Seeking Sophia

As I am digging into my own taxes, I get up this morning to read of the Fed’s Super Sunday Bailout of Wall Street investment firms who got caught up in sleazy financial dealings that (I keep reading) the average citizen would not be able to understand.

So what’s all this talk about free market?

Oh, that only applies to those stupid homeowners who fell for the sub-prime bait?

To say I am livid would be an understatement.  I hate these Monday morning surprises – last week Eliot Spitzer and today it’s getting stuck with the bill from the Mother of All Parties that I wasn’t even invited to.  Oh, and none of the other party-hardy types have to pay either, though they have raked in billions and billions through the scams they engaged in.

Back to the stupid homeowners (who are portrayed as somehow swindling those poor mortgage companies and banks):  back in the day, when a bank told you that you qualified for a certain mortgage, you could be pretty sure that with some semblance of careful money management, this would be correct.   That was before our mailboxes were stuffed with dozens of credit card offers each week, each one better than the last.  Offers, that is, not weeks. 

So our credit began to get out of control and more banks and mortgage companies wanted what the credit card folks got – a cash cow with escalating interest rates, changing due dates that resulted in larger rates and high fees, and all kinds of other money-making widgets.  Enter the sub-prime mortgage, where higher interest rates were charged when you were not able to afford a conventional mortgage. With pre-payment penalties that worked against you when woke up and smelled the coffee burning and rushed to re-fi.

And when you did re-fi, as housing prices were rising they talked you into consolidating all your other bills and dreams for vacations and toys in a most convenient HELOC. Now that the value of your house is less than it was, re-financed for, you are in deep.

So a lot of people had come to believe that when a bank (or by extension, the mortgage company) said that you qualified for something, they believed it.  Now the banks/mortgage companies are laughing all the way to the… Fed.  Which is you and me, basically.

On this week where we observe the 5^th anniversary of the Iraq war that has now cost over $500 billion, the Fed may well approach this figure soon. Previous bailout funds: $200 billion. Bear Stearns bailout: $30 b.  And now an open-ended bailout for other banks similarly situated to Bear Stearns.

I’ll tell you what this reminds me of:  several years ago at an Air Force base in Montana where they fly B-52 bombers (the kind that carried the atomic bomb to Hiroshima and Nagasaki – a huge plane), one of the pilots would engage in aerial high jinks with those planes, doing loop-de-loops and other aerial feats that the planes were not built for. His crew mates complained bitterly – the Air Force slapped him on the wrist and continued to let him fly. He crashed the plane and the crew, killing all as he yet again tempted fate.  This is what I’m reminded of with this bail-out.

The banks and investment firms have been on a huge bender, drunk with greed and the high of engaging in questionable financial mechanics. They have been slapped, but then we come in and bail them out.  And the foreclosed homeowners slowly pick up the pieces of what’s left of their lives. What is anyone learning from this?

End of rant.

OK, I’m back, it’s been an especially harried couple of weeks. Apologies.

I, like many of you, am shocked at the news of Gov. Spitzer. Is it because I’ve looked at him through rose-colored glasses, thinking that he was some kind of Golden Boy? No. Is it because I’m a sexual prude? No.   

Actually, unlike some, I don’t look at this as a sexual ‘private’ matter. I have lived through the so-called sexual revolution and like many found that gratuitous sex is far, far less satisfactory than a strong intimate relationship that includes sex. Although admittedly I don’t personally ‘get’ the whole prostitution thing, I often wonder why it’s a crime. And why we spend our precious resources scoping it out. 

With Gov. Spitzer, this is a matter of public trust to me – a further erosion in a mountain that has been eroded so much that it is now a molehill – an erosion that has escalated in the past 7+ years (for reasons other than sexual impropriety, whatever that is).   I do believe that people are entitled to behave as they choose. I also believe that we as humans all ‘miss the mark’ on occasion, sometimes more flagrantly than others. 

But Gov. Spitzer’s career has been one of uncovering corruption, of relentless pursuit of those who have missed the mark – he has stood on a pedestal of morality and ethics. Including breaking prostitution rings. In that, he has placed himself on a higher pedestal and was believed to be a force that would rout out the ‘bad’ influences and lift up the high, the principled, the good, the legal. The fact remains that prostitution is illegal. And that the Governor evidently developed shell corporations to move money to pay for his addiction (and my educated guess is that many clients of prostitutes are addicted). 

We know that sexual acts outside of intimate relationships are often about power and control.  And to some this is a powerful addiction. With prostitutes, one is paying to exert such power in a seductive setting.  

