Advent Sonnet Two

O rend the sky and dwell with us, o Lord -
The old refrain, the tired plea we make
In all our weary moanings o'er the sword
Of hostil times - old enemies that take
Away our joy and sense of You.  And in
The absence that we face, we look to see,
But cannot see, the love we feel within
Our quickened beating hearts - the joyful glee -
When you, our God, are with us in the mess
And brokenness that we call life.  With sad,
Pathetic lamentation, we address
The hole we find; in it we are made glad
For in the hidden places You do dwell,
The secret space is where we are made well.

Advent Project - Day One

You know what makes blogging hard?  Being a full-time student and working four days a week. But, to try and get myself back into the swing of blogging regularly, I'm going to share here my Advent project - a sonnet a day for all of Advent.


This is the age of waiting and of hope,
Yet in the darkness there is no way out
But to walk in blinded steps and to grope
With eager expectation past the doubt.
This is the day of wonder and of fear
Of all the grumbling noises in the dark
That scratch and tear and bite the mindful ear
Which strains to find the song of distance larks.
This is the hour of once and future pasts,
The present gloom a curtain from the light.
We stumble on in fearful pain that lasts
What looks to weary eyes an endless night.
But in the inky midnight of our way
Will come a dawn, the birth of endless day.

Guy Fawkes Day

It is indeed the 5th of November - but no Gunpowder Treason and Plot this year.  Instead, there are other protests - against our corporate banking institutions who take our money, use it to fund the oppression of the poor (Sub-prime mortgage crisis, anyone?), waste it on increasingly byzantine speculative financial deals (see point #2 again), and then demand to be bailed out with our tax money.  Thousands of people are pulling their money from their banking institutions today and moving them to community banks, where their money can be used for local investment projects.


If this were happening even a month later, I would be joining them...and probably will join them here in a few weeks when loan money clears.  If we're going to sit around and talk about how awful these big corporate interests are, and how they contribute to the economic wreck that is life in the U.S. now by continuing to plunder the general public in the name of increasing the already bulging profit margins of the wealthiest people in this nation, then the very least we can do is take the reasonable steps that we can to guarantee that our money stays out of this process to the largest extent possible.  Easiest way - don't do your banking with Bank of America, Chase, etc.  Take your money out, and find a local bank or credit union.


I will, however, be joining the movement physically - there are nationwide protests happening in front of Bank of America, and I'll be joining the one in the Loop later today.  It is no longer the time to sit back and complain about the way things are from the comfort of home; it is time to, collectively, put our money where our mouths are and join in the resistance.  If we are going to criticize the emergent U.S. American oligarchy - the corporate class and their marriage to the bloated political establishment - then we have no choice but to craft an alternative vision by living it out in our homes, in our churches, and on our streets.  Now is the time, now is the moment - "My heart shall sing of the day you bring - let the fires of justice burn!  Wipe away all tears for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!"

Article from CPT's latest newsletter

(Written for, and edited by, Christian Peacemaker Teams.  In other words, if it doesn't sound QUITE like how I normally write...it's been tweaked lovingly by others.)

On the last day of our Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation, we had big plans.   We wanted to do a public action in response to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (which is now a done deal).  We brainstormed, we strategized, and we agonized over the best time and place and finally, we planned the street theater- a scene of two tables to be held in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá.

One table is the world of free trade, in which Colombia is being devoured by its free trade partners (such as Canada and European Union), while the Colombian resistance tries to hold back the monster of U.S. corporate greed.  This table was based on stories we heard during the delegation, stories of violence and displacement fueled by multinational companies robbing the resources of Colombia.

The other table is God's table, a table marked by equality, mutuality, and abundance.

With this vision in our minds, we got to work, spending hours assembling costumes, writing prayers, and calling Colombian partner organizations.

Soon, the big day arrived.  And... it rained.  A lot.  This was not a shower or a drizzle. It absolutely poured. As they say in Spanish, llovió cántaros. It was obvious that our original plan wasn't going to work.

And then, God showed up.  Earlier in the day, we had briefly met a group of former General Motors employees who were on strike outside the U.S. Embassy.  These were workers who had been injured on the job and then fired by G.M. as a way of escaping their obligation to pay the healthcare costs. These workers wanted justice and so they camped out in front of the diplomatic entrance.  They put a few tents together and occupied the space in shifts. When we met them, they had been there for sixty-four days.  We decided to brave the rain and go join them.

  

What we found there was the table of God's abundance that we had planned to demonstrate in the second half our action. But instead of just a symbolic handing out of bread, we found a living, active sharing.  We shared a little about ourselves, and then we heard their stories - stories of lives derailed by preventable injuries in unsafe work environments, stories of just compensation denied to "the least of these."  One man had to sell his house to pay for hospital bills after a back injury he received in the factory.

We heard God's vision for humanity from Isaiah 25 - a vision of abundance for all, and the destruction of death and injustice, and we prayed and broke bread.  As these stories - these sacred tales of brokenness, injustice, and holy resistance - hung in the air over us like holy incense, we brought out the loaves of bread we'd bought to share during our action, and the G.M employees made agua panela (a hot beverage made water and local unprocessed cane sugar).  

