The cardinal virtues in 2020

We have endured pandemics and plagues throughout history. We have never had the scientific ability to address them as we do now.

However, we’ve never been as acculturated to expect immediate results as we are today. Patience is not our virtue.

Viruses are ignorant of cultural expectations, and pandemics are not brief house guests. They overstay their welcome.

The 1918 influenza (e.g. Spanish flu, which actually began in Kansas) lasted for 15 months. That is the short end of most pandemics.

We have unprecedented science and knowledge to address Covid-19. We have historically unmatched financial resources, albeit unequally distributed.

Do we have the will? Plato (and the Bible) stated the case still relevant today: can we appeal to the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance and fortitude for such a time as this?

The Bible recasts those virtues as faith, hope and love. The greatest of these ...

I miss worshiping with my congregation. But ...

Thankfully, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declined the request Sunday (April 5) of Republican legislators who called for the resumption of in-person services for Easter and Passover.

But to the hubris of the suggestion in the first place: No. No on so many levels. Not the least of which is that the first rule of our faith is to do no harm. Do we miss worshiping together? Emphatically yes. This social distancing is a devastating blow to our expression of Christian community.

Is the church essential? We certainly believe so. But it is idol worship to assert that our desire to be together trumps the necessary precautions asked of schools and other entities to protect our public health. A loving God would not wish us to flaunt our faith in arrogant disregard for the vulnerability of our communities.

These lawmakers' ill-advised statements leave those of us seeking to responsibly minister to our faith communities having to reiterate again and again the need to listen to public health officials and stay home. "Do no harm."

The request of these lawmakers also is disturbingly on trend with the false narrative spun in the halls of government: That one party represents God's interests, and that the other is antagonistic to faith.

That Republicans would feign to speak for people of faith at such a precarious time is only the latest calculation designed to appease right-leaning voters in the name of religious values.

That Democrats disengaged from the conversation decades ago leaves them maddeningly ineffectual if not sadly silent in such public dialogues.

None of this should be surprising, any more than the president's disingenuous pining for the churches to be "packed" on Easter as a way to disguise with a religious cloak his contempt for science and knowledge.

We are, after all, entering Holy Week. When the Galilean sage Jesus so challenged the self-interested motives of government that it led to his death. Every time we worship the government, especially when it claims to speak for God, we unwittingly join the angry mob in rooting for the wrong savior.

We will, with deep sadness, not worship together this Easter Sunday. Not because we don't believe God will protect us. But so that God will save us for all the good that needs to be done during and after this time of pandemic.

Rev. Steve Scott, Milton United Methodist Church, Special to the Journal Sentinel, Published 9:09 p.m. CT April 5, 2020

When systems theory negates grace

We have done well to learn and adapt systems theory to groups of human interaction: family, workplace and church, for example.

Thanks to Edwin Friedman and others, we understand our behavior is shaped by those with whom we interact. An assertive adult may become passive as the child they once were when reunited with family at Thanksgiving. An introvert among peers may emerge gregarious among those older or younger. A conflictual personality in one setting may be serene in another.

Systems theory allows us to gain deeper understanding of the groups in which we work and live. It can help us see where change is needed and understand why it's resisted. (Systems tend to preserve themselves more readily than adapting.)

image by Emaze

It's specious, however, to blame everything on "the system."

"The media are dishonest." "Government is corrupt." "The church is broken."

Yes, systems can promulgate (or protect) dishonesty, corruption and brokenness. But it's superficial, and too easy, to blame everything on the system.

"The church is broken," for example. Yes, the church too often falls far short of Jesus' command to welcome, teach and heal in his name. But to blame everything on "the system" is like saying all politicians are crooks. I've had both politicians and preachers in my family, so I guess I take exception.

Whenever I hear someone begin "The church ..." or "the media ..." I'm on alert that an expression of pain and frustration is to follow. I need to listen. I need to honor the person's experience. But by "the church" do they mean all of Christendom? Am I to blame the entire enterprise, given my knowledge that most of the church members I know are doing their best?

