The Miracle of an Ordinary Day

It was beginning winter,

An in-between time,

The landscape still partly brown:

The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind,

--Theodore Roethke

I’m feeling a bit in-between today, still living in the echo of a great Thanksgiving but also knowing just how far off the holidays are, some twenty four days to be exact and counting.  Feels like a long way to go.

In-between: times in life when we have already left the station but have yet to arrive at our final destination, days filled with anticipation and wonder or anxiety and impatience.  All depends upon how we view these great chunks of time set squarely in the middle of “Been there, done that” and “I’m finally here!” 

Nature is in-between in early December. The grass is brown and lies matted down.  Plants have pulled within for a long winter’s rest.  The birds have flown south and the light of day is flat and diffuse and short. The earth waits for the first snowstorm to blow in but not just yet, not today, as fall wanes and winter has yet to knock at the door.  We’re living in-between.

In-between is actually the place humans live almost all of the time.  Pushing through school on a quiet Monday afternoon.  Driving to work on a mellow Friday morning.  Making lunches for the kids at the kitchen counter for the 1,000^th time.  Gently sidling up to our spouse in bed and hearing her quiet breaths, as you have for so many evenings.  Sleepily standing in line at Dunkin Donuts and muttering for the umpteenth time: “black, two sugars, medium”.  Guess what? This is in fact our life, most of life, the overwhelming truth of our existence. In-between. But how do we see this?  Is it a miracle or is it merely mundane?

Though our mind and spirit is want to remember in sharp detail the big days of life: a joyous wedding, a happy birth, a heart breaking death, or some dramatic personal victory, the truth is that we mortals spend most of our moments in ordinary time, regular time, just normal time.  Like Thursday, December 1^st at 11:35 am or February 11^th at 2 pm or June 9^th at 6 pm.  The temptation is to view this in-between time with impatience, to want to leap over the more ho-hum aspects of daily life, to skip our vegetables and go straight for desert. Are we there yet? Nope, still living in-between. And just maybe that’s ok, even good.

One of the disciplines of claiming a faith in God is having a belief which allows us to see each and every day as special, extraordinary even, but not for any amazing event.  No. Instead faith asks us give thanks just because one ordinary day is here for the taking and the living, all delivered as a no-strings attached gift from a generous God.  As the Psalmist wrote, “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!”   

Possessing such a grateful and open attitude about the in-between is not easy. We thank the Creator for a holy day and holiday, vacation, Christmas, a birthday, an anniversary. Yahoo! But can we also embrace today as sacred too?  All the other days?  Our hungry spirits may clamor for a quick fix, a jolt, or the rush of just one day like no other.  Yet the calendar never lies.  The reality is that most of the time our time is finally lived in-between.  

I like singer songwriter James Taylor’s take on the in-between.  “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it. There ain't nothing to it. Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill. But since we're on our way down we might as well enjoy the ride.”

So happy day!  There won’t be another day like this day, ever, ever again.  It’s an in-between gift. Maybe that’s the real secret of knowing an ordinary extraordinary life. Just one day at a time. 

     

         

Hooray for Real Holidays!

Holiday (noun) 1. a day fixed by law or custom on which ordinary business is suspended in commemoration of some event or in honor of some person; a religious feast day or holy day.

--Random House Dictionary

Call me crazy but I like to celebrate just one holiday at a time.  To mark holidays and holy days: the tradition in a culture to set aside time for commemoration, worship, and just plain rest. But lately holidays have gotten all kind of mashed together. Have you noticed?  Barely past Halloween and then all the Thanksgiving stuff goes up on November 1, almost one month early. Haven’t even bought the turkey yet and I’m already hearing holiday music on the radio. Holiday mash up. Holiday smash up. Holiday creep.    

The concept of “holiday” owes its roots to the words “holy day”, a time set aside by the early church, other faith traditions and even government to mark a unique day of prayer or remembrance: Christmas, Hanukah, Easter, Ramadan, etc.  At one time Sunday was a kind of holiday and holy day too, all rolled into one.  The idea of a holiday is simple and at one time this is how it worked. Few shops were open.  Youth sports took a day off.  Banks, liquor stores, almost everything else was shuttered for the day.  Most people actually got to stay home from work.  They then spent time with loved ones and visited friends and played and napped or just did nothing.  The key was the culture agreed that it needed a time reserved for Sabbath, to slow down, to stop, to pause.  To “holiday”.  That of course is going, if not almost gone.

