Rekindling a Longing for the Warmth of Truth

 My first experience was in the mid-1980’s when every year or so a non-descript letter would arrive at my office warning me, as a pastor, and enlisting my support against efforts by atheist agitators to pass legislation in Congress banning religious broadcasts from the airwaves.  The Federal Communications Commission was mentioned; a particular bill number was referenced and I was urged to contact my congressman (they were all men in those days) to encourage his opposition.  It seemed shocking that such a move could be gaining traction in the hallowed halls of government, and wanted to learn more.  The internet was still years away, so investigation required more rudimentary tools than Google. I picked up the phone, called Directory Assistance for the number of the Federal Communications Commission, and proceeded.  A kind official took my call, and heard my questions.  There was no such regulatory change being considered, he told me.  There had been no such House Bill introduced.  That legislative file number did not exist.  It was all a hoax.  He thanked me for doing anything I could to counter this annoying conspiracy theory (mine was clearly was not the first call he had fielded), sent me documentary, supportive evidence by mail, and I filed the information away after throwing away the provoking letter.  

Until the next one came along, fanning the very same flames.  And the one after that.

 

And then there was the revolving suspicion about the Proctor and Gamble logo (satanic) and later the Starbucks logo (demonic).

 

Falsehoods, all of them.  Conspiracy theories stirred up and fanned by the nervous, the fearful, the intrinsically suspicious and the religiously paranoid.  But those were the good old days, when such fictions were promulgated only every few years.  Now they are manufactured multiple times daily.

 

In recent days, just to note one example, a story has been circulating on Facebook – an angering story; the kind that makes you mutter about how mad and miserable the world has become – a story usually introduced with the attribution, “shared by a friend”.  The story reports that the misery in Texas caused by the recent extreme weather and resulting power failures was at least exacerbated by the refusal of the current administration in Washington to allow state authorities to ramp up the state’s generating capacities. The result, according to the story, was the human tragedy that ensued – misery that could have at least been reduced had the federal authorities been less politically punitive and more humanitarian, more lenient, flexible and responsive. 

 

It is a horrifying story – precisely detailing and colorfully illustrating the kind of political maneuverings that have infuriated the electorate. 

 

The only trouble is, the “news” story was false.  In fact, it is worse than false.  It gets the story slanderously backward. Yes, Texas authorities requested a variance from federal regulators in light of forecasted weather conditions (variances in the level of polluting emissions permitted, not power generation per se), and the request was…granted.  Matter-of-factly.  There were no arguments, no back and forth, no wrangling or hand-wringing or horse trading.  There was the simple agreement that in light of the approaching danger and anticipated emergency demand, the variance should be approved.  Power generation ramped up in Texas, until malfunctions caused by the bitter temperatures intervened.  There was no conspiracy.  There was simply weather too cold for the equipment as it had been configured. There is almost certainly blame to be assigned for the suffering thousands experienced, and past decisions to be reviewed and reassessed, but it serves no one to point fingers wherever it feels good. And in this case, it simply isn’t Washington, no matter how satisfying that might be.

 

How do I know this?  Troubled by the allegation, I looked into it.  I researched it.  It isn’t hard to do these days.  The story was easy to track down; easy to bump into the miscellaneous fact checker websites who’s business it is to pursue their own truth seeking.  With serious and honest pursuit of accuracy, they test, they footnote and document; they question and verify.  They both confirm and debunk.  It turns out that the original story was concocted by an ideological organ with a political ax to grind – one that Facebook has flagged as inaccurate and deceptive, which is why the story is passed along now without attribution. “Friend” to “friend.”  Falsehood to falsehood.

 

I cite this example not to vilify those who perpetuate the falsehood.  I bring it up as an example of the ongoing fomenting that simply needs to, well, run out of gas.  There ought to be room to disagree on policy issues - we will, indeed, need to argue; but let's argue intelligently and well.  Let us do each other the favor of starting with bonafide information. If we are going to debate, let’s at least debate over what is, rather than what we might enjoy thinking might be.  It might be too much to hope that we “expect the best,” of each other, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to assume the worst.  We don't have to be this morally flaccid, this intellectually facile, this relationally puerile.

 

It simply isn’t that hard to verify information. We should have learned how to do that in junior high. And learned that we ought to do so while younger than that.  Let’s stop making fools of ourselves and do our homework. The world can’t afford a nation of loose cannons, constantly firing.  In a circle.  

