The children

Children, children, children. Children running away from violence and poverty in Central America, children sent back to violence and poverty in Central America, children killed on a beach in Gaza, children hungry and unsafe on the streets of these United States, children deathly ill with cholera in South Sudan. Cry out, o stones.

I first posted this lament on Facebook about 12 hours ago, Wednesday July 16, 2014.

Photo: Reuters, Gaza, July 16, 2014

December 26: St. Stephen's Day - blog flashback

Well, the Episcopal Church has transferred the feast of Stephen till tomorrow, today being a Sunday (you can't liturgically celebrate a Sunday and a saint's day on the same day, or rather you can, but you may not).

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church --or at least the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops-- has bagged Stephen entirely, because the 26th is not only a Sunday but the first Sunday after Christmas, which in the Catholic Church is the Feast of the Holy Family.

Since I have no liturgical celebrations to attend or at which to preach or officiate, I'm sticking to the original calendar. Today is the feast of Stephen, so there.


No energy, or rather, still hardly any words. Writer's block or something. Here is last year's post on Stephen, which itself has a flashback to two years before that and a feast of St. Stephen poem. Gentle readers, you have probably forgotten both posts anyway, so enjoy the (re-) read.

And thank you for bearing with me. I am well but in a bit of an odd relationship to words. Trying to find a voice again. My job tends to destroy it and I recently spent two or three weeks correcting final papers in other people's voices, many of them with bad grammar, syntax, and usage. Lord, have mercy on your indentured servants in the academy.

Posted on December 27, dated December 26.

Orthodox icon: Stephen the Protomartyr

Stations of the Cross of Globalization

My friend Luiz Coelho has made his Stations of the Cross of Globalization available as a free download. You can find the download link here with some information. Or go directly here.

The Stations were just selected as runner-up in the Edinburgh 2010 media competition. As Holy Week approaches, you may want to consider them for your devotions if you are a Christian.

World Malaria Day

ToujoursDan reminded us on Facebook that today is World Malaria Day. I see that he also has a post about this on his blog. Did you know that malaria is the single biggest killer of children under the age of five on the African continent?

Dan also wants everyone to know that for just $10 you can buy a net that will protect an African child from Malaria and save a life. Go here to give.

Note: I went to the site and made a "Spread the Net" donation and noticed that it is the UNICEF Canada site. Nothing wrong at all with that, but I think the $10 are thus Canadian dollars.

Healing Psalms, Day Five

P. is out of heart surgery and now begins the recovery, some of it short and some much longer. (The sternum takes a while to heal.)

Modern medicine is amazing, when you think about it, and so is the human body. Glory be to Godde for both of them, the science and the person. And please, Congress of the United States, can we have decent health insurance for all, and soon?

Back to our sequence of Psalms, recommended for both R'fuat HaGuf (Healing of the Body) and R'fuat HaNefesh (Healing of the Spirit). Rabbi Nachman of Breslov identified these ten psalms as the Tikkun HaKlali, the Complete Remedy.

Rabbi Nachman, or Rebbe Nachman as some call him, lived from 1772 to 1810, not terribly long. People died younger in those days. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. He lived in the era of the French and American revolutions, deist philosophers, the days of the Terror in France, and Napoleon - and very far away from them all, both geographically and philosophically, in Czarist Russia. He was a Hasidic master and the great-grandson of the Ba'al Shem Tov, the great Jewish mystic and leader whom the editors of our book call "the progenitor of the Hasidic trend in Judaism." This movement stressed the mystical and emotional dimensions of Judaism to complement its intellectual and carefully structured dimensions. Rebbe Nachman was --among many other things-- a great believer in the power of prayer.

Today's Psalm is Psalm 59, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg as commentator. I'm going to be brief because I've just realized I'd better stay within Fair Use. And you really do want to buy this book. (Info at bottom of each post.) It's quite wonderful and you don't have to be Jewish to use or appreciate it. It might make you a little more Jewish, though.

Rabbi Peltz Weinberg writes:

This very personal psalm contains the cries of someone searching for help in the face of life-threatening danger, beginning with a plea in despair and ending with a song of praise and thanksgiving. It moves from terror to serenity in a three-fold structure telescoped into a mere 18 lines.

Just a few lines tonight, and then you can read the full psalm on your own.
...
Rescue me from enemies, my God:
***from those who rise up against me --strengthen me!
Rescue me from those who act treacherously;
from bloodthirsty people --save me!
For they lie in ambush for my soul,
***brazen ones gather against me;
***yet I have not transgressed,
*******nor sinned against them, Adonai!
...

