Resurrecting Chicago

Today I was watching the faces and listening to the words of the Parkland students as they presented their anguish and hopes for change to our president. I can feel no shift in the president or in that section of the populace who look to him as their godfather. He and his supporters are not moving toward a more sane gun-control pattern in the US. He and they are going to listen and nothing, absolutely nothing will change, in fact, the divide is going to get worse.

Can you imagine teachers with handguns on their hips and ready to shoot the first student who appears dangerous? Will all teachers be forced to pack a gun, loaded and handy?  To me, this is the most moronic answer possible to the grieving students pleas for common-sense gun control. I can easily imagine a time when a teacher might casually move her hand to her holster area in jest, the move would simply emphasize that she means business in her class.  There are people–teachers, even — who have this kind of a sense of humor.  Showing the gun would have nothing to do with protection of the student and everything to do with power.  Learn or else! I can’t believe that we are even considering arming teachers. How do I know how a threatened teacher would act in  the presence of an active shooter.  Would she automatically act heroically?  What a dangerous and stupid idea to propose for protecting our students..

Why not try these remedies to gun massacres:

–Have a single entrance at schools where everyone has to pass through detectors. Fence the place.  Staff the gate with guards. No one gets in during school hours.

–No permits should be issued for ownership of military style rapid-fire firearms. To hell with the exotic gun collectors. Period.

— The right to bear arms as stated in  the second amendment must be balanced by every citizen’s right to a non-threatening environment. Open-carry is always a threat; that’s why people carry arms in the first place.  Closed-carry creates a similar fear in good people. I don’t want to be around a handgun and I don’t want to see them except on police officers. I have a right to be in a gun free zone at school or any other place.

–Raise the legal age to purchase a forearm to 21 years, first in Florida and then every other state that allows teenagers to buy weapons. In  Florida, if I am eighteen I can’t buy a pack of cigarettes legally but I can buy a gun, any kind of gun.

I am sick at heart over how the culture of my country is spiraling down. Don’t tell me to leave.  I don’t want to leave.  I want those who think every American should be armed to avoid conflict to rethink that idea.  Good people bearing guns do not have an advantage over bad people with guns. Some of us good people can’t even control ourselves when someone cuts us off in traffic. When we all carry will we control ourselves when a good citizen brandishes a handgun and challenges our self-respect?

It is the ides of February, 2018, winter in the Midwest and tourist season in Florida.  Earlier this week in Florida, a nineteen year old man massacred seventeen students at his former high school. And, an off-duty Chicago policeman –a commander, at that– died on the steps of a subway entrance after being shot by a fleeing drug dealer. Why did these awful things happen? Are we content with simply saying there is no answer to that type of question or is there something deeper to reach for?

Does being spiritual mean that I believe in mystery but not a personal God?  “Yep, I’m spiritual.  I can find spirituality in a running stream, a setting sun, in the closing eyes of my baby daughter as she falls asleep. I am deeply moved by intentional evil acts but I don’t have answers to the horror of malice in our world. Religion talks a lot but it has no satisfying answers to the darkness that enters our lives.”

To the spiritual but not religious person facing evil, I want to say this: We Christians experience evil like you do. Our only hope is in a Savior who also experienced evil and taught us how to live through it. He called Himself the light in our darkness.  Maybe if we stop denying that intentional evil exists in Parkland, Chicago and in our own communities, we can find the courage to counter evil with grace.  Isn’t that what Lent strives to teach us?

I once met a man walking barefoot on the hot sidewalks of Las Vegas where I lived at the time.  I thought he was some kind of a nut. He wore a rough sack over his thin body and slept in my yard overnight. The next morning when I asked him who he was he told me he belonged to an informal community of Christians called “The Children of God.” And, what’s your name? I asked. He answered “My name is LIGHTNING-AMEN.”  Now, I’m wondering did his name mean a bolt of fire from the sky or the hope that dawn –a  lightening–  brings to darkness? These days we could use both. AMEN

It is less that forty-eight hours since a lone shooter entered his local high school and massacred seventeen young people and teachers.  Bang! We are knocked out of our routine to be reminded that there is evil in the world. I don’t think the shooter would have benefited much  from medication or anger management classes.  He wanted to silence the voices, gestures and movements of those whom he felt were more blessed than he was. He hated their full lives. Now, those victims will never run, or sing, or fly again. He will have final isolation.

Yesterday, in the early morning fog, I heard a cardinal singing and earlier in the week a chickadee whistled it’s simple two-notes. Unmistakable signs of Spring. The mornings are earlier and the sun sets a bit later each day. We have more light. The birds know what that means: nest-building, brooding, hatching and fledging.  There is hope in the air.

A few years back, my community lost a young man to a heart attack. He was vibrant and looking forward to a new life with us as a servant in the Church.  In silence several of us were walking up a side entrance to the building where the funeral luncheon was being held. The path was lined with bushes and evergreens. A cardinal at the top of a pine tree was singing loudly. Out of our silence, one of us looked up and said “the birds are still singing.” They are, aren’t they?

I renamed this blog “Resurrecting Chicago” sometime ago and I’ll bet you are wondering what that theme means since what I write about often has nothing to do with Chicago. No, I don’t write about Chicago rising from the ashes as it did after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and with such spirit and power that it hosted a World’s Fair in 1893, one generation later. I sure don’t mean the on-going death and resurrection of apartment complexes, old factory and railroad sites which is going on right now in the “City by the Lake.” No, I mean that in my small way I am trying to live a new life in Christ in and around my city so that Chicago experiences something of Christ.

I am a faithful follower of the spirit of the Resurrection.  If I live bringing life and love in my tiny existence then Chicago is better. If many of us live that way Chicago becomes renewed. There are a lot of us around the big city.

There is a wonderful book called “If Christ came to Chicago” by William Stead who wrote about my city after he visited the World’s Fair of 1893.  He reported on the magnificence of the Fair but also examined the city itself.  He came up with a searing critique of Chicago’s politicians and churches who gloried in the success of the World’s Fair but didn’t do much for workers and their families.  In 1893, the United States was in a depression the likes of which had not been seen before and would not be seen again until the Great Depression. People were hungry, cold and without the necessities of life.  What kind of city could host a colossal carnival and exhibition for visitors from the outside world and at the same time neglect its poor?

You know where Christ would be if he came to Chicago?  According to Stead, Jesus would be talking with the poor in the neighborhood taverns.  Stead found that in the neighborhood taverns, it was the bar-keeps, not the churches –much less the politicians– who fed the poor everyday. They offered soup and sandwiches to the hungry and sometimes shelter.

In 1893 and for some time after WWII, taverns were everywhere in Chicago’s neighborhoods, sometimes two or three in one block. People gathered in these centers to drink and socialize.  Bartenders were usually the owners and they knew the people who came in everyday. They cashed their pay checks, or kept their tabs.  They notified family members when a patron had just a little too much. They were their neighbors not only their customers. I remember as  an eight-year old going into local bars — the doors were propped wide open in the Summer– to shine shoes. My dad and mom were not there but lots of folks from the neighborhood were.  It was there in the taverns that we listened to one another, laughed and teased one another.  We even sang together and always looked out for one another.

Somehow these experiences have remained with me and have become part of my Chicago heritage.  No, I would not be surprised to see the Gallilean in earnest conversation with some guy from the neighborhood while nursing a brew. Unless I’m reading the gospel incorrectly, He always seems to show up around tax-collectors, poor residents, and all those who were in one way or another, screwed-up.

That’s why I’ve named this blog “Resurrecting Chicago.”  I’ve done it out of love for the city which still means the world to me.