Feast of Mary

I have a copy of this icon by Robert Lentz on my desk.

I know Trinity Stores is Robert Lentz's exclusive distributor (well, not exactly, you can buy the cards in some specialized stores too) but that little square commercial thingie in the lower left corner is really irritating.

I've had "Protectress of the Oppressed" in my office or in my study at home for nearly two decades. She's in my study now. (In the company of her hubby.) In my office, I have Mother of God, Mother of the Streets.

Arrupe and the Bomb

Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the deeply prayerful, justice-seeking General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) from 1965 to 1983, was for many years a missionary in Japan. (Arrupe was Basque, just like the founder of the Society, Ignatius of Loyola.)

Fr. Arrupe was working as a missionary in Japan when war broke out with the United States and the Allies. While the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7th in Hawaii, in Japan it was already December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Arrupe was saying mass when he was arrested and imprisoned for a time. His attitude of profound prayer (he would later describe it as one of his most transforming spiritual periods), his lack of offensive behaviour gained him the respect of his jailors and judges, and was set free in a month. He was appointed Jesuit superior and the master of novices in Japan in 1942.

He was living in suburban Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in August of 1945. As a trained doctor he headed the first rescue party to arrive in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. He described that event as "a permanent experience outside of history, engraved on my memory." He utilized his medical skills in the service of the wounded and the dying, transforming the novitiate into a make-shift hospital for over 200 grievously scarred human remnants. He eventually was appointed the first Jesuit provincial for Japan (1958-65). [Nationmaster.com Encyclopedia]

Doxy writes in from the International AIDS Conference in Mexico

Doxy has just posted eloquently from the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

Read Doxy's report and commentary here.

Last day to sign the ACLU's FISA ad

...Unconstitutional law allows spying on Americans without warrants or oversight, threatening privacy and free speech rights....

I don't think you have to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU to sign the ad protesting the passage of FISA... The ACLU website is here.

Women as Global Church: latest column at the Episcopal Café

My monthly essay is up at the Episcopal Café.

Some excerpts:

... These days, with Lambeth looming, we Anglicans tend to filter the word “church” through a particular lens. Like all lenses, it affects our vision, focusing on some realities and leaving others blurred.

I want to talk about church and about women as church.

Think of this as taking the camera we have been training on the Anglican muddle and performing two actions with it: zooming it outward and around to include the church universal, and examining the whole view through the lens of women’s experience and insight.

Church: not just the Anglican Communion, but the church in its fullness and multiplicity: the oikoumene, the word for the world church also meaning “the whole inhabited earth” -- this fragile earth, our island home, where God dwells among us.

Women as church: not just women in the worldwide church, but women AS church.

....

Do you know the major issue women identified during the WCC [World Council of Churches] Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women?

Violence. Violence against women.

In homes. In churches. And of course on battlefields, in migrant camps, on streets, but especially in those other places, home and church, the places that should be the safest. No socio-economic class, race, or nationality was exempt. Women from every country and every church reported this violence.

Violence was the major issue brought up by church women. As a Christian issue. As an ecumenical issue. As an issue directly and intimately related to who we say we are as friends and disciples of Jesus and as images, icons, of the living God, the one and holy Trinity.

...

... I confess: Lambeth and GAFCON raise the same questions for me when I look at them through a feminist lens, which is the lens of women as global church.

Who is defining the situation?

What is church? Who is church? Where is church?

Who decides? Who interprets? Whom does this benefit?

What is unity? At what cost and over whose backs do we build unity?

What are the truly important matters for the friends of Jesus who call themselves the Body of Christ?

What are the needs of the world and the signs of the times?

Where ought our attention to be directed in these times?

And where, where will be the women and the voices of women, of women as church?

More, and permanent link, here.

July 1: Catherine Winkworth and a month of fabulous holy women

Today is the feast of Catherine Winkworth. (1827-1878)

The Daily Office site (link above) has links to several of the hymns Catherine Winkworth translated from German to English. Even in "midi" music files they remind me of many times I have heard or sung them in community. Catherine Winkworth was also a worker for women's rights.

