tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82280052024-03-23T10:44:40.380-07:00Guerilla OrthodoxyPeacemaking and Social Justice
in the Orthodox Christian ChurchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-14546164205582155962007-01-05T22:08:00.000-08:002007-01-06T16:34:08.863-08:00Letter to a Right Wing Nation<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">As many of you know, I took a hiatus from blogging for about a year. Like Rip Van Winkle emerging from sleep, when I went back to the blog I discovered a lot had changed. Most of the blogs that used to link to mine had given up on me (can't say I blame them), as had many of my regular readers. But I found there was a new blog linking to mine, a blog called "<a href="http://rightwingnation.com/">Right Wing Nation</a>."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Perhaps, now that I am starting up blogging again, this is a good opportunity to reiterate a few things I have <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/04/why-i-distrust-idea-of-religious-left.html">mentioned in the past</a>. I am an Orthodox Christian who lives and writes from a socially and politically liberal perspective. I'm a pacifist, a vegetarian, and a socialist/distributionalist. I am anti-death penalty, and favor eliminating the stigma attached to homosexual people in society and in the church. And my family and I, in the various situations in which we have lived over the past number of years, have attempted to live in community with the poor, to make disadvantaged people a part of our lives. This is really the basis for the Guerilla Orthodoxy blog: it is one family's attempt at living out a personal preferential option for the poor.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So it was a real surprise to discover that someone whose tag line is "peace through superior firepower" is linking to my blog.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Now, I want to emphasize that I'm not complaining about this (and not only because I don't want to lose one of my few remaining referrers!). Despite my own ideas and leanings, I happen to think there are many things that are more important about a person than his or her political affiliation. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat or a Constitutionalist or a Green, it doesn't answer some of my most basic questions about you: Are you kind? Are you fair? Are you generous?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Moreover, I genuinely believe (appearances in this country often to the contrary) that it is possible for people of good faith on the right and on the left to work together on some very difficult issues if we are willing to surrender some of our preconceptions, rather than using these issues as fulcrums to leverage ourselves into power. Take abortion, for example, one of the most divisive issues of our time. If you study the statistics about abortion, you will soon learn that one of the strongest predictive factors as to whether or not a pregnant young woman will get an abortion is poverty. The country that has the lowest abortion rate in the world is not the country with the most restrictive abortion laws, but rather the one with the most liberal abortion laws, the Netherlands. Why is this? Probably because there is very little poverty in the Netherlands, a narrow gap between rich and poor, a generous medical leave program, and health care for everyone.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">A world without abortion is not a world with better laws. It is a world without desperation. So being pro-life doesn't just mean passing stronger abortion laws. It also means working to eliminate poverty, narrowing the gap between rich and poor, making health care accessible to everyone, and creating a society where family is more important than productivity or profit. I'd like to think there is a "win-win" on abortion, a way for people on both the right and the left to agree that every abortion is a tragic event, and to work towards eliminating the root causes of abortion, rather than endlessly reiterating the "right to life/right to choose" dichotomy like a bad and endless beer commercial ("Tastes great!" "Less filling!").</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So this is my letter to a right wing nation. I'm glad you're here, I really am. I just wanted you to know where "here" is.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Peace,</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Sampson</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-56248082521935815302007-01-05T21:21:00.000-08:002007-01-05T22:01:15.015-08:00Working on Broadway<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">So this morning when we got up, Jeff was still asleep in the doorway of the church next door. After breakfast, I brought him some coffee and blueberry flapjacks, and we talked a little.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Jeff's story was familiar in many ways. He's lived all over, including Hawaii and Alaska. Like a lot of people I've met, Jeff went on the street when his family network of support disintegrated: his mom died young, his dad remarried soon after, and then more or less disowned Jeff and his sister in order to focus on his new family. He's 42 years old, and been on the street for over ten years. He has the worn look of someone who's been out for awhile; the average age of death for people on the street is 43 (as compared to about 70 for the rest of us). </span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">One of Jeff's biggest problems is that he has no ID, nor does he have the ID necessary to get ID. This has become a very big problem for homeless people since 9/11, when the standards for getting identification were significantly raised. When you're moving all the time and have no safe dry place to store stuff, it's easy to lose your ID, have it stolen, or ruin it. Then you need a certified copy of your birth certificate to get a new license or state ID. But Jeff doesn't have a birth certificate, nor does he have the means to get one, and without a birth certificate, no ID. And without ID, its difficult for him to get assistance or services, and easy for him to get arrested. As he put it, "It's like they say, 'in order to work on Broadway, you have to have worked on Broadway.'"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Jeff told me he thinks his sister may have a copy of his birth certificate, but she's moved to Arizona, or maybe Florida, and he doesn't have contact information for her. He doesn't remember the spelling of her married name, but thinks he can get it. I told him I'd give him a hand trying to look her up on the Internet sometime.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">This evening, I saw that he was still there under a pile of blankets, though in the morning he had said he was going to try to move on to another place where some friends were staying. It's a blustery and rainy night, no time to be traveling, so I figured he was going to hunker down for one more night. After dinner, I got some shells and cheese and Eritrean style vegetables together on a plate, along with some hot coffee, and brought them out for him.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">When I got out to the church doorway, I could hear music and singing; a service was going on inside. And Jeff was gone.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-60613040943900537612007-01-04T22:43:00.000-08:002007-01-04T22:59:19.184-08:00Sleeping in the alcove of God's house (again)<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Our new house is next door to a church. Not a nice, beautiful, suburban chapel, but a big, boxy, urban church that looks like it wanted to be a warehouse like all the other cool buildings, but instead ended up as a church.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Tonight when I got home, there was a guy sleeping in the back entrance to the church (which faces our house). The she-guerilla told me he'd been there all afternoon. She had left some homemade caldo verde soup and biscuits for him on the steps, but he hadn't stirred.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So I went out and walked halfway up the steps. "Friend," I called out. No answer. A little louder, "Hey friend, would you like some coffee or something?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Pause.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">"That sounds good."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So we brought him some coffee and reheated the soup and biscuits (and added a piece of baklava left over from a Christmas plate), and we gave him a blanket out of the garage. He said his name was Jeff, and thanks. He didn't seem too interested in talking, so I said I was sorry he had to be out tonight, and went back in.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">A few hours later, we turned up the heat. It's cold out tonight.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I thought about <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/06/alcove-of-gods-house.html">Milton</a>, who used to sleep "in the alcove of God's house." I wondered how he is doing, or if he is even still alive.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">It's tough out on the damn street.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1167462469700117332007-01-02T12:53:00.000-08:002007-01-02T13:01:49.420-08:00The Legend of Old Befana<span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So since the <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2006/12/on-moving-into-up-and-coming-area.html">purchase of our home</a>, I have been reflecting on what it means to create a hospitable and inviting space. On Christmas day, we decided to have some guests over, a few people who otherwise didn't have any place to go. We invited Stan and Mona over, with their daughter Stephanie and Mona's son Romero. I first met them in the Salvation Army shelter last February; now they are in an apartment, but still in a pretty precarious situation. Romero is not quite 13 years old, basically a good kid in a horrible situation. I see so much gentleness in him, watching the way he takes care of his two-year-old baby sister. He's still a child, but just old enough to have started to become intimidating, at that age when we stop adoring children and start fearing them, especially if they have dark skin. He wears his baseball cap cocked to the side and punctuates his speech with wide, gangly, hip-hop gestures, talking about Tupac Shakur and "the street" and "keeping it real." But he's still enough of a kid to look up from time to time to see if you notice him, to make sure you're still listening.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Romero was suspended a couple of weeks ago for bringing a knife to school. When I heard this, I couldn't help but think of the knife his stepfather Stan brandished when he had a nervous breakdown a couple of months ago, the day Romero had to help tackle him to protect his mom and sister, and then watched the paramedics take him away in an ambulance to the mental ward. When I came over a few hours later, there was still blood on the wall, Stan'</span><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">s own blood from where he slashed himself when he was struggling with Mona and Romero.