Behold! The Power of Words

Preparing the music for this Sunday’s service brought me back in contact with Jeremiah’s call to prophecy. Previous contact with this passage (Jer 1: 4-10) has always drawn my focus to the prophet’s foreordination and the philosophical debate still taking place about free will vs. destiny. This time, however, I was drawn to the end of the passage. Yahweh puts his words in Jeremiah’s mouth and tells him that by doing so, He has put the prophet over nations and kingdoms. Yahweh’s words in Jeremiah’s mouth have the power to tear up, knock down, destroy, and overthrow. They can also build and plant. Does this sound familiar in our day?

 

The power of words. Jesus was the Jedi master when it came to using this power. His words to the people of Nazareth, his hometown, were enough to incite them to attempted murder (Luke 4:21-30). It’s never comfortable to hear one of your own people tell you that you’re too shortsighted, doubting, and stubborn to be worth performing miracles for, but their reaction was extreme, a witness to the power of the words directed at them.

 

Jesus’s words also had the power to heal. Stories of that healing power sometimes involve physical touch, but just as often, all Jesus does is speak and healing miracles occur. The words of Jesus have retained their power for over two millennia. “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” (John 8:11) “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you…Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14: 27) Powerful words, indeed!

 

The most powerful words attributed to Jesus might be these: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love…This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15: 9, 12)  Later, the apostle Paul sent some additional words about love to the Corinthians, hoping to heal the divisions among them. In the thirteenth chapter of his first epistle to them, Paul writes of the body of Christ, how Christ’s disciples are members of His body here on Earth, and of each member’s importance in that body. Each member brings with them essential gifts. Lest any member think its gifts more essential than the others, however, Paul goes on to say that all the gifts shall at some point fail and that none of them are perfectly manifest in humanity anyway.  Then he tells them only faith, hope, and love endure after everything else has failed, and that of these three gifts, the greatest is love. He’s not wrong about that.

 

As a verbal and vocal human, I’m keenly aware of the power of words and sounds to hurt or heal. I’ve always been sensitive to it. My love of and strong opinions about music are a direct result of that sensitivity. In my fallible, imperfect way, I do what I can to use the power given me for healing and the expression of love. I’ve seen hearts forever changed by the utterance of loving words. I’ve also seen the deep wounds rendered by careless or malicious words.

 

We have the power given us by the Creator to heal the rifts in our world by healing the hearts of those around us. The question in this life for each of us is whether or not we will choose to do just that.​

By Their Fruits

I have yet to see a battle that hasn’t sown the seeds for future conflict. Perhaps that’s why I do whatever I can to avoid participating in one. There’s a maxim I heard years ago that says: “Be careful who you make your enemy for you shall become them.” While I can’t find the source of it, that statement agrees with what I see in the world. It’s like in Orwell’s Animal Farm where the pigs end up looking just like the humans. That’s an extreme and fictitious example but it’s valid.

Taking out a bully by being one means there are now two bullies. Preventing or avenging a murder by murdering still leaves a murderer running around. In World War II, we were supposedly the “good guys” and all of the violence we committed was justified because we on the right side of the issues. Were we the good guys to the citizens of Dresden when we fire-bombed them? Were we the good guys to the citizens of Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

I don’t know how we could have better responded to the threat of Hitler or Hirohito but I do know we continue to feel the fallout from what went on, some of which came about because of how we chose to respond to the actions of others. After the war, we fell prey to some pretty shocking hubris that allowed us to think we could and should police the world and manipulate other peoples into acting in our best interests even if it was to their detriment. “We never lose a war” got us into Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria. We deposed a democratically-elected leader in Chile in 1973 because we disagreed with his ideology. We have held ourselves up as a model of liberty and virtue yet we have committed acts of oppression and depravity. I could go on, but I hope these examples will suffice to illustrate where I’m coming from.

On a much smaller scale, the toxic online culture we currently experience shows how little is truly resolved by drawing lines in the sand and screaming at each other, and it spills over from our PC’s, laptops, and smartphones into our streets and churches and schools. Nothing is fully resolved and the fights intensify.