Last year I noticed that July brings us commemorations of many remarkable women. Stay tuned.

And remember Auntie Jane's ecclesial motto:

Never underestimate the church ladies.

This one's for you, Paul: FISA update, Olbermann on Obama and FISA

For Paul the Byzigenous Buddhapalian, FISA-watcher who is overly busy with work these days (a guy's gotta eat, give him a break), and anyone else interested in FISA, this update just in on Obama's second chance to have a go at FISA. Courtesey Keith Olbermann. Courtesy Truthout.

Here.

Cognitive dissonance

I have been reading books and articles related to women in the worldwide church, or rather, to women AS worldwide church.

What's the difference? Sometime in the 1980s a shift happened within churches and in ecumenical gatherings, both the formal ones (e.g. the World Council of Churches) and the informal and new ones (e.g. Women-Church) including feminist groups: the focus of women's language about our church participation --at the grass roots and among theologians-- shifted from a "Please, sir, may I have some more" or "Please let us in" approach to a "We are church and have always been church" approach.

I'm talking about the world church here, church across the board, not just Anglicans, but what is sometimes called the oikoumene, from the Greek and meaning "the whole inhabited earth."

And by the way, the pioneers in this new approach toward women and church have often been Roman Catholic women.

Women are church.

Which doesn't mean that all persons are, in practice, suddenly equal.

Women make up a majority of worshippers in all Christian churches. Go up the hierarchical ladder and you find fewer and fewer of us.

Not that this is the only indicator of women's lives as church; far from it.

Over the last few decades women, many calling themselves feminists, others not, have drawn attention to the destructive and interrelated institutional (as in systemic, as in structural, not individual) webs of sexism, racism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and socio-economic class - based bias (sometimes called "classism").

(Stick with me here, this is not about using ideological jargon, it's about the real lives of real people and where the churches are in relation to these people.)

The same women who have drawn attention to the reality of interlocking oppressions --and therefore the need for interwoven movements for liberation and healing-- have also noted the relation between church teaching and practice on the one hand and social practices harmful to women on the other.

Ways of interpreting the Bible or of offering (or not offering) pastoral care directly affect --and reflect-- the health and well-being of women and their dependent children.

Do you know what the major issue (one of four key issues, but the one that came up most often) was during the World Council of Churches' 1988-1998 Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women?

Violence. Violence against women. In homes. In churches. And of course on battlefields, in migrant camps, on streets, but especially in those other places, home and church, the places that should be the safest. No socio-economic class, race, or nationality was exempt. Women from every country and every church reported this.

That was the major issue brought up by church women. As a Christian issue. As an ecumenical issue. As an issue related to who we say we are as friends and followers and disciples of Jesus and as images, icons, of the living God, the one and holy Trinity.

The other issues lifted up by "the Decade," as it became known, were:

- Women's full and creative participation in the life of the church. (Are women participating in the life of the church to the full extent of their God-given gifts? Are women as well as men of all races, cultures, and economic conditions viewed as the images of God? Do the language and the shape of the liturgy reflect this? Do women have access to theological education? If they have access to it, can they use it to the fullest extent of their abilities? Are they remunerated for it? Do we value the wisdom of church women, whether or not they have formal theological education? Do we reflect this in the way we raise our girl children in the church? )

- The global economic crisis and its effects on women in particular. (Women and their dependent children are disproportionately affected by poverty. Everywhere. U.S., Mexico, Haiti, India, Thailand, Ghana, Brazil, Fiji.)

- Racism and xenophobia and their specific impact on women. (If you are dark-skinned and a woman, you are more likely to be poor. If you are a migrant or immigrant and a woman, your chances of suffering from both poverty and violence increase. So do the risks for your children's health and well-being.)

