(Dr. Frank Crane, by training a Methodist minister and son of a Methodist minister, became a widely-read newspaper columnist in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. His “Four Minute Essays” appeared in hundreds of newspapers. His New York Times obituary in 1928 noted, “His message was always one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking, and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” Last week, we offer his thoughts on yesterday. As we look ahead to the unpredictability of life, particularly in a campaign year, we offer these thoughts from Dr. Crane on tomorrow and other tomorrows to tome.)
AROUND THE CORNER
What’s around the corner? Something. Whatever it is, I used to be terribly afraid of it when I was a boy.
When I would take a girl home at night after meeting, I would walk out in the street a little, lest if I kept on the sidewalk I would be so close that Something around the Corner would get me. Nothing ever did jump out and grab me, never a ghost, or a boogey man, or a murderer, or anything, though I expected and feared all those boy-years.
And since I have grown up I have discovered that Something around the Corner is believed in by most mortals. It may be accident, or disease or loss or disgrace—or that old fellow himself who lurks around the corner for all of us, and will get us everyone someday—Death.
The Thing around the Corner, it is the skeleton at the feast, the shadow on our sunny day, the nightmare of our sleep, the concealed weapon of destiny, the vague enemy that will not let us bivouac in peace, but makes us always keep our pickets out alert for stealthy attack.
And yet, the Good Things of life are around the Corner. Happiness hides there and springs laughing at us. And the little things that make hearts bright and days glad. Ten of these blessed things have come upon us unaware, to one of them that we have sought and found.
Love, for instance. Don’t you remember how it was with you when it came to you that She really loved you? That wonderful, divine creature, the pearl of the world, that radiant one, the latchet of whose shoes you were not worthy to unloose—what could she see in so commonplace a mucker as you? O miracle of miracles!
The there’s Christmas, Corner of all corners, with what amazing secrets and what crowded bevy of giggles and whispers, and loving thoughts!
But, especially the Little Things are they that make the sum of our contentment, and they are nearly all surprises. If we could foresee them we wouldn’t appreciate them.
It’s not the big Olympian gods that love us most; it’s the little fairies of circumstance, the elves and pyxies of happy accident that flutter along the ways of men.
The best things of life come unexpected upon you. From the time when you were presented with your first pair of trousers, or Uncle Ed bought you home a toy pistol, down to just yesterday, when a friend paid you back the ten dollars you lent him and never expected to see again, an all through your life, your successes in business, you rarest friends, your most palatable food, your most enjoyable excursions, your most interesting books, the remarks some one made about you that most tickled your vanity, the most welcome visitors—almost all of them were not planned and worked for, but jumped at you from around the corner.
And around that last Corner, where we turn to travel the Unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly Thong of Evil, but a smiling-faced one, with welcome in His hands and the Morning Star for me.
Sometimes as we go through old newspapers, magazines, journals, etc., we come across things that remind us of what we were as a society. They’re painful to read in today’s world but they’re reminders of something that remains not far beneath the thin social crust on which we live, as recent events show. It was difficult to read the accounts we relate today, but we pass them along as a reminder of what we can become if we listen to the wrong people, believe the wrong words, and fail to recognize that all of us have a responsibility to each of us.
The Republican takeover of the governorship and the legislature in the 1908 elections immediately increased racial tensions of the time at the capitol. The Clinton Henry County Weekly Democrat commented, “The first fruit of Republican victory…was the distribution of patronage; and in this the black bullies from Kansas City and St. Louis were not overmodest in their demands.” Ten African-Americans were hired for jobs with the House doorkeeper and the House Chief Clerk. “Naturally their first thought was to swell up and strut around, shedding the perfume of their presence among white members,” said the newspaper.
The “negro question,” as it was called, turned ugly in the Missouri House when a white woman Senate stenographer told State Auditor John Gordon she had been approached by a black employee of the House bill clerk’s office as she walked home one night. She reported she had refused to respond when he tried to engage her in conversation, although he told her, “The women clerks in my department like me.” She was badly frightened.
