I'm Dreaming of a Green Spri-ing

Yes, it's only February 21, but I don't care. It's snowing today, and we'll end up with around four inches of the white stuff. I've already cleaned several heavy inchess off my car this morning, tomorrow morning will necessitate the same. 

And I'm thinking of Spring. 

That's the thing about Chicago Winters. We were treated to a few gorgeous days that reached the sixties. Trees all over the place have little knobbly buds beginning, because they were faked out by the warm weather. Lawns throughout the city shone emerald from the mixture of precipitation and sun they'd received. 

People want to burst out into our own form of Spring-selves, too. Our faces smooth, our eyes lose their squint, our backs straighten as we stand taller, reaching for the sun and its warmth...

"Faked out again," the snowflakes silently taunt us as they continue to coat us back into our Winter-selves. 

I won't bow down to the snow and cold. I've set the picture below as my desktop wallpaper, reminding me that inside, it's warm, it's green, and full of life!

(If anyone feels so inclined to use this photo as their desktop wallpaper, please be my guest - it's quite calm-invoking.) 

Us and Them

Us and them.

I think that maybe the majority of people do tend to think in terms of 'themselves' (and their people, or people just like them) and 'others', unless they have made a conscious effort not to.

This is fostered in us from an early age. Take our love of team sports, our faithfulness to our schools. Our national pride. But it translates to state-vs-state rivalry, to genders, to political parties, to races...

It's been a number of years now since I saw the movie "Bowling for Columbine", but the part that always stuck with me was the cartoon section (A Brief History of America), where they talk about fear and guns going hand in hand. That cartoon section highlights the tendency to separate into groups of us and them.

Probably since prehistoric times, the 'us vs them' mentality has been a means of survival, one tribe versus another, one country versus another. Ignorance of who 'they' are, what 'they' are like, translated into fear and hatred of 'them'.

But ignorance CAN be conquered.

Minds CAN change. People can change. Who we are now does not have to limit who we can become.

Twelve years ago, my church called a female to be our pastor. In a survey beforehand, only one person checked 'female' when asked whether they preferred a male or female pastor. One. But a woman candidated at the church and absolutely blew us away. We realized that God had led her to us, so we called her. And after a short time, maybe a few months, basically everyone wondered why they had said they'd prefer a male. It was simply the unknown that they were afraid of. It was like a switch was turned in their minds, saying, "this is okay. better than okay. this is GOOD."

I realize that the opposition toward women in ministry is significantly different than racial prejudices, even though both run deep. It's not a perfect comparison. I don't have a lot of hope for the hardcore haters. But I do think that lots of people who are unsure about the efficacy of any person of color in the presidency, whatever their reasoning, who will be able to realize the unfounded nature of their fears, once they are continuing to live their lives as usual under his presidency.

I have been overflowing with excitement for what I hope President-elect Obama's administration will do to turn that switch in lots of people's minds that it IS possible for people of color to have authority, to have power. And it will be a GOOD thing, not something to fear, hate, or a cause of suspicion.

There's so much "us-and-themming" going around, whether you're talking race, politics, religion, gender... I really liked what he said in his acceptance speech, about no red states and no blue states, just united states.

But a long time ago another public speech was given, which said that there is no more us and them. We are all one.

Still gazing in wonder.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, He's Ours!

I'm still too overwhelmed (and tired!) to speak coherently on my excitement and wonder in the knowledge that Barack Obama is our president elect. As usual, songs do it best for me, and the words of Sam Cooke have been playing through my brain for the last couple of days.

It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come. Oh, yes it will. (Sam Cooke)

I'm proud of our country. Oh, yes I am.

Women's Right to Vote

Yes, I realize I've posted this photo of my grandmother before. I've got it up again because today, Sunday, November 2, celebrates two anniversaries. It is my grandparents' (88th!) wedding anniversary. They were married in 1920.

November 2, 1920 is also the anniversary of the first time women in the United States voted. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed August 26th, giving the right to vote to women. The first election this affected was two months later, when Warren G Harding won by a landslide, replacing the by-then unpopular Woodrow Wilson.

Some other interesting dates in US voting history:

February 3, 1870: 15th Amendment passed:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

August 18, 1920: 19th Amendment passed:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

August 6, 1965: Voting Rights Act passed.
The Constitution alone apparently not enough to guarantee all citizens the right to vote, this act was passed to outlaw discriminatory practices which prevented many people of color from voting. The odd thing about this, though, is that it is not permanent - it has to get re-ratified every 25 years. The last time it was renewed was July 27, 2006, when G W Bush signed a 25 year extension.

