Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

RDM to RFK: Sit Down and Shut Up

I normally don't mean to sound so harsh, but bear with me for a moment.

Pat Robertson has said some ridiculous things, and he's been roundly criticized for them by conservative evangelicals. The comments by Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming September 11th on homosexuals and abortionists were roundly denounced. I am wondering when we're going to hear a similar denunciation from the left of the horrifying and barbaric comments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As I take telephone call after telephone call this evening regarding the destruction of my hometown and all homes and livelihoods of my family members in south Mississippi, I am sickened beyond words that Kennedy would take the opportunity of Hurricane Katrina to score partisan political points. Kennedy, it seems, is blaming the apocalyptic nightmare, which includes the deaths of a still not counted number of people, on Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's opposition to the Kyoto protocols on global warming.

When I was a teenager, Kennedy's father was one of my heroes. Although I disagree now with his political stance, he had a heart of palpable compassion for the downtrodden, including disenfranchised African-Americans and impoverished whites in rural Mississippi. Today I have consoled my 79 year-old grandmother who has lost everything she ever owned and I have heard about people without high school diplomas taking up chain saws to help their neighbors dig out from the tragedy. And a man who inherited his millions, his notoriety, and his public platform from his dynastic family tells us that the dead are lying unburied in the streets of Gulfport, that families are weeping over rubble in Biloxi, because the governor doesn't agree with him on an international environmental treaty?

Sure, we all know the Kennedy dynasty has seen better days. And, yes, we've known since Absalom that a titanic father doesn't rule out a craven son.  But I just wonder how long it will be before Sen. Clinton, Sen. Kennedy, Chairman Dean, and the rest of the Blue State leadership is willing to say to RFK Jr. what many of their conservative counterparts have already said to Pat Robertson: Sit down and shut up.

What I Cannot Forget

I know this all may seem odd, but after following the news about hurricane Katrina, I have not been able to get out of my head a few personal experiences of the last few years. It all goes back to the commemoration of the Beheading of John the Baptist, which I wrote about a couple of days ago.

The first time I have ever observed this memorial liturgically was back in 2001, while I was on an Orthodox pilgrimage on the island of Iona, Scotland. After the Divine Liturgy of this memorial, we pilgrims had a “strict fast” lunch, then a few of us crossed over the Sound of Iona to walk to a silversmith’s shop a couple of miles inland; there I bought a small silver cross for my wife. When we arrived back at the retreat center late that afternoon, we were informed about the terrorist attack on America. Yes, it was 9/11. Like many Orthodox in Europe, we were following the Old (Julian) Calendar, and so observed the August 29 memorial of the Beheading of John on September 11.

This year, August 29, the New Calendar date of John’s beheading, coincided with Katrina. For the commemoration of John’s death, my family and I did an unusual thing: we visited another church for vespers. While there we received from a mutual friend some gifts from a Russian Orthodox woman from Moscow whom we had met on the 2003 Iona Orthodox Pilgrimage. Both the 2001 and the 2005 commemorations of John’s beheadings were thus connected to the 2003 pilgrimage by means of these gifts from our Russian friend, Julia, whom we met in 2003. And both commemorations—2001 and 2005—of John’s demise also coincided with catastrophes, the latest, of course, Katrina.

But there’s another connection to the 2003 pilgrimage that I cannot get out of my head, an odd event that took place on that trip. While there, this time in late September, we took the hour-long boat ride to Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa. (In 2001 I had visited the cave the day before 9/11.) In 2003 a few people on the boat got seasick. The boat rocked badly, while its captain said he had never made this trip in a sea as rough as this—the waves seemed much worse than when we started. The reason? The captain said it was waves from hurricane Isabel, a storm which reached category 5 strength on September 11 and hit the North Carolina coast a week later after weakening. The ripple effect of the hurricane was reaching our boat far away in the North Atlantic.

I hope readers might see why I have a hard time forgetting the connections here, though I don’t want to make too much of them. Perhaps just putting them down “on paper” might be enough.

The world is full of bad news and tragedies. Yesterday, like most of us, I heard the reports coming in from New Orleans about a catastrophe in the making, when the night before it had seemed the city had been mostly spared. I heard this bad news on the radio as soon as I had put down a book I had been reading on the way to work the last couple of days—I had just begun reading a section about the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986.

