What We're On About

I note this week an editorial called, "Baby boomers, it's time to get out of the way," by Lisa Bornstein, whose byline reads 'entertainment reporter.' She claims folks like me "spent the 60's changing the world but weren't all that effective." I can't totally dispute the charge, but, hey, it was worth a try. She also wrote, despite an avowed anti-materalism, we "spent the '80's making ourselves rich."

Neil Young has a response: "were we overrated? Compared to what? Generation X - what the hell does that mean? It's not distinct enough to make fun of - where's their mark? They didn't leave one. They left an X." So there.

Maybe all Lisa's rancor is intertwined with her career choice; her report carries the depth of an Entertainment Tonight interview -- to Neil, that's part of the problem. He says when he thinks of 60's icons like Hendrix, Joplin and the Airplace, "it wasn't the entertainment industry. They were part of a movement: the music was believable, and the people believed it."

Neil's jibe isn't targeted just at Ms. Bornstein; the quote was published in the 40th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone. A tad ironic: as a charter subscriber of the original newspaper edition, it's apparent the Stone itself has morhphed into a pretty slick little rag. It's not exactly radical these days; at most, radical chic. It's gulity as charged; it no doubt makes some former revolutionaries very rich. Once in a while, though, when it looks over its shoulder, a wistful vibe still manages to lean over a walker and hobble up an old familiar road.

If not content simply to entertain, can popular art drive culture? (I know, smarty pants, who's Art?). When Rolling Stone asked Director Martin Scorsese what he thought was missing from his days as a student activist, he replied, "the idealism of really making a change." Bobby Weir, of the Dead, offered, "What we had then, was timeless. It comes and goes; ebbs and flows. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It just has to be there, to provide enough juice for enough people to coalesce around and work together, to bring about fundamental change. We still have that forward thrust."

A few weeks ago, I wrote how Bill Moyer's Genesis program sparked by Christian conversion. He himself journeyed from a place of power, as LBJ's press secretary, to one with the power to create change through his art and craft. It worked for me. From his perspective today, he captures the 60's soul as "an alternative conscience at work, a conscience that could be moved without self-interest by the consequences of official decisions."

Everyone believes everyone else acts without self-interest. I'm not even sure if it's possible to act on any other level, even if you're not aware of it. It's my theory, though, that when it comes time for a community to make a decision, 10% vote for something, 10% vote against, and the rest are carried along by a riptide current dominated by the old guard of customary power.

Jimmy Carter describes this in his Stone interview. He recalls the time at his church in Plains, GA, when out of 250 members, 56 families voted to extend segregation, 2 voted to end it, and many of the rest called him afterwards to say they were also against it but didn't want to speak out. Did those who voted for it, against it, and didn't vote at all, act with the same degree of self-interest? Perhaps - yet only a very few actively voted with the courage to stand against the domineering tide.

I had a similar experience a few years ago when our parish took a vote on whether to move the church from a neighborhood rapidly turning Latino to an enclave out on the affluent suburban parkway, where we were told by 'experts' that church members would be more effective evangelists if they were lodged alongside people who were more like them. The ayes carried the day; yet, as the only vestry member to audibly vote nay, I was approached by many afterwards who whispered, "I was against it too." I also suspect an inaction of a silent majority in the face of a domineering tide was in play when it came to the later vote of the parish to secede from TEC.

How can we tell, then, if the boomers weren't, indeed, all that effective, or if they still carry that forward thrust. I note this week Columnist Froma Harrop writes that a clue can be found in a picture. It's quite an ordinary photo; grandparents "proudly holding their new grandson - with the same starchy older-generation pose had the other parent been a hairy-chested airline pilot named Chuck." It wasn't Chuck. It wasn't even close to a Chuck. The mother's name is Mary. The other mother's name is Heather Poe. The grandparents are Lynne and Dick Chaney.

In Mystic Chords of Memory, Michael Kammen writes, "To be successful, a reform ordinarily must propose modes of change that seem consisent with a society's values. Non-traditional change is likely to be regarded with suspicion, as threatening, or even revoluntionary." I ask, what's more ordinary than grandparents sitting for a portrait with their new grandson?

In 1967, in America, 16 states still banned interracial marriage. In 2007, the issue of an interracial marriage is running for President. So is a woman. The Presiding Bishop of TEC is Katharine Jefforts-Schori and the Bishop of New Hampshire is an openly gay man. My parish priest is female. The sitting Vice-President of the United States has a daugher living in a committed lesbian relationship raising his grandosn. You're going to tell me we weren't all that effective?

Ah, but you say, that's all about secular change. Can anyone tell me the meaning from a Christian perspective?

I can.

Lights please.

"As many of you were baptized in Christ, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise."

That's what being a boomer and a Christian is all about.

We believe in the promise. We keep faith in it. We live by it, and act on it, for today, and for tommorrow.

Before the Reformation, England was witness to the rise of the great landowning families. The first action many took as new gentry was to demolish the parish church, and build a new one, often just a few yards away. This had nothing to do with who owned the property. It had everything to do with who owned the history. Where it began, who claims it today, and for the future.

So it is with the ecclesiastical law suits in Virginia. It's not who owns the property, so much at stake, it's who owns the history, past, present and future. Anglicans who temporarily occupy TEC churches, representing a local domineering current, claim history belongs to the powerful who've always resisted change and the subsequent threat to their dominance; that the Church, the nation, the parish can't absorb any more without engendering great harm to their traditions and status quo.

Those profiled in the Stone, like myself, claim an American and Episcopalian history that enshrines change and progress, and that responds to the call of God by recreating an inclusion as revealed in the Word as the vision and ideal for humanity in the Garden. This is our history, past, present, and future thrust.

Lisa Bornstein, Generation X, says it's time for boomers to get out of the way. Aint gonna happen. The Who sang, "hope I die before I get old." That didn't happen either. We're still here despite copious amounts of self-abuse. When Lisa departs this mortal coil to hear St. Peter sing, All You Need is Love, to enter these gates, and she finally knows she can't escape us for all eternity, she's not going to like that very much at all.