Pentecost and Education Day at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church

Numbers 11:24-30 (NRSV)

24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent.  25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.  27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”  28 And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”  29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”  30 And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Getting an education, going to school, is like having a job.  It has its good days and its bad days.  It has its steady tasks and its deadlines.  It has issues of getting along with supervisors and peers.  It requires an everyday dedication that at worst becomes drudgery and at best reveals new blessings from day to day.

In one way then, completing a course of study or finishing a degree is like finishing a task on the job.  Deadlines have been met.  The work has been approved. Catch your breath.  Okay, what’s next?

But in another way, finishing a course of study or a degree is a major crossroads in life.  It is both a consummation and a watershed.  It is an ending and a beginning.  It is a time of looking back and looking forward.

For this reason, we gather as a congregation to celebrate Education Day.  As God’s people, we gather today to consecrate the accomplishments and achievements of all who strive to better themselves through education.  As the body of Christ, we gather bearing sacramental witness to the work of the Holy Spirit who pours out grace upon grace into our community of faith. 

This Education Day is therefore both a joyous and a solemn occasion.  It is a joyous day of looking back as we remember the blessings of friendships, the fascination of new knowledge learned, the satisfaction of a tasks completed successfully, and the affectionate pride of our loved ones.  It is a solemn day of looking back when we remember the sacrifices required of us and others to reach this accomplishment, when we recall the many times when the line between success and failure was as thin as a hair’s breadth, when we relive the moments when the first try was not good enough, and when we meditate on the grace required to hold us up through the challenges we faced.

It is also a joyous and solemn day of looking forward.  It is joyous to revel in the knowledge that fifth grade or middle school or high school or a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree is done and we never have to do that again.  It is joyous for many who have been waiting while studying, looking ahead to the opportunity of work or further education that can only come when this degree or course of study is complete.  We are joyful when we realize the possibilities for serving God that have become greater because of what we have learned and now know. 

It is also a solemn occasion of looking forward.  One segment of life is complete, and whatever comes next will have a whole new set of challenges.  It is solemn for those who move forward to jobs or further education, knowing the opportunity will still require striving and struggle.  It is solemn to look ahead and see that God’s purposes for our lives draw ever nearer and require greater faith and discipline than we have yet demonstrated in our lives.

Education Day, thus, is a day for celebrating the joy and reflecting on the solemnity we meet at the current crossroads of our lives.

You may not realize that this Education Day has also fallen on one of the high holy days of the Christian year.  By habit, Baptists are keenly aware of Christmas and Easter, but we often do not hold in mind the third great festival of the church, Pentecost.  On Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit with power to enliven and commission the church to be the body of Christ in the world, receiving the task of living out the very purposes of God for all creation.  On Pentecost, we receive the calling to break down the barriers of race, class, nationality, language, and any other superficial distinctions, and we become the family of God, a holy nation, a peculiar people who up until Jesus called us together were not a people.  We become a family, not by blood relations but by a new creation, united with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection as a new race of humanity from every tribe and nation, people and language.

As the festival of the Holy Spirit and the church, Pentecost has much to tell us about how to celebrate Education Day.  On Education Day, we don’t want to merely acknowledge accomplishments from a secular realm of life, say a prayer over them, and then let our education and worship part ways for the remainder of our lives.  As I said earlier, we celebrate Education Day as a consecration of the work we have done in school, not for ourselves, but for the good of all of God’s people and for the glory of God who made us able to learn, grow, and achieve.  In that way, the diploma or degree takes on sacramental significance.  Just as Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and humanity, so we mark our educational achievements as steps toward taking onto ourselves the full stature of Christ, bearing his image as a new creation.

The Old Testament lesson for this Pentecost Sunday speaks to our reason for celebrating Education Day.  It is a familiar story about Moses and the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus.  Moses, as the leader of a great crowd of people, often found himself overworked and worn out.  Perhaps Moses had the kind of personality that sometimes led him to think only he could do things right.  If you want a job done right, he might have said to himself, do it yourself.  Or maybe, and this hits closer to home for me, Moses tended to put off getting things planned and finished.  Dragging everything down to the last minute meant that when the crunch time hit, it was too late to get the help that he needed.  We don’t fully know the cause of Moses’ problem as described in Numbers, but we do know how his God recommended that he solve the problem.

God told Moses that he was not the only one who could do the important tasks needed to lead the people.  He was not the only one who could discern the will of God and speak a word from the Lord.  So God told Moses to select seventy elders from among the people to share the burdens of leadership.  Spread out the work, God told Moses, and don’t be surprised that there are many more gifted people out here ready to lead.

Well Moses was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and he eagerly did what God told him to do.  As Numbers puts it, God “took some of the spirit that was on Moses” and spread it out by putting some on each of the seventy elders.  It is a kind of crude image in a way, but it gets the point across.  If we imagine that Moses had power from God smeared around all over him, then what was to prevent sopping up some of that and smearing it around on a bunch of other folks? 

So there we have it.  Moses and God transferred some of the leadership responsibilities to others, and the story tells us that all of the seventy elders began to prophesy, just as Moses had been prophesying.  Now we don’t use the word prophesy very well in our time.  We tend to narrow its meaning to be the same as predicting the future.  But Numbers is not telling us that the seventy elders formed a psychic hotline and started predicting the future.  No, prophesy means first of all to deliver a message from God.  These elders became leaders who spoke the truth of God and guided the people in solving their problems and getting their lives moving the right direction.  These elders became servants of God to serve the common good.  They began to focus their life’s work around making everyone’s lives better.  With all of these elders serving the common good, less of that work fell on Moses.  And since it was no longer just one man’s job, probably a whole lot more got done.

One of the questions that came to my mind in reading this story has to do with the number of elders.  Now we know that symbolically, the number twelve is very important for understanding the people of Israel.  The twelve tribes are a constant organizing principle, and so we might have expected God to tell Moses to choose twelve elders, one for each tribe.  Instead, God told him to choose seventy.  Seventy is not even a multiple of twelve.  That would have been seventy-two, making six elders per tribe.  But the number is not seventy-two, it is just seventy.

If we analyze the number seventy, we can see some possible reasons for choosing that number.  The most obvious thing to see is that it is a multiple of seven.  With seven days of creation and Sabbath, a seven year cycle of debt remission and letting the land rest, a seven day week, and for many other reasons, seven is also a highly significant number.  It is a number that expresses completeness.  It is a number that implies a cycle of restorative justice.  It is a number reminding us never to get too carried away with our schemes and activities without stopping to devote ourselves to God and renew our covenant relationship.

So choosing seventy has within it a symbolism of completion, of divine remembrance, and of just social existence.  But Moses did not choose only seven elders, but seventy.  Now seventy is a round number, and round numbers have a biblical symbolism of many and plenty.  If seven is symbolic of completion, seventy symbolized complete and more, plenty to accomplish the task.  So what we see in Moses’ selection of seventy elders is choosing a number adequate to do a very big job.

