I’m so angry right now I almost can’t sleep at night.  It’s a boiling, gutteral fury.  When I try to speak of it, I begin to sputter and use bad language because I don’t have enough words to express the utter depth of my rage.

My in-laws turned 70 this year.  My mother will turn 70 early next year and my father is 75.  My parents are extremely fortunate because a relative left them unexpectedly very well off about 14 years ago.  However, my in-laws are not in that place.

My father-in-law worked hard all his life.  He still works hard.  He is 70 years old and with a bachelors degree in economics he works in a hardware store.  This year they will not be taking their annual three month winter trip to Florida as they cannot afford it.  Financially.  Unfortunately, their children and children-in-laws are all holding their breath for the toll this will take on their health.  They are good people who depend on the vagaries of the stock market for their fixed income retirement package.  They are good people who were depending on the stability of real estate to sell their home of 35 years when they needed to to supplement their retirement income.  Now they can do neither.

Remember when I said that the first national election I ever voted in, I voted for John Anderson?  Well … I had turned nineteen that May and Ronald Reagan won that election for those of you who remember which race John Anderson ran in.  So, for the entirety of my adult life, I have heard lessons on the economy from the conservative side of the street.  In a nutshell, those lessons may be summed up by saying, “The market will correct itself, the government does not need to regulate it.”  and “We’re not a socialist state, keep the government out of the market.”  Don’t fool yourselves, Bill Clinton was no liberal when it came to economics.  There was a very good reason why he kept Alan Greenspan in charge of the Federal Reserve for almost the entirety of his presidency.  Clinton was a fiscal conservative and only barely a social liberal.

Yet, every time I turn around these same fiscal conservatives … these Republicans who hue and cry about the government staying out of the market … run to the government for a bailout when their greed fails them.  When their pride, hubris, greed and foolishness fail and put all of us in jeopardy … they run to the government teat, just like a welfare mother in the projects.  I am way past disgust.  Just where exactly do they think that government money comes from?  The trees?  No … I have news for these financiers of great and immortal fame … it comes from me and you.  We are now paying for their foolishness.

Those men of millions and billions, who ran their companies into the ground, ran to Uncle Sam for help cleaning up the mess, are now keeping the millions they gained personally and have the unmitigated gall to fight for their 60 and 70 million dollar severance packages.  They are keeping their houses (multiples each), their personal jets, their yachts, their jewelry, their … whatever, whatever, whatever AND all their money AND we get to clean up the mess they made; AND we get to pay the court fees for the battle that they’ll stage to keep their severance packages.

The ugly thing about this is this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem.

And there’s something very wrong about that. Because all of those people that made all that money are running off here into the distance with the money, carrying it in their bags. And the United States taxpayer is on the hook. Gretchen Morgenson of the Times on Bill Moyers Journal Sept. 19

So … when does the market correct itself?  I’m just curious.

I think these people need to help pay for the mistakes and help clean up the mess they’ve made … just like I do with my children.  The only thing anyone “needs” is one house and one car.  Strip them of everything else and use that money to begin the bailout … that’s market correction.  Because I want someone, anyone, to help my in-laws out of this mess.  They have lived life well, made responsible, wise, and even generous decisions … so why on earth should they and everyone else who have done likewise be made to clean up this mess?

After all, the only people who didn’t see this coming were those who don’t know their history.  That would be … almost everyone.

Way back when …

In the depths of my personal history, I lived next door to Pete Mondale and his wife. It was back in the day. Back when I had just gained my own personal freedom and earned my own apartment in Washington DC. It was a studio in a renovated brownstone in a neighborhood on the precipice of regentrification. I paid $280 a month for a room the size of my current diningroom, a kitchen, two large closets and a bathroom which was not so large. There were five apartments in the building and one in the basement in which lived an Hispanic family of unknown quantity. An intense guy named Mike lived on the third floor; he rode a motorcycle and took me for rides every now and again. The second apartment on the third floor seemed to rotate a lot. On the second floor next door to me lived a forty-ish woman and her little boy. She was on welfare and never turned the lights on … just the television. The little boy visited me a lot. After the mother died of a heart attack and the little boy went to live with older siblings, a young woman named Amy lived in that apartment. On the first floor lived an older African-American couple. For security there was a deadbolt on the front door to the building. If I stood in the middle of my kitchen and stretched out my arms I could touch the opposite walls with my fingertips … on all four walls. But it also had beautiful high ceilings and huge windows (three of them!). And I could afford a place of my own. All by myself. Nothing matched, except one set of coffee mugs, until my brother broke three of them in the porcelain sink and I slept on a mattress on the floor. But it was all mine. That, and my bicycle and my 13″ black & white television set.

