Galilean-leaks

The wiki-leaks have really created uproar from people and authorities that are less than keen to be transparent: consequently the witch-hunt on the one person associated with the leaks, including every attempt to shut-down moves at uncovering what is covered up. The shroud of secrecy is what the power-brokers and hand washing Pilates and agents of death thrive on.

My deceased grandmother as will many older heads in the Caribbean and Latin America with their years of reading the role of superpowers in the region could have disclosed such leaks without the use of any modern technology. The habits of the powerful and strong never change – they simply assume more sophisticated garb to deploy their conniving and destructive forces. And we are led to believe that for our safety and security this is why we should not want know the truth. So much for democracy with all its checks and balances!

Long before wiki-leaks, governments and people in power have been afraid/fearful of “leaks” – that is the uncovering of what is covered up. Interestingly, the Greek work for truth (alethia) actually means to uncover what is covered up! No wonder Pilate could have supposedly posed the question: what is truth?

Indeed, Jesus would have been at the heart of many Galilean-Leaks. No wonder he was nailed to a tree trunk, even though such an act did not kill or cover up truth – it simply overflowed as a result of that act.

And what are some of the Galilean-Leaks that led to his nailing? A few will suffice and hopefully stir your own imagination:

• Galilean-Leaks: Religious leaders met with Roman authorities to dispel the myth of the birth of a saviour.
• Galilean-Leaks: Religious establishment’s secret memo dismisses virgin birth as wishful thinking and parents as crack-pots
• Galilean-leaks: Herod had sleepless nights and severe temper tantrums. Roman authorities considered removing him!
• Galilean-Leaks: Herod had secret conversations with Egyptians about the whereabouts of the Child
• Galilean-leaks: Religious establishment reveal radicalisation of faith a threat of religious economy and well being of region
• Galilean-leaks: Religious Leaders worried that people were running after maverick religious teacher. Arranged secret meeting with authorities.
• Galilean-leaks: Memo reveal secret meeting with inner circle friend of radical teacher/healer with governing and religious authorities

Should this webpage be active after the publication of this blog, you may wish to return here for further Galilean-Leaks! In the meantime, a blessed Christmas and a new year filled with further uncovering of secrets that impoverish our life together. Truth, God in Christ, is here and available, if only we are able and willing to let go of restrictive and life-denying habits.

copyright © December 21, 2010

Transgressive Advent Thoughts

I too am waiting. However, I am waiting for nothing, anything, something, everything – all at the same time. Generally, the advent language and imagery terrify me. I cringe at the overuse and abuse of light and darkness: reminding me of the dark tribes and the heathens, from that place of total darkness in need of the shining bright Light. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light! Those who live in darkness and embody darkness need light! Imagine this mantra over years on repeating and then try to understand how easily people of a lighter-hue are privileged over those of a heavier one. This is not to mention those laden with long black beards. My terror is compounded not only by this ritual humiliation but the internalisation in both camps as a result. My receptors do a blip and long pause at such readings during this season

But this is not all: the imageries of the season from readings, liturgies and lyrics of those “holy than other hymns” that dropped out of the mouth of God ring in and cast and recast in concrete the notion of Empire: Lord of Might; Thrones shall rest; King of Kings – Make Way, Make Way; He who Shall by Right all the Nations Possess; Everlasting Seat; The Race that long in darkness pined have seen a Glorious Light; His power increasing shall Spread; Him shall all the Tribes of Earth Obey; The Lord Makes Bare his Arms Through all the Earth Abroad. Many have drunk of this wine of intoxication and then reasoned their God-given right to shackle and lockdown others as non-human beings. Scripture, theology, liturgy, lyrics, Empire and Kingdom got on board the holy boat of Christianity. So when the Empire’s priests landed on virgin soil, they fell on their knees, gave thanks to God, ask the natives for their gold and then fell upon them with the might of swords and guns. Today priests of the empire freedom, democracy and free-market for the natives, then bomb the living daylights out of them. I wonder: has the heart of the Divine become sluggish? Stir up the power of your Love, O God and Come. Come Lover of the dead corners of the earth and the forgotten wretched of the earth!

I often wonder how many in the “holy huddle” really expects Jesus to return. I even wonder if the Church really wants Jesus to return. This will be too bad for business: especially having to give up all the power, comfort and security and be no more. Or perhaps we have been so disappointed by the first, we desperately need the second! Believe it or not – I am waiting for Jesus to return. Not that I think he got it wrong the first time. I have lots of troubling questions for him. They are lying like splinters at the tip of my tongue ready to be rolled off. Here are a few:

How come we adore and lavish the “child” of Christmas: with praise of love, joy and hope and canticles of “Unto us a Child is born”; Peace Bearer, Counsellor; O Holy Child; He smiles within his cradle – A babe with face so bright; Infant holy, Infant lowly…. and yet down the ages, exploited and excluded children from most of our life together – relegating them to the margins? We are so exploitative of our children that we need “Child Protection” policies to protect them from us. Why have we missed your insight: Unless you become like a child you cannot enter….What is really your point? How locked? How dull? How unimaginative? How adult? - are our liturgies, texts, homilies, our lives? Is this why we miss the music in the wilderness? O God please raise up children from these stones?

