At 80, Still Wondering Who I Am
Just yesterday, I had two experiences that made me wonder about myself. Even at the age of 80, I’m still questioning how I should present myself in this world that by all appearances is rushing headlong into terminal disaster? Am I being too outspoken? Should I temper what I say about politics and religion?
For me, those are constant questions. They arise not only in family conversations, but more publicly – e.g., in the context of a men’s group I’m part of in our new hometown, Westport Connecticut. My self-interrogations surface as well in the church that Peggy and are aspiring to enter. It’s the Talmadge Hill Community Church located in nearby Darien. In all three instances – family, the men’s group, and in church – I find myself wondering about transgressing the boundaries of polite discourse.
Today, let me first of all tell you about what happened yesterday with the men’s group. In a subsequent posting, I’ll share my questionable behavior in church – and then in my family.
The Y’s Men
In Westport, I’m a member of The Y’s Men. It’s a group of about 200 retired men, mostly Jewish and with backgrounds in international business, law, local government, and other administrative posts. The organization gets its cleverly ambiguous name from some distant association with the YMCA, which I can’t recall.
In any case, the Y’s Men meet every week and sponsor a myriad of activities that include (among other items) hiking, golf, sailing, a book club, and (before Covid) theater in New York City. I’m enjoying all of that. The Y’s Men are typically very bright and firm I their opinions.
That firmness takes center stage every other week, when a gathering of about 50 of us meet to discuss world issues. There, as we talk about matters such as China, 5G, the Middle East, and the Great Global Reset. In those contexts, the Y’s Men reveal themselves as basically patriotic, respectful of the military, and as “Americans” who understand their country as a splendid model honoring human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
I, of course, share none of those characteristics. Informed by social analysis reflected in liberation theology, my own tendencies have me looking at international affairs from the viewpoint of the world’s majority who are poor and under the jackboot of western imperialism led by the United States of America. As a result, I often find myself at odds with my fellow discussants.
U.S. Policy in the Middle East
This week was no exception. The announced topic is “Recalibrating US Policy with respect to Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.” As usual, the conversation reflected the official position of the United States, viz. that “our” interests in recalibration are democracy and the protection of Israel from unreasonably hostile undemocratic forces represented principally by Iran, Islam, the Taliban, and Islamic terrorists.
For me, that position overlooked the provocative hostility of the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia towards Iran which is a major power in the area and whose interpretation of Islam has good reason for being defensively hostile towards foreign control of the Middle East. Consider the following:
- Between 2010 and 2012, the intelligence agency (Mossad) of U.S. client Israel, assassinated four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists.
- On January 3rd of 2020, the Trump administration itself assassinated Iran’s revered general, Qassim Soleimani, a national hero.
- On November 11th, 2020, the Mossad also assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, yet another of the country’s leading nuclear scientists.
- On May 8th, 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the internationally supported Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by which Iran had renounced alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons. By all accounts, Iran had not violated the agreement.
- Instead, the United States intensified economic sanctions on the country which increased Iran’s poverty rate by 11%.
- The strengthening of sanctions persisted even during the Covid-19 global pandemic.
Despite such provocations, Iran has taken virtually no retaliatory measures either against Israel or the United States.
In the light of these facts, here’s what said at this week’s meeting:
What we’re calling a “reset” in the Middle East is really a recommitment to traditional U.S. anti-democratic policy there. It has us supporting not democracy, but client kings and potentates throughout the region particularly in Saudi Arabia as well as an apartheid regime in Israel. U.S. enemies here are Islamic nations who understand their religion as an affirmation of independence from outside control – independence from western imperialism and neo-colonialism. (For their part, the United States and its puppets call Islamic striving for independence “terrorism.”) Of course, the point of that imperial control is what it’s always been, viz. transfer of resources. And in the middle east, the resource in question is oil. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change as long as our economy remains petroleum dependent.
My intervention was largely ignored. So, using other words, I reiterated the sentiment about three times more.
Too Insistent?
And that’s my point of self-questioning here. Am I saying too much? Are my positions too radical? If so, are my efforts counterproductive in that they turn people against the very viewpoint I’m trying to share (that of the world’s poor, imperialized and silenced). Should I just shut up and listen?
Family members often caution me in the direction of such judicious silence.
Truthfully however, I find such restraint a species of self-betrayal. My role models – the people I find most admirable in the world – never bit their tongues in similar circumstances and even on the world stage. Their list is long and includes Gandhi, King, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Dorothy Day, William Barber II, Liz Theoharis, Naomi Klein, Cornel West, Jeremiah Wright, Chris Hedges, the Berrigan brothers, and the liberation theologians I’ve spent more than 50 years studying.