The bonus was that it was next door to Pete Mondale and his wife. They, being middle aged, owned their whole house. They had regentrified it. It was beautiful. They took good care of their house. And, without being parental, kept half an eye on me. Just half. Just enough. We were not close at all, but I knew that if there was an emergency, I could knock on their door for help. There never was an emergency, but their door was always there.

Pete Mondale is the brother of Walter Mondale, who at the time was campaigning for president on the Democratic ticket. He was the first nominee in history to select a woman as a running mate, Geraldine Ferraro. They ran a exquisitely executed campaign that everyone knew was doomed from the start. They were running against the incumbent Ronald Reagan. It was gloriously hopeless from the beginning.

I had just begun dating LightHusband and his earliest memories of me are that I yell at the television during political debates. I still do, when I can stomach them. He was completely dumbfounded. Why would anyone yell at an inanimate object? But I was yelling at the foolishness of Reagan’s policies … remember trickle-down economics? … he was intrigued. Now he yells too on rare occasion.

In my family, we talk back to the television and radio and express disagreement. Especially when we think something is wrong or ill-founded (read: stupid) and we might even throw our hands up in the air as well. In fact, one time during a particularly good rant, someone asked me if I am Italian. Not one little bit, I replied. All British. Just none of the hangups. And I’m cheeky too.

All of that is to say, while I’ve been an independent for a long time, I’ve viewed life primarily through the lens of a Democrat.  I worked for my senator when I was in college. Senator Stafford was a life-long Republican and I thoroughly admired him and supported his work. I believe that the government’s job is to protect it’s citizens, to provide a safety net for them should they need it, and several other things that I haven’t yet verbalized enough to write.  I still don’t know who I’ll be voting for in the upcoming presidential election.  There was a time when I certain it would be Obama … but recently I’ve been thinking about Nader.  I know … throwing my vote away again.

In 1989 and 1990 LightHusband and I had been married a few years and we had our “conversion experience” and joined an Evangelical Free Church here in town. We took all the classes. Learned all the ropes. Joined all the clubs. Did all the right things. Learned how to fake it til we were makin’ it.  Began teaching 5th&6th grade Sunday School.  Sometimes the kids knew more than we did, sometimes we knew more than the kids … everyone learned in that class.  I still keep in touch with a couple of those kids … who are now grown ups!!  Somewhere in this time period one of the larger radio stations in the area became “Christian” so I began listening to it going to and from work each day.  Thoroughly indoctrinated I was.

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran for President.  And the whole world went to hell in a handbasket.  You may not have not noticed it at the time, but it did according to all the naysayers in the Christian world.  Particularly in the pulpit of many churches.  I remember going to visit our pastor at some point during the election.  He and his family had recently moved out of their townhouse right next to ours and were transitioning to a single family home.  In the interim, they were house sitting across town.  I want to take some time to set the stage for this visit because it’s important.  This pastor and his wife were the people who had lead LightHusband and I to Christ.  We were very close to them.  Our houses had shared a wall for several years and we had shared life with them.

When we got to the house, I noticed that their two girls (homeschooled and in first-ish grade) were watching “Ren & Stimpy” that precursor to South Park without any supervision at all.  It was an episode in which one character was farting on the head of the other in the bathtub.  While we spent a lot of time quoting and laughing about Monty Python together as adults, I knew that this was not something either of them would condone for their very young daughters if they really knew about it.  But they weren’t really paying attention.  In any case, I was there to try to talk to our pastor about political discussions from the pulpit and why I didn’t believe they were appropriate.  The whole “Ren & Stimpy” thing threw me off guard temporarily and of course, I was a young Christian arguing without much back up.

