Christ Church. 20 Years.

Christ Church, East Greenwich, RI. First worship service: February 11th, 1990. It's been 20 years, and I am remembering the early years. A special time and experience, a gift, really. It does not seem so very long ago, yet it is now remembered only by the largely dispersed people of that time and place.

Not $Trillions, Not Hundreds of $Billions, Maybe $87 Billion

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is telling Congress that the administration believes the final cost of the government's heavily criticized financial bailout effort could be as low as $87 billion. Geithner made the new estimate in a letter Friday to congressional leaders that was obtained by The Associated Press. A year ago, officials were estimating the bailout could cost as much as $500 billion [and which at first had been estimated at $700 billion, or much more by many].

The administration had already lowered the cost of the $700 billion bailout program, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to $117 billion. That [includes] the losses from the auto [$28b], AIG [$48b] and the mortgage foreclosure programs [$49b] and earnings of up to $11 billion from several other programs under TARP.

In addition to the $117 billion in TARP losses, the administration is estimating losses of $85 billion from the support to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those two categories of losses would be offset by the $115 billion in earnings the administration expects will be realized from the Fed's support programs. The biggest offset to those losses will be earnings of $115 billion that the administration expects the Federal Reserve to realize from the extraordinary assistance it has given to provide liquidity to the financial system.

--"Bailout cost may total just $87 billion," by Martin Crutsinger, Associated Press, reprinted on msnbc.com (4.23.10)

Yes, some of us are still keeping track of this. Especially those who saw the necessity and logic of these bold initiates, and believed the early estimates and projections of actual cost and likely offsets offered by the administration.

Yes, we did trust in the character, experience and ability of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Who else was there who was more dispassionate and uncompromised by prior career choices and experience? Who else had the same depth of current information, historical perspective, expertise and understandings of the financial system and issues?

No, we were not swept away with the doom and dispair being marketed by those ideologically antagonistic or just skeptical toward the programs--or those personally antagonistic to President Obama himself or, by association, Secretary Geithner or Fed Chairman Bernanke. (For an overview of cost estimates ranging to over $7 trillion a year ago--and the more realistic estimates of the administration and CBO--see my post and cites in "Real Tab for Bailout? A Lot Less Than You Think," April 18,2009.)

So yes, I am quite pleased to observe the evolving vindication of these men and their courageous work on our behalf, without whom the best choices would not have been made, and the courage to carry them out would have been lacking. (And yes, some credit goes to former President George Bush who appointed Chairman Bernanke and supported the original TARP approach, and the unlikely contribution of then Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sacks CEO Hank Paulsen.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36742144/ns/business-economy_at_a_crossroads/

Dealing with Budget Deficits: Who Pays the Bill?

If the world were run by economists, deficit reduction would be a very complicated balancing act. For politicians one question may well dominate all others: who is going to pay? The candidates differ from country to country, but the list usually includes taxpayers, public-sector workers, entitlement recipients (such as state pensioners or public-health users), foreign investors and future generations. Already battle lines are being drawn: witness the strikes by Greece's public-sector unions and the tea parties thrown by America's tax protesters.

--"Dealing with the budget deficits: Who pays the bill?" The Economist (3.4.10)

It amazes me that so many people I run into, hear of or read about--well-heeled, "middle class," or relatively poorer, all--believe that someone else should and will pay for the huge national budget deficit that is now visited upon us. Someone else must pay the cost of averting the worst depression in history. The middle class--and certainly those poorer--believe that they need lower taxes or more government help, even if most of them pay little or no income taxes now. And yes, I do know they still pay a considerable portion of their income in regressive social security, property and sales taxes. Then, too, retirees clearly do not want their social security payments reduced, even as some of them bluster and shake their fists incomprehensibly about the need for lower income taxes.

But the ones that amaze me most are the particularly well off or "rich," by some fair measure, so many of whom believe they have no responsibility or duty to play a larger role in reducing the choking weight of our national budget deficit. They have great difficulty seeing it as their patriotic duty, a service to their country required of them because they are the fortunate ones favorably positioned to provide it. And they are favorably positioned to provide it because they have taken full advantage of the opportunities and benefits of citizenship in the most open, representative democracy and the most robust market economy in the world. And it has made them financially rich or very well off.

Giving more in a time of national need is to them somehow unfair, too much to ask of them and their investment portfolios. And more, to suggest that social security should be treated more as social insurance for which a "means test" would determine their need for supplemental retirement payments can bring out an ugly, selfish side of many of them that might surprise you. It still surprises me. They want what is coming to them, thank you very much; let someone else save the country from its financial woes.

That's what it has come to. That's the state of patriotism and individual responsibility among many of America's most fortunate today. What is particularly ironic and galling to me is that these same people are so quick to deride and dismiss poorer groups and the working middle class as having an attitude of entitlement about social programs or fair labor practices. But yet, those same privileged folks believe they are entitled to avail themselves of all the opportunity America offers--and they have, often to extraordinary levels of wealth--but in tough times, do not feel obliged to give what only they can give to relieve the national burden, possibly to avoid continuing economic weakness or another recession. What a country. What patriots, these.

There. My unrepentant rant now done, and catharsis advanced, I return to The Economist article which offers some more global observations about the state of sovereign debt, world-wide--and who may be called on to pay for it:

The battles will be all the more fierce this time around because the deficits are so large and likely in the short term to stay that way. With developed economies still weak, many governments are (often rightly) keen to run large deficits for a while longer. But the bond markets are getting impatient, especially with weaker European countries. Greece was forced to announce a third austerity package this week, after its initial efforts failed to reassure either the markets or its neighbours (see article). Although Britain has a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than Greece and its debt has an average maturity of 14 years, sterling also wobbled this week, with investors spooked by the prospect of a hung parliament. True, the three biggest rich-world economies, the United States, Germany and Japan, are under less pressure. But Japan has high debt levels and America has the government-bankrupting cost of ageing baby-boomers.

Okay, so much for the backdrop of sovereign public deficits world-wide. What about solving the problem, and especially here in the U.S.? What about identifying resources and sources to liquidate these public deficits?

Two immediate answers appear, which should be easier for politicians to embrace than all those spending cuts and tax rises. The first is to be honest about the size of the problem...[V]oters can hardly make judgments about what to scale back if they do not know what promises have been made. The second is to focus on economic growth. Higher growth reassures markets, increases tax revenues and reduces spending on unemployment benefits and other welfare payments. So politicians should eschew policies that reduce the long-term growth rate, such as protectionism or higher taxes, and focus instead on measures that boost the growth potential, such as more flexible labour markets and other productivity-enhancing reforms.

