Author: revbaum

I manage issues of faith & politics with a dry sense of humor and my own unconventional perspective. I’m ordained, progressive and “woke”. I am a chaplain, health coach, spiritual director and pastor.

I saw Delight Today

I saw Delight today

And joy.

They were in a diner with a couple of kids.

The kids were arguing over who got to hold the menu

And delight reached her arms around one child

And kissed him on the top of his head.

Joy got the attention of the other

And helped her look at the pictures of the ice cream sundaes

And discussed quite seriously, the difference

Between caramel and butterscotch.

The two had Peace among them

Congregational care in the little booth

And a moment of the fleeting holiness

Where sanctity is ice cream

And beauty is sipped

Through a plastic straw.

#poetry

Here We Are Again, Lord


Here I am again Lord
Lonely and afraid
Although I know you are with me.
We sit together in this quiet time
Like an old married couple.
Its not necessary to talk
We’re both too tired
And you know what’s on my mind
without me saying a word.

Yet I feel compelled
to remind you
that I’m afraid.
I’m taking a chance.
I’m crossing the lane
Crossing that line
Jumping without a parachute
Flying without being tethered
to anything
but you.

Yeah, yeah you’re here.
Do my speaking
Do my flying
Make my pitch
and come back home
and tell me how it went.

Because I’m tired.
Its been a long life
No one knows
we live like this
in this sort of
relationship.

They wouldn’t believe me
if I told them.

Prayer of Confession 1

Oh my Lord,
My sweet, sweet Lord.
I imagine the disengaged expression on your face
Used to represent an antiquated Jewish carpenter
From the “middle” East,
Yes you, that Jesus;
Please help us.

You see Lord,
We the People,
In order to form a more “perfect union”,
A union of all American men
who are white and strong and good and straight
And ride the white horses
In chasing away those
Evil injuns
And saving the helpless women
In the petticoats and calico dresses,
The “make American great Again” men
Please Jesus,
Please forgive “us”,
The white men that created you.

Deliver us from the
Hate swarm
Group-think
Power hungry
Egomaniacal
Fear filled
Gun toters
Who profess
to believe in a
Guns-and-Roses Moses
And not a brown and homeless
immigrant.

Let me kneel and wash your tired feet
As you wipe the sweat from my
Upturned brow before you
And receive your grace in place of those
Who feel no need, nor understand
Arrogance, bigotry, sexism, xenophobia.
Please forgive us as
Mr. Cleaver forgave the Beave
For doing something so stupid
That we make even those who
Desire to live stupidly
Feel offended.

And dear Lord? My golden calf Lord?
Teach us again how you
Washed the feet of the 12
And probably even more than 12,
If you actually count the women,
And the children
And the stranger
And Elijah;
Elijah who awaits an invitation to
Come to our “open” table
And celebrate with all of us.

Finally.

Amen.

Why do you call Him good?

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, a man approaches Jesus and asks him what he has to do to “inherit eternal life”. He is called “the rich young ruler” and he addresses Jesus as “Good Teacher” and Jesus replies, “Why do you call me ‘good’?” Jesus goes on to tell him to keep the commandments and the guy says he’s done all that. So Jesus tells him to sell all he has & give it to the poor, and then, in addition, follow Jesus. The man goes away sad because he doesn’t want to do that. And that’s the end of his story.

The young man called Jesus “good” and I can imagine Jesus saying, “Who told you that?” or “Where did you get that idea?” or even “What do you mean by ‘good’?”

As a person who is sent to talk to families during emergency situations, I can tell you that people often think that I do not come bearing “good” news but the news about what Jesus came to offer us is called “good news”, the “Gospels”.

So if Jesus has been thought to be, or even misunderstood as a “good” teacher and the news of Jesus is considered “good news” then why is it that in so many places in Christian history that people of this ‘good news” have been everything but good?