Most of all, the list of such truth-tellers is headed by the great prophets of the Bible and by the one who has grasped and held my attention my entire life. I’m talking about Jesus the Christ.
I’ll explore that dimension of my outspokenness and self-doubt in my next posting.
Pixar’s “Soul”: Profound Spiritual Wisdom from a Soulless Corporation
Isn’t it ironic that one of the most powerful businesses in the world, the Disney conglomerate, has ended up being one of our nation’s most effective spiritual teachers?
I mean, in Disney you have a typical heartless corporation that controls so much of our deceitful mainstream media and our superficial entertainment industry. Yet that very transnational firm has consistently produced popular art that calls viewers to introspection, identification with wildlife and nature, and to qualities of generosity, selflessness, and love.
I’m thinking of celebrated productions like “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and even “Bambi.” Arguably, such animated films issue more effective calls to spiritual values (especially to the young) than do most churches.
How that’s possible remains a mystery to me. It’s probably because even Disney Productions discerns a deep hunger for meaning in audiences throughout the world. So, in its effort to enhance its bottom line, it acquires scripts authored by spiritually attuned writers. But that’s only a guess.
The Film
Nevertheless, that was probably the case with Disney’s latest issuance, “Soul” whose screenplay was written by Pete Docter, Mike Jones and Kemp Powers. It’s a charming, comedic yet penetrating probe into the meaning of life and death. Its depiction of the afterlife suggests characterization as a poor man’s version of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It has all the ingredients: a guided trip through the great beyond, a painful process of purgation, and finally arrival at peaceful beatitude.
(At this point, some might think it appropriate to give a “spoiler alert,” though that hardly seems necessary for a spiritually themed work like “Soul.” It’s not some cliffhanger. In any case, be forewarned.)
More specifically, as Disney’s first all-black production, “Soul” tells the story of Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a frustrated middle school band teacher obsessed with jazz and landing his dream job of playing piano in a quartet headed by a diva saxophonist named Dorothea Williams.
Joe is himself an unappreciated musical genius as becomes evident every time his riffs transport him into the “Zone” of his prodigious brilliance. In his audition for the Williams quartet, the diva immediately recognizes Joe’s talent and hires him on the spot.
Joe is overjoyed. On his way home, he practically floats and dances down the streets of NYC. In his distracted oblivion he is narrowly missed by busses, cars, motorcycles and bikes. However, Joe himself doesn’t miss an open manhole, which swallows him up and apparently ends his life.
The next thing he knows, he’s is in the afterlife on his way towards the Bright Light invariably reported in the accounts of most near-death experiences (NDE). But possessed by his obsession with finally realizing his dream job, Joe refuses to die.
The Underworld
So, instead of escalating into the world of light, he’s returned to heaven’s underworld – a kind of limbo – a so-called “Youth Seminar” where unborn souls are prepared by the recently departed to enter into bodies on planet earth. There Joe is introduced to a rebellious unborn soul (Tina Fey) called #22 (seemingly because she was the 22nd soul ever created).
Despite its status as a truly “old soul,” #22 has remained unembodied for eons because she finds the prospect of life on earth boring. No mentor, no matter how prestigious – not Copernicus, Marie Antoinette, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Jung, George Orwell, Mother Theresa, or Muhammad Ali – has been able to successfully coax 22 to incarnate on the Milky Way’s “stinky rock,” where she knows that life is inevitably soul crushing.
Despite that history, Joe Gardner accepts the task of mentoring #22 in hopes that if successful, he might be allowed to return to earth and his dream gig. Joe is convinced that if he can help 22 find her passion – her Spark – then her fierce resistance to life on earth will dissolve.
So, acting like Dante’s Virgil, Joe leads 22 through the “Great Before.” She accompanies him as he reviews his own life and identifies jazz as the spark which had given his frustrated existence the modicum of meaning it’s had. From there the two travel through the Hall of Everything where Joe shows 22 her own life’s possibilities as a baker, fire fighter, artist, librarian, mathematician, gymnast, office worker, or astronaut. Not surprisingly, 22 remains unmoved.
However, it’s at this point that roles suddenly reverse as the unborn soul takes pity on Joe. He’s unlike any of her previous mentors, she says, because his life has been so sad and pathetic. Despite the fact that 22 can’t imagine why Joe wants so desperately to return to such pathos, she leads her mentor to the Zone – a state between the physical and spiritual – where he’s made to recall the times his music has induced a state of happiness and bliss.
