Phoebe Kate

In all the ongoing blah-blah on the news about Obama and his pastor, I haven’t heard any of the TV talking heads address the real reason why Obama can’t disaffiliate himself from the man who may well be his Achilles heel in the presidential race.  

During his speech, Obama deftly twirled around the issue as if it were his tango partner on “Dancing with the Stars.”  When interviewed, the spokespersons who supposedly represent the black religious community carefully sidestepped it like it’s a landmine only they know exists.  Even Obama himself would prefer to appear a liar in the public eye, reversing his earlier avowal that he’d never personally heard Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric, rather than reveal what keeps him tied to the political millstone around his neck.

The truth is that in certain denominational flavors, pastors hold an ungodly amount of spiritual (read: psychological) power over their congregation and to renounce him would be tantamount to renouncing Christ.  Although evangelical/fundamentalist/born-again circles would not appreciate the comparison, it’s not unlike how traditional Catholics view the Pope: as a divinely ordained spokesperson to the laity — and the implicit warning is you better not mess with the Almighty’s official DD (Designated Delegate.)   

The precept is a very old one.  It originates in the Old Testament, when Israel’s kings and prophets were considered irreproachable and unimpeachable by the people — as it cautions in Psalm 105: “Touch not the Lord’s anointed ones.”  It was a caveat that the ancient Jews took very seriously.   The same idea is further elaborated on in the New Testament with St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians in Chapter 4, where it states: “And He Himself appointed some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers…for building up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith.”  If people believe that all scripture is the inerrant and unchanging word of God to man, then they can’t denounce their pastor, no matter what he says or does.  Hey, if it’s God’s hand-picked man, the problem is His and not theirs. 

Do I personally think Obama shares Reverend Wright’s racist views?  No, I don’t.  But he found himself was in a terrible Biblical bind.  He’s a politican who wants to get elected.  He’s also a Christian who belongs to a church whose beliefs might well seem bizarre and backward to mainstream America.  He doesn’t want to lie, but neither can he afford to explain the real reason why he sat for years under a hate-mongering pastor.  The solution?  Simple!  Just dodge the issue by noncommittally stating he “didn’t agree” with everything Wright espoused from the pulpit — and then quickly move on to another subject.

Obama’s campaign slogan may be “Change we can believe in.”  But after his bit of Political Speech Strategy 101, the old truism applies more than ever.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.        

–phoebe kate

Tonight as I re-read it, I noticed in my Easter Sunday post that I typed Normal Rockwell instead of Norman in referring to the kind of family most of us wish we’d originated from.  I was going to correct it, hoping nobody had seen it – I couldn’t believe that one had slipped under my professional editor radar.  Then I thought: Hell, NO — let it stand (or ”Stet,” in proofreaders’ terminology.) 

Freudian slips tell the whole tale.

–phoebe kate  

Another holiday has rolled around.  Good God, wasn’t Christmas just a few weeks ago?!?!  

All across America, grand repasts are being prepared as I write.  Hams and legs of lamb are roasting.  Jello salads are congealing in the fridge.  Biscuits are baking in the oven.  Little red potatoes and asparagus are steaming.  In some kitchens, certain slightly deranged home chefs are laboring to craft bunny-shaped cakes festooned with white icing and coconut.  Doorbells buzz as relatives arrive.  Handsomely attired in their Easter best, families flock together for feasting and fellowship.     

This scenario either gives you the warm fuzzies and a joyful sense of anticipation or strikes terror in your heart and makes you desperate to concoct an air-tight excuse for being a no-show at the get-together (even if you’re the one hosting it.)  I belong to the latter group, the Deipnophobics (”deipnon” is Greek for dinner) who fear dinner parties (specifically, family ones) and the concomitant conversation. 

There’s a lot of us around, but we tend to be covert and quiet about our problem.  In this Hallmark greeting card world, we seem like misfits, misanthropes and maybe even sociopaths.  The truth is that we’ve attended too many holiday din-dins with kin and don’t kid ourselves that it’s going to turn out any better than the previous ones – unless, of course, a few key players have passed on to their eternal reward or whatnot.  But those folks seem to have made a pact with the devil to live forever and we’ve witnessed how fast they can chuck their company manners.

In every family, there’s a pecking order and a reliable coterie of carpers, cavillers and critics whose barbs and digs are cleverly disguised as humor or advice.  Most of us are loathe to admit this reality.  We’d all like to think our family stepped out of a Normal Rockwell painting, but let’s face it – it’s not just the proverbial fatted calf that gets roasted at our celebratory gatherings.   It’s brother Kevin the college dropout “who’s never going to make anything out of himself unless he straightens up and flies right” or sister Susie the Sleep-Around “whom nobody’s ever going to marry because why buy the cow when the milk is free” or Uncle Joey who can’t keep a job “because he’s so lazy that he sticks his nose out the window so the wind will blow it for him” or space cadet cousin Lucy who “who can’t pour water out of a boot” or Aunt Patsy who’s left the church and receives spiritual counsel from a guru now instead of the pastor. 

Or it’s us, for whatever flaw or faux pas of ours strikes somebody’s fancy at the table that day. 

