I woke up this morning with the news that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  Comments from previous recipients and from world leaders were pouring in.  Although some said the prize was “premature,” most respondents seem to receive the news as a harbinger of hope for our world.  I would agree.

It is true that Obama has been in office a scant 9 months, but he has not been given the Prize for what he has accomplished, so much as what he embodies.  With his election as our President, he became an iconic figure for the whole world, signifying a new day. 

–He says we need to work together in non-partisan ways to solve the enormous problems of our country.  (And he has tried to do so, in spite of no encouragement from the Republicans.)

–He says that everyone deserves to have health care.

–He says we should rid the world of nuclear weapons.

–He says it’s way past time for Israel and Palestine to work for a concrete solution to their ages-old conflict.

–He says that the United States can and should lead the way in the reduction of carbon emissions, but that we cannot solve this problem alone..

–He is not naive about defense, but will always hold out the olive branch for peace.

But it is more than what he says–it is what he is, that won the Nobel Prize.  He listens, respectfully.  He changes his mind sometimes, when the facts merit it.  His wish is to compromise, some say to a fault, but he keeps the vision of the good ever before him.  He is humble.  His life has never been his own, to gain riches or fame–he is a servant of the people.  He understands that the United States is not the only country, but one country among many.  He respects his wife as his peer and true partner–which says everything about his attitude towards women.  And he is a person of color in a world long dominated by white people, but a world that is mostly populated by people of color.  His very presence as head of state of our country says to the world, “This is a new day.  No longer will we do business as usual.”

So Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.  What are the implications of his winning?  Undoubtedly, his voice will carry ever more authority when he speaks of peace.  His distractors–and they are many and they are shockingly effective–will have a tougher time convincing others that he is unworthy, for one reason or another.  His character will only become stronger as he grows into this new honor.

But Obama cannot bring peace to our world alone.  No one can.  What can each one of us do to make our world more peaceful?  I mean, personally, in addition to our political activities. 

I think peace has to be learned, like any other skill, and this skill is best learned by example.  It is learned first in the home.  Then in school and in the workplace.  It is learned in churches and universities and unions and non-profits.  What if wherever we have influence, we sought to bring caring and compassion to our words and actions?  What if we did not allow ourselves to be “hooked” by others’ anger or frustration?  What if we assumed the best of people?  What if resentment was released and forgiveness practiced?  I’m not arguing for Casper Milquetoast–it’s possible to be firm as well as kind.  

I have only one bumper sticker on my car–it’s a small one, on the left side of the back bumper, and it says “Nonjudgment Day Is Near.”  I’m trying to practice not judging–discernment, yes, but not judgment.  Just being present with what is.  I’ve begun noticing how much calmer I am when I can pull this off.  And how much more peaceful the world feels. 

Michelle Obama’s ancestry has been traced by genealogist Megan Smolenyak and the NY Times, and the study has revealed that Michelle’s great-great-great-grandparents were Melvinia Shields, a slave, and some unknown white man (NY Times 10/8/09, p. 1).  In 1850 as a little six-year-old slave girl, she was taken from her family and given as a bequest in a will to faraway relatives of the slave owner. She fathered four children, three of them mulattos, the first perhaps as early as 15.  The father of this child, this unknown white man, is the male ancestor of the woman who now resides in the White House as our First Lady. 

Who was he?  Was he the “master” of the household?  Was he one of the sons?  Was he one of the itinerant workers who passed through from time to time?  The surname the children were given was the name of the patriarch, but that was a common practice in those days, no matter who the father was. 

After freedom came, Melvinia stayed on an adjacent farm as a laborer.  One of her children was born four years after emancipation.  What does that fact suggest about the complexities of slavery and the difficulties of “freedom”?  Melvinia finally broke away when she was in her 30′s or 40′s, and was able to reunite with former slaves from her early childhood.  But so much remained unknown for Melvinia.  When she died in her 90′s, her 1938 death certificate, signed by a relative, states “don’t know” in the space where parents would be named. 

Melvinia’s first child was Dolphus T. Shields, who made his way to Birmingham, Alabama, and became a prosperous businessman and the co-founder of two churches, both of which later were active in the Civil Rights movement.  Dolphus’s carpentry shop was in the white section of town, a rarity for black businesses, and being of light color, he mixed easily with whites.  Dolphus died in 1950 at the age of 91.  On the very day that his obituary appeared on the front page of the Birmingham World, a black newspaper, the paper also ran a headline “U.S. Court Bans Segregation in Diners and Higher Education.”  Things change.

Things do change.  This is the truth I want to always keep before me when I despair of my country and the lack of progress we seem to make on so many crucial issues.  Things change.  They don’t change quickly or easily.  Things don’t change automatically, or just because time passes. Things change because it is right that they should change, and good people throughout time provide the leadership for those changes.  Things change because people keep at it, keep working for years, often with little success, but keeping the vision before them always. 

Michelle Obama, whose ancesters were slaves, is in the White House.  When we would become discouraged in our labor, let us remember: things change.

It seems that Saks Fifth Avenue has started carrying a product called the Equmen, a tight-fitting undershirt made especially for men.  The undershirt apparently trims a few inches from the mid-section and “supports core muscles.”  In this age of the overweight and over-stuffed, the beauty industry has found a new object: middle-aged men.

Not that men have been unnoticed by the industry in the past–no, through the years, men have been encouraged to use some of the very same products as women, to enhance their attractiveness.  First it was the wrist watch.  I’m not sure when men gave up their pocket watches for their Rolexes, but when they did, they were aping women’s fashion, of course. 