Sometimes in church we get a couple of people together and just try to get by, do the minimum to say we have fulfilled our responsibility.  In this case, Moses is choosing enough to get the job done effectively and get the job done right.  This plan from God for Moses does not operate in an economy of scarcity, fearful that if Moses does not have most of the power, then these other leaders will edge him out or steal his turf.  It is not about jealousy and control.  This selection of elders is about what is good for the people.  And unless Moses wants to be a candle burned out by next week, it is also going to be good for him.

So on Education Day, we acknowledge with Moses that the work of God is far too great for Dr. Turner to do it all himself.  The work of God is far to vast for a few people to hoard all the power of God’s Spirit as if it were their personal possession.  On Education Day, and on Pentecost, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has come with power.  God has poured out the Spirit on all flesh, on the young and the old, on the women and the men, on the slave and the free, on the Jew and the Gentile.  By striving for knowledge and working to complete a course of study or a degree, we offer ourselves as servants of God, as vessels of the Spirit’s power.  Today, on Education Day, we gather to consecrate this commitment to serve God and to share in the coming of God’s Spirit with power on each of you who have offered yourselves as a living sacrifice to God.  You today stand in the position of the seventy elders of Israel.  The Spirit is calling on you to use your gifts to prophesy, to speak a word from the Lord, and to serve the good of all the people.

Now there is another interesting detail in this story of the seventy elders that we do not want to miss.  Joshua got very disturbed about one thing that happened.  He was a young man with a lot to learn.  As the story unfolded, a couple of the elders chosen to lead did not manage to make the official meeting at which they would be set aside for service.  We don’t know why Eldad and Medad did not make it to the big house . . . I mean the tent where they were supposed to gather.  Maybe they got preoccupied with work they were already doing.  [From the pew, Dr. Turner inserted, “Maybe they overslept.”]  Maybe someone told them it was a mistake that their names got on the list, and they should just go on home and not try to be uppity.  Maybe they never got the message that they were supposed to go to the meeting.  Maybe a family crisis came up, and they decided to give up their dream in order to support the family.  We don’t know why they did not show up.

However, when the meeting was held, and the elders were set aside for their task, the power of the spirit came upon all seventy of the elders.  That means that when the other sixty eight who showed up for the meeting started to prophesy, Eldad and Medad started prophesying, too, back in the hood.  It was such a big deal that a youngster got all excited and ran to the tent of meeting to tell what was going on.  Joshua heard the news and started worrying that Eldad and Medad were getting out of line.  He burst out to Moses saying, “This has got to be shut down.  We can’t have stray people prophesying here and there and acting like they are in our select, elite group.  There are rules and precedents to follow!”

I suspect Joshua was pretty surprised by Moses’ reply.  The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on earth, and here is one of the occasions when we can see what that means.  Moses did not need to be the head man in charge of everything.  He was happy to see the work of God done, no matter who was doing it.  He told Joshua that as far as old Moses is concerned, he wished everyone would become a prophet of God. 

Whoa, Moses!  Thank you God for setting Moses’ mind on You.  On the day of selecting the seventy elders, Moses has caught a glimpse of Pentecost.  He is looking for and longing for the day when God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

Moreover, this day of setting aside seventy elders to lead and speak a word from the Lord also looks ahead to a day when Jesus gathered his followers and sent out seventy missionaries to all the towns and villages to tell them the good news of the Kingdom of God.  As it was when Jesus’ sent the seventy, the God of Jesus Christ is in the business of calling all of us out to take up the task of living and loving and bringing about the beloved community.  These elders could no longer live merely for themselves, but they now would live for the good of the entire community.  Eldad and Medad, back in the hood, would live for God and for the good of the whole community.  No more looking out only for number one.  Now they must look out for the way that we can all become one.

Some of you, in completing this season of school work, may remember bitter moments when you were told you were too dumb to finish school.  Maybe someone told you your clothes were too plain, your teeth too crooked, your hair too nappy, your skin too dark or too light, your speech too country, your voice too squeaky, your people too poor, your neighborhood to run down.  Maybe it was even someone with the status of Joshua who stood in your way and made you feel like you should not even try. 

But like Eldad and Medad, if you are here today, you have found the courage and strength to put that dispiritedness behind you.  You have risen over that adversity, using it as a stepping stone to remember that God has called not only this preacher and the teachers and the ministers and the deacons, but God has called you.  Maybe nobody wanted you to know that you could come to Moses’ meeting.  Maybe somebody got in your way.  But praise be to God that the Spirit is poured out on all flesh.  If God is calling you, nobody can stop the power of God from filling you with all that you need to do what God has for you to do.

On the Feast of Pentecost, we unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit who gives gifts to all.  The Apostle Paul, who sometimes reminds folks that he was a latecomer to his work, maybe like Eldad and Medad, wrote to the churches that we are one body with many gifts.  The Spirit gives each one a gift, and each gift is needed for the good of the whole community.  If you don’t cultivate your gift, grow it, and allow it to flourish, all of us will be diminished.  God’s Spirit is poured out on all of us, and our educational milestones of maturity are part of the process of learning to exercise our gifts for the good of all.

The Gospel Lesson for today comes from John, chapter 7.  In that passage, Jesus says to the crowds in Jerusalem that the day will come when the Spirit will work with power in the lives of all believers.  He says, “Out of the believer’s heart will flow rivers of living water.”  This is the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in all of us, and in all of you whom we recognize on this Education Day.  God is at work to will and to do in you what has not yet been seen or imagined.  The transformation of your life underway through the work of the Spirit will make you into a wellspring.  The gift of the Spirit will be the water of life for all those whom God sends your way.  Whether back in the hood with Eldad and Medad, or at the big meeting with the rest of the elders, you will be a vessel of the very life of God. 

Receive this work of the Holy Spirit.  Lift up your hearts to God.  You stand here today as a sacrament of the work of the Holy Spirit.  You are gifted.  Hasten to use the gifts you have received.  Amen.

Follow-up on a Day with Dad

After Dad and I made our tour of central Texas, where we saw not only hoards of goats and a few buffalo, but also a trio of elk behind a very tall fence, I traveled to NC for a few days.  Upon my return, I had about a week in Texas to get a few things done and prepare for a long stay in Durham to teach summer school at Shaw.  Yes, we did manage to get the university reopened for summer school, and I have two full classes.  We anticipate having the dormitories and dining hall reopened by the end of July in order to welcome back undergraduate students for the Fall 2011-12 semester.

Dad asked around and found a friend from church who was willing for us to get our rolling cart/shelf units using his pickup.  Moreover, having known my dad for some time through Sunday School class and other church activities, he decided to drive us himself.  He told me he couldn't think of much better than getting to spend a few hours with W. D. and hear him tell stories.

The drive was uneventful, and our friend was not disappointed.  All along the way, Dad would tell about a pastor whom he had known who served a church in the small town we were passing through, or about the time he preached a revival at a church on the side of the highway, or a funny story about a preacher or church in this or that town.  In fact, we worked Dad so hard that he started getting hoarse by the time we reached Huckabay, our destination for the furniture acquisition.  We took a slightly different route, and along the way we saw winter wheat and hay ready for harvest.

