Henry Gates, Obama: Mistakes, Misjudgments

President Obama has made a troubling mistake and misjudgment in his comments about the arrest of Professor Henry Gates by Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley. It was a personal and political mistake--a big one--because it was a factual error, an uninformed emotional response, and a serious political misjudgment. He has hurt himself with many supporters, even 'in-the-tank-for-Obama" supporters like me.

I am deeply disappointed with both Professor Gates' and the President's representation of what happened. Having read everything available, including the Cambridge Police Department incident report, having heard the personal accounts of both men involved and the findings of relevant police organizations, I am persuaded that Professor Gates has misrepresented what occurred, and recast a simple case of an officer trying to protect Gates' private property as a racial incident. In light of the facts, it appears evident that Professor Gates overreacted, straining the events and facts to create one.

I've long been a fan of Professor Gates. Among my graduate degrees is a later-in-life masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Professor Gates is a revered figure on the Harvard campus, and rightly so. And I was among those who lionized him. But what I saw in the picture painted by the various reports of this unfortunate situation was not the response of a black man or white man, but the response of an arrogant, privileged man who felt he was above being accountable, respectful, and cooperative with a police sergeant who was trying to do his job. In that spirit, Gates was apparently verbally abusive and willing to dramatically play the race card as well. It's especially ironic and troubling when you consider that this respected sergeant was in fact trying to protect Gates' property.

I am aware of similar incidents that have occurred over the years in my neighborhoods and those of friends. My instinctive response and those of my neighbors and friends were to understand that the police were dutifully responding to a concerned call from a diligent neighbor. More, the instinctive responses most often were to be grateful for the quick action of both the neighbor and the responding officers. Also understood was the need to respond to the officers respectfully, and that they had to confirm the identity of those they found there--to be assured they were in fact the owners. They had to follow the procedures set out to complete the job and report it thoroughly. The responses of the police officers were welcome and assuring to the owners, and most often acknowledged with appreciation.

The only people I know of who respond to such situations in the way Professor Gates did are the arrogant, self-important people with notable personal issues regarding status and privilege. They think that by virtue of their success, status, prestige, wealth--whatever--they are above the inconveniences or implications of submitting to the requirements of police officers doing their jobs--even when it is to protect them. I know the good professor was tired after a long trip home from China. We all can have a bad day. But his pride has kept him from setting things straight, acknowledging a more balanced account of the events, and his contributing culpability as well. Professor Gates' halo has tarnished and fallen, to be sure.

I am also disappointed at the emotional, uninformed response of President Obama. I'm still "in the tank" for his agenda, but the president needs to respond with one of his more characteristically thoughtful and balanced assessments of things. He needs to retract his uninformed statement, apologize for reacting without all the facts, and apologize for the implication that this event was in any way related to the unfortunate history of law enforcement and minority peoples in some places.

(Just a little while ago today, the President more-or-less addressed the first two points--although it was only his choice of words that he retracted. He otherwise issued no apologies and admitted no error. He failed to acknowledge substantive misjudgment on the facts or to back away from the third point on inherent underlying racism in the incident. If this was a "teachable moment," it was perhaps most appropriately one for the good professor and the president.)

The President must also correct the appearance that because Professor Gates is a personal friend, and a respected scholar on race, he must be supported in this case, regardless. So far, that appearance remains. If it is clear that it is not yet a post-racial America, it is now equally clear that our president is not as even-handedly post-racial as we wanted to believe either.

Peggy Noonan (WSJ) On Sarah Palin

Peggy Noonan is a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and a best-selling author. A trustee of the conservative Manhattan Institute, Edmund Burke and Ronald Reagan are among the political figures she most admires. In fact, she was a primary speech writer and special assistant to Ronald Reagan. Ms. Noonan also wrote the speeches for George H.W. Bush that introduced the memorable phrases, "a kinder, gentler nation" and "a thousand points of light," along with the unfortunate declaration, "Read my lips: no new taxes," in his 1988 presidential acceptance speech. She is a Republican voice that commands attention, a principled conservative thinker and spokesperson--and she has concerns with Sarah Palin's newfound prominence in the Republican Party.

From her recent column in the WSJ:

Palin was bad for Republicans--and the republic.

Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground.

Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence....

McCain-Palin lost. Mrs. Palin has now stepped down, but she continues to poll high among some members of the Republican base, some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths.

To wit, "I love her because she's so working-class." This is a favorite of some party intellectuals. She is not working class, never was, and even she, avid claimer of advantage that she is, never claimed to be and just lets others say it....What she is, is a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits....

"The elites hate her." The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

"She makes the Republican Party look inclusive." She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

"She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes." She shows your cynicism.

"Now she can prepare herself for higher office by studying up, reading in, boning up on the issues." ...Mrs. Palin's supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone. She can memorize the names of the presidents of Pakistan, but she is not going to be able to know how to think about Pakistan....

Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think....

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.

We are going to need the best.

--"A Farewell to Harms: Palin was bad for Republicans--and the republic," by Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal (7.11.09)

I didn't say it. Peggy Noonan did--a Republican voice of impeccable credentials. But if I were still a Republican, if my views had not changed so on the need for education, healthcare and regulatory reform, if George W and his team had not succeeded in alienating and running off thoughtful Republicans whose eyes were cast more toward a fast-changing future than myopically at the same old 19th-20th century cultural, economic and government model--if I thought there were a chance to update their DNA and redeem the Republican Party (and I don't)--then I might have cared enough to say it, too. But the Republican Party is quickly becoming a cultural and political anachronism. And unless it surprises me and changes dramatically, it will rightly remain one.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124716984620819351.html

The Five-Foot Shelf: The Great Books, Classics

First published in 1909, the Five-Foot Shelf was conceived by the Harvard president Charles W. Eliot as "a good substitute for a liberal education" for a growing middle class eager for knowledge. All the big names and important ideas were here: Sophocles, Chaucer, the Constitution, three treatises on smallpox for good measure. Ordinary men and women who had never set foot in Harvard Yard could now stake a claim to the peaks of Western civilization.