Take this week’s holiday mash up, the crazy rush to tear right through Thanksgiving and make a mad dash for Christmas, to frantically push to meet Santa Claus even before the gravy on the table gets cold.  Name the retailer and this year they’ve pushed back the time to begin the Christmas shopping season right to the edge of Turkey Day, earlier than ever before.  This week anyone who so desires can get buying even before their holiday dinner dishes get done.  On “Black Friday” in Massachusetts Macy’s will open at 12:30 a.m., Kohl’s and Best Buy at 1 a.m. and Wal-Mart at 4 a.m., to name but a few. In other states with less restrictive holiday closing laws, many stores are actually open on Thanksgiving, including Kmart, Target, the Gap, Toys R Us, Old Navy and Wal-Mart.  Makes me wonder if next year they might start serving turkey right in the aisles, a blue light special with cranberry sauce on the side.

Too bad for the workers because they have to go in, leave or even forego the holiday table and set up all the tinsel and the bells and stock the shelves and man the registers. Retailers argue that Black Friday is “good” for shoppers.  Target corporate spokesperson Molly Snyder insists, “We have heard from our guests that they want to shop Target following their Thanksgiving celebrations rather than only having the option of getting up in the middle of the night.’’ Wouldn’t want to let down those “guests”, would we? 

Me? I’m a freak I suppose, because I actually love to do my Christmas shopping, celebrating and anticipating the week just before Christmas when it actually feels like the season, you know snow, carols, the cold. The thing I’ve always loved about both holy days and holidays is the lack of a need to do anything other than celebrate in my tradition and with my friends and family.  I love the sense that this one day is somehow special, precious, quiet. All is calm, all is bright.        

So it was with a sense of surprise and delight I learned of one retailer who bucks this trend of erasing a holiday, the Nordstrom’s Department store chain.  They are a rare institution in the retailing world.  Headquartered in Seattle, Nordstrom’s is an upscale retailer. I’ve never shopped there. I’m more of a Sears guy. But I may just check them out to support a most unusual holiday opening policy at all of their stores.  This is the message Nordstrom’s shoppers saw in stores in the days leading up to “Black Friday”.

 “We won’t be decking our halls until Friday, November 25. Why? We just like the idea of celebrating one holiday at a time. Our stores will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving festivities. On Friday, our doors will open to ring the new season in style. From our family to yours, HAPPY THANKSGIVING.”   So in Massachusetts, if you want to go to Nordstrom’s you’ll be forced to wait until the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. in Peabody, on Friday.  OH NO!  8 a.m. in Natick and Burlington.  HOW WILL WE SURVIVE! 7 a.m. in Braintree.  BUT I WANTED TO WAIT IN LINE IN A DARK PARKING LOT!

I know in expressing frustration about the cultural downgrading of holidays and holy days, I risk sounding like a dinosaur, a cranky old guy.  I know that the ideal of Sabbath and holiday is fast fading away in a societal wave of 24/7 life.  Yet I can’t help but lament.  I’m human. I work hard.  When a holiday comes along I need that time to rest.  I need to stop. I need to recharge my spiritual batteries. I need to suspend all the wacky energy of modern life and just breathe.  Holidays give all of us these amazing opportunities.

Thank you Nordstrom’s.  You offer a small but important witness to the world about the need to take holidays seriously. So please pass the gravy and another roll too. I’m staying put at the Thanksgiving table as long as I can. How about you?

     

     

Self-Discipline: No More Kicking the Can Down the Road

“Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want 

to do.”     --Mark Twain

Tomorrow.  Yea…that’s when I’ll get it done.  Rake the lawn. Start the diet.  Clean the house.  Go to the gym.  Visit the dentist.  Do the homework.  Reign in my credit card spending.  But tomorrow, ok?  No rush, right?

It’s the oldest of human temptations: to put off to the future what could be done, even should be done, in the present.  To procrastinate.  Kick the can down the road. Avoid a hard decision. Delay a painful or onerous choice.  Punt. Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?

That’s the conundrum Uncle Sam faces with a huge deadline just six days away, November 23^rd.  To recap: last summer as a part of raising the federal government’s debt ceiling, Congress and the President created a 12 member bi-partisan Congressional Super Committee and charged it with agreeing upon a formula of spending cuts and tax increases to slice $1.2 trillion from the federal budget.  If no agreement is reached automatic cuts of the same amount will be triggered, in everything from national security and defense to a wide array of domestic programs. Entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) will be spared, at least for now.  

