Put me in charge . . ..
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Now, if you have the guts – PASS IT ON…

According to an e-mail LightHusband received the above was a letter to the editor in the Waco Herald Tribune in November 2010. It’s rather blunt point is something I bet we’ve all heard and perhaps felt at one time or another in reference to what many see as the profligate waste associated with aid programs for the impoverished in our country. We all think those programs would be really easy to run. So for kicks and giggles I thought I’d respond to this letter myself. Just for fun. Here’s what I would say to this person … paragraph by paragraph. And for arguments sake, I’m going to assume that the author was a man, the writing seems very masculine to me. So I’m going to respond to a man.

Food Stamps – You’re correct, sir. Food assistance should not be allowed to purchase Ding Dongs or Ho Hos or other known unhealthy foods (such as Captain Crunch or other sugary cereal). But I also happen to think that it would be wise to include some healthy fruits and vegetables in your list of approved items for people to purchase. I have never understood why it was acceptable for the WIC (Women with Infants and Children) to have a limited number of items for purchase with their funds, but Food Stamps was a free for all. WIC money is too limited, but Food Stamps are too open. There needs to be a healthy and wise middle ground in which people learn about a healthy diet … and I’m sorry but rice, beans, cheese and milk ain’t it. Steak and frozen pizza probably isn’t it either.

There are a lot of ways to feed a family a healthy diet on a tight budget. This is going to mean educating moms and dads because they did not learn this from their parents. Education costs money, so in the short run this would make the food stamp program more expensive. In the long run (over a period of years) it would become less expensive. But we would have to be prepared to invest our time, effort and money in it to eventually wean people off of it.

Medicaid – Forced birth control, tubal ligations, drug testing etc. I think I understand the reasoning and emotion behind this. However, when the large majority of people receiving Medicaid are people with dark skin it smacks of racism and there is no getting around that. If you are poor, you cannot have children. If you are poor, your options are limited. We have an amendment in the Constitution which addresses this issue – Amendment 14; Article 1 states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. While individual (private) companies can require drug testing for the right to employment and the federal government can require it for security purposes and has done so through the due process of law, there is no reason to require drug testing as a prerequisite for the receipt of public funds. I know that two states are currently attempting to make this law and they are on shaky Constitutional ground. In addition … there are huge costs involved with drug testing. How is this going to be paid for?

Government Housing – I completely understand the desire to tell folks who live in public housing to clean up their act. It is disgraceful the way our country has treated those housing projects. We’ve left them to rot. But have you ever gone to Home Depot and noted the cost of purchasing a basic home repair kit? When you have nothing, it’s pretty expensive. Then you have to learn how to use it. Now I do love LightHusband, but I am here to tell you that of his many talents, home repair is not one of them.  He has 10 thumbs. We hire that out or we do things with friends. But what do you do when you live in an apartment building and you rent? It is common knowledge that a renter relies on the owner or the superintendent of the facility to keep the place in good repair. It is the owner’s responsibility to keep a place looking ship shape and tidy, not the renter’s. Your plan puts the onus in the wrong place. If we want our government housing projects to look like someone cares for them, then perhaps “we, the people” as owners of those public housing projects ought to start caring for them. Perhaps we need to get down off our high horse and take care of our neighbors. Maybe we could teach them some skills and give them some of our excess tools in the process.

As for the plasma televisions and gaming devices, first of all there is no way to inspect for those. Secondly, what do you do if someone receives those sorts of luxury items as a gift? Take it away? That is ludicrous to begin to monitor gifts and decide which are worthy and which are not. We will become a police state if we do that.

Job Corps – Here is something I can give marginal support to. With one large question. How sir, do you propose to care for the minor children that moms may have in their care? I can see a number of solutions to this problem, but you do not seem to have accounted for children or their wellbeing in your scheme. I wonder how you will do that? My other large problem is that what you have outlined looks more like a chain gang than a public works program. While I agree with the notion that having people work in some manner for the public assistance they receive, I also believe that the work they do should train them in some way for eventually getting off public assistance. It should be a road that leads them in a positive direction, rather than a dead end alley of endless work for endless public assistance. This just feeds the cycle that we desire to break.