I often feel as confused about the Christian faith at 56, having been in ordained ministry for 22 years, as I did as a young teenager at church camp, reflecting on locker room body shame of a 13 year old. It makes no sense.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve witnessed these things – just briefly, and to name these casually:

  • The United Methodist Church (my denominational home) passing church law to ban anyone other than heterosexual celibate singles or married people from ordained ministry
  • The same religious body to put any clergy person on probation without pay for one year should they perform a legal wedding ceremony between same gender couples & then to strip them of their credentials (remove them) if they do it again
  • A Facebook Messenger video in the voice of Donald Trump discussing the importance of Christian faith, the need for prayer & how vital it is in the backbone of the US & that message being shared in all seriousness by evangelicals who believe him to be the “savior for our country”
  • Weekly natural disasters while our administration claims there is no scientific “proof” of climate change
  • Immigrant children living in cages, three having died in US custody & when the infants and young children were separated from their guardians, no system was in place to keep track of where they were being sent
  • A federal investigation that concluded Russia did interfere in the 2016 election & nothing is being done to safeguard the next Presidential election
  • The Attorney General lies under oath & then stands in contempt by refusing to appear before the House Judicial Council AND misrepresenting a two year investigation to the entire country
  • The President attempting executive privilege to block testimony about investigations about his own corruption before Congress where there could and should be a balance or power

I don’t want to seem paranoid or anything but I know I’m not the only person who is noticing these things but NOTHING IS BEING DONE TO STOP THIS.

We can’t stand on the basic tenets of our Constitution. We can’t stand on the tenets of Wesleyan Tradition of using Scripture, tradition, reason and experience in working out our salvation. Further back,  we have distorted Christianity into something I no longer recognize in this country and champion Donald Trump as a Christian leader and even without any religious dogma, Truth itself, decency, respect are all subject to interpretation and/or cannot be trusted.

We have indeed traded the truth for a lie, we have stomped on the necks of our sisters and brothers in order to get an extra teaspoon of sugar for ourselves. No, there is no decency, there is no kindness.

If the people who believe America was once great when others were sorely oppressed (and wanted to “Make America Great Again”) are proud of themselves and the Pharisees are riding high with the Klan, I will be with those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and even those who hunger and thirst for food and drink and medication and education and work with their children in the cages because that’s where I will find the “Good Teacher” and not some Golden Cow.

Here I Stand.

Bedlam

“…God has disposed us with a mushroom shaped cloud …. someone will set the bomb off, and we will all be blown away…”

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Our family sang songs in the car on trips, especially vacations, but I believe we were a little unusual in that we sang a few that were not the usual …

Sweet Rosie O’Grady, she was a blacksmith by birth …
Just a Bowl of Butterbeans…
Three itty fishes and a momma fishy too…
In the Boarding House Where I Lived….
We Live for You, We Die for You, National Embalming School…

There was another song, that is vaguely remembered from a cassette tape recorded by my dad, a couple of his sisters and their husbands, on a trip he took back home a few months before his sudden death, 34 years ago this month. If I could remember it now, it would be a great history lesson, almost as good as Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

It talked about how the French hate the Germans, the Irish hate the Scots, etc and ended with a line similar to the one I began with “…and we will all be blown away”, followed by a whistle of the sound of a bomb dropping from the skies. It was written post WWII, obviously, and wasn’t one of the more popular Baumgartner tunes, but I listened to the tape, and in the decade following my dad’s death, spent a good deal of time with his little sister (almost a carbon copy – they looked like twins). We sat around playing canasta, with bourbon and coke flowing freely, & sang & drank & smoked & played all night. It was the ‘80s. We were in the middle of the Cold War, and discussions of nuclear weapons were popping up like dandelions around families and churches and social clubs. The US spent (at least) billions of dollars on a bomb that would stop their bomb before it could reach us, and although it failed in every test back then, we poured billions and billions more into it, seemingly with endless funds and voter support.

