Byron Edgington's Blog, page 10

Stones

I had an interesting discussion last evening with my older brother. He asked my response to the elevation of Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. My initial, gut reaction, truly from the gut, was that I my interest in this event was “near zero.” Having been raised in the catholic church, and having aspired to its administrative levels as a priest, this reaction may surprise some people. Sour grapes, they may say. Just bitter, others might add. Perhaps they’re right. I do describe myself in terms of spiritual activities as ‘a recovering catholic,’ after all.
With the tincture of time behind me, twelve hours or so since the question, I’ve reconsidered my estimation of the new pope and all the kerfuffle about him. Ever the positive, progressive individual, I’m happy the church, my former spiritual home has a new leader. Benedict was a troll. There’s no question that Joseph Ratzinger was a tribute to the fourteenth century in his thinking and his medieval intentions for the church, so good riddance to him, I say.
As I see it, the task confronting pope Frank the First is to obtain blood from stones. Like the picture above, the church resembles a graveyard in many respects. Littered with insensate symbols, its decrepit leaders, bloodless and soulless, insensitive to the poor, the vulnerable and those who dare to be different, the catholic church is already dead to many, and is withering to many more. It’s sad, really. An institution created to address the manifold needs and aspirations, spiritual AND physical of its membership, the church has turned a stone cold eye on those very people clamoring to be heard, relapsing again and again to rock hard dogma and cratered logic to maintain its position. Too sad. Maybe Frank and his minions can start fresh. Perhaps they can resurrect the green grass, plant a flower or two, learn to embrace real live christians as they move past the walls of the cemetery the church has become, real people getting on with their real lives, while ignoring the hoary stones crumbling inside the ancient gates.

Lucy & the Football

Anyone familiar with my book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life , knows about my personal history of abuse in a catholic seminary when I was fourteen. In an odd way I'm almost grateful for the outcome of those incidents, my dismissal from a life in the priesthood etc. It set me on the path I followed, a life in the sky much more gratifying and meaningful, I'm certain, than one I might have had as a catholic priest.
As I observe the convocation in the Sistine Chapel, where the world's largest collection of ancient, clueless virgins selects a new pope, I have very mixed feelings. A bit of anger, insufficiently disguised, at the institution in which I was swaddled as a child; bemusement at just why anyone still attends to the church at all; and a sort of weariness at the hypocrisy adorning the whole affair. Like with Lucy and her football, catholics the world over are about to tromp forward Charlie-Brown-like to take yet another swag at something that is once again to be yanked away at the last blessed second, forcing them by simple physics onto their beloved backsides. Once again.
The catholic church is "...in the business of change big time,” so says Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan at St. Peter’s Basilica during a Mass he celebrated for U.S. journalists. The football is, as we speak, resting lightly before Lucy, her nimble finger making steady the soon to be booted sphere, until... Charlie Brown is confident, as he has been lo these many years, that friend Lucy will allow him to set the ball flying, arcing in glorious flight, snapping at long last the agonizing wait poor Charles has endured with commendable patience. Here's the punch line: change 'big time' in the catholic church, take it from me, is when the baptismal font at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion in Dubuque is moved from the front of the nave to the back. And breathtaking change such as that requires many years, decades even, carefully penned letters between Rome and Dubuque, confabs between Bishops, priests, rooks, knaves--never any nuns--and the Holy See itself before a single babe is dunked in said font. Centuries even.
Married priests? Women in the priesthood? Gay rights (and rites) in the church? A plausible, definitive agenda to root out pedophiles in church ranks? Not gonna happen. Lucy will see to it.

