Man with a red-state accent

I found Kareem Salama through a couple of hyperlinks off Beliefnet's Idol Chatter column. He is an Egyptian-American country and western singer raised in Oklahoma who provides the music for this video



about American Muslims which is charming and funny. What is equally refreshing is an interview he did on Fox News last year. He might convert me -- to country music.

What I'm reading

Emotions Revealed. By Paul Ekman.

Psychologist Paul Ekman is a smart cookie who has worked with the Dalai Lama at the latter's Mind and Life dialogs. He's done cross-cultural research on the facial expressions that accompany emotions, so he can make the argument that some feelings and their outward show are universal. More interestingly, he shows that emotions are not experiences which we can control. We get angry when someone gets between us and a goal. Even babies do. All of which is to say, you can't try to not be angry. Anger has evolved as a useful response. I bet it was more useful before we had traffic gridlock. In the meantime there are things we can do about our emotional behavior. He talks about developing the habit of attentiveness -- know yourself. The book offers the empirical underpinning for the therapeutic process of working on our bad habits; not surprisingly, it is better at analysis than the how-then-shall-we-live part.

Giving up + taking on = shifting something

As a Quaker, I miss the liturgical calendar of the Catholicism of my youth. To everything there really is a season, including the third snow of the week just outside my window. Lent, which begins today, is a big deal for many Christians, especially Catholics. When I was little, we got little Lenten cans in which to save the money for the candy, or anything else, we gave up. The money went for missions. It was unfortunate spiritual pride that made me want to fill up my can: I gave up big time. Today I understand spiritual discipline, paradoxically enough, through my practice of Buddhist meditation and watching my awareness. Today I am highly aware of how difficult it is to work without a cup of coffee, since I am fasting. In doing some research on Lenten disciplines, I came across the idea that if Lent is about self-examination and self-discipline, one could also take on a practice instead of merely giving something up. I'm adding sacred poetry to my Lenten reading: The Soul is Here for its Own Joy edited by Robert Bly (doesn't sound very sacrificial, does it?) and (in a more orthodox vein) The Poetry of Piety edited by Ben Witherington and Christopher Mead Armitage, which really ought to have had T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday:

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual for only one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are ...

I'm in charge here

said Mother Nature before leaving in a windy huff after depositing 10 inches of snow that fell heavily in our driveway, street, schools, etc. At the feeder outside my window is one grateful nuthatch, sharing dining quarters with two chickadees. Our letter carrier seems happy that enough shoveling has been done on the block that he can do his work, come rain, sleet or however many inches of snow. At seven a.m., the view consisted of unbroken planes of white, but the plow has finally come through on the street. We routinely refuse to admit that weather always has the upper hand, although my sister the airline reservation agent will have a busy day today. I love having a grocery store four blocks away, though if I were as smart as all the old folks I saw in there yesterday afternoon, after the snow had begun, I wouldn't have had to return today. It's winter. What do you expect in Chicago ?

Oprah's new pick

No, it's not Hillary Clinton. I'll make hay another time about the correlation between Oprah appearances for him in Iowa and South Carolina and his victories there. Meantime there's a new book club pick, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Number 38 already at amazon.com. O singled out The Power of Now a few years ago and thereby helped sell a few hundred thousand more. I interviewed Tolle in 2003 for Religion News Service when he published Stillness Speaks, which followed The Power of Now. You can read it here . He was then slightly reclusive, or at least not much given to lots of publicity. The O platform is quite the change. What I'm struck by is his use of "purpose" in his title. Post-Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, purpose got borrowed a couple times by other authors. Eckhart is an original, however, and so much more O's style than Warren. I'm staying tuned, and am in line for the webinar with him and O.

The birds got confused

Last week my husband and I enjoyed our annual retreat to Starved Rock State Park along the Illinois River near the town of Utica. During the winter on a weekday, the place is deserted and we can walk for miles without seeing anybody. We saw things we hadn't seen before, including LaSalle Canyon, with a semi-frozen waterfall. We could walk under the falling water; the rock area was iced and slippery. Equally awesome in a much different way was the flood covering the parking lot of the visitors center. The Illinois has been swollen by snow melt from our temperatures in the 60s in January. We saw park benches and picnic shelters sitting in the river water. We also didn't see things we usually see, namely, wintering bald eagles. Usually a dozen can be found roosting and fishing along the river. This year we saw one on the wing, disappearing. We asked at the lodge (a handsome building of WPA vintage, a memorial to truly useful public work) about the eagles. The birds got confused by the warm weather, someone told us, and were around, but not always.