Although the Senate had no black employees, some senators joined some House members in questioning bill room clerk Virgil Franklin. The inquisitors were angered by what they considered his “impertinence,” and were stopped by cooler heads from throwing Franklin over the capitol’s second floor railing to the tile floor a story below. Franklin was suspended from his job and quickly put on a train to safety in St. Louis.
The incident prompted an angry resolution in the House from Representative Jesse Duncan of Lincoln County complaining that “numerous negro employees of this House…have, by their constant use of toilet rooms and towels provided for the members of the General Assembly and white employes [sic] become such a nuisance” and recommending the firing of almost all black employees of the House. The resolution also demanded separate toilets and towels be provided for black employees remaining.
But Duncan would go only so far. When Representative William H. Wade of Greene County asked him if he would accept an amendment calling for firing all negro cooks and waiters at boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels where legislators boarded, Duncan responded, “Certainly not. That is a different thing.” Wade retorted, “I would as soon have a negro pass me a bill as handle my food.”
A second resolution, from Iron County Representative C. H. Polk went further, proclaiming, “This is a white man’s State, and the white man has ruled its official conduct in the past and will continue to do so as long as time lasts.” He complained, “The big negro bucks continue to loiter and lounge around the corridors and the ingress and egress of the Assembly hall,” forcing lawmakers and others entering the chamber “to push and edge their way through this motley crowd of unclean, common, stinking negroes or return to their homes or lodging places in the city.”
He also complained, “The toilet rooms, eating counters, benches and seats, drinking cups, wash basins and towels furnished at the expense of the State for the convenience and comfort of the members of the Assembly and their white employes [sic], and…This horde of colored men use indiscriminately and with impudence all the above named necessaries and comforts of life without authority or consent given them by this assembly.” He wanted to protect “the white girl…where she is compelled to come in contact with him in any way whatsoever, her very nature revolting against his presence and rebelling against his every touch or attention.”
His resolution continued in the same vein for another couple of paragraphs but we have run out of capacity to share more of it. In the end, Polk advocated firing all “colored” employees of the House except for those doing menial labor for the doorkeeper and told “to leave the hall at once.”
The resolutions were sent to a committee that recommended a compromise replacing two black employees in the House mail room with white men “who would not mind” working with the two remaining black clerks. The compromise was suggested when all Democrats in the House refused to go to the bill room as long as all of the clerks were black. The committee also recommended separate bathrooms for black employees and visitors, a move called by one correspondent, “the first Jim Crow order…in Missouri,” further observing, “For years such democrats as James M. Seibert, Sam B. Cook and the democratic governors down to the present time had used the same wash rooms as the janitors. But the first change was made by the Republicans in the report of the clerical force committee…” (Seibert had been the State Treasurer, 1885-1889, and Sam B. Cook had been Secretary of State 1901-1905.)
The Keytesville Chariton Courier commented after the legislature had acted, “The only way that it is possible for the white race to get along with the negro is to make him know his place and then see that he stays in it.” Keytesville, in Chariton County, had been the home town of former governor and later Confederate General and former governor Sterling Price.
Before the end of the month, however, the first African-American lobbyist appeared in the legislative halls, Kansas City minister T.C. Unthank, who became the fortieth lobbyist to register for the session. The legislature had voted in 1905 to spend thirty-thousand dollars for a separate building for “incorrigible negro girls” at the Chillicothe Industrial School. But when the building was completed, so many white girls wanted to be in it that the building was made whites-only, leaving black girls to go to jails, work houses, or even worse to the state penitentiary. The sentencing in 1908 of a twelve-year old black girl to the state penitentiary added impetus to Unthank’s lobbying. He asked for a separate industrial school for girls—somewhere other than Chillicothe. His work paid off but the school did not open until 1916, largely because of trouble finding a community that would allow such a school. The Missouri Industrial home for Negro Girls opened in Tipton in 1916.
