The Man Who Taught the World to Meditate

You may not know the name of S.N. Goenka, who died Saturday at the age of 90. But if you've counted your breaths to relax in a hospital, or if you've ever tried to eat, walk, or speak "mindfully," you've felt his influence. He might even have changed your life.

Satya Narayan Goenka did not set out to be a meditation guru. He was an Indian businessman who happened to come across the teachings of a then-radical Burmese Buddhist tradition which had adapted Buddhist meditation practices and taught them to laypeople, like me and (probably) you. That may not seem so radical today, but one hundred years ago, it absolutely was. These techniques had been monastic traditions only - imagine what it would have been like had medieval monks suddenly taught peasants to read the Bible.

Goenka was one of many laypeople whose lives were changed by meditation - but he had the widest influence. He was a core teacher for the first generation of "insight" meditation teachers to have an impact in the United States, and through them, to popularizers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) is now taught across the country in hospitals, schools, even prisons.

Indeed, the very notion that meditation may be practiced in a non-religious, non-sectarian way owes much to Goenka himself. Basically a rationalist and a pragmatist, Goenka emphasized that meditation was not spirituality and not religion, but more like a technology - a set of tools for upgrading and optimizing the mind. These are my terms, not his (I discuss this fascinating story of secularization and popularization in my book Evolving Dharma), but the gist is the same. You don't have to believe anything, wear special clothes, or chant special words in order to calm the mind, improve memory, and attain the various other benefits of meditation.

At the same time, Goenka did work within a specific Buddhist tradition, and created a very rigorous format designed to attain certain levels of mental understanding on ten and twenty day silent retreats. To Westerners, he can indeed seem like the very image of the Indian sage, talking about enlightenment while insisting on a very demanding (and inflexible) set of contemplative exercises. Goenka retreats are austere - not only no speaking, but also no reading or writing, and with arduous schedules of concentration and meditation.

Huffington Post blog, The Third Metric, Jay Michaelson, September 30, 2013

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10 Old-Trends, New-Trends That Rule the World Today

What’s going on in the world today? It’s hard to keep up. Some facts are familiar to anyone who reads the news. Unemployment is high. Growth is slow. Shale gas is a big deal. But beyond the caps-lock headlines, subtler, but no less significant, shifts are changing the U.S. economy and reshaping the global financial order. Here are ten that have surprised—and might surprise.

1) Old Trend: Expensive solar, surviving only on subsidies.
New Trend: Cheap solar, disrupting old industries.

Since the 1970s, it has become a cliché that solar power is an expensive boondoggle, kept alive only by government subsidies. But every cliché is right until the day it’s suddenly wrong. And for solar, that day is today. Since Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, the price of solar cells has fallen over 99 percent. No, that’s not a typo. And the exponential cost-drop shows no sign of slowing down, with dozens of new technologies in the pipeline. Installation and land costs are falling too. What this means is that in sunny states like Arizona, solar can already compete with fossil fuel electricity even with zero government subsidies. In fact, rooftop solar panels are becoming so popular that utility companies are trying to tax solar power in order to pay for grid maintenance! The technology that was a punch line for decades is about to launch an energy revolution, and most people aren’t even paying attention.

2. Old Trend: The Latinization of America.
New Trend: The Asiafication of America.

“The huge boom in Mexican immigration is over.” The improving Mexican economy, lower Mexican fertility, the U.S. construction bust, and increased enforcement have combined to bring net Mexican immigration to zero or negative since 2008. That bears repeating: On net, Mexicans are no longer moving to the United States at all. So who is? Lots of people, but Asians more than anyone. Asians are moving here at a rate of about half a million a year, and the Asian-American percentage of the population has already reached 6%. Most studies say immigration is good for the economy, so this is good news, especially because many of the new Asian arrivals are high-skilled, entrepreneurial types who will start businesses and hire the rest of us.

In 2

3. Old Trend: The Chinese population bomb.
New Trend: The Chinese population bust.

In 2012, the working-age population of China fell by 3.45 million. In other words, last year China lost a number of workers approximately equal to the entire population of Lebanon. This year the drop will be bigger, and the drops will accelerate through the 2030s. That means that China’s inexhaustible supply of cheap labor is going to be exhausted a lot faster than most people expected. Nor will repealing the infamous one-child policy cause a Chinese baby boom – in some small areas where it was repealed, fertility rates remain below the national average. This population crunch won’t put that huge of a dent in China’s billion-strong workforce, but it will boost investment in a lot of other poor countries and will force China’s industries to move up the value chain very quickly or risk the “middle-income trap”.

4. Old Trend: Soaring U.S. CO2 emissions.
New Trend: Plummeting U.S. CO2 emissions.

Thanks a little bit to economic stagnation, but mostly to the boom in natural gas, the U.S. – the only large rich country not to sign the Kyoto Protocol – has seen its CO2 emissions tumble to levels not seen since the early 1990s. More drops are expected to follow. Global emissions (that's what really matters) continue to soar, but China is the main driver now. The U.S. is subtracting from total emissions growth now. Of course, that doesn’t count methane emissions, which are released when natural gas is fracked. But the United States is no longer the global carbon bad-boy it was in the '90s.

