Ravine of Light

Well … LightGirl and LightHusband are off at a wedding.  We were all invited as guests, but the bride & groom are trying to save some money (who isn’t these days?) and very politely inquired as to LightHusband’s availability for wedding photography.  He loves to do that, and LightGirl wanted to help him with her blooming photography skills.  So they are off.  My ever present introvert raised it’s head and I decided to stay home; I’d only know two other people there and with my extroverts taking pictures, I’d be lost.

So … LightBoy and I stayed home.  He invited his bestest bestie to spend the night; they’ve known each other and been besties since they could each grab a truck and roar at the other.  LaughingSon arrived just at supper time.  The big treat of the evening was Chik-Fil-A with shakes for dinner.  I was treated to a car ride and dinner with two pre-adolescent boys.

Allow me to recount some of the conversation for you.

LightBoy - “Wanna Turkish breath mint?”
LaughingSon - “What’s that?”
LightBoy - “It’s where I drop my pants and fart in your face”
Me - “OMG [exclaimed in full voice and laughing cause I couldn’t help it] where did you hear THAT?!?!” thinking perhaps a hockey locker room or something
LightBoy - “YouTube”
LaughingSon - [muttering] “oh man … I’m glad I asked”
Me … sputter sputter … no more YouTube for you young man EVER.  You’re grounded for LIFE! then we all burst into laughter.

Laughing giggling silly conversation ensues from the back seat for a few more minutes about nothing that is memorable and then:

Me - “Hey guys, you know that shakes are on for tonight, right?”
Them - “YAY” more laughing and general mayhem
LaughingSon - “Yeah, I’m too skinny … you can see my ribs without even sucking in.” (and he is pretty skinny) “See you can feel my ribs.”
LightBoy - “You can feel my ribs too.” pause “Well … you can if you kinda dig for them.”

bahahahaha … how, you might ask, did I keep the car on the road?  Yeah.  I dunno.

When I asked them what they wanted for dinner in the car, I accused them of sounding like Patrick Starfish and I was promptly corrected. No, I was told, Patrick sounds like this and we sounded like that.  Oh.  Well.  That’s much better and oh so much different and privately rolled my eyes.

On our way back into the house I had to lay some ground rules for the evening.  “There will be no Barbies blown up, maimed, dismembered or exploded on these premises this evening or in the next 24 hours.”  Mostly because LightGirl is not home to give her permission to have her old dolls tinkered with.

They are out playing with some boys in the neighborhood now and have plans for movie watching, Wii playing, X-boxing, etc til who-knows-when.

So.  My Saturday night may be quiet but it sure is interesting.

I received urgent word via Brother Maynard this evening that Rick Meigs (aka Blind Beggar) has been critically injured in a hit and run motorcycle accident today:

I wanted to let everyone know that Rick Meigs was at a Motorcycle rally at Hell’s Canyon and was clipped by a vehicle which crossed the line and clipped him head on.  It was a hit and run.
He is in critical condition with two collapsed lungs and a ruptured spleen.  His wife Fran is in Texas and trying to get to Baker City before they fly him to Boise.

Please be praying for him and his family.

He had really been looking forward to this rally and trip to Idaho to visit friends and ride his best beloved bike.

In whatever fashion that you pray, please do so with fervor and often in the days to come.  Rick has poured his life out in prayer for others over the years and now is a good time for us to help him.

I seem to be a little dry lately and don’t have a lot to say, either in real life or here in on my blog.  So I haven’t been saying much.  That’s why you haven’t seen me around here very often.  I have a feeling that might be changing soon (or not), I don’t know.

A little while ago, Mike Todd did a really good piece on atonement (it’s long) and it sparked some really great discussion.  I read through it all and tried to jump in the conversation here and there, but … as I said, I’m kinda dry right now.  So I just listened and absorbed it all.  If you weren’t privy to it, I’d recommend reading it now.   Or not.  I’m just telling you about to set the scene, so to speak.  So you know what I was percolating on.

In the meantime, I’ve been watching a lot of afternoon television the last couple of weeks.  It’s been keeping me company while I’ve done lots and lots of sewing.  I have two channels I prefer in the late afternoon and they run re-runs of “murder” television, as my family calls it; Law & Order, mostly, but also Bones and House.   One episode of either Bones or House ended with a song one day that I could not let go of.  It was a mostly a refrain that went, “none of us are free, none of us are free, one of us in chains, none of us are free.”