I resonate with Lillian Daniel, who wrote Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong To. I don't mean to negate real experiences of real pain caused by neglectful or harmful practices by the church. Even, or especially, those perpetuated by systems of embedded power and privilege by the few over the many.

(I listened to the stories of too many victims of clergy sexual abuse to not be horrified by "the church's" tendency to cover-up sin and crime. But it's intellectually lazy of me to castigate every priest, even as I weep with the victims.)

Recently, a colleague was unfortunately slighted in a most untimely way by a promised action that wasn't acted upon. I resonated with their disappointment. But that disappointment, vented in a public way, became a denunciation of "the system."

"The system," in fact, included me. And others who worked very hard. And a ball was dropped. Quite unfortunately, I might add. The "process" suffered from a most untimely glitch. Is the "system" broken? That's the easy assertion, when we take systems theory to the point where the complexities of human interaction are reduced to a matrix of inevitable right or wrong behavior.

We need to take responsibility when our "process" fails. But when we blame everything on "the system," we leave little room for understanding the dynamics of human error, forgiveness and grace that govern our relationships with each other.

Seeing from God's view

1969 was a profound year in American history. 

However, for the fact I was 8 years old that summer, I was oblivious to much of it. But on one warm evening in the summer of ’69 I got to stay up late and, with most of the planet, watched Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the moon. Fifty years ago, it was clearly one of those “Where were you when …?” moments in our lives. 

I’m quite certain that even my childhood self grasped the enormity of sailing this new sea, of climbing this highest mountain, of going to the moon because we chose to go to the moon, and that we chose to do such a thing not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

That President Kennedy had memorably spoken those words a mere seven years earlier would’ve impressed even my pre-adolescent self to realize that time was accelerating in unprecedented fashion, and that humankind was living in an era of rapid scientific advancement and breakneck societal change.

Because July 20, 1969, was a Sunday, I’m quite certain I was in church that morning. The message, alas, is beyond my recall. So I’ve wondered, how did we as people of faith contemplate this remarkable achievement? What did preachers preach? What did Sunday schools discuss?

I’d like to imagine that if I were to preach that day, I would’ve included the 19^th Psalm.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” - Psalm 19:1

Neil Armstrong’s small step for man and giant leap for mankind was in fact humankind merely dipping its little toe into a cosmic ocean so vast that we cannot fathom its depth or breadth.

Just as Jesus long ago made the invisible God visible, the lunar landing put flesh and bone and moondust on the previously held fairy-dust fantasy of space exploration. We humans could now dare thrust ourselves onto God’s magnificent celestial stage and live to tell about it.

To look skyward on that July night 50 years ago and imagine real men on the lunar surface rather than the mythical Man on the Moon was a moment of awe, wonder and mystery.

I hear the word of God coming to us from the prophet Isaiah:

“To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?” - Isaiah 40:25-26

Indeed, we may have engineered the spacecraft and the technology to travel to the moon, but we didn’t put the moon there in the first place.

That’s the kind of cosmic reordering we can all use from time to time. The world doesn’t begin and end with us, and we aren’t the center of the universe.

My favorite image of the moon landing is seeing Earth from that vantage point.

Look at our earthly home as God sees it. There is, from this vantage point, God’s vantage point, no rationale for not sharing equally among God’s beloved the resources of this abundant sphere, no justification for treating people differently because of the color of their skin.

We are, rather, created in God’s image in this one creation, related, inextricably, to one another.

Perhaps we need the awe of another event like a moon landing to remind us of what Martin Luther King said so eloquently, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

To know that would indeed be one small step for us, one giant leap for all of God’s creation.

