Wormwood's Doxy

Peaches

2012-01-13T00:06:00.007-05:00

It’s probably tough to go through life with a name like “Peaches”--but she was up for it. She was probably the sunniest person I ever knew. I can honestly say that I never heard her utter an unkind word about anyone.

Peaches was my aunt. She was stuck with the sobriquet because of me. When I was little, I loved peaches and I loved my Aunt Sarah. I guess I named her after something I loved, because she was inherently lovable. She was gracious enough to embrace that nickname, and she wore it for nearly 50 years.

Peaches as a young woman
Peaches had a massive stroke on New Year’s Eve and died on January 4. She was 71 years old and she was still teaching school when she passed. She had retired from one school system--and promptly moved to the school system just over the county line and kept going. She loved children too much to quit. She taught special-needs kids—and she was brilliant at it.

My ex, who has made his career in public education, once told me: “Good teachers are the ones who love the kids.”

My aunt loved those children with a vengeance.

At her funeral, there was a huge sheet of paper--taller than I am and as wide as it was tall--covered with handwritten messages from her students. It was displayed proudly next to her casket.

During the service, the preacher read aloud a letter written by Peaches’ classroom aide. Mrs. Payne talked about how Peaches was known for running out to the local dollar store at mid-day to get supplies for her students--out of her own pocket, of course. She was also known for bribing them with the promise of a McDonald’s Happy Meal for improving their test scores.

Her students excelled beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. How could you not work for Peaches?

Our family will not be alone in missing her.

She was the life of any party, because she knew how to laugh. She seized the moment about as well as anyone I’ve ever met. Heaven will be a much better--and livelier--place because Peaches is there now.

The night before her funeral, I was talking with some cousins about her. One cousin was preparing to sing for her funeral the next day. After he gave us a preview of the hymn he intended to sing, the other cousin--very bluntly--said “I don’t think that sounds like Peaches at all!”

I had to agree. I thought for a moment, and then I said: “If I had to pick a song that embodied Peaches, I believe I would pick Pink’s ‘Raise Your Glass.’”

The two cousins clearly had no idea what—or who—I was talking about. (This is where it helps to have a teenager living in your house!)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral...

I was ferrying relatives to the funeral home that morning. One of them was a pallbearer, so he had to be there early. After I dropped them off, I needed to run to the nearby drug store for a few minutes. After I completed my errand, I headed back to the funeral home. It was only a few blocks away, but, as I turned the corner that would take me there, for some inexplicable reason I turned on the radio.

What do you think was playing?

I started laughing through my tears…

Thanks, Peaches. For all the love and the laughter. And for the message--it made a hard day a lot easier.

I’ll see you on the other side—you and Dad save a glass for me, okay?

Peaches and her "little" brother, my Dad

Lessons of the War*

2011-12-01T18:11:00.014-05:00

We aren’t supposed to use the language of war when talking about HIV anymore.

In January 2011, UNAIDS published its latest set of terminology guidelines (PDF). The guidelines are very explicit:

Avoid using words such as ‘fight’ and other combatant language, e.g. struggle, battle, campaign, or war, unless in a direct quotation or because of the specific context of the text. For example, possibly a poster or very short publication designed to have high impact would make such use appropriate. Alternatives include ‘response’, ‘management of’, ‘measures against’, ‘initiative’, ‘action’, ‘efforts’, and ‘programme’. One rationale for this is to avoid transference from the fight against HIV to a fight against people living with HIV.

I “get” that. Truly I do. But, from my perspective, this is—and always has been—a war.

It has been a war against ignorance, indifference, and prejudice. A war against shame and violence committed against both the body and the human spirit. A war against a virus that is one of the wiliest and deadliest we’ve ever encountered.

I believe we will win that war eventually. We will eradicate HIV from the planet, just as we have eradicated smallpox and—largely—polio.

But today is the 24^th observance of World AIDS Day--and, for now, we are still fighting.

For a long time, HIV marched through the world like General Sherman marched through Georgia. It laid waste to everyone in its path, and there was nothing to stop it.

The first glimmers of a successful resistance came in 1987, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved zidovudine (AZT) as the first treatment for HIV infection. As I noted in my post on June 5, AZT alone could only slow the progress of HIV infection. The virus was too strong for only one drug to keep it in check—over time, it simply mutated into a drug-resistant form and renewed its unrelenting assault on the human immune system.

It would take the combination therapy that became available in 1996 to finally stop HIV’s hegemony.

*******************************************
And that brings us to the question: What have we learned from 30 years of AIDS? What are the “Lessons of the War”?

The first one is this…

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust—

Ruin is formal—Devil's work
Consecutive and slow—
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping—is Crash's law.
---Emily Dickinson

What happened did not happen in an instant. It happened in the context of prejudice and indifference—those “cobwebs on the soul.” It happened over years of “organized decay,” when the people who should have stepped up to help—the government, healthcare providers, churches, and even families and friends—either hung back or deliberately turned away. As in so many other human tragedies, “Devil’s work” was supported, furthered, and expanded by people who saw themselves as good, decent individuals—and by systems that were supposed to serve and protect.

We learned what happens when disadvantaged groups fall prey to a deadly epidemic.

Not much...at least until people with privilege begin to succumb. Until AIDS killed a high-profile celebrity with deep pockets and a personal connection to the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health struggled to find the most basic funding for AIDS research and treatment. Almost no one cared about gay men or injecting drug users for a long time--it would take the fear of the epidemic moving into the general population for people to start paying attention.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. As the epidemic has become more and more concentrated in the African American and Latino communities—and among men who have sex with men (MSM) in those communities—the epidemic has faded, once again, from public consciousness. This appears to be one lesson we forget with regularity...

We learned that sexism never takes a holiday.

Women were almost completely missing from the AIDS equation for over a decade (if you don’t count prostitutes, who were seen as “vectors” for infection and vilified as such). AIDS in women often presented as gynecological symptoms, including pelvic inflammatory disease and recurrent, severe vaginal yeast infections. But the CDC case definitions for AIDS were built on the opportunistic infections that were common in men—and CDC did not change those definitions to include a condition common among women with HIV (invasive cervical cancer) until 1993.

Because the CDC definition was adopted as an eligibility criterion by U.S. government public assistance programs (including the Social Security Administration), this meant that many women—the majority of whom were poor women of color—were never able to get the assistance they needed. Their final days were made even harder because the system was geared to men.

We learned that it is incredibly difficult to change people’s risk-taking behavior, long-term—especially when it comes to sex.

In the beginning, the gay community did not want to believe that frequent sex with multiple partners could be the cause of AIDS. To believe that was to threaten the world they had created to protect themselves from all those “fine Christians” who hated them and wanted them dead.

And really...who could blame them? Sex was fun, usually free, and their variety of it didn’t lead to unwanted pregnancies. Antibiotics would take care of the multitude of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) they got, and no one got hurt. At least until HIV showed up...

Once it became clear that HIV was sexually transmitted, condom use by MSM skyrocketed. As a result, the infection rates among gay men fell dramatically in the late 80s and early 90s. But HIV incidence rates among MSM have been creeping up slowly again for the last decade. Among young Black and Latino MSM, the increases are dramatic.

We now have an entire generation of young people who do not remember a time before antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and who have the (very mistaken) notion that “HIV is no big deal anymore. All you have to do is take some pills.”

When I am asked to speak about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, people frequently want to know “Why do people keep getting HIV? We all know what causes it—why don’t they protect themselves?” Given that there are an estimated 50,000+ new HIV infections in the U.S. each year (and 2.5 million new infections worldwide), it’s a fair question—despite the judgmentalism that is usually part and parcel of the inquiry.

My best answer is to compare sexual behavior to eating. Sex and eating are two of the strongest biological drives that humans experience. In our culture of affluence, many of us struggle to eat in a healthy way and to maintain a healthy weight. We take a look at that tempting piece of chocolate cake, or the second helping, and we tell ourselves “I’ll just have that now, and I’ll be ‘good’ the rest of the day/week.”

But we rarely do. It is hard to deny ourselves things that bring us pleasure and comfort--and both sex and food do that. In addition to perpetuating the species, those drives also serve to connect us to others and to meet a myriad of emotional needs, as well as the physical ones.

I am grateful to work in the field of HIV prevention, and I believe very strongly in what I do. But I am coming to believe that only a vaccine for HIV will end the pandemic for good. People want to be “good”--but, for a whole variety of reasons...many of them deeply emotional...it is difficult to be vigilant all the time.

The next time you have that piece of cake, or that second helping against your better judgment, I hope you will stop and think a little more kindly of those who struggle with the same temptation in the bedroom instead of the kitchen...

On a more positive note...

We learned that average people can make a difference on public policy and healthcare if they are loud and organized.

People living with HIV/AIDS forever changed the way we deliver healthcare in this nation. They demanded the opportunity to be partners in their own care. When no one else would help them, they created their own networks of support.

Today, we need more people like those in the activist group ACT UP, who embarrassed the Federal government to the point that it finally acted to fund research, care, and treatment initiatives, and to open access to medications and clinical trials. I have hopes that the Occupy movement will be the latest incarnation of ACT UP--and I dream that, one day, people will take to the streets to demand decent healthcare for EVERYONE in this country.

We learned that government leadership is crucial in the face of a pandemic.

A key role of government is to protect citizens—and that includes protecting their health. We call it “public health” for a reason.

There are very few government heroes in the story of AIDS--but a couple stand out for me, and you may be surprised by who they are.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, the 13^th U.S. Surgeon General, did a very brave thing. Like his boss, Ronald Reagan, he said nothing about AIDS for years--but when he finally decided to speak, he changed the game completely.

In October, 1986, Koop released a publication entitled The Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. To get the report past the White House without going through the usual clearance process--a process he knew would gut the very frank discussion of AIDS he wanted to have--he printed 1,000 copies on expensive paper, complete with the silver seal of the Public Health Service embossed on the front. He was scheduled to review it with the Domestic Policy Council and he gambled that the Council members wouldn’t want to spend the money to reprint such a fancy-looking report. (I could admire him for that alone! ;-) He also numbered the copies and told the Council that he would be picking them up at the end of the meeting to avoid any press leaks.

His gamble paid off--the review was cursory and no one complained. Not then, anyway...

The staunchly conservative Koop, who had been nominated for Surgeon General because of his leading role in the anti-abortion movement, shocked and dismayed his conservative colleagues by addressing the problem of AIDS purely in public health terms, without the political or religious rhetoric that had muddied the waters in the past. He advocated for AIDS education “at the earliest grade possible” for children. He was blunt in pushing condom use.

And possibly most impressive of all (given his background), he came down hard against calls for mandatory HIV testing. He was able to explain, clearly and well, why any push for large-scale HIV testing must be accompanied by guarantees of confidentiality and nondiscrimination.

While it took him longer than it should have to address the issue in the first place, when Dr. Koop took it on, he didn’t flinch. He set aside the ideology that got him his job and attempted to quell the worst of the AIDS-related hysteria. He made it possible for the American public to have a reasonable conversation about HIV/AIDS, and helped to begin the still-unfinished process of tackling the stigma and discrimination associated with HIV. For those things, I consider him a leader and a hero.

The other hero is a most unlikely one, given that I am the one doing the designating. I cannot think of any other thing on which I agreed with him--but George W. Bush showed the kind of leadership on responding to HIV/AIDS that represents the very best of what government can do.

By his support for the creation of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and his commitment of $15 billion over the first five years of that program (2003-2008), George Bush saved literally millions of lives.

There are many details over which I could argue (focus on abstinence, ignoring harm reduction techniques for injecting drug users, etc.), but the fact remains: without President Bush’s active support for, and commitment to, PEPFAR, the AIDS pandemic would have been immeasurably worse.

Thanks to his leadership, there are babies and children all over the world who are HIV-free, because their mothers got the treatment they needed to keep from passing the virus during pregnancy, labor, or delivery. There are millions of people who have access to affordable antiretroviral drugs, and who are now leading productive lives.

I predict that PEPFAR will be the only positive legacy of George Bush’s presidency--but it is a legacy of which he can justly be proud.

**********************************************************

Today is the 24^th observance of World AIDS Day. I love what I do--and I am glad to have an opportunity to honor those who lost the fight, and to look forward to the creation of an "AIDS-free generation," which is now the official goal of the U.S. Government, in the future.

But I wonder...will we finally learn the lessons of the war?

*The title of this post comes from a six-part poem of the same name by WWII English poet Henry Reed. It’s funny and dark (with flashes of beauty and brilliance) all at the same time—a case of laughing to keep oneself from crying…or screaming. It reminds me of the grim humor in which so many people living with, or affected by, HIV have to engage in order to find the courage and strength to keep fighting the battle.

You can read all six parts of Lessons of the War here.

Dick, George, Barack, and me--a nightmare in one act

2011-08-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

On my recent vacation, I had nightmares every night. I suspect that had a lot to do with the fact that there has been significant stress in my life lately and my brain hadn’t had a chance to process all of that until I had some long-overdue “down time.”

Here’s what the National Institutes of Health have to say about dreams:

Some scientists believe dreams are the [brain] cortex's attempt to find meaning in the random signals that it receives during REM sleep. The cortex is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness. It may be that, given random signals from the pons during REM sleep, the cortex tries to interpret these signals as well, creating a "story" out of fragmented brain activity.

Well…on the last night of vacation, my cortex decided to create a humdinger of story…

***********

I am in a fancy office. It looks like the photos I have seen of the Oval Office in the White House. Richard Nixon is telling me that George W. Bush has decided to run for a third term against Barack Obama. (Of course, this is completely unconstitutional—but it’s a dream!)

Dick has decided that I should be Dubya’s running mate.

Even in the dream, I am flabbergasted. My first words are “But he’s ANTI-CHOICE! How could that possibly work?!?!?!?”

Dick is insistent. My jaw is on the floor, but I pick it up and tell him, “We don’t agree on anything!”

Dick sees that as a positive, rather than a negative. Apparently he believes that if Dubya and I run together, the nation will see that completely divergent views do not keep people from working together.

I continue to remonstrate with him. There is simply No.Freaking.Way. that Dubya and I can run as a team.

And then I look out into an adjacent room, and I see Barack Obama getting ready to announce his new running mate. Apparently Joe Biden has been kicked to the curb, because President Obama has asked an African American woman to be his Vice-President. She is standing in the wings with her husband and a teenaged son. I do not recognize her.

My thoughts are racing. “Great! Obama has chosen an African American woman, and so it will be the white man/white woman ticket against the black man/black woman ticket. And I don’t agree with Dubya about anything!”*

Then I wake up. And I am very, very grateful that it was only a dream…

**************************************

*IRL this is not quite true. I did agree with George W. Bush about one thing--the need for the PEPFAR program. I only wish he had been as interested in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in this country...

What I did on my summer vacation...

2011-08-25T10:20:00.002-04:00

I spent my summer vacation planning my funeral.

I guess that seems odd. As far as I know, I am not dying. I recently celebrated my 48^th birthday. With the exception of a bad case of reflux (exacerbated by my addiction to Diet Coke), and a few aches and pains in various joints, I seem to be in remarkably good health.

But I have been thinking a lot about death lately.

Maybe it is because so many people I have cared about have died in the last few years. My regular readers know about the death of my friend Terri-Lynn two years ago—a death that left a big hole in my heart. Her death still enrages me and fuels my political activism for universal healthcare.

But there are others. There was Maria—the first of my Invisible Friends to die. She was posting and e-mailing me one day—and then she was gone, at age 45, from lupus. There was Kate (age 55), Lisa (age 50), Kathy (age 49), and Sharon (age 47)—all dead from cancer, between October 2007 and March 2010. There was Roseann (age 56), who died of kidney failure. And, of course, there is Kirstin (age 40), who died July 1 of metastatic melanoma, and Goran (age 57) who died on July 29 of prostate cancer.

In the midst of life, we are in death….

If the actuarial tables are accurate—and my family history is any guide—I have many more years left on this planet. But life is uncertain…and I travel a lot. For the past couple of years, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I should plan for my death.

So that’s what I did.

Dear Friend and I made wills and signed advance directives and Powers of Attorney for healthcare and business before we got married—so we had already taken care of those things.

It was the stuff I knew would be problematic in the wake of some kind of unexpected or traumatic death that worried me. Would my family know how to cash in my life insurance policy? Would they know where all the bank accounts were located? What about the credit cards? What would happen with my blog and my Facebook page if I died?

There will be surprises if I die suddenly—no one can foresee all the issues. But my family now has a complete list of accounts, contact numbers, and instructions about what they need to do in the aftermath. I’ve even set out a basic set of instructions about the funeral—I felt an irrational desire to ensure that no one would decide to include liturgical dance [shudder] as a final practical joke on me…

All in all, it was a cathartic experience—not sad or depressing at all. I highly recommend that you do it yourself.

Let’s Be Clear....

2011-06-10T22:02:00.003-04:00

Anthony Weiner is a sexual harasser. He sent 21-year-old college student, Gennette Cordova, an unsolicited sexual photo of himself.

Unsolicited.

That’s really important—because it goes to the heart of what so many people do not seem to “get” about sexual harassment.

I’ve had this argument with more than one person over the last couple of days. I’ve argued with intelligent people—intelligent women, no less!—who have basically said to me, “I like his politics, so what he did doesn’t matter.” Or…even worse to me, in some ways: “It’s not sexual harassment unless you tell him to stop and he refuses.”

No.

NO.

HELL NO!!

Unless that young woman sent him a message saying “I want to see pictures of you naked,” he had no business sending her suggestive photos. She says she didn’t. Even he admits she didn’t. He says he sent the photo as “part of a joke.”

That makes him a sexual harasser. And that makes ANYONE defending him—on whatever grounds—apologists for sexual harassment.

I’m not laughing.

I loved his politics. I loved the way he seemed to be the only one who would stand up publicly to the assholes in Congress who are trying to ruin this country and run roughshod over women, LGBTs, immigrants, the poor—basically anyone who isn’t white, male, straight, and rich.

But I will not excuse him for what he did on that basis. I will not give him a pass for using his power and privilege to sexually harass anyone.

I will not sell out my expectations that progressives should be better than this. I will not sink to the level of those who will defend the Larry Craigs and David Vitters of this world, just to hang on to a seat in Congress. And for those who are wondering...I thought Bill Clinton should have resigned when the Lewinsky scandal broke—and I still think we would have avoided eight years of George W. Bush if he had.

I do not support sexual harassers, no matter what their politics happen to be. And if you are a true progressive, you shouldn’t either.

I expect more.

Consent matters. Integrity matters. Without them, we are no different than those we oppose—because there really isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between leftist abusers of women and conservative abusers of women.

It just hurts more coming from those we thought were our allies.

June 5, 1981

2011-06-05T00:01:00.008-04:00

They were young. The oldest was 36; the youngest, 29.

On the day the bombshell exploded, two of the five were already dead. The others would be dead very soon after.

June 5, 1981. That was the day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report on a rare and deadly illness affecting five young, gay men in Los Angeles.

It would be more than a year before the condition got its official name, but that was the day that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, was officially recognized in the U.S.

Within days of publication, CDC was flooded with reports of similar cases. The wildfire was already out of control.

*****************************

The young gay men had migrated to San Francisco and New York and Los Angeles to find others like themselves, and they had created communities where they were not the outcasts of society. They had built safe havens where they could live and love and walk down the street without getting their heads bashed in. In a world that vilified their very existence, they had proudly embraced their sexuality—flipping an audacious middle finger to middle American morals.

But now—once again—there were no safe places.

*****************************

Thirty years later, it can be hard to remember the fear and the desperation of those early days. It took more than three years to figure out what caused AIDS and to develop a test to detect HIV, the virus that causes it.

But what good is a test for a virus that can’t be treated? The medical profession stood by in bewilderment as doctors exhausted their arsenals of drugs and procedures—and nothing stopped the onslaught of death.

They were young—and they died like flies. Tens…and then hundreds…and then thousands of them.

*****************************

There were multiple ways to die of AIDS and they were all ugly. Until 1981, the only people who got the bizarre diseases that came with AIDS were whose immune systems had been destroyed by treatment for cancer.

But now the dying patients came in ever-increasing waves. Young men who had once been healthy and beautiful—who had reveled in their attractiveness and physicality as a way of healing themselves from the deep psychological and spiritual wounds that the culture had inflicted on them—were now gaunt and desperate.

They were defenseless against the unrelenting onslaught of opportunistic infections that were the hallmark of AIDS. That astonishing array of illnesses both debilitated and demoralized them.

There was pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), which killed almost 80% of AIDS patients in the early days.

There was candidiasis, or thrush, which filled their mouths and throats with so much yeast that they could barely talk, eat, or breathe.

Then there was Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), an aggressive form of viral cancer that overran their internal organs and disfigured their beautiful, young faces. In the first years of the epidemic, PCP may have killed more people, but KS became the defining mark of those with AIDS.

KS was the 20th century mark of Cain….imposed not for murder, but for love—or something close to it.

Then there were cytomegalovirus and toxoplasmosis and cryptosporidiosis and a host of other hard-to-pronounce and hard-to-spell illnesses that had the infectious disease specialists scratching their heads in confusion.

Nothing worked. For the first five years of the epidemic, the average survival time after diagnosis was less than a year.

*****************************

And then there were the other “side effects” of AIDS. People lost their jobs, their families and friends, and their homes when they got sick. Schools refused to admit HIV-positive students. Doctors wouldn’t treat HIV-positive patients, and healthcare workers refused to touch them. Churches and funeral homes refused to bury those who died.

They were young…and so many of them died alone and abandoned by those who should have been the first to help.

*****************************

We forget these things now. We forget that we—all of us who were on the outside looking in—made the horror and agony immeasurably worse. We treated them all—the gay men, the drug addicts, the sex workers—like lepers, and we told them that they deserved what they got for daring to be gay or addicted or abused or poor.

We even held the so-called “innocent victims”—the hemophiliacs, the babies, the blood-transfusion recipients, and the female partners of HIV-positive men—at arm’s length. Under the guise of concern, we wanted to know all about how they “got it,” to assure ourselves that we were safe.

Some of us went so far as to call for quarantining or tattooing people with AIDS. And someone in Florida went a step farther and burned down the home of three little boys who had hemophilia, AIDS—and the gall to want to attend school.

We would like to forget these things. We would like to believe that we were better, kinder, more compassionate.

We were not.

*****************************

The drugs ended much of the terror and despair—but the medications that would change everything were 15 years away from June 5, 1981.

The advent of the drug zidovudine (AZT) in 1987 would save lives, but AZT alone could only slow--not stop--HIV's ability to take over and destroy the immune system. It would take the appearance of combination antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in 1996 to bank the wildfire.

By the time ARVs became available, over 500,000 Americans had AIDS—and 62% of them were dead. Almost 70% of those who died were under the age of 49.

*****************************

On June 5, 2011, I am 47.

They were so young…

Doxy’s Note:This post is for Mark, Tim, Lee (who is one of the big reasons I am an Episcopalian, even though I never met him), and Bill—all of whom died of AIDS. For Phillip, whose love for me set me on the path to what has turned out to be my vocation, and for Buck, whose courage and honesty has changed my life in ways he will never fully know. But—most of all—for Miguel, whose unswerving commitment to ending the scourge of HIV/AIDS inspires me every day, and who gave me the chance to spend my life working on something that matters so much to me. Thank you….

For more information on the history of the AIDS epidemic, visit the AIDS.gov timeline or the "30 Years of AIDS" page.

UPDATE: Emily to the rescue!

2011-02-03T07:18:00.002-05:00

I e-mailed the Empress' teacher last night. This was in my In-box this morning:

Doxy:

Thank you for your email. I am extremely grateful that you've brought this situation to my attention. I have no problem addressing this with Ms. Manners. If it's alright with you, I'd like to forward your email to the school principal so that she can also be aware of what's going on. Please reassure the Empress that this situation won't happen again -- to her or anyone else in our class!

The immediate solution (until I am able to contact Ms. Manners to discuss this all with her) will be to make a new seating chart for lunch....

I will keep you updated about this situation, but rest assured that we will handle it. Please let me know if the Empress is still coming home with a full lunchbox. If necessary, she and her friends can come upstairs and eat with me! I do not want her to be afraid to eat her lunch!

Emily Post II
Wonder Teacher

Okay, I made that signature up, but that's what I think of her...

Where's Emily Post when you need her?

2011-02-02T10:57:00.003-05:00

At my daughter's school, parents are welcome to come and have lunch with their children. I do this occasionally, but it's something of a treat for both of us when I can.

Lunch lasts all of 20 minutes. I spend it chatting with the Empress and her gaggle of friends. It always seems to be a big deal for the kids when a parent comes for lunch--no matter whose parent happens to show up. I guess the kids enjoy the diversion.

Recently, I've been hearing about lunches with the mom of one of my daughter's classmates. According to the Empress, this woman teaches some kind of "manners class." To the Empress' credit, she has very nice manners, but she--understandably--gets nervous when this woman is around. After all, this mom is a PROFESSIONAL!