I think many people over the course of their lives, if they look hard enough, will see things, small patterns, personal reminders, that indicate a direction, or sign, toward something very basic and vital. The disasters mentioned in the Gospels, brought to the Lord’s attention for his commentary, went unexplained, and only responded to by Christ with a strong echo of what John preached before Herod cut off his head: “Repent.” Now John’s message is not one I can put on anyone else. I can’t repent for anyone else, only for myself. And it’s the word I cannot banish from my thoughts.

For the victims of Katrina, we can offer our prayers, our aid, our financial support, and whatever else is called for in these hours of darkness and trial. Those survivors who, whether on or off camera, have responded by giving thanks that they are simply alive already know more about what’s truly important than I often do. I pray these are things I never forget to do, both repentance and thanksgiving.

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Jabez Move Over?

Steve Breitenbach sends me this link to a piece posted at Time Magazine:

The yoga teacher sits in a lotus position atop a polished wooden platform. Behind her, verdant woods are visible through panoramic windows. Gentle music tinkles from overhead speakers. Two dozen students in spandex outfits, most of them women, settle onto purple and blue mats to begin the class with ujjayi, a breathing exercise. Their instructor, Cindy Senarighi, recommends today's mantra. "'Yahweh' is a great breath prayer," she says. "The Jesus Prayer also works. Now lift your arms in praise to the Lord."

The platform is an altar, the tinkly tune is praise music, and the practice is Christian yoga. Senarighi's class, called Yogadevotion and taught in the main chapel of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minn., is part of a fast-growing movement that seeks to retool the 5,000-year-old practice of yoga to fit Christ's teachings. From Phoenix, Ariz., to Pittsburgh, Pa., from Grand Rapids, Mich., to New York City, hundreds of Christian yoga classes are in session.

How about just reclaiming the 2,000-year practice of Christian prayer?

Raving Atheist Right On

Our friend and colleague Dawn Eden writes:

My pro-life brother in arms The Raving Atheist has penned a guest blog entry for The Dawn Patrol on the Planned Parenthood-backed Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which advocates "respecting what we destroy." I'd like to show him that we theists know a well-argued and informative pro-life blog post when we see one. If you'd like to link to it, here it is.

One of the arguments our atheist friend critiques:

Can we get beyond the "either/or" arguments, and instead find a way to regard human stem cells as both worthy of respect and useful tools toward potential cures for serious human diseases?

Anyway, you can read the critique at the link above.

What the Russian Ladies Said

A couple of items, one from today and another from last week, raise the questions of the future of Russia and its women. According to an article by Edvard Radzinsky writing in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Page, “All across the country, a plethora of beautiful girls has sprung up.” In contrast, in Soviet times, society was supposed to be in some way sexless, and “Party leaders lived meekly with their ugly old wives who never appeared in public.”

The first shock of Gorbachev's new era was his appearance on the television screen together with . . . his wife! This was the true beginning of perestroika. For the first time, the wife of the General Secretary ceased to be "the Empress of the Dark Chambers." And this wife even dared to speak her mind on matters of politics! This was received with bewilderment by the majority of the populace, and in particular, by women. Immediately, there arose one of the most dangerous of Russian rumors: that the wife rules the husband. It was one of the main reasons for the decline of Gorbachev's popularity. The wives of subsequent presidents made their appearances on screen, but they took the experience of the Gorbachevs into account: First ladies now conducted themselves with extreme modesty. They remained what women were supposed to be in Russia--mere women.

A woman in Russia lived through her family. And she had to have a husband. …

With the advent of perestroika, all this began to change. The first Russian businesswomen came onto the scene. It was in business, not politics, that the road to true gender equality in Russia began to be laid. The first businesswomen were poor young girls when perestroika hit. Now they're over 30. They can be found in the most varied professions--from advertising firms to travel agencies, from computer companies to mass media agencies, from law firms to major commercial enterprises. . . . They arrived speedily at a new slogan for the independent Russian woman: "If pants must be hanging in the closet, they might as well be mine!" They can have children without husbands, they can leave one husband for another--the important thing is to live as they like, not as he likes.