All right, we are all for motherhood and apple pie. Truth telling and policies that facilitate growth will be welcomed by all. But notwithstanding the Economist's lofty perch on the free-market citadel--and I am a fan, as all know--most realists also insist that more short-term fiscal discipline is essential to deliver us from this mess. Reform of social security (read that, reduced benefits, or a reduction in the growth of benefit, or a delay in the age of qualification for benefits, or "means testing" for benefits, or all of the above), medicare administration and fraud, and other social programs, and some level of income tax increases for higher income taxpayers, will be required. So how about that?

The more immediate fight, which is already starting to break out in many European countries, is between taxpayers and public-sector workers, and between raising taxes and cutting public spending (see article). Politically, the contest is evenly matched, pitting powerful unions against the biggest taxpayers—corporations and high-earners—who often have the ear of politicians. In terms of economics, though, the bulk of the adjustment should come in the form of spending cuts.

The state had to step in during the credit crunch, given the scale of the banking crisis, but this expansion of its scope should be temporary. This is not just ideological bias on our part; economic studies suggest that fiscal adjustments that rely on spending cuts do better than those based on tax rises. Yes, some tax rises may be necessary, if only out of the political necessity of persuading the electorate that the burden is being shared. But tax rises, like Japan's in 1997, can kill a recovery.

It is probably not just ideological bias, but there is a healthy dose of it in there. And if we should consult what economic studies suggest might do better, we should also recognize the need and wisdom of timely addressing debt reduction and the state of national social cohesion. Income taxes are at their lowest point in a long time, and we as a country have in the past enjoyed a vigorous, high-employment economy with considerably higher individual income tax burdens. We can likely bear some level of higher income taxes now without material adverse effects on the progress of the economic recovery, or so economists opine in other places. And as the debt is paid down and the economy continues to strengthen, those tax rates can again be reduced. But to move responsibly and timely on debt reduction will likely require a more balanced approach, a fiscal policy that includes both spending cuts and tax increases. And in case you were wondering, those tax increases would doubtless apply to me, as well. But yes, Mr. Economist, you can have a last word:

Whichever path governments choose will be hard. As a period of loose credit gives way to an era of austerity, the social cohesion of many nations will be put to the test. Not all countries will pass. Over the next few years the careers of many politicians will be made and broken in the bond market.

Now, that observation is surely correct, and all the more reason to approach the available fiscal policy options erring on the side of faster solutions (spending cuts and tax increases) and, to the extent practicable, meeting social needs and preserving the strength of the social fabric.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15606221&fsrc=nlwhig03-04-2010editors_highlights

Defining Poverty: Measuring the Actual Needs of the Needy

The poor will always be with us. That's what one of the most influential religious figures in history said two millenia ago--although to be fair, the statement was addressing a very different place, time, and situation. But the poor are still with us, and have been ever since in most societies and cultures. In economics, they measure and analyze the damaging social effects and costly burdens of poverty, and the persistent levels of chronic unemployment, the attendant condition that both leads to poverty and holds the poor captive there, often for generations.

Over the course of the 20th century, most advanced and accountable societies have provided assistance programs for the poor to a greater or lesser extent. And in most cases, it is measured and provided for in terms of money--periodic welfare payments, or "transfer payments" from the government. And in the U.S., those payments are supported to some extent by complementary programs such as food stamps, subsidized federal housing, and medicaid. But it is often not enough as many continue to live without an adequate diet, adequate housing, education or healthcare. And the victims are too often the children, a next generation without the basics needed to lift themselves to gainful employment, to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty.

But how do we define and measure poverty? And is our approach to its measurement part of the failure that extends to inadequate solutions? Does income in and of itself--money--provide the best measure of the needy's needs, and the best understanding of how to address them? That issue is now being addressed by two of the most authoritative and influential researchers and thinkers in the field. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

At the forefront of this change in thinking are two economists, James E. Foster, a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University, and Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative, at the University of Oxford. A paper they wrote in 2007 may help redefine what it means to be poor. Mexico has adopted the method outlined in the paper as its official poverty measure. Bhutan is using it to create a national happiness index. Other countries, like Chile, have indicated interest, as have officials of the World Bank, who are considering where else the approach might work.

Among researchers in the field, Mr. Foster was already well known. A paper he co-wrote in the 1980s included a method for calculating income-based poverty that is now the standard in many countries and is cited in nearly every paper on international poverty. A mathematician at heart, Mr. Foster took an economics course as an undergraduate at New College of Florida and found his calling. Here, he decided, was a way for him to apply his math skills to the real world. [He and] economist Amartya Sen, who is now a professor at Harvard University [and] won a Nobel in economic science in 1998, wrote a book together called On Economic Inequality (Oxford, 1997).

That book contains a chapter on multidimensional poverty, a concept that Mr. Sen is known for having pioneered. But while Mr. Foster agreed that, in theory, poverty was about more than income, he was dubious about actually trying to measure those other factors...A conversation with Ms. Alkire changed his mind. While he was in Britain to give a talk, she buttonholed him, arguing that his formula for measuring chronic poverty could, with appropriate tweaks, translate to multidimensional poverty. "He was suspicious," Ms. Alkire says, "but we talked it through." Mr. Foster was finally persuaded.

The method that they developed allows researchers to create categories deemed important to well-being, like access to health care, education, food, and so on. Income can be included, too, as one factor among several. Researchers can decide how many categories must be deficient to make a person poor, and can also weight certain categories as more important than others. They might, for instance, decide that food matters more than education.

--"The Actual Needs of the Needy: New Measure of Poverty Cathes On," by Tom Bartlett, The Chronicle of Higher Education (3.7.10).

But what does that mean in terms of how it could help us better understand poverty and address it? And with the U.S.' long history of using income to measure poverty--and falling short of adequately addressing it--what are the chances that this new approach might be adopted here? More from the same article:

For starters, says Mr. Foster, you get a fuller, more accurate picture of who needs help and what kind of help they need. People in a rural area might need better transportation in order to make it to a market. Providing better transportation does not necessarily raise anyone's income, but it might substantially improve their quality of life. Having a way to measure improvement in areas other than income allows a government to demonstrate how it is helping its citizens, or a critic to show how it's failing to help them. What's more, looking at just income can be misleading. In India incomes have recently risen, but so has malnutrition. If people are hungry, aren't they still living in poverty?

That's why Mexico has adopted the new method. A 2004 law requires the government to use a multidimensional measure of poverty in official estimates. After looking at a number of proposals, Mexico chose the method devised by Mr. Foster and Ms. Alkire. The multidimensional approach, he says, allows for "a better idea of the type of poverty people are suffering and the reasons for this type of poverty." Data from 2008 have been analyzed using the method and, Mr. Licona says, some changes are already under way. For example, a program called Oportunidades, which gives grants to poor families, will now take into account schooling and nutrition when identifying families in need.