From there, 22 takes Joe to the Realm of Lost Souls where she introduces him to “a guy I know” – a mad psychedelic captain, a self-described “mystic without borders.” Captain Moonwind (who doubles as a NYC sign spinner on the other side) helps lost souls find their way out of obsessions and anxieties that leave them disconnected from life. For instance, he once helped liberate a soulless hedge funder from his alienated labor. In the aftermath, the frustrated Wall Streeter completely trashes his obsessed, anxious and confining work environment while finally screaming “I’m alive! I’m alive!”
To the tune of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Moonwind ferries Joe and 22 across the Sea of Lost Souls. On the way, the captain tellingly instructs Joe that lost souls are not that different from those striving to live constantly in the Zone. In both cases, he warns, “When your joy becomes an obsession, you end up tragically disconnected from life.”
With the warning ringing in his ears, and after entering a deep state of meditation, Joe and 22 suddenly find themselves returned to earth – to the intensive care unit where Joe’s NDE began. He’s not dead after all. However, both Joe and 22 are surprised to find that they remain completely displaced. Joe’s personality is now located in the hospital’s therapy cat, Mr. Mittens. Meanwhile, 22 finds itself animating Joe’s just-revived body.
Desperate and confused, the two narrowly escape from intensive care and emerge onto NYC’s noisy, smelly and dirty streets. It’s in this Purgatorio that Joe resumes his role as 22’s Virgil. Trapped in the cat’s body, he is intent on leading his newly ensouled form to what he imagines as heaven – the Half Note Jazz Club where his platonic Beatrice (Dorothea Williams) awaits him impatiently.
Purgatorio
On the way, 22 learns more about inhabiting Joe’s body. For the first time, she discovers the soul-purging joys of pizza; of simply walking, sky watching, taking a shower, tasting toothpaste, and of fitting into a comfortable old brown suit. She recognizes a kindred spirit in 12-year-old Connie, Joe’s gifted middle school trombonist who finds school stultifying. When Connie expresses her boredom with school, 22 approvingly quotes her former mentor, George Orwell, “State-sponsored education is like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
22 even revels in subway rudeness and in the talent of an underground street musician. Above all, 22 likes “jazzing” – spontaneous self-expression or any kind.
Now Mr. Mittens is the one to object. “No,” he insists, jazz is a completely other category. “Music and life,” he says, “operate by very different rules.”
Undeterred, 22 continues jazzing during a visit to Joe’s neighborhood barbershop. There, with Mr. Mittens sitting in her lap, Dez the barber reveals the possibility of finding joy in a second-choice career even when one’s first choice has been frustrated. Despite his genius at cutting hair, Dez explains that he originally wanted to become a vet. However, since barber school was less expensive than training for veterinary medicine, Dez chose the former. But it’s made him “happy as a clam.”
The lesson is not lost on Mr. Mittens. His wide eyes tell that he’s thoughtfully considering his own life in the light of Dez’s revelation. Meanwhile he listens incredulously as 22 philosophizes free form while Dez cuts the hair on the head she’s now thinking with.
Everyone’s enthralled as she pontificates about “existing as a theoretical construct in a hypothetical waystation between life and death. . . left wondering whether all this (obsessed and over-focused) living was really worth dying for.”
Then she responds smartly to Paul, a hip barbershop customer, who rips Joe for falling short of his dreams. 22 fires back, “He’s just criticizing me to make up for the pain of his own failed dreams.” Her barbershop audience laughs at Paul derisively.
Later, 22 ecstatically explains to Joe: Didn’t you see? “I was jazzing.”
22’s jazzing continues through the next stage of Joe’s purgatory – an encounter with his mother who has constantly urged her son to abandon his musical ambitions in favor of steady employment with pension and health care.
Still encased in Joe’s body and tentatively coached by Mr. Mittens, 22 boldly responds on Joe’s behalf, “Mom, I’m just afraid that if I died today, then my life would have amounted to nothing.”
That particular jazz riff opens Mrs. Gardner’s heart. In tears, she embraces her son and tells him how proud she is of him. She adds that his deceased father would have been proud too. She even gives Joe his dad’s handsome wool suit to wear at the anticipated performance that evening. (Joe’s father too had been a musician dependent for support on his wife’s real job as a seamstress. No wonder she was worried about Joe.)
