The national debatable: freeing the press, or sneering at it? Media madnes

Listening to the moderator of the national political debates is always instructive; the boos come  much freer than the nods of affirmation. “Freedom of the press” wobbles back and forth in national mood but not, I think, in its function. But I will digress.

My mother always had one sweet taste in her mouth all her life. It was remembering being a young secretary in the years of Prohibition, but only somewhat about alcohol. I remember where it took place; it was a small, two story brick building on the way to downtown. The black paint reading “Press” was by then faded.

It was election time and the Ku Klux Klan in the county had announced that if they lost the election the county newspaper would never report it. The entire staff assembled in the building; a man with a 30-30 deer rifle was posted on the roof; they awaited the results. My mother always giggled as she told the story of how the men tried to get the secretaries to take a swallow of the “coke cola” drink they were passing around. It was in the time when, I think, every newspaper desk had a bottle in the top drawer – a lot of reporters didn’t get intimidated by Prohibition, either. When President Roosevelt enumerated the Four Freedoms, few quibbled about the Press.

It has never been easy to wallow in printers’ ink, lots of ups and downs in its history. I remember when I wrote an article that was in the New York Times one Sunday. The editors sent a “stringer” up from New Orleans to get an interview and a couple of pictures. He drove up in a ten year jalopy that was some kind of wreck. When I asked him about it, he told me he had a 450 motor in it that could out outrun any KKK car in the South. He also had a foot long telescopic lens so he didn’t have to get any closer to a riot than he had to. Smart guy. He then confided to me that the reporters “were going to keep hitting the South over the head until we could go where ever we want to and not be afraid.”

Personally, if I were a presidential candidate in these debates, I wouldn’t do a lot of sneering at the press. These guys are hard losers. The women, too. 

Do you ever wonder what Paul would have to say when reading such a blog? Considering the predictable difficulties he had in getting those church newsletters out from prison I suspect he would just laugh and say, “The more things change the more they remain the same.”

“Freedom” is the word in our national debates – and in need of a wider, even worldwide context

The woman in the blue brassiere was screaming in pain as she was dragged away by the Egyptian police, her ripped black burka trailing behind her. It was a highly dramatic scene in an Arab Spring filled with crowds roaring for “Freedom!” It is a majestic word with an almost sacred history to us – but its usage can be peculiar.

We all should feel a need to declare our context of “freedom.” My father told stories to me as a boy about hunting trips. “There was a turkey roost where they would come by the thousands at dusk and literally darkened the sky. We shot into it for ten years” – it was against state game laws – but they could get away with it, and did. Regulation: ugh. You know. Then he would shake his head sadly, “We thought it would never end.” It did. When I was in early middle age we went back one year and the turkeys had made a come back thanks to a respect for limitations and I got my limit. That did not diminish the sadder and wiser tone to my father’s voice when he would re-tell that story. 

Sometimes the current use of the word, “freedom,” appears to have a religious justification, as well. That is peculiar in that “freedom,” as an abstract principle is a seldom used a biblical idea. At times it seemed as if the context is more of a desire to act out, ignoring the reality of the “all about me” characterizing sin. “Free” is the much used biblical word, most often describing a person’s religious experiences. 

Freedom as a term in the context of religion was much used in the time of Luther and the Reformation. In Annelie’s and my  discussions about the subject, my memory served – or swerved – more towards “trust God and sin bravely,” while Annelie’s memory of table talks ran more towards, “sin boldly and confess bravely.” I think she  caught more of what is going on in the now-a-days political assertions. Thinking about Luther and his marriage to a nun who had rebelled against a cloister reminds me of that young woman in the blue bra. I think we are recycling a 500 year old revolution in world wide ways now. Just as bloody.

In terms of Paul, in his earlier years, while yet being called “Saul,” freedom was much in the context of forgiveness. As he grew in grace from “being in Christ,” becoming “free” was more in the context of internalizing this gift. The reality of that grace he increasingly lived out – well, mostly. My sympathies. My understanding.

My father was in politics. In his later career he was listed in “Who’s Who in American politics.” He occasionally would tell me that “politics was the art of being friendly.” He never ran for an office higher than he would be able to call the voters by their first names. You would have liked my father.

The American debate goes on: but is it less government, or less Law? How say you, Paul?

When there is a pronouncement on governing, it is not always clear whether the reference is to the majesty concept of Law or the mundane, individual laws. A negative view might be over-simplified as laws are like a mountain range fogged in with regulations. In contrast, we might hear from mouths half tilted that the slogans about diminishing government are from those who have seen too many John Wayne movies about the Wild West. We have even had a Oscar-prize-level TV comedian spoofing us about the high water mark of our thinking is set by money.

Not at issue is that the questioning of legal statutes and regulatory agencies is one thing, the undermining of respect for Law is quite another. 

