Using force against peaceful protesters is always a bad idea

The world was shocked last October 7 by the savage attack on Israelis by Hamas. The surprise attack left over 1,200 dead, including many who were tortured, raped and taken hostage. It was a dark and brutal day. Nothing can ever justify such an act. Shock waves crashed over Jewish communities everywhere. In retaliation, Israel conducted a military offensive to root out Hamas, protect itself, and prevent such incursions from Gaza again. The scale and type of response, however, brought about massive destruction, the deaths of over 30,000 people, the large majority of whom were non-combantants, women and children. The infrastructure of Gaza was destroyed, including hospitals, schools, mosques and churches. Israel’s prime minister and war cabinet prosecuted a war that was far beyond proportionate. The result of this outsized military action in Gaza has created nothing short of a humanitarian disaster. Sadly, regardless of American dipolmacy and requests for a cease fire and cessation of indiscriminate bombing, the destruction continued. And yet – this is the moral and political key – the United States continues to provide military aid and hardware that makes all this possible.

The history of conflict in this region is long and complex. Continuing injustices maintain simmering resentments and a cycle of retribution. Outside terrorist organizations fuel additional violence. Hopeful diplomatic resolution is often scuttled by actors who do not want peace initiatives to succeed.

All that said, it is not lost on university students that the United States is not free of culpability in this conflict. As a result, students across the county and indeed the world have engaged in on-campus protests. For those of us who have lived for more than a few years, this kind of response is not a new phenomenon. Students often represent a moral barometer on social issues, including but not limited to war and injustice. They often organize and engage in prophetic speech and action.

Siding against protesting students and instead aligning with those who attempt to repress them almost always ends up on the wrong side of history. Nevertheless, some universities, cities, law enforcement, and expressions of the military have attempted to break up protests, arrest students, tear down encampments, and exercise violent reprisals, including tear gassing, forcible restraint, and sometimes worse.

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard descended on Kent State to exert authority and maintain order. As a result, four unarmed students were killed. Others were harmed and wounded. It was entirely unnecessary. Horrific things like this happen when force is brought to bear when citizens peacefully engage in free speech and right of assembly.

If better angels were summoned in such a time as this, I believe they would counsel restraint, slow response, and free expression. University administrators would be talking with students, and doing so in public spaces. Use of law enforcement would be limited to incidents of violence or expression of hate speech.

Easy? No, not at all. But in a free society, one in which we want to tilt away from authoritarianism and the use of law enforcement and the military against our own citizens, the effort is worth it. We generally have a sad track record in how we have responded to free speech and the right to assembly during hard public conversations.

We could try to get it right this time and avoid repeating one more Kent State.

Once Is Never Enough

Once is Never Enough

I’ve heard it said more than once,

from more than one mouth or pen,

that once is never enough,

which is a truism true enough,

If you are talking chocolate shakes,

walks in the springing forest,

Mozart’s 40^th Symphony,

winding the clock before coffee,

or laying satisfied and spent

in the late afternoon.

Once may never seem enough.

But some contestants deserve the title

of never bearing even one repetition,

because unrepeatable is what makes them

what they are and remain.

Never again is their stubborn declaration,

unmatched by weakening do-overs.

They stand unrivaled, wearing the garland,

always outstretching the competition.

But there is another list

of the once-onlys, the rarities,

floating over and above time,

that are not determined in any way

by perspective, wanting, or waiting.

These are the one-time-by-design,

most distinguished things

made so by being none other than once:

The azure, crystalline clarity

marking everything that came before

and would after, this great divide.

Getting born into this body

the one time, mind you,

and then getting out of it, too,

the cry the first time

the whisper the second,

both one time, because any more

would not only be impossible,

but withdraw wonder by degrees.  

Some parts of this one story

deserve to stand alone,

unrepeated, unparalleled, unedited.

Here is to you, the once only thing,

which stays that way,

can’t not be that way,

revealing every fearsome limit,

among winsome love,

and deepest admiration.

(Timothy Carson, February 2024)

Leaning into the Liminal Launch Discount!

During the month of February, a deep discount is offered on purchases of Leaning into the Liminal: A Guide for Counselors and Companions (The Liminality Press, 2024). This book is designed as a guide for those in the counseling arts, including therapists, counselors, chaplains, spiritual directors, religious leaders, and coaches. By clicking the link you may order a deeply discounted launch version. Get yours or one for that counselor friend today!