Bhutan's embrace of the formula has a twist. Instead of measuring poverty, the country is using it to assess national happiness in nine areas, including living standards and psychological well-being. Adaptability is part of the method's appeal: Mr. Foster and Ms. Alkire don't dictate categories or cutoffs. Instead they provide mathematical tools for making an evaluation...What the two scholars have created is "a method to actually operationalize these ideas that otherwise seem appealing but are very difficult to put into practice."

The United States has been using the same income-based measure for decades, though the Obama administration announced just last week that it would start taking into account a broader set of information, like how much a family spends on child care and housing. That's still a long way from what Mr. Foster and Ms. Alkire propose, but it will provide more data on how poor people spend money. And perhaps if the multidimensional poverty measure is a success in Mexico, then other countries, maybe even the United States, will follow suit.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Actual-Needs-of-the-Needy-/64526/

Science, Spin & Climate Change: The Clouds of Unknowing

I understand the type of identity politics involved. I do. But it's just so dysfunctional, so sad and unsettling. That one vocal, political interest group is unqualifiedly dismissive of the science that supports global warming and the actions proposed to address it, and another unqualifiedly supports it, is hard to reconcile but easy enough to understand. That's the nature of unquestioning identity politics. That's where we are, whether it sinks us or not. We appear helpless to get past it it all, absent the level of climate change and global disaster that would signal it is already too late to address the related issues without great shared pain and loss--and great expense.

Part of the problem is that it is hard to find balance in interpreting and understanding the science, the evidence. But The Economist in a recent "Leaders" article and related "Briefing" article, provides as balanced and useful an understanding and prescription as I've read. They address both the error and the harm of overstating the case beyond the evidence, but also the failed thinking that presumes the research and its interpretation must be complete and without error to justify preventative action. The Economist:

CLIMATE-change legislation, dormant for six months, is showing signs of life again in Washington, DC. This week senators and industrial groups have been discussing a compromise bill to introduce mandatory controls on carbon (see article). Yet although green activists around the world have been waiting for 20 years for American action, nobody is cheering. Even if discussion ever turns into legislation, it will be a pale shadow of what was once hoped for.

The mess at Copenhagen is one reason. So much effort went into the event, with so little result. The recession is another...The bilious argument over American health care has not helped: this is not a good time for any bill that needs bipartisan support. Even the northern hemisphere's cold winter has hurt... But climate science is also responsible. A series of controversies over the past year have provided heavy ammunition to those who doubt the seriousness of the problem.

Three questions arise from this. How bad is the science? Should policy be changed? And what can be done to ensure such confusion does not happen again? Behind all three lies a common story. The problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists.

--"Spin, science and climate change," Leaders Section, The Economist (3.18.10)

Now, that is a provocative opening, one that should warm the hearts of naysayers, those who doubt or disparage the science, those who would let nature and man's influence on it just take its own course. But it is just setting the necessary backdrop, making the appropriate concessions, in setting a fair and useful basis to continue the discussion. The same article continues:

When governments started thinking seriously about climate change they took the sensible step of establishing, in 1989, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was designed to get scientists to work out what was happening to the climate, and to get governments to sign off on the scientists' conclusions. It has done the job of basic science pretty well. There have been occasional complaints both that it has overstated the extent of the problem, and that it has understated it. Its reports trawl through all recent climate science. The wide range of the outcomes it predicts—from a mildly warming global temperature increase of 1.1°C by the end of the century to a hellish 6.4°C—illustrate the uncertainties it is dealing with.

But the ambiguities of science sit uncomfortably with the demands of politics. Politicians, and the voters who elect them, are more comfortable with certainty. So "six months to save the planet" is more likely to garner support than "there is a high probability—though not by any means a certainty—that serious climate change could damage the biosphere, depending on levels of economic growth, population growth and innovation." Politics, like journalism, tends to simplify and exaggerate...

Around the same time it emerged that the most recent IPCC report had claimed that the Himalayan glaciers were going to disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. The panel's initial unwillingness to address this mistake, and the discovery of further problems with its work, raised troubling questions about its procedures.

How bad is this? Sceptics point out that each mistake has tended to exaggerate the extent of climate change. The notion that the scientific establishment has suppressed evidence to the contrary has provided plenty of non-expert politicians with an excuse not to spend money reducing carbon. So the scientists' shameful mistakes have certainly changed perceptions. They have not, however, changed the science itself.

As our briefing explains in detail, most research supports the idea that warming is man-made. Sources of doubt that have seemed plausible in the past, such as a mismatch between temperatures measured by satellites and temperatures measured at the surface, and doubts about the additional warming that can be put down to water vapour, have been in large part resolved, though more work is needed. If records of temperature across the past 1,000 years are not reliable, it matters little to the overall story. If there are problems with the warming as measured by weather stations on land, there are also more reliable data from ships and satellites.

So, is it wise to champion inaction until all doubts and objections by all parties are satisfied? Do we not understand that it is so often the nature of scientific research and prescriptions that they must incorporate uncertainties and the statistical probability of their occurence and impact? It is based on data and probabilities like these that intelligent, wise public policy is often shaped and carried out. And we have been well served by understanding the strengths and limitations of that process. More from the article:

Plenty of uncertainty remains; but that argues for, not against, action. If it were known that global warming would be limited to 2°C, the world might decide to live with that. But the range of possible outcomes is huge, with catastrophe one possibility, and the costs of averting climate change are comparatively small. Just as a householder pays a small premium to protect himself against disaster [property damage insurance], the world should do the same.

This newspaper sees no reason to alter its views on that. Where there is plainly an urgent need for change is the way in which governments use science to make their case. The IPCC has suffered from the perception that it is a tool of politicians. The greater the distance that can be created between it and them, the better. And rather than feeding voters infantile advertisements peddling childish certainties, politicians should treat voters like grown-ups. With climate change you do not need to invent things; the truth, even with all those uncertainties and caveats, is scary enough.

The longer, more detailed "Briefing" in the same edition of the Economist does in fact provided a very useful review of the state of some of the questioned data and interpretations of them. I commend it to your reading. But that more thorough treatment also offers broader perspectives that are equally helpful. From the briefing article, "The science of climate change: the clouds of unknowing":

In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps, misperceptions and mistakes. Whether your impression is dominated by the whole or the holes will depend on your attitude to the project at hand. You might say that some see a jigsaw where others see a house of cards. Jigsaw types have in mind an overall picture and are open to bits being taken out, moved around or abandoned should they not fit. Those who see houses of cards think that if any piece is removed, the whole lot falls down. When it comes to climate, academic scientists are jigsaw types, dissenters from their view house-of-cards-ists.

The defenders of the consensus tend to stress the general consilience of their efforts—the way that data, theory and modelling back each other up. Doubters see this as a thoroughgoing version of "confirmation bias", the tendency people have to select the evidence that agrees with their original outlook. But although there is undoubtedly some degree of that (the errors in the IPCC, such as they are, all make the problem look worse, not better) there is still genuine power to the way different arguments and datasets in climate science tend to reinforce each other.

