Occupy This

The Occupy movement has been on my brain a lot in the past couple of months. Perhaps you've heard of it.

I guess I started actively paying attention back in the beginning of October when a (conservative) friend sent me a text message, asking, “Have you made any friends at Occupy Oakland yet? Where’s your tent?” I didn't respond because I didn't know what to say: I hadn't been down there yet so I hadn't made any friends, although some classmates of mine were occupying, but I hadn't informed myself and I didn't want to admit that. My head was swimming. I knew it was something I should know about, so I started...collecting. Facts. Quotes. Photos.

Occupy SF, before it moved down the block and became MUCH bigger

Found on a friend's Facebook wall

My classmate TR marching in an interfaith rally in San Francisco

An Italian take on Occupy Oakland

My friend and classmate PK, center, a few hours before he was arrested at the Interfaith Coalition tent at Occupy Oakland

PK, center

Cellphone photo walking past Occupy Cal last week

“I encourage my students to dig deeper for answers in their Bible and theology courses. Jesus committed his entire life, and death, to the love of all humanity, including the 1 percent, but most especially he identified with the poor and powerless. He showed his particular love, time and again, by sleeping alongside them, eating with them and living as one of them. It is with the neediest, Jesus told his disciples, that God is alive and on the move.” - Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." – Mahatma Gandhi

“I’m ready to occupy all “Occupy _________” punch lines. They’re every bit as stale and lame as the old, stodgy millionaires that the “occupy” movement itself protests.” – MS, a friend and distant relative, in a Facebook status

“Anyone who really says ‘yes’ to life says ‘no’ to war. Anyone who really loves life says ‘no’ to poverty. So the people who truly affirm and love life take up the struggle against violence and injustice. They refuse to get used to it. They do not conform. They resist.” – Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life

In engaging the bigger issues I've faced in my short life - what should I do after college? Why do I want Barack Obama to be president? et cetera - I've found that the best solution comes to me after consulting a variety of quality sources, getting a few good nights' rest, and praying super hard for a sound answer. The Occupy movement, to be fair, doesn't feel as personal for me as it does for others, but nonetheless I've undertaken this same method to decipher its importance for my life. And the punchline is: I still don't know what to think of it, but because the world doesn't revolve around me, I am SO GLAD the movement exists. It may not be affecting my day-to-day, but I am wholly supportive of every protester and every minute reason that any of them feels compelled to camp or march. I feel so damn lucky to be living while this is happening. If Jesus were alive today, I absolutely believe he would be camping in Oscar Grant plaza. It doesn't matter to me that the movement hasn't produced "demands" or specific objectives. It seems to me that most protestors are opposed, quite simply, to the broken system that currently exists, so why would they provide a list of demands if that's a product of the system they're opposing?

For now, I'm going to class, writing papers, buying groceries and doing some yoga. I'm getting ready for my birthday and Christmas. And I have an eye on Occupy. I give thanks that there are thousands of people who are willing to shake things up to make the world a better place, and if something changes - if the Spirit so moves me - I'm ready to join them.

In honor of Veterans' Day

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things."

Kurt Vonnegut

I wasn’t going to write about Penn State.

I wasn’t going to write about Penn State. I wasn’t going to write about Jerry Sandusky, Mike McQueary, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, President Graham Spanier or Joe Paterno. I wasn’t going to write about the purported sexual abuse of (at least) eight children.

But then I saw this Facebook status: “Penn St: terrible decision.”

To my great fortune, I am not a victim of sexual assault. But it’s a subject that I cared a lot about back in high school, when I was a Peer Counselor, and the things I learned in that program are still hanging onto me. I did a lot of work in sexual assault prevention in Peer Counseling: I taught classes, I made educational videos, I went to hundreds of meetings. I was Fort Collins High School’s Sexual Assault Resource Team Student Representative. I could rattle off statistics about how 1 in 4 Colorado women and 1 in 17 Colorado men would be victims of sexual assault in her and his lifetime; about how victims of sexual assault in Larimer County alone ranged in age from six months to 94 years. I learned, and believed in my bones, that sexual assault is an issue of power, not sex.

Given my experience in Peer Counseling there are many things I could say about Sandusky, but I’m not thinking about him.

Joe Paterno is 84 years old. He knew about Sandusky’s abuse. He reported it to Curley, the AD, sure, but he should have done more, and that’s why he lost his job tonight. At Penn State, and around the country for that matter, there are two camps of people watching this play out: those who say Paterno deserved to be fired and those who say he’s innocent, just getting swept up in Sandusky’s scandal. And here’s the disconnect: Paterno is part of a dying generation of men who looked the other way. He did what he was legally obligated to do, and then quickly tried to forget it because it wasn’t his business.

It’s November 9, 2011. Today we know that because Joe Pa looked the other way, children – children – were raped. But how much sexual abuse of children went totally unreported in the 1960s because people who knew about it looked the other way?

