I guess I don’t understand what happened in the Holocaust. I don’t understand how people could either survive the way so many did, through the hell of those times, or how folks on the other side could get on with their ‘everyday’ lives while knowing about the horrors, or even working in the camps. (Though I do understand how the Germans felt who didn’t necessarily know or realize the horrors or details of the concentration camps, because my government also keeps me in the dark about the atrocities for which we are responsible.)

I just heard on NPR the story of a woman who was in Auschwitz. She talked in a way that only survivors of the Holocaust can speak. I have only met three survivors personally, but they all shared a kindness that I can’t quite describe, but that you probably understand if you, too, have met a survivor.

I will tell the positive message she gave in her story to me, and the message I was given by another Holocaust survivor — a woman in Nahariya, Israel, about 6 years ago My telling these stories is meant to be a testament to the courage of the survivors and of those who died in the camps, so I hope you are able to read it as such:

My mother boldly wrote a letter to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which she posted at her new blog site http://cynthiagustavson.modblog.com — which closes with the following passage:

“What is a Christian church that doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus, the one who included prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers, the one who challenged the role of women in his conversations with Mary and Martha, the one who healed on the Sabbath, the one born in a manger?”

She doesn’t write this out of a desire to break with the church. On the contrary, she is a devoted Lutheran, and is even an elected member to the nationwide meeting of the ELCA from Oklahoma, where they live.

Jesus was born in a sheep and donkey trough, surrounded by the smell of manure and dust. Jesus healed on the Sabbath — even in Chariots of Fire, the main character doesn’t run on the Sabbath because of his faith convictions 2000 years later. What does it mean that Jesus ate with tax collectors, and told the crowd, “if you don’t have sins, throw the first stone…”?

If homosexuality were a sin, I would still believe in acceptance, as a Lutheran, as a follower of Christ, and as a compassionate human being. I don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin, and especially not because of what the bible says. If I believed in the bible in that manner, I couldn’t interact women on the days of their menstruation, and I could be killed for many other offenses.

And even if we did believe in the ‘literal’ interpretation of the scriptures, we would need to go back to the roots of the laws contained therein, and to understand the situations for which the codes were used, or applicable. I have been told that, in the time of the Old Testament, it was customary, or at least in practice, that the conquering army would rape their prisoners of war. And I have heard that male prostitution was as common as female prostitution.

The possibilities for literal translation of these passages is endless because of our own little knowledge on the historical significance of the laws.
So what about now? What do we believe as Christians, or simply as members of this society. Do we believe that it’s okay on television, but not in church (Will and Grace for example)… Do we believe that Spongebob is gay, and decide to homeschool our children, and shelter them from the outside world of ‘Atheists’?…

Again, I quote my good friend Jeshua Erickson from his blog at www.jeshuaerickson.com/blog:
“The Jesus I’ve experienced in my life is the Jesus who watched over me when I slept a night on the street or who joined me when I slept in a shelter, or who guided me when I hitchhiked across the country alone, taught me this: there is enough judgement and condemnation in the world. What we really need is faith to know that God can still do his work even if we aren’t busily condemning folks in his name.”

I encourage you to also visit Lars Clausen’s website, where he writes details about a plan to explore the condemnation and the compassion of this divisive discussion, http://www.onewheel.org/244.html:

“Sometime early this summer I plan a month-long solo unicycle ride to explore beyond the divisive issues of gay marriage and seek the stories of everyday GLBT people in America. My hope is to add a word of compassion to the contentious “moral” conversations of this past election.”

The one born in a manger surely doesn’t close the door on our brothers and sisters of faith who were born differently than those of us who are societally considered ‘normal’. We who are ‘normal’ should concern ourselves more with ourselves, and our embracing of our brethren and friends in faith.

When people are born to preach, let them preach. When people are born to play music, let them play. Let people love whom they love. And let them, and let us, treat those we love with the respect that Christ begs from us, whatever that might mean…

Chariots of Fire is an unbelievable movie. I just picked it up at the public library and watched it tonight… If you haven’t seen it, it is an incredible film.

Maybe I like it so much because of my interest in running, or because of my deep intensity… The movie is about essentially two characters, a Jewish man and a Christian man, two runners with passion enough to power a steam engine…

The Christian man, Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), runs for divine ecstasy… with little form, he churns past everyone else with raw determination and love — really unbelievable to watch… and he preaches after his races — he tells people of the spirituality of this running… If he didn’t run, he would be disobeying God.

And yet, near the end of the movie, (this doesn’t entirely spoil the plot, but don’t continue reading if you don’t want to know what happens near the end…), Liddell refuses to run on the Sabbath.