The doubters tend to focus on specific bits of empirical evidence, not on the whole picture. This is worthwhile—facts do need to be well grounded—but it can make the doubts seem more fundamental than they are. People often assume that data are simple, graspable and trustworthy, whereas theory is complex, recondite and slippery, and so give the former priority. In the case of climate change, as in much of science, the reverse is at least as fair a picture. Data are vexatious; theory is quite straightforward. Constructing a set of data that tells you about the temperature of the Earth over time is much harder than putting together the basic theoretical story of how the temperature should be changing, given what else is known about the universe in general...

Okay, but moving from a proper perspective to summary data, possible outcomes, and probabilities, what reasonable understandings should we take away from all this?

Adding the uncertainties about sensitivity to uncertainties about how much greenhouse gas will be emitted, the IPCC expects the temperature to have increased by 1.1ºC to 6.4ºC over the course of the 21st century. That low figure would sit fairly well with the sort of picture that doubters think science is ignoring or covering up. In this account, the climate has natural fluctuations larger in scale and longer in duration (such as that of the medieval warm period) than climate science normally allows, and the Earth's recent warming is caused mostly by such a fluctuation, the effects of which have been exaggerated by a contaminated surface-temperature record. Greenhouse warming has been comparatively minor, this argument would continue, because the Earth's sensitivity to increased levels of carbon dioxide is lower than that seen in models, which have an inbuilt bias towards high sensitivities. As a result subsequent warming, even if emissions continue full bore, will be muted too.

It seems unlikely that the errors, misprisions and sloppiness in a number of different types of climate science might all favour such a minimised effect. That said, the doubters tend to assume that climate scientists are not acting in good faith, and so are happy to believe exactly that. Climategate [the e-mail disclosures suggesting bias among investigators at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia] and the IPCC's problems have reinforced this position.

Using the IPCC's assessment of probabilities, the sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide [having an effect] of less than 1.5ºC in such a scenario has perhaps one chance in ten of being correct. But if the IPCC were underestimating things by a factor of five or so, that would still leave only a 50:50 chance of such a desirable outcome. The fact that the uncertainties allow you to construct a relatively benign future does not allow you to ignore [higher probability] futures in which climate change is large, and in some of which it is very dangerous indeed. The doubters are right that uncertainties are rife in climate science. They are wrong when they present that as a reason for inaction.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=15720419&fsrc=nlw%7Chig%7C03-18-2010%7Ceditors_highlights

Resentfulness

Resentfulness always takes us to the same sad end: lost to love and joy, lost to ourselves and others. And this is especially true when born of the jealous, worldly desires of our eyes and hearts, desires which in themselves move us to thought or action that inevitably produces guilt or sadness. If we could only be more accepting of who we are and grateful for our place and opportunities in life. If we could only be more motivated by gratitude, understanding and love.

Healing, Restoration, Peace.

Healing, restoration, peace. Caring, understanding, kindness. Forgiveness and Love. Jesus and God's Spirit.

Authentic Americans

Mine has been a thoroughly American life and experience--broadly, deeply American. I am 63 years old, and I was born to a multigenerational American family; my father was a successful small businessman whose ancestors came to America centuries ago, literally. My Mother's is a similar story. And my story is one of taking advantage of all the opportunities offered me because of that; mine has been the fortunate life that America offers. But I can only speak impersonally, philosophically and proudly in reference to my family's immigration experience so long ago. Other than the "where" and the probable "when" there is no recollection retained of who they were and what their uniquely American experience of first-generation American life was like.

The article shared and linked below reminds me that my life did not include the quintessential, but most difficult of American experiences: immigration, being a "first-generation American." I did not personally come here to escape religious intolerance, political tyranny, or economic hardship. I did not make the passage, the tortuous, often painful journey to a new, very different world to build a new life and a new identity. I was not called to that riskiest, most honest and transparent, most personal and American of experiences. It was left to me and most of you to be grateful for that foundation, to build on it and enjoy the best of what America offers today.

It is immigrants who were and are the most important Americans. And if each had their own type of first-generation American experience, in a real sense they also had a type of "first American" experience. Because they were and are first Americans. And they continue to make those passages and take those risks, to embrace the opportunity and challenges, the joys and pains, of being a first American today. They are willing to risk and sacrifice all just for the oportunity to earn a place here, and to bring to us everything they have to offer. And historically, that has been the best of everything we Americans are today. To me, in a most real and basic sense, they are also the most authentic Americans.

Albert Sabina is director of Hispanic initiatives for the Naples Daily News and naplesnews.com. To my view he and his family are among today's many authentic first Americans. This article by him reflects the pride he embraces both in the culture he came from and the culture and place--the identity, really--he now comfortably calls home. Mr. Sanina:

The Broadway musical "In the Heights" mamboed, hustled and merengued into the Naples Philharmonic Center on Monday, leaving a lasting impression on the audience — and in the most subtle and caring way bringing up issues about my identity I had not pondered for many years. With me, as with most Latinos, these issues lie dormant within our consciences.

Upon watching the first act, I was overtaken by my sense of pride as I saw Latino themes, story lines and sentiments eloquently presented. It is a rare opportunity as a "hyphenated" American — In my case Cuban-American — for me to witness such accurate, heartfelt portrayals of the Latino experience. "In the Heights" masterfully captured the essence of the U.S. migration saga in a way that not only rings true to Latinos, but can easily stir up the emotions of all Americans whose descendants arrived from somewhere else. The musical made me ponder my accented perspective, but even more powerful was the sense of pride it gave me as being an American and living in the most inclusive, welcoming country in the world.

At the crux of the "In the Heights" plot line is the notion of the place and culture that one defines as home. As the musical cleverly depicts, home is where one's friends and family are. Home is also where one feels they are a part of something greater.

"In the Heights" is the brainchild of Puerto Rican-American Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the play in the winter of his sophomore year at Wesleyan University. Somewhere between shoveling snow and donning nine layers of clothing while braving the Connecticut cold, Miranda began questioning his sense of belonging. This introspection is familiar to millions of Americans like me.

My family and I settled in Los Angeles from Cuba in the late 1960s, sometime between the Kennedy assassination and Woodstock. At first I wanted nothing more than a quick return to my beloved Ranchuelo (my hometown in Cuba). However, geopolitics and history played a different hand, and I wound up listening to rock 'n' roll and watching Lakers games.

Assimilation, it's called. Yet the five-syllable word doesn't capture the tons of emotions that go into the process. "In the Heights" took me on a two-hour journey that tugged on every nuance and sentiment of the last 40-plus years of my assimilation. It made me laugh and cry, sometimes both at the same time.

