Women’s History Month: A Major Women’s Anniversary Approaches

In not quite two weeks, on April 2^nd, we will commemorate the 100^th Anniversary of the swearing in of the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin.  This is clearly a major event in American history. 

I shared this fact with two different friends in entirely unrelated conversations last week, and they had exactly the same reactions:  they immediately blurted out, “she was in Congress before she could even vote?!”  Well, no, it didn’t work that way, and how it did work is part of Jeannette Rankin’s story. 

Jeannette Rankin was born in Missoula, Montana on June 11, 1880.  Her father was a rancher and her mother a schoolteacher.  She was the eldest of six children: five daughters and one son.  Besides helping with her younger siblings, Jeannette did her daily outdoor work and farm chores while helping to maintain the machinery at the ranch.  Once, she built a wooden sidewalk for one of her father’s buildings all by herself.  Years later, she said that as a child she had observed that women worked side by side with men as equals in the 1890s western frontier, but they did not have an equal political voice and were denied legal voting rights.

After high school, Jeannette attended the University of Montana.  She worked as a seamstress and a teacher and also tried social work.  Her social work experience was of sufficient interest that she furthered her studies at the New York School of Philanthropy, which later became the Columbia University School of Social Work.  She also attended the University of Washington in Seattle.  At this last, Jeannette became active in the women’s suffrage movement.  Further, in 1910, one of her associates in this work, Denver news reporter and women’s rights activist Minnie J. Reynolds, persuaded Rankin that pacifism was an inherent part of feminism. “The women produce the boys and the men take them off and kill them in war,” Reynolds argued.  Rankin’s reading of Benjamin Kidd’s 1918 book, The Science of Power, solidified her commitment to Reynold’s feminist-pacifist ideology. Kidd found in men a natural inclination to battle while he found in women a preference for peaceful settling of disputes. 

Jeannette had been active in the efforts in Washington State to grant voting rights to women, and those efforts succeeded in 1910, as Washington became the fifth state to allow women to vote.  She then moved home to Montana, where she started working toward similar rights there.  Her efforts were instrumental in achieving that goal in 1914, and Montana became the tenth state where women could vote.  Then Jeannette decided to try running for Congress.  Her brother, a lawyer and active in state Republican politics, helped finance and manage her campaign.  Montana had two Representatives who served a single state-wide “at-large” district.  In the election on November 7, 1916, of six candidates, Jeannette received the second highest vote total, 76,932, and 7,567 fewer than the front-runner.  She got 9,958 more than the third highest vote-getter, so her performance was quite respectable.  The following April 2, 1917, when the 65^th Congress convened, she was greeted with enthusiastic applause as she took her seat in the House.

This was all in the midst of World War I.  In the opening days of April, newly elected President Woodrow Wilson asked for a Declaration of War.  This was granted on April 6; the vote in the House was 373 to 50.  Ms. Rankin was among the 50 “no” votes.  Because she was the only woman, her vote was all got considerable attention, not all of it complimentary.  Her other distinction in her one term in the House in that era was to initiate the legislation and help lead the push for passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, which would give women the right to vote everywhere in the country.  The House passed this amendment twice during 1918, but each time the Senate narrowly voted it down.  It finally passed both Houses of Congress in 1919, after Rankin had left the House, and was ratified in late August 1920.

Jeannette Rankin ran for Senate in 1918, but lost in the Republican primary.  She then bought a small farm in Georgia and became a public speaker and lobbyist on behalf of peace and the prevention of war.  During that time, of course, World War II developed, and she returned to Montana to run for the House again in 1940, at age 60.  Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941, and the vote in Congress to declare war Japan took place on December 8.  The vote in the Senate was unanimous and in the House, it was 388 to 1.  Asked to change her vote – actually by then-Representative Everett Dirksen – Ms. Rankin said, “As a woman, I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”  Reaction to her NO vote was so disruptive that she had to take shelter in a phonebooth in the Capitol Building until security officers could escort her out. This ended her political career. 

She did consider running again, however, in 1972, when she was 92, in order to argue against Viet Nam involvement, but her health would not permit.  She died in Carmel, California, on May 18, 1973.  While her pacifist sentiments had brought the most publicity in later years, she said in 1972 the she hoped she would be remembered most for being “the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote."

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I composed this narrative for an event on March 19 at my home parish, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, NY.  Called “Unsung Heroines”, this is becoming an annual Women’s History Month commemoration, celebrating notable women who receive relatively little recognition.  Among the other women lauded in parishioner presentations were Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman ordained in the Anglican Communion and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel singer precursor to Chuck Berry and other rock-‘n-roll stars.  Presentations this year also included a couple of other suffragettes.

Sources for the material on Jeannette Rankin presented here include the Wikipedia article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin, her entry in the U.S. House of Representatives “History” section: http://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/ and – interestingly – an entry in the U.S. Senate history section: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Jeannette_Rankin.htm.  That selection begins, “No history of American representative government could properly be written without a major reference to Representative Jeannette Rankin.”  Detail on her pacifist positions is given in http://www.historynet.com/jeanette-rankin-no-vote.htm.

Obviously, Ms. Rankin and her accomplishments have often been “sung”.  But the proximity of the anniversary gave ample justification for including her in a celebration of Unsung Heroines.

"Christmas Eve in Space and Communion on the Moon"

Christmas Night 2016

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, the first manned space vehicle to do so.   The astronauts on board,  Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders commemorated the occasion by reading the first 10 verses of Genesis as millions of people around the world watched a special telecast from the spacecraft.

In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal[1], Eric Metaxas writes of this and then describes for us an occurrence on Apollo 11, the following July, in which Buzz Aldrin partakes of Holy Communion inside the lunar landing module on the Moon itself.  Herewith some segments of the story:

[W]hat could one do to mark the first time human beings landed on another heavenly body? He asked Dean Woodruff, the pastor of his church in Webster, Texas, who had an idea. 