What I didn’t realize was that he didn’t think he had to listen to a woman about much of anything in any case so I might as well have been talking to a wall.  At the time, I had no idea about the whole complementarian/hierarchical debate and the damage it could do a relationship.  I also did not have a good enough command of the scriptures or the faith to be able to stand against his belief that politics and faith do mix in the pulpit.  Oh, how I wish now for a Richard Land (head of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) to counter-act the prevailing wisdom of the time.  “Pastors are called to serve all their parishioners, he says, and to endorse a candidate even privately is needlessly partisan and divisive.  “I have an obligation to minister to all Southern Baptists, and it’s true, four out of five of them voted for George W. Bush, but I have an obligation  to that other fifth as well,” he says.” [We The Purple p. 144]

While Bill Clinton weathered some moral crises during his presidency, hundreds of thousands of people did not die at his command or because of his lies.  He has his flaws, but despite the claims made about him during the election cycles of 1992 and 1996, he did not turn out to be the anti-Christ.  Neither did Al Gore, nor did John Kerry.  It’s interesting to me that in every election cycle there are Christians who make the claim that the Democratic candidate is actually the anti-Christ.  It’s no surprise to me now that there are those out there making the same claim (and more stridently than ever) about Obama.

The point is that by the time George W. Bush was handed the presidency in 2000, I had come to the decision that it was safer in Christian circles for a person to acknowledge being a homosexual than to acknowledge being a political independent or Democrat.  Not that either acknowledgment would be particularly safe, mind you … just that one would lead to slightly less ostracizing than the other.

That’s wrong.  On both counts, but I’m not writing about homosexuals today.  Jesus is not a Republican and I’m not certain He’d vote for one.  But He’s not a Democrat either, and I’m not certain He’d vote for Obama.   No matter how much I like him.  I began to think more seriously about how would Jesus interact with the political system that we have constructed here.  It’s fairly different from the political system that he encountered in first century Jerusalem.  It’s not an autocratic police state.  We have a lot more freedom.  Trying to take the gospels and epistles and make a one for one comparison is fairly disengenuous.

I’m not certain Jesus would vote.  Although it’s hard to know.  He didn’t participate in the power structures of the day, but then hardly anyone did.  The idea that an average citizen could participate at any level in a system of government was as foreign to them as flying to the moon.  Who would do such a thing?  If he did vote, I think Jesus would put relationship first over rules.  I think he’d take that into consideration when looking at candidates and their platforms.  He’d think about Love, Grace, and Mercy and how that all fits together.

But when push comes to shove … I don’t think Jesus would vote.  Tomorrow I’ll tell you why.

Earlier this year I went on a little road trip with two friends.  We were investigating the possibility of purchasing a quilt shop in a little town not too far from here.  That possibility did not pan out, but on the road trip we discovered a wonderful Mennonite grocery store where they sold sandwiches to order.  The sandwiches were delicious.  Hanging on the wall over the cash register I saw this hand-lettered sign:

“The cost of something is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.”

That is a profound truth.  The cost of something is not necessarily the price tag that is put there by the merchant from whom the customer purchases an item, but it is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.

So … exactly how much should that bottle of TwoBuckChuck cost? … in light of the following? (ht Christy at DryBonesDance)

Farm Worker Died Connected To Two Buck Chuck

We told you about the tragic death of 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez who died while laboring in a Stockton area vineyard in 100 plus degree heat. According to a Wednesday AP story, the San Joaquin County Coroner has officially confirmed that Maria died of heat stroke. Maria had been working 8 hours in the blistering heat without shade or sufficient water. The closest water supply was a 10 minute walk away.

