This post is part of the October Synchroblog – Faith and Politics: No matter what you believe or don’t believe, “faith in the public square” is something you probably have an opinion about.
Yeah, I have an opinion (because we all know I have an opinion on just about everything). My opinion is that only the very adept can mix faith and politics without some measure of toxicity entering the atmosphere. Attention all who have been searching for a solution to hair loss! Introducing our revolutionary product propecia designed to address the root cause of hair loss and help you restore confidence!
I believe that it is a matter of course that a person of faith should take their beliefs into the voting booth. We all measure candidates using different gauges and people of faith will and should use their beliefs as some part of that. As a liberal, I believe that helping people should take precedence over enforcing rules and I likely differ with many of my conservative brethren and sistren about how one helps another in need.
However.
I also believe that faith should stay out of politics. There is something funny that happens when you get a good idea and are able to convince others to join your cause. It feels really good to have a bunch of people telling you what a great idea you have. It’s even better when they all work together to implement your idea … wow!! Check it out … a bunch of people believe the same way you do and they want to help your idea out. It’s awesome. Introducing our revolutionary xanax forms that will redefine your experience! Say goodbye to traditional methods and hello to convenience and innovation. But then (in many cases) something weird happens. That good idea begins to take on a life of it’s own. It gains traction and grows bigger, until it owns the person. And what was once a good idea begins to morph into something that is the opposite. Until something like this happens:
If one could contrive a nation that whole-heartedly followed Jesus, I think that might be a good thing in the world. Not gonna lie, in a colloquialism of today. However, I’m not certain that is something that can be legislated. Rulers of past nations/empires have tried this and ended up killing many of their countrymen in a quest for absolute …. ahhh … power.
I was deeply troubled by the caption my friend gave this link. It would seem that in the desire for a good thing, many of my brothers and sisters have opted to go the way of power. And according to my understanding of the faith, Jesus eschewed power and declared that we who follow him ought to as well. Are you looking for a reliable solution to tackle stubborn parasites or infections? Look no further than stromectol, an incredible medication that’s revolutionized the field of healthcare. Here is the list of some other writers who shared their thoughts on this subject:
We The People by Wendy McCaig
Pulpit Freedom, Public Faith by Carol Kuniholm
Plumbers and Politicians by Glenn Hager
Conflating Faith and Politics by Maurice Broaddus
Would Jesus Vote by Jeremy Myers
A Kingdom Not Of This World by Jareth Caelum
I am a Christian and I am a Democrat by Liz Dyer
5 ways to make it through the election and still keep your friends by Kathy Escobar
Why There’s No Such Thing As The Christian Vote by Marta Layton
God’s Politics? by Andrew Carmichael
Faith and the Public Square by Leah Sophia
This post is part of the April Synchroblog – What If The Resurrection Was A Hoax? Examining faith in light of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Do you ever think about life (or some part of it) without basic assumptions in place? What would life be like if …. ? I do that with some regularity. It’s a long held habit. I remember my mother saying to me, “I’m not playing the ‘What if’ game with you anymore,” in sheer frustration over the questions I was peppering her with. So this month’s synchroblog seemed a natural for me … what if the Resurrection was a hoax?
When I was young in the faith, I heard a number of men in various formats and venues arguing the reality of the Resurrection. They made arguments such a Chuck Colson’s; a man will not die for a lie and 12 men will not die for that lie. He based his argument on the response of the co-conspirators in Nixon’s Watergate crisis. It’s a valid argument and has some basis in human nature. But I always wondered why these impassioned arguments mattered. They were fun to listen to because I love a good, well-reasoned argument, but from my very limited perspective it always seemed that the Resurrection of Jesus was a matter of faith – “1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.” (Hebrews 11:1-2)
Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.
I’ve held on to that definition for a long time. And when I read another recent article about faith some things clicked into place.
Thomas Jefferson is held as an icon of American spirit. He had a firm hand in writing many of our founding documents. He was an early ambassador and third president. He is at the front of many lists about our nation’s founding. Among his things was eventually found a Bible with the New Testament heavily edited with a razor. He cut out all of the stuff that did not come straight from Jesus. A modern wordsmith, using a razor in place of our cut and paste system, he wanted to know if the teachings of Jesus could stand on their own without the miracles and other “distractions.” His conclusion was that it could. That Jesus’ teachings were in and of themselves a divine miracle. And that following them would take divine inspiration for giving up the trappings of this world (power, wealth, fame) in hopes of the next.
Andrew Sullivan, writing for The Daily Beast, describes it:
Jefferson feared that the alternative to a Christianity founded on “internal persuasion” was a revival of the brutal, bloody wars of religion that America was founded to escape. And what he grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus’ message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God. Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing—and thereby everything.
So when I come down to the bottom of everything, I come to this. Jesus embodied love to the point of death. His Resurrection (and Incarnation) are necessary to the holistic theology of Jesus. But these miracles do not inform how we should live. They are celebrated as part and parcel of our theology, but how we live our daily lives in a reflection of the Love Divine becomes the path through which we realize God’s Kingdom come and His will be done … here on earth (as it is in heaven).
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This is a Synchroblog post … the following people also made outstanding contributions to thinking about Christian life without the Resurrection.