What if he were to take communion? What is more basic to humanity than bread and wine? He could do it as his own way of thanking God—for the Earth and for everyone on it, and for our amazing ability to do things like build spacecraft that could fly to the moon. So the pastor gave him a small amount of consecrated bread and wine and a tiny chalice, and Mr. Aldrin took them with him to the moon. After the Eagle had landed and he and Neil Armstrong sat in the Lunar Module, Mr. Aldrin said this over the radio: 

“This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

 He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, read a Bible verse, and took communion. For reasons he explains in his own account, none of this was made public until Mr. Aldrin wrote about it in Guideposts magazine the following year: 

 “In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.” 

 Then Mr. Aldrin read Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.” He explained that he had wanted to read this over the radio back to Earth, but at the last minute NASA asked him not to because the agency was in a legal battle with the outspoken atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. As it happened, she was suing over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve. And that of course is why so few people have heard of this amazing story. 

 [In a personal interview with Metaxas about 10 years ago, Mr. Aldrin explained more]: “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.” 

 And of course right now, as Christians around the world are celebrating the birth of Jesus, it’s fascinating to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were his words, the powerless newborn in the dirty manger who came to Earth from heaven, and who made the Earth and the moon and all of us, in His own image. And who, in the immortal words of Dante, is himself the “Love that moves the Sun and other stars.” 

Merry Christmas.

[1]Eric Metaxas.  “Christmas Eve in Space and Communion on the Moon,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24-25, 2016.  Page A13.

Trump's Election and the Health of Middle-Aged White Workers

Back in June, soon after it became evident that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for President, we wrote an article discussing one significant aspect of his candidacy: his possible appeal to working class voters who are exasperated by stagnant wages and income inequality.  We didn’t advocate for him, but we did see how he would appeal to those workers, which put his candidacy in a realistic light.  See the piece here:  http://ways-of-the-world.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-workers-might-favor-businessman-for.html.

This general notion indeed played out in the actual election results.  Exit poll results showed that Mr. Trump had relatively strong support from low-income voters, middle-aged and older voters, and those with less education.[1]  He received a larger percentage than Mitt Romney did in 2012 of votes cast by people 45-64 years old, of people with incomes under $30,000, of people with high school or less and college less than bachelor’s degrees, and in particular, white people with no college degree.   In fact, Trump scored 67% of those votes compared with just 42% for Romney.  Thus, Trump’s mantra about bringing jobs back to this country would speak to this group, who would be looking for consistent employment opportunities in production, construction and mining especially, sectors which have been experiencing major disruptions that Trump hopes to mitigate.

This situation of uncertainty for middle-aged people in particular has another, deeply serious component.  In a Wall Street Journal discussion of the election result on November 10 [2], Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, expresses concern for middle-aged workers, especially men and for white, middle-aged people.  He calls our attention in turn to a paper published last December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which Angus Deaton, the Nobel Laureate in economics in 2015 and professor at Princeton, and Anne Case, also at Princeton, describe the astounding development that the mortality rate of white 45-54 year-olds in this country actually rose from 1999 to 2013.  This is in clear contrast to the mortality rates for all other age groups, which declined, an obvious result of advances in medicine.[3] 

What happened to those middle-aged white people is dramatic.  Mortality rates for diseases in that age range did decline.  But rates for externally caused deaths went up: suicide, drug poisoning and alcohol abuse.  Those specific rates went up for other age groups too, but for the 45-54 year-olds, the increases were so large that the pushed overall mortality higher.  Subsequent release of data by the U.S. Center for Disease Control for 2014 show the overall uptrend continued that year as well.  In addition, Deaton and Case discuss “morbidity”:  the proportion of the population reporting good health and the proportion reporting poor health, including various symptoms of pain and the frequency of difficulty performing simple “activities of daily living” (ADLs).  For this population group between 1997-99 and 2011-13, government data show a smaller proportion reported good health, a larger proportion poor health.  More people had trouble with various ADLs and more people consumed excessive amounts of  alcohol.  There was a significant increase in the share of these middle-aged white persons who were unable to work, which, Deaton and Case point out, may correspond to the unusual decline in labor force participation rates, a phenomenon we have discussed here before.

Deaton and Case suggest that economic insecurity might play into 45-54-year-olds’ increased use of drugs, dependence on alcohol and suicides.  They mention the same economic factors we have been talking about: tepid movement of median wages and income inequality.  They point out that these are especially important for people with just a high-school education.  In addition, they discuss the shift in many employers’ pension arrangements from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans.  So now it’s up to many employees to see to the adequacy of their own retirement savings, since there’s no guarantee of a specific payout during their elder years, as would be the case with defined benefit plans.  The pressure on these people is thus increased.  They have another reason to be concerned: will they have a steady income through consistent employment and will the economy grow so that their financial assets can grow?

This economic pressure on middle-aged white Americans is obviously not the only reason Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton did not.  There is a general unease with governments and bureaucracies.  We saw it earlier this year in the U.K., where, also, ordinary people surprised their government leaders as they voted that that nation should withdraw from the European Union, the development known as “Brexit”.  The work to do so is in process now.  The factor of importance in that issue is similar to what Mr. Trump advocates, the reduction in regulation of business and other government intrusion into everyday life.  Brexit highlights people’s frustration with the bureaucratic nature of the EU organization.  In the U.S., Trump is concerned that regulation of business, along with the relatively high U.S. business tax rates, contributes to companies’ moving their headquarters and some operations to other countries, even as they continue to sell their products here.  He wants to change the government setting for business so those companies will stay here and keep jobs here.  It’s a good idea, if it can be implemented in a prompt and orderly way.  That’s a big “if”.  Further, it will go the wrong way if there are trade wars and too much anti-immigration push.  Tough questions.

