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

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

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

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

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

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

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  We think their tribalism is quaint and outdated; almost primitive.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photograph by Paula Sullivan

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

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Julie Clawson of One Hand Clapping challenged us to find some unsung heroines of the Bible and celebrate their stories today in a synchroblog.  So I pulled up BibleGateway and put “daughter” into their search engine.  I think it came back with about 110 hits … or something like that.

Some daughters just got honorable mention.  That is, they were simply mentioned as so and so’s daughter and that was the end of that.  Others had an actual story attached to their name.  Sometimes the story was fairly mysterious.  As in the case with Caleb’s daughter.  She was married to her cousin, by Caleb’s younger brother because Caleb had promised his daughter to whomever won a particular battle.  His nephew won the battle, so he married off his daughter.  This is not very acceptable by today’s standards, but in that culture we can understand it.  The next couple of verses recount an event that is odd.  Caleb’s daughter went to him and asked for some additional land.  When he gave it to her, she also asked for a couple of springs.  So he gave her those.  And there the story of Caleb’s daughter ends.  With the gift of springs.  It’s mysterious, really.  In there for a reason, but why?

So I moved on and found the story of Job’s daughters:  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  This story can be found in Job, chapter 42 … the very end of the book.  Job has come through his trials with some version of success:

¹ Then Job replied to the LORD :

 ² “I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.

 ³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

 ⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’

 ⁵ My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.

 ⁶ Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

⁷ After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ⁸ So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” ⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.

This is curious to me, because here we see the result of what happens to friends who might give you (however well-meaning) an incorrect perspective of God during your trials.  Those friends will have to sacrifice in your presence and have you pray over them.  This is an interesting perspective that I’ve not heard taken away from Job … but more on that another time.   I’m just thinking we need to be very careful with what we say to people about God when they are experiencing trials.

In any case, the account goes on tell us what happens to Job in the rest of his life:

 ¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

 ¹² The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. ¹³ And he also had seven sons and three daughters. ¹⁴ The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. ¹⁵ Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

 ¹⁶ After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. ¹⁷ And so he died, old and full of years.

Wait?  What?  Three short sentences.  That is all we have of Job’s daughters.  They were part of a family of 10 siblings.  We don’t know where they fell in the sibling order.  We do know who among the girls was eldest, middle and youngest.  We know they were beautiful.  Most astonishing of all, we know that “… their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.”  That’s it.

It’s a genealogist’s worst nightmare.  We have names and nothing else.  We know only the most bare facts of their existence.  But we know one more thing.  Job gave them status.  He told the world that his daughters were equal to men.  His daughters were not chattel to belong to their husbands.  They owned something of their father in their own right.  I’m not certain I can fully convey how remarkable this was for that time.

It was miraculous.  Unheard of.  Women were not considered capable of owning or managing the things that men did.   But Job did it.

These are the just sorts of passages I do love.  Open-ended, without a tidy message.  We don’t know what happened to Job’s daughters.  We do know that Job lived to see “… his children and their children to the fourth generation.”  I believe that would be his great, great grandchildren if I’ve figured correctly.  My guess is that his daughters married and children of their own.  So how did they use their inheritance?  And … did they pass it on to their daughters?  What was their inheritance?  Was it land, animals, jewels?

I wonder about those things you see.  We have things (land, jewels and the like) that have been only passed to women in my family.  Our summer lake house is among them.  When my aunt left it to our family, she left it to my mom (her relative).  Her will stipulated that if my mother had pre-deceased her, it was to go to me and my brothers.  She was emphatic that it stay in her family.  In the 100 years prior to that, the house had always passed woman to woman.

They are so intriguing to me.  Those daughters.  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  They are the opposing book-end to Job’s first three daughters.  As I thought about them and let their names rattle around I came to another realization.  I’d heard two of the names before.  Jemimah and Keziah were common names given to girls who were slaves in the American South.