I don’t know what the answer is. I know humans are inherently tribal. I know we easily view the world as “us vs. them”. I know there are times we don’t see any other choice but to fight for what we feel is right. That said, my friends, if you see me hanging back while a fight is going on in front of me, please understand that I’m trying to gauge what is right and what the right response is. I’m evaluating if I can truly help resolve the conflict by entering into the battle. I’m attempting to discern as clearly as I can in this human state where the truth actually lies and what my Lord would want me to do. I might even be seen speaking to your enemy, hoping to discern their intent. If you choose to interpret that as disloyalty or weakness, I can’t control that. If you choose to sever our relationship because I haven’t sided with you, I can’t control that either, but know this: I can only do what I feel is right and I will always welcome the opportunity for healing and reconciliation.

Peace.

Wandering Blind in Our Town

We all wander around blind, stepping on each other's feelings and wasting our opportunities to truly see and love each other. So laments the tormented Mr. Stimson in the third act of Ned Rorem's setting of Our Town. Mrs. Gibbs firmly corrects the frustrated former choir leader, insisting that it isn't always like that, but it's obvious from her strong advice to Emily not to go back and re-live life that she's also seen the mindlessness with which she lived life, and her new awareness stings.

Tonight was the closing night for ISU's production of Rorem's Our Town. It was a beautiful, soul-exposing show, well sung, well staged, well played. Vanessa Ballam's direction illuminated everything, making it glow with the heart one doesn't even see consistently in professional theatre. Scott Anderson with his excellent orchestra made music out of Rorem's complex score (Bravi, tutti!).

The character of Mr. Stimson (Austin Baum in an inspired bit of casting) stood out to me as possibly the most blatant illustration of the mindless, blind living the playwright wants to warn us about. One of those people Mr. Gibbs points out isn't really suited to small town life, Stimson is a man of some cultivation and deep sensibilities who strives to realize a delicate, otherworldly beauty but finds precious little of it in the singing of his choir. Paradoxically, his solitary vision isolates him from the beauty in those around him. "We loved you in our way," Mrs. Gibbs says. As a mortal, it was a love he couldn't receive. Trying to deaden the pain of his loneliness with alcohol, he further blurred his vision of what was present while clarifying his vision of what he was missing. It's a spiral that leads him to take his own life. I understand that spiral. My drug of choice is TV.

Emily (beautifully sung and capably acted by Taylor Schultz) has her own painful experience of seeing life as it truly is. Spoiler alert: it's only with post-mortal clarity that Emily can truly experience the feelings, the hopes, and the pain of those that surrounded her in life. It's all too much for her and she retreats back into the peace of death with its own kind of blindness.

I disagree that we humans lack the capacity to truly see the life and love around us. Many of us can see with our hearts, but the experience is too exquisite and, like Emily, we have to turn away. It takes a lot of strength to live life mindfully and it's not something we can sustain. Our blindness is the most human of our many frailties.

Having only read the play once, I was unprepared for the impact the opera would have on me. I came away from it with a poignant sense of the inevitable. It also struck me that with all of us stumbling blindly around, whether by choice or weakness, it's important for us to make kindness our default response. We can only hope that someone will do the same for us.

My Name is Bill and I'm a Republican

It's true! My name is William Clegg and I am a registered Republican.

This evening, Dr. Kert Howard, one of Pocatello’s foot doctors, called me on the phone. He was looking for Bill Clegg. There is or was an art teacher named Bill Clegg in the Poky school system, a distant relative I’ve never met. The doctor might possibly have been looking for that Bill Clegg, but it was my number he called so, after establishing I wasn't that Bill Clegg, I continued the conversation. After all, my first name is William and I am a registered Republican.*

Dr. Howard is running for a seat on the local school board, trying to unseat incumbent Janie Gebhardt in the election on Tuesday.  He was calling me, a fellow Republican, to drum up some support for his bid. He assumed that as a Republican I was also “conservative”.  The “conservative” vs. “liberal” gambit was all he felt he needed to play until I started asking him some questions about why he was running for office and what he planned to do once there.

Regarding his motivation for running, what I gathered is that Dr. Howard supports our local education system. He believes education is worth spending public funds on. He wouldn’t have been able to become a doctor without the foundation of a good education, which was obtained through the public system. Where he believes our current board members are lacking is in their apportioning of funds. He believes the district isn’t spending enough to attract and keep good teachers. It was implied that, once in office, he would be able to look at the budget and correct the problem.