Overall, the numbers we have discussed here describe considerable unease among a core group of Americans, a population group that rarely gets much attention.  But this election has made us look at them.  Perhaps there’s no genuine link between the pressure they feel and the election of Mr. Trump, but it seems there might well be.

In church yesterday during the Intercessory Prayer, I heard myself offer petitions for “all those who are afraid in the wake of the Election” and for “the new President, that he might govern carefully and wisely”.  We indeed hope Mr. Trump rises to the occasion and we hope our many friends and acquaintances who are upset and distressed will find there is reason they can relax.

--------------

[1] “Election 2016: Exit Poll Results.”  The New York Times.  November 8, 2016 and subsequent updates.  The Exit Poll is conducted by Edison Research and is sponsored by a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBSNews, CNN, Fox News and NBC News.  The data were collected from  24,537 voters leaving 350 voting places throughout the United States on Election Day including 4,398 telephone interviews with early and absentee voters.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html. 

[2] Arthur Brooks.  “How Trump Filled the Dignity Deficit,“ The Wall Street Journal.  November 10, 2016, page A23.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-donald-trump-filled-the-dignity-deficit-1478734436

[3] Anne Case and Angus Deaton.  “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21^st century,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 8, 2015.  Pages 15078-15083.   http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078 .  You may have seen this referenced in The New York Times as well.  A number of professional health policy publications also contain references.

A Threesome: Some Prayers, a Prime Minister, and a Parable

Prayers for Police and for Peace

In these tense days of troubles among African-Americans and law enforcement officers, we suggest these prayers from A New Zealand Prayer Book*. 

FOR THE JUDICIARY AND POLICE

God of truth and justice;
we ask you to help the men and women
who administer and police our laws;
grant them insight, courage and compassion,
protect them from corruption and arrogance
and grant that we, whom they seek to serve,
may give them the support and affection they need;
so may our people be strengthened more and more in respect and concern for one another.
We make this prayer through Jesus Christ. Amen.

ON THE 25^TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: For Our World

Universal and unchanging God,
we are one, unalterably one,
with all the human race.
Grant that we who share Christ’s blood
may, through your unifying Spirit,
break down the walls that divide us.
This we ask through Christ our Mediator. Amen.

 __________

*http://anglicanprayerbook.nz/index.html  1988.  Pages 139 and 637.

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Theresa May To Become U.K. Prime Minister

On July 13, the U.K. will get its second woman Prime Minister when Theresa May, currently Home Secretary, assumes that higher office.  As we wrote last week, David Cameron resigned immediately after the Brexit vote on June 23; he will do that formally July 13 by presenting himself and his letter of resignation to the Queen; he will inform her that Ms. May is available and in his view would be worthy of the appointment.  Later in the day, Ms. May will be presented to the Queen.

We give you this follow-up information for a couple of reasons.  Obviously, it is an important step forward in the U.K.’s new sense of itself.  Ms. May favored remaining in the EU, but she seems always to have understood what people wanted in breaking away and will work carefully on that process.  Comments we saw about her indicate that she is a most conscientious worker in government and concentrates on the substance of matters, rather than the perks and personality points of holding office.  “I don’t tour the TV studios,” she has stated.

This brings us to the second reason we want to give specific mention to this development.  We are struck by the “adult” attitudes of the U.K. leaders at this time.  Boris Johnson, who seemed to be a leading candidate early on, and Andrea Leadsom, the other finalist for election as Conservative Party leader, both pulled out to allow the selection to take place with the least controversy possible.  At this point in time, with much uncertainty, having the election process as brief as practicable helps significantly in both domestic and international affairs, and we are impressed that egos have not gotten in the way and that everyone has seemed to be in line to move forward, despite the shock of the Brexit vote outcome.  Concluding the Prime Minister decision promptly will permit more time on the substance of the conditions for the U.K.’s departure from the EU, and Ms. May seems to be someone who will give ample consideration to all concerns in this important step.

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Maybe the 3^rd Servant Was Right To Bury his Talent

The Gospel selection assigned for today’s (July 12) Daily Office readings in the U.S. Book of Common Prayer is the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30.  A man of wealth is going off on a long journey and decides to let three slaves manage some of his funds while he is away.  To one slave, he gives 5 “talents”, to a second slave, 2 talents and to a third slave, 1 talent.  The first two make investments or form businesses, and each doubles his money.  When the master returns, he is very pleased with their performances and promises them promotions.  The third slave buries his talent in the ground; he doesn’t lose any money, but he doesn’t gain anything either.  As we know, the master is upset at this action – or non-action – by the third slave; he takes back the talent and throws the slave out on the street, leaving him penniless and homeless.

In some dialogue this morning with Barbara Crafton, she and I both realized that there might be times when the third slave actually did the right thing in burying the talent.  Last week in Japan, for instance, that government issued 10-year bonds with a yield of  -0.243%; that is, there is negative interest on the bonds, so that investors are paying the government a fee to keep their money safe for 10 years and return it to them.  Similarly, in Germany, a recent auction of 30-year government bonds carried a negative yield of -0.76%.  So investors there also are paying the government to keep their money for them and return it at the designated time.

Thus, simply by burying the talent in the ground and returning it to the master at the proper time, the slave might have fulfilled an important function, keeping the master’s money safe and keeping it from eroding in value.

However – you knew there had to be a “however” – the broader economic environment that surrounds these negative bond yields is hardly one that produces many business opportunities that result in doubling someone’s active investment.  So it’s unlikely that the other two slaves would have been nearly as successful in this scenario. The German stock market is down 13% from a year ago, the Japanese stock market 21%.  The U.S. market is up, but by only 1.3%.  Investors would have done all right with gold, at a gain of almost 15% from a year ago, but a broad index of industrial and agricultural commodities is down 13%.