I started looking for confirmation of that.  Of course, I quickly ran into a brick wall … because records of what slaves were named by each other were … um … slim.  Nobody thought it was important to keep track of what they called each other.  Sometimes just the gender and the slaveholders last name is recorded.  Certainly, no inheritance was given to these men and women.  It is intriguing to me that Jemima and Keziah were used as girls names though.

I wonder … could those names have been picked on purpose?  Are they names of hope?  We’ll never know for certain.  But we do know some few things.  We know that some slaves were given Christian training.  Some were even given Bible teaching.  We know that some of the stories resonated with their experience and certainly Job’s would have been among them.  It’s not a terrible stretch to imagine naming your daughter Jemima or Keziah out of hope … hope that one day you would have an inheritance to leave her, hope that she would be known as the daughter of a man who was blessed by God, hope that your trial would be ended in blessing rather than curses.

I think there might be something to that.  None of Job’s other children are named.  Not his first ten children (seven sons, three daughters) and not his second seven sons; just these three daughters.  So, it seems to me that these names spring to the top as names that are symbolic of the hope of a good outcome at the end of horrible trials … the kind of trials endured by slaves in the antebellum South.

Thus I came to the Aunt Jemima pancake empire.  It was begun in the 1890’s by two men who, having created an instant pancake mix, needed an icon to name it and represent.  One of them ducked into a black-face minstrel show and there heard the following song:

The monkey dressed in soldier clothes,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Went out in the woods for to drill some crows,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The jay bird hung on the swinging limb,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
I up with a stone and hit him on the shin,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

The bullfrog married the tadpole’s sister,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
He smacked his lips and then he kissed her,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
She says if you love me as I love you,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
No knife can cut our love in two,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

Shortly after hearing the name, Nancy Green was hired to represent Aunt Jemima.  She was currently working as a servant for a judge in Chicago, but had been born and raised a slave in antebellum Kentucky.  Aunt Jemima and her pancakes were introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.  It was held from May to November and Nancy smiled, sang, told slave tales, flipped and served almost a million pancakes during that six month period.  In the hundred and ten years since then she has become perhaps the most well-known African American female face in history.

Yet, there is something vaguely disturbing about that.  This name, Jemimah, started out as a name of hope, blessing, inheritance and beauty had become a term interchangeable with disparagement, slavery and bondage and now … commerce.  You never hear Jemimah as a name anymore.  There are no young women with that name … no fathers or mothers hoping to pass on that message of hope, blessing and inheritance to their daughters with that name because it’s lost all of it’s power.

We still hear Keziah.  You might not recognize it.  You’ll hear Keshia or Aisha.  Both of those names have their roots in Keziah.  A name of hope and blessing and inheritance for girls.   That’s just what we need to give our daughters today … a sense of hope and blessing and inheritance.  What sort of inheritance will you give your daughters?

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

This is my contribution to the International Women’s Day Synchroblog –

Here are links to some others –

Julie Clawson on the God who sees
Steve Hayes on St. Theodora the Iconodule
Sonja Andrews on Aunt Jemima
Sensuous Wife on a single mom in the Bible
Minnowspeaks on celebrating women
Michelle Van Loon on the persistant widow
Lyn Hallewell on the strength of biblical women
Shawna Atteberry on the Daughter of Mary Magdalene
Christine Sine on women who impacted her life
Susan Barnes on Tamar, Ruth, and Mary
Kathy Escobar on standing up for nameless and voiceless women
Ellen Haroutunian on out from under the veil
Liz Dyer on Mary and Martha
Bethany Stedman on Shiphrah and Puah
Dan Brennan on Mary Magdalene
Jessica Schafer on Bathsheba
Eugene Cho on Lydia
Laura sorts through what she knows about women in the Bible
Miz Melly preached on the woman at the well
AJ Schwanz on women’s workteenage girls changing the world
Teresa on the women Paul didn’t hate
Helen on Esther
Happy on Abigail
Mark Baker-Wright on telling stories
Robin M. on Eve
Patrick Oden on Rahab and the spies
Alan Knox is thankful for the women who served God
Lainie Petersen on the unnamed concubine
Mike Clawson on cultural norms in the early church
Krista on serving God
Bob Carlton on Barbie as Icon
Jan Edmiston preached on the unnamed concubine
Deb on her namesake – Deborah
Makeesha on empowering women

It’s just too bad she won’t accrue any benefits from it.