The next thing was perfume–men started using scent in shaving products and then began just splashing on cologne.  Cosmetics for men are not as widely used or as widely accepted as cologne, but more and more men are stopping by cosmetic counters in department stores, not to buy products for their wives and sweethearts, but for themselves.  Plastic surgery, long the purview of wealthy women, has made amazing inroads onto the credit cards of middle-class women–and is increasingly popular among men. 

And then, purses are coming into vogue for men.  They are not called purses, of course–they are called “bags” or “satchels” or some other more gender-friendly term.  Recently in Italy, the home of fine leather, I reached for a lovely “bag,” thinking that I might buy it for myself, until the clerk explained to me that it was for men.  It was smaller than most women’s purses that are being shown now, most of which are just short of suitcases in size and weight, so it had an appeal for me.  But I decided against it–I wouldn’t want to be caught with a “male bag.”

I was looking through a clothing catalog last week and noticed that it featured horse-hair bracelets for men.  Men, if you’re going to wear a bracelet, let it be made of some . . . animal matter.  This lets people know that although you want to pretty-up your hairy arm, you are identifying with our Native American tradition and are therefore seen as earthy and masculine and certainly no sissy.

Men, let me just say this about the Equmen undershirt: I wore girdles when I was 18 until I was 30, and I still have the broken veins in my legs to show for it.  Such garments constrain the flesh, and flesh is not meant to be constrained.  If you have too much flesh, or if it wobbles excessively, then you really must–and I know you don’t want to hear this–you really must EXERCISE.  

Women have let advertisers tell us what we must do to be loved and wanted; and men, now they are trying to rope you in, as well.  Isn’t it enough to try to sell you fast, gleaming cars and foaming glasses of beer?  Do they have to enter your toilet, as they have done that of women? 

Hear me now, men–just say no.  Say no before it’s too late, and like your female counterparts, you too begin to believe that your value lies in your figure, your face, your . . .  hair.  Whoops, they’ve already got you there.

In yesterday’s NY Times (p. B1), we are told that “in a provocative new study, a pair of Nobel prize-winning economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, urge the adoption of new assessment tools that incorporate a broader concern for human welfare than just economic growth.”  Mr. Stiglitz said on Tuesday during an interview with a number of journalists, “What you measure affects what you do.  If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.”

Excuse me for saying so, but how is this thinking “new and provocative”?  These ideas have been around for over 30 years.  Our problem is not economic analysis: it is a combination of (1) human nature (“coveteousness” and “greed,” speaking theologically); (2) an appalling lack of analysis and leadership in the academy; and (3) ignorance and lack of political will by elected leaders.

Just a short history of some alternative economic thinkers.  In 1972 the Club of Rome study was published, in which limits to growth was questioned.  The study considered the ecological impact of growth and the creation of wealth in relation to non-renewable resources.

In 1978, Hazel Henderson, economist and futurist, published a book entitled Creating Alternative Futures, in which she questions the value of judging human well-being with a measurement of Gross National Product.  Since that time, she has continued to write and speak, developing her theories, encouraging a paradigm shift in economic thinking, and encouraging socially responsible behavior by corporations. 

In 1989, economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb co-authored a book on economic theory entitled For the Common Good, challenging the assumptions and theoretical fallacies of contemporary economic scholarship.  They recommended a shift from an economics based on individual self-interest to what they called an “economics for community.”  They said that current models address the acquisition of goods and services, but say nothing about relationships.  (These two dare to believe that the disciplines of economics and theology have anything in common.)  The book is 492 pages of dense but exhilarating reading (in the opinion of one who slugged through it).

I could mention others–Simon Kuznets, creator of the concept Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which could be used to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of economic growth.  The idea is that, for example, just because someone gets cancer from chemical pollution, thus generating wealth for doctors and hospitals–well, that’s not really a sign of human progress and well-being.  So we need to look at both the costs and the benefits of growth.  In current economic models, the costs are called “externalities” and are not considered.

There is the Canadian scientist David Suzuki, who has been speaking internationally for over 15 years about the ecological limits of growth.  He has warned that societies typically can sustain only about 1.5%-3% new growth per year, without overwhelming their ecosystems.

Our Nobel prize winners say that we should not focus on goods and services produced, but on the material well-being of typical people.  We should measure such things as availability of health care and education, their report concludes.  That such statements should be considered “innovative” is a sign of where our society is, in terms of human services. 

It is true, as the article states, that the problem of any new measurement of economic well-being is the “how to” factor–how do we do such measurement?  It’s relatively easy to measure GDP, but how about GPI?  How do we measure, for example, the hours that a parent spends tending to a child’s needs–for no pay at all?  How do we measure the depression and devaluation of self-worth that often comes with unemployment?

The fact is that it is the most important elements of human life that are the most difficult to measure.  (Try measuring love, for example.  Or honor.  Or peace.)  But the difficulty of mathematical measurement does not excuse ignoring the economic realities of our lives and pretending that we are only what we get and spend.  And certainly some of what goes unmeasured is amenable to simple accounting: what does it cost a city to clean up a polluted site, for example.

Progressive economic voices, most outside the mainstream, have been telling us for many, many years that what we’re measuring is an inaccurate reflection of our well-being.  Instead of remaining steeped in the conventional wisdom of their discipline, and composing mathematically verfiable articles for one another, economists should get down on the earth with the rest of us and help us structure an economic theory that corresponds to our existential realties.  Stiglitz and Sen have given encouragement to their colleagues to do just that.  I hope they take up the challenge.

Correction: My “Reflections” will not appear again until September 24 (not October 24).