In every family, there are certain contentious members who relish starting arguments in the middle of the meal and can’t be shut up.  Maybe it’s boozy Uncle Bill or obnoxious Grampa Ned or opinionated Aunt Opal or intolerant Granny Ida – it hardly matters because they’re all the same and they have one thing in common: they are the hardiest souls in our clan.  They can put away three heaping plates of food and a whole pie while railing about religion or politics or economics or whatever and never once get indigestion or lose a good night’s sleep wondering whose feelings they’ve hurt or who they’ve insulted. In the meantime, everybody else is searching for the Pepto-Bismal or a sleeping pill or polishing off what little Scotch boozy Uncle Bill left in the bottle as they lick their wounds in the privacy of their own room.

Finally, every family’s got the Conversation Hog – the solipsistic person who demands center stage and everyone’s attention.  It can be a spoiled youngster, an adult who insists on relating everyone’s remark to something in his or her life or the chronic invalid who’s determined to discuss the details of their colonoscopy.  Little wonder that meals that take five hours to prepare are consumed in five minutes flat and then everyone flees the table.           

Happy holiday, all.  Remember that Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day are right around the corner, not to mention all those birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs and graduation parties.

Good luck.

–phoebe kate                       

My sisterwoman Val has a Golden Oldie living in her home – her 91-year-old mother, whom I love as dearly as if she were my own mother – who gets into mischief when she’s left alone for a bit.  Recently, Val went away for a few days to visit her daughter.  Though well-patrolled  by other family members, Mother decided to set small bonfires in a receptacle meant for soon-to-be-planted plants that was sitting on the back porch.  No harm done, thank God, but disturbing nonetheless for Val to come home and discover the evidence of small burnt offerings in her planter.

Now, I’ve got a Golden Oldie of my own, so I can truly identify with this problem.  In my case, she’s my 91-year-old mother-in-law (born, by weird coincidence, on the same day as my sisterwoman Val’s mother) and she lives next door to my husband and me.  I can’t say she tops my sisterwoman’s mother in pyromaniac proclivities (thank God!) but she’s got her own set of troubling oddities.

For instance: 

– Instead of calling us on the phone to say she needs to borrow some milk or sugar, she     totters across the uneven slopes of our two-acre lot using her walker and beats on our windows at all hours of the day and night to get our attention.     

– When we have workmen digging ditches, installing outside electrical wiring, doing plumbing or delivering large items, she again totters across those 2 acres with her walker to get right in the midst of whatever anybody’s doing.  Today, she nearly got knocked into kingdom come by 2 burly men hauling an HVAC unit as big and heavy as a bull moose into our garage.  They didn’t expect a little old lady to be standing right in the middle of their path where they couldn’t see her.

–When my husband is cutting trees with a chainsaw, she creeps out and stands right behind the tree being cut and starts to chat about the election or the price of gas.  My husband can’t hear her or see her.  He nearly saws her in half along with the tree.  Or she nearly gets crushed like a bug by the falling timber. 

– She thinks every space is her space.  She bangs open the back door of our house at odd hours and we jump into action thinking we’re the target of a home invasion.  That old girl is damn lucky we’re not members of the NRA and don’t own guns.

God bless ‘em, those Golden Oldies.  And may I never live to be so old.

–phoebe kate       

This Latin phrase, meaning “First, do no harm,” is not actually found verbatim in the Hippocratic Oath, but it has been a key concept in medical ethics since ancient Greece.  I just wish it was the guiding principle that governed how men of the cloth go about the work they claim to be doing ”in the name of the Lord.”

Specifically, I wish that someone who has influence with Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ would explain to him the horrific harm he has done to the reputation of Afro-American fellowships across America.  What many — perhaps even the majority — of white Americans know about “black” churches comes from the media because they haven’t personally spent time in them.  

Aha, is this racism rearing its ugly head?  No, I think for most people in the post-civil rights era, it’s a combination of habit and nostalgia.  If we grew up in a household espousing a religious affiliation (and a great many of us probably did), we’re more than likely going to gravitate as adults to churches similar to those we remember from our childhood.  Let’s face it, we like the familiar.  Very few people, other than those with a lifelong passion for comparative religion, become the spiritual equivalent of Christopher Columbus or Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, seeking out new worlds of faith and going where no one in our family has gone before, whether it be a Unitarian fellowship instead of Baptist or a Reform synagogue instead of Orthodox. 

I have been one of these intrepid explorers for over three decades.  My travels have lead me into many black churches.  Initially, what drew me was my fascination with the music.  What kept me coming back Sunday after Sunday was the warmth, unconditional love and acceptance of the people I met there. In all the years I spent in those houses of worship, I only heard the pure and simple gospel of Jesus Christ preached, not the vituperative polemics of Louis Farrakhan.  Jeremiah Wright’s church is in no way typical of the Afro-American religious community in America.  The black pastors I’ve known would be the first to denounce him as a spiritual fraud for the irresponsible and reprehensible misuse of his pulpit to spread a warped message of hate and racism under the cloak of Christianity. 

Pastor Peters, Reverend Crenshaw, Pastor Holmes, Reverend Daniels, Pastor Murrell, Reverend Taylor, Brother Alton, Brother Dickerson, Brother and Sister Watkins, and the Good Will Singers – this blog is for you.  Thank you for proving to me that love, equality and the brotherhood of man are not just lofty ideals or expedient political rhetoric, but a living reality when we stop being ethnically solipsistic and commit ourselves to making the dream come true.    

–phoebe kate