Maybe you remember Lilly from last year’s presidential campaign. Or if you’re really observant, from the news in May 2007. If you don’t, allow me to tell you a little bit of Lilly’s story.

Lilly Ledbetter worked for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber company down in Alabama. She was an Area Manager (aka plant supervisor). She worked at Goodyear from 1979 to 1998. When she retired in 1998, she was the only female Area Manager, the rest of her colleagues were male. All 15 of them. Another unique characteristic that her colleagues shared was that they all earned more than she did. Every single one of them. Even those who had worked at Goodyear less time than Lilly had. Even those who did a worse job than she did.

Sometime in early 1998, Lilly finally had enough evidence and she filed paperwork with the EEOC (that’s the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). She retired in July and in November she filed a lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company claiming that they had discriminated against her on the basis of her gender. That’s when the legal wrangling began. I’ll spare you the details. But it went all the way up to the highest court in the land.

The Supremes got it. No, poodles, not Diana Ross and the Supremes. The Supreme Court. The Nine in Black. However, their decision made just about as much sense as MacArthur Park.

Now you can read the ruling in it’s entirety if you’d like. You can download it for yourself here. However, the essence of the majority (5 to 4) decision, handed down by Justice Alito, was that Ms. Ledbetter had missed the boat. You see, Lilly had filed suit saying, in essence, that because there was discrimination in her pay at the end of her employment, there had been ongoing discrimination for a long period of time. Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas (who, being African American, ought to know better) disagreed and wrote, essentially that Ms. Ledbetter ought to have known about the discrimination in her salary from the very beginning and in order to have gained redress, should have filed grievances at every instance. They used plenty of the court’s own rulings as precedence for this. Every single one of which as been overwritten by Congress. They ignored the intent and the scope of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the National Labor Relations Act.

You see, the original court in which Ms. Ledbetter filed her claim she was given redress for the wrong and was awarded $3.5 million dollars in lost income. That seemed a little steep to me when I first saw the number, because at the time of her retirement the disparity in income was not that great. Ms. Ledbetter was earning $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236. However, then I realized that while the immediate difference was not great, this difference would play out for perhaps 30 years or more during her retirement. Ms. Ledbetter had not had the opportunity to save as much for retirement, nor Social Security as her male counterparts and so that must also be accounted for in the redress.

You may be wondering why Ms. Ledbetter won. Well, until the Supreme Court ruling, the presumption was that the clock (180 days) started running on the day that one recieved the most recent (or current) discriminatory paycheck, NOT the first discriminatory paycheck. So the court in which she originally filed suit found that she presented a valid case and gave her redress. Goodyear Tire did not like that answer and filed an appeal. Thus the case wound it’s way to the Supreme Court.

Think back for a moment to your employment experiences. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Think about the notion that salary decisions might be public knowledge.

Have you finished guffawing yet?

That’s exactly what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought too. She wrote the dissenting opinion. Then took the unusual step of reading it from the bench after the majority opinion had been read. If you’ve never read Supreme Court decisions, this is a good one to cut your teeth on. It’s fairly straightforward and you already know what’s going on. Even more interesting (to me) are the dissenting opinions. The writing in those are more relaxed and less full of legalese, because they don’t count for as much. That is, future jurisprudence will not necessarily be relying upon the dissent. Reading the dissenting opinion from the bench is very unusual. It carries a certain weight; it goes beyond saying, “We in the minority disagree.” to also spitting on your shoes. In public. Here is some of what Justice Ginsburg had to say:

The Court’s insistence on immediate contest overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination. Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time. Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials. Small initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves.

