Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas in Barnesville

I was talking with my new friend Sally on the phone last night and we agreed it's a wonderful thing that a group of us all arrived here in Barnesville at the same time.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, we will all go to hear Clyde (and our Olney friend Ela), both of whom are musical, at a Christmas Eve service at the Presbyterian Church in town. On Christmas, we will all get together at Jane and Clyde's 100-year old blue frame house just down from the library for Christmas dinner. All of these activities will include our teenage and young adult children (except for Sally's; her children are far away). Even Sophie is home, having returned from her visit with her boyfriend Lucas's family in Yellow Springs.

I'm appreciating Christmas in a place where there's little to buy and little to do. Downtown Barnesville looks not too different from downtown Bedford Falls (circa 1946) in "It's a Wonderful Life." Maybe a little quieter. The town has hung Christmas decorations from the street lamps on Main Street. You can still pull into an (unmetered) parking space in front of the store where you'd like to shop. While there are a straggle of stores with separate parking lots as you head east toward my end of town--some fast food "joints," a Save A Lot, Riesbecks, Dollar General and Rite Aid--there's nothing like a strip mall, mall or arcade of shops. Downtown Main Street shopping could be lifted straight out of the 1950s. For me it's a delight to live in a land time forgot. (As an aside, I'm rereading Emma for my reading group in Maryland and last night was charmed by a streetscape. Emma is waiting for her friend Harriet to pick out ribbon and so steps outside to watch the activities. One is a boy urging a donkey down the street (you won't see that in Barnesville but horses and buggies you will see) and another is a group of children staring in the bow window of the bakery looking at the gingerbread. That last image struck me as more Victorian or Dickensian that Jane Austen-like, but it was charming.)

All our snow is gone, but the grass has a golden cast and we still have some reddish leaves on the trees outside our south living room window. Plus the view of the red barn with the green roof.

I keep telling people, half jokingly, that Barnesville is still in the 1970s. That's part of what I like about living here. But where ever you are, feliz navidad.

Christmas Chronos

My cyber-friend Peggy, the abbess, blogs about two different kinds of time, one more temporal, one more eternal. In the book Blessed Unrest, (Peggy, if you're reading this, could you explain your two times?) Paul Hawken names four types of time, borrowing, I believe from Stewart Brand's book, The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Repsonsibilty: 1. commerce time, the most rapid and changing time, which Hawken calls the dominant time frame of our time, 2. cultural time, which moves and changes much more slowly (for example, he says, the Russian Orthodox church was largely unruffled by the 72 year interlude of communism and picked up its liturgy as if nothing had happened after the fall of the Soviet Union), 3. governance time, which, he says, moves faster than culture, slower than commerce, and perhaps mediates between the two, and 4. what he calls "earth, nature and the web of life," which moves far move slowly than the other three.

As you might imagine, Hawkin contends that the dominant commerce time of our culture, with its breakneck pace of change, is dangerous when not tempered by other, slower understandings of time.

I read an article the other day in the New York Times that said that more people were buying crafts from small, independent vendors or making crafts for Christmas, and that, in fact, Michael's was seeing an increase in sales in these hard times. That gave me a hope that there's perhaps a grass-roots rebellion against living constantly in commerce time. Crafts handmade by oneself or another person, dearly take more time and infusion of self than a factory produced product. The Times predictably framed this switch to crafts as a money-saving trend, but I wonder if there is something deeper going on, as while crafts may be cheaper than some forms of ready made consumption, they're not the cheapest way to go, at least not if you are buying from an artisan or purchasing supplies from MIchaels.

But to get back to the beginnning: it's Christmas and for all the glomming on of commercialism and countless forms of pressure, at its core, this holy day has a timeless quality. Quakers hoped they could infuse all days with such a gentle, loving sense of the presence of God, and that is a worthy dream, but at least we have one such day. Through the birth of a baby, foretold and celebrated by angels, shepherds and magi, all joyfully proclaiming a new order, we touch the eternal, a time even deeper and more lasting than that of the earth, which will, in its time, also pass away.