Paradiso
Finally, Joe arrives at the Half Note Jazz Club. By now, with the help of Captain Moonwind and a brief return to the Great Before, the difference between Joe and 22 has been completely overcome. Joe’s come to realize that 22 is the same as his own unappropriated unborn soul.
Whole at last, Joe is now ready for his beatific vision. Imagining that it will happen on the Half-Note’s stage, Joe persuades Dorothea Williams to rehire him despite his late arrival at the jazz club. Reluctantly, she acquiesces.
However, all doubts vanish as Joe gives the performance of his life thrilling everyone present including his mother and Ms. Williams herself. Amid the applause, Joe’s mother is heard shouting proudly, “That’s my son!”
Nonetheless in the aftermath, Joe remains strangely detached. In effect, he wonders aloud, “Is that all there is? I’ve been waiting for this my entire life. I thought it would be different.”
The diva explains, “You’ve been like a fish discontent with his water habitat because he’s been searching for the ocean. You’ve had what you’ve been looking for all your life. It’s what you live in, move in and where you have your being.”
With that, Joe’s penny finally drops. Now his life flashes before him summarized in the symbolic trinkets that awakened the soul of # 22:
- A Metro pass
- A pizza crust
- A piece of a bagel whose other half had been thrown into the tip basket of that subway musician
- The lollypop Dez the barber shared during the session in his “magic chair”
- A spool of blue thread that Joe’s mother used to refashion his father’s wool suit
- A seed from a maple tree brought by a gentle breeze into Joe’s waiting hand
Yes, Dorothea’s version of Beatrice was right: Joe’s had everything he’s needed right from the beginning – in his father’s sharing his passion for jazz, in fireworks over New York City, in the heat blowing from city street grates, in the taste of pecan pie, in the star filled sky . . .
So have we all.
Conclusion
Such “morals of the story” might strike some as typically Hollywood – trite truisms generated algorithmically by pretentious but ultimately soulless corporations interested only in easy pandering to the peasant gallery. However, conclusions of this sort overlook the fact that most preaching and motivational talks contain similar messages. Fact is: we need the reminders.
Nonetheless, the morals of “Soul” go far beyond what’s already been itemized. A more comprehensive catalog might include the following.
- Life on planet earth need not be boring or meaningless.
- Death is not our enemy, but a portal to profound insight and expanded awareness.
- Animals from which we evolved (symbolized in Mr. Mittens) continue to guide us.
- So do previous human incarnations (like 22’s George Orwell and Muhammed Ali) who somehow persist as our mentor guardian angels.
- When our joys become obsessive, they disconnect us from life’s richness.
- Even our “dream jobs” are comparatively insignificant – carried out in the equivalent of a small basement jazz club.
- The same holds true for the heroes we idolize (like the self-important diva Dorothea Williams).
- In the light of impending death, (if we’re lucky) consciousness of such relativity eventually dawns as we realize that wish fulfillment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
- Instead, life is about overcoming separations – male from female, black from white, animal from human, body from soul.
- It’s important “to jazz” and free flow at every opportunity; music and life both operate by the same rules.
These insights merit not only superficial review, but serious meditation by those whose spiritual hunger evokes them from sensitive writers like Docter, Jones and Powers despite their employment by Disney.
Do yourself a favor and see Pixar’s “Soul.” It will set you on the path of Dante, Virgil, Beatrice — and Joe Gardner.
Talkin’ Guitar Blues
This is the first song I ever played in public. That was back in 1965 when I was still in the seminary, a year before I was ordained. On our patron saint’s feast day, St. Columban’s Day (November 23rd), we always put on some kind of show. “Old timers” (far younger than I am now) would sing their favorite songs. I remember that our moral theology prof, Tom McElligott, would sing “Mick McGuire” every year. Well, believe it or not, on this particular St. Columban’s Day, I had the gall to perform this little ditty. Later on, it became my signature party piece. I’ve done it a million times. (Still can’t get it exactly right!)
Hallelujah
“Everybody Knows”: Leonard Cohen
So Much to Be Upset About: A Cabin Fever Short List
Forgive me if Covid-19 isolation is finally getting to me. But (like many of you, I’m sure) I find there are just so many things to be upset about these days. So, let me relieve the pressure and mention just three: the attack on the capitol, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R Ga.), and the Super Bowl.
Capitol Attack
Did you see the film presented by the Democratic impeachment team last Tuesday? If not, click on the video above. I found that collage both disgusting and perversely empowering. On the disgusting side:
- It was ultimate proof of white privilege, wasn’t it?
- I mean, during BLM protests right-wing media and Republicans were outraged when some businesses were set on ablaze.