Just to complicate this rosy picture of the new Russian womanhood, though, is this item from MosNews, which had been in circulation for a few days last week:

Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday quoting the country’s highest-ranking obstetrician.

“The appearance of a first child pushes many families into poverty,” Kulakov said today in the government’s official newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta. “Potential parents first try to start a career, stand on their feet and so forth.”

The increase in poverty and the decline in the quality of health care since the fall of communism have left about six million women and 4 million men — seven percent of Russia’s 145 million people — incapable of having children.

Part of the problem is a lack of job prospects. Careers traditionally favored by Russian women, such as in education and medicine, no longer pay a decent salary, which leads to fewer births and ultimately a smaller population, Kulakov said.

For every 1,000 Russians there are 16 deaths and just 10.6 births, a gap that isn’t being filled by immigrants, leading to a population decline of about 750,000 to 800,000 a year.

The average Russian man now dies at 58.8, the shortest life expectancy in Europe and five years fewer than 15 years ago, the Statistics Service said. Russian women have the fourth-lowest life expectancy in Europe, 72 years…

That’s nearly 14 years longer than the men. Why the disparity? Well, I asked a few of the “beautiful Russian women” I met at a professional presentation in Chicago in July about this. Why the dying men? “Vodka” was the only answer given. One of the women earlier had been offered a small glass of vodka at a celebration and quickly turned it down, with disdain. ‘It’s what the men drink,” and apparently too much of it.

I don’t know what Mr. Radzinsky might say about the future of the beautiful Russian women when the abortion rate is so high and the birth rate incredibly below replacement rate. He mentions the famous Russian tennis stars, but this is just a Russian entry in the pop celebrity culture that is not really a culture at all.

The three women I met said that a woman who has a baby gets a three-year maternity leave. I didn’t ask what the details for the arrangement were, but they did note how generous this was compared to American practices. On the other hand, though, if you (understandably and rightly, I think) take three years off of work each time you have a child, doing this twice means that you are going to be absent from your career for six years. In a bad economy, where wages are low, and apartments tiny and expensive, having two children seems like quite a heroic endeavor.

These Russian women came to the United States under an academic program funded by the U. S. government. One of them came to study American non-profits to enhance her own work with non-profits in Russia, a new class of organization for that country.

So what did they learn while here? My wife told me that at the end of her conversation with them, they said that they thought that best thing they could do for their own country was, well, go home, get married, and have children.

And I am willing to wager that the more who do just that, the longer the men will live, and the mothers will always be beautiful in the eyes of their children.

Reverence and Education

     "In wonder (which Plato and Aristotle claimed to be the indispensible presupposition for philosophy), reverence is a constitutive element.  Indeed, lack of reverence is one of the main sources of philosophical errors.  But if reverence is a necessary basis for every true and adequate knowledge of being, it is, above all, indispensible for the grasping and understanding of values.  Only to the reverent man (who is ready to admit the existence of something greater than himself, who is willing to be silent and let the object speak to him, and who opens himself) will the sublime world of values disclose itself.  This already explains why reverence is the mother of all virtues . . . "  (Dietrich von Hildebrand, from "The Role of Reverence in Education," in The New Tower of Babel)

     Reading the words of Dr. von Hildebrand, I found myself wincing at memories of some of my own ribald and irreverent performances in teaching college classes.  Do not ask about Aristophanes in the vicinity of Providence College.  In my own defense I can say that if I'm tempted to be irreverent to the work -- to treat it sniffingly as something beneath my love and esteem -- I don't bother to teach it.  Still, a fundamental attitude of irreverence chokes the life out of the mind, right from the start.  If there is nothing wondrous in the heavens, why look at the heavens?  If there is nothing wondrous, even miraculous, in the art of Shakespeare, why slog through that Baroque diction?  Dr. von Hildebrand is quite correct.  If the worst students to have in class are those whose minds have never come to life, who sit morosely in the corner and seethe, the second worst are the superficially bright and pert, whose intelligence has long been trained to see through the silliness of Milton, or directional derivatives, or the Ontological Proof.

