Germans fight on Polish soil: Battle it out

The Germans are back, battling on Polish soil!


Poland is a part of Europe. But of course, you say, look at the map.

Poland is a part of Europe. You would think this too obvious to mention. But you would be wrong. Poland has been forgotten, ignored, neglected, abused, wiped off the map completely, and left out of European self-consciousness time after time after time. For much of its long life -- since the 10th century -- Poland has ended up on the wrong sides of rivers and seas and geo-political divides. From 1945 - 1999 it was locked behind an iron curtain, a satellite in orbit around a behemoth that required it to forsake its largely European identity. It might have been smack dab in the center of continental Europe but it surely didn't seem so. Poland felt more like a back-water, isolated, stagnating, while the rest of Europe recovered from World War II and moved on. It was so little known, its own War story was ignored. Even in other European countries, like the souvenir shop I visited in Amsterdam in 1984, one heard, "But Poland isn't a part of Europe."

Well, it is.

Poland has been Europe's favorite lost-in-plain-sight battlefield for centuries. Conveniently located on a largely level plain, with unimpeded access from east and west, Poland is the place where Europe has come to fight for forever. Mongols and Tartars, Turks, Teutonic Knights and Germanic tribesmen. Slavs from Eastern lands and even the now-taciturn Swedes conquered and ravaged Poland over the ages. More Turks, Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, Russians. The French marched through without stopping to take over and won the "Most Popular" award. But then the Russians attacked again. And Germans again. Then the Russians again. Who hasn't invaded Poland?

And now they have come again. Europe came back to fight on Polish soil. But of course, the flat fertile fields and rich mineral resources have been contested for eons.

More startling, the Poles are happy to welcome them. The Europeans -- all of them -- are doing battle in Poland again right now. Portugal and Spain, England and Sweden, Greece, Slovakia, even the Russians got swanky accomodations.

But this time it is different. This evening (Thursday), Germany will fight its heart out. And Italy will be the opponent, not the Axis Ally.

This time it is very different. This time they are fighting on the lush green turf, not for it. This time the trophy will not be the land itself.

Poland is hosting (along with Ukraine) the UEFA -- European Football Championships -- 2012 games. It is the coveted UEFA Cup at stake, not Poland itself. Visitors, so far some 86% of them, have said they will come back again to enjoy the Polish hospitality. It's largely gone off without incident. The Russians were not especially welcome and a brouhaha broke out. And was quickly contained. But that's all.

This time Poland will be left significantly better off economically after everyone has gone home. And what a change that will be.

It is high time that Poland be back in the middle of things! Poland -- in the very heart of Europe where it belongs. And it is about time for Poland to get to host a friendly, even lucrative invasion where the battles will be civilized, if not always civil, and the trophy will not be the land itself.

Tonight Germany fights on Polish soil. But not against Poland. What a great lot of change that is.

Chaos Closed: Philadelphia Church Official Jailed, awaits sentencing

Church official found guilty of cover-up in abuse cases


"Imperious" church leaders and an "insular camaraderie" among clergy promotes the cover-up of sexual abuse against women and children in local parishes. So says a source to the NYTimes article cited for this blog.

A Philadelphia Archdiocese official and advisor to the late Archbishop was found guilty on Friday of endangerment and covering up incidences of abuse. Endangerment. This is a key part of the charge.

Protestant church leaders, don't bother breathing a sigh of relief that it was them, not you. The justice system will find you too.

It is only a matter of time.

The tide has turned.

Twenty years when I began this work -- fighting abuse in the church -- I had a churchwide (ELCA) mandate but still had an uphill battle and precious, few allies. Today there are still too few in the church who seem to 'get it' and to take an aggressive approach against perpetrators. But the tide has turned. Without question. Chaos closed. There is no explaining this behavior, no defending it, no blaming the victims any more.

Oh, that still happens, but in all official circles of justice it is clear. There is no fuzzy boundary. And that is a good thing.

Church leaders, like doctors, take their own oath in their ordination vows and while the words, "First, do no harm," do not appear verbatim, their meaning is clear. Church leaders are always responsible for keeping the safe boundary between clergy and laity and that boundary never includes sexual contact. If a bona fide couple emerges, it is up to them to remove the danger of a misuse of power by ending the pastor/parishioner relationship and conducting an open and honest relationship. Otherwise, it always runs the risk, or it is outright, an abuse of the considerable power of the pastoral office.