Eleven years after these events, Walthall M. Moore of St. Louis was elected the first African-American member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Forty more years passed before Theodore McNeal of St. Louis became the first black state senator.
Even after McNeal took his seat in the senate, no black member of the Missouri legislature could stay at a Jefferson City hotel. They either stayed in private homes or in dormitory rooms at Lincoln University. Not until fair housing laws came in the mid-1960s did that situation change.
Three years after Walthall Moore took his seat in the House, the Ku Klux Klan tried to hold its state convention in the House chamber. But it moved elsewhere when the governor ordered the chamber doors to be unlocked so anyone could enter.
Next year will mark 100 years since the election of the first African-American to the state legislature. Missouri has yet to elect a member of a minority race to a statewide office.
We debated with ourself whether to create this entry. But we recalled a few years ago when we were talking about newswriting to an Indiana college class and we let them listen to Edward R. Murrow’s powerful report from the German concentration camp at Buchenwald. We watched the impact it had on those young people, some of whom were near tears. Later, some of those students told me they had never been told about that part of history.
We do ourselves no favors by forgetting about or hiding from the painful words and deeds of the past in these times of anti-Semitic attacks on the streets of New York; of culturally-motivated mass murders in theatres, malls, churches and synagogues; of concerns about white nationalism shaping public policy; of toleration of cruel words and characterizations. The beast lurks beneath the thin social crust of our daily existence and we fail to recognize its nearness to each of us at our own peril.
(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them.)
As we leave one year and begin another one, we are reminded of Al Stewart’s 1978 hit song that includes:
Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.
Dr. Crane wrote in his column about the importance of living for today and working for our tomorrows:
YESTERDAY
I am Yesterday. I am gone from you forever.
I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at least into the ocean of oblivion.
Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.
We fill your soul’s cellar.
I depart from you, yet am I ever with you.
Once I was called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I became your spouse and was named Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.
I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.
I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.
I am rich, for I have wisdom.
I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.
You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.
You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.
I am Yesterday; yet I am the same as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.
Sometimes I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. We do not love you. We do not hate you. We judge you.
We have no compassion; only Today has that.
We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.
We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrows becoming Todays and then enter among us.
Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward Tomorrow.
Our snows cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burnt-out enthusiasms, shattered dream-houses, dissolved illusions, move to you, surround you.
Tomorrows come unnoticed. Todays slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.
Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloths, broken vessels, wilted roses.
Ours are empty churches where aspirations were, where only ghosts are.
Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan wine jars now dry and empty forever.
From us comes that miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.
We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow.
We are the world’s Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.
I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.
I am not your friend. I am your judge — and your fear.
A heartbeat has returned to the Missouri Capitol. The legislature is back. It’s an election year. It’s a census year.
It’s leap year, meaning lawmakers have an extra day to accomplish something.
Because it’s an election year, members will want to burnish their records to improve their re-election chances. Sometimes election years leave incumbents vulnerable to interests that can threaten to cut off campaign donations or divert donations to challengers if the lawmaker doesn’t toe the line. That’s not a comfortable position for a legislator to be in but we’ve always thought some folks too easily let themselves be pushed around when their incumbency can be their greatest strength in the face of campaign intimidation.
By mid-May the idealistic rookies who were elected just two years ago will have had a taste of the real world. Some might have thought they could change things two years ago. Doesn’t look like they have. Yet. But maybe something is still burning within them that will produce positive change as they learn more about how to make the system work for them.
It’s always good to remember something the long-time Speaker of the California House, Jesse Unruh, said a long time ago, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” And there will be some who will chug it.
But others might remember Unruh’s comments about those who try to pressure (or bully) our legislators: “If you can’t take their money, drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and vote against them, you don’t belong here.”