On MLK Day: remembering the Chicago Freedom Movement

I was 13 the summer of 1966 when activists marched in my Chicago neighborhood, Belmont-Cragin on the city's northwest side. The demonstrators sought an end to slum housing and segregated housing patterns. I was much more interested in the Beatles; my vague memory is of marchers on Central Avenue, a few blocks from my home. I have no memory of the hostile reception the marchers received. Dr. King was in Chicago that summer; in one of the demonstrations, he was hit in the head by a rock hurled at him during a march in Marquette Park/Gage Park, on the city's southwest side. He said later that people from Mississippi should come North to learn how to hate.

The Chicago Freedom Movement is regarded by historians as a failure. Measured by its immediate effect on housing patterns, that's true. A seed fell in my heart, one heart, which is where freedom takes root (as well as in laws). I don't remember exactly when I began the habit of quizzing my parents whenever they used the term "colored" to describe black people -- what color ? Sure, it was obnoxious, and my father died a frightened white working-class Democrat defected to the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. But it made a difference to me, and in the next few years I volunteered for the brand-new Head Start program during the summer, and the Chicago Area Lay Movement (CALM) to tutor kids who lived in the south side projects on Lake Park.

A recent local newspaper column prompted me to look up King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Its eloquence is breathtaking -- a man sitting in jail writes this. King could as easily speak for justice as he could write his own name: two habits. This is a radical letter that calls on us to be extremists for love ("Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness") and carefully explains the grounds for civil disobedience. Dr. King's image has been softened over time. But history is memory for those who were there. King was radical. The Declaration of Independence was radical in its time, too. Having missed the MLK special at the Church of Oprah this morning, I'm glad to have spent some time today reading this forceful letter.

At home beyond

I was saddened to learn that the Irish writer John O'Donohue, who had a bestseller several years ago with Anam Cara, died on Jan. 3. I loved his book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace . It forced me to remember the beautiful in art and literature, especially poetry. O'Donohue was a poet, one of the few philosophers I can think of who transmuted the dry abstractions of philosophy into poetry: "our joy in the beautiful is as native to us as our breath," he wrote. I didn't realize he was an environmental activist as well as a writer, and a former priest as well (that part sure figures). Tributes at his site from people intimately familiar with him and his work are lovely. The last lines of Beauty:

As twilight fills night with bright horizons

May Beauty await you at home beyond.

Rest in peace, John O'Donohue.

People just want to be heard

While doing some reporting at a preschool this morning (I like those tiny chairs, and the walls are always covered with pictures of animals like Wilma Walrus) I had occasion to talk to one of the children's parents. She is an architect trained in the Philippines. Somehow she started to tell me about her father's role in World War II, helping Americans find occupying Japanese soldiers, after the Americans shot her father's cousin, not knowing who or what they were dealing with when they first encountered the Filipino men foraging for food. The Philippines were an important part of the Asian theater in World War II -- it was that country to which Gen. Douglas MacArthur promised to return. Every person has a story, and this woman has a bookful. Listening is a great discipline.

The sun was shining -- the weather is unnaturally warm for January -- and another generation of four-year-olds is getting ready for kindergarten. At this stage in their lives everything is a lesson; both my 4-year-old subjects said the best thing about school was playing.

Holding Kenya in the light


Evangelical Christians say they "have a heart for" something that especially worries them. We Friends "have a concern." I have a concern for Kenya in light of the violence following the contested election there. Kenya has more Quakers -- 300,000 -- than any other country in the world. (The US has 200,000.) Kenyan Friends have visited us at Illinois Yearly Meeting, and that was spiritually refreshing. Because some of our members have ties to Kenyan Friends, including marital ties, we have access to more information about Kenya (another good blog is here) from people who are there in order to understand what has happened and, more importantly, why. This is helpful, and also hopeful. The press has not done a good job of providing any kind of context, another illustration of messed-up priorities.