Well....someone needs to tell Ms. Thang to get some manners of her own. Last week, she started critiquing my daughter's lunch. Apparently she's a vegetarian and she thinks everyone else should be one too. Oh...and she didn't approve of the cinnamon roll I gave the Empress for dessert. (I should note that the Empress eats two bites of anything and is finished--so getting a few calories into her is a major goal. It's not like she has a steady diet of Cinnabons....)

The Empress came home that day with her lunch almost completely intact. She was too intimidated to eat.

That was bad enough--but yesterday, the Empress told me that Ms. Manners stopped her as she was beginning to eat and asked her if she had said grace!

Once again, lunch came home almost untouched.

Now that's a bridge too far for me. Some stranger I've never even met is coming into a public school cafeteria and instructing my child not only on what to eat, but on her spiritual duties?!

Time to get creative, my friends. How should I handle this? (Short of pistols at dawn, of course...)

Rage

2010-10-24T18:45:00.007-04:00

I am feeling it these days. It's welling up like a fountain in my chest--and threatening to become a tidal wave.

Not good.

Mostly I am angry at injustice--and at the people who perpetuate it. (I'm angry with the Hydra too, but--unfortunately--I can't blog about that.)

I am angry at the willful ignorance that passes for politics these days. I am angry about a citizenry that won't do its homework, makes gods of lying "entertainers," and rewards politicians for negative and downright dishonest advertisements. (And on that last, I'm talking about ALL of them--not just one party...) Make. It. Stop.

I am angry about people who promise the moon and have no intention of delivering. I am particularly angry about people who do this while asking for my money and my time/vote.

I am angry about a society that puts profits before people, and actually rewards the robbers while it throws people out of their homes into the streets. I am angry at the selfishness of those who "have"--determined to deny their fellow citizens a decent standard of living and some security because it might mean they have to give up some frills in their lives.

I am furious with people who have the power to help others--and refuse to do it.

I am angry with people who say "Have patience"--people who don't have to worry about being homeless or going without medical care or being denied the chance to marry the one they love. People who can afford to "wait" for justice for others because they already have all the "justice" they need.

I am angry with people who were born on third base but who have somehow convinced themselves that they hit a triple. Who believe that they have earned what they have--without ever once examining the unearned privilege of their race or the socioeconomic status of their family of origin or their heterosexual orientation.

I'm angry about racism, sexism, homophobia--and I'm particularly angry with "Christians" who use our faith to oppose caring for the least among us and who bully, lie, and hate in the name of Christ.

I am angry about a society that apparently requires the suicides of seven kids (that I know of) in the last month--and the countless more whose names are known only to God--before it wakes up to the fact that meanness permeates our culture and that we are, in essence, murdering our children when we tell them it's not okay to be different.

I'm angry with the church--which also bullies and manipulates and treats people in shameful ways and brings disrepute on the Gospel.

Today, I am particularly angry on behalf of those who are abused by the ordination process. It is difficult enough to be called by God--to feel that you have no choice but to give your life in ministry to God's people. But to have to endure hazing (and I use that term on purpose) by those in the church to be able to exercise your call is the height of cruelty. I am furious with people who call themselves Christians and inflict this viciousness.

Finally, I'm angry at myself. For not doing more. For allowing this impotent rage to bleed into my life and my relationships with the people I love. For being less than God calls me to be. For being the Pharisee, rather than the tax collector (Luke 18: 9-14). For failing to love my enemies and to pray for them.

Domine Iesu Christe, Fili Dei, miserere mei, peccatoris.

Episcopal elections and the limits of "inclusivity"

2010-09-20T10:51:00.011-04:00

Doxy's note: Since the beginning of the summer, I have been dealing with some very difficult and stressful family issues. As a result, I haven't had any emotional energy for blogging myself, and not much for reading other people's blogs or commenting.

But Mimi changed all that. ;-)

For some reason, the election of Fr. Dan Martins as bishop of the Diocese of Springfield has really touched a nerve with me. And when I was reading the comments on Mimi's post about the election, I started writing a long comment in rebuttal and couldn't seem to stop myself.

When it reached blog-post length, I decided I shouldn't clog Mimi's comment box, so I decided to put it here.

So blame Mimi. But I will thank her--it's been a long time since I felt enough energy to write anything more than a comment on Facebook....

*************************************
In responding to a comment from Bruce, Mimi wrote:

if we are to be the inclusive church we claim to be, are we not perhaps called to make room even for those who may want to destroy us?

And here is my response to that:

In a word...no.

I can't bring myself to believe that "turn the other cheek" translates to "let someone destroy you." In fact, I will go so far as to say that the urge to destroy that which does not suit you is a sign that you are being tempted to do evil.

(I recognize that temptation in myself far too often, so I am keenly aware of the spiritual dangers it poses....)

I think we, as a church and as people of faith, are called to be inclusive--and that means welcoming all to the table. It means being civil and generous to one another even when we disagree.

And I also think that it's time for us to be honest about who we are as a church:

TEC, as a whole, has declared its support for the ordained ministry of women.
TEC, as a whole, has declared its support for the ordained ministry of LGBTs--including those who are partnered.

I think if someone honestly believes that either or both of those things are against the will of God, that person needs to ask hirself* two questions:

Do I think that they are first-order issues? (i.e., that salvation depends on them)
If I DO believe they are first-order issues, how can I remain in TEC with any integrity?

For those who do not think they are first-order issues, I think we ought to be able to coexist quite happily in the same church. I have my own opinions about biblical interpretation, atonement, salvation, judgment, etc., with which I'm sure many people would disagree--but that doesn't keep us from worshiping and taking communion together.

And that, to me, is the hallmark of inclusion. We meet at the altar and we feast together--then we scatter to serve in Christ's name.

I am puzzled by those who DO think those are first-order issues, and yet remain in TEC. I believe they are violating their own spiritual and personal integrity by doing so. I understand the feeling of "I've been here all my life, so why should *I* leave?!"--and I'm certainly not advocating that anyone be booted out. Ever. But to continue to stay in a place that causes one to feel such anger and the urge to destroy is not healthy--spiritually or psychologically.

No parish is ever going to be required to hire a female priest or one who is LGBT. But Episcopalians who cannot accept those ministries need to ask themselves if they can remain in TEC without trying to "destroy" it. If they can't, then they should have the integrity to go to a community of faith where they do not feel called to destroy, but instead feel called to build up the Kingdom.

Because if we are truly following Christ, we are called to be co-creators with God of a kingdom where peace and justice reign.

****************************************

As for Fr. Martins...I think +Mark Lawrence *is* the precedent. I take some comfort in the fact that Mark Harris+, Michael Russell+, and Tobias Haller are standing up for him. But the fact is that Fr. Martins voted to support thievery and schism. That is not a minor issue--it is an issue of integrity and whether or not he is trustworthy.

+Lawrence said that he had "no intention of leaving the Episcopal Church," but look at what he's been doing ever since they put that pointy hat on his head. Both +Lawrence and Martins+ came out of the same TEC-hating milieu (the Diocese of San Joaquin), and we should not forget that in our rush to be "inclusive."

I don't want to hear any more "I have no intention of..." Those are weasel words, pure and simple. As +Lawrence has so aptly demonstrated....

I want to hear, *unequivocally*:

"I will NOT leave the Episcopal Church--neither will I allow any priest in my diocese to encourage others to do so."

That last point is really important. Given that so much of the ugliness in TEC has been clergy-driven, I want to hear a bishop-elect say that zie* will not put up with schismatic priests, in addition to pledging hir* own commitment to TEC.

Of course, TBTG, I'm neither on the Standing Committee for my diocese, nor am I a bishop--so I don't get to require anything of Fr. Martins. But if you ARE on the SC in your diocese, I encourage you to think long and hard about giving consent without asking for a clear, unambiguous promise.

Not "intention."

Promise.

Commitment.

Vow.

Finally, Fr. Martin's comments at GC09 about our "covering ourselves with shame" for allowing bishops to provide a pastoral response to same-sex couples are deeply troubling--as Jim Naughton rightly points out. As are his comments about refusing to ordain LGBT people.

And this gets back to my point about who we are as a church.

Even bishops who themselves are uncomfortable with women priests and LGBT priests must make room for them. Our canons and constitution require them to do so. (Canon III.1.2-3)
Even bishops who themselves are uncomfortable with same-sex blessings need to make pastoral provision for those in this church who desire those blessings, and to grant permission to those among their clergy willing to bless.

IMO, if Fr. Martins cannot do those things, he has no business being a bishop in TEC. Because to make him one otherwise is to do something doubly violent. It is to consign this church to having yet another bishop who is not prepared to honor his consecration vows, in some misguided attempt to show how "inclusive" we are.

And it is to participate in helping a man violate his own integrity. Even if he is willing to do that to gain a mitre, we ought not to assist him.

*********************
*From henceforth, I am adopting gender-neutral pronouns when applied to non-specific people. I'm choosing these particular forms because they are often used on most of the feminist blogs I read, especially Shakesville.

And so it began...

2010-06-15T08:30:00.003-04:00

River
Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me
to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.
I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.

The river stirs and turns, consoling and fondling itself
with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.
Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.

I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache
as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed
against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;

open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry
from traveling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,
and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel

my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

---Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture

Dearest Friend---

For all that you have given me...for all the joy that you have brought into my life...for the miracle that God has wrought in bringing us together...I give thanks.

Tell me again who is "interpreting" scripture?!

2010-06-06T09:09:00.003-04:00

I woke up to find this piece from Thinking Anglicans in my reader:

Bishops and divorce

So +Rowan thinks that Jesus' plain words about divorce are negotiable, but not any of the other scriptural referents to homosexuality?

Veddy interesting.....

Jasper says to tell you all that hypocrisy reeks. And not in a good way.

Pupdate

2010-05-27T11:22:00.005-04:00

Jasper is home! He is pleased to be back with his friend, Porky Pig. You can see that they had to shave big bands of fur off his paws for the IVs. Between that, and the shaving for the surgery, he looks like a very patchy rug...

He is relieved to be back at his post. He was very worried that the Evil Hordes of Satanic Squirrels might have overrun the place in his absence.

Jasper's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Month*...

2010-05-26T08:59:00.006-04:00

The last month has not been a great one for Jasper.

On April 30, he was attacked by another dog at daycare. That dog bit a plug out of Jasper's left side, and he ended up having to have emergency surgery to repair the damage.

Despite the best efforts of the surgeon, and copious quantities of antibiotics, the wound got infected, so the recovery process has taken a long time.

But he was doing great--especially after the "Cone of Shame" came off.

Monday was Jasper's 3rd birthday. We had a great day--he got a bath and haircut and had a nice long walk with Dear Friend. He was feeling quite sassy.

And then yesterday, he started vomiting uncontrollably. I couldn't identify anything he might have gotten into that would make him sick. He had nothing in his stomach to throw up, so he just kept retching.

He is now at NC State University's Small Animal Emergency Service. He has had X-rays to determine that there are no blockages in his stomach or intestines. He has had blood work to determine whether he might have some acute condition and to rule out poisoning of some sort. He spent the night retching, and also had bloody diarrhea.

They are talking about testing him for Addison's Disease today and doing an ultrasound to ensure that there isn't some obstruction that didn't show up on the X-ray. The vet student who just called to give me an update on Jasper says that he is very playful and lovable this morning, but he's still retching. So he's on IV saline and getting antacids to settle his stomach.

Prayers, good thoughts, and all positive energy would be appreciated. Jasper is the most affectionate, loving dog I've ever had. The house feels very empty without him....

*with apologies to Judith Viorst. I love that book--except when I'm living it.

Lent is not a competitive sport....

2010-02-19T09:31:00.004-05:00

One of the reasons I decided to go back to giving up my daily pleasures of Diet Cokes and sweets was because in my early years of "doing Lent"--which I did on my own, outside of church--those little deprivations made me do a lot of soul-searching. Those were my "good Lents," if you will.

Once I got into church, I heard other people take a lot of ribbing about giving up chocolates or sodas---the implication was that these were not SERIOUS disciplines. That "real" Christians gave up things that mattered or---more important--took on new spiritual disciplines.

I'm sure that no one was TRYING to do spiritual one-upsmanship, but that was the message I got. So, for the most part, I stopped giving stuff up and started trying to take stuff on.

As a result, I haven't had a "good Lent" in years. I'm a mother, own my own business, and now commute to be a wife too. (And I have to fit the dog in there somewhere.) I have finally realized that taking stuff on is--quite simply--a recipe for spiritual failure at this point in my life.

(And before someone comes in here and starts giving me a pep-talk about not thinking of spiritual things in terms of "failure"...well, thanks, but don't worry. It's a figure of speech, you know?)

So I'm back to giving up the little things I really enjoy--and consume without thinking most of the time. I will not win any Olympic gold medals for my discipline--and I'm sure there are plenty of folks who will find my choices puerile (if I even bother to mention them, outside of the blogosphere). But I'm coming to understand that God is in EVERYTHING--even in the smallest and seemingly most insignificant choices I make.

To be honest, there is some discomfort in that. Who wants to think that God is interested in Every.Single.Thing you do? It sounds almost stalker-ish...

And yet...I grow more and more convinced that, in everything we do and every choice we make, God is there, calling to us. Calling us to the good--for ourselves, for others, and for the earth. Calling us to holiness--to be the people we were meant to be. Calling us into a relationship so total and--dare I say it?--erotic, that it makes sex look tame and boring.

That's a lot to lay on an unopened can of Diet Coke. But, for me, it's a start--or, more accurately, it's my little choice for this morning. This morning, I chose to write this blog post, rather than succumb to the temptation of going downstairs for the soda (even though I can hear it calling my name from here). I thought about God for the better part of the morning. And while I won't claim that I reached any Kama Sutra-type heights, I felt connected.

Somehow, I think that's what it's all about.

Bite

2010-02-17T21:22:00.003-05:00

I am a Diet Coke addict.

There, I confessed it.

When the Empress was very little, I was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The symptoms were such that I honestly felt as if I were having a heart attack. This was quite...disconcerting...for someone in her late 30s, with a family history of heart disease. (My paternal grandmother died of heart disease in her 50s.)

One of the things I had to do to deal with GERD was to give up soda. It was a terribly difficult thing for me, because I drank multiple cans a day---but for many years, I couldn't drink more than 3 sips of soda before I felt the tell-tale chest pains.

It tells you something about my addiction that I kept trying...

About a 18 months ago, I discovered that I could drink sodas again. I suspect it had to do with the fact that I COMPLETELY changed my life. I was no longer miserable, and apparently my body responded by lowering acid production. So I'm back up to my 3-4 cans-a-day Diet Coke habit.

What I love about Diet Coke is the bite.

It's not the taste. It's the "bite" of the carbonation that hooks me. And there is a lesson there, I'm afraid.

I love to bite. I love to argue, and even more than loving to argue, I love to win.

Tonight, as Dear Friend recited the liturgy for Ash Wednesday, I asked God to help me lose my love of the bite. I asked for a gentle spirit and a gentle and forgiving heart.

This is a hard request for someone who continually battles for justice for the marginalized. I have said many times that I wish Jesus hadn't said all that stuff about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. It's so much FUN to eviscerate the people with whom you disagree! And, to be perfectly honest with you, I'm pretty damned good at it.

But biting doesn't achieve much, does it? All it does it CREATE enemies--and all *that* does is lengthen my prayer list!

I will never give up my passion for justice and the Gospel, but I have seen people who know how to advocate for the good without biting. I know that it is possible--and that it will take a miracle to achieve it in my case.

I am giving up Diet Coke for Lent--and hoping to give up the bite. In my case, it is a serious sacrifice for both. I ask for your prayers.

A Fitting Life

2010-01-21T22:44:00.003-05:00

Does your life fit you? If it were an outfit, would it make you feel beautiful or frumpy? Is it the right size, or did it long ago become too tight or begin to swallow you up like an over-sized tent?

I’m thinking about the “fit” of life because I got word that my father died early this morning.

My father and I had been estranged for almost 20 years when I got an e-mail from my cousin telling me that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. I didn’t feel any responsibility to go, but Dear Friend really wanted to meet my dad and he urged me to make the trip to my hometown. So we went to visit my dad the week before Thanksgiving. It was the first time I had seen him since Christmas Eve, 1989.

Twenty years is a long time in a human life. Twenty years ago, my dad was the age I am now--46. His hair was still dark then, though it was beginning to thin on top, and his beard was shot through with white. His eyes always twinkled mischievously--and you could bet he was up to something.

My dad was cocky--he wasn’t a large man, but he walked with a swagger and was quick with a joke. He was part con man, part gangster--and he was always the life of the party. He was the kind of “hail fellow, well met” whose glass is half-full and who is forever on the hunt for the main chance.

But when I saw him in November, that man had disappeared. My dad was dying, and he looked like he was 90 years old--frail, with a belly swollen by the cancerous liver and lungs that killed him today. He was in a great deal of pain, and the medications he was taking were clouding his brain. I am not sure that he really even knew who I was.

Which, in a way, was...fitting.

We ended our relationship in much the same way we had lived it--on opposite sides of a seemingly impenetrable divide.

***********************************************

My dad and I had a complicated history. My parents split up when I was 6--not a very common thing in 1969. My dad was a sporadic part of my life for the next few years, but disappeared for nearly 10 years about the time I was 11 or 12.

He popped back in while I was in college--mostly because he wanted me to do something for him. And that was fine--we ended up engaging in a trade of sorts. I helped him out, and he helped me finish college. I will always be grateful for that.

After I went to grad school, however, we had a falling-out. In that conflict, both of us were armed and dangerous. Harsh words were exchanged. Old grievances were aired.

And that, as they say, was that.

************************************************

For many years, both before and after the clash that ended our relationship, I felt bewildered and angry with my dad. The realization that the man who contributed half my DNA wasn’t interested in being my father left a scar. His absence from my life--both as child and adult--has formed me in ways that I still don’t always recognize or understand.

Mostly I couldn’t understand how he could have two children but not want to be a part of their day-to-day lives. Even now, this aspect puzzles me. As a mother, I simply cannot imagine choosing not to know my children--or my grandkids. My children are my father’s only grandchildren, but he never met them.

I have spent much of my life trying NOT to be my father. Trying to be respectable, responsible, and dependable. Trying to be a good parent.

But...

Almost five years ago, my life was turned upside down by a crippling depression that nearly killed me. My breakdown was rooted in the fact that I was trying to live a life that didn’t fit me. It was a life that was filled with all the world’s markers of success--marriage, children, big house in the suburbs, mountains of “things”--but I experienced it as an arid, colorless, and endless wasteland. My dogged and desperate attempts to remain in that life eventually made death look preferable to enduring it any longer.

I was lucky. I believe God showed me a way out of that life--and pointed me to the miracle that is my life now.

And in that process, God enabled me to do something else. God enabled me to forgive my father--melting my anger and confusion and turning them into something approaching understanding.

I will never know why my dad made the choices he did, because we never had that conversation. But in the wreckage of my old life, I discovered that my dad and I might not be so different after all--and I found some empathy I didn’t know I had.

***************************************

Of course I could be wrong, but I came to believe that my dad ran away from a life that didn’t fit him. Given my own history, I’m extremely wary of appearing to excuse the breaking of commitments in the search for some hedonistic form of happiness. But I honestly believe that my dad was probably never meant to be married or to have children. I think he recognized that too, after the fact--as evidenced by the fact that he never remarried and never (to my knowledge anyway) had any other children. He was simply born at a time when you got married at 19 or 20 and had kids. No questions allowed.

How many of us have fallen victim to similar expectations from our families and our culture? How many of us have woken up one day to discover that we are living someone else's life, and asked ourselves "How the hell did I get here?!"

But sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we are given second, third, and even more chances. It is up to us to decide what we will make of them.

I am doing my best to make my extra chances count--and I think my dad did too. I have reason to believe that my dad was happy with the life he ultimately chose. For the last number of years, he ran a bar on the beach in Playa del Carmen on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. I know that he attracted a sizable--and very loyal--group of American expatriates who made the bar their home-away-from-home and who loved my dad in the less-complicated way that “chosen families” often do.

In the photos I have seen of him, he looks like a grizzled old pirate--and he’s always laughing.

Having finally found a life that fits me--a life filled with love and laughter--I’m glad my dad found his own “fitting” life. We both made some pretty major mistakes in life, and I am grateful that our poor choices didn’t doom us to misery forever. There is a part of me that wishes we could have reconciled, but some things are just not possible in this life. By the end, there was simply too much distance between us and not enough time or energy to undo a lifetime of missteps.

But I left my visit with him with a deep sense of peace, because I could finally say that I was no longer angry with him. That will have to suffice for now.

I believe in a life beyond death, however, and in a merciful God who will make all things right in the end. So I also believe that--one day--my dad and I will have a chance to mend our broken relationship. Until that day, I have this image of my dad pouring a beer for Jesus and telling him some raucous joke--and Jesus rolling his eyes and laughing.

Rest in peace and rise in glory, Dad. The next time we see each other, the questions will all be answered and we'll be able start over again. We'll know how to love each other better next time...

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' ...

2009-12-31T10:19:00.002-05:00

As the year rolls to a close, that Steve Miller song is what keeps playing in my head.

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future

I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till I'm free
Oh, Lord, through the revolution

Feed the babies
Who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin' in the street
Oh, oh, there's a solution

I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till I'm free
Fly through the revolution

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future

Time has been slipping away from me for months now. And tonight, another year will turn, and time will continue to slip into the future. I know I am not the only one who wishes I could slow it down or stop it on occasion.

For the most part, 2009 was a stellar year for me. It was the year that I married the love of my life, and the year that I was handed the most important project of my career. It was the year that I met Mimi, Fran, Paul, and PJ!

It was the year I flew like an eagle.

I also know that 2009 was awful for many people. My friend Terri-Lynn died, as did Roseann, and my friends Sharon and Joe from church. I continue to grieve with and for Kathy in the loss of her husband and for the families of my friends who had to face the holidays without those they loved. I know a lot of people who are out of work, battling illnesses, or dealing with difficult family issues. My prayer list is longer than it's ever been.

So, in the midst of my overly busy life, I try to remember to be grateful for all the blessings I have. A loving husband. Healthy, happy kids. Bouncy dog. Work I really enjoy (even if there has been too much of it lately!). Wonderful friends. Two faith communities to sustain me.

New Year's Eve is a great time to reflect on all those blessings. And, despite the cliche attached to New Year's resolutions, it is also a time to think about things done and left undone, and to consider the call to amendment of life.

I am wary of New Year's resolutions. I do not like to fail, and they seem like invitations to failure. It's not as if I need another thing for which I will feel the need to beat myself up. (Believe me, that list is already long enough...)

So, for over 20 years, I have made only one resolution, and it's always the same: I resolve not to feed marshmallows to alligators.

I am pleased to report that I have been very successful in keeping this resolution. In a life where I have too often disappointed myself and those who love me, I needed to be able to say that there is ONE resolution I have observed to the letter.

This year, however, I'm thinking about making some changes to my life. I don't want to make resolutions here--I have learned the hard way that trying to force myself to do hard things by making public commitments is not the way to go.

But I am thinking about how I want to live. And praying. Mostly for a little quiet and stillness. For more time with those I love. For the grace to appreciate what I have, while I have it. For the courage and discipline to live my convictions.

As the curtains fall on 2009, here is my prayer for you: May you and yours truly enjoy the precious gift of time this year. May you recognize that the future--like the Kingdom of God-- is already-but-not-yet here.

Grab it and fly.

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina--Boneheads

2009-10-28T09:06:00.006-04:00

When I got up this morning, I had a text message from a friend who had seen yesterday's blog post about the scumsucking Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina. She wrote:

Read bcbsnc article front pg n&o 2day. U r not the only 1 pissed!

So off I went to the website of the News and Observer:

BCBS plea to customers on reform hits a nerve - Local/State - News & Observer

I loved that one wag taped the postcard to Senator Kay Hagan to a brick! Since my mail from yesterday hadn't gone out yet, I went in search of something similar.

I couldn't find a brick---but I DID find a large and very heavy dog bone...which I thought was perfectly appropriate under the circumstances.

Jasper is not too thrilled with this, as you can see in the photo below. He thinks it's a waste of a perfectly good bone.

But I'll buy him another one, I promise.

(In case you can't read the "Writing on the Bone," it says "BCBSNC--A Boneheaded Company")

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina--My Open Letter to My Scumsucking Insurance Company

2009-10-27T13:49:00.010-04:00

When I collected my mail today, I had this piece from my friendly health insurance company, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina:

Here is my response:

Dear Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina:

Who wants Federal government intervention in the private health insurance market? I do!

I want a public option. In fact, I want more than a public option--I want single-payer healthcare. Want it more than a kid wants candy at Halloween and presents at Christmas. Want it even more than I wanted a pony when I was 8.

Why? Because I think healthcare is a human right, and I don't think it should be a profit-making venture. Because I think insurance is nothing more than legalized extortion-and I'm tired of having my pockets picked, only to be told that you won't cover X,Y, or Z. Oh, and by the way...you're raising my premiums by nearly 30%.