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Now Stan is back with the family; he's taking his medication regularly and appears to be doing much better. But Romero has started carrying a knife, perhaps because it makes him feel strong and tough and "real," perhaps just in case he needs to protect his mom and sister again. And the guidence counselor at the school is saying he may not be readmitted to school in January because of the school's "zero tolerance" weapons policy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">In the Italian Catholic tradition, the season between Christmas and Epiphany is a time for telling the story of Old Befana. According to the legend, Befana was a grouchy old woman who kept a neat house and did not like children. One day, she sees a wonderful sight: a magnificent train of camels, wise men bedecked regally, and a little child who tells her that they are following the star, seeking the Child who has been born a king. When Old Befena hears this, she says "humph" and goes back to her sweeping. But the story has captured her imagination, and so before long she lights a fire in the oven and prepares her very best sweets for the new king, then hurries after the wise men, now long gone.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">She is still searching to this day.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">It is said that on Epiphany eve, Old Befana creeps into the room of all children and peers into their sleeping faces, seeking the Child born king. And she leaves sweets for every child, saying to herself, "Who knows? Perhaps this is the one."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">For some reason, I imagine Old Befana coming to Romero's room. I see her looking deeply into his still boyish, not-quite adolescent face, relaxed in sleep. And then silently leaving sweets.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Perhaps Epiphany is calling all of us to this: to learn to see through the eyes of Old Befana. To see in each face, even those we are tempted to fear, the face of the Child.</span> <span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">To keep saying to ourselves, "Perhaps this is the one."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>What makes a boy like you go bad?</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>What makes a man so lonely and sad</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>That he'd poison all he knows</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>And in one year, just let it go?</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>And all that time you were telling me</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>You were fine</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>Aw, silly man, silly boy.</em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">"Dirt and Dead Ends," from <em>Despite our Differences</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">Amy Ray, The Indigo Girls</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1167609100788961202006-12-31T15:50:00.000-08:002006-12-31T15:51:40.803-08:00WWJC?<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Someone who is close to me wrote on her blog:</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>At a recent holiday dinner, I heard a man with a red moustache say,</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>"My house belongs to the Lord. And so does my car. So if Jesus wants to take them, that's okay with me."</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>I don't believe him. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I wonder what that means, "If Jesus wants to take them"? It made me think that maybe if this guy were carjacked by Jesus, he'd be OK with that, but if anybody else tries it, he's definitely pressing charges.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">WWJC? </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1167512348989015772006-12-30T12:19:00.000-08:002006-12-30T13:35:18.883-08:00Just Another Killing<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The last thing my wife said to me last night when she came into the bedroom after turning off the computer was, "They killed Saddam." This morning I awoke to the story all over the newspaper, and to all the questions that are being asked. Will Saddam's execution bring peace? Will it bring about greater stability? Will it be the end of one chapter in Iraq's history, and the beginning of another, better one?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Everyone seems to agree the answer is "probably not."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I saw profound irony in the statement of President Bush, that Saddam received "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime." In fact, this kind of "justice" was all too prevalent under Saddam's reign. His execution is just another killing, and all the trappings of officialdom cannot make it otherwise. His death, like all the other deaths that came before and all the deaths that will come after, will not bring peace.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Lately, as a part of my morning reflections, I have been reading the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After finishing with the newspaper, I read his sermon "Loving your Enemies." The sense of tension and counterpoint in this sermon could not have been greater. Following are a few excerpts from; you can find the text in its entirety <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/sermons/571117.002_Loving_Your_Enemies.html">here</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system...</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">It’s not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. [tapping on pulpit] It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love...</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, "Love your enemies." Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But </span><a name="quote"></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">What might have happened if we had loved Saddam? What if, instead of breaking his neck with a rope, we had kept him alive in a place where he could do no further harm to others or himself, treated him humanely, allowed him to read, and offered him access to moderate Muslim clergy? Might he eventually have recognized the horror of his actions? Might he one day have repented? Yes, I know this is a one in a million chance, but such things do happen. A change in Saddam would have a chance of bringing about change in Iraq; then he might indeed have become a symbol of a new chapter in the country's history. Now, he is merely a symbol of the fact that the Shiites are executing Sunnis, instead of Sunnis executing Shiites.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Every person who commits acts of great evil contains within himself or herself the key to understanding that evil, and so to redeeming, transforming, and healing it. When we kill that person, the key is lost forever.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">My morning meditation was from Mark 13:12-13, "You will be hated by all because of my name. The one who endures to the end will be saved." What does it mean to endure to the end? Perhaps it means, in the midst of hatred, to abide in love, not to succumb to hate or to the tactics of those who practice hatred. It means remaining steadfast in the confidence that love is, as St. John Chrysostom says, τό ισχυρόν, the greatest power, the strongest force on earth.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>It doesn't come by the bullwhip</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>Not the company of gunslingers</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>The epicenter love is the pendulum swinger</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>If we're a drop in the bucket</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>With just enough science to keep from saying fuck it</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>Until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"><em>Plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right.</em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#990000;">The Indigo Girls, "Pendulum Swinger," from <em>Despite our Differences</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1166510562921584932006-12-29T21:20:00.000-08:002006-12-29T21:28:59.286-08:00On moving into an "up and coming" area<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">We bought a house.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">This is a first in the life of the she-guerilla and me. A friend of mine remarked that we'd be switching over to the Republicans any day now.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Lots of people have asked us, "So where did you move? What part of the city?" When we tell them, they often look a little surprised at first, but then quickly recover and say, "Oh, that's an up and coming area." At first, I felt a little twinge of pride when people said this (how smart we were to buy a house in an "up and coming" area! <em>That </em>kind of bear!). But after the third or fourth time, I started to get suspicious and began wondering what this phrase really meant.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">We bought a house in a minority neighborhood. Our new home is in a part of town traditionally associated with African-Americans. We are right next door to a predominantly African-American church, shared by a Latino congregation that meets on Saturday nights. One of our neighbors is from Ghana, a woman who lives with her daughter and at least one other tenant, also from Ghana. Another neighbor from across the street, Brian, is African American; he has a big, beautiful son named Rasheed, with deep ebony skin. We chose this neighborhood because we weren't comfortable in the lily-white upper-middle class part of town where we were renting, and wanted a place where there was diversity and a sense of community.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"><em>It's an up and coming neighborhood.</em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I suppose "up and coming" is probably the nicest possible way of saying "down and out with possibilities." You can't exactly call it a nice (read "white") neighborhood, but maybe in time it will get nicer (i.e., more nice white people will move there and drive the housing prices up so the minority and low-income people will have to leave and find someplace else to live). In saying this, I'm acutely aware that I am a part of this process of gentrification. I think I'd feel differently about being here if we had bought the house from an African-American family, but we did not. Our coming didn't change the demographic.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Today I was reflecting on Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of Mark with regard to the Son of David. Jesus asks the question, "If the Messiah is the son of David, how can David call him Lord?" The traditional exegesis is that Jesus is speaking about his own divine status as the Son of God. But perhaps there is something more to this passage.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">David was the perfect example of an "up and coming" ruler, a man of deep-seated ambition. David was a winner. He never lost a battle. He successfully engineered the downfall of Saul, after marrying Saul's daughter so as to have a clear claim to the throne. He successfully united the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel under his rule, and began a dynastic succession of kings that spanned some twenty generations.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Jesus' point was that the Messiah would be something more, something greater than David, David's own Lord. But he would do so not by winning, but rather by losing, by an act of voluntary sacrifice. There is a kind of deep irony in the statement "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies beneath your feet;" Jesus' enemies are placed beneath his feet only when he is lifted up on the cross.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Jesus was a down and out Messiah.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">The scribes expected a Messiah like David. And who could blame them? Everybody loves a winner. Isn't that what we expect at the Second Coming: the Heavenly Winner? I wonder why are we so hard on the Scribes and Pharisees for seeking that which we ourselves so eagerly desire?