My question, along with yet another merry Christmas, is this: how do you personally get yourself out of "commerce" time? And, are you buying or making crafts? I actually bought hand-crafted goat's milk soaps as Christmas gifts.

Christmas

"You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler.
The wicked foe pulls all of them up in his dragnet;
and he rejoices and is glad,
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and burns incense to his dragnet,
for by his net he lives in luxury
and enjoys the choicest food.
Is he to keep on emptying his net,
destroying nations without mercy?" Habbakuk 1:13-17

Of course, Jesus calling Peter and Andrew, fishermen, to become "fishers of men" jumps immediately to mind. Jesus calls his disciples so that they can oppose the people who devour others for their own gain. This adds a social justice dimension to the fish as a Christian symbol. The fish--the little people--get a loving ruler, Jesus, who protects them from the wicked. There's a sense of lines drawn: Who will get the fish (us): those who bring death or those who offer salvation?

As I read the Christmas story while doing the Advent calendar with Will and Nick and Roger, I again see how oppositional it is. It offers an alternative universe and a transformed way of viewing the world. Yes, there is the Roman emperor and other kings and princes, who rule through warfare and violence, but we have a prince of peace. Secular princes may bring terror but our prince brings goodwill. Our king, according to Mary, stands for the oppressed and the humble. In all of this is a complete challenge to an order based on material wealth and violence.

The peace testimony--God's commitment to peace--is underlined in God's rebuke to the proud in Habbakuk: "Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed."

Jesus built his kingdom on peace, love, joy and humility.

"One of the greatest risks, I think, of living in a secular world ... is something I might call the Woody Allenization of everything. Too much reason. Too much self-awareness. Too much blah-blah. Too little wonder, and marvel and faith ... " Judith Warner, NYT, 12/23/08

The Christmas story gives us the gift of wonder, faith and miracle. Merry Christmas.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Reply to Jim Wallis

In my e-mail box, I received a letter "from" Jim Wallis of Sojourners, offering me the "opportunity" to send Sojourners money!

I was irritated. Not because Sojourners is trying to raise money because, of course, as many people will tell me, they "need" to. What annoyed me was the smarminess of the letter. Addressing me by first name as if I were "Jim's" personal friend. Couching sending them money as an "opportunity." The creepy hackneyed hyberpole: "enormous," "Incredible." Treating the reader, without irony, as a fool. Maybe it was the absence of irony that bothered me most. Wanting absolutely nothing of me but my money and not even offering me a laugh for my buck. It reminded me of an old Monty Python skit where a doctor comes to pay a house call but ignores the patient while he runs around the house in a crazed way stuffing his empty black doctor's bag with any cash he can find. Of course, the skit was funny.

Here is an organization that prides itself on being different from "those people" on the other side of the political divide. Yet it seems to mirror standard corporate fundraising tactics. It seems to put all its faith in money to solve problems. Hhhm. Is it putting first the kingdom or filthy lucre? Are they anything but a mirror of the thing they purport to hate and want to "reform?" I imagine I am supposed to be naive enough to see sending them money as an "opportunity," but not so naive as to think they could "do it without my support (money)?"

I spent more than a decade in marketing and among many tasks I wrote what quaintly used to be called "direct mail" letters like the one from Sojourners. They're used because they're "proven to be effective." But just because something is an effective fundraising technique, does that justify using it? Not to be sanctimonious, but can you, Sojourners, really pour new wine into old wineskins?

I "replied" to the letter. Here's my response:

Dear Jim,

Thank you so much for contacting me personally and by first name.

In such a time as this, with both "enormous possibilities" and "incredible challenges," I too want to keep Sojourners work "alive and strong."

I am a religion journalist who would like to make you a gift worth more than a check for measly lucre: the opportunity of hiring me.

I will give you insightful, accurate and intelligent stories and columns for a reasonable salary. I will thus help you keep Sojourners work alive and strong. In fact, I will make it more alive and stronger. I am an "opportunity."