So. This verdict is in. It is a shot across the bow of all judicatory and other church leaders. No more cover ups. You will be held accountable. I know of cases where this must have some bishops shaking in their boots. And rightly so. The justice system is coming for you. I suggest you plead guilty. Chaos closed.

Talk back

For the moment, the best way to respond to me is either on the facebook where many of you read this blog or by sending me an email. I have enabled the comments section but it does not appear at the bottom of the post. This is not ideal because you all can't talk to one another but if a great discussion threatens to break out I'll ask your permission to cut and paste your responses to me right here on the blog. And if I ever figure out how to outsmart this system, the comment box will be back. (It is on old posts but something changed and it has gone bye-bye.)

So, talk back at epfam@aol.com Or respond to my facebook post at Jan Erickson on facebook.

Thanks, and my apologies for the inconvenience.

Jan

Chaos Theory in limits

Not all chaos continues.

Or should.

I wrote the book on boundaries, for heaven's sake. Chaos has to resolve.

There are cars that seem not to understand that traffic lanes are meant to be used. And that turn signals, traffic signals, merge signs and other directions are meant to be followed.

Chaos in traffic is, well, chaos. And dangerous. I was reminded of this just moments after posting yesterday's blog and I thought, what was I thinking! Of course, chaos has its limits.

Boundaries are there for our safety. Order -- to to a point -- is a guide that keeps us human really beings moving alongside one another without crashing.

Surprise is one thing, and it does crack us open to new possibilities. But you won't get me to say that unlimited chaos, in daily life, is a good thing.

My days go better, are more productive when I impose some order, some expectation on them. I am writing now because I have a commitment to writing in the mornings.

What I do argue for is being open. My phone just rang. An unexpected offer to write a guest blog once a month. Too much order would have closed me off from even answering the phone.

Some of us have a higher tolerance for chaos than others. If yours is low, honor your own needs. If you run a magazine that has weekly firm deadlines, well, you're stuck. But I still say, always leave a squige of room for the unexpected to sneak in.

Chaos, at least in theory, is a good thing. That's how the light gets in!

Chaos Continues

I prefer chaos to the hell of order.


Paraphrasing the late, Polish poet, Wyslawa Szymborska, I want to cast my vote for the messiness of chaos.

Chaos is a twenty-year-old Stanford student ringing your doorbell at 8:30 p.m. on a Tuesday evening, with her suitcase and duffel bag and all the earthly belongings she will require for a summer in Denver to give up her time and passionate energy to work on the Obama campaign. I was not quite expecting her.

"Hi, I'm Ashley." I was so flustered I forgot to tell her my name. Two hours later she found the courage to ask, with polite patience, "and what do I call you?" Ooops.

In all the commotion of planning a quick visit to our local high school by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and training a few hundred new summer volunteers, and having a wingding weekend for voter registration at the PrideFest and Juneteenth events this past weekend, Ashley's arrival was only rumored, never confirmed. Chaos. But such good chaos.

Ashley (or is it Ashleigh, I don't yet even know her last name!) will be living with us this summer while she gives her time to the campaign. What a privilege for us to participate in this way. And what fun to have another kid in the house.

Chaos brings surprise, change, new ideas, fresh and promising possibilities to our world. We roll with it. That is what we do. And I believe that is what the divine does with the universe. Rolls it. And rolls with it.

I can't wait to see what happens next. In fact, that's life, waiting for what happens next.

Gotta go buy new sheets. Ciao for now.

Brand: Chaos

Chaos leads us on!


Chaos gets a bad rap. Not with me, though.

Chaos is the raw material that makes life move. Without chaos we would be static, stuck, left with only the materials and experiences we have at hand. Without chaos we would have only what we were given at birth and only what we have already had.

Chaos brings the vitality to our lives. Chaos is the swirling mass of messy stuff that gives us new chances, changes, growth.

I love chaos, in theory. I create it wherever I go. It is that 'out of the box' oddball question that pushes the conversation beyond its boundaries. Chaos is the moment when the mad mix of unexpected possibilities swirls into position and something new is born.

