Hungry and abused animals, disappearing species, the unsanitary conditions in which chickens and cows and pigs are slaughtered, the poaching of game animals and the hatred of wolves are as much a sign of the sinful nature of humans as any.

“God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.”

The Book of Genesis

                I am excited because I have been asked to bless the animals being cared for and about at the Cheyenne Animal Shelter. Animals need blessing. It’s a tough world for them. They are too often abused, hungry, horded and poached. Entire species are sacrificed for a few more barrels of oil. One should never walk by an animal without saying a quiet prayer.

            The Blessing of the Animals has become a ritual event in many communities. It is often conducted in respect to the memory and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis is “the patron saint of animals.” He took the Bible seriously enough to believe when God entrusted the care of the animals to humans, we were given a sacred responsibility for their well-being.

            A book telling of the Saint’s works is entitled The Little Flowers of St. Francis, in Italian the Fioretti. Included is a story with meaning for those who continue to wage political war on God’s beloved wolves. Long ago in the Italian village where Francis lived, there was a terrifying wolf who preyed on humans and animals alike. Caring for both animals and the humans of the village, Francis undertook to convert both. When he happened upon the ferocious wolf, the young priest called the animal “brother” and with the sign of the cross commanded the wolf to change his ways.

"Brother Wolf,” Francis said respectfully, “you do much harm in these parts and you have done great evil. All these people accuse you and curse you but brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people.” Francis led the wolf into the town, and made peace between the people and the wild beast. Each would agree to acknowledge the right of the other to exist as part of God’s creation. Because the wolf had “done evil out of hunger”, the townsfolk agreed to feed the wolf. For his part, the wolf would no longer prey on them or their flocks. As a demonstration of the acceptance of the animal as a part of the life of the village, Francis blessed the wolf as he had blessed the people before.

            For much the same reason, we bless the animals amongst us. We do so in order to raise awareness of their special status among the Creation of God. They were as central to God’s hope for the world as we. Hungry and abused animals, disappearing species, the unsanitary conditions in which chickens and cows and pigs are slaughtered, the poaching of game animals and the hatred of wolves are as much a sign of the sinful nature of humans as any.

            Know that the blessing of the animals is as much about us as it is them. It’s an occasion for humans to consider our sacred responsibility to care for and protect the most vulnerable of God’s creation. It is likewise a chance for the people of Cheyenne to thank the Animal Shelter for undertaking our community’s responsibility to provide for the abandoned and orphaned animals among us. Our blessing is for them as well as the animals entrusted to them.

If you or a parent is planning on Social Security and Medicaid within the next 10 years, you need to pay attention to the mounting threat.

I fear the American people are being set up for a huge raid on Social Security and Medicare by those who would prefer to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. The only way they can afford to do that is to persuade us there must be huge cuts in what they call “entitlements.”  When we oppose that, they say we aren’t serious about cutting the deficit.

They have borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for tax cuts and wars and now say something has to be done to cut benefits because as Senator Enzi says, “It’s one of those amazing trust funds that the United States has that has no money in it, it has IOU’s.” And whose fault is that?

This morning’s blog is a letter written to Sen. Enzi by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. These are facts you need to know.

The Honorable Mike Enzi
379a Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Enzi,

You were quoted on the NPR news show Power Breakfast saying “Anybody who is saying that Social Security is in good shape is making a political statement that they don’t want to handle it during their term in office... It’s one of those amazing trust funds that the United States has that has no money in it, it has IOU’s in it and that should worry everybody” in reference to the bonds that make up the Social Security Trust Fund.

Thankfully, there is little cause for worry. The government sold U.S. government bonds to the Trust Fund, just as it sells bonds to individuals and private corporations every day of the week. Just as with any funds used to purchase bonds, the money is borrowed by the government, but repaid at the end of the term of the bond. As long as the law is followed and the bonds are repaid on schedule, there is no reason to worry about the Social Security Trust Fund. In fact the Social Security trustees report clearly shows that Social Security will remain fully solvent through 2037 and will be able to pay roughly 80 percent of scheduled benefits from then on even if no changes are ever made.

While it would be unacceptable to have benefits drop by more than 20 percent, Congress has more than a quarter century to prepare for this situation. The projected shortfall is substantial, but nonetheless considerably smaller than other budgetary changes we have seen in recent years. For example, it is more than 20 percent less, measured as a share of GDP, than the increase in annual defense spending than we have seen from 2000 to 2010.

I hope that you will be careful to present the situation more accurately in future public statements. If you would like any additional background on the program, I would be happy to assist you.