You bill yourself as "nonprofit," which may make some gullible people think you are looking out for their best interests. But I know better. I've done my homework, and I've found the numbers:

In 2008, you paid your top 9 executives a total of $13, 369,133 in salaries, bonuses, and other compensation. That averages to $1,485,459 per person. You gave your top execs raises that ranged from 20%-32% that year.
According to the same regulatory filing, in 2008, you paid the 13 members of your Board of Directors a total of $494,459--an average of $38,035. Just for comparison, according to the U.S. Census bureau's most recent data (2005), the average salary for a family of 4 in North Carolina was $59,481. That means that a BCBSNC director made 64% of a NC family's YEARLY income for attending 5 meetings a year.
You reported profits of $186 million in 2008---and raised our premiums in the worst economy in living memory. (I'm still trying to figure out how a "nonprofit" has profits....)
You have a 72.5% market share of individual and employer-provided health insurance in North Carolina. That means, for many North Carolinians, you are the only game in town---the 800 lb. gorilla no one can ignore.

I've got to hand it to you, BCBSNC. You've got chutzpah. You can corner the state health insurance market, make millions in "nonprofits," pay your executives whopping salaries, raise my premiums while cutting my benefits--and still find a way to spend my hard-earned money trying to get me to lobby against my own best interests!

But you forgot one thing...I'm not a mindless FOX News drone and I'm not easily manipulated. I had been feeling tired and worn out with the whole healthcare debate--but your little mailing gave me an energy boost!

You see, I have my Senator's and Representative's phone numbers programmed into my phone. They both got calls today about the mailing you sent me. I doubt you'll be happy about what I said.

And that postage-paid postcard you wanted me to send to Senator Kay Hagan? The one that asked her to "please oppose government-run health insurance" because it would allow the government to compete "unfairly" with the private sector? I crossed out your message and wrote her asking her to support a true public option.

It gave me great satisfaction to know that you'll be paying a few cents of the money you have extorted from me over the years to lobby against YOUR best interests. It also gave me great pleasure to discover that I'm not alone, and that others are taking action too.

We take our victories where we find them.

Sincerely,
Doxy

UPDATE: The story made the front page of our local newspaper today (October 28), and I"m not the only one who's pissed! You can read about it here. One wag taped the card to a brick! Since the mail hasn't gone out yet, I'm going to see if I can do something similar. ;-)

UPDATE #2: Check out my follow-up post.

O Magnum Mysterium

2009-09-25T22:17:00.009-04:00

Much time has passed since I started this discussion, but the subject never leaves my mind for long. I suppose that’s because the subject of “mystery” keeps flowing in and out of my life and my conversations. Coincidence? Or just chaos theory in action?

And today is the fifth anniversary of my blog--I guess that deserves some sort of effort on my part.

*************************************

Mystical Seeker (MS) asked some wonderful questions in the comments to my previous post on this topic, and I have spent a lot of time pondering them.

I’ve questioned the best way to engage in dialogue here. To do point/counter-point has the advantage of forcing me to confront the questions MS and others raised, and I think it’s important to do that. I don’t want to look as if I’m ducking the hard issues.

The downside to my responding in that way, however, is that it can look as if I am trying to argue people into agreeing with me (or at least to “prove” that I am somehow correct in my approach or interpretations). I assure you that is not my project. Like anyone else, I prefer to be “right,” but I long ago accepted that—if we are honest—in matters of faith, there ARE no right answers.

For me, the whole point of this exercise is that I am still trying to figure out for myself what *I* believe---why I feel this need to hold “truth” and “mystery” in tension with one another and let the baby splash in the bathwater without throwing either of them out.

As I have noted, in some parts of my life, being a confessing Christian seems very...exotic. It’s like saying you believe in fairies or the boogeyman. In those parts of my life, people cut me some slack because they know I’m not one of “those” Christians. I don’t proselytize and I don’t speak about my faith unless invited to do so.

But the question is always there, though usually unspoken: How can you believe “that stuff?!”

Even in church, I get that feeling sometimes. Last Sunday morning I attended a discussion on Jesus for the Nonreligious in my home parish. The class was well-attended and quite lively and interesting. Several people made comments about how they had reached a point in their journeys of faith where they could no longer have remained in the Christian fold if they had to believe that “nonsense” about virgin births and miracles.

And I thought to myself, “Am I the ONLY one who thinks I can believe in quantum physics and miracles at the same time?”

And so, I type to MS and the others who commented—but I am really talking to myself...

**********************************

The fact that we exist at all--that's a mystery. The fact that there is love--that's a mystery. I don't have to believe in the literal truth of fantastical tales in order to believe in a mystery.

But what IS “mystery?” Is it simply a word that means “what I/we cannot (yet) know or understand?” Or is it more than that?

And, in the immortal words of Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” It seems to me that this is the unasked question in +Spong’s work—he assumes he knows exactly what “truth” is, and that you will agree with him about the definition.

I suppose I am too postmodern in my approach to truth. While I believe that there *is* Absolute Truth, I’m also pretty sure we can’t know it in this life. So, in that sense, all truth is relative. “Truth” changes because our understanding about the world expands and changes over time.

Having said that, I wonder sometimes if that is why we have lost the capacity to appreciate miracles—and why so many people no longer believe in them. We put our faith in science, as our modern version of “truth,” and think that we are so much more advanced than our first-century cousins in Palestine.

But are we really so different than they were? Many people--me, among them—accept the “truth” of the Big Bang theory. (Please note the quotation marks—I am well aware that scientists do not use the word “truth” about theories, but, in practice, we all do it.) But it seems to me that the notion of a singularity that is infinitely dense and hot and then—BAM!—expands to create the universe in less than a picosecond is at least as fantastical as the stories of miracles in the Bible!

What constitutes a mystery in your world? Tell me that and I will know something about your version of the truth.

************************************

The universe is for me such an amazing source of awe, I don't have to revert to a five-year-old mentality and believe in Santa Clause in order to feel this awe.

I, too, am awed by the universe. But I guess I’m with Mary Sue on this. What’s wrong with being a 5-year-old when it comes to stories? Who enjoys Christmas more? The grown-ups who “know” there is no Santa Claus, or the little kids who can hardly sleep for quivering with excitement?

I know the objection to this, of course--Santa Claus isn’t “real.” But, for me, that’s where the mystery comes in. As crazy as it sounds, I DO believe in Santa Claus. Because the “reality” of Santa Claus is that there is love and generosity in the universe, and, when I “play” Santa Claus for my children, I am acting on behalf of that for them. From my perspective, I am merely channeling what already exists--and giving them some fun and lovely memories while I’m doing it.

This is why I think Jesus made such a point of talking about having faith like a child. They haven’t lost their capacity for wonder. They aren’t bound by “rationality” and science. They still know how to thrill to something. They aren’t cynical and jaded like the adults in their lives.

I really do aspire to be more child-like in that sense. It’s not about accepting falsehoods. It’s about being open to things that are not always rational. And if that doesn’t define God and faith, I don’t know what does...

********************************************************

One of the problems that I see in religious credulity is that it often boils down to "my fairy tale is true; your fairy tale is false." So Christians can believe that Jesus literally walked around after being resuscitated, but they will refuse to believe the fantastical claims of Muhammad or Joseph Smith. Incredulity with other religions, credulity with my own.

Fair point. But I don’t believe that. I’m fully aware of just how crazy the Christian story is, and willing to grant that Muslims or Mormons ALSO have the “right” story—or at least another facet of it.

My “problem” is that I’m a Christian who doesn’t believe that Christianity is the only way to God--but I’m lumped in with all the fundagelicals.

I started this conversation by asking why people who can’t accept the idea that Jesus was anything other than a good teacher would want to hold on to him--but I guess I should ask myself why I want to hold on to him when I don’t think I “have to” in order to be saved (whatever that means) and it puts me in the same group with people whose theology and worldview I find repugnant?

That conversation, I suspect, will be a lifelong one...

*****************************************************

The difference between Cinderella and Jesus' resurrection is that adults don't take Cinderella literally, but lots of adults do take the fanciful tales in Matthew, Luke and John about his resurrection literally.

I will beg to differ with you on this. They may not take it “literally” in the way that you mean it, but women in our culture have internalized the story of Cinderella and I think the damage is incalculable. From the time they are infants, girls hear almost nothing but stories about beautiful princesses who are rescued by handsome princes—and then go on to live “happily ever after.” Those stories shape the way girls feel about themselves and the way they look at their relationships with men. I’m trying hard to figure out how believing that Jesus turned water into wine can have that same type of negative cultural impact...

***************************************************

I discovered a lot of churches where people read Borg or Spong in reading groups, but when push comes to shove, as this discussion bears out, most Christians, even progressive or non-fundamentalist ones, seem to prefer to treat these stories as if they are true.

That’s because they MEAN something to us.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it difficult to live in a completely “rational” world all the time. That’s where poetry and music and stories come in for me. If you read those biblical stories as “poems,” what’s wrong with accepting that miraculous things happen? You can’t “prove” that they didn’t, anymore than I can prove that they did--but my life would be much poorer without those stories.

For instance, I think many people fail to see the beauty and power of the story of the virgin birth. Think about it for a moment--God comes to earth in human form, and there is no man involved! Do you grasp how radical and life-affirming that could be from a feminist standpoint?

I’m not willing to stake my faith on that story being “true” in a literal sense, because I know all about the history of virgin birth stories--and I don’t demand that anyone else believe it. But I love it, and I’m not willing to give it up because some people declare it to be impossible. If I can believe in a God that created the universe (and I do, however that has worked itself out over the last 14 billion years), believing in the virgin birth is really not much of a stretch. For the God who could create this:

a virgin birth—or turning water into wine—would be little more than a parlor trick.

********************************************************

There is more--much more--but this is already too long and I want to post something tonight. So I will close with this...

When I was in high school, I sang in the school choir (known as the A Cappella). Our choir director was a man of great talent who held high expectations of us, and, one year, he entered us in a regional choral contest. Here is what we performed:

It was ambitious for a bunch of fundamentalist kids who had never seen Latin before the day he handed us the music. I don’t remember that we did particularly well at the contest, but I have never forgotten the beauty of that piece. In some sense, it is the story of my faith:

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

Grief, Pragmatism, and Warnings: My letter to the President

2009-09-06T21:00:00.005-04:00

Although I've been promising to do a follow-up post to my post on Spong (and I will!), my dear friend Jane at Acts of Hope has challenged us all to DO SOMETHING about healthcare reform. Today she challenged us to write to President Obama.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am still grieving the death of my friend, Terri-Lynn. Her death has turned me into a stark, raving maniac on the subject of healthcare reform. I always supported a single-payer system, as far back as President Clinton's push for healthcare reform. I have said many times that I thought Clinton made a major mistake by not starting out demanding a single-payer plan---by starting in the mushy middle, he gave away the store before the debate even got started. And that meant he--and more important, WE--got nothing.

President Obama, it seems, did not learn from that debacle. He keeps telling everyone he is a pragmatist---and I believe he thinks he is. But a REAL pragmatist would know that you start out asking for pie-in-the-sky, with the hope of getting something in the middle. A REAL pragmatist would have figured out by now that Republicans are not interested in creating a bigger safety net---and that the raving lunatics at these "town-hall meetings" will never be won over by a centrist Black man who they believe is not even an American.

It is not pragmatic to argue with crazy people. It is not pragmatic to give those who are deeply in the pockets of the insurance companies and Big Pharma the ability to control the debate or veto your proposals.

It is not pragmatic to abandon your base.

So I used this link to write to the President, and here is what I said:

Dear Mr. President:

On May 25, 2009, my friend, Terri-Lynn, died of cancer. TL was 50--a self-employed, single mother of a 10-year-old son with a chronic health condition. When TL started having symptoms 5 years ago, she didn't go to the doctor because she didn't have health insurance and didn't think she could afford to see a physician. By the time they found her colon cancer, it was too far gone. She spent the last couple of years of her life not only dealing with cancer but worried about how to pay the rent and feed her son. It was sickening, and totally unacceptable in a country that bills itself as the "leader of the free world."

TL died because we privilege profits over people's lives. If we had had a REAL public option for healthcare 5 years ago, I have no doubt she would still be alive. Her son would not be motherless and those of us who loved her would not be grieving.

But we are grieving not only her death---but your failure to lead on this issue. I knocked on doors for your campaign--as did my 12-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. We believed you when you said you would support a single-payer healthcare system. We believed you when you said you would be a leader for change.

But now every time I read the news, I hear that you have dropped even a public option---never mind a single-payer plan. Every time I read that, it's like hearing the news that TL died all over again.

Your desire for bipartisanship is admirable--but it should be clear to you by now that it will never happen. It is time you listened to those of us who are begging you for help and LEAD. How many more Terri-Lynns have to die before you find the courage to do what you promised us you would do when we worked to get you elected?

I want a single-payer system like the one my mother, who married a British citizen 6 years ago, has under the National Health Service in the UK. But barring that, I want a REAL public option for healthcare in this country. Anything less will be no reform at all. Anything less will continue to leave the power in the hands of insurance companies and Big Pharma---and that will mean more Terri-Lynns. That is not acceptable, Mr. President. We believed you. Please don't let us down.

******************************************************

Maybe you don't support a single-payer plan, or even a public option. You think the government can't do anything right, and--anyway--you don't want your "hard-earned dollars" going to pay for healthcare for "deadbeats" who can't afford health insurance.

You go right ahead believing that you are somehow different from the Terri-Lynns of the world. You go right on believing that your hard work and your job-related insurance will protect you from what happened to her. You go right on believing that she just didn't work as hard as you, or "live right" the way you have. You go right on believing that your insurance company will take better care of you than "government bureaucrats," even though the former has a financial incentive to deny you coverage while the latter doesn't.

But please, when it all comes crashing down---when your little girl gets a brain tumor or your spouse has kidney failure or you develop a life-threatening illness and your insurance company refuses to pay for the treatment you or your loved one needs--please don't tell me "But I didn't KNOW!!!!!"

When your health insurance premiums rise 50% next year after the defeat of healthcare reform, because the health insurance companies know they own Congress--or all of a sudden you lose your job because your spouse has cancer and your company can't afford to carry you anymore because the insurance company has slapped a $1M premium on them because of that---please don't tell me "But I didn't know they could do that!!!"

Because you have been told. You have been warned. Terri-Lynn, and those like her, are simply the canaries in the coal mine. If you can't be moved to support healthcare reform from simple human decency, you should be moved to support it from pragmatism.

Because you're next--and the President, "pragmatist" that he is, needs to know it and be a leader.

Murder(ing) Mystery

2009-08-12T10:33:00.012-04:00

Last night, Dear Friend and I attended a discussion of John Shelby Spong's book, Jesus for the Nonreligious. The discussion was sponsored by a group which bills itself as a cross-denominational, ecumenical gathering of "progressive Christians." There were about 25 people there, and the discussion was lively and interesting.

It was also something of a watershed moment for me. I can't even tell you the last time I was the most theologically conservative person in a room--but I'm pretty sure I was last night!

(I know, I know--you can pick your jaw up off the floor now... ;-)

Before I go on, I need to say a word about +Spong. As some of you know, it was +Spong's books Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Living in Sin? that brought the Episcopal Church to my attention. For better or worse, Jack Spong is responsible for my being an Episcopalian.

But these days, I tend to find +Spong annoying. It's as if he can never stop reacting to the fundamentalism in which he was reared. He's like a reformed smoker/drinker/gambler, who now has to lecture everyone on the evils of whatever it was he used to do. Everything is black or white--no grey allowed. It gets tiring after a while.

I grew up as a fundamentalist, too---and, to a certain degree, my current approach to the Christian faith will always be a reaction to the bad things about that experience. But, after well over a decade of wrestling with very serious theological questions, I have somehow gotten past the need to define myself in opposition to the literalists.

+Spong hasn't. In his own way, he is as dogmatic as any biblical literalist. He states categorically "This could not have happened," and we are expected to exchange our unthinking obedience to one set of fundamentalist beliefs for another, arguably more "progressive," one.

Worse, he blithely states that, if you don't agree with him, you are child-like and refuse to live in the modern world.

Alrighty then....

The discussion last night moved along those lines. My first uncomfortable moment came when the discussion leader used the word "brainwash." He was talking about telling children stories about the miracles of Jesus, and asked the group how we could tell those stories without brainwashing our kids into believing things that clearly were not true.

I asked him if he was uncomfortable telling children fairy tales? After all, those aren't true either---but most of us don't have a debrief with our kids after their nightly story time to explain that frogs really can't talk and they won't turn into princes if you kiss them!

In addition, I dare say that stories like "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast" are at least as deeply embedded in our culture as any biblical story---and as the mother of a daughter, I would contend that they do infinitely more psychological damage to our children than stories of Jesus turning water into wine or healing lepers.

(On second thought...maybe we SHOULD debrief our kids after those stories! I know that the myth of the Prince and "happily ever after" harmed me in ways that have been much more painful and long-lasting than anything I learned in church...)

My next uncomfortable moment came when the discussion leader and a couple of others started putting clergy "in the dock." There were numerous assertions that clergy don't preach what they really know to be the truth because they fear offending parishioners--and a call for them to "tell the truth" to those people who still believe in things like the virgin birth and the miracle stories.

All eyes whipped immediately to Dear Friend...who had chosen to attend "in collar," and was, I suppose, "fair game." ;-)

At that point, I had to comment. I told them I was struck by the irony of a group of people who are unhappy because ministers tell people what to think....demanding that ministers tell people what NOT to think!

After 35 years in the ministry, Dear Friend has a much tougher skin than I do. I was really proud of him for the way he responded. He said that he didn't see sermons in the same way they did. He is a great lover of poetry, and he asked them:

"Do you 'believe' a poem?"

In his view, the Bible is a poem--not a scientific or historical treatise. The stories about Jesus are "poems" about God's love for us and God's way of interacting with us on a human level. To illustrate, Dear Friend recited this poem from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

As he pointed out, if you read that poem "literally," you would have to say "An eagle is really a member of the Accipitridae family. It doesn't have 'hands,' it has CLAWS. And it is not close to the sun, which is between 91-94.5 million miles (depending on where we are in the orbit). And the sea is not 'wrinkled,' nor does it 'crawl."'

And if you did that, you would have ruined it. A poem and a scientific paper on eagles are two totally different things. Both have their uses, but it is a mistake to confuse the two.

Dear Friend observed that most people seem to yearn for transcendence, and that a sermon should speak to that yearning, rather than be an academic lecture on textual or historical biblical criticism. He does talk about scholarship in Christian Education classes, small groups, or one-on-one discussions with people--but he believes that to do so in a sermon is to exercise an abusive form of clerical power by telling people what to believe. And he talked about transcendence being largely a "right-brain" thing--one of elusive experience, rather than left-brained, factual knowledge.

(As an aside, I have never, in all the years I've known him, heard Dear Friend tell anyone what to believe. In fact, his sermons are almost always a series of questions, without any answers. This unnerves some people, but it appeals mightily to people who are seriously engaged in theological reflection.)

I don't know what the other participants made of that. My reaction was to spend the rest of the evening wondering why people want to murder mystery.

****************************************************

I run with a pretty well-educated group of people. I was trained in the social sciences, so I have a nose for methodology and I can read statistics and ask the right questions to see if they represent any shade of reality. I work with lots of people who have M.D.s or PhD.s in the hard sciences, and--even though I don't have a degree in science--I'm something of a science geek. I've got no problem with the prevailing paradigm for scientific research, which demands testable hypotheses and replicable results.

And I've also got no problem believing that Jesus actually turned water into wine or literally healed people. I can say the Nicene Creed without crossing my fingers. I absolutely believe in the Real Presence in the bread and wine during Eucharist.

I suspect the people in the group last night would be flummoxed by my ability to reconcile all these things in my head. And a few years ago, I probably would have been too. I used to struggle, HARD, with the insane things that Christianity asks you to accept--a fully divine/fully human, sinless incarnation of God who was put to death, rose again, and ascended into heaven.

What kind of crazy stuff is THAT?!?!?

But for a variety of reasons (some of which I have shared here and some of which I haven't), I have come to feel the "truth" of those things. I have learned to open my hands, shrug, and say "It's a mystery."

For many people, that's a cop-out. I can understand that. But I have found that there is a role for mystery in my faith. I have discovered that mystery and Truth are not strangers, or enemies, but are engaged in an intimate--even erotic--dance. I have learned that leaving room for that mystery brings me much closer to that transcendence for which I long.

Every Sunday, I drink from the cup of Mystery, and am transformed.

************************************************

The more I think about +Spong's title, Jesus for the Nonreligious, the more puzzled I become. Why would the "nonreligious" even be interested in Jesus? With only one or two exceptions last night, everyone in the group gave a religious affiliation. They weren't nonreligious--just not happy with traditional Christianity. THAT, I understand!

But if you take +Spong's view of Jesus and you remain in the Christian fold, I'd really be interested to know why. I confess that I am mystified by the lengths to which people will go to hang on to a Jesus who is really just another "good teacher." What is it about that Jesus that makes you want to hold on to him?

If you choose to look at Jesus in a way that strips away all of the mystery, you won't get any argument from me. I won't tell you that you are going to a Hell I don't believe in. I won't think you are evil or disobedient to God if you don't accept that Jesus was divine in some way (whatever that means).

But I will wonder why you bother. I'd really love to know.

I want to remember...

2009-08-05T18:02:00.004-04:00

I want to remember
the birthday when
the cake needed no candles
because there was nothing left
to wish for...
Except to freeze the joy
of this day
And this life
Forever in time.

The Purple Haze of Theodicy--A Response to John Marks

2009-06-21T14:26:00.002-04:00

If you don’t know who John Marks is, I hope you will check out his blog, The Purple State of John. John and his old college roommate, Craig Detwiler, made a wonderful film called A Purple State of Mind. In that film, John, who is an avowed atheist, and Craig, who is an evangelical Christian (although a fairly progressive one), have a series of open, honest--and occasionally painful--conversations about faith and its implications for public life and individual action. They call the film "an 80-minute effort to bridge the cultural gap, to push past politics, and wade into the middle ground where most people live."

The "purple," of course, refers to a blending of the so-called "red state"/"blue state" divide promulgated so heavily by television news. I highly recommend the film to you.

When Dear Friend and I went to the premiere of A Purple State of Mind at Davidson College (where Marks and Detwiler met), we both felt more affinity for John, with his doubts and questions, than we did with Craig. Since that time, I have read John’s blog regularly (he does some really interesting posts on film and other cultural issues) and I comment semi-regularly on his faith-related posts. The following is my response to his post entitled The Perfect Christian Daughter Murders Her Perfect Christian Family: A Case Study In The Problem Of Evil. I got started writing, and couldn’t stop, so rather than clog up his comment box, I decided to respond here.

*************************************************

John--I ask in advance for your forgiveness if this sounds snarky. If we were discussing it over coffee or a beer, I assure you, I would sound more questioning than snide. (I also apologize for the length, but it’s hard to discuss this without laying out some important context.)

I have no easy answers for theodicy--and no thinking person of faith does. Stories like the one you highlight are quite effective for your purpose. You dare Christians to answer the unanswerable and show us to be ignorant fools when we try. It’s an easy “victory” for you---like shooting fish in a barrel.

But here is my question for you: What do YOU have to say about Erin Caffey and the evil she has done? Can you address the problem of evil without God and find any satisfactory answers?

I am a person of faith (in part) because, without "God," (however you define that), there can be no redemption for the evil or suffering in the world. All that pain just *is*. It will never be rectified. There will never be justice for the oppressed. There will never be any recompense for suffering. Life, to borrow from Thomas Hobbes, is "nasty, brutish, and short"--and we should probably all just kill ourselves and save ourselves the trouble. What's the point, anyway?

Maybe you can live in that nihilistic world, but I can't. Maybe you are made of stronger stuff than I--and most of the rest of humanity. I would venture to say that most people who claim a faith do so because we need to believe that the pain and suffering we DO experience (regardless of its cause) will ultimately be redeemed. That even if what we suffer is pointless, something good will come from it and our pain will not have been completely in vain.

If that makes me foolish or gullible in your eyes, I readily plead “Guilty as charged.”

I will not be glib about theodicy--but I will also state, as strongly as I am able, that I do not believe God causes or allows suffering for our "good." IMO, that God would be a monster and not worthy of worship.

I believe that God is with us *in* our suffering and works with us and others to bring good out of bad situations. I have experienced that presence myself in my own times of trouble. (Of course, it could just be some autonomic, evolution-inspired response in my brain—but that’s why we call it “faith.” ;-) I have also sensed the presence of the “holy” (for lack of a better term) in the faces and actions of those who have loved me.

I should probably note at this point that I am a process theologian. (I claim the title of "theologian" by virtue of my baptism, not because I went to seminary.) I don't believe that God is "omnipotent" (at least, in the sense most people mean it). I agree with Charles Hartshorne's view about that--he wrote a book titled Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. My theology differs from most of those whom you profiled in your book Reasons to Believe--but I still count myself as a “Nicene Creed” Christian, and there are probably a lot more like me in Christian circles than you might think.

I am also a universalist, so I do not believe that God is going to send all but the chosen few to Hell. I don’t even believe in heaven or hell, in the sense that so many people mean them (as physical places where “good” or “bad” people go). But I do believe that, somehow, what is broken will be repaired and love will reign.

At the end of the day, my belief in God gives me "a very present help in times of trouble." That belief may be a delusion on my part, but it gives my life meaning and purpose.