 

There is enough mayhem blighting this earth – more than enough global accidents to slow down and gawk over as we pass by.  Surely what the world needs from us is leadership, not simply one more source of bloody and morbid entertainment.  

It Isn’t Socialism, It’s Power Sharing

When Lori and I installed solar panels on our farmstead several years ago, we had a choice to make.  “For whom is this energy being generated?”  It was a pragmatic question, but also a philosophical one.  If our intent was to be “off the grid” and generate electricity for our household alone, we would need to add battery storage to the system to sustain us through the nights and even those cloudy or snow-covered days when generation is diminished or halted.  If we intended to remain connected to the world at large, then batteries were an unnecessary expense.  Functionally, we didn’t need to be self-sufficient.   Power lines are readily available in our area; our home, in fact, was already connected to them.  

 

The larger question, then, would lean us into the philosophical realm.  For whom, indeed, would this energy be generated?

 

That we ultimately opted to connect our solar panels to the energy grid strikes many as incomprehensible.  We remain as subject to power outages as anyone else on our gravel road.  A propane-fed backup generator gets us over those humps.  Because autonomy – complete self-reliance – was never our intent.  Instead, we rather like the symbiotic reciprocity of contributing, and receiving.  The larger body of electrical consumers benefits from our overproduction while we earn credit; when we under-generate, we use those credits and then purchase more.

 

Somehow, in recent years, that system of mutual benefit has gotten a bad name.

 

Of late, America has been characterized as an amalgam of totally independent monopods who simply wear the same jersey.  There is no “us,” just an accumulation of “me’s” who are singularly responsible for themselves.  We are “free”, to cite the current holy incantation.  “Don’t fence me in.”  “Don’t tread on me.”  

 

So it was that the Mayor of a Texas town, amidst the cold darkness of his town brought about by the power outage of a paralyzing winter storm, could shout to his constituents:

“The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!... If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your lazy is direct result of your raising! [sic]…. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW will work and others will become dependent for handouts…. I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves!... Bottom line quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family! Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish [sic].”

 

“Take care of yourself.”  Anything else, we are told by the angry Mayor and just about anyone else in the prevailing thought of the day, is socialism.

 

But “socialism” is a shibboleth; a tired and sad trope used to divide the good from the bad, the lazy from the strong, the righteous from the parasitic.  Expecting one another to live and contribute their best, to take personal responsibility, and to be stewards of their gifts, resources and opportunities does not negate the concomitant truth that “we are in this together.”  I learned the latter not from some Marxist manifesto, but from my parents, my church community and its example, and the West Texas town in which I was raised.  I learned the former from those same teachers who found in the two principles no contradiction.

 

It isn’t an alien rapport.  We receive this paradoxical instruction from the craftsmanship of our own civilization – celebrating independence and privacy and the stimulating value of personal freedom, while simultaneously obviating those freedoms in the interest of the common good. We impose traffic regulations, erect stop signs and string signal lights to instruct who should “go” and who should “stop.”  We require seatbelts and liability insurance.  We abridge our otherwise wide-ranging freedom of speech, outlawing such mischief as crying “fire” in a crowded room where there is no blaze. We require, with only limited exceptions, vaccinations against virulent diseases.  These examples, along with thousands of similar abridgments – all for the common good.  Do we go too far at times?  Of course!  But we can just as harmfully become too libertine.  The political system exists, in part, to manage the tension between too little and too much.  Surely we are sophisticated enough to resist the silly – and dangerous – binary alternatives of all one or the other.

 

But if the disciplined witness of civilization isn’t teacher enough, we could revisit the scriptures we claim to hold in such high esteem.  Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures it was the failure not only to honor God in prayer and piety, but also the failure to honor God in the care of one another – especially the poorest and weakest - that routinely earned the people holy wrath.  In the Christian scriptures, the “one anothering” passages express the core of the gospel message – love one another, protect one another, feed and clothe and shelter and attend to one another.  Loving God is all mixed up with loving neighbor and self.  According to the letter to the Ephesians, we are to honor and hone and mature our particularly personal gifts not for the advancement and aggrandizement of self, but “for the upbuilding of the whole.”

 

The upbuilding of the whole.  Because we individuals are in this together.