Pay disparities are thus significantly different from adverse actions “such as termination, failure to promote, . . . or refusal to hire,” all involving fully communicated discrete acts, “easy to identify” as discriminatory.

There is so much more. This may not sound like much to the untrained ear/eye, but in the language of the Supreme Court it is a stinging rebuke. Especially since it was delivered in a public address.

And so things stood for nearly two years. But two days ago, President Obama and the U.S. Senate set the scales of justice just a little bit right again. The Senate approved legislation which would establish that the clock starts with the most recent discriminatory paycheck NOT the first one. Then President Obama signed it into law. It was the second law he signed since taking office. It’s known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And, God bless her, Lilly won’t get one thin dime from it. The rest of us will. Or not. But at least we will have gained an equal footing on which to stand up for ourselves.

As Gail Collins wrote in yesterday’s NYTimes:

Ledbetter, who was widowed in December, won’t get any restitution of her lost wages; her case can’t be retried. She’s now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit.

I highly recommend that op-ed piece. For two reasons. First, you’ll read about women who have paved the way for the rest of us, the un-sung heroines in mostly blue-collar jobs who made it possible for us to get where we are today. Second, many of the cases that Gail writes about, were also used as precedence by Alito, et al; cases the Court ruled on which were then overwritten by Congress.

So, if you think about it today, say a prayer for Lilly Ledbetter and Eulalie Cooper and Patricia Lorance and Lorena Weeks. They fought so we could stand.
Cross-posted at Emerging Women

Missional Tribe – Not Just Another Use of the Word “Missional”

Do a Google search on the word “missional” and you’ll get 1,200,000 hits. Search “missional” at Amazon and 1,238 missional products appear before your very eyes. It’s the Western Church word of the moment. The key to all that ails the church. The promise of a bright future – beginning with a boldtomorrow. That is, if we only knew what it meant.

This recent quote from a church website accurately demonstrates “missional” confusion.

We have made a commitment to being a Missional Church, reaching into the community and inviting people to come and experience what we are doing. We should have “standing room only” Services every Sunday. There should be a buzz in the Community about [church name removed] and all the wonderful activities available for most people’s needs and wishes.

Well, not so much.

Last June (2008), in response to this kind of confusion, Friend of Missional’s Rick Meigs challenged the blogosphere to respond to the question,

“What is Missional?”

“I have a continuing concern that the term missional has become over used and wrongly used.

“I think it is time to make a bigger effort to reclaim the term, a term which describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.

“To help reclaim it, I propose a synchronized blog for Monday, June 23rd on the topic, ‘What is Missional?’”

50 bloggers responded with their understanding of the word – and a lot more conversation was generated both in real life and on the web. Brother Maynard did a great summary of the missional excitement. There was a sense of accomplishment – the 50 people and the hundreds of commentors had refocused the word missional.

But then each blogger wrote other posts – dislodging their Synchroblog posts from the lead position. Soon these posts disappeared from the front pages of 50 blogs – only accessible if one knew exactly what you were looking for. The sense of accomplishment was ephemeral.

A few of us who had met face-to-face at the Allelon Missional Order event in Seabeck, WA in October, 2007, talked about the best way to keep those posts and ideas evergreen. We’d also been part of the Wikiklesia Project: Voices of the Virtual World. Perhaps a book would be effective. By the fall, seven of us were in ongoing conversation around how best to serve the”missional” mission – Sonja Andrews, Peggy Brown, Kingdom Grace, Bill Kinnon, Brother Maynard, Rick Meigs, and Brad Sargent.

Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody and Seth Godin’s Tribes helped to inform our discussions.  Missional Tribe’s first iteration was as a Wiki. Then the mini “blogstorm” around Out of Ur’s Dan Kimball Missional results post convinced us that what the conversation needed was a place to discuss, share stories, watch videos, ask questions, and grow together. Where all of this can easily be tagged and indexed for rapid access in the future. The Missional Tribe social network was born (www.missionaltribe.org).