(We’re using the clean version because there might be ladies reading this entry)
Monday’s entry with Dr. Frank Crane suggested some things each lawmaker might say to himself or herself each day before going to the Capitol. In addition to those noble thoughts, it might be good for our lawmakers to recite the Unruh Gospel of Political Reality.
Swimming season resumes in the Missouri Capitol Shark Tank at noon today.
Dr. Frank Crane, former Presbyterian minister turned widely-printed newspaper columnist in the 19-teens and twenties, wrote this piece in 1921.
Later this week our state lawmakers return to the capitol for almost five months of high-pressure work writing laws for themselves and more than six-million Missourians—and those who visit our state. We, as the lawmakers, learned early in our Capitol reporting career that legislative sessions quickly become all-consuming events that impose psychological blinders that narrow the view of life as the calendar days are crossed off. This column from almost a century ago by former Presbyterian minister-turned newspaper columnist Dr. Frank Crane extolls the value of spending a few minutes before leaving for the Capitol each morning to set some one-day personal goals. Maybe each of our lawmakers and others who will shape the laws and policies of our future should keep this column close by and read it out loud each day before going to do the public’s work.
JUST FOR TODAY
Here are ten resolutions to make when you awake in the morning.
They are Just for One Day. Think of them not as a life task but as a day’s work.
These things will give you pleasure. Yet they require will power. You don’t need resolutions to do what is easy.
Just for Today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life-problem at once. I can do some things for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
Just for Today, I will be Happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from Within; it is not a matter of Externals.
Just for Today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come, and fit myself to them.
Just for Today, I will take care of my Body. I will exercise it, care for it, and nourish it, and not abuse it nor neglect it; so that it will be a perfect machine for my will.
Just for Today, I will try to strengthen my mind, I will study. I will learn something useful, I will not be a mental loafer all day. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
Just for Today, I will exercise my Soul. In three ways, to wit:
(a) I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. If anybody knows of it, it will not count.
(b) I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests just for exercise.
(c) I will not show any one that my feelings are hurt. They may be hurt, but Today I will not show it.
Just for To-day, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with flattery, criticize not one bit nor find fault with anything, and not try to regulate nor improve anybody.
Just for Today, I will have a Programme. I will write down just what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I’ll have it. It will save me from the two pests Hurry and Indecision.
Just for Today, I will have a quiet half hour, all by myself, and relax. During this half hour, some time, I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective to my life.
Just for Today, I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love and to believe that those I love love me.
It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth. But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.
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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000. And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.
We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.
Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.
By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.
When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?
Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)
To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?
When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with? If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.
When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10. If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.
So the decade has another year to go.
Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it. A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.
So what the heck are we arguing about? Let’s move on.
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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned). As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.” Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.
One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing. Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.
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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth. A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:
The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration
Ruben Rosario Rodriguez December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia
As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.
Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:
“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”
One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”
Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”
Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,”“Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.
This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.
In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.
Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.
Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:
“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”
—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.
(A 1919 advertisement for Dr. Frank Crane’s books said, “Nine years ago Dr. Frank Crane was scarcely known outside of a small circle. To-day he has a million friends. And these million friends are happier men and women to-day because of this friendship. They occupy a higher, finer place in life because of it.” Dr. Crane stepped away from his Methodist pulpit to become one of the most-published inspirational columnists of his time. We are starting our weeks be recalling his writings).
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
The New Year is here. It is inventory time. Let us look over the stock of habits, ideas, and relationships we have accumulated the last twelve months and clean up.
The New Year’s resolution is a good thing. Why drift along, the slave and plaything of our unmanaged desires and of our accidental circumstances? Why not be our own master and live one year like an intelligent human being?
Examine your habits. Lop off the bad ones. Free yourself from any ways you have fallen into that make you lazy, unhealthy, miserable, and disagreeable to other people.