"In much wisdom is much grief," counsels the book of Ecclesiastes, and in Christopher R. Beha's tender intellectual memoir, we find plenty of both. By the time he set out to read all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics — known as the Five-Foot Shelf — Beha had already survived blood cancer and seen his identical twin brother nearly die after a car accident. And in a year that would take Beha from ancient Greece to the 20th century, illness and death returned once more, reminding him that no amount of learning can efface what Pascal called the "eternal silence of these infinite spaces."

A product of Manhattan private schools and Princeton, Beha seems an unlikely candidate for such earnest self-­improvement. But like the working masses who were Eliot's intended audience, he was desperately seeking a retreat from the mundane.

--A NYT Sunday Book Review (6.24.09) by Alexander Nazaryan of The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, by Christopher R. Beha.

I haven't read this book. And it may be awhile before I get to it. But the story affirms again the value and power of a classical education, a Great Books Curriculum, or reading the classic literature of the ages. Ironic then, isn't it, that one reads again and again of colleges dropping the major in classical studies because of a lack of student interest and enrollment.

During my six years in the Marine Corps between high school and college, I organized my own self-help approach to an experience of higher education. I took upon myself the task, often the joy, of reading as many classics of different scholarly disciplines as I could manage to identify and acquire. For me, to this day, they are among the most important, most useful books I have read.

But, I had not heard of Charles Eliot's "Five-Foot Shelf," this being the first reference to it I've encountered. Still, I understood what a classical education entailed: the Latin and Greek languages, the history, literature, philosophy, science, mathematics and arts of Greece and Rome. Then, more generally, there were the classic works of literature and other disciplines which spanned the millennia from ancient Greece and Rome through the 20th century AD/CE. And recognizing the threat to a sound education in the classics, however defined, some colleges organized their undergraduate liberal arts curriculum around the "Great Books," the classics.

The idea of the Great Books curriculum emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. The University of Chicago is probably best known for trying to implement it, although the ideal was never fully realized there. Still, Chicago today retains a Great Books component to its core curriculum, and several universities offer a form of Great Books curriculum as an alternative. In addition, there are several small colleges that have adopted a Great Books approach to their liberal arts curriculum.

The best known and most respected Great Books program today is likely the 70-year-old curriculum at St. John's College, which has campuses at Annapolis, MD, and Santa Fe, NM. When my son and daughter were considering colleges, I at least acquainted them with St. John's as an alternative. They were not interested, but in the process I received some interesting information from the school. They listed 104 authors of classics from the Greeks to the 20th century. I couldn't help but take inventory of how well I had done against their list. Of the 104 authors listed, I had read 44. Not great, but not bad either. But most interesting, I had first read 38 of those 44 authors in my self-education process in the Marine Corps. Later in college, in a liberal arts program self-crafted to be as broad an exposure to the arts and sciences as I could organize, I would add only nine more of them.

A few years ago, in reading the book John Adams by David McCullough, I was reminded again in the letters of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and other luminaries of their revolutionary time, how powerfully their classical education had informed them and served them. It provided the needed knowledge and intellectual discipline, the philosophical and political foundations, for planning and organizing the most enlightened democracy and effective market economy in the history of the world. America's best and brightest today could do worse than avail themselves of that same foundation of knowledge. And the universities that define how a broadly instructive and enlightening liberal arts education is constructed and taught might revisit these considerations as well. (Although we do understand, don't we, that universities now more often tailor curricula to what students want and will pay for, and students want what society and the marketplace value.)

But I am also reminded that I have unfinished business. I still have 60 authors to go, don't I? And while I have no illusions of reading them all, there are still many on that list that I truly want to read--perhaps now more than ever. Anyone care to join me?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/books/review/Nazaryan-t.html?_r=1

Thomas Merton: Failings of Faith Life & Prayer

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Cistercian (Trappist) monk resident at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was a poet and, perhaps, the most prolific and authoritative 20th-century writer on the Christian contemplative life and tradition. His name and works were recognized broadly outside the cloisters of his monastic life and his Roman Catholic Christian faith. His best known work is his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, but his most important work on the contemplative life is likely New Seeds of Contemplation.

Merton was also a scholar and sympathetic ambassador to the contemplative traditions of other faiths, particularly those of East Asia. He provided respected commentary on the Chinese Taoist Master in The Way of Chuang Tzu, along with English translations of his poetry. His book Zen and the Birds of Appetite provides an intriguing treatment of Chan/Zen Buddhism from the perspective of a Christian contemplative, and offers a fascinating, insightful dialogue between Merton and Japanese Zen Master and scholar D.T. Suzuki.

But the work that speaks most directly to me is his instructive, profound reflections on Contemplative Prayer, published after his accidental death in 1968. And one of the characteristics of Merton that made him more real, a citizen in this world even if a monk, was his open, unapologetic commentary about the ills and failings of society, and the ills and failings of the organized Christian Church. A man after Christ's own heart, he lived the humble, compassionate life of an impoverished monk, yet never failed to take up his cross in calling out the religious Pharisees and vipers, the fakes and hypocrites of his day--and the misguiding expressions of their misappropriated faith.

This from Contemplative Prayer, Chapter 19, pp. 113:

Of course it is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and to God, easily comes to serve as "the opium of the people." And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with Him. When religion becomes a mere artificial facade to justify a social or economic system--when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate.

It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for His truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and of love, and becomes the law that might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo.

In the last book to come to us from the hand of Raissa Maritain, her commentary on the Lord's Prayer, we read the following passage concerning those who barely obtain their daily bread, and are deprived of the advantages of a decent life on earth by the injustice and thoughtlessness of the privileged:

If there were fewer wars, less thirst to dominate and exploit others, less national egoism, less egoism of class and caste, if man were more concerned for his brother, and really wanted to collect together for the good of the human race all the resources which science places at our disposal especially today, there would be on earth fewer populations deprived of their necessary sustenance, there would be fewer children who die or are incurably weakened by undernourishment.

She goes on to ask what obstacles man has placed in the way of the Gospel that this should be so. It is unfortunately true that those who have complacently imagined themselves blessed by God have in fact done more than others to frustrate His will....

