Christians who pray to Allah?

Two years ago at an evangelistic tent meeting, I was confronted with a difficult dilemma as the guest speaker attacked those who "pray to Allah." I was reminded of this dilemma last week by news of Christian opposition to the construction of a mosque in New York City.

With Rev. Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin leading, national Christian politicians have challenged the construction of a mosque near where the two WTC towers came down, because it would desecrate the site where many victims are interred. So now, Christians and Muslims who have worked together since 9/11 to make the NYC mosque a center of religious understanding and a place of peace between Muslims and Christians must struggle against the loud voices of bigotry in America.

The many people of good will in Big Horn County have a message for these folks. We here know about religious bigotry since the introduction of Christianity, when Crow and Cheyenne people began to suffer religious divisions. In the past decades respect has built for our different religious expressions. We are now better able to work together for the common good. This contrasts with our national religious and political leaders, and major media pundits. They should listen to us.

I'd like to tell them about my dilemma of two years ago.

With my wife and me were our good friends, a family from Kenya, the father a Christian pastor and theology student, his wife a teacher, and their two young daughters. I knew our friends have Muslim friends, and participate freely with them in religious dialogue, parenting and schooling children, and other affairs. I knew also from them that there are many Arabic speaking Christians in Kenya whose Arabic Christian Bible proclaims the message of Jesus the son of "Allah," because their Christian Bible uses the Arabic "Allah" instead of the German "God", or Crow "Akbaatatdia," or Cheyenne "Ma'heo'o," or Spanish "Deo," for the Supreme Being, initially unnamed in ancient Hebrew.

I could feel their discomfort at hearing an American Christian evangelist speak so negatively about a religion with which they are intimately acquainted. I was equally shocked with his ignorance about the millions of Christians worldwide who read their Christian Bible in Arabic, with its many references to "Allah," the equivalent of our German word "God."

I felt compelled to leave. But I had many friends present in the congregation that evening, and did not want to just get up and leave with our guests. I caught myself imaging the piece of my mind I would like to tell the evangelist, since I had no reasonable way to give it to him. I sat and pondered.

I thought about the millions of born-again Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus. I thought about the fact that Muslim-majority armies have not for centuries invaded nor are currently occupying by force any Christian-majority nation, while Christian-majority nations' soldiers are doing so in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about the significant portion of all Muslim fundamentalists who are pacifists, while Christian fundamentalists have largely forgotten their pacifist history.

Most of all, from two years service in the Far East, I remembered that the vast majority of the world's Muslims, far from being obsessed with a passion to kill Christians, know how to live together peaceably with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths, shopping at the same stores, their children attending the same schools and playing in the same parks.

In the tent meeting, the rhetoric increased in intensity. All who use the word "Allah" to invoke the Supreme Being in prayer were lumped together with the militant Islamic extremists responsible for the World Trade Center bombing. I began regretting my silent assent to what the speaker was saying.

Suddenly I felt myself standing up, interrupting the evangelist with these words,

"You must be mistaken, since I know Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus." The congregation froze. He responded by reasserting his condemnations, insisting I was mistaken. I asked him if he approved of the German, Crow and Cheyenne words for the Creator, but not the Arabic word. After the service I left a note requesting dialogue on the issue. There has been no response.

This prompted an interesting discussion with our friends, who were at least as shocked as I was with my behavior at a Christian service of worship.

Next morning, just before their departure, we prayed for deliverance in the Christian media from the frequent undercurrent of bigotry against Islam. We praised God for the few Christian media speakers who follow Jesus' example with religious conflict as recorded in John chapter 4 of the New Testament. Then we parted.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034

Tea party? Really?

This new one is far from the original Boston tea party. Now it's 2010 and both parties are right in step with the lambs on our back 40, who would bloat and die if I would indulge their emotions and let them go after the new alfalfa I seeded.

Listen to the propaganda bloat that passes for democratic debate, promoted by the new "Tea Party" leadership, corporate and media backers, etc. It goes something like this:

"The best government is the least government. End taxes! End regulation! It's time for real change."

Look at 1773.
Yes, the original Boston tea party was about taxes, but not whether there would be taxes. It was about who was doing the taxing. There was a history of the British crown taxing American colonial citizens' purchases of imports, and then that money pot sailed away right back the Atlantic with the next clipper.

Yes, it was about big government, a big British government with no vote or voice from the colonies. It was NOT against the growth of government on the land in which these citizens lived, for which they soon elected representatives. In fact, they are among those we venerate in our high school history classes who helped our fledgling government on this land grow constitutionally, to the benefit of all of us today.

Yes, it was against government regulation passed by the British parliament to "teach the colonists a lesson" and force them to submit. But it was also for new regulations to break the oppressive collusion between the British crown and one of the first multinational corporations, the East India Tea Company. That collusion smashed what sovereignty the colonies enjoyed and destroyed fair competition in overseas trade.