Gone to the dogs

One of the things I have always loved about being a journalist is the opportunity to learn new things. This week's lesson: canine couture. Who knew? Well-heeled dogs, and their owners, everywhere, but not this cat person. In the course of work for the Fox Valley Park District at a dog obedience class, I met two Maltese, one of whom was distinctly mini-Maltese, being a puppy. Each was wearing an Oscar Newman sweater -- the seasonal variety, of course, for December. (Oscar is being a little possessive about images of his upscale sweaters, but click on the link above for a peek.) Modern Dog magazine chronicles the lifestyle of the urban dog, and Paris Hilton did something useful in this world in designing dogwear .

What I'm reading

The Amber Spyglass. By Phillip Pullman.

This made me want to re-open my Milton, and nothing has ever made me want to reopen Milton after studying him out of (self-imposed) obligation in graduate school. I don't generally like darkly lit dystopian works, but this one is less dark, curiously enough, even if the principal characters do go to the land of the dead. This was the first of the trilogy I actually liked, perhaps because I finally grew to like Will and Lyra. And I really liked the Gallivespians (is he nodding to Swift there? probably). The scope of the series is so apparent here -- its ambitious character that borrows from so much of literature to ask again some of the great, timeless questions. Pullman is clearly an excellent student of literature, which he evidently concentrated on at the expense of keeping up with theology. In some ways his is a very old-fashioned view of the superiority of Enlightenment rationalism, though with souped-up contemporary physics. The controversy over Pullman's atheism is well-covered at Idol Chatter by Donna Freitas, who told me when I interviewed her about Killing the Imposter God, her book on Pullman, that she envied my encounter with it for the first time. I'm curious enough to dip back into Milton and, even more so, Blake.

Existential question of the day

I dropped in today to the local senior center, which is cheerfully called The Friendly Center. I played two hands of bridge (lost one, darn it) and heard some stories. Having recently been with a group of Presbyterian women who wanted to learn more about telling their own stories to their families, and also because I was there prospecting for local history, I was conscious of how many years of personal history were in the room in the lives of those 135 people. Bernice, who will be 98 in January and looks like she's in her 80s, shared some of her history with me, including having a grandfather who was a lamplighter in Chicago's Marquette Park. She was aboard TWA flight 847 when it was hijacked by two Lebanese gunmen in June 1985. She was among the first group of people let off the plane because the hijackers had decided "to let the old ladies go," she said. She was 75. She remembered the name of the heroic flight attendant who spoke German and could communicate with one of the hijackers, the captain's name, the name of the Navy diver who was the single fatality during the protracted ordeal. (There were 152 people on the plane.) People remember little pieces of history, which is a much bigger story. A propos of something else (the game trophies bagged by her late husband, a hunter) Bernice's friend Viola asked, "What are you supposed to do with your memories?" I hope I learn the answer.

I've been made an honorary Presbyterian

I spoke about Oprah Winfrey and writing to a gathering of the Presbyterian Women in the Synod of the Southwest this past weekend. I certainly had fun. It was great to be with so many women of energy, discipline and commitment. These are the folks out there providing for less resourced congregations, many of them on Arizona reservations. The theme was "We love to tell the Story," and I heard some interesting stories from women I met, stories of travel, family, widowhood, divorce. The energy was especially remarkable because many of the women were in their 60s and 70s, some in their 80s. In the bathroom, one woman was flossing her teeth. Flossing is a great habit, someone said. Supposed to be one of the secrets of longevity, I added. Huh, said another woman. I'm 84 and I guess I've got that figured out. I was delighted to be made an honorary Presbyterian. They gave me a wooden pin with the PW symbol.

What I'm reading

The Golden Compass. By Philip Pullman.

It took me forever to get into this and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I don't much like the heroine, Lyra Belacqua; she comes across as somewhat sullen. And goodness, this world is dark, dark, the Aurora Borealis notwithstanding. Given the Miltonic echo of the trilogy, this darkness is appropriate. It's certainly deeply and quirkily imaginative. I adore the daemons and love the panserbjorn. The animals are at least as human as the people, some nobler. Do you want Iorek Byrnison or Lord Asriel as your ally? But I am on to The Subtle Knife, number two in the series.