July 1, 1971: 26th Amendment passed: lowered the US voting age to 18.

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

November 4, 2008: The first time a person of color is elected as President of the United States. Okay, so it's positive thinking. See me about it in two days!

In the meantime, my women friends (and men friends, for that matter), if you haven't voted early for the historic election, GET OUT AND VOTE on Tuesday. Women suffered and even died so that we would have this privilege; let's honor their sacrifice, do our civic responsibility, take advantage of our ability to participate in our government.

The Democratic Process

Can a cynic also be an idealist? I think so.

I still get inspired listening to audio of JFK's speeches, even though we all found out years after his death what a womanizer he was. Same goes for Clinton, although the reveal came much sooner! I believe even as good and Christian as Jimmy Carter was painted, he had to be just a little bit crooked or compromised to make it all the way to the Oval Office.

I think there's good and evil in most of us. The proportions might be different, and some of us might hide the evil (or the good) better than others.

All this to explain why we see so many examples of people spewing ignorance and hate. Videos show rampant name calling, rumor spreading, and lying at political rallies. Internet searches for political posters for my candidate yielded anti-propaganda results that are disgusting and immoral, not to mention untrue. I'm almost afraid to read articles or view videos anymore because it's so nauseating to witness the naked hate expressed by women, men and even children. (I could link to examples, but won't because they were just so offensive.)

I know my candidate is not perfect. Neither is the other candidate. Both of them have good and evil inside them, because they are human.

In the midst of all this negativity and cynicism about our country and our fallen nature, I still hold on to (cling to, even) the following ideals:
* my vote matters
* there is hope for this country
* things can get better
* we can unite to help bring about change

I'm going to vote first thing next Tuesday, and stay up late waiting for the returns to come in. If my candidate wins, I'm sure tears will be shed. (Probably the same would be true if the other candidate were to win, God forbid!)

God Bless America. God bless our democratic process.

What is the Key? The RENEWED MIND!!!

Okay, it was really funny (in a horrifying way) the first time I saw this video.




Oh, man, but it was funnier still when I saw what The Soup had to say about it.




Boy, my worship team almost never has matching spangly dresses and choreographed dance moves, including (gasp) the moon walk. (Of course, since I'm the only one there not sitting or holding an instrument, I guess it would have been up to me...)

Repeat Witness

So, in February, I wrote about being a witness. It's happening again, right now. I'm in the same place, even, with some of the same people. We're talking about who we are as Christians, who we are as the Covenant, who we want to be as the Covenant, what challenges we will face in coming years, what responsibilities we have to God, to our churches, to our pastors, to our communities, our conferences, our country, the world.

Just a small conversation...

The setting is interesting. We're at the University of St Mary's of the Lake in Mundelein. It's the same place we held the meeting where we talked about being intentional about ethnic diversity. It's the same place where we held a meeting to look at the implications of our numeric growth on our current structures. Not to mention countless other retreats and meetings we've had here.

This is becoming a very meaningful place for the ECC. Who would have thought that a Catholic seminary / retreat center would be so instrumental in the direction of our church?

good neighbors

They say good fences make good neighbors. I talk to and like a lot of the people on my block, even if I don't actually socialize with them beyond our sidewalk conversations. I think I have pretty good neighbors.

There's a 3-flat across the street from me. The owner is not a huge gardener, nor does he take exquisite care of his lawn (as opposed to the people in the 3-flat right next door to him, whose lawn is as green as I imagine their homeland of Ireland to be!).

Over the years he's gotten some nicer plants, and he's tried to put little mini-fence things to protect his grass. But the mini-fence things keep getting knocked over, stepped on, bent, by who knows who. And the neighbor kids from the corner apartment building have begun extending their play area to include his lawn.

I remember walking by his yard and seeing that someone had systematically bent over all the top decorations on his mini-fences, and also flattened every other one to the ground. Nice.

So today, I come home, and what's across the street? A good (and pissed off) neighbor...

Sankofa Processing #3

Trying to encapsulate thoughts about Sankofa is like playing one of those video games, where just when you think you've gotten a handle on things, the game pieces start multiplying, and spill over the top again.

One thing that was reminded to me on the trip was the fact that I'm an external processor, and have to either talk things out or write things out a couple of times before I'm satisfied with them. It's been helpful to talk things out with a couple of friends the last few days.