The Atlantic, Noah Smith, September 30, 2012

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This Week's Frightening Climate Report - What You Need to Know

The polar icecaps are melting faster than we thought they would; seas are rising faster than we thought they would; extreme weather events are increasing. Have a nice day! That’s a less than scientifically rigorous summary of the findings of the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released this morning in Stockholm.

Appearing exhausted after a nearly two sleepless days fine-tuning the language of the report, co-chair Thomas Stocker called climate change “the greatest challenge of our time," adding that “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than the past,” and that this trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Pledging further action to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, "This isn’t a run of the mill report to be dumped in a filing cabinet. This isn’t a political document produced by politicians... It’s science."

And that science needs to be communicated to the public, loudly and clearly. I canvassed leading climate researchers for their take on the findings of the vastly influential IPCC report. What headline would they put on the news? What do they hope people hear about this report?

When I asked him for his headline, Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State (a former IPCC author himself) suggested: "Jury In: Climate Change Real, Caused by Us, and a Threat We Must Deal With."

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist and head scientist of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) based in Boulder would lead with: "IPCC 2013, Similar Forecasts, Better Certainty." While the report, which is issued every six to seven years, offers no radically new or alarming news, Scambos told me, it puts an exclamation point on what we already know, and refines our evolving understanding of global warming.

“I do 

The IPCC, the indisputable rock star of UN documents, serves as the basis for global climate negotiations, like the ones that took place in Kyoto, Rio, and, more recently, Copenhagen. (The next big international climate meeting is scheduled for 2015 in Paris.) It is also arguably the most elaborately vetted and exhaustively researched scientific paper in existence. Founded in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, the IPCC represents the distilled wisdom of over 600 climate researchers in 32 countries on changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas. It endeavors to answer the late New York mayor Ed Koch’s famous question “How am I doing?” for all of us. The answer, which won’t surprise anyone who has been following the climate change story, is not very well at all. 

It is now 95 percent likely that human spewed heat-trapping gases — rather than natural variability — are the main cause of climate change, according to today’s report. In 2007 the IPCC’s confidence level was 90 percent, and in 2001 it was 66 percent, and just over 50 percent in 1995.

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Richard Schiffman, The Atlantic blog, September 19, 2013

Excerpt: Dancing in the Dark Fields - the teachings of illness

First is knowing an illness to be an admonition to virtuous action.
Second is knowing an impediment to be the divine chosen deity.
Third is the patient’s awareness of intrinsic awareness.
-Ko-brag-pa Bsod-nams-rgyal-mtshan
(from The Hermit of Go Cliffs, Cyrus Stearns, trans.)

I have a chronic, painful illness,. Actually, to call the illness an “it” is a bit off the mark. It’s an event in the body, an event of the body. It’s my dancing partner, my teacher, my enemy, my friend, my curse, my blessing. It constantly surprises me, sometimes shocks me, and continues to shape my like life a river shapes the land.

Until I was thirty-five, I was strong and capable. I walked the sagebrush hills of eastern Washington as a field botanist, I kayaked in the green waters of Puget Sound, I sat in meditation all night listening to the frogs. I loved Dharma practice and long silent retreats. I was a hard worker and proud of my contributions to the natural world and my community. I was also, I see now, strikingly oblivious to my body – I didn’t need to pay attention: it was always reliable. Then I contracted mononucleosis, a debilitating viral disease with a long recovery period. Illness, pain and weakness were suddenly the stuff of my life. As the months passed, there were days or weeks when I thought I was recovering, but then the symptoms would return, fierce as ever. I never knew when the illness would hit or how long it would last. I say “knew,” but really it’s “know.” Gradually it began to dawn on me that this thing had moved in and taken up residence in the household. Every time I had a period of weeks without symptoms I would think, “All right, it’s gone. Hallelujah!” Then, when it struck again, I would be devastated.

Nine years later it’s still with me, coming and going in much the same form. After a few years, I discovered that what I had was actually several autoimmune diseases, perhaps triggered by the virus that caused the mononucleosis. At times I’m completely free of symptoms; at other times I lie in bed curled in a ball around the pain and feel nausea so persistent that food – and life- loses all savour and joy. Every plan is subject to the body’s unpredictability; tea with a friend, a hike in the mountains, a retreat with a favourite teacher – all may seem reasonable when first imagined, impossible when the time arrives. When the symptoms return, life becomes very small and narrow – the width of a bed, the space between one aching limb and another. And I feel grief. It’s hard to hurt, again; it’s hard to have to put one’s life on hold, again; it’s hard to be back in the place of illness.

This is the territory of the dark fields.

Human condition

I’ve cried a lot of tears of self-pity in the last few years, and I wonder why self-pity is such a pejorative term. To feel pity for the person in pain – me – has been the first step toward really understanding that this is the human condition. I’m getting a taste of it a little sooner than most, a little later than some. I know a sweet little girl who developed a rare autoimmune illness just before her sixth birthday, and I watched her parents suffer as she struggled for breath. My friend Michael lies in his bed with Parkinson’s, not able to speak, his eyes locked on mine. Our tears mingle together, a big invisible river circling around the world, and through my tears of self-pity I join everyone who cries.