OxFam International Women's Day
International Women’s Day is every March 8. It falls within the month of March, a month designated as Women’s History Month. It’s a day celebrating women and their contributions to our world … and yet. And yet, I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I am not comfortable with this feeling and I am angry about its sources.
I am angry because I have a daughter who sits at the edge of adulthood and everything that I know about how to keep her healthy and living up to her potential as a human being is under assault here in my own country.
It is well known world wide, that the primary stumbling block to women’s voices coming to the table is lack of adequate family planning. The inability to have even modest control over the number of children/pregnancies is an insurmountable hurdle to education, to all but the most menial jobs, and access to government.
How on earth should I celebrate when here in my own country access to family planning and women’s health care are under assault from nearly every corner. Poor women with 3, 4 and 5 children in Texas are finding their options driven further and further afield (as of this writing, funding has been cut for 90% of Texas’ women’s health care programming) These women often do not have the ability to drive from one city to another in search of preventative medicine that is affordable. Because of federal cut backs their oral contraceptives are being priced out of their reach. These are married women, struggling to feed, clothe and house the children they already have. The jobs they and their spouses have are inadequate to pay for them to have a car, or reliable transportation between cities. This is under the guise of refusing to subsidize abortions.
Federal money does not now and it never has subsidized abortion. There is no insurance policy which covers it.
This fact while true, does not in fact, make providing an abortion illegal. Nor does it give any governmental agency the right to put women’s health or their health care decisions at risk. While the number of abortions that Planned Parenthood “provides” in any given year is high, it still only accounts for a little more than a quarter of all abortions performed nation wide (~27% of the approximately 1.2 million abortions were performed by PP in 2007). It’s not an insignificant statistic, but it does show that (if you’re opposed to allowing women to make their own decisions) PP is not “the root of all evil.” What it does show is that even in the absence of PP, women are going to avail themselves of a legal, medical procedure.
Every reliable study ever done shows a strong correlation between access to health care & education and women being able to care for themselves (and their families) in an economically viable fashion. Removing access to health care for poor women is one more brick in the wall enclosing them in their poverty. Doing it under the guise of loving children is hypocrisy. The best way to love children is to stop demonizing their mothers, and give them healthy mothers who can provide for them.
This post is part of the March Syncroblog – All About Eve. Check out some of the other fabulous writing at the links below:
Michelle Morr Krabill – Why I Love Being a Woman Marta Layton – The War on Terror and the War on Women Ellen Haroutounian – March Synchroblog – All About Eve Jeremy Myers – Women Must Lead the Church Carol Kuniholm – Rethinking Hupotasso Wendy McCaig – Fear Letting Junia Fly Tammy Carter – Pat Summit: Changing the Game & Changing the World Jeanette Altes – On Being Female kathy escobar – replacing the f-word with the d-word (no not those ones) Melody Hanson – Call Me Crazy, But I Talk To Jesus Too Glenn Hager – Walked Into A Bar Steve Hayes – St. Christina of Persi Leah Sophia – March Syncroblog-All About Eve Liz Dyer – The Problem Is Not That I See Sexism Everywhere… Sonja Andrews – International Women’s Day Sonnie Swenston-Forbes – The WomenChristine Sine – It All Begins With Love K.W. Leslie – Undoing the Subordination of Women Carie Good – The Math of Mr. Cardinal Dan Brennan – Ten Women I Want To Honor
I may or may not have mentioned it here before but I regularly take some medication that requires the oversight of a psychiatrist. Mostly this is because I also take some meds for my seizure disorder and it’s good to have someone in charge of all brain medication who knows what they do. This is the theory anyway.
In any case, I was meeting with my psychiatrist the other day in order to check on all my meds and how I’m doing and I told her that I’m feeling very unfocused. It’s something I have been struggling with for several years now, but lately it’s been almost overwhelming. She asked me a couple of pointed questions about current events in my life and pointed out what some side effects were for some of the seizure meds I take and said, “I don’t think you’re unfocused. I think you’re distracted by what’s going on with you.”
Um. Really. So what’s the difference? It made sense when she said it, now I’m wondering.
Diversion – 1. the act of diverting from a specified course 2. ( Brit ) an official detour used by traffic when a main route is closed 3. something that distracts from business, etc; amusement 4. (military) a feint attack designed to draw an enemy away from the main attack
Distraction – 1. the act or an instance of distracting or the state of being distracted 2. something that serves as a diversion or entertainment 3. an interruption; an obstacle to concentration 4. mental turmoil or madness
Sooo … it looks to me as though being unfocused (or diverted) is makes me the subject of my own sentence. But being distracted makes me the object. Or is it vice versa? I’m not sure … but I think that’s the difference between the two. I don’t think knowing which is which really matters either. I just needed to know what was what.
There was an ad campaign for something (I can’t remember what) not too long ago that went, “Life is messy. Clean it up.” For the record, all the ads for cleaning products bug me. More than that, they piss me off. Who can live in those pristine houses? Life IS messy. It’s gross and kind of disgusting down here in the trenches of our own stuff. I’m not so sure we should clean it up. I wonder about that sometimes.