As I had judged earlier, the people at the Huckabay I. S. D. were very nice people.  If they got a laugh out of our last visit, no one let on.  Instead, the business manager apologized to me, as if her description of the units had not told me enough to save me from that first unsuccessful trip.  I reminded her that the auction listing did include the exact measurements, which I had failed to think through adequately.  It took only a couple of minutes to load both items into the truck and tie them down.  Then we were back on our way. 

We stopped again in Hico for lunch.  Dad and I had the blue plate special--meat loaf--which was excellent.  The dessert for the lunch special was "coconut pudding," basically a coconut merengue pie without any crust.  That's two pies I've tasted there--about fifteen or more to go. 

We got the furniture back home, letting Dad nap a bit while we told some of our own stories in the front seat.  I rolled them into the garage and piled them high with boxes, making a way to more easily move stuff around in the crowded garage.  That night, I moved another pile of boxes to get them out of my mom's way so that she would not have to deal with them while I was gone for a half the summer.  We also spent a couple of days getting her pantry and cabinets cleaned out and reorganized.  It was a busy and rewarding week.

The shelf units cost me a total of $16 at auction.  I suspect that equivalent units would cost $500 each, give or take a hundred dollars.  Even building them from scratch would take a long time and cost $100 or more in supplies.  They should be sturdy enough to do what we need.  Dad bought our friend lunch, and Mom cooked him dinner.  I bought him a tank of gas for about $80, making the total price of each unit $48 for me (I'm not counting the Day with Dad trip since we went to see Aunt Joyce.)  Considering the good times had by all, I would say we all came out very well.

A Day with Dad

For the last couple of weeks, I have been preoccupied with grading papers or with things that suddenly become crucial to do rather than grading papers.  I've been retreating to the back room, to a coffee shop, or wherever I can to try to keep my focus.  That means that the people I live with have also tried to stay out of my way and not expect much of me.

Going back a few more weeks, I have also been trying to help Dad get set up better with his gardening.  First, I found a utility sink on Craigslist to put on the back patio.  With a couple of fittings, I rigged a damaged water hose to run from an outdoor spigot to the sink.  The drain, for now, can drain into a bucket or into one of the dozens of potted plants he has in the back of the house.  That was a big success:  good quality sink, low Craigslist price.

My next project was to find some kind of cart to set up as a potting table and workspace next to the sink.  One place I looked is an auction site for government surplus sales, Public Surplus.  This site has lots of school equipment for sale, as well as police departments, county governments, etc., and you can sort by state.  I found a big printer table not far away in Georgetown.  It is the kind you used to see in Human Resources offices, out in the hallway, running constantly, printing checks with all kinds of attached documentation on fancy paper with perforations.  Those printers were noisy, so the tables for them often had a plastic cover to mute the noise while letting a person see the machine at work.  I thought this was a great idea for a mini-greenhouse work table, with wheels to boot.  But I did not win the auction.

I tried Craigslist again, and found a heavy-duty steel cart, tall enough to do potting work standing, and with big wheels.  The guy selling it said it was cluttering his garage and he wasn't using it any more.  A bit of negotiation, and I had a deal.  That makes two successful back porch improvements for Dad's gardening work.  And I have not spent even close to $100 for both items.

In all my heady success, I decided to bid on a couple of rolling shelf units, or more accurately classroom media carts that were surplus at a small school district "not too far" from where we live.  Remember that I have been living in NC for 24 years, so my memory of the map of Texas and distances is a bit rusty.  I did not expect to win the auctions because my bids were pretty low.

But lo, and behold, when the auctions closed I had won both items.  A couple of half-hearted bids had challenged my offer, but the price was way lower than I could have expected to pay.  I scheduled a day to go pick them up, and I did a little measuring of the doors to Dad's Chrysler minivan.  All looked fine to me.  Famous last words . . .

I reached a good point in my grading, came out of hiding, and Dad and I agreed to go together and retrieve the shelving carts, which I plan to use in the garage to make compact storage of boxes more easy to manage with these rolling units.  We checked the map, and to my surprise the location was 2.5 hours away.  Now that is small potatoes in Texas, but it is a bigger part of the day than I had anticipated.  To make double duty, we planned to visit Dad's oldest living sister, Joyce Harbour, in Hico, about thirty miles from the school of our destination in Huckabay.

The route was nice.  Before long we had passed out of the dried up region and into green meadows where there has been some consistent rain during the past month of storms.  The times, they are a-changing, and we passed from cattle ranches into goat ranches and eventually buffalo ranches on the road to Hico.  I don't remember many goats in Texas when I lived here before, and I don't remember ever seeing a buffalo ranch south of Wyoming or Montana.

Dad and I talked about all sorts of things on the trip.  I had brought some work to do, but the conversation was good and the scenery was interesting.  When we finally got to Hico, we took note of a little cafe called the Koffee Kup, which has received some recognition from travel magazines for its food and its pies.  I knew where I wanted to be in a couple of hours.

We headed on up to Huckabay, and I think you may know where this story is going.  It is a small school district with 192 students from K-12.  One of the business administrators met me, and she went to get the bus driver to show us where the carts are.  Immediately, he began to express reservations about where we planned to put the carts for transport.  I assured them I had measured the doors of the minivan and all should fit.  They called out the principal of the school to help me load things up.  These were generous, hospitable people.

What I had not taken into consideration was the depth of the carts.  While I had accurately found that the length of the cart would fit through the side door (45"), I had not taken into account that the door would not open wide enough to accommodate the 28.5" depth of the cart.  Nor would the cart fit through the back gate on its side.

I reckon some small-town folk got a few laughs about the city folk who drove all the way from Salado to pick something up without planning how to fit it in their vehicle.  I was chagrined and a little embarrassed.  The business manager tried to comfort me by pointing out that even if I had gotten one cart through the door, I would have had to make a second trip to get the second one because they were too thick to get both in the van.  Yes, Mike, there are three dimensions in space, even if you are looking at a two-dimensional picture.

One thing I have learned from Dad, and over the years have gotten a little better at doing, is rolling with the punches and not letting things upset me too bad.  This was one of those days that I was able to roll.  We thanked the people, scheduled a later visit with a borrowed truck, and headed back to Hico.  Dad picked up some chocolate candy for Joyce, and we went to see her at the nursing home.  I was happy that she recognized me before we even said anything.  We talked about this and that, caught up
on the relatives, gave our hugs, and prayed together.

Then it was off to the Koffee Kup for CFS (that's Texas shorthand for Chicken Fried Steak), onion rings, and pie.  Filled to satisfaction, we retraced our route back to Salado, having visited Aunt Joyce, scouted the two big shelving carts I bought for a total of $16 (and as Everly will never let me forget, spent way, way, way more on gasoline), eaten pie (a notable achievement in itself), and covered thoroughly the full range of the world's and the family's topics.  If there were any problems, we solved them several times over.  Even with the silliness of poor planning, that was a good day with Dad.