My "brand" of Christianity is not the one against which you contend, of course. I will never try to impose my faith on you or anyone else--and I do my fair share of fighting my co-religionists in the political/legal sphere.

But I get tired of otherwise intelligent people acting as if the existence of evil is THE argument that disproves my belief in a loving God. (Bart Ehrman is another one who comes to mind...) I can make a case for agnosticism (though not for atheism) from a scientific point of view, but to use theodicy to dismiss the existence of God still leaves atheists with the problem of evil. Only in that case, as I see it, *you* have no answer at all--and no comfort to offer to those who suffer. I would love to know how you see it.

Pax,
Doxy

Let my epitaph read...

2009-06-11T07:57:00.003-04:00

"She ran to joy and embraced it."

A word about "Dear Friend"...

2009-05-31T13:22:00.003-04:00

A number of people have asked me why I haven't changed Dear Friend's name to "Dear Husband"?

Mainly, it's because he *is* my dear friend--the dearest of them all. I have learned that heart friends nearly always treat each other in ways that honor relationship--and that spouses can frequently treat each other in ways that they would never think of treating their best friends. I aim to treat him always like the dear friend that he is.

There is another reason too. When I first joined an Internet community 10 years ago, everyone there referred to their male spouses as "DH," which could stand for "Dear Husband" or "Damned Husband," depending on the circumstances. Since I used to refer to the Hydra in that forum as "DH," I just can't bring myself to change Dear Friend's name to that. In all the important ways, they are as different as chalk and cheese, for which I daily thank the good Lord.

I would have called him "Beloved," since that is what he is and it is actually what his name means in the original language from which it comes--but Cecilia already had that one covered by the time he became a fixture in my life.

So I think I'll just leave his moniker as-is. It suits him and it makes me happy.

Boston, here we come!!!

2009-05-30T19:15:00.002-04:00

Dear Friend did it! He finished his 19th marathon in 3 hours and 53 minutes. He has now qualified for the Boston Marathon in April 2010.

Not a bad week for my beloved. Turn 60 on Friday. Get married on Saturday. Realize a long-held personal dream on the following Saturday...

I think we are both liking this marriage thing.

Elegy

2009-05-26T19:41:00.005-04:00

She was beautiful. Big brown eyes and a veritable mane of dark brown, unruly hair. A crooked tooth gave her a interesting smile.

She was sarcastic and wry. I was always glad that I wasn’t the subject of her witheringly funny scrutiny. She could cut through bullshit in about two seconds flat. You never wondered what she thought about anything--she was always happy to tell you.

She grew up in a beach town and she was in love with the ocean. Her blog carried a quote from Isak Dinesen: “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” She knew something about tears--and she knew how to laugh, too.

She was fiercely loyal to her friends, including me. And she was loving--to her son, to her family and friends, and even to a few people who didn’t deserve it.

She exemplified Jesus about as well as anyone I’ve ever known. She gave up on organized religion after her young son was diagnosed with a chronic illness and the faith community in which he was baptized at sunrise on an Easter morning never called to see how he was or visited him in the hospital. I can’t say I blame her for that--in fact, it grieves me in a special way, because those apathetic folks were “my people”--Episcopalians. But she walked the walk a hell of a lot better than most people who just like to tell you about their love for Jesus.

She never caught a break. She never went to college. Never really had much in the way of a career--certainly not something with benefits. Her one great love broke her heart when he left their marriage. Late in life, she had the son she loved above all with a man who didn’t deserve either of them.

She was a loving, good woman, friend, and mother, and she never caught a break.

*********************************

She died of cancer yesterday. She died at age 50, leaving that 10-year-old boy with the chronic illness without her fierce love and protection. God only knows what his life will be like now.

She died because she was poor, and because she didn’t have health insurance.

She died because, when she started having pain and other symptoms almost five years ago, she didn’t go to the doctor because she couldn’t afford it. What might have been easily curable had it been caught early was a death sentence by the time she was no longer able to bear the pain and dragged herself to the emergency room.

She died because the people in this country are so fucking selfish that they have fought healthcare reform tooth and nail.

She died because she didn’t have the good fortune to be born in a country that doesn’t CLAIM to be “Christian”--like any developed nation in Europe or the United Kingdom. (Where my mother, who suffers from chronic health problems, has received the best healthcare she’s ever gotten...so spare me your ignorant diatribes about the National Health Service in the U.K.)

My friend spent her last years suffering not only the pain of cancer but the indignity of having to worry about how she was going to pay her rent and feed her child. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer 2½ years ago, and was able to get Social Security disability payments only nine weeks ago.

It sickens me to type that.

If you are one of those people who believes that universal healthcare is a socialist plot and has fought reform that would enable every American to have decent healthcare, I hold you personally responsible for her death. You are complicit in murder, and you should fall to your knees and beg God’s forgiveness for your selfishness and your hardness of heart.

If it were in my power, I would force you to look that 10-year-old boy in the face and explain to him why it is okay that his mother is dead so that you could have a few more dollars in your pocket for your Starbucks lattes or your cable television service. Or why it it was okay for you to keep your “Cadillac healthcare plan” while his mother had none.

If you could do that, you are beyond help and may God have mercy on your soul--for you will get none from me.

If you could do that, I hope that you at least have the grace not to call yourself a Christian.

And if you couldn’t--if you couldn’t look that sweet boy in the face and say something so hardened and callous that it would make the angels weep--you need to be on the phone to your elected representatives, telling them to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Demanding that they make changes--no matter what the cost--so that no person on this earth will die in agony, and no child will be left motherless, because we don’t have the will to do the most basic thing that Jesus asked of us: “Love one another.”

**********************************************************

This is what my friend, Terri-Lynn—funny, loyal, loving woman that she was—wrote about herself:

Where I'm From

I am from sand dollars and Sea and Ski
and the whole world contained in a tidal pool.
I am from overdue library books and Oreos
and tea parties after school.

I am from a tiny Riverside kitchen, abundant in love
and children
and molasses-filled biscuits.
I am from squeaky screen doors and sun-dried linens
and the golden promise of forsythia.

I am from the wild tangle of honeysuckle
the salt-cured planks of the pier
the cool green sanctuary under the willow tree.

I am from walks by the ocean and foolish pride,
from Lilla and Thelma
and Carolyn-now-Lynn.

I am from mule-headed stubborn and talking too much,
from singing along and dancing fools.
I am from Murphy was an optimist and bless your heart.
I am from the best part of the day.

I am from Jesus loves me
just as I am.
I am from dinner on the grounds and I'll fly away oh glory
and Jesus Christ Superstar.

I am from Edgecombe County and the muddy Tar,
from forbidden dunes and the endless Atlantic.
I am from ham biscuits,
butterbeans shelled this morning
and Pop's peach ice cream.

I am from the girl who sang with the band
and won the heart of the soldier,
from the milkman's daughter and the man with no voice
(he loved to fish).

I am from pirates and poets and painters
All of the gifts; none of the glory.
I am from Mason's shrine and Granny's cedar chest,
from Daddy's photographs and Tracy's poems.

I am from crocheted blankets, delicate as lace,
from cut-glass dishes and perfectly seasoned cast-iron skillets.
I am from familiar melodies and forgotten secrets
and a million grains of sand.

*********************************************************************

Rest in peace, Terri-Lynn Sykes. It was my great privilege to know you and to be your friend. And it is my great shame and sorrow that we failed you and your son.

Father of all, we pray to you for Terri-Lynn., and for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest.Let light perpetual shine upon them. May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.

Terri-Lynn and Doxy with boys
at the North Carolina State Fair
Fall 2004

Going to Ground

2009-04-26T23:08:00.002-04:00

The wedding is less than a month away. I have been given the largest project of my career--one that I have wanted for 3 years--and it has to be completed by the end of June. I have another huge project in the works. As the school year winds to a close, my children need some additional parental attention to their homework (spring fever has bitten the Doxy household in a bad way...). Jasper needs more exercise.

All of that to say...I'm going to focus on what needs attention the most at the moment. I won't be blogging--but that's not the hard part. (It's not as if I blog all that often anyway...) The big challenge for me now is to try to stay off the Net so that I can get the humongous project in good shape and not have to take my computer on my honeymoon. Well, that...and get married and be a good mom to all three of my children and a good partner for Dear Friend.

It won't be easy to quit for a spell---I count on many of you to keep me informed about the things that matter most to me. Faith, politics (ecclesial and otherwise), and your own madcap adventures. I pray daily for many of you, as I know that some of you do for me. I'll keep praying--and I'll be bold enough to ask for yours. It's going to be a bumpy, wonderful ride!

Guest Blogging by Jasper

2009-04-19T16:00:00.009-04:00

Hi! My name is Jasper. I live with my Mom, Doxy, and the Emperor and Empress. I love them with all the big, wet, sloppy dog love I can muster. Especially my Mom. I try to be with her every minute of the day, so that I can protect her from squirrels and guys on motorcycles. (There ought to be a law against those things!)

I also spend half my time at Dear Friend's house. He's pretty cool too. He lets me watch "Animal Planet" on his big TV, and he plays tug-of-war with me when Mom isn't looking. (Don't tell her, or we'll both be in trouble!)

Some people think I'm a poodle, but that's only because they don't look very closely. I'm a Portuguese Water Dog. A lot of people call us "Porties" for short. I think that sounds stupid.

(Mom says "stupid" is not a nice word, but they aren't shortening her name to something that sounds like "potty!")

Being a Portuguese Water Dog means I'm kind of famous, because Mom says that there is a new Portuguese Water Dog living with President Obama at the Big White House...the one with the even bigger Green Lawn. I would looooove to play on that big green thing!

I've seen that new dog, Bo, on the news, because Mom made me watch the video. He's cute, but I feel a little bit sorry for him. He can't even do his business without people taking pictures of him. Yuck.

(I love having my picture made, as you can see, but I have my limits.)

My friend Jane at Acts of Hope wanted to know what I thought about having one of My Kind in the Big White House. I think it's pretty cool, but Mom thinks I should point you to this article about dogs like me:

Water Dogs Should Come With Warnings

Hey, I can't help it if I have LOTS of energy! And I confess I have a "thing" for sofa cushions:

See what a good job I am doing of checking this one for squirrels hiding inside it? Mom isn't very happy about this. She keeps saying "I haven't even finished paying for those yet!" I don't know what she's so upset about. It's my job to protect her from those evil hordes of satanic squirrels!

Know what I love to do for fun? Eat kleenex and paper towels. Boy, howdy! That is some kind of entertaining! And it provides lots of roughage...not to mention the exercise I get from Mom and the Royals chasing me around the house to try and stop me. (They can't usually do it. We Portuguese Water Dogs are FAST!)

My most favorite thing in the whole, wide world is going for walks. And now it's time for Mom to take me on one. Hope you have a great Sunday!

Prenuptial Agreements

2009-04-08T07:35:00.003-04:00

Dear Friend and I have been working on finalizing our prenuptial agreements.*

I think a spouse should have to promise to put the toilet seat AND the lid down. I think a male spouse should wipe the floor when he misses the target. And I think said spouse should towel off in the bathtub, rather than dripping all over the bath mat and the floor.

(I have bathroom issues. Sue me.)

Dear Friend is having his best friend, Harold, help him devise his own prenuptial agreement list. Knowing Harold, I'm sure it will contain acrobatic sexual performances on demand, keeping the fridge stocked with designer beer, and no complaining about time spent on the golf course.

Knowing what you know now, what would you require of a spouse before tying the knot?

*************
*For the humor-impaired among you, this is all in good fun. Work with me here....

It's the end of the world as we know it....

2009-04-06T00:29:00.001-04:00

Recently, I was reading MattyBoy's grim blog post on the economy (specifically, the impending tidal wave of credit default swaps), and I was feeling all worried and afraid. I've noted before that I'm a worrier by nature, and stuff like this can just send me right over the edge. It's huge and scary and totally out of my control--an issue tailor-made to keep me awake in the middle of the night.

But let's be realistic--nothing lasts forever. Certainly not governments or economic systems. The human belief that we can go on and on eternally, "just the way we are now," is silly.

This may not sound like a very optimistic approach to you, but it helps me to consider this.....

Every two or three hundred million years, there appears to be a mass extinction of life on this planet. We are probably about due for another one. At some point, there will be another asteroid hit, or a massive nuclear accident/attack, or a virus we can't stop. At some point, we will run out of resources, luck, or both.

It comforts me to know this because it actually gives added urgency to the need to live NOW. We have no control over the markets or the possibility of cataclysmic events--but we do have control over what we focus on in the moment.

The thought that there might be no more tomorrows reminds me that, just for today, there is love and beauty and music and dark chocolate/red wine. There is poetry and Jasper's unearned adoration and the way Dear Friend's eyes sparkle when he laughs. There are lilies and sunsets and whatever else makes you happy.

No matter how much we like to pretend otherwise, the only moment we know we have is the very one in which we are breathing.

This is much on my mind right now because of the situation with Dear Friend's brother-in-law, who was rushed to surgery last night to try and stop bleeding in his brain. As of this afternoon, he was relatively alert and communicative. For now, every word, every glance, every squeeze of the hand is a blessing to him and to his family.

And they should be to the rest of us, if only we could pay attention...

I am not good at paying attention, and I know I'm not alone in that. Some part of us knows that we should revel in the time we have, but we rarely do. It usually takes tragedy to remind us of the importance of this moment--and we quickly forget again when the tragedy recedes into the distance. We are a remarkably stupid species, in that regard.

None of us is going to live forever. I believe we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what we have, so I strongly support efforts to change the way we live in the world. But we were ALWAYS going to die. Individually and as a species. The only really important question is: "How are we going to live...today?"

That is my question for myself during Holy Week. The world is coming to an end: What am I going to do before it happens?

Call for Prayers

2009-04-02T16:42:00.002-04:00

It appears that Dear Friend's brother-in-law, Jim, has a brain tumor. We are still awaiting word on how serious the doctors believe it is, and what the next steps should be--but Jim commented that he felt better knowing that people were praying for him.

In light of that, I will ask your prayers for Jim, his wife Ruthie, and their teen-aged sons, Taylor and Daniel. They are a lovely family and I suspect they can use all the help they can get right now. I know how much your prayers can accomplish, having felt them on more than one occasion myself. Thanks so much...

Words of Wisdom?

2009-03-24T09:17:00.003-04:00

This weekend, the Emperor will participate in our parish's Rite-13 Ceremony of Manhood/Womanhood. This is the Episcopalian version of a bar mitzvah.

Part of what we do as a parish is offer the "celebrities" (I hate that term, but that is what the coordinators call them) bits of wisdom to help them on their journey to adulthood. So I thought I would pick your brains and ask:

If you could go back in time and give advice to your 13-year-old self, what would you say?

Doxy Admits Defeat

2009-03-08T22:35:00.003-04:00

There were 324 entries in my Google Reader when I logged in tonight.

I cannot possibly read them all, so I have acquiesced to the inevitable and hit "Mark All As Read." I apologize to my regular commenters. Sigh. (Please e-mail me if there is anything you really need/want me to read, or pray about.)

Life is good---just very, VERY full at the moment. So many of you are in my prayers. I'll be back soon with book reviews from my Lenten studies.

Love,
Doxy

This is for Josh....

2009-02-27T19:47:00.004-05:00

This is the Lenten Kitty. He gave up perfectionism--but decided he could keep the Cokes and desserts. ;-)

Intentions

2009-02-23T08:52:00.008-05:00

Today is my favorite day of the liturgical year. Yes, I know I'm strange.

Once upon a time, I celebrated Lent all by myself. I wasn't part of any faith community--I just liked the idea of giving up something and using that voluntary fast as a way of focusing on my relationship with God. (I somehow kept that relationship, even when I jettisoned church.)

Every year, I gave up Cokes and dessert. In some ways, I guess that seems kind of silly--but since I ingested both on a daily basis, giving them up made me think about God a LOT. And I fasted for the entire season of Lent, because no one told me that Sundays were feast days. Since I only went to church once a year on Ash Wednesday, and I didn't grow up in a catholic tradition, I didn't know.

I regret to report that my Lenten fasts were much more effective when I did them outside the church than they have been in the 13 years I've been an Episcopalian. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because I was fasting in isolation. I didn't have a community of people with whom I could joke and moan about my minor deprivations. Fasting was not expected of me, either. In the tradition in which I grew up, I never even heard of Lent or fasting (except what I read in the Bible)--they would have been considered Catholic (picture that being said in a whisper with lips pursed and eyebrows raised), which, of course, meant "very, very bad" and not at all Christian.

In recent years, I have had difficulty deciding what to do as a Lenten discipline--and often I have failed at my intentions. Some years I took on additional spiritual practices. Others, I gave up something that felt more "weighty" than Cokes or dessert. Rarely did I succeed in practicing my discipline all the way through Lent (even with feast days!) without throwing my hands up in defeat.

********************************************

Now before I start getting lectures about the purpose of Lent, let me say this--I KNOW the purpose of Lent. I totally agree with our friend Margaret--Lent is about living a Resurrection Life. And I am still working on finding ways to support myself in doing that.

That is why I love Lent--even the penitential aspects of it. Lent supports me on my walk with God because it makes me mindful--not just of my sins, which are many...but of my longing for God. As far as I have fallen short of my intentions in the past, they mean something. Even my failures mark me as someone who loves God so much that I can't quite seem to give Her up.

So I have been thinking about what things might strengthen my love for God--and how people in my life might actually know that I love God.

**********************************************

My first intention was born last weekend, when I made a shocking discovery.

I hardly ever read anymore.

By that, I mean I hardly ever read BOOKS anymore. I spend a good portion of my days reading things on the intertubes, but I--who used to be a voracious reader of books--have only read a few in the last couple of months. And those have been re-reads of some of my old childhood favorites.

I made this discovery while I was rearranging my bookshelves. When I moved into this house last January, I had a rollicking case of pneumonia, and I remember very little about the move itself. The books were among the very few things I unpacked, and in my feverish state, I simply threw them up on the shelves, without rhyme or reason. And so, for the past year, I have been heard cursing loudly every time I tried to find some reference I needed for my Education for Ministry class.

Last weekend, I decided to fix that. I started categorizing books, which meant I had to pull most of them off the shelf. And I was dismayed to realize that I have a fine collection of books--especially theology books--that I've never read.

Some of my most intense moments of spiritual connection or insight have come from reading. I get a lot of really wonderful insights and inspiration from the things I read on the Web--but tearing through all the blog entries in my Google Reader doesn't really count as thoughtful spiritual practice for me.

So today is the day I take a deep breath, slow down, and start reading books again--books that I've been wanting to read because I think they will add something to my relationship with God. Today is the day that I start once again to exercise the mental muscles I need to wrestle intelligently with my faith, and to inform that faith as I pass it along to others.

To be honest, I really started on Sunday. I finished a book of essays by Alan Lightman, A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit. (If you haven't read his book, Einstein's Dreams, I highly recommend it. This one was good too.) I am a science geek, and I actually find much that is spiritual in the science reading that I do. Astronomy and physics both speak strongly of God to me--a notion I'm sure would appall some of the scientists I read!

Now I'm starting on Kathleen Norris' new book, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. Norris' work has always resonated for me, and this book promises to do so as well. I have had my own experiences with acedia and I'll probably be blogging on that in the future.

Other books in the pile for Lent include our own Jane's When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life (that one I've already made a dent in, but I got sidetracked for some reason), Verna Dozier's The Dream of God, and John Spong's Jesus for the Non-Religious. If you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

***********************************

This entry is already too long as it is, so I'll talk about my other intentions later. For now, I am headed out to church, where Dear Friend will mark my forehead with ashes and we will enter this holy season together. "Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return."

It is hard to feel penitential when I feel so much joy in my life these days--but I am reminded that the dust of which we are made is stardust. Each of us, in our best moments, reflects the dazzling brilliance of the stars from which we come--and the love of the One who made us all.

This Lent, may you discover that stardust within yourself. May you shine like the star you are. Radiant. Joyful. Beloved.

The Color of Relief

2009-02-17T15:09:00.002-05:00

Relief is blue...a shimmery, silvery blue that captures the light and makes you catch your breath in pleasure.

You'll see me wearing it on my wedding day.

Running on the Knife-Edge of Fear

2009-02-15T13:52:00.008-05:00

I got a phone call last week. It was the kind of phone call you really hope you never get...

"The radiologist has reviewed your mammogram, and there are some dense spots in your breasts that we would like to investigate further. Can you come in for further tests next Tuesday?"

I am 45 years old. I have two young children. I'm supposed to get married in 95 days.

I have held the fear at bay since the phone call--mostly because the day it came, I was up to my eyeballs in work and didn't have time to process. Since then, I have been away on a Valentine's Day holiday with Dear Friend, and being with him tends to send my serotonin levels into the stratosphere. He is with me, no matter what, he says...and I believe that.

But today, I am back at my other home without him...and the wait to have further tests and get the results seems like a marathon for which I have not trained. Today, I am running full-tilt on the knife-edge of fear.

As I run, however, I am mindful of Mark Twain's comment about worry:

I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

I am trying to keep this all in perspective, but it is difficult not to "borrow trouble." I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of what a diagnosis of cancer would do to the carefully constructed house of cards that is my life. Can I take care of my children if I am ill? Can I be with Dear Friend, when our relationship depends on my being able to travel? However will I manage? Should I continue to make wedding plans?

So many questions. So few answers, here on the knife-edge.

I suspect that is the way it always is. No one is really prepared for the possibility of disaster. We spend our lives pretending that nothing bad will ever happen to us or those we love--and then we all just react to bad news as best we can.

Today, I am praying for peace of mind, because I really believe that's all God has the ability to give in situations like this. Because I tend to rush headlong into an imagined future of pain and loss, I am praying for the gift of presence in this moment--in which I am loved and supported by many.

Just this morning, dear Fran wrote me this, in answer to my worries about whether I should continue with wedding plans:

Your beautiful future is really in the present and awaits you with such enormous grace and love, it needs you to participate without reserve.

I am fortunate to have such friends...such love...such faith in my life. May I have the ability to listen and to live a life that reflects so many blessings. May I have the grace to continue to "participate without reserve."

You cannot make this stuff up...

2009-02-09T10:15:00.002-05:00

For some inexplicable (and probably twisted) reason, I decided to see if the bully who made my life a living hell in 5th and 6th grades was on Facebook. Sure enough, she was...so I googled her married name to see if she showed up on the intertubes.

Not only did she show up--she has a flashy website. And get this: She makes her living as a "motivational speaker," speaking at schools and talking with kids about how to deal with...bullies.

Wonder if she ever tells them that she knows whereof she speaks?

Same as it ever was....

2009-02-08T11:48:00.005-05:00

I keep reading all these wonderful sermons drawn from today's Gospel reading:

Mark 1:29-31
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

But I confess that my reaction to this story is largely negative. I mean...honestly! Couldn't Jesus have given the woman a day off?! She's just had a near-death experience, been healed by the Lord of Creation, and the first thing she does is...do what women always do. Cook. Clean. Wait on people.

I guess we are supposed to believe that she was thrilled beyond belief to be made well, and was happy to return to her life of servitude. Feh, I say. Sometimes REAL service is giving a break to those who do it daily.

Apparently Jesus got that message by the time he told Martha that listening to the word of God was more important than cooking. (Luke 10:38-42) But (if my lectionary calculations are correct), we won't get that story until Sunday, July 20, 2010. In this case, the Good News is a long way off...

UPDATE: And, of course, Elizabeth Kaeton moves beyond the obvious (after I hit "Publish Post"). But I still feel grumpy about the whole thing...

Canine Capers

2009-01-28T11:18:00.007-05:00

Jane R. from Acts of Hope frequently checks in to see how my beloved Jasper the Wonder Dog is faring. So I finally got around to taking some new photos of him. These were taken last week, during our 4-inch snow:

Just call me "Snowface!"

Doesn't he have a lovely tail? He's very proud of it.

I took these this morning:

Mr. Curly-Whirly

This is Jasper in his favorite spot, looking out the window. The sofa cushion is permanently imprinted with the shape of his body.

Keeping the world safe from Evil Hordes of Satanic Squirrels

How far will you go?

2009-01-23T18:03:00.003-05:00

Some painful conversations with friends and neighbors this week have me asking myself some hard questions. Because you are such a smart and thoughtful group of readers, I thought I'd ask them of you and see what you have to say:

How far are you willing to go to support what you say you believe in?
How many of your advantages are you willing to give up to ensure justice for all people?
What would you sacrifice so that others might have a shot at a decent life? Convenience? Money? Possessions? Your life?
Would you be willing to enforce sacrifices on some to achieve what you thought was a greater good?

And, if you ARE willing to make some serious sacrifices (or impose them on others), what are the guidelines you use to make those hard decisions?

I don't want to give too many specifics about my personal Issue of the Week--it will only cloud my thinking about what are really important, life-defining questions. But I'd love to know what you think about those questions...

Hope is the thing with feathers...

2009-01-20T14:35:00.002-05:00

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

---Emily Dickinson

I am jealous of only one woman in Dear Friend's life--and she's been dead for 123 years.