…

Because Maria worked for a labor contractor, she most likely never knew she was part of the production team for Bronco Winery who is better known for Charles Shaw wines–commonly called “Two-Buck Chuck.”  This best selling wine is available exclusively at Trader Joe’s stores.  According to Trader Joe’s web site, “these super-value wines began as the result of an oversupply of wine and a great relationship with a valued supplier.”

Maria’s Story

On May 14, the official temperature was 95 degrees; it was even hotter inside the wine grape vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming, east of Stockton, where Maria and her fiancé, Florentino Bautista, worked. Maria had been working for nine hours.

At 3:40 p.m. Maria became dizzy. She didn’t know where she was and didn’t recognize Florentino. Maria passed out.  Florentino helplessly held her in his arms.

There was no water for the workers from 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. When water arrived, it was a 10-minute walk from where Maria was working, too far to access. There was no shade or training for foremen and workers about what to do if someone became ill from the heat—as required by law.

…

After a number of delays Maria was taken to a clinic. On the in Lodi, the foreman called on the driver’s cell phone and spoke to Florentino. “If you take her to a clinic,” the foreman said, “don’t say she was working [for the contractor]. Say she became sick because she was jogging to get exercise. Since she’s underage, it will create big problems for us.”

Maria’s temperature upon arriving at the hospital was 108.6.  After two days and six heart stoppages, she died.

“The cost of something is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.”

Happy Father’s Day.

It’s one that will surely survive in our collective memory as a family.

It began early; as in 5:30 a.m. One last early rink time for the season. We all went. LightBoy’s game was on one sheet at 7:20; LightGirl’s on the other at 7:30. I ran through the golden arches for a delicious, nutritious breakfast. Yum. LightBoy lost. LightGirl tied. But none of that is memorable.

LightGirl has had a crush on a teammate for a while now. About a week ago she got some intel which suggested that he was more LightBoy’s age. This was completely embarassing. Humiliating. Horrifying. In her words, she felt like a pedophile. Ewweth. This morning before the game I discovered she had bad intel. Her crush was her age. I passed this information along after the game.

So what do you think she did? Well, what would you do? Given that you definitely wouldn’t be seeing the guy again til September and maybe not very much even then.

Has she ever been on a date? No.

Has she ever had a boyfriend? No.

Has she ever been in any kind of relationship of any sort other than friends with a boy? No.

Has she ever spoken more than say fifteen words in a row to this kid? Uhhh … no.

So, of course, it goes without saying … ask him out. Ask him, where? Just … you know … out. On a date. Sometimes the mom is stoo-pid.

It’s helpful too, to have a friend by your side who will act as your voice when you and the guy stand there staring at each other. So, her friend did the actual, you know, asking. She said, “So … LightGirl wants to know if you’d go to the movies or something?” He said, “Sure.” and they both stood there and looked at each other … stunned. So GirlFriend spoke up again and said, “Now it would be good if you exchanged phone numbers.” So they did that too.

Then she came flying around the corner to tell me all about it. Grinning from ear to ear.

She spent the next half an hour texting him. Now she is firmly, giddily ensconced on the phone and computer with her peeps giggling and reliving the event. Imagining what will come next. And ad finitum. It is quintessential adolescence.

And just like that LightHusband and I have crossed a rubicon. It came upon us and we were across it before we even realized that it was there. I never even heard the echo of my feet on wood as the footsteps bounced back from water.

We are lucky, I suppose. She’s very confident. The young man in question is kind, upright, and a decent hockey player. We now have decisions of heavy consequence to make. Where should they go? What should they do? Now that the question has been asked and answered, will the “date” actually even take place?