But you, Adonai, You laugh at them,
***You scorn the evil among the nations.
***My Strength--
******for Your Help I wait,
******for God is my Haven
God, my Hessed/Faithful One,
***You will go before me. ...

Rabbi Peltz Weinberg writes:

... As the enemy is named and acknowledged, so is God, source of help, strength, and support. Three words appear in the Hebrew. Each word as it is pronounced allows the suffering person to leap across a chasm of hopelessness. The words are names of an intimate reservoir of help, an answer to the cries at the height of panic. The words are personal - ozi, My Strength, misgavi, My Haven, and hasdi, My Faithful One. As we name the unseen hands that cradle us in our most bereft moments, we can allow ourselves to lay some of our heavy burden in those hands. The psalmist takes a breath. We pause. Selah.

Previous posts on the Healing Psalms are here:

Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four

From Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., ed. Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994.

December 1: World AIDS Day

Never forget.

Remembering the year the AIDS Quilt first came to Boston, running into a colleague there and holding him in my arms as he wept.

Honoring my friends who work in the field: Brian. Lisa. Doxy. Will, who worked in South Africa where, he told us, they are burying people two deep in the cemeteries because there is not enough room. Musa, the biblical scholar from Botswana, who works with women especially, but who also educates church leaders of all genders and examines with them how our scriptural interpretations kill or give life. The women of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Guy and the people at his center for spiritual care in Atlanta, Georgia, many of whom have been homeless. Margaret, who with Guy and like Musa, teaches Pentecostal seminarians and pastors in the Atlanta neighborhood that is ground zero for HIV infection and where the rates of infection are as high as in South Africa.

And the hospice nurses who were my colleagues twenty years ago when we were raising money for the first residential hospice for people with AIDS in Boston, because there were people, mostly gay men, who had no place to go and die with dignity and with the loving care all human beings deserve. Jeannette, now resting with the saints, who after years as a prison chaplain began working with people infected and affected and who opened a home for formerly incarcerated women and formerly homeless women living with HIV infection. Mary, who volunteered without fanfare for years, taking time from a busy job to go and hold infected babies in a Washington hospital. Edward, who is in his second executive directorship of an AIDS-related organization, the first a consortium serving the needs of people of color in a large city in the Northeast, the current one a group advocating for better distribution of life-saving drugs. Joe, who continues to ride his bike each year in the annual fund-raiser for research and care.

Doxy's thoughts are here, Fran's are here, with some words from South Africa.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation's prevention program is here.

The Frontline PBS series of a couple of years ago, "The Age of AIDS," which you can watch in its entirety in the privacy of your home, but which is also great for group discussion, is here. The movie series is a great place to start if you don't know where to start, and the website is full of good scientific and social information. Its perspective is international --great segment on Uganda-- and it also tracks the social history of the epidemic and related politics here in the U.S.

And here's a quiz for you to take, from the movie's website.

UNAIDS's photo gallery is here.

Learn about the feminization of AIDS here.

From that last one:
HIV infections among women and girls have risen in every part of the world in recent years. The numbers point to a fundamental and startling reality - the HIV/AIDS pandemic is inextricably linked to the brutal effects of sexism and gender inequality, most pronounced in Africa. ... Gender violence and poverty are disease risks.

Mary Hunt on the debate

No one raises fundamental moral questions about the nature of unfettered market capitalism, private property, or the common good. At best we hear a plea for an amorphous middle class, while the poor simply fade from view.

More here.

Blood on our hands

People of Faith Against the Death Penalty (PFADP) has been holding two vigils, in Asheville and Raleigh, North Carolina. Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed right now, at 7:00 p.m.

I confess the sin of inaction. I am a member of PFADP. This time, I did nothing.

I feel as I did every time there was an execution in California. We have blood on our hands.

For more on Troy Davis and his case, see here.

On the death penalty in North Carolina, racial bias, and the NC Racial Justice Act, see here.

Latest news: Amnesty International reports a stay of execution till Monday, September 29. The Supreme Court of the United States issued the stay hours before Troy Davis was scheduled to be killed. Amnesty International has campaigned intensively for clemency for Mr. Davis.

He lives. For now.

Nagasaki Day

Nagasaki Day often disappears among our remembrances of the first atomic bombs.

Today is Nagasaki Day.

Grandmere Mimi has a commemoration with heartfelt prayers from Holy Trinity Church in Nagasaki.

Ken has two posts about this day, 1) The saddest of anniversaries, and 2) a creative imagining (a midrash! if one can make midrash about opera) of the sequel to Madama Butterfly, Related to Nagasaki, A Follow-up to "Madama Butterfly".

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.

