Old Song, New Verse: The Sound of Xenophobia

People who know me well know that I firmly in the middle of the road when it comes to American politics.  I cannot be defined by any single issue, don't vote a party line, and can most often see the other side of an argument, even if I'm pretty convinced of my opinion.

Sometimes, however, things happen in our country that cannot go unchallenged, and for me, celebrity candidate Trump's xenophobic comments about barring all Muslims from entering the US makes me wonder if he will soon appear the flag of the Third Reich as a campaign backdrop.  His words ring hollow against those of the First Amendment, which protects all of us from religious tyranny, not only those who think like "us."  This prohibition on religious profiling protects every American from the censorship of our faith by the government, and though some will argue that we Christians have seen our freedoms diminish in recent years, that only proves the point that this freedom belongs to all of us, and, as such, must be protected.

Trump sounds far too much like Hitler to see his fear-mongering as simply political stagecraft. He wants us to be scared; so scared that we build a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, so scared that we would abandon the principles of our constitution, so scared that we would restrict the movements of an entire group of Americans, or hold them captive against their will.  American citizens! He wants us to be afraid of Americans.  This appeal to fear calls us to abandon intelligent problem-solving and react like cornered animals, lashing out at whatever is closest, regardless of where the actual danger might be.  He wants us to be afraid, because he believes that if we are afraid, it will bring him more power.  So, he reframes our concern about radical, extremist zealots into irrational fear of all Muslims.

He plans to do these things because he believes their religion makes them dangerous.  And, he believes that our law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and military communities are incapable of doing their jobs in the fight against terrorism.

There are surely people in this world who wish to do us harm, even to destroy us, because we are Americans.   We need strong military and intelligence against ISIS, here and abroad, and those who would bring evil against us must expect dire consequences.  We cannot be a paper tiger; our teeth must be quick and sharp.  We must protect the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

People of all political stripes, religions, and races must call this what it is; xenophobic, racist hate speech that undermines key American values, feeds fear, and will do nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism in our country.

Well Said, Gov. Jindal!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/jeb-bush-donald-trump-carly-fiorina/index.html

Stephen Colbert and Pope Francis

More from my favorite Catholic theologian :

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/55f0748ce4b093be51bd21e2

Museum Staff?

"The future is our native time zone. Granted, humans are the only species that thinks about the future. It's the time zone that, when we occupy it, we are being most human. But we are being most Christian as well. Jesus comes to us from beyond and pulls us from the future more than pushes us from the past. The Holy Spirit encourages time travel, most often to the future. Close your eyes and travel in time: where do you go? The default timezone of the Christian is what is ahead, not what is behind." Len Sweet, So Beautiful, p. 48.

I don't think most Christians actually think this way. I think we are usually looking backward--more like volunteers at the historical center than lookouts in a ship's crow's nest.

In Dufftown, the lovely town in Scotland where we spent five days, there is a small museum, right across from the clock tower in the middle of the village. on the day we visited the museum, it was staffed by a sweet "older" lady who didn't seem to know much history of the town.  As we looked at the displays and the photos on the walls, she seemed as inquisitive as we were, but no more knowledgeable.  While she welcomed us warmly, she really couldn't tell us much about anything in the town.

Are church folk like that? Volunteers in a museum they don't know much about?

Sweet points out that it is uniquely human to consider the future, and that when we are oriented to the future we are most oriented toward Christ.  What if Christians behaved the way Sweet describes us?  What would the Church look like if Jesus followers were really focused on God's future more than its own past?  Or if we used our understanding of the past to help us look forward with hope and passion?

Gotthard Pass 12 June

Gotthard Pass in Switzerland was one of the most amazing passes we crossed throughout the trip.  The mountains were in the clouds most of the day, but the pass road was really cool. One side was all cobblestones.  It's amazing to think of the manual labor it took to make this road!

You can get a little sense of the steepness here.

The snow had only been off the road for less than a week so there had been very few vehicles to wear down the grasses growing in the cobblestones.

That's us :-).

Time For a Wee Dram

Castles, Sheep, and the Highland "Coo"

Balvenie Castle, near Dufftown

Aye, the Yank with the camera's still there. Dunna look a' him.

Braemar Castle

This castle ruin was right next to the estate above

The Highland "Coo"--they all need haircuts

Ah, pastoral bliss

Ballindalloch Castle

Balmoral Castle, the Royals' cabin in Scotland

Because the Queen, et al, actually live here, they only show one room, with pictures of the royal family.

