Human Life Or Cheap T-Shirts: What Matters More To You?

The death toll for the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh reached 500 yesterday. At least 501 people are dead.

I read in this Associated Press article that back in November (after 112 factory workers died in a fire), "clothing brands and retailers continued to reject a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh's $20 billion garment industry." Apparently, they didn't think consumers would be willing to pick up the extra costs.

I feel like I ought to say something about how it may be perfectly natural for us Americans to have a much stronger emotional response to the death of three people at a bombing of the Boston Marathon--after all, most of us know someone who has run in a marathon or have even run or watched one ourselves. But only the very tiniest percentage of Americans knows anyone who works in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. The vast majority of us cannot imagine what the lives of Bangladeshi factory workers are like at all. 

And it's only to be expected that people would sincerely "wish there was something they could do to help" in the case of a national tragedy like the one in Boston--but that they'd have a very difficult time talking or even thinking about how their actions and choices might help to prevent future industrial disasters in developing nations.

I don't want to "preach" about this. I can't take a stand of righteous indignation, not least of all because I buy my clothes at thrift stores and Target; I have not myself taken the principled stand of purchasing only from fair-trade organizations or sewing my own clothing.

And, like I said, it's understandable and completely unsurprising that people would be callous and unmoved by the unimaginably horrendous accident in Bangladesh that they're still sorting through the rubble from right now. It's only to be expected that we all just want to put the responsibility on the Bangladeshi government--and it is their responsibility. But we are ignoring or justifying the role that we ourselves play in the system by purchasing cheap goods which we might have guessed were produced in sweatshops with unsafe working conditions. It's understandable. It's not surprising. But it's also sickening and sad and terrible.

Anyway, at least some folks think that major improvements in safety could be made in Bangladeshi factories without dramatically increasing prices. This article suggests that all it might take is some pressure from consumers on the brands they buy to start seeing some positive changes. Now all we need is some folks to start campaigns of making phone calls, writing letters and emails and signing petitions and stuff, right? Hm ...

Found an Amazing Blog! ("Jyoti Art Ashram")

Nowadays especially, I am always on the lookout for great artwork with spiritual themes and did I ever hit the jackpot stumbling across this blog: Jyoti Art Ashram! OH MY GOSH IT'S INCREDIBLE!!!

I absolutely, instantly fell in love with this mandala of the shepherd with a hundred sheep who seeks out the one that is lost; a revival of my all-time favorite genre/style: medieval Europe, pre-Renaissance.

And look at this gorgeous painting of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism!

And this one of "Guru Jesus and his fiery sermon"!

And I LOVE this one of "Jesus the Healer"--depicted as a member of the Dalit/"untouchable" caste.

And this joyful sketch of the healing of the paralytic, and this fascinating image of the "Trinity in the landscape," and this one of a 15th century mystic poet, Kabir.

Wow wow wow! That's what I have to say!

The only bad thing about this blog is that it hasn't been updated recently and it's kind of hard to navigate. In fact, the only way to find one of the brightest gems in the collection is to scroll halfway down this page to the "Surya Namashkar" entry, which is a series of yoga poses, beautifully illustrated, of the stations of the cross!

Let me just repeat that for anyone who failed to catch the absolutely amazing awesomeness of that the first time: it's a beautifully illustrated series of yoga poses for praying the stations of the cross!!!!!!!

I feel like I just discovered a buried treasure chest filled with wonders beyond my imagining!

"How To Make Six Figures Online"

A few weeks ago I went to a free lecture on how to make six figures on the internet. It was pretty good. The guy who gave the talk shared his experiences and the strategies that ended up working for him.

The primary take-away for me was that you can make buckets of money on the internet if you really want to--but you have to really want it, and it's a ton of work.

Personally, I have never particularly wanted to make a lot of money, so I probably never will. I would guess that's true of most people. Anyone likes the sound of "six figures" but very few want the money badly enough to do the work required to earn it.

So, lesson number one is, most people should stop complaining about how little money they make. If it were a higher priority, they could be making plenty more. They just don't care enough to get off their butts and do it. (And I mean most Americans, by the way--can't say about people in other countries.)

