As in Biblical times, the Christmas season officially begins the day after Halloween, and that’s when the holiday catalogs started showing up.
Gird your loins folks: the Season of Audi has arrived.
The deep introspection, the "Emmanuel, God with us" soul-searching can wait until January, when all the hubbub has passed and the bills start arriving.
We piled the catalogs up on the dining room buffet as a visual warning against the coming materialistic storm. A few caught my eye:
“Soft Surroundings: My time. My place. My self. Winter collection. Clothing, home, beauty.” My, oh my, it really IS all about me. For the narcissist in all of us…
“HearthSong: Toys You’ll Feel Good About Giving. Over 100 New Toys… And Limitless Joy!” After 45 minutes of page-flipping, and several phone calls to their 1-800 line, it turns out that HearthSong does not sell Limitless Joy as a stand-alone product. It comes only with the purchase of a toy.
For the first week of Advent, my wife Amy preached about hope. She pointed out that having hope doesn’t mean necessarily that we see a way out of suffering. It does, however, give us a reason to try to keep working through it. We have to believe there’s another side to it. Another possibility. The potential for a new reality.
And that reality will never, ever be realized by responding to violence with more violence. It may make us feel better in the moment. It may seem to offer short-term relief. But ultimately, it makes everyone that participates become a little bit of what they hate. And the cycle continues.
Which story will we choose to try to live into?
Tashfeen Malik, the female suspect in the San Bernardino shooting spree, had expressed support for the Islamic State terrorist group and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a social media post, according to two U.S. officials.
While there was no indication yet that the extremist group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, directed the massacre in California that left 14 people dead, the posting represents the strongest link yet that the killings may have been rooted, at least partially, in terrorism.
Scene: A row house in Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C.
Me: Hi, Joanna! Bob tells me you're writing a book about mansplaining — that’s so interesting!
Joanna: Yeah, I'm excited! It got picked up by a publisher and they're thinking of doing a pretty serious marketing push.
Me: Awesome. I'm a pretty quiet dude by inclination, so I thought I was immune to mansplaining. Then I found myself holding court on Aristotelian metaphysics at a party last week and realized that I was terribly mistaken. I totally speak over and ignore women who know what they are talking about and spend ages explaining things to them anyway.
Joanna: Well, the concept is a bit more complicated than that—
Me: And, of course, society teaches women that you need to nod politely even when you really don't care.
Joanna: Well—
Me: And usually I'm too oblivious to even notice! I think it might even be worse, in a way, when I'm complicit in these conversations, when I don't try to make space for women who know what they're taking about. Most of the time — shamefully — I prefer to listen to a dude gas on about something. Why do I do this? Two big reasons that I can think of (I hold up two fingers):
First (index), I'm a sexist pig. …I can't really play that down. I don't pay attention to women like I should, because I simply don't care enough. I've got some serious respect I need to build when it comes to actually paying attention to people who know what they are talking about, especially when those people are women. I mean, I call myself a feminist but I still have a lot of work left to do.
Joanna: Well, most guys do. But—
Me: Second (add the middle), like with most of the ways men screw up, I think this flows from a deep insecurity.
I wonder if God calls us to celebrate waiting because the lie we’re all most susceptible to is that if we just get what we want, we’ll be ok. When this is our mentality, we actually forget to live. We become so future-oriented that we can ignore the presence of God in our midst and the signs of the Divine work in this world. We can miss out on the good things he provides daily, hourly.
The oh-so-familiar reaction started before we knew what had happened. Posts on social media encouraged us to pray. Tweets went out bearing hashtag prayers. It’s far too familiar.
McDonald was a 17-year-old kid, gunned down by a police officer as he was walking away. The dashcam video shows Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times in the back.
But the official police story after the murder was that McDonald “refused to comply with orders to drop the knife and continued to approach the officers.”
The officers. Multiple officers witnessed the shooting, but none of them blew the whistle. Instead, they participated in a huge cover-up. It took 400 days for the video to be released. Why did it take so long?
Many speculate it’s because Emanuel was in the middle of a close election and the video would have hurt his chances of winning. To add fuel to the cover-up conspiracy, 86 minutes of footage was deleted from a Burger King security camera, including footage of the shooting. According to NBC Chicago, “a Burger King district manager said police deleted the security footage after spending more than three hours in the restaurant.”
Yeah. Emanuel and the Chicago police have trust issues.
Because in the end we are left with this fact: Laquan McDonald is another black body that didn’t matter.
The epidemic of gun violence in America has become the new normal. We can’t just blame it on the brokenness of the world, pray for peace, and move on, worried that anything more will be seen as politicizing tragedy. What is tragic is that those who have the ability to DO something about this crisis refuse to offer more than simplistic sentiments on Twitter before getting caught in a circular argument about our rights as Americans. It’s time for people of faith to respond out of their faith and work to stop senseless violence. As Nicholas Kristoff wrote in the New York Times today: “It’s not clear what policy, if any, could have prevented the killings in San Bernardino. Not every shooting is preventable. But we’re not even trying.” Common sense measures like universal background checks — which is supported by 85 percent of Americans — would be a good start.
7 Our ancestors sinned the great sin of instituting slavery; they are no more—but we bear their shame.
8 The system of slavery and institutionalized racism ruled over us,
and there is no one to free us from their hands.
9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the guns on the streets.
French authorities announced Dec. 2 that they shut down three radicalized mosques.
After the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, the government proclaimed a state of emergency, which grants it wide latitude to conduct searches, make arrests, and ban public gatherings.