Witness at Bank of America Shareholders Meeting

On May 11, 2011, North Carolina United Power (NCUP) gathered with some allies to challenge Bank of America to clean up its act concerning mortgage modifications and foreclosures.  We brought banners and posters, including a banner displaying the text of Micah 2:1-2.

Associated Press photo

Alas for those who devise wickedness
  and evil deeds on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
  because it is in their power.
They covet fields, and seize them;
  houses, and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
  people and their inheritance.

Rev. Clyde Ellis came from Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE) came to speak about the disaster of foreclosures in Prince William County, VA.   Peter Skillern of Community Reinvestment Association-NC (CRA-NC) and Josh Zinner of Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP) in New York City addressed the slow pace of improvement made by Bank of America in dealing with the enormous number of troubled mortgages they service.

Iraq Veteran Blackmon of the Harry Veterans Community Outreach Service in Winston-Salem addressed B of A's work with military families.  Rev. Spencer Bradford of Durham Mennonite Church spoke about bankers and homeowners sharing the same neighborhood, in the spirit of rejecting the utilitarian vision condemned by the Prophet Micah.  Rev. Dr. Greg Moss of HELP, Rev. Dr. Carlton Eversley of CHANGE, and many more from Durham CAN, Davidson County HOPE, Orange County Justice United, and the NC Latino Coalition, gave comments or stood to represent the continued efforts to bring change and justice to the foreclosure crisis.

The big news of the day came from information shared with us by the County Clerk of Court of Guilford County.  In our effort to slow down the railroading of foreclosures perpetrated through "robosigning" and other fraudulent practices of a hasty and careless banking industry, we have been meeting with County Clerks of Court in NC to promote the use of best practices in foreclosure procedings, especially in the determination of who holds the original promissory note on the mortgage.  We found that in Guilford County alone, the Clerk of Court had identified over 4500 fraudulent or forged documents presented to support foreclosures.  That is one county.  We had specific numbers for each bank, as well as the names of robosigners whom banks had employed.  We are calling for a county by county audit of foreclosure documents in NC to get to the bottom of this illegal practice.

Associate Press photo

The following is the speech I gave to open the witness outside the shareholders meeting.

Good morning.  I am Dr. Mike Broadway of Shaw University Divinity School and Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church in Durham.

When theological educators in North and South Carolina issued a statement on this economic crisis, we identified key convictions about justice and the economy from our tradition of faith.  Among those convictions was that all people should share in the gifts of God's creation.  Another was that no society can allow a permanent debtor class to emerge, a kind of debt-sharecropping.  A third, among many more, was that the risks and benefits of the economy should be shared by all participants, not dumping all risks on the weak and paying bonuses to the elite.  It is with these kinds of convictions that we stand here today to address foreclosure fraud and mortgage modifications.

Some people say theologians and preachers should stay out of this business.  That's nothing new.  Long ago in the days of the Prophet Micah, the so-called leaders of the people  did not want to hear what he was sent to say.  The economy was in turmoil and people were suffering mightily.  But the leaders preferred a preacher who would gloss over it all and say, "Live it up!  Go have another drink!  Life is good!"  They wanted happy talk while people were losing their homes and livelihoods through fraud and injustice (Micah 2:6-7, 11; Isa. 1:15).

We don't want to be those kinds of preachers.  We don't want to be churches of the sort that Fannie Lou Hamer came to despise during her civil rights work.  She saw so many churches as hypocrites gathering "for the sake of paying the minister's way to hell and theirs, too."  No, we do not want to join the misleaders of the people.

Both the Prophets Micah and Isaiah challenged the financial and political elites of their day for being misleaders.  To the financial leaders they said, "you mislead and confuse the people," and "the spoils of the poor are in your houses" (Micah 2:1-2, 8-9; Isa. 3:12-14).  Back in those days, and now in our time, the financial elite manipulated the structures of the economy "because it is in their power" (Micah 2:1).  They preyed on the hard-earned livings of the working people.

The prophets said that the "add house to house" and "field to field," leaving "many houses desolate" (Isa. 5:8-9; Micah 2:2, 9).  In ancient Israel they foreclosed on the working class in massive numbers, transferring wealth from the producers to the predators, just as is happening in our day.  They turned from leadership to predation.  The prophets say the obvious:  the poor are losing their homes and livelihoods and widows and orphans are abandoned.

Why can this happen?  It seems patently unjust that some can ruin others simply "because it is in their power."  The prophets go on to say that the foreclosures and mass economic turmoil happen because political leaders "write oppressive statutes" and "turn aside the needy from justice" (Isa. 10:1-2).  Just yesterday, ten Attorneys General of the states met in Atlanta to oppose and try to derail a fair resolution of the mortgage crisis.  Recently, the Comptroller of the Currency suggested that the banks need not bear the weight of setting things right in this foreclosure crisis.  Then who will bear it?  If it is not a shared burden, then average homeowners will bear this burden that is too great for us.  We don't need this kind of misleader deciding our futures.

We think that Bank of America wants to be a leader for the average consumer.  We think that Bank of American can be a leader in finding a resolution for the foreclosure crisis that will be good for all parties.  That is why we are here today.  We are calling for leadership toward a just, streamlined process for mortgage modification, foreclosures as a last resort, and a solution that makes the Bank more profitable while keeping people in their homes.

It may seem that we are just a few average, unimportant people standing here today calling out for justice in the tradition of Micah and Isaiah.  But to quote Marian Wright Edelman, "You just need to be a flea against injustice.  Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation."  And enough fleas can transform the biggest bank, too.

Eat at Joe's

“I know what it’s like not to have.  My highest goal in life is to help people.”--Joe Bushfan

After Shaw University Commencement on Saturday, I finally made my way to a place I have been hearing about even before it opened:  Joe's Diner on Angier Avenue at Driver Street in Durham.  My friend Steve Bumgardner has been telling me about these great hot dogs that Joe Bushfan was selling out of a cart.  Quite a few years ago, Joe Bushfan married one of Durham's finest home-grown citizens, Elaine O'Neal Bushfan, that's Judge Bushfan to you and me.  He settled into Durham and made friends easily.  And he came up with a plan to make his life and work benefit a whole community.  I don't need to tell the whole story, because much of it has already been told here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

I do want to report on my first time to Joe's Diner.  It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, so the pace was slow after lunch and before dinner.  I studied the menu, introduced myself to Joe, and told him Steve had sent me.  I looked over the diner options:  the feature is his all beef hot dog brand from Massachusetts, Pearl Frankfurters.  A quarter-pound dog is close to the size of a large hot dog you might be familiar with.  A half pound dog is not much longer than usual, but really big.  Then there is the one pound hot dog.  I saw one being cooked:  it looked like a great big red snake.  It is thick and about three times or more longer than your usual grocery store hot dog.  He does have some skinny dogs that look familiar.  I only saw a footlong.