In such cases, religion is understood to be at least implicitly misdirected, and therefore the "God" whom it invokes becomes, or tends to become, a mere figment of the imagination. Such religion is insincere. It is merely a front for greed, injustice, selfishness, violence. The cure for this corruption is to restore the purity of faith and the genuineness of Christian love: and this means a restoration of the contemplative orientation of prayer.

How, I wonder, might Thomas Merton view the hubris of those more politicized, triumphalist, and polarizing Christian church cultures of today?

Warren Reaches Out to American Muslims. Christian Integrity. About Time.

Under fire from fellow conservatives, he addresses Islamic Society

WASHINGTON - Defying some of his fellow conservative Christian critics, one of the most prominent religious leaders in the country told several thousand American Muslims on Saturday that "the two largest faiths on the planet" must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems. "Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them," evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren addressed the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. Warren said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls "the five global giants" of war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy.

--"Evangelist Warren to Muslims: Let's Partner," Associated Press, as reported on msnbc.com (7.5.09)

At long last a credible voice is lifted up from the Evangelical Christian community to respectfully address American Muslims. It is a welcome voice, reflecting something of the spiritual integrity that all Christians are called to through their relationship with Christ and the abiding-in of the Spirit of God. Pushing aside the religion of cultural and political identity, Rick Warren takes a welcome step toward reflecting more of Christ's nonjudgmental love, humility, and compassion when engaging those in the world who approach their faith life from a different historical and cultural foundation. The Apostle Paul admonished the Christian faithful of his day to "walk by the Spirit," and more,

...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control; against such things there is no law.

Why, then, do so many so-called Christians who pray "Lord, Lord," reflect that spiritual identity only when it is convenient to them, and then only within the context of that narrow culturally and politically defined social space where they try to hold God hostage. Lord, Lord, indeed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31741969/ns/us_news-faith/

Trilliums*

Every spring
among

the ambiguities
of childhood

the hillsides grew white
with the wild trilliums.
I believe in the world.
Oh, I wanted

to be easy
in the peopled kingdoms,
to take my place there,
but there was none

that I could find
shaped like me.
So I entered
through the tender buds,

I crossed the cold creek,
my backbone
and my thin white shoulders
unfolding and stretching.

From the time of snow-melt,
when the creek roared
and the mud slid
and the seeds cracked,

I listened to the earth-talk,
the root-wrangle,
the arguments of energy,
the dreams of lying

just under the surface,
then rising,
becoming
at the last moment

flaring and luminous--
the patient parable
of every spring and hillside
year after difficult year.


* in Dreamworks (1986), Mary Oliver

Doonesbury: Washington, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt--on Torture

Doonesbury found it's edge again with yesterday's Sunday strip. The strip has always been intelligent, thought provoking, even uncomfortable at times, but it has failed sometimes to express simmering outrage when called for. And with the retirement of Berkeley Breathed's Opus, there has been nowhere else to look among the comics pages for hard edged irony and honesty than Doonesbury. And, yes, the topic of torture during the Bush administration has been pleading for the kind of treatment provided us yesterday. Thank you, Gary Trudeau.

To access the Sunday strip, click on this link to Slate/Doonesbury and scroll down:

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090621

But not being one to assume all representations are credible, I've done a little research of my own. I found presidential statements and actions against torture from revolutionary times through the 20th century confirmed and discussed all over the web. As I also noted in my earlier post on the subject (see below), that doesn't mean that torture has never happened, or that there were no ambiguous circumstances or statements, or inconsistent actions. There were. But our ideals and policies on the subject as expressed by many of our greatest presidents have been consistent and unambiguous in condemning cruelty and torture of enemy prisoners. And that includes methods used long ago that are very close in type and practice to what we today call waterboarding. I found the following presidential quotes and accounts reported by several credible publications and their web sites.

George Washington

I offer this quote by Washington, although there were others on the subject. Another, longer one which I have omitted has been more often quoted, but appears also to have been over-edited for effect, even though in full quote it also generally supports the same policies and sentiments. After the battle of Trenton, about 1,000 Hessians (Britain's German mercenaries) had been captured. Washington, it is reported, ordered that enemy prisoners be treated humanely. After the Battle of Princeton, some of Washington's troops were apparently preparing to run some of the German mercenaries through what they called the "gauntlet," impliedly a form of extreme punishment. General Washington discovered this, intervened, and gave the following order to his troops regarding prisoners of war:

Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands.

It is recorded that through this approach, he and John Adams, among others, hoped to shame their British adversaries, and demonstrate to the world the moral superiority of the American people and their cause.

Abraham Lincoln

In order to address the legal issues resulting from the Civil War's large number of Union and Confederate prisoners, Lincoln turned to legal Scholar Francis Lieber of Columbia College. Lieber's work resulted in Lincoln's General Orders 100, "Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field" on April 24, 1863. Article 16 stated:

Military necessity does not admit of cruelty--that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions.

President Lincoln's pronouncement was likely the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners, and it is said to have been a model for the 1929 Geneva Convention.

Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt is reported to have issued this urgent cable after receiving information about the use of a close variation of waterboarding by American soldiers in the Philippines:

THE PRESIDENT DESIRES TO KNOW IN THE FULLEST AND MOST CIRCUMSTANTIAL MANNER ALL THE FACTS . . . FOR THE VERY REASON THAT THE PRESIDENT INTENDS TO BACK UP THE ARMY IN THE HEARTIEST FASHION IN EVERY LAWFUL AND LEGITIMATE METHOD OF DOING ITS WORK. HE ALSO INTENDS TO SEE THAT THE MOST VIGOROUS CARE IS EXERCISED TO DETECT AND PREVENT ANY CRUELTY OR BRUTALITY AND THAT MEN WHO ARE GUILTY THEREOF ARE PUNISHED. GREAT AS THE PROVOCATION HAS BEEN . . . NOTHING CAN JUSTIFY . . . THE USE OF TORTURE OR INHUMAN CONDUCT OF ANY KIND ON THE PART OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.