Zenshin Florence Caplow

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Excerpt: Pastors, the Spirit, and Discernment

I want to seriously address the concept of discernment one more time. I have always been taken by the brief description of the promised Messiah in Isaiah 11:2-3 (in context). These verses read:

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD – and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears… (NIV)

Professor Bryan E. Beyer in his Encountering the Book of Isaiah summarizes these verses, “His [the Messiah's] wisdom and discernment enabled him to get beyond what he saw and heard to the heart of the matter and to rule with true justice, righteousness, and faithfulness (11:3-5)” p 90. One of the essential traits of the promised Messiah is discernment. Other leaders in the Davidic line ruled for power or for selfish ends, but the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” would be saturated with the Spirit of God and rule righteously. Discernment was a major aspect of his rule.

The tendency of too many evangelical pastors is to pronounce endless moralisms and to offer a smorgasbord of holiness hints and rules. There is musty smell to this approach. The odor is the absence of the Spirit. We create a distasteful atmosphere driven by what we hear and what we see. Very few take the time to contemplate why this endless litany of “Bible-based” principles, guidelines, steps and how-to’s is not producing a holy church. These holiness helps pile up and begin to smell offensive. In our sincere desire to urge holy living, we think we are smarter than the Holy Spirit. The Spirit cannot do without our intrusive two cents’ worth. What does it tell us about ourselves if we do not trust that the Holy Spirit of the Living God can lead teenagers into holy living? We actually believe hormones trump the Holy Spirit. We do this in all good conscience. Leveraging holiness insults the Spirit and condescendingly disrespects teenagers.

The Spirit-empowered Messiah (of Isaiah 11) was on a revolutionary mission from God (with all due respect to the Blues Brothers). I do not think pastors give a compelling enough kingdom of God vision to the church for which holy living even matters. How much holiness is required to be part of the average local church? Does holiness even come up? We are so busy reacting to the sometimes turbulent obvious that we miss the weightier, unseen matters of hearts and souls. We harp about external issues–what our eyes see and our ears hear–until people can’t stand it anymore and give up. We are long past “the tyranny of the urgent.” We are in the mediocrity of the minutia. “Directions! Give the people more and more holy directions! Teaching discernment? We don’t have time for it.” O, sisters and brothers, we better make time.  Jesus did. Paul did.

Holiness is about being long before it is about behavior(s). God urges us to “be holy, for I am holy.” God does not say “Do holy things because I do holy things.” We try to get people to tie holy behaviors on lives driven by ill-equipped, disinterested hearts. As if I would tie apples to a dead apple tree and say, “Look! It’s an apple tree.” Not for long. Soon it will begin to smell. The Spirit works, always works from the inside out. That is the beauty of the Spirit. Discernment is an inside job. Any hack can give directions.

Discernment, the Scriptures, and the Spirit are happy allies. Discernment presupposes that Jesus is in the process of making all things new. Discernment is newness directed to a specific situation or person, to a specific community or missional venture. Discernment is much more like a compass in a wilderness than like a GPS on a busy urban freeway. Discernment provides space to maneuver and learn and does not scream, “Take this exit!” Discernment is not frantic. Discernment is not judgmental, though it will lead sometimes to tough moral decisions. Discernment will never violate Scripture or the character of Jesus Christ. To the contrary, discernment will always honor Scripture and express the presence of Jesus. Discernment will rarely feel like a law. It will feel like a strong, loving arm around the shoulder of someone confused or questioning.  Because discernment cares more about the heart and maturity, it will often ask more questions than it gives answers. Discernment will not get antsy when someone suggests something new or something never tried before. Discernment, moving in the strong currents of the Spirit, will often carve new paths in old ground. The “rivers of living water” that the Spirit is will not be bottled and sold for profit. Discernment is not for sale like so many of the packaged holy moralisms of our day. Discernment will never be a commercial template on sale at the local Christian bookstore. Discernment is ferociously local and specific, communal and situational. Discernment is the Spirit guiding a surrendered community who are fascinated with the person and mission of Jesus Christ.

Some folks may bristle with the old barb: “This discernment stuff will lead to unholy living, you just wait and see. People need rules. They need direction.” My response is: “Where has all the unceasing holy rules and directions gotten the church?” Not very far.  Most Christians in the U.S.A. are living by the same prevailing values as the surrounding culture. Data confirm it. Come, Holy Spirit, come. The time for discernment is now.

John Frye, the Jesus Creed Blog, September 27, 2013

Excerpt: Peacemaking, the Core of the Gospel

I don’t know a single local church pastor who doesn’t believe in peacemaking. After all, the angels celebrating Jesus’s birth come right out and sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). Jesus himself champions the role of peacemaker in his Sermon on the Mount and, let’s be honest, nobody’s going to challenge Jesus’s direct words there.