Voting – Once again, I would like to refer you to the Constitution and Amendment 24 in which it states “1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.” This means that no one can ask or require that voting rights or privileges be restricted for any reason, whether “voluntary” or otherwise.

Last, I’m going to call you out, sir. You are being disingenuous when you make the claim that when you are in charge all of your changes are “voluntary.” That people have the choice to knuckle under to your demands or they can reject public assistance. In other words, it’s your way or the highway (in popular vernacular). When the alternative is starvation, homelessness and perhaps death, especially for one’s children, there’s not really much of a choice, now, is there? And I’d like to ask you, if you were that person, or those people, just how free would you think this country is?

Part 2

Part 3

Remember that childhood nursery rhyme?  We used it to ward off name-calling and taunts; as an umbrella of protection when words rained down pain upon our little heads:

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

Then we all grew up and we learned how much power there is in words.  We learned that words, when they are repeated over and over again, can become a person’s reality and perception.  We understand now that name-calling and taunts create a poisonous environment for children and workers.  We even have a name for this … we call it bullying and it has garnered a negative reputation nationwide.  Behaviour that makes some people uncomfortable by putting them down, threatening them with harm, making pejorative statements about their ethnicity, gender or any other physical characteristic OR their belief system is generally considered off limits.  This is considered negative behaviour and in many cases is shunned or disallowed.  Why?  Because “nice” people don’t do that, sweetie.  People who are educated, with manners; people who want to be known by their self-control (as ladies or as gentlemen) don’t do those kinds of things to others.

Yet there is one large crevice where we still allow this sort of bad behaviour.  Nay … there are some portions of our culture who even encourage it.  That would be our political culture.  Our political culture (and one party in particular) takes pleasure in name calling, insults based on race, gender and physical characteristics and creating a poisonous environment for others.

What happened in Tucson was tragic.  But it was only a matter of time.  And frankly, I am surprised it did not happen sooner than this.  I expected this sort of thing to happen on the campaign trail last October.  Yes, that young man is mentally deranged and that is very sad.  But mentally deranged people listen to rhetoric just like the rest of us.  The only difference is … many people with these mental health issues cannot separate rhetoric from reality.

That is why putting out websites with crosshairs on Democrats and encouraging your followers to carry weapons to rallies (even though they may -or may not- be unloaded) is dangerous.  While people have every right to do those things, those are not necessarily the most responsible or the most gracious things to do. Encouraging your followers to stop and accost motorists with bumper stickers of your opposition on their car with antagonistic, insulting, and pejorative questions is not responsible leadership.  It makes for great drama and excellent ratings, but it creates an atmosphere of poison and hate.  This is the sort of atmosphere which will bring the mentally challenged people out with their guns (in this case a Glock 9mm … because I’m certain that’s an excellent hunting weapon) to hunt people.

And in this poisonous atmosphere that we have created, please don’t anyone act surprised.  Because now we have lowered ourselves to the level of many developing nations where they shoot politicians when they don’t like them.

These words were spoken by Clinton in 2010 as he reflected on the Oklahoma City bombing:
“The words we use really do matter. There’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike.”
h/t Liz Dyer

As one of the three women who work together to get the synchroblog going each month, it’s really pitiful that here I am … bringing up the rear in November.  But something was stopping me from writing this month.  Oh, I have plenty to say on the topic (Voices of the Marginalized) and there were/are many directions I felt I could take.  Yet every time I wanted to write, I couldn’t.  There was a time when I would have fretted and fussed.  Sat down and made something up.  But if I’ve learned anything over the last five or six years, I’ve learned how to wait.  How to be patient.  How to let things percolate and bubble to the surface.  And last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I finally knew what to write about.  So here I am this morning … a couple days late, and a couple dollars short.  I hope you find it worthy.

Marginalization results in an individual’s exclusion from meaningful participation in society and it’s source is many. Economic circumstances, illness, disability, geographical location, gender, sexuality, race, religion are all dominant sources of individuals being marginalized. Sometimes it’s easy to see holidays or certain systems from a position of power or privilege. * As God’s people, what does it mean to see the world through the eyes of the marginalized?

• What is it like to be one of the marginalized?
• How can we be part of bridging some of these gaps?