And then the other lesson is, you can accomplish all kinds of things that seem beyond the reach of ordinary people if you're passionate enough about it.

Someday I hope to write some books that will actually be accepted by a publisher ... but at the present time, it's not a high enough priority in my life to actually happen. I think that's okay, though--what all is going on in my life now is future grist for the writing mill ...

Jesus' Donkey: symbol of what, exactly?

Typical Palm Sunday interpretation: Jesus rode a peaceful donkey instead of a war horse to indicate his non-violent intention. However, I've also heard it suggested that donkeys were better animals for waging war on rocky hillsides where horse-drawn chariots were useless--so, donkeys were still a symbol of war, but they represented the indigenous underdog using guerrilla tactics, as contrasted with the big and powerful armies of a foreign invading empire. Perhaps there's room for both meanings--we could imagine the crowds taking the second interpretation (hoping for a violent revolution) whereas Jesus intended the first (as was demonstrated soon after). Or we could take Jesus' act as transforming a symbol of the people's resistance into something even more powerful.

Stupid Brain Stem Wants To Subdue That Chevy

Sometimes psychologists make a big deal about the "reptilian brain." They're referring to the brain stem, thought to be the earliest part of the brain to evolve, which controls very basic, unconscious processes (heart rate, breathing, etc.)--as contrasted with the limbic system, which is said to be the seat of emotions, and the neocortex, which enables us to reason. It's said that threatening situations trigger the reptilian brain's fight or flight instinct, which overrides rational processes. I've never found the supposed applications of this concept to everyday life to be very meaningful or helpful, with one exception.

The "fight" instinct always kicks in when I'm walking across the street and a car is approaching at a high speed. Although the calculations of my neocortex would indicate impact is very unlikely (it's rare that a motorist would intentionally mow down a pedestrian rather than stopping at a red light), an uncontrollable instinct takes over for a moment, and my body automatically stops in the middle of the road and braces itself for mortal combat with the oncoming vehicle. It only lasts for a moment, but it happens every time. No matter how many times the neocortex tries to inform the brain stem (for future reference) that "flight" would be a better option than "fight" in those cases, the stupid reptilian brain simply never learns.

Have other people experienced this? Do I have an overactive "fight" response, or what?

Has the Democratic Party Lost Its Vision?

Over the past few days, facebook friends have posted several dozen Martin Luther King Jr. quotes—they’re all great—but you get to wondering after a while—what relevance do all these quotations have to our current situation?

The evil of legislated segregation has been over for decades, thanks to the work of Dr. King and so many others. Today, people are celebrating the fact that our (biracial) black (/white) president is still heading the nation, a symbol of how far we’ve come and a role model to inspire young African Americans. And people are talking about how there’s still work to be done, but we can press on in hope toward Dr. King’s vision and dream.

 But how are we going to get there unless we start talking about the problems facing black communities today? I am purposely using the term “black communities” rather than “black community,” even though I think there is value in talking about “the black community” in some contexts—because another reality is, there are huge differences between, say, the middle-class suburbs where some black people live and were raised, versus the crime riddled urban wastelands where others struggle to survive.

Although our president is part of “the black community,” he did not grow up in gang-controlled territory. Though he had to deal with the kind of racism that one of only three black kids in an elite private school might face, he had nothing like the experience of adolescent (or even pre-adolescent) boys struggling with the dilemma of whether to join a gang, or else refuse and risk bodily injury or death—and bleak economic prospects. Our black (/white) president did not have to attend an abysmally failing, dangerous public school. Can there be any doubt but that he benefitted immensely from the privileges of his white-American heritage?

Just because we have a black president does not mean he understands or is an advocate for solutions to the worst problems African Americans are facing in this country. I am, frankly, disappointed that his inaugural speech ended up sounding like the same old Democratic hobby horse riding of which I’ve been getting sicker and sicker since the beginning of last year’s campaign. People keep complaining that it offered no vision of a way forward in partnership with Republicans, but I was even more disheartened that it was such a small bundle of hopes limited to issues I consider of only secondary importance.