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">We made a conscious decision to move to this neighborhood. </span><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So please don't pity us, and spare us the whole "up and coming" thing. We didn't choose this place in spite of the diversity, but because of it. We came seeking a sense of connection to a wondrously diverse human community.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">We're glad to be here.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1120529372732687272006-09-05T22:38:00.000-07:002006-09-05T22:45:41.066-07:00If life were more like the X-Files...<p><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><em>A post I've been saving for awhile. This grew out of an X-Files DVD binge last year.</em></span></p><ol><li><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Every time you heard a bump from the ceiling, it would be followed, a few seconds later, by something starting to drip.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Every time you passed a hole or some kind of dark opening, you would feel an irresistible urge to pull out a flashlight (which you always carry with you on your person) and crawl down into it.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">All uniformity--people who drive the same nondescript dark sedans, wear the same dark suits, or sport the same dark sunglasses--would be regarded as sinister and conspiratorial.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Creepy music would play frequently in the background, making otherwise mundane tasks like opening the mailbox or reaching into the garbage disposal preludes to disaster.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Conduits that lead to places you cannot see--drains, vents, manholes, etc--would be a source of endless fascination for you, and would always have occupants.</span></li></ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1157435371107193962006-09-04T22:20:00.000-07:002007-01-04T23:01:58.408-08:00Dinner at the Catholic Worker House<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Although perhaps first I should answer the question "where the hell have you been?!?" that a few of you have been kind enough to ask...</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"><em>Answer: </em>Out. Busy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">Ah, that's my inner teenager talking. It's never too late to have a rebellious adolescence.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">The short of it is that we are in a new location, and I have been doing some new things. At some point I may write about this, but not now. Tonight, this is what I want to talk about:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">For the past several years, we have tried to invite the poor to be a part of our lives, and we have found various ways of doing so in a couple of different locations, both rural and urban. As I said to my son today, I think religion goes bad when it grows far from the poor. But in our new location, we have not yet found a way to do this. We currently are living in an overly residential location with little or no sense of connectedness or community. We have found some opportunities to volunteer our time, but not a niche. Not a commitment.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">So tonight it was food for the soul for us to go to the local Catholic Worker House and share a potluck vegetarian meal with people who define their ministry as one of "hospitality and resistance." We ate together, and talked about what we are doing and what we would like to be doing. We agreed to come back for the potluck next month. And we are looking at the possibility of being "house-parents" from time to time, coming over to the house to cook dinner, talk with the guests, and give members of the core staff a night off.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">As the she-guerilla put it, "we found our tribe."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I think many of us are looking for precisely this. We are not looking for another volunteer opportunity. We are looking for a tribe, a community, a group of people with whom we hold values and a vision of the world in common, with whom we can share, not just work, but cooking and laughter, washing dishes, working in the garden together. We are seeking a sense of belonging, a connectedness that overcomes the isolation that has been imposed upon us by race, by class, by gender, and by a thousand others meaningless distinctions, the ways by which we size up others and say, "like me" or "not like me."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I think there are many, many people out there who are still looking for their tribe. Some of you have been looking for years.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I hope we have found a niche, a place to hang a longer-term commitment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">But in any case, tonight I am happy. And glad to be back.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:78%;"><em>For more information about Catholic Worker Houses, including a listing of locations, see <a href="http://www.catholicworker.org/">http://www.catholicworker.org/</a>.</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1127026291731631302005-10-27T22:48:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:00:39.030-07:00From 20,000 feet<span style="font-family:verdana;">From 20,000 feet</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The world looks somehow different</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The things that separate us fade</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Into apparent harmony</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">From 20,000 feet</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The fences are invisible</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">You cannot see the railroad tracks</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Or tell which is the wrong side</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">From 20,000 feet<br /></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">You cannot tell black</span> from white</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Rich from poor</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Saint from sinner</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">At 20,000 feet</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">You cannot see the chaos</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Or hear the cries for help</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Or smell the fear in the air</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The world is peaceful here</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Calm and beautiful</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Not such a bad place at all</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">From 20,000 feet.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6580/547/1600/20000_feet.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6580/547/320/20000_feet.jpg" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1127879995631139832005-09-27T20:48:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:33:39.170-07:00Beauty<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Psalm 27</span></strong><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Journal entry dated March 22, 2005</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"to feast my eyes on the beauty of the Lord"<br /></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Like <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/08/world-without-desperation.html">Psalm 23</a>, Psalm 27 identifies dwelling in the house of the Lord with freedom from fear. But there is an additional element: beauty. We are the creators of so much ugliness: war, environmental devastation, senseless violence, poverty that breeds despair and endemic hopelessness. And beauty, on the other hand, has become largely a prerogative of the bourgeoisie, a luxury for those who can afford it. We spend so much on imperial Byzantine churches and iconography projects that we have nothing to give to those in need.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">What is the beauty of the Lord?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Spontaneous and simple. Unanticipated. It is an act of kindness when you least expect it, restoring hope. Beauty is a healing event. Beauty is fearlessly fragile and vulnerable. Like kindness, beauty is a concept not easily commodified as an instrument of control. Beauty is free.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">A single act of beauty is like a seed that has the power to save the world.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/04/selah-project.html">The Selah Project</a></span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1127447536429695162005-09-22T20:37:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:37:30.666-07:00The Feast of the Holy Ghost<span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>The following is a guest post by Johanna, a regular reader. She sent it to me and I loved it, and asked if I could put it up on the blog. Another guest post by Johanna, "The Lover of Truth," can be found </em></span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/01/lover-of-truth-guest-post-by-johanna.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>here</span></em></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>.</em></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em><br /></em></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I grew up in a tiny coastal fishing village in southeastern Connecticut. When my parents moved there in 1962 it was inhabited by an interesting cross-section of humanity: primarily poor working-class Portuguese fishermen and their families, a few lower-middle class Navy families (like mine), a healthy dose of eccentric artists and writers from many different places, a few wealthy year-round families involved in local businesses, and a trickle of summer folks who came up from New York City and Washington DC. You could walk to anything you needed. There were five little local markets, a few package stores, a lumberyard, two hardware stores, a gas station, a few bars, three churches, a post office, a drugstore, a few gift shops, a small department store, a few restaurants, a dry cleaner, and of course, you could buy fresh fish and lobster right off the boats. The school was within walking distance. You didn't really need a car for much. There were lots of things to do all the time; it was a great place to grow up. I went to school with mostly second-generation Portuguese kids; they were the "blacks" of our community. I remember in the summers we would go for walks around the village after dinner and a lot of (the Portuguese) people down by the Point would sit out on their front stoops, enjoying a sunset, visiting with people walking by, and the atmosphere was lively, congenial, interesting and vital. It sure wasn't boring.