So I did some internet sleuthing and found the song and artist.  Bought the whole album from iTunes.  It’s a blues album.  I’m a sucker for the blues.  If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to absolutely choose a favorite genre of music, I likely choose the blues.  Of course, I like almost all genres equally, but there’s something about the blues that gets under my skin.

The song is “None Of Us Are Free” by Solomon Burke and you can enjoy it below … watch the video and listen hard to the words.  It’s a spiritual wrapped up in the blues.

This song reminds me that no matter what theory of atonement you subscribe to, in the end it doesn’t matter.  We are all bound up in this kingdom together until we enter God’s Kingdom …. all together.

None of us are free.  Maybe that’s why this gospel of my own personal Jesus always feels so empty and void.

None of us are free.  One of us are chained.  None of us are free.

I read something last night that I’m finding difficult to reconcile.  It was an article in CNN.  And I really do not understand how people who claim to follow a person/God who said these things (among many other similar things):

Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ ³⁹But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. ⁴⁰And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. ⁴¹If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. ⁴²Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (all from Matthew ch. 5)

That’s just one chapter, one sermon that Jesus preached.  Just one.  No parables.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Simple words declaring to all that those who follow Him must always keep love for the other uppermost in their minds.  If that’s the case, how is this then possible?

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.  (report in CNN)

Before you go all empire on me, just remember that we who claim Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour are not called to support the kingdoms of this world.  We are render unto Caesar the things due him, other than that, we are called to support the endless Kingdom of God.  So would anyone care to explain this to me in a way that does not include references to defending one’s country, because as Christians we do not have a country, we have a Kingdom.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Buehler?

That was the question posed by a friend in response to my FaceBook status this morning.

I found my reply somewhat cynical and that surprised me:

Hmmm … I don’t know.

I’m feeling more and more out of the loop even though I’m sort of in it.

It’s a weird liminal space where you’re sort of connected, but really, you’re not. It’s just people hurling information at you. Most folks are following so many people that if you try to start a conversation or ask a question, it gets lost in the flotsam.

As I sat back looking at what I wrote with the objectivity of a stranger, because I was really that surprised by myself, Hamlet’s famous soliloquy came to mind:

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. 

And I wondered, is it really blogger suicide to not Twitter?

Many of us have joined.  Some more enthusiastically than others.  Now Twibes are forming.  Hashtags are being used for convenience.  I’ve been a tweet or a twit or whatever-you-want-to-call-it for quite some time now and have over 2,000 updates … most of them useless pieces of information about my life that really no one should care about except me.  Strange thoughts and errant conversations.  Clogging the information highway with my little automobile of me.

So, why do we do this?  Why do we want to connect on Twitter and with our FaceBook status and on Plurk and all the other social media that’s out there beckoning?  Bob Hyatt wrote a compelling piece on this matter the other day that’s worth a read about why we need to keep this all in proper balance.  But I’m wondering about the deeper magic of why?  LightHusband even came back from a defense contracting conference last week and told me that the upper level management people (i.e. in their 50’s and 60’s) were talking about how to use these sorts of platforms in the workplace to engage young people as they come into the various agencies; how to secure them, etc.   What?!?  Defense agencies want to use social media??  Surely Jesus is about to return. 

So what do you think?  Do you Twitter? Or FaceBook?  Why? or why not?  What do you think of the social media revolution thing?

So it all started innocently enough.  It was just a conversation in a car on the way from one place to another, in a hurry because while most things had been accounted for, one critical piece had been overlooked.  As we drove through downtown Washington DC, my perspective shifted and I saw Rome … metaphorically speaking, of course.

Later in the same evening we attended a hockey game at the Verizon Center.   A metaphorical Coliseum complete with gladiators … but no lions and no death.  Sometimes there is blood.

It made my gears start to turn.  If we could suspend reality for a moment; play pretend like we used to do as kids, how would we know and what would today, Black Friday, look like?  So … play pretend with me for a little bit and I’ll set the stage, you help me fill in the blanks in the comments.

