Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Jun 14, 2013

Smartphones at the Breakfast Table?

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Smartphone-at-Breakfast-007

Here’s something I wonder, as I think about faithful uses of technology.

I agree with Sherry Turkle (author of Alone Together) that there should be certain zones that are smartphone-free. Sacred spaces, if you will, such as the carpool line or the dinner table. Places where we are focusing on the people we are sharing physical spaces with. Places where children or other loved ones may to be able to look us in the eye.

But what about the breakfast table?

I grew up with parents who read the newspaper during breakfast. For some people, this remains an essential morning practice. Newspapers invite browsing—flipping from item to item, sharing an interesting tidbit with someone else.

How is reading on a smartphone the same or different than browsing the morning paper? You could argue that a phone is even less problematic, since you don’t have this big wall of newsprint between you and your breakfast companions.

When newspapers first came out, was there a hue and cry that reading them in the presence of other people was “taking people out of the moment,” or “distancing them from the people around them”?

Discuss…

May 6, 2013

Who Was Jackie Robinson’s Jackie Robinson?

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Robert and I went to see 42 last night. Good film, well worth seeing. There was the tiniest layer of cheese over the movie, and the score was not the least bit subtle. But it was well done, and it captured the essence of his story, at least according to Robinson’s widow.

A church member had told me to be on the lookout for references to faith, and they were certainly there. Branch Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) quotes scripture as a justification for signing Robinson to the Dodgers, though he’s also clear that it’s a good long-term business decision. Loved the line at the beginning: “Robinson’s a Methodist! I’m a Methodist! God’s a Methodist!”

During their first meeting, Rickey talks to Robinson about how he is to respond to the racist vitriol that will come—he cannot fight back, even if provoked, because he will inevitably be deemed the instigator by a wary and suspicious public. His job is to play ball and to do it well. (Which he does… and there are clear elements of the trickster in the way Robinson toys with the pitchers when stealing bases.)

Jackie Robinson: You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?

Branch Rickey: No. I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back.

This idea is connected explicitly to Jesus’ teachings later on during a conversation between the two characters.

Given the Christian images that wove throughout the movie, I longed for just one scene of Jackie Robinson in church. It’s not that I need that validation as a Christian or anything. But there is no real sense of the community Jackie grows out of. Whenever we see him in the movie, he’s either on the field, with Rickey, or with his wife.

We see him inspiring countless African-Americans at the time (and it was cool to read that one of the most “Hollywood” moments of the story, involving a young boy at a train station as Robinson and the team pull away, was based in reality). But who inspired and sustained Jackie Robinson? Who did he look to for support? During the torrent of abuse, the pitches thrown at him, the petitions circulating behind his back, was there a community that he leaned on?

Even trailblazers need a community.

As I wrote last week, John Lewis talked recently about the training the civil rights activists received around non-violent resistance to racist attitudes and barriers. That kind of training didn’t spring fully formed in the 1950s, post-Robinson; it rises from a long history and a deep grounding in the stories of liberation in the Bible. I understand that in a movie you have to be economical with the story, but it felt a bit strained for Rickey, an old white guy, to be Robinson’s sole mentor helping him along the way. (Though I loved the character.)

Maybe a Jackie Robinson fan will come along and shed some light—and for all I know the film may be accurate that he was kind of a loner. But there’s a bigger point. I’m always a bit bothered by this kind of portrayal of our heroes. It strikes me as a very American way to tell the story—it’s the bootstrap myth on steroids—but it’s ultimately inadequate. What’s powerful about real-life hero stories is that they tell about real flesh-and-blood people who rise out of a community in a specific time and place. They may see themselves as nothing special, but their gifts and circumstance conspire to thrust them into greatness. Even so, they cannot do it alone. 

Not everyone is called to be Jackie Robinson. Heck, not everyone can be Jackie Robinson. But our world needs people to aspire to great things. If the cultural story we tell is of the lone hero, I suspect that most people will choose to sit out because they think they don’t have what it takes. But if we get to stand on the shoulders of others who’ve gone before, I suspect that more people will get to climbing.

Apr 30, 2013

John Lewis, Marriage Equality, and the Battle Already Won

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John Lewis is arrested during the civil rights era

A short thought for today:

John Lewis was interviewed by Krista Tippett recently about the use of non-violence during the civil rights era. The whole conversation is transcendent. He talks about being beaten during one of the protests and how he was absolutely certain he was going to die.

This exchange has remained in my mind:

Rep. John Lewis: I wanted to believe, and I did believe, that things would get better. But later I discovered, I guess, that you have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. It’s already happened.

Ms. Tippett: Say some more about that.

Rep. Lewis: It’s the power to believe that you can see, that you visualize, that sense of community, that sense of family, that sense of one house.

Ms. Tippett: And live as if?

Rep. Lewis: And you live that you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house.

~

We see this idea lurking in many places, some profound, some not.

“Be the change you wish to see.”

“Fake it ’til you make it.”

It’s also basic Christian eschatology. I can’t find the reference now, but Desmond Tutu talks about preaching against apartheid during the height of that evil system. The police rimmed the arena with guns and intimidation as he spoke. At one point he turned his attention to them and invited them to put down their guns.

Come and join us, he said, because you have already lost. We have won.

I sense this dynamic at work in the fight for marriage equality. We have reached a tipping point, and there is something relentlessly inevitable about it now. It is not a question of if, but when. This doesn’t mean that marriage equality supporters are done with their work. On the contrary, “living as if” gives a sense of energy and urgency to the work. Even many people opposed to gay marriage understand that sooner or later, it will be the law of the land.