 

It has been cold here in Iowa these recent weeks – bitterly, deeply sub-zero cold.  In the main chicken yard behind our house are two coops, between the two of them appropriately designed to house our 30 or so laying hens.  Chickens, as a rule, are fairly independent creatures, drifting off to remote parts of the yard to hunt and peck and, when back at the feeders and waterers, shoving each other aside to access fair share.  But on these bitter winter nights, all 30 of them pack themselves into a single coop that, as I mentioned, was sized for half that number.  It’s crowded and cramped and likely uncomfortable.  They seem to intuit, however, that the night will be difficult, and that if they are to survive, they need the warmth and shelter of each other.  It is, to return to the beginning, a kind of “power sharing agreement.”

 

Is that socialism?  

 

Once upon a time I would have responded, “No, that is common-sensically human.”  But perhaps I have unjustly attributed it.  The most we can say at this point is that it is common-sensically poultry.  They somehow comprehend that they are in this together.  

 

The rest of us apparently still have a few things to learn – or, perhaps more charitably, a few things to remember.

A Day for Different Conversations

 I know, everyone is talking about the impeachment trial, variously celebrating or decrying the outcome.  Fine.  It’s not an unimportant conversation, simply secondary.  While the ex-President wasn’t convicted of treason, he was unarguably convicted of being despicable – a disgraceful leader, an affront to all that is decent, and an international embarrassment.  But I don’t suppose we needed a trial to establish that.  We knew it already.

 

So, why waste my time mired in such nonsense?  It’s Valentine’s Day, after all, and politics and the current dystopian embodiment notwithstanding, I have plenty of reasons to celebrate Love.  Yes, Love.  Capital “L.”  It is a worthy alternative concentration.  I am, when I survey my personal landscape, surrounded and routinely animated by dear and warming friends who beckon, without even knowing it, the brighter lights of my imagination.  I am cradled by a son and daughter and their significant others who augment my soul with a fresh sense of both roots and wings; with parents who continually excavate the best in me and nudge me toward more; and extended family who, like the flying buttresses of gothic cathedrals, steady and inform and expand me, reinforcing my flightier fancies.

 

All that, plus I get to spend my life with Lori Jo Alexander Diebel.   That, as I have spent the past 25 years or so discovering, is a far more wonderful topic still.  Where do I begin?  

 

On the day that I proposed, I picked up my guitar (it’s a sickness, I know.  On my gravestone will likely be carved the epitaph, “There’s a song for that.”) and sang a song.  It was a song by David Wilcox called, “Kindness,” which, though it might not sound like the most romantic tune of the ages, perfectly characterized my hoped-for bride – then, as now.  Kindness certainly doesn’t exhaust my beloved’s virtues – the list, in truth, is inexhaustible – but it is, indeed, up there at the top.  Beauty, welcome, joy, and yes, kindness.  And encouragement; how could I forget that?  Those, of course, and indulgent support.  This, from a guy who prematurely quit his job to uproot our whole marital enterprise in order to move the two of us to the country to completely start over as cultivators of the seeds, stewards of the soil, and fomenters of a fresh imagination.  She didn’t sign on for this – or, for that matter, the chickens, or the coming bees that eventually went along with it – but here we are…with her blessing, her support, and her immersion.  

 

All that, and she still makes me weak in the knees.  Well into our 24^th matrimonial year, I still feel the flutter.  It is a major part of my life’s ambition to give her reason to feel it, too. 

 

More than a distraction from troublesome current events, you are my current event, this day and always.  Happy Valentine’s Day, Lori Jo.  As the old classic sings it, dear Valentine, in your company and your embrace, “each day is Valentine’s Day.”  I’m forever grateful for the mythical arrow that has pierced my heart, and by the piercing makes me, if not exactly whole, at least yours. 

 

And that is quite enough.

Whenever

Whenever...

On this weekend morning when the “feels like” temperature, according to the National Weather Service, is -25, and the cultural temperature is colder still, I resolve to look for the presence of God:

 

“WHENEVER the mind of a person has been uplifted; 

 

whenever I have frustrated the temptation to deny the truth within me, or to betray a value which to me is significant; 

 

whenever I have found the despair of my own heart and life groundless;

 

whenever my resolutions to be a better person have stiffened in a real resistance against some form of disintegration; 

 

whenever I have been able to bring my life under some high and holy purpose that gives to it a greater wholeness and a greater unity; 

 

whenever I have stood in the presence of innocence, purity, love and beauty and found my own mind chastened and my whole self somehow challenged and cleansed; 

 

whenever for one swirling moment I have glimpsed the distinction between good and evil courses of conduct, caught sight of something better as I turned to embrace something worse; 

 

whenever these experiences or others like them have been mine, I have seen God, and felt His presence winging near.”

(Howard Thurman, Deep is the Hunger)