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Leaning into the Liminal: A Guide for Counselors and Companions

Carson, Timothy L

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Tim Carson is a Guest on Tom Rundel’s Podcast Liminal Living

I was recently a guest on Tom Rundel’s podcast, Liminal Living. The episode is “This is your brain on liminality.”

I hope you enjoy it! Click here to listen in.

Christmas Eve in the Bar

Carrie Newcomer tells a story that is at once familiar and unfamilar to me.

The familiar part of her story is the description of Christmas Eve for a typical parish pastor. In my case, after a long season of preparation leading up to Christmas, Christmas Eve arrived with several services, the last of which was ordinarily some midnight candlelight service with communion. In the wee hours of Christmas morning, after the last soul left the church, the last light turned off and doors locked, I usually stood outside in the cold night looking up at the stars, taking a contented sigh of relief. That was the moment when Christmas finally settled in on me. But the unfamiliar and more interesting part of Newcomer’s story is this:

“I remember a conversation with two pastors serving two different congregations. They described how every year, when they both finished their respective Christmas Eve midnight services, they went to a favorite local bar located near their home. When the bar closed at 2am they would hold Christmas Eve service for anyone still in the bar. The owner and these two wonderful women would put a cloth on the pool table and light candles. They would hold hands around the table, tell a story of weary travelers on a weary night far from home, they would sing a few songs and say a prayer of blessing.

I asked them both why they decided to do this each year, when they were probably totally exhausted from all the responsibilities of the season. Instead of giving me an answer, they asked me a question, ‘Who needs a little hope and care more than the folks who are alone and closing down a bar on Christmas eve?’ 

They went on to tell me of how last Christmas Eve there had been a somewhat intimidating looking young man seated at the end of the counter covered in tattoos and piercings. He ended up staying after hours and stood in the circle with the other Christmas Eve refugees. After the gathering ended with a quiet Silent Night, the young man turned to one of the pastors and with soft eyes said, ‘you know, my mom would have loved this.’” 

The Scuff and Scrape of Feet

As the dog walked me in the early morning dark, I started listening to the sounds of our feet on the ground. Even though I try to walk lightly and quietly, my age and weight makes silence a near impossibility. The repetitive scuff and scrape of my sandals on earth took me back to other scuffing and scraping in the dark.

In the distant past of my young adulthood I spent a summer in Bangladesh, visiting the work of an NGO and shadowing their staff. I travelled everywhere by any means – walking, bus, the back of a motor cycle, rickshaw, river boats, crossing over rice paddy rickety bridges. And I ended up in a combination of locations difficult to describe. Small villages, leper hospitals, disaster recovery programs, tiny retreat centers, literacy programs in the shanty slums.

Our base camp was Dhaka, the capital city. Like so many others, we lived in a walled house inside the city. You can hear the flurry of activity on the street outside those walls at all hours. By 2 or 3am it gets quiet.

More than once, as I lay dreaming in the pre-dawn dark, I heard the scuff and scrape of a silent procession on the street. It was like a muted percussion section. This was the sound of the sandaled feet of Bangladeshi women walking to work in the shirt factories.

Factory work was one of the few plentiful jobs in the city. They always needed cheap labor. Bangladeshi women could provide that for pauper wages. Their hours were long, the conditions dirty and cramped, and every so often a factory would collapse on them. The owners never protected them or improved those conditions. Inspectors were routinely paid off. But that wasn’t the most important factor that kept the wages deplorable and the conditions marginal.

Large multinational corporations like Walmart came in with shirt contracts that the owners couldn’t say no to. The offers were rock bottom, making it almost impossible for the manufacturers to make a profit, improve their buildings, and pay their labor force. These contracts insured low costs for people like me, when I look for a shirt at Walmart or some other multinational chain. My cheap shirts require cheap labor and poor conditions elsewhere. As the end of the supply chain, my demands for low prices make that what it is.

The scuff and scrape of feet comprise a symphony of sorts. It is the unending song of those who must walk for their lives, inside their inhumane cities, or across miles of terraine to escape the spectre of despair. Every time I hear the sound of my feet in the dark, I remember them.

I also imagine the sound of feet and hooves of another young family escaping the disaster that loomed over them. So vulnerable were they, what with the young child in their care. They fled under the cover of night, escaping harm on the way to safety, from Galilee, down south through Gaza, across the border into Egypt, where the migrant family would wait, try to survive, and hope for better days to come.

Scuff-scrape, scuff-scrape, scuff-scrape.

A paraphrase of the ancient Jesus prayer

Sleeping in Church and Other Miracles of Grace

My friend, June, just wrote about a new friend she met in church.