The need for Law must have emerged as the hunter-gatherers clustered first in villages and then in commerce connected cities. The reciting of folk ways gradually evolved into the need for writing. The felt need for laws must have gradually made its way up out of the same sensations as had the unceasing need for problem solving. Its function in educating people must have been no less real, nonetheless, than for setting limits on their acting out. As you would expect, the priests finally got into the act.

Our particular interest, however, is that the debate is couched by some against a background of religion, particularly the New Testament and Mosaic Law. In actuality, the setting is more often that of Luther and the Reformation. Since Luther, in the main, centered his thinking on Paul we ought to look at that. 

Looking at the great Apostle from the perspective of the post-traumatic process is a great advantage. We can divide his life roughly Into three stages. In the first, in the as yet “Saul,” there is the striving to get out from under the burden of having been a persecutor of Jesus. In the middle section,on the one hand, there is a celebration of the gift of freeing grace that comes to us who are “in Jesus Christ”  and then, as well, an appreciation there was a sort of English common-like law in the Empire. In a final countdown, we can sense the aging process when Paul was writing that last letter to Timothy. He began to reminisce about the time when Moses came down from the mountain with his stone tablets and the people had rebelled and were dancing around a golden calf.  He had come to terms with the wholeness of his life; peace at last.

The reality is that when it comes to laws we have troubles with proliferation, and when it comes to Law we have troubles with perfectionism. Nevertheless, before we resign ourselves to being completely bogged down in our human setting - which never excludes sin – we need to consult the mind of Christ. It always rules in the direction of loving your neighbor as yourself.  

Citizens cannot abolish Sin, neither can we ignore it at election times

                                                          The first of a series of thoughts-out loud during 

                                                          the candidates for president debates

I make my confession to you. My intention was to listen to the political aspirations and, during the commercials, work on some blog. Mia culpa. After a bit, I put on speeches on “mute” and listened to the commercials. (Not true, but no Texan born and bred would corrupt a good story with the truth and nothing but…) Actually, there is still a good bit of cross-pollination going on.

“You must be saved,” is not an irrelevancy to listeners. It just means more if you are concerned about those with the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This does not involve the theological abstractions of heaven and hell. The reality of “sin” does matter – just as much as “stress.” The flashback is a call to be saved. 

The issue is that therapy is often centered on “freed from,” and healing involves “saved to.” For Paul, as our role model, it was not freed from flashbacks; it was a call to mission. We all need a positive meaning to our lives, a “more” than just escaping wearying symptoms.

Sin, as I have come to understand and experience it, is rooted in our biology. It is grounded in perception. Life forms have no way to evade experiencing with whatever they have with which to perceive. Enter our human reality of self awareness. We all got our push into the world naked and squalling. 

The essence of Sin is this “all about me.” Under stress, there is a greater push and a pull; with a trauma we just hurt from it on-goingly. To experience some form of PTSD is not sin, but at the same time an ”all about me” needs to be levered loose from it. “What must I do to be ‘freed’?” is as heavy on a person with flashbacks as any sinner who crying out from the mourners’ bench at a revival. 

The “Saul” who eventually came in for a renaming as the “Apostle Paul” first took a sharp turn towards health when the term “Christian” was first coined; it meant identifying yourself as a “little Christ.” Since he was teaching in Antioch at that time, we can well believe this piece of theology was rooted in some aspect of his personal experiences (as all theologies are). Out of his woundedness Saul the Professor was pressing hard on the question: “Who am I?”

That is also our question. Trauma disrupts a person’s self identity, fragments it, imposes distortions. We need to demand an answer to the question, just as Saul knew he had to do. “Who am I really?”

We all have our answers, most of them given to us, much like citizenship. “I am a Texan,” “I am a Methodist,” “I am an American.” They are all fine answers for an individual, but we need a bigger and better one.

Back to those political speeches. Some speakers seem to proffer their religion to us (or on us). Some aspects of that seem a good deal about other people’s sin, particularly younger women with a particular kind of being heavy laden. We can only hope similar expressions are just the need of anyone in politics to have a sufficiency of self esteem - rather than an insufficiency of realizing all individuals are limited to their own unique perceptions.

We celebrate the war correspondents, the medics – and the videographers and backroom news editors

The end of the year summations on television had some ghastly pictures of war, floods, earthquakes. For the special persons who read this blog, it is especially important to acknowledge the coming years’ reports. 

I was watching a panel of foreign correspondents being interviewed about the effect of their work on them: they get the very smells of the dead and dying, suffering in some cases rapes and knockings around. One man told how he maintained his professional discipline when on assignment, cries on the plane homeward.