Now it's 2010.
Look at Republicans and Democrats who distrust the modern tea party. The "racism" controversy recently in the news is nothing more than a sham. The real issue is loss of collusion benefits, which would happen if either party started adopting priorities similar to the original Boston Tea Party. The fact is, there are huge benefits to both parties today from collusion between government and big business. And that, my friends, is the biggest bipartisanship our Congress can muster. Few politicians of any party want that changed.

Our citizenry, raised by mainline radio and TV, love pretense and surface rhetoric; we like that luscious look and smell, deep green and tender, of government sham-regulation of big business for the benefit of all the people, but in reality no change, so the few, the richest, benefit the most.
Unfortunately, we sheep give our votes to the sham of ending big government. We roll over and ignore the deception and theft from our own pockets.

Take the government's recent sham crackdown on Goldman Sachs. After packaging and selling mortgages they knew were bad, they got off scot-free with their deception and theft:

1) No further investigation of fraud.

2) No jail sentences (The S & L scandal decades ago led to 1000+ sentences).

3) A fine payable to the Securities and Exchange Commission of a fraction of the profit made from the scheme.

4) No requirement to pay back their ill-gotten wealth; no restitution.

5) The system of secrecy and deception stays in place.

The media still hypes the biggest fine ever levied against a Wall Street corporation. Hidden in its back pages are the data: millions in profits from the deception.

Sometimes it takes a fringy documentary news source to plumb reality and feed it to the mainline media, who then cannot afford to ignore it, like the recent WikiLeaks version of the Pentagon papers.

I would applaud a reincarnation of the Boston Tea Party. I hoped the Obama presidency would deal with the sham in the collusions. So far I see same old same old across the political spectrum.

Meanwhile my sheep, resentfully munching the tough old brome and wheat grass of the wild meadow strip along our channel, stop and turn west, sniff their noses in the morning breeze and exclaim in chorus, "Baa-a-a! We want our fresh green alfalfa, and want it right now, early this morning when our stomachs are empty." Sometimes we, like sheep, would be better off munching on what's best for us, not what our TV and radio pundits put out to titillate our tastes and thinking habits.

Oh, for some help in our country and on this back 40 to take rational charge of these colorful delicious delusions! Slowly, carefully, transparently and honestly, with the kind of courage and determination absent in Washington right now in either party, and disappointingly absent in the new tea party.

Previous columns and comments: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

David Graber

He dissed me!

Diss. v.t. prison slang. To verbally dehumanize, disrespect, or otherwise devalue the life of a human being directly or by implication.

Summer, 1996, Miles City. The courtroom was quiet and stark. Two prisoners were brought in handcuffed and seated at the defendant bench. Present were some family members of these former students of mine previously convicted of murdering another young man over a confrontation at a bar. 

The boys' defense attorney called me as a character witness at this sentencing at the request of the family, because they had been my students and because the boys' grandfather had been a close friend of mine. I saw tears of anguish that day from family members of both the perpetrators and the victim. Throughout the proceeding, the most important verdict became clear to me: no one was winning anything. These boys would never be free men. The young man they killed would not be resurrected. 

Why did this happen? What destroyed human respect for another's life in these two young men? I remembered them as generally cooperative, sensitive, fearful, socially clumsy boys. They were diagnosed with fetal alcohol effect, which could explain a propensity toward criminal mentality. But I wanted a more useful explanation. 

I did a little research. We in the U.S. kill and incarcerate each other far more than the rest of the world except where there is active civil warfare. A year later I stumbled onto something.

June, 1997, Boston. As tourists escorted by our children, we stopped in at one of many used bookstores so I could feed my addiction. My attention was drawn to Violence: Our Nation's Epidemic and its Causes, by James Gilligan, M.D. I bought it for $2. The book had come out 6 years before, the same month Willie Horton's release and murder rampage destroyed Dukakis' presidential campaign. 

In 1970, suicide and murder rates in Massachusetts's prison system had skyrocketed higher than anywhere in the country. Gilligan was hired by the state to reform the prison system. In ten years, these rates were reduced to zero, and recidivism was drastically reduced. The book recounts Gilligan's research and methodology. It was his research that found the most common reason murder happens in prison, as spoken by the perpetrators, was simply that the victim "dissed" the perpetrator. 

He then built a program to address the problems this phrase implies. It was a controversial program that emphasized rehabilitation and reform. The presidential campaign of the 80s with Willie Horton and Dukakis highlighting the "coddling criminals" mania was the end of Gilligan's research and credibility in the media. Massachusetts's politicians forgot his research-based system, though it continued to be reworked in academia. 

Since then, we as a nation have slumped back into the Old Testament vengeance system God warned against even 2000 years ago (Romans 12.19).

