“There has been no clear consensus on what constitutes torture,” according to Brian Duffy, NPR’s former managing editor, a principal in Public Radio’s refusal to use the term “torture” to describe Bush era practices.

“I understand the desire to ‘call a spade a spade,’ but it is not for journalists to start labeling specific practices torture,” said Duffy. “That’s what the debate is about — what constitutes torture?”

National Public Radio’s Ombudsman Alicia Shepherd concurs,

“The role of a news organization is not to choose sides in this or any debate. People have different definitions of torture and different feelings about what constitutes torture. NPR’s job is to give listeners all perspectives, and present the news as detailed as possible and put it in context.”

Ombudsman Shepherd continues, “No matter how many distinguished groups — the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners — say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters obviously believed that waterboarding terrorism suspects was necessary to protect the nation’s security.

One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public. So, it is not an open-and-shut case that everyone believes waterboarding to be torture.

I am not shilling for NPR. I don’t agree with its use of bureaucratic euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’  But I am shilling for strong, credible journalism that is as objective as humanly possible.”

Hmm, is an Ombudsman just a paid blog commenter?

Bob Garfield, host of the NPR program, “On The Media,” conducted an exemplary interview with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepherd.

He queried,

“Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.

It seems to me that the only people who think it’s a debate are the Bush Administration, who are the culprits. So how does that constituent a debate?

NPR certainly has no difficulty calling murder ‘murder.’ It doesn’t call it ‘enhanced argumentation technique.’ The terrorists call themselves ‘freedom fighters’ but NPR calls acts of terror ‘acts of terror.’”

Jesus upbraided his disciples for using weasel words to avoid telling the truth.  His punch line was,

“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Karen J. Greenberg writes in her sobering op-ed “Kiss the Era of Human Rights Goodbye,”

“Bush’s Global War on Terror has been a textbook case of human rights violations designed and implemented at the highest levels of government. First, there was the assault on the English language, a necessary initial step in the process of changing the national mindset of a country about to become a first-class human-rights abuser… (when) Susan Sontag compared administration abuses of language to the linguistic perversions that preceded genocidal acts against the Hutus in Rwanda, I recoiled.”

Ever since Gingrich’s “Contract on America” began to threaten NPR’s government funding the network has become morally docile as a legitimate political watchdog.

After 9-11 as NPR garnered a much larger “market share” their support has become much more corporate and their coverage much more feel good.

Public Radio does non threatening arts and culture pieces very well, and will do liberal self congratulatory stories about racism, sexism, or homophobia.

However, NPR’s political interviews are so polite and cozy as to be just shy of handing government officials an open mic to spew propaganda.  Grade school kids have recently asked former Bushies like Condoleezza Rice tougher questions than any NPR reporter ever has.  BBC training and an internship on “Democracy Now” should be mandatory for every NPR correspondent.

It gives me no pleasure to say this but what I  have privately railed about for years is  dreadfully clear now.  NPR has ceded its moral integrity and sacred journalistic trust to hold the powerful accountable.

Health care is worthy of a vigorous debate.  International, universally accepted definitions of torture are not.

There are times when the admonishment of Jesus cannot be trifled with. “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

“The Lord sent Prophet Nathan to King David. When he came to him, he said, ‘There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.’”

King David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’

Then Prophet Nathan said to King David, ‘You are the man!’”

President Obama spoke at the annual Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner on June 19th.  Here are a couple of his timely quips.

“Nick at Nite has a new take on an old classic, “Leave it to Uigurs. I thought that was pretty good.”

“But I have to say, as I traveled to all these countries, I saw firsthand how much people truly have in common with one another. Because no matter where I went, there’s one thing I heard over and over again from every world leader:  “No thanks, but have you considered Palau?”

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor are two of my stylistic and rhetorical gurus.  I am given to satirical and politically incorrect humor.  Yet, something about my President’s jokes on these matters, at this time in our history, sounds off key.  This scene reminds me of the Prophet Nathan’s cunning parable that indicted King David.  It is one thing for Leno, Letterman, or Stewart to satirize the Uighurs plight, but for the President who holds their destiny in his hands to do so seems indecent.

The 17 Chinese Muslim ethnic Uighurs in Obama’s joke have been held at the Guantanamo Bay Prison for more than seven years without charge.  They were cleared for release from Guantanamo four years ago after US officials ruled there was no evidence to hold them as “enemy combatants.”

Last year a Federal judge ordered the men released into the United States, but an appeals court halted the order, and they have been in legal limbo ever since.

The US state department has said the Uighurs cannot be returned to China because of fears they will face persecution and possible execution.