And guess what?  After working for almost three and half months the group seems no closer to agreement than when it began.  In a CNN article, Republican panel co-chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, “…acknowledged the committee may be forced to punt its most difficult decisions on tax and entitlement reform into next year.”

We live in times when our leaders seem frozen in their ability to make hard political choices in the now.  To do something today in order to save tomorrow.  The European Union dawdles on making difficult fiscal choices, to bail out Greece and Italy, and the markets rock. President Obama puts off until after the 2012 elections a decision on a controversial tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. and angers both the left and the right.  If the feds do nothing, Medicare will run out of money by 2024 and Social Security by 2036. 

What’s missing in this equation is the old fashioned virtue of self-discipline, doing a hard and right thing today for a greater good tomorrow.  Facing into short term pain for long term gain.  Sucking it up and just doing what needs to be done.  A sobering word, “discipline”.  It can mean punishment but it also denotes training, regimen, rigor and behavior in accord with certain rules and a code of conduct.  Discipline is hard, yes, but almost always it pays off.  

We get this as individuals.  How does the marathoner run 26.2 miles? By getting up every morning and running in the rain and snow and cold with self-discipline, knowledge that victory is won by daily facing into the hard things.  How does an addict stay sober?  By going to AA regularly and saying “no” to substances one day at a time.  How are some folks successful in this life while others seem to perpetually tread water? Through discipline, by each day forging ahead and having courage when it comes time to make the difficult decisions and doing what needs to be done in order to move ahead. How does a person of faith stay connected to God? Through the discipline of daily prayer, reaching out when God is answering and when God is silent. It’s not rocket science. Self-discipline is simply about grit and not finesse, determination instead of instant gratification. 

So Uncle Sam, if I may be so blunt: it is time for some self-discipline, time to suck it up.  Time to be less focused on re-election this year and more focused on what’s best for the whole country in the potentially perilous or prosperous years ahead.  It is time to confront us, the citizenry and tell us about the hard choices all of us have to make together.  It is time for a little pain in the now, yes, but gains in the future, one which will only be bright if we all have the courage to not procrastinate anymore. Decisions must be made now.

No more kicking the can down the road.  We can’t afford to play that childhood game anymore.

Enough with the Weather!!!

Weather (noun) 1.the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, moisture, pressure, etc.; (verb) to bear up against and come safely through (as in a storm, danger, trouble)   --Random House Dictionary

That’s it. I’m moving to San Diego.  

Packing up my suitcase with shorts and sunscreen, my golf clubs and my bike.  I’m leaving behind all my bulky sweaters and clunky snow boots and well worn snow shovels, all my flashlights and candles for power failures too, my long johns as well. I’m done with weather in New England. 

And oh San Diego…with an average daily temperature of 72 degrees, more than 250 days of sunshine and only 12 inches of rain per year, San Diego is weather nirvana, one of the ten best weather cities in the United States according to the Farmer’s Almanac.  Can you hear it calling, a sultry song of sweet breezy warm days and clear cool nights?  Afternoons spent on a sunny veranda, sipping a cool drink watching the whitecaps break on the Pacific. 

And no hurricanes.  No tornadoes.  No floods. No wacky October snowstorms.  And no snow.  Not a flake.  The last time any measurable snow fell in San Diego was 1967.  I’m told people there actually love their weather, brag about it.  San Diego meteorologists have the most boring of jobs: “Sunny and seventy!” day after day.  Yes, I’ll have to change my ways as a longtime New Englander.  Give up my pasty white mid-winter complexion for a tanned and toned California grin.  I’ll have to root for the Padres rather than the Red Sox, wear those silly Hawaiian shirts and even drop the occasional “dude!” into daily conversation. I’ll make that sacrifice.

I’m just not sure I can take one more weather whack in this year of freakish storms and atmospheric anomalies here in New England.  First there was “THE WINTER”, this year’s unrelenting pummeling by Mother Nature in our coldest months.  Eighty point one inches of the white stuff dumped from the skies, double our average amount.  The storms were doozies: five major events alone in December and January, with an especially cruel blizzard hitting on the day after Christmas, stranding thousands of folks with their ruined holiday plans.  Merry Christmas…ugh.  

Driving around my neighborhood last February I was Nanook of the North, navigating my pathetically skidding compact car around 15 foot high snow drifts that framed the street like ice cold prison walls.  Three times last winter the snow in my driveway was so deep I had to park at the bottom of the hill and trek on up, praying, hoping that the snow plow would come soon and rescue me.  Remember?

