Rants, mumbling, repressed memories, recipes, and haiku from a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School.
Friday, June 21, 2024
Haiku Friday: The weather
We all talk about the weather this time of year-- and especially right now here in Minnesota, where rains are causing flooding. So let's haiku about weather this week! Here, I will go first:
Blown-over building
A river in the street now
Ah, summer weather!
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern and have some fun!
The State of Louisiana just passed a law mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state. It's a terrible idea. The Ten Commandments directly conflict with the US Constitution-- and probably the best way to comply with the new law would be to post the Bill of Rights next to the Ten Commandments. I'll explain why (though I have already done that in an article you can read here after downloading it).
Consider the First Commandment: "Have no other Gods Before Me." Setting aside the assumption of other Gods there, this commandment directly contradicts the First Amendment, which sets out freedom of religion. The Second Commandment suffers the same problem-- the Constitution guarantees we can have graven images if we damn well want. The Third Commandment conflict with the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Our society has pretty much given up on 4 & 5. Really, the only commandments encompassed by American law and culture are 6 & 8-- and, if you think about it, any organized society bars theft and murder.
The 10 Commandments can be perfectly fine as a personal code, but lousy as a government mandate-- especially in a nation that has thrived under the Constitution we have. Our government can embrace one or the other, but not both-- and it seems that Louisiana has chosen Old Testament rules over the Constitution of the United States.
So, yeah, yesterday I skipped right over the Olympics this summer to talk about the 2026 World Cup, and I feel kinda bad about that. So let's jump back to the Olympics for a moment-- and specifically what I think might be the most interesting venue in Paris.
For whatever reason, a 30,000 seat temporary facility at Place de le Concorde is slated to host four of the more unorthodox events in the games: Freestyle BMX racing, 3 on 3 basketball, skateboarding, and breakdancing.
3 x 3 basketball was an Olympic sport for the first time in 2020 (er, actually, 2021), but this will be the first time around for the US men. The team will have 4 members: Canyon Barry (son of hall of famer Rick Barry, who shoots free throws underhand and made 42 in a row in college), Jimmy Fredette (a former BYU star who played in the NBA for 7 years or so), Kareem Maddox (former Princeton player and NPR employee), and Dylan Travis (who played D2 ball at Florida Southern College). They are ranked #2 in the world.
The women's 3 x 3 team features two players familiar to most from the recent NCAA tournament: Cameron Brink from Stanford and Hailey Van Lith from LSU (who just transferred to TCU). They are joined by Rhyne Howard from the WNBA's Atlanta Dream (a former rookie of the year) and former WNBA player Cierra Burdick.
I know... we should all be excited now for the Paris Olympics, which start next month, after all. But I'm looking past it to the 2026 World Cup for men's soccer, which is going to be a very different kind of tournament than we have seen in the past.
For one thing, it is being co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, with games held in all three countries. You can bet there will be real excitement all over once things start. I'm a little bummed that Texas got two host cities (Dallas and Houston) while the entire upper midwest (Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, etc) got shut out. Yeah, Kansas City is a host, but that is not the same.
The other big news is that the tournament is expanding from 32 to 48. teams, which means we will see some nations represented that don't usually get in the mix.
In a lot of churches, this will be the reading for the day, from Mark 4:
26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”
30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
There is a lot going on there, and basically three things a preacher could talk about: the parable of the sower, the parable of the mustard seed, and the explanation of parables. It's that last one that preachers least often address.
The explanation for the use of parables as a teaching tool is that it allowed Jesus to speak the word to his audiences "as they were able to hear it." Of course, that doesn't really explain the technique, but I think there are at least two important things at work here.
First, parables allowed Jesus to set moral lessons in the kinds of experiences that everyday people had at that time. Getting water from a well, sowing seeds, paying workers (or being paid), working as a shepherd-- these are settings that people could understand. In other words, Jesus started at a point of commonality. I often think of it as drawing a circle around me and an audience, and starting there, with what we have in common.