There is a footnote I would add here. One of the interviewed still added another thought, a dislike of correspondents who swagger about, too tough to feel the hurt about which they write. Some will note, however, these are often on their way to a bar. That ought to be plural, “bars.” 

I don’t believe the “too tough.” What I know about – personally – is denial. In the short run it may be professional discipline, but I don’t think anyone escapes the blows of trauma. “Too tough” is just a price deferred. 

All of us profit from those who make a career out of enduring the on-coming post-traumatic, the ambulance driver, the medic, the policeman, all those firemen. Yes, all those firemen. As one of them said to me, “I’d like to talk to you about it some day; I have seen some awful things.” 

Yet it is also that human with the video camera who is there photographing while others are doing what has to be done. We know why some handheld ones shake, but almost all the lens hold steady, even while the reporters duck their heads. So many make the evening news graphically real to us – local, as well as foreign. I would like to especially thank those backroom news editors, for whom there is no glory, who watch the endless horror and then editor slice out bits so that we – no, I - may see and empathize. They, too, may well pay a price no pension can compensate.

I am going to take a moment to stand in silence, now that Annelie has signed off on the last draft. Would you join me? And then I am going to salute.

Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress: an aspect of child abuse often yoked to religion

There it was in bold black print, NAZI GARB PROVOKES OUTRAGE, Jewish sect dons outfits to bash media. It was a page 4 article, a reprint from an Associated Press article by Aron Heller in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on January 2^nd. It also recounted the bullying of Israeli girls, dressed in their ordinary modern way, being jeered and spat upon on the way to school as they passed through Ultra Orthodox neighborhoods. It was said to be a part of the demand that women be seated at the back of the bus and greater segregation in public by gender. There was an accompaning picture of Ultra Orthodox children dressed as if compelled by Holocaust times, protesting that Ultra Orthodox religious customs are not being carried out in today’s Israel.

When I passed that section of the newspaper to Annelie her response was similar to many Israelis: child abuse. Actually, I have heard similar stories as a young pastor In deep bayou country. The city limits signs in a neighboring small city once read, “Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine Good Catholics and One Damn Protestant.” One of our young church members told me what it was to pass the local Catholic Church: hat off or else. Not too different from a chairman of the church board in another pastorate. When, as a boy, his Italian family moved into an Arkansas town. They were told, “Methodist or Baptist or leave town!” 

Religion, in its bullying aspect, does not seem to differ from culture to culture, the language is different, the attitudes similar. It is not too far away from a black friend’s experience when, as a child, her family moved as the first one of “their kind” into a Pennsylvania town. The “pre-judgement” of prejudice is so often preceded by the sanctified feeling, “traditional.” What is particularly interesting about the Israeli story is the religious demand – actually, cultural – is laid on others by remembered suffering. 

Suffering can inspire. This as supremely illustrated by Jesus on the cross. Gandhi’s fasts in India challenging Britain to live out its ideals are such.  Similar scenes provide a motivating horror, as in the Arab Spring’s beginning when a man burned himself to death. In other illustrations, challenge by suffering leaves many feeling ambiguous, such as signs on lawns reading, “Pray and fast  for life” (implying against abortion). At the very extreme of the spectrum, there are countless jokes on the theme of some mother making a career of suffering in order to control her family. 

What is it about religion - so often inspirational and deeply humanizing in our relating to the neighbor - that can turn some to aggressive manipulation? Being empowered by one’s religion should be no incentive for a power grab. The human bonding inherent in the word “religion” is different from the “all about me” expressed in sectarian ways.

 In the opening illustration, what is being described is “secondary” post-traumatic stress. “Disorder” would not be inappropriately added. There is a contrived flashback in the remembrance of death staring me in the face. There is  the pervasive anxiety, the rage, the alienation, the troubling interpersonal implications. What is different is that in the primary experience there is a loss of control; in the secondary – taught – experience there is a passion to be controlling. In this reversal of domination the abuse of those once directly traumatized is passed down to – and on - others.

 
Can you imagine anything more abusive than having your grandchildren taught to immediately experience the Holocaust – or flinging those feelings at the grandchildren of others who also lived it? A memorial is one thing, having following generations internalize it, and then act out on it is another. No one can avoid having PTSD and then it is very difficult for any of us to shake off its consequences. What is avoidable is perpetuating it as a hammer to be used on others as it was used on us.

At the beginning of the New Year there is often the memory of a friend

I love to read to Annelie, particularly when she is cooking supper. So often at the beginning of the year I have turned to a passage from Tennyson. I would like to share it with you, too. It is from In Memoriam. He had lost a friend he had first made when they were in Cambridge, so young, so soon. We all need a model for our grief.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring, happy bells, across the snow;

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

   For those that here we see no more;

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the spite;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold.

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

   Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

                                             And let all the people say, Amen.