Other Presidents, Generals

As I noted above, John Adams also argued that humane treatment of prisoners not only reflected the American Revolution's highest ideals, it was also a moral and strategic imperative. His thoughts on the subject were set out in a 1777 letter to his wife, Abigail:

I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed.

It is reported that even British military leaders involved in atrocities and torture of American troops finally recognized the negative effects on their campaign against the new American democracy. In 1778, a Colonel Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of Bute:

Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.

Later, John Adam's son, John Quincy Adams, would formally express similar views to those of Washington and his father. Dwight Eisenhower guaranteed humane treatment to German POWs in World War II, and General Douglas McArthur ordered observance of an updated Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even when the U.S. had yet to sign it. In the Vietnam War, the United States applied the convention's rules and protections to Viet Cong prisoners even though the law, technically, may not have required it.

So, then, how well has America supported and protected the higher ground of these ideals and policies, how true to them have we been, in the 21st century?

For my treatment of the subject, see my earlier post to Hyde Park's Corner, Torture, Our Slide From Grace (5.30.09)

Who Is My Brother?

Who is my brother or sister on my spiritual journey? How do I recognize such people? Is it their profession of faith, their claim of identity or outward appearance? Is it everyone who says, Lord, Lord? More and more, as my prayer relationship with God has deepened, there has emerged another understanding for me. The New Testament's first letter of John challenges us saying,

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love….God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

This teaching finds authority and inspiration in the many similar and challenging teachings on love by Jesus, especially those in the Gospel of John.

Another challenging teaching of Jesus is on the disowning final judgment of those who do not help or serve "the least of our brethren"—those who therefore do not serve Him. These two teachings would cause me to be much more humble and generous in my recognition of who may know and walk with God--in the many Christian communities, yes, but also in the communities of other faith traditions as well. At the very least, I should be ready to share God's love toward all of them, and be open to receiving God's love from any of them.

And for those who would hasten to point out that another person has not accepted Jesus as Lord, I would only suggest that we carry enough humility to inform us that we may not know all things about God, or Jesus, or the Spirit of God, or how He works with the people He loves—which includes all people, everywhere. An evident love of God and all humanity, and unselfish service or help to those most in need, brings one so close to Christ's identity and teaching, so close to the heart of God, that I would feel uncontrollably moved to call him brother—and leave the working out of our differences and their importance to God.

But beware of those who profess faith in God and identity with His people, who maintain the outward appearance and language of faith community, but reflect no love for the larger family of humanity, or do not serve the needs of the poor and unable. Avoid the angry, cultural and political warriors, and the fundamentalists of all faiths who appear unable to receive or convey God's unqualified love. They too often serve only themselves and their cultural, political or cultish interests, and are too often in the process of condemning or discriminating against one group or another that God would have them love. They also appear unable to receive God's Spirit, His forgiveness, compassion and humility. For if they could, they would more often reflect it and share it with others in the lives they live within and without their communities.

First written: November 2006 and included in my What God? essays.
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

A Poem of Hafiz, A Teaching of Paul

Would You Think It Odd? *

Would you think it odd if Hafiz said,

"I am in love with every church
And Mosque
And Temple
And any kind of shrine

Because I know it is there
That people say the different names
Of the One God."

Would you tell your friends
I was a bit strange if I admitted

I am indeed in love with every mind
And heart and body.

O I am sincerely
Plumb crazy
About your every thought and yearning
And limb

Because, my dear,
I know
That it is through these

That you search for Him.

The Apostle Paul: From Colossians 3

[Y]ou laid aside the old self, with its evil practices,
and put on the new self
who is being renewed to a true knowledge
according to the image of the One who created him--

a renewal in which there is no distinction
between Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman,
but Christ [God] is all, and in all.

And so,
as those who have been chosen of God,
holy and beloved,
put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, and patience;
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone;
just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you [forgive].

And beyond all these things,
put on love,
which is the perfect bond of unity.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called in one body,
and be thankful.

* From I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy (1996,2006), poems of Hafez as freely interpreted in English by Daniel Ladinsky.

In Europe, Social Safety Net Softens Slump

Aid for unemployment, health care and further education

Eppelheim, Germany.

[W]ith the auto industry here hit especially hard — this is the home of Mercedes-Benz — things are tougher than they have been in decades. Unemployment is up 70 percent in the past year and many employees have been forced to cut down their hours....

Misery below the surface, perhaps? Not at the bustling Fuerstenberger home just outside Heidelberg, where little has changed for the family's four children despite neither parent currently working. "If we were in Detroit, we could worry every minute," said [American] Sarah Fuerstenberger, 37. "But here, we're safe because of the system."

While economic forecasts are just as dire on this continent as in the United States, Germany's citizens — and, indeed, most across western Europe — can count on a broad government safety net that includes generous unemployment checks, universal healthcare and inexpensive university education to tide them over. "The German government is really good about taking care of people; we know we won't be starving one way or another," she added....

Universal health care, education

"We don't pay anything for any of (our) medicines, for doctor's visits, nothing," Sarah said, adding that she worried about her sister in Detroit, who had had several periods without health insurance.

"People shouldn't become poor if they need health care," said Joe Kutzin, a World Health Organization adviser, adding that a 2005 study published in the journal Health Affairs found that medical causes were at the root of about half of personal bankruptcy cases in the United States in 2001. It's ironic, he said, given that Americans spend more per capita on healthcare than anyone else in the world....

As a profession, Susanne [a doctor] said that medicine was not as well paid in Germany as in the United States. She pointed out, however, that Europe's doctors do not have six-figure student loans to pay off. When the 35-year-old studied medicine here, all students paid the equivalent of just 100 euros ($131) a semester. They now pay up to 500 euros ($657).

"Education must be equal for everyone regardless of the size of their wallet," she said. "It's one of our basic civil rights in the [German] constitution."

Paying for privileges

While Europe's social safety net is softening the slump, it does of course have to be paid for.