Best Regards,
Dean Baker-Co-Director
Center for Economic and Policy Research

Should Congressional Salaries be means-tested? Why should a person worth 50 million dollars receive a government check for public service?

Can you imagine a job where you get to set your own salary and benefits using somebody else’s money? All the employer knows about your job performance is what you tell them in press releases and self-serving speeches. Not one dime of your earnings is in any way dependent on your performance or outcomes. And your employer is even willing to borrow from China to make the payroll.

It’s good work if you can get it! There are only 535 such jobs in the entire country. Wyoming has been allocated only three of those jobs.

As those three join the other 532 in deciding whether elderly folks will have Medicaid or children at Head Start will have a place to go to school, you should look at what they pocket. It starts with their salary. A member of Congress receives $174,000 dollars a year. That is 2 ½ times the median income of Wyoming families and more than 90% of the earnings of those who vote (or not). I don’t know what raises you’ve seen in the last decade but members of Congress have used your money to give themselves a 30% pay increase. Here is the chart that shows how they have hiked their pay.

1999	$136,700	per annum
2000	$141,300	per annum
2001	$145,100	per annum
2002	$150,000	per annum
2003	$154,700	per annum
2004	$158,100	per annum
2005	$162,100	per annum
2006-2007	$165,200	per annum
2008	$169,300	per annum
2009	$174,000	per annum

Salary is only part of the story. The benefits are eye opening. Members of Congress participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program along with federal workers. However, members of Congress receive additional medical benefits beyond those available to regular federal employees.

For an annual payment of $503, (.003 of their salary) members receive routine care from the Office of the Attending Physician in the Capitol including physicals and other examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists.

In addition, current members receive medical and emergency dental care at military hospitals and clinics. Outpatient care is free if it's performed at facilities such as Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland or Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia. Retiring members continue receiving health care for a contribution much smaller than you and I are required to make under COBRA or other plans.

And the Congressional trough is a pretty good place to be when it’s time to retire. In addition to Social Security, they receive a hefty pension. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average annual pension for a retired member of Congress after serving only FIVE years was $35,952.  Members and their staffs receive a larger retirement benefit than other federal employees and become eligible for a retirement annuity at a younger age and with fewer years of service. They contribute only 1.3 percent with the bulk of the retirement benefit's cost picked up by the employer, i.e. you.

On top of all that some members get free housing by turning their plush DC office into a condominium of sorts!

Now what’s really curious about this enhanced salary and benefit package is that nearly all of the Members of Congress pocketing these public dollars are already millionaires. It was reported last week that Wyoming Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis is the 7^th wealthiest member of the US House with a net worth of almost 50 million dollars.

I have an idea. In that same budget where she and her colleagues propose to end Medicare and severely cut social programs in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy…how about a provision to means test congressional salaries? Programs for the poor are limited by one's income, why not programs for wealthy public servants. Why should a person worth 50 million dollars receive a government check for public service?

As the Bible says, “To whom much has been given much is expected.” During a time when Congress is deciding who else and how much of a sacrifice Americans must make, you’d think they could set an example. To whom much has been give, at least a little bit more could be expected during these tough times.

Rodger McDaniel is the Pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church.

This is an excerpt from a speech he gave to the Laramie County Democratic Party

I now understand political involvement is a part of living out my faith. Matthew Pistono has written a book about his life, growing up in Lander and taking a journey that led him to Tibet and from his Catholic upbringing to Buddhism and how he understands the confluence of faith and political activism. The book has helped me to understand where faith intersects with politics.

“Politics and spirituality emerge from the commitment to strive for enlightenment so that one may be beneficial to others. Social activism is one and the same with spiritual practice. There is no separation so long as the commitment to benefit all beings never wavers. Bodhisattvas teach by example, not by quoting scripture.”

There was a time when one could involve herself or himself in politics without endangering their soul, in fact there was time when political involvement enhanced one’s soul.

In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy first walked with disenfranchised farm workers in Delano, California to learn their story and to see what he could do to bring hardworking people some justice. Robert Kennedy came to the Mississippi Delta and brought back images of poverty and hunger that shocked the nation. Bobby taught the value of hope in the face of despair. Something happened inside of people when they saw this wealthy son of an aristocrat sitting on a porch with the poorest of the poor, his face grimaced as he looked at American children with swollen bellies. Bobby Kennedy made the plight of the poor a spiritual issue, a guttural faith issue in America. He gave hope to the hopeless.

When he died so did that. When he died, the Democratic Party and politics in general saw what Robert Frost saw. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.”