Officials in Palau, a U.S. administered territory until 1994, have agreed to temporarily take in the 17 Uighurs for humanitarian reasons.  The island is heavily dependent on U.S. aid.  Plus, Palau maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, not China.  Ironically, Palau and the United States are discussing the possibility of a $200-million aid package.

Here’s what gets my little lamb, I mean, goat.

From my back porch, Obama’s cavalier joking is part of a larger American soul affliction.  We live such comfy, entitled lives that wise cracks about locking up marginalized Chinese guys for years on end without cause, is like watching a movie.  Admitting they are completely innocent, yet holding them in prison for their own “protection” is like playing a video game.  Dealing them for money to a helpless former island territory is like the Washington Redskins trading a football player.  Reporters, known in days of yore as political watchdogs, making jolly with the President about our human rights abuses is like attending a farcical play.

Maybe I got up today on the self - righteous side of the bed.  But, Prophet Nathan’s confrontational exclamation seems on the money.

America, “You are the man!”

“They gotta war for oil, a war for gold,

A war for money and a war for souls,

A war on terror, a war on drugs,

A war on kindness and a war on hugs,

A war on birds and a war on bees.

They gotta a war on hippies tryin’ save the trees.

A war with jets and a war with missiles,

A war with high seated, government officials,

Wall street war on high finance,

A war on people who just love to dance,

A war on music, a war on speech,

A war on teachers and the things they teach,

A war for the last 500 years.

War’s just messin’ up the atmosphere.

A war on Muslims, a war on Jews,

A war on Christians and Hindus,

A whole lotta people just sayin’ kill them all.

They gotta a war on Mumia Abu Jamal,

The war on pot is a war that’s failed,

A war that’s fillin’ up the nations jails.

World war one, two, three and four,

Chemical weapons, biological war,

Bush war 1, Bush war 2,

They gotta war for me, they gotta war for you!”

A Truer poetic rhyme has never riffed on.  It flowed from the prophetic well of Michael Franti. (Listen below.)

Michael Franti, \”We Don\’t Stop\”

A war on communism, drugs, materialism, secularism, terrorism, gay marriage, abortion rights.  Rest assured but with both eyes fully open - when you hear a government or a group declaring war on something, the war is on you.

The war on communism spawned over the top zealots like McCarthy bulls eyeing and black balling hoards of creative, honorable, patriotic souls.  It mutated into Korean and Vietnam wars, which are still cavernous in terms of personal, national, international pain and angst.

Nicholas Kristof writes,

“This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

We have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

It’s now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.”

The hellish “war on terror” has debased the human decency of all concerned.  U.S. government officials have resorted to global lying, bullying, torture, dictatorial secrecy, spying on its citizens, the banishment of habeas corpus, and the virtual wholesale gerrymandering of our constitution.

Our reputation is shamefully sullied among our allies and we have birthed more terrorists than democratic converts.  We have killed legions more innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan than Bin Laden ever reveled in on 9-11.  Even though we “regret mistakes were made” following our initial denials and investigations, the indelible damage is done.

The wars are on you; your person, your privacy, your property, your principles.

The venerable sage Lao Tzu offers timeless spiritual medicine.

“There is no greater illusion than fear,

no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear

will always be safe.”

“To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened - a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.”

These were our President’s words at Buchenwald, Germany, earlier this month.  It is infamous as a place of torture for more than a quarter-million, and the place of death for more than 50,000.

In 1995 I watched an 4 part PBS documentary, “The Way West.” It chronicled the Europeans steady, determined migration and occupation of the American Indian lands.  My heart and passion went out to the Indian’s in every respect.  This surprised me since I am a European who never gave Indians much thought.

My only point of reference was negative.  We lived in Rapid City, South Dakota when I was ten years old or so.  My Dad was a minister there and I recall him often helping out drunken and destitute Indians.

There is a part of me that wished I never viewed the PBS series.  Until this time I essentially believed the American fable that we are a nation founded on and committed to the freedom and nobility of all people.  The truth doesn’t always set you free.  Sometimes it disturbs, haunts, and invades you like a bacteria that will neither kill or cure you.

The only way I can maintain any integrity in regard to my ancestor’s relationship to the Indians is to call it painfully and regrettably, an American Holocaust.

According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a “vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record.”

By the end of the 19th century, writes David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, native Americans had undergone the “worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people.”

In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr., “there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a ‘race’ of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history.”

I recall a fiery rant from John the Baptist.