Determine this year to be master of self; that you will control your thoughts, regulate your passions, and guide your own deeds; that you will not let events lead you by the nose.
Resolve to be happy. Remember Lincoln’s saying that “folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
This year you shall not neglect your friends. They are too valuable, as life assets, to lose.
You will adopt some system and stick to it, knowing that nine-tenths of our irritation comes from lack of system.
Lay out a course of study. No one is too old to learn. Resolve to give some time each day to reading some helpful book. Cut out the trash.
Resolve to keep an account of all the money you get and of all you spend. You may have tried this many times and failed. Never mind; you are still alive and have the chance to try it again.
Save. Put a certain fraction by of all you make. There’s no friend like money in the bank.
Son’t spend any money till you get it. Don’t go into debt. Beware of buying all those things you “must have,” for you mustn’t have anything until you can pay for it.
No alcohol this year. Let your body rest 365 days from this poison and see how you feel. Don’t get into a moral fever over this. Don’t “try” not to drink. Just don’t drink.
Resolve to take that daily exercise.
Eliminate worry. This year make up your mind to fret over nothing. Adjust yourself to facts instead of getting into a stew over them. If a matter can be helped, help it; if it cannot be helped, forget it.
This year resolve to keep discord out of the house. Nobody can quarrel with you if you do not quarrel with him. Say to yourself that you will not once…speak crossly to your children; that you will not say one unkind word to your husband or wife, and that you will keep agreeable…
This may be the last year you will have. Make it a good one.
You know how you ought to live. At least, you think you do. And if you do as well as your own judgment tells you, it will be an advance.
This is old-fashioned advice. But happiness is old-fashioned, and life. There is no new-fangled way to be content.
And learn this of wise Marcus Aurelius:
“To change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free that you were before.”
Also: “The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”
The following is based on a true event. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance of the names used in this account and the names of real people is entirely coincidental.
To: all staff From: Gala Landowski, coordinator of interoffice activities
This Friday will be the Christmas Party potluck. There are signup sheets in each department area. Please try to have your food items picked out by the end of the day.
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To: Gala Landowski, CIA From: Armand LeSoir, Accounting Department
The Accounting Department will be meeting tomorrow to determine what brand of unflavored yogurt to contribute.
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To: Armand LeSoir, AD From: Gala Landowski, CIA
We are emphasizing the use of home-grown products from producers throughout the state.
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To: Gala, CIA From: Armand, AD
A very good idea, Gala. I have a good friend who has an organic yogurt farm outside of Clarence, Missouri. In fact, he says the recent harvest of yogurt berries was exceptional and produced some very high quality product this year. His is one of the few farms in Missouri to escape the serious outbreak of yogurt blight this year, or as some call it, Yogurt Rust. He grows his yogurt organically with no pesticides, insecticides, or artificial sweeteners. Each berry is carefully picked and processed by the highest-trained immigrant workers, some of whom have worked for him since they were thirteen years old. All of them carefully wash their hands after they use the bathroom.
The yogurt plants on his farm are nourished only by manure from organically-grown Angus cattle fed only organically-grown grass and high-quality organic grains. His plants have been carefully bred, using the highest quality yogurt berries from Bavaria and Latvia which are known for their hardiness, with berries from France which have a certain tartness balanced by berries from South Carolina that are known for southern sweetness. These in turn have been bred to the famous Missouri wild yogurt berry, which was a favorite of our pioneer settlers after being introduced to Missouri by the legendary Johnny Yogurtseed. The result of all of this careful work that has spanned generations of his family is an outstanding natural and well-balanced organic yogurt.
I shall make every effort to obtain some of my friend’s yogurt for the event Friday. However as many of you know, the Corps of Engineers is holding back billions of gallons of water in reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana so people in those regions have lakes on which to go ice fishing and to experience other winter activities that we in the South would never understand. Because the Corps has taken that step, the navigation season on the Missouri has been shortened considerably because of lack of water in the channel which, in turn, has made it impossible for the yogurt barge companies to operate.