Under the new Obama proposed tax structures, this will will you a tax break of $3,000. Hiring talented people like me is part of the challenge and possibility to make a real difference in a failed economy.

Please e-mail me for my resume and more information.

Sincerely,

Diane

Do you think I'll hear from them? :)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Peaceable Kingdom




Apparently, the above photos of a tiger with piglets are real, but despite some sweet stories circulating that a group of altruistic zoo officials brought in the piglets to help a grieving tiger mother heal from the loss of her young, the real story supposedly is that they are part of a Chinese zoo exhibit meant to startle viewers in the same way a circus sideshow might.

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together." Isaiah 11:6.

And the tiger shall lie down with the piglet ...

Who says it can't happen?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Christmas

"You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler.
The wicked foe pulls all of them up in his dragnet;
and he rejoices and is glad,
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and burns incense to his dragnet,
for by his net he lives in luxury
and enjoys the choicest food.
Is he to keep on emptying his net,
destroying nations without mercy?" Habbakuk 1:13-17

Of course, Jesus calling Peter and Andrew, fisherman, to become "fishers of men" jumps immediately to mind. Jesus calls his disciples so that they can oppose the people who devour others for their own gain. This adds a social justice dimension to the fish as a Christian symbol. The fish--the little people--get a loving ruler, Jesus, who protects them from the wicked. There's a sense of lines drawn: Who will get the fish (us): those who bring death or those who offer salvation?

As I read the Christmas story while doing the Advent calendar with Will and Nick and Roger, I again see how oppositional it is. It offers an alternative universe and a transformed way of viewing the world. Yes, there is the Roman emperor and other kings and princes, who rule through warfare and violence, but we have a prince of peace. Secular princes may bring terror but our prince brings goodwill. Our king, according to Mary, stands for the oppressed and the humble. In all of this is a complete challenge to an order based on material wealth and violence.

The peace testimony--God's commitment to peace--is underlined in God's rebuke to the proud in Habbakuk: "Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed."

Jesus built his kingdom on peace, love, joy and humility.

"One of the greatest risks, I think, of living in a secular world ... is something I might call the Woody Allenization of everything. Too much reason. Too much self-awareness. Too much blah-blah. Too little wonder, and marvel and faith ... " Judith Warner, NYT, 12/23/08

The Christmas story gives us the gift of wonder, faith and miracle. Merry Christmas.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Back

Roger put new memory in and did good things to my computer, so now I can access my own blog again! I imagine that all of this makes me more patient and able to see that I don't need to be "wired" all the time.

I have been drawn to Habbukuk recently, so I will most likely blog about that.

And, of course, I am thinking about a lot about Christmas.

Hope everyone is well!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

An Award

My cyber-friend Ted (you can link to him on the right) has nominated me for the "Marie Antionette, a real person, a real award" award for my Website! Cool. Now I have to nominate seven other people's sites. I will attend to that ... but currently, I'm experiencing problems connected to my very own blog, so please be patient with me. I can't connect from own machine, so I will try to get on when I have access to other computers ... I have another new blog entry right below this one ...

Monday, December 8, 2008

What we long for

Following is a beautiful description of nature in Paul Hawkin's book Blessed Unrest. It describes Kitlope, upriver east of Kitimat in British Columbia:

“I felt as though I had been thrust into a painting by the Hudson River School, a preternatural, romantic dreamscape ... But here it was, the real thing, glaciers, rainbows, and all. The five species of Pacific salmon ... underfoot were fodder for the grizzlies and black bears denning in the old-growth spruce and cedar forests. In the glacier-fed waters, river otters peered curiously. wolf packs roamed at night, mountain goats capered on alpine croppings, blubbery seals feasted on easy pickings a hundred miles from the sea, and eagles nested in evenly spaced sequences along every spawning tributary.”
p. 41.