And yet, there is a clear gap between U.S. church leaders’ stated support of biblical peacemaking and our actual pursuit of peacemaking in our ministry initiatives. I recently conducted a research project that collected data from 15 pastors in personal interviews and 297 pastors through an online survey. Their feedback on this issue was almost unanimous: “Yes, I affirm the theory of peacemaking as a biblical value. No, it’s not something our church is currently doing. Honestly, we’d have no idea where to start if we wanted to.”

When asked, “How important are concepts like peacemaking and reconciliation in mission?” one pastor responded, “I guess I’d say theologically and philosophically, Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, so that’s certainly part of the gospel …[However] I’m extremely pragmatic, like to a fault.”…

Therein lies the rub. Pastors get stuck believing peacemaking is an elective; in truth, it is the very heartbeat of the gospel. Jesus’s declaration of kingdom invites us to experience, receive, and promote peace with God, with our enemies, among our broken families, and between warring tribes and nations.

Peacemaking, then, is not simply an avenue for sharing the gospel; peacemaking truly is the core of the gospel message.

Steven Norman, Jesus Creed blog, August 26, 2013

Excerpt: Contemplation - The Key to a Renewed Humanity

I’ve posted both of the following quotes in this blog before, but they are such wonderful quotes that I find myself going back to them again and again. Last night I taught a class on contemplative spirituality at an Episcopal Church in Gainesville, GA, and I used the first of these two quotes. It’s from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on the occasion of his addressing the Catholic Synod of Bishops in Rome: the first time an Anglican Archbishop ever gave such an address. The Archbishop used this historic occasion to make the following comment about contemplation:

Contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.

Kenneth Leech

This next quote about contemplation, perhaps my all-time favorite single quote on the subject, comes from one of my true heroes: Anglican priest, community theologian, and spiritual writer Kenneth Leech, from his book The Social God (also excerpted in Prayer and Prophecy: The Essential Kenneth Leech):

Contemplation has a context: it does not occur in a vacuum. Today’s context is that of the multinational corporations, the arms race, the strong state, the economic crisis, urban decay, the growing racism, and human loneliness. It is within this highly deranged culture that contemplatives explore the waste of their own being. It is in the midst of chaos and crisis that they pursue the vision of God and experience the conflict which is at the core of the contemplative search. They become part of that conflict and begin to see into the heart of things. The contemplative shares in the passion of Christ which is both an identification with the pain of the world and also the despoiling of the principalities and powers of the fallen world-order.

What can we learn from these two Anglican theologians — one of whom inhabited the central corridors of the church’s power, the other of whom lived out his ministry in some of the grittiest neighborhoods in London’s economically challenged east end?

Here are just a few thoughts, a way to summarize these two splendid quotes from two of the most interesting (and authentically contemplative) theologians alive today. I’d love to hear if you have any more insights into what these two are saying.

1. Contemplation is the key to Christian prayer, liturgy, art and ethics;
2. It is also the key to a renewed humanity;
3. And it is an answer (if not “the” answer) to the way in which our culture idolizes money, advertising, and entertainment;
4. Contemplative practice teaches us how to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly.
5. Therefore, it is a deeply revolutionary matter.
6. Contemplation does not happen in a bubble or a vacuum; it is not an escape from the world’s problems, but rather a strategy for addressing those problems.
7. Because we live in a toxic culture, we should expect that contemplation reveals to us the toxicity within our own hearts, minds, and spirits;
8. Contemplation is not, therefore, a tool for achieving inner peace (even though at times it can be a deeply serene practice); rather, it will bring us face to face with all the ways in which we lack true peace and equipoise.
9. Because contemplation is training in a new way of seeing, contemplative practice helps us to see the problems in our lives (and our world) more clearly.
10. When we struggle with contemplative practice — facing our own inner chaos, turmoil, and darkness — we participate in the passion of Christ, which is a deeply revolutionary matter.

So both the Archbishop and the community theologian bring us to the same place in the end: a recognition that contemplative prayer and practice is ultimately such a profound force for both inner and outer change that it is truly revolutionary. But not revolutionary in a Marxist, Leninist or Maoist sense; rather, revolutionary in a Jesus of Nazareth sense.

Viva la revolución!

Carl McColman on his blog, September 26, 2013

Excursion: The Latest Word on Happiness

How do you measure happiness? A difficult question; but even more challenging, How do you define happiness? Sometimes I think in terms of my personal emotional status (Am I happy today?) At other times I  think of happiness as a broader evaluation (Am I happy with my life as a whole?) Authors of a United Nations sponsored report account for both meanings of happiness. Their primary assessment tool includes six variables: social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy at birth, and perceptions of corruption.

The United States came in 17th overall, just behind Mexico and ahead of Ireland. Britain finished in 22nd place, Russia in 68th, China 93rd and Iraq 105th. War-torn Syria came in an unsurprising 148th, while a handful of West Africa countries seemed to be the unhappiest of all, with Benin at 155th and neighboring Togo bringing up the rear at 156th.

Denmark is the happiest country in the world, followed by Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

According to the report, there are some common themes in the happiest places, including:

1. It (mostly) pays to be rich.
Money may not buy happiness, but it sure doesn't hurt. Happy places are usually expensive places to live.