The lesson for investors in these differential results is that we need to assess the whole environment and be aware of the risks.  As Barbara wrote in her own comments on this parable, the underlying issue is not money but risk.  For the three slaves and for us, probably the best answer is a mix of assets with varying risks.  We see that sometimes, burying the talent in the ground can be the best thing.  And perhaps all of the time, at least some of the funds should be in something with a guaranteed outcome.  Otherwise, nothing is totally sure.

Jo Cox and the EU

Most of what you’ve been hearing about since June 12 pertains to the mass shooting in Orlando.  Clearly we are upset about that horrible tragedy.  But we want also to give attention to a not-totally-unrelated event in northern England on June 16.

This Thursday, June 23, people in the U.K. will vote on whether to remain in the EU or leave.  The EU is an association of 28 European nations enjoying free trade among each other and whose citizens can move freely among the countries, living anywhere they choose at any time.  Nineteen of these countries, obviously not including the U.K., also use a common currency, the euro.

There is dissatisfaction among some U.K. citizens over belonging to the EU, such that when he ran for re-election to Parliament in 2013, the current Prime Minister David Cameron promised that Parliament would authorize a public election over whether to stay in it.

This hardly sounds like an issue that should spawn violence.  But as the voting date has approached, two vociferous camps have emerged and campaigning has been raucous and nasty.

Still, the nation – and many others – was shocked last Thursday, when Jo Cox, a Member of Parliament supporting the Remain camp, was shot and stabbed in front of the public library in her town of Birstall.

Violence.  What is it about these days that political disagreements seem to be spurring such deadly violence?  The gentleman who murdered Jo Cox on Thursday was known to have mental problems, but still, outright killing is extreme.  Tommie Mair even used a sawed-off shotgun to do this in a country where almost all guns are outlawed, and most police don’t even carry them.

We have to talk first about Jo Cox herself.

An extraordinary person.  She is from Birstall in Northern England, just north of Leicester and south of Nottingham.  The region is a factory community; it includes a large Muslim population, apparently mainly from India, as workers were needed for factories.  Jo Cox’s father worked in a factory.  She apparently always presumed she would do the same.  But she had the opportunity to attend Cambridge and she was the first member of her family to attend university.  She spent 10 years as an aid worker, affiliated with Oxfam, the Gates Foundation and the Freedom Fund, this last an organization that fights modern slavery.  The Wall Street Journal explains that in Parliament “she pushed for international action to help Syrians who had been caught up in fighting there .” She was also a vocal proponent of the UK staying in the EU.

She lived simply, with her husband and two children on a houseboat, and, according to The Economist magazine, she commuted to Parliament on a bicycle.  Ms. Cox was on her way to conduct constituent appointments at the local library in Birstall when she was attacked.  A witness reported that the attacker shouted “Britain first” as he struck her.  In Mr. Mair’s court appearance, the prosecutor stated that he had said, “Britain first, keep Britain independent, Britain always comes first.”  Perhaps coincidentally, “Britain First” is actually an organization committed to banning Islam in the U.K.  The group denied responsibility, however, although they are concerned that immigration is the root of many of the U.K.’s current problems.  When asked to state his name during his court appearance Saturday, June 18, he replied, “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

Thus, we seem to face three forces here.  First, the awful killing of a highly regarded public servant, popular in her community and respected in Parliament.  A bright, relatively young woman, age 41, who obviously had much to say and do toward the benefit of the people she represents.  Second, a raucous, divisive campaign about whether the U.K. should Remain in the EU or Leave it; indeed the groups in support of each side are “Remain” and “Vote Leave”.  Polls show sentiment is almost evenly divided and oscillates from one preference to the other, so it is not at all clear which will come out ahead in the vote.  Campaigning was suspended altogether from Thursday after Jo Cox’s death through Saturday.  Third, there is the immigration issue.  Being part of the EU means that immigration into the U.K. from Europe is relatively easy.

This last issue, immigration, even strikes us as bearing some resemblance to at least one of the factors in the Donald Trump campaign in the U.S.  Trump’s supporters tend to blame immigrants for some of our problems, similar to the U.K. citizens who blame immigrants for whatever distress they are feeling.

While we have no answers to any of this, we can offer you a prayer concerning the U.K. vote, published by the Church of England back in April.  It is obviously directed at this specific issue, but its themes can apply to many topics of public debate:

God of truth, give us grace to debate the issues in this referendum with honesty and openness. Give generosity to those who seek to form opinion and discernment to those who vote, that our nation may prosper and that with all the peoples of Europe we may work for peace and the common good; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

And among the myriad tributes to Jo Cox, here is one offered at a prayer service at a church in Birstall last Thursday and published on the website of the Diocese of West Yorkshire and the Dales:

Prayers after the Shootings in the South Carolina Church

A week ago, a young man shot nine African-American people in cold blood in a church in Charlston, South Carolina.  We interrupted work we were doing to send an email to Ways-of-the-World readers.  As the funerals for these dear people are about to begin, we post much of the text of that email here.  Note that this was written just as people were first hearing about this awful act.

My own Bishop, Lawrence Provenzano of the Diocese of Long Island, has responded immediately, and I write just now to share his message with you all.

"From the Office of the Bishop:   

The BBC reported this morning at 8 am, EDT [June 17], that "Nine people have been shot dead at a historic African-American Church in Charleston, SC, and a hunt is under way for a white gunman. 

Police described the attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as a 'hate crime.' 

They issued surveillance images of the suspect and said he had sat in the church for an hour before opening fire.

____________________________________

Bishop Provenzano sends the following Pastoral Message to the clergy and members of the Diocese of Long Island: 

Prayer.  Deep, deep, soul-stirring prayer for the victims,  their families, their church community, the city of Charleston, and for this nation! 

Words can no longer suffice for the senseless hatred of this sinful act. Prayer and the witness of prayer by God's people must be our response. 

I call upon our Diocese to pray with each other across parish lines, and neighborhood lines, and county lines.

Hold each other in prayer and witness to the unity in Christ we profess. 