The method of the Decade during its second half involved visits by a team of four people, usually two women and two men, to local churches around the world. It was the first time in its 50-year history that the WCC used this model of local, person to person visits. The WCC chose to call these visiting teams "Living Letters," using the language of Paul the apostle in the Second Letter to the Corinthians:"You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (2 Cor. 3:3, RSV)

(The WCC is now in the middle of a Decade to Overcome Violence whose focus and methodology are in part and quite directly inspired by the Decade in Solidarity with Women. It too has a Living Letters process.)

In the years before the Decade, another WCC project involved a broad number of grass-roots women, extending even beyond the Protestant, Anglican, Pentecostal, and Orthodox members of the WCC to include Roman Catholic and other women. The project, which has become known as "the Community Study," was called the Community of Women and Men in the Church. It lasted from 1978 to 1982 but its roots grew earlier from a number of earlier places and events, including the 1974 WCC conference on "Sexism in the 1970s," the first time a World Council of Churches international gathering used the term "sexism."

The WCC staff person running that 1974 conference on sexism, was a Black South African Anglican named Brigalia Hlophe (or Ntombemhlophe) Bam. Brigalia Bam later served as the Secretary-General of the South Africa Council of Churches. She is now Chair of South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission.

Note the methods or processes by which the two projects, the Community Study and the Decade, came up with their findings: broadly based, grass-roots-involving (and involving church leaders too), ecumenical enterprises involving face to face conversation with much listening, study, and examination of the relationship between faith in Christ and daily life, and the relationship between daily life and the structures and institutions affecting it. A lot of sitting in circles, a lot of breaking or melting of silence, a lot of tension, tears, and anger but also patience, hospitality, and hope.

I know that at Lambeth the Bible study will be participatory and involve a carefully designed process that is not unlike the processes I have described above, though it will of course only involve bishops and their spouses. (With the exception of one duly elected and consecrated Bishop of New Hamphire and his spouse; but I digress.) Gerald O. West, a South African theologian (U. of KwaZulu-Natal) whom we heard speak at the Society for the Study of Anglicanism last November in San Diego, a contextual and liberation-oriented scholar who has also worked with women's concerns and examined approaches to biblical interpretation in the age of HIV/AIDS, has been coordinating the design of the sessions. This reassures me.

But --here it comes-- I confess to having almost the same feeling about Lambeth and GAFCON when I look at them through a feminist lens. Or, if the word "feminist" bothers you, through the lens of women as world church.

Of course, push me against the wall and I'm a Lambeth woman. I'm an Episcopalian --a happy one-- and an Anglican --a heartfelt one-- and Lambeth is my instrument of unity too. (Discussion about the why, what, whether and how of the Instruments of Unity --or Instruments of Communion-- some other time, or not at all.)

But that's part of my point -- the act of pushing against the wall. (Note the violent image.)

Who will be pushed against the wall? Who will push? Who will be outside the circle? Will there be true circles of listening and struggling with difference with integrity, charity, and hope? Will the relation between living Christ's resurrection and building justice be intimate, casual, clear, muddled, ignored, nonexistent?

Both GAFCON and Lambeth raise some of the same questions for me.

Who will be defining the situation?

What is church? Who is church? Where is church?

Who decides? Who interprets? Whom does this benefit?

What is unity? At what cost and over whose backs do we build unity?

What are the truly important matters for the friends of Jesus who call themselves the Body of Christ?

What are the needs of the world and the signs of the times?

Where ought our attention to be directed in these times?

And where, where will be the women and the voices of women, women as church?

I am late with my monthly column for the Episcopal Café because I have been trying to write a carefully worded piece on what ecumenical, worldwide women's questions and wisdom have to say to us in this Lambeth year, a perspective that goes more broadly and deeply than that of Lambeth yet is in some ways marginal to it.

Wherein lies the rub.

The nicely moderate words won't come out and instead I am pondering in public, or perhaps ranting, after realizing suddenly, a few hours ago, that I was having a profound experience of cognitive dissonance. That got me unblocked and writing.

The cognitive dissonance is this: the language and structure and process and concerns of one set of events (Lambeth, GAFCON) seem light years away from the language and structure and process and concerns of the other set of events (the WCC Decade and related gatherings and movements).