2.  More money means more problems.
The author warns that the advertising industry is preying on our weaknesses and urges, thereby making us less happy. Stress and disillusionment may explain why the overall happpiness figures for the industrialized West have been declining, while countries in developing regions such as Latin America and sub-Sahara Africa have been becoming happier overall.

3. Nice weather doesn't correlate to happiness.
With the lone exception of Australia (No. 10), all of the world's top ten happiest countries have long, bleak winters. Iceland (No. 9) barely sees the sun at all.

4. Happy people ride bicycles - by choice.
Denmark and the Netherlands (No. 1 and No. 4 on the list) are renowned for being the most bicycle-friendly nations. To be sure, the remark of a Chinese interviewee reflects the attitude of many people, wherever their country ranks, "I'd rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle."

What makes you happy? What are the primary factors which affect your happiness? With whom would you be willing to change places? What can you do (with others) to raise the overall happiness in your community? Do not ignore these questions. Some unhappy people become terrorists. Some simply live lives that are irritable, moody, lacking in gratitude - and very unhappy.

based on material from The World Happiness Report

Excerpt: Free to Be Hungry, The Fight to Preserve Food Stamps

The word “freedom” looms large in modern conservative rhetoric. Lobbying groups are given names like FreedomWorks; health reform is denounced not just for its cost but as an assault on, yes, freedom. Oh, and remember when we were supposed to refer to pommes frites as “freedom fries”?

The right’s definition of freedom, however, isn’t one that, say, F.D.R. would recognize. In particular, the third of his famous Four Freedoms — freedom from want — seems to have been turned on its head. Conservatives seem, in particular, to believe that freedom’s just another word for not enough to eat.

Hence the war on food stamps, which House Republicans have just voted to cut sharply even while voting to increase farm subsidies.

In a way, you can see why the food stamp program — or, to use its proper name, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) — has become a target. Conservatives are deeply committed to the view that the size of government has exploded under President Obama but face the awkward fact that public employment is down sharply, while overall spending has been falling fast as a share of G.D.P. SNAP, however, really has grown a lot, with enrollment rising from 26 million Americans in 2007 to almost 48 million now.

Conservatives look at this and see what, to their great disappointment, they can’t find elsewhere in the data: runaway, explosive growth in a government program. The rest of us, however, see a safety-net program doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: help more people in a time of widespread economic distress.

The recent growth of SNAP has indeed been unusual, but then so have the times, in the worst possible way. The Great Recession of 2007-9 was the worst slump since the Great Depression, and the recovery that followed has been very weak. Multiple careful economic studies have shown that the economic downturn explains the great bulk of the increase in food stamp use. And while the economic news has been generally bad, one piece of good news is that food stamps have at least mitigated the hardship, keeping millions of Americans out of poverty.

Nor is that the program’s only benefit. The evidence is now overwhelming that spending cuts in a depressed economy deepen the slump, yet government spending has been falling anyway. SNAP, however, is one program that has been expanding, and as such it has indirectly helped save hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But, say the usual suspects, the recession ended in 2009. Why hasn’t recovery brought the SNAP rolls down? The answer is, while the recession did indeed officially end in 2009, what we’ve had since then is a recovery of, by and for a small number of people at the top of the income distribution, with none of the gains trickling down to the less fortunate. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the top 1 percent rose 31 percent from 2009 to 2012, but the real income of the bottom 40 percent actually fell 6 percent. Why should food stamp usage have gone down?

Still, is SNAP in general a good idea? Or is it, as Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, puts it, an example of turning the safety net into “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.”

One answer is, some hammock: last year, average food stamp benefits were $4.45 a day. Also, about those “able-bodied people”: almost two-thirds of SNAP beneficiaries are children, the elderly or the disabled, and most of the rest are adults with children.

Beyond that, however, you might think that ensuring adequate nutrition for children, which is a large part of what SNAP does, actually makes it less, not more likely that those children will be poor and need public assistance when they grow up. And that’s what the evidence shows. The economists Hilary Hoynes and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach have studied the impact of the food stamp program in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was gradually rolled out across the country. They found that children who received early assistance grew up, on average, to be healthier and more productive adults than those who didn’t — and they were also, it turns out, less likely to turn to the safety net for help.

SNAP, in short, is public policy at its best. It not only helps those in need; it helps them help themselves. And it has done yeoman work in the economic crisis, mitigating suffering and protecting jobs at a time when all too many policy makers seem determined to do the opposite. So it tells you something that conservatives have singled out this of all programs for special ire.

Even some conservative pundits worry that the war on food stamps, especially combined with the vote to increase farm subsidies, is bad for the G.O.P., because it makes Republicans look like mean-spirited class warriors. Indeed it does. And that’s because they are.

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, September 22, 2013

Excerpt: 5 Barriers to Evangelism

There are few words in the Christian life more intimidating than evangelism. Maybe that’s why a lot of us try to leave the heavy lifting to other people. It’s not that we don’t want our friends and family and neighbors to know Christ. We’d just be more comfortable if someone else showed them the way. Someone who’s good at it. Someone with the gift of evangelism. Or the role or office of evangelist. (See Ephesians 4:11). Just not us.