According to the OECD, the total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is 28.3 percent in the United States, compared with 36.2 percent in Germany. The cost can be seen in workers' paystubs. "For example," said economic analyst Brenke, "a single worker with an average salary — about 16 euros ($21.31) per hour in fulltime work — pays about 52 percent for taxes and the social security system." This compares to an average of 30 percent in the United States.

With her family paying roughly that amount, Sarah said, "sometimes I think it's not worth it when I look at what ends up in my bank account, but in times like these, I appreciate it."

--"In Europe, Social Safety Net Softens the Slump," by Jennifer Carlile, msnbc.com (5.7.09)

Don't you think that many of America's unemployed or underemployed workers, professionals, and young and middle managers, might now feel the same way? How about those students and their families who can no longer afford the cost of finishing college or professional education? How about those daily being bankrupted by health care costs--or afraid to seek health care at all without insurance coverage? Might they too be more likely to think higher taxes were now worth it for that kind of social safety net?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30363790/

Deficit Not Obama's Doing, But He Must Fix It

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years. The first is that President Obama's agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested....

[A]s President Bill Clinton was leaving office, [t]he Congressional Budget Office estimated that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years....

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It's a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists' assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.

--"America's Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making," David Leonhardt, New York Times (6.9.09)

As I observed in my last post, Republican operatives have done a good job of shifting responsibility for the Bush era policies and deficits onto Obama. They are holding to the time-honored approach of making the same misleading or untrue statements over and over again until they stick, until they are somehow accepted by many as true--regardless of more truthful rebuttals. But as the NYT article makes clear, the facts are that Obama has added but little to the overall budget deficit. That responsibility rests with the G. W. Bush administration, and all the lies that can shamelessly be told will not change that.

What is more questionable, or premature at least, is the NYT opinion that, "Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit." It is very early in this process, and Obama is clearly still examining, discussing, and formulating alternatives--he's still learning--as he addresses the best policy options, promoting them, and negotiating the political mine fields. And the solutions to some of the challenges may not be politically workable in one step; they may take two or more. Which is not to say that the NYT is wrong about what is now on the table, but it is wrong to imply that this iteration is likely the last. More from the NYT on their concerns about the adequacy of Obama's response to date--and the disingenuous lack of answers from the Republicans, as well:

Mr. Orszag says the president is committed to a deficit equal to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product within five to 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of at least 4 percent for most of the next decade. Even that may turn out to be optimistic, since the government usually ends up spending more than it says it will. So Mr. Obama isn't on course to meet his target. [But see The Economist article and comments, below, that are more generous in setting the context and more optimistic about the possibilities.]

But Congressional Republicans aren't, either. Judd Gregg recently held up a chart on the Senate floor showing that Mr. Obama would increase the deficit — but failed to mention that much of the increase stemmed from extending Bush policies. In fact, unlike Mr. Obama, Republicans favor extending all the Bush tax cuts, which will send the deficit higher.

Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, announced a plan last week to cut spending by $75 billion a year. But they made specific suggestions adding up to meager $5 billion. The remaining $70 billion was left vague. "The G.O.P. is not serious about cutting down spending," the conservative Cato Institute concluded.

What, then, will happen?

The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won't be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.

Doubtless these conclusions are true. But the solutions, the particular programs will likely have to be introduced in stages. Yesterday, President Obama called on the AMA at their annual meeting to recognize that our health care challenges "are a ticking time bomb." He offered the outline of his approach to reducing health care costs, but also made some specific, necessary first proposals. The open question is, how quickly will further, specific and politically practicable proposals be introduced by Obama's team? And more, perhaps, when will it become evident to the public, and key industry and political players, the importance of supporting now the more difficult and painful changes necessary to reforming existing health care and other failing policies? Timing and political effectiveness are critical.

This same topic of public debt was addressed more universally and at greater length in the cover piece of the most recent edition of The Economist ("Government Debt: The Big Sweat") and in the Leaders section:

THE worst global economic storm since the 1930s may be beginning to clear, but another cloud already looms on the financial horizon: massive public debt. Across the rich world governments are borrowing vast amounts as the recession reduces tax revenue and spending mounts—on bail-outs, unemployment benefits and stimulus plans....

Will they default, inflate or manage their way out?

This alarming trajectory puts policymakers in an increasingly tricky bind. In the short term government borrowing is an essential antidote to the slump. Without bank bail-outs the financial crash would have been even more of a catastrophe. Without stimulus the global recession would be deeper and longer—and it is a prolonged downturn that does the greatest damage to public finances. But in the long run today's fiscal laxity is unsustainable. Governments' thirst for funds will eventually crowd out private investment and reduce economic growth. More alarming, the scale of the coming indebtedness might ultimately induce governments to default or to cut the real cost of their debt through high inflation....

---"The biggest bill in history: The right and wrong way to deal with the rich world's fiscal mess," Leaders section, The Economist (6.11.09)

The Economist recognizes what everyone should understand: most industrialized countries are in this public debt situation because they now have to be. It was the only way to quiet the financial and economic "perfect storm," for which they themselves set the occasion. If much of America's budget deficit is driven by other factors as well, responding to the broken financial system, failing banks and a flagging economy surely played a significant role. But the response has to be prudent, measured, and well timed suggests The Economist; analysis, planning, rethinking and re-planning will likely be a necessary ongoing process. More from The Economist:

What should policymakers do? A sudden fit of fiscal austerity would be a mistake. Even when economies stop shrinking, they will stay weak. Japan's experience in 1997, when a rise in consumption taxes pushed the economy back into recession, is a reminder that a rush to fiscal tightening is counterproductive, especially after a banking bust. Instead of slashing their deficits now, the rich world's governments need to promise, credibly, that they will do so once their economies are stronger.

Good points. And that is necessarily the approach of the Obama team to the evolving economic and political realities, even if the financial press and many factions appear unsatisfied with anything less than a complete, perfect, and politically saleable plan immediately. (Yes, I know they are meeting deadlines, filling the ceaseless demands of the news cycle, selling print space or air time. But still.) And the realities of congressional party politics and various business interests also rightly give us pause; for there has been little to be optimistic about in the workings of Congress or the response of business since TARP and the stimulus bill. The Economist raises the same concerns:

But how? Politicians' promises are not worth much by themselves....