“When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’… every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

American translation – “Don’t talk to me about Washington’s freedom revolution or, Jefferson and Franklin’s  “all people being created equal.” Own up to who you are, and show that you have changed by your actions.”

I am enriched to hear our Presidents decry and memorialize the Jewish Holocaust.  But, if it serves as a smoke screen of self righteousness on how we liberated the Jews, while never looking in the American mirror we will continue to be like the “brood of vipers” John the Baptist called out.  And, we will continue to invade sovereign nations to fight our contrived boogiemen like communism and terrorism.

When U. S. leaders and citizens are courageous enough to confront our denial of the American Indian Holocaust, then healing words of Jesus will be released on their path of natural grace.  “The truth will set you free.”

 

 

“The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor. Time, patience, and the baby will come. Respect the woman’s rhythm. And if you forget the second and third rule, remember the first. The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor.”

This was the philosophy of Dr. George Tiller, the sixty-seven-year-old Physician who was assassinated a week ago Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas.  

As I write this the sick feeling in the belly of my being returns for a man I had never heard of until his murder.  My infirm soul has systemic causes.  

Doctors who provide legal medical care for women are routinely harassed, threatened and sometimes slain.  Women’s clinics are often under siege and vandalized.  Those who honor the woman’s body as her sacred domain are labeled as “murderers” and “baby killers.”  Politicians are forever playing on the fears of certain Christians making laws to chisel away at the legal and ethical right to an abortion.  This is the second time in less than a year that an innocent person has been shot in cold blood in a church practicing liberal faith.

Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue made this statement. 

“George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”

In the early 90’s I read a thick volume which had a profound impact on me titled, “The Great Cosmic Mother” by Sjoo and Mor.  

They write,

“The problem of mass poverty, mass starvation, the mass deaths of children and infants every year from a simple lack of proper nourishment is not normal, is not ‘life’… It is a condition traceable solely and specifically to patriarchal religion.

The antiabortion movement in America calls itself ‘pro life.’  In fact it is ‘pro fetus’ period.  Championing the fetus is easy…What is hard is to change the world, so that millions and millions of children have a chance for some kind of qualitative life after they are born – this is the only genuine pro life work.

When one reads the total gestalt of the antiabortionist movement in America, it is clear to see that the average ‘pro lifer’ is not pro-life at all, certainly not pro-quality life.  Rather, they are pro-control.”

Their conclusion has a foul visual ‘aha’ moment for me.  I vividly recall in 2003 when the federal law was signed to make intact dilation and extraction a crime.  Every single person gathered around the table were men.

Sjoo and Mor continue. 

“The fundamentalist men…are not involved in a religion of Life, but in a religion of male control.”

“Where does life begin?” they inquire.  “Life does not begin.  It is always here.  Nature is alive from the beginning.  Life does not emerge from us, we emerge from it.  Pregnancy and childbirth are ritual passages of eternal life through the bodies of autonomous women.”

Dr. George Tiller recognized a cosmic truth; “The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor.”  Well then, just maybe the woman’s body is smarter than powerful male religions, ministers, and law makers.

Dateline: July 29, 2009 Washington D.C., “Christian Senators Reject Jesus for Supreme Court Justice”

After tense, terse and tedious questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a majority of Christian Senators voted against Jesus of Nazareth to become the first Aramaic speaking Supreme Court Justice of the United States.

Leading up to the nomination President Barak Obama articulated the qualities he wanted in a potential Justice. 

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

President Obama showcased the humble roots of nominee Jesus as he introduced him.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.  He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He has no credentials but Himself.”  

In the course of the hearings the Christian Senators were particularly vexed by the response of Jesus in a case where he failed to uphold the rule of law. 

Fundamentalist Christian leaders had brought a woman before Jesus who had been caught in the act of adultery.  They quoted from Leviticus in the law of Moses.

“If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.”

They then challenged Jesus, “Now what do you say?”

Jesus stooped down and began to write with his finger in the dust on the ground.  As they persisted in their questioning Jesus straightened up and said to them, “if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  He then bent down again and continued writing with his finger on the ground.  At this, they began to leave one by one, beginning with the eldest. 

Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing before him.  He stood up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?  ‘No one sir,’ she replied.  ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared.  ‘Go now, and do not sin again.’” 

Here is a sampling of responses from the Christian Senators, when asked why they rejected Jesus to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Senator Orrin Hatch replied. 

(Obama) “said that a judge has to be a person of empathy. What does that mean? Usually that’s a code word for an activist judge.”

Senator Jeff Sessions retorted,

“(His judicial philosophy is) “dangerous, because I don’t know what empathy means. So I’m one judge and I have empathy for you and not this party, and so…is he now free to rule one way or the other based on likes, predilections, politics, personal values?”