Second, as this passage explains, Jesus usually did little to explain the parables unless goaded to do so by his apostles later. He left the people in the audience to figure it out, and that gave them agency, a role in the process. The commitment to a conclusion is much stronger when we are part of the deciders, and that is what is going on here, I think.
Perhaps you have never heard of Father Charles Coughlin, but it might be time to do so.
He was the parish priest at the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan but was mostly significant because of his very popular radio show, The Hour of Power. He began broadcasting in 1926, and was hugely influential until World War II. He was a Christian leader who was expressly political. His agenda included pushing for an "America First" foreign policy and staunch anti-communism. Though he promoted unions, he evolved into a right-wing defender of Hitler's actions in the 1930's, including Kristallnacht. In 1938, he promoted the emerging Christian Front, a militia-like organization which vowed to defend America from Communists and Jews. Anti-semitism became a major part of his theology.
At his peak in the 1930's, about 30 million people listened to his weekly broadcasts-- about a quarter of the U.S. population of 120 million.
Ultimately, his activities were curtailed when World War II began. He opposed U.S. involvement in the war, predictably blaming Jews for the conflict.
I hope that it will not take a world war to create broad rejection of Christian nationalism in our own time.
Yesterday President Biden's son, Hunter, was convicted of three felony counts in a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. The core charges were that Hunter Biden was using drugs at the time he bought a gun, and lied about the drug use at the time of the gun purchase.
The similarities between this outcome and the recent conviction of former President Donald Trump in a Manhattan state court are striking:
-- Both involve members of political families
-- Both convictions were under statutes that are not usually used in this way
-- Both involve a man who was at a low point in his life at the time of the incident
-- Both cases are likely to result in probationary sentences (though others disagree with me on this)
The thing is, the Biden outcome undercuts Trump's claim that the system is rigged against him and Republicans.
I suppose he could continue to say that IF the argument was that Biden wanted to get Trump and allowed prosecution of his own kid to give him cover. If true... that would be some serious Kaiser Soze shit right there. And I don't think Biden has that in him.
It's that fascinating time of the political year where all the fringe candidates are still on ballots and the malarky runs high.
I'm especially intrigued by the Minnesota Senate race, which will be won by incumbent Amy Klobuchar. The Republican Party here has endorsed former basketball player Royce White, who seems interesting. Beyond the usual election denying and such, he spent campaign money at a strip club in Miami and some other unusual places, and is under investigation.
And what about "Loner Blue?" Formerly known as Scott G. Kendall, Mr. Blue was incarcerated for a while and now styles himself as a "Christian American Patriot" (though in his version, it is all caps).
Ole Savior, in turn, has a uniquely Minnesotan name and quite a history of unsuccessful campaigns:
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
It's kind of a confounding teaching, especially for people who view Christianity and the nuclear family as intrinsically tied together. In fact, I often used this passage in prosecuting Jesus back when we were doing The Trial, knowing that what he said is threatening to the view we have of the family.
But the truth is the family is only family if we make it that way, and not all families do.
So, in this picture we see my Dad in France. He was painting outside, and a dog from the village trotted over and.... just lay down there to hang out.
If you look at the picture, you would think it shows a guy and his beloved dog. That's just not true; my dad had no idea who that dog was!
But there are a couple of truths there. One is that, for that moment, that dog WAS my dad's beloved pooch. And maybe that moment counts.
A second is that perhaps this is the kind of family picture we often see-- where what we see on the surface, what we assume from the image, is not really the truth. Families are complicated.
Often, people will talk about "chosen family," referring to those close to them that they aren't really related to. But the reality is that all families, functional ones, are chosen, even the biological ones. That's because if we don't keep choosing them, making them important in the moment, they stop being real in an important way. We all know families that aren't really families anymore, because people didn't choose to make them work.
Jesus chose his followers--- but he chose his brothers and mother, too, as became clear later in his life, even at his death (where his mother saw him return to life).