Ah...the undergrowth...when Frost chose that word it meant something to his readers. They knew places where you could not see the forest for the trees, where shrubs and saplings and bushes grew so thick under the trees one could not see to the other side. Where one must choose a path without knowing where it leads.

In today’s virtual world the term undergrowth has acquired a new reference point. It’s the 24 hour news cycle, the internet, twitter, facebook, email, FOX News, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity…it’s the creation of a virtual reality that not only conceals the truth in the undergrowth but makes the truth entirely irrelevant to the choices we make. We find ourselves in a world where politics and spiritual pursuits have little apparent relationship.

I grew up in a blue collar home. My dad was an underground miner in Leadville when I was born. Later we moved to Cheyenne where he got a job as a milk man and a truck driver. He was a Teamster. His parents were itinerant farm workers who survived the dust bowl in west Texas. My mother worked her life as a cook and waitress.

My earliest memory of any discussion about politics was my parents telling me about FDR. They believed the President of the United States, FDR, actually cared about how they lived. They really thought he spoke to them, listened to them, and laid awake at night worrying about their hunger, their children, and their lives.

That’s what we’ve lost in the undergrowth of a world more concerned with messages and spin and talking points than with people. That’s what we have to work to regain if politics is to become the honorable pursuit it once was.

“Here lies the mighty gentleman who rose to such heights of valor that death itself did not triumph over his life; he did not esteem the world for he was a frightening threat to the world…"

Rodger McDaniel is the Pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church

in Cheyenne. This is an excerpt from yesterday’s sermon.

They say your whole life pass before your eyes in the instant before death. One psychologist described this phenomenon as a brief overview of your life. Not the mundane hours that would end up on the proverbial cutting room floor, but the few glowing or tragic memories that you've never been able to forget.

Luke records that moment as Jesus languished on the cross. “It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

In these last few moments Jesus’ life passed before his eyes. Between the moments when he cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” and the last moments before death overtook him and Jesus commended his own spirit into his Father’s hands…in those brief moments, what did Jesus see?

When all we know about someone is what we read in their biography or one their grave stone, we are purposely denied a glimpse of the mundane. The epitaph of Don Quixote reads: “Here lies the mighty gentleman who rose to such heights of valor that death itself did not triumph over his life; he did not esteem the world for he was a frightening threat to the world…for it was his great good fortune to live as a madman and to die sane.”

These words are appropriate for the tomb in which Jesus lay for three days before this morning. Those words allow us to imagine the parts of his life passing before his eyes those last moments. Can you imagine knowing, as did Jesus, your impending death is not the end. Think of how that would affect the highlight reel of your life. The Gospel is a highlight reel of the life of the man on the cross. Close your eyes and let some of the images of his life pass before your eyes.

His baptism in the Jordan River. The 40 days in the wilderness. Wandering along the banks of the Sea of Galilee turning fishermen into fishers of men’s souls. Confronting demons. Confronting chief priests, scribes, Pharisees and Romans emperors. Speaking hard truths to those who did not want to hear them. Times spent caring for those who were rejected by even the religious folk. Saving that woman from stoning by simply suggesting he who is without sin should cast the first stone.  

Jesus may have died on Friday with all of those images passing before his eyes but he awoke on Sunday with visions of the future firmly printed on his mind. And us? Can we proclaim such a certainty of belief in God’s power to restore life that when we see a brother who is hungry we give him food, or see a sister thirsty we give her something to drink, meet strangers and welcome them, see those who are naked and give them the shirt off our own back, learn of one who is sick and take care of them, know of those in prison and visit.’ 

Can we be so recklessly curious about Jesus to go beyond studying his life and his teachings to be a genuine follower? In this culture that would be so counter-cultural as to make us appear to live as madmen and women but Jesus assures us we will be remembered as sane…and compassionate and caring…and as Christians.

And perhaps we will earn a gravestone etched with the words, “Here lies the mighty gentleman who rose to such heights of valor that death itself did not triumph over his life; he did not esteem the world for he was a frightening threat to the world.”

Why are hard working middle class conservatives providing political cover for greedy gazzillionaires?

I don’t get it. Maybe someone can help me to understand.  Why are hard working middle class conservatives providing political cover for greedy gazzillionaires? What’s up with that?

I understand most of them are Republicans and instinct is to defend Republican proposals. We are wired with “default” reactions. Recent science concludes our brains predispose us to being liberals or conservatives years before we are old enough to vote. Harvard researchers have isolated a gene, DRD4, causing us to embrace certain political beliefs.