The rhythm of the musical is heartwarming and the lyrics tug at the heartstrings. Abuela Claudia (Grandma Claudia) sings one of the musical's most poignant songs, "Paciencia y Fe" (patience and faith). It is a song that reflects the feelings of the many who came before us. When I heard the song, I could not help but think about my father, who arrived in this country with very little money in his pocket and several mouths to feed. Yet what sustained him, and all of us, was "paciencia y fe."

Usnavi, the protagonist of "In the Heights," concludes his home is in a little-known corner of Washington Heights, Manhattan, where people care about him. In return, he cares about their lives and about the place itself.

Watching and feeling "In the Heights" at the Phil reminded me Naples is my home — even if my soundtrack may have a little more salsa and spice to it.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/mar/30/albert-sabina-heights-brings-issues-about-my-ident/

My Portion & My Strength

"My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever...
[A]s for me, the nearness of God is my good." Ps. 73.

"The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.
Indeed, my inheritance is beautiful to me." Ps. 16.

Identity, Ideology, Opinion Formation & Change

Many of us have lived a lot of life, some more than others. But all have managed to negotiate some of life's passages, and the challenges and growth experiences that go with it. And I expect most have changed their views about some things, perhaps even their ideological, philosophical or faith perspectives, to one degree or another. Of course, some amount of opinion formation and change has to do with the personality and temperament of each of us as individuals. And some of it cannot be understood without reference to one's emotional stake or personal interests in a particular position, ideology or philosophy.

But changes in our opinions or perspective also have to do with the range of different places we find ourselves across a period of time, places that offer different experiences, work or life with people with different expectations and ideas, that offer different information, different incentives, even different identity. If we are also moved by certain values and interests in addressing national and societal issues--and many of us likely are--it is important that we are open and respond to the need to personally examine each place, the people and their perspectives. It is important for us to learn more and understand more about them and how they address resolution of those national and societal issues--not just to debate them, but to understand how they have changed or might change our own perspective, even our sense of identity.

Many of us have walked personal career and life paths of many turns. And it changes you, or at least it often does. That's the point. It's difficult to walk those many and varied paths without doing some serious assessment and reconciliation of the very different views, ideas, thinking and identities assimilated or assumed in those different places, those different worlds. At least it was for me. And throughout those years, I felt compelled to examine those very different experiences and the more characteristic views, ideologies, philosophies or faith perspectives identified with them. And that covered a considerable spectrum of intellectual, political and spiritual thinking.

But even if one is a willing learner of such things--and not all are--that process usually takes quite some time. Yet, most of us soon or later recognize that every approach, point of view, or policy answer--certainly every ideology and philosophy--is defined as much by its shortcomings and failings, its incomplete or insufficient answers, as it is by its trumpeted virtues and correctness, its political, cultural or philosophical acceptability. And I could not help but carry with me a good measure of understanding and respect for each experience and each perspective as I moved from one to the next to where I am today. And it is a process that continues to work for me today. Perhaps it does for you, too.

A sound approach to national and societal problem solving first honors the strength and virtue of the principal philosophical foundations of this greatest of representative democracies and most effective of market economies. It honors the necessity for robust, intelligently regulated markets, but also providing for the important needs of people, especially those who are poor, unable, ill or aged. That's what responsible, advanced societies do, and in that way strengthen our national identity and social fabric while advancing and strengthening our economy.

But then, so far as we can muster and manage the balance and will, it is important that we begin the issue resolution process with a statement of the problem and available information, the alternative solutions or answers, and their likely cost and probable results--but without constraining adherence or reference to ideological, political or philosophical direction. It is more useful to speak of market mechanisms, incentives, strengths and weaknesses, than ideological understandings or dictates. It is more useful to speak of societal challenges, problems or needs and, again, the alternatives, the costs and benefits, the wisest answers for society and the economy, not considerations of ideology or political platforms. It's the only way we can feel at all competent or accountable in approaching such issues or problems responsibly.

And this approach also makes it so much easier to effect course corrections or reverse field with changed information, alternatives or goals--because it's based on the best information and problem-solving processes, all of which can and do change. And we are much freer to change with them. Certainly that has been my general experience, and perhaps the experience of many of you as well. It is the power of seeking the best, most complete and unbiased information about an issue, identifying and understanding the implications of available alternatives, and then dispassionately exploring that information and those alternatives for the better solutions or answers. That is difficult enough without the procrustean constraints, the polarizing and sobotaging effects, of narrow ideological or philosophical imperatives.

It is also easy to see that this approach or orientation more likely generates respect for, if not acceptance of, other views because there is understanding of and mutual respect for the process. And if you are like me, you are also likely to recognize a view you once held, or one you may yet support. When working with a common, credible body of information or facts, and similar understandings of alternative resolutions, it makes agreement on issues or problems more likely, or at least reduces the scope and depth of differences. There is more often a type of "regression to the mean" of resolutions or answers reached and agreed to when we mutually accept and respect a competent, open and fair process for reaching them. Let our identity be more that of competent, respectful and respected resolvers of issues and formulators of wise policies, than ideological drones. Integrated thinking and synthesis, informed and fair reasoning, transparent and respectful dialogue, must rule.

Messiah

Two millennia ago, I'm told, an occupied, dispirited Israel looked for a Davidic, conquering Messiah and deliverer from the Romans, a restorer of their nation and their independent cultural identity. They could not see or accept in Jesus another kind of deliverer, a spiritual deliverer, a restorer of their relationship with God.

In the same way today, aggressive expressions of cultural, political Christianity lift up a Davidic Jesus as their deliverer from secular humanism, liberalism, other spiritualities, even other Christian views. He would be their conquering, culture-restoring Messiah. And they, too, now appear unable to see or accept in Jesus another kind of deliverer, a spiritual deliverer, the restorer of a deeper personal relationship with God. Do they fear the real, the profound personal and cultural changes an indwelling Spirit of Christ might necessarily bring?

Going There, Love & Mary Oliver

Have you ever felt led to a transcendent sense of self, your relationships and circumstances in life? Ever felt moved in different, unknown directions? That wherever that leads, you might love as you need to love because you would be loved in that way, too? That you'd be more forgiving, compassionate and gentle than formerly inclined, more humble, more selfless than your identity had allowed? Isn't that where we're supposed to be going?

Mary Oliver, in Thirst:

A Pretty Song (edited)

From the complications of loving...

I think there is no end or return.

No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?

This isn't a playground, this is

earth, our heaven, for awhile.

Therefore I have given precedence to all my moods

That hold [love] in the center of my world...

And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.

And I say to my heart: rave on.

Love is its own reason.