Here in the LightHouse we’ve been discussing some particularly knotty extended family issues over the last week or so.  This has been an ongoing conversation that has ebbed and flowed around work schedules, hockey schedules, and our emotional barometers.  We have worked it around to a place where we realized we are not free to say, “No, this or that will not work for us.” within this relationship.  Well, I suppose we are free to say that, but the emotional damage to the relationship will be very high.  In order to maintain the relationship, we are required to affirm the other party’s desires, no matter what else is going on with us.

It struck me as I was drifting off to sleep last night, that this is the quintessential difference between those who are in and those who are marginalized.  Those who are in have power, are equals and may say yes or no to whatever they please.  They have the freedom to choose their lives and their horizons.  Those who have been pushed to the edges do not have this freedom, they are required to say yes in order to maintain their relationship with those in power around them.  Their choices/our choices are then limited by what they are given to say yes to.  A relationship between equals will allow negotiation; it will allow for a yes OR a no.  A relationship between a powerful and a powerless will only allow for a yes and negotiation will be minimal at best.

What this means is that those who are marginalized in our country are not free.  They are bound by invisible bonds.  The ties are tightly woven and they are kept in place (in some cases over generations) just as surely as those of a plantation owner in the Antebellum South.  We tell ourselves that now we no longer capitalize on human suffering, but is that really true?  Perhaps if we took a different perspective on the relationship of power and wealth vs. poverty, we might begin to see how much of our power grid really does still capitalize on human suffering; on some humans having less than others and on a zero-sum paradigm of the world.

And as I was thinking all of this through, I remembered the words of the Apostle Paul again, in the letter to the church at Galatia:

All of you are God’s children because of your faith in Christ Jesus. And when you were baptized, it was as though you had put on Christ in the same way you put on new clothes. Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman. (Gal. 3:26-28)

That is the gospel of freedom.  That we would all be free to make our yes be yes and our no be no.  To be equal with one another.  That in the end, our relationships with one another will not be driven by who is powerful and who is powerless, but by love.  And our mission during our brief stint here is bring the Kingdom to the dusty corners that we find.  Help those in our path see new horizons and find ways to speak; to say no when they need to and yes only when they want to.  To have healthy relationships based on love, rather than warped relationships based on fear or power.

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

As I wrote above, this is a synchroblog post, and no synchroblog would be complete without a list of juicy links for you to read at the end.  Please take some time to read what others have written on this important subject.  Thanks!

• George at the Love Revolution – The Hierarchy of Dirt
• Arthur Stewart – The Bank
• Sonnie Swenston – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized
• Wendy McCaig – An Empty Chair at the Debate
• Ellen Haroutunian – Reading the Bible from the Margins
• Christine Sine – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized
• Alan Knox – Naming the Marginalized
• Margaret Boehlman – Just Out of Sight
• Liz Dyer – Step Away from the Keyhole
• John O’Keefe – Viewing the World in Different Ways
• Steve Hayes – Ministry to Refugees–Synchroblog on Marginalised People
• Kathy Escobar – sitting at the rickety-card-table-in-the-family room at thanksgiving dinner
• Andries Louw – The South African Squatter Problem
• Drew Tatusko – Invisible Margins of a White Male Body
• K.W. Leslie – Who’s the Man? We Christians Are
• Jacob Boelman – Seeing through the Eyes of the Marginalized
• Peter Walker – Through the Eyes of the Marginalized
• Cobus van Wyngaard – Addressing the Normalized Position
• Tom Smith – Seeing Through the Eyes of the Marginalized
• Annie Bullock – Empty Empathy
• Christen Hansel – Foreigners and Feasts

The other day I wrote about a Barna survey that will be coming out with full documentation in about a year.  The posted statistics are quite provocative as I (and several other women) noted.  The data have raised a lot of criticism and left many women scratching their heads, thinking, “That’s not my experience, so how can those numbers be so high?”  It will be interesting to see the full report when Jim Henderson publishes his book next year.