You might remember that last week the final yogurt barge of the season didn’t get downstream quickly enough and one of the tows struck a snag near Boonville and settled on the bottom of the river. Only the fact that the tow had a double hull has kept us from having a major environmental disaster. The interior hull protected against a major yogurt spill but the frigid weather and the cold water has caused the yogurt to congeal, making it impossible for salvage crews to pump it out into their smaller boats. They won’t be able to remove the yogurt until a few days before the spring navigation season.
By then the yogurt—because it is organic and therefore contains no preservatives—will have rotted and will be usable only as feed for captured feral hogs. I understand a University of Missouri study done by the College of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources, Home-Produced Ethanol, and Quilt-Making has recently shown that rotted yogurt produces a chemical change within the brains of feral pigs that transforms them into pets suitable for children who sometimes come to regard them as large and hairy potbellied pigs.
Fortunately my friend had insurance that will cover his loss and he did hold back some of his crop in a yogurt storage bin so he might be able to provide us with enough yogurt for our part of the party. The situation has produced a significant supermarket price increase to excessive levels for organic yogurt this winter. If my friend cannot provide some yogurt from his storage bin we won’t be able to afford to buy some at the supermarket and will be forced to look for other items for the food crawl. Should you find something other than yogurt on Friday, please understand that we have been forced to provide it with the greatest reluctance.
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From: Darrell Upton, Coordinator of Pencils and Stationery To: AS, AD
If my memory is correct, the “first” yogurt was created by a special kind of bacteria—most definitely ORGANIC in nature.
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From: AS, AD To: DU, CPS
Your memory is accurate to a point, Darrell. In fact, the first yogurt bacteria was carefully cultivated by Neanderthals who found them in a cave near what is now Lascaux, France. It was found growing mysteriously and voluntarily in the dark recesses of a large room in the cave. (Did you know, by the way, that an analysis of my saliva by National Geographic shows that I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal, which is above average?) The leader of the group that found it was known as a sage because of his great intellect and his willingness to experiment in a primitive scientific way. He rubbed his finger through the bacterial growth and tasted it. He survived the experiment and, in fact, thought it tasted rather good. After consulting with others in his clan, it was decided the bacteria should be grown as a food source, a delicacy. Through experiments and using various ground herbs mixed with virgin’s urine, it was determined the bacteria could be grown rapidly enough to supply a small amount of food for the group.
The testing process took a considerable length of time during which various members of this Neanderthal band stood watch inside the cave to protect the precious small growing area. Although Neanderthals were not as intelligent as we are today, they nonetheless were as easily bored as we can become, especially in the dark. They took to carrying small lamps fueled by the oil of the glands of certain goats indigenous to the area into the cave and also took some ground- up berries native to the area. While waiting for the bacteria to flourish, they used the juice from the berries to paint some figures on the walls of that cave.
In time, this clan was able to get the bacteria to reproduce in a peat bog in a shaded area outside the cave and as the bacteria evolved it became capable of growing in the daylight and if not harvested for a lengthy time, formed into berries with reproducing seeds. Thus were born the earliest yogurt berries, the progenitor of the berries raised by my friend near Clarence.
In the middle of the 19th Century, some explorers discovered the cave and were dazzled by the great cave paintings those early yogurt developers left behind those thousands of years ago. Little did they know the other historic activity that happened in that cave, an early experiment that led to one of society’s most useful foods. Few know the name of that early clan elder, the sage, but this story was told to me in my youth by my high school science teacher who claimed to be a direct descendant of that Neanderthal family.
The old sage/scientist’s name was Yog, and the product became known as Yog-urt, which is Neanderthal meaning “Food from the Finger of Yog.”
At some indefinite time, it appears the Neanderthals had enough berries that they traded with some ancient Greek traders who found the berries flourished on Mount Oikos,
And the rest is history.