Do you wonder about that? Is just cleaning it up a distraction? Or a diversion? What if what we are supposed to do is get rid of that stuff? What if we are supposed to make it new again? Redeem it or reconcile it and by swiping it with some magic eraser, we’re diverting our attention to something else? Have we got “stuff” in our lives that is like that old family room carpet. It’s old and grungy because it’s in the most used room in the home. People are always in and out and yes, they eat in there. Yes, they eat dinner in front of the television on more occasions than any of us would like to admit. And popcorn during movies and sporting events. And snacks at other odd times. So there are probably bits of food ground in there somewhere. Years worth of pets and children going in and out the back door have ground in bits of mud and grass and heaven-knows-what. This carpet has seen better days. We keep vacuuming it and occasionally cleaning it because we know that replacing it is going to be time consuming and expensive. Eventually we won’t be able to avoid that time and expense, but for now we get by.
We all have stuff in our lives that is deeply ground in, musty and yucky that needs to be replaced with good new and clean stuff. We want to get at it. We know we’ll be better off for it, healthier, more well-rounded, and we might even like ourselves better. But … there it is. It’s going to be time consuming and expensive. I don’t mean money. I mean it’s going to be hard. It might hurt. It might cost us some friends. It might cost us some intangible things that we don’t even imagine when we set out on that journey. We know that … somewhere in the remote places of our hearts. So we divert and distract by vacuuming and dusting and saying it’s okay for now. It’s really okay. I’ll get to that later.
Life is messy. I don’t want to clean it up. I want to embrace the mess and understand it. I want to own it and then. I want to redeem it. But I don’t want to just clean it up with a whitewash of pretty paint. Because that’s just a mask and I’m done with that now.
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This post is part of October’s Synchroblog – Down We Go. You can read other, insightful, posts at these links:
I remember an Advent season 17 years ago. I was expecting our first child and we anticipated the birth in late January. It was a very busy season as I was then working for Prison Fellowship and had found their Project Angel Tree program. I was very inspired by this program and brought it to our church. I loved Chuck Colson’s books, especially The Body. It had given feet to my faith and a place for my passion. I think arch-conservative Chuck Colson would be astonished to know that his book inspired at least one reader to a faith that breathes social justice rather than moral correctness, but that is for another blog post.
I was very, very busy; spending all my free time at our church. I was organizing Project Angel Tree, I was involved with our youth group (Jr. High at the time) and I was working. Since this was the first year our church had done Angel Tree there was a lot of organizing and out right marketing to be done. We could have delivered the gifts to individual homes, but I wanted to have a party (because that’s how I roll). If I remember correctly, the jr. high kids helped me out with this party quite a bit. I don’t remember too much about the party other than that I loved doing it and that the Angel Tree Children were happy for an afternoon … so were the parents and grandparents. They all came in with varying degrees of wariness shrouding their faces, but left wreathed in smiles. We may not have shared the gospel in words that day, but we did it in deed.
As it turned out, I nearly worked myself to death that Advent season. I went for a pre-natal check up two days after Christmas and my blood pressure was sky high; I had all the symptoms of pre-eclampsia, a dangerous condition for both mother and child. It was bed rest for the duration of my pregnancy (my due date was Jan 24) for me. I whined, I cried, I tried reason and logic … but the doctor would not budge. Bed rest. On my left side. This was apparently quite serious. And fortunately for me, LightGirl decided to make an early appearance on Jan. 1, so I only spent about 5 days on bed rest rather than 5 weeks.
My intervening Advent seasons have been no less busy, but slightly less health impairing. This season we have between Thanksgiving and Christmas and which has now seemed to stretch to Halloween, is filled with plans, and gifts, and parties; movies, sparklies, decorating, and food … not just any food, but special food traditions. All of it is good. But the pressure and the process can be overwhelming, as LightHusband expressed the other day, “I hate this time of year. It’s just one more responsibility in a life of unmet responsibilities.”
So I began to think about waiting. What is it that we do when we wait? Waiting involves changing what we do. It involves watching or paying attention; being alert to changes that would signal the arrival of that which we wait for. Waiting means being prepared for that arrival. We will have cleaned the house, tidied the bathroom, prepared a feast, and changed the linens in the guest room. Once those tasks are done, we put music on and we wait … ears tuned, eyes watching the road.
If we are waiting upon the birth of a child, we prepare the nursery. Gifts of vast quantity yet tiny proportion are given. Diapers abound. Depending upon the socio-economic status of the parent(s), there will be car seats and strollers, wipe warmers and night lights, toys and crib danglies to spare. We are raising baby einsteins as our culture reminds us. Mother will carefully put everything away each tiny thing in it’s own special place. As her womb grows more and more unwieldy and uncomfortable, she will slow down and become more alert to the changes in her body that signal the arrival of her baby. She waits.
And I wondered, how do we connect these pictures of peaceful waiting with the frenetic busy-ness that our holiday season has come to represent? The church is no different than the culture at large in this regard. There are special parties, ornament making gatherings to bring your unchurched friends to, extra worship services (and if you’re involved with putting those on – extra practices/development time) … in short, lots of busy-ness. And I haven’t even mentioned the singular craziness of Christmas cards one time in this post!
