Could Jesus Get A License?

The debate in New Mexico about who can get a driver’s license is part of a bigger national conversation. We’re asking who’s a citizen, who belongs, who’s entitled to public services like healthcare and education, who’s an insider and who’s outside the circle of our compassion?



Who is my neighbor, as Jesus put it? It’s illuminating to think about this debate in the context of Christian history. Back in the time of Jesus, of course, Rome was the world’s superpower, like America today. Big armies, gap between the rich and poor, a veneer of republican government laid over a corrupt regime. And back then, being a citizen of Rome was a big deal, just as having an American passport is a big thing now.



If I recall my Sunday School lessons, for example, Paul was a Roman citizen. Remember Paul? That’s how he managed to do so much traveling. He was in Corinth, Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, planting churches and spreading the gospel. Old Paul had his travel documents. Nobody quite knows how or why he managed to claim citizenship, but being a bona fide citizen saved him more than once. Because being a citizen back then, as now, meant privileges. You couldn’t be arbitrarily imprisoned if you were a citizen. You couldn’t be flogged or crucified. Being a citizen meant you had protection of the laws.



In contrast, for example, to a man like Jesus who wasn’t a citizen, who was undocumented, an illegal, who probably never traveled more than 50 miles from the place he was born because he didn’t have his papers.



Jesus wasn’t exactly a slave, but was still the lowest of the low in a caste system where some people had rights and other people were expendable. He was the kind of guy who of course didn’t have any right to a fair trial. The sort who associated with questionable characters …was suspected of criminal activity … lacking any visible means of support. And of course Jesus spent his life caring for and ministering to the underdogs, the outcasts, the foreigners and aliens and other outsiders like himself that were looked on as human trash by respectable society.



We need to remember our Sunday School lessons as we participate in this current debate in New Mexico. We need to ask not just “What would Jesus do?” but “Who would Jesus be?” if he were to appear again here, now, this legislative session.



Maybe he’d be a child, born into this country, but now threatened with being relegated to throw-away status. Maybe his parents would be working people, like so many undocumented laborers, doing janitorial or agricultural work or the other dirty jobs that have to get done and that proper citizens don’t want. He probably wouldn’t even speak Latin, or English, or whatever the official language is. That’s probably who he’d be: a brown baby, a child living on the margins.



And if he were here today, he’d be reminding us and reminding our Governor that everybody is somebody. That the tens of thousands of residents of New Mexico called “illegals” are actually mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, they’re employees, taxpayers and contributors to our economy, not contraband or sub-human refuse but human beings like ourselves. Maybe not citizens of the United States. But still citizens of that kingdom of justice and compassion that Jesus spoke of.



I know there are more practical arguments for why it makes sense to make sure all the drivers on our public roads are licensed and tested, insured and registered. But I’m no expert on traffic safety or public policy. I’d just like to ask our legislators and Governor to ask themselves the religious and moral questions that should be part of this debate:



“What would Jesus do? And who is my neighbor”

An Interview with Pagan Pages

Pagan Pages: Hello Gary! It is a pleasure to meet you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself first? You are a minister of a Unitarian Universalist Church, can you tell us a bit about it?


Gary Kowalski: Unitarian Universalism is a faith that embraces of people of all beliefs and backgrounds. I have pagans, atheists, Buddhists and Christians in my congregation, who like the freedom to find their own answers and learn from those on differing spiritual paths. We’ve been around since colonial times in America. Figures like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who identified themselves as Unitarians, were busy making a political revolution but also demanded the right to independent opinion in the religious sphere. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers drew more inspiration from the pagan authors of classical Greece and Rome than from the Bible. Even then, they were looking to nature rather than scripture or traditional Christian doctrine as the primary revelation of divinity.

PP:What made you decide to write an alphabet book?

GK: As children, we naturally appreciate Mother Earth and other living creatures. Research shows that young kids, for instance, dream about animals constantly. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson thinks human beings are endowed with “biophilia,” an inborn attraction to butterflies and pinecones and polar bears as part of our evolutionary inheritance. Too often that inborn sense of awe and reverence disappears as we age. So a book for children makes perfect sense.