As we were driving back to the hockey game, I talked to LightHusband and we thought through some things.  Of course the metaphor is lacking and has huge holes.  All games of pretend do, and we’re going to ignore them, unless we can think of creative ways to work with them in order to learn and grow in our faith journey.

If Washington DC is latter day Rome, I asked him, “then where would latter day Israel be?”  We talked through what some of the qualifications would need to be.  It needs to be a place that is under military occupation, where the local religion is suspect and maybe quelled for rebellion/terrorism, where the local culture is also viewed with suspicion.  The obvious answer was either Iraq or Afghanistan.  A runner up might be Mexico or Columbia … however, they are not under military occupation.

What would we do and how would we respond to someone with the teachings of Jesus in a Muslim context?

I wonder about that as I read about American responses to Muslims.  Some have moderated with time since 2001, others have grown more and more vituperative.  I look at our perspective on the Romans and we know that their downfall was attempting to assimilate too many disparate people groups into the Roman way of life.  We know that.  Yet we don’t seem to understand it as we go abroad attempting spread the “flower of democracy.”  So what do we do with the Muslims response to democracy and Western ways?  How do we respond to the Taliban?  For example, we find their subjugation of women repugnant.  Yet there are certain segments of the Christian church which are just as restrictive to women.  We think their tribalism is quaint and outdated; almost primitive.  Surely they can see that there are more contemporary, progressive manners in which to organize and operate a government?  Right?  It’s the primitive nature of their system that’s the problem.  If we could just get those poor, ignorant towel-heads into the twenty-first century like us and fix them, everything would be fine.

That last sentence is fairly offensive isn’t it?  Most people would strenuously disagree that they think that way.  Oh … but we all do.  We, here in America, all think that our way is the better, nay, the best way.  If everyone were just like us, the world  would be just fine.  And when you get down to the bottom of it, that’s the way the Romans thought too.

Judea, and by extension, Jerusalem, were under the charge of Herod Agrippa, a Jew under the thumb of Pontius Pilate, a Roman procurator.  So, you see, if we put ourselves in the poor dusty shoes of our Muslim cousins abroad from the oldest civilizations on earth in our game of pretend here, it’s not so difficult to see the similarities.

So my question today as we reflect on Dark Friday and the Cross, is if it were happening now, how would we know?  How would we hear the news?  How would we members of the empire hear of and respond to the news of a Jesus in a rebellious colony?

I’m reviewing two album/CD’s here.   “Songs For A Revolution Of Hope” by Brian McLaren in collaboration with Tracey Howe and “Shameless Jane” by Teel Montague Cook.  LightHusband and I listened to them both together, and the review that follows is a compilation of our thoughts (he’s a retired professional drummer who has participated in the production of more than one album, I have an amateur background in music and we both enjoy listening to a broad, eclectic spectrum of artists).

I have several pet peeves when it comes to the Christian music industry and, unfortunately, neither of these albums did anything to dispel those.

First - sound engineers tend to be very cautious and the result is that you don’t where to point your ears.  Think of a painting in which the artist uses the same hue of paint all across the canvass in the same amounts and judiciously meted all the colors in the same amounts as well.  You wouldn’t know where to focus your eyes or what the artist wanted you to look at first.  That’s what happens when a sound engineer gets overly cautious.

Second - dynamic range in vocalists … vocalists also tend to be very cautious and want to live in one range.  This makes for songs that have very little aural interest.  That means our attention begins to wander (for those of us with short attention spans) and for those of us with sensitive hearing it can actually be unnerving to listen to these for any length of time.  At the risk of sounding petty, the feminist in me wishes really hard that female Christian vocalists would lose the breathy thing.  This is a personal preference (and I’ll admit it) but I prefer strong female voices, no matter what their range and breathy gets annoying after awhile.  Sing from your diaphragm and belt it out, believe in yourself and what you have to offer.  You have a beautiful gift, share it with glee.

Third - lyrics … please, oh please write some lyrics that help the audience to think about the wonder and mystery of God.   That engage the audience and invite them to the throne room of grace.  Don’t stand behind them and beat them about the head with what you think they need.  That’s all I could hear in the lyrics on these albums … here was the writer’s interpretation and they drew the picture so perfectly that there was no room for me to use their music in my life at all.  I had no use for it; there is no room for my imagination or LightHusband’s or anyone elses’.

