jim hancock: May 2017

Monday, May 29, 2017

The American Future: Commentary by Martin Marty

Memorial Day, Mayor Landrieu, and the American Future
By MARTIN E. MARTY May 29, 2017

Mitch Landrieu at a New Orleans mayoral debate in 2010 | Photo Credit: Derek Bridges/Flickr (cc)

Recommended homework for Americans on Memorial Day: read, don’t simply read about, the talk Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered in New Orleans last week. (To make the task of locating it easy, we provide a link; see “Resources.”) As for “reading about” the talk, we do not lack commentary from analysts who are interested in eloquence, the destinies of the republic, and finding ways for citizens to address the future in times of chaos. Frank Bruni, in The New York Times, captioned his comment “This is Eloquence, Remember That?” Some are considering Landrieu’s efforts comparable to those of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and other modern prophets.

Let me compare Landrieu’s genre to the forgotten language and intentions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. Landrieu addressed his city as “a people.” So did the prophets, like Jeremiah, revered in and beyond Judaism and Christianity. Landrieu was defending the decision and act of taking down the city’s four most prominent icons—the prophets would have called them “idols”—in the form of statues commemorating long-revered General Robert E. Lee and lesser Confederates who defended the enslavement of American blacks. The expressions of others before the removal of the statues were not always eloquent or healing: defenders of the statues and representatives of what the mayor would call the “Cult of the Lost Cause” often rallied with shouts or whispered with threats.

As the statues were being lifted up from their platforms and lowered to the ground, Landrieu—not to his or anyone’s surprise—was the subject of death threats. Yet, like Jeremiah, he spoke of “a future and a hope.” His speech exemplified Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s definition of prophecy as “hope projected backward.” In a time of bitter divisions in New Orleans and throughout the nation at large, Landrieu spoke not as a great denunciator, but as a great enunciator of directions for his contemporaries to take. Unmistakable was his identification with his great city, to some of whose many assets he referred in terms that a tourist bureau could envy.

Landrieu, from a prominent political family, with all the ambiguities that such an identification suggests, was almost pastoral in his regard for his audience and us non-New-Orleanian overhearers. He reminded locals that their city was America’s “largest slave market,” their state a place where 540 Louisianans had been lynched and where “Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.” Landrieu’s words reflected his Roman Catholic tradition, along with many other inspirations for critical preaching and constructive counsel. They inevitably called to mind the religious language of confession and a call to repentance. By some accounts, the act of repenting is not really about the irrecoverable past: New Orleans’s past is past! It is instead about experiencing and nurturing a change of heart.

Yes, Frank Bruni, eloquence has rarely characterized recent public speech. But now and then we hear it, or read it. In this case we are invited to join with those people whom Landrieu addressed as a people, to which Americans at large belong or, in this case, are beckoned. Memorial Day allows us the time and the occasion for a confession about the now dead past and a call for a living future.

Resources

- Bruni, Frank. “Mitch Landrieu Reminds Us That Eloquence Still Exists.” The New York Times. May 23, 2017.

- “Read Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s speech on removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments.” NOLA.com. May 22, 2017.

— courtesy of Sightings: Religion in Public Life, The Martin Marty Center, University of Chicago Divinity School

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

One at a Time

My friend Darrell went to a career seminar with the intriguing title:

How to Get Rich Working Half Days

The opening line of the seminar was, “I’m going to tell you how to get rich working half days. The first thing you have to do is decide which 12 hours you want to work.”
   Right.
   I thought long and hard about this. I read a shelf-full of books. I worked with kids and parents daily for two and a half decades. I interacted with the most and the least effective parents I know; and I interacted with the most and least resilient and flourishing children I know. And Susan and I raised an adult our own-selves.
And here’s the One True Thing: There are no secrets, keys, or steps. There’s just you and maybe your partner, and one child. Even if you have five kids, you still have to raise them one at a time. Some are ready at three for what other children won’t handle until five. Some learn best by ear, some by eye, and some by hands-on instruction. Try one size fits all parenting (the same goes for teaching, coaching, and mentoring) and the result will come out looking like Class Diagnosis[1] as sure as I’m sittin’ here. So, sorry, I can’t give you three easy steps to raising adults.
   But I do have this 30-Day Guarantee….

from Raising Adults by Jim Hancock

[1] Class Diagnosis is what happens when we assume everyone in a group shares the same characteristics and problems by virtue of being in the group. It’s not that Class Diagnosis is completely without basis, only that it’s a short cut, an easy answer to a complicated question.

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Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Maybe the Kids are Alright | a Fragment from Raising Adults

Most kids seem to be doing fine. They’re not in jail nor do they seem likely to go there. They get to school or work most days.

They don’t carry concealed weapons, traffic in drugs, or consort with Russian spies. They seem to be turning out OK.

Perhaps it’s benign neglect: Despite ourselves, we managed to not screw them up. Maybe its Providence, which was very popular with the founding fathers and mothers and I see no reason we can’t invoke it now.

And maybe, somehow, we didn’t do such a bad job on the whole. Maybe the kids are alright.

Except that some of them don’t seem alright, at all…some days it seems like most aren’t doing so well.

Generation X, Y, Z, and whatever’s next, are clichés constructed on something observable. That observable something includes sometimes disturbing levels of aimlessness, sadness, anger, fear, occasional violence, and hopelessness. Many of our children reach adulthood with a serious life skills deficit. They enter their adult years emotionally impotent, unable to cope with pressure, socially awkward, scholastically under-prepared, spiritually undernourished. This produces considerable second-guessing among those who think of themselves as somehow responsible for the outcome.

from Raising Adults by Jim Hancock

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Thursday, May 04, 2017

217 Death Panel Volunteers | this is not great

Here are the 217 Members of Congress who volunteered today to sit on the Death Panels

Or, we might say they are the 217 Members of Congress who today declared war on the poor. and the sick. and the old.

20 of their Republican colleagues, and all their Democratic colleagues, voted against the measure, knowing full well it is guaranteed to devastate - and in many instances, prematurely end - the lives of millions of our fellow citizens.