By firing Paterno, the board of trustees at Penn State is declaring that protecting Sandusky’s victims is more important than football, which is a statement that needs to be made. I think if Paterno were just getting his coaching start now, in an era when sexual assault is deemed utterly reprehensible, he would have reported Sandusky to the police and this story would be completely different. But he and the rest of the good ol’ boys let this one slide, and that led to an enormous tragedy that they could have prevented. I think my friend with the Facebook status and the rest of camp Innocent are upset because a) he’s such an old man – sort of like our grandfathers, who we think can do no wrong – and b) he never touched a child himself. But he’s 100% complicit in the crime, because he knew about it and he didn’t take appropriate measures to stop it.

It’s sad, because Paterno probably didn’t think he had to do anything else. But does that mean we should let him off the hook? Because he looked the other way, so many children were hurt. That inaction deserves serious consequences, and if he were a janitor at Penn State, he would have received the same punishment for that failure. He’s not taking the fall because he’s the face of the football program and the scapegoat of a flawed university system. He’s falling because he screwed up. Big time.

I sat on a bench down in the Berkeley Marina for a few hours today, reading more Spirit of Life and thinking about this scandal. Moltmann writes, “There is no liberation from sin without atonement, but the only one who can atone is someone who is not himself a sinner. Atonement is not humanly possible. It is possible only for God.”

This morning Paterno released a statement, part of which read, “This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.” I think about Paterno’s words, and Moltmann’s, and reach for peace – for the victims of sexual assault everywhere, for Paterno and the other coaches, for my friend, for the rest of us – from God. Lord, have mercy.

On the family farm and trying harder

Last Tuesday I submitted two midterm papers and took my first exam in Islam. I was pretty worked up about all three of those things, so I worked my buns off and wrote two decent papers but still felt antsy going into my test.

I got my grade back today: I got a 99/100 on my Islam test. I killed it. The only problem I missed was a question about the shortest Surah in the Qur’an, which was a goofy piece of trivia that our professor didn’t cover in class and I didn’t think to look up before the exam. I’m not too upset about it, frankly.

I also got my paper back in Political Theology. Background on this class: it’s really, really hard. I chose it because I need two 4000-level Systematic Theology classes to graduate, and the course description sounded incredibly interesting. I haven’t missed a minute of class time and I’ve read every word of the readings Dr. Radzins has assigned, but oh, good Lord, it is so thick and deep and complex. One week I was so frustrated with a passage that I took a picture and Tweeted it.

Another week we had to read Augustine’s The City of God almost in its entirety.

There are eleven students in the class, and while I follow as best I can, every week I feel like I do 100 units of listening and 5 units of understanding. I probably should have dropped it at the beginning of the semester and taken something more my speed, but I pride myself on NOT QUITTING. I figured eventually I’d understand.

Anyway, I got a C on my paper. Sure, a C is average. But I’ve never gotten a C on a paper in my entire educational career, all the way back to kindergarten. I’ve gotten Cs on tests, but papers are supposed to be the way that I best demonstrate what I know. Hell, I’m training to be an educator and I plan on assigning loads of papers, because students can really show me how much they’re learning. And the real pisser of it all is this: that paper is worth 40% of our grade in the class, and I have to get a B or better or it doesn’t go on my transcript. So either a) I have to take two more 4000-level Systematics classes next semester or b) I don’t graduate on time.

I freaked out the whole way home. Part of me is thinking Suck it up, Schleusener, this is GRADUATE school and it’s game time. The other part of me, the much louder part of me, is thinking You’re not cut out for this and you know it. You’ve been bullshitting yourself and everyone around you for 15 months and it’s time to fold. And part of that is true; I really, honestly don’t get this the way that my classmates do. I don’t have the background in it, which is a disadvantage in itself, but I didn’t exactly spent my summer break reading theology to make up for it.

When my grandpa was a teenager, in the span of just a few months, his big brother Dennis went to war and his father, my great-grandfather, deteriorated mentally to the point where he was basically committed to a mental institution. That left my grandpa, at, like, 16 years old to run the family farm in Oxford, Nebraska. He absorbed all of the duties of both his father and his older brother practically overnight, as a teenager, when his ability to cope with change of that magnitude wasn’t even close to developed. I think an equally impressive part of this story is that my great uncle Dennis wrote Grandpa letters from battle in the South Pacific, telling him what kind of equipment to buy, when to plant and harvest crops, how to manage the farm without him. It literally makes me cry to think of this. That level of responsibility – to each other, to their family – it just…I can’t even fathom it.

Grandpa and Dennis are what Tom Brokaw calls The Greatest Generation. It is so humbling for me to think about The Greatest Generation, because sometimes I’m so disgusted with my own. We can be such a bunch of shitheads. I shouldn’t generalize: I can be such a shithead. I can’t even write a whole paper without getting on Facebook. I buy all of my groceries from a store less than a mile away and I drive there. I complain about having to wash dishes that aren’t my own. I’m afraid – I’m really, really afraid – that I don't actually know how to work hard.