Some Christians are better evangelists than others, no doubt, and there are various levels of calling. But don't be deceived—evangelism is for every Christian. Even those of us who are scared to death of it.

I’ve been considering some of the barriers we might face as we attempt to share the Good News of Jesus. Some of these are easier to overcome than others, and you may have some of your own barriers that aren’t on this list.

We don’t know how to articulate what we believe. Have you ever tried to explain the Gospel of Christ, but the words that came out of your mouth didn’t sound nearly as good as the ones that were in your head? To overcome this obstacle, create a few talking points with the basics of the Christian faith arranged in a way that makes sense to you and memorize them. But don’t turn this into a script, because no one wants to hear talking points that sound like talking points. You certainly want to be able to share stories on the fly, answer questions, and be spontaneous, but these basic points should be so familiar to you that you have no problems navigating through any evangelism conversation while covering what you need to cover, and staying on track.

We try to complicate things. Jesus is at the the center of the Gospel. He died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day. We're made righteous by the blood of Christ, and it's because Christ was raised from the dead that we're raised to new life too. Justification is an event; sanctification is a process. (FYI, I don’t recommend using the terms justification and sanctification when you’re doing evangelism. But since I’m writing for a largely Christian audience, I just can’t help myself.)

We must be willing to change our hearts and lives (repent) and believe Christ died for our sins and was resurrected so we might live. Romans 10:9 says that “if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Repent, believe, confess. Keep it simple. There’s no need to get bogged down in atonement theory or in trying to explain in detail how everything works. Stick with the basics. The deep theological discussions can come later.

We lack passion. If we aren’t excited about the Gospel, people will pick up on it. I suppose some of us could use our mad acting skills and get a few converts, but what a lousy way to do it! This is where we have to ask ourselves tough questions. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Don’t you understand that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail the test.” Now I’m not encouraging anyone to doubt their relationship with God just because they’ve temporarily lost their excitement or hit a spiritual plateau. But in the healthy Christian life, growth should be the norm. If we lack enthusiasm about our faith, we need to figure out why it has become “old hat.” There’s nothing unhealthy about testing ourselves and making sure we really believe what we say we do. Christianity isn’t just about being made righteous, it’s also about going on to perfection. 

Remember, you're ultimately responsible for your own spiritual growth. Paul told Timothy to "revive God’s gift that is in you through the laying on of my hands" (2 Timothy 1:6). The Greek word translated as revive in the CEB is anazopureo, and it means "to kindle up, inflame one’s mind, strength, zeal." Take charge. You know which books, speakers, preachers, spiritual activities, and people get you excited and stir you up to help bring in God's kingdom. You also know the things that bring you down. Interact with more of the former and less of the latter.

Our prayer life stinks. Remember the TV series Alias? Before every mission, everyone sat around a conference table for a pre-mission briefing. The director of SD-6 (an organization originally thought to be a black ops section of the CIA) gave instructions, answered questions, and discussed strategy with the field agents and other team members. Then Sydney (portrayed by Jennifer Garner) went out on the mission, and nothing ever went according to plan. But that’s not the point. (Or maybe it is. God’s missions always seem to include surprises too.)

Here's the point—if we aren’t in regular communion with God, and we aren’t praying for the people around us, odds are we won’t be as intentional about sharing our faith with them. Prayer helps us get to know God’s heart, and it’s through prayer that we cultivate a heart to see others come to know Christ and experience victory over sin. Put another way, when we hang out with God enough, what’s important to him will start to become more important to us. Regular prayer helps us keep our mission in focus.

Our own sin holds us back. Bill Hybels has said, “If you're tolerating sin in your life, don't waste your breath praying unless it's a prayer of confession.” This is a bold statement, and it really messes with some people’s theology. But Hybels is right. If we’re in an attitude of persistent rebellion and we’re hanging on to sin instead of confessing it and turning away from it, we can actually hinder the power of God from working in our life and from moving through us. Plus, sin drains our self-confidence and can even open us up to spiritual attack. And if other people know about continual sin and rebellion happening in our lives, it’s a credibility killer.

Ministry Matters, Shane Raynor, September 17, 2013

Excerpt: Last Meals before Execution

In January 1985, Pizza Hut aired a commercial in South Carolina that featured a condemned prisoner ordering delivery for his last meal. Two weeks earlier, the state had carried out its first execution in twenty-two years, electrocuting a man named Joseph Carl Shaw. Shaw’s last-meal request had been pizza, although not from Pizza Hut. Complaints came quickly; the spot was pulled, and a company official claimed the ad was never intended to run in South Carolina.

It’s not hard to understand why Pizza Hut’s creative team thought the ad was a good idea. The last meal offers an irresistible blend of food, death, and crime that drives a commercial and voyeuristic cottage industry. Studiofeast, an invitation-only supper club in New York City, hosts an annual event based on the best responses to the question, “You’re about to die, what’s your last meal?” There are books and magazine articles and art projects that address, among other things, what celebrity chefs—like Mario Batali and Marcus Samuelsson—would have for their last meals, or what the famous and the infamous ate before dying. Newspapers reported that Saddam Hussein was offered but refused chicken, while Esquire published an article about the terminally ill Francois Mitterrand, the former French president, who had Marennes oysters, foie gras, and, the pièce de résistance, two ortolan songbirds. The bird is thought to represent the French soul and, because it’s protected, is illegal to consume.