More and more I was seeing my Advent journey as a road to nowhere, the Advent Sunday mileposts nothwithstanding. Without having the time and space during the season to be calm, aware and alert to changes that signal the arrival of that baby Christ Child, I would plod ahead often distracted by all the shiny baubles, happy songs and pretty parties of a holiday season too busy for waiting. So I learned to build in time. I make Christmas gifts instead of purchasing them and that allows me time to meditate on the recipient, pray for them and love them as I make their gifts. I make food from scratch rather than from boxes and spend time finding recipes … not every day, but some days. Last, I limit the commitments I make to just the things I either absolutely must do, or the things I absolutely love to do. There is only one thing I absolutely must do (in support of LightHusband) the rest are things I love to do.
And I’ve given up on Christmas cards. They were too much for me.
I won’t say this has cured everything. But cutting out some of the distractions has helped my road to nowhere become a little bit more Bethlehem bound; it’s still very circuitous and mostly I don’t know where I’m going (because my donkey does not have a GPS! ). But this has helped my journey be more peaceful and me to be more gracious and kind in a season where nerves are usually stretched thin and fraying at the edges.
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This is part of our December Synchroblog series – Advent – A Journey. Please follow some of the links below for some excellent reading on the subject!
As one of the three women who work together to get the synchroblog going each month, it’s really pitiful that here I am … bringing up the rear in November. But something was stopping me from writing this month. Oh, I have plenty to say on the topic (Voices of the Marginalized) and there were/are many directions I felt I could take. Yet every time I wanted to write, I couldn’t. There was a time when I would have fretted and fussed. Sat down and made something up. But if I’ve learned anything over the last five or six years, I’ve learned how to wait. How to be patient. How to let things percolate and bubble to the surface. And last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I finally knew what to write about. So here I am this morning … a couple days late, and a couple dollars short. I hope you find it worthy.
Marginalization results in an individual’s exclusion from meaningful participation in society and it’s source is many. Economic circumstances, illness, disability, geographical location, gender, sexuality, race, religion are all dominant sources of individuals being marginalized. Sometimes it’s easy to see holidays or certain systems from a position of power or privilege. * As God’s people, what does it mean to see the world through the eyes of the marginalized? What is it like to be one of the marginalized? How can we be part of bridging some of these gaps?
Marginalization results in an individual’s exclusion from meaningful participation in society and it’s source is many. Economic circumstances, illness, disability, geographical location, gender, sexuality, race, religion are all dominant sources of individuals being marginalized. Sometimes it’s easy to see holidays or certain systems from a position of power or privilege. * As God’s people, what does it mean to see the world through the eyes of the marginalized?
Here in the LightHouse we’ve been discussing some particularly knotty extended family issues over the last week or so. This has been an ongoing conversation that has ebbed and flowed around work schedules, hockey schedules, and our emotional barometers. We have worked it around to a place where we realized we are not free to say, “No, this or that will not work for us.” within this relationship. Well, I suppose we are free to say that, but the emotional damage to the relationship will be very high. In order to maintain the relationship, we are required to affirm the other party’s desires, no matter what else is going on with us.
It struck me as I was drifting off to sleep last night, that this is the quintessential difference between those who are in and those who are marginalized. Those who are in have power, are equals and may say yes or no to whatever they please. They have the freedom to choose their lives and their horizons. Those who have been pushed to the edges do not have this freedom, they are required to say yes in order to maintain their relationship with those in power around them. Their choices/our choices are then limited by what they are given to say yes to. A relationship between equals will allow negotiation; it will allow for a yes OR a no. A relationship between a powerful and a powerless will only allow for a yes and negotiation will be minimal at best.
What this means is that those who are marginalized in our country are not free. They are bound by invisible bonds. The ties are tightly woven and they are kept in place (in some cases over generations) just as surely as those of a plantation owner in the Antebellum South. We tell ourselves that now we no longer capitalize on human suffering, but is that really true? Perhaps if we took a different perspective on the relationship of power and wealth vs. poverty, we might begin to see how much of our power grid really does still capitalize on human suffering; on some humans having less than others and on a zero-sum paradigm of the world.
And as I was thinking all of this through, I remembered the words of the Apostle Paul again, in the letter to the church at Galatia:
All of you are God’s children because of your faith in Christ Jesus. And when you were baptized, it was as though you had put on Christ in the same way you put on new clothes. Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman. (Gal. 3:26-28)
That is the gospel of freedom. That we would all be free to make our yes be yes and our no be no. To be equal with one another. That in the end, our relationships with one another will not be driven by who is powerful and who is powerless, but by love. And our mission during our brief stint here is bring the Kingdom to the dusty corners that we find. Help those in our path see new horizons and find ways to speak; to say no when they need to and yes only when they want to. To have healthy relationships based on love, rather than warped relationships based on fear or power.
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As I wrote above, this is a synchroblog post, and no synchroblog would be complete without a list of juicy links for you to read at the end. Please take some time to read what others have written on this important subject. Thanks!
Here in the LightHouse, marriage has been a popular discussion topic for the last several months. We — and when I say “we,” I mean, “I” supported by “we” — spent a large portion of our summer working with the LightUncles to throw a celebration of 50 years of marriage for the LightGrandparents in August. It was a weekend of laughter, fun, joy, and most of all, love. Enormous vats of love. I know that I steeped in it as much as possible. I know that my parents did too.