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To: AS, AD From: Barbara Singlemom, Human Resources
Wow! I heard it was newborn baby poopoo (thus very organic and all naturelle). Your story is much more interesting.
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To: BS, HR From: AS, AD
Barb, you’re partly correct. Modern scientists who have reverse-engineered the yogurt berry have determined that the original bacterium began in the feces of the Miniature Jurassic Tyrannobat that lived in the cave before the species became extinct.
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To: AS, AD From: BS, HR
Well, we all have much to think about now each time we enjoy our cup of Yoplait.
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To: BS, HR From: AS, AD
Yo-Plait, in fact, was the first virgin whose urine was used in those early experiments.
If we are not able to get enough yogurt from my friend near Clarence, our department will provide some sourdough biscuits for the crawl.
Did you know there is a “Sourdough Citizen Science Project” that has sequenced the DNA of sourdough starters from throughout the world to better understand the sourdough microbial biodiversity? You can Google it.
(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. This entry is from a later book of essays, Christmas and the Year Round, published the year before his death.)
Christmas means the indestructibility of joy
Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.
The one thing neither time nor force can suppress is instinct.
In days past, religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.
When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes Instinct, and to use the words of Bennett*, blandly remarks:
“Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own convenience and no one but nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”
In the Fourth Century, the Christian World was pretty dismal. This world was considered a dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the girls and boys were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.
Then the church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.
In 342 A.D., the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.
Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.
This time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Saturnalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysus. In Egypt of this period the population bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus of India sang their songs to Vishnu.
Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.
The wisest things the Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to a child.
The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.
It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes, it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.
Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.
It is the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for this orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”
Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail or hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.
The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied by laughter.
*Dr. Crane is referring to English novelist essayist, and journalist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). The quote comes from his book, Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays, published in 1921.
Ceres was lifted back to the top of the Capitol Tuesday morning. Not everybody was happy about it. The reason why is part of our national faith and national political history.
At a couple of the several pre-Christmas events we attended last weekend people asked if your observer had observed Representative Mike Moon’s letter in the local newspaper objecting to a pagan goddess being put back on top of our Capitol and what our observations were about his position that a statue of Jesus would have been better.
The tones of their voices as they asked those questions was indicative of their feelings that Rep. Moon was—–I guess “mistaken” is a generic way to put it.
My observation was that I disagreed with Rep. Moon, not because I am not a Christian—I shall let a much higher power than public opinion decide if I am and if being so entitles me to some eternal benefit—but because I am an American.
This incident and the attitudes implied in those brief discussion is both a commentary on some of the unfortunate polarization within our national community in which people tend to stake out a position and those who disagree are branded as political heathens, enemies, liberals, conservatives—whatever disparaging brands you can think of with which we brand people today instead of respecting their right to think differently from us.
There is nothing wrong with disagreement. Our nation, or at least the New England version of it that has been part of our school history lessons, was founded on disagreement. Unfortunately, our history tells us that those who disagreed with the Church of England enough to flee England often did not tolerate disagreement on matters of faith within their own ranks once they got here.
The discussion of Ceres vs. Jesus is part of our national faith fabric that we’ll explore a little bit later. But first, allow your faithful servant to explain why he comes down on the side of Ceres in this discussion.
Ceres is a symbol. Jesus is a person of worship. We do not worship Ceres by having her on our capitol. She symbolizes our greatest industry—agriculture—among other things. We do not worship agriculture although without it we could not exist. So her importance is in that quality of Missouri that is essential to all who live here. She might have been a goddess to be worshipped by ancient Romans and Greeks (who called her Demeter), but today she is but a symbol of a bountiful state.