Broadly, governments should pledge to clean up their public finances by cutting future spending rather than raising taxes. Most European countries have scant room for higher taxes....Even in the United States, where tax revenues add up to less than 30% of GDP, simply raising tax rates is not the best answer. There too, spending control should take priority, though there is certainly room for efficiency-enhancing tax reforms, such as eliminating the preferential tax treatment of housing and the deductibility of employer-provided health insurance.

The next step is to boost the credibility of these principles with rules and institutions to reinforce future politicians' resolve....

Yet nothing sends a stronger signal than taking difficult decisions today. One priority is to raise the retirement age, which would boost tax revenues (as people work longer) and cut future pension costs. Many rich countries are already doing this, but they need to go further and faster. Another huge target is health care. America has the most wasteful system on the planet. Its fiscal future would be transformed if Congress passed reforms that emphasized control of costs as much as the expansion of coverage that Barack Obama rightly wants.

This advice, overall, rings true and wise. And Obama's plans and actions appear consistent with this advise. Although, as the NYT article concluded, in addition to cost control and program reforms, the U.S. will likely also have to raise taxes. We--Obama and the Congress--will have to do whatever must be done. The Economist article admonishes us, "Instead of slashing their deficits now, the rich world's governments need to promise, credibly, that they will do so once their economies are stronger." It appears to most of us that Obama and his team are addressing issues and initiating proposals at break-neck speed, but they are also going only as fast as necessity and circumstances dictate. They are exercising pragmatism and patience, as well as resolve.

On the financial front, Bernanke and Geithner are constantly assessing and planning the next best steps in restoring the strength and regulatory oversight of our financial system. The war in Iraq is winding down, even if the war in Afghanistan is expanding. (Sometimes getting out of messes responsibly is painful and expensive at best--but exiting sooner rather later, would be my hope and pray.) And Obama is now directly leading the initiative to reform and restructure the health care system to significantly reduce per capita health care costs while providing access to all. Social security and Medicare will have to follow soon after. These articles have offered some sound beginnings of their own, ideas that have been often discussed before, and I would be surprised if most all of them aren't also embraced by Obama.

My confidence in Obama is clear, no doubt. If anyone has the package of personal and political skills to lead us through this budget crisis successfully, it is him. But he cannot do it alone. He will require continuing, often selfless and sacrificial, public support. And there will soon come a time when he will need bi-partisan Congressional support, as well. Still, players in the health care industry will try to play the spoilers. So, we will succeed only if we Americans act selflessly, responsibly, and accountably as one body in the national interest. But not even Obama may be able to deliver that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=13829461

Summers: Financial Rescues a Necessity, Not Back-Door Nationalization

Obama did not run for president "to manage banks" or auto makers

"Our objective is not to supplant or replace markets," Summers told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Rather, our objective is to save them from their own excesses and improve our market-based system going forward...."The actions we take are those of necessity, not choice," he insisted, adding that President Barack Obama had no desire to "manage banks, insurance companies or car manufacturers."

Summers said critics claim the administration was engaging in "backdoor socialism" and flatly denied it. "Where our focus has been as we have intervened when necessary is on the intervention being temporary, based on market principles and minimally intrusive," he said....

--"Summers says financial rescues were "necessity," Reuters, as reported on msnbc.com (6.12.09)

What has been happening, evolving, with the financial rescue programs should be reasonably apparent or understandable to most anyone. But we continue to hear the same refrain from the same predictable political corners. The same low-brow, populist Republican demagogues continue to traffic in fear tactics that grossly misrepresent a complex economic challenge in simplistic capitalist/socialist, good-guy/bad-guy terms. In so doing, they mask the real issues and polarize people who might otherwise be finding common ground together. I even have a few friends--bright enough, well-meaning enough--who have fallen prey to this simplistic message of fear, a dangerous message based on misleading, inadequate, and superannuated economic constructions and interpretations.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone that the TARP rescue plan was designed and carried out initially by the Bush administration, as were the first steps to support, restructure and save our automotive industry. And I supported TARP at the time, even if there was little else of the 8-year Bush agenda to approve of or be happy about. I suppose we should be grudgingly impressed at how quickly and adeptly the low-brow Republican operatives have turned it all into Obama's nationalization programs--how they could be so approving and supportive when it was Bush's team leading and acting, and so damning and fear-mongering when it was Obama shepherding those same initiatives to success. (For more on this and our expansive national debt, see my next post.)

Lawrence Summers, chief White House economic advisor, former president of Harvard University, and former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, succinctly and directly set the record straight in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday. Dr. Summers is accustomed to shooting straight, telling it as it is, a trait that brought him more than a fair share of grief in the politically correct halls of Harvard University. But as a former professor of mine at the Harvard Ed School wrote, whenever Lawrence Summers met with faculty, alumni or other groups at Harvard, there was never any doubt who was the smartest person in the room. Politically, socially sensitive, no; very smart, usually right, oh yes. From the Reuter's article:

Summers said a central element of any reform will be to ensure financial firms have and maintain adequate levels of capital so that they are less vulnerable to over-reliance on debt and borrowing in the future.

The administration is expected to unveil proposals for wide-ranging overhaul of the regulatory system on Wednesday. But he warned that the nation's financial system is not going to be "fail safe" until it is able to handle a failure. That means some type of resolution authority must be in place to deal with failing firms rather than continue the current system in which some firms are deemed too-big-to-fail so that the government is forced to step in to help them.

And now, we are starting to see signs of banks growing healthy enough to assert their independence again, paying back the TARP loans and buying back the government's stock warrants--and with the Obama administration's approval and support. From the Associated Press:

10 big banks can repay bailout: President Obama hails it as ‘an initial return’ to taxpayers for TARP

Ten of the nation’s largest banks were given the green light Tuesday to repay $68 billion in government bailout money, freeing them from restrictions on executive compensation that they say are making it hard to keep their top-performing executives.