My definition of good worship music (and by far the most excellent of these can be seen with U2) is a song which creates enough mystery, yet enough presence that the listener is invited to participate in the portrait the musician is creating of God with his/her song.  Too many songwriters now have their vision; their only requirement of the audience is that they become a mirror.  Listen to Grace by U2 as an example of lyrics which allow the listener to participate in the portrait of God rather than being told what the details are by the singer in so many other worship songs.

Songs For A Revolution of Hope, by Tracey Howe and Brian McLaren, produced by Brian McLaren & Tracey Howe - “…it’s better than the J0n@s Brothers.“  Thus spake LightBoy … and faint praise it was, given his low opinion of the latest teeny bopper idols.

LightHusband’s overall perspective (without any foreknowledge of who he was listening to … as he said later, “I thought this was some tiny little local church putting out an album.  Someone with the resources of Brian McLaren should be putting out a much better product.”)  was that this music deserves a much more aggressive mix; whoever mixed it was much too cautious.  This was obvious with the songs where the instrumentation was simple; those songs were handled beautifully.  When all the musicians were playing, the engineer seemed overwhelmed, leaving the listener with no direction for their ear.  As is typical for many Christian sound engineers, they had no idea what to do with the drums and consistently under mixed them; making them an annoying afterthought rather than an integral part of the music as good percussion should be.  Overall, it sounded as though it were mixed by a vocalist rather than a instrumentalist, because there was no separation of the instrument voices and they became very muddy to the ear.

Here are some specific notes about certain tracks on the album … these four were potentially the best songs on it.

Canticle - no drums and sounded really good.  The mix they were trying to force on the whole album works here.  Good balance … sounds very much like Nickle Creek and we enjoyed this song very much.

In Your Crucifixion - cut back to only acoustic guitar for intro … added in acoustic bass; instrumentation is lovely - once again the mix works and produces a lovely song.  Hint - no drums.   Lyrics needed a lot of work; I didn’t really need the vocabulary lesson … but otherwise well done.

Let’s Confess - just drums … beat music and beat poetry.  I get that the conservative Christian church is like 50 years behind the curve, but do we really need to go through all the steps?  Or could we just say that, yes … it’s been done and move along.  What was fresh and experimental in the 1960’s repeated now is sort of … um …   That said … drums are interesting and vocals are interesting … however, the mix is horrible and the drums drowned her out.

Chant - don’t do it unless it’s really part of your tradition and daily prayer walk.  It’s pretentious.  The voices in the background could have been used in some really imaginative and wonderful places … the harp was wonderful, beautiful instrumentation.  The final chorus was good and should have been used more frequently.  Those background voices were  annoying until the final chorus, when they became beautiful, but we had to wait too long and in the interim they were a distraction.

Have Love - potentially the best song on the album … ruined by the cautious mix.  We should be able to hear the drums up front, then the brass and the cowbells … instead the instrumentation sounds like mud because the engineer didn’t know what to highlight.  This song could (and should, given the subject matter) be a party in my speakers … it’s awesome, instead I’m sitting frustrated by the mud.

[Begin Rant] I am so fed up with Christians putting out a shoddy product in God’s name thinking that people will flock to it because it’s got the God stamp of approval on it. Just because you do something for God, doesn’t mean you give Him short shrift. The Classical and Renaissance periods are filled with artists who waited for the right moment or starved (hence the term starving artist) rather than produce artwork that was not their best. For heaven’s sake, do it right. Do it well. Do it for His glory rather than on the cheap.[End Rant]

Here’s a quote from the liner notes on “Songs …”: We had only five full days to track the album but were able to track most of it live, again, something that was amazing to witness as some of the songs took on great complexity.

It was interesting to read because as LightHusband and I listened to this album (before I read those notes) that’s exactly what we thought: this album was done too fast and without enough resources behind it. The songs did take on great complexity, but the mixing did not reflect that with the result is that the listener doesn’t have any direction for their ears.

Given the resources that could (and should) have been invested in this album it could (and should) have been so much better than it was.  Clearly these musicians are well trained and know their craft.  There were moments of brilliance here.  It’s a shame it got lost in a rush to put something out without the proper support behind it.