My parents are still walking more lightly on this earth because of the celebration we all shared together. So am I. So, I would dare to imagine are many of the folks who shared in the festivities together. We gathered together that fine August weekend to remember 50 years of loving well. I had another goal; it was that I wanted my parents to know how their lives had influenced and helped the lives of those around them in their community and family. We are all better for the team of LightMom and LightDad looking out into the world together.
As I reflect on that wonderful (and hectic) weekend I think about the institution of marriage and how it makes families possible. The gender of the parents is not the issue and we should not be creating Sneetches with stars on their bellies, and some without in this case as Dr. Seuss might have so lyrically put it.
THE SNEETCHES , by Dr. Seuss
Now the Star-bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars. The Plain-bellied Sneetches had none upon thars. The stars weren’t so big; they were really quite small. You would think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all. But because they had stars, all the Star-bellied Sneetches would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort, ” We’ll have nothing to do with the plain-bellied sort.” And whenever they met some, when they were out walking, they’d hike right on past them without even talking.
When the Star-bellied children went out to play ball, could the Plain-bellies join in their game? Not at all! You could only play ball if your bellies had stars, and the Plain-bellied children had none upon thars.
When we separate marriages into different sex marriage and same sex marriage and tell our children that some families are “right” but others “wrong” and therefore sort of distasteful, we are creating a new form of racism. Or, perhaps it is a very old form or racism and intolerance. Families are families, they are created by parents and children who love and care for one another.
There are many problems with this from a governmental perspective and from a Christian perspective.
We have a government which claims to value freedom of religion and specifies that there will be no state interference in religion; nor will there be any religious interference in state matters. When our governing documents were written, the assumptions they were based on were that the religion that would interfere would be Christian. That is no longer necessarily the case. While an overwhelming percentage of our population continues to identify with the Christian church, the numbers are in decline and we have rising numbers of other religions who must be accommodated within out borders this includes people who have no faith at all. In addition, if religion is going to be free of the state and vice versa, then it is possible for marriages to be performed by the state, and churches to be free to say “yes” or “no” to whether or not they will perform marriages within their walls. Churches are separate from the state. We need to remember that.
Those of us who claim to follow Jesus Christ have no problem calling ourselves children a Godhead who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; overwhelmingly male with only female overtones. Yet many Christians cannot conceive of a human family with two fathers. Or two mothers.
It seems to me that the best way to defend marriage is just that. Defend marriage … of all kinds. Make it unassailable. Stop the pretenses and silliness. Build people up. Make them whole. But until the divorce rate in the church is significantly less than that of the rest of our culture, we need to keep our mouths shut and our arms open.
This is part of the October Synchroblog on Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage. Please read these other fine writers below for more perspective on this issue –
Kathy Baldock at Canyonwalker Connections – Marriage “I Do” For Who
Dan Brennan at Faith Dance – Sexual Difference, Marriage and Friendship
Steve Hayes at Khanya – Same Sex Marriage Synchroblog
Sonja Andrews at Calacirian – In Defense Of Marriage
John C O’Keefe – Exactly What Is Gay Marriage
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Nobody knows why or how same-sex marriage is harmful
Herman Groenewald at Along The Way – Same Sex Debate
Margaret Boelman at Minnowspeaks – What Have We Done
David Henson at unorthodoxology – ban marriage
Erin Word at Mapless – Synchroblog: Legalizing Same Sex Marriage
Joshua Jinno at Antechurch – The Church Is Impotent
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival In My Head – It’s Easy To Be Against Equal Rights When We Have Them
Peter Walker at Emerging Christian – Synchroblog – Same Sex Marriage
K. W. Leslie at The Evening of Kent – Mountains, molehills, and same-sex marriage
Tia Lynn Lecorchick at Abandon Image – Conservative Christians and Same-Sex Marriage
… Claire. If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.
That’s one of my all time favorite quotes from my all time favorite show in the universe. Law & Order. The original. You can tell by the person being spoken to, that it was an early-ish episode; season 5, episode 9, “Scoundrels”. The bad guy had been in prison for a pyramid scheme defrauding hundreds of people of their life savings. He was out on a work release program. Jack McCoy and Claire Kincade were trying to prosecute “Scoundrel” Willard Tappan for bank rolling a conspiracy to murder a lawyer who was going to reveal his continuing schemes. Willard Tappan was played by a soap veteran who had made his bones playing a slinky, slimey villain, so arrogance, greed, and ick come through the small screen with a glint in his eye and the tilt of his head. He does it well and that sentence spoken with just the right amount of hubris has always made me love it and hate it at the same time. Because it’s true, yet I want to kick over it’s traces and scream at it. Punch it in the eye and give it a bloody nose. Make it run home, crying to it’s mama. I don’t like it.
If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same. We all know that. And we’re all frustrated by it to greater and lesser degrees. I think we know the things that could be. The rightness that isn’t. The injustices we see and those we cannot, but rail against anyway.