The menu has many different ways to serve the hot dogs, as well as some spicy dogs and sausages.  I went fairly conservative for my first try:  half pounder with yellow mustard, ketchup, cheddar cheese, and chopped onions.  With such a big dog, I had to ask for a few more chopped onions to make it come out even, and they were glad to pile them on.  The flavor of the frankfurter did live up to the reputation.  It was good enough to enjoy it for its own flavor, not merely as an excuse for a big pile of condiments.  I'm going to try something else next time.  The Apollo Dog looks pretty good, if I don't have to buy a whole pound of frankfurter.  For folks from Chicago, New York, or other towns with specialized hot dog styles, you can get what you want.

Besides hot dogs, Joe's has hamburgers, from normal to extra large, fixed up in a variety of interesting ways.  Then there are other sandwiches, including some pastrami that caught my eye (I'd better not tell my friend W. C. Turner, Jr., about the pastrami.  He says it is the only thing that successfully tempts him to give up his dietary discipline.)  And Joe's serves breakfast all day.  I definitely want to go back for that.

One of the specials on the day I went was a pork chop sandwich.  Now if I had not gone in planning to try the hot dog, that is what I would have eaten.  I can't vouch for Joe's pork chops yet, but I will not let a pork chop special pass me by again when I eat at Joe's.  There are some of the usual diner sides like fries, but I passed on all of that to make sure I could get through the big hot dog.  It was not as daunting as I had imagined.

Joe is a hard-working, friendly guy.  The other folks working at Joe's also aim to please, and they kept checking on me to make sure I had what I needed.  Tea and sodas are refillable, so I had my diet soda refilled to wash it all down.  Joe's got a score of 100 on its last health code inspection, and he has the good grade displayed on the front window for all to see.  The place was obviously spotless.  Joe did most of the work to restore the old building and install the fixtures himself.  A few of the more technical jobs were contracted out.  The black granite countertop he installed gave sitting at the counter a touch of class.  It has the look and feel of a place that has been around for a long time.  We all can hope it will be around a whole lot longer.

The place was kind of laid back while I was there.  A few people were eating, and the staff was serving and doing some cleaning up from the lunch rush.  Joe made himself a cheese steak sandwich while I was relaxing with my soda.  We chatted about the work he had done to get this fine establishment operational.  

The whole place livened up for a few minutes when someone brought up boxing.  Joe got animated talking about a recent pre-fight weigh-in.  Everyone had an opinion about who would likely win, where the best place to watch would be, or how these fighter compared to the ones from back in the day.  Customers hung on every word when Joe told about conversations with famous fighters from the past.  I suspect that kind of animated conversation is not unusual when the diner is busy.

I'll be in Durham for about six weeks this summer, teaching summer school and working on getting my house ready to sell.  I'll be checking back in at Joe's Diner to sample the food and fellowship again.  I hope you will do the same.

From the Jubilee File--Hon. Rt. Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

I have a file buried several layers down in my Documents file on the laptop.  I have visited it often in the past two years to save or retrieve documents relating to community organizing work on the economy.  I named it when I was working on a theological reflection on the economic crisis with a group of colleagues.  Since so much of the biblical discussion of usury kept taking us back to the Jubilee practices of the Israelite society.  So I called the file "Jubilee."  A big part of my life and creative work for the past two years gets documented in the Jubilee file.

It's been a Jubilee year, and in the past few days I have been reminded to count my Jubilee blessings.  Willie James Jennings, my younger brother, turned 50 last Friday.  I was in Texas, fittingly grading papers, on the birthday of my brother in the professoriate.  I lift an analytical reading report in your honor, my brother, to toast your Jubilee Day.

Willie has worked as hard as anyone has to be my friend.  I take it that some of my professorial instincts and habits--absorption in private study, narrowly focused thinking, lack of awareness of the passing of time, occasional absent-mindedness (to put it lightly), aversion to being told what to do and when, being enamored by my own words--make it a bit harder to be my friend.  I hope I have other qualities that compensate.  But Willie thought it worth his time to keep a friendship going.

Although we met as students, it was after marching for graduation in 1994 that we stoked the fires of friendship.  Willie and I shared Saturday morning coffee for many weeks while our daughters (my youngest and his oldest) hopped and skipped and leaped with joy in the little kiddie's dance class.  We talked through some hard times and some good times.  He put a black man's mirror up for me to look at my white man's life in a racialized world.  I knew that something bigger than I could handle was happening to me.  I had no idea that he was finding in me some hope for the church's deliverance from its demons of malformed desire and imagination. 

I did not know this because as a scholar-friend, Willie kept his cards close to his chest.  I understand this a little better now that I've seen him in action recently on a panel to discuss his book, The Christian Imagination.  Some people in the gathering raised questions which begged for a polemical response.  They either did not understand his arguments from the book, or they just wanted to see if they could get a rise out of him. 

But Willie did not take the bait in his Jubilee year.  He generously referred to the antagonistic comments as "matters of deep importance," or something to that effect.  I was ready to pounce, but Willie gave his winning smile.   It may be that he was simply being political, having learned such skills as a faculty dean for so many years.  But I think it was also a commitment to listen and remain in a friendly conversation with people who are sure that he has gone off on a fool's errand.

This Jubilee year I was blessed to read The Christian Imagination with a class of Shaw students taking Systematic Theology.  As with J. Kameron Carter's Race, in reading Willie's book with my students I continuously found ways that it could challenge my previous theology lectures and supplement the textbooks with which I have become so familiar.  The Christian Imagination opened doors for me and for my students that made theology more alive. 

So often when we take theology to be the gleaned gems of a long [tired] tradition, we find it hard to get a lever on how Christian faith, its leaders, its institutions, and its social productions could become so corrupted and contrary to the ways of the one from whom they take their name.  Books like Willie's give us hope that theology does not have to be merely the crusty oozings from the cracked plaster walls lining the edifice of Euro-American World Domination.  Can there be life within those walls of ageless stone?  Could the academy have a heart of beating flesh?  Or are we destined to have hearts of stone?

So it is that in this Jubilee year, Willie opened the floodgates which had held back a deep lake of theological reflection, fed by mountain streams and woodland springs, flowing through the dark places of middle passage, bottom lands of enforced toil, and the hopeful self-direction of a Second Great Migration.  Along the way, a few droplets from the deeps had come my way, but the halls of Duke and Shaw, only thirty miles apart, are worlds away from one another.  If there were open conversations in Durham, I was out of that loop. 

Moreover, the fast scholarly pace of read, reduce, destroy that makes up hyperacademia is not on the menu at Shaw.  I don't mean to be "hatin' on" Duke, but they really are caught up in the university-military-industrial complex, on a high-speed train toward producing the next world, and the next, and the one after that.  Surely, Willie wisely let only a few droplets out so that when the flood arrived, it would be a season of reckoning.  Folks on the train would have to stop and get off if they were going to have a word to say about it.  He gave us far more in this Jubilee year than we could chew quickly, unless we want to choke on it.