- However, those same media along with those Republican officials – the very ones under attack during the insurrection – find excuses to downplay white supremacists ravaging the nation’s congress. Can you believe that?
- Imagine if the insurrectionists were black, armed and destroying capitol property – roaming about looking for officials to kill.
- Don’t tell me that a lot of black protestors wouldn’t have been shot.
- We’d never hear the end of it.
- For sure, police protection would have been much heavier. (If you’ve been to DC during protests, e.g., against the war in Iraq, you know the place is always absolutely crawling with cops lining the streets in phalanx dressed in heavy riot gear just waiting to pounce.)
- Or what if the insurrectionists had been Muslims? We’d be bombing some poor country like Yemen right now in self-righteous response.
- And what about all that money DC (and every other city in this great country of ours) spends on policing? You mean, they couldn’t prevent that fiasco?
Nonetheless, while disagreeing with its cause, I somehow felt rebelliously good about the insurrection.
- It showed that revolution is possible — what it would look like if we followed the advice of Thomas Jefferson about regular citizen uprisings.
- I loved the thought of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi (and Mike Pence!) hiding under their desks.
- Their lives shouldn’t be threatened, but they do need to be afraid of us. They’re not. And disgracefully, beneficiaries of white privilege are the only ones at this historical juncture whom the system allows to intimidate irresponsible politicians.
- I mean, Pelosi and McConnell are not our friends.
- Neither are Biden and Harris.
- And of course, neither is Trump.
- None of them represents us; they exclusively represent their donors.
- They won’t even consider universal health care during an actual pandemic. They refuse to keep campaign promises to increase the minimum wage to $15 and to send out $2000 (not $1400!) checks when so many have been out of work for nearly a year.
- Yes, those were democratic campaign promises! It’s how they won Georgia.
- They lied!
- No wonder people are angry.
Marjorie Taylor-Greene
And don’t get me started about U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R Ga).
- So, she wants Obama executed?
- She’s called for the murder of Nancy Pelosi – specifically with a bullet to the head?
- Imagine if Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib had said that about Mitch McConnell — a bullet to his head.
- Even if you or I uttered such monstrosities, SWAT teams would be at our doors right now with battering rams.
- But she’s allowed to continue serving as a government official.
- Double standards, anyone?
- White privilege?
The Super Bowl
And then there’s the Super Bowl with white people complaining about the NFL’s predominantly black workforce calling attention to wanton police murders of their unarmed racial counterparts.
- Whites’ response to the reduced Super Bowl TV audience? Too much mixture of politics and sports. “Get woke. Go broke,” they say.
- They ask, “Why politicize a football game?”
- Good, that’s what I say! In fact, I’ve been saying it for years. I mean why play the National Anthem, “honor our troops,” and normalize war with special flyovers of air force weapons of mass destruction (aka fighter planes) at every major sports event you care to name? What’s the connection? I don’t get it. (Imagine if your boss had you stand for the National Anthem before work each day.)
- At least Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks) is on the right page on this one. He’s decided to eliminate playing the “Star Spangled Banner” before any home games. Good idea, Mark. If everyone followed suit, it would save me from wondering whether to stand or not.
- And thanks Colin Kaepernick!
Of course, my cabin fever list could go on and on. So could yours, I’m sure.
Amazon Workers to Vote on Unionization: Bezos Says He Can’t Afford It
Readings for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Job 7: 1-7; Psalm 147: 1-6; 1 Cor. 9: 16-19, 22-23; Mark 1: 29-39.
Tomorrow, 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama will vote on unionization. Of course, their decision will affect workers throughout Amazon’s mammoth enterprise – most of them non-white. The company employs 798,000 full-and part-time employees. In 2019, its net revenues were around $280.5 billion. Its CEO, Jeff Bezos, is himself worth about $184 billion. He’s the second richest man on the planet.
Work at Amazon
Despite company profits and the wealth of its chief, there’s good reason for the unionization drive including alienated labor resulting from:
- Low pay: Recently, Amazon raised its wages to $15 per hour. It also extended to its workers a $2 per hour bonus for “heroic” service during the pandemic. However, the company has since removed that extra pay in the light of its claims that the pandemic’s severity has diminished. Amazon workers dispute that assertion, while maintaining that $15 per hour remains inadequate remuneration for their heavy workloads. And besides, Amazon workers’ unprecedentedly profitable production increases during the pandemic need due reward.
- Intense surveillance of workers: Sophisticated AI technology tracks every move of each Amazon worker – to such an extent that those not meeting production goals can be threatened with imminent job termination by a robot without intervention from a human supervisor.