So no more. I give up. Uncle. Game over. I surrender.

The tornadoes in June.  Hurricane Irene in August. Floods of biblical proportions.  A record breaking Halloween storm, which weirdly was only two weeks removed from ninety degree temperatures Columbus Day weekend, another record.  Fall foliage which never seemed to show up.  Power outages, hundreds of thousands of folks living in the dark for days and even weeks at a time. 

With only seven weeks left in 2011, I’m getting nervous.  What’s next? Hail?  Drought? Pestilence—I have no idea what that last word means but hey we’re on a roll, right and anything is possible?

Mark Twain, who called Hartford his home, nailed it when he said, “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather…The weather is always doing something there…always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go…I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather…”   

But in the end Twain stayed here and called New England his home and I suppose I will too, and we will too. The cliché is that we New Englanders are a hardy bunch and the weather certainly tests our mettle and sanity.  At its best it brings us together and reminds us that as neighbors we need each other.  The stranger who shows up to clear the driveway, no charge.  The young Mom who checks up on her elderly friend.  Family who invited family to bunk with them because the lights are out.

Weather always gives us something to talk about, that’s for sure.  Our one of a kind sometimes crazy but never boring weather certainly makes this place our unique place in all of God’s Creation.  And I couldn’t take all that California cheeriness after all.   I’ll stay. 

So winter: bring it on. Give us your best shot.  We can take it.  We’ve weathered your worst and will do so again. But just in case, I’m booking a mid-winter vacation to San Diego.  Can anyone lend me a Hawaiian shirt?

One Tweet Can Change the World

(This Sunday November 6^th, journalist Charles Sennott, who witnessed and wrote extensively about the January 25^th revolution in Egypt, will speak at the seventh annual Cornerstone Forum in Sherborn on the topic “Digital Revolution: The Power of Social Media to Change the World”.  It takes place at 4 p.m. at the Sherborn Community Center and is free and open to the public.  Sennott’s topic got me thinking about social media’s revolutionary impact on all of life.)

Tweet (noun) 1. a weak chirping sound, as of a young or small bird. 2. a very short message posted on the Twitter Web site: the message may include text, keywords, and mentions of specific users, links to Web sites, links to images or videos on a Web site.

                                                            --Random House Dictionary

Can one person change the world by writing and sending a 140 character message on a digital screen?  Consider Twitter.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is an online social networking and micro-blogging site which allows users to “tweet” (send) and read “tweets (text based messages) with other Twitter followers on smart phones and computers.  160 characters is the limit for international text messages, so Twitter limits users to 140 characters of prose, with 20 characters reserved for the “tweeter’s” (sender’s) name. Twitter users “follow” (subscribe) to other Twitter authors and receive tweets in real time, then often forward those to other groups of online followers. In the digital world, Twitter isn’t all that old having just turned five last April.  But it is a big and growing form of instant digital communication and connection, with 200 million users worldwide, writing, sending and reading some quarter billion tweets per day. 

The cliché critique of Twitter and similar social networking sites like Facebook, is that these only promote digital narcissism, claim a cadre of self-focused folks letting other self-focused folks know what they are doing and how they are feeling, overblown human self-importance writ large.  “Hey! I’m going to the store.” “I’m drinking a great cup of coffee at Starbucks!” “I have a headache!” 

Yes. Twitter is largely filled with such digital “cotton candy”. Four of the top five tweeters are the singers Lady Gaga (1.5 million followers), Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and reality TV queen Kim Kardashian. (President Obama is number four.)  You have to go pretty far down the top 200 tweet list to find any other folks of substance: Bill Gates (44), Stephen Colbert (100), or Al Gore (126).  But if we look beyond the flash of Twitter, its simple and radical process of sharing information is very revolutionary, especially when it comes to social change, people seeking to transform the world from the bottom up.

Twitter’s first great moment came during the Iranian uprisings in the summer of 2009, when Iranian protesters, fighting for democracy in that theocratic land, were able to let the world know of their struggle and the government’s violent crackdown by tweeting text and photo and video links. News outlets were not there to witness, nor most foreign governments. But Twitter was and with its instantaneous and under the radar messaging the global community quickly found out about Iran’s dirty laundry.  Last January’s revolution in Egypt was largely organized not through traditional methods (from the top down of a political structure) but through postings and pages on Facebook.  Occupy Wall Street, which seemed to come out of nowhere, was in fact born in social media land. 