FTR, I am still aghast that a man, without any co-authorship from a woman, is writing this book.  Upon reading Pam Hogeweide’s testimony about her involvement with it, I am further dismayed.  I don’t know Jim Henderson at all so I cannot comment on this.  I will speak my own mind and say that to me it feels as though he is stealing our voices for himself.  He has said that he is writing this because no woman has stepped forward to write it.  That may be.  It may also be that the time is not right for a woman to write it and therefore as a man he is taking away our right to speak for ourselves in our way, in our own time and with our own unique voice.  Que sera, sera …

I stopped writing about this issue for some time.  In fact, I stopped writing at all for a long time because I was and am undone by a lot of this.  I am struggling to find my place in the world; struggling to understand my faith without the trappings of church.  I don’t always know what is real and what is a reflection in a funhouse mirror.  But then I saw this data and began to remember …

I remembered a time when I might also have answered all those questions affirmatively.  Or in such a way that I might be part of the large percentage of women who were following the tail in front of them.  I grew up in an egalitarian home; a home in which my mother finally decided that she would NOT learn how to use a chainsaw because then she would have to use it more frequently than she wanted to because the boundaries between women’s work and men’s work were blurred (except dishes and laundry).  Everyone did everything.  I took shop classes in highschool.  My brothers took Home-Ec and I was jealous that my brother can still bake a better loaf of bread than I can.

Then LightHusband and I joined an EFree Church.  As a new believer I remember that I wanted to be like the other women in my church.  I think I wanted it mostly because that was the way to fit in and be part of the group.  But it was also the key … the key to being “Godly.”  In an evangelical or Bible-believing church, this is the defining characteristic of any adult … are they Godly?  I have no idea what that means.  What I can tell you is that people stand around looking very serious and hand out that superlative like it’s a crown.  It is placed on the head of this person or that person … it was never put on my head, I’ll tell you that up front.  Usually the character qualities that seem to be in common with a “Godly” person are those found in the fruits of the Spirit verses in Galatians:  self-control, patience, peace, etc.  They also have to be really good with their money (aka … rich).  Women should be submissive to their husbands.  Men should be the head of the family and make all the decisions.

I struggled to fit my round-peg into this square hole for 14 years.  I now battle an most likely lifelong case of depression because I so depleted myself from this.  I cannot even begin to catalogue the fallout from all of this in my life.  I’ve been gone for 7 years now.  I’m finally beginning to get my life and my mind back.  I have held on to my faith by the barest edge; the evidence of grace and love.

I did some poking around because of a throw-away comment in my earlier post.  I said that the Church is like an anorexic who looks in the mirror and sees someone who is fat and needs to lose weight, but the reality is she is wasting away and starving herself.  I thought about that some more and did a little research into eating disorders.  I found a little known cousin to anorexia called, orthorexia.  Orthorexia is like anorexia because people (mostly women) who become trapped in its snare waste away and starve.  However, the motivation for orthorexics is different.  It is an eating disorder characterized by a focus on eating healthy or natural foods.  The person who has become orthorexic feels better and better as they are able to purify their diet.  As it becomes an obsession, the person begins to focus more and more time and attention on what they eat.  I first discovered this through an on-line journal of a young woman who ultimately died as a result of her obsession with natural/healthy food.  As I discovered more about this, I found this helpful Ten Signs Of Orthorexia:

Dr. Bratman suggests that you may be orthorexic, or on your way there, if you:

• Spend more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food.
• Plan your day’s menu more than 24 hour ahead of time.
• Take more pleasure from the “virtuous” aspect of your food than from actually eating it.
• Find your quality of life decreasing as the “quality” of your food increases.
• Are increasingly rigid and self-critical about your eating.
• Base your self-esteem on eating “healthy” foods, and have a lower opinion of people who do not.
• Eat “correct” foods to the avoidance of all those that you’ve always enjoyed.
• So limit what you can eat that you can dine “correctly” only at home, spending less and less time with friends and family.
• Feel guilt or self-loathing when you eat “incorrect” foods.
• Derive a sense of self-control from eating “properly.”