In The Color of Fear, Victor tells David that he expects people of color to act like him, talk like him, be like him. David is continually coming at things from a one-sided viewpoint, never stopping to consider that other people, other people groups, come at things from a different viewpoint than his.

In her paper, White Privilege, Peggy McIntosh suggests that the people with the power, the advantage, the privilege, want to level things out by trying to raise others up to their level rather than giving up some of that privilege and power. Again, they're coming at it from the wrong direction.

Similarly, I've been wondering if instead of deciding, "I'll treat all the people of color I come across just like my White friends and acquaintances," one should decide, "I'll treat my White friends and acquaintances just like I treat people of color.

Can we do this? I don't know.

The fact that I have friends - good, trusted, loved, intimate friends - who are different ethnicities than me does not mean I've "gotten over" my ingrained prejudices. Now and then I am disgusted to realize that I'm profiling as I walk down the street. Who's a gangbanger? Who's just a thug? Who can I ask for directions/change/to take a picture with my camera? Who hates me because I'm White? Who is a working man/woman just like me? Who...

Notice none of those questions were directed at myself... Do I make more pay for doing the same job as him/her? Do I have a lower mortgage rate than him/her? Am I looking at a man coming home tired and dirty from a hard day of work and assuming he's homeless?

The thing with ingrained prejudices is that they're ... well, ingrained. Deep. Hard to dig up, hard to root out.

But we need to do the hard work. God help me. God help us.

Sankofa Processing #2

One reason why it's been difficult to process through Sankofa is that it seems like so much has happened since then that is also pertaining to race, or racial righteousness, or discrimination. Maybe it's that I'm looking at everything through a different lens. I don't know, but check this out:

• The very next day a dog-walking neighbor and I were talking, and she started railing on the people in her building (she's White - they're African American and southeast Asian) and I had nothing to say in response
• Our whole group got an email from Mona, one of the event co-leaders, about her son who was almost arrested for DWB (driving while Black)
• My son's and my less-than-fabulous (yet oh-too-common for many) experience at Cook County Hospital
• Seeing the homeless guy at 7-Eleven
• Reading Eugene Cho's blog entry about the Spanish basketball team taking a picture making slanty-eyes, and all the comments it's engendered (p.s. all of Eugene's blog is a worthy read, btw)
• Telling a friend that I don't think a joke is funny because it has racist undertones
• (From before I went) Refugee families from Burma (Myanmar) continuing to come to our church; council trying to figure out what we can do for them, as their needs are great
• Wondering why my son can't seem to get a full time job, and wondering if his race is working against him
• Listening to the advertisements for This American Life, where they were telling a story about BWB (biking while Black)

And just tonight I finally read a paper called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack. Man. It is deep. It says so much in a relatively short paper. We talked on the bus about a number of the points that Peggy McIntosh, the author, writes about.

Her list of privileges is incredible. This is the stuff we, I, White people, don't have to think about, and often refuse to think about. And many of us have no idea, no freaking idea, that we have it so well.

Enough with the non-point!

First of all, you gotta give Hillary props for her speech last night. That girl spoke her butt off! I realize I can be a sucker for political speeches, but I won't lie. I got teary-eyed. Partly because I was wondering how she was feeling, speaking on behalf of Barack and Joe, instead of herself. Partly because - hey! - she was inspiring! And she really came through. Like she said, she is a proud Democrat, and she proved herself to be a real team player.

There's only one thing. She kept doing the non-point. You know, that not-quite-pointing, kind-of-fist that someone makes when they want to point but don't want to seem like they're pointing at you.

It seems to me that this little gesture was made popular by none other than Hillary's husband, when he was running for president. And now not only politicians but a lot of other people have inexplicably embraced it as a nice non-offensive point-making... non-pointing... thing.

And I'm sorry, but it just looks weird. Point at me if you want. Or use your whole open hand. But the non-point looks like your almost fist is on an elastic band where your arm can't quite stretch out; it bounces back in and just looks awkward.

G'head! Uncle Sam did it - he inspired a whole nation to enlist by pointing at them! Be direct. I want YOU to make your point!

Sankofa Processing #1

What to say about Sankofa?

I could write about the schedule - almost 72 hours together, half of which was on board a bus, awestruck at the sites we visited, moved by the videos we watched, especially The Color of Fear, inspired and intimidated by the conversations we had.