All along though, the US had enough nuclear war heads to blow up the entire planet several times over. “My stockpile is bigger than your stockpile…” was the US/Soviet dialogue.

How things have changed.

Looking back to those days, no one and no-thing could stop the power of the US with the backing of Ronald Reagan. We were the shining city on the hill, where the poor dreamed of a better life and sought to make their way here. We didn’t fear them. Unless they were Communists, of course. Even then we opened our arms to those who sought political asylum from the Soviet Union in the US, many talented and brilliant people who sought freedom and teetered over the tight wire of Communism, oppression, and poverty to beg for our protection.  We granted them the sanctuary to house them and keep them safe from their enemy states.  (Hmmm, whatever happened to doing that, say, for Syrians?)

Even though I’m a Democrat, I respected all the Presidents, regardless of political party, because they were OUR Presidents. While I became President-elect of the College Democrats following the Mondale/Ferraro attempt to win the White House in 1984 and got to attend wine and cheese parties at Speaker Jim Wright’s home in Fort Worth, I have to grant respect to Reagan (aka the Great Communicator) for coming to a nuclear agreement with the Soviet Union. My side was wanting an elimination of nuclear warheads and even nuclear power plants but that was not to be. But it seemed that by the end of the Cold War, the US/Soviet relations had agreed to disagree. It would have been incomprehensible for Reagan to have had the covert spies or friends of Gorbachev have photo ops in the Oval Office, or would Reagan or Bush or Nixon, for that matter, ever considered the Soviet leaders as people to be admired.

Had there been a question of Russian involvement even giving Mondale a couple of electoral votes in that pitiful Presidential election of 1984, I would bank on Ronald Reagan making a speech and endorsing a full fledged investigation into any interference in our American democratic process. Any American President would, until now.

Half of the Democratic Presidents of my lifetime had mistresses who were either accepted or hated by the media, except Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter; and Jimmy Carter actually acknowledged his sin of “lust in his heart” to Playboy magazine and everyone was aghast that such a thing could be said. JFK had numerous women at his disposal, Bill Clinton did, too. We thought THOSE issues were scandalous?

What has happened? Where did our education of civics, our understanding of American history and our diplomacy go?

Try as I might, I can’t understand this phenomenon of Trump believers. I think it is because they do believe in something of Trump that does not equate with patriotism. Trump himself seems clueless as to how the three branches of government work. I have friends who think that presidents are elected for 8 year terms. Many believe that individual states already have power that outweighs Supreme Court decisions or can manipulate the Court’s decisions to fit their culture. (Look at what’s happened to sanctuary cities, abortion rights, and gay marriage).

Now we have the “good old boys” who have been the backbone of the American south (in my exposure anyway) with whom I shared classes with in all of the schools I attended, who have begun this vitriol over Blue Lives Matter and the Confederate Flag being a symbol of southern history (it was an uprising and we lost …hello????). The NRA has become the 4th Reich; “buy a gun, get one free for the sociopath of your choice”. And coworkers who supported Trump have said to me it was “that transgender thing … the queers … that’s just not Christian” or, more popular still was “I just can’t vote for Hillary Clinton.”

What has happened, America? That sick feeling I had the night of the Presidential election and the days following did not go away; they have been stretched out from having a political flu, to a short remission with the Women’s March, back down to a relapse in the face of White Nationalists organizing in Charlottesville …. which wouldn’t trouble me as much but the swastikas, the white robes and the TORCHES? Seriously, TORCHES?? What the hell? Are these born again cavemen or Klansmen? It’s hard to differentiate.

Here I Stand.

But I cannot finish with the words of John Wesley, “So be it”.

Hey God: What? How? When? Why?

Siri defines “bedlam” as “a scene of uproar and confusion”.

I define God as the great “I AM” and the Creator.

Please, God, re-create us in your image and grant us wisdom to relieve our confusion.

AMEN+