Restraining the monsters we feed

Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin have been catching some serious criticism from all sides for neither challenging nor calming the angry crowds at the campaign rallies held for them earlier this week.

But just last night, I saw recent clips of John McCain working to calm down the angry crowds at his rallies and to counter their inflammatory remarks about Barack Obama with clarifying assurances that he knows Obama to be a "decent, family man" who just happens to disagree with him on "fundamental issues." McCain also made clear that, contrary to popular belief, Obama is not "an Arab" (a term that some are using in a derogatory tone as if there is something inherently wrong in being of Arabic descent).

Will the McCain/Palin campaign be able to restrain this xenophobic and racist monstrosity they have been feeding?

When leaders thrive on the fear and ignorance of their supporters

Fear-mongering

In December 2007, Newsweek featured a cover story about the roots of fear which shed light on just how effectively fear can be used to get people’s attention. According to the article, "the evolutionary primacy of the brain's fear circuitry makes it more powerful than reasoning circuits." In light of such knowledge, Is it any wonder why fear-mongering remains an effective and persuasive tactic to rally public support?

Fear-mongering has worked for centuries as countless leaders have campaigned for positions of power and the public support it takes to preserve such positions. Leaders throughout history have propagated messages and imaged themselves as saviors who will usher in the prosperity, security and peace that their people crave; all the while imaging their political opponents as dangerous alternatives that would undoubtedly ruin the people's way of life.

I personally detest this kind of campaigning and lament that we, the people, still play into this tempting trap largely because we are uninformed, unaware or unwilling to break the cycle.

Recently, I’ve been pretty disgusted lately by the McCain/Palin campaign’s persistent efforts to link Senator Barack Obama with domestic terrorism all the while refusing to challenge the underlying racist and outwardly ethnocentric impulses of some of their own supporters. Such tactics seem to capitalize on human ignorance and, what’s even sadder, is that such tactics seem to work.

The McCain/Palin campaign’s recent push to excite the groundless fears of their supporters reminds me of the popular NBC TV show Heroes' recent introduction of a new villain who has the ability to grow stronger by feeding off of the fear of others; which is precisely what it seems like the presidential candidates of all parties have been doing throughout this election season. But the trend seems to have reached fever pitch with the latest push by the McCain/Palin campaign to brand Obama as a mysterious, shifty figure who has been “palling around with terrorists.”

Living in the “post-9/11” United States of America, there are certain words that reasonable people use sparingly and wisely due to their powerful connotation and emotional weight. The word “terrorist” falls into such a category.

Earlier this week, at a recent rally of Republican supporters, Governor Sarah Palin referred to Barack Obama as “someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Palin went on to proclaim, “One of [Obama’s] earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers, and according to the New York Times, [Ayers] was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol’.” Palin's words were echoed by a chorus of boos and threatening invectives directed at both Obama and Ayers.

Hold it right there, Sarah. You mean to tell me that this whole time Barack Obama has been an unpatriotic trickster who maintains relationships with terrorists? That is a very serious claim, Mrs. Palin. Surely, one would not cast such a sharp stone unless they had the most credible evidence to substantiate this bold claim. Right?

Checking the facts

Let’s examine the validity of this accusation. According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization FactCheck.org, “William Ayers [is] a Chicago professor of education, who in the 1960s was part of a radical antiwar group that set off pipe bombs in lavatories in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.” William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, were leaders of the Weather Underground, an ill fated antiwar group. According to the New York Times, “most of the bombings attributed to the Weathermen were meant to damage only property, but a 1970 pipe bombing in San Francisco attributed to the group killed a police officer and severely hurt another.”

A bombing of any kind is nothing to take lightly and I understand the curiosity of those, like myself, who seek to find out the truth about any possible connection between Mr. Obama and the activities of Mr. Ayers. But let's continue our investigation.

According to the Oct. 5 edition of CNN Fact Check, the claim that Obama is “palling around with terrorists” is false. CNN reports “False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now ‘palling around,’ or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.” This clarification is in line with what FactCheck.org discovered back on April 17, 2008, soon after Sen. Hillary Clinton mentioned a possible connection between Obama and Ayers during a Democratic debate. Clinton said "people died" in some of the 1960s and 1970s bombings by a radical group of which an Obama acquaintance was a member. According to FactCheck.org, “the deaths were of three members of the Weather Underground itself, who died when their own bombs accidentally exploded.”