Arcatao Stations of the Cross: The Third 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.

Blogswarm against the war: hope in the rain

There were perhaps thirty of us, in the rain and wind, standing at a corner. Some held signs, others made peace signs with their fingers, others simply stood.

Several were from my congregation; its oldest members, in fact. A few were students. One was a little girl in a pink slicker, standing under the protective arm of her mother. She was the only child out on this night. Two photographers snapped pictures. At least four, maybe five of those in attendance were clergy; not young ones, but the young ones were tending to Holy Week duties and perhaps families; the retired ones were there in the rain, in clerical collars and raincoats and wrinkles.

After one of the MoveOn local coordinators spoke (one coordinator is a retired clergy friend, another his spouse), we cheered for the families of veterans in attendance. A mother spoke. She wore a clear plastic bag as a poncho and had a warm round face and curly hair. Her son, she said, had joined the Reserves against her warning. It was at least two years before 9/11, she remembered. Don't do it, she said to him. There's going to be a war. And it will be in the Middle East. "I just had a feeling," she said, "and I was paying attention." She read, she listened. She knew. Her son dismissed her prediction. A medical doctor, he shipped off the day the war began. She said goodbye to him at the airport, and four hours later she watched bombs begin to fall on Baghdad on the television. She was one of the fortunate ones, she said. Her son came back, six months later. But the war changed him, even though he was not in combat. Bullets whizzed by his head. He saw things, she said, that none of us should see. He is still in the Reserves. Thank you, she said, thank you for coming, in this rain, which is nothing next to what the soldiers endure, and which we endured tonight because we simply could not stay home.

We were a tiny group. Did we do any good? Did we make a difference?

Dorothee Soelle (1929-2003), one of my favorite theologians, writes in Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian:

.... for the first time I found myself attracted by a tiny group of people who were taking to the streets. I had a long conversation with my mother about the older peace movement. She was passionately opposed to war, and I have rarely seen her cry so terribly as in the summer of 1938 during the Czech crisis. .... Our conversation now in the fifties focused on re-armament [in Germany] and what could be done to stop it. I said, "I'm going down to have a look at those people," to which my mother replied, "Go ahead, but you must know that it won't achieve one little bit." In light of two different considerations, I thought long and hard about that remark --especially later, when we blockaded the nuclear rocket sites at Mutlangen and elsewhere. I had no doubt that Mother was right. At the same time, I knew that I belonged "there," and belonged with those "crazies." I sensed even then that the label "success" is not one of ultimate value, that as Martin Buber said, "Success is not one of God's names."

In her book of poems Revolutionary Patience, published in the U.S. in 1977 (the poems were first published in German in the late 1960s and early 1970s), Soelle writes:

*****He gave answers to questions they didn't ask

*****sometimes they didn't dare

*****open their mouths anymore

*****not because they hadn't understood

*****he was taking from them

*****everything sacred and safe

*****he offered no guarantees

*****Fire was not sacred to him or neon

*****not singing or silence

*****not fornication or chastity

*****in his speech foxes breaddough

*****and much mended nets became sacred

*****the down and out were his proof

*****and actually he has as much assurance

*****of victory as we in these parts do

*****
*****None.

CHRIST HAS DIED.

CHRIST IS RISEN.

CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN.

END THE WAR. END THE WAR. END THE WAR.

Arcatao Stations of the Cross: The First 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.

Gorgeous Bosphorus view with a tear in the film

Or something. Not sure how this happened but it was there on the CD of the photos when I got them back from the shop two months ago, and I haven't gone back to find out whether it was the film. It makes me sad because this was the most beautiful day on the Bosphorus, as you can see.

But life sometimes feels that way: our beautiful world, with an unexplained tear (that's tear as in torn, not tear as in weeping) right in the middle of the beauty, unexplained and unexplainable, impossible to get rid of, impossible to avoid, impossible to fix.

So I decided to post the picture.



Bosphorus: Shadow and Light.

Photo by Jane Redmont, December 2007. Click to enlarge.

And again I say "shame"

I know, it leaves you speechless, but it bears contemplating, long and hard.

Meanwhile, Caminante was posting the Vermont side of the same picture. Vermont. Who knew? That's right, it's not all Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry.

We're number one... in rate of incarceration

Shame, shame, shame. One in a hundred U.S. inhabitants is in prison.

Let me repeat that. ONE IN A HUNDRED UNITED STATES PEOPLE IS IN PRISON.

Among the details:

One in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars.

One in 9 --yes, one in nine-- Black men is in prison.

h/t to truthout for the article in the Toronto Globe and Mail. (And thanks to Our Neighbors to the North for reporting the news and to the Pew Center for the States for conducting the study.)