Mary Oliver, in Red Bird:

Not This, Not That (Edited)

Not this, not that, nor anything...
will alter

my love for you, my friends and my beloved,
or for you, ghosts of Emerson and Whitman,

or for you, oh blue sky of a summer morning,
that makes me roll in a barrel of gratitude
down hills,

or for you, oldest of friends: hope;
or for you, newest of friends: faith:

or for you, ...dearest of surprises, my own life.

 

 

On Prayer & Meditation: Thich Nhat Hanh

Those who understand the invitations accepted and the paths prayerfully explored in my spiritual walk, will not be surprised that the experience and wisdom shared by a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and writer--especially one like Thich Nhat Hanh--might resonate with me, a Christian. Those explorations have left me convinced that I have heard God speak from the reverenced writings and poetry of other faith traitions, in addition to the Scriptures of my Christian faith. But in addition to the Psalms, the Prophets, John's Gospel and Paul's epistles, and the writings and poetry of the Christian contemplatives (yes, the mystics) such as St. John of the Cross and the more contemporary Thomas Merton, I find most resonant the Sufi poetry of Hafiz and Rumi, among others, as well as some Buddhist writings and Haiku poetry. And now, Thich Nhat Hanh.


Thich Nhat Hanh may be best known to Western audiences for his disarming, endearing book, Living Buddha, Living Christ. But today I'd like to share with you some of his brief remarks on prayer and meditation offered in his Introduction to his good friend Thomas Merton's book, Contemplative Prayer, a succinct, insightful treatment I've found both instructive and comforting. Thich Nhat Hanh:

Our approach to prayer in Buddhism is a little different from that of Chrisitanity. We practice silent meditation, and we try to practice mindfulness in everything we do, to awaken to what is going on inside us and all around us in each moment... In real prayer, you ask only for the things you really need, things that are necessary for your well-being, such as peace, solidity, and freedom--freedom from anger, fear, and craving. Happiness and well-being are not possible without peace, solidity, and freedom... This kind of prayer is the light of God that shines upon you, telling you which way to go... 

In real prayer, you also touch the wholesome seeds in your consciousness of compassion, love, understanding, forgiveness, and joy. In prayer, recognize these seeds in you and help them grow... Our Christian brothers and sisters know that God is love. This prayer is a practice to help us touch love and bring it into our daily life:

THE NINE PRAYERS

1.

May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.

May you be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.

2.

May I be free from injury. May I live in safety.

May you be free from injury. May you live in safety.

3.

May I be free from disturbance, fear, anxiety, and worry.

May you be free from disturbance, fear, anxiety, and worry.

4.

May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and love.

May you learn to look at yourself with the eyes of understanding and love.

5.

May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.

May you be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in yourself.

6.

May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself.

May you learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in yourself.

7.

May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.

May you know how to nourish the seeds of joy in yourself every day.

8.

May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free.

May you be able to live fresh, solid, and free.

9.

May I be free from attachments and aversion, but not be indifferent.

May you be free from attachments and aversions, but not be indifferent.

This kind of prayer is also contemplation, meditation, and practice. It generates spirituality in every moment of our daily life. In his wonderful book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton shares with us his own deep and nondualistic understanding of prayer and meditation...
But many Christians and many Buddhists do not practice, or they only practice when they are in difficult situations, and after that they forget. They support churches and temples, organize ceremonies, convert people, do charity work or social work, or take up an apostolic ministry, but they do not practice mindfulness or prayer while they act...

To me, mindfulness is very much like the Holy Spirit. When the energy of the Holy Spirit is in us, we feel truly alive, capable of understanding the sufferings of others, and motivated by the desire to help. Mindfulness and the Holy Spirit are both agents of healing. When you touch deep understanding and love, you are healed.

If we pray "in the Spirit," we are certainly not running away from life...prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all men, and all the history of mankind in the light of God.

Postscript:


In the '60s, my earliest introduction and understandings of Zen Buddhism were found in the more ponderous, academic books and writings of Daisetsu T. ("D.T.") Suzuki. But those books and writings were often dark windows for me, providing only a measure of understanding and evoking a measure of resonance and respect, but not enough to keep me from leaving it all there and moving on. Yes, I still mused over the Zen koans and Haiku poetry of Basho, but it failed to move any closer to the center of my spiritual journey and identity.

But as I found the depth and range of Thomas Merton's writings calling to me more urgently, I happened upon his book, Zen and the Birds of Appetite. It is a respectful, unthreatened and unthreatening treatment of Zen Buddhism from the perspective of an American Christian monk. Remarkably, he finds much to suggest shared directions and common experience in the practice of prayer, meditation and contemplation--albeit with markedly different nomenclatures, philosophical frameworks, and understandings of purpose.

That small volume concludes with a wonderful exchange of ideas, understandings and explanations between Thomas Merton and D. T. Suzuki, who also became one of Merton's good friends. And you too might find it spiritually enriching to accept the invitation to share and learn what they shared and learned from each other.

The Self-Indulgent Generation

We thought we were the greatest generation, Brokaw's book notwithstanding. We were the generation of promise and destiny. We were the generation of change, enlightened societal change and better social thinking. We were the '60s generation and the babyboomers.

We would author movement to higher ground: greater civic virtue, and elevated democratic and humanitarian principles. A new and better vision of society would be our gift to the great unwashed of other generations and other places. We would make this happen. And to a notable extent, we did.

But I don't know just when it became clear that the sense of promise would be unfulfilled, the sense of destiny a delusion. Perhaps it was the early promotion and exercise of license more than liberty, the self-aggrandizing presumption and self-indulgence, the selfishness and assumed entitlement. But we were the anointed; we were smarter, more self-assured than those who came before. We were not subject to the same constraints, the same disciplines. We were governed by a new, inspired paradigm of our own imagination and creation. It would play out in so many areas. We could not go wrong. We could have it all.

For me it is hard not to see the fingerprints of the baby boomers, and especially we '60s folk, our presumptuousness and collective self-indulgence, on the stock and housing market excesses, all the bubbles and busts of the last 15 years, the financial crisis, and great recession now weighing upon us all. And yes, the indulgences and indiscretions of Wall Street, on those too--and all this without any sense of culpability, only an individual and collective sense of impunity for all we authored or that unavoidably resulted.

For as a generation, we were never able to deny ourselves anything--and if unavailing, the system would have to be changed to provide it, whether those changes represented solvent, workable ideas, wishful thinking, or mere reverie. There were too few workable ideas, and too much wishful thinking. And now the chronicler of the other greatest generation, the real one, makes a few observation about we boomers and our generation at this most inauspicious time of reckoning about our predicament and our legacy. Mr. Brokaw:

Aging Boomers Face Stark Economics:

Decling finances, rising health care costs threaten a generation

Not so long ago, Michael Blattman lived in the upscale Washington, D.C., suburb of Potomac, Md., earning $225,000 a year as senior vice president for a student loan company. As he reached his 50s, it never really occurred to him that his job wouldn't last forever.