Who are you Jesus-Christ? Your genealogy is quite impressive. In fact, it counters the ridiculous notion of a “purist” identity: Galilee, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and God knows where. So much for the fossilized and shackling ideology of “essentialized identity”. The scandal of particularity sounds very much like hyphenated identities. Are you a hybrid Jesus? Is that why you were very comfortable in traversing and transgressing the worlds of nationality, gender, sexuality, race, and class? Is that why the purists nailed you to the tree? In Christ there are male and female, slave and free, Gentile and Jew, black and white, north and south, east and west – all at the same time!

I love creative disorder. I am WAIT-ing. I am waiting for: no-thing, any-thing, some-thing, every-thing – all at the same time. There is a THING here. Like those learned visitors who sought to worship the Child – I may be off course by 9 miles. You see – as negotiator of the state of in-between-ness, I have a very faint glimpse of what it means to straddle a paradox: that moving line between the already and the not yet; between hope and the temptation to despair.

copyright © November 27,2010

Slanting Views from Recent Journeys

Recently, I had to make two trips to the United States, with the need for penance in terms of my carbon footprint only getting more urgent! The first was a visit to the United Church of Christ and the most recent was to the annual gathering of the American Academy of Religion. Both have been very worthwhile journeys for different and connecting reasons. Here are a few “slanting” excerpts that have nothing to do with the purpose of my travels.

On the first trip, I picked up a copy of what then was a recent issue of the New Scientist magazine. Two articles caught my attention. The first was an editorial about how to handle the many sea wrecks with their dangerous oil contents under the sea. What really caught my attention was the suggestion and the terminology associated with the suggestion: that there is a relatively cheap way of stopping the corrosion and consequently the leaks of what is part of the dangerous wreck at the bottom of the sea. The term is sacrificial anodes, which are already standard on oil rigs and which are used to delay the day when something must be actually done.

The other item that caught my eye was a story about a commercial road to be built in Tanzania in the north of the Serengeti National Park, and which will cut through the migratory route of two million wildebeest and zebra. With protests from various group, the PM said that all he can offer is an unpaved part of the road for the animals to cross as part of their migratory route. You would agree with me that from this story, Zebra Crossing has certainly taken a new meaning in Tanzania.

Both stories offer two powerful images to speak to our present time and the numerous challenges before us. The idea of sacrificial anodes speaks volume to our present economic demise and the foolish wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the loss of many lives (civilians and soldiers). We have developed this very strange habit of not wanting to make tough choices and decisions and to clean up the mess we have created. Instead we seem to major in sacrificial anodes that provide us with a way out, albeit momentarily – delaying the day when we must actually act. Churches are no exception: in terms of my own church, sacrificial anodes are in abundance in our desperate need to deal with our ecclesial shipwreck. In the meantime, we attempt to create small spaces or crossings to provide a way out (as we drift further from reality), again only temporarily and in the meantime we continue to carry-on with all our madness and illogic. “Business as usual” seems to be the only orienting metaphor of our existence. Change tends to be brief and temporary before we soon re-inscribe the very system and way of being that we wish to counter.

At the heart of our proclivity towards “business as usual”, while postponing the actual disaster is our enslavement to an economic system that has neither time nor sympathy for the weak, vulnerable or poor. Its mantra is the survival of the fittest! And this brings me to my most recent trip to the USA (Atlanta). On the way back I had so much time to “play with” that I arrived very early at the airport. My departure lounge was where all international flights leave from. One of the flights –to Rio de Janerio was terribly overbooked – almost 15 extra passengers!!! Capitalism in its most crass form then displayed itself over the public address system as the airline needed to get people to volunteer not to travel on that day but on the next day (as it was the last flight to Rio on that day). Thus passengers were firstly offered 400 dollars, hotel & meal vouchers. But there were no takers or maybe the crowd was thinking about the kind of scene you will witness on the “Deal or no Deal TV Show! After about 10 minutes, a second offer of 600 dollars, hotel and meal vouchers and then some takers. Yet there was still the need for 4 persons to drop out and again the offer goes up to lure the customers. There was a sudden rush as the gamblers in the crowd decided this was it!