“A young woman came into our church yesterday. I greeted her and she said it was her first time here so I invited her to sit with me.I generally do that when women come in alone for their first time. It is a big church and can be kind of intimidating. Anyway, she sat near me for awhile and then rolled up her coat, lay down and went to sleep and slept through the service. Someone asked me if she was ok. And, she was. She just needed a quiet and safe space to rest. I don’t think it matters that she missed the readings or the sermon. I think it matters that she found a safe space and could rest. I told her that I hoped to see her next week and she smiled and said that she will be coming back.”

Who knows why she needed to have a nap there and then. Maybe she was exhausted after returning from the front lines of life. Was it, borrowing the words of Frederick Buechner, that she collapsed from the too-muchness or too-littleness of her existence? Was she in search of sanctuary, a quiet and safe space to rest, as my friend June put it? Was it a return to something vaguely familiar from childhood, something lost in the intervening years? Did it take her back to the innocence of childhood, sitting peacefully beside parents as carols drifted over her?

I remember hearing Anne Lamott tell about a time in her life when she was struggling, a single mom wrestling with her demons. A black church was nearby her apartment in the city, and she could hear the Gospel music wafting out onto the streets. She crept inside, arriving late, leaving early, sitting near the exits. She somehow stepped inside a holy zone, though she couldn’t really explain how it worked. The sisters welcomed her, took her in. It was only later, much later, that she put together what she had experienced with what was being talked about.

It’s not that theology is unimportant, because it’s not. It matters what kind of God or Jesus or way of life or church you’re describing. They’re not the same thing, these notions of God, and one version can attract and build up and another repel and tear down. But these theological principles are most likely not the first term. The first term may not be rational at all. The first term has something to do with the woman sleeping in that pew, how she found a resting place, surrounded by a community going through the ordinary paces of its tradition. That’s the seen part. The unseen part is everything that guided her feet to this place in the first place, the simple kindness that welcomed her, and what the spirit is up to way back behind the curtain.

Preachers have always been consoled by the idea that people actually learn in their sleep; meticulously worked out sermons are occasionally delivered among quiet snoring. But it’s not really about the learning, though learning is important. It is mostly about grace, belonging, and peace. Can I be at home here, take off my shoes like I would in the home of a friend, and trust that everything will be okay? If so, then I can roll up my coat as a pillow and ascend a ladder that reaches a place so far beyond what I compehend that I am filled with childlike wonder. And if that happens, well, it is a very good service indeed

Don’t listen to what people have to say about Christmas

If you want a true read on the Christmas spirit, don’t listen to what people have to say about it. Watch how they treat and interact with retail staff in stores and restaurants during the season of peace and joy. That tells the tale. If you observe harshness and cruelty, then you know. If you witness kindness and understanding, then you know.

Come to think of it, that’s the true measure year-round, because kindness is the currency of love. Again, don’t listen to what people say about love. Watch where they slide on the kindness scale. Watch where we slide on the kindness scale.

Some time ago I was on a road trip and stopped at a restaurant. In the same area of the dining room a large, noisy group of maybe a dozen people were eating. They were constantly calling and cat calling the server, demanding this and that, complaining about every little thing. She could barely keep up. And at the end they didn’t even leave a tip.

My wife and I noticed, grimaced, and suffered for this person who was trying to earn a paycheck. I’m sure she would have liked to have been anywhere else than there. But sometimes you don’t get to choose. As we prepared to leave, we both approached her as she tried to keep up with the abusive table. In front of them, we thanked our server, went on and on about how fine her service was, and wished her the best evening. We also put money in her hand – in front of them – and said we left a tip on the table, but she deserved more. Then we turned and left. She was stunned, probably by the contrast with the customers at the other table. And they were stunned, too.

I repeat, don’t pay any attention to whatever cute little signs these people might have on their porches or on their car bumpers. Watch how they treat people who are in a one-down position, who are required to serve them, who, for a little while, have less power than they do.

Years ago, I was in a church and the CEO of a business invited me to tour his company operation and then go to lunch. It’s a kind of ritual that happens with clergy. As we walked out on to the floor, the executive stopped at a workstation, called an employee out on the carpet in front of me, berating and humiliating him. It was no accident that I was conspicuously present. One can only guess his motives, what this church guy was trying to prove. Perhaps to demonstrate his station and power in life, that one should take note. For whatever reason, he sadistically castigated another human being who had less power. But I tell you,  he was in his pew singing about Jesus the next Sunday.