On another hand, our fortunes run much deeper than that. Our definition of what is quintessentially adolescent is light and air. It involves words like, “giddy” and “peeps.” She will (Lord willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise) complete her secondary education and go on to get a college level education of some sort. There are many, many parents in the 2/3’s world who never even begin to think these words, never mind associate them with children in their family. Yet most families in our world … our 1/3 world, that is the industrialized, civilized, mechanized, and importantly educated, world do have the opportunity to associate words like, “giddy” and “adolescence” and “grin” and “date” and “secondary education” and “college education” with our daughters. Not only do we have that opportunity, we make the assumption that it is the right and natural course of things.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being secure in our bodily needs allows us to become more secure with our friendships, family and relational intimacy. This in turn builds self-esteem, confidence, etc. It makes sense in a way. One cannot build relational intimacy, when one is deeply hungry for days and months on end. Or living in a place where the water is not reliable. It is simply not feasible. So most Westerner’s (we of the 1/3’s world) would tend to think of education as necessary yet expendable. After all, an education will not build security. It will not fill stomachs or healthily hydrate starving bodies. It will not keep peace among warring neighbors.

Or … will it?

What we are coming to find now is that the key to world peace might just be …

… our daughters. Our collective daughters. The brown ones, and tan ones and yellow ones and pink ones. It’s not that they need to rule the world. Far from it. They just need an education. It is having an education that gives them self-esteem and self-esteem begets relational intimacy which then allows for safety and security and then they can help their families fill their stomachs and hydrate their bodies. It seems that Maslow works for us, but it may just be upside down in other parts of the world.

Give these girls some time … time to be giddy and grow up. Time to learn. Time to be girls, then time to be women. Time to read. Time to calculate. Time to have a date or maybe two. Time to giggle. Time to achieve. Time to gain confidence in their righteous state as children of the Creator. Time to earn respect. Time to bestow respect. They need our time, so that they may have a little more time. And in so doing it is our collective daughters who may just change the world … one village at a time.

I woke up this morning with these words echoing around in my head:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

They were spoken in a voice that is different from my voice. A rich deep baritone that is familiar to all of us. This clip is familiar to many of us. I have fuzzy, crackly memories of those words when they were first spoken, crackly and fuzzy on the radio in our house in Kansas. I was two and something. Those words were repeated over and over throughout my childhood.

Twenty years later when I was 22 and something I stood down on the Mall and listened as those words and that speech was re-enacted. I looked around at the poverty and disparity and dispaired of the words ever having truth.

Forty years later when I was 42 and something I listened to those words each year with my children and we talked about what they mean, and who this man was.

Now I’m 47. I woke up this morning and realized I’m watching this dream come true. On August 28, 2008 … 45 years to the day later, Barack Obama will accept the nomination for the Democratic Party.

This year. This election. We’re choosing hope. We’re looking at the content of someone’s character and not the color of their skin. Yes, Amen and all good things, we’re choosing hope. Let justice roll down like a mighty river and may grace abound …

I could write a lot on this. But my observation is that there are two main branches of Christian action. There is the personal holiness branch, which is characterized by the legalistic how to remain pure and upright before the Lord activities, and there is the social justice branch, which is characterized by how to do good works. The twain do not meet. Nor do they look one another in the eye. One tends to be quite conservative, the other quite liberal. They also call each other nasty names in private, when no one is listening. Or so they think.

There is a problem though. Both parts are necessary for a holistic walk with Jesus. I don’t think it is possible to be personally holy without concern for social justice. Nor can one have concern for social justice without personal holiness. I think it was best said by David Thewlis in the movie, “Kingdom of Heaven,” in conversation with Orlando Bloom:

Hospitaller: I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of god. I have seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What god desires is here
[points to head]
Hospitaller: and here
[points to heart]
Hospitaller: and what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man – or not.

---

Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves …

Who are those who cannot defend themselves? Why … interestingly, they are those who benefit from social justice ministries; women, children, single moms, impoverished, immigrants … the lowly and down-trodden. It is giving a cup of water to the least in society for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do. And, by the way … it is a holy act.