This is our response to hatred and sin.

The Right Reverend Lawrence C. Provenzano  

Bishop of Long Island

Also included in that message is a note from the Brooklyn Borough President's office, which contains the information that among the dead is the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator.

May Rev. Pinckney and all those killed rest in peace.  May light perpetual shine upon them.

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As we write this afternoon, June 24, Rev. Pinckney lies in state in the South Carolina Capitol Building.

A Remembrance of Robin Williams

We have an article in process on consumer finances and their role in the broader economy.  Even as we are working on that, we recognize that these days are full of heavy-weight events in the world.  In the last few weeks, we have written of praying for peace (July 18) and we have offered internet links to aid for the child immigrants in Texas (July 11).  Now, we also need to pause and remember a prominent man who has passed, Robin Williams.

There is much we could say about Williams.  We could choose the serious side of his passing, including his illnesses and the manner of his death.  But in this moment, we choose to be light-hearted and remember the fun he brought us.  For Episcopalians, perhaps the easiest and most sentimental expression of this is a recitation of the gift he gave to us in particular, "The Top 10 Reasons for Being Episcopalian", which he presented during an HBO special in 2002.  These have been making the rounds this past week and you may have seen them already.  There's even a tee shirt, which you can find here: https://www.episcopalbookstore.com/product.aspx?productid=3171.

The Top 10 Reasons for Being Episcopalian:

10. No snake handling.

9. You can believe in dinosaurs.

8. Male and female God created them; male and female we ordain them.

7. You don't have to check your brains at the door.

6. Pew aerobics.

5. Church year is color-coded.

4. Free wine on Sunday.

3. All of the pageantry - none of the guilt.

2. You don't have to know how to swim to get baptized.

And the Number One reason to be an Episcopalian:

1. No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you.

May Williams help us to laugh at ourselves, which we need to do often and especially right now! 

"The Courage to Grow Old"

Last year in this country, there were 19.5 million people over age 75.  This group made up 6.2% of the total population.  By 2026, just 12 years from now, Census Bureau projections indicate there will be about 10 million more of these elderly residents and they will be more than 8% of the population, growing another 10 million through the subsequent nine years to almost 11%.

So Barbara Crafton has written a book on growing old.  We know we don't need to justify any particular choice of topic for her writings, and her own reason for writing on this seems to be that she herself feels she is beginning "to grow old", as is evident in the Preface and Chapter 1 of the book.  Still, and perhaps too obvious to deserve mention, this is a topic of broad general interest, and her comments on several issues and her impressions of this time in our lives are significant for many people and their publication significantly timed, as illustrated by our data above.

Some of the topics are practical: among others, how do you convince your father that he shouldn't drive a car anymore?  How do you handle really elderly parents who want to live at home or in your home?  How do you conduct yourself on a date?[!]  Also, quite logically but with great feeling, how do you imagine approaching death and dying yourself?

So we have taken a step right here in what Barbara wants us to do.  We're talking about this.  We've already taken a courageous step.  See what she says on page 8:

In order to help those who love me deal with my death, I must come to terms with it myself.  It will help to think about death in advance.  Trust me [she says], this gets easier to do with practice – those things of which we refuse to think don't disappear meekly in response to our refusal:  they go underground.  There they grow in apparent size and virulence, becoming larger and more unthinkable than they really are.  What will happen to me in my death is that I will join the billions of human beings who have died; everyone who has ever lived has managed to do this.

We have already had experiences in our lives like this: major losses, traumatic events.  We realize that in order to function more fully as time passes, the best way to handle those experiences is to face them head on.  Our own death is no different, apparently.

One chapter talks about pain, and Barbara is quick to distinguish between acute pain and chronic pain.  Acute pain sends a signal:  oops, your finger is too close to the candle flame.  Ouch!  Then you take action to stop it.  Chronic pain is different.  You have to learn to live with chronic pain and counteract its source or compensate for it.  For instance, maybe your knees won't let you genuflect in church?  Then bow instead [that's what we ourselves have to do!].  She says these strategies take courage too; from page 35:

I think chronic pain teaches courage.  Real courage, I mean, not bravado – it teaches the kind of courage that looks unwaveringly at the way things really are, rather than the strutting, noisy kind that asserts power it doesn't possess and control over events that human beings don't really run.  No, the courage chronic pain can teach us is the slow kind, the patient kind – maybe "maturity" is a better term for it than "courage."

One more notion, an impressionist metaphor: "The Two Baskets".  We are in a basket that is nested in a bigger basket.  Page 80:

Baskets are woven, of course: strips of grass or straw or wood thread intricately over and under one another again and again . . . . But there is space between the strips, however tightly they might be woven.  You could peer out one of those spaces, if you wanted to. . . . Yup, there's something out there all right.  But you can't see it very clearly through that tiny opening.  Besides, who cares?  This basket is beautiful.  It contains everything you need.

One day, though, the smaller basket begins to fall apart . . . .

So you get the idea of where that image is going.  Barbara helps us understand that we have been inside the bigger basket all along.

In addition to Barbara's two baskets, we realize that we've actually seen a third basket.  A friend who lately became a grandmother showed us a picture of her grandson smiling at us – from the womb.  The wonders of ultrasound let us see inside and there was little Luke, inside the basket inside the basket inside the basket . . . .

Barbara Crafton's book The Courage to Grow Old is published by Morehouse, an imprint of Church Publishing, Incorporated.  It is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in both paperback and Kindle or Nook editions.

The First Generation of Americans

Each year at the anniversary of American Independence, Ways of the World visits that historical era with an eye to the key role of ordinary people.  The American Revolution was more than battles and big documents; it marked dramatic changes in the structure of society, in people’s relationships and in their day-to-day interactions with one another.