Fall 1980, Kansas. A light came on in my brain that had been shut off in my childhood. Here in a parenting workshop was a list of common phrases used by parents or teachers in correcting children: "Can't you ever do it right?"—"You'll never amount to anything if you don't shape up"—"Why do you always. . . .?" etc. 

I had no idea these phrases programmed children's minds to perceive themselves as inferior, disrespected or depreciated. I was raised in a good, God-fearing family. But I learned this negative language.

It was habitual, and at first I was defensive: our children knew they were loved. It didn't matter, so I thought. We two parents talked with our children for the first time about the meaning of my words. It did matter. I began to see how children's minds are either programmed to respect and expect respect from other humans or the reverse. 

The way we treat our children can set them up to be respectful or disrespectful, and in the same way, the way we treat our prisoners can do the same.
The controversy in 2007 over Hardin's detention center was underlined by the phrase, "coddling criminals." Have you heard of the confusion between "tough on crime" and "tough on criminals"? It seems some of us think the one equals the other. 

It's not that simple. In fact, making criminals suffer dehumanization, disrespect, and being devalued has proven counterproductive to the stated goal of crime reduction. Hardin's detention center program was set to address this reform.

I took the time then for research. The detention program put forth by CEC the company that had contracted to operate the jail, had an awesome record for cutting recidivism through a tough but respectfully human program to habilitate, educate, and reorient appropriately pliable young criminals for restoration to society. It could have turned a Montana prison away from schooling for crime and toward schooling for responsible citizenship. The record is one of true toughness on crime. Too bad we lost that program. 

Here on the Back 40 I'm working on the weeds and the imbalance in the soils. Patience, experimentation, advice and dogged attention to scientific research is needed. It's taken years for me to make a dent in the weeds of my own language habits in my parenting and teaching. I found freedom in repetitive practice of simple positive phrases with my young students. 

I'm still farming and learning. There's hope.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Does stuff just happen?

By David Graber

Illusory correlation. The phenomenon of seeing the relationship one expects in a set of data even when no such relationship exists.

MetraPark destroyed by a tornado? Didn't you wonder? What's the meaning? Did God disapprove of the entertainment booked at the Metra Park Arena? I often hear an illusory correlation justified by the phrase, "These things don't just happen."

The tornado stayed in one spot for several minutes, right over the Metra, pounding and pulling until the roof tore apart. What an unusual tornado phenomenon! Add to this the rarity of a tornado in Montana, and there must be at least a divine role, if not a bona fide miraculous intervention in the weather.

Busby 1914-Back in the 1970's I was transporting Oliver Risingsun, then in his 80's, to the clinic in Lame Deer. He was into telling stories from his youth.

On an August afternoon in 1914 he was sent by his father to the pine hills nearby to bring home the horses for cattle work early the next morning. On the way back he noticed from his saddle a storm brewing. It got very dark and windy. He gathered the horses just below a pine ridge for protection from wind and hail, and watched as a funnel dipped down and churned right into the Busby Mennonite Church, a log structure built in the early 1900s. So much dust and debris flew he couldn't see the town. It kept churning until the entire structure was torn apart, logs, roof, and lumber strewn down the Rosebud valley. Then the funnel lifted. The house near the church was not touched. Nothing else was damaged in the town, or in the valley. The tornado focused on one building.

Several weeks before this event, so Oliver told me, a medicine man came to the Mennonite missionary* asking him to stop preaching against Indian religion. The minister refused. The medicine man warned him one more time, adding that he liked the missionary, and was concerned that something bad might happen to the church unless he stopped his criticism.

Then the medicine man went to the hills to fast and pray. While the medicine man was on his vision quest, the tornado destroyed the church.

The Christians of Busby, including Oliver, came to pick up the pieces. They found the pulpit tipped over, but still on the church floor. The hymnbooks were inside, none missing. The pulpit Bible was there, not a page missing. They found the reed organ, with damage to some wood carving, but otherwise ready to be used again. Nothing else was left of the church building except the floor.

To this day, Christians will say this is evidence God wants the Gospel preached and Cheyenne hymns sung in Cheyenne country. They believe that though a tornado struck the church, God preserved the hymnbooks, the pulpit Bible and the organ to show that the Christian faith has a place on the reservation.

Others, namely those who held to the indigenous religion, expressed the view that the Divine Spirit sent the tornado to destroy the church because He does not approve of divisive preaching against Native American religions, something the Christians had engaged in at that time.

In the end, the tornado caused something of a "coming together moment" as the two sides realized that railing against the religious beliefs of the other was ultimately unproductive.

After all, there is no objective proof to confirm either point of view. Illusory correlation?

Here on the back 40 this summer my family enjoys confronting my skepticism about correlations I call illusory. Sometimes they don't catch my little secret that I'm also skeptical of my skepticism. In fact, I love the fact of mystery, and that miracles happen. I don't mind either if someone believes it's all an illusion, this correlation of events with a possibly divine prerogative. My opinion is that the most important Divine Mystery is the Creator of All, who made it all so that sometimes, maybe often, stuff just happens.