While the number of yearly executions in the United States has generally declined since a high of ninety-eight in 1999, the website Dead Man Eatingtracked and commented on last-meal requests of death-row inmates across the country during the first decade of the new millennium. One of the site’s last posts, in January 2010, was the request of Bobby Wayne Woods, who was executed in Texas for raping and killing an eleven-year-old girl: “Two chicken-fried steaks, two fried chicken breasts, three fried pork chops, two hamburgers with lettuce, tomato, onion, and salad dressing, four slices of bread, half a pound of fried potatoes with onion, half a pound of onion rings with ketchup, half a pan of chocolate cake with icing, and two pitchers of milk.”

There are also efforts to leverage the pop-culture spectacle of last meals to protest the death penalty. An Oregon artist has vowed to paint images of fifty last-meal requests of U.S. inmates on ceramic plates every year until the death penalty is outlawed. Amnesty International launched an anti-capital punishment campaign this past February that featured depictions of the last meals of prisoners who were later exonerated of their crimes.

No matter your stance on capital punishment, eating and dying are universal and densely symbolic human processes. Death eludes the living, and we are drawn to anything that offers the possibility of glimpsing the undiscovered country. If, as the French epicure Anthelme Brillat-Savarin suggested, we are what we eat, then a final meal would seem to be the ultimate self-expression. There is added titillation when that expression comes from the likes of Timothy McVeigh (two pints of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream) or Ted Bundy (who declined a special meal and was served steak, eggs, hash browns, toast, milk, coffee, juice, butter, and jelly). And when this combination of factors is set against America’s already fraught relationship with food, supersized or slow, and with weight and weight loss, it’s almost surprising that Pizza Hut didn’t have a winner on its hands.

The idea of a meal before an execution is compassionate or perverse, depending on your perspective, but it contains an inherently curious paradox: marking the end of a life with the stuff that sustains it seems at once laden with meaning and beside the point. As Barry Lee Fairchild, who was executed by the state of Arkansas in 1995, said in regard to his last meal, “It’s just like putting gas in a car that don’t have no motor.”

Lapham's Quarterly, September 24, 2013

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Excerpt: Defying Church Law About Same-Sex Marriages

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (RNS) The Rev. Steve Heiss presided at his first same-sex marriage ceremony in a field in upstate New York on July 7, 2002. At the time, gay marriage was not legal in New York, and it remains illegal in the United Methodist Church.

But his daughter was getting married, and he wanted to bless her relationship. As pastor of Tabernacle United Methodist Church in Binghamton, N.Y., he knew he was violating church law, but he saw no reason the women should not be treated as any other couple.

“Even then I knew it was worth the risk,” he said. “It was so right. You only have one opportunity to do this in your lifetime. I couldn’t imagine anyone would be so upset about it.”

In 2011, same-sex marriage became legal in New York state. Within a week, Heiss officiated at a same-sex marriage, and he has presided over six more since. Five of those weddings took place at his church.

In May, Heiss sent his bishop a letter disclosing his actions and his intention to continue officiating at same-sex marriages. On June 27, Heiss’ bishop, Mark J. Webb of the Upper New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, sent him a registered letter informing him that a complaint had been filed against him.

On Friday (Sept. 20), Webb will decide whether to dismiss the complaint or forward the case to a church trial or an administrative hearing.

Heiss’ case comes as more United Methodists are challenging church policy. At least three other clergy face church complaints for presiding at same-sex marriages, and at least one pastor faces a complaint of being a practicing lesbian. All could potentially lose their clergy credentials.

Among those facing a complaint is the Rev. Thomas Ogletree, 79, retired dean at Drew Theological Seminary and Yale University Divinity School, who presided at the Oct. 12, 2012, wedding of his son and another man. Clergy filed a complaint against Ogletree after The New York Times published a marriage announcement. Ogletree has refused to promise never to preside again at a same-sex wedding.

Momentum is growing to change the church law, said Andy Oliver, director of communications for the Reconciling Ministries Network, an independent United Methodist group that advocates full inclusion of gay people.

The network includes 569 churches or communities that have written statements  welcoming all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“There are so many churches entering the process that we’ve had to add regional staff,” said Oliver, an ordained elder in Florida.

At least 1,500 clergy have signed a statement, publicly stating they are willing to officiate at same-sex marriages, Oliver said.

In addition, the Western Jurisdiction, stretching from Colorado to Hawaii, and from Alaska to Arizona, overwhelmingly passed a resolution in July 2012 that says the church “is in error on the subject.” The jurisdiction will operate as if the church teaching in the Book of Discipline on homosexuality did not exist. Several regional conferences, the smaller areas that make up jurisdictions, have passed similar resolutions in recent years.