So the back and forth clicking to the Jubilee folder was more than I realized.  In his year of Jubilee, my friend ripped open a place in my heart through which the Holy Spirit may shine to make me a better man than I was, burn away the malformations of desire, and kindle an imagination of another way of being Christian, of being a community that longs to know one another as God's bountiful creation and election.

Happy Jubilee, Willie.  Love that house full of women with all that you have in you.  And save a minute for me so we can plot the revolution.

Improvised Egg Hunt

This is a funny story I posted on facebook.  I thought some of you might like it.

We have a few plastic Easter eggs somewhere in a box, but I could not find them. So after lunch, I got 7 egg cartons (1.5 dozen each) full of golf balls my dad has found in his yard.

That makes 126 golf balls. I tossed them around the yard for an egg hunt for the young adult chirrens.

They groaned about having an egg hunt.  Lydia even made the excuse that she had homework to do.  What's up with that?  I mean, they are only 19 to 24 years old.  Surely they still like egg hunting. 

Everly said it was because there was no candy reward.  We made the strategic mistake of handing out all the candy at lunch time.  So we came up with an other reward.  That made sense.  The egg hunts back in the day usually had a few eggs with money in them.  We did a little math, grouping the factors 7 x 3 x 3 x 2 until we came up with a plan.

I announced a bounty of $1 for every three golf balls, and they flew out of the house to get their share of $42.  I got just what I wanted:   David, Naomi, Lydia, Megan, and Casie (Lydia's buddies from Baylor who live too far away to go home for the long weekend)  giggling and running around the yard like old times.

We tallied up the collections:  19, 22, 23, 27, and 33.  Of course, David has always taken on egg hunts as serious business, and he got the most.  I think it's time for him to go professional.  All but two golf balls got picked up.  We rounded up to the nearest dollar, then scrounged together dollar bills, dollar coins, quarters, fives, and tens.  Everybody got a nice payout. 

For me and Everly, Hugh Delle and W. D., it was $42 very well spent.  Quoting a lyric from Michael Card:  "I would wander weary miles, and welcome ridicule, my child, to simply see the sunrise of your smile, to see the light behind your eyes, the happy thought that makes you fly."

The joy kept on giving.  W.D. came in the next morning having found one of the stray golf balls, and he was as happy as could be.

These few minutes of joyful play are not all that we did on Easter.  Earlier in the day, we worshiped at First Baptist Church, Austin, where I raised the eyebrows of the girls by singing loudly on all the harmony parts.  Roger Paynter preached an excellent sermon, almost slipping into a hoop, about the way that the greeting from Jesus to the Marys was one word that changed everything.  One good turn of phrase said, "He had us from 'Hello.'"  Out front of the sanctuary, church members had brought and placed flowers on the Easter Cross.

Storm at Shaw University on April 16

It occurred to me that some of you may have heard about the tornadoes that swept across parts of the Midwest, South, and Southeast in the past two weeks, and particularly about a tornado that hit Raleigh and Shaw University's campus.  I was present and teaching on campus during that storm, so I am posting the report I gave to my dean about the events of that afternoon.

Hello, Dr. Grady, 

As you requested, I am sending you a narrative of the events of yesterday afternoon on the Shaw campus.  Around 1:30 pm, a student spoke with me about the anticipated storm and its effect on our schedule for divinity classes.  I told him my opinion, which was that we would be safer in the building than we would be out in our cars if a dangerous storm did hit.  I went online to WRAL and checked the live radar reports on the storm.  It was still in the Winston-Salem area at the time and not anticipated to arrive very soon. 

After meeting with a student until about 2:30 pm, I went to meet my class in room 302 of Leonard Hall.  I noted to the students that the attendance was low, and they responded that some students had stayed away because of the predicted storm.  I repeated my opinion that we would be safer in the building tan out in our cars.  We checked the radar, which I projected onto the wall.  It showed storms which would arrive in our area in the next hour or so.  Then we proceeded with class. 

With occasional checks out the window, we proceeded with classes.  Apparently, at least two other classes were meeting in the building.  Sometime near 4:00 pm, we noticed the storm becoming much more intense outside.  Within a brief period, several things happened to alert us.  A student received a phone call from his wife, reporting that the TV weather report was placing a serious storm approaching downtown Raleigh.  Another student whose laptop was online received a weather alert about severe weather approaching downtown Raleigh.  And I noticed that the scene outside the window had become a blur with objects moving horizontally and none of the usual buildings, trees, parking lot, etc., visible. 

I advised the students to come out of the classroom into the hallway between the classrooms.  About that time the electricity went out in the building.  I closed every classroom door so that there would be no direct line to a window from which flying glass might approach us.  Some students asked whether we should move to the central staircase.  Certainly, a lower floor would be better, but passage to the staircase would require moving into the hallway between the restrooms and the main building, and I thought passing through there would be unsafe.  I urged students into the short hallway of the classroom wing, and we waited while the building shook violently for some time. 

When the intense storm had passed, and light began to come from windows around the building again, we reentered the classroom.  The outer window had bowed inward but not broken.  Water and debris had entered the room, getting all over Michelle Outlaw's books, computer (a closed laptop that seemed to only get wet on the surface), papers, and bags.  Otherwise, the room was in the same condition as before.  There were no broken windows on the third floor.   Cornelius Atkinson checked the restroom and told me that there was considerable water damage in the men's room.  I later went to check and found that light was coming through from above the false ceiling and some ceiling tiles were broken or damaged.  The women's room also had damaged ceiling tiles. 

Students milled around, talked with one another, and made phone calls for a few minutes.  We had a prayer of thanksgiving led by Horace Mason, and then we began making our way out.  I looked around the building.  In the Lewis Lecture Hall, at least one window had bowed under pressure sending water and debris into the room.  Overall, no damage was visible there.  I did not check the second floor, although other classes may have been meeting there.  I checked all the Wiggins Library windows, and no water had come in through them.  I saw Dr. Greaux also scouting the building before he left. 

A number of students, Mrs. Goldston, and Dr. Brock continued to assist one another and check out conditions in the building and parking lot.  Dr. Walker-Barnes, her husband, and her son were in their car as the storm approached, and they drove to the Leonard Building for shelter.  Students went outside to find that their cars had been damaged by broken trees and flying debris.  Claudia Cofield had a very large dent in the driver's side of her car from a fallen tree.  Cornelius Anderson had a broken window.  James Collins had the rear hatch of his vehicle pulled open by the storm.  Other students had windows broken.  My raggedy old 1989 Corolla was untouched. 

A tree was blocking the entrance to the Leonard parking lot, so people had to drive over the curb and grass to exit to the road.  Some of us attempted to pull the tree out of the way, but it was intent on staying where it was.  Two oil tanks were pushed over by the wind.  Between the two doors at the end of the Duplex building there is a tank painted silver.  It was lying on its side.  As best I could tell, it is not currently in use and likely had no fuel in it.   Around the back of the Duplex another oil tank painted brick red had been knocked down and pulled around the AC unit and the back porch until it reached the limit of its fuel line going to the furnace.  I sniffed around and smelled a faint whiff of oil when I got right next to the fuel line.  I could see no obvious leak at any of the joints, valves, or pressure points. 