We sought this year to see how this reordering played out as the new country and its culture developed.  Recognizing that we had not read a classic statement of this, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, we thought that might be the way to go.  Our seeking brought us instead to a prelude of the years right before Tocqueville’s trip, which began in 1831.  So we focus on Inheriting the Revolution: the First Generation of Americans by Joyce Appleby.  She is professor emerita at UCLA and a former president of the American Historical Association.  The book is based largely on her study of people born from 1776 to 1800, sourced from autobiographies, contemporary press reports and other primary sources.

Originality and newness and flexibility are the main themes.  There had been a big war and the older people were conditioned by the necessary defenses they had had to put together.  The new, younger generation faced no such constraints; they were looking forward.  Their new orientation became manifest in some surprisingly basic aspects of living, as Appleby explains.

In these annual July-4^th exercises, we never cease to be amazed at the historic reach of the American Revolution.  Here follow six significant kinds of changes that emerged early after it.  They concern a fundamental shift of power, influence and benefits from a limited predetermined elite to a vast populace exercising initiative.  At the same time, we will have to conclude with some comments about some people who were largely left out of all this.

1.  Politics and the popular press

By the 1790s, many more people were learning to read, and newspapers were expanding rapidly.  As marks affairs today, inquisitive reporters and commentators got into the workings of government and of leaders.  The process of governing was now out in the open, no longer conducted in closed rooms, hidden from the population at large; information was now available to almost everyone.  Appleby highlights the election of Jefferson in 1800 as a demarcation of the social ramifications of what was happening.  Social and political power were now uncoupled.  "[T]he colonial belief that authority should be exercised through the uncontested leadership of a recognized cadre of families” was "drowned in a tidal wave". [Appleby, page 6]

2.  Enterprise and expansion

The Industrial Revolution along with the end of the American Revolutionary War meant people could focus on going new places and making new things.  They were no longer preoccupied with military issues and could explore the vastness of the North American continent.  Agriculture and the family farm remained the primary way to make a living, but commercial interests developed to a substantial extent.  Steam engines and machine tools led to the growth of industry; as the variety of goods available increased, retailing expanded and all this needed financing, so banking spread as well.  Many new kinds of jobs opened up.  Extending the theme of spreading leadership, business ventures could be undertaken by anyone, not just members of certain favored families or those with government connections.

3.  Careers

Indeed, individuals could now make many basic choices about the course of their own lives.  “Where once sons had achieved manhood by emulating their fathers, more and more they were esteemed by carrying a torch into uncharted territory.” [page 21]  Notably, the very word “career” took on a new definition.  The Oxford English Dictionary shows that in 1580, it meant “a race course”.  But by 1802, it had come to describe “a person’s progress through life”.  [Cited by Appleby, page 270]

4.  Societal distinctions

“Mobility” now meant several things: movement away from the family home, geographic mobility even to another region, changing one’s profession, participating in and gaining influence in governing.  The product of these processes came to be known as the “middle class”, encompassing people with origins in both ends of the economic spectrum and generating a new emphasis on peer groups.  “Status”, “merit” and “virtue” were still important, but they took on whole new contexts.

5.  Intimate relationships

“The collapse of venerable hierarchies and the scattering of families” [page 22] meant people no longer had a pre-existing emotional support system; they had to be conscious of their emotional needs and seek out relatives and friends with some deliberateness.  In another sphere of intimacy, religious revivals imparted to church and worship an emotional character not generally experienced before in more formal worship settings.

6.  Voluntary associations

Society, of course, continued to be plagued with various problems.  Individuals who cared about specific issues of the day began to form volunteer groups to address them.  Appleby emphasizes temperance and urban charity among more secular issues, while the evangelical revivalist movements sent people on mission work.  These missions were sometimes foreign, perhaps to India, and some more local, such as to the Cherokees and the Chickasaws.  Anti-slavery organizations were formed.

So the young country grew and prospered with broad-based participation in leadership roles unknown in history before.

“Participation” was, of course, still not universal:  women and blacks were still restrained.  Women's roles evolved somewhat, though.  Many became literate, with some making writing careers.  Others became active in church-work or other voluntary groups; they became aware that they wanted and should have choices, not necessarily tied automatically to the men in their lives. 

Appleby is careful in many places to specify that the main beneficiaries of the constructive societal changes were "white men".  Blacks (many from the West Indies as well as Africa) were largely emancipated in the North, could own property and even vote in some locales.  But the Southern culture was different, remaining staunchly pro-slavery and retaining other hierarchical characteristics.  Part of this is tied to dependence on labor-intensive cotton-growing as European demand for the fabric expanded.  Without more study, we don't want to go on about this at length, but Appleby makes clear that the seeds of conflict over these racial differences were sown very early in our history as a nation.

We want to leave you with two thoughts in this July 4^th Season of 2014.  First, much of the news of our day highlights failures and misgivings people feel about our government and society.  But we urge you to stop and put this in perspective.  The US has fostered a flexible, open lifestyle focused on mobility.  It's distinctive in millennia of history, that we have come, 238 years after Independence, to want to assure opportunities for everyone, whatever their background.  People who were prospering in 1800 were already starting to figure out how they could spread this prosperity.

Secondly, this spirit of widespread initiative and prosperity is readily evident to other people all around the world.  Some of them seem to hate us for it and plot our destruction.  But many others want to come and join in it.  We see the massive border problems of this moment and we struggle mightily over how to handle the hordes of illegal immigrants.  Surely this whole situation is being badly mishandled and the President perhaps did not anticipate the volume of people who would respond to his unilateral move in 2012 to let young people stay who arrived in the U.S. as dependent children.

But look at the statement those young people and their families are making.  What you and I have as lives here in the United States, flawed though our situations may seem to us, looks so great compared to what those families have now that they are willing to risk everything to come and be a part of it or send their children in the hope they can have a better future.

* * * * *

Joyce Appleby.  Inheriting the Revolution: the First Generation of Americans.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.  2000.

" . . . an HIV-Free Generation"?! Really?