The Treasury Department said the banks had been approved to repay the money they received from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created by Congress in October at the height of the financial crisis. Experts say allowing 10 banks to return $68 billion in bailout money shows some stability has returned to the system but caution that the crisis isn’t over. And some fear the repayments could widen the gap between healthy and weak banks....

When Treasury first doled out the money, it received warrants from the banks allowing it to buy stock at a fixed price at some future date. The stock prices are expected to rise as the economy recovers. As a result, the warrants could provide substantial profits for taxpayers. The firms now have the right to purchase the warrants Treasury holds in their firm “at fair market value,” Treasury said Tuesday. Testifying before a Senate panel, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the value of the warrants for banks permitted to repay TARP funds are in the “several billion dollar range.”

--"10 big banks can repay bailout, Associate Press as reported on msnbc.com (6.9.09)

As all have said, including President Obama, these repayments are a good sign of approaching stability, even if we have a way to go yet. But they also make clear that the Obama administration, as Lawrence Summers has said, has no interest in nationalizing the banks, auto industry or anything else. They are pleased that banks that have passed the stress test, or are raising sufficient capital in the open markets, can now safely pay back government loans with interest, and buy back the stock warrants required for the loans. Certainly, the government had an obligation to American taxpayers to require an appropriate return on taxpayer TARP money used to rescue the financial and automotive companies, just as it had an obligation to the American taxpayers to rescue and reform our financial system and markets--and in the process save financial firms and markets from themselves in the future.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31315754/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31183784/

Barack Obama Speaks to Muslims in Cairo

Barack Obama delivers a convincing speech

to Muslims around the world

In a rousing speech on Thursday June 4th Barack Obama used the magnifying force of the American presidency, his own charisma and a podium at the heart of the Arab world to address the concerns of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims. Speaking at Cairo University, he sought to project an openness to Islam, a sense of shared values, support for Muslim aspirations and a determination to use American power to help fix the problems that most trouble them. It won praise as a superb oratorical performance.

"The cycle of suspicion and discord must end," Mr Obama declared, to enthusiastic applause. "I have come to seek a new beginning, based on co-operation and respect." Punctuated with quotations from the Koran, the speech ranged from pressing issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear ambitions to principles such as democracy and women's rights. It culminated in a vision of a more tolerant and peaceful world.

The American president did not shy away from chiding some Muslims for their reluctance to condemn violent extremism or the tendency to measure their own faith by rejection of another. He made a strong pitch for America's own vision of religious freedom, and called for understanding of the historical suffering of Jews. Castigating the denial of the Nazi Holocaust as "baseless, ignorant and hateful", he took an indirect swipe at Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But he also evoked Palestinians' suffering, describing their situation as "intolerable". He forthrightly repeated his demand for an end to Jewish colonisation of Palestinian territory....

Mr Obama has addressed Muslims before. He granted his first interview as president to an Arab satellite channel, beamed a warm message to Iranians Broadly speaking, and despite the latest internet tirades of Osama bin Laden, most Muslims recognise the sincerity of Mr Obama's effort to extricate America from Iraq—and its complexity. More grudgingly, they also understand his quandary in Afghanistan. The one issue where Muslim opinion converges with a demand for a change in America's approach is Palestine. Here, arguably, no American action can be expected fully to assuage Muslim and Arab grievances fast, partly because of what Mr Obama described as America's "unbreakable bond" with Israel and partly because half of the Palestinians' divided polity is run by Hamas, an Islamist group still seen as anathema to America. But Muslims are immensely cheered by the fact that Israelis are plainly rattled by Mr Obama's pressure over the issue of Jewish settlement on occupied land.

Mr Obama's determination to set America's relations with Muslims on a new footing will bring hope across the Middle East and farther afield. The difficulty now lies in translating the new goodwill into action, not just by America, but by its Arab and Muslim allies.

---"Let's be friends: Barack Obama speaks in Cairo," The Economist (6.04.09)

You've probably heard this speech by President Obama. But if you haven't, you should find it on the internet and listen. In the meantime, this article in The Economist will provide context, reaction, and what should come next. It is hard not to be proud and impressed with the amazingly ambitious and idealistic agenda of this remarkable young president--and the impressive start he has made on so many fronts simultaneously. And his outreach to the Muslim world and approach to the troubling issues of the Middle East is as uplifting, inviting and practical as any of them. He continues to inspire hope and commitment to change--at home, yes, but now around the world.

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13788639&fsrc=nwl

Religious School Grads Likelier to Have Abortions

Unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to research in the June [2009] issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make it difficult for them to act according to religious values when deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy," said the study's author, sociologist Amy Adamczyk of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York....

Results revealed no significant link between a young woman's reported decision to have an abortion and her personal religiosity, as defined by her religious involvement, frequency of prayer and perception of religion's importance.

--from LiveScience (6.1.09) as reported by msnbc.com (6.5.09)

It is not just the sad irony that speaks to us from reports like this one. These studies and reports should also remind us of the complex social, family, religious and psychological context that weighs so heavily on young women caught in the misfortune of these difficult circumstances. And if we would learn anything from this research and our all-too-common experience, we would be much more likely to bring the love, compassion, forgiveness and support that the highest values of faith proclaim, and much less the self-righteous judgment and anger, the social and political narrow mindedness, that too many people justify through incomplete, often misapplied understandings of their faith.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31048153/

Bob Dylan Revisited

It was 1962 when I bought his newly-minted first album, titled appropriately enough, Bob Dylan. I was 15 years old. It offered mostly folk and blues classics or songs written by others. But about a year later, he released his second, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan—all original, vintage Dylan songs. I can remember how excited I was, how engaged I felt. And then, the next year, The Times They Are A-Changin'. Those two albums, the second and third, changed it all for me; they formed an early canon of his work, something for an adolescent to believe in, to identify with. I'm still grateful for that.

They called him the poet laureate of our generation, although he didn't seem to understand why. And he was surely that to me, speaking to me so personally on so many new topics in so many new and moving ways. Over the next few years, I bought and enjoyed some of his newer albums, the electric ones—even in the Marine Corps. Those next few albums were great creatively and artistically—and among Dylan's favorites, I believe—but they did not speak to me, inform me, in the same way. I was surely among those who initially felt he had betrayed his medium and message, even his identity (although his identity was such a fluid, elusive thing), when he picked up the electric guitar. Perhaps, to some extent, I still do. It's still all about the early albums for me.