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Every year on Labor Day Weekend, the local Portuguese community celebrates The Feast of The Holy Ghost. The Portuguese Holy Ghost Society owns a big Greek Revival three-story building whose side yard backs right up onto the back of our house. The feast commemorates a miracle of faith and unconditional giving: in the midst of a great famine and flood, Queen Isabella of Portugal sold her crown jewels to buy food for her starving people, and the flood waters receded. There are parades, band music, feasting, and a lively Portuguese sweetbread auction all weekend. Because we're perhaps the most intimate of their neighbors to this whole scene, we have been a part of it from the very first year we lived there. We've always loved it and looked forward to it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">One of the highlights of the weekend is "the feeding of the masses." The Daughters of Isabella prepare a huge meal of traditional Portuguese "sopas," a heavenly broth, with bread in it, and beef, potatoes, chorizo, cabbage, roasted onions and fresh mint. They feed everyone and anyone who walks through the door, all without charge. For a long time when I was a kid, we were too afraid to go wait in line and go into that big hall on the second floor and find out what all of this was about. So we just enjoyed the wacky, ethnic festival atmosphere that prevailed in the neighborhood all weekend. But when I was 15, one of our neighbors, who was Greek and felt like he fit in anywhere said, "Hey, let's just go." So we braved the long line stretching out the front door, down the steps and way down the block to Wall Street, went inside, and had our first meal of sopas. Believe me, it was totally incredible, not just the food, but the whole experience: of going even though we are not Portuguese, of being welcomed and embraced into this cacophonous joyous community as one of their own, of tasting the outpouring of service and unstinting, unconditional giving that this meal is... we ARE a part of this, because we dared to cross the boundary of our fear and to mingle as equals.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I make it a point to be there every year for this weekend. I am happy that even though it is 2005 and the once very strong traditions are fading somewhat from the years of my childhood, that this at least still exists in some form, and I am happy that this diversity still exists. It makes life so much more real and interesting.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But Stonington has changed a great deal in 40 years. In the renovation boom of the 70's, most of the poorer fishing families down at the Point sold their homes to wealthier out-of-towners who were looking for idyllic second homes by the sea. The village is now too expensive a place for my husband and I to own a home in, let alone even rent a modest apartment. At least my mother owns her house and can still afford to pay the taxes. It is now a wealthy bedroom community, with little diversity with which to recommend itself.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And, there are a lot of new residents to the village who try to make life difficult for the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society because they consider their festivals and feasts to be neighborhood annoyances that disturb their expectations of a perfectly noiseless, tranquil life in their expensive real estate, and which threaten "the value" of said property.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">If they could just have the humility to be ordinary for a few hours, and go stand in that jostling line with all the other human bodies, and go inside and sit at large tables with neighbors they haven't met yet and eat this wonderful meal, to accept the gift, then they too could realize that they are totally a part of the community and would appreciate a depth and breadth to this place that perhaps they have not yet been able to connect with.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I think essentially this is the same issue at work in all of these things. We make barriers out of our fears. We keep ourselves separated from others. We often want our own way in things rather than having the willingness to consider life from the perspective of someone very different from ourselves.</span></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1127190369061332982005-09-19T21:26:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:11:56.656-07:00A dollar for a cup of coffee<span style="font-family:Verdana;">Tonight, when I went down to the corner to get some plain yogurt from the organic market, Milton was there talking to his friend Bernice and a guy named Mike whom I've only met once before. Mike looks like Johnny Cash, with salt and pepper hair pulled back into a long ponytail. He sounds a bit like Johnny Cash, too, with a deep smoker's rasp. The last time I saw Mike, he was sitting on the corner running a sign, "Homeless, please help," and he had an old comic book, a real collector's item, sitting on top of his pack. I mentioned that I had a friend who collects comic books, and offered him some dinner. He accepted, but it took longer than I thought to get the food ready, and by the time I got back to the corner, he was gone. But he'd left the comic book with somebody else to give to me.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I went to shake Mike's hand, and he reached out gingerly, saying he'd hurt his hand a few days ago. I sat down on the little brick wall in front of the library, with the sun setting and a cool breeze blowing, and we talked. Mike told me about how he likes to feed the birds in the morning. He gets day-old bread from the local café and scatters it for the pigeons. Years ago, he found a baby pigeon that had fallen out of the nest prematurely, and raised it till it was old enough to fly, then released it. He named it Sammy. Mike said that he could recognize Sammy out of all the other birds, but that last year Sammy stopped coming around, and he figures a hawk probably got him. He said that a song he once heard by Celine Dion made him think that maybe he would see Sammy again "up there." I told him that I thought that an act of kindness is never lost, that one day every generous act would come back to us. So maybe he's right.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike told me he has a learning disability; it doesn't really show, except that he talks slowly and deliberately. He strikes me as kind and peaceful. He is a musician; he has a one-man-band act that he puts on for the tourists in town, with a guitar and a harmonica and bells on his legs. He's even recorded a CD with a man he met who has recording equipment. One of his songs, a gospel/blues number, is called "Hear the Beggerman Cry."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">A few weeks ago, Mike was walking his bike across a crosswalk, and a woman hit him with her car. She hit him pretty hard, hard enough to knock him down and break his bike. He was lying on the street, and she pulled up next to him, rolled down her window, and asked if he was hurt. He said, in his slow way, "I don't know. I don't think so." He stood up, and she told him she was in a hurry; she had her nephew in the car and had to get him to school. "Can I give you a dollar for a cup of coffee?" Mike said no, he didn't think so, and bent over to pick up his ruined bike.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">When he looked up, she was driving away.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike was hurt in the accident, though he didn't feel it right away; his hand was injured, and he was unable to urinate for over two days. He got down on his knees and tried and tried. His abdomen distended. Finally he went to the hospital. They told him he had internal injuries, possibly a hernia. His ureter was blocked. They catheterized him and drained 1,000 cc's of urine, gave him a leg bag, and released him back to the street. He told me that now there's a discharge of pus from around the catheter.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I brought him down some dinner: spicy cucumber salad with yogurt, tofu with peanut topping, brown rice, and orange juice, with lemon meltaway cookies for dessert. I told him I thought he should go to the hospital. He said he was thinking about it, but he wasn't sure he would. He didn't want to get an infection. He looked over at Milton, who <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/06/alcove-of-gods-house.html">got a staph infection</a> while he was in the hospital for a broken leg, and ended up losing the use of his leg and being confined permanently to a wheelchair.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">People on the street know all too well that they don't get the same care as everybody else.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">My wife checked out a book from the library over the weekend called </span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Disposable People, </span></em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">about slavery in the modern world. I couldn't help thinking about Mike when I looked at the title. Here is a musician, a songwriter, a guy who feeds the birds like St. Francis, peaceful, generous with day-old-bread and antique comic books. A kind person. In my mind's eye, I see him walking across the street, see the car coming up and striking him, see the window rolling down, see the face of the person inside, saying "can I give you a dollar for a cup of coffee?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It's my face.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I'm just as guilty. I see someone hurt, someone in whose injury I am complicit on some level, and I offer just a little bit of help, a quick and easy fix, something small and manageable and noncommittal, and then drive away. I'm in a hurry, after all. Places to go, things to do. I'm an important person. One of the non-disposable people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"A dollar for a cup of coffee" is what passes for compassion in our world.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Fortunately, shame gets smaller and smaller as it recedes in the rear-view mirror.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1126937168741095102005-09-16T22:55:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:12:40.410-07:00Two new CDs<span style="font-family:verdana;">I am currently listening to two terrific CDs that I recommend highly. The first is <em>Rarities</em> by the Indigo Girls, my absolute favorite musicians in the world. <em>Rarities</em> is a B-side release, a bunch of songs that never made it out of the studio, together with some remixes and tribute album pieces. I never thought I would hear a collaborative effort between IGs and Rage Against the Machine, but there it was on the album. The second-to-last song, "It Won't Take Long," made me weep, because I want so much to believe that a day could come when, "as we let outselves be bought, we're gonna let ourselves be free."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The second CD is <em>40 Days</em> by the Wailin' Jennys. We heard them on <em>A Prairie Home Companion,</em> and checked out a CD. Gorgeous folk music. Painfully beautiful, if you know what I mean.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Check 'em out.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1126844793624758912005-09-15T20:57:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:43:46.556-07:00Train my hands<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/04/selah-project.html">Psalm 144</a></span></strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Journal entry dated September 15, 2005</span></em><br /></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"A blessing for the Lord, who trains my arms for war, my hands for battle"</em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#990000;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">This psalm begins as the song of the well-trained warrior. Yet it ends with a vision of a world beyond war and the threat of war, a world where children grow up to take their places in society, where there is plenty of food and animals are well-cared for, where there is no breach in the wall, no terror in the streets, no captives being led away to exile.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The great lure of war has always been the false promise of building a better world through violence. But if it is true that we cannot build a new world through war, which seems more apparent every day, it is equally true that we will not build it through inactivity, by sitting in our homes and watching television or by talking about it. We have to build it with our hands.