This Sunday, May 18, is the annual AIDS Walk in New York City.  This is a big event: last year, some 30,000 people participated in this 10K "non-race" in Central Park and nearby neighborhoods and raised roughly $5.5 million toward HIV/AIDS causes locally and elsewhere.

Coincidentally, a leading health policy research journal Health Affairs published articles in its March issue on HIV topics.  One of them, highlighted on the cover, has the title "Policy Choices for an HIV-Free Generation."

What a concept, to even imagine an HIV-free generation!  Accompanying articles talk about a concept almost as startling, growing old with an HIV+ condition.  How times have changed for these people.

This topic is close to our heart.  The first person we knew who died of AIDS passed away in the spring of 1983, near the very beginning of this tragic epidemic.  We have lost at least a dozen other friends through the years and even the husband of a cousin.  In a sign of the changing fortunes of this population, however, the last two HIV+ people we knew never developed AIDS itself and lived into their 70s, approaching the lifespan of the overall population.  We wrote of this at the passing of one of them in late 2012.  At that time, we were deeply moved that Bob and Michael could have pretty much normal, active lives while taking their anti-retroviral medications.  We are touched anew by the current attention this health condition is receiving and by the striking results of the now more than 15-years' worth of anti-retroviral treatments.  What dramatic outcomes there are.

First (in order, but not priority), combination anti-retroviral therapy, known as cART, more than pays for itself economically.  Researchers at the University of Southern California and at Bristol-Myers Squib analyzed the added life expectancies against the $12,000+ annual cost of the treatment.  They conclude that patients' added lifespan has an estimated value several times greater than the cost of the therapy.  Further, their study indicates that since the people are healthier while taking the ART and since it has preventive qualities, it should be started early, before the infection evolves into a more serious symptomatic condition.  The phrase taking hold is "test and treat", don't wait until people's infection rating gets worse before starting treatment.

In addition, as we just noted, the cART is "preventive".  It's not a vaccine, which just has to be administered once.  It's a continuing treatment over potentially many years.  But it works.  So the next step is to use it as a prophylactic for partners of infected individuals.  Treating them can keep them from getting infected in the first place.   This is also worthwhile economically, to say nothing of how it is stabilizing to the daily lives of the individual and the partner couple.  Other analysts in the Health Affairs issue estimate that cART has prevented 13,500 infections per year since it was introduced broadly in 1996.

All of this is not a signal that the war against this brutal health condition has been won.  Numerous issues remain.  There is still a social stigma.  HIV+ people need employment, but often face obstacles to getting a job.  Now that many are getting older and trying to lead more normal lives, they may well face obstacles to forming social relationships: they're both older and HIV+.  Further, as people enjoy the benefits of cART, they may get less cautious in their sexual practices and even lax in taking the meds themselves.  This is the situation known to economists as "moral hazard"; people who know they have added protection may take more risk.  Separately, financing their treatment can get tricky as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) meshes with the long-standing federally funded Ryan White Program and numerous state versions of Medicaid, many of which are being restructured.  At the same time, it's estimated that the ACA will facilitate HIV testing for as many as 500,000 people in just the next three years, surely a big help.

Among other lingering concerns, all the good news we describe here pertains to the United States.  A look at a few of the organization who share in the proceeds of AIDS Walk New York gives an idea of the variety of other AIDS-related issues that remain.  Among nearly 40 groups all together, funds go to Keep a Child Alive, which provides anti-retroviral drugs to African children; Africa Tikkun provides education and social services to children and families in South African villages; and AID for AIDS assists people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Still, even with the caveats we state, we can see that the wider testing in the US and the recognition of the benefits of early administration of cART indeed create the plausibility of a generation free of HIV in the US.  We hear so much about the troubles in medical care delivery these days, and it's nice to stop and recognize a genuine triumph for potentially millions of people.

* * * * *

Visit the AIDS Walk website: http://www.aidswalk.net/newyork .  DONATE!!

The Health Affairs articles are here: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/3.toc .  The issue is aimed at the impact of the Affordable Care Act on outreach to HIV/AIDS patients and the jail population.  We have not yet examined the latter material.  The HIV/AIDS articles we found most interesting include "Living with HIV and Growing Old" a portrait of a particular gentleman, two articles on the costs and benefits of early cART treatments and the policy summary.  All of it is helpful and accessible to general readers.

About Someone Else Who Died November 22, 1963

Another major figure of the 20^th Century also died on November 22, 1963.  His name is C.S. Lewis.  As yesterday's Christian Science Monitor noted, Lewis's passing was far overshadowed by JFK's assassination and few people paid attention.[1]  The Gospel Coalition website[2] explains that Lewis collapsed and died at his home in Oxford early that evening, apparently just an hour or so before Kennedy was shot.

The Episcopal Church does pay attention today, though, and since 2003 has remembered Lewis in its calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.  The commentary there highlights the fact that Lewis did not come by his religion easily, but went through a long period of atheism from his adolescence in the 1910s until 1929.  The profile also notes that his reconversion, fulfilled in 1931, "inaugurated a wonderful outpouring of Christian apologetics in media as varied as popular theology, children’s literature, fantasy and science fiction, and correspondence on spiritual matters with friends and strangers alike."

Here are a few quotes from Lewis, taken from a variety of his writings and assorted websites:

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

As we copied-and-pasted those words a little while ago, we didn't know, but quickly learned, that they now appear on the plaque which just yesterday was dedicated to Lewis in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.[3]

Some other of Lewis's words:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

"Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to: the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on (the devil's) part, be turned into a sense of injury."

"You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

“Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.”