We live in amazing and revolutionary times, especially when it comes to mass and micro communication.  For the gift of Twitter and Facebook, so much more so than merely allowing us to connect with friends or follow a celebrity, is that these communication networks bypass the powers that be. They bring the power of protest instead directly to the streets, the people, and the activists.  With just a cell phone and a signal, one brave soul can send out the word to fight for freedom, and governments are often powerless in the face of such subversive organizing. 

If I was a ruling cleric in Iran or a communist party chair in China these days, I’d be very afraid of Twitter and Facebook.  It’s startling to consider just what can be said in 140 characters.  “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all [people] are created equal.” (79 characters.)  “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble." (130 characters.)   "You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." (106 characters.)   "Be the change you wish to see in the world." (45 characters.) “I have a dream.” (17 characters.)

What would you say in 140 characters?  It might just change the world for the better.

           

      

God and Politics: A Messy Mix

“They that know God will be humble.”         

--John Flavel

Is God a Republican or a Democrat or maybe a liberal or a conservative or maybe even both or how about neither? Hard to tell these days.  Because once again the Presidential election machine is cranking up and this cycle, perhaps more so than ever before in recent memory, God is getting co-opted, dragged and recruited into the messy world of politics. Makes me feel kind of bad for the Holy One, forever being claimed by this candidate or that cause, all to give righteous weight to a partisan crusade.

And so during a candidate’s forum in Iowa this month Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress, a supporter of candidate Rick Perry, had this to say: "In my estimation, Mormonism is a cult. And it would give credence to a cult to have a Mormon candidate…"   Bummer for Mitt Romney and 14 million Mormons.

In late August, candidate Michelle Bachman weighed in with this interesting theological declaration: “I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. [God] said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.”  Wow: I never knew God uses natural disasters to warn America to reduce the deficit and shrink government. 

Candidate Herman Cain on his ‘call’ to run for President: "God's been in this from the beginning." Cain says God’s personally called him to run and that this one on one message took a lot of "conversations with God".  Hmmm.  Does this mean God isn’t talking to the other candidates or President Obama?

I’d love to skewer a left wing politician on some type of similar sloppy God talk but most progressives and liberals have left behind any discussion of God or faith. In the 2008 election, Obama got so burnt by his local church pastor that he’s been rarely seen going anywhere near a house of worship in his presidency. But like all good doobie pols, he still concludes practically every single speech with this eight word mantra: “And God bless the United States of America!”  Just once can’t he use a different coda? Maybe one that doesn’t arrogantly suppose God’s cliché good housekeeping seal of approval upon whatever policy he’s proposing?      

God and politics: for me, as a person of faith, one who does this faith thing for a living, this mix, this coupling of the Creator and crass politics is an awful mess.  It’s not that I oppose candidates or politician having a deep faith, whatever their tradition.  Kudos to the men and women who take their faith walk seriously and then try to incorporate the values therein into how they govern.  America needs leaders who stand upon a personal foundation of God-given morals, ethics and ideals.  Philosophical notions like compassion for the least of these our neighbors. Peace. Justice.  Honesty. Service to others.  Humility.  Respect for God’s Creation. Who can argue against that? 

But do they have to be so self-righteous about it? So smarmily sure? So “My God’s better than your God” or “My God specifically told me to do this!”?  Do they have to imply, sometimes not so subtly, that only a person who believes in God (never an atheist) or a certain God (never a Mormon) can be President? Guaranteed if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee that the Mormon bashers and questioners will all come out of the hills. 

Do they have to wear their faith like a shiny medal of honor and twist what is at its best a private and personal relationship with the Divine, and instead use this relationship as just another way to sell themselves to the electorate as a commodity? “Vote for me ‘cuz I love God and God loves me!”

In my tradition Jesus tells a great story about two folks, a priest and a tax collector, who go up to the Temple to pray one day.  At the front of that house of worship, one self-righteous soul stands tall, arms outstretched, face proudly uplifted to the heavens and offers this prayer to the Almighty: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” And there, way, way in the back of the sanctuary, eyes averted, head bowed, is the object of the priest’s self-righteous scorn.  The tax collector’s simple prayer? “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

One believer all haughty, puffed up, so convinced of his righteousness before God.  The other soul humble, acknowledging his flawed humanity, and putting himself right before an all merciful and loving God. 