“More and more clergy are being public,” Oliver said. “They frame it as they’re not being disobedient to church law, they are being obedient to the fullness of church law that says a lot more than the few paragraphs about LGBT issues.”

The issue is evolving in the same way that the church addressed other civil rights issues, said the Rev. Dean Snyder, senior minister at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. “We’ve been through this again and again,” he said.  “We did it over the issue of slavery. We experienced the same kind of thing around women being given the vote. The church was divided when it was segregated.”

Heiss sees himself as typical of his generation, growing more open to gay rights as time goes on. A big turning point was learning that his brother and daughter are gay, as is a close friend. “If everyone had a gay relative or a gay friend this issue would disappear,” he said.

When he performed his daughter’s marriage back in 2002, he did it with a bit of stealth.

“I never really pronounced them married,” he said.

But these days he is feeling far more secure in his convictions. When his bishop suggested Heiss agree not to perform any more gay weddings, Heiss refused.

His bishop declined to comment, saying through a spokesman that it was a personnel matter. The Rev. Richard Barton, a district superintendent in the Upper New York Conference who filed the complaint, did not respond to a request for comment.

Heiss said he no longer wants actions to be secret, and he wants his denomination to change its policies.

“The long bitter era of scorn and hatred against gay people is dissolving before our very eyes,” he wrote to Webb.  “Christ has broken down the walls. … We are learning that it is really OK with God if one is gay.”

At its worldwide General Conference in May 2012, the  12 milion-member global denomination voted to keep the language in its Book of Discipline that calls homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

The church does not ordain “avowed” homosexuals and bans clergy from officiating at same-sex marriages or holding such ceremonies in its churches. The church law cannot change until the next quadrennial conference, in 2016.

Should he lose his clergy credentials, Heiss would also lose his health insurance. But since his two daughters are grown and he’s divorced, it’s easier to take the risk than for younger clergy, he said. More important is the principle.

“I’m doing it because it’s so right,” he said. “After suffering the kind of bias these people have gone through, I have the privilege of standing there and saying, ‘You are married.’ It’s just knowing you are on the right side of history.”

Renee K. Gadous

Religious News Service

Excerpt: Can a Christian Get Depressed?

All over the English speaking world today, as a result of the tragic death of Rick and Kay Warren’s son, many will be having conversations about mental illness. I thought I would write a short series of posts reflecting as a Christian psychiatrist on some of the questions people will inevitably ask.

Proverbs 15:13
A glad heart makes a cheerful face,
but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.

The first question, today, is incredibly easy to answer. Can a Christian get depressed? The answer is a resounding, YES.

But being a blogger, I will of course want to say more than that. So why do some people feel Christians can’t or at least shouldn’t get depressed?

Some argue that a Christian should be able to reject depression “by faith.” Many would disagree with applying that notion to physical illness. Truth be told, we all know that Christians get sick. I have never heard of a “faith healer” who is 130 years old. Every great Christian of the past eventually succumbed to some illness or other. You do not simply die of old age.

As soon as we accept that Christians can get sick, we must acknowledge that they can get depressed too. Depression, like Bipolar Affective Disorder, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, and a number of other psychiatric conditions, is a real illness.

We may not understand mental illnesses as well as some other conditions. Our treatments may not always work. But there is much evidence that a physical cause is at least part of the picture. For example twins raised apart are more likely to get depressed if the other twin does, especially so if they are genetically identical.

The burden of having a mental illness is at times very hard to bear. Christians must learn to ease that weight for others. Too often churches will instead add to sufferers a sense of guilt that they “ought not” to be feeling that way.

The Gospel promises “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). So how can we still be sorrowful? The gospel also promises a life free of sin and sickness. But we know that all these promises are only fulfilled in part in this earthly existence. Jesus himself taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven” precisely because it often isn’t done here. Even a Calvinist must accept that much happens here on earth that is contrary to God’s revealed will, his pleasure.

Paul spoke of the paradox of the Christian experience in 2 Corinthians 6 where he describes himself as “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” The Christian may have a complex emotional state where the joy of knowing forgiveness battles with unquenchable depression, and the hope of eternity wrestles with despair.

One time Paul said of himself, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” (Romans 9:2).

It doesn’t take much reading of the Psalms to discover that King David and other psalmists had times when they suffered from severe depression. See for example Psalms 6, 30, and 31.

One message of the Bible, and the Psalms in particular is that depression does have an end point. Mercifully for most who suffer in this way, there are seasons of low mood that eventually give way to periods of resolution. We see that in the Psalms with such statements as,

“Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

But, as we saw in the tragic case that prompted this post, while that statement is generally true, it is not true in every case. Or at least it is not always true in this lifetime.

Theologians sometimes talk of an “over realised eschatology.” This happens when we take benefits of the gospel which are promised for us in eternity, and assume that they will be available completely for everybody today. God does heal depression in this life. But he doesn’t heal everyone. He does, however, promise a future where,

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

That is a glorious promise for every Christian who is affected by mental illness. Note that the repercussions of the disorder affect everybody who has a connection with someone who has mental illness. These are diseases that affect society, not merely individuals.

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Adrian Warnock, Jesus Creed blog