justice?

Let me start by saying that I feel for former police officer Ian Birk, I really do. He is now persona non grata #1in Seattle (with the possible exceptions of the prosecutor, the sheriff and the mayor) and likely will never work as a police officer in Washington State again - and possibly not in the rest of the country. And it has been a hideous couple of years for police officers in the Pacific Northwest. At least 5 have been killed execution style when not in an active incident, and several others killed in the line of duty. I am sure that there is a very heightened sense of danger. I would never want to be a police office and I commend those who are. The literally place their lives at risk every day.

Ian Birk is the officer who shot a Native American wood carver (I have heard that it is disrespectful to use the name of a person after he is deceased in this person's culture, so I am not using his name). The wood carver had a knife - as a wood carver it is rather an essential tool - and Birk stopped when he thought the wood carver's behavior was somewhat suspicious. Within 4 seconds (that is right - seconds) of warning the wood carver to drop the knife, Birk shot the man 4 times, killing him. Later it was discovered that the wood carver was very hard of hearing. Why were the shots to kill instead of disable?

Yesterday the King County prosecutors office announced, after a lengthy inquest, that charges would not be filed against Birk. In announcing the decision, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg cited the portion of the Washington State law that states that the officer is justified if he is acting without malice and in good faith and believing that his life - or others lives - are in danger. Since malice is very difficult to prove, the prosecutor's office will not be making charges against Birk. The Seattle Police Department issued a scathing report declaring that Birk did not follow procedure and that the shooting was not justified. Birk resigned before being fired.

Was there malice? I would contend that there was not intentional malice, but that there is an underlying insidious malice that pervades the entire event. In the past year, there have been three highly publicized events in which police officers used what appeared to be excessive force - the incident described above, one in which an officer punched a girl after stopping several people for jay walking, and one in which a police officer kicked and stomped on a person, later determined to be completely innocent of anything other that being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In all three of these instances, the police officers were white males and the others were people of color - an African-American woman, a Hispanic man and the Native American wood carver. In all 3 cases the police officers have been cleared - the first 2 by the police department and the 3rd by the prosecutor's office.

The malice comes from the underlying racism inherent in the system. I have to question if any of those events would have happened to me - a white male. I highly doubt it. The Seattle Police Department claims to have good diversity training and that they are not racist. Sorry. We are all racist. It is important to recognize our racism and the resulting behaviors. This is especially difficult for the dominant culture by which everyone else and their behaviors are judged. We have a very limited perception of of our privilege. (My friend Diane has done a great deal of study on this and her blog whitematters.wordpress.com is an essential read.) We have become so used to seeing inebriated Native Americans on our city's streets, that we fail to even notice any more. And we do not even begin to examine the long history of oppression that has robbed the Native peoples of their land, language and culture and has created the reservation system that is rife with poverty and lack of opportunity.

We must examine our privilege, our racism and the myriad of ways they play out in our country. Two lives were ruined that day. Ian Birk still has the chance to change his. The talented and troubled wood carver does not - and maybe never did.

Unstructured time...not idle time...

I have been unemployed since my interim position at Seattle First Baptist ended last September. I have to admit that for the rest of 2010, I was rather at a loss with how to fill my time other that to look for jobs that I really did not want. I was involved in a few things that were important to me, but on the whole, felt lost in the vast pool of time that surrounded me.

All that changed with the New Year. I did make some deliberate choices of change. I decided that I was going to get up early to read the scriptures from the daily lectionary, journal and write "morning pages". Morning pages is an exercise advocated by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way and, in a slightly different format, by Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones.The concept is that you basically sit and write for a set amount of time or for a set number of pages - the major rule being that the pen never leaves the paper for the set time or pages. For Cameron, this is a clearing of clutter that keeps the artists from true expression; for Goldberg, this is an exercise from which ideas for other works are born. Another major reason for this time early in the morning is to have a few hours of quiet solitude before the almost 4 year old breaks loose on the world.

Another deliberate choice was to give up drinking. It started with the concept of dry January that I came across on Facebook. I decided to extend it all the way through the season of Lent. As Easter is April 24 this year, that will be nearly 4 months. Drinking with a great deal of time weighing heavy is not a good practice. It is too easy for the glass of wine to become the bottle of wine...

I also decided that I was going to get some exercise. I have discovered the joy of multitasking on the treadmill. I take my kindle with me and read while on the treadmill, which is much better than watching the inane TV that perpetually plays at 24 hour Fitness.

I also serve as the vice chair of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, preach occasionally and plan to work with other faith leaders toward marriage equality in Washington State.

I am still job hunting - and there seem to be a few good prospects right now. Part of me wonders how I am going to fit all the activities that have become important to me into a schedule that will include a full time job. I have done it before - and I will likely do it again. In the meantime, I am glad that I have relearned to feed my soul, mind and body and feel prepared for the next phase of my journey

hence the title...

The title of the blog, as I indicated yesterday, comes from the personal ad I placed that eventually brought Russ and I together. It was the beginning of 2000 and I was new to email and computer etiquette - I wrote the entire ad in capital letters. Russ' then roommate thought that the ad was intriguing but wondered why I was shouting. I placed the ad in the personals of the now defunct gayseattle.com.

The journey to embracing myself as both gay and Christian was long and complicated. I grew up in an environment (northern Michigan) in which being gay automatically excluded one from being a Christian. I then moved to South Dakota to attend seminary, which only reinforced the idea that a gay Christian was indeed an oxymoron. The best decision I ever made was to leave South Dakota - and that seminary - and move to Seattle. I want to clarify at this juncture that I made many wonderful friends in South Dakota who were and are an important part of who I am today. Some have come to accept me fully; others still care deeply about me but have a hard time concluding that gay and Christian are not oxymorons. All are carried within me as precious parts of who I have become.

Even when I came to Seattle, it took me some time to find Christians with a different message. I thought that I had to give up the church to embrace my unchanging sexual orientation. (Believe me people - I prayed and prayed and prayed - and then I prayed some more.) I had come to the realization that God still loved me and embraced me through an amazing encounter one stunningly beautiful fall day when I was driving along US 2 as it wanders along the Lake Michigan shoreline in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I literally heard God say - all else is grace - you are loved. However, I thought I lost the sense of community of that I had always found in belonging to a particular gathered worshiping body. Imagine my delight when I found a welcoming community - and my astonishment that the community was Baptist!

As I reclaimed my identity as Christian, I began to reclaim the other dreams that I thought were forsaken - marriage, children, seminary, ordination and ministry. God is faithful - all have come true. A gay Christian may still seem oxymoronic to many - but God is bigger than all of our labels and can embrace that which we might not understand given our limited vision. And God can take these unlikely juxtapositions and create something unexpected and beautiful.

Examine the seeming oxymorons in your lives and perhaps you will see God doing a new and unexpected thing - as God is very want to do.