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Thich Nhat Hanh writes that if you look into your hands, you will see all the past and all the future of the world. It's a shock for someone like me, a wordsmith by trade, to realize that the New City will be built, not with words, but with our two good hands. I say to the she-guerilla from time to time that I am jealous of her. She works with her hands, produces something real, tangible. She makes handmade soap, artisan breads, delicious meals from organic ingredients. At the end of the day, I am left with nothing but words on paper.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"A blessing for the Lord, who trains my hands for..." what? It's not enough to say "peace;" this is far too abstract.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Train my hands for art, for music, for cooking, for kneading bread. Train my hands for building homes for those who have none; shape my fingers to the hammer and the nail. Train my hands for gardening, to feel the richness of the soil. Train my hands to plant, to build, to create, to heal.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">If ever we beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, it will not be with our words, but with our own hands.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The future of the world is literally in our hands.</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><em><span style="font-family:verdana;">At noon on one day coming,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Human strength will fill the streets</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Of every city on our planet,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hear the sound of angry feet</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">With business freezed up in the harbor,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The kings will pull upon their hair</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And the banks will shudder to a halt,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And the artists will be there</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">'Cause it won't take long,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It won't take too long at all,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It won't take long, and you may say,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"I don't think I can be a part of that,"</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And it makes me want to say,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Don't you want to see yourself that strong?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>"It Won't Take Long," by Ferron</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>as performed by the Indigo Girls</span></span></em></em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1126630391773870432005-09-13T09:39:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:44:37.530-07:00A world without violence<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/04/selah-project.html">Psalm 140</a></span></strong><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Journal entry dated September 11, 2005</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:78%;"></span></em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Rescue me, Lord, from evil men; from the violent keep me safe"</em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em></span></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">In this psalm, the psalmist appeals to God for mercy, meaning protection from the plots and evil intent of violent people. The violent will suffer what they planned for others, and will be ultimately cleansed from the earth: "let evil hound the violent man to his death."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">On this day, our nation remembers 9/11, but for the most part, it is an evil memory, not a transformative one. We have dashed their infants against the rock, rocked the nations of our foes with shock and awe, killed our enemies, their children, and their children's children.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Is there less violence in the world as a result?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Hurricane Katrina came as a massive embarrassment to us, because it showed us that, despite our efforts to rid the world of evil, evil remains in our midst in the form of poverty, racism, and utter selfishness. We quickly lowered the curtain, cut the microphones of those who said it openly, but the damage was done. The world saw the ugliness, the evil of our doings.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The times are calling us to broaden our appeal for mercy. Like the psalmist, we pray that we may not suffer violence. But we must also learn to pray this on behalf of our enemies, or better, "on behalf of all, and for all." If we seek a world without violence, as the psalmist does at some level, then we must have the courage to create a world without violence. A world without violence only for a few is a world perpetually at war. A green zone of safety within a world of violence is a bubble waiting to burst.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The bubble burst on 9/11, and we responded, at best, with immaturity. Perhaps the close coincidence of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina may lead us as a nation this year to a deeper reflection as to how we might create a world without violence.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125939568411477692005-09-05T09:59:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:22:04.086-07:00Gone fishin'<span style="font-family:verdana;">Well, not really, since we're vegetarians, but we have gone camping for the next week, where there in no internet access. So see y'all next week!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125891429532556562005-09-04T20:37:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:46:33.323-07:00God's a-gonna trouble the water<em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Wade in the water</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Wade in the water, children</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Wade in the water</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">God’s a-gonna trouble the water</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">This is the first song we sang in church this morning. On almost any Sunday, I am to be found in the Orthodox Church. But this Sunday, my family and I went to the local African Methodist Episcopal church. On this Sunday, we wanted to stand in solidarity with our African-American brothers and sisters, some of whom grew up in New Orleans, many of whom have friends and relatives who have been affected by this tragedy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">As we sang, a projector flashed slides on the back wall: pictures of people walking in the water. People being rescued, pulled into boats and helicopters. Houses half-submerged in the flood. Black faces. White faces. Faces so covered with grime it was hard to tell what color they were.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I wept as I sang, tears sliding down my face while the ushers handed out fans and tissues.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>Wade in the water </em></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The service was not somber or subdued, but joyous. It was a celebration, an affirmation of life. I sensed within these people the indomitable spirit of those who have suffered. I noticed that those who were weeping, like me, were mostly the white folks. The black faces were set with a kind of fierce joy; they had seen this bad and worse before, and they had survived. They summoned a courage and dignity from deep within to which I did not have access, a strength that belongs to those who know what it means to patiently endure.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The last scene that flashed on the screen was a picture of New Orleans with a rainbow over it. Devastation and promise. “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Wade in the water, children</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">There is an <a href="http://leavingdoverbeach.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Orthodox blogger</a> who calls me his “leftist counterpart.” He wrote a piece critical of my post about looting. He claimed that the minority poor of New Orleans are suffering, not because they had no transportation to get out of the city, but because they are evil people, lazy and incorrigible, “a community which has so embraced a culture of crime, laziness, contempt for the general social order, abuse, drugs, sexual promiscuity, and lawlessness that it is past the point of no return and cannot be helped for the foreseeable future.” Unlike, apparently, all those good and virtuous white people who cruised out of the city in their air-conditioned SUV’s.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>Wade in the water </em></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I wrote a post full of white-hot rage when I read what he had written, in which I inveighed bitterly against a “racist worldview of post-Confederate fantasies.” I’m still angry. But after today’s service, I feel something else.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I feel pity.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Barricade yourself in your house. Lock your doors. Load your guns. Defend yourself and your stuff against those you fear. Choose to believe that some people are not worth the effort to save.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It sounds to me like a foretaste of hell.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>God’s a-gonna trouble the water</em></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I learned this from my black brothers and sisters: that the proper response to tragedy is to celebrate life, to affirm it as God’s gift, not to surrender to bitterness or anger. In their midst, I did not see “a spirit of blame and hostility.” I saw a river of joy to wash away a river of pain, and an ocean of love to wash away an ocean of tears. I saw strength, and dignity, and above all, a deep faith that we shall overcome.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">A beautiful rendition by Eva Cassidy of "Wade in the Water," a slave spiritual, is available for free and legal download at WashingtonPost.com: </span><a href="http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/bands/eva_cassidy.shtml"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/bands/eva_cassidy.shtml</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">.</span></span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125635782276945052005-09-01T21:33:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:26:35.963-07:00The storm after the storm<span style="font-family:verdana;">Here's an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01brooks.html">interesting article</a> from the New York Times to follow our discussion on looting and human behavior.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>"Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities..."</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125507086454835102005-08-31T09:11:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:48:49.220-07:00The psychology of looting<span style="font-family:verdana;">Imagine you are standing on a sidewalk looking into a store. A natural disaster has befallen your town. At your home, you are dangerously low on supplies: you are out of clean water, and nearly out of food. On the other side of that quarter-inch thick glass pane is clean water, food, medicine, and other supplies.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Do you break the glass?