His love affair with Emily Dickinson predates our acquaintance by over three decades. When I first met him, it was the joke in the parish that she was the only woman in the universe for whom he would break his vow never to marry again--and that he was planning to waltz her down the aisle in heaven the moment he got the chance. He has an icon of her in his bedroom. Dead or not, I consider her a formidable rival for his affections.

But I have loved her too. And today, her words have been ringing in my ears. "Hope is the thing with feathers" is a poem that I probably learned from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, more than 30 years ago. I was reminded of that poem as I watched the faces of so many Americans who had gathered on the Mall in Washington to witness and celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States.

Old and young. Rich and poor. Gay and straight. All the colors of the rainbow. I confess that it was a glorious melange that I had never even...hoped...to see in my lifetime.

As I listened to President Obama (how I love typing that!), I also remembered another of Emily's poems:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Today we heard important words about hope--but also about accountability and sacrifice. We heard our new President say that we will all be called upon to do our part in facing the difficult challenges that lie ahead.

The words have been said. It is time for us to make them live. Get busy, people.

My So-Called Life

2009-01-19T12:24:00.003-05:00

I haven't been posting much. The well is been dry lately--though I've been mulling posts on the awful situation in Gaza and some more on homelessness and community. But if you don't write it when it's bugging you, then chances are, it will already have been covered by better bloggers than yourself, and then you think "Why bother?" That's me lately....

And life has been full since Christmas. Here's a partial run-down:

Bad Things:

Work is crazy, thanks to Transition Mania.
One kid missed an entire week of school for a virus last week. The other missed Wednesday through Friday.
I have a cold.
They are predicting 2-6 inches of snow tomorrow. Ugh.
There are well over 200 entries in my Google Reader and my head is too stuffed up to comprehend them all. I will probably hit "Mark All As Read" and hope you will forgive me.
I have gotten myself involved in a local controversy over school assignments. Some neighbors are mad at me, and I am a bit angry myself. Race, class, and privilege all come into play---not easy conversations to have.
One of my grandmother's oldest friends was found dead in her yard the other day. My grandmother is feeling this loss deeply. At 83, every death is one closer to your own. Sigh.
A friend at church was recently diagnosed with an extremely serious illness and ended up having to have surgery last week. The long-term prognosis is grim.

Good Things:

Dear Friend and I had a lovely weekend together, after a long space between visits. Our engagement seems to have deepened our relationship in some lovely ways I could not have predicted.
Ruth gave me a nice award, which I will post when my head is not spinning. Thank you, my friend!
The Empress and I are having lunch together today and going to paint pottery together. In my altered state of consciousness, I have no idea what I will produce---but she is over-the-moon happy about our "Mommy and Me date," as she calls it.
Tomorrow marks a Whole New Day. Thanks be to God.

That's my life. How's yours?

I just feel the need to post this...

2009-01-03T15:20:00.005-05:00

Three years ago yesterday, my best friend took me to see a movie called The Family Stone. She had already seen it, and thought I might enjoy it.

If you haven't seen the movie, it's about a family at Christmastime--with all the misadventures you would expect. Oldest son returns to introduce his incredibly uptight fiancee to his very liberal family. Hijinks and hilarity ensue.

But there is a scene in that movie that broke my heart into a million pieces. One character, who has unexpectedly fallen in love with someone he's not supposed to, chases after her as she runs away in confusion. It is dark and he races madly through the snow, screaming her name and trying to catch her before he loses his chance at real love.

I sobbed bitterly in the dark of that theater because I knew that I would never have anyone in my life who would love me enough to race through the snow and the dark for me.

Miracles do happen.

Doxy Eats Crow for Christmas

2008-12-25T20:15:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas, my dear Invisible Friends! What a year this has been...elections, recessions, hospitalizations, oh my!

But always...ALWAYS...there has been hope, love, and friendship. I can't thank you enough for all the support and the prayers I have gotten from those of you who come here and read my scribblings. I count a number of you as real-life friends as a result, and that is a wonderful Christmas blessing.

I am a lucky woman.

****************************************

Luck does not always come in the forms you expect, however.

Not all that long ago, I wrote a long post on my distrust of the institution of marriage (The Triumph of Hope Over Experience). I know I said I would never, ever, EVER get married again.

I meant it, too.

But on December 6th--the Feast of St. Nicholas--Dear Friend got down on both knees and asked me to marry him.

If you had seen the look on his face, you couldn't have turned him down either...

We had to ask the Bishop for permission, which is one reason I didn't announce the news sooner. Bishop Curry has not only given his permission--he has offered to perform the ceremony. That was a true stroke of grace for me--a sign that my past relationship mistakes are not beyond redemption.

It still bothers me immensely that I have tried and failed in the past--I wanted to celebrate my 65th anniversary, as Dear Friend's parents were able to do before his father died last year. "Third time's a charm!" is funny, but painful. It is not what I wanted.

But Dear Friend is who I want. He is who I wanted all along...I just kept thinking that no one gets the total package in one person, so I settled for what I thought was enough. Passion the first time. Stability the second.

Imagine my surprise when I realized you could have passion, commitment, friendship--and God--all in the same relationship...

Dear Friend is the whole ball of wax. He is loving, kind, thoughtful, brilliant, funny, and beautiful--inside and out. He loves God and he loves me--and he is open and candid about both of those things to everyone who will listen. From the moment I met him, he made me feel special. I will spend whatever time God blesses us with trying to return the favor.

We will be married Memorial Day Weekend, when we will also celebrate his 60th birthday.

************************************************

You may now commence your chorus of "I told you so's!"

I deserve that.

But in the midst of happily eating all that crow, I will beg your prayers--for Dear Friend and myself, our combined five children, and our exes. Love and hope we have in abundance. Pray for grace, patience, and mercy if you will. We will need them all.

Finally, I ask you to pray for those who may not yet take this step--or who are grieving attempts to undo the marriages they have already made. Dear Friend and I are ever mindful of the fact that there are many who want to celebrate their own triumph of hope and love and cannot. In our joy, we do not forget their pain--and we will not rest until all who want to make loving, faithful commitments can do so both legally and in the Episcopal Church.

And now, I'm off to start eating. I hope your Christmas dinner is as pleasant as mine!

Waiting

2008-12-20T20:15:00.005-05:00

He is waiting—this small man with the Jamaican accent and the slight cough. He is waiting for what will happen next in his life.

He is tired and ill from sleeping out in the weather, and when he speaks there is a sense of numbness in his voice. He is waiting, but only God knows for what.

I am rendered silent in the face of this waiting. What can I say to a man who has no home?

His name is William, and he left his native Jamaica after a string of 10 devastating hurricanes--only to lose most of his family and all of his possessions in Hurricane Katrina. In the years since Katrina, his life has gone from bad to worse.

He talks quietly of his losses. The job that no longer exists. The woman he loved who was murdered, and the woman he tried to love, but couldn’t--too much pain and anger coursing through both of their veins. The move from “home” to the streets.

I touch his arm lightly, and look him in the eyes as he speaks. It is all I have to offer.

He is matter-of-fact about these things. He does not whine or complain. He just explains…and he waits. For someone to give him the work he longs to do. For a place to call his own. For someone who will be able to love away the pain and the memories.

And I am shamed into silence...knowing that I will go home with Dear Friend when this evening is finished. Knowing that my work--the work I feel blessed to do--will begin again in the morning, and that, tonight, I will be warm and sheltered and loved. Knowing that my waiting is over.

***************************

I doubt I will ever see William again, but our brief time together at a Room in the Inn dinner has given him lodging in my mind and heart. He has been my living, breathing Advent lesson, and I have been unable to forget our conversation.

Part of me wishes that I could...

That’s because I ran full tilt into the Wall of Doubt again as my conversation with William went on. This happens frequently when I must put a face to issues of poverty and social inequality.

It is one thing to talk about “homelessness” or “the homeless”--it is quite another to look into the weary eyes of a human being who tells you that he slept in a bus shelter last night because he had nowhere else to go.

The Wall of Doubt is what I encounter every time I am faced with the failure of common decency--and let’s be honest and acknowledge that this is what is at the root of homelessness and abject poverty. These things are based in the failure of human beings to love and care for one another in the most basic ways.

That Wall is the rock on which my faith is tested--the stone that threatens to shatter what little confidence I have that there is a good and benevolent God in this universe.

Much better minds than mine have wrestled with the theodicy problem through the ages. I am under no illusion that I will be the one to solve the puzzle. But the problem takes on new urgency as I consider the fact that there is nothing I can do to help William.

Or is there?

********************

My feeling of helplessness drove me to write to my friend Under There (UT), who blogs at Under the Overpasses. UT runs a shelter for homeless people—and he writes beautifully about those he serves.

I wrote to him about my experience with William and confessed my angst over the encounter:

There are no religious platitudes that will apply here--I've never felt so inadequate in my life. I had absolutely nothing to offer him, except my prayers. But I have to say--that felt REALLY hollow. What good are prayers when you don’t have a job or a roof over your head? When everyone you love is gone?

How do you handle that? At least you have resources to offer--I had nothing but a willingness to listen and some totally inadequate words...

Do we do more harm than good by going to hang out with these folks for a few hours? Do we just remind them that we can go home after dinner...and they can't? I think if I were them, I would be so bitter about that---but I also know that many homeless people feel invisible, and just being treated like a person, rather than a social problem, makes a difference...

I don't want to sound like a guilty liberal (though I guess I feel like one). I just want to know--what can I do that will REALLY make a difference? I told William that I would pray for him every day--and I will keep that promise. But what else can I do?

Thanks, and bless you for reading this far...

Doxy

*************************************

UT was kind enough to write me back, and we have engaged in a conversation about helpful responses to homelessness. He has graciously give his permission for me to share his words with you (I have edited some things out for brevity and I have interwoven our conversations to try and give a coherent overview of what he had to say):

You have just discovered why a ministry of presence is so difficult. It's natural for the problem-solver mode to kick in and to say "here, let me help you." The gift of simply listening, as powerless and painfully inadequate to help as it made you feel, was a true gift to that man.

Most of the people trained to help him locate the disappearing resources he seeks are overwhelmed, overworked, and considering another career because of how impossible the task is. When he walks into any social service agency he will be another number to get the facts from and then "next..."

Simply being present and actually giving a damn about what he was saying is incredibly important. Some people on the streets go for weeks without actually being listened to. Everyone is too busy doing good to listen--or the ones who do listen, do it out of guilt and are always sneaking peeks at their watches.

The survival skills of people on the street are incredible. They can tell when someone is feigning interest and when it is real. One of our local social workers at the hospital told me about a lady who, when she asked her what she wanted, replied, "I just want someone to listen to me bitch about what is going on." Pretty profound and honest. Heck, sometimes I want that.

You should feel inadequate. That is normal. Liberal guilt is not always a such a bad thing. Remember that many of our conservative friends feel none at all. I seriously doubt that William felt bitter about anything. If there was someone there who felt that way, he or she probably stayed away from conversation. You may have thought that person was just shy or quiet. But your Jamaican friend knew why you were there and he opened up to you and shared his story. Instead of saying, "Lady, will you find me a job?", he asked you to listen, and it sounds like you did that...You did not show up and run roughshod all over his person, by glibly saying, "bless you, I am praying for you," and then disappear. You gave him your presence.

Yes, on one level, it is not enough—-but on the other hand, neither is the dehumanizing social work that most people experience. He deserves help and you gave one form---now someone or some group needs to give him the other kind...

The day labor thing is a curse...Most of it was based on a very fragile bubble. Most day labor is landscaping or construction-related around new homes and existing wealth. When the luxury houses stopped selling here, the day labor was one of the first things to go. The faltering economy has impacted those who have no commitment from their employers except “Maybe tomorrow” in a very hard way.

There is a sort of word-of-mouth aspect to day labor. People hear from a “friend who knows someone related to someone who heard it from a reliable source” that there is work in this town or in this region. They chase the labor, and often it has dried up before they get there.

Day labor is a great thing temporarily, but unless we train people with GED/literacy and job skills programs, they are most vulnerable. Unfortunately, too many of my guests--immigrants, laborers with low educational backgrounds, people with felonies, etc.--are caught in the cycle of never-ending day labor employment. They deserve better because they want to work.

You learned something very valuable--and, dear Doxy, with the soap box you have built, you should do something about it. Your experience should be voiced in a parish newsletter, blogs, and whatever other official forums you have…people need to know that the homeless are not lazy. They are desperate for work. Most of the ones I know are. Your Jamaican friend would love to have the opportunity to work his way out of crisis with dignity. The number of lazy homeless people is no greater than the number of lazy people in society at large.

**************************************************

I asked UT what he thought that Christians should do to address the issue of homelessness. Here is what he said [emphases are mine]:

I think what I’m trying to get at is the one sermon I can never seem to shut up about--getting the church to lavish its treasures onto the world for the kingdom of God.

Of course, by that, I do not really mean just money. In my humble opinion, the real jewels of the church are the actual people and the gifts they have. We are pretty good at releasing funds for charity, but we never really get to address the root causes of the symptoms that charity relieves.

Justice really demands that we do more than provide overnight shelters and soup kitchens. That does not mean we do away with crisis assistance, but from my perspective (admittedly a basement-level perspective), it seems that we must recognize their limitations and never let them become substitutes for structural changes to remedy the root causes.

I think we need to revamp our existing technologies of compassion to include the brains and the talents of people in our pews who would never volunteer to go down and serve a meal at a shelter. That does not necessarily mean that they have hearts of stone. Their God-given passions may lie somewhere else. They may have gifts that, unfortunately, have only been valued in the secular business world. I have seen what can happen in places like Atlanta when you give bankers, lawyers, architects, real estate professionals and business people a “kingdom vision.” It's like the Holy Spirit kicks them in the ass and says, "Those are your spiritual gifts, doofus--stop feeling second best to the clergy and social workers and get out and make a difference with what you have."

The thrill of discovering "This is what I was meant to do, and I enjoy doing it" makes all the difference in the world. I think the fashionable term for what I have in mind is "social entrepreneurship," but on a much more simplistic scale. Justice demands that we find a way to provide your friend at the RITI with opportunity. He deserves the opportunity to have the dignity of working his way out of the famine he is in. It just seems that is right and fair, or in other words, justice...

Whenever I imagine things like nonprofit day labor projects that employ the homeless, while providing community improvement for poverty stricken areas that are crying out for hope, I know that it means time and effort and it is simply easier to write a check to the local soup kitchen to feed the homeless.

I also know that I--like most clergy types--really do not know how to operate a business and make it thrive--but our parishes are usually packed full of people who do. We need to tap them and give them a vision and then turn their imagination and know-how loose on creating real opportunities. If we do not, charity--without tangible hope for escaping the need for charity--can sap the human spirit by demeaning people who come to resent it as a way of life.

I guess what I am getting at is creating hope based not simply on warm fuzzy feelings, but real jobs that lead to better opportunities out of homelessness.

People want to work. My guests will do back breaking work and come in feeling proud of themselves about it. You may not be able to help your Jamaican friend directly, but that does not mean that you cannot do something. I hope his story continues to percolate through your consciousness and I hope it finds its way to your writer's voice. You are known for stirring things up every now and then, right?

I am sorry, I hate to give you a sermon about it. I am proud that you felt like crap over the helplessness of the situation. It means you are fully human and you have a conscience. I am also more pleased than you can know that you listened to his story. Not many people are willing to do that. In short, Doxy, glad to know you.

Peace, UT

***************************************************

UT was way too kind to me. I recognize his desire to encourage people in their generous impulses. It’s all about baby steps.

But I am coming to realize that baby steps are not enough anymore. Jesus didn’t say take baby steps. Jesus said “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” Jesus said “When they sue you for your coat, give them your cloak as well.” Jesus said “Turn the other cheek,” and “Love your enemies.”

The way I read it, Jesus did not believe in baby steps. Jesus was all about real sacrifice. And I wonder what I am willing to sacrifice for William? What will I give up so that he can have a roof over his head and work that will grant him dignity?

Do I really believe anything I say I believe?

As I type this, I am sitting in a warm house, and Dear Friend is bustling about doing whatever he is doing at the moment. There is plenty of food in the fridge, and there is a pile of Christmas presents on the dining room table. I am safe, and loved, and sheltered.

I will write and I will pray. I will do my best to “stir things up.” But it is not enough.

Because somewhere, out in the cold and wet North Carolina night, William is waiting...

*********************
Update--UT has posted some additional thoughts on this issue: My Slow and Steady Conversion.

Gambling for the Risk-Averse

2008-12-05T14:58:00.013-05:00

I have never been much of a gambler. The few times I have been to Las Vegas or Reno, I take $10 worth of nickels and I get two cups and head for the nickel slot machines. I put my 200 nickels in Cup#1, and I use Cup#2 to catch my winnings. When Cup#1 is empty, I quit. Period.

I often leave with more than $10, but I am never going to get rich this way.

Small risks equal small rewards.

**************************************************

I am not a gambler, and I have always been a world-class worrier. My mind has always been able to go from zero to my own impending (and terribly painful) death to total annihilation of everyone on the planet in about three seconds flat.

It is worse when I contemplate dangers to those I love.

To be honest, my descent into madness and my close brush with death three years ago left me with no fear of my own end. God Herself spoke to me (or so I believe), and the experience was one of overwhelming love and concern. So I no longer worry about death--nor do I worry that I am gambling on my salvation or my relationship with God when I fail to live up to Jesus' call to "be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). God was kind enough to relieve me of those fears.

But I still fear losing those I love. And last week, I was reminded of how deep that fear goes.

***************************************

Seeing Dear Friend hooked up to IVs...watching the concerned looks on the faces of those caring for him...listening to him moaning in pain in his sleep---I was gripped by my old, deep terror of loss. In the depths of the night---folded uncomfortably in one of those chairs they TELL you converts into a bed---I could only cry out my fears in prayer.

So I prayed. And I took great comfort in knowing that other people--all over the world--were praying too. If you prayed for us, please accept my heartfelt "Thank you!"

And I thought. A lot. About life and love. About why we make ourselves vulnerable to love when we KNOW we will be hurt---or will cause pain ourselves.

Why do we gamble, when we know we will lose?

That question has no easy answer. Most of the time, we cope by tucking our fears in a deep, dark place and then we try to pretend they don't exist. We pretend that we, and those we love, will live forever. That we will always be healthy and whole. That if we just do what we are "supposed" to do, nothing bad will ever happen to us.

Sometimes we try and close ourselves off to the possibility of pain and loss, and we refuse to gamble at all.

******************************************

As a result of my natural aversion to risk, I very nearly chose to be child-free--because I sensed the kind of vulnerability to which I would be opening myself if I had children. My great-grandmother was 88 when she died, and to her last breath, she worried about my grandmother. I knew that motherhood would not end when the baby turned 18--and I wasn't sure I was up for the job.

And, to be honest, when it came to vulnerability...motherhood was every bit as bad as I was afraid it would be. It was worse, even. I worried incessantly about everything. Would my babies be born normal? Would they dies of SIDS? Would they choke to death on a grape or a piece of hot dog, or fall out a window?

Each age brings its own terrors--and I haven't even gotten to the stage where my kids are driving or dating! Sex, drugs, and rock and roll will be knocking on our door soon enough---and I expect the sleepless nights I endured when they were infants to return, as I wait up for the sound of the car in the driveway.

But always--ALWAYS--there is the joy of loving my beautiful children. This is what I almost did not factor into the equation--the potency of the joy of love. My vivid imagination sought to prepare me for all the awful things that can happen in life--but it could never prepare me for that joy...the ultimate gambling pay-off.

*************************************************

I thought of all of that in the nights in the hospital, when I lay awake listening to the beeping of IV pumps and the squeak of the nurses' shoes on the tile floors. I thought of how many times in my life that I have contemplated closing myself off to love and joy for fear of what might happen if I took the risk and opened my heart.

The older I get, the harder it becomes to take that risk.

I thought of that, too, when I looked at Dear Friend (who, it has to be said, is the only man I've ever seen who could still manage to look good in a hospital johnny). What am I thinking, to open my heart again to someone who could break it?

But it is too late for that, of course. Just as it was too late the instant I got pregnant with my children. The heart will break---that is a given. But it will also know joy and love, if I let it.

***************************************

Advent is a time when I am forced to contemplate that risk-taking. Forced to recognize that we live in faith that there will eventually be a light in the darkness. We have no guarantees that our hope will be rewarded--but we keep hoping anyway.

Ultimately, I believe that we are gamblers because we are made in the image of God. God--who gambled on a crazy experiment called "humanity." Who gambled that we would respond to Her message of love and joy, and poured Herself into human form to walk among us. Who appeared to lose that gamble in the shadow of the cross--but came up with sevens in the final throw.

To be truly human--and to manifest that spark of the divine within us--we must gamble everything on life, love, and joy. I have come to believe that is what Jesus meant when he said:

Luke 9: 23—25
..."If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”

What was Jesus' cross, if not to make himself vulnerable? To experience pain and love, life and death--of his own free will?

So I will put it all on the table. I will "deny myself" by ignoring my fear and desire to protect myself from pain and loss, and I will "take up the cross" of loving wastefully--without holding anything back. I will risk my heart and my life to follow my Savior who gave up everything to be fully human and vulnerable to all that flesh is heir to...

The House will always win---of this I am sure. And, at the same time, the payouts to the gamblers will be extravagant.

I'm betting on it.

World AIDS Day 2008

2008-12-01T10:32:00.002-05:00

I think of them sometimes…all those beautiful, talented young men, dead long before their time. Ken and Paul. Bill and Michael. Freddie and Randy. Names I knew from books and the news…and Mark, whom I knew from childhood.

Mark was in his mid-20s when he died of pneumocystis pneumonia—those who saw him in his last days said he looked like he was in his 70s. He was arch and funny, and his family covered up the cause of his death because, in the late 1980s in Memphis, you didn’t admit that your son had died of AIDS.

There were women too, of course. Not as many—but those who lived with HIV and died of AIDS in the first 15 years of the epidemic suffered a great deal more than they should have. In those early days of the AIDS epidemic, the diagnosis criteria were based on the symptoms exhibited by men. Women often presented with serious gynecological symptoms, which weren’t included in the medical guidelines—for treatment, for clinical trials, or for declaring people eligible for social services.

So much suffering. So much death…

Today is World AIDS Day. I could give you lots of statistics that would probably make your eyes glaze over. If you want those statistics, all you have to do is use the search function for my blog and type in “HIV.”

But what I really want to do today is to remember those who have died, recognize those who are living with HIV/AIDS, and pray for the day when AIDS is a footnote in the history books—along with polio and smallpox.

And, always, I want to encourage you to be tested for HIV. Even if you think you have no risk factors. ESPECIALLY if you think you have no risk factors. (Check my sidebar for links that will connect you to an HIV testing location near you.)

Because the only way we are going to stop this epidemic is to ensure that those who are infected know it, and can take precautions to prevent spreading the virus to others. This means we have to destroy the stigma that surrounds HIV/AIDS by making HIV testing routine for everyone, so that taking an HIV test is not some admission that you’ve been “doing something nasty.”

Today, I remember Mark and his family. I pray for those I know who are living with HIV.

And I pray that all of us will act wisely for ourselves and our partners. That we will have compassion for those who are infected, or affected by, HIV. That we will be the hands and feet of God in the world. That next World AIDS Day, I will be writing a different post…

Update

2008-11-29T18:16:00.002-05:00

Thanks so much for all your prayers! Dear Friend is definitely better this evening. His hand is still terribly swollen, but not as bad as this morning, and the red streaks have faded from his forearm. The hospital staff has done a great job of managing his pain, and he's even started cracking jokes again--so I am breathing a sigh of relief.

You are the best, folks. As many of you know, I struggle mightily with the theology of prayer--but it has been an inexpressible comfort to know that so many of you are praying for us. Thank you for being the face of God in my world.

Love,
Doxy

Standing in the need of prayer...

2008-11-29T08:34:00.002-05:00

We don't sing that song in the Episcopal Church (not that I know of, anyway), but it came to me this morning.

I had to take Dear Friend to the Emergency Room at midnight last night. He had come to town to spend Thanksgiving with the children and me, and, over the course of the last couple of days, he developed a very serious infection in his right hand--which is now so swollen it looks like something out of a horror movie. The pain is intense. He was admitted to the hospital about 4:00 a.m., where they are currently pumping him full of IV antibiotics and morphine. He is likely to be there for a couple of days.

He is due to preach on Sunday, so he is NOT happy about this turn of events. His sense of duty is so strong that sometimes it overrides his reason. I am running around behind his back to tell the nurses they need to be firm about the fact that he is not going anywhere until he is well. (I'm very firm about that to his face, just in case you were wondering...)

Please pray for him--not only that he will get well (natch), but that he will recognize the need to be good to himself and to accept the help of others.

And, if I may be so bold, I ask for you prayers for me, too. He means so very much to me, and this taps into all my worst fears about losing him, just when I've finally found him.

Superior Scribbling?

2008-11-20T11:57:00.003-05:00

Well, Ruth, at Ruth's Visions and Revisions, has dubbed me a Superior Scribbler, and I am most honored...