And the Jewish man, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), runs with a passion born out of anger — out of his need to replace the discrimination and anti-semitism in society with something — and he vows to beat everyone — his quest is to win — also for something greater than himself…

The movie takes place around 1920, right after the great war, and remarkably deals with the incredible moral dispersion of British/Scottish society… Jewish and Christian, country and city…

I was moved again not only for all of these things — for the powerful meaning of the running, and for the movie’s incredible grasp of the divine — but for a more personal reason.

My father is the best runner I have ever known. Not that he always won. But that there was this fierce determination, this joyous love, and incredible breath and blood and muscle caught up inside of him, and it burst out with the steady pounding of his legs on the pavement, or on grass, or dirt.

My father ran in airport terminals. He ran in tuxedos rented for weddings after the party was over. He ran to school at age 3. He ran a sub-5 minute mile at age 50. He lived for running. He lived for the sweat, for the heat and the cold, the pounding of his feet on the pavement.

And my father and I were in a terrible car accident about 4 years ago. And the doctors said he would never walk again.

And today when I watched the scene in Chariots of Fire when Liddell is pushed off the track, sprawling on the lawn, and he gets up, and he runs with the passion of a ‘wild animal’, driven on by his faith, and by the passion he said was straight from God, with all the speed he could pull from his heart.

And my father is the same way. He walks to communion every Sunday. He bikes almost as fast as he used to, going out for hours through the city and the hills of Tulsa, OK. But he will never run again.

It makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I was with him in the car, and I wasn’t hurt at all. My wrist broke, but it healed perfectly, and my body was bruised, but I healed. I wish I could give my dad use of my legs for one run, for one time tearing through the streets…

But I know all of us have certain parts of us that fade away, certain traits that go, certain people that we lose touch with. And often, those things are exactly the parts of us we would love to keep most.

When Liddell in Chariots of Fire was given a choice, he chose to stay with his morals, to stay with his character, to run only for God, and not for his own glory… And he couldn’t run in the race that had been the focus of his life.

We always have something. We always have God. And beyond that, we have our own love, and our passion. Mine is for my music. My dad’s is for that feeling he gets when he is riding free on his bike, when he used to run with every ounce of strength he had. And we have our love for each other.

God bless.

“For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

“Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

“In public testimony he said, ‘after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

– Bill Moyers, after winning the fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

Funny that the first thing I think of when reading this text is the Lorax from Dr. Seuss, one of the best books ever written about environmental degradation and oppression… “Perhaps, if you plant this seed, and protect it from axes that hack, the Lorax and all his friends will come back…”

And here are people that believe that Christ requires the kind of strife that is happening in Iraq and in Jerusalem for the final day when he will come back and claim the chosen. Can we take the gospel of John so literally that we design our environmental policy and our social policy in our nation based on a belief that all civilization must come to ruin before Christ will come again? Is that what Christ came to preach?

The Christ that I believe walked the earth, as God’s arm down to the oppressed and the weary, the downtrodden and the sinners, sat with lepers and with tax collectors, came to say that even those who have nothing, who are destroyed and broken… even they have God…

And Martin Luther suffered in his time for saying that we needn’t pay for God, for redemption, for grace. God is with us, Emmanuel. This is the Christmas season, and yet we cling to destruction, we cling to the passion, and not the birth. We cling to the resurrection and not the human God among us.

What should we see in this new year? Should we eat McDonalds every day, and buy more stuff, and build houses and buy cars, and teach our children to love violence and hate our enemies… is this the preparation for the kingdom?

I am a Christian, and I use the bible as my guide, in my beliefs in social justice and in my personal values. But I do not believe in the bible as the incarnate word of God on paper. I do not believe in the literal ‘truth’ of these words. I believe in God, and I believe in the teachings of the words that are written there on the pages of my bible. I believe in Christ as Emmanuel, God with us, and I believe in the teachings of Emmanuel, the parables, the stories, the life he led among us.

There is a gospel song that I love the sound of, but I would never sing: “Are you afraid to Die.” This song’s words are: “Are you afraid, are you unsaved, are you afraid to die…” This is not my theology. I don’t believe in a theology of fear. I believe in a God of hope, of grace, and of compassion. When I see hatred in the world, I think of Lazarus, and of Jesus sitting by his tomb and weeping.

I don’ t believe that God wants us to destroy our environment, and support the aggressions in Jerusalem and in Iraq. Climate change is not a sign of the Second Coming.

In a brilliant passage in his book, Lars Clausen, my new favorite author, in his book, One Wheel, Many Spokes, http://www.onewheel.org, writes about a religious service he took part in at the Grand Canyon, where the preacher talked about how God was a lighthouse. Lars writes about how crazy it is, so far away from any water, from any shore where a lighthouse would be needed, to compare Christ to a lighthouse, when Christ was in every rock, in every river, every dry bush in that huge and wondrous canyon.