Don’t pay any attention to what people say about faith and love. Watch how they treat other people with less power, those who are under their thumb. That’s the true story.

In fact, watch for this power differential anywhere. Watch for how people with some modicum of power treat others with less power. Listen for it in the language of politicians. Watch for it in organizations. Notice it in the supermarket aisle.

The ironic thing is that every Christmas narrative in New Testament Gospels is about this. Each and every story is some kind of commentary on power – who has it, wants it, doesn’t have it, and will kill to have it. If we read those first century stories through this lens – the lens of power and how it is wielded and used – a clear picture emerges, not only of the most common pitfalls of humanity, but the paradoxical way that sacred power overturns, undermines, and capsizes all this human clamoring for that which will collapse anyway.

Roman legions march, and babies are born in no count places. Swords slash and angels sing. Kings fight off all rivals, and the most important things of life are born among the lower classes. A radical reversal, an alternative narrative, has the power to change everything. Even when the story is covered over by the glitter of commercialism.

I’m a real proponent of the date of Orthodox Christmas – January 6. That’s because it’s not happening at the same time that cultural Christmas is. I like the idea of creeping off to some quiet, out-of-the-way grotto, where no one is presenting an extravaganza, flexing their social power, and trying to impress us. One candle will do. A story. A song about little things that make a big difference. A prayer of the heart. Less is more. Simple.

Amidst the noisy broadcasts of the world don’t listen to what they are saying. Pay attention to what they are doing. Watch for miracles of love that get born among those so enthralled with power that they very often don’t even notice.

The Plague of Christmas

In one of the seminar classes I teach at the University of Missouri, we are reading The Plague by Albert Camus. This book periodically makes the rounds, just as actual plagues and pandemics make the rounds. As of late it has been extremely popular and for obvious reasons. A theological and philosophical debate is embedded in the narratives of the main characters, and nothing is out of bounds: The cause of suffering, the disputed divine role in such things, and the role of courage and agency in the face of pure absurdity. All the things that cause existentialists to salivate.

I would like to say that most people are beyond blaming a deity for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but that is not entirely true. Though Camus and most of those who have read him eventually move beyond that thinking, it is not true of all people, not by a longshot. Some people and especially some religions communities still operate with a reward-punishment system. Extended essays like the Book of Job withstanding, they remain captive to this idea, an idea roundly discounted by Jesus who knew that rainstorms pour on the heads of all people, irrespective of virtue or vice.

There was a day when people struggled over these ideas. Rabbi Harold Kushner made the rounds with his Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? on the heels of his own personal tragedy. Through the years, I have listened to scores of people trying to untie that Gordian Knot. It most often remained tied, snugly, resisting all efforts to unweave it.

Such a dialogue usually isn’t taking place in American culture today. Mostly, I think, because people have discarded the God of classical theism. Therefore, they have no theological conundrum to unravel. Instead, as a great reverse negative, they often default to nihilism. That’s a hard place to be. Especially when bad things really do happen to good people, and they do.

But you don’t have to choose between classical theism or nihilism. There are more ways forward than those two. But what?

Just this week I heard sad news of a tragedy which befell good people in a church I know far from where I live. It shattered the family and everyone around them. Today, another tragedy, equally terrible, befell good folk in the church I presently attend. They sat there today, stunned. At the same time, a man from our community decided this world was simply too painful to stay in it one more day, and so he left. We won’t even mention slaughters in Israel, doomsday in Gaza, and devastation in Ukraine.

As a young person, my mother died around Thanksgiving. She was a fine person, too. But that, as I have already said, is beside the point. The point is that loss comes regardless and is no respecter of persons. It strikes without warning, and we very often are left without answers that make any sense. For example, I’m driving a dear one to more testing and treatment tomorrow. We know when and why her immune system was tattered those many years ago, but we don’t know what the future holds. Never the future.

In the end, we are left with faith, hope, and love. These three. Even when we wonder if they can possibly be enough, we also know, deep down, that they must be.

The season we have just entered – winter holiday and the great American capitalistic orgy – do not help us traverse the beauty and terror of life. That requires more. And it is often found in the quiet cracks and crevices of life, sacred islands where hope and courage are available.

I’m not above foxhole religion; I, too, will beg for mercy when only mercy will do. But this is more than a ritual of the last resort. On the most basic level it comes down to knowing what’s worth living for and what’s not. Getting quiet. Following ancient wisdom when it speaks. Listening to whispers of the heart. And standing in a circle with those who long for the same.