So on two levels, I see insurmountable problems with Gov. Spitzer continuing to govern: first, he is not who he presents himself to be. And second, his judgment is clearly impaired. In both of these, he is not trustworthy. His ability to lead or negotiate responsibly is seriously undermined. This is not the same as merely falling off a lofty pedestal – it hampers his ability to do his important job. I won’t go into the highly charged atmosphere of politics of Albany (or anyplace these days), but this is a serious problem.  

I see Gov. Spitzer’s situation to be far more problematic than Senator Larry Craig’s well-publicized arrest last year.  Since Republicans have such a climate of hate against homosexuals and homosexual behavior, his actions are heartrending on one level. He has remained in his Senate seat, but how effective is he now, as compared to before his arrest?  He too engaged in risky behavior and got caught in an admittedly horrible set-up in a public restroom. My guess is that power issues were not a huge part of Sen. Craig’s ‘crime’. Sad, sad, sad. Gov. Spitzer’s situation is sad too, but different.

Later this week I will blog about the relationship between Gov. Spitzer and clergy sexual misconduct. There are parallels – and this is probably why I’m rocked by this so hard. 

A PS:  another reason why I am so reactive to this is that I loved politics as an adolescent and young adult. I loved democracy and made my undergrad major political science because of this. I got out of politics in my mid-twenties, largely because at political gatherings I was treated as a sex object and propositioned in some very ugly, demeaning, and aggressive ways. I had no doubt that this was always about power and control issues.

As I said in my sermon yesterday, I do love reading scientific ‘stuff’.  It seems that each week, something wondrous/miraculous/awe-some thing is discovered or put together in a new way.  There’s the horrific stuff too, but that is worth knowing too.

I have very little background in the sciences. My Achilles heel has always been math, and when the science courses would get to the mathematical formulas and algorithms, I’d be lost. I majored in Political Science, then Social Work. Oh, yes, I did get a Masters of *Science* in Social Work (MSSW), that was a trendy take on social work for a while — we were required to take research and statistics courses and our thesis needed to be original research.  I did mine on a part of then-emerging brain science and how this played out in social workers’ choice in career specialization (counseling, administration, community work, etc.).

My first ministry was in a congregation of scientists and engineers.  When I did preach on topics involving the sciences, I quaked in my boots. One of the first sermons I preached there was on Einstein – and I knew I was in big trouble when, in the week before the service, I was asked by a member whether I pronounced it Ein-stein or Ein-schtein.   I loved serving that congregation and that’s probably one of the reasons I fell in love with FUSS.  I still shudder before I venture forth on a science-related topic, though.

When I do take on a scientific topic, I amp up my research.  I’ve been collecting stuff on the intelligent design (ID) vs. evolution debate for a few years. So last week I scheduled in an hour each day to read up on this.  What I realized when I put the sermon together (I had page after page of notes and great stuff) was that I should have done this the week before and spent an hour a day last week honing it down. Ministry being what it is, I don’t often have that kind of time, but I do learn as I go along, which I guess is a good thing. One thing I know for sure: sermon preparation (as with most other parts of ministry) is an evolving process.

One of the points that I wish I had made clearer (it was there, just not clarified):  we carry around these old stories about how the world works. In the ID vs. Evolution debate, it’s about our Western creation story. But we carry around all kinds of other stories from our early life and our early learning.  They are there, lurking somewhere in our nervous system and memory complex (a topic that is also rapidly evolving).  So then we learn about new discoveries that make those old stories crash and burn – but something else happens.  They won’t die that easily. Something in us wants to cling to those old stories even when facts tell us otherwise. And for some, it’s darn near impossible for a switch to take place. (Like the Catholic Church and Galileo, or hard core Creationists not able to let go of a 6000 year old universe).

So it seems that resilience is an important tool in adapting to new information. We know that some are more resilient than others, and probably in this particular area of adapting to new information, those of us who take on liberal religion are more resilient than, say, a member of a snake handling church. (That’s a hunch, not a scientific observation). But there are probably lots of kinds of resilience and degrees of resilience, which is why change is something that our organisms like to resist.  And it’s very difficult for communities to adapt to change. So these dynamics work on micro and macro levels.

And so as one who has made my career as a religious professional, I find that the newer research on brain behavior and religious practice (the field known as neurotheology) to be quite interesting.  I have lots of reading to do in that field, so maybe I’ll eke out a sermon when I take a study leave (whenever that will be!).

I’d love to hear your comments, and thank all those who have engaged me in discussions on all this after yesterday’s sermon.