Shameless Jane - by Teel Montague Cook, produced by Earthshaking Music, Atlanta, Georgia.

Here’s the better news about Teel Montague … she’s got tons of potential. She oozes potential. I listened to her and heard overtones of Janis Ian. If you don’t remember Janis, you can hear one of her songs here at this free download. Unfortunately, this album is all about potential … unrealized potential.

Nothing is working, not even this song … this is a line from one of the tracks on this CD and cynically, it seemed appropriate for the title of this review.

The best thing I can say about Shameless Jane is that this album is unoffensive; that should never be the best thing one has to say about a work of music.

The lyrics were pedantic, not thought-provoking; they don’t leave much space, mystery or subtlety to let the listener think, process or breath. It was pretty obvious that Teel has some interesting thoughts she wants to put to music, but that’s part of the problem … she was too obvious. Dress it up a little, use some metaphor, analogy, play with words … have fun with song writing.  Although she had a few tracks where she approached this, namely Bean Dip Bomb and Peter Pan, so once again, her potential is there and I do hope that Teel continues to play and engage her craft.  There’s a lot there to be developed in the future.

The music, melody, etc. seems to be an afterthought. Dynamic range of songs never change. Tempos rarely (if ever) change. After the first song or two, my ears were tired. The acoustic guitar was well done, and the vocals strong, but breathy.  While this would be excellent to have as background music for an evening with friends, I found it difficult to listen to and engage with as a listening event because of the range and tempo issues.

Teel Cook is a mom with two teenagers at home.  This is an obvious first album that shows her roughcut artistic talent.  She’s got a lot of potential.  I hope she gets the support, time and resources that will help her to realize that potential … and I hope to hear more from her in the future.  I really do …

Well, that’s not entirely true … only because one can never really make up for lost time.  But I’m on a mission to get myself back on some kind of track and get some writing done.

I have some plans and ideas in my head for real, live honest to goodness posts.  Yes, written by me and posted here.  Believe it or not.  I may be coming back from my own dead head.

And I’m going to be regularly posting Ooze reviews once a week.  On Fridays.  That just seems like a good day to do them.  So be watching this space tomorrow where I’ll be reviewing two CD’s.  Books begin again next week.

Maybe I’ll even write about my whacky idea to turn our suburban manicured front yard (sloppy and ragged can be considered a manicure … it’s just not a good manicure ) into a Virginia meadow.

Photograph by Paula Sullivan

See, I think this will be a good idea on many fronts. We won’t have to mow except for twice a year, thus reducing our gas usage and carbon emissions. It will attract song birds, humming birds and honey bees, thus it would be a haven for small creatures that need space in urban environments. Plus, it would be pretty. Who can argue with pretty?

One of our very favorite television shows here in the LightHouse is House.  Well, it’s really LightGirl’s favorite show, and the rest of us are also interested.  So we watch it in re-runs on USA network with some regularity.  Some of the episodes we’ve seen far too often, others not so much.  We watched an interesting episode last night in which the patient turned out to have the Black Plague at the end.  For those of you who do not watch House, the formula is that a patient presents with crazy symptoms and the show is spent with the team spinning through all kinds of wild, and opposing ideas about what s/he has before discovering the true diagnosis at the end.  Usually this is just in time to save their life, but ocassionally the patient dies.   Last night the patient lived.

It was interesting though, because her symptoms were masked in part by some steroids she’d been prescribed for an intense interaction with some poison ivy and by some meds she’d been given there in the hospital.  So the doctors were fooled until they took her off everything, then the charactertistic plague boils began to appear (in the last 3 to 5 minutes of the show and after she’d had a liver transplant).

I was thinking about that patient this morning as I read, yet again, Rich Kirkpatrick’s fine post from Monday about the weaving together of justice and mercy.   Rich does a great job of discussing and questioning what we’re doing when we Christians set out to “do” social justice.  Not that that is a bad thing.  No, not at all!  There really is no one else who has been commissioned to look after those who have nothing in this world, so we must.

It is the **how** we go about doing that, that Rich is talking about and he paints a wonderful picture in his first two sentences:

“The cross was the greatest social injustice in history, but no greater act of mercy has been recorded for mankind and the world.