- Union-busting: That same sort of technology makes sure that workers on break do not congregate for purposes of conversation related to union organizing. Those caught engaging in such exchanges have been summarily fired.
- Wage theft: Last Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission fined Amazon $61.7 million for actually stealing tips from Amazon’s Flex drivers over a two and a half-year period. Flex drivers are hourly workers who receive no benefits and use their own cars to make deliveries.
- Dangerous working conditions: Work at Amazon is three times as dangerous as employment across the private sector and twice as dangerous as warehouse work in general. 911 records show that on the job mental episodes and even suicides are common in the Amazon workplace.
- PR to the contrary: The Amazon website proclaims that it supports the Black Lives Matter movement. However, according to Amazon’s largely non-white workforce, the items just listed tell another story.
Today’s Readings
I bring all of this up, because this Sunday’s readings suggest themes of work, overwork, and low pay. They implicitly compare the alienated work of “hirelings” and “slaves” to that of the self-chosen pro bono work done by Yeshua and Paul in service of the poor. Both types of work are exhausting. But one is human, the other not.
What I’m driving at is reflected in my translations of these thoughtful readings about work. Please check out the originals here:
Job 7: 1-7: Joining Job On his stinking POS Wage workers know That life is hard When a plague requires Months of misery Sleepless nights Overtime work And hopeless days That drain their lives And have them wondering If they’ll ever Smile again. Psalm 147: 1-6: Brokenhearted, Some look to “God” And still find words Of prayer, Praise and thanks That transform Even bricklayers’ Tattered blueprints Into transcendent plans Of infinite intelligence, Power, and wisdom That one day will find Bosses humiliated And poor workers Finally earning Their just wage. 1 Cor. 9: 16-19, 22-23: Paul’s proud labor Was teaching Which he too found Underpaid and driven As he gave hope to Those too poor to pay Just as his Master had In order to help them Regain that grin. Mark 1: 29-39: Yes, Jesus too Worked hard As a day-laborer Become faith healer First of his friend’s Feverish in-law And then Of the insane And those afflicted With unnamed infection Of every type. Sustained by prayer At early dawn, He too soon returned To his tireless grind As a selfless Pro bono physician Without borders.
Alienated Labor or Not
Do you see what’s happening in those readings?
The first one from the Book of Job indirectly reveals reluctant wage labor (a la Amazon) to be like sitting on top of Job’s famous pile of excrement (Job 2: 8-13). It’s pure drudgery. It’s slavery. Its misery leads to sleepless nights, and a shortened life entirely deprived of happiness.
By way of contrast, the second and third readings describe unalienated labor. In both the case of Paul and Yeshua, the work is completely exhausting and without monetary remuneration – but by their own choice. (The gospel reading’s description of a typical “day in the life” of Yeshua the Christ is actually quite detailed. It’s up in the early morning for prayer and then dealing with a constant stream of impoverished peasants seeking relief from diseases both mental and physical. Then it’s on to the next town for a round of the same – all without charge.)
Of course, the difference between the work Job’s text references and that of Yeshua and Paul is that the latter determined their own workload and pace of activity. They exhausted themselves because they freely chose to do so – not in the service of a distant wealthy slavedriver like Bezos, but in service to Life Itself.
Though union organizers don’t put it this way, that’s the ideal of the labor union movement – a humanized workplace, where workers have voice and some control over conditions in the place where they spend fully half of their waking hours.
As economists like Richard Wolff point out, an even more humanized workplace would be run entirely by workers. They’d determine for themselves every aspect of their workday – what to produce, where to produce it, the pace of work, and what to do with the profits. In such a cooperative there’d be no alienation, no intense surveillance, no dangerous working conditions, no underpayment or wage theft.
Conclusion
Naturally, all of us have to work. But exhausting labor too (like that of Yeshua and Paul) can bring a sense of joy and participation in creation of the universe like that described in today’s responsorial, Psalm 147.
Even work for Amazon could be dignified – absent the intense surveillance, constant race against the clock, low pay, and wage theft at the hands of one of the wealthiest companies in the world run by the globe’s second richest man. That sort of work can and does drive people over the edge even to the point of suicide.
The efforts by Alabama’s Amazon employees to unionize represent an attempt by wage earners to humanize all of that harshness. Within the capitalist system as we know it, unionization is the closest workers can get to escape slave-like conditions and completely alienated labor. The real humanization however would come from transforming the workplace into a cooperative where employees would be self-empowered.