Factcheck.org goes on to note that nobody died as a result of bombings in which Ayers said he participated as part of the Weather Underground “at the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, in a men's lavatory in the Capitol building in 1971 and in a women's restroom in the Pentagon in 1972.” The site reports, “The deaths to which Clinton referred were of three Weather Underground members who died when their own ‘bomb factory’ exploded in a Greenwich Village townhouse on March 6, 1970. Ayers was not present. Also, two police officers were murdered in connection with the robbery of a Brinks armored car by Weather Underground members in 1981. That was about a year after Ayers had turned himself in and after all charges against him had been dropped.”Obama responded to Hillary Clinton's accusations last spring by noting that President Bill Clinton “had pardoned or commuted the sentences of two Weather Underground members, who had, unlike Ayers, been convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. Bill Clinton indeed pardoned one and commuted the sentence of another.”

Obama visited Ayer's home in 1995 at the invitation of an Illinois state senator, according to a February 22 story in Politico.com. But Politico concluded, "There’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation."

William Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lives in the same neighborhood as the Obama family. Ayers is an associate of Obama’s who has worked with him on a schools project and on at least two community boards such as The Woods Fund of Chicago, an antipoverty charity. Ayers graciously hosted a “meet-the-candidate” house party for Obama when he first ran for state Senate in 1995 and contributed $200 to Obama's campaign for the Illinois state Senate on March 2, 2001.

I think it’s reasonable for citizens to be informed about and to explore any genuine connection that may exist between Barack Obama and domestic terrorism, but you’d better be sure that there is a definite connection, otherwise, you quickly find yourself advancing false and harmful propaganda that could incite fear and hatred of an individual.

In light of the information I’ve seen, it seems a far cry to imply that Barack Obama would approve or endorse any of Weather Underground’s activities or that Ayers himself has even been remotely involved with any such activities over the last 30 years. Neither Obama nor Ayers appear to be a pair of domestic terrorists conspiring ways to usurp the country because there is far more evidence to the contrary.

But, regardless of the facts, McCain and his campaign have aggressively sought to raise skepticism about Obama’s personal character. In the last week, McCain campaign has released a 90-second web advertisement that attempts to link Obama with Ayers that says, “Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They’ve worked together for years.” According to an October 9 article in the Detroit Free Press, “the ad also claimed that one of the nonprofits on which Obama and Ayers worked was a radical education foundation.” The same article points out that “[t]hat educational foundation was the Annenberg Challenge…funded by the Annenberg Foundation, a charity set up by longtime Republican backer and newspaper publisher Walter Annenberg. Annenberg has since died, but his wife has endorsed McCain this year.” The article also includes the interesting fact that “The city of Chicago gave Ayers its Citizen of the Year award in 1997 for work on the educational project.”

Just when you thought such moves were played out, some McCain supporters have continued to use Obama’s middle name (Hussein) during introductions of McCain and Palin this week in the attempt to invoke negative connotations associating Obama with memories of the defeated Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

In my opinion, only the ignorant would consider someone's birth name (of which that person had no control over) as a strike against that individual's character. But again, it is one more example of how our instinct fear can overpower our powers to reason.

The cost of fear-mongering

Human history has shown that fear and hatred are cancerous conditions that can blind minds and warp souls. That’s why I find it chilling to watch footage of political rallies where fiercely partisan crowds boo and hurl invectives at the competing party’s candidates and characters. Sadly, it seems that candidates are banking on the notion that their base supporters are too ignorant to research these matters themselves and to discover that many of their candidate's claims are either groundless accusations and carefully packaged lies.

I also wonder why some leaders who profess integrity would dare provoke their crowds with tribalistic “us-and-them” rhetoric instead of counseling the masses to think soberly and rationally during these difficult times. As we all know, these are troubling times for voters and there is a lot of anxiety and worry out there concerning how our lives will be affected by the dynamics of the global economy, our costly involvement in a perpetual war and the next occupants of the White House. But advancing the idea that Barack Obama is a militant, anti-American traitor with a hidden terrorist agenda is a reckless, dangerous and desperate move.

Exploring a legitimate connection between a Presidential candidate and the activities of a domestic terrorist group is one thing, but to demonize an individual by over-exaggerating the facts and provoking fanatical crowds with false information is morally reprehensible. History has shown us that demonization eventually breeds dehumanization; and once you dehumanize someone, there is no limit to the damage that you will inflict and justify in the name of self-righteousness.

I find much to admire about Senator John McCain’s political record, but his approval of reckless tactics like this seems to reflect a frenzied panic that becomes yet another reason why I don’t consider him fit for the job as President of the United States. Maybe capitalizing on fear will make him popular enough to become President; but it is a weak leader who thrives on the ignorance and fear of their people.