For comments and previous columns: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

* When the Reverend Linscheid arrived with his family in 1904 a log church was erected at Busby. This building was destroyed on August 14, 1914 by a tornado. It was replaced that year by the current frame church, now the chapel of White River Cheyenne Mennonite Church in Busby. The original pulpit and organ are still there.

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

A sower went out. . .

Spirit and Dust

By David Graber, June 24, 2010

A sower went out to sow, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them.  But other fell into good ground, and brought forth, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold."
—Matthew 13. 3ff, KJV

It's amazing how acting on hope can bring unexpected gains from unexpected sources.

"Letting things be" in the fields

Early this spring I watched a pair of geese obsessed for hours pecking around in the ground we seeded before freeze-up last fall. That's when we couldn't find a high-tech seeder to place the seed in the ground at the right depth with the best compaction and spacing.

Because we didn't have the right technology, we needed to double the amount of seed we bought, and broadcast it with a seeder made to fit on an ATV. It took some mental adjustment. My heritage doesn't approve of wasteful extravagance. I'd rather win by doing things right.

As spring advanced into summer I monitored the weeds, kicked the grass to count baby hoppers, rechecked my soil tests and regretted not investing in correcting our soil phosphate deficit.

I noticed acres of long strips devoid of anything except a few weeds. It felt wrong, wasting that seed on poor soil. But we did win a round: Nary a seed was visible to any birds thanks to the winter-long snow blanket.

Last week a neighbor finished leveling the lumps in the bottom of our irrigation drainage ditch. In order to do the work, the flow had been blocked, making stagnant water for a population explosion of mosquitoes.

When the work was done, the water started moving much better. Yesterday I walked down to the point where our drainage water enters the channel that connects to the river. The water was clear, and I could see hundreds of minnows in several swarms hanging around the inlet, enjoying a feast of mosquito larva and eggs.

I knew we'd had a mosquito population explosion. I hadn't thought about how flowing water solves the problem. Also, I didn't expect this assistance from minnows.

"Letting things be" in the classroom

I averted my eyes from the child jumping off his seat and falling on the floor, crawling around, disturbing other children's singing in my music class.

I told my students, "Those who sing and sign get to drum or dance." Most children followed my example, ignoring the one out of place. We drummed and danced without him.

Months before the end of school this spring he was drumming and dancing with the others. Cooperation slowly replaced defiance.

Prior to taking the new "let it be" tack, I would have intervened by removing him from the group. That seldom helped. The best intervention I have found is like seeding our pasture. You just do it, everywhere, and let it be. In the classroom setting, I give each child attention, and then do my best to let them be.

I give each a smile or a pat on the shoulder upon entering my music room. I don't distinguish good from bad, or a history of chasing, tripping, and hitting from a history of following classroom directions.

I've noticed that this leads to fewer disruptions and less attention given to those children who aren't following directions. If I don't focus on the kids who are out of line, the children who are participating won't either.

I've tried to learn the value of what I would have previously called wasteful extravagance. Now I'm looking at unexpected beneficial rains this spring greening up even the most saline pasture areas. A little rain extravagance in Big Horn County is OK with me.

See comments and previous columns:     http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

When Truth Lies

When truth lies

 

It's green, it looks good, it tastes good to livestock, and it has lots of carbohydrates and proteins. That's the truth, nothing but the truth. But it's not the whole truth.

 

O. lambertii Pursh.  Crazyweed.  Non-standard name: locoweed, a perennial herbaceous legume common on western rangelands.  Once livestock eat it, they seek out the plants and poison themselves on the toxic but tasty plant.  Horses never recover once they are poisoned.

 

It's sad to see a horse with that fierce gleam in the eye setting aside all other options, pursuing the taste, smell and look of only one thing to consume.  Once the entire mind and body is so obsessed, there is no turning back.

 

Just like horses seeking out this intoxicating plant, sometimes we humans pursue part of the truth similarly recklessly.

 

I was in a conversation with a Foreign Languages Department colleague at XiHua University in Sichuan Province of China a few years ago.  It was National Day in China, with fireworks celebrating the day the Communist Party established the New China, "…like your July fourth celebration," she said.  She was honest and insightful, yet spared no mercy in her criticism of Chairman Mao. 

 

She remembered almost 50 years ago, when she competed successfully with her cadre of "Red Guard" revolutionaries for the right to travel to Beijing to represent them at a great rally where Mao would address the crowd of tens of thousands from all over China. 

 

She explained how tears flowed from her eyes at the moment Chairman Mao appeared at the dais.  I asked her if she remembered anything he said.  She only remembered the obsession, the passion of hundreds of thousands of young people brandishing small red Chinese flags and Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, screaming its slogans with great emotion.