What I love about this passage is the way it shows the abundance in God's creation. This scene describes plenty, and paints a picture of how God meant this world to be. It raised in me a longing to see Kitlope. It made me feel sad over what we've done to our world. It reminded me that the world of scarcity we seem to live in is not the only reality and different from God's plan for us or for the rest of the animals and plants in creation. I couldn't help but contrast it to Hawkin's (and other's) depictions of polluted slums in Third World cities, where the water is toxic and most of the plant and animal life has been killed.

But what I most want to hang on to is an outlook that hopes for all things, that doesn't settle for the fallen world around us as the way things have to be. I can imagine a time in the not too distant future, perhaps my grandchildren's generation, when something as basic as having free or nearly-free water will seem like a dream. A few generations beyond that, a world of free, abundant water might seem like a "fairy story" that idealists had made up. Or in a society of increasing single parenthood, two-parent families as the norm might become scoffed at as impossible. Yet I grew up during a time when (albeit imperfectly) it was quite common. So I want to remember that the simple things we long for are not fantasies but possibilities and part what God has promised we can have in this world.

Republic Windows and Doors

What do you think of the "sit in" at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago? Workers there were told Tuesday that the plant was closing for good on Friday. They were given three days notice that they would no longer have jobs. The workers decided to stage a peaceful protest by sitting in the empty factory in shifts. They say they are owed vacation and overtime pay and question whether Bank of America was overhasty in pulling the plug on the business's credit.

This sit in caught my attention because it is a peaceful protest, and because it perfectly aligns with the kind of social justice action Paul Hawkin describes in his book "Blessed Unrest," which I recently finished reading. The sit-in participants are a small group of people on the bottom of society questioning how Bank of America, which recently got how many billions (?) in taxpayer bailout money, could refuse to extend credit to the small company. Maybe Bank of America had a good reason to deny the funds and maybe not, but at least the laid-off workers are raising the question.

So what do you think?

Friday, December 5, 2008

How to Change the World?

During the Thanksgiving holiday, I read a novel called My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru, which was on the New York Times notable book list for 2008. Now I'm reading Paul Hawken's nonfiction work, Blessed Unrest. The two books are about changing the world and are instructive to read back to back. How do we change the world?

My Revolutions is based loosely on a group in Britain called the Angry Brigade which, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, worked through bombings and acts of civil disobedienceto bring down the English government and its systems of domination and oppression. The Angry Brigrade wants to lead a political "movement" that will attract the "masses." In the fictionalized account, we see the action through the eyes of Chris Carver, a college student who falls into the radical group partly out of a desire to change the system but largely because he is infatuated with the astringently beautiful Anna, one of the group's leaders. Of course, he has to hide this regressive "bourgeois" desire for individualized, romantic love.

In the book, we watch the group do good things, such as occupying empty housing in London and refurbishing it for the homeless. But we also see the group slide into increased isolation, fanaticism, narcissism and violence. The group looks towards models such as Lenin and the Russian Revolution and Mao and the Chinese Revolution. Like many 20th century radicals, the members are motivated by "isms" such as communism, and by a desire for ideoligical purity. They think big, wanting to lead massive change all at once. In the end, as we know, they fail, and England remains much as it always has, a mixed economy with democratic elections and a titular monarchy. The book becomes an indictment of ideological fanaticism, self-delusion and violence.

In contrast, Blessed Unrest follows a different kind of "movement," which can hardly be called a movement: the organic, unorganized rise of more than a million small groups worldwide that are concerned about environmentalism and social justice. These groups follow a different model from the grand isms of the 20th century: they are pragmatic rather than ideological and they work often, though not always, for small, local changes. They are fluid, grouping and regrouping at will, and operate largely below the radar of the media.

The book's author, Paul Hawken, tends narrowly to identify Christianity, which he puts on the side of transnational systems of domination and oppression, with its worst fundamentalist forms. This secular viewpoint is a weakness and a blind spot in an otherwise splendid book.As I read about groups working in different ways to affirm one principle: the sanctity of life, human life primarily, but also animal life, I saw these groups as manifesting Jesus's message of loving God and loving one's neighbor as the most important values.