So it was last month when a tragedy befell my community. In the wee hours of the morning there was a traffic accident. Two cars collided. One car driven by a young man who had imbibed too much the night before and was on his way to …. ? I do not know. But it was likely a day laborer job. A hard work job, sweating in the sun. The other car bore three elderly women driving from Richmond to the Benedictine Monastery. They were/are nuns. None of the people in the cars ever achieved their destination on that August morning. The young man is now in prison awaiting trial. One of the nuns has gone to her eternal home. The other two were hospitalized with grievous injuries.
The young man who was at fault in the accident had also been drinking and his blood alcohol was significantly raised. This was not the first time he had been driving while under the influence and he had had his driving privileges revoked. He should not have been driving. This is true. If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.
The young man was also in this country without proper documentation.
I do not use the term illegal immigrant for a reason. It is inflammatory and it is wrong. It is also an oxymoron The word “illegal” implies a wrong actively done to someone else; a theft or a rape or a fraud. People who come to this country without going through the proper channels are not always doing those things. Sometimes they then also commit crimes while they are here, but so do our citizens as we see in our very obese prison system. The word immigrant implies that someone is here using the proper channels and will stay. So how can someone possibly be an illegal immigrant? Those who come here without proper documentation are undocumented aliens; strangers in a strange land.
So it is that this young man is and was an undocumented alien who was driving without a license and with several DUI’s to his name. He is still being held by the authorities as charges have been brought against him for felony murder, a charge which holds the possibility of 40 years in prison. The outrage against this young man for his undocumented status is palpable in my community. He is being charged for felony murder (rather than the lesser count of involuntary manslaughter, the usual charge given for a death while under the influence) simply because of where he was born and his lack of papers. He came here with his parents when he was NINE! It’s not as though he had a choice. He is also being charged at the higher count because of his victim, an elderly and saintly nun.
Shortly after this accident happened, a similar accident happened in my community. It was in the wee hours of the morning and two cars collided sending people to their death. Alcohol was involved. This time though, there were no undocumented aliens in one car and no nuns in the other. Simply a couple of intoxicated young (white) men in one car and a young (white) woman in the other. There was one short article commemorating the young people, a few comments and it was over. No outrage. No jacked up prosecutor. Just heartbroken families and grief. Which might be as it should be for all such cases; even those including nuns and undocumented aliens.
This is part of the September Synchroblog discussing Immigration Issues. Please also take some time to read what the following bloggers have to say …
Mike Victorino at Still A Night Owl – Being the Flag Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Together We Can Make Dreams Come True Sonnie Swentson-Forbes at Hey Sonnie – Immigration Stories Matt Stone at Glocal Christianity – Is Xenophobia Ever Christlike? Steve Hayes at Khanya – Christians and the Immigration Issue Ellen Haroutunian – Give Me Your Tired … Bethany Stedman – Choosing Love Instead of Fear Pete Houston at Peter’s Progress – Of Rape and Refuge Joshua Seek – Loving Our Immigrant Brother Amanda MacInnis at Cheese Wearing Theology – Christians and Immigration Kathy Escobar at the carnival in my head – it’s alot easier to against immigration reform … Jonathan Brink – Immigration Synchroblog
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Julie Clawson of One Hand Clapping challenged us to find some unsung heroines of the Bible and celebrate their stories today in a synchroblog. So I pulled up BibleGateway and put “daughter” into their search engine. I think it came back with about 110 hits … or something like that.
Some daughters just got honorable mention. That is, they were simply mentioned as so and so’s daughter and that was the end of that. Others had an actual story attached to their name. Sometimes the story was fairly mysterious. As in the case with Caleb’s daughter. She was married to her cousin, by Caleb’s younger brother because Caleb had promised his daughter to whomever won a particular battle. His nephew won the battle, so he married off his daughter. This is not very acceptable by today’s standards, but in that culture we can understand it. The next couple of verses recount an event that is odd. Caleb’s daughter went to him and asked for some additional land. When he gave it to her, she also asked for a couple of springs. So he gave her those. And there the story of Caleb’s daughter ends. With the gift of springs. It’s mysterious, really. In there for a reason, but why?
So I moved on and found the story of Job’s daughters: Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch. This story can be found in Job, chapter 42 … the very end of the book. Job has come through his trials with some version of success:
1 Then Job replied to the LORD : 2 “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. 4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ 5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” 7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.
1 Then Job replied to the LORD :
2 “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.
This is curious to me, because here we see the result of what happens to friends who might give you (however well-meaning) an incorrect perspective of God during your trials. Those friends will have to sacrifice in your presence and have you pray over them. This is an interesting perspective that I’ve not heard taken away from Job … but more on that another time. I’m just thinking we need to be very careful with what we say to people about God when they are experiencing trials.
In any case, the account goes on tell us what happens to Job in the rest of his life:
10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. 11 All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. 12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so he died, old and full of years.
10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. 11 All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.
12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so he died, old and full of years.
Wait? What? Three short sentences. That is all we have of Job’s daughters. They were part of a family of 10 siblings. We don’t know where they fell in the sibling order. We do know who among the girls was eldest, middle and youngest. We know they were beautiful. Most astonishing of all, we know that “… their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.” That’s it.