I know this is not entirely true. From looking over some of the Lambeth resolutions and some accounts of the last meeting, I see that it is not entirely true. I also see that it is partly true. And GAFCON, which, as most readers of this blog know, is not my thing, may have a participatory process about which I don't know. (Though I would love someone to filter it through the ecumenical experience of women for us. I doubt that any of the reporters or commentators will. Someone, please prove me wrong.)

So that's the lengthy thought for the day, and here I sit.

Can I get a witness?

Sing it, Ray

I always loved this piece of the verse in the hymnal version, but it's not always in the performances...

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law.

Still, Mr. Ray Charles rocks this song.

The Constitution lives - with its interpreters

An American flag waves within the razor wire-lined compound of Camp Delta prison, at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base. (Photo by Brennan Linsley, Reuters)

Well! The Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 (which always seems to be the number these days) on the Guantanamo case. News story here from the Associated Press and here from the BBC.

Adventus has already weighed in.

The SCOTUS Blog is closed to comments, but has all kinds of interesting follow-up to the decision already. Go there to get info closest to the source.

No doubt the beloved BB will weigh in sometime in the next few days. Constitution bloggers, rejoice.

The ACLU is here. (You knew I was going to get that one in, right?)

As a former Roman Catholic and an ongoing student and teacher of Catholic social thought, it grieves me that the four dissenting justices are all RCs. If Catholic social teaching has one* underlying principle, it is the dignity of the human person. Habeas corpus, anyone?

* I was being rhetorical, it's really two: as Charlie Curran's book notes, Catholic social teaching is grounded in a view that embraces both the inherent dignity and the social nature of the human person.

P.S. I think there are a lot of parallels between Constitutional Law and biblical interpretation, but that is another conversation.

Nicaraguan priest elected president of United Nations General Assembly

Well! Look where Miguel D'Escoto has turned up!

Story here.

And again I say to you (or rather, Howard Zinn says)

I mentioned it in the comments to this post and alluded to it vaguely in the comments to this one, so it's time, as we enter a new phase of the presidential campaign, to return to this post from February. Please. Read it.

In case you're lazy, I'm pasting below the excerpt I pasted back then. But really, read the whole thing.

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore. ...

***************************Howard Zinn
***************************The Progressive (March 2008 issue)
***************************[boldface emphases by Acts of Hope]

More writing: friends at the Episcopal Café

Luiz today (Friday) on the front page! Permanent link here.

Luiz's essay is titled "Religious Freedom in a Diverse, Secular Society."

Yours truly tomorrow (Saturday) with link coming in the morning.
*******Sat. -- It's morning and here it is!
*******"Reclaiming the Sabbath" is what it is.

I may make two separate posts at that point. Some of the labels at the bottom of this post are about Luiz's column, others about mine, though "these United States" fits both. We'll see.

Interfaith peace delegation to Iran - and a woman rabbi speaks in Tehran

My friend Ethan Vesely-Flad, who works for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and with whom I helped start the East Bay chapter of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship some years ago when we were both living in the San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay means Berkeley, Oakland, and environs), is in Iran with an interfaith peace delegation.

You read that right, Iran. One of the members of the delegation is Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and she recently stood before an Orthodox Jewish congregation in Tehran, a historical first.

Ethan, who edits FOR's magazine, Fellowship, is reporting on the trip. You can read about it on the FOR blog here.

Make sure you click the "read more" words so you can read the full stories. The home page of the blog just shows the first paragraph of each blog entry. Read the one about Lynn under "Climbing mountains, making history." (Direct link to the story here.)

Blogging will be scarce in this space for a few days again while I take some more writing time to work on a Big Theological Tome (and also on the required year-end reports - more of the romantic life of academe), but Ethan's writing is much more worthy of your attention right now than my writing, so enjoy and ponder.

It's worth exploring the whole FOR homepage and links too. Scroll all the way down on that page, there is a wealth of information.

