All children are beautiful and sacred and worthy of all good things

Today, I went to Boston to go to a meeting on immigration issues and how they relate to family homelessness. During the meeting, the Massachusetts state legislature debated this year’s budget just half a block away under the golden dome of the state house. I brought two participants of our shelter program with me. They are wonderful people.

One of the women brought her one-year-old son, and on the train ride home I helped him stand up on my knees and we watched the other trains as we left North Station. He smiles and giggles a lot, especially when his mother brings her hand close to his face and then pulls it away just before she touches him. I’m not sure how long she has been in this country, but she has had a difficult journey. She used to live in poverty in a very dangerous city in Latin America. Her family was in constant threat of violence.

The other woman has two teenage daughters. She searches everyday for jobs and housing. There aren’t any, but she keeps looking. She takes pride in how clean she keeps her shelter apartment, in her appearance, in her graduation from a recent self-advocacy class, and in her daughters. One is going to graduate from high school this spring, and has been accepted into a local college. Her daughters came to America before she did. They got visas through their father. She needed to be with her daughters. So, she found a way.

I work with a lot of mothers. Mothers whose sons are being deployed to Afghanistan. Mothers whose kids are away at college. Mothers whose children have passed away. Mothers whose kids are at home with them. Single mothers who take care of their families on their own (there is a special kind of strength in a single mother that exists in no other creature).

I never understood, on a personal level, the reality of our wars until I saw my coworkers cry as their sons were being deployed. One jokes about flying to Afghanistan with him to keep him safe. He’s in his 40s. I’m not sure she was joking.

Mothers do anything for their children. To be with them, to feed them, to protect them, to nurture them, to help them grow.

I can’t look at the world and separate out the kinds of lives people should live based on borders. I can’t. Mothers whose children are at risk of starvation, murder, rape, drugs, and war can’t either.

I am really close with my own mother. When I need proof that love exists in the world I think about her. I am convinced that if Wisconsin during the 1990s had been a place ravaged by violence and poverty and there was some other place that was reported to be a safe haven—a place where her kids could be safe and go to school and grow and live in peace—that she would have uprooted our whole family and gone there, whether or not she had permission from anybody else’s laws—or even if she understood them or was aware of them. As if a government could legislate a mother’s need to take care of her children, a mother’s instinct.

At the meeting we talked about the budget discussions and what that means for emergency assistance for the poor. If the budget passes as it is now, immigrants without documentation will no longer be eligible for shelter, even if their children are citizens or legal residents.

Punish a mother for being a mother? Punish children? If families with an “illegal” head of household don’t have safe housing, their children will be taken from them.

This is not worth lower taxes for the rest of us.

I was sitting in my living room a few minutes ago, with a still smoldering anger and desire and passion to change things, and it struck me that if every person in the country had been on the trip to Boston with me today, with those two mothers, that no one would think it that large of a sacrifice to keep funding affordable housing, food stamps, and WIC. If only you all knew these two women! And watched the little boy laugh!

There are other ways to cut the deficit. I’m not claiming to be a politician or an economist or a sociologist. I’m just claiming that these people are worth it. Every penny. If I'm ever a father I pray that I will have the an ounce of the courage and strength and love of an immigrant mother.

I am in contact with the organization that ran the meeting today, and they are going to let me know when and who to call at the State House to advocate for these people. I hope you'll help.

If this doesn’t change, some beautiful people will be on the streets on July 1^st.

Celebrate Dr. King!

In honor of the greatest American holiday (tied for first with Thanksgiving), here is a quote from a sermon by the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967 called "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."

"As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries."

Now, go on and celebrate Dr. King by seeking to bring peace to your corner of the world. Amen.

New Years Resolution

My New Years Resolution is either to make someone's day once a week, or make someone's week once a day. The latter depends on how well the former goes. I'll keep you (whoever you are) posted.

Peace.

Kingdom of Heaven in 2011

Bandera

In Peru:

"Y los colores de tu bandera? Son rojo, azul, y blanco, no?"
My flag? I have a flag?

Love! Love! Love!

Dear friends, love each other! Love beyond all reason! Love until death and love until death is defeated! Love with everything you are! Love people even as they seek to destroy you! Let them destroy you even, just show them love while you go down! Find people to love! Look near and far, small needs and large, physical or otherwise. You have been freed to love by a cross, now love even as you are carrying your own!

A line of thought inspired by Invictus

I went to see Invictus a couple days ago, and it was a really good movie. You should go see it. It's about Nelson Mandela and rugby!

The movie portrays South Africa during and immediately after apartheid. I was thinking how South Africa is one of, if not the most, developed country in Africa, and how the white parts of South Africa were (and still are) really developed. It reminded me of how Dr. George would always say in her Social Change and Development class at Gordon that "the Third World is to