     Those irreverent students often come from the "best" schools; poverty encourages surliness, ignorance, and brutishness, but for the really high-quality powder you've got to have money.  And that makes me ask: has anyone addressed the matter of the Pledge of Allegiance from the other end -- not its tribute to God, but its assumption that a mature human being longs to have someone to whom to give tribute?  And that the Pledge (now, I am told, an occasion for much eye-rolling and snorting "rebellion" among students) might only be a sign of something more general and deeper than that single prayer?  For you only Pledge Allegiance to something that calls forth your wonder, your reverence.  The basic attitude of mind and heart that the Pledge presupposes is, Dr. von Hildebrand would suggest, indispensible for true education of any sort, sectarian or otherwise. 

     If he is correct, and I think the logic (and the anthropo-logic) of his argument is perfectly sound, then the question arises: If not the Pledge, then what?  What exactly in our schools commands reverence?  What inculcates it, so that the hearts of the young people will be open to wonder?  The homework?  The dress?  The propaganda against smoking?  The propaganda in favor of behaviors far more destructive than smoking?  The habitual sneering at authors of the past?  What pubescent boy or girl has managed to survive so long in school with his capacity for wonder still strong? 

     SAT scores be damned.  Look in the eyes.  God be praised, but somehow every year I do meet quite a few college students whose hearts still beat strong.  Now that too is a source of wonder.  But we have been promised: the gates of school shall not prevail against it.

    

On This Date: Repent! (John the Baptist)

In the Eastern Church calendar, today, August 29, is observed as a strict fast in memory of the beheading of John the Baptist. (The date is also marked in Western calendars as the death of John.) My own parish, like many smaller parishes, does not observe this commemoration liturgically unless it happens to fall on a Sunday, as it did last year.

So last night my wife and son and I visited another parish for the vespers of the Beheading of John. Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral (OCA) is an old church for Chicago, completed in 1903, under the direction of the architect Louis Sullivan. Fr. John Kochurov was the pastor of Holy Trinity, under whose supervision the church was built. He was born in Russia, the son of an Orthodox priest.

We arrived while it was still light, but during the hour-long service the windows slowly  darkened, leaving only the candlelight for much of the service. A small choir sang vespers, along with the priest. A congregation of maybe ten joined in the responses. The choir chanted several short hymns in honor of St. John, describing the iniquitous banquet at which the request for John's head was honored by "an evil king."

John's rebuke of the king's adulterous marriage to Herodias inspires many to see a need to "speak truth to power," as the phrase goes. But I think John was not quite about that: he spoke of the need for repentance to one and all, not just the powerful. He was not out to single out those in high office. His ministry was to preach repentance to one and all, from the least to the greatest. He told the soldiers who came to him what "fruits of repentance" they must bear. He warned the pharisees about their sins--and Herod his.

In all cases, it was the personal sins that he addressed, even if in the case of some, like certain pharisees, they each might be engaged in a sin such as hypocrisy as a group, in company with others. Sin is sin, and to the extent that the church follows in John's footsteps, it is not called primarily to "speak truth to power" but to speak holiness to sin: to convict each person of sin and lead to repentance. This was not just true of John's ministry; in the Gospels, Jesus takes up where John leaves off, preaching the gospel with the word, "Repent!"

Fr. John Kochurov in his own way followed in John the Baptist's steps.  He returned to Russia in 1907, and in 1917 was serving in St. Petersburg. On October 31, the victorious Bolsheviks arrested Fr. John for leading a procession the previous day, at which prayers for peace had been offered. He was summarily shot by the Bolsheviks with rifles. He was the first known cleric to be executed by the Bolsheviks, the first of tens of thousands priests and monks and nuns. He was later canonized as a saint of the Orthodox Church.

Before the service last evening, we met a friend whom we knew would be there. She brought with her gifts for us from a mutual friend in Moscow. Among the gifts was a framed photograph of St. Tikhon of Moscow, the Russian patriarch who earlier spent years in the United States as bishop of the Orthodox. In 1903 he visited Holy Trinity Cathedral and gave it his blessing. Tikhon later returned to Russia where he became the head of the Russian Church. He was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks for more than a year in 1922 for his opposition to some of their policies. He died in 1925 and is honored as a saint.

It was inspiring to hear the hymns honoring St. John while standing in the same place where two courageous Christians once stood--one, Tikhon, put into prison, like St. John, the other, John Kochurov, executed, like St. John.