Less than two months after the decision to launch a social network, the beta of the Missional Tribe site launches today – Epiphany, on the church calendar. We would like you to join us in being a part of this non-hierarchical network.

From simply reading and commenting on posts and in the Forums, to creating your own Missional Tribe blog or posting a video – Missional Tribe is a place to track and expand the missional conversation – as we follow the Lord back into the neighborhoods where he has strategically placed each one of us.

To become involved, please join Missional Tribe at www.missionaltribe.org .
Want more information? Contact info at missionaltribe dot org .

If you’ve been reading me during the last couple of weeks, I’ve alluded to something being up.  That I’ve been busy with a big project.  It’s really big.  It’s a tribe.  Missional Tribe.

And the cat is climbing out of the bag.  Bill (Kinnon) has been writing about it.  Rick (Blind Beggar) Meigs has been writing about it.  Peggy (Virtual Abbess) Brown has been writing about it.  The rest of my fellow Instigators (Brother Maynard, Kingdom Grace, and Brad -FuturistGuy- Saargent) have been more demure.

Our beta test period is almost done.  Our virtual space is going live on Epiphany.  January 6.  Be looking for Missional Tribe then.

Missional Tribe is a social networking space with a purpose.  As Rick wrote:

It is a space for “… those involved in any aspect of the missional movement can gather for virtual communitas, will launch. It is a space where story and praxis is given emphasis over the theoretical and conceptual. It is a kinship of diverse people who practice “the way of Jesus,” a way that informs and radically transforms their very being. It is a place where the great conversations around the missional paradigm can be brought together so they are evergreen and accessible.”

So … be looking for more information here early next week.  I’ll be posting more about it then.

So …

Where were you when?

Where were you when John Glenn Neil Armstrong (thanks BroKen) walked on the moon?

Where were you when …

… the first man of African-American descent was elected president?

I’m going to remember every step of this process.  I’m going to relish it.

Sometime last weekend it was announced that the final rally of Obama’s campaign would be literally in my backyard.  In my hometown.  Less than two miles from my house, on Monday evening.  So CoachWonderWoman and her daughter, LightGirl and I all walked to the appointed place.  We stood around watching the people and wondering for about three hours.  There was an amazing cross-section of people at the rally.  There were young and old, of every ethnic background and all walks of life.  We could have been in an airport, or on a street corner, or in a bus station.  There was everyone there.  Everyone.  (And some bad music.  I don’t know who was in charge of the live music, but it was horrid.  Think Bill Murray Lounge Lizard.  Ugh.  They played “Celebrate” by Kool & The Gang and I thought I was in the world’s largest elevator.  And I discovered that I can hear “Beautiful Day” too many times in one evening – five, for the record)  It was a typical political rally and hearing Obama speak was wonderful.  I’m glad we saw him (microscopically) in person.  I’m glad we had the experience of being amongst fellow supporters and seeing what that was like … that was more important to me.  Apparently, there were about 80,000 of us packed into that field.  I still can’t quite get my head around that.

Yesterday I walked to my polling place alone.  Both children were otherwise engaged and LightHusband had a meeting.  He was going to vote later.  My polling place just so happens to be in a middle school which was once the place of worship for a church I used to go to (my CLB1).  Usually the voting room is in the chorus room in the back.  But yesterday in anticipation of long lines and increased voter turnout, they had moved the voting to the cafeteria.  This happened to be the very place where we used to worship.  I didn’t really take note of this until after I’d left.