Separation of church & state

The so called church/state separation debate has been going on for…well, for a very long time in America. Why does it seem to be approaching some kind of apex? A day of reckoning, possibly soon, possibly the Ides of March? I have a theory.
Here’s a recent headline–actually two, juxtaposed one atop the other:
03/11/2013 The Vatican Buys Europe’s Biggest Gay Sauna:

Marriage Equality Vote in Illinois House ‘Any Day Now’

Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/2013/03/marr...
This is ripped from The Windy City Times. I left the URL + its tail in to reinforce the seeming convergence of things, the looming, perhaps definitive church/state interaction concerning the issue of LGBT rights (and rites).
Why the photo? It’s as close as I could come to an iconic representation of church/state proximity/separation. The reason we established states in the first place is to consolidate disparate people under one roof, and to endow one entity with the power to do violence in our name. And not only that; states are given the power to enforce whatever social agreements we make among ourselves.
The other reason I chose a Huey helicopter purportedly crafted by god is in reference to my own military background. My initial aim in life was to be on the other side of the image–not god, good heavens, not that–but one of god’s enforcers of social justice on earth. How I ended up in the seat of the Huey and not at the seat of god’s church is, as the nuns were fond of saying, a mystery. My mother, though not fond in the least of my helicopter-ing, would have said, “it was meant to be.” All this is my way of saying that, for me, there’s little separation at all, actually. I spent a long time in the military, less time in a church. But in both positions I held to the belief that a social contract is just that. That “…with liberty and justice for all,” means just that. Nothing less. In working for LGBT rights, I’m able to see with some ease the convergence of our national belief in church/state separation. And, despite the political pressures otherwise, I believe that Illinois legislators and the rest of America will agree that liberty and justice for all is a value worth fighting for.

Light the match

Last evening a remarkable documentary made its way onto CNN. Escape Fire (not fire escape) is an all too true story about the deep chasm we find ourselves in concerning health care in America. There was a time when people like Drs. Andrew Weil, and Dean Ornish may have been considered cranks, or alarmists, despite their credentials and the seeming sensibility of their statements, as shown on this well-crafted documentary. Watching Escape Fire was difficult for a number of reasons. The show brought the clash of reality versus fantasy into living rooms: The reality being that we Americans are in the weeds with our health care, waaaaaay down the list of developed countries in terms of quality of health care delivery and results, seventh of the eight developed countries, according to the Commonwealth Fund, and we’re getting in deeper all the time. One segment of the show starred a returning veteran of the ill-fated conflict in Afghanistan. The young fellow saw the hole his life had fallen into from a regimen of pain-killing drugs longer than anyone’s grocery list. To his great credit, the fellow decided to break away from his dependency, and he succeeded. Another character in the show, a dedicated smoker, confronted with his addiction decided otherwise; he would wait to quit smoking, he stated, “…until I figure out what’s wrong with me.” Much to her credit, his doctor held her tongue. The young veteran lit his own escape fire, in other words, and has a renewed, healthful outlook and a better life. The second fellow will likely smoke himself to death, partly at our collective expense.
According to Escape Fire, what is the problem with our health care system? As a former Air Medical pilot I was close to some aspects of this so called ‘problem’ for a long time, so I found myself nodding my head at the show’s revelations. We Americans eat too much of the wrong foods, we smoke, we ignore stress levels and our own genetic and familial history. Then, when our health deteriorates, we demand that the health care system ‘fix’ us. And here’s where the deep chasm becomes canyone-esque.
The health care system in America thrives on money. Lots of money. No surprise there. Health Care America Inc. is one of the largest industries the world has ever seen. We spend $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person every year according to U.S. government actuarial data. There is at present very little incentive for this system to keep its customers healthy, thus driving them away. Do General Motors or Ford encourage mass transit? Does Hollywood urge us to spend more time outdoors watching fewer movies? Do the airlines subsidize train travel? No, no and no. The health care system in this country is, as the narrator of Escape Fire said, “A disease management system.”
In twenty years as an Air Med pilot I saw many patients. Most of them needed the transport and in-flight medical interventions they received. Many of them did not. Many of them needed transport away from a medical facility that lacked the expensive procedural mechanisms to diagnose and treat them. There is justification for flying medical patients. But the whole spectrum of medical care is oriented around ‘treating’ us, not keeping us healthy in the first place. What a lot of those patients, a lot of we Americans need, is a better diet, a smoke-free life, consistent exercise and a willingness to take care of our own health and the knowledge needed to do that.
The system we have is unsustainable. The worst foods are the most heavily subsidized; government reimbursements are targeted at the quantity of procedures given, numbers of patients seen per day, not the quality and long-term health benefits to the patient. Physicians are paid per patient, not for health maintenance provided to the community. Plus, fully 30% of expenditures on health care today is wasted.
The name Escape Fire is taken from those who fight forest fires. If those crews find themselves surrounded, or threatened by a rapidly moving wall of fire, they often ignite another fire around themselves to burn off fuel and thereby starve the advancing flames. Lighting these fires takes courage, dedication and a brazen disregard for powerful forces that would sweep us away. But those forces are looming; it’s time to light the match.