As always, the call of today’s readings is to do what our faith tells us the Great Father-Mother God did: become human. In today’s instance that means humanizing the workplace. That means opposition to Amazon’s exploitation of workers. It implies support of unions everywhere. It suggests support of the co-op movement.
If That’s Religion, Good Riddance!
Religion is in extremis – on its deathbed; it’s breathing its last.
That’s the unmistakable conclusion reached by Dr. Ronald Inglehart, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He was interviewed recently by OpEdNews editor-in-chief, Rob Kall.
Over the last 40 years, Inglehart has overseen a study of the worldwide viability of religious belief and practice in every inhabited continent on the planet. The work of his international World Values Research Team has covered the beliefs of 90% of our globe’s inhabitants.
The survey’s results have been published in Inglehart’s new book, Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing It and What Comes Next. And if Rob’s interview is any indication, it shouldn’t be missed.
I say that as a liberation theologian whose discipline has long anticipated the conclusions reached by the World Values Survey.
Let me explain.
Religion’s Sudden Decline
Personal experience (even with our own children) tells most of us that despite the dominance of white evangelicals over the Republican party, and despite the claim of most Americans to “believe in God,” religion has largely lost its power.
What’s surprising about Inglehart’s study, however, is its claim that the decline has reached a “tipping point” over the last ten years.
That is, after a post WWII surge in religious fervor from 1947 through the early 1950s, disaffection with religion has gradually increased not only within the U.S. population, but worldwide. Over the last decade, it has reached an epidemic point of no return. That’s what “tipping point” means.
All of that raises the question of the meaning Inglehart assigns “religion,” and (for me) that meaning’s relationship to liberation theology.
For Inglehart, religion represents a cross-cultural survival mechanism found in every human community on the planet. In the face of their overwhelming insecurity in the face of wild animals, famine, wars, unpredictable weather patterns, and high infant mortality rates, humans have traditionally sought refuge in religion’s moral order that ensured most prominently survival of the species. The resulting morality of survival mandated:
- Large families
- That women’s bodies be controlled as “baby factories”
- That they stay at home and care for their offspring
- That human morality adopt a prohibition of birth control, abortion, divorce, and unproductive sexual behaviors such as homosexuality
However, with the advent of modern medicine, decline in infant mortality, and the emergence of the welfare state, such restrictions became unnecessary. The role of women changed.
And with that mutation, the door almost imperceptibly began to swing open towards a world without religion. That new context even showed signs of accepting non-binary sexuality.
Another factor contributing to that liberation has been the progressive decline of authoritarian government and the spread of democracy. Inglehart recalls that ancient hunter-gatherer tribal societies were more egalitarian. (For more than 50,000 years they worshipped female goddesses.)
However, with the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, power became increasingly centralized in palaces and manors while the majority of the world’s population remained disaggregated and relatively powerless.
To maintain that situation, kings, royal classes, emperors, popes, and priests emerged. They hijacked the more democratic popular religious beliefs and practices of matricentric societies. Increasingly, the divine was imagined as masculine.
The resulting patriarchy used religion to shore up its power and to justify the consequent wealth disparities. This entailed creating and invoking their “divine right” which enabled the minority of rich and powerful patriarchs not only to rule over their inferiors at the local level, but (where possible) to impose their sway over weaker neighboring peoples in the form of empires. The point of it all was to transfer wealth from the weak to the strong.
Once again, on Inglehart’s analysis, the decline of empires following the Second Inter-Capitalist War simultaneously undermined the reigning political order and religious beliefs in the ideological remnants of that dispensation. No more divine right of kings.
Moreover, the decline in question was accompanied by new conceptualizations of governments’ very purpose and the emergence of the welfare state. No longer was the state’s raison d’etre to be defined from the top-down. Instead, (as Rob Kall says) it became a “bottom-up” affair.
Increasingly (and most successfully in Scandinavian countries) the point became (at least modest) wealth transfer from the top to the bottom and the provision of free health care and education, along with subsidized housing and transportation.
In other words, as Inglehart would have it, the rapid decline of religion’s influence was due to liberation movements in general – most prominently, to the women’s liberation movement and anti-colonialism – that have swept the planet since the Second Inter-Capitalist War.
Liberation Theology
All of that brings us to liberation theology and its alternative reconceptualization of religion.
In its Christian form (and there are parallels in Judaism, Islam, engaged Buddhism, etc.) liberation theology is reflection on the following Yeshua the Christ from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed committed to the collective improvement of their lives economically, politically, socially and spiritually.