The Senate’s No. 2 Republican Jon Kyl forcefully stated he could not support a Supreme Court justice who decides cases based on

“emotions, feelings, preconceived ideas, or someone who takes into account human suffering and employs empathy from the bench.”

Peter, a fellow judge with Jesus, reflected on the Christian Senators “no” votes.

“The living stone rejected by men is chosen and precious in God’s sight..the very stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone that will make men stumble and a rock that will make them fall.” 

“When the evil spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through arid places seeking rest; and finding none he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he finds it swept and put in order.  Then he goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

This week the Bush era revelations have degraded to - sick, sicker, sickest.   A Gentlemen’s  Quarterly magazine article by Robert Draper has unearthed covers of former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld’s “Worldwide Intelligence Updates.”  Rumsfeld deemed them so important that he personally delivered them to President Bush in the run up to, and the execution of the Iraq War.  They depict scenes of soldiers, machine guns, tanks, grenade launchers, and aircraft with Bible verses for the headings.

Most of the passages are so gnarled out of context that they make blasphemy look like an Eagle Scout pledge.  Even the most fair minded person has ample ammunition (pun intended) with these images and quotes to view the Iraq invasion as a Christian holy war.  

One of the covers has American tanks entering an Iraqi city with the passage, “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.”

The cover that most had me reaching for extra strength nausea meds shows soldiers with machine guns kneeling in prayer.  The biblical quote is “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?  Here am I Lord, Send Me.” 

This is the Prophet Isaiah’s timeless call to preach this message to his nation;

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”

Mr. Rumsfeld and company, if the woe fits wear it.

Now to the moral of the Jesus story at the beginning of this piece.  He was informing naysayers of the spiritual process of becoming whole.  We can excise the offending “evil spirit” and sweep our house spic and span, but if we fail to replace this offending energy with a positive force the vacuum will be filled seven fold with an unholy vengeance.

Liberals have swept the house named “public square” clean with a detergent labeled “separation of church and state.”  We have failed to distinguish the vast difference between religious institutions being entangled in government, and personal spiritual ethics infusing and informing public morality.

We have, with concentrated might painted all religion, even the enlightened versions with the same evil spirit brush.  Progressive Ministers and religious leaders have as a rule been marginalized, ghettozed and made invisible by the secular left. 

Liberal religions have neutered themselves in parochial, self satisfied comfort zones.  Turn on your radio, and TV.  The voice of religion is uniformly narrow, anachronistic, and tribal.  Progressive religion has ceded the airwaves with no visionary movement afoot.  We can’t count on Obama being an all- in-one vacuum cleaner and holy censer. 

The “evil spirits” are lurking in arid places.  If we progressives neglect to fill the house with new furnishings they will return to the house from which they came.  The Rumsfeld portraits hang on the wall as a visual, visceral admonition, “The last state becomes worse than the first.”

“They preach, but do not practice.   They bind

heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on

men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their

finger.”

An Iranian appeals court announced last week that it was reducing the sentence and ordering the immediate release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was convicted by an Iranian court last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Saberi’s release is good news, as her conviction was based on highly dubious charges and unreliable judicial procedures in Iran. 

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had called for Iran to release Saberi.

“We believe she should be freed immediately, that the charges against her are baseless and that she has been subjected to a process that has been non-transparent, unpredictable and arbitrary.”

President Obama weighed in,

“I am gravely concerned with her safety and well-being… We are working to make sure that she is properly treated.  She is an Iranian-American who was interested in the country which her family came from. And it is appropriate for her to be treated as such, and to be released.”

These salvos are right on target and I would expect nothing less of my government.  The Grand canyon credibility gap lies in the admonition of Jesus in the opener. “They preach, but do not practice.”

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind.

In Iraq, we imprisoned Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, part of AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning war coverage.  He was held for almost two years with no charges of any kind, after Hussein’s photographs from the Anbar province directly contradicted Bush administration claims about the state of affairs there. 

In this very moment as we celebrate Saberi’s release in Iran, the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters.  Last December an Iraqi court found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released.  But, our administration has refused to recognize the validity of the Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned.  Hey White House, can you spell sovereignty?

It is a woeful season in America when a medieval theocracy metes out greater justice than an alleged enlightenment democracy.  How long will we heap heavy burdens on others without lifting a finger to remove them?  It is hard for a life, a body, a soul, a family, a nation, an interwoven world to bear. 