Bratman suggests that if more than four of these descriptions applies to you, it may be time to take a step back and reassess your attitude toward what you eat. If they all apply, you’re in the grip of an obsession.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’ve included this here.  As I was reading about orthorexics and their quest for a pure diet, the parallels between seeking a pure and undefiled diet and seeking after a pure and undefiled faith became very clear to me.  They may not be to you.  But I began to look at the Church in terms of this obsession with pure food.  I think we all exist on a spectrum here.  Some believers have no issue with pure/right faith, others are obsessed with it to the point of starving themselves of any other sort of food than that which they deem pure.  Think about those 10 markers in terms of the faith of believers you know or about yourself –

• Spend more than three hours a day thinking about a healthy faith
• Plan your day’s faith practices more than 24 hour ahead of time.
• Take more pleasure from the “virtuous” aspect of your faith than from actively participating in it.
• Find your quality of life decreasing as the “quality” of your faith increases.
• Are increasingly rigid and self-critical about your faith practices (and those of others).
• Base your self-esteem on your knowledge of Scripture, your pure faith, etc., and have a lower opinion of people who do not.
• Expose yourself to “correct” media to the avoidance of all those that you’ve always enjoyed.
• So limit what you can be exposed to that you can practice your faith “correctly” only at home, spending less and less time with friends and family.
• Feel guilt or self-loathing when you expose yourself to ideas, images, etc that are “incorrect” according to the tenets of your faith.
• Derive a sense of self-control from practicing your faith “properly.”

So what does this have to do with women in church and/or church leadership? I’m not sure yet. But I do know that in many churches today there is an unhealthy focus on being “Godly,” on having correct doctrine, and on having a pure faith. For many of those churches, this includes attitudes about women and men that are not reflective of a healthy body. Some of these attitudes run to the extreme (such as a growing trend known as Christian Domestic Discipline, or another growing trend known sometimes as Quiverfull others as “radical family planning”).  Some of them are more middle of the road and merely separate men and women into different classes during Sunday School, women are not allowed to teach men either from the pulpit or in a class, etc.

No one can fault these churches or these believers because they really truly are seeking after God and seeking to find Him in the purest way they know how.  They get a lot of satisfaction from being a “Bible-believing” church, or having that crown of “Godliness” bestowed upon them.  And truth be told, we all get that sense of satisfaction when we’re told that we’re doing something good and pure and right.  It makes us want to be part of it and work harder for that cause … whatever that cause may be … so that we’ll get some more of that praise and that sense of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.  When we’re part of a group, that’s what happens in our socially-inclined brains.

But what do you do if your group is killing you?  I mean that both literally (sometimes women die from trying to have their babies unassisted at home in the so-called “Quiverfull” movement) and figuratively.  What if seeking after a pure faith (even walking in the middle of that road) isn’t an obsession, but just a concern … and the “food” you’ve decided is healthy, really isn’t?  How would anyone know?  How do you know when you’re being slowly inexhorably being poisoned and it’s gone on all your life?

The first rumble of something in the wind came late yesterday.  I was tired.  Grumpy even.  The day had been empty and I was supposed to be able to sew all day after a busy weekend.  But I ended up driving all day.  So I sat on the sofa and was mad.  It had been good for everyone else.  Just not me.  There seems to be a theme in that lately and I am slowly but steadily ending up without so much wick to my candle.  So I checked into my googlereader and found that kathy escobar had posted a rather interestingly titled post, “drinking the company koolaid.” Now since she usually writes about more Jesus-y things and her church-y gathering, I wondered what could be up with that!  And read it.

It was a most uncharacteristic rant from her about the state of women in the church.  Not that she thinks that women in the church over all have it made and we should stop going on about it.  Far from that.  It’s just that usually she has other things on her mind.  And she is very good about choosing her battles (windmills) very wisely.  She is no Don Quixote (unlike yours truly).  She referenced a post by Pam Hogeweide (Happy Christian Women … really??) … which is a must read.  But more importantly, she linked to some data that is being published by Jim Henderson, of Off The Map.  It’s a recent Barna Group survey of 603 Christian (self-described) women and what they thought of women and leadership in the church.

What he has published so far seems to be fairly provocative –

1. 84% say that their church’s perspective on women in ministry is almost identical, very similar, or somewhat similar to their own.

2. 83% say that their Senior Pastor is somewhat, highly or completely supportive of women leading in their church

3. 82% say they can tell by their church’s actions that the church values the leadership of women

4. 81% say that their church provides women with the same degree of leadership opportunities as Jesus would.