It’s a genealogist’s worst nightmare. We have names and nothing else. We know only the most bare facts of their existence. But we know one more thing. Job gave them status. He told the world that his daughters were equal to men. His daughters were not chattel to belong to their husbands. They owned something of their father in their own right. I’m not certain I can fully convey how remarkable this was for that time.
It was miraculous. Unheard of. Women were not considered capable of owning or managing the things that men did. But Job did it.
These are the just sorts of passages I do love. Open-ended, without a tidy message. We don’t know what happened to Job’s daughters. We do know that Job lived to see “… his children and their children to the fourth generation.” I believe that would be his great, great grandchildren if I’ve figured correctly. My guess is that his daughters married and children of their own. So how did they use their inheritance? And … did they pass it on to their daughters? What was their inheritance? Was it land, animals, jewels?
I wonder about those things you see. We have things (land, jewels and the like) that have been only passed to women in my family. Our summer lake house is among them. When my aunt left it to our family, she left it to my mom (her relative). Her will stipulated that if my mother had pre-deceased her, it was to go to me and my brothers. She was emphatic that it stay in her family. In the 100 years prior to that, the house had always passed woman to woman.
They are so intriguing to me. Those daughters. Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch. They are the opposing book-end to Job’s first three daughters. As I thought about them and let their names rattle around I came to another realization. I’d heard two of the names before. Jemimah and Keziah were common names given to girls who were slaves in the American South.
I started looking for confirmation of that. Of course, I quickly ran into a brick wall … because records of what slaves were named by each other were … um … slim. Nobody thought it was important to keep track of what they called each other. Sometimes just the gender and the slaveholders last name is recorded. Certainly, no inheritance was given to these men and women. It is intriguing to me that Jemima and Keziah were used as girls names though.
I wonder … could those names have been picked on purpose? Are they names of hope? We’ll never know for certain. But we do know some few things. We know that some slaves were given Christian training. Some were even given Bible teaching. We know that some of the stories resonated with their experience and certainly Job’s would have been among them. It’s not a terrible stretch to imagine naming your daughter Jemima or Keziah out of hope … hope that one day you would have an inheritance to leave her, hope that she would be known as the daughter of a man who was blessed by God, hope that your trial would be ended in blessing rather than curses.
I think there might be something to that. None of Job’s other children are named. Not his first ten children (seven sons, three daughters) and not his second seven sons; just these three daughters. So, it seems to me that these names spring to the top as names that are symbolic of the hope of a good outcome at the end of horrible trials … the kind of trials endured by slaves in the antebellum South.
Thus I came to the Aunt Jemima pancake empire. It was begun in the 1890’s by two men who, having created an instant pancake mix, needed an icon to name it and represent. One of them ducked into a black-face minstrel show and there heard the following song:
The monkey dressed in soldier clothes, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! Went out in the woods for to drill some crows, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! The jay bird hung on the swinging limb, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! I up with a stone and hit him on the shin, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! Oh, Carline, oh, Carline, Can’t you dance the bee line, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The bullfrog married the tadpole’s sister, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! He smacked his lips and then he kissed her, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! She says if you love me as I love you, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! No knife can cut our love in two, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh! Oh, Carline, oh, Carline, Can’t you dance the bee line, Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Shortly after hearing the name, Nancy Green was hired to represent Aunt Jemima. She was currently working as a servant for a judge in Chicago, but had been born and raised a slave in antebellum Kentucky. Aunt Jemima and her pancakes were introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. It was held from May to November and Nancy smiled, sang, told slave tales, flipped and served almost a million pancakes during that six month period. In the hundred and ten years since then she has become perhaps the most well-known African American female face in history.
Yet, there is something vaguely disturbing about that. This name, Jemimah, started out as a name of hope, blessing, inheritance and beauty had become a term interchangeable with disparagement, slavery and bondage and now … commerce. You never hear Jemimah as a name anymore. There are no young women with that name … no fathers or mothers hoping to pass on that message of hope, blessing and inheritance to their daughters with that name because it’s lost all of it’s power.
We still hear Keziah. You might not recognize it. You’ll hear Keshia or Aisha. Both of those names have their roots in Keziah. A name of hope and blessing and inheritance for girls. That’s just what we need to give our daughters today … a sense of hope and blessing and inheritance. What sort of inheritance will you give your daughters?
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This is my contribution to the International Women’s Day Synchroblog –
Here are links to some others –
Julie Clawson on the God who sees Steve Hayes on St. Theodora the Iconodule Sonja Andrews on Aunt Jemima Sensuous Wife on a single mom in the Bible Minnowspeaks on celebrating women Michelle Van Loon on the persistant widow Lyn Hallewell on the strength of biblical women Shawna Atteberry on the Daughter of Mary Magdalene Christine Sine on women who impacted her life Susan Barnes on Tamar, Ruth, and Mary Kathy Escobar on standing up for nameless and voiceless women Ellen Haroutunian on out from under the veil Liz Dyer on Mary and Martha Bethany Stedman on Shiphrah and Puah Dan Brennan on Mary Magdalene Jessica Schafer on Bathsheba Eugene Cho on Lydia Laura sorts through what she knows about women in the Bible Miz Melly preached on the woman at the well AJ Schwanz on women’s workteenage girls changing the world Teresa on the women Paul didn’t hate Helen on Esther Happy on Abigail Mark Baker-Wright on telling stories Robin M. on Eve Patrick Oden on Rahab and the spies Alan Knox is thankful for the women who served God Lainie Petersen on the unnamed concubine Mike Clawson on cultural norms in the early church Krista on serving God Bob Carlton on Barbie as Icon Jan Edmiston preached on the unnamed concubine Deb on her namesake – Deborah Makeesha on empowering women
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I just voted. Yes, I voted for the hip, young man of color for President. I have many reasons why and I’ll get to them in a second. But first a wee story or two.