Or I could focus on the sites we visited: the 16th Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; the John Perkins Institute in Jackson, and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, which has been converted into the National Civil Rights Museum.

In some ways, Sankofa now seems a world away - perhaps because of the very nature of it. We are separated off, cocooned into a bus that becomes our world for several days. Our sense of time gets a little goofy, because of the long hours we spend viewing films and discussing them or the places we have visited.

As much as possible, I tried to capture sights on film and impressions on paper, which I have yet to transfer into understandable notes. Overall, I still have an overwhelming feeling akin to despair. On one hand, Sankofa was a wonderful experience, one I intend to repeat. But it is not a feel good trip. It is not like going on a weekend retreat. You do not (hopefully) come out of it saying, "oh, God is so gooood, my eyes are ooopened, now I'm awaaare, praise the Lord, and life will be better from now on."

At the start of Sankofa, a couple of the women said that they were frankly tired of having to deal with these issues; they've lived them every day their whole lives. And I can't blame them.

No matter how awaaare (of self and/or society) I might become, the truth is, I can go on with my life, enjoying the benefits of not having to be aware of my race, not worrying about being profiled by the police while I'm driving, not being looked at suspiciously by people on the street or in shops. I don't have to think about the fact that I am White.

Freedom to be oblivious to matters of race. In The Color of Fear, one man asked another what it was like to be White. The White man really had no answer. He didn't have to know.

At the start, we were all asked how we thought of ourselves in terms of race. Several of the White people said White, or European American. I was the first person asked, and I didn't interpret the question as 'how do I label myself'; but rather what I thought about myself in terms of race. The first word that came to mind was privileged, but I was hesitant to speak that aloud until someone else did.

Another woman said that she felt no identity as 'White'. I agree. There is no feeling of common identity or of shared experience, whether it be good or bad.

No, this was not a feel good time. And lots more processing has to take place.

OMG My pastor said SUCK!!!!!!

My pastor said suck. In front of everyone. From the pulpit. During the sermon. Ohmigoo-oosh!

Here's a more-or-less quote: "How do we stay pure to relationships even when things suck?" It took my enough by surprise that I had to write it down in my notebook. [p.s. disclaimer at end]

Here's the thing. She gave a fabulous sermon (no surprise there, she pretty much always does). To put that quote in context, she was preaching on faithfulness, in a series on the fruit of the spirit. And she used this great term to describe our culture: A Culture of Impermanence (that's from the book Life on the Vine by Philip Kenneson). It's all about how everything is disposable, planned obsolescence, undependable, untrustworthy... and that extends to our relationships.

We are amazed when we hear about marriages lasting 20, 30, 40, 50 years. The idea of growing old together is a thing of the past. Therefore, what makes us value those relationships enough to honor them, to honor the vows we take that are meant to give those relationships a strong base? Being bound to anything (house, job, possession, person) is something our culture resists. So how do we stay pure to relationships even when things suck?

Oh. There's that word again. It reminded me of that famous Tony Campolo quote: "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

I leaned over to our sound guy and whispered, "pastor said suck!" He kinda cracked up and nodded.

Here's the thing. Our language, our vocabulary is also one of those victims of the culture of impermanence. When I was young, that word in particular was pretty nasty. It came about, of course, as a sexual reference.

I think using suck as a vulgarity started gaining popularity in the Sixties, and by the Seventies, was hugely widespread. But it was not something you said in front of parents, teachers, youth group friends. It was not something I said - it was dirty.

Okay, I'd better make a DISCLAIMER here. I've used it since. Sometimes to express myself, sometimes to shock people or make them laugh. But I have used it, and it doesn't seem as dirty as it used to when I was young. But it still feels like I'm saying a bad word.

Here's one result of my pastor saying suck from the pulpit. I REMEMBERED HER SERMON. Yes, I had to go back into my notes to get a few more details about it, but the point is, I remembered what she said.

Atlanta in August

Sankofa. What was I thinking, signing up to go to the Deep South in the middle of the hottest month of the year?

It's about 36 hours till the bus leaves, and I'm feeling anxiety for any number of reasons... the discomfort of spending so much time on the bus... wondering how we'll change clothes, wash up the first morning... will the others think I'm shallow... what will I dredge up from within that I don't want to face...

I really am eager, too. I figure the current state of busy-ness will work in my favor in that I won't have as much time to worry while I'm frantically trying to get a number of things done before we leave.

Sankofa. What will you bring?