5. 72% say they possess a lot of spiritual freedom in their life

6. 70% say that the media has little influence on their decision-making

7. 71% say fear is not something they experience ever or often in their life

8. 62% say that ALL leadership roles are open to them in their church.

9. Only 1% say they often struggle with jealousy

10. Among those who feel they are capable of doing more to serve God, and should be doing more, only 4% say that their fear of failure is holding them back from doing more to serve God.

I commented at Jim’s blog (where he published this data).  I’m wondering how this survey was taken.  If it was taken on paper (either virtual or literal) or by phone that would give different results … especially when dealing with a group of women.   I think that this is incredibly revealing of how the church has become a system of brain-washing rather than God’s Kingdom revealed tiny piece by tiny piece. Because the Kingdom of Heaven is not about men or women or leadership.  Or who will be first.  It’s about who will be last.  It’s about finding the lost sheep, the lost penny; giving away your wrap when someone needs a shirt; enabling someone to care for others when at first they can barely care for themselves; it’s about spreading the Love Divine around, not keeping it for yourself.

It made me angry to read these statistics.  It made me angry, not just for the women … but for all the people involved in those churches.  They are losing out.  This is not the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, or as he walked with his disciples or at any time.  Would even Peter, or John the beloved disciple be able to answer these questions so affirmatively?  How about Mary Magdalene?  Good grief, if even the disciples struggled with jealousy why on earth can only 6 women out 603 acknowledge it?  Perhaps it was the word, often, that threw them off.  Maybe they decided that they could deny that jealousy was something that strolled in and regularly did battle in their hearts.  I know I will stand up and say that I am jealous all the time.  It doesn’t make me mean anymore, but acknowledging it to myself and being able to laugh at it has made it easier.

Then this report made me sad.  The kind of sad that aches in my bones.  Because when I look at it I see poverty.  The church in North America (like the US) may have a lot of money.  It may have a lot of stuff.  We may also have a lot of people for all I know.  But we are starving to death.  Emaciated and dying for lack of food, water and oxygen.  Worse, we are doing it to ourselves.  With a huge smile on our faces.  We are a people with anorexia or bulemia.  When we look in the mirror we see fat and happy, but the reality is we are starving.  Dying.

In the end, we can know a lot of stuff about the Bible.  We can even know a lot of stuff about God and Jesus.  But if we do not have love … love enough to be honest with ourselves and our neighbors and our communities, then we are nothing but a clanging gong.

Every year I wrestle with Independence Day.  I don’t know why I can’t just enjoy it … the sights, sounds, camaraderie, bon hommie, brownies and, of course, fireworks.  No.  I must wrestle with ideas.  What is this day that we celebrate each year.  Are we free?  What does that mean?  How does our freedom here effect and affect others around the world?  What have we done and what are we doing?

Of course, there is a song out there that expresses my ennui.  But I’d forgotten it.  Then I heard it anew this morning.

Gone by U2, from their Pop album

Listen to that.  Or, just read the lyrics here …

Gotta feel so guilty
Got so much for so little …

The opening lines.  And I look around at my own life; at how much I have for how little I’ve done.  The good fortune I’ve had to be born into empire unaware.  And I wonder at what the course we’ve taken here in this country.  This nation become empire.

So what is freedom?  What is this idea that we celebrate each Independence Day with such nationalistic fervor and patriotic delight?

According to princeton.edu it is “… the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints” However, can any of us ever be truly free?  Well, yes.  If the definition as posed here is used.  If we are to use “externally imposed restraints” as our measure.  It has been said that my freedom ends at your nose.  This implies that I am free to act as I will as long as it does not impinge upon your freedom.  Then we have a problem.  So if restraints are to be applied, they must be internal.  That is, I must apply them.

What if I do not?  What if I choose to bumble on my merry way getting my stuff because I am free … what I thought was freedom is just greed.  What happens to the people around me when I do not apply internal restraints?  Or if there is no one big enough to apply external restraints?  Or there is too much greed to go around?

What’s your superpower?

Tilting at Windmills

My superpower is tilting at windmills.  From Wikipedia –

Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies, or fighting unwinnable or futile battles. The word “tilt”, in this context, comes from jousting. (emphasis mine … for … well … emphasis).