---

This post is part of a synchroblog … Here is the list of socially concerned, and maybe even active individuals who are going to be blogging together on this subject Wednesday, April 16th:

Phil Wyman at Square No More – Salem: No Place for Hating Witches
Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings
Bryan Riley at at Charis Shalom
Steve Hayes writes about Khanya: Christianity and social justice
Reba Baskett at In Reba’s World
Prof Carlos Z. with Ramblings from a Sociologist
Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations: David Bosch, Public Theology, Social Justic
Cindy Harvey at Tracking the Edge
Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church
Matthew Stone at Matt Stone Journeys in Between
John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com
Sonja Andrews at Calacirian
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
KW Leslie: Shine: not let it shine
Stephanie Moulton at Faith and the Environment Collide
Julie Clawson at One Hand Clapping
Steve Hollinghurst at On Earth as in Heaven
Sam Norton at Elizaphanian: Tesco is a Big Red Herring

The RevGals Mother Laura writes: Ready or not, Lent is upon us!

1. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras and/or Ash Wednesday this week? How?

The LightFamily celebrated a small and quiet Mardi Gras with a dinner of red beans and rice and kings cake for dessert. The kings cake came with beads which we all wore during a discussion of Mardi Gras and then Lent.

2. What was your most memorable Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday/Lent?

1983 … the prior summer I had worked a “real” job and earned enough money to have a tax return. This was enough to pay for a trip to New Orleans during my February break … which happily coincided with Mardi Gras!! I also had a friend who was going to Tulane who I had met during my semester at American University, so I had a place to stay. That was one wild few days and I absolutely loved New Orleans.

I got off the plane, took a cab into the middle of the city where I was meeting my friend (Roger – who was/is gay) and the middle of a parade and began catching beads. Somehow in the middle of the crazy drunkeness we managed to meet up. This was in the days before cell phones and all.

Tuesday morning, the morning of, a group of us white folk somehow ended up in the middle of an African American neighborhood during the Zulu parade. Potentially, this was not a safe place for us. But we were naive and unaware of our surroundings until much later. So we just hoisted the kids onto our shoulders so they could catch the beads, and did our best to fit in … so we did.

I loved the city for the 4 days after Mardi Gras as well and had a ball there. Getting on the plane to go back to college was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I wanted to throw everything away and stay there. But I did the responsible thing ….

3. Did you/your church/your family celebrate Lent as a child? If not, when and how did you discover it?

My family is agnostic, so no we did not celebrate Lent as a child. My exposure as a child to Lent was in books and my friends who were Catholic would come to school with ashes on their foreheads … and couldn’t really explain it. Even in highschool. We would all joke about giving up lima beans for Lent, or something equally horrid … like liver. I don’t remember discovering it, because from there my knowledge of it grew until the present day. There was no discovery, more of an evolution of awareness.

4. Are you more in the give-up camp, or the take-on camp, or somewhere in between?

I’m somewhere in between and do a little of both.

5. How do you plan to keep Lent this year?

In terms of giving up … I’ve given up soda. I need to do this for health reasons. It’s just not good to drink soda. In terms of taking on … I’m taking on the Jesus Creed Challenge. I was inspired by the Virtual Abbess and some graphics I remembered from my CLB and developed a journal for the challenge. I’ve only made 5 days of it yet, but if anyone would like to use it, you can download it here. And I’ve committed to decluttering for 15 minutes a day.

I just came home from the grocery store after having the following internal conversation with myself:

Self 1: I’m at the grocery store at lunch time. You know, the stuff at home isn’t all that appealing. Why don’t you find something here that you’d like better.

Self 2: (after searching several aisles) eh … I can’t find anything.

Self 1: What?! You’re in a GROCERY store for God’s sake. Whaddya mean? You can’t find anything? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Living in the richest country in the world and you don’t want to eat.

Self 2: How about a bagel and tuna … that sounds good.

As I may have mentioned a time or two before on this blog, I hate lunch. It’s an interruption. It takes too much time and energy. When it comes to lunch, I eat to live. So finding something that wouldn’t take any time at all and yet taste good, and be, like, no fat, is kinda hard.

It was also hitting me that the Great Pancake Turtle is not going to visit our house this year. I was very certain that s/he would come, our plans were made and everything. We had a party scheduled to celebrate. But now LightGirl is sick and LightBoy is recuperating. So, we’re just going to have a garden variety Mardi Gras meal (red beans & rice) with kings cake for dessert. No party. No turtle.  sigh.