The photo and inspiration for this reflection were posted on Facebook on July 19, 2019, by the Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin 

A birthday from beyond the veil

Today is my mother-in-law's 88th birthday. Not that she knows, of course, anymore than she knows Monday from Wednesday or her family one from another. The clutch of dementia has drawn down the shade to hide personality, awareness and acknowledgment. But make no mistake, she was - or is behind that impervious curtain - learned, well-read, engaged and opinionated.

On this birthday, she gave me a gift. As I pulled her Jerusalem Bible off the shelf, I opened the hand-written pages where she inscribed the details of her family tree and the record of her children's and grandchildren's births, baptisms, schools-attended and marriages. They are events beyond her memory's reach but not ours.

This leather-bound Bible, however, is more than a family keepsake. Its taped cover and worn pages reveal copious underlinings and notes in the margins. This was her study Bible. It's unclear whether she used it in one of many classes she taught, or when she went back for a second college degree in her late 60s.

She jotted in the end piece references to a dozen Scriptures: Philippians 4 (on money), John 5 (take up your mat and walk), 2 Corinthians (on reconciliation). Next to a notation for the dry bones in Ezekiel was one for the tree by the waterside in Jeremiah 17.

An entire section of Ecclesiastes is paper-clipped. I note to myself that my late father had similarly set off the same book. Perhaps each resonated with the cynic of Scripture.

I wonder what she thought as she highlighted a footnote in Exodus explaining the image of a woman in labor as a common biblical metaphor. Or the passage in Psalm 55 where she circled: "Were it an enemy who insulted me, I could put up with that ... But you, a man of my own rank, a colleague and a friend ..."

Eventually I turn to the editor's foreward, penned by Alexander Jones from Christ's College, Liverpool, 1 June 1966. As time has stopped still for my mother-in-law, I realize life in many ways is timeless.

Jones writes of this "new" translation of Holy Scriptures as being necessitated by two principal dangers: First, the reduction of Christianity to the status of a relic, irrelevant to our times. Second, its rejection as mythology cherished in emotion with nothing to say to the mind. Furthermore, the foreword suggests the Bible, though crystallized in antiquity, is not to be considered fossilized.

"Now for Christian thinking ... two slogans have been wisely adopted: aggiornamento, or keeping abreast of the times, and approfondimento, or deepening of theological thought."

I imagine sitting at a dining room table over coffee, or in a church study with my mother-in-law holding court, discussing with her the enduring pull of Scripture and our ongoing tug-of-war as we wrestle with its place in our lives and our lives' place in Scripture. It's not a conversation that will take place today, but I'm thankful for all those who had it with her over the years.

Happy birthday Nancy.

No, I'm not a crybaby

This has been making the rounds of social media today, 11 months after the 2016 presidential election.

I commented I couldn't agree more. Upon which I was called a crybaby, and told to get over it. And moreover, that the above-referenced clip was taken out of context.

There is nothing out of context when a person, especially an elected leader or candidate for same, mocks another human being. 

I have lived through the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Some resonated more than others. 

I've never been a crybaby. And I'm not a crybaby now.

I'm aghast at the pass our current president received to be handed the reins of our nation's leadership despite his dehumanizing behavior. Mocking the disability of a reporter was neither the beginning nor the end of his offense to decency. 

That said, I believe we will never move forward as long as progressives continue ridiculing those who voted for the current president, and conservatives continue ridiculing those who oppose him. I concede the analysis of the vagaries of the 2016 election to political scientists and sociologists who might someday reason its complexities with historical perspective. 

In the meantime, how then shall we live? 

Yes, there are political issues about which I care deeply, particularly the fragility of our global climate and the vulnerability inherent in our health care system. On these and other matters, I disagree, in some instances strongly, with the leanings of our current president.

However, nothing troubles my soul more than when our leaders degrade those who are adversely affected by their partisan decisions as if they are somehow lesser citizens. (To wit, the exultant posturing of boastful vainglory in the Oval Office each time the presidential pen strikes a blow against one or another segment of our citizenry. See below. It's not as if they're creating national parks or celebrating a moon landing.) 