I can’t decide if I should pick my battles better, or carry on knowing that I am simply planting the seeds for future winnable battles.  I’m still pondering that …

As regular readers of this blog may be aware, I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Loved the books and loved the movies.  I still read the books from time to time.  And watch the movies over and over again.  But I guess I don’t need to tell any of you that.

One of my very favorite scenes in either books or movies is the scene between Merry, Pippin and Treebeard where the hobbits are trying their very best to convince the ent that the ents must join with the forces of men, elves, hobbits and dwarves against the orcs in this epic battle.  It takes them quite a bit of convincing just to get Treebeard to move.  But he finally decides that meeting would be a good idea and off he went for an interminably long meeting.  He came back to make a report after days … literally, days … of talking.  His report?  “Weeeeee haaave decided.  Yoooouuuuu aaaarrrrrreeee noooooot Orcs.”

The look of dismay, mixed with disgust, need and something else on Merry and Pippin’s faces was priceless.  I love that moment.  It is such an amazing clash of cultures and paradigms.  Each learning how to interact with the other.

Yesterday morning, I was brushing my teeth, washing my face, getting dressed and mulling over some long standing issues in my life.  By long standing, I mean they’ve been sitting out there for about three or four years.  So I mulled and thought and came to some resolution about how I wanted to moved.  I finished up, went downstairs and said to LightHusband, “I’ve made a decision.”  He looked at me with a grin, “What?  I’m not an orc?”  I laughed and replied, “Well, I’ve known you’re not an orc for 20 years now.  But I’ve decided that there are some people who are orcs to me.  Or at least I need to treat them that way … sort of.  For me to be healthy.”  He arched a brow and said, “You mean I got it right?  You really are an ent?”  “Yes, I really am an ent.”

I went on make the following explanation.  Well.  My explanation to him was similar.  But not the same.

I’ve spent the last three years playing the part of Lot’s wife.  Sometimes I wonder about that story.  I remember reading about it in some popular literature when I was younger.  There was speculation that the weapon of destruction for Sodom was a nuclear bomb and Lot’s wife died of radiation.  But I think she was turned to stone from grief.  Grief can stop us in our tracks and turn us to stone and the operative action that causes it is “turning back.”  Lot’s wife turned back, and her tears turned her into a pillar of salt.  That has been my reality for far too long now.

I have allowed myself to look back and pine for what was, what can never be and what I wish for.  I doubt they ever will be and my wishing my life away is not healthy for me or anyone else involved.  So my quilts will be for those who I am in active contact with at this time.  That means people I see and talk to on the telephone … who know what is going on in my life beyond Facebook and Twitter statuses (stati?).  To those of you reading this who have gone down that road (and you know who you are), choosing to believe your church leaders about us and thinking you might still love us is no longer possible.  It is time to stop looking back.

Those of you who would like to remain in relationship with us, you will need to be able to talk with us openly about that horrible time in our lives and hear our pain without denying it or taking it away from us.  It is a wound that continues to bleed and tear at our souls.  You will need to be unafraid of picking up the phone and calling us or writing us an old-fashioned e-mail now and then.  More now than then.  In short, you will have to desire a relationship with us that requires something of you.  So … I am going to un-Friend you on Facebook and Twitter.  And sever those tenuous ties with you.  I need to move forward.  I need to release myself from the grip that era has on my mind and my soul.

Because sometimes … people who are not orcs, really do have an orc-like effect on others.  And then they need to be kept at a distance if one is to remain healthy and on the road to happy without “looking back” and turning into a pillar of salt.

Four years ago I re-discovered an old acquaintance.  I’m having fun now watching again.

Four years ago I was in the middle of the darkest caves and curling was the only time of day I could breath freely.  Something about the commentary, the rhythm, the pace all combined to give me peace and comfort.

It’s been a long and winding road.  But I can finally say that the fall is over.  I might even be out of the caves and in the sunshine on most days.

Life is good.