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">My hunch is that the vast majority of people would say yes. Some would qualify their answer by saying that they would leave money or go back later to pay for what they took plus damages. But I think that just about everyone would agree that in a time of crisis, there are more important things than private property.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Now, let me ask another question. Let's say you have lived your entire life on one side of a line. People who live on your side of the line do not have new clothes, or good food, or decent housing, or jobs. People on the other side have plenty of all those things, and more. All your life, you have tried to cross this line, tried to better yourself through education in substandard schools or by searching for jobs where there are none. And then suddenly, one day, that line, a thin blue line marked out with police and laws and guns, is taken out of the way. Suddenly, everything you and your children have been denied is available to you. It's right there, just on the other side of that glass, and if you leave it, chances are it's going to be destroyed anyway by the swiftly rising waters.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Do you cross the line?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The primary reason for the existence of laws and police is the preservation of a certain disparity within society. Think about that statement for a second. Society contains some people who possess a great deal, and others who possess very little. The laws of our country, the majority of which deal with questions of money and property, serve to maintain this imbalance by creating categories of "rightful" ownership. Laws are like dams and levies that allow a state of non-equilibrium to exist, a situation in which there can be vast amounts of resources on one side, and very little on the other.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Looting is a breach in the cultural levy, a sudden and spontaneous rush towards equilibrium.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">There are many people who will look at the pictures of looters in the morning papers and shake their heads and cluck their tongues. Most of these people, the vast majority, have never had to ask themselves whether they would cross that line if given the opportunity, because they were born on the other side of the line, the one defined by access to resources. Some who were born on the side of the line defined by poverty and deprivation will make the decision not to cross the line, and for them, I have nothing but the utmost respect.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">For most of these people, Hurricane Katrina is not the real catastrophe. They have very little to lose. The real crisis is Hurricane Poverty, a storm they have been weathering their entire lives.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"In a time of crisis, there are things more important than private property." Perhaps that statement does not sit with us quite so comfortably as it did at the beginning of this conversation.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Looting is an uncomfortable reminder that there is a sizable percentage of our population that does not accept the cultural myth that those who have, have because they are better or smarter or work harder. And that should make those of us who live on this side of the thin blue levy very uncomfortable indeed.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /></span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">St. Basil the Great on disparities of wealth:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Once wealth has been forcibly contained until it becomes a flood, it washes away all its embankments; it destroys the storehouses of the rich man and tears down his treasuries, charging like some kind of enemy warrior.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">--from Homily Seven "I Will Tear Down My Barns"</span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125421574029124632005-08-30T09:40:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:50:39.696-07:00Orthodoxy and Cremation<span style="font-family:verdana;">Since I made reference to Mark being cremated below, I'd like to post a quick comment about my feelings on cremation. The Orthodox Church forbids cremation under most circumstances (though it is permitted in certain special cases such as epidemics). The reasons usually given are that cremation is disrespectful to the body, which is holy, and represents a denial of the Resurrection at some level.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;">Fine.<br /><br />Do you know what is involved in the process of embalming? I personally cannot think of a more disrespectful, invasive, and unnatural process. I won't disturb you with undue details (draining, mincing of internal organs, etc.), but you can read about them if you want at </span><a href="http://www.funerals.org/faq/embalm.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;">this site</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:100%;">. Embalming dishonors the body by fillling it with toxic chemicals, and it dishonors the earth by poisoning the land and the groundwater. Moreover, I fear that the Orthodox Church has unwittingly allowed itself to become complicit in the death-denying zeitgeist of our culture by permitting embalming, the primary purpose of which is to make a person look like something other than what they are: dead.<br /><br />In addition to the above, burial of the dead has become exorbitantly expensive, since the entire process of preparation and burial has come to be controlled by a vast industry. Poor people can't afford burial in many cases, and therefore many of the poor end up being cremated, thus losing their opportunity for an Orthodox funeral and subsequent commemoration in the Church.<br /><br />In the ancient Church, one of the primary works of mercy was burial of the dead, including the poor non-Christian dead. This ministry was known as the <em>xenotaphion </em>(lit. "burial of the stranger")<em>.</em> But the Orthodox Church has for the most part forgotten this tradition, and does not involve itself in the burial of non-Orthodox, nor does it have many ministries for giving dignified burial to poor Orthodox Christians.<br /><br />So...<br /><br />We in the Orthodox Church should either stop permitting embalming, or start allowing cremation, or possibly both. Requiring burial of the dead, which has become prohibitively expensive in our culture, while doing nothing to assist the poor with the costs involved and prohibiting less expensive options such as cremation, is discrimination against the poor. To use the words of Jesus, it is hypocrisy.<br /></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>"They (the Pharisees) tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them."</em><br /><em></em><br />Matt. 23:4</span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1125326439257125752005-08-29T07:40:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:30:10.900-07:00Mark Castle: 1954-2005 (Part Three of Three)<span style="font-family:Verdana;">Being poor is a series of indignities, and death is the final indignity.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">When I spoke to the coroner about the disposition of Mark’s body, he prefaced what he was about to say by telling me that he doesn’t make the policy, and he doesn’t have to like it. If Mark is found to be indigent and his family cannot pay for a funeral, the city will cremate his remains and scatter the ashes at sea. The family will not be able to have his ashes, they will not be allowed to be present when his ashes are scattered, and they will not receive a death certificate. They would have no opportunity to say goodbye.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I went over to Mark’s daughter’s place that night to bring the awful news. I brought a picture album with me, something Mark had given me to hold for him the last time he came over, a few days before he died. When I told her his body was at the morgue and explained their policy, she looked at me with tear filled eyes and said, “So, that’s it? He can’t even have a funeral?” And in that moment I blurted out a promise: Mark would have a funeral. Somehow, we would find a way to bring some dignity to what had been a terribly undignified end.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Making good on that promise has brought me closer to Mark than I ever thought I would feel. As I have spoken to funeral home and cemetary directors, I have found myself in the same position he was in countless times: trying to get what I need with nothing but my words, spinning out the story that will overcome all resistance and reach the goal. Mark was the master, and I have apparently learned a thing or two from him in my yearlong apprenticeship.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">A wake for Mark will be held tomorrow night. Afterwards, he’ll be cremated, and his ashes interred in a small plot at a local cemetary, where his younger daughter can bring his grandchildren when they get older.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I went over to Sheri’s place to break the news to her. She is living in a cooperative housing program in a beautiful apartment. We sat in her kitchen and she made us hot chocolate, and I told her what had happened. I sat in her kitchen and thought about all the times we sat together on the curb while she sucked poison into her body out of a vodka bottle. All the times we had offered her hospitality in our home. Now she was offering hospitality to me.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It was a good feeling.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">A few nights before Mark died, he came over to out place and we had dinner together. He actually crossed himself before dinner, something I had never seen him do before. He read me something he wrote for me in prison about growing up in a dysfunctional family where violence and addiction were the norm (I will try to post this at some point). He told me he wanted to pursue his writing, that he was going to try to enroll in a college writing class if he could get some loans. He also wanted to learn how to use a computer. We set up an email account for him that night, so he could start using email.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We talked about the letters he sent while he was in prison. He apologized for sending them, and I apologized for not writing, for not being able to listen through the anger to hear his cries for help, his need for understanding. I later described the time just before his death as a “space of reconciliation.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Before he left, we embraced, and he walked out into the darkness, like he did that very first night he and Sheri came over:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">When it was all over, we said goodnight and showed them to the door, knowing that they were not going to get into the car and drive home like ordinary guests, but catch the tram back to their little park where they will try to live out another night without getting mugged or killed, lying huddled together in the darkness.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">(<a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2004/09/mark-and-sheri.html" target="_blank">Mark and Sheri, September 10, 2004</a>)</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We spent a year with Mark, and in the end, he died just about the time it looked like he might get traction, just about the time it looked like his life might turn around and start to move forward.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">What did it all mean?