God was there present among us as we shared in the least likely of Eucharists.  For a few minutes in a couple of tents in front of the U.S. Embassy, the Reign of God broke into the world, and we shared the feast of victory for our God. It was beautiful.

 Now, back in Chicago, I reflect on that afternoon in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has blossomed in Chicago and so many other cities.  I think of new tents cropping up in equally unlikely places, and I see God continuing to break into our reality around tables every bit as unlikely as the one we stumbled upon in Bogotá.  And maybe across this world, God's Kingdom is continuing to come in the places where it is most needed, but least expected. And maybe one table is being cleared so that a new one might be set.

Where is my mind?

The Pixies seem to be asking the question that I've been wondering about for the past...well, three months or so.  Where is my mind?  Times of radical transition in life are not always conducive to clarity of mind and focus for some of us, and it feels like I've done nothing but transition since the end of July.  First, it was leaving Iowa to move back to Chicago.  Then, the insane first month back of reconnecting with people, and flying down to Texas long enough to say hi and then coming back, and forming a new community that then was scattered across the world for a year, and guest preaching, and tying up loose ends with paperwork and such for first call...while trying to figure out what I feel called to do for that first call, which entailed extra paperwork as an application went in to Global Mission.  Then, right as a relationship ended (largely due to the paperwork going in to Global Mission), school and worked began anew...but there was no time to get comfortable, because I left two weeks into the semester to spend two weeks in Colombia, just in time to get back for reading week.  In some ways, it feels like the semester has only now gotten started.  I can finally be here now.


But...my mind hasn't caught up yet.  It's still in Webster County, and a million places in Chicago other than the black building at 55th and University, and all over the world with the YAGM, and in future places where I might be called but can't yet imagine.  It's why I've struggled to blog for the past few months; I have a million things to say, but my brain is saying them all at once.  I wish my mind would settle the hell down.

An open letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama,


This is not a letter I imagined that I'd be writing back in 2008 when I, rather enthusiastically, cast my ballot for you here in your own home neighborhood in Chicago, Hyde Park.  I felt pretty connected to your campaign - I managed to watch your victory speech after the Iowa caucus in (of all places) southern Chile during a year of global service with my church, I moved to an apartment four blocks from your house in Chicago to begin my seminary studies, and I took a job working at an after-school program at the Lab School here.  You're the hometown hero in these parts - our neighbor down the street, our friend, our best chance for vindication.


In 2008, you campaigned reasonably left of center - you're no Bernie Sanders or Paul Wellstone, but you convinced us progressive-minded folk that you were one of us.  So, we turned out and voted for you...and now, we're not sure if you are, in fact, the person who we voted for.  You've compromised, time and time again, with the right-wing leadership of the Republican Party.  You have backed down from genuine systemic reform, and settled for putting expensive band-aids on gaping wounds, such as our miserable failure of a healthcare system.  In the process, you've lost a lot of people like me's trust.  Mr. President, I don't trust you, or your word, when it comes to policy decisions and core principles.  The man I voted for in 2008 appears to have been a fictitious character.


I will confess that I have little knowledge of the inner workings of the Washington political world.  For those of us on the outside, it is a giant mystery - most of suspect it's a beast fed by corporate money, but it could run on any number of equally odious things for all I know.  However it is fueled, I grant that it is a system that you know better than I do.  That said, I feel as if we have seen not only a lack of conviction, but a lack of leadership.  Time and time again, as you have abandoned campaign promises and progressive ideals in the name of "compromise" with an increasingly blood-hungry Republican Party, you have fumbled as a leader.  You've lost those of us on the left by forgetting that we helped elect you.  You've lost the right by being a black liberal who doesn't reference Jesus every fifth word...though to be fair, you can't lose what you never had.  And, you've lost the center by presenting yourself as elitist, aloof, unconcerned with the goings-on of daily life for most U.S. Americans, inept, and unreadable.  You've lost us all, Mr. President, and I'm sorry to say that you've got nobody to blame but yourself.


And so, Mr. President, I ask you - as just one little voice coming from your own neighborhood, as one person who genuinely respects you and your life story even while being disappointed with your presidential leadership - not to run for re-election.  I will name the elephant in the room - most of us are terrified that you are incapable of winning.  Yes, the election is a year away (and much can change), but there's been no evidence of change on the wing to give us hope that it's possible.  The closest to hope we have is that the Republican Party can't seem to find their ass with their hands right now, either.  The nightmare scenario - you versus one of the lunatic fringe candidates, such as a Rick Perry or currently flavor-of-the-month Herman Cain...and you losing.  Pair that with losing the Senate, and this country will be set to go back to the "good ol' days" of fine leaders like Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover.


Don't run to save face, and then wax poetic as you lose on election night.  Back out, now, and give the 3/4 of us who don't share the corporate-funded Tea Party's nightmare vision of laissez-faire economic hell a chance to keep that beast at bay.  Please, Mr. President - if you can't deliver the goods, then nobly step aside to make room for someone who can, whoever that may be.

Where I'm At

One of my favorite songs, and one with which I have a long and colorful history, sums up where I'm at these days.  Actual details to come; for now, Third Eye Blind can do the talking.