The LightFamily’s favorite magazine is National Geographic.  We all like it and read it/browse it for different reasons.  LightBoy loves the articles about space and the ocean.  LightGirl and LightHusband love the photography and the articles about far away places.  Me, I love the articles about different cultures and people.  So we all get something from this treasure each month.  They get stored in a basket in our “reading room.”  Does your home have a “reading room?”  You know the one … with a “special” white “throne”.  Yeah … that one.

So this morning I wandered into the “reading” room and found an article in the December 2009 issue of NatGeo (as it is sometimes called these days) about one of the last hunter-gatherer societies to survive in these modern times.  There are only about 6,000 people in this tribe which makes it’s home in northern Tanzania in Africa.  And an expanding population is now encroaching upon it’s formerly uninhabitable territory.  The days of being just hunter-gatherers are probably numbered, but the article is quite good.  The author lived amongst the people with a particular camp for two weeks and does a remarkable job of giving a fly on the wall view of their life (including a baboon hunt with only his pocket knife).

I recommend this article to you if you like learning about other people groups and other cultures. It really is fascinating and the author writes it quite well.  But I was struck by his description of the way in which the Hadza live.  Specifically, by their lack of worry.  This is mentioned several times in the article, but strikingly here:

Dirt roads are now carved into the edges of the Hadza bush. A paved road is within a four-day walk. From many high points there is decent cell phone reception. Most Hadza, including Onwas, have learned to speak some Swahili, in order to communicate with other groups. I was asked by a few of the younger Hadza hunters if I could give them a gun, to make it easier to harvest game. Onwas himself, though he’s scarcely ventured beyond the periphery of the bush, senses that profound changes are coming. This does not appear to bother him. Onwas, as he repeatedly told me, doesn’t worry about the future. He doesn’t worry about anything. No Hadza I met, in fact, seemed prone to worry. It was a mind-set that astounded me, for the Hadza, to my way of thinking, have very legitimate worries. Will I eat tomorrow? Will something eat me tomorrow? Yet they live a remarkably present-tense existence.

This may be one reason farming has never appealed to the Hadza—growing crops requires planning; seeds are sown now for plants that won’t be edible for months. Domestic animals must be fed and protected long before they’re ready to butcher. To a Hadza, this makes no sense. Why grow food or rear animals when it’s being done for you, naturally, in the bush? When they want berries, they walk to a berry shrub. When they desire baobab fruit, they visit a baobab tree. Honey waits for them in wild hives. And they keep their meat in the biggest storehouse in the world—their land. All that’s required is a bit of stalking and a well-shot arrow. (emphasis added)

And I remembered Jesus’ words to us in Luke 12:

²²Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? ²⁶Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

²⁷“Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ²⁸If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! ²⁹And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. ³⁰For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

³²“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. ³³Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So was Jesus recommending that we turn back the clock even then (the year ~30 CE) to become hunter-gatherers?  I don’t think so.  It may seem somewhat idyllic to us now, because we did not take stock of the unintended consequences of our modern conveniences.  But turning back to what was is impossible, first of all.  But maybe there are lessons to be learned?

So the next words from Jesus after telling us not to worry, are … but you need to worry.  That it’s a tension to be managed.  A balancing act … that going over the edge either one way or the other is not good and not what He wants from any of us.  He wants us to be watching, yet reclining, relaxed and worry-free.

³⁵“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, ³⁶like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. ³⁷It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. ³⁸It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. ³⁹But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

⁴¹Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

⁴²The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? ⁴³It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. ⁴⁴I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. ⁴⁵But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. ⁴⁶The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

⁴⁷“That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. ⁴⁸But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

The Hadza

They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars. They are living a hunter-gatherer existence that is little changed from 10,000 years ago. What do
they know that we’ve forgotten?

The Hadza tend to be gregarious people, and Onwas readily agreed. He said I’d be the first foreigner ever to live in his camp. He promised to send his son to a particular tree at the edge of the bush to meet me when I was scheduled to arrive, in three weeks.

Sure enough, three weeks later, when my interpreter and I arrived by Land Rover in the bush, there was Onwas’s son Ngaola waiting for us. Apparently, Onwas had noted the stages of the moon, and when he felt enough time had passed, he sent his son to the tree. I asked Ngaola if he’d waited a long time for me. “No,” he said. “Only a few days.”

Hmmm … So, I wonder what do they know that we seem to have forgotten?