If he was the poet for our generation, he also informed our conscience—and the poetry and messages of his early songbook certainly spoke to mine. He focused and set the foundations of my early understandings of social issues—particularly concerning segregation, civil rights, and social justice—with songs like Oxford Town, Only a Pawn in Their Game, and When the Ship Comes In. Having grown up in a white, New England suburb, I needed awakening and focus. He burst the John Wayne-defined patriotic bubble that passed for my understandings about war—why and how—with A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Masters of War, Talkin' World War III Blues, and With God on Our Side. (When, regardless, inexplicably, I joined the Marine Corps soon thereafter, I learned my own lessons of why and how during the Vietnam era experience.) And ever since hearing Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changin', I have kept turning new corners, setting my gaze on new views and vistas, turning my face into the changing winds, trying to sort it all out—for the times have just kept on changing.

Of course, you know the enigmatic Dylan was Jewish, formerly Robert Zimmerman, that he converted to Christianity in his middle years, then drifted away from his adopted faith as time passed by. He also kept moving from one artistic phase to the next. But I read that in later years he said his earlier work—the songs and messages they carried—had become his prayer book. But if they have not been elevated to the status of prayer book for me, his poetry and songs continue to occupy a lofty status in my pantheon of artistic, moral expression, insight, and naïve courage. And they continue to inform my sense of conscience and moral courage as much as any other product of human inspiration.

But this assessment, as you might guess, is rather more a retrospective, arguably a revisionist or reincarnated view of Dylan's impact on me in my early years, updated for the way I feel about his influence now. The sometimes enigmatic, sometimes ironic changes in my own life over the intervening years certainly provided some contrasting, seemingly conflicting directions and identities. Like his only in that it was unpredictably changing, my life differed markedly from the directions of Dylan's life and art. And it was at times lived inconsistent with his messages, casting doubt on his influence. But it was never really possible to let go of Dylan's influence, even if it had become compartmentalized, archived, and called out only from time to time. Don't we all have our own travels and sojourns, our own crooked highways?

In September 2005, PBS broadcast Martin Scorcese's documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. I saw it, and saw it again. Both a reminder of an earlier identity and an affirmation that, in part, it still endures, it also provided a sense of closure for me. It reminded me of the depth and good reasons for my adolescent interest and knowledge of Dylan, my love for his poetry, my empathy and belief in his medium and his messages. They set a keystone in a foundation that endures today, even if I failed to recognize it for a long time, even if I thought I had outgrown it. But the documentary also impressed me with how much I didn't know about Dylan and how much I had forgotten—and that I had unavoidably, and rightly, moved on.

For me, he was first and last an artist: a poet, song writer, and performer. He was uninterested in political organizations or their crusades. He was only interested in artistically expressing himself about issues and topics. I didn't appreciate that about him at the time, but I do understand and relate better to it now. If I confessed a lack of interest in party politics as a teen, you couldn't be surprised. But if I have more interest now—and I do, much more—it is only out of critical necessity, for I have less regard and respect for party politics than ever. More accurately, I have developed more an antipathy toward it. Issues and problems, ideas and solutions, yes; party politics, no. In the intervening years, I had supported political parties for the same reasons that John Adams ultimately had to, I suppose: public association, identity and advocacy concerning public issues. But no more. Now, I just read, talk and write about it all. How about you?

Dylan also appeared uninterested in achieving success and identity and staying there, satisfying his constituency, protecting his franchise. In fact, he couldn't seem to help himself; he had to continually move on artistically, in his song writing and performance. He apparently felt no sense of real control or managed authorship; the poetry, the songs, the performance style and direction, just came out and pushed him on. Or so he suggests. He can't or won't explain that process, what it meant, or where it was going. He says he refuses to try. Perhaps he's been quite honest and humble about it all. Either that or, as some have always suggested, he just continues to turn the random corners of his life, teasing us, implying more order and meaning than there is, even mocking us, continually yanking our collective chain.

The first description rings more true to the ways of life and gifts and artists for me. Certainly I prefer it. And how many of us can be that independent, that courageous about following and giving expression to our abilities and gifts—especially if our accompanying abilities as an instrumentalist are that mediocre, and our voice that singularly unmelodious and rendered that affectedly.

The way he handled his need to move on artistically and personally sometimes appeared to others thoughtless, selfish, even callous in the choices and changes he made and the interpersonal exchanges that attended them. He sometimes left others feeling abandoned or betrayed without explanation, whether family, old friends or new, or his bereaved constituencies and publics. He was disinclined, often apparently unable, to explain these things. He was private and self protective. He would have us think that it was just part of his single-minded devotion to following his muse. But it is hard to understand or see the necessity for this churlish behavior. Perhaps he would have us think it was an unfortunate, involuntary character trait, but in the end he was too often just insensitive and boorish. Or some might conclude in resignation that he couldn't be the poet and performer he was without, well, being the person he was. To one degree or another, that may be true for all of us.

And if it is his earlier work that he now reflects on most, considers his prayer book, it may be in part because over time what remained of his inspiration, his gift, no longer granted him expression in that same brilliant way. Age and aging have observed the withering of the prescience and insight—the power—of his poetry and prose, as it has his rude, once commanding voice. I doubt that he knows why—we never do—but he no longer has the creative, impassioned inspiration he once had, at least not for me. It's now as if his muse has been spirited away, and we're all a little sad she's gone.

But even if Dylan is now more celebrated for the work done than the work he is doing, the genius and insight of his earlier work endures. And it will continue to endure, for me at least, even if his light has grown dimmer in the archives of my own recollections. His voice on civil rights, war, life, love and hate, his songbook, will long outlive his quirky personality and predilections. I feel fortunate to have been both informed and entertained in such a singular way by such a singular talent at that impressionable time of my life. And I was pleased, warmed, to reacquaint myself with the nature and origins of those foundation stones.