to be for or against myself.

Choosing Family as a content area is a gutsy call.  Nothing in my personal life has so challenged, befuddled and yet defined me.   Blood family, blended family, chosen family-it is all complicated and the territory is filled with land mines.  Usually you’ve buried them all yourself.  And damn it you no longer have the map.  You can walk very, very carefully for the rest of your life or just get used to the occasional loss of limb.

It all began in the complex relationship with my parents.  I can testify to the difficulties of the middle child.  You watch as some in that big extended family grab on to the oldest and others are thrilled with the youngest.  Rarely did anyone choose the middle.  You wonder whether it’s a judgment about you or just the random placement you have in the series.  Generally, you conclude it’s the former.  Nearly all the negative stuff ends up aimed straight at your own heart.

All the raw emotions of parent-child experience changed radically and suddenly for me when my parents died.  My father took his last labored breath over five years ago.  My mother died with no warning one early August morning last year.  Taking their leave they kindly packed and took with them the more hurtful memories.  As I think about them now, see their faces in the clouds, or feel a gentle chiding when I have an especially ungracious thought about someone, it is with a deep knowing of the love they have for me.

The challenges assuming the size of mountains are not about the acts of others.  They are about my own.  As I write in this content area, I’ll protect the innocent, but seek to shed light.  If it doesn’t illuminate I’ll not press the publish button.

“In family, nothing is beyond forgiveness.”  Not forgotten, but forgiven in the classic sense:  to give as before.  My internal debate on the merits of the idea have fully given way to a deep personal hope/prayer-that it is true.

On Media

January 30, 2009 in Media | No comments

Before the commentaries on specific reporting by the media comes some foundational work.  Like most I have drawn conclusions from experience.  The most basic is that the best journalism creates a shared context for community.

Broadcast journalism occupied more of my adult years than any other work.  It holds a special place in my heart-usually the sad part.  A fierce advocate for my vision of this important electronic calling, I have rarely seen it.  There is Bill Moyers.  There is Jon Stewart.  There is NPR.  So perhaps I can reflect inside something other than a scream.

Many years ago my mother toured an Albuquerque TV station where I anchored the local news.  As she passed through the hallway with all the media awards she turned to me, “I hope I can meet this Media (Ma-dee’-ah) person-he’s certainly won a lot of awards.”  Laughter does ease the pain.

America’s version of broadcast journalism is one more example of our inability to harness capitalism.  It has devoured most real examples of the form.  In its wake we get a Lawrence Welk experience.  When I started my career, you could hear Aaron Copeland-literally.  It was the theme music for CBS Reports.

Television has always determined its ad rates by the size of its total audience.  Newscasts don’t seek to create niche markets with thoughtful coverage.

The Golden Era of television news was buried in the early 70s.  The part of funeral director played by the News Consultant promising station owners more ad revenue from ever bigger audiences.  They surveyed the masses in each community.  Built, or so they said, a newscast tailored to “what the audience wants.”  Inane chatter among on-air folks, and a selection of news stories based on the philosophy “if it bleeds it leads” were the major ingredients.  The format swept local television stations.  A long, slow death rattle was heard in the land.

A friend of mine once shared a theory explaining the spiraling down that has continued.  Each year the audience is surveyed and the news is programmed to the common denominator.  As the product is dumbed down, the outer edge of intelligent viewers leaves.  The common denominator diminishes each year.

This is a sad story.  But in the abundance of the new American hope, we may yet find a happy ending.  The Internet offers alternatives to the deadly local newscast.  Technology gives access to the tools to broadcast pictures and sound.  As they are used in increasing numbers, we listen for the new music.

Inside Out

January 28, 2009 in The Human Spirit | No comments

A philosopher once noted that the best experiences of life are beyond words.  My spiritual journey lives within that admonition and mysticism.  I approach using words for its sharing with humility.  It is my truth.  To preach this truth as universal would destroy its meaning.

I have walked multiple, sacred paths:  the Christian, the Native American, the Buddhist, and Ubuntu.  The forces encountered teach me that faith is a natural element of being human.  If allowed it emerges, inside out.  Outside in strategies from the multiple, structured religious systems can teach, but they freeze my experience of God.

Walking a sacred path requires different steps for different branches of my experience.  I love Jesus.  Especially I love the Jesus of St. Thomas:

He who drinks of my mouth will be me and I will be him.

The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth but men do not see.

Kernels of the human experience revealing ourselves and the creative power we hold.