I want to chalk this up to being a child of this age, to being a kid who’s grown up with unimaginable comforts and who’s never really been tested. But I can’t, because even though that’s true, I come from tough stock. I can’t make excuses that other members of my generation can. I fucking owe it to myself, my grandpa, my great uncle who’s long since passed, to TRY. They didn't quit, so I can’t, either.

So tonight, I'm going for a long run. I need to shake my shit out, so to speak.

And tomorrow, I rally. I’m getting that class back on track. I’m writing my thesis. I’m not giving up.

Jurgen Moltmann and a Monday night in Starbucks

Tonight I sit at a long table in Starbucks, sipping a too-hot coffee and highlighting my copy of Jürgen Moltmann’s The Spirit of Life. I finished my class readings this morning so I could spend some time crafting my Master’s thesis, which I’m writing largely on this book. Moltmann is a contemporary German theologian (he’s still alive) with an interesting life story, and this particular book is about pneumatology – the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

I come to a part that reads,

“Because God lets [God’s] Spirit rest on [God’s] messiah, the messiah ‘will bring forth justice to the nations’ (Isaiah 42.1), and when ‘the Spirit is poured out from on high…then justice will dwell in the wilderness and righteousness abide in the fruitful field, and the fruit of righteousness will be peace’ (Isaiah 32.15ff). This means in the first place that the God who in [God’s] almighty power created heaven and earth is on the side of the people who have to suffer violence because they cannot defend themselves. Their rights are [God’s] divine concern. … God is the justice of the unjustly treated, just as [God] is the power of the powerless.”

I swallow hard. This doesn't make sense to me. My gut asks, Can we be explicit about this? Or does it necessarily imply that God is more in favor of those who suffer? Because if that's the case, it would mean that God is less in favor of those who cause the suffering – who are equally a part of God's creation. I don't think this is possible of God. This smacks of mortal construction, not divine.

I put my conundrum on Twitter. Several of my friends in seminary respond. They write, invariably:

- " “I don’t think I would say God is more on their side, but instead acts differently.”

- “I think we can be explicit about that statement and not be exclusive.”

- “I think it's because those who can defend themselves don't need God to defend them. If they did, they would have God.”

- “Maybe there’s an important difference between ‘on the side of’ and ‘favoring.’

My question remains unanswered. These responses don’t satisfy the root of what’s troubling me – that God could, or would, differentiate between us, the mystifyingly complicated little orbs of light that God created. How could God quantify the suffering of someone against the suffering of someone else, who in our eyes might look like the agent of suffering…when really they’re suffering, too?

I keep reading. Moltmann continues, “The suffering, tormented and murdered Christ is on the side of the victims, not the agents.” This gives me such an AHA! moment, because you’re wrong, Moltmann. God is too on the side of the agents, whether we like it or not. God may not be in the torture or the murder, but God is in the person; the Holy Spirit doesn’t pick-and-choose.

I think we envisage God as our justice and power because it gives us hope, and without it, how could we possibly persevere? But we’re shortchanging ourselves with this image, and we are sure as hell shortchanging God with it. As Anne Lamott writes, “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Because we can’t say that Jesus is “against” the agents of torture doesn’t mean we can say He’s for them; it means we have to say that there is so much more at play than we can understand. Grace would be so cheap if it were only allotted to those who deserve it (and believe me, if I could dole it out, Ann Coulter would be left off the list). But we all get it, every one of us, including those people who cause suffering and siphon power from the already-powerless, even though sometimes it doesn’t make a lick of sense. And that, my dear readers, is why more than 2,000 years after the death of Christ, some four and a half billion years after the dawn of time, all of us are still talking about and reading about and writing about and arguing about God. These answers are elusive for a reason. How lucky are we that they are?

**EDIT**

After I published my post, I found this post, and I think Marika is hitting at the same things I'm trying to say, so if my thoughts don't make sense, maybe hers do.

**EDIT II**

An old friend (who's also seminary-educated) just tweeted back at me, saying, "No way God plays favorites. Jesus was just as concerned with Nicodemus' problems and the wealthy man's as the sick and outcasts' struggles." Amen, buddy, amen. <3

One more utterly fantastic trip home

I didn't have class this past week - the GTU gives us a whole week off in the fall, like Spring Break but better because you don't really expect it - so I went home for a few days, and it was SO. AWESOME. Here are the highlights:

- lunch at Old Chicago with Mom, Dad & Courto: I had a beer big enough to swim in before I even got home

- family voting at the kitchen table

- Courto and I teaching Lucy the downward dog

- dinner with the whole S family and reading books afterwards

- breakfast with BG

- bar time with MJ and BG and his friends

It was good to be back in Colorado and remember that my heart really does belong there.

I could say it, but he says it better.

I don't talk about it much, but the political environment in our country has been on my mind a lot in the last couple of years. Ever since I worked for the Obama campaign (right when I started this blog), I've had a much harder time ignoring the nastiness. And while I could say so much more, someone has already said it better.

The Daily Show
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Today's Unexpected Spark: free speech. Thank you, good Lord, for Jon Stewart.