Cycles are what we ride, like it or not.

I was twenty-one years old when this picture was taken in January 1971. I’m standing next to my Huey–#16252–on the landing strip at Khe Sanh. Three feet to my left, inside the cockpit, my office, is the collective, my up and down stick. Hidden from view is the cyclic, the control stick that determines which direction the aircraft goes. For a year in Vietnam I held the cyclic in my right hand, steering the Huey in and out of harms way.
As I look at the kid in this picture I see a lot of things: youthful insouciance, a sheen of invulnerability (back then enemy troops owned Khe Sanh for Pete’s sake) and a look of cleverly disguised bravado, like the glare a kid gives a neighborhood bully just before getting clobbered. But the most interesting thing about this shot is its followup. In 1992 I traveled back to Vietnam, the returning vet going over old haunts, touching a part of my past. It was a trip dripping with remembrance. With my little car and an interpreter I drove highway 9 from Quang Tri out to Khe Sanh, ending up very near the spot pictured here. The old airstrip was weed-infested, barely recognizable. The surrounding hills were a picture of serenity, the ‘enemy’ nowhere to be seen. The property is now owned by a company that grows coffee beans.
This morning, as I look at the picture of that kid again, I’m no longer young, much less naive than he was while perhaps even more vulnerable to the vicissitudes and dangers of life. Still, the cycles are no longer hidden. I’m sipping a cup of coffee in the (relative) safety of my home office, reminiscing about a place that played a monumental part in my early life. That once dangerous place is now a peaceful field, a farmer’s source of income. The cycle, one hopes, is complete.

Iraq + 10 years

March 20th marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. After ten years, untold casualties, three trillion dollars and counting and unknowable lost opportunity costs, we have to ask why? No official pronouncements are likely to issue from the hallowed halls of Congress on March 20th, but here’s one I’d love to hear: Today we honor those men and women, the faithful troops of Operation Iraqi Freedom by calling the invasion of that country what it was, the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history. We hereby resolve to bring as much transparency to the flawed and meretricious process that led us into Iraq as is necessary to ensure  that it never happens again. This is how we honor our troops, by being honest about the deployments we force on them, and never again go to war the way our ill-informed and egregiously over-confident leadership did ten years ago next week. Never again. It’s entirely appropriate that the symbol of a ten year anniversary is tin. It works, I think.

A Book at The Library

The Columbus Metropolitan Library now has two copies of The Sky Behind Me . It's both gratifying and intriguing to have a book on the shelves of a public arena devoted to reading and learning. To walk in to a branch of a public library and see one's work displayed is an odd experience, kind of puzzling in a way. Does it mean people are actually reading my story? Evidently so. Here's the fun part: at least once a week my sweet wife pulls up the library website to check the book's borrowing progress. When the copies are all checked out she grins and shows me the evidence. And it seems to happen a lot. Gratifying, that's what it is. But a little mystifying, too. When 87 million Americans borrow books to read, the fact that at least a few of them choose mine is humbling. It makes me want to keep writing, while demanding that I write quality stuff, so borrowers keep taking my words home to read. And by the way, thanks to those who do.

A Radical Idea

I spent almost 30 years in uniform either full time, or part time in the National Guard. That’s almost half my life in uniform defending this great country. Or at least the idea of this country. The idea that we all are indeed equal, and entitled to equal protection of the laws. It is a radical idea. In 1776 a bunch of radicals proposed a new idea for a country, a place where everyone, not just royalty and clergy, everyone was given equal protection. The core of that idea was a simple understanding: no exceptions. What I wore the uniform defending was a system of no exceptions. The war stories in The Sky Behind Me aren’t just personal adventures, but evidence of the work I tried to do while defending that idea.  So when I hear people say ‘gays and lesbians are an exception, I ‘take exception’ to that. To me it’s kinda personal. I am a radical; it’s true. I believe that America is indeed an exceptional country–a country that makes no exceptions, not for anyone. Marriage equality will soon be law in America. It’s time. No exceptions. If you agree, visit this new website and put on your uniform.