 

Everyone endorsed his truth: a mission to defeat the enemies of China and rid the entire nation of counter-revolutionaries.  This included people with any cultural connection to the West, especially America and Great Britain.  Several times she was apologetic for being swept into this terrible wave of hysteria in China. 

 

A few months later, talking with a Chinese legal scholar, I started to understand her regret at being part of that day, cheering Chairman Mao. Perhaps she felt partly responsible for the consequences of Mao's disastrous leadership.

 

Once his power was secure, Mao had decided that China's steel production had to rival Great Britain's at all costs. Following Mao's directive, entire villages gladly gave up cast-iron cooking pots and steel farm tools.  The iron was taken as scrap to the village steel smelter for making weapons to defend China from the great threat overseas. 
 

Tools for survival were given up in order to "defend the motherland." Without rice and food crops, people all over China starved to death. He volunteered his estimate of deaths in the four years of their rampage in the early 60s: 80 million people, many from starvation and many from violence.

 

Here on Greenwood Farm's Back 40, hundreds of varieties of species I didn't plant are competing with my dormant seeding from last November.  I've bought a copy of Weeds of the West, consulted the NRCS and MSU Extension.  I'm serious about avoiding deceptive truth, especially the worst kind: locoweed. 

 

So far, I haven't found any. I need as much help managing my farm as all of us need in dissecting the half-truths bombarding us from any particular media paranoia peddler. 

 

Our media is saturated with information biased toward narrow viewpoints.  The larger picture is ignored, especially common ground outside the loud little boxes. The split TV screen has become the mantra; choose your side. Two proponents raise their voices in intractable argument over opposite assertions, both true.  Neither can acknowledge any truth outside what they're shouting.  It passes for political debate.  Many of us are hooked.

 

If all we consider when making political decisions are the talking heads, these political "strategists" whose job it is to advance a particular agenda, we risk becoming caught up in hysteria, driven out of our minds like horses poisoned by locoweed and youthful revolutionaries poisoned by a demagogue.

 

And that's the truth, nothing but the truth.  But it's not the whole truth.

 

For comments and previous columns:     http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

War and Remembering

Two cock pheasants, formerly friendly to each other during the long winter, seemed to enjoy jousting with each other this spring. It got pretty vicious outside my south window. Now they have adjacent territory, and we occasionally see a few hens in the vicinity. It's clear they have learned to coexist. I wonder if they even remember their previous battles. But there never was, as far as I could tell, any bird bloodshed.

Humans are different. We kill each other one by one, and it's called murder. We kill each other by the thousands, and call it war. We have a few thousand years of history to teach us how to remember battle casualties. We tend to remember and bear grudges. This remembering often leads to more bloodshed.

Jesus insisted on being remembered. He and the gospel writers were explicit about his bloody, violent death. He explained why his followers would not be fighting to preserve himself and his mission (John 18. 36f). He didn't expect that our remembering his unjust death would nurture demands of vengeance. For his followers, his death was his victory. The motley crew of early Christians instead launched an opposite, more powerful remembering that would put in place the principles of justice, fairness, respect, and righteousness upon which this nation itself was founded. If acted upon, these principles still become powerful tools of battle against evil in this world.

Yet Jesus agonized over the sacrifice. Soldiers confronting violent death in war might ask, "Why me?" Jesus's words echo those of the soldier when he said, "If it's possible, let this cup pass from me!" No one wants this kind of violent death. Yet Jesus knew that his encounter with evil would remain triumphant.

St. Paul knew this too. He put remembering Jesus into action. He framed his specific instructions for remembering Jesus' death on the cross, and these instructions are still the most important source for our communion services in our churches. But often omitted in our remembering is Paul's expectation that this communion ritual will dismantle human prejudice and hatred, and peace will be built. The two are connected. St. Paul wanted the Corinthian's memorializing of Jesus' violent death to heal human strife (See 1 Corinthians 11. 17-33). It follows that memorializing Jesus' death isn't really right if the participants are steeped in hatred and division.
Today, as we celebrate Memorial Day, the highest patriotic remembering will not call us to

blindly prepare for the next generation's sacrifice on the altar of warfare. Remembering will mean examining carefully and rationally the injustices that naturally arise in our world community, just as injustices arose in the first century A.D. That was Jesus's and Paul's teaching.

As our remembering this Memorial Weekend prods us to wonder, to question national priorities and policies, to consider alternatives to the next generation's sacrificial deaths, let's hold our heads with pride.

There is no greater patriotism, no greater honor to bestow on any who have made the ultimate sacrifice, than to creatively and energetically pursue the path carved out by Jesus and Paul. The freedoms won by blood-shedding sacrifice for our nation are many. But none are greater than the freedom to reveal the truth of war propaganda, and the truth of the powerful options to combat evil without modern warfare (See A Force More Powerful, by Jack Duvall, or check out the DVD, or come borrow my copy).