The other day I drove past the Vipassana Buddhist Church, Center for Buddhist Development in Jefferson City, which has been in town since 2001. A few minutes later I drove past Temple Beth-el, the oldest synagogue building still in use west of the Mississippi River, built in 1883. Had I driven a little longer I would have gone past the Islamic Center of Jefferson City. Just outside of town is the Unity Church of Peace. And I have spoken several times at local Unitarian Universalist meetings. There even is a loose-knit organization of Atheists that gets together from time to time in Jefferson City.
Most Sundays you’ll find me at the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), one block from the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal Churches, kind of a mainstream nest in downtown Jefferson City.
All of these mainline and other organizations are free in this nation to worship as they please and who they please or to worship nobody if they please. This nation for centuries has tried to keep church and state apart. The degree to which that has succeeded has been discussed for as long as the effort has been made. But the underlying sentiment behind it has been that this nation is a nation where believers or non-believers of various ilks are equal in the eyes of the law and as such are to be respected as citizens of this country. Refining that concept has produced court rulings by the dozens without eliminating the attitudes by some that they are closer to God than others are. In the end, however, we think as an individual that God will decide who is closest to God and that the human tendency to separate ourselves on that basis is spiritually counterproductive.
Putting Jesus atop our Capitol would not recognize the diversity of faith or non-faith that is a perpetual part of American history, one of the things that sets our nation apart from many others.
Representative Moon sees things differently and he is entitled as a citizen and a man of faith to do so. Those who dismiss him out-of-hand are being dismissive of our heritage. A healthy and respectful discussion of the issues surrounding his feelings is not likely to produce many converts in any direction but the freedom we have to explore competing points of view on subjects such as this is part of who we are as a nation.
I’m reading George M. Marsden’s Religion in American Culture, a broad survey of the role of religion in creating and shaping our country. One of the things he writes about early in the book is the world that produced those we call Pilgrims and Puritans, people who came out of a Europe in which the Catholic Church only a century earlier had split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in which more recently the Roman church had divided through the Protestant Reformation (“Protestant,” as in one who protests), and the further divisions within Protestantism that was free of Catholic doctrine. In England, where King Henry VIII created his own church rather than follow dictates from Rome, a further split occurred between those who believed the Anglican Church could be cleansed from within and those whose disagreements with that church led to persecution and their eventual flight to Holland and ultimately to the New World.
But those who landed here in 1620 and the Puritans who came a few years later had a low tolerance for non-traditional interpretations within their ranks, the foremost result being Roger Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts Bay to found what is now Rhode Island as a refuge for those who felt church and state should not be one.
Williams was a co-founder of the Baptist Church in America with Dr. John Clarke. Marsden says, “Baptists carried the Puritan emphasis on conversion a step further by insisting that baptism of adults symbolizes spiritual separation from the world. Interested above all in the spiritual purity of the church, early Baptists believed in separation from the state Church of England, rather than working for reform from within, as most Puritans believed…Williams thus championed the separation of church and state, but not for the same reason that later Enlightenment thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, did. Jefferson was concerned that the church would corrupt the state. Williams feared that the state would corrupt the church.”
The challenges of survival by settlers who faced another new world beyond the Alleghenies led to new denominations that recognized individual responses to God rather than responses to the structured and creedal churches of the colonies.
We might have oversimplified what Marsden spent many pages explaining, but we remain today a nation of conversion-oriented, structured religions and religions that place greater emphasis on individual responses to faith outside of church-required adherence to doctrines.
One might be more likely to insist Jesus should be atop the Capitol. The other might be more likely to insist a state showing a preference for a particular faith tradition should not be what the country is all about. This discussion about the proper place of religion in American life is an ongoing one. Fortunately, we live in a nation that allows that discussion. We must be vigilant in protecting that right.
So Representative Moon is neither wrong nor right. He’s just being an American citizen and in his advocacy for Jesus being on top of the Capitol, he has reminded us of the differences that have shaped our free country and remain part of the diverse dialogue that is welcome here. We are glad that he can be such a citizen. And glad that those who respectfully disagree with him are Americans, too.