Most of us, when confronted with the injustice of the world want to act.”

In those two sentences I see Jesus on the cross, with all the power of the universe at his fingertips.  He could have wiped out injustice … the same injustice that we face in our communities and around the world … with a zap, but He did something else.  And I have to wonder why?  In fact, all of His actions and parables throughout the gospels show Him doing something other than what we anticipate or expect from people.  Why?

Then that patient with the plague bubbled up in my head.  And I got to thinking more about her and what happened with her.  You see, the meds she was given suppressed some of her symptoms, but not the disease and the disease (plague) was killing her.  Until they found the source of the disease she was still going to die.

I think that’s they way Jesus thinks about justice and mercy all woven together on the cross.  We can engage in acts of justice quite efficiently for very good purposes and we do all the time.  But if we do not have mercy as the weft to justice’s warp, we will never cure the disease; we will only provide a stop gap to some of the symptoms.  The horrible disease will continue to eat away at our communal body until we figure out how to do both together.

Let me give you a couple of examples.  During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s many Christians lead drives to abolish the consumption of alcohol.  This eventually lead to the passing of the Volstead Act (as it was commonly known) or Prohibition.  Congress and the country amended the Constitution for the eighteenth time in order to prohibit the public possession and/or drinking of alcoholic beverages.  If you wanted to drink in private that was your own concern.  This was done out of wonderful motives.  We all know what ravages the “demon rum” can wreak on people who drink too much and too often … for both those who consume and those who get in their way.  It’s bad for your health, bad for your brain, dangerous to drive, etc.  But those ten years when we banned public consumption and possession also showed us something important; that simply banning it doesn’t dry up the need.  If we want people to stop drinking (because we know it’s not a great idea), then we have to look at it in a different light.  We have to weave justice together with mercy.

Another example came to my in-box this morning.  LightMom sent me information about Dambisa Moyo, a Harvard-educated economist who has worked at the World Bank and Goldman-Sachs.  She was born and raised in Zambia, but spent part of her childhood in Wisconsin while her father worked on a doctorate in linguistics.  She returned for her own education and then employment.  She’s written a book called “Dead Aid” and I watched her interview on Charlie Rose on the subject.  You can view it below or listen to the shorter, less nuanced version on NPR by using this link.

According to her bio (linked above), “Dambisa argues for more innovative ways for Africa to finance development including trade with China, accessing the capital markets, and microfinance.” If you listen to the interview you will hear her argue strenuously that government-to-government (bilateral) aid has hastened poverty in Africa.  We have known this for more than 30 years.  I remember hearing about it from my African friends when I was in college.  I was most taken by this quote in response to a question by Charlie Rose about whether or not aid should be seen as a failed experiment, “I don’t believe that Africa and Africans are a practical experiment in economics.”  It was one of the few moments when emotion was clearly observed on her face and in her voice.  Think about that for a moment, we have excellent motives … the end of poverty amongst a people we have treated poorly for centuries.  Yet with our very attempts at helping them we are continuing to treat them as less than capable human beings.  LightMom, who sent me the interviews, swears she heard Dambisa point out that when a star humanitarian in US sent thousands upon thousands of mosquito nets to Africa, it helped malaria but it put the local mosquito net manufacturers out of business.

So what do we do?  How do we weave justice and mercy together?  Is it really alright to starve a local mosquito net manufacturer in the name of eradicating malaria?  We go in with excellent motives and great ideas, but our horizons are too narrow and we fail to see what the ripple effects are going to be of our actions, though our actions might be excellent.

What is justice in the face of 70% of the population of a continent living abject poverty?  What is mercy?  These are questions we must begin to ask and answer honestly amongst ourselves as we face a new economic future; one in which it will no longer be possible to continue simply halting the symptoms, we must properly diagnose the disease and treat it.  Or our communal body will die.

I’ve been on FaceBook for a couple of years now.  When I joined there were mostly college kids and just a few emerging church types around.  For the longest time I had about 30 or so friends.  I’d gain a friend or so here and there and then I had 50.  And then my blogging network grew and I gained some more friends.  But still it was hit or miss.