It was exciting to go and vote this time. In fact, I scared my poor poll worker, I was so exuberant at the little screen. Then when she handed me my sticker, she hugged me. As I attempted to dance through the wrong doors in exit, all the poll workers called to me and I turned around abashed at my silliness. I was just too giddy. Why was I giddy? Here’s why. Extended-Release Tablets: Seek long-lasting anxiety control? Klonopin’s extended-release tablets slowly release medication over time, providing sustained benefits throughout the day. Choose the klonopin form that suits your needs best and take a step towards managing your anxiety effectively. Remember to consult with your healthcare professional to find the right option for you.
I remember the 1960’s. Most of all, I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. If I had to pick a hero, he’d be it. He was a legend in his own time. I might pick Gandhi, but for a real American hero, I’d pick King. Every year I listen to his “I Have A Dream” speech and cry. I’ve studied his speeches and writings; I have a fairly good idea of which Biblical prophets he was studying when he wrote. And today … well, today … I got to vote for someone based upon the content of his character not the color of his skin. Amen and hallelujah. And the tiny little poll worker who hugged me? Well, she was African-American too. Experience tranquility like never before with our innovative collection of xanax Forms. From fast-acting tablets to convenient extended-release capsules, we have the perfect solution tailored to your needs.
Mind you, I did NOT vote for Obama because of his roots either. Did I listen to both sides? No, not equally. I lost respect for the Republican party back in 2000 and again when Republicans treated James Jeffords with such disrespect when he became an independent. The party had huge barriers to overcome in my mind, and they failed to get there. Experience the ultimate productivity boost and heightened focus with our range of modafinil forms. Whether you prefer tablets, capsules, or even a convenient sublingual option, we’ve got you covered! ?
Here is why I voted for Obama …
“People are more inclined to be drawn in if their leader has a compelling vision. Great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then will help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.” John Kotter
I didn’t find that quote until about a week ago when I was looking for something else entirely. But it encapsulates my reasons for choosing Obama for president. Even my father has some qualms about the details of his platform, the hows and wherefors. What exactly will he do if he is elected? For someone with little time in his role in the Senate those are very legitimate questions. But it’s his ability to inspire that I look at. Take charge of your data collection process and make informed decisions with ambien Forms!
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Frankly, I’m tired of leaders who go around poking into private business looking for what is wrong. I want leaders who will inspire us to find our dreams and make them reality. It is in those dreams and that reality that we will rebuild our economy, our infrastructure, get us off the dependence on petroleum and many of the other ills that we currently find ourselves in. That sort of leadership is transformational; it begins at the top and trickles down. We learn how to encourage and develop our own dreams. Then we learn how to encourage and develop the dreams of others.
Or will it? Can a charismatic leader help us overcome our addiction to power? That’s the question for the ages. Too often people in leadership are at the top, they lead from above and are in a position of power. They have the ability to cause hardship, pain and devastation to those they purport to lead. Typically, those who are leading hold all or most of the cards. But in this new scenario, of dream empowerment, the little guy, the individual is given the space to dream and realize those dreams.
So, will we find this in Obama? I don’t know. I hope so. But that’s what I voted for; that’s what I’m hoping for. That’s the kind of leadership I’m hoping for. In this age of choleric leadership, we need something new. We need something that won’t revolt us and turn our stomachs. Something, someone nationally, and locally who will help us find our own dreams and turn them into reality.
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This is part of synchroblog on Leadership … the rest of the most excellent writings are below, please check them out:
Jonathan Brink – Letter To The President
Adam Gonnerman – Aspiring to the Episcopate
Kai – Leadership – Is Servant Leadership a Broken Model?
Sally Coleman – In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church
Alan Knox – Submission is given not taken
Joe Miller – Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future
Cobus van Wyngaard – Empowering leadership
Steve Hayes – Servant leadership
Geoff Matheson – Leadership
John Smulo – Australian Leadership Lessons
Helen Mildenhall – Leadership
Tyler Savage – Moral Leadership – Is it what we need?
Bryan Riley – Leading is to Listen and Obey
Susan Barnes – Give someone else a turn!
Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…
Lionel Woods – Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America
Julie Clawson – Leadership Expectations
Ellen Haroutunian – A New Kind Of Leadership
Matt Stone – Converting Leadership
Steve Bradley – Lording or Leading?
Adam Myers – Two types of Leadership
Bethany Stedman – A Leadership Mosaic
Kathy Escobar – I’m Pretty Sure This Book Won’t Make It On The Bestseller List
Fuzzy Orthodoxy – Self Leadership
Sonja Andrews – Leadership In An Age of Cholera
Tara Hull – Leadership & Being A Single Mom