This has happened on the state level in Wisconsin (upon the passage of Act 10, when teachers and public servants were castigated as adversaries of good government) and occurs repeatedly on the national stage.

If you can mock one reporter's disability, you can create whatever "reality" you wish while categorizing anything opposed to your ideology as "fake" and those who stand opposed as subhuman.

Winner take all

A two-run homer by Gary Gaetti, center, powered the Cubs to a 1998 Wild Card tie-breaker victory (Daily Herald photo)

Winner-take-all games in Chicago Cubs history:
Oct. 4, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at Chicago, Cubs 5, Pittsburgh 2
Oct. 8, 1908, make-up game tie-breaker at New York, Cubs 4, New York Giants 2
Oct. 10, 1945, World Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Detroit 9, Cubs 3
Oct. 7, 1984, NL Championship Series Game 5 at San Diego: San Diego 6, Cubs 3
Sept. 28, 1998, NL Wild-Card tie-breaker at Wrigley Field: Cubs 5, San Francisco 3
Oct. 5, 2003, NL Division Series Game 5 at Atlanta: Cubs 5, Atlanta 1
Oct. 15, 2003, NL Championship Series Game 7 at Wrigley Field: Florida 9, Cubs 6
Oct. 7, 2015, NL Wild-Card Game at Pittsburgh: Cubs 4, Pirates 0
Nov. 2, 2016, World Series Game 7 at Cleveland: Cubs 8, Cleveland 7, 10 inn.
Oct. 12, 2017, NL Division Series Game 5 at Washington: Cubs 9, Washington 8

Baseball is a streaky game

The longest winning streaks in major league baseball history:

26 - New York Giants, 1916
22 - Cleveland Indians, 2017
21 - Chicago Cubs, 1935

The 1916 Giants are credited with the longest streak at 26 games.

From Sept. 7-30, the Giants won 26 games and tied 1. They won 12 in a row, then tied Pittsburgh 1-1 in a game shortened to 8 innings, which was the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 18. The Giants then won their next 14 straight.

Remarkably, the Giants had won 17 in a row earlier in the season after starting the season 2-13. They finished the year wth an 86-66 record, in fourth place behind NL champion Brooklyn. Subtracting the two long winning streaks, the Giants were 43-66 in the rest of their games.

(And yes, the Giants' logo was purple in 1916.)

When the '35 Cubs began their streak on Sept. 4, they were in 3rd place in the NL, behind St. Louis and the N.Y. Giants. By the time the streak ended on Sept. 27, the Cubs had clinched the NL pennant and a spot in the World Series against the Yankees.

During the Indians' streak, which ended tonight, they outscored their opponents 140-36 and were behind in only seven of the 181 innings they played.

Cousins 4.0 (with pooch)

See how they've grown: here and here and here

Happy birthday from Vinegar Bend

Coincidence? On the day Ann was born (May 21, 1956), only two major league baseball games were played: the Yankees beat the Kansas City A's 8-5, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Giants 4-1. The Cardinals' winning pitcher was Vinegar Bend Mizell, a 6-foot-3 left-hander just back from two years of Army service.

The day I was born (Oct. 7, 1960) was a travel day between games 2 and 3 of the World Series. In the first game of my lifetime, the Yankees and Whitey Ford shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates 10-0. The losing pitcher? Vinegar Bend Mizell, whom St. Louis had traded to Pittsburgh midseason.

Mizell was born Wilmer Mizell in Leakesville, Miss., but his family routinely picked up their mail in the nearby town of Vinegar Bend, Ala. That town of 200 people provided a better nickname than Leakesville Mizell.

After a nine-year major league career (with a 90-88 win-loss record), Mizell became a three-term U.S. Congressman from North Carolina until he was swept out of office in a post-Watergate Republican purge. He would later serve in the administrations of Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.

Photo: Baseball Reference. Bio adapted from SABR.