A few prayers for the interfaith delegation wouldn't hurt, either.

Top 50 eco-blogs (according to Times Online)

Must... stop... websurfing... But once a day it's just too tempting, and this evening brings this interesting piece of Yet More Information from Times Online. (That's The Times of London, not The New York Times.)

The top 50 eco-blogs. A good resource. Bookmark it.

Photo: Ruffled Lemur, South Africa. Mike Hutchings, Reuters, via Time (that's Time Mag)'s "This Fragile Earth" slide show.

Visiting an old speech full of life

I am reading Pablo Neruda's Nobel Lecture. (He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and died two years later at the age of 69.) This is a translation. If you read Spanish, you can find the original here. There is also a sound recording on the Web page. I listened to most of it because I love reading Neruda poems aloud and I had never heard his voice. I hear sadness in it.

The narrative of the first part of Neruda's speech is a lot like his poems in its descriptions of nature. It's worth listening to for a short while even if you don't know Spanish. I used to read Neruda's poems aloud even when I didn't understand all the words. The sound of them alone was beautiful. Having a bilingual edition, of course, helped me cheat and understand what I was missing.

But language never fully translates. A translation is almost an entirely different work from the original.

Go to the right hand column and you can click your way around for a biography of Neruda and other resources.

...

From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny. ...

The poet is not a "little god". No, he is not a "little god". He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind's products: bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been whittled down in every epoch. ...

As far as we in particular are concerned, we writers within the tremendously far-flung American region, we listen unceasingly to the call to fill this mighty void with beings of flesh and blood. We are conscious of our duty as fulfillers - at the same time we are faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication within a world which is empty and is not less full of injustices, punishments and sufferings because it is empty - and we feel also the responsibility for reawakening the old dreams which sleep in statues of stone in the ruined ancient monuments, in the wide-stretching silence in planetary plains, in dense primeval forests, in rivers which roar like thunder. We must fill with words the most distant places in a dumb continent and we are intoxicated by this task of making fables and giving names. This is perhaps what is decisive in my own humble case, and if so my exaggerations or my abundance or my rhetoric would not be anything other than the simplest of events within the daily work of an American. Each and every one of my verses has chosen to take its place as a tangible object, each and every one of my poems has claimed to be a useful working instrument, each and every one of my songs has endeavoured to serve as a sign in space for a meeting between paths which cross one another, or as a piece of stone or wood on which someone, some others, those who follow after, will be able to carve the new signs.

By extending to these extreme consequences the poet's duty, in truth or in error, I determined that my posture within the community and before life should be that of in a humble way taking sides. I decided this when I saw so many honourable misfortunes, lone victories, splendid defeats. In the midst of the arena of America's struggles I saw that my human task was none other than to join the extensive forces of the organized masses of the people, to join with life and soul with suffering and hope, because it is only from this great popular stream that the necessary changes can arise for the authors and for the nations. And even if my attitude gave and still gives rise to bitter or friendly objections, the truth is that I can find no other way for an author in our far-flung and cruel countries, if we want the darkness to blossom, if we are concerned that the millions of people who have learnt neither to read us nor to read at all, who still cannot write or write to us, are to feel at home in the area of dignity without which it is impossible for them to be complete human beings.

We have inherited this damaged life of peoples dragging behind them the burden of the condemnation of centuries, the most paradisaical of peoples, the purest, those who with stones and metals made marvellous towers, jewels of dazzling brilliance - peoples who were suddenly despoiled and silenced in the fearful epochs of colonialism which still linger on.

Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would have become of me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able to raise my brow, illuminated by the honour which Sweden has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some pride in having taken part, even to a small extent, in the change which has now come over my country? It is necessary to look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid multiplicity, before the cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to understand why many writers refuse to share the dishonour and plundering of the past, of all that which dark gods have taken away from the American peoples.

I chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat the worship of the individual as the sun and centre of the system, I have preferred to offer my services in all modesty to an honourable army which may from time to time commit mistakes but which moves forward unceasingly and struggles every day against the anachronism of the refractory and the impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet involve friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my poetry.

It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: "A l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes." "In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities." ...

... I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all [hu]mankind. ...

***************- Pablo Neruda

Neruda always wrote in green, the color (he said) of hope, esperanza.

Arcatao Stations of the Cross: The Sixth Station

From the walls of the church in Arcatao, El Salvador.

Photos of the Stations have been traveling as an exhibit "Stations of the Struggle" during Lent. Photographer Roland Torres, from Madison, Wisconsin, took them during a delegation visit. Madison is sister city to Arcatao.

People in the military: an update

Thanks very much to PJ, without whom I would have forgotten that the "Winter Soldier" conference is going on right now in Washington, DC. I read about it a while back and in the last couple of weeks it went clear out of my mind.

The conference features testimony from U.S. veterans who served in the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, giving an accurate account of what is happening on the ground, with video and photographic evidence.

The conference also includes panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support. Spread the word, please, and go to the conference Web page for information on conference. PJ also has a link to a video of conference testimony on her blog.

As for our men and women in the military, they also endure sexual harassment, especially the women. A new Pentagon survey reports that one-third of the women in the military suffer sexual harassment, as do six percent of the men.


P.S. (a few days later) FranIAm has had a fine post up during this time, "Long for Peace, Work for Peace, Live for Peace, Be Peace," which has touched the hearts and minds of many, as witness the many comments in response to it. Thank you, Fran. I was grateful for the reminder of the words of the Talmud:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.

You are not obligated to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it.

Laughter and justice

Some friends and I just went to a hilarious and moving one-woman show by Jennifer Lanier this evening. I almost didn't go, but it was well worth it and everyone needs a good laugh.

I recommend Jennifer Lanier to you. Note that she does shows for schools (high schools, colleges, et al.). The show we saw is called "None of the Above." The title makes sense as soon as you learn that Ms. Lanier is part African American, part American Indian and a little bit of White Euro-American and that she is a lesbian who tried for seven years to be both heterosexual and "feminine" -- and is much, much happier and saner now.

One of the evening's sponsors was the local organization GSAFE, which stands for Gay Straight Advocates for Education. Their mission statement is here. (With passive verb forms, oy, but the mission is a worthy one.)

There were also people there from Equality North Carolina with information on the School Violence Prevention Act, which "would require schools to adopt strong policies against bullying and harassment, including bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression."

Another sponsor was the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute. Dr. Cole (an Oberlin alumna, yay!) is president emerita of Bennett College for Women, a historically African American institution in Greensboro. (She was president of Spelman College before that.)

The evening was also sponsored by New Garden Friends School, the Quaker private school down the road from Guilford College (yes, they have common origins), and by Greensboro College, where the performance took place.

Botswana, Bible, women, HIV/AIDS: Musa Dube Wednesday!

North Carolina and Southern Virginia folks:

We are very fortunate to have with us this week
Dr. Musa Dube, scholar and activist from Botswana

Wednesday, March 5

at Guilford College, Greensboro, NC

1:00 p.m. "African Women and the Bible: Other Ways of Reading"
Hosted by Jane Redmont's Liberation Theologies seminar
at Jane's house on campus
(e-mail for directions if you wish to attend)

7:00 p.m. "Reading the Bible in Botswana in the Age of HIV-AIDS"
Lecture, Moon Room, Dana Auditorium

Dr. Dube is a feminist postcolonial biblical scholar and has been doing a great deal of work on biblical interpretation in the age of HIV/AIDS, particularly in the African context. She is a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians and holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. She has taught at Scripps College and the University of Botswana and is the author, editor, and coeditor of many works including:
Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible
The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories, Trends
Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible
Grant Me Justice! HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible.

This is a unique opportunity. Dr. Dube has come all the way from Botswana and we were able --at the last minute-- to get some time with her between her lectures at Shaw University and Wake Forest University.