Prayers

Dear all who pray, please hold us in your hearts and before the heart of G*d. We have a faculty member suddenly and gravely ill with aggressive pneumonia in hospital. His life is hanging by a thread. He is a deeply committed teacher and advisor and much beloved and respected. His name is Jeff.

I also humbly ask your prayers and thoughts for various trials I have been going through including the loss of a computer (not here, back in California, long story) with vital and irreplaceable data, two major life challenges (one in church, one in academe, sorry I cannot give you details), and our still open search for a faculty member in our very small religious studies department. (Where everyone is healthy right now, physically anyway...)

Thank you.

"A little cantata" ("Une petite cantate") by Barbara - and various grumpy updates and a senior freak-out dinner

This is one of my favorites among Barbara's sadder songs. The words speak of piano-playing and grief (at the loss of a daughter or younger person)

I'm in the mood for sad music because 1) Ralph Nader is running for President, and though I get the point (and even agree) I still think it's going to play right into the hands of the Republican Party and 2) Our chosen candidate from the three finalists at the end of our year-long faculty search has turned us down, not because s/he didn't like us (s/he did, and we would have made a great team) but because we pay much, much less than the other place that offered him/her a job. And there's more I can't discuss on that score. I am not a happy puppy.

I'm not sure what this will mean or how we will proceed, and I probably won't be at liberty to say for a while.

[Note from the technical staff at Acts of Hope: YouTube is up again and the link to the song above works. Take a listen.]

I am having a bunch of seniors over later on for what I have called the "senior freak-out dinner." (Note to non-U.S. readers: a "senior" in this case is a fourth-year college student, completing his or her bachelor's degree, the first U.S. university degree, at the end of this academic year.) I invited every senior I knew and told them to bring friends and come and spend a couple of hours here (early, before they and I all repair to our studies and libraries to do the usual Sunday night hours and hours of homework) eating soup and talking about what it's feeling like to be a second-semester senior. I remember that when I was an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college not unlike this one, this time of year my senior year was exactly when I freaked out. Endings, beginnings, life decisions, going or not going on for further study, identity crises and all the rest. So, I ran the idea past one of my former teaching assistants (a senior herself) and she thought it was dandy, and I sent out a big group e-mail and a reminder, and the little darlings are coming over in a few hours. One group is even bringing homemade cookies. I told them they didn't have to be freaking out to attend; all the better if they are feeling happy and relieved to be graduating. But there is such a mix of emotions at this time in one's life that it's good to have a place to acknowledge this.

We also have adult students (about half our students actually) but these are, except for a few younger "adult students" who are in their twenties, people in a different situation when they graduate. They usually have clear reasons, professional and financial, for getting a college degree at age 30 or 40 or older, so the issues senior year are very different -- and they are rarely full time students. So this will be a group of the young 'uns.

I'm going to go weep into my mug of organic fair-trade locally roasted coffee now.

This one was not a happy return: pray for him and his family

A friend phoned me from another part of the country just as I was about to post about Wyld's return, rejoicing.

Her call was about suicide. She announced the topic before giving me the details. At first I thought she was feeling suicidal (it has happened before) and snapped into differential-diagnosis mode. Was she thinking about harming herself? No, she was doing all right and not thinking about harming herself. Good. The conversation continued.

The part of the conversation I can repeat, which was about a young man related to a friend of my friend's, went like this. My friend said: "He'd been to Iraq, he was back, and then he got the 'you're going to be deployed again' letter."

"Oh Godde," I said. "And he killed himself?"

"Yes," she answered.

More of the wreckage of war.

This past November, a survey by CBS was quoted on Alternet with this statistic: 120 returned veterans commit suicide EACH WEEK. The Alternet article was by Penny Coleman, whose husband was one of those veterans.

God of mercy,
welcome into your loving arms
your wounded child.
May he know at last
the peace that we could not give him.
In peace may he rest,
in glory may he rise.
Give your consolation to his family:
may the love of friends
and the knowledge of your boundless love
embrace and fill them.
Fill us with deep compassion
and righteous anger,
that with your help,
in the power of the Holy Spirit,
we may, with Christ whose disciples we are,
work for your kin-dom in our warring world.
Amen.*****
**** *JCR

God of peace,
let us your people know
that at the heart of turbulence
there is an inner calm that comes
from faith in you.
Keep us from being content with things as they are,
that from this central peace,
there may come a creative compassion,
a thirst for justice,
and a willingness to give of ourselves
in the spirit of Christ.
Amen
****** **A New Zealand Prayer Book