When I asked him to specify where the funds would come from to pay those teachers, we got into a discussion of the percentage of the Bannock County budget that goes into education, not to mention how much is spent statewide on education each year. My impression was that he believes there is enough money in the budget already but that it is being less effectively spent elsewhere. Ultimately, he didn’t specify exactly where in the budget he would trim funds to then reapportion to teachers. (I’m guessing that’s because he hasn’t actually seen the budget or developed a plan.)

Another point of our conversation was that Janie Gebhardt is a very nice lady but that she’s “really pretty liberal.” It was some kind of mild pejorative. The point was made two or three times. Obviously, I was expected to react negatively to the word “liberal” and that should determine my vote right there. It was a sad example of how our politics have regressed to mere name calling. (In all fairness, there was no venom in his voice and it was clear that he had no hard feelings against his opponent. He was just doing what had worked for other Republicans and Democrats up the line.)

I asked the doctor if he had a website, Facebook page, or other web or social media presence to which I could refer and, possibly, refer my friends. He didn’t. He mentioned the website he had previously had for his state senate run a few years back and how easy it was to set it up. This time around, he didn’t have much of a budget, was really busy with his practice (which makes me wonder how much time he's going to have to be on the board), and was running the campaign on a shoestring. At that point, it was feeling like the call was running far longer than he had planned so I didn’t push how simple it would be to set up a Facebook page.

As we were ending our conversation, Dr. Howard thanked me for “grilling” him. I’m sure he didn’t expect it. Frankly, I think that word’s a little strong to use to describe my questioning. I was direct but always polite and friendly. He should have had better answers for me, though. I expect more from those seeking to publicly serve me and my fellow citizens, especially the younger ones.

Dr. Howard, judging solely from our phone call, I think you’re a nice enough guy, and I agree with you that we need to be paying our teachers more. They work so hard, are under so much pressure from so many sides, and we aren't even close to fairly compensating them for putting up with it all. That said, public service isn't a high school popularity contest. You’re going to have to do a lot better than the contents of our phone call to convince me you deserve to take the place of an individual who, at the very least, already understands the detailed daily workings of her job on the board and, at most, is a capable, experienced, and dedicated public servant.

* (I believe in representative rather than direct government, so I can honestly call myself a Republican in its truest sense, in case you were wondering. This handy belief allows my vote to have a more direct effect in local and state politics.)

Tyler Glenn is a Nice Guy

I met Debbie and Tyler Glenn this evening. Lovely people. I hope he finds the peace he's seeking and I hope more people will listen to her message. 

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7445957/neon-trees-tyler-glenn-meditate-finding-peace-gay-mormon-church

A Misguided Message of Frustration

I just submitted this email to NPR's All Things Considered.

"To the hosts of NPR’s All Things Considered:

I have a bone to pick with you.

In 1991, I was a young college student in Rexburg, Idaho, working at the Ricks College NPR affiliate, KRIC. Public Radio was entirely new to me then and I was deeply impressed by the news reporting I heard every day. Its integrity and fairness was far above any broadcast news to which I had previously been exposed. I came to trust NPR over any other news source, confident that at last I was hearing thoughtful, objective reporting on the events of the day.

That trust came to an end during this past election cycle.

I was fully awakened to NPR News’ political agenda during the primaries. Suddenly, descriptors became glaringly obvious in reference to the various candidates. Certain candidates became known as the “front-runner” or “Republican favorite”. Others were the “dark horse” or even the “long shot”. The use of the “front-runner” descriptor in connection with the names Trump and Clinton became so pervasive that it was impossible not to notice the bias accorded them and be angered by it. These were not harmless words employed to make the prose pop or the sounds sizzle. They were subtle forms of electioneering on the part of NPR News which has no business playing politics in any way. Perhaps this occurred in past elections, but this is the first time it was so obvious it jolted me out of my trusting complacency.

What would have been preferable? What would have ensured that NPR maintained its trusted status in the ears of this listener? To begin with, if descriptors had to be used, it would have been better to say things like “presidential hopeful” or “Democratic candidate”. Terms like these are purely factual, with no weight added to them. They leave the value judgments to the listeners, just as they should be.

Perhaps I’m naïve in supposing that you are different than the commercially-controlled news outlets. Perhaps I’m tilting at windmills to expect that you would serve the people with ironclad integrity, reporting the news in a manner as unbiased and as truthful as is humanly possible. Do you remain servants of the public or have you completely sold your soul? Up until now, I ignored the not-quite-commercials disguised as underwriting that bookend NPR news modules. Perhaps I should have been paying much closer attention to them.