Reflection on "My Easy God is Gone," a poem by James Kavanaugh

Yesterday evening as I drove to pick up my daughter from daycare, I was listening to a podcast that cited “My Easy God is Gone,” a confessional poem written by former Catholic priest and renowned wordsmith James Kavanaugh. Before this point, I had never heard of Kavanaugh; but as his transparent sentiments were read aloud, I found many of his lyrical phrasings resonating with my own experience of disillusionment in regards to the personal God in which I used to believe. Kavanaugh’s powerful poem takes meticulous account of what he has lost in abandoning his earlier notions of God, expresses relief for having shed his former ideas and then proceeds to celebrate the reclaiming of his own sensitive humanity.

Kavanaugh notes that he has “lost” his “easy God” and has abandoned the constrictive dogma that too often rendered his own human experiences devoid of meaning and value. Kavanaugh grieves at how the “easy God” of his childhood “took all mystery away, corroded my imagination, controlled the stars and would not let them speak for themselves.” He boldly declares that, despite his childhood indoctrination into the creeds of his faith tradition, the “maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience.” He proclaims, “I am a boy again - I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth.” Kavanaugh seems to express a relieved sigh of freedom with honest lines like, “I walk alone, but not so terrified as when He held my hand.”

Yes, like Kavanaugh, I too feel that “some fierce umbilical is broken.” As my wife and I visit different churches (both liberal and conservative), I sit through worship services and feel jarringly distant and removed from what is going on- almost like a disinterested anthropologist sent from a foreign land to study the religious experiences of my fellow human beings. Yet, though I feel removed, I remain keenly aware of my own ignorance while also being appreciative and grateful for the myriad of meaningful experiences that have formed my personality and shaped my character.

I don’t know much about James Kavanaugh, but I sought to know more about the life that created such a moving piece. Somehow I sense a kindred spirit in Kavanaugh, one that belongs to a restless explorer whose thirst for inquiry refuses to settle for pat answers and outdated explanations. I appreciate that Kavanaugh’s poetry affirms the significance of mystery, human fallibility and adaptability, the wonders of love, the regenerative power of painful experiences and the creative resourcefulness with which we humans derive meaning from it all.

Like Kavanaugh, I am still willing to consider the idea that “God” may exist as some vague force or pulsating creative power that exists beyond the human capacity to understand or explain; However, I am more convinced than ever that “God” does not exist as a personal and tribal deity who picks favorites, conveys its crucial message to a handful of ordained spokespersons and intervenes in the physical world through supernatural and miraculous means.

In the Preface to his book, Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves, Kavanaugh says:

"I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become."

Below is the complete version of James Kavanaugh's poem “My Easy God is Gone.”

"My Easy God is Gone"
by James Kavanaugh


I have lost my easy God –
the one whose name I knew since childhood.
I knew his temper, his sullen outrage, his ritual forgiveness.
I knew the strength of his arm,
the sound of his insistent voice.
His beard bristling, his lips full and red
with moisture at the moustache,
His eyes clear and piercing,
too blue to understand all,
His face too unwrinkled to feel my child’s pain.
He was a good God - so he told me -
a long suffering and manageable one.
I knelt at his feet and kissed them.
I felt the smooth countenance of his forgiveness.

I never told him how he frightened me,
How he followed me as a child,
When I played with friends or begged
for candy on Halloween.
He was a predictable God,
I was the unpredictable one.
He was unchanging, omnipotent, all-seeing,
I was volatile and helpless.

He taught me to thank him for the concern
which gave me no chance to breathe,
For the love which demanded only love in
return - and obedience.
He made pain sensible and patience possible
and the future foreseeable.
He, the mysterious, took all mystery away,
corroded my imagination,
Controlled the stars and would not let
them speak for themselves.

Now he haunts me seldom:
some fierce umbilical is broken,
I live with my own fragile hopes and
sudden rising despair.
Now I do not weep for my sins;
I have learned to love them.
And to know that they are the wounds that
make love real.
His face eludes me; his voice, with all
its pity, does not ring in my ear.
His maxims memorized in boyhood do not
make fruitless and pointless my experience.

I walk alone,
but not so terrified as when he held my hand.

I do not splash in the blood of his son
nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns
piercing protesting flesh.
I am a boy again - I whose boyhood was
turned to manhood in a brutal myth.
Now wine is only wine
with drops that do not taste of blood.
The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,
I, too - and together the bread and I embrace,
Each grateful to be what we are,
each loving from our own reality.
Now the bread is warm in my mouth and
I am warm in its mouth as well.

Now my easy God is gone –
he knew too much to be real,
He talked too much to listen,
he knew my words before I spoke.
But I knew his answers as well –
computerized and turned to dogma.
His stamp was on my soul, his law locked
cross-like on my heart,
His imperatives tattooed on my breast, his
aloofness canonized in ritual.

