Film at 11

I haven't written much lately, but this is just a short reminder tha I am, in fact, alive, and that life is good. Very good. Really pretty incredible, actually. More later; all I'll say for now is that I love my work at First Lutheran, and that her name's Colleen, and that these two things are unrelated except that they both make me very happy, albeit in different ways.

Green Group

Yes, there are more Advent sonnets, and yes, I will post them soon and very soon.  But first...


The subject of kids and teaching has been a big one for me lately.  Not too surprising, when you consider that I work four afternoons a week with a delightful group of kindergartners at an after-school program.  And...we're trying to do things differently.


You see, the temptation when there are two or three adults and a lot of precocious, if sometimes hyper, little ones is to throw any attempts at substantive after-school programming out the window.  Not enough people to enforce discipline; can't be done.  Let's just go out and play for endless stretches of time...well, as endless as the weather in Chicago will allow any given day.  When that's over, go inside, have a snack, and monitor the organized chaos as the kids move on to free play with Legos, etc.


I don't mean to sound like I'm knocking outdoor play, snack time, and Legos...they all show up in our afternoon, too.  But...what if early child after-school programming focused on forming community in the classroom?  And on talking about peace, and did so concretely through work around sharing and respect?  What if we boldly talked about issues of identity and difference, and did so in a way intended to affirm the humanity of all people?  What if our stories for group time illustrated these things?  What if time outside involved emphasizing ecological consciousness and respect for plants, animals, and the earth?  When we play, what if we tell them "you can't say you can't play" and encourage them to play together and use their shared imaginations to create new games?  What about making snack time into a chance for community meal - eating as a rainbow-tinged family of different people celebrating being human together?  How about using art and opportunities for creativity as ways to help express some of these things?  And, quiet reading - how will the children be formed by being shown that reading for oneself or with a friend should be a part of daily routine?  How will they grow up to be if we teach them how to tell stories with wordless books, and ask them to imagine what might happen next in our story before we turn the page?  What would it look like if, when children break rules, the response is to engage in dialogue around the issues involved rather than simply rush to judgments and punish?  And, when they quarrel with one another, why don't we teach them how to talk through their problems together, express their feelings with considerate honesty, and arrive at mutually beneficial solutions?


These are the things we try to do with the kids in Green Group.  It's hard some days...really hard.  It's not how we're programmed to do things.  But, I genuinely believe that if we're ever, EVER, going to change life in this world for the better, then the process is going to start with a million groups like this teaching people, from day one, how to be the world we all say we want to live in.

Advent Sonnet Three

A candle flickers in the wind that blows
With fury, and with frigid teeth that gnaw
Away at skin and bone; the tree that grows
Outside my window creaks and groans, the maw
Of winter wrapped around its soul.  The light
That day by day grows dimmer as the wick,
Aglow with flame, fights on against the might
Of icy rain and snow that falls in thick
White layers on the ground.  The sun has set;
An endless night has fallen on our lives
As sin-black evil taints us.  We have met
Our deepest fear, the death of soul it gives.
But even in the dark our light shines on -
A hope to face our night until the dawn.

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.