I attempted to report the roof leak and the oil tank to security numerous times, but the power outages prevented my getting through to them.  Sometime after 4:30 pm I left to return home.  A few students were working together to tape up their car windows.  Dr. Brock, showing his pastoral heart, was doing his best to take care of everyone that he could.  Mrs. Goldston was also still in the building.   

You spoke with me around 5:00 pm as I was driving home, and you took an oral report on these events.  At that time I brought these two matters of the roof and oil tank to your attention.  I have seen reports of the Fire Department inspecting the Shaw campus today, so these matters should be inventoried and resolved soon.  It still may be advisable for you to forward this information to persons in charge on campus. 

After seeing the damage to the cars outside, I was glad that I had advised students to stay in the building rather than risk driving through the storm.  Of course, none of us could have predicted that Shaw's buildings would be right in the path of such an intense storm.  Even so, all who were in the building were safe with no injuries. 

Submitted respectfully, 

Mike Broadway 

Theology and Economy Update

For those of you who check in here now and then, you probably know that in 2009 a group of theological professors in North Carolina and South Carolina distributed a working paper, "Theological Reflection on the Economy."  It was an early step in a series of actions and campaigns through which faith communities have organized around economic justice in the current economic crisis.  Since that time, I have occasionally communicated with the group of professors about active campaigns, particularly the "10% Is Enough" work on usury pertaining to credit cards and other consumer interest.  This week, I sent a note to update them on the range of actions and campaigns in which North Carolina United Power has continued to organize in the past year and a half.  Here is an excerpt of the note I sent them.

Hey, folks,

A year and a half ago I was sending you lots of emails as we started work on a major organizing campaign dealing with economic justice issues.  As theological scholars and servants of the church, we recognize our responsibilities to follow Jesus in the task of serving the poor, offering ministry of relief, building ecclesial structures to reshape economic life in our neighborhoods, and seeking justice in the face of economic powers.  Thus, the theological reflection leading to the "Theological Reflection on the Economy" of 2009 was an exercise of our vocation which helped to provide grounding for faith-based people's movements which have gone many directions.  The document has been studied in churches, in minister's conferences, in seminary classes, and far beyond North and South Carolina. 

The paths of discipleship continue to open before us even now.  Let me highlight some of the work linked to our efforts of 2009.

1.  The "10% Is Enough" campaign in the Eastern US, London, and Berlin, has continued to bear fruit.  We did not convince banks to voluntarily cap credit card interest rates, nor did with convince Congress to cap consumer interest rates.  But we have built relationships with bank executives which are paying off in continued access and influence.  Moreover, leaders of the "10% Is Enough" campaign have met with Dr. Elizabeth Warren to help shape the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  Caps on interest rates continue to be a lively topic, in part because of the strong work of MetroIAF, of which we have been a part.

2.  The "6% Is Enough" campaign to protect military families from predatory credit practices and foreclosure has been an overwhelming success.  This is a NC United Power campaign, and we have worked with Wachovia/Wells Fargo and Bank of America.  B of A held ongoing conversations with us for over a year.  Last summer they agreed to everything we were asking for, extending benefits beyond the legal requirements for nine months of protection from rising interest rates.  For several months, they were reluctant to admit publicly that they had changed their policies in response to negotiations with NCUP.  This month, in a surprise turn, CEO Brian Moynihan publicly thanked NCUP and Gerald Taylor for our work in this crucial area.  Our fellow signatory, Dan Rhodes, was present to meet personally with Moynihan, the first time he has met personally with members of our organization.

3.   The effort to bring justice to the foreclosure crisis has taken off in recent months, in part because of the attention that NC Attorney General Roy Cooper has given to foreclosure fraud as President of the National Association of Attorneys General.  For this work, NCUP (also going by the name IAF-SouthEast) has made partnership with People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), National People's Action (NPA-US), Alliance for a Just Society, and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), all faith-based community organizing groups, stretching our organizing from the west coast to the east coast, from the Rocky Mountains to the midwest to the south.  We have met with key leaders, including Iowa AG Tom Miller and NC AG Roy Cooper, all the while keeping our efforts alive with Bank of America.  One summary of our proposals, "The Homeowner's Bottom Line," has gained significant interest, and most of its proposals remain on the table in the nationwide AG's investigation and potential settlement with the major banks to improve the foreclosure process.

4.  In conversation with a major funding organization (no funding yet) for theological education research, I have piloted a course at Shaw University Divinity School, "Pastoral Readiness for Economic Crises."  We covered financial literacy and financial freedom for pastors as well as a form of Christian formation for churches and their communities.  We looked at a wide range of theological sources on money, possessions, economics, and consumption from the earliest churches down to our times.  We looked at tools for churches to evaluate their relationships with banks that may or may not be serving poor communities.  We looked at models of community development, such as the Christian Community Development Association model of ecclesial politics of neighbor love.  Finally, we looked at faith-based community organizing.  With this trial run under our belt, I am hoping to work with some of you as partners in developing a proposal for adapting this sort of clergy training to other seminaries and to continuing education programs for current pastors.

5.  The predatory practices of payday lenders and car-title lenders will not die without a fight.  From Texas to North Carolina, from Mississippi to New Hampshire, strong lobbying efforts to open the door to astronomical interest rates on small dollar loans are alive and well in the state legislatures.  I've testified before legislative committees in Texas, mentioning you all and our work.  Just this past week, a bill was introduced in the NC legislature to reopen the door to usurious rates.  When there is the chance of ripping people off legally, there will always be people trying to do it.  Contact your legislator right away to stop the progress of HB 810.  South Carolina, having passed important reforms in 2009, seems not to have any pending legislation at this time.

On two matters I am seeking your response to moving forward with this work. 

First, . . . we are considering a clergy witness [at an upcoming event], with particular attention to dealing justly in the foreclosure crisis. 

The text of Micah 2:1-11 is directly relevant to this matter (not to ignore Isaiah 5:8-17).  The injustice of Samaria and Judah included coveting and seizing houses, ruining people financially (v2).  The powerful put people out of their homes (v9).  All the while they continue to practice the trappings of faith.  Predictably, they demand that anyone who might preach judgment against their greed should stop saying that stuff (v6).  The prophet says they only want a preacher who says, "Go on and get drunk.  Live it up!" (v11), while they "rise up against my people as an enemy" (v8). 

We hope we might gather 100 clergy and seminarians to speak a word of witness about the injustices of foreclosing on people whose financial security was destroyed by the greed, risks, and fraud of bankers, brokers, and insurers. . . . Details of when and where to meet will be forthcoming, depending on whether we believe we can gather an appropriate-sized group for witness.

Second, I will be trying to convene a meeting of some of you professors in late May.  If you would be interested in meeting for three or four hours to evaluate the course I put together and to brainstorm about expanding clergy training for economic life, let me know. . . .