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I've been struggling with this question, and the best answer I’ve come up with so far was written in Mark’s own handwriting, a letter he wrote in response to something Johanna posted on the blog, about a man she knew who drank himself to death:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“Reading your story let me see that we can only do so much to save the people we love and care about. Only God has the answers as to why people choose to drink themselves to death or drug themselves. So please don’t be feeling remorse that you didn’t do more. You did what you could by caring and loving him.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">And I’ve thought a lot about <a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/01/fairweather-fans.html" target="_blank">this post</a> since his death.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I'm still on your side, brother. Still holding out for that winning season. Praying that it finally comes.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I still believe in you.</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6580/547/1600/Mark.gif"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 218px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 226px" height="226" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6580/547/320/Mark.gif" width="240" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Goodbye brother, and Godspeed.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">May you find the home you’ve been looking for.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1124860715717805622005-08-23T22:18:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:30:47.103-07:00Mark Castle: 1954-2005 (Part Two of Three)<span style="font-family:Verdana;">It was about 10:00 PM when we found the card from the coroner’s office in our door.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We called the number on the back of the card and paged the investigator, knowing that this was unlikely to be good news. But it was worse than we could have imagined. Mark’s body had been dumped out of a car late at night almost a week earlier, with no ID. He had fresh needle marks in his arm, but no signs of foul play. The coroner ruled it an overdose. It took them a few days to identify him from his fingerprints, and then they didn’t know who to call. I still don’t know how they found us.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">He was discarded like trash in the streets, left behind like an old couch somebody didn’t want to bother having hauled away, so they just abandoned it on the sidewalk.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The thing we loved about Mark right away when we first met him was his writing, his ability to tell a story, his skill in the perilous business of transforming experience into meaning. That first night he and Sheri came to our place, he read a long firsthand account of the 1960's and the “Summer of Love” he had written, entitled “Peace, Pot, and Microdot.” It was a story about freedom and the aftermath of freedom, about how plenty of drugs and free love and optimism had not, in the end, been enough to change the world. It could have been the basis for a documentary. Mark had talent, although his writing was rough and needed some grammatical work. But for someone who had only finished eighth grade, he was amazing.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Here’s a sample from a piece he guest published on the blog, “</span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2004/11/vietnam-revisited.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Vietnam Revisited</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;">:”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Our government would lead us to believe that the US wins all the way around (in the Iraq war). But what of all the American lives we are losing? Who is really going to benefit in the long run? Why do we let our government, at the cost of American lives and in the name of freedom, use us as pawns in their own personal board game, one that seems to be a combination of Risk and Monopoly?</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">On the whole, we Americans have become far too complacent in managing our country’s affairs. But the government is only part of the problem; we are the other side of the equation. We are so wrapped up in our lifestyles—our cars, clothes, toys—that we are reluctant to rock the boat, for fear of losing what we have.</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It was only later, when his endless talk began to wear on us, that we started to see another side to Mark’s storytelling. Mark talked in order to stay in control of the situation. I honestly believe that he felt, deep down, that if he ever stopped talking, if words ever failed him, his life would spin completely out of control into that void of silence. He was always one word ahead of disaster. He was talking himself down off the edge, day after day.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I think that people whose lives are spinning out of control feel a deep need to tell their story. Putting the events of their lives in the form of a narrative is a way of trying to regain some measure of control over their destiny. Telling their life in the form of a story gives the sense that there is meaning and purpose and direction, and not just random tragedy after random tragedy.</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>(</em></span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2004/09/poor-talk-too-much.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>The Poor Talk too Much, September 24, 2004</em></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>)<br /><br /></em></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Sheri’s relationship with Mark started falling apart about the time things started to turn around for her, about the time she hit bottom and started to rise. Mark was angry when she left him to go into the rehab program. I wrote this about the two of them during this time:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mark had a violent father. He hated his dad, and yet at a certain level I think he still believes the lies he learned as a child: that violence is the only way to get through to people sometimes. And Sheri had an abusive step-father, who conditioned her to the patterns of living with an abuser. The most difficult thing about trying to live in community with people like this is the recognition of how difficult it is for them to get back on their feet. You try to address one need, and it's like picking at a loose thread in a sweater: it just goes on and on forever. They need so much more than food and shelter, the basics; they need to learn a whole new way of living. They need models of the kinds of healthy relationships that they never experienced. You could spend your whole life working with just one person. And in the end, it might not be enough.</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>(</em></span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/02/blessed-is-one-who-comes.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>Blessed is the One who Comes, February 12, 2005</em></span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>)</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">From the time we first met Mark, he was a parole violator, though we didn’t know this until much later. He had served prison time for possession of a fairly significant quantity of heroin. He had violated his parole early on by failing to report, because he was "dirty:" he had lapsed and started using heroin again. But in November, he enrolled himself and Sheri in an outpatient methadone treatment program, and things started to turn around for them both (methadone is a heroin substitute that comes in liquid form). Some of the desperation that had characterized their life on the street faded, as they shed the burden of a fifteen-dollar-a-day habit. Before methadone, if they had a good night panhandling, they would buy both heroin and food. If they had a bad night, they only bought heroin. Heroin was the one constant in their lives, the speed of light in their personal universe. Sheri’s success in the detox program the second time around was probably partly due to the fact that she had already dealt with her heroin habit, and was now fighting just one addiction, alcohol, instead of two.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">After Sheri went into the detox program, Mark did some stupid things that made him conspicuous in the neighborhood, a bad idea if you’re a parole violator. Eventually, he got picked up by the police, and was sent back to prison for a few months for his parole violation. While he was there, he wrote some very hurtful letters to us that were hard to read. He blamed us for breaking him and Sheri up, and even made some veiled threats. I didn’t write to him while he was in prison until the very end, because I didn’t know what to say, because I was hurt and angry and a little bit afraid of what would happen when he got out.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mark was released from prison on July 31, and immediately tried to go into a supportive housing program where he could get drug rehab therapy and anger management classes, but there were no beds available. Instead, they put him in a roach-infested, crime ridden hotel where drug use was rampant. He stayed there for over two weeks, trying to stay clean, waiting for a space in the rehab center to open.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">And then, apparently, he wavered.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><em>(To be continued...)</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1124775226965843562005-08-22T22:33:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:51:30.723-07:00Mark Castle: 1954-2005 (Part One of Three)<span style="font-family:Verdana;">I never imagined it would end like this.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">My relationship with Mark started out almost a year ago, with </span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2004/09/mark-and-sheri.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">this post</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> on September 10, 2004, just a few days after we arrived in the city:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The other night, we had our new friends Mark and Sheri over for a few hours to our new apartment. We met Sheri on the street corner last week, holding a little sign, "homeless, please help." We talked for awhile. The next evening, my wife sent the kids down to her with a plate of her very special chile relleno. Later, she introduced me to her husband Mark (he works the opposite corner); Sheri wanted me to meet him so I could beat a little God talk into him, but I told them I'm not really all that pushy about the whole God thing. I invited them to come over to our place and get washed up sometime. So they came over, took a shower, washed their clothes (it had been two months), had some tea, and we talked.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It ended with a card shoved into the doorjamb, waiting for us when we got back from a conference last Sunday night, a card left by an investigator of the Medical Examiner’s (i.e., coroner’s) Office: “Please Call RE. Mark Castle.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Over the past year, we have met a lot of people on our corner. We have adopted this corner, made it an aspect of our commitment to living in community with the poor. If you stand out on our corner looking like you have noplace to go or run a sign there, we will share our food with you and listen to your stories, and sometimes we will share our money or open our home. It is our personal preferential option for the poor. In this way, we have brought drug addicts and alcoholics and people with psychological problems into our lives, and we have found our lives enriched by their presence. Over the past year, we met Michelle and </span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/06/alcove-of-gods-house.