I know who I’d vote for if each were to each run for public office.  How about you?    

              

 

When the Deck Is Stacked

Stack the deck (originally from card playing) 

1. to cheat by arranging the cards to be dealt out to one's advantage.    

 --McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms

What’s the only thing worse than losing at a game? Discovering that the competition has in fact been rigged from the start.  That you really never had a chance to win because a select few at the table were playing from a stacked deck. That the outcome was heavily in their favor from the moment the first cards were dealt. Losing always hurts but discovering that you lost because someone else cheated? Well, that rightfully makes us angry, even very angry.

In America these days we’re living in an angry, fractious time in our shared economic and political lives.  On the philosophical far right the Tea Party movement angrily rails against a big and often corrupt, wasteful government.  On the philosophical far left the Occupy Wall Street movement angrily denounces accumulated ill-gotten wealth in the pockets of a very few, 99 percent versus one percent. 

Yet beneath each of these seemingly diametrically opposed populist groups is a common lament, that in 2012 America the deck is stacked on both Wall Street and in Washington, D.C.  In the marketplace and halls of government, an elite few have most of the power while the many average citizens are mostly powerless to effect change in both capitalism and democracy.  And when folks feel like the game is a loser from the start, of course they get riled up. Of course they protest. 

But the game continues on.  In Massachusetts last month, State Treasurer Steve Grossman, the chief governmental official charged with regulating our state’s liquor industry, unashamedly accepted a $45,000 campaign donation from the package store owners, bar owners and liquor distributors he’s supposed to oversee.  When asked to justify this “gift”, a spokesman from Grossman’s office told The Boston Globe that “The contributions are allowed under state campaign finance and ethics laws, and no one will get special treatment in exchange for donations.” 

In Washington D.C., in the wake of the bankruptcy of a government backed solar panel energy called Solyndra, which cost Uncle Sam $535 million, the New York Times reported that Department of Energy official Daniel Spinner kept pushing the loan, even after it became clear the company was on the brink of collapse.  It may have something to do with the fact that his lawyer wife, Mrs. Spinner, works for a law firm which represents Solyndra.

In Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd, quit in August 2010 in the face of sexual harassment charges and received $23 million from the company on his way out the door.  His successor, Leo Apotheker, was fired for incompetence after just one year and received a golden parachute of $13.16 million.  In 2012 in the United States, the pay of an average CEO is 263 times more than an average worker at that same corporation. For comparison the number is 13 for Germany and 11 for Japan.  Corporate profits are at an all time historic high, nearly $1.6 trillion this year.  Yet the unemployment rate is still stuck at more than 9 percent. United States’ income disparity is at its highest since 1928 and America’s rate of poverty is one in seven, 44 million people, the highest number since 1993.

If only these tales of a stacked deck were rare or isolated but they are not.  Instead the flash of populist anger shining bright on both the political left and right is an indication that more and more average citizens believe that there are actually two games going on in the United States.  One is for the connected, the insider, the well heeled, and the elite.  Their game in politics and economics is going very well, high fives all around the table. 

But the other game is increasingly brutal and unforgiving. The other game is filled with players who find themselves locked out of the political process for lack of access and connections and cash.  The other game is filled with people who are more and more convinced that “We the people” is a hollow cliché and that the golden rule in 2012 is he who has the gold makes the rules.  The other game is made up of people who are mostly just scared in these uncertain times: retirees who fear dwindling pensions and health care, the long term unemployed who have given up hope, the young college graduates who can’t find a job and are saddled with debt, the poor who feel caught in the grip of a poverty that they cannot escape, and cynical voters who wonders if their ballots really makes a difference anymore. 

It’s not about the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street, Republicans or Democrats, or blue states or red states anymore. It’s about people feeling disenfranchised, on the outside looking in and playing a game that they believe is rigged and that they cannot win.  It’s about Americans of all political stripes being very, very worried about our future as a nation.  That’s why they are so angry.

One of the moral hallmarks of a biblical faith is that of equity and justice: the notion that in a society, when all folks play fair, play by the rules, play honestly and play on a level playing field, every one wins.  But when the deck is stacked? No one wins and finally every one (save for a very elite few) loses.

So the next time we turn on the TV or read on the Internet about folks occupying Wall Street or rallying as Tea Partiers, maybe we’ll not so quickly dismiss their demands or anger as far flung extremism or mere political theater. 

They in fact are protesting against a stacked deck.  And we are all in that game. 

 

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