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

"The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

And here is the Collect for this Day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006 (page 465):

O God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give you thanks for Clive Staples Lewis, whose sanctified imagination lights fires of faith in young and old alike. Surprise us also with your joy and draw us into that new and abundant life which is ours in Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Finally, one other notable also passed away that day: Aldous Huxley, aged 69, died of cancer in Los Angeles at 5:20PM PST, seven hours after Kennedy's shooting and eight hours after Lewis's death in England.[4]

-----------------------------------

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2013/1122/C.S.-Lewis-10-thought-provoking-quotes/Taken-unawares

[2] http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2013/11/22/9-things-you-should-know-about-c-s-lewis/

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10452711/Does-CS-Lewis-deserve-a-place-in-Poets-Corner.html.  Also see an interview with Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham (Joy Davidman's son), here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/cs-lewis-in-the-shadow-of-jfks-death-8955470.html.  Other Telegraph stories note that Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, officiated at the unveiling of the Poet's Corner plaque.

[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/10465714/JFKs-assassination-not-a-slow-news-day.html

Kansas City: A High School Reunion and an Extraordinary Charity

We know we owe you some comments about the government shutdown mess, and we will offer those in a few days.  But more immediately, good friend Chris and I are just back in Brooklyn from a visit to Kansas City, my hometown, and we are anxious to share a couple of special stories.  We attended my high school class 50^th anniversary reunion (!), and we had occasion to get acquainted with an extraordinary charity headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas.

Christian Foundation for Children and Aging

Located in an unobtrusive warehouse building in an industrial district, the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging – CFCA – serves 300,000 children and elderly adults in 21 countries, mostly in Central and South America and also in Africa, India and the Philippines.  Maybe you know this group or even serve among its 250,000 sponsors, but it was new to us.  The organization was founded by five Roman Catholic lay people in the Kansas City area in 1981 and has grown to be the largest non-profit in the state of Kansas and among the 200 largest non-profits in the country, according to Chronicle of Philanthropy tabulations of donor-raised funds.  Along with my long-time Kansas City friend Chari, an Episcopal deacon, we were shown around their offices by one of the managers and we met staff and volunteers.

Aid from the donor-sponsors is directed to individual children and elderly family members; they receive nutrition assistance, clothing, health care and, for the children, assistance in staying in school.  The whole family is involved.  Mothers often participate in support groups, which may well represent their first interactions in a peer group and first efforts at teamwork.  The mothers' programming can include microloans for local business efforts, and CFCA also helps the men find jobs.

CFCA's location in a simple warehouse headquarters keeps down its overhead, and other expense controls and accountability measures mean their operating costs are quite modest.  The share of revenue thus available to go directly to programming in 2012 was 93.6%, a very large amount for any charity.

The group currently conducts its fundraising mainly through outreach by priests and lay people to individual parishes, where they recruit new sponsors.  We know one of those priests personally in Brooklyn, which is how we came to visit the Kansas City headquarters.  The foundation is seeking to attract a broader Christian coalition, both in outreach and in sponsorship, and is wanting to expand its effort in this area.  Our own visit with their leadership and hearing the success stories of some of the children made it easy to write to you about them.

We direct you to www.cfcausa.org to learn more about the group and about sponsoring a child or senior citizen.  One of their current themes is about dreams, and around their office walls are a collection of "Hello!  My Name Is ______!" cards that say instead "Hello!  My Dream Is . . . . to teach school . . . . to learn to dance . . . . to make clothes . . . . to play the drums . . . . and so on".  A video available through the website shows a group of the children in a band playing a concert, feeling fulfilled and happy at the respect they sense through their achievement.

The Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, 1 Elmwood Avenue, Kansas City, KS 66103.  (800) 875-6564.

The Shawnee Mission North Class of 1963 Parties Again!

The reunion event was a lovely experience, which, interestingly, also involved young people.  Our class had numbered about 450 and some 95 of us gathered on October 12 for dinner at a hotel near the school.  We were genuinely happy to see each other.  I had not been in touch and didn't know whether anyone would even remember me.  But many called out my name right away.  A reunion website contained profiles for those coming, so we were at least somewhat prepared about whom to watch out for.  I also had not considered it before, but a high school reunion is also an elementary school reunion, and there were five or six of us who had started out in kindergarten together in 1950!  Seeing those "kids" again was especially sweet.

People traveled to Kansas City from New York (me), California, Oregon, Utah, Florida and Texas, among other locales.  The class president is a doctor at the medical school of the University of Indiana.  Another of us had counted up from our profiles an estimate that about 15% of us have doctorate or professional degrees.  That particular guy always loved baseball; he became a lawyer in Houston and started a firm that manages major league baseball players' business affairs.  We had a fine conversation with one of us who is a social worker; our AFS exchange student from Sweden is a dentist – yes, she came from Sweden for the event – and someone else is retired as an accountant for TWA, the company my own father had worked for during all of my childhood.  The person seated next to me at dinner is a retired nurse who sings in a San Francisco choral group that is about to go on tour to Europe.  There are numerous stay-at-home moms with many kids and many spoiled grandchildren.

One of the points the CFCA official made to us on our tour there was how important it is to create opportunities for the kids to give back.  At the reunion we had seen this too from kids in a much more comfortable economic setting.  We were entertained during dinner by the Shawnee Mission North Strolling Strings.  When I saw the announcement that they would provide the dinner music, I expected half-a-dozen or so violins wandering among the tables.  But there were at least 50 teen-age musicians.  Four or five string basses were stationed around the perimeter of the ballroom, while violins, violas and even cellos circulated throughout the room, playing as they moved.  Andrew Lloyd Weber and similar selections filled the space with warm, flowing tones.  The kids came right up to us, smiling broadly as they serenaded each person.  They did a couple of 1950s swing tunes, and a few of the girls picked dance partners from among us 68-year-olds.  It means so much when, seemingly, the only times you hear about kids these days are when they do bad things, not lovely things like this.

Late in the evening, I ran into one of the professional photographers, also a young woman, outside the dining room, and I asked her if she was having a good time.  "Oh, yes," she replied, "I'm really enjoying you all enjoying each other!" Absolutely!