Adult growth has come from the deep pain of knowing that that at which we grasp seeps through clinched fingers.  Mysticism reveals faith contemplating a single rose held aloft.  Inside out faith manifests.

The bone melting heat of the Inipi, accompanied by Lakota chants, spreads my soul across the universe.  Earth, wind, air, fire are the base of physical reality.  Individual knowing of its existence, with no intermediary, elevates God.  We open from within that which He placed.

Individual knowing does not erase our inter-dependence.  “I am who I am because of those around me.”  This is the philosophy captured by the Zulu word Ubuntu.

A few years ago a small group of Portland friends gathered, driven by an individual desire for intentional community.  The dialogue quickly revealed that our foundational hunger was to experience faith.  We adopted the name Ubuntu.  We meet regularly with the freedom to be.  We share the design of the experience.  In the time since our birth, we have together fed the hunger.  Each holds their truth, but I have learned two great things:  I am who I am because of those around me.  My deepest faith has always been there awaiting discovery from inside out.

January 20, 2009: At Last

January 27, 2009 in Public Service | 2 comments

Searching for the deeper meaning of my experience in Washington DC is a welcome journey.  It is a gift of the new American community.  There are so many complex emotions:  some stirred by the big picture, some growing from the actions of a new administration.  Ever-deeper personal illumination emerges as the puzzle pieces fall into place.

In 2004 my son and a friend sit around the table.  The conversation concerns the importance of a John Kerry victory in the Presidential election.  “Defeat means the America I love is gone.  It will be too late to get it back,” I said.  Our friend said, “It’s already too late.  It’s gone.”  Over the past four years his words return often.  For me, increasingly they carry a truth.

“I Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear”….   No matter how clumsy that moment in the inaugural ritual, it carries America to resurrection.  Something lost forever in the darkness of those eight years, never-ending eight years, arises from the dead.  In the sun of the Inauguration I understand St. Thomas does not own the market on doubt.  Grappling with my share changes how I hold the ideals and principles of our country’s founding.  Their universal truth is ever there to be discovered and honed in re-birth.  There whenever the people choose.

In my earliest years in the wind-swept wheat fields of Southwest Nebraska, my grandfather served as the volunteer mayor of his small town.  My brother taught me the value of community from somewhere deep within who he was.  Then came John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., all sculpting in concert with the teaching of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln my love of country and it’s limitless possibility.

The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution join to articulate the best concept of self-government known to man.  Employing the tool we enter the crucible of our individual human imperfection and emerge in the truth of a collective wisdom so much greater than the sum of its parts.

January 20, 2001 unveiled an eight-year rejection of the sacred, fundamental truths of this country’s founding.  January 20, 2009, on the mall of the nation’s capitol, I learn human folly can obscure truth, but it cannot destroy it.  Somewhere between one-point-five and two million witnesses rejoice around me.  Something else drives our joy.

On my first trip to Washington DC some 15 years ago, I toured Mt. Vernon.  Rounding the walkway onto the grounds of George Washington’s estate you pass the slave quarters.  Looking into that building, two African American women did not speak.  The shared pain etched on their faces forever altered my sense of the hallowed home of our founding father.

Candidate Barack Obama called it the original sin of our founding.  A slavery scarred America roiling in that sin for 233 years found a measure of calm this Inaugural week.  We are not innocent, but we move toward redemption.

“I truly did not believe I would live to see this day.”  The Black American from Atlanta stood in front of me beside his sister from Los Angeles.  Through tears and shared wonder strangers hug, standing on the capitol mall of a new, more perfect union.

From fertile, new hope the conscious confront the reality of our common challenges.  Economics, war doubled, genocide, health care denied, homes lost, jobs disappeared, all stare us in the eyes from the abyss of a 24/7 news cycle.  The sense of doom is driven by some with behavior born in our recent dark national experience, others from calculations of more mundane political objectives.  Both seek our company.

An alternate reality emerges in the first week of a new America:  our nation no longer tortures, transparency of public action outweighs secrecy, we speak to the world from the power of our ideals, we strive to build new government action aimed at the common good.  Despair faces a vast new force of hope.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”  President Barack Obama and our First Lady walk into the Neighborhood Ball.  The  President tells us this particular ball holds so much meaning  for the First Couple:  “We are neighborhood people.  We cut our teeth on neighborhood work.  We believe in its power,” he says.

From another stage across the room Beyonce sings as they dance-two as one:  “At last my love has come along.  My lonely days are over.  At last the skies above are blue.”