Virtual Protest

Please join me in the virtual protest which I've been carrying on since the start of the Iraq war. What you do is, once or twice a week, cut out the "Names of the Dead" from the New York Times (if you don't live in NYC, you can print it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/29/us/29list.html ) and tape it up somewhere where people will see it. Subway cars and stations are my favorite place because lots of people will see it. Why the "Names of the Dead?" It's a tally of US service men and women who have died, and it gives some personal details about the young people who have died. My hope is that this will catch the eye of the average person and make them stop and think for a minute. It's especially poignant in NYC, since the number of the dead US service people is fast approaching the number of people who died on 9/11.
Pass it on.

Patron Saint: Simone Weil
In honor of the Simone Weil Colloquy

Over the past few years, the mystical philosopher Simone Weil has captured my soul's imagination. I think she really knew God. In the short 34 years she lived, she struggled to love God fiercely, with all of her being. She saw it as a natural consequence that she would therefore love the poor and marginalized, so much that she tried to experience what it was like to live like a factory worker (the picture is from her Renault factory ID), and like a poorly paid soldier. Her awareness of God started with a number of mystical experiences, and intensified as she experienced God’s love throughout her life, especially in the midst of suffering. She believed, “we cannot take one step towards the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us” (from The Love of God and Affliction). Instead, we can only turn our faces toward God. She believed that if we ask God for bread, God will not give us stones.

If we could only live this truth.

For an introduction to her work, I suggest Eric Springsted’s collection of her writings, Simone Weil, published by Orbis. I don’t know how to do links on this blog yet, so you’ll have to google it.

Where's the beef?

Just for fun, all kids of the 80's click here:

Poverty in the USA (first in a series)

Here are the numbers (from povertyusa.org):

Since 2000, the number of poor Americans has grown by more than 6 million. Total Americans below the official poverty thresholds numbered 37 million. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)

On average, more than one out of every three Americans - 37 percent of all people in the United States - are officially classified as living in poverty at least 2 months out of the year. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)

The number of Americans living in severe poverty - with incomes below half of the poverty line - remained the same at 15.6 million. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)

In case you were wondering how poverty is defined, here are the federal poverty levels for families in 2005:

One person: $9,645
Two persons: $12,334
Three persons: $15,067
Four persons:$19,307
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004

Footwashing

At the Mennonite church I attended before moving to NYC, footwashing was a big deal. Right up there with communion and baptism. We saved it for Holy Thursday so we could really reenact the last supper as closely as possible for a bunch of folks in 20th century Pennsylvania. After celebrating communion and sharing a meal of hummus and other Middle Eastern treats, we retreated from the sanctuary into the church nursery (men) and library (women) to wash each other’s feet.

In the women’s room, we made small talk while we took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our pant legs. The older ladies kept their stockings on. And through the ritual of kneeling down in front of one another and gently washing each others feet in a basin of cold water, we kept talking, as if this was something we did every day. The older women initiated the younger women by telling us stories of how things used to be, back when the men and women sat on separate sides of the church, all the women wore head coverings and wouldn’t have dreamed that they could ever become pastors. It was the one time in the year when the newcomers and the old timers shared an intimacy that only a group of women could create. When I knelt down and nervously held the stockinged foot of one of the elders in my hand, I think I caught a glimpse of what Jesus was trying to do that night, when he washed the disciples feet and then told them to go and wash each others feet. Vulnerability and community and grace in a basin of cold water.

Signs of Spring in Brooklyn



The Egg trees are in full glorious bloom.



Magnolias


Ready for Holy Week


So much easier to appreciate snow flakes when they float down on an April afternoon.

Breath, life.

As I laid on the floor in a relaxation pose at the end of a yoga class last week, I felt the floor holding my body up. I felt my breath cause my chest to rise and fall, and noticed that I wasn’t breathing into my stomach. I wondered what I was holding onto, what fear or anxiety, that kept me from breathing deeply.

I never gave a second thought to breath before I started practicing yoga a few years ago. It has been through that practice of breath and movement that I learned what it means to be present, even for a fleeting moment. For someone who teeters on the brink of ADD, it seems to take moving meditation for me to really pay attention.

During my daughter’s birth, it was this breath (maybe combined with extreme pain!) that kept me acutely in the present moment. I was able to drink in every moment, without worrying about what had just happened, or what was to come. In this space, I noticed the presence of God with me as a midwife, breathing with me and my husband, creating a calm entrance for my daughter to enter this world.

Note to self: breathe.

I enjoy being a girl (for now)

When I was in third grade, I told people I wanted to be a professional football player (choice number two was a paper boy). I told people this because I purposely wanted to point out that I wanted to be a player, not a stupid cheerleader, even though I was a girl. I guess it was my little way of feeling powerful despite my new awareness that girls and boys were valued differently. By eighth grade, I was determined to fight for equal opportunity. I had my sights set on the White House, and I planned to be the first female president. Again, my way of feeling personal power in a society that was discussing what would happen if Walter Mondale became president and died in office. If that happened, then a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, would have control of the button that could launch a nuclear bomb on the USSR. And if she had PMS, look out.

Three months ago, I gave birth to a daughter, Cana. Right now, her main concerns are eating and sleeping, she has no idea what kind of world exists for girls outside of our Brooklyn apartment. Here are a few facts that remind us humanity isn't meeting our obligations to women and girls:

In India, there is a rise in selective abortions of girl fetuses. According to the Christian Science Monitor, "The ratio among children up to the age of 6 was 962 girls per 1,000 boys in 1981, but 20 years later the inequity was actually worse: 927 girls per 1,000 boys." (for more info http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0209/p11s01-wosc.html).

In the US, the pay gap between women and men widened in 2003. Women's pay slumped for the first time since 1999, with women earning only 75.5 cents to every dollar men earn. (http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?id=8754 )

I lament the day that my girl-child's naivete ends.

Right now the universe seems open to her wildest dreams. But one day she will sadly realize that most people in the world still think girls are inferior to boys. She'll learn that in some places in the world mothers cry when they give birth to a girl. And she will awaken to the reality that even though her parents and her teachers tell her she can be anything she wants when she grows up, even be the president of the US of A, she'll find out there has yet to be a female president in this country. Let's hope she doesn't conclude that there is something a little less about girls.