I saw Jesus' lessons flowing out of the actions of these small groups in many ways:

1. Pragmistism: Jesus came down on the side of pragmatic gestures. For example, he defends Mary Magdalene for her gesture of spontaneous love in breaking an expensive vial of perfume over him. He understood the ideoligical purity is soul killing while actions from the heart are soul expanding. Also, as just one other example, Jesus' valorized the debt-forgiving "crooked" steward who used common sense to help himself and his neighbors.

2. Working quietly: Jeus talked about being yeast and salt invisibly working its way through the culture to bring around small, incremental changes that add up to big change. Not only did he use these metaphors, he enacted a refusal to fall into the traditional patterns of "big" military "change" by refusing to lead a military uprising at the end of his life.

3. Standing for peace: Jesus' way was not violent. Even the overturning of the money lenders' tables in the Temple, his most aggressive act, didn't take any lives and apparently injured nobody permanently. This is a huge rachteting down of the violence of the ancient world and a contrast to Bibilcal leaders such as Moses, David and Ezekiel, who all killed. It's definitely a contrast to the carnage of the Roman Empire.

4. Valuing the little people: Do I need to say anything? Blessed are the meek, the poor, the broken spirited ...

5. Upside-down kingdom thinking: These groups seem to share a strong sense that the powers that oppress the world value the wrong things: that their wisdom is foolishness and that what they despise are the most precious gifts in the universe.

I wonder how many of the groups Hawkins describes, if not overtly Christian, arise out of Christian roots. Since I became a convert 17 years ago, I have fallen into a network of small groups that I never knew existed in my secular days. Just about everyone I know in the Christian/Quaker world is working for the kind of change Hawkin is talking about in the way he is talking about: small and grassroots. I think of Bill and his Consistent Life work, Peggy and her Abbess work, the raw milk network I've fallen into, the Patapsco Friends Meeting prison ministry, the peace work done by Stillwater meeting, Olney Friends School's commitment ... the list goes on. I'd be interested in hearing about what I've left out.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Do Not Waste the Creation

"He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster." Proverbs 18:9

"Do rightly, justly, truly, holy, equally to all people in all things ... and there ye are servicable in your generation, laboring in the thing that is good, which doth not spoil, nor destroy, nor waste the creation upon lusts." George Fox, from Mind the Heavenly Treasure, entry for Dec. 4.

"Nor waste the creation upon lusts ..." I don't know that Fox meant creation as earth, but in today's context it sounds like an environmental statement. What would the world be like today if we didn't waste creation upon lusts (or maximizing profits)?

Fox's statement also joins a sense of not wasting creation, or environmentalism, with social justice: "do rightly ... to all people in all things." This same conjoining of environmentalism and social justice happens to be a theme of a wonderful book I'm reading called "Blessed Unrest" by Paul Hawken. Has anybody read it? In the book, (I have only read the intro and part of the first chapter) Hawken, an environmentalist, talks about all the small groups he knows of (he and his cohorts estimate at least a million such groups worldwide) that are working quietly, often unnoticed, to bring about change in the world. It's exciting to think about, and I will blog more about the book later.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Winter before Summer

"And let us not be weary in doing well; for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not." (Galatians 6:9).

"For the husbandman waits patiently, after the seed is sown; there is winter before summer comes ... So live in patience and peace."

From "Mind the Heavenly Treasure," writings of George Fox

Fox is advising us to follow the slower but more fruitful rhythms of nature in what we do, not to expect instant results and to have a view of productivity as a long term endeavor. This is contrary to the world's frantic pace and demands, but we have a choice or so it seems.

I had a lovely week at home in Maryland as well as visiting in-law family in Pennsylvania. Now I'm back to Ohio. Some of my companions, especially e-mail companions, are in a winter funk because it's cold and dark, and I am too. So I am thinking about how people --or so we are led to believe--knew how to enjoy the season in days gone by, with festivity and hope and prayer and all those good things. Peggy is talking about Advent on her site, the Abbess (see it on the right) and Bill is reflecting in his Reflections (also to the right) on what he is grateful for. What do you do for this season?