Put otherwise, liberation theology is a champion of anti-imperialism, and anti-colonialism. It is pro-women’s liberation and stands on the side of the LGBTQ movement. In that sense, it is anti-religion as understood by Dr. Inglehart’s study. It welcomes the death of traditional faith.
Moreover, liberation theology’s critical approach to the Bible (along with 90% of biblical scholars over the last century) recognizes the “battle of the gods” implicitly described by the World Values Survey.
Its understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition exposes the class struggle over the biblical God within the pages of the Bible itself. Fundamentally, the conflict pitted the God of Moses against the God of David and the royal classes.
More specifically, the Moses tradition celebrated the liberation of slaves from Egypt as its foundational event. Slave liberation led to a loose confederation of nomadic tribes whose decentralized religious “covenant” prioritized the rights of widows and orphans while mandating hospitality to strangers – just as Dr. Inglehart describes.
For its part, the Davidic tradition’s covenant had Israel’s God assuring dynasty to David and his sons – to Judah’s royal crime families with their wealth exploitation of disaggregated peasants along with imperial ambitions that sacrificed young men’s lives in pointless wars. To that end, the royals and their scribes advanced an idea of a blood-thirsty war God who delighted in the slaughter of “enemy” men, women, children and animals.
In the meantime, the biblical prophetic tradition stood on the side of the Mosaic covenant.
In the first place, the prophets opposed the creation of royalty at all (1 Samuel 8). In the second place, their social criticism advocated the interests of those widows, orphans and strangers (https://www.openbible.info/topics/widows_and_orphans). In the third place, they suffered the predictable consequences experienced by all (then and since) who speak truth to the patriarchy. They were ostracized, exiled, imprisoned, assassinated or formally executed https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Killing-Prophets
Yeshua the Christ appeared in the prophetic tradition. As such, his story emerges as profoundly anti-religious in Dr. Inglehart’s sense. His incarnation took place not in a palace or temple, but among the poorest of the poor – in a stable and on the banks of the Jordan river as a disciple of a harsh critic of the temple priesthood and its co-dominion with Rome’s imperialists.
All of that (and so much more) identifies Yeshua as a great prophet in the tradition of Moses, the liberator of slaves in Egypt, and of predecessors like Amos who defended the poor, criticized the rich, and scandalized everyone by condemning temple sacrifice and imposition of laws that penalized the poor and favored the rich.
And besides, Jesus was more than a prophet, social critic, and movement organizer. He was also an incisive mystic, a seer. He saw and taught the fundamental unity of all people and of all creation. He taught love of neighbor as oneself, because he evidently recognized that one’s neighbor is in fact oneself. There is really only one of us here. Or, as Paul of Tarsus put it, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female (Galatians 3:28).
Conclusion
Nevertheless, if religion has been historically so retrograde and negative, why bother with it? Why continue reading something like the Bible? Why claim adherence to the teachings of Yeshua the Christ?
More personally, why should I continue to work as a theologian and contribute to an OEN series called “Homilies for Progressives”? Why not follow the implications of Dr. Inglehart’s study and jettison faith altogether along with its supporting documents?
For me, the answer to all these questions is threefold:
- First of all, because though undeniably in decline, religion remains a potent source of meaning for the world’s majority. You might even say that its stories supply their popular “philosophy.” It organizes their experience. They might not know much about history, economics, or political parties, but they know what they’ve been told about the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Holy Koran. To ignore this truism is to tragically surrender a potential tool of human liberation to its enemies.
- Second and relatedly, because even in the face of encroaching irrelevance, patriarchal religion remains that powerful tool in the arsenal of the oppressors of women, widows, orphans, immigrants, gender nonconformists, and the current empire’s oppressed and slaughtered subjects. (Of course, I’m speaking here of the United States.) The servants of patriarchy invoke religion at every turn. They use it to justify their wars. They employ religion to rationalize massive theft of natural resources across the globe. They need it to explain the wholesale destruction of the earth as subject to God-endorsed human domination. Religion’s liberation potential therefore needs to be understood and exposed as a countervailing, in-kind force for good. In this context sound biblical theology is an indispensable instrument for dismantling “divinely sanctioned” structures of oppression.
- And thirdly, because the mystical strain found in the Judeo-Christian tradition (as well as in all major religions) addresses life’s most fundamental questions –about the nature and meaning of life at its deepest level; about our relations with one another and with the environment, about those mistakenly perceived as foreigners and enemies, about power, love, money, and justice.
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