I feel a real kinship with Ruth. We are both professional writer/editors, and I think we share a passion for education and matters of faith. I wish I had her skills with knitting and roses, but it's nice to enjoy the beautiful visions and labors of others without the frustrations. Thanks for the vote of confidence, my friend.

Here are the rules:

Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to this post, which explains The Award.
Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Here are some of my favorite bloggers:

FranIAm, of course---Fran's blog is always the first thing I read when I open my Reader. As the Quakers say, "Friend speaks for me"--and she does it with such heart and eloquence.

Closeted Pastor--Though we've never met, Cecilia is near and dear to my heart. In ways that are not obvious, her "coming out" story has real resonance for me, so I await each new post with bated breath.

Feral Christianity--This one is new to me, and it's a doozy. Duck is an amazing writer and thinker. Check her out.

Kirkepiscatoid--I am jealous of the extremely thoughtful posts that Kirk does on a variety of subjects. Kirk is on my Short List of Bloggers I'd Like to Have a Beer With.

Shuck and Jive--Another I never miss. John is a powerful and articulate advocate for Christianity---but it ain't your parents' version...

Find one you haven't read, and go be amused, enlightened, or challenged.

The Lessons of History

2008-11-11T16:03:00.001-05:00

I've been on a self-imposed Internet fast for most of the last week. I spent so much time obsessively hitting blogs and news sites in the days leading up to the election that I felt positively poisoned by the news and analysis overload.

So last weekend, I decided to read a book. A REAL book. With covers and pages and everything.

That book was written by my friend Joel Haas. Joel is one of the most creative people I've ever known. He is a sculptor by profession, but he is also a storyteller--a first-rate raconteur. He comes by this honestly, as his father spent Joel's childhood entertaining Joel and his brothers with a whole universe of make-believe characters who had wonderful adventures.

(Hearing Joel's stories about his father always make me hang my head in shame--I couldn't make up a story for my kids if my life depended on it...)

Joel's whole family history is fascinating. He grew up in Charlotte, NC--where he lived between the Billy Graham family on one side and the John Shelby Spong family on the other. That, as he says, "explains a lot." (Doxy's Note: Joel corrects me about this in the comments. It was his dad who grew up between the Grahams and the Spongs. I still think my version is funnier. ;-)

Joel's father came from a German Jewish family, and Joel's novel, Adlerhof, is based loosely on his paternal family history. It is the story of two halves of the Adler family--one set of individuals who make their way to North Carolina in the late 19th century, and the others, who are forced by circumstances and disastrous choices to remain behind in Germany. (You can read more about Adlerhof at Joel's blog about the novel.)

It is a sobering book, as any tale about the Wilmington race riots and the Holocaust (no link necessary) must be--and I recommend it to you. There are scenes in it that I will remember forever. In fact, I finished it just before Dear Friend's Saturday Mass, and I spent most of my time during the service praying over how awful we humans are to one another.

Joel's novel was doubly poignant for me for me this week, as I mourn the passage of California's Proposition 8. In the wake of so much finger-pointing and so many recriminations about the result of that vote, Joel's book reminded me of what happens when a minority group (whether it be Jews, gays, or African Americans) is blamed for all the ills in a civilization. It reminded me of how craven and cowardly people can be when those in power use their might (and their money) to intimidate--and how "little people" will often use whatever power they have to trample others.

It reminded me of how easy it is to demonize others and to convince yourself that you are doing right in the bargain.

On this day, 70 years after the Holocaust began, I see few signs that we've learned much. Oh, sure...we just had a peaceful election, and--as long as you don't count Gitmo--we don't have any concentration camps.

But we still demonize those who differ from us. We still rush to put our boots on the necks of others, so that we can feel that we are in control. We still live in a world where we must rely on the threat of punishment--rather than the inherent goodness of the human heart--to keep people from hurting others.

As I said before, I live in hope. But that hope is sorely tested on occasion. I do not understand how people can sit by and do nothing when others are being persecuted merely for who they are. I do not understand how people can actively participate in persecuting others. (And let the reader understand, "persecution" does NOT mean "disagreeing with your position." It means taking away the rights, freedoms, livelihood, or personal safety of others.)

I particularly do not understand how people can do so in the name of Christ.

Joel's book was a powerful reminder that we must always be vigilant in the defense of the vulnerable in our midst. That evil only wins when good people stand by and do nothing--or participate in it out of fear or manipulation.

It was also a reminder that there is a price to pay for standing up for what is right.

This is the hard part--the part we don't like to acknowledge...that protecting our freedoms can require great personal sacrifice. On this Veteran's Day, we acknowledge the sacrifice of those who have gone before us, as we honor those members of our military who paid the price for our freedoms.

"Freedom isn't free," as the saying goes---and it isn't only those in uniform who fight for it. I think of Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. I think of Jonathan Daniels and, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I also think of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns who went to jail and endured being tortured so that women could have the vote. And I think of the gay and transgender rioters who fought back against the brutality of the New York City police force at the Stonewall Riots, starting the modern gay rights movement in the process--and the members of ACT UP, who fought to get access to lifesaving drugs for those living with AIDS.

Today is a day to remember the brutal lessons of history--and to pledge ourselves to ensuring that we do not repeat them. It is a day to ask yourself:

What prejudices do *I* hold, and what am I going to do to remedy them?
When have *I* participated in violence (rhetorical, physical, economic, or spiritual) against others, and what am I going to do to avoid committing violence in the future?
Just what sacrifices am*I* willing to make to usher in the Kingdom of God in the here and now? (No fair demanding that others make sacrifices you are not willing to make yourself...)

May God bless all those who struggle for freedom and justice, and may God guide those of us who have so much of it to extend it graciously to others.

Why I Vote the Way I Do--The Final Answer

2008-11-04T16:13:00.006-05:00

(For those of you joining the party late, here's the Prologue, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.)

I had made a list of at least a dozen more things that cause me to vote progressive--most of them issue-specific (war, healthcare, taxes, public health policy, etc.).

But at the end of this historic election day, there is really only one more important reason that I vote the way I do.

I live in hope.

Jesus and all God's angels give the same message: "Fear not!" To me, progressive politics reflect that message.

I don't want to live in fear my whole life--and it seems to me that so much of conservative politics is about fear. Fear that someone, somewhere, is plotting to take away what I have. Fear of change. Fear of difference. Fear of "them."

I refuse to live in fear. I live in hope.

I live in hope of liberty and justice for ALL. Regardless of your sex. Regardless of your skin color. Regardless of your creed (or lack thereof). Regardless of your sexual orientation.

I live in hope that we can come together and build a better future for our children--a future where all people have their basic needs (food, shelter, healthcare, education) met...and none are left behind.

(You parents will get this one. I live in hope of ohana.)

I live in hope that people will grant freely to their fellow citizens the rights, liberties, and responsibilities that they want for themselves and their children.

I live in hope that we, as a nation, will one day live into the promise that we Episcopalians make every time we renew our baptismal vows: to strive for justice and peace among all people, and [to] respect the dignity of every human being.

As John Lennon once wrote, "You may say I'm a dreamer." And I will acknowledge the truth of that statement. But I make no apology for it.

In the end, I come back to my first reason for voting the way I do. I am a Christian. I believe Jesus when he says "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10b). I take seriously the need to ensure an "abundant life" for all of God's children.

I believe him when he says "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) That means that I cannot claim privileges or benefits for myself that I will not grant to others.

I believe him when he says "for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'...Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'(Matthew 25:35-36, 40) There is nothing in that verse that allows me to decide who is "worthy" of help. "Give!", "Care!", "Visit!" Jesus commands. I have no choice but to follow...

I live in hope. I vote progressive.

There endeth the lesson. Thanks for reading.

What he said...

2008-11-03T12:59:00.002-05:00

From conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan:

The world will soon remember why it resents America as well as loves it. But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.

But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.

Let the people say "Amen!"

H/T to FranIAm

Why I Vote the Way I Do--Part 4

2008-10-31T19:31:00.006-04:00

Doxy's Note: Another long one. Sigh....

(For those of you joining the party late, here's the Prologue, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

Up until now, I have focused on macro reasons about why I vote the way I do. This post is more specific--but it is one that speaks to my heart---and I think it is critical to our future as a nation.

I hope to have at least one more post before Election Day is over, but we'll see. There are many other issues that affect my vote--and I may keep talking about this even after the election. I have found that thinking deeply about the reasons I vote the way I do is a very useful exercise...I encourage all of you to try it.

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I am passionate about education. I’ve done a lot of things in my life—including teaching in both private and public institutions of higher education. But probably the most important and eye-opening thing I ever did was to volunteer in my neighborhood school before I even had children.

My ex and I bought our first house in a revitalizing urban area in Nashville in the mid-1990s. When we first lived there, we could sit in the back yard and watch our neighbors doing drug deals in the street. A week after we brought our infant son home from the hospital, an angry resident at the “boarding house” (i.e., rooms for rent by the week) across the street set off a pipe bomb in the front yard because he was angry with his landlord.

(That same boarding house was briefly home to mass murderer Paul Reid—who, before he was arrested, tried, and convicted for killing seven people and sentenced to death—occasionally stopped and spoke kindly to my grandmother as she rocked the Baby Emperor on our front porch swing.)

All of that aside, the neighborhood was a wonderful community of people who cared deeply about the area and worked hard to improve it. I served on the neighborhood association board, and my interest was in schools—I had worked as an education analyst for the Tennessee General Assembly for several years, and had a solid knowledge base on education policy, funding, and data. I knew that the middle school in my neighborhood was failing—in large measure because 98% of the kids in it were in the free- or reduced-price meal (FRM) program. (There are both free- or reduced-price breakfast and lunch programs—I’ll use the one acronym to include them both.)

If you don’t know about it, the FRM program is open to kids living at 130%-185% of the Federal poverty line, which in 2008-2009 is $21,200/year for a family of four (in 1996-97, it was probably under $16K/year). For many children, the meals they get at school are by far the most nutritious food they will receive in a day. For some children, they are the ONLY meals they will get.

(Think about what this means to kids over the weekend and on holidays and summer breaks…and if you are moved by the hunger they face, donate to the Backpack Buddies program at the Interfaith Food Shuttle or to Feeding America in your own home town.)

FRM percentage is THE indicator to look for if children in a school are not doing well—it is an almost-perfect marker for underperforming students. Schools with more than 50% of their students on FRMs are almost guaranteed to have a significant percentage (if not an outright majority) of kids who don’t perform to standards set by either their local school boards or the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

Most of those kids are Black or Latino. I point this out because race and class have been conflated in the public’s mind. People talk about minority kids who don’t do well in school—and it’s true that minority kids are hugely at risk for academic failure—but they are at risk because they are disproportionately poor, not because of the color of their skin.

Why do I tell you all this stuff? Because my experience with Lockeland Middle School—and with the racism and poverty that led to its poor performance—has shaped my politics and the way I vote in profound ways.

(Lockeland was converted into a magnet elementary school sometime around 2000. There is no one left on the faculty who was there when I volunteered.)

The principal and staff at Lockeland were, quite frankly, incredulous when I showed up on their doorstep. I was White, upper-middle class (in education, if not in income), and hugely pregnant with the Emperor. I had no child in their school—and wouldn’t have one in any Nashville Public School for at least 6 years. They weren’t sure what to do with me at first.

But they quickly got over their surprise (and probably suspicion) and put me to work. I helped them re-start a moribund Parent-Teacher Association. I helped them apply for a grant from the state legislature to repair a room in the school that had been destroyed by arson and to replace the equipment in it—the first grant I ever wrote and got funded. I sold cookies and cupcakes at Back-to-School night to raise money for supplies and books.

And I listened in shock as I heard some teachers talk openly and disparagingly about their students’ abilities and their futures. Watched the “soft bigotry of low expectations” (about the ONLY thing—other than the need to fund HIV/AIDS programs worldwide—on which George W. Bush and I have ever agreed) in action. Watched the principal and other staff work their asses off to try and overcome the societal influences and inequalities that stacked the deck against these CHILDREN—and fail, so often.

I was radicalized by my experience in that school.

I learned that segregating poor children into their own schools was a recipe for academic failure—and a prescription for lifelong poverty. I learned that parents who are too overwhelmed with trying to keep a roof over their children’s heads and food in their bellies don’t have the energy to fight for better schools for their kids—or even to come to PTA meetings. I learned that parents who were poorly educated themselves too often do not appreciate how important education is to their children’s futures—and thus do not encourage academic achievement at home. I learned that parents whose native language is not English are doubly disadvantaged. I learned that not all teachers have their students' best interests at heart.

Mostly, I learned that when there is no community responsibility for educating children, only White, middle- and upper-middle class children get the education they need.

Like many Southern cities, Nashville did not respond positively to desegregation. The movers and shakers in Nashville removed their children from public schools and built their own network of educational enclaves that were “safe” from an influx of poor, mostly Black, children. Once that happened, there was no one left in the Halls of Power to push for better schools—with predictable results.

I vote for progressive politicians and policies because I am convinced of the need to have schools that are integrated—both racially and economically. I have seen the results of not doing so, and they are ugly. In fact, I will go so far as to say that educational segregation is a metastatic cancer at the heart of our democracy.

I am also convinced of the need for accountability for educational results--and the need for us to be accountable for supporting public schools adequately. NCLB was originally supported by a wide coalition of education advocacy groups—in large measure because it required school districts to be transparent about their achievements with different racial/ethnic groups and students living in poverty.

Before NCLB, school districts had been able to hide how badly they were doing with their poor and minority students by offering aggregate achievement statistics. If a district had a predominantly White, middle-class student body, its generally higher test scores tended to mask academic failures among struggling kids—which allowed districts to continue ignoring those children with special educational needs caused by racism and/or poverty. NCLB blew that shameful closet door off the hinges.

Where NCLB fell apart was in mandating student achievement without providing the resources necessary to make it happen—and in treating schools like factories that can produce widgets to spec.

Children, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, are not widgets. Factories that make widgets can cull and destroy widgets that aren’t up to spec. Humans shouldn’t be able to do that to one another, but we do. We are effectively treating poor kids as if they are widgets—we are destroying their hopes for the future and casting them on the economic garbage heap when we do not support public education adequately.

You can talk all you want about how it takes more than just money to educate children, and you can also talk all you want about “throwing good money after bad”—but the truth is that education is ENORMOUSLY expensive and in order to fix what is wrong in our public schools it will take community will, collective responsibility for outcomes, and lots of money.

For most school districts, approximately 80% percent of their annual budget goes for teacher salaries and benefits. When you talk about “throwing money at education,” you are talking about whether you are going to pay teachers decently—and about how many children are going to be in a given classroom.

You want smaller class sizes, and better-educated, more experienced teachers? Open your wallet.

Most school district budgets are based on property taxes—which is great if you live in an area where there is a lot of valuable property than can be taxed. If you live in a poverty-stricken or rural area, or an area with lots of untaxable property (e.g., military bases, businesses that have been given tax breaks to come to, or remain in, an area), you may be SOL.

Of course, lots of people believe that they shouldn’t have to pay higher property taxes for schools. If you send your kids to private school (as my family did me), or you don’t have children (or grandchildren) in the public schools, you may think it’s not your responsibility to fund education for other people’s children.

I will tell you, loudly and unequivocally, that you are as wrong as it is possible to be wrong.

(I will also say that I think property taxes are a piss-poor way to fund schools and yet another guarantee that the “haves” will continue to have. Yet another post….)

Our future as a nation depends on a well-educated citizenry. And by “well-educated,” I do NOT mean kids who can fill in a bubble on a standardized test. I mean citizens who can think and reason and ask questions. I mean citizens who understand their responsibilities qua citizens—and who do not shirk their responsibilities to educate themselves about issues, vote, communicate with their elected officials, serve on juries, pay taxes, and be actively involved in the common life of their communities.

Public schools are the only way to get that educated citizenry. They are open to all—regardless of race, color, creed, or income. Public schools are our best hope of leveling the playing field and ensuring that all Americans know the things they need to know to be good citizens—and productive workers. If you want a stable society, supporting public schools should be at the top of your list of things to do.

And that’s another reason I vote progressive. Because for at least the last 25 years (and really more like 40, since desegregation), there has been a concerted effort by conservatives to undermine public schools and the public’s confidence in them. There is a long and painful history of racism and classism in that story—and the end result has been to ensure that millions of American children have received substandard educations.

To me, this undermines democracy and endangers the future of our nation. So I vote for those who support public education.

(And I ALWAYS support bond referenda for schools. Just in case you were wondering…)

Write to Marry--Save the Heterosexual Females!

2008-10-29T06:32:00.004-04:00

How could same-sex marriage possibly affect heterosexual marriage?

Well...if same-sex marriage had been available in 1987 (when I got married the first time), it probably would have saved me from one divorce.

Maybe P., who was gay, might have been able to envision a marriage to his long-term partner (17 years and counting...) and not put both of us through the wrenching pain of divorce. Maybe he wouldn't have had people at church telling him that the way to deal with his homosexual attractions was to marry me...

So save straight women from divorce! Vote NO! on California's Proposition 8.

Oh, and go read this: John Seery

Why I Vote the Way I Do--Part 3

2008-10-25T16:31:00.005-04:00

Doxy's beginning note: This one is ridiculously long, and I would have separated the two if I could. But, for me, they are two sides of the same coin. As always, you only have to read what you want to...

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I am a feminist. Discovering feminism was like breathing for the first time. All of a sudden, the world finally made sense.

I could finally understand why I felt compelled to seek male approval—even to the point of erasing my own self. (Didn’t necessarily stop me from doing it, I’m sorry to say—but that’s another post…) I could see the social expectations that worked against me in the classroom and the workplace.

Becoming a feminist changed my life. Probably much more than becoming a Christian did, to be honest. Claiming my identity as a feminist propelled me into political activism for the first time in my life, because it showed me exactly how politics could improve my life.

Most important—becoming a feminist opened my eyes to the way that laws and social structures perpetuate inequality. The list was long:

Unequal pay
Discrimination against married women, pregnant women, and mothers in the workplace
Domestic violence laws that favored batterers
Rape laws that allowed the “justice” system to put the blame on women—or allowed husbands to rape their wives
Attitudes that sexual harassment was just “boys being boys”
An assumption that government could intervene in women’s reproductive decisions in ways that would never be tolerated if men were the ones being affected
Attitudes that taking care of children and home was “women’s work” (and thus underpaying anyone who does those things professionally…teachers, daycare workers, domestic laborers, etc.)
An economy that rests on the unpaid work of women in rearing children and keeping their homes going

I have never been able to look at advertising, religion, politics, economics, relationships—anything—the same way that I did before I become a feminist. Feminism made me look hard at all those things and clarify to myself what it was that I wanted out of life—and what I was willing to do to get it.

Here’s what I decided. I want a fair and just society. I want a society that doesn’t constrict women’s choices around careers and motherhood.* I want a society that recognizes the important unpaid work that women do—and that doesn’t penalize them economically for taking time out to care for their families. I want a society that recognizes women as mature moral agents, who do not need the government or other unrelated individuals telling us what we can and cannot do with our bodies.

I probably did it backwards from most people, but becoming a feminist is what made me a liberal. Feminism made me aware of, and angry about, the injustices in this nation that prides itself on the idea that “all men [sic] are created equal.” Becoming a feminist opened my eyes to ALL injustice.

I cannot tell you how mentally and emotionally exhausting that was.

You see, it was easy being a conservative. When I was a conservative, I was able to compartmentalize things very neatly. In the conservative world I used to inhabit, there was no such thing as institutionalized injustice. There were “people who made bad choices and had to pay the consequences.” In my little conservative head, that meant being born into the wrong family and attending inferior schools, I guess. Each single issue had its own cause and nothing was connected to anything else. That way, it was easy to assign blame and offer facile “solutions” that weren’t solutions at all—certainly not solutions that cost ME anything.

There was never any recognition that I was just “born lucky.” (See my last post on that one…)

When I became a liberal, I suddenly saw the web of connections between EVERYTHING. Sexism was tied up with racism and poverty. Discrimination (against minorities, LGBTs, the poor) was tied up in misogyny. Racism was used to divide the very people who should unite against those who would exploit them economically and politically.

Life suddenly became a very intricate spider web, and I couldn’t put things in neat little boxes anymore. Solutions got a lot more complicated—and expensive…both personally and politically.

Becoming a feminist and a liberal wore me slap out.

It still does—it requires enormous amounts of energy to keep at the fight, day by day, year by year. But I’ve been doing it for nearly a quarter of a century now, so I’ve learned to keep focused on the end goal. Feminism—although it presents itself as being about improving life for women—is ultimately about improving life for all of us. And that goal can only be reached by refusing to give up or give in to people and policies that maintain discrimination in any form.

I’ve learned when to take a news break and read some poetry—and then I get up and go to a rally, or volunteer for a progressive cause, or write on my blog...or vote. Because I’ve learned that life is complicated, but politics can make it better for a lot of people—not just for me.

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I am a mother. I vote progressive because I want the world to be a better place for my children.

Now every mother--progressive, conservative, or somewhere in-between-- says that. But I believe that the world will only be a better place when EVERYONE has a decent place to live, enough to eat, and a good education. I do not believe I do my children any favors by trying to construct a world in which they achieve at someone else’s expense—or live in luxury while children on the other side of the world literally starve to death.

Every day, nearly 30,000 children die of poverty-related illness and starvation.

Read that again.

30,000 children. Dead. Every. Single. Day.

I keep coming back to faith here, but combine it with motherhood and I’ve got no choice. How can we live with ourselves, knowing that this is the case? How—in the name of God—do we justify this?

The answer, of course, is that we refuse to think about it, because addressing it would mean we had to give up our own privileged consumerist habits to change things. We tell ourselves that we cannot “fix” things in Somalia or Darfur because they are too far away. Or we blame it on “those people” who starve their own for political purposes (never asking ourselves about the hungry children in our own backyards).

Or—worst of all—we assume that people in other parts of the world are “used to” losing their babies and children to death, and that they don’t feel the loss the way we do. (I’ve actually heard people make this argument…)

Now this is not all about starving children in Africa. I know that our ability to bring about change in other parts of the world is limited (see Iraq). But as a progressive mother, I believe I have a responsibility to push for domestic policies that safeguard the children here in my own North Carolina community—and international policies that have an impact on children all over the world.

When my children were toddlers, I spent a great deal of time teaching them to share with their peers. In my world of neighborhood playgroups, there was a lot of parental disapproval aimed at those children who, after the age of 2 or 3, wouldn’t share their toys. The last thing you wanted was for your child to be the one the other parents talked about when you weren’t around… (and believe me, they DO talk!)

Unfortunately, sharing does not seem to be natural to human beings—but the earliest humans realized that they would not survive unless they could pool their resources. And small children, when they have proper guidance from the adults who love them, learn this too. They figure out pretty quickly that their time with their friends will be much more pleasant (and last longer!) when they share, than if they are grabby and selfish.

I have difficulty understanding why this concept is so hard for most people to grasp. If you teach your children to share when they are small, why not expect them to keep doing it when they are grown? Why turn greed into a value once they leave preschool?

Voting for progressive politicians and policies is my way of sharing what I have. It is an acknowledgment that the values I taught (and am continuing to teach) my children—the need to share and play well with others—are values worth living by.

Voting the way I do is a way that I live my motherhood outside the boundaries of my own home.

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* Doxy’s ending note: I have made the argument elsewhere that one of the reasons I dislike Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is that I believe she did not consider adequately the needs of her family (special-needs newborn and pregnant, teen-aged daughter) when she accepted the nomination—and therefore, I do not trust her to care for my family.

My criticism could certainly be construed as being anti-feminist (as, indeed, some have done). But that assumes that there is only one kind of feminism—and that career and choices in and for the public arena are the only choices a “true” feminist is concerned with.

Obviously, I disagree.

I believe that parents (not just mothers) have an obligation to put their children first, once they have chosen to bring them into the world. Sometimes the direction that such choices will take is not obvious—as those of us who are divorced with children know all too well. Palin may very well have decided that being Vice-President WAS the best way to put her children first. I believe I can disagree—and still hold tightly and proudly to my Outspoken Feminist card.

There are many branches of feminism—liberal feminism being the one that most people mean when they use the word “feminist.” While I am grateful for the hard work that liberal feminists have done, I am not a liberal feminist (though I am liberal and a feminist!). Call me a cultural feminist, if you like—one who believes that the values often attributed to women (nurturing, relational, connected to family and community) are values to be encouraged in the public sphere.

(You can read the “cultural feminism” article at Wikipedia if you like, but I can promise you it was written by a liberal feminist and does not accurately reflect what I’m talking about. One more thing to add to my To Do list…)

Liberal feminism, in my view, basically sought to give women the right to be men (i.e., to give them political and economic power, as well as bodily autonomy), and little else. It has tended to be disdainful of motherhood and family relationships—focusing on ensuring that women have career and political options, rather than on ensuring that society respects the choice of women to be mothers, wives, lovers, and community activists, in addition to being business executives, Congressional representatives, and Supreme Court justices. It takes our cultural standards of success—power over self and others and wealth—which have traditionally been hallmarks of masculinity, and accepts them in toto as the things for which women should strive.