(Of course, the inevitability of something doesn’t automatically make it right or good. But I believe the ability to marry the person you love regardless of gender is both a right and a good. And though I’m not on the front lines of this struggle, I have lived toward it in several tangible ways.)

I wonder where you’ve seen this dynamic John Lewis describes. I wonder when and how you live toward this in your own life.

Apr 15, 2013

They Ran Into the Fire

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Two weekends ago we were in Pennsylvania for Robert’s grandmother’s 90th birthday party. It was a wonderful weekend of activities that included a buffet lunch on Sunday after church in the fellowship hall.

During the lunch we sat with my mother-in-law’s cousin, who was a police officer for many years before he retired. He now investigates crime scenes, if I remember correctly.

We were talking about their recent vacation to France when we heard someone call out “Fire! Fire!” The sterno underneath the steam tables had ignited some paper wrappings nearby.

Many people jumped up to help. But nobody moved faster than cousin Will.

After the fire was out and people were settled back into their lunches, we all joked about his superb reflexes and the impulse to be the first into the fray, even during a luncheon for a 90-year-old. I’m sure it’s the training.

Thought about him again today when I saw this:

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Hug a first responder today. If you don’t have one handy, anyone else will do.

And as a second responder, I agree with Patton Oswalt. For me it’s a theological affirmation:

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

title comes from the West Wing episode Twenty Hours in America

Mar 28, 2013

More on Violence and Holy Week: Breaking Bad, Hunger Games

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Rue from the Hunger Games

Rue from the Hunger Games

In response to yesterday’s post:

This was going to be a comment but it’s too long. I want to share a quote from a recent episode of On Being. The ep was The Great Cauldron of Story: Why Fairy Tales Are for Adults Again with a folklorist, Maria Tatar:

Ms. Tippett: I’m just following on some of the things we’ve been talking about also in terms of popular culture. I also do see some very gritty ways right now specific to our time I think. You know, television like The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad or The Hunger Games, you’ve talked about. There’s also this genre where there’s a really intense existential fear. And one of the themes in a lot of these is everything that we think has civilized us is taken away. Right. And that we are brutalized.

Ms. Tatar: Right, right, yeah.

Ms. Tippett: And, but I’ve read you feeling concerned also about some of that going to new extremes that might not be good for us.

Ms. Tatar: You know, it’s hard, I don’t like to be the one preaching a sermon. Because I told you about my childhood experience. So I’m always reluctant to sort of be judgmental. But I must admit that Breaking Bad was my breaking point. That is, that there’s some — I remember just seeing — I won’t even describe it. But I thought, OK, that’s just too much for me.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, I feel that way too.

Ms. Tatar: I have to turn that off, yeah. And Hunger Games I was startled by, because to me, the idea of a book about children killing children was just going to an extreme. It was violating a cultural taboo in a way that was difficult for me. But then there, I read the book and I watched the movie and I thought they were sensational and really fascinating. You know, and I didn’t — even though it had crossed a line, Suzanne Collins somehow seemed to have done it in a way that made sense for me. That you know, there seemed to be a real point to that. And you know, I’m not the one who is looking for a lesson. But you know, we do have a new culture.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Tatar: You know, where there’s a lot more is permitted. We don’t protect our children as much as we once did. And I guess, you know, I do worry that children today they can see anything.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, and they know they’re not protected. Right. That’s…

Ms. Tatar: Right, right, right. And…

Ms. Tippett: I mean, here’s something you wrote: “This savagery we offer children today is more unforgiving than it once was. And the shadows are rarely banished by comic relief. Instead of stories about children who struggle to grow up, we have stories about children to struggle to survive.” But I think that’s a reality people, even children, are aware of.

Ms. Tatar: It is. And I have to say that the minute you go into the protectionist mode and you say, you know, we need to draw a line and it shouldn’t be anything goes, you just get a lot blowback from people who say, oh you know, you don’t give children enough credit. They’re able to navigate this. And also we live in a violent world and therefore children should be, should know that, and all of that. But some of that — I think we haven’t been very thoughtful about figuring out, you know, where is that line? Where do we draw it? What responsibilities do we have as adults? But as I say, I always feel uncomfortable and maybe that’s why we’re not talking about it, because it makes us uncomfortable to be the censors or the editors or the ones who are saying, oh no, oh no, that’s too much.

Ms. Tippett: You know, I remember when my son whose now 14 — I think he was probably 12 or 13 when he was reading and really just inhaling it. And I asked him what it was about? I mean I heard other people tell me what it was about. And the first word that came out of his mouth is, it’s about poverty. You know, that’s not the word other people — I mean it wasn’t about children struggling.

Ms. Tatar: Oh, that’s fascinating.

Ms. Tippett: I mean it was about children struggling, but if this book has him thinking about poverty, well OK.

Ms. Tatar: Oh yeah, because Katniss is — remember when the book starts out she’s skin and bones.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Ms. Tatar: And she’s, you know, she’s living in Panem, the country of bread, where there is no food. And she, you know, she becomes this extraordinary trickster figure, who has to survive in a time of famine and use her wits.

~

The Holy Week angle, not that there needs to be one, is that Jesus’ story has elements of the trickster as well. But more broadly, I resonate with this exchange, even as I notice that Tippett and Tatar are conflating two things. One, the intensity of those stories as they relate to children. And two, the appropriateness of those stories for children.

And we shouldn’t confuse those two issues. There are spheres for adults and spheres for children. I’ve just noticed that extremely dark stuff (violent or not) is not cathartic or entertaining in the way it once might have been before I started relating to children every day, for many hours a day. The fiction leaks into the non-fiction, and the world looks darker than it really is.

But I’m very interested in other perspectives on this.