Then the floodgates opened up.  Anyone could join FaceBook.  And they have.  O Mi Goodness.  Grandmothers (as in people old enough to be my mother) are on FaceBook.  And people from my long lost past have been finding me.  And I’ve been finding them.  It’s been a grand adventure.  Some particular joys have been finding friends from college.  I’ve been to a couple of high school reunions and I do hear news of those friends from home from time to time.  But college friends?  Well, when I left college, I was done.  In the words of Jesus, I wiped the dust off my feet and got out of town.   I thought I didn’t care if I never heard from anyone ever again.  But it turned out that I did.

Now I have.  Several in fact.  And I’ve been having a ball exchanging news of families and children and lives.  Not all is great news, of course, but it’s catching up with one another.  So that is good.  I may indeed have the courage to go to our 30th reunion in four years ;-).  Who knows, through the wonders of FaceBook, alot of colleges may see a ressurgence in reunion attendance.  That would be an interesting statistic to look at.

One thing I’ve noticed on many of my old/new friend’s profiles is attendance or notation of their 30th highschool reunions this year.  And realized … hah!  Mine should be as well.  Not that it will be, because our class (rather than an alumnae association) is in charge of such things and we’re notoriously unorganized and under-unified.  The class before us and after us … hyper-together.  Us?  Not so much.

In any case, it’s got me thinking about highschool too.  I don’t remember terribly much about highschool.   Most of you wouldn’t recognize my highschool experience.  I went to highschool in the mid to late 70’s at a school which was designed to be both experimental and experiential.  By the late 80’s it had morphed to a more traditional format, but when I was there it was fairly cutting edge in terms of educational theory.

When we didn’t have a class scheduled, we had free time and could do anything we wanted to do.  Literally, anything as long as we did not disturb another class that was in session.  We called our teachers by their first names (with only one or two exceptions).  We had a smoking lounge for kids who smoked.  We had a regular lounge to just hang out in when we had free time.  We could hang out in the library.  Or the science lab.  Or the art workshop.  Or with a teacher.  Or outside on the lawn if it was a nice day.

We had great class selections too.  Not your standard English classes … I remember a great class in science fiction one semester, another class in movie-making.  One year for science I took a hands on earth science class wherein we disproved the standing Vermont Geological Survey’s theory on the direction that the last glacier had taken through the state.  Our class’s Adamant Pebble Campaign was written up and published in Vermont Geological History.  That happened when I was in ninth grade.

All of it sounds fairly idyllic.  And some of the time it was.  For many of the students it was as well.  However, for many of my years in highschool my father was chairman of the schoolboard.  For all of my years there, he was on the schoolboard.  I love my dad.  I think my dad is pretty wonderful.  But those years were hell.  Because my dad is a stickler for fiscal responsibility and is financially extremely conservative.  The mid to late 70s were not years when any local community had a spare sou to rub together.  So he was probably a great person to have in charge of the school’s budget during those years.  But not if you asked the teachers.  Add to that the fact that he was a reformed smoker and he took the teachers smoking lounge away from them.  Many of the teachers were mature enough to be able to separate me, the student, from my father, the schoolboard chairman.  But there were many who could not, including a few who I had once been close to.

I don’t remember talking to my parents about it.  But I do remember wishing that my father would just shut up.  I could not figure out what drove him.  Why did he have to make such a stink?  Why couldn’t he just let it be?  Let the teachers have their stupid smoking lounge?  Let the budget go?  Didn’t he know how hard it was … how the teachers were talking (and falling silent when I came by) and looking?  Even the bus drivers looked sideways at me sometimes.  I think I might have asked my mom once or twice and she tried to explain.  But I couldn’t verbalize what was going on at school, and as I look back on it now, I’m not sure it was really that important.

Or was it?

I learned something really important from those teachers during those years.  It had nothing to do with readin’ ‘ritin’ or ‘rithmatic.  Those years were my first brutal lesson that the price of belonging is silence.

I’ve had to learn it over and over again since then, to be sure.  Most people prefer the status quo.  They want the easy road, the way things are or the way things have “always been done,” to change.  They prefer the wizard in the back pulling levers and their green spectacles, to having a full spectrum of color on their own.  When you point out the wizard … you will be expelled, you may be sure.

I’ve learned with my father that sometimes you have to speak.  You can’t not speak.  The price of belonging may be silence.  But, sometimes, that price is too high.