In a related issue, President Obama has reneged on his pledge to obey a court order to release more torture photos.  He stated “the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” 

Even if this nation is too stiff necked to follow its principles for the sake of integrity we will do well to take heed of an intergalactic spiritual law.

Obama’s statement recognizes this hard wired reality, which our superpower will not be able to stave off forever.

“Do not be deceived, a man reaps what he sows.”

“I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.”

Now there’s a mouthful of truth times 6.7 billion!  The sage is Pete Seeger at his recent 90th birthday celebration. 

One of the most tempting cynicisms in life is, “I’m just one person, I can’t do much of anything.”  

Bruce Springsteen headlined the concert honoring Seeger.  He strummed his guitar before performing and mused.

“As Pete and I traveled to Washington for President Obama’s inaugural celebration, he told me the entire story of ‘We Shall Overcome,’ how it moved from a labor movement song and, with Pete’s inspiration, had been adopted by the civil rights movement.

And that day, as we sang ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ I looked at Pete. The first black president of the United States was seated to his right. And I thought of the incredible journey that Pete had taken. You know, my own growing up in the ’60s, a town scarred by race rioting, made that moment nearly unbelievable. And Pete had thirty extra years of struggle and real activism on his belt. He was so happy that day. It was like, Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.”

The other end of cynicism is the American fiction that change happens by the courageous passion of one lone person.  This is not to undermine Pete Seeger’s 60 years of dedication to equality and justice.  Nor is it to deny the fortitude of that singular soul who claims cosmic authority and says “no more.”  It takes the postered faces and the faceless millions.

A new report by Amnesty International says China has intensified its crackdown on activists and particularly lawyers.  Li Jinsong’s law firm has defended some of China’s most high-profile dissidents. 

Li has been threatened, harassed and beaten. Three years ago, he and three other colleagues were brutally assaulted as they traveled to a local court to defend another lawyer.  No one but local court officials knew they would be traveling that day, and despite repeated calls, local police never came to investigate.

Li says he is willing to sacrifice himself for the law. 

“If China’s legal system is a skyscraper, it should be 100 stories. But it’s not finished; we’ve only built 30 or 40 stories. If we’re standing high up in the building, and I get knocked to the ground and killed by corrupt officials and their friends, at least the 30 or 40 stories we’ve built will still exist.”

Pete Seeger plumbed the everlasting truth this way.

“I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and one end of this seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it. 

The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we’re trying to fill it up with sand. 

A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, “Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in.” 

But we keep saying, “We’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time. “One of these years, you’ll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction.” And people will say, “Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?” 

The lyrical refrain hums, “Us and all our little teaspoons.”

“Do not mate different kinds of animals.  Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.  Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”

There are some downright silly laws in the Jewish Torah.  Of the above, I plead innocent to number one.  I was forced by my parents to break number two sowing our family garden.  According to my Chinese garment tags I violate the third one with some regularity, although I prefer 100% cotton.   Obedience to some of these laws would get me thrown under the jail nowadays.

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him…Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death.”

Or, the favorite among a narrow tribe of Christians; “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

However, there are some Torah laws that time has forgotten which are worthy of reinstatement.

“When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands…Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.”

I heard of a young man this week who lived in harmony with this law, likely without knowing it.  That is part of the beauty here.  A universal truth is implanted in the fabric of our being.  A precept is timeless when it calls forth the deep compassion of our common humanity.  Dan Millis is a volunteer with No More Deaths a humanitarian group founded in 2004, as a response to the growing number of deaths along the border. They operate along the Arizona-Mexico border providing water, food, and medical assistance to migrants walking through the desert. 

In February of 2008, he found the body of a fourteen-year-old girl from El Salvador in the southern Arizona desert. Two days later, as he was leaving gallon-sized sealed jugs of water along the same migrant trails, he was ticketed for littering by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Dan Millis refused to pay the $175 fine and fought the littering ticket misdemeanor charge on the grounds that humanitarian aid is not a crime.  A district court denied his appeal last month, stating, “the Court finds the water jugs, left in the refuge, constitute garbage.”

The interesting thing about this conviction was that Dan received no punishment whatsoever.  He didn’t have to serve the six months’ jail time and didn’t have to pay the $5,000 maximum fine. He didn’t even have to pay the $175 ticket.

Makes me wonder if the court too supplanted the unjust modern law in favor of the ancient perennial principle.

With great fondness and sentiment I recall many Sundays singing the stalwart gospel standard, “Bringing In The Sheaves.”  I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what a “sheave” was, or what the song meant.  Now I do.

“Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”  

\”Bringing In The Sheaves\” Southern fried gospel by the Chuck Wagon Gang