I went to where my last name lined up with the letters and waited my turn … less than a minute.  I noticed a table off to the left groaning with snack food for poll workers.  Then it was my turn and I handed my voter registration card to the people at the table, they asked me for my identifying information, assigned me number 243 and I went to await a booth.  I got to the booth and was overwhelmed with exuberance.  I don’t know.  I just got happy.  Everytime I hit a button on the touch screen I had to do a tiny jig.  Well, this was a little bit too much for the tiny little African-American lady who was attending my booth.  I think she was worried I was going to knock it over or something.  She was smiling at me, yet nervous.  When I was done and she handed me my sticker, she also gave me a big hug.  Then I promptly tried to walk out the wrong doors! and everyone hollered, “Ma’m you’re going the wrong way!!”  oops.

What a ninny.  So I turned around with a big grin on and all the poll workers were smiling at me.  So I waved and shrugged and went the right direction.  And told them I had the blonde streaks applied for a reason!!

Then I came home and giggled the whole way.  I wore my sticker with pride.  For the first time since my first time voting (1980), I’ve been excited about a candidate.  I’m inspired.   I’m inspired because Obama gets scripture; he quotes it regularly and not just the easy, well-known stuff … he quoted from Amos last night.  And I’m inspired because he gets the “social contract” in a way that many of our latter-day leaders have not … to whit:

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world. (italics mine for emphasis)  From today’s NYTimes editorial

In other words, there are things that are the responsibility of the government and things that are the responsibility of us as individuals.  Give us the empowerment to do our thing and then do the stuff that is the responsibility of the government.   Give us the the space to do things locally in our communities to bring about change where ever we are and in the things that impassion us.  And, well … that is the way to truly change history.

Cholera: any of several diseases of humans and domestic animals usually marked by severe gastrointestinal symptoms ; especially : an acute diarrheal disease caused by an enterotoxin produced by a comma-shaped gram-negative bacillus (Vibrio cholerae syn. V. comma) when it is present in large numbers in the proximal part of the human small intestine.  Merriam-Webster on-line

I just voted.  Yes, I voted for the hip, young man of color for President.  I have many reasons why and I’ll get to them in a second.  But first a wee story or two.

It was exciting to go and vote this time.  In fact, I scared my poor poll worker, I was so exuberant at the little screen.  Then when she handed me my sticker, she hugged me.  As I attempted to dance through the wrong doors in exit, all the poll workers called to me and I turned around abashed at my silliness.  I was just too giddy.  Why was I giddy?  Here’s why.
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I remember the 1960’s.  Most of all, I remember Martin Luther King, Jr.  If I had to pick a hero, he’d be it.  He was a legend in his own time.  I might pick Gandhi, but for a real American hero, I’d pick King.  Every year I listen to his “I Have A Dream” speech and cry.  I’ve studied his speeches and writings; I have a fairly good idea of which Biblical prophets he was studying when he wrote.  And today … well, today … I got to vote for someone based upon the content of his character not the color of his skin.  Amen and hallelujah.  And the tiny little poll worker who hugged me?  Well, she was African-American too.
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Mind you, I did NOT vote for Obama because of his roots either. Did I listen to both sides?  No, not equally.  I lost respect for the Republican party back in 2000 and again when Republicans treated James Jeffords with such disrespect when he became an independent.  The party had huge barriers to overcome in my mind, and they failed to get there. Experience the ultimate productivity boost and heightened focus with our range of modafinil forms. Whether you prefer tablets, capsules, or even a convenient sublingual option, we’ve got you covered! ?

Here is why I voted for Obama …

“People are more inclined to be drawn in if their leader has a compelling vision. Great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then will help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.” John Kotter

I didn’t find that quote until about a week ago when I was looking for something else entirely.   But it encapsulates my reasons for choosing Obama for president.  Even my father has some qualms about the details of his platform, the hows and wherefors.  What exactly will he do if he is elected?  For someone with little time in his role in the Senate those are very legitimate questions.  But it’s his ability to inspire that I look at. Take charge of your data collection process and make informed decisions with ambien Forms!