That is my "brand." In this world where all of us are asked / expected to have a brand, to be one thing and not another, to be cold-eyed laser focused on a topic, a place, a worldview, my view is chaos.

For those of you new to the blog, you will discover a variety of topics here: Poland, history, spiritual life, sexual abuse, and daily life. It may seem a disparate hodge-podge but I invite you to see what is below the surface: Chaos. It started with a laser-focus on Poland but so much more feeds it. And it all adds up to this, the roiling and rollicking mix of life adds up to this wonderful, if sometimes vexing, reality. We are born in and from chaos and we live in it. The trick is to make it work for us. I hope your chaotic day adds up to something really cool for you.

Space for rent

I am not renting out space in my head.

I am giving the grey matter away for free.

Disrespect is hard to tolerate. And I got dissed today, big time. It doesn't much bother me when I'm disliked (okay, I mind but it doesn't rankle the same way). But disrespected. Oh, look out.

What about you? What is it that gets under your skin the most?


I have to thank for my real estate problem an editorial agent who didn't bother to read my material and then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with it. I like critics who carefully engage and give constructive criticism. But this was a level of disrespect I had almost forgotten.

My consolation, as always when dealing with ass-holes, is knowing that he has to live with himself. I wouldn't exactly mind it if his plane got delayed in Cleveland overnight, either.

How do you keep idjuts from renting space in your head -- or getting it for free?

"Losing my religion"

It is interesting to be out in the world incognito.

For whatever it is worth, I don't make a point of telling my hairdresser, my friend's parents, folks I meet in writing class and random people in the world that I am a Lutheran pastor.

I sure learn a lot that way.

The conversations I have, and overhear, are both enlightening and ear-splitting. Most are heart-breaking.

People hate the church. Let's be honest about this. People don't feel neutral or indifferent. They're either in it and of it or they really really hate it.

The reasons for hating "organized religion" are often personal and various but they generally come round to one basic, grounding point. As the poet and playwright wrote, "Somebody almost walked away with all of my stuff."

Abusing power takes many forms. I spent years fighting against and responding to the scurge of sexual abuse, which seems not to have abated, just gone underground again.

But the abuse of power can be subtle and all the more dangerous. A recent news story tells of a Catholic hospital refusing HIV meds to a patient because, well, you know. The controversy around contraception continues.

Freedom from, and of religion was articulated as early as the ancient Greeks. They knew the danger of messing with power and the spirits of persons.

Spiritual life can not be imposed or implied. It cannot be enforced. The human spirit will go its own way.

Which leads to a multitude of abuses all their own. Anarchy in the spiritual realm is as potentially dangerous as dictated spiritual life.

Which leads me to this: life asks a lot of us. It asks of us respect, carefulness, kindness. It asks of us a brain -- to not fall for anything. And a heart -- to not push our experience of the divine down anyone else's throat. It asks of us decency, to speak truth as we know it. And to challenge one another.

It asks us, god forbid, to be intelligent. Much of what I hear from outside the church is mush. It is intellectually nonsense. It is reactionary and shallow. To my mind. And yet I respect the experience that is searching for articulation.

And it comes back around to this: Somebody messed with me, with my mind, my spirit, my body and I didn't like it so I quit. They might not be able to explain it to the satisfaction of the great minds of our time, or any time, and so we ridicule them. Not fair at all.

They are on to something. It is the abuse of power. Messing with folks. Using the gift of divine grace to impose, manipulate, screw with. In whatever fashion.

If the church wants to survive -- and maybe God has new plans for getting the word out, it has become that serious -- we are going to have to clean up our act. And first of all, we are going to have to own up, humbly without excuse or self-exhonoration, to our badness. We are not what Jesus wanted. Not always and maybe even not often enough. It is not just odd balls who screw up. It is the institution itself. We have to apologize. And be open.

We must listen more than we speak, which is why I sit there while Ty puts stuff in my hair to make it come out looking lighter and let him rant and rave. He has a real beef, a real story. Then I ask a few questions. Gentle, respectful. He could like Jesus. He might even follow Jesus. But he is not going to be going to any of our churches anytime soon.

What are we going to do about that?