PP:Why base it on Earth Day?

GK: People of every religious tradition can embrace Earth Day. It’s not a sectarian holiday, but a moment to consider our interdependence with air, sun, water and soil and re-commit to preserving the environment for future generations. The ecological crisis is really a spiritual crisis. The political will to save the Earth can only arise when individuals of every religion begin to realize that the planet does not belong to us but is the property of God or the Great Spirit or Maha Devi (the Hindu Goddess) or whatever name you give to that creative mystery. We’re just holding the world in trust.

PP:What was your inspiration behind the book?

GK: My own mystical moments have come through relationships with animals, like my dog Chinook whom I once called my “spiritual guide.” So I tend to think that there’s a bit of nature worshiper in all of us, not just Wiccans and Druids but garden-variety tree-huggers like me who experience a contact high from walking on the beach or watching the geese migrate south in the autumn. Jane Goodall reports that even chimpanzees perform a “rain dance” when there’s big weather in the sky. There’s a thrill from feeling connected to all those elemental forces, so much older and more powerful than our own transient egos.

PP:Did you choose the inspirational artwork that compliments your thoughts in the book or collaborate with the artist?

GK: No, but the illustrations by Rocco Baviera are delightful: colorful, simple, and lighthearted to accompany what I hope is a joyous message of kinship with creation.

PP:Did your role as a minister help with writing this book?

GK: The words originated as material for Sunday morning. So I didn’t set out with the intention to write a book, but to summon up a sense of the sacred circle that includes us all.

PP:Is your publisher a part of your ministry?

GK:Skinner House is the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Several years ago they published a curriculum I wrote on World Religions, as well as a brief volume of personal essays titled Green Mountain Spring and Other Leaps of Faith.

PP:Have you written any other books?

GK: The Souls of Animals, my first book, and Goodbye Friend: Healing Wisdom For Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Pet (both from New World Library) have been translated into six languages and sold in the hundreds of thousands. I’ve published two other titles with Lantern , Science and the Search for God and The Bible According To Noah: Theology As If Animals Mattered. Finally, there’s Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America’s Founding Fathers (BlueBridge Publishing) which came out in 2008. You’ll find all my books on Amazon or, better yet, you can order them through your local, independent bookstore.


PP:  Although, Gary Himself, is not a pagan, his earth worship has inspired us and we hope it inspires you and your children, as well.  Thank you Gary for your time and your thoughts! Your book is beautiful and has taught us about giving thanks for our everyday.

Benediction for Martin

This afternoon I delivered a benediction for the Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration of our local NAACP.   Thinking of what to say, I was reminded of how Martin managed to weave together the Republican and Biblical strands of our history, as in his 1963 “Dream” speech. 

 This may be the sign of great public rhetoric in America.  Lincoln was a master at combining the two, and the Founding generation employed this technique skillfully, so that even Deists like Thomas Paine could invoke a divine blessing on the Revolution and its outcome, as in his pamphlet The Crisis:

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war.

The Biblical vocabulary lifts the people’s struggle for freedom above the plane of a naked collision of self-interest, endowing their aspirations with ultimate significance.  At the same time, the Republican strain, skeptical and plainspoken, demands that policy choices (war or no war, for instance) have some down-to-earth, secular justification.  “Thus sayeth the Lord” is not an argument likely to carry much weight in a pluralistic public square.

Well, with these ruminations in mind, here’s the brief blessing I gave at today’s event:

Grateful for the labors of those past, giants like Martin and Rosa,

Let us be thankful too for the work still to be done,

Grateful that we have an opportunity to serve, to make a difference,

To bring release to the captives and good news to the poor,

To proclaim liberty throughout the land and to build a more perfect union,

A union where every child will have an equal start in life,

A union that invests more in people than in weapons of war,

Where hate has no place

And the scales of justice do not discriminate,

Where those whose sweat and toil built this great land can share equitably in the abundance they helped create,

Where the dreams of the fathers become the children’s realities.

May God bless us in this task and bless the nation this was meant to be.