So many people are blinded by their own false reality. The television tells them the way to believe. They home-school their kids, they buy special books that tell a different history, and special textbooks that shield their kids from geology and biology because of the word ‘evolution.’

Let’s open up our eyes today to the great presence of God around us, in the trees, or in the fields, or in the people we meet.

I just got off the telephone with an incredible man, Lars Clausen. Lars is the holder of two Guinness World Records for distance unicycling, and wrote a book about the people he met on his 9,000 mile trip across the country on his one wheel.

This book has changed my life. You MUST go visit his website right now — http://www.onewheel.org — his story is your story and my story, and all of our stories. He tells the story of a country divided on political and racial and religious lines, and of a country united after 9-11, all in the casing of an adventure on his unicycle. He is truly an inspiration.

The quote he encloses from Mark Twain to sum up his entire book, all of our lives, and the way he sees the world is this:

“Twenty years from now you will be
more disappointed by the things
you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I wrote to him my life’s story after I finished the book because I felt so closely connected with him after finishing the book — and you will too.

His trip was also not only for himself, but for a very important endowment supporting Native Americans in Alaska. Please visit his site at http://www.onewheel.org

Here is an incredible portion of his book where he talks about the present political divide in this country:
“Having protested the War in Afghanistan, I appreciate Twain’s 1905 essay on war: ‘The half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightaway got such a a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.’ In the first months after 9-11, it felt almost traitorous to critique our government.
The hospitality we are experiencing on our unicycle journey is a complete contrast to the fear, violence and hostility that dominate public discussion. Our family is living into this hospitality state by state, person by person, and the cumulative effect is powerful. I am convinced that this hospitality can make a difference in our world. I find myself wishing our roads could be filled with cyclists, out gaining this view of life’s compassionate side.”

Clausen is a visionary come unicycling into our lives with his knee and elbow pads.

New York Times, January 15, 2005, Front Page.
“Jerusalem, Jan. 14. — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered Friday that all government officials cut ties with the Palestinian Authority and that the Gaza Strip be sealed until Palestinian leaders moved to curb terrorism.”

Yet again, the promise of ‘peace’ lasts a day.

I went to Jerusalem on September 11, 2000, full of the hope of a young boy, wanting to change my world. Wanting to achieve that ‘peace’ that people sing about, that I sang in “Where have all the flowers gone” — ‘when will they ever learn…’ — I truly believed that all people had to do was learn, and that peace would happen.

And then my childhood was broken apart just as easily as a few words are spoken, as easily as a few bodies were shot and torn.

Still, 5 years later, they are still at the same point. Do we truly believe that all is possible because of the death of Yasser Arafat? Was everything his fault in this whole conflict?

In the year 2000, when Arafat and Barak were meeting at Camp David with Bill Clinton and Aaron Miller, they had agreed on everything — everything was simple — the Israelis pull out from the land that they have illegally claimed in the last 40 years, and the Palestinians stop acting out in violence. There had been no ‘terrorist’ attacks in 3 years. Are we better off now? What happened between then and now.

Yet here we stand again in the ‘peace’ process, three steps backwards, and three steps forwards…

Will there be peace? Can there be peace? What does it mean to have peace in Palestine, in Israel, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, in Tel Aviv?

For the Israelis, its a big big wall — its a cage around Gaza — keep the animals in, and they won’t hurt us. For the Palestinians, it is freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of resources.

Sharon suspends Palestinian ties. What do we think when we read this in the paper. This has happened before — Sharon does this all the time — it’s a trick — make everybody around the world think that you want ‘peace’ — and then pull out at the last second, pointing your finger at the other guy, saying everything’s their fault.

God be with the children in Gaza tonight, angry and poor. God be with the children in Israel tonight, scared and secure.

I know many Israeli children, and they are all good. I know many Palestinan children. They are all good. Children need not pick up stones and M-16s to fight their parents’ useless war. Children need not pour this concrete to build up their parents’ wall.

The wall gets higher every day. More cement poured, more barbed wire layed down with razors on the top.

And somehow, it all seems so silly. I read a story about the death of a man who was climbing over the wall and shot by Israeli soldiers as he scrambled down the other side. What was he doing? Going to work? He certainly was no spy — he was ‘armed’ with a table knife… And yet the newspaper article portrayed him as a terrorist…

I think there are no terrorists, there are no soldiers. There are children, there are adults, and there are human beings. Each one lost is another tear from the eye of God.

Take Care.