Now he is gone - my easy, stuffy God - God,
the father - master, the mother - whiner, the
dull, whoring God who offered love bought
by an infant’s fear.
Now the world is mine with all its pain and
warmth, with its every color and sound;
The setting sun is my priest with the ocean for its altar.
The rising sun redeems me with rolling
waves warmed in its arms.
A dog barks and I weep to be alive, a
cat studies me and my job is boundless.
I lie on the grass and boy-like, search the sky.
The clouds do not turn to angels, the winds
do not whisper of heaven or hell.

Perhaps I have no God - what does it matter?
I have beauty and joy and transcending loneliness,
I have the beginning of love - as beautiful as it
is feeble - as free as it is human.
I have the mountains that whisper secrets
held before men could speak,
I have the oceans that belches life on
the beach and caresses it in the sand,
I have a friend who smiles when he sees me,
who weeps when he hears my pain,
I have a future of wonder.
I have no past - the steps have disappeared
the wind has blown them away.

I stand in the heavens and on earth, I feel the breeze in my hair,
I can drink to the North Star and shout on a bar stool,
I can feel the teeth of a hangover, the joy of laziness,
The flush of my own rudeness,
the surge of my own ineptitude.
And I can know my own gentleness
as well as my wonder, my nobility.
I sense the call of creation,
I feel its swelling in my hands.
I can lust and love, eat and drink, sleep and rise,
But my easy God is gone - and in his stead
The mystery of loneliness and love!

POEM: Dare I Ask?

Dare I Ask?


Dare I ask…
…when I don’t expect an answer?

But sometimes...sometimes... asking and knocking leads to unlocking
So I dare.

Here I am, Lord.
A heretical human engaged in honest prayer

Are you a divine creative essence
or are you a created being?
Are you the ageless mystery born of myth?
Or an imaginary thing?

Are you the cosmic ruler of all that is?
The heavenly parent who provides for all our needs?
Or are you an invisible collage of our developing ideals
called upon to justify our deeds?

Are you an anthropomorphic construct of philosophers and theologians?
A personification of our conscience?
Are you hero to those who suffer…
who continually wait for the deliverance that they believe you promised?

Are you the otherworldly overseer of golden streets and crystal seas
Supreme object of our eternal adoration
Exorcist of the demonic
Broker of conditional salvation

Director of otherworldly dramas
Shepherd of every bullet gone astray
Vengeful agent of bizarre justice
Puppeteer of nature’s dreadful ways

Are you the psychological patchwork
of projected prejudice and human fear?


Are you even there?
Can you even hear?


Creator, almighty and in control?
Did you make us in your image to till?
Or did we create an image of you
to fill this hole we feel?

We share a desire for security
To be certain of what it is that we can and cannot hold
Trying to make sense out of this life
Your silent shadow seems so cold

I don’t think that I can trust you
A restless soul, I walk this road
I don’t know what to believe
Suspicious of those who speak so bold

Not sure that my scattered thoughts can offer any consolation
to the faithful ones who grieve
For me, prayer feels more like a placebo
yet I pray that I am not deceived

I believe that honesty is holy
Unaware, we feel around and grope
Finding sacred meanings
in whatever helps us cope

I believe that honesty is holy
Unaware, we feel around and grope

I’m not sure that I believe in heaven
but I still believe in hope

# # #

POEM: Seminary

Seminary

I was warned by those who love me
They pray for my salvation with concern
I misunderstood their apprehension
Yet hoped they’d understand my will to learn

Consumed by this passionate obsession
Suspicious of tradition’s claims
Trusting those who voice their doubts and live the questions
What force attracts me to the strange?

Convinced that vital work is taking place in these halls
Faith kept me strong when hope grew dim
I came to find ways to protect and understand
those I was taught we must condemn

Purify me from all fear and superstition!
I come only for the truth!
Reappraising the doctrines I was given
Until I find convincing proof

Would I know it when I find it?
Or is it too elusive to pin down?
Is it heresy to seek the truth…
or to deny it once it’s found?

Something compels me to keep pushing,
but is this pathway worth the risk?
Having bit the fruit there’s no return
to my previous state of bliss

Haunted by regrets, yet still believing
that life will yet unfold
ever-evolving revelation,
we investigate what is not known

I don’t pretend to read God’s mind
or detect any divine purpose or plan
And I don’t have a lot of confidence
In those that think they can

My native language now sounds foreign
Yet the strangeness seems sincere
I came searching for encounters
Believing something holy led me here

Exploring the depths of myself and others
Intrigued by undiscovered lands
But even the familiar contain mysteries
that would take lifetimes to understand

What hidden things exist beyond our knowing?
I feel like something grows within
Consumed by my restless searching
Knowing it will never end