February 26th, 2013

This morning I met with one of our State Senators here in Ohio. I visited with him to discuss looming issues concerning LGBT rights, specifically access for all to civil marriage. Kris Jordan represents Ohio’s 19th in the statehouse. Senator Jordan is a conservative Republican, a married Christian fellow who notes on his website that he is ‘pro-life’, and that both he and his wife Melissa ‘have concealed carry permits.’ Kris Jordan has little interest in changing Ohio’s constitutional ‘one-man; one-woman’ stance on marriage. So you’re asking, why would I meet with this fellow? As a big-L Liberal, LGBT rights advocate, un-churched and disdainful of all weaponry, what values & perspectives could I possibly share with Kris Jordan?
Here’s the answer. Before being ushered into the senator’s office, I had a chat with his personal secretary, a nice fellow named Jeremy, a young-ish a black man, married with a five-year-old daughter. When he talks about his little girl, Jeremy beams. “She’s a Power Ranger,” he said. “She doesn’t just think she’s a Power Ranger, she IS a Power Ranger.”
“Isn’t it amazing,” I said. “…that she’ll grow up in a country in which she has no limits?”
Jeremy agreed, and soon I was in front of Senator Jordan. As my companions and I discussed various issues and positions with him, it occurred to me that what we were attempting to do with this legislator was make that unlimited world happen for everyone. we were trying, through the legislative process, to identify limits the state imposes on its citizens, its real and potential Power Rangers, and trying to remove those limits.
And one of those limits is the law barring our LGBT citizens from marrying the person they love. This very same morning, according to a New York Times article, dozens of prominent Republicans from all over the country have ‘come out’ for marriage equality. Conservatives are beginning to see the ‘limits’ current law imposes on a segment of our population, and they, too, are getting on board. Thanks to organizations like the AFER, HRC, NGLTF, PFLAG and many others, limits are being identified, and Power Rangers are being given access to their full potential.
I am a very fortunate man. In my life I have experienced no limits on what I was able to do. As a white, middle-class, male recovering catholic the only limits before me were those I created for myself, and those I allowed to happen. In my memoir, the theme is the pursuit of our dreams. It never occurred to me that I was limited in any way. This is one reason I work for equality for all. I was a Power Ranger once; I owe it Jeremy’s little girl to help remove those limits.

Take a starving writer to lunch

Here I am at my latest reading/signing. The event was February 12th at Barnes & Noble on North High, near the OSU Campus in Columbus OH. Notice the pressing crowd, the crazed fans shoving ahead in line to get my autograph, the screaming groupies I can’t seem to get rid of. Ah, the price of fame and fortune. Had I known what becoming a successful writer entailed I’d have done something different, something less glamorous, something that didn’t offer so much public adulation and so many worshiping fans at every venue, something that didn’t keep my accountant quite so busy.
Wrong picture you say? Drat, I almost had myself convinced. The raw truth is that I didn’t become a writer, number one, I write because I can’t not write. Number two I really don’t care if Barnes & Noble preferred stock ticks up at the mention of my name, or screaming fans pummel each other for my autographed book so they can get a hundred bucks for it on E-bay (Okay, twenty bucks? Five?)
I only care that people read my stuff, and hopefully respond with some kind of review, or comment or yes even criticism. Starving writer? Anyone who’s seen me lately, especially in my workout clothes, which is a frightening spectacle I assure you, knows that I ain’t about to starve. I may have enough fat stored up to get me through the winter of ’16. With a certain degree of validity I’ve been called the official Jeni’s Ice Cream taste tester. Hey, somebody’s gotta do it, ya know? Call it research. In any case, I’m doing quite well in terms of physical dimensions, filled out nicely, thank you. What I truly need is feedback (good word? You bet) on my writing and its impact on my readers.
Lunch anyone?