It's amazing to me that the critters on the world's back 40's seem to understand these alternatives better than us humans. Sure, they fight. But it's extremely rare for them to kill each other. They quickly learn respect for each other's place at the table of God's nourishing earth.

Coexistence is an assumed postulate of their conflict. If we can't learn from Jesus or Paul, let's at least watch the critters in our back 40's.

Comments and previous Spirit and Dust columns: http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034

Musings from the Back 40

Humans and Humus

Human: adj.  ME 3. Prone to frailties associated with man as an imperfect being. Made from dust (humus), destined for dust. 

 

To be human is to know we are dust. Yet we know the gift of life remains, despite death and decay. In the Creator's plan, dying is not in vain; it leads to life as surely as humus, the moldering rot of previous life, becomes the nutrient source of new life.

 

Humus: n. An organic substance consisting of decaying vegetable matter that provides nutrients to living plants and increases ability of the soil to retain water for plant roots.

 

Spring 1961.

I wielded the shovel aggressively, but Dad said, "Careful now," and placed a restraining hand on my shovel.  He marked a larger perimeter in the soil around a healthy young sapling growing from dark, moldering soil.  That's where I was to dig a narrow, two-blade-depth trench.  I dug.

 

He stopped me again and held up a lump of soil packed with many root hairs. 

 

"Here," he said, "is humus.  It's what makes trees grow.  If the root hairs are broken and the humus separates from the roots, no point trying to fix it."

 

He sent me for the gunny sacks in the pickup.  I helped him rip them into wide bands and bind them tightly around the root ball with baling wire.  Only when the delicate soil-root system was secure did he allow me to do what I intended earlier: I pierced the taproot with the blade of my spade. Then I pried up the root ball, and the gunny sack bands secured the fragile network of root hairs and humus around the tree roots.

 

We took several dozen oak, maple, and elm saplings that day for him to plant along newly paved streets in our hometown.  The following spring, when I came home from college, he proudly pointed out the flourishing trees transplanted from our farm.

  

Spring 2010

Our nation's broken health care system is being dug up and transplanted.  The past three years of political wrangling leading up to the new health care reform law have badly damaged the older American values of compassion and trust. These were the values that guided health care until the mid-70's. Profit then was a corollary, not the priority.  Since profit-maximizing business was not dominant among providers, health care functioned responsibly. The insurance companies generally trusted doctors, recognizing the bottom line was not maximum profit.

 

Now two major competing values of our health care system have been at war for decades, and health care is in crisis.  On the one hand is the right of any citizen to health care.  On the other hand is the right of health businesses to maximize profit.

 

No one, Democrat or Republican, in Washington seems to have the guts to stop healthcare profiteers from gorging at the tax-payer trough.  Republicans claimed the expense of the Obama plan would bankrupt the country. Yet Obama refused the obvious: to let the proven taxpayer-paid and -run health care systems of Medicare, Congresses' health care, and veterans' health care become the model for total reform, drastically reducing profit-maximizing business to pre-70's levels.  That's what would also lower the costs that now burden each citizen. And it would provide the fiscal foundation for health care for all.  Almost everyone in Washington, including the President, is bought off to refuse this proven solution.

 

The media have not reported on this mistaken bi-partisan consensus.  Instead they favor the contrived controversies funded with billions$$ by the health industry to skew American citizens away from this best solution. Washington easily refuses an honest debate on this racket, enjoying instead the noisy Republican vs Democrat gridlock over minute intricacies barely questioning the power of profit priorities in the health care system (see on line a relevant Frontline report. Search words: Obama's Deal Frontline, or use this ULR:  www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/).

 

Our roots need nourishment from the humus of these older values: compassion and respect.  They used to bring people together networking around human need, and can still provide support for our nation's health care in the changes ahead. It depends on how the heavyweights view the old values that built American health care into the world's best system in the 70's.  We need those values again, like never before.

 

That's the way I see it from the back 40.

 

"No one can serve two masters. . . you cannot serve both God and money."

            –Jesus of Nazareth, AD 32.

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
graberdb@gmail.com
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Musings from the Back 40

The Power of Mercy

 

"What does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy God."  — Micah 6.8, The Bible, King James Version.

 

Most of us agree we want the most effective, strongest tools to deal with the reality of evil people in this world. Here is my bias: Mercy is often neglected as a strong strategy to stop evil people.  What does research say?  For this, I refer to scholars of social anthropology and historians specializing in cultural theory.  Perhaps foremost among these is René Girard, who has researched and written extensively into the origin of human mass violence. 

 

But I'll set aside elite academics for another question: What does the Bible say?  Answer: It agrees with the research I've seen.

 

In many human cultures, as well as ours in the past, the practice of mercy was valued as a strong alternative to reciprocal violence in the face of extreme evil.   That's the subject of a Bible story I wrote for this column, a story that leaves big questions unanswered.  I thought it was good to challenge Big Horn County News readers' thinking.  But my cadre of preview commentators said it's too much.  So I decided on a drastic rewriting.   