Dr. John Alford of Rice University concludes there’s a genetic component causing some to react more strongly than others to perceived threats. Those tend to be the conservatives. Alford asks, “If conservatives genetically respond differently to stimuli than do liberals will “facts” matter at all in today’s political debates?”  Dr. Alford says there’s a limit to genetic thought control however. He believes political views are about 40-50% nature. Difficult as it may be for facts to penetrate, it is therefore possible.

Look at some facts middle class conservatives sidestep to their own detriment. I’m not talking about the tax rates of the rich but rather the ungodly rich, the folks Jesus spoke about. “Truly I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus used the camel as metaphor because the camel was the largest animal roaming Israel. I am using the term “rich” to refer to the largest bank account holders roaming American politics.

Since 1992 (yes, I have included Clinton years as well as Bush) the income of the wealthiest Americans has increased by 392%. At the same time, their lobbyists have wired the tax code to achieve a 37% cut in their taxes. If you made 50 or a hundred thousand dollars a year during that period, your tax rate stayed pretty much the same. You need better lobbyists because those bringing home 500,000 dollars to a million saw their tax rates cut in half.

The  “Bush tax cuts” middle class conservatives find sacred (which Obama campaigned against and then caved for) benefit only those camels who’ll find it difficult passing through the eye of any form of subjective scrutiny. Those cuts provide an average $146,000 annual tax savings to each of the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans.

So when Wyoming’s congresswoman says America doesn’t have a taxing problem, who is she speaking for? Not you. There’s only one way our federal budget can afford to give some folks those kinds of tax breaks. Someone else has to pick up the slack. That’s where you and I come in.

While the “eye of the needle” crowd can afford health care for themselves and their aging parents and education for their children, you and I have to plan on Medicare. Our children will continue to run up massive student loan debt to get a competitive education. While they have to decide which of their several homes in which to “summer” middle class folks will continue working multiple jobs to pay the mortgage, if they can get one in the world created by Wall Street excesses. While their stock portfolio is enhanced by higher oil prices, you and I will run up credit card debt filling our tanks.

So tell me my middle class conservative friends, what’s in it for you? What’s in it for your aging parents or the future of your children? Our brains may be wired differently but our futures are intertwined and regardless of genetics, we have more in common as middle class neighbors than as political adversaries.

Bibles and Beers! Interested?

Highlands Presbyterian is starting an outreach ministry to engage people who may not be in traditional pews on traditional days but have an abiding interest to understand their relationship with the Divine and with one another.

The church is one of the oldest living models of globalization. Its presence is more ubiquitous than Coca Cola or Chinese restaurants. For some, it is everywhere but for others it is nowhere!
Over more than 20 centuries, the church has passed through transformations and reformations. One thing is certain. With all the current forces at work on the souls of human beings, the church of the next generation will look considerably different than it does today.

Churches expend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to grow. We wring our hands at board meetings and attend special seminars. We design programs and think about new ways to use music and technology. We advertise, evangelicize, and sanitize. And yet the fastest growing segment of the faith is the group that calls themselves “unaffiliated.” Church folk bemoan the fact that these people are not in the sanctuary on Sunday with their children. They don’t follow our idea of church. Yet I know many to be morally upstanding, conscientious parents who support good causes, giving time and money to their community. Many of them are interested in spiritual development.

Recently I facebooked an inquiry. What kind of a spiritual gathering would you take time to attend? Surprisingly in spite of this generation’s technological savvy and all their twittering, texting and social networking, many said they would opt for some good old time hospitality. Some churches have responded to the virtual age by using technology such as PDA’s to question preachers during the service and virtual churches allowing congregants to continue sitting at their computer to “worship” on Sunday mornings.

But the folks who responded to me were looking for time to sit around a circle with friends, enjoying a soft drink or even a beer as they grew their spiritual sensibilities. They wanted a respite from the electronics that characterize their days. As you think about it, they are seeking to return to the days of the early church when people gathered in a hospitable setting, shared a meal and wine and talked, prayed and enjoyed one another.

So we are going to give it a try. Beginning May 16^th, Highlands will sponsor a weekly happy hour called “Beers and Bibles.” Anyone (21 years and older!) interested is welcome. Bring an open mind, a desire to listen and learn and enough money to pick up your own tab. We’ll meet at 5:30 till 6:30 at Uncle Charlie’s.  I know this may not be for everybody, but then I know of no single spiritual experience that is.

Rev. Rodger McDaniel is the pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne. He has a Law Degree from the

University of Wyoming and a Masters of Divinity Degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He may be contacted at rodger.mcdaniel@bresnan.net