Cultural religion

The French are supposed to be a secular culture -- it's in their constitution . So I was surprised to discover when we arrived in the city of Lyon on Aug. 15 that the town was pretty much closed down, because it was the Feast of the Assumption. Not only that, the basilica -- Notre Dame de Fourviere -- was packed. We could hear the sermon amplified outside. French historian Nathalie Caron notes the paradox of a secular state with a Catholic culture that celebrates a significant number of religious holidays. But cultural practices don't offer evidence of active belief. France is historically Catholic; hence its beautiful cathedrals. In the U.S., scholars refer to our "civil religion" -- which has been misinterpreted to mean that America is (and was) an actively practicing Christian nation, as opposed to one with historic ties to a large number of Christian denominations.

Step class as spiritual discipline, continued

People have regularly asked me how I found the people I wrote about in my first book, The God of Second Chances. How did I find people with amazing life-changing experiences? Research and radar, the last part meaning that maybe they find me because I'm in the right place. Today my step instructor mentioned in passing that she was in a coma 10 years ago. Ten years ago she had a seizure and aneurysms, and was about to have her plug pulled. The day the plug was to be pulled, she woke up. Then came the work of learning to walk, talk, eat again. Ten years later she's a fitness instructor. Just in case you think that things will never change. I tend to forget that everybody has a story, and some of those stories are pretty compelling.

Pushing the daisy envelope

The critics are rooting for Pushing Daisies as one of the most creative entries in the fall TV line-up. Hoping spiritual significance would flower in a show about a piemaker who can bring dead people back to life, I tuned in. Last night's premiere had a lot of visual fun, very 60s-mod looking colors. There was less verbal fun, altho parts of the script crackled more than others. I loved the deadpan of Chi McBride, who plays Emerson Cod, Ned's private investigator partner. It reminded me overwhelmingly of the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, with visual exaggeration and above all a narrator, whose ubiquitous drone annoyed me. Ned the baker's Pie Hole restaurant also reminded me strongly of the bakery in the whimsy-romance film Stranger than Fiction. Leftover set? I prefer whimsy to fantasy, because the latter can easily shade over to allegorical. And I love it that weird stories can ask large questions and be quite disarming about it. At the moment I prefer Stranger than Fiction; its conceits and concerns with love and imagination were familiar and yet quite fresh. By comparison, Pushing Daisies is pretty far out there, certainly for mainstream TV. Usually cable TV is the home of metaphysics.

Step class as spiritual discipline


Somebody asked me last week at the Religion Newswriters conference in San Antonio if I blogged about religion. Not really, I said. I don't blog about religion news, I should have said. Lots of others do that quite well -- I enjoy Bible Belt Blogger , Religionwriter.com and the reliably fine work by the team at the Dallas Morning News , among others. But you couldn't pay me enough money to write about the travails of the Episcopal Church over gay marriage. I would much rather write about spiritual discipline in all its modern varieties, and step aerobics is a new and demanding one to me, not terribly trendy, but heck, I'm in the Midwest. Exercise works by faithfulness: you show up, and keep showing up, with consistency. That's the only secret: show up. My Catholic upbringing, with daily Mass attendance, really laid down the tracks for that. By this kind of faith and works are you saved, so tap it out, one-two-three.

New acquaintance

How lucky am I? Last week I returned to the hood and the past, and this week I did San Antonio for the Religion Newswriters Association annual meeting, definitely my present occupation. Former president Jeff Sheler said a few years ago that this group is his peeps, and this year I finally get what he means. I spent less time in panel sessions taking notes that won't yield stories and more time chatting and taking cards of freelance colleagues, since this subgroup is growing in numbers. If religion writers are the weird uncles of the newsroom (thanks to whomever said that), then freelance religion writers are weird uncles, and aunts, at home alone writing to themselves (like now!). How great to be in a roomful of people who read newspapers, have wry senses of humor and can use "premillenial dispensationalist" correctly in a sentence. (I missed that panel, but I can figure out someone to check with.) Free food helps, too.