"To be perfectly honest, I didn't really go there," he said. "Yeah, there was always a risk. Everything in business is a risk." In January 2008, Blattman, along with 500 other employees, was laid off by his company. With an $188,000 severance, he wasn't worried at first. "The barometer was always something like five or six months until you landed something comparable," he said. "So I figured, 'Oh, OK, six months?' OK, I could do this for six months. And find the next one. Well, there was no next one."

As his generation confronted an economic storm of historic proportions, Blattman found himself humbled — and living in a one-room apartment. After applying for 600 openings and getting only three interviews, he was still looking after two years. Blattman gets some solace from the knowledge that he's far from alone. More than 4 million baby boomers are unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For many, retirement at 65 is no longer an option. Facing shrinking nest eggs and mounting bills, they need to work, but they wonder if anyone will hire them again.

"Blattman starts every day checking out online job sites and sending out resumes for jobs that pay much less than his old salary. "I have applied for jobs that are one-fourth, one-third of my previous income level," he said. "And I would have been thrilled to get it. There are just too many of me and everyone else out there. I just wish there was a place for us, to kind of land."

It's a double whammy: no job and no health insurance. Many boomers are in far worse shape than Blattman. Some have turned to free clinics. It's just one indication that the health care crisis is really an economic crisis. And for the boomers it's only going to get tougher, according to Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson.

"If they've done their homework, then they'll be afraid," he said. "Very afraid." Ferguson says it won't be easy to care for a generation with ailing bodies and many more years to live.

"The baby boomers have set us on a path towards a massive fiscal crisis," he said. "Which is going to hit as the baby boomers retire." The recession, though devastating, will pass. But rising health care costs as boomers age may bring lasting harm to this generation's financial well-being. By the time all boomers are 65, the senior population will have grown from 40 million now to about 72 million. Who will pay their medical bills?

--"Aging Boomers Face Stark Economics," by Tom Brokaw, CNBC as reported on msnbc.com (3.4.10)

This is the financial burden, the legacy lost we've visited upon our children, a generation with much less reason to expect greatness, and little sense of grand destiny. But more, we've presented them a polarized, dysfunctional political system and apparatus; an outsized, unworkably expensive and dysfunctional health care system; faltering, underfunded schools; huge, dispiriting levels of national debt; and the beginnings of national decline.

Of course, our slowly declining place and power in the world would likely have evolved subject to the same external forces, regardless. But we have hurried it all along, made the unlikely, likely, perhaps inevitable. And yet, so many of us are still in denial, attaching our accusations desperately, frantically to any other contributing culprits or events. Anything, anyone, but not we of such promise and destiny. For now our hope must be that our children, the next generation, are wiser, more disciplined than we, that they might sacrificially, heroically, join their grandparents as true people of promise and destiny, and visit upon America a prudent, disciplined, and responsible identity again.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35675368/ns/business-cnbc_tv/

Snow days: No Meals. Other Days: Poor Meals

TAKOMA PARK, Md. - As back-to-back snowstorms shuttered schools for the week across the mid-Atlantic states, parents fretted about lost learning time, administrators scheduled makeup days and teachers posted assignments online. But Marla Caplon worried about a more fundamental problem: How would students eat?

The two snowstorms that pummeled the region, leaving more than 3 feet of snow in some areas, deprived tens of thousands of children from Virginia to Pennsylvania of the free or reduced-price school lunch that may be their only nutritious meal of the day. The nonprofits that try to meet the need when school is not in session also closed their doors for much of the week, leaving many families looking at bare cupboards. And many parents working hourly jobs were unable to earn any money during the week, as the snow forced businesses to close.

Caplon is a food services supervisor for Montgomery County Public Schools, where about 43,000 [poor] children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Some also get breakfast, dinner and bags of staple foods to take home for the weekend. The snow days meant children would get none of that until Tuesday, because schools are closed Monday for Presidents Day.

--"Snow days mean less food for many students," Associated Press in msnbc.com (2.13.10)

It is dispiriting to our sense of social caring and public responsibility to acknowledge that large numbers of children from economically disadvantaged families must rely on the public school free lunch program for their breakfast and dinner, as well as their lunch. The family circumstances are varied and the reasons most often unsettling, challenging, and unhappy, at least. And when weather or misfortune closes schools, those children often go hungry. That is an unwelcome and unsatisfying condition for so many.

But it is the view of more and more nutitionists, doctors and researchers that the only thing near as bad as losing access to meals through the public school lunch programs is to actually consume a long-term diet of school cafeteria fare. It appears that researchers have now concluded what casual observers or consumers of school lunch programs have always known: the food is nutitionally poor and dangerous to the long-term heath of students who eat it. But the delivery--or vending--of school lunch and its alternatives has been taken to a whole new place in many schools. And the reasons are all too familiar. From an article in the Washington Monthly:

As Janet Poppendieck writes in Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, we live in "a new age in which a business model … permeate[s] school food." Where lunchrooms in the past treated children as lucky recipients, they now view them as customers whose business must be won. Vending machines light up the hallways, usually through an exclusive contractual arrangement between school or school district and a company like Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Fast-food operations like Subway and KFC set up shop in the food court, tempting away all the students with enough money to afford a hoagie or fried chicken strips. Alongside the traditional cafeteria meal are a la carte lines where burgers and French fries (and their unholy cousins, tater tots) glisten with grease under the lamplights, exempted in all their fatty glory from USDA nutritional requirements. Even those children who buy the standard hot meal eat mostly junk: pizza with fries hits all of the major food groups, if you define the groups expansively enough. As Ronald Reagan's USDA famously taught us, ketchup is, after all, a vegetable...

With the business approach to school food come money woes, and these permeate Poppendieck's excellent, informative, if occasionally dry book. School districts simply do not have the funds to make ends meet, and hence the drive toward vending machines and a la carte junk food lines. Under the National School Food Lunch Program, there are three tiers of school meals: free ones for the poorest children, reduced-price ones for those with somewhat greater means, and full-price meals for everyone else. All of the meals, including the full-price ones, are subsidized and therefore artificially cheap. And it is hard to break even when your most expensive meal costs $1.50, so school districts have increasingly turned to unregulated (and pricier) a la carte lines, the income from which goes straight back into the cafeteria program, and vending machines, which help fill out the schools' general discretionary budgets. Sell enough Twizzlers and you might be able to afford new uniforms for the marching band...

Poppendieck's survey of the broken school lunch program is sophisticated and nuanced, and her conclusions, which tend toward healthier food and greater funding, are generally sound, with one notable exception. She is far too easy on the USDA, which administers and regulates the school lunch program on the federal level. When the National School Lunch Act was passed in 1946, Congress described it as a way "to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities." Ever since, the school lunch program has been a captive and exclusive market for subsidized agribusiness products, like corn (and high-fructose corn syrup), meat, and dairy. Our farm system is propped up by the worst type of corporate welfare to the biggest industrial producers, and foisting their artery-clogging products on schoolchildren is the inevitable result of USDA's stewardship.

