Musings: Notes From My Daybook

As we move deeper into the national election cycle we shall hear more and more extremism and exaggeration from candidates, from supporters, and from the media.  Sorting all that out and making informed decisions will require moving beyond the black and white that is usually offered to looking deeper into the complexity of issues and the complexity of the candidates themselves.

One good example of that kind of reflection comes from Garry Wills in a New York Review piece where he compares the Illinois senator with an Illinois senator from the 1850's who was also running for president.  At first blush you might find a comparison between Obama and Lincoln to bizarre and construed.  However, if one takes the time to think about they dynamics and contexts around the two speeches that Wills reviews, then I think that one comes to a different light.

I want to make clear that I have no idea who I will vote for in November.  However, I do hope for and will work for  reasoned and thoughtful dialogue.    Thank you Gary. 

David Gushee's article is a good way of remembering Martin Luther King today.

Earlier in March, I had occasion to drive north from Cambridge to Edinburgh while in Britain.  With a couple of hours on hand, I eagerly made my way to Durham to see the cathedral there.  One of the oldest cathedrals in Britain, it offers a beautiful example of Norman construction.  A number of people important  to the Christian community are buried there--including Cuthbert, an early saint and pioneer not only of Durham but of Lindisfarne and Bede, the historian.

But in my time walking through this wonderful space and enjoying the way in which the present Christian community use the building in worshipful and forming ways, I found a stone in memorial of one of the deans of the cathedral that caught my eye.  Spencer Cowper, born in 1713 and who passed in 1774, served as a leader in the Christian community there nearly thirty years.  What I found most riveting was the brief comment on the stone.  Spencer Cowper, Dean of Durham:  "Life spent in the uniform practice of unaffected Piety, Friendship, Humanity, Hospitality, and Charity."

I like that description--the uniform practice of some very basic and valuable virtues.  It can be easy, from time to time, to show piety or friendship.  However, to do so faithfully, consistently every day is no small matter.  To be uniform, consistent, focused, and purposeful about our virtues sounds like high praise.

I hope for something similar to be said about me. 

We usually think of sports heroes and Christian models in our culture as winners of World Series Championships and Super Bowls, but this well-written article suggests that we should look a little deeper into the world of sport.  Brett Favre the now retired quarterback of the Packers is the subject of the piece by Joseph Kip Kosek.  Read it here.

Noteworthy quote from Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes:

Preachers, despite much evidence to the contrary, are not called to celebrate the status quo, even an American status quo, and when they do their job properly they call us all to a higher standard. Preachers are not perfect, nor are they the only people allowed to be credible critics of our time and place, but they are among the very few whose vocation it is to make us aspire to something other than the status quo. For too long we have made God an ally in the American way; the highest standards of preaching in America require that we should seek to be God’s ally, helping God and one another to create a world in which we seek to live as God would have us live. To criticize America is not a sin, but it is a sin to mistake America for God, and it is both sin and dereliction of duty to fail to note the difference.

 For more see his piece on Obama and Jeremiah Wright here.