 

I did keep the story.  If you think you qualify to read it, use the link below to my blog, or look up the original short news report in 2 Kings 6, The Bible.

 

Meantime, here's a synopsis:  Aramean tribesmen were conducting nighttime raids from their mountain hideouts on farm villages in the valley.  When a planned raid turned up no one at home and nothing to take from one small village, the Aramean king suspected that one of his raiders was a spy for the Israelis.  When told that an Israeli holy man, Elisha, had ability to divine this information from a distance, he sent his raiders on a mission to capture him.  Through some trickery and miraculous power, Elisha managed to lead the raiders to the capital city into the hands of the Israeli king's soldiers.  The king, knowing the terror the villagers were suffering, sought Elisha's permission to kill the raiders.  But he ordered the king to prepare a banquet for them, and set them free back to their master.  This ended the raids, according to the writer of 2 Kings. 

 

A modern, much longer version of doing good to counter evil, in this case the jihadist Taliban of Afghanistan, is Greg Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea.  This book is now on a required reading list at The Pentagon for military officers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Greg is from Bozeman, and has written a second book, Stones into Schools. 

 

I recommend anyone, especially script writers for children's Saturday morning cartoons, to incorporate such powerful good alternatives to the usual bloody entertainment fare of how good has to turn bad to defeat bad evil.  And, you might check out King David: Psalm 23. 5, St. Paul: Romans 12.20, or Jesus of Nazareth: Matthew 5.43f and Luke 22.30, all of whom allude to the above story from 2 Kings 6, The Bible.

 

David Graber

http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

 

The Story:

The Holy Man and the Raiders

 

Long ago in a valley far across the ocean lived a peaceful people. They cared for the fertile soil of their valley, and it produced grain and forage for animals.  They celebrated their life, and worshipped one Creator God from whom all good things come. 

 

But they could not remain at peace. A rag tag royalty raider bunch from the hills around began nighttime raids on the valley below.  The farmers and their families were terrified of them, the Arameans.  It was not without reason; periodically they lost stores of grain, a sheep or a goat, even children and wives.

 

One evening the king of the Arameans assembled his officers to plan another raid.  They selected a small village. They choose the night, the route to the village, the escape route, and each member of the war party.  The plan was in order.

 

The chosen night arrived.  Carefully they crept up on the first house, curious that the sheepfold outside contained no baa-aa's. They easily entered the house, and no one was inside.  They went through the whole village and found few animals, little grain, and no people. 

 

They returned back to the hills frustrated.  The king called his officers and inquired, "Who among you is the traitor who revealed our plans to the enemy?"

 

The reply came from his most trusted lieutenant. "The enemy has a holy man who puts his ear to the ground and hears your speech, O king, even your most secret words spoken in your sleep." The king replied, "Where does this holy man live?"

 

"In Dothan," they replied.

 

"Then go get him, and bring him to me immediately!" ordered the raider king.

 

Dutifully the raiders set off for Dothan, and camped for the night on a hillside outside the city gate.  

 

It was just before dawn.  The holy man barely stirred when his sidekick left the house for a trip outside the gate.  He happened to glance up on the hillside, and was terrified.  He knew the colors of these tramps, and knew they were out to get his master, if not himself.  He rushed back in to tell the holy one the bad news. 

 

"No problem." Said the holy man.  "Go out again, and look above the hills.  Come back and tell me what you see."  He went out, looked, and saw a huge host of the heavenlies above the hillside.  Again he ran back inside, and the holy man said, "Let's go out and greet our guests.  We have nothing to fear."

 

They went out.  The gate closed tight behind them.  As the raider commander with his officers approached in the breaking dawn, the two unarmed targets wanted to break and run.  But they stood their ground.

 

"Where is the holy man who lives here in Dothan?"  demanded one of the officers.

 

(To be continued.  At this point the 20 inches for my column are past.  This story could be continued next week, or linked to my blog for the ending.  What's your idea??  If it's continued I would need to write a synopsis.  Dave.)

 

"Yes, he lives here, but he has gone to Samaria.  May I take you to him?" said the holy man.

 

"Yes, please."  Answered the commander.

 

The commander roused his hungry, tired terrible troops, fed and watered them, and they were on the trail again. 

 

After marching many hours, they approached the city, shimmering in the afternoon heat.  The gates were open, and surprisingly, with their colors, no one paid them attention as they entered.  Crowds were gathered in the market place.  They were about to start buying food when the holy man disappeared in the crowd, along with his sidekick.  The tired, thirsty, hungry men fingered their swords, knives, and clubs under their robes.  They were nervous.

 

Not without reason.  Suddenly the crowds of people became soldiers, many more and better armed than they, strong and ready for battle.  With barely a skirmish the tired raiders surrendered. 

