Ash Wednesday: Stuck in the Middle

Is not this the fast that I choose:
   to loose the bonds of injustice,
   to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
   and to break every yoke?  

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin?—Isaiah 58:6-7

And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.—Matthew 6:16-18.

Well, you started off with nothing

And you're proud that you're a self-made man

And your friends they all come crawling

Slap you on the back and say

Please, please--Gerry Rafferty, Stuck in The Middle with You

It’s a funny thing about Religion. You believe what you believe because that’s what you believe.—Mickey Spillane (in an interview by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, November 22, 1989)

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The Ordinary Miracle of Christmas

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.  This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.  Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.  

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, * praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’  

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’  So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.  But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.-Luke 2:1-20

We are still amazed at what the shepherds tell us, amazed even that we are amazed at this story. For the dirt-poor pregnant unmarried teenager who brings a child into the world upon whom she lays her nation's hope for salvation is not really so different from any young mother in poverty and oppression across the ages and around the globe. Young mothers always believe in the possibility that their child will be the one who ends the war or finds the cure for cancer or makes the streets safe again or sends the occupiers packing. And it is not really so miraculous that a child could be born apart from the usual way. For it happens every day in fertility clinics across the planet. 

It is in fact, the very ordinariness of the story that fascinates us. The ordinary hopes of an ordinary mother. The ordinary recklessness of ordinary young people taking chances with life and ending up struggling against poverty, pain and panic. In the ordinary face of a baby the story calls us to see a God incarnate in the ordinary. 

We can demythologize the Nativity story, chalking angels, shepherds, mad kings and magi up to  the myth-making of the religious enthusiast. We can find all sorts of ancient stories of Gods come to walk among us, of grand and wise prophets misunderstood by their contemporaries who meet sad and untimely ends, of mothers' broken hearts and the unfulfilled hopes of people living in darkness yearning to see a great light. But demythologizing this story will not rob it of its power. For it is our story and that is its power. 

The Jesus story is not true because of its miracles. It is true because its ordinariness. It is true because in the deepest part of our hearts we know that every mother fears the sword that may pierce her own soul, that every night angels sing, and that shepherds tell tales of music that echoes off the stars, and that every baby's face shines with the image of God. 

The ordinary story of Jesus, Lord and Savior, Messiah and Martyr, is the story of love, of hope, of goodness, faith and sacrifice. The human story. The Word made Flesh. Our story.

Everything is Political. Especially politics.

Thomas Mann, the German social critic and Nobel laureate once memorably said, "There is nothing that is not political. Everything is politics." Like much of what he wrote, he was dead on. Particularly in the politically charged atmosphere of a highly divided nation on the brink of an election that will decide whether or not it continues as a center-right social democratic republic or a hard right confederation of business-dominated special interests.

And nothing illustrates that like the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known to Fox News viewers as Obamacare, but to the rest of us simply as health care reform. I'm not a huge fan of the PPA-ACA, but not because I believe it to be some sort of dark socialist plot to undermine the American health care system, but because I believe it to be a large-scale giveaway to insurance companies in the largest corporate raid on American pocketbooks ever. And because it does not solve the basic problem of health care for millions of people. Even the most rosy estimates of the PPA-ACA put the number of uninsured at 14,000,000 after the full implementation of the law in 2018. Single-payer, universal health care access would be cheaper, simpler and fairer. But the law is at least a start towards insuring that every American can get access to health care without using hospital emergency rooms as primary care centers.

One of the law's provisions is that each state must implement a state-run "health insurance exchange," a sort of Travelocity of health insurance, public and private. If a state elects not to do that, then the federal government will operate the exchange in that state. Back in March, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley issued an Executive Order creating a nonpartisan South Carolina Health Planning Committee to decide whether or not the state should establish a health insurance exchange.

Today's Charleston Post and Courier published an article headlined "SC Gov. Haley dictated health panel finding" with the subtitle "Outcome ordered before committee met." The article cited recently released emails among the Governor, her staff and the Director of the the Department of Health and Human Services, Tony Keck. The work of the Committee, it charged, was a sham, and all along the Committee's report was fixed.

Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper. I know, because I was a member of that Committee.

 When Governor Haley asked me to serve as a consumer advocate and representative of the nonprofit sector, I agreed without hesitation. I spend way too much time advocating for quality health care access as a basic human right to say no to an opportunity like that. Besides, I wanted to advocate for a federally-run exchange, because I simply don't trust South Carolina state government to serve the interests of people who are not a)wealthy and b) well-connected. Whatever problems the federal government has in its programs to serve the poor, the sick, or the disabled, (and they are many) it still does it better than we do things when left to our own devices in the Palmetto State.

We worked long and hard through months of meetings, reams of reports, mind-numbing Power Points and expert testimony. Some members of the Committee originally felt that South Carolina should run its own exchange and tell the Feds to take a hike. But after all the work, and more than a few good-natured political jabs around the table, we came together in a final report that said there were so many unknown factors around the implementation of the law that we could not, in good conscience recommend a state-exchange. As one of the Senators on the Committee noted, "we can't even get the computer systems we have up to federal standards, there's just no way we are competent to do something this complicated."

We encouraged some interim steps: staying in serious conversation and negotiations with the federal agencies charged with implementation, encouraging private exchanges, and promoting smaller-scale, community-based health access networks, like the Duke Endowment funded AccessHealth SC and Tri-County Project Care, run by Charleston's incredible visionary surgeon, Dr. Casey Fitts.

And you know what? Not once did I hear from Governor Haley telling me to support a pre-determined outcome. Because if she had, I would have raised hell. And though I may have been the token liberal on the Committee, I believe many of the other Committee members would have as well.

Everything is politics. The Committee's final report contained a lot of politically charged language that made me roll my eyes. But I voted for it because, in 2014, South Carolina will not have a state exchange and barring a Supreme Court overturn or a Congressional roll-back, the federal government will be running the South Carolina Health Insurance Exchange and hundreds of thousands of people who don't have health insurance now will have it.

It's precisely the opposite of what the tea-guzzling-tell-the-feds-to-get-their-goddam-government-hands-off-our-health-care crowd wants. And that's a good thing.