--"Unhappy Meals," a book review by Michael O'Donnell in Washington Monthly (January/February 2010) of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, by Janet
Poppendiecks (University of California Press)

Mr. O'Donnell shares much more about this book, and about an important public service gone so wrong. And the more you understand it all, the financial challenges and incentives for schools and communities, the political and corporate roles involved, the more unsettled and politically impotent you may tend to feel as you add this failure to a growing list of political and public service disappointments and failures.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35384779/ns/weather/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.odonnell.html

Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Most people haven't really been watching or listening, have they? And why should they? The people they've been trafficking with probably haven't prepared them for it. They've had no expectation that the One who calls us may be trying to get their attention: waving His arms at them in the press of daily relationships and responsibilities, flashing His light in the soft, smiling eyes that pause and pass by, speaking in the voices of those who love and care, whispering to the heart that sighs, stirring in their very soul. They have not heard Him calling from all creation, the cycles of birth and death, change and renewal, nudging them to the questions of what is passing, what transcends, and what endures.

We are challenged with notions of humility and transcendence, challenged to understand ourselves as a passing experience, identity and consciousness which is somehow part of a greater Purpose and existence that endures. This understanding and peace, ever incomplete but continually unfolding, seems more often extended by invitation and accepted than pursued. And it appears that the more attentive we are to the unfolding, the more often we accept the invitations, the deeper, more intimate the journey becomes.

Is this something to be proved or even pursued in a certain way? No; it's a matter of personal journey and experience, and very personal to each of us. Can I logically explain it to you? In part, perhaps, but not completely—and probably not satisfactorily. Is it all part of our purpose in life? Yes, it seems to be, although we can find many reasons to treat it as though it is not or try to ignore it altogether. Do we play a role with each other in this process? Yes, and a very important one. But sometimes we may only touch a responsive chord with others—and sometimes only inadvertently—and provide a sense of invitation or permission to listen and seek some understanding of that voice or apprehension. Beyond that, if asked, we can only share our own experiences and understandings, which are unlikely to be altogether the same as someone else's. That's the way it seems to me to be.

Not Heaven Yet

If for so many good reasons, I try to extend respect to others, I also want to receive respect in return. But that is not the way of the world, is it? Nor is it the way of many who claim Christianity—not even toward other Christian groups or traditions. To entrust that expectation of respect to others—including those who dislike or disagree with you—would appear to most folks as innocent or naive, even unwise and trust misplaced, wouldn't it?

But if not respect, then what about tolerance? Surely that is a reasonable expectation. As I posed the question in Out of the Box:

So, how about this: I'll live my life as well as I know how, and others can do the same. We will try, so far as we are able, to respect each other. But failing that, we will politely tolerate each other. Civility. I can live with that. How about you?

But even the guarded hopefulness you might struggle to infer from that question might be misplaced, even naïve, might it not? We are not nearly ready to see each other as one family of humanity, and certainly not as one family of God. It is not the way we've evolved genetically or been molded socially, culturally—or at least not most of us. As my pastor is wont to say, it's not heaven yet.

We are competitive and contentious as a species, and given too much to disagreement and argument. Not only are we contentious and disagreeable among our various nations, races or ethnicities, religions and ideologies, we are constantly disagreeable within them. We are continually in the process of finding reasons to distinguish or differentiate ourselves from others, lift ourselves above them or remove ourselves from them. This is an observable, predictable process, and we are too often unpleasant and hurtful in doing it. And it all breeds deep prejudice and discrimination, anger, even hatred. It's clearly not heaven yet.

A Responsible Market Economy

Deny it with rationalizations, or ignore it if you must. But there is a social responsibility that accrues, a moral obligation that must be continually honored in recognition of the generous provision made to the successful upper and middle classes by our open, competitive market economy. And it is owing to those unable to compete or defeated in the competition: the poor, the infirm, the unable. What's owing are the survival basics: health care, education, and a subsistence living for all.

Yes, this represents the higher sense of social responsibility that an advanced society acknowledges to its citizens, but it is also dictated by the more pragmatic concern for strengthening the labor and intellectual capital components of our economy--and ultimately reducing the cost of both.

College and the Well-Lived Life

Students come to universities with a remarkably materialistic view of what a college education can provide. It was not always thus. In the 1960s, entering freshmen were chiefly interested in developing values and a meaningful phi­losophy of life. Only 40 percent felt that making "a lot of money" was a "very important" goal. By the mid-70s, their priorities were reversed. Making "a lot of money" was now "very important" to 75 percent of entering students.

Since then, making money has continued to be the pre-­eminent reason for attending college. But much research has shown that people who set great store by becoming rich tend to be less happy than those who have other goals. If that is the case, most college freshmen are already on the wrong path to a full and satisfying life.

The widespread pre­occupation with making money has clearly left its mark on the undergraduate curriculum. To compete for applicants, col­leges have felt impelled to offer more vocational majors, and students have responded by gravitating increasingly to pro­grams that prepare them for higher-paid jobs. Three-fifths of all undergraduates in four-year colleges are pursuing vocational majors. Even liberal-arts concentrators may seek majors that look suspiciously like preprofes­sional programs for Ph.D.'s and academic careers.

--"College and the Well-Lived Life," by Derek Bok, Chronicle Review (1.31.10)

Derek Bok is the esteemed former president of Harvard University, and former dean of the Harvard Law School. He remains a professor at the university and a frequent writer on higher education in America. And he teaches a course on higher education policy at the Harvard Ed School, which I was privileged to take while in the doctoral program there. It was one of the most engaging, challenging courses I've taken, and marked by spirited discussions with Professor Bok. You could do that with him; he invited it and enjoyed it--even if he was quite self-satisfied that he had already sorted it all out, thank you very much.

But his concerns with directions in higher education were personal and deep. This had been his life, and he was highly idealistic about the purpose and value of a liberal arts education--about the development and holistic educational experience of the more complete, better-educated person. And nothing was of greater concern to him than that policy makers, universities, and educators, but more, families and students, would lose sight of this understanding and priority. How could we let slip away the understanding that a broad liberal arts education best prepares a student to be a thoughtful, discerning reader, effective writer, critical thinker, and more practiced problem solve--and with better understandings of how people function as individuals, groups, and societies?

For with that educational background, later vocational or professional training can more easily be pursued and practiced, and professional life more effectively, respectfully lived out. And more, life-long learning, well-informed reflection, and constant reassessment are more likely to continue and result in a more important and respected personal contribution to society. That's why a college education in the humanities, arts and sciences is still the most valuable education of all, the best foundation for the well-lived life.