 

The king of the Samaria was ecstatic.  He came to the holy man saying, "Father, just say the word, and my men will exterminate this plague of insects from our land."

 

The holy man replied, "Did you capture with your sword and bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink: and let them go to their master." 

 

The king and his men   "…prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master.  And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel." —2 Kings chapter 6, The Bible. NRSV*

 

*This story is alluded to elsewhere in Scripture: Psalm 23. 5, Matthew 5.43f, Luke 22.30, Romans 12.20.

 

 

 

--
David Graber
RR 1 Box 1211D
631 Woodley Ln
Hardin, MT  59034

406 665-3373
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
Bonnie's email graberbj@gmail.com

Spirit & Dust for Easter week.

Musings from the Back 40

 
Why Did Jesus Die?

by David Graber

www.bighorncountynews.com/news.html

Agape n. <Gk. Christian love: the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, which Christians were committed to reciprocating and practicing towards God, among one another, and with enemies.

Just before 300 A.D. a farm boy near a small town just upstream the Nile River from Thebes was working crops in a field near the river with other young men. Pachomius, 20 years old at the time, and others his age hardly noticed a Roman ship with soldiers aboard pulling the ship upstream. But the centurion aboard did notice the young men in the field. He was on a recruiting mission, and knew farm boys had the strength to make good soldiers. He stopped. His methods were simple. He deployed his soldiers with chains and swords. The young men were caught, chained together in groups, and marched to the waiting ship. They cast off and drifted downstream to the city of Thebes, where the centurion stopped to wait for favorable winds before venturing from the Nile into the Mediterranean.

Waiting on the shore in chains, Pachomius and the new recruits were in shock. They were hungry and cold, and had no money. But more than that, they grieved knowing they might never see their homes and families again. Citizens of Thebes heard their cries in the night, but paid no attention. They knew it was best to ignore the affairs of the Roman army. But a small group of citizens had the courage to take the risk. To the amazement of the young men in chains, they brought money, clothing and nourishment, and quickly departed.

In a day or two the wind turned favorable, and they set sail. Held with the other recruits on board, Pachomius asked them the identity of the citizens who dared come to aid them. Only one knew anything. He told Pachomius he had heard of a new cult of Jesus the Christ, a resurrected God who commanded followers to do good to all, even enemies. Pachomius, on the boat on his way to war against his will, was determined to seek out this God. In the night, he made a vow that if he were to survive his military duty, he would commit himself to the Christian god and abandon the gods of the empire. Thus began Pachomius' life as a Christian (Information from translated writings of Tabenna and others. See www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/PACHOMI.htm or use search words such as Pachomius Thebes Tabenna Christianity)

I was a farm boy raised to believe that God's love demanded Jesus's obedience to love neighbors and enemies, and to refuse the sword when threatened because of acting on this love (see Matthew 5).

My family has a copy of the book in publication longer than any other, second to the Holy Bible: The Martyr's Mirror (Theileman J. van Bracht, Dort, 1659). All stories in this 1157-page volume, illustrate the Gospel stories of why Jesus died, as generally understood in the first three centuries of Christianity. Historical narratives of martyrs in this book extend from Jesus of Nazareth to the date the first edition was published.

Early Christians took literally Jesus' life and words, and felt the most absolute of all were his words about love, especially agape. He demonstrated this with his disciples, with sworn enemies chosen from both insurgents and collaborators with the Roman occupation in first century Galilee. Five days after crowds followed him on the Appian Way into Jerusalem at the beginning of the first Holy Week, he was arrested, tried in court and tortured to death the Roman way. His disciples, ready to fight for him with swords, were rebuked. Roman records corroborate Gospel accounts of his death.

Some of Jesus' words important to Christians the first centuries:

"Love your enemies, and be good to everyone who hates you… .If you love

only someone who loves you, will God praise you for that?" (Luke 6:27, 32 Contemporary English Version)

"Put your sword away. Anyone who lives by fighting will die by fighting." (Matthew 26:52 CEV)

"My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight." (John 18:36 New Revised Standard Version)

Mary's "Magnificat" (Luke 1: 46-55)

The "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 5, 6, and 7).

So Jesus died because of love? The scripture statements are clear. Jesus died, as God's son, in a consummate outpouring of God's love for the whole world.

This understanding has left questions to ponder, just like the Bible record does. Today there remain a variety of precise explanations of what happened between God, Satan, the politicians who executed Jesus, all humanity, and Jesus himself. Among Bible scholars, these are known as theories of atonement. The history of Christianity includes the rise of these theories, a special focus of Constantine's council agenda at Nicea in 311 A.D. Since then atonement theories have clashed in Christianity. But among them all, this understanding of God's love, short on specificity and leaving questions unanswered, has endured through the dust of European Christianity.

To access the Spirit & Dust blog site and write your response:

http://greenwoodback40.blogspot.com/

Home web site:  www.greenwoodfarmmt.org