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Frankly, I’m tired of leaders who go around poking into private business looking for what is wrong.  I want leaders who will inspire us to find our dreams and make them reality.  It is in those dreams and that reality that we will rebuild our economy, our infrastructure, get us off the dependence on petroleum and many of the other ills that we currently find ourselves in.   That sort of leadership is transformational; it begins at the top and trickles down.  We learn how to encourage and develop our own dreams.  Then we learn how to encourage and develop the dreams of others.

Or will it?  Can a charismatic leader help us overcome our addiction to power?  That’s the question for the ages.  Too often people in leadership are at the top, they lead from above and are in a position of power.  They have the ability to cause hardship, pain and devastation to those they purport to lead.  Typically, those who are leading hold all or most of the cards.  But in this new scenario, of dream empowerment, the little guy, the individual is given the space to dream and realize those dreams.

So, will we find this in Obama?  I don’t know.  I hope so.  But that’s what I voted for; that’s what I’m hoping for.  That’s the kind of leadership I’m hoping for.  In this age of choleric leadership, we need something new.  We need something that won’t revolt us and turn our stomachs.  Something, someone nationally, and locally who will help us find our own dreams and turn them into reality.

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This is part of synchroblog on Leadership … the rest of the most excellent writings are below, please check them out:

Jonathan Brink – Letter To The President

Adam Gonnerman – Aspiring to the Episcopate

Kai – Leadership – Is Servant Leadership a Broken Model?

Sally Coleman – In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church

Alan Knox – Submission is given not taken

Joe Miller – Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future

Cobus van Wyngaard – Empowering leadership

Steve Hayes – Servant leadership

Geoff Matheson – Leadership

John Smulo – Australian Leadership Lessons

Helen Mildenhall – Leadership

Tyler Savage – Moral Leadership – Is it what we need?

Bryan Riley – Leading is to Listen and Obey

Susan Barnes – Give someone else a turn!

Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…

Lionel Woods – Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America

Julie Clawson – Leadership Expectations

Ellen Haroutunian – A New Kind Of Leadership

Matt Stone – Converting Leadership

Steve Bradley – Lording or Leading?

Adam Myers – Two types of Leadership

Bethany Stedman – A Leadership Mosaic

Kathy Escobar – I’m Pretty Sure This Book Won’t Make It On The Bestseller List

Fuzzy Orthodoxy – Self Leadership

Sonja Andrews – Leadership In An Age of Cholera

Tara Hull – Leadership & Being A Single Mom

Here it is … the end of the day.

I thought I had nothing.  Several bloggers I know had made me aware of this event and I’ve been thinking about it, but nothing came to mind.  And … I’ve been busier than a blue bottle fly as my grammy used to say.  So it just wasn’t happenin’ … no big deal.  I could let it pass without participating.  I’ve done that before.

But then I read two things.  This fact over at pinkhairedgirl.net:

“Americans spend 450 Billion dollars a year in Christmas. It is estimated that it would cost 10 billion dollars to SOLVE the clean water shortage around the planet that causes a majority of diseases in the third world.” and Crystal credits Troy Kennedy, who in turn quotes The Advent Conspiracy for the source of that information.

A short time later I read an article in the BBC that today is also World Handwashing Day sponsored by the United Nations.

The UN says it wants to get over the message that this simple routine is one of the most effective ways of preventing killer diseases.

Nearly half the world’s population do not have access to adequate sanitation.

The main concern seems to be cleaning one’s hands after using the bathroom and before food preparation and consumption.  That’s reasonable.  And it’s what we teach our children, for good reason.

It seems like a great idea.  But then I remember these stories from Jimmy Carter’s latest book (these quotes come from pages at the Carter Center website):

Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, is a disease affecting 18 million people in 37 countries worldwide. River blindness is transmitted by black flies, which deposit the larvae of the Onchocerca volvulus worm into the body. Over the course of a year, these larvae mature within the human host at which point the adult worms mate and the female worms release their embryonic microfilariae. These microfilariae cause debilitating itching and inflammation, and may eventually infiltrate the eye where they cause damage and diminished eyesight.  If left untreated, the infected person can become permanently blind.