I have been considering my words since the defeat of Bernie Sanders. Though I now address this missive to All Things Considered as you are the flagship of NPR News, my words are intended for the entire NPR News organization. You have lost my trust and support. I am confident I am not alone. Since November 9, I haven’t been able to listen to NPR News in any form without being physically sickened by the sound of it. The gambit played in which you took part to ensure the victory of one candidate over another has backfired and now all of us will suffer the consequences. (Are you listening, Ari Shapiro? You should be especially worried about this.) Given the incoming administration’s view of public entities, it is questionable whether you have the time to regain your integrity before the karmic axe hanging high above your heads starts its descent and it’s too late to save you or any of us. It might be already."

Orwell and Sanders: Today's Animal Farm

George Orwell's Animal Farm has been on my mind a great deal lately. That fable of the foibles that corrupted a grassroots movement is a warning to those of us who would see great changes occur in the United States and the world, changes that we feel would make this world a better place. Our desires, like those of the animals, are mainly to have a better life. Nothing extravagant, just better. We're tired of working to exhaustion just so someone else can profit from it. But in the story, something went wrong...very, very wrong, and it's taken me a while to put my finger on just what it was.

Yesterday, I shared on Facebook a Bernie Sanders campaign video created for the citizens of New York. Its message is inspiring, calling on us to stand together instead of letting our differences be exploited by divisive fear. Nothing harmful in that, right? Isn't that just the message we need right now? For those of us in Pocatello, aren't we seeing in a very real way how much we need that message?

Well, yes it is! It's exactly what we need to hear. We shouldn't blame Muslims for our troubles! Immigrants aren't purveyors of crime! Gays aren't the enemy! Women aren't the enemy! Our enemy is... We need to stand together against... The true blame is on...

Wait. That's...divisive fear. Those big bankers and corporate bosses are homo sapiens too. I don't think he realizes it. He just became his own enemy.

You see, that right there is where the animals went wrong and so will we if we're not careful. The animals that spearheaded their revolution ended up looking just like those they had overthrown. Why? How did that happen? How DOES that happen over and over again, not just in stories but in our own history? How did Bernie let that happen in his own ad?

"Be careful who you make your enemy for you shall become them." Most of my friends know how hotly I "feel the Bern" right now, but this is one very important point where I disagree with him, and incidentally is why any comparison of Bernie to Jesus Christ makes me wince. Bernie is a good man, with an all-too-rare vein of integrity as wide as the Grand Canyon...but he's flawed just like the rest of us. He's the best by far of the current crop but he's not our Savior. In the video, Senator Sanders encourages us to tell the angry and disenfranchised that their righteous anger should be directed towards their true oppressors, but this is how the cycle is perpetuated and why Christ's message of love through forgiveness is so crucial to breaking it.

We need to stop making our own enemies.

When we declared Communism and the Soviet Union our enemy, didn't we start exhibiting many of the same features of their society, complete with our own KGB and propaganda machines? How many terrorist organizations have we supplied with money and guns to topple regimes in other countries, becoming in essence terrorists ourselves? It's very uncomfortable but if we look at America today, we often look like our supposed enemies because we are. We are our own enemies. We need to stop making enemies. We need to assuage the anger. We need to calm the troubled waters and stop the hate from the inside out.

I'm not saying the people of the United States or the world should submit to continued exploitation, and frankly ending that practice could include some firm and even forceful behavior, but the motivation behind our actions makes all the difference in the world to the consequences that will follow. Lasting change is motivated by love.

A great if fictitious example with which most people are familiar is Darth Vader. He wanted good things and was trying to fight for what he felt was right, trying to fight for positive change, but he allowed his anger to rule him, to blind him, and he became the very thing he started fighting against. Anger and fear lead to selfishness which is the opposite of love and are the very things that corrupt virtue and usurp nobility.

If this rising progressive movement is to escape the failure of past attempts, unassailable virtue and steadfast nobility rooted in wise and determined love are essential. While we must acknowledge our feelings of anger and hurt, those feelings must not be allowed to turn into hate.

"I say unto you love your enemies. Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." This is the real revolution. This is how we ALL will win.