peace out

It’s the hap-happiest time of the year and everything seems to be lining up like reindeer in front of a sleigh to remind me of it: snow is falling, cookies are baking, lawsuits are being filed. Ah, yes! Christmas is right around the corner.
There’s a woman in the small town of Pagosa Springs, CO (not far from me) who put up an evergreen wreath in the shape of a peace sign. Her name is Lisa Jensen. Some neighbors complained that it was a protest against the Iraq war. The home owners’ association board agreed, and ordered the wreath removed, or Jensen would have to pay $25 a day. Actually, some of the board members agreed. Those who didn’t were fired.
This wasn’t the first peace sign that had to be removed. Before Thanksgiving, another resident was asked to take down a wooden one from her yard. Peace just can’t catch a break.
To be fair, the home owners’ association does have a rule against signs and flags that anyone might find offensive. That’s pretty specific wording, isn’t it? That would mean just about everything, including Santa, pumpkins, and those silly paper hearts my mother used to hang in the window. The board president said some people thought the peace wreath was a symbol of Satan himself. He said that others might want to put up signs that say, “Drop bombs on Iraq.” Then he said, “If you let one go up you have to let them all go up”. Yeah, that makes sense.
Lisa Jensen got cards and letters and offers of cash from people all around the world. She won’t need it, though, because her association has rescinded the order to remove the wreath.
I won’t point out the irony of a person being fined for being pro-peace at a time of the year when many of us stop to remember the story of a baby whose birth was announced with the words, “Peace on Earth.” Too many other people have done that aready.
Instead, I’m wondering about the logic of allowing the wreath to stay. It was determined by the board that the wreath doesn’t really say anything. Jensen herself said, “It’s a spiritual thing.” Apparently, the wreath wasn’t saying anything about any current conflict; it’s just a general sentiment for peace. It strikes me as odd that it’s ok to be in favor of something in a general, conceptual, metaphysical, ethereal sense, but not in any real, specific, hard, on the ground sense. If part of the Christmas tale is peace on earth, doesn’t that include Iraq?
I’m also curious about the folks who protested the wreath. Some of them have children serving in Iraq. Wouldn’t the people who stand to lose the most be the ones wishing and praying the most for peace to come to that place? After all, those parents have children who might have to kill other people or even be killed themselves, or be maimed, so long as there is open, direct violence in Iraq.
Ironically, I think the only person who really understands the implications of the peace wreath is that board president. He understands that symbols are more than mere signs, that their presence is an invocation of sorts, a plea for action.
I’m going to get myself a peace wreath. I’ll hang it up and think of it like those Tibetan prayer flags, flapping and unraveling peace to the breeze, working for me, even while I sleep. I’ll remember it like those little pieces of paper tucked into the Wailing Wall, beseeching God for peace after I am gone home for soup. I’ll let it glimmer like those candles in a church, burning hope for peace: real, specific, hard, on the ground peace, in Iraq and everywhere else the words “on earth” might include.

Jesus Loves

“Jesus Loves Porn Stars”. That’s what Mike Foster and Craig Gross, a couple of pastors from California (where else?) wanted to have printed on copies of the New Testament. The Bibles were for distribution to attendees of porn conventions, not as an endorsement of the industry itself, but of the men and women who are a part of it. The American Bible Society decided not to print the Bibles, saying the slogan is “misleading and inappropriate.”

The American Bible Society’s response reminds me of a parishioner I used to have. Someone once proposed a baby shower for a single mother. “What will people think of us?” he objected. I laughed and told him that if we were lucky, they might think we suck, just like they hated Jesus for his misplaced love.

Jesus had branding problems, too. He gave his marketing people fits. If you’re going to be a holy man, you can’t drink so much, eat so much, and you sure as hell can’t spend your down time with whores and extortionists. What will people think, after all? It would be “misleading and inappropriate”.

I think a big part of the whole Jesus story is that he was loose with love; he was promiscuous. His love was available to anyone who asked or even just looked over at him with a little interest in their eyes.

If the Jesus story is even partially true, then the center of human existence, of the universe, even, is not anger or indifference, but white hot love, the kind of love that could make a porn star blush.

That’s what the New Testament calls evangelion, the good news.

“Jesus Loves Porn Stars”. The slogan opens a whole slew of possible Bible covers. I imagine green ones that say, “Jesus Loves Oil Executives”, blaze orange ones: “Jesus Loves PETA”, and pink ones: “Jesus Loves Homophobes”. Or what about a red, white, and blue bible with the words, “Jesus Loves Islamic Extremists” on the cover? If we take Jesus seriously, even as a great teacher and example, we’ve got to at least suspect that every human is worthy of more than tolerance and deserving of love. The best part of it is that love is available to people who are absolutely not like me.

The American Bible Society took a pass, but another publisher, NavPress, stepped up. “The Message”, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, will express the sentiment “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” both inside and out.

I think that’s good news.

What Else? Haggard

Let me say this from the outset: I’m not a big fan of Ted Haggard or his ministry. I don’t know exactly what it is; maybe it’s his reductionist approach to our shared faith, maybe it’s his close association with Republican politics and his willingness to give voice to the anti-gay ballot initiative we’re looking at this fall in Colorado, maybe it’s his tacit endorsement of the upper middle class status quo. Or maybe my friends are right and I just have a case of parishioner envy. Maybe it’s all that and more.
So when I was watching the news Wednesday night and heard that a male prostitute named Mike Jones was saying Haggard had paying him for sex and drugs on a nearly weekly schedule, I was surprised by my own sorrow.
My mother said this will affect how people see God and Christ. Haggard will join Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart and those myriad Catholic priests we all heard about a few years ago. The political analysts are and will try to decipher what affect this scandal will have on the evangelical vote here in Colorado.
But I think God can handle himself just fine. And who cares what the political effects are? Real human beings are involved here.
The reason I was and still am sad as I this whole mess play out is that I cannot begin to grasp the depth of suffering Ted Haggard and his family and his church are in for. One can only wonder at the years of denial and self-recrimination, of horror over the conflict between his private desires and deeply held theology, and the inability to reconcile the two.
And then of course there’s Mike Jones, prostitute and drug dealer. The gay community isn’t rushing to thank him, nor should they be. He’s not exactly the kind of representative they’re looking for. He seems almost stunned by the events as a result of his actions. His brief celebrity will shine and die, and where he’ll be, and what, is anyone’s guess. I can’t imagine it being good.
I’ve started noticing some Schadenfreude, that sense of joy over another’s pain. It’s compounded by the delicious irony of this story. I’ve got plenty of that in my veins. Whatever happens to Haggard or Jones, some will delight in their pain.
I don’t know what either man is going to do. Ted Haggard and I both claim and proclaim the Christian message. At the heart of that message is an unadulterated love, a willingness identify with those in crisis, regardless of the consequences. There’s Schadenfreude, and in the Buddhist tradition there’s mutida, that habit of sharing the joy of others. Then there’s Jesus. In English, Jesus is reported to have said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Martin Luther translated “mourners” as, “they who bear suffering,” suffering not only for themselves, but for others, even for their enemies, even for those who ostensibly do not deserve it. I can only hope that there are those around Ted Haggard and around Mike Jones who can bear their suffering.