I believe that liberal feminism was absolutely the right place to begin. Changing laws and politics was, and is, necessary—and I am deeply indebted to all of those women who have worked so hard to bring those changes about. But I think changing hearts and minds to value family, children, and a kind, more caring, and less competitive society is the next step.

You see…I want it all. I want open doors for anything that I, or my daughter, can dream and do. I want laws to protect my rights and my autonomy, AND I want a community that supports women and their families.

I want a world I know that I will never live to see this side of the Eschaton—but that does not absolve me of the responsibility of doing my part to create it.

I am a Feminist Mother. And I vote.

Things left undone...

2008-10-17T14:42:00.004-04:00

A little while ago, I was working in my hotel room when the housekeeper knocked and asked if she could come in to clean my room. I said if she didn't mind me working, I would try to stay out of her way.

She was young, Hispanic, and very polite.

As she got close to finishing, she disappeared into the hallway to get some supplies, and all of a sudden, I heard this loud male voice.

He was asking her for directions--and as it became clear that she didn't understand what he was asking, he got louder. And, frankly, abusive.

His last comment? "Jesus Christ! Nobody around here speaks English!" Then he stomped away.

This all happened very quickly--so quickly that, as I was sitting watching this encounter through the open door of my hotel room, I barely had time to make it out from behind the desk and head for the door before he was gone.

But I didn't chase him down the hall. And I wish I had. I wish I had said:

"Did that make you feel like a REAL man? To yell at a young woman who clearly didn't understand what you were asking?"

"Do you realize how hard that woman is working to feed her family? She isn't on the welfare line---she's scrubbing YOUR dirty toilet and picking YOUR dirty underwear up off the floor. She's doing work that fine, upstanding (cough, cough) white Americans like yourself won't touch with a 10-foot pole. Why don't you change places with her for a week and see if you can learn some manners?

"Did YOUR ancestors speak Escamacu or Combahee when they got here? If not, then you need to shut the fuck up."

I am clearly not a nice person to want to say such things---but I'm not a brave one, either...or I would have chased him down the hall.

Jesus wept for both of us today, I'm afraid.

Too busy to blog...

2008-10-13T10:16:00.002-04:00

I'm headed out to do an HIV/AIDS training for a large, national faith-based group. I'd appreciate your prayers for the success of this conference---it will mean better, more compassionate care for tens of thousands of people at risk for, or living with, HIV/AIDS.

More on voting when I get back. But while I'm away, go and read the Feminarian's take on this subject. Friend speaks for me.

Pax,
Doxy

Why I Vote the Way I Do--Part 2

2008-09-28T09:14:00.004-04:00

I actually believe in the American Ideal. You see, when I studied them, I took the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution seriously. I really believe all that stuff about people being created equal, and being entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe in America and I want her to be what she was envisioned to be--the City Shining on the Hill, the beacon of freedom…the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It’s fashionable right now among the right-wing chattering classes and talking heads to impugn the patriotism of those who disagree with their jingoistic, xenophobic approach to politics. To be honest, I feel the same way about them. I really question whether they truly love this country at all.

Loving your country means more than waving (or wearing) a flag. It even means more than joining the military. I am grateful to those who put their lives on the line in our armed services, but I do not believe that makes them better Americans than the rest of us.

Loving your country means you do your damnedest to protect the ideals on which your country was founded--government by, for, and of the people.

Loving your country means that you don’t allow it to engage in activities that bring it into disrepute, or that undermine its foundational tenets. It means you ask hard questions of those in power and don’t stop until you get solid answers. It means you hold your elected officials responsible for their actions--and you never, ever, EVER give them a blank check with no accountability. (Do you hear that, Congress?)

Loving your country means you participate in the political process. It means you work to ensure free and fair elections. It means you educate your children about their civic responsibilities. It means you don't ever offer an excuse about why you couldn't be bothered to vote.

Loving your country certainly means more than shouting “9/11!” every time someone questions an approach to domestic or international politics…or handing over your civil liberties because some politician tells you that doing so will keep you safe from “Terrorists™.”

Loving your country requires intelligence, courage, skepticism, patience, and perseverance. Waving a flag or slapping a bellicose bumper sticker on your car are piss-poor substitutes for real patriotism. Saying “My country, right or wrong!” or “America: love it or leave it!” makes you an idolater in my book--not a patriot.

I love my country and I have fought for the ideals on which she was founded my entire adult life--as far as I’m concerned, that's the definition of patriotism. I expect better of her than what I've seen for most of the last eight years. Hell, I expect better of her than most of what I've seen since I was born in 1963.

It is no secret that we have rarely lived up to the ideals enshrined in our founding covenants. America deserved better than de jure racial segregation--and people put their lives, and their children’s lives, on the line to get it. We deserved better than sexism written into law--and women and their male allies fought until we changed a lot of it. (Miles to go before we sleep on both issues, but it’s a start…)

We deserved better than Vietnam, and Richard Nixon, and Love Canal. We deserved better than U.S. support for murderous regimes in Latin America and Africa. We deserved more than Iran-Contra and Reagan’s unconscionable silence on HIV/AIDS. We deserved better than Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and the infamous Blue Dress. And we CERTAINLY deserved better than anything we’ve gotten in the last eight years from George W. Bush and his cronies--the “Patriot” Act, Abu Ghraib, the ongoing debacle in Iraq, the current financial crisis, the privileging of bad theology over science in public health…to name just a few.

One of the first things you learn to tell your children when they are old enough to understand is “I don’t always like what you DO, but I love YOU.” That is how I feel about America--and why I vote the way I do.

No matter how many times I am disappointed by my country, I refuse to give up on her. I still believe in America--the America enshrined in those yellowed parchments in the National Archives. That America is worth fighting for, and I’ll fight for her until I draw my last breath.

So I vote for people who share that vision--who believe that what has made America great is not her military might, but her commitment to the ideals of freedom. And I vote for policies that will create that vision…for my children and yours.

*******************************************************

I was born on third base. I will not make a liar out of myself by pretending that I hit a triple. I vote for progressive politicians and policies because I’ve been so damned lucky—and I can imagine what life would be like if I hadn’t been.

I have had every opportunity that a woman born into a white, upper-middle class family could have. A loving and supportive family. An excellent education. Financial help--especially in times of crisis in my life. I have not gotten where I am today solely on my own merit--I won the lottery in life. To act as if the playing field is level--or that I somehow "deserve" what I have--would make me the worst kind of liar.

No one can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.* No one. Each of us is called to work on our own behalf, but we do not do so in a vacuum. There is no such thing as a blank slate--you are born into a world that is already set up to work either for or against you, based on the socioeconomic status of your family, the color of your skin, your gender, and your sexual orientation. The only people who deny this are the ones on the positive end of the spectrum.

We all know people who have overcome their backgrounds to succeed in life--and we can admire and respect those individuals. But we cannot pretend that this is the norm. And I believe we must always ask ourselves: Why should we expect anyone to “overcome the odds” of their own lives? Why do we not work to lessen those overwhelming odds for those who face them?

The answer, I believe, lies in our own selfishness and fear.

I spent the past couple of days at the St. Francis Springs Prayer Center in Stoneville, NC. It is a lovely place--conceived, built, and run by a Franciscan monk who saw a great need for a contemplative place where people could meet, pray, and focus on their relationship with God. On the wall outside the office is a plaque that reads: Poverty happens when people stop caring for one another.

I believe that is true. I believe that material poverty happens when we mistakenly believe that we deserve what we have, and cling to it with both fists so that others cannot “take it away from us.”

I believe that spiritual poverty happens in that same moment.

And both material and spiritual poverty are compounded when we build social, legal, and economic structures in such a way to ensure that we maintain our unfair advantages over others. I do not want to live in selfishness, fear, and spiritual poverty. I vote the way I do because I recognize the role that culture and the social structure play in success in life--and I believe we can create structures that open the door wider for everyone, not just for the privileged few. I vote that way because I will not fall into the trap of believing that I have been blessed by God for my “specialness” and that I have no responsibility to help those in my own backyard who were not so blessed.

This does not make me a "guilt-ridden liberal," by the way. It makes me a clear-eyed one, who believes to the depths of my being that every child born in this world should have the right to the same things I had (and have). A supportive family and community. A decent place to live. Food to eat. Health insurance. A good education. Help through the inevitable rough spots of life.

In my earlier post, I mentioned John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. If you don’t know Rawls’ work, I encourage you to check it out. Rawls was a political philosopher who thought deeply about the issue of distributive justice. He asked people to consider how they would build a society from scratch if they could not know in advance what their position in that society would be.

Since I suspect most of my readers are well-educated whites from the middle and upper-middle class, I ask you to do the same. Consider what your life would be like if you had none of the advantages you enjoyed growing up. Think long and hard about what it took for you to succeed—outside of your personal ambition. Good schools? Safe home environment? Medical care? Etc.

Then ask yourself:

Would I trade places with an African American or a Latino in the current culture?
Would I trade places with a gay or lesbian person in the current culture?
Would I willingly put my children in the "worst" public school in my city?
Would I support the current health care system if I did not have health insurance?
Would I be satisfied with the current mental health care system if I, or one of my loved ones, had to be treated in it?
Would I be satisfied with the justice system if I had to enter it without money?
Would I support our current system of prisons if someone I love had to be incarcerated?

I ask these questions of myself all the time. To you, I will say, that if you answer "No" to any of them, then you need to ask yourself why, and then look long and hard at the kinds of policies you are supporting.

Because if you wouldn't choose to be a minority in this culture, you need to work to create a society where your lot in life doesn't depend on the color of your skin--or whom you happen to love. Because if you wouldn't want your child to attend any school in the system, you shouldn't consign other people's children to substandard education. Because if you wouldn't want to have to go to the emergency room to be treated because you didn't have insurance--or wouldn't want your own child to go without medical treatment for that reason--you shouldn't condemn other people to that status. Etc.

I vote the way I do because I believe Rawls was right---and because I won't condemn people to lives of poverty or misery just to maintain my status on third base.

*Please forgive the poor grammar.

This Just In...

2008-09-26T13:23:00.001-04:00

This Just In....

Doxy is away at EFM mentor training--and has no Internet access. She'll be back posting on the voting issue by Sunday.

Posted by Ghostblogger on Doxy's behalf with great love!!

Why I Vote the Way I Do--Part 1

2008-09-21T06:32:00.015-04:00

Doxy's Note: Yet another series of very long posts...sorry. I started writing and couldn't stop--apparently I needed to sort it out for myself and writing is the best way I know to do that. You know what to do if it bores you.

If you do manage to slog through the whole thing, well...you probably deserve a medal. You surely have my thanks for your patience.

If you leave a challenge in the comments, I probably won't argue with you there, at least until I finish the series. I never finished my series of posts on racism because I got bogged down in the comments---lesson learned. In the course of writing this, I've come to realize that it is important to me to get all the way to the end of it. Call it a spiritual discipline, if you like.

********************************************************************

In my last post, I talked about a disturbing encounter I had with a friend who is very conservative. I complained that he wanted me to justify the way I vote to him, but he's never done me the courtesy of explaining why he votes the way he does.

Just as a bit of background---as most of my regular readers know, I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church and attended a school run by that church. As was expected of me by my teachers, I grew up to be a good little conservative. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

That all changed because I went to college and was taught to question what I was told and evaluate evidence for myself. I started out as president of the College Republicans at my alma mater, Memphis State University, and ended up pretty much where I remain today---a strongly progressive feminist with deep commitments to social justice and humane economics.

Since my college days, I've spent many years thinking very deeply and seriously about politics. From 1987-1994, I was a doctoral student in political science at Vanderbilt University, and I taught there and at two other universities. Although my specialty was International Relations, I taught just about every political science topic you can think of.

Whatever else I may be, I am not an uninformed consumer of political information.

But my diatribe about my friend got me to thinking---have I ever REALLY articulated to myself, or to others, why I vote the way I do? Other than to say that I think my faith demands it?

So the other day, on my long drive from Dear Friend's back to my house in Raleigh, I started making a mental list. Following is what I came up with.

I don't pretend that any of my arguments are air-tight---but I have arrived at my positions by trying to think deeply and honestly about who I am called to be in this world and what I am called to do, by virtue of both my faith and my humanity. I think about what it would be like to have to look Jesus in the face and answer the question "What did you do for the least of my flock?" I'd like to be able to answer that question honestly and without shame. And, for all the verbiage that follows, that's the reason I do what I do.

*******************************************

I vote the way I do because...

I am a Christian. First and foremost, this is my reason for voting for progressive politicians and policies. Jesus was very clear what our responsibilities on earth are---love God and love one another. Take care of the weakest and most vulnerable, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. (Matthew 25: 31-46) He explicitly says that if you don't do those things, you will be sent away to eternal punishment.

Now you probably all know by now that I don't believe in a literal hell or eternal punishment. But I do believe that Jesus was deadly serious about this issue of caring for others. And the truth is that I, as an individual, do not have the capacity to look after all the vulnerable people in my community. I certainly take it as a duty to do my part---but I consider that part to include supporting progressive social policies that provide a safety net for those who are less fortunate than I am.

(For the political scientists out there, there's also John Rawls' "Theory of Justice" to consider--one day I might need those policies myself! Empathy is a huge reason to vote progressive.)

My Christianity is not some "girly," weak-minded, "why can't we all get along and have a group hug" kind of faith, despite what my friend seems to think. It is no coincidence that my favorite Old Testament character is Jacob, and my favorite story is the one where he wrestles the angel (or could it be God in disguise?) and says "I will not let you go until you bless me!"

That is the story of my faith---an endless wrestling match with God, hard, sweaty, and dangerous. I have been marked by it, as Jacob was. I have been twisted and wrung out and I limp towards God now, one hesitant step at a time. I will never have the certainty that some Christians do---never believe that I know EXACTLY what God wants. The only thing I can do is look to Jesus, author of my salvation, who was very clear about what it takes to do his will.

I have been marked---but I have been blessed, as well. And I will NOT take that blessing only for myself and say "I've got mine. You're on your own." I vote the way I do because I don't see that attitude applauded anywhere in my Bible--and certainly not in the life or words of Jesus of Nazareth.

************************************************

I believe in a strict separation of church and state. Now, at first glance, this may seem a contradiction to my first statement. It isn't, of course. I don't want government and church mixed because I want my church to be safe from government intrusion, and I don't want the government to have the power to compel me (or anyone else) to believe or worship in a particular way.

In other words...if I wanted to live in a theocracy, I'd move to Iran.

(If you need a Christian reference, just remember what happened to the German churches under National Socialism.)

My Christian values inform my politics, but I don't want to impose them as a condition for citizenship, election to political office, or eligibility for benefits. Given the choice, I'd much rather be governed by our resident self-described atheist, IT, than I would by George W. Bush, who has made a mockery of the "Christianity" he brandishes like a billy club.

I am a Christian who believes we should honor the American social contract by extending help to all those who need it---without religious strings attached. I want my government to provide the social safety net for every American citizen, rather than relying on churches or individuals to do it all.

Churches--and individual acts of charity--are an important part of the safety net, but only secular government can ensure that people are helped regardless of their religion, race, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, etc. No one in this country should go without food, shelter, or medical attention because they don't fit the "right" profile for a religious charity. I believe that allowing such things to happen is an insult to God and a violation of the most basic requirements of us as human beings.

Caring for the "least of these" is not a strictly Christian value---you can find that in almost every religion and philosophy in the world. We can adopt the humanitarian stance embedded in religion without corrupting public policy with religious dogma or corrupting religion with political power.

I believe that confusing religion and politics does violence to all involved--not only legal, social, and economic violence, but spiritual violence as well. That means I don't want my government enforcing religious dogma on people who do not share it. For me, forcing religion on people ranks as one of the most heinous things you can do---it totally corrupts religion in the service of power. It makes a travesty of faith, demoralizes and endangers the one to whom it is done, and demonizes the one who does it.

If you don't believe me, read up on the Christian Crusades---or study the plight of women in Saudi Arabia under Islam.

"That couldn't happen here!" you say? If I hadn't followed conservative evangelical Christian politics, I might agree with you. Having done so, I believe "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (Wendell Phillips)

I vote the way I do because I don't want the government using religious tenets to deny me the right to use contraceptives or choose an abortion. Those choices have moral dimensions, and my church has every right to declaim on them. Politicians who don't know me or my story have no business doing so.

I don't want the government using religious doctrine to tell me who I can or can't sleep with, or to keep my gay and lesbian friends from getting married.

I don't want the government involved in teaching religion in schools or in mandating that my child's science teacher teach creationism or "intelligent design" in his public school SCIENCE classroom. I don't want government supporting adult-led public prayer in public schools, either. I will teach my children theology at home and at church, thanks very much--I don't need or want the government's help in that department.

We live in a plural society, thank God. That diversity of opinion and belief is what keeps us safe from the theocrats who would impose their tiny view of God on others, and start lighting the bonfires for the heretics among us. Tinkering with the Constitution and trying to play favorites with any particular religion is playing with those fires---and we all know that, when you start playing with fire, you are going to get burned.

Jesus was pretty clear that government and religion were two separate things. In answer to a pointed question tempting him to make political statements, he said "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." (Matthew 22:15-22) This is one of the few issues that will ever cause me to say "If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."

I'll always vote my Christian values, but I'll do it in a way that keeps religion and politics as separate as possible.

*********************************

There will be more to follow. Lots more.

Reaching Across the Divide?

2008-09-19T15:27:00.007-04:00

After my last post, I almost hate to post this----but I need to get it off my chest.

I've been trying to generate more light and less heat in the political arena. Easier said than done.

On Tuesday evening, I had to attend the annual Open House at my daughter's school. While I was there, I ran into a neighbor---someone whom I can't help but like, despite his red-meat politics. He and his wife have been good friends since my divorce--their daughter and mine are best friends, and I see them quite frequently.

We've talked politics in the past. His wife once told me that she'd never seen anyone render him totally speechless, the way I did when I told him I was a liberal because I thought my faith demanded it of me.

On Tuesday, he seemed to rediscover his voice.

He started trying to needle me about my progressive politics, and I said "We've already had this discussion, my friend. You know why I vote the way I do."

Whereupon he put his arm around me, and started talking in this sing-songy voice:

"Why can't we all just get along, and be nice to each other? Why don't we just have a group hug?"

My response?

I looked him straight in the eyes and said "Jesus said: 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God." And turned around and walked away.

***********************************************

The more I think about this, the angrier I get.

My friend has never shared with me his reasons for voting the way he does. He's retired military, but that--in and of itself--doesn't give me any reason for his stance. He wants me to justify my views, but offers nothing about his own.

I can actually understand why someone would vote conservative based on their faith. I don't agree, of course. But I can talk about that---lay out my own case that caring for the least of God's flock requires progressive politics. I can argue with the best of them.

What I cannot do is mock people's faith---the way my friend did mine.

It is hard to reach across the divide when someone you know and like can patronize and mock you for your beliefs. When people who know and spend time with one another can be so dismissive of each other's beliefs, I'm afraid it doesn't bode well for our country.

I'll keep trying. I'll try to follow the sensible (and spiritual) advice of Sara Miles.

I just wish it wasn't so damned difficult.

Got Hope?

2008-09-13T12:43:00.003-04:00

I have been too busy with work, and too depressed about the appalling state of politics in this country, to blog this week.

But last night, I got to hold Baby J. for the first time. Babies have a way of restoring your faith in the world, don't they?

He is lovely and precious. And he has his father's dark hair and Dear Friend's long, beautiful feet. I thought DF was going to burst with pride--he was positively glowing with happiness over this new addition to his family.

M. is doing better, though her blood pressure is still high. We would all appreciate your continued prayers for her return to full health.

I marveled as I watched her nurse Baby J. last night. She showed a beautiful confidence for a first-time nursing mother. I was a long-term nursing mom, myself (2.5 years with each of my two children), and it took me a long time to build up that kind of poise. She looked lovely--so peaceful and serene. She and R., Baby J's dad, are already moving so gracefully into this new stage of their lives. Watching the three of them together made me realize that the future is not something to be dreaded, but something to be welcomed. That fear may hold the moment, but love will always, ultimately, win the day.

The world keeps spinning. Bidden or not, God is present. And hope comes in the form of a tiny little boy, nursing peacefully at his mother's breast.

Thanks be to God!

2008-09-07T06:35:00.002-04:00

Baby J. was born just after midnight last night---no surgery necessary. Mother and son are doing well.

Thank you for your prayers. I was very worried for M. and the baby and you can't know how much they meant to me and to Dear Friend.

So happy birthday, Baby J.---you're a lucky little boy!

And congratulations to the new family (and to the new grandpa!). May the blessings of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with you today and remain with you always.

Prayer Request

2008-09-06T16:12:00.002-04:00

Dear Friend's middle daughter, M., is pregnant with her first child. The baby is due on September 12th---but M. was hospitalized yesterday with high blood pressure. They are awaiting tests as I type this, and depending on the outcome, she may have to have a Cesarean section this afternoon or tomorrow.

Please pray for M., the baby, her husband, and for Dear Friend, who is by her side.

Bad News

2008-08-28T09:35:00.003-04:00

The leftovers of Hurricane Fay did a number on the home of Jane R. from Acts of Hope. I just got a phone message from her saying that a tree fell on her house. Fortunately, she was not home at the time. Her Grace, +Maya Pavlova is safe as well.

Unfortunately, Jane's house is uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Please keep her in your prayers.

Basic Instinct

2008-08-22T17:56:00.000-04:00

As you know, I recently spent a week with 23,000 people who are working to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

We certainly didn't all agree on how to do that. I had one man from Nigeria come to the booth I was staffing and complain about having to talk about condoms. He wanted to teach abstinence and monogamy only, since, as he said, "I am a monogamous man. I know it works!"

And, of course, he's right. Abstinence is the one, surefire way of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Assuming, of course, that you CAN be abstinent--that you aren't raped or forced into selling yourself to keep yourself alive.

Assuming, of course, that your partner is monogamous---which, I'm told by those who live and work there, is not the norm in sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS pandemic is the worst and is being driven by heterosexual males who have 2-5 concurrent sexual partners. (This, according to the epidemiologists with whom I spoke, is THE recipe for the rampant spread of AIDS---networks of long-term, overlapping sexual partners.)

Assuming, of course, that your mother wasn't HIV-positive when you were born or that AZT or nevirapine were available when she was in labor if she was.

Assuming that your HIV infection didn't come from a dirty needle or a bad blood transfusion.

So many assumptions...

So much "If you were only like me, everything would be all right!"

So many deaths. (Nearly 7,000 a day, now)

***********************************

In case it has escaped your notice, I am in a sober mood. The atmosphere at the conference was one of resignation. We are in this for the long haul. There will be no magic bullets to stop the spread of HIV. We must return to the basics--lab research and prevention programs.

It is so very human to forget the basics. The basics are not "sexy" or flashy. They don't make the evening news. They often involve tedium and repetition. Repeat the experiment to see if you achieve the same result. Repeat after me: "Use a new condom each and every time you have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse and a clean needle each time you shoot up."

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Next year, unless something dramatic happens with the basics, 53,000 Americans, and over 2 million others around the world, will be newly infected with HIV. Out of every five infected individuals, only 2 will receive treatment. The rest---most of them young adults in their prime working and childbearing/rearing years---will die.

************************************

Thinking about the importance of the basics for public health got me to thinking of their importance in the life of faith:

"Our Father, who art in heaven..."
"We believe in one God..."
"This is the body of Christ, given for you..."
"Go in peace to love and serve the Lord."

Two-thousand-year-old prayers. Repeated so many times they should have worn completely away by now. Beloved and familiar words. Bread. Wine. Love in action.

They are not flashy. They are the basics. They--not covenants or canons--are the foundation of our life as a community of faith.

The basics--prevention, research, our common prayers, our compassion for others in the service of God--are what will save us.

If we let them.

If you only read one blog today...

2008-08-13T08:48:00.002-04:00

...make it this one:

Under the Overpasses

This guy is the real deal---a searingly honest Christian who does his best to pick up the societal balls that the rest of us, in our comfortable, suburban faith, let drop.

We can't all work in homeless shelters, as UTO does---but he makes me realize how often I allow my eyes to skate over the pain, need, and misery that surround me.

That, my friends, is God at work in the world---always calling us to love and care for one another. Even through the Intertubes....

Black U.S. AIDS rates rival some African nations... and Bishops fiddle

2008-08-03T08:24:00.004-04:00

...according to this story. (The bit about the Bishops is my own "journalistic" interpretation...)

Do you know why this is? It has to do with high poverty rates (which tend to limit access to medical care) and the inferior education that tends to go along with poverty. It has to do with ignorance and prejudice.

Mostly it has to do with stigma and discrimination.

People die from stigma. People won't even get tested for HIV because they are afraid that merely taking the test indicates something negative about the person taking it.

Seriously.

I once heard a prominent African American local government official in my hometown say he gave blood twice a year to get tested--that way no one would think he'd been doing anything "nasty" (i.e., having sex with men or shooting up).

I nearly throttled him for using the blood donation system as a means of HIV testing. Blood screening is excellent these days, so I don't want to be alarmist--but there are reasons that blood donation guidelines ask people not to donate if they have been engaging in risky sexual or drug-taking behaviors. I have no idea if the person in question was gay or a drug-user---but he willingly put other people at risk, so that no one would think he might be.