Did I say "once stood"? No, they were there, with us, for in the worship of the church we come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born born who are enrolled in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect. As John Kochurov and Tikhon prayed in the same place just over a 100 years ago, we, too, sang the words, "Blessed is man who walks not in the council of the wicked... the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish"--the message of John the Baptist, and Jesus, and one without which the church fails to even begin to preach the Gospel.

Christ and Katrina

I am from Biloxi, Mississippi. My family members are there now, enduring the brunt of Hurricane Katrina despite pleas to evacuate. As my father puts it, "Only sissies and Yankees evacuate" (I think this is sufficient explanation for why my ancestors lost the war). As I spent most of the night praying and flipping from Fox News to CNN to MSNBC, I am reminded of just how unnatural natural disasters really are.

The Psalmist reminds us that God put all things under the feet of Adam (Ps 8:6). The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we do not yet see all things under the feet of humanity (Heb 2:8), but we do see a crucified and resurrected Jesus (Heb 2:9). The apostle Paul likewise reminds us that the creation itself groans under the reign of sin and death, waiting for its rightful rulers to assume their thrones in the resurrection (Rom 8:20-23). The storms and the waves are one more reminder that the "already" has not yet been replaced by the "not yet."

Against the backdrop of the hurricane, consider the contrast between the prophet Jonah and the Messiah Jesus. Like Jonah, Jesus is confronted by a seemingly murderous storm, with his fellow travelers convinced they would perish. Whereas Jonah the sinner could only still the storm by throwing himself into its midst, Jesus exercises dominion over the winds and the waves with his voice. Mark reminds us that the boat's occupants remarked: "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41 ESV).

The CNN meteorologists can explain the hurricane only in terms of barometric pressure and water temperatures. We know, however, that at its root this natural disaster isn't natural at all. It is a creation crying out, "Adam, where are you?"  As we pray for my hometown and all its citizens, let's remember to groan along with the hurricane itself, "Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus."

Convenient Televised Miscarriages

Abortion is not ready for prime-time. Despite the fact that almost everything else can be talked about on television, abortion is, well, only talked about. Television characters often ponder the "right to choose," and often decide to abort. But there is always the last-minute miscarriage, or some other ironic plot twist that renders the trip to the clinic unnecessary.

So argues an article by activist Rachel Fudge for the May/June 2005 issue of Clamor Magazine, reprinted in this month's issue of Utne Reader. For Fudge, this is a problem because, in recent years, "it has become more difficult to introduce the issue of abortion on a TV show than it once was." She's right. Remember Bea Arthur's character's controversial decision to abort on Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom Maude (Okay, since I was three I don't exactly remember it, but you know what I mean)? Imagine now, however, a sympathetic leading role on a television sitcom aborting a baby, and then just moving on with the storyline. It is almost impossible to imagine.

For Fudge, this is problematic precisely because it highlights an American ambiguity about abortion rights. The "pro-choice" cause needs to see televised abortions she argues. "In the struggle to capture the hearts and minds of Americans, the reproductive-rights movement-like the rest of the progressive movement-needs to find new ways to present its cause openly and frankly." But, unfortunately in the author's mind, this just isn't happening on television:

For now, it's unlikely that TV viewers will ever see one of the Desperate Housewives unapologetically opting for a second trimester abortion when she realizes her fetus has profound genetic anomalies, or one of the lissome gals on The O.C. sporting an "I had an abortion" baby tee, proclaiming that ending her pregnancy was the best decision she ever made.

Fudge is right about television pop culture demonstrating American ambiguity at this point, which is precisely why comedian Chris Rock caused such discomfort when he publicly joked about picking up women at a "pro-choice" rally, since he knew they'd be sexually active. The question is where is this ambiguity coming from?

As Christians, I think we must find small glimmers of hope in such phenomena. The "convenient miscarriage" is a sign that there is at least some aspect of conscience still alive in American culture when it comes to the plight of the unborn. At the same time, we must recognize that consciences may be seared and calloused. We will see abortions celebrated on television in our lifetimes. But, until then, this cultural ambiguity may allow us to press our case, especially with young men and women who hold abortion out as the "final solution" for the consequences of sexual hedonism. Perhaps, just perhaps, we might be able to connect with a sensitive conscience when we ask: "So why do you think we so rarely see abortion on television?"