Sunday Worship At Mortlach Church, Dufftown, Scotland

We worshipped Sunday at one of the oldest churches in Britain,  right around the corner from our B and B, dating back to the sixth century. There was a famous battle fought there in 1010, as the Danes tried to conquer the Scots.  As the story goes, the Scottish King for victory and told God if they won he would expand the church by three spear lengths. They won the battle and he did as he had promised. Three lancet windows commemorate the Scottish victory and the three spear lengths.

In the center of the cemetery is a stone memorializing the battle.

Inside the vestry are stones from the sixth century marking the Pictish ancestry of the area.
Worship was interesting--no notes in the hymnbooks, we stood for all the hymns but not until the verrry last second, then popped up all together.

They have communion twice a year and this was one of them. Distribution was in the pews, in silence, and a bit like a "tea service."  The pews were lined with white clothes in honor of this important day.

I took a few notes from the sermon, so if I break into a Scottish brogue you'll know I'm quoting him.

He gave me some good advice after worship : "There is no bad whisky; some is just better."  Aye, I'll raise a wee dram to that!

The people warmed up slowly to us...but Karen soon had them charmed and they became very talkative. The interim pastor told us quite a bit of the church's history.

We even had coffee and tea! It was a lovely morning.

Spiritually Void?

In the US  often hear people talk about spirituality and saying some version of "I'm spiritual but not religious."  Here in the UK and Europe, I have not heard that kind of commitment to a spiritual dimension in life.  Instead, there appears often to be a spiritual void in the lives of younger people, so much so that they are unaware even that it's missing.  It makes me wonder if we will follow their path, becoming not only post-Christian, but post-spiritual.

What does that mean for the spread of the gospel? Will the Church go dormant in some way, or could it be that a cultural "clean slate" will provide space for a fresh telling of the story of Jesus?  Can there be an awakening of faith, or will Christianity become an historical relic?

Yet, even as we ask such questions, we confess that God is alive and at work in the world, bringing abundant and eternal life through Christ.  Surely, God's power will be made known in our weakness and the Holy Spirit will continue to move among and through God's faithful people.  It may be tempting to mourn the decay of the Church here or back home, but God is faithful and the Spirit is at work.  Here in the village of Dufftown, faithful people gather for worship each week and serve God by serving one another in their community.

22 June Left To Fend For Ourselves

Last full day of riding we were moving as a group through the town of San Moritz Switzerland. The way we stayed together as we moved through towns was that when we went through a roundabout the rider going through would stay near the roundabout until the next rider came, then that rider would take his place and stay until the next rider saw him, and so on. It worked through a number of towns all across the trip but today one of the riders decided not to wait and subsequently four of us had no idea what rest of the group had done. We stopped to consult a map, and we rode back and forth through the town trying to find them. Finally we rode the route to the hotel, and when we arrived we found that the other guys had been there for 30 minutes. The only way they could have been so far ahead is that they did not wait at all, they simply high-tailed it down the mountain.  We were not happy campers, and explained our unhappiness to them clearly and succinctly.

Castellane, France

Today is our rest day in Castellane, in southeastern France.  So far the trip has been quite amazing, with endless moutain views and more curves in each day's ride than I've ever done before.  My riding seems to get better each day, I think.  The group has quite a breadth of riding experience and skill, including a former pro racer and a rider-journalist who tests bikes for a living and writes about them for a variety of magazines.  Our host, Ewe, is an excellent rider as well, and has ridden everywhere you can imagine, including a six-year ride around the world!  I would say that I am in the middle--the fastest of the slower group and the only one riding two-up. The top four riders leave me in the dust quite quickly.
About half the group took a day ride today to the Grand Canyon du Verdon, while the rest of us stayed to enjoy Castellane, do a little laundry and catch up on blog posts.

As I write this, Karen and I have some laundry going a couple of doors down and we're enjoying a lunchtime glass of vin blanc at a little sidewalk cafe.  It was quiet when Karen took the picture of me at this little table, but now every table is full and conversations abound (all in French, of course).  Every couple of minutes another cycle goes by, weaving between the pedestrians who spill off the narrow sidewalks onto the winding road through this section of the town.  It is exactly what one imagine a small French town to look like.

Castellane, France Photos