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Milton</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> and </span><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2005/07/tainted-charity.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Larry</span></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> and Mike and Donald and those two kids whose names I don’t remember, who were too young to be on the damn street, and a few others. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">But first of all came Mark and Sheri.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">So much has happened between then and now. The changes really began when Sheri made the decision to go into a detoxification program to get clean and sober. She and Mark stayed over at our place that night for the first time, and the next morning, I went down with her to help her through the process. The day ended something like this:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">As we sat together waiting for the van to come and take her to the treatment facility, a beautiful African-American woman, one of the social workers, came into the room, radiant and smiling at Sheri. She said, "You're going to be OK honey. Everything's gonna be all right. You're doing a really good thing." In a day that was measured in the incremental advances of bureaucratic negotiation, this was grace wholesale and unexpected. In that moment, her voice sounded more like the voice of Christ than anything I had ever heard.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I noticed that Sheri was still nursing the cup of coffee I had bought her that morning at the hospital, and mentioned it to her. She nodded, and said, "Yeah, I poured my vodka into it." She nodded to herself a couple more times, then peered meditatively into the cup and said, "It's my last one."</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I walked across the parking lot after they picked her up, and unexpected tears flowed. It was a release of tension, of all the things that could have gone wrong, all the things that had gone wrong for Sheri in this terrible fucked up world. But today, one little thing went right.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">She was three sheets to the wind when the van picked her up. But "the wind bloweth where it listeth," and the Spirit also moves in mysterious ways. Maybe today I bought Sheri her last drink.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">You're going to be OK, honey. Everything's going to be all right.</span></em><br /><a href="http://orthact.blogspot.com/2004/10/three-sheets-to-wind.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>(Three Sheets to the Wind, October 6, 2004)</em></span></a><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Unfortunately, at the time I was naïve and overly optimistic. Sheri only lasted about seventy-two hours in the detox program, then walked out and went missing for almost two days. When we found her, she was gray and as near to death as any living person I have ever seen. She sat in our apartment eating cereal and nodding off between every bite. I was afraid she might die in our home.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">But the second time around, a few months later, she went back into detox and stayed in.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">(To be continued…)</span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8228005.post-1124426821790895072005-08-18T21:47:00.000-07:002006-04-28T22:52:53.530-07:00Of Mexico and M-16's<span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Wow, Mike, this is pretty heavy duty stuff."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We were bouncing down a rural dirt road in Mexico that was getting worse by the mile. I was sitting in the back of a VW van belonging to Mike, a friend of mine from college. Bored, I had picked up a pamphlet lying in the back and started flipping through it. It was about how to survive gas warfare, with lots of handy diagrams as to how to get your chemical protection suit on right and your mask sealed so as to avoid a very messy death. Mike was a Marine reservist, and the pamphlet was apparently part of his training.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"If you think that's heavy duty, then don't look in the cabinet." Mike said.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">beat</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Why, what's in the cabinet?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"I checked out an M-16 for target practice at the base range yesterday, and forgot to check it back in."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I froze, or at least sat as still as you can while bouncing down a dirt road that didn't seem to have been graded since dirt was invented.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Mike! You have an M-16 in the cabinet?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Uh-huh."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Mike, you know that if the </span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Federales </span></em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">catch us with an M-16, we'll be in Mexican prison for the rest of our foreseeable lives?"</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Yeah," said Mike unconcernedly, not taking his eyes off the road.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We were in Mexico to do relief work. Every couple of weekends, a group of us would get together, put well-drilling equipment on top of the van, flip a boat over the equipment, and then smuggle it down to a remote barrio. In this little village, people had to walk half a mile to get water from a shallow well that was polluted. We had a little hand well-drilling rig that used eight-foot lengths of pipe to drill, so every eight feet you had to stop the rig and install a new piece. We had been working for a couple of months, and had succeeded in getting down almost a hundred feet, but hadn't found water yet. The local authorities knew about our little public works project, but they hadn’t tried to interfere, because they were taking credit for it in the local newspaper.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Georgia;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike and I were both students at a Christian college a little north of the border. Despite my annoyance with him at that moment, I had a lot of admiration for Mike. At the college, we did a lot of talking about Christianity, a lot of reading, a lot of writing. But his was a strong, muscular version of Christianity that involved long dirt roads and hard, dusty work. His was a Christ of the barrios. I badly wanted that kind of faith for myself.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike lived a couple doors down from me in the dormitory. He had done missionary work in Africa. This was the guy who used to yell "Clear!" just before using an African blowgun to shoot poison-tipped darts down the length of the hallway into plastic milk jugs he set up at the far end. He was cheerfully insane. So the whole M-16 incident wasn't really much of a surprise.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I have so many memories of that time. I remember drinking cold Mexican Cokes in bottles to wash down the dust. I also remember drinking the water once or twice, despite all the “don’t drink the water” stories. And yes, I did catch something from it that stayed with me for months. I remember children, lots of children, who didn’t have any toys but could entertain themselves for hours with a piece of rope. Of course, when we were there, the primary entertainment was us, the <em>gueros.</em> </span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">El Oso </span></em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">was what they called Mike: “the bear.” Their favorite game was to sneak up behind him and tackle him and try to throw him into the ten-foot deep pit that was next to the well-drilling rig, where the people of the town had started digging for water by hand. Eventually he would topple over the edge, laughing, with seven or eight kids clinging to him.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I remember eating </span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">menudo, </span></em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">intestine soup, for the first and last time, which may have had something to do with my eventually becoming a vegetarian. I also remember handmade tortillas and the best fried chicken I ever had, eaten in the home of one of the local families. Sitting in the dim, smoky lantern light around a guitar, singing an impromptu Spanish translation of “Wild Thing” (Loca Cosa) that had us all in tears of laughter. Sleeping in an abandoned house with unexplained bullet holes in it, kept company by a little dog we named “Taco.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I remember shaking the hand of a leper, looking down at the gnarled, twisted fingers, thinking I’d expected leprosy to look different, more dramatic somehow. Seeing shacks made of cardboard and scrap and old tires, leaning crazily to one side, with four, five children peeking out through the gaps. People living in whatever they could find to make some semblance of shelter. Children picking through the dump, looking for food.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">If you’ve seen it, you don’t need me to tell you. If you haven’t, no words can ever be enough.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I remember standing for an hour in a hot shower in the dormitory afterwards, never understanding how something could feel so good and burn like shame at the same time.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">We never did find water.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Somehow, all of this strikes me as a kind of parable, or maybe as a question. The question is, “Is it worth trying to accomplish something, trying to help someone else, even if you never succeed, even if the effort is doomed from the start?” Was it worth all the work that we and the people of the barrio put into the project, only to reach that last length of pipe, and still no water?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I don’t know what the people would say; they were the ones who continued to walk half a mile to get water that developed a rainbow-colored film on the top if you let it sit for awhile. Their lives were no different afterwards. But my life was. Something was growing in me during those trips, something I couldn’t name yet: a vast, swelling outrage. </span><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;">This should not be. No one should live like this. I should not be standing for an hour in a hot shower while they can’t even get clean water. There should not be a line that divides me from them, the rich from the poor, a line I can just saunter past, while they cannot.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I would never look at the world the same again.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike taught me that the greatest revolution of all can happen while the M-16 stays put in the cabinet.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Mike made me a guerilla.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.maryknollmall.org/description2.cfm?ISBN=10532"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6580/547/200/Christ_of_barrios.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em></em></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>To learn more about how to get involved in projects to assist the Mexican people, visit the website of </em></span><a href="http://www.projectmexico.org/"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>Project Mexico</em></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><em>.</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1