Mindful of the need to purge myself of taking any high moral ground, I will endeavour to allow counter cultural anodes to keep me grounded to the fullness of life and living vision of that Galilean-Palestinian Jew who dared to be different and got nailed for it!

copyright © November 9,2010

Cutbacks, Scape-goating and Fairness

The current focus on the nation’s economic woes conjures up for me images of what was known as Structural Adjustment Programme and the deadly touch of the IMF in regions such as the Caribbean, South America and Africa. I can just imagine the millions who are daily experiencing the “grind” of poverty, as a result of an economic system that continue to impoverish whole nations and peoples, more than bemused at our anxieties about pensions, cutbacks, redundancies and loss of benefits. These people have been living in a perpetual state of “cutbacks” and impoverishment and may soon come to our help with insights of how to survive our present demise. I doubt they would be so calloused as to mockingly point out that we are reaping what we have sowed. The Eldorado bubble we have been living in has been punctured. Lies, greed and the insatiable desire for more which have all become first nature, mean that the urgency to change our bad habits will be a long and sacrificial haul.

At this time, it is also sad to hear how politics and politicians have degenerated to a very low level of discourse with their multiple excuses of why the cutbacks. The default mode is that of “scapegoating”. The Con-Libs continue to lay all the blame on Labour for their spending spree and at no point are assuming responsibility for the tough choices they have to make and the decisions they are taking. Some labour politicians, on the other hand, are blaming the banking crisis for the over-spending and debts. No one is accepting that all have bankrolled their policies on an unrealistic economic model and have encouraged unsustainable life styles. In spite of all the present talk and moves around cuts - the fundamental point about changing lifestyles and making different choices will most likely impinge on one set of people - the already vulnerable.

Is this just? Well, we are hearing lots of talk about “fairness” and a new understanding of and conversation on this suddenly elevated virtue. The question, however, is just what is fair, and fairness for whom? How about equality and justice and in what ways would these challenge PM Cameron’s privileged take on fairness. Only a person from a privileged position of power (such as his) can speak of fairness in words as these: “Fairness means giving people what they deserve, and what people deserve depends on how they behave. If you really can’t work, we’ll look after you. But if you can work but refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.”

Indeed, depending on what rung of the social ladder you are located on, fairness may have a different meaning. One cannot help but sense a default mode in operation here: that of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. It would certainly be fair to let the bankers, banks and corpocrats carry the cost for the crisis they have largely engineered, while asking the people to “tighten their belts”. Fairness that is just will want to question the £500 billion bailout of banks as a result of their greed and their continuing piling up of profits and paying out of astronomical bonuses to their executives.

From a Christian [and faith perspective] fairness doesn’t happen by chance. It has to be intentional through just governance and policies and a commitment to the well-being of all (especially the vulnerable). It needs a moral basis which should not be justified in economic terms (as the new interpretation point to) but along the lines of justice and compassion. This is quite a challenge in view of the modern tendency to reduce moral values to economic worth.

copyright © October 19,2010

Not so Smart

Not so long ago, I bought myself a new mobile phone that I thought was very “smart”. By smart I mean that it can pretty well do some neat things to help me manage my more than busy work schedule. There are so many features on this phone that it will take me a few years to be able to employ the full capability of the gadget.

But if I think my phone is "smart", I was even more baffled to read what the intel gurus are predicting about future phones and even TV’s. They are predicting that these and other devices are going to become our trusted advisers. Mindful of my many mood swings, I am intrigued by the possibility that one day soon the personal devices and gadgets we use will be able to sense our moods. Hence, it will soon be possible for Ultra Smart Phones to react to my moods and for my television to even identify if it is really me watching the programme. This should make for some interesting developments for those who compete at home to look at favourite programmes!

The implication is that there is going to be a change in the way we view our relationships with our gadgets. I suspect we are already aware of this! So my phone or TV of Notebook will become my assistant or even companion. Lord have mercy! These future devices will constantly be learning about who we are and how we live, work and play – everything about us. And even the remote of our TV will be able to determine who is holding it based on the grip and how it is held and astutely calculates the viewer preferences (re Channels). And this is only the tip of the multiplicity of possibilities before us.

According to the experts these future possibilities of making all of our context/life readily available on the Net, will heighten our conversations and fears around identity threat and make this look like an ancient joke. The question for us is whether we have become latently enslaved by our own ingenuous creations of simulated worlds around us. And is this ability making us more human or less human? Is there a limit to our ideas of progress and can we ever put the genie back into the bottle? While every new invention will promise us stars and the moons, do we really need them? And I need to ask myself: did I really need that new phone? and if not, why did I purchase it?

Copyright ©October 5, 2010