Yesterday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new HIV surveillance data for the United States. This data is based on better testing procedures and an improved reporting system.

Since the mid-1990s, the CDC has estimated that there are 40,000 Americans who are newly infected with HIV each year. These new numbers indicate a 40 percent increase over that number--the new estimates are over 56,000 new cases each year.

The "spin" is that the numbers aren't necessarily higher---the data is just better. In other words, we've been undercounting because our data hasn't been all that accurate.

That's a fine explanation if you are a statistician---or a politician who doesn't want to spend any more money combating HIV/AIDS in the domestic sphere. (In my experience, Black people in Africa are seen as more "deserving" of prevention and treatment dollars than Black people here in the United States... but I digress.)

Anecdotal evidence may be worth the peer-reviewed journal it was printed in...but I've heard enough stories from people on the ground to be less sanguine about a more benign interpretation of that increase.

Yesterday, as I flew to Mexico City for the International AIDS Conference, I sat next to a physician from Philadelphia. He told me that he's been treating a rising number of young men who have sex with men (MSM) who are HIV-positive. He was frustrated by the fact that most of them know how HIV is spread---yet they engage in risky behaviors and lose their game of Russian roulette.

The numbers are particularly bad among Black MSM. I've been expecting bad news on this front since a 2005 study of five large U.S. cities found that 46% of African American MSM in the sample were HIV-positive.

Read that and weep, people. AIDS is the leading cause of death for African American women aged 25-34 (i.e., women in their prime, child-bearing years) and nearly 1/2 of Black MSM are estimated to be HIV-positive.

If you are not outraged by those numbers, well...I simply don't know what to say to you. You should stop right now and check to see whether you have a pulse yourself...or a heart.

People get HIV/AIDS not because they are stupid---but because they are human. Because the need to be loved--or simply to connect physically with another human being--can be overwhelming. Because they think "It won't happen to me," or they tell themselves that "They have drugs for that now. It's not a death sentence anymore--so if I get it, it won't be great, but it won't kill me either."

If you are one of the millions of Americans who struggles with your weight, you will recognize the inner voice that tempts you to do things you know in your heart are not healthy for you. Taking sexual risks is really no different than taking the risk of eating too much of the wrong kind of food---they are both rooted in human behaviors that are both deeply meaningful in and of themselves and necessary for the survival of the species. Sex and food are the basic foundations for human life--which is why this struggle is, in some ways, a Sisyphean one.

Until and unless researchers develop a vaccine for HIV, we will only combat the spread of the epidemic by recognizing this fact and developing a way to deal with it--a way that does not stigmatize or demonize those who are, ultimately, only being human.

Unfortunately, this has been a week of humans behaving badly in public (i.e., the soap opera called the Anglican Communion and the Lambeth Conference).

Because, you see--along with stigma and discrimination--archaic views of sexuality are what drive the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Powerlessness and shame kill people---and all over the world, issues of sex keep people (particularly women and LBGTs) powerless and shamed.

By and large, religion is the source of that shame. As long as the Church continues to pair sex and shame, people will suffer from, and die of, AIDS.

I say without hesitation---the Church could do a great deal to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS simply by being honest about the role that sex plays in human life and compassionate about the way that individuals act on their sexual desires. People have always had sex outside of marriage and outside the rigid norms set by their local cultures. To admit this, and try to find a holy way of dealing with it, is not to say "Anything goes!" It is to say that the need for both passion and human touch are well nigh universal, and simply saying "Wait until you get married!" gets us nowhere (particularly not for those who cannot get married under law).

(For an excellent start on dealing with this issue theologically, I commend to you Fr. Tobias Haller's series The Sex Articles: A Series of Reflections on Where We Stand.)

There have been churches that have done this, of course---but they have mostly been voices crying in the wilderness for the better part of the last 30 years. Without developing a Christian ethic of sexuality that is rooted in self-respect and mutuality, we won't change the underlying dynamics that allow HIV to spread and to continue its devastating march through our most vulnerable communities.

There is no end in sight---either to the shaming or the suffering and death. Bishops at the Lambeth conference keep issuing "fatwas" about gay and lesbian people. As my friend Jim Naughton noted, "GLBT people are discussed exclusively as a problem and a challenge, never as a gift."

And two weeks ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) pulled the plug on the latest HIV vaccine trials. In essence, Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said that it was time for everyone to go back to the drawing board--and the lab bench. We haven't learned enough about the virus to make large-scale human trials worth the effort or the risks.

Last night, I walked through the lobby of my hotel in Mexico City, and I could easily pick out some of those who are living with HIV/AIDS. They are mostly men---prematurely aged, frail, and with large bellies...a common side effect of the antiretrovirals that keep them alive. They are here to lobby for better treatments and more humane policies toward those who face the challenge of living with HIV/AIDS. They are here looking for good news and hope.

I wish I could give it to them. To them, and to the 56,300 Americans who will follow them in the next year. (And to the untold millions, worldwide....)

But no. Our leaders--both spiritual and temporal--are too busy doing other things. Pronouncing doctrine. Protecting budgets.

Turning their heads so that they don't have to see what they do in the name of God and country.

Because there's nothing I hate more than a bully....Standing up for Dave Walker & SPCK

2008-07-23T09:32:00.005-04:00

Thanks to MadPriest, who is organizing this Dave Walker Solidarity Post:

It is a load of saved posts that Dave has been bullied into taking down off his blog by Mark Brewer, a Texan who bought a venerable collection of Christian bookstores in England and has managed to lay waste to them through poor management. The last straw came when one of the most beloved of the store's employees committed suicide after Brewer's company laid him off.

PLEASE COPY AND POST ON YOUR BLOGS

As MadPriest says: "We will not be silenced by bad people; there are too many of us."

And as Doxy says: "Don't fuck with bloggers--especially those in America who are not hampered by the UK's ridiculous libel laws."

**************************************************

SPCK / SSG Bookshop Posts

July 8th, 2008
My silence

I’ve been aware that this has been a sad week for many readers of the Cartoon Blog. Many of those visiting have been mourning the death of Steve Jeynes, the Worcester bookseller, who, judging from the comments posted on this site was loved by many. In the circumstances the usual nonsense that I write on this site has not seemed appropriate, hence my silence.

The memorial service for Steve Jeynes took place yesterday. The Worcester News has a report: Tributes paid to exceptional man. Doug Chaplain was there and has written about it. See also on the SPCK/SSG blog: Steve Jeynes: A Life Remembered.

This will be one of the last former-SPCK-related posts that I expect to do until September as I am away doing one thing and another. I have one more bookshop-related thing that I need to post about which has arisen as a result of a comment (not yet visible) on this site on Sunday morning. I will hopefully do that post today (Tuesday) or tomorrow (Wednesday).

The place to go for former-SPCK-related posts for the next month or two is SPCK/SSG: News, Notes & Info. [Aside to Phil: hopefully you will post Plans Coming Together for New Christian Bookshop in Cardiff on the SSG/SPCK site when the time is right - a post well worth sharing.]

I hope to post a bit more on this blog this week, including an announcement about my new book and plans for Lambeth.

Posted by Dave at 1:06 am on July 8, 2008 and filed under Blogging, Save the SPCK.

5 Comments

July 3rd, 2008
Memorial service for Steve Jeynes

The memorial service for Steve Jeynes is now to be held at Worcester Cathedral at 3.30pm on Monday 7th July, followed by refreshments at Worcestershire County Cricket Club.

There is a news item in the Worcester News today, and another in the Worcester Standard. Update: Also Worcester News: Hundreds expected to bookseller’s memorial

Many tributes have been left in the comments of my previous post and on other sites linked from there.

Image: the former SPCK shop in Worcester

Posted by Dave at 7:57 am on July 3, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK.

No Comments

June 27th, 2008
SPCK / SSG: Tragic news from Worcester

There is some tragic news from the Worcester Diocese. This note was sent out today to clergy within the Diocese by the Communications department:

I am very sorry to tell you that Steve Jeynes, has been found dead, apparently having taken his own life. Many of you will know him from his work at the SSGT (ex-SPCK) shop in Worcester, from where he was made redundant two weeks ago.

Please hold (the) family in your prayers, together with the many friends whose lives have been enriched through Steve’s loving generosity in serving the Lord.

Details of the funeral arrangements will be made available in due course.

Doug Chaplain has posted here: In Worcester the SSG / SPCK saga turns to tragedy

Please remember Steve’s family, friends and all affected in your prayers.

Update: A service of Thanksgiving for Steve’s life will take place on Monday 7 July 2008 at 3:30 pm at All Saints’ Church, Deansway, Worcester. The Thanksgiving Service has been moved from All Saints’ Church to the Cathedral at 3.30pm on Monday 7th July followed by refreshments at Worcestershire County Cricket Club.

Further tributes have been posted here and here.

Posted by Dave at 5:53 pm on June 27, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

65 Comments

SPCK / SSG bookshop news

A couple of things:

New website
Phil Groom has set up a new group blog on the subject of the former SPCK shops. It is here: SPCK/SSG: News, Notes & Info. If you’re interested in SPCK/ SSG updates please bookmark this site and/or subscribe to the feed. I do intend to continue writing on the subject on this blog, but during July and August in particular I will have very little (if any) time to devote to writing on the topic owing to my preparation for and participation in the Lambeth conference and being away from home for various other reasons.

If there is anyone who would like to contribute to the new site please contact Phil directly.

Staff pay
An update to my last post - some staff have now been paid. I have made an update to my last post to reflect this and will update again if it emerges that all staff have now been paid.

News reports
Bookseller: SSG tribunal claims mount
Chester Chronicle: Union action to support sacked Chester bookshop workers
Lincolnshire Echo: ‘Sacked’ shop staff in court action

Posted by Dave at 9:09 am on June 27, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

3 Comments

June 25th, 2008
SSG: Bankruptcy papers received, employees not paid

Bankruptcy papers received
Some people in the UK have been receiving papers relating to the SSG ‘bankruptcy’ from the US Bankruptcy Court of the District of Southern District of Texas. There will apparently be a ‘meeting of creditors’ on 22 July in Houston.

Having done a quick search I notice that there was, on 18 June a ’status conference’ for St Stephen the Great LLC in the bankruptcy court (this can be found on a cached Google page saved here). Information on the chapter 11 bankruptcy process can be found via this page: Chapter 11 - Bankruptcy Basics

All of this must be seen in the light of Usdaw’s statement yesterday, now available on the Usdaw website:

Usdaw firmly believes that the bankruptcy proceedings in the US have no effect in the UK, because this is a UK company with entirely UK-based assets and activities.

Also, from John Hannett, the General Secretary of Usdaw:

These loyal staff are being given misleading information about these US bankruptcy proceedings and the effects this may have on their rights to take legal action in the UK. Our fear is that the Brewers’ actions may be an attempt to move assets away from the business and out of the reach of our members with legitimate claims.

“We will carry on as before with the claims against the Brewers who are accumulating wealth whilst riding roughshod over hard working employees. We will continue to assist all our members affected by this messy situation and work to rectify it as soon as possible.”

Employees not paid
On a related note some (all?) of the people who work or worked in the shops have not been paid today (the 25th) as they would usually be. See for instance these blog comments. [Update: some employees have now been paid]

Telegraph blog post
Christopher Howse (who wrote Saturday’s comment piece) has written on his Telegraph blog about the Orthodox church in Poole: Orthodox Exodus. As others have pointed out this isn’t new information, but I thought I’d post the link anyway.

Posted by Dave at 3:05 pm on June 25, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

13 Comments

June 24th, 2008
Usdaw press release about the former SPCK shops

Usdaw fights for mistreated bookshop workers
Shopworkers’ union, Usdaw, has submitted 15 employment tribunal claims against the Brewers, US-based brothers who have taken over a chain of UK bookshops and were seeking to impose a new contract on staff, drastically reducing their contractual rights. The Union has over 50 members at the bookshops and is expecting that the number of employment tribunal claims will rise.

The Brewer brothers were gifted the St. Stephen the Great Christian bookshops in 2006 by SPCK. The chain includes 23 bookshops, many of which are historic buildings in prime retail positions.

Following the change of ownership, a new contract was drawn up increasing the working week from 37.5 to 40 hours with no additional pay, turning all part-time staff into casual staff with no guaranteed hours every week and taking away all rights to company sick pay.

Now, virtually all Usdaw members have been dismissed with no notice, some by email, and have received little or no information about what this means for their rights and their pay.

The Brewer brothers have now filed St. Stephen the Great for bankruptcy in the US. Usdaw firmly believes that the bankruptcy proceedings in the US have no effect in the UK, because this is a UK company with entirely UK-based assets and activities. Staff have been told that they can apply for jobs with ENC Management Company, which is also owned by the Brewers, but that they no longer have jobs with St. Stephen the Great.

Usdaw is also aware that the Charity Commission has been alerted to these actions because of its role in regulating the activities of the linked charity, St. Stephen the Great Charitable Trust.

John Hannett, Usdaw General Secretary, stated:

“It is clear that staff, many of whom have been long standing loyal workers, have been mistreated and many are understandably very upset and concerned. We are very concerned at a new company (ENC Management Company) being set up in these circumstances, while our members are losing their jobs. These loyal staff are being given misleading information about these US bankruptcy proceedings and the effects this may have on their rights to take legal action in the UK. Our fear is that the Brewers’ actions may be an attempt to move assets away from the business and out of the reach of our members with legitimate claims.

“We will carry on as before with the claims against the Brewers who are accumulating wealth whilst riding roughshod over hard working employees. We will continue to assist all our members affected by this messy situation and work to rectify it as soon as possible.”

Ends

St. Stephen the Great shops at which Usdaw members are affected:

§ Cambridge
§ Carlisle
§ Chester
§ Exeter
§ Lincoln
§ Newcastle
§ Norwich
§ Sheffield
§ Worcester
§ York

Usdaw is the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers

Update: This press release is now available via the Usdaw website: Usdaw fights for mistreated bookshop workers

Posted by Dave at 8:13 am on June 24, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

34 Comments

June 21st, 2008
Former SPCK bookshops in the Telegraph

Christopher Howse: The bare and desolate SPCK bookshops

Posted by Dave at 9:57 am on June 21, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

5 Comments

June 20th, 2008
Today’s former SPCK bookshop news

From the Chester Chronicle: Christian bookshop sacks staff by e-mail

From the Eastern Daily Press: Christian bookshop stripped of stock

From the comments below:

The article in the Eastern Daily Press concerning the Norwich shop mentions three potential future tenants.
One of the bids is from the Norwich Christian Resource Centre, a new Community Interest Company with six directors from various denominations, all with a wealth of business experience.
They are giving their time and talents free of charge and are all passionate to re-establish the centre that had become such an integral part of the community of Norfolk and beyond, as quoted in the article.
The company would run as a non-profit making business and strive to return the centre to it’s original ethos, offering the widest breadth of stock, knowledgable staff, a high level of customer service and the ‘best capuccino in town’.
Prayers for this venture very welcome.

Also, from the comments yesterday, this by ‘concerned dad’:

My daughter applied for holiday work via an agency in Newcastle and took up a job in the Newcastle shop - we were completely unaware of the situation. She is expected to work completely on her own for 6 hours a day several days a week, somebody else does the other days - both are temps, no permanent staff, no training or guidance. She has creditors and people chasing book orders ringing up but no information to be able to respond to them. She is employed and paid by the agency (that is the theory anyway, will be interesting to find out what happens on payday!) If we had known about the situation we would not have got into this, but the agency were not very forthcoming with details about the shop until it was virtually too late…. So Newcastle is open - after a fashion, but far from satisfactory situation.

Update (lunchtime) Phil Groom has posted: SPCK/SSG News Archives. (I’ll try to say something about the blog idea later or over the weekend.)

Posted by Dave at 8:18 am on June 20, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

6 Comments

June 19th, 2008
Website updates

The SPCKonline website is now the same as the Third Space books website. Details of most shops have been updated. Some, like Salisbury (above - thanks to ezlxq), are on very limited hours and appear to be relying on voluntary labour. I’m aware that I need to keep updating the shop roundup page - updates appreciated.

The entry for the Norwich shop says ‘You are not authorised to view this resource’. That is probably because there is no resource to view - I am informed that a removal firm packed up all the books, fixtures and fittings and was taking them to the Chichester shop today.

Meanwhile the St Stephen the Great LLC website has been updated today “Last Updated ( Thursday, 19 June 2008 )“, but there is still no mention of the ‘bankruptcy’.

I have updated the Church Times blog with a list of news reports and letters about the former SPCK shops.

Melanie, the former manager of the SPCKonline site has written an interesting comment on Phil’s bookshop blog.

Posted by Dave at 5:43 pm on June 19, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

5 Comments

June 18th, 2008
Norwich / York

Norwich

Network Norwich has the following: Norwich Christian bookshop closes its doors

Meanwhile, from the comments section of this blog:

In 2003 I was taken to a city centre deconsecrated church by Stephen Platten, then Dean of Norwich. We both thought how splendid it would be to relocate the SPCK Bookshop, it’s decrepid premises huddling in a side street, to this magnificent medieval building.
In January of the next year Bishop Graham James officially blessed the vision along with representatives from virtually every denomination.
After many trials and tribulations and delays of several months, the centre opened on 13 July 2004. I had been privileged to help plan the layout and the concept.
Over 180 people attended the rededictation of the church to it’s new use in on a Friday morning in October 2004!
Within 3 years the loyal team had doubled the turnover of the previous shop and provided access to thousands of visitors from the Christian faith or none, to be offered an exceptionally broad range of product, a place to meet and be refreshed in the cafe.
We held events on a monthly basis. Highlights included: a lecture by Bishop Tom Wright attended by 350 plus, an Advent evening with Ronald Blythe during which three Salvation Army bandsmen managed to ascend the spiral staircase complete with trombone and play from the balcony, debates between bishops and humanists; Professor Brian Thorne and Ian Gibson MP and a Fawlty Towers evening!
This morning I visited the centre with my two sons, on the last day of trading. It was in fact open after 11-00.
To describe it as semi-vandalised would not be overstating the sight of half-empty boxes relocated from the London shop several weeks ago still blocking the porch and what is left of the stock lurching across the shelves.
Visiting the church on a regular basis over the past months I have been moved from frustration, to anger, to sadness, to disbelief as to how such a thiving resource could be laid to seed.
Today is a very sad day for the ex-staff, all but one of whom have yet to find new employment and the Christian community, who are voicing that ‘their’ centre has been lost - a high compliment indeed.
I count myself blessed to have been offered an alternative position within the Christian retail environment and have thus stayed in touch with so many of my customers who had become friends.
However, it’s never over until the Canary sings as we say in Narwich, so please keep praying for an unlikely resurrection in the not too distant future.
‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’

York

‘Richard and Gill’ on Flickr have a recent picture of the former SPCK shop in York.

Meanwhile, I found this blog post written in Chinese on June 16. It sounds as if it is by someone working in the York shop. Google translated it as follows:

I should be very fortunate, at least in this area to work, to York the second week, it began a career Part-time job. However, this is not so much a subjective initiative, I found, than to use a blind cat encountered more aptly described as dead mice. At that time, purely in the City Centre Luancuan, Okay, I admit that, in fact, I had lost. The results of the accidents that have been in SPCK work.

This is one in the entire United Kingdom has 28 Chain stores of the Christian Bookshop, a harmonious working atmosphere, have fixed the breakfast 11am and 3pm the afternoon tea time and all the break are paid. However, however, however, but, boom is not long, SPCK be acquired. A U.S. company called SSG took over the bookstore this. British indeed are born of hatred of Americans, the shop all the old staff have left, but Fortunately, the Manager of new people is pretty good. I want to go to the SSG, also by the nature of the work before the development of a simple cashier to accountant, gradually began to contact the bank’s work. Sense of accomplishment that is not an ordinary Youranersheng ah.

Boom is not really long, SSG recently went bankrupt, another bookstore was an American company take over. David and Olga have left, I left the bookstore on the people. Optimistic, I am now boss hey. Pessimistic, I really do not know Bookstore will close on this, I have on unemployment.

SPCK in the UK with my life is inseparable from, I Baijia all have come from the capital where wages. However, it also sacrificed a lot with my family Dear Amanda travel out of time. Switzerland, Rome, Prague, Barcelona, Fuluolunsa I have no time to. My dear SPCK, you can see in my youth to take all the copies to you, will not be so quick to close OK. You, and so I kept enough money to the United States, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Arctic Circle, and so I kept enough money to buy Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Prada to the temporary close it, but I travel back and so on, then opened the door for ah

This might or might not mean that the York shop is open.

Posted by Dave at 11:28 am on June 18, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK.

3 Comments

June 13th, 2008
Charity Commission to investigate SSG

News reports

From today’s Church Times: Ex-SPCK shops ‘bankruptcy’
The Bookseller says that the Charity Commission is to investigate SSG: St Stephen the Great files for bankruptcy
I think the Church of England Newspaper will have a report (Just opened my online copy - nothing there as far as I can see. I thought there might be as I was telephoned.)

Closures and openings

We think that the shops that have closed since the bankruptcy announcement are:
Birmingham, Canterbury, Chester, Exeter, Newcastle, Norwich (closing on June 14) Worcester, York. These may be temporary or permanent.
Salisbury is now open again.
I’m still attempting to maintain a complete list here.
New map

On the Third Space books site (Is Third Space books bankrupt or not? Not sure.) a new map of the SSG shops appeared on June 7. Bristol, Carlisle, Lincoln and London have been taken off. Cardiff remains. ‘Leichester’ (not on the old map) has been added.
Posted by Dave at 8:20 am on June 13, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

11 Comments

June 11th, 2008
Former SPCK bookshop closures

I have been attempting to update my SPCK bookshop roundup page. Please take a look and tell me whether I am being accurate.

In the last few days I have been told that the following shops have been closed, but some of these closures might be temporary:

Chester (Local news report: Christian bookshop closes in Chester city centre)
Exeter (Notice on door says it is due to reopen - photo above)
Newcastle
Salisbury Now open again
Worcester
York
Posted by Dave at 6:11 pm on June 11, 2008 and filed under Save the SPCK, Religion.

You like me! You really, really like me!

2008-07-10T08:18:00.002-04:00

The wild and precious LJ and the talented JohnieB have honored me by nominating my blog for the Arte y Pico award. I am deeply humbled by their kind words about my occasional chicken-scratching, and am grateful for their giving me an opportunity to nominate some other blogs I deeply admire.

Here are the rules:

1) Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte Y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award which is here: Arte Y Pico.

I've tried to choose those I haven't seen nominated before, so I'm limiting myself to four:

Closeted Pastor--Cecilia is fiercely honest in her self-examinations, and I admire her courage immensely. It has been, and continues to be, a joy to see her come into her own.

Caliban's Dream--I also admire Alcibiade's courage, his integrity, and his faith in the face of events that would have stripped me of mine. I wish he could be a priest in my parish---he's the real deal.

Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper--Crystal has experienced things from which most of us pray daily to be spared---and she shares her life with knock-em-dead writing. She's vulgar, funny as hell, and pulls no punches. I like that in a woman...

Grendel, the Misanthropic Dog--Grendel is a fine writer and theologian. And he once labeled me a "goo-person." What's not to love?

Magical Mystery Tour

2008-07-07T15:31:00.003-04:00

I'm not even sure I can blog about it. It was so incredibly wonderful and magical that I'm afraid talking about it will spoil it...

Dear Friend and I had the time of our lives on our 10-day whirlwind tour of Europe. It was amazing, more fun than you could possibly imagine, and incredibly romantic. I could hardly have fathomed that pairing an off-the-scale introvert (him) and an off-the-scale extrovert (me) 24/7 for 10 days would have a good effect on our relationship, but it did. We meshed about as well as two traveling companions possibly could.

The only fly in the ointment was that The Hydra did not allow me to talk to the children for an entire week. He has all kinds of excuses as to why his refusal to answer my calls (or turn his phone on at all) wasn't malicious, of course. I don't buy a word of it.

He did it to try and ruin my trip. He failed, of course. Utterly. But he used his own children as pawns against me. My daughter (age 7) was clearly extremely stressed by this, and it will take me years to get over the fury I feel at him.

I know Jesus said to forgive and pray for your enemies, but I'm having a hard time being a Christian today.

But then I think about the evenings that Dear Friend and I sat on the rooftop terrace of our hotel in Florence, drinking Chianti and watching the sun set over the Arno River below us, and I start smiling again.

My friends, I can assure you---there is still magic in the world. And for 10 glorious days, I got to float in it.

Gone Fishin'...

2008-06-09T09:45:00.002-04:00

The kids and I leave tomorrow for Merrie Olde England to visit my mother for a week. After we return, Dear Friend and I are going on our own romantic trip to Europe.

I have no idea whether I'll be able to get online while I'm gone (and I may not even try), so I'm going to wait to post my last rumination on race when I get back. I expect some big arguments, so I figure I'd better be around to let the comments through... ;-)

I'll be bold enough to ask your prayers, and I will continue in mine for you. (I'm a white-knuckle flyer, and extended time with family--while wonderful--can also be challenging.)

Thanks, and may God bless you all!