For more information, see

News coverage of recent NCUP action:  here and here

Foreclosure Justice:  Homeowner's Bottom Line 

Broad Campaign for Financial Reforms:  Showdown in America

Against Usury:  10% Is Enough 

Military Families:  6% Is Enough 

Periodic updates on "earth as it is in heaven"

Madder as the Day Went On!

Last night, I fell asleep looking at a news story about the bombshell budget proposal whose poster boy is Rep. Ryan, R-Wisconsin.  Then I woke up this morning thinking about it, so I finished reading the article.  Then, as the day went on, I kept reading and kept getting more upset.

As has been the case with the Party of NO for the past few years, Social Security, Medicare, and the social safety net have been held up as bankrupting the country.  There is no doubt that the cost of health care is at the heart of what is destroying the people of the US and the economy.  But Medicare and Medicaid are not the cause.  Medicare and Medicaid are expensive because the health care industry is operating with out-of-control greed, and the health care industry lobbyists are running the government.

Pres. Obama and his advisers offered ideas about reform, but before reform could get started the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, the hospital industry, and on and on had derailed real reform.  What we got was, I think, a step in the right direction.  But it did not do what was needed to slow the growth of health care costs.  Its opponents also have no interest in slowing the growth of health care costs.  They only want to make American safe for health care profits.  So if health care is going to cost more and more, they want to make sure that taxpayers are not paying for the poor and elderly to get some.  That might require the wealthy to pay their fare share of taxes, and the sinister dementia of current right-wing politics is that the wealthy deserve all that they have gotten, and the rest of us deserve to do without.

As you can tell, I have been getting madder as the day has gone on.  I have tormented my facebook friends with post after post, which of course they have been free to ignore.  So I decided I would collect them all into one blog post for those who want to think through this with me.

around 11 am

Thank you, government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Don't forget, corporations are people, too. In fact, they are special people who get a better deal than the rest of us lowly human people. Mr. Obama, Mr. Ryan, stop posturing and FIX THIS!

10 of the Biggest Corporate Tax Cheats in America

f you or I were running a small business and we kept one set of books showing how much money we were making and a second set for the IRS that painted a picture of an enterprise on the brink of bankruptcy, we'd end up behind bars.

But that's standard operating procedure for corporate America.

around 3 pm

Let's see: spinach, hamburger meat, peanut butter, chicken, tomatoes, and besides food there's lead paint on toys, radioactive compounds in toys. All in all, doesn't Ryan's budget make sense when it fires all the inspectors? Mr. Obama and Mr. Ryan--tell the truth, serve the people, do what is right, FIX THIS.

Congress: Support funding for FDA food safety

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, urged Congress to support funding for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)s food safety functions in advance of a House hearing on the FDA budget.

around 3:30 pm

I gave some effort but should have tried harder at my kids' high schools. Let's hear it for this Atlanta group's recruitment for non-violence.

American Friends Service Committee/Atlanta: SCAP Brings Non-Military Options to Stephenson High

Stephenson High school invited Student Career Alternatives Program to their first spring career fair, which took place today. This marked our second visit to the Stone Mountain high school. One striking thing that we again noticed today that the student body is over 99% African American, which seems to further confirm the fact that Atlanta Metro school have become resegregated over the past 20 years.

We were all impressed with the counseling staffs dedication to the students and their post high school careers. So many high school counselors cave into parents request to hold career fairs after school instead of during school. The fairs that take place during school hours are so much more accessible to students.

We had hundreds of students come talk to us through the course of the fair. Students explored ways to serve their country, travel the world, find adventure, get money for college, develop artistic skills, and other job skills training without out having to join the military.

around 3:30 pm

Recruiting for nonviolence

Before You Enlist! (2011 revision)

Straight talk from soldiers, veterans and their family members tells what is missing from the sales pitches presented by recruiters and the military's marketing efforts. Produced by Telequest, Inc with support from AFSC. See http://youth4peace.org/ for more info.

around 4 pm

Here is the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Bill to Massively Increase Senior Adult Medical Bankruptcy presented by Rep. Ryan.

Representative Ryan Proposes Medicare Plan Under Which Seniors Would Pay Most of Their Income for Health Care

That is what headlines would look like if the United States had an independent press. After all, this is one of the main take aways of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the plan proposed by Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee.

still around 4 pm

The budget debate is between those who would reign in the mountains of money going to pharmaceutical corporations, physicians, for-profit and "non-profit" hospitals, and private insurance companies, and those who would keep letting them rob the rest of us to pay bonuses to their top executives.  Mr. Ryan and Mr. Obama, tell the truth, stop the "giant sucking sound" of money going from the people to the corporations.

The New York Times Thinks That Congress is Full of Philosophers | Beat the Press

The New York Times apparently missed the elections last fall. This is the only possible explanation for its assertion that the budget debate in Congress "is likely to spur an ideological showdown over the size of government and the role of entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare."

The people serving in Congress got their jobs because they are effective politicians. This means that they have the ability to appeal to powerful interest groups; there is no requirement that they have any background in, or adherence to, any political philosophy.

The debates over competing plans for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are most obviously about the distribution of income between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

a little later, around 4 pm 

Look at the third graphic line from the bottom: this is the projected percentage of health care cost turned back upon the retiree on fixed income in Ryan's plan.  Of course, if most of the seniors go bankrupt, then we can put them on Medicaid instead--oops, that will be gone, too.  Sorry, Mom and Dad, but we're better off if you die.  Ryan says this will save the taxpayers $400 billion over 10 years, which may or may not be accurate.  Ten years of war in Afghanistan has cost $400 billion, and eight years in Iraq has cost $800 million.  This year $119 billion is budgeted for Afghanistan alone.  Ron Paul, where are you when we need you?  Cut the cost of these wars and bring the troops home.  That way we can keep medical care available for seniors.  Cutting the cost of medical care is essential, but this is not the way to do it.

around 7:20 pm

Calculating the costs of killing--Cadillac Death Machines and Yugo Safety Nets

MLK, Jr., speaking about the war in Vietnam in 1967:  "You may not know it my friend, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 dollars to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only $53.00 dollars for each person classified as poor.  And, most of that $53.00 dollars goes to salaries for people who are not poor."

Available data on enemies killed per year in the past three years is sketchy, ranging from under 2000 (Army data in mid 2009) in a year to about 4000 (Wikileaks) to 5225 (Afghan government).  At a cost of over $100 billion a year that would mean somewhere between $20 million and $50 million dollars to kill each enemy soldier.  Grisly.  Sickening.  Expensive.

Who is benefiting from such an outsized cost for the blood and guts of war?  Not the taxpayers.  Not the soldiers.  Not the seniors on Medicare or the malaria sufferers of Africa.

So there you have it.  Mad.  Sick and tired.  The world is not the church.   Too often, the church is not the church.  The phrase "hell in a handbasket" comes to mind.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is despair, let me sow hope.  Where there is darkness, let me sow light.  Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.