The ancient Guinea worm parasite, while not usually fatal to its human hosts, can grow up to three feet long inside the body before emerging slowly through a blister on the flesh. The disease is contracted by drinking water that contains the microscopic Cyclops flea, which eats and carries parasitic Guinea worm larvae. In the host’s stomach, the flea is broken down, leaving the male and female worm larvae free to cruise undetected through the body until they find one another and mate. The male dies, while the impregnated female grows not fat but long before emerging blindly into the African sunshine some nine months to a year later, typically on the lower limbs. The emergence of “the fiery serpent” causes a painful burning sensation, often sending victims to the nearest water source to soak the sore, which begins the cycle anew: when it hits the water, the worm releases thousands of new larvae. 

I read that book a couple of years ago and the mental visages stuck with me.  It seemed as though washing one’s hands in water that might be infested like this would be spitting into the wind.  We think of washing our hands and the picture we get is of running water, clean sinks, drains and a clean town with which to dry our hands when we’re done.  But what if we only have pest infested water, or fetid rain water caught in a rusty barrel sitting around brooding mosquitos to wash our hands in?  Or to drink?

The numbers are huge and staggering.  So big that we cannot comprehend them.  The numbers of people dying, living blind, living poor, living hungry.  The amount of money it would take to change that is huge too.

It would take 2% of a Christmas.

About 1% of a financial crisis.

Would we wipe out poverty?  No.  But at least people would have clean water.  Then maybe they could start taking care of the rest of it themselves.    What if we put something besides small change aside?

But those numbers, those numbers are so damn big.  I can’t get my head around them.  There’s not a collection plate in the world that’s big enough.  Everyone is working on it, talking about it, moaning about it.  But at heart, we’re all still essentially selfish. We don’t want to give up our Christmases and our Wall Streets.

Until that changes, nothing else really will.

Just about every parent has heard of the terrible twos.  It’s that period of life when a child is two.  Supposedly they become terrible.  Acting out, rebellious … suddenly aware of their own power and self-dom, they wield it with aplomb, spouting, “No.” or “I don’t wanna.” at any turn.  It is an important era in the development of their character and personhood, that they begin to understand the limits of themselves and others.  And it seems to begin at two, with a rather sudden onslaught of apparent disobedience and rebellion.  I never experienced this with my children.  Maybe it was because I understood what two was all about, but the twos seemed to go well for me.  Three on the other hand … the threes were terrible.  And yet, also not really.  Neither of my children were horrible toddlers.  Inquistive?  Yes.  Self-motivated?  Yes.  But the threes were more difficult than the twos.

So I’m not sure what to think now that my blog is three.  We turned three the other day.  July 7.  I realized it a day late and now I’m blogging about it even later.  I’m ambivalent about my blogiversary these days.  I began this blog as an exercise in community to which I no longer belong and from which I was rudely dismissed when I began to point to inconsistencies in leadership.  Then I became the problem. I continue to grieve that gaping hole in my life and struggle with the accompanying anger, stress and mistrust on a daily basis.

On the other hand, I have found a new community of friends to whom I owe a great debt for the love, grace and patience they have granted me as I’ve walked this road.  Alone, yet accompanied virtually by a host of companions.  They go with me on this road, some before, some behind.  All calling out to one another that yes, we can walk this way, we can.  It’s a careful community.  Our skin is in various stages of healing from the burn so we are tender and raw.  Perhaps not yet ready for IRL community.  Or only ready for it in small doses with carefully selected friends.

So this blog has been an incredible exercise in community.  2462 comments.  827 posts (more or less). I blog at least once a week, most weeks several times a week.  Most posts are commented on.  Sometimes I get a good idea.  We’ll see if the threes are better than or more difficult than the twos 😉 …