 Isn’t the Democratic Party supposed to be looking out for the interests of the poor and marginalized? “Struggling middle class families” do not count in my mind. Neither do women or gays. Okay, sure I'm phrasing it that way for shock value, and it's true that there are a few ways public policy could be changed to improve things for certain subsets of those groups—but this is not the same kind of high priority issue as it is to rescue children from criminally bad public schools, or to reduce the incarceration and homicide rates for young people, particularly black and Hispanic males. I'm not saying we should pit the interests of the less-marginalized against those of the substantially oppressed—I mean that if the party is only talking about issues on the scale of "keeping entitlements the way they've always been" and vague aspirations of closing the income gap between men and women (how exactly do you legislate that?) ... they've lost sight of the bigger issues.

I don’t understand why Democrats are so afraid to admit that probably the single worst cause of continued racial inequality in this country is the war on drugs. Gang activity centers around the underground drug economy. Young men who made poor choices during their youth, usually because there were no good choices available, become second-class citizens with felonies on their permanent records. This is one of few instances where public policy (and not just public policy, but federal legislation) is oppressing the poor on a massive scale.

In spite of being black, our (also white) president seems to have no appreciation for the importance of ending the inestimably destructive (and unjust) war on drugs. Instead, he’s gotten lost in politicking, and is not able to lead his party, much less the nation, out of its blindness and hypocrisy.

You Really Expect Me To Turn The Bare Rocks Into Tithing Members?

This is a modified, shortened version of last Sunday's sermon.

Being the pastor of a church with fewer than ten people has been a real test of faith for me (and it’s only been three months now). I wasn’t expecting this, perhaps because I’ve dealt in the past with doubts of a more intellectual sort—“Is faith consistent with a rational worldview? Is ‘God’ nothing more than fantasy born of a habit of psychological dependence?” and that sort of thing. This is a different kind of doubt.

I’ve been thinking of Moses lately, in the desert—when the Israelites were dying of thirst—and God told him, just talk to that rock over there and that’ll fix it. And Moses goes ahead and gathers everyone together, but when the moment comes, he chokes, and instead of talking to the rock, he says to the people, “What am I supposed to do, squeeze water out of this stone?” And he hits it a couple times with his staff and sure enough, it turns into a gushing fountain.

I know that other people know it’s not reasonable to expect that I can just instantly turn my church around, make it grow by leaps and bounds, and bring in enough income to put all our financial concerns to rest. But I also know certain people are really, really hoping that will happen. Some people really, really want it to happen and have faith it can happen—and just like Moses, I have my doubts—and unlike Moses, I have not had a word directly from the mouth of God telling me exactly what to do or what kind of provision God is going to make.

It’s been said that doubt is not the opposite of faith—indifference is. Because if the potential existence of God really makes no difference in your life, there’s no particular reason either to believe or to doubt. But the more you’ve risked on the possibility of God actually doing something to intervene in your life, the more you’re probably going to struggle with doubt. It’s scary to entrust your career (for example), or your reputation, finances, your life’s work, etc. to someone you have never literally seen or heard from. The more you entrust to God, the more anxiety you can expect to feel—i.e. the more faith you have, the more you will have to struggle with doubt.

It’s possible that by the end of 2013 we could have twenty new members. It’s also possible we could have even fewer than are here now. No one knows what’s going to happen. And that’s what causes me anxiety, when I see how much faith other people have that the church is going to grow and I want to shield them from disappointment—or when I imagine that other people think this venture is crazy and I wish God would prove them wrong.

But deeper than all that, I have no doubt that whether the church grows numerically or even shrinks (hah ha, talk about a test of faith), it’s going to grow spiritually.

I’ve also been thinking about how Jesus said the kingdom of God is like seeds that some guy scattered in a field. He doesn’t know how or why it happens and he doesn’t make it happen, but all by itself the seeds sprout and grow and eventually the kernels of wheat are ripe for harvesting.

Sometimes the reassurance God gives us is “too deep for words” and sometimes an image—a seed that sprouts and grows, naturally, at first invisibly, beneath the soil, mysteriously, wondrously grows—an image may be all that we need to remember and keep in mind. Something is growing, whether we can see it or not, whether it’s the type of plant we imagined or something unexpected. I know my doubts are only superficial, some worry about how this is going to end up looking to other people—but the truth that is written on my heart—how could I doubt—that God is, as always, causing something beautiful to grow …