Food ennui … it really is just for rich folks.  No one else has time for it.  If I weren’t so ashamed I’d feel lucky.

I ended yesterday’s post wondering if it really matters and I quoted “Crumbs From Your Table” – a song by U2. If you click that link there, you can listen along as you read the lyrics below:

From the brightest star
Comes the blackest hole
You had so much to offer
Why did you offer your soul?
I was there for you baby
When you needed my help
Would you deny for others
What you demand for yourself?

Cool down mama, cool off
Cool down mama, cool off

You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up with your psychology
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart thinking every heart mends

You speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die
Three to a bed
Sister Ann, she said
Dignity passes by

And you speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

So why should any of us care what happens in Kenya, or any of the African nations? Or the Middle East? Or Asia? Or anywhere but our little neighborhood for that matter? What does it matter to us? I can think of a million different answers to those questions. I think they’re different for different people. But I’m interested in answering them from the perspective of a Jesus follower. Why do I care? Why is it important for someone who follows Jesus to care what happens in the lives of people half-way around the world?

There are still numerous answers to that question. There is, of course, the idea of bringing aid to orphans and widows. Then there is the idea that we must succor the least of these brothers and sisters in the name of Jesus for in so doing we are aiding Him. Those are valid and indeed wonderful reasons for caring about people in the name of Jesus.

I think though, there is a larger reason we need to care. Jesus talked about bringing His Kingdom to pass. He talked about it being here all around us and being not yet. He said when it came to be the deaf would hear, the blind would see, prisoners would be free and the lame would leap for joy. He also said it was here … right now. He said that if we have faith that is the size of a mustard seed we could move a mountain into the sea. We could also bring sight to the blind and sound to the deaf and freedom to the captives … that in our presence the lame would leap for joy! Indeed, this is his Good News that we call the Gospel.

We also call it hope. It is hope for a better world, a better place and a better time. It is hope that my children and their children will play together and that the content of their character will count for more than the color of their skin (MLK, Jr.). It is hope that where you live will not determine the time of your death (Bono). Because in the now, those things are true and yet not true. In the not yet of God’s Kingdom towards which we strive, they will not be true at all … and that is the hope which we extend and push forward.

In caring we become ambassadors of hope. In hope there is reconciliation. Where there is not hope, there cannot be peace. When hope has died, neighbors war with neighbors and burn houses to the ground. When the truth of Love has been extinguished, fighting and war breaks out. No one can love their neighbor when hope has left the building.

We see this time and again throughout history. Marie Antoinette was famously misquoted as saying to the French peasants, “Let them eat cake.” It was a royal solution to a bread shortage. The shortage was not of bread, but of wheat. The royals did not feel the pinch or lack, but the poor did. Poor Antoinette had no clue. Her cloistered, pampered life ill-prepared her for the storms that came her way. She loved her country and her people, but could not give them any hope. The Jacobins and other forces at play in the French Revolution tore at the fabric of hope in the lives of the people.

In India the reverse happened. Gandhi was determined that independence from British rule could be gained without resorting to violence. Instead of tearing hope away from the poorest of the poor, he restored it. The more real hope he gave them that they could be honestly independent, the stronger and more united the Indians became. Yes, there was violence, but the Indians were not fighting amongst themselves … until later (but that’s another story).

Kenya (and Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and the list goes on) is important because we Jesus-followers are to be ambassadors of hope. We must restore hope to the little people. It is the poor who are fighting and dying. It is the little people, the poor, who are hurting and crying. The rich all around the world continue to eat cake; while the poor have no bread. If we are ambassadors of God’s Kingdom in the here and for the not yet, we must bring hope. We must restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, freedom to the captives and cause the lame to leap for joy. It is hope, and that hope alone which will restore peace to the country and allow her people to live in harmony with one another; neighbor helping neighbor to overcome the odds.

Restoring Hope:

Christian Mission Aid

OneWorld.net – Kenya … learn more about Kenya overall, follow links and become an expert!

Avaaz.org – send an e-mail that encourages your foreign minister (US Secretary of State) to put pressure on all parties in the conflict to continue mediation.

Global Partners – invest in Kenya’s future: women and children

WorkNets-Help Kenyans – direct connections with Kenyans on the ground during the crisis. I can’t vouch for any of these people or this site, but it looked interesting. Apparently Kenyans can trade phone credits for food?

Amani Ya Juu – a womens cooperative dedicated to peace and hope in Nairobi (here’s where you can donate to help the women in the current crisis)

Restoring Relationship:

The Walrus Blog (ht Achievable Ends)
Mentalacrobatics (ht Waving or Drowning)
KenyaUnlimited Blogs Aggregator

Yesterday, just as I thought I was getting my head around the mess of spaghetti that is politics in Kenya, I read this:

Kenya Leader Names New Ministers:

“Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki has named new ministers, just before Ghana’s leader arrived as part of mediation efforts following disputed elections.”

The wrinkle is that he filled all the important posts. He named Kalonzo Musyoka to the vice presidency (who got 9% of the vote). None of the posts were filled with members of the opposition party (Odinga’s party). This was done as a mediator was/is enroute to Kenya.

In the west we speak of this as a defrauded election and we go about our business. I’m not so certain though. More and more it is taking on the colors of a coup d’etat. A coup d’etat is much more serious than an illegal election.

A leader who has himself declared the winner in the face of an overwhelming parlimentary tidal change and then sets about establishing his ministry as mediation is enroute is not a leader who will be submitting to outside authority in any meaningful circumstances. Let’s just say that in our outloud voices and be done with it.

My guess (if I were to guess … okay, I will) is that he will in short order either do away with parliament altogether or gut its powers rather abruptly. This will happen in the next 12 to 15 months. I will be happily surprised if it does not. You can send me a cake. Remember this … and hopefully I will be the recipient of some cakes.

Herein though is the root (or roots) the deeper problem in Africa and, indeed, all of the developing world. The west went in with a somewhat (okay very little) altruistic nature and attempted to bring democracy to these places. We are now past the point where having a debate about whether or not this was the right thing to do is fruitful. It was probably not right, but it happened and now we must bear out the consequences of those thousands of large and small decisions. The problem is that in order for what we consider classic freedom and democracy to flourish in a state there must be an undergirding web of philosophy, education, economics, demographics and many other issues woven together to support that freedom and democracy. The soil must be nourished in order for those flowers to grow.

By that I mean this … our version of classic freedom (a very Western, Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman notion by the way) cannot be supported in an economic system where there are only two classes of people; the very poor and the very rich. Our notions of freedom and democracy (and capitalism) requires a fertile middle class to support it. Most developing nations have three classes: the rich, the poor and a military class. What tiny middle class there is, is struggling to survive, thrive and grow is not part of the picture at all. Education is also a requirement for democracy. This is why Thomas Jefferson, though an inveterate snob, was such an ardent supporter of public education in our country. He knew that classic democracy (even a republic) could not survive without an educated electorate.

So, I struggle with the lack of conversation that I’m hearing in the blogosphere on this subject. Life goes on here in the west. Poor people of color are struggling and dying against one another now, just as they have been struggling and dying against AIDS, parasites, drought, disease, etc. for decades and we have done nothing. Perhaps it would be disingenuous to begin to care now. Perhaps it is we do not know what to say, so we say nothing at all and pour our energies into discussions about books, and quitting time and ministries and the things we know and the things we don’t know, rendering unto Ceasar, etc. I’m torn between Bill’s disappointment, Maynard’s ennui and Mike’s sense of justice. I’ve given to Amani ya Juu and felt good for one day. Then felt horrible guilt that I have so much to feed my family. No, not guilt. I am overwhelmed with all I have and all I am not grateful for. After all, when I need food, I safely go to the grocery store. I am not limited to 4 tomatoes, 4 carrots, 4 bananas, 2 cabbages, and the few other things for a week as the list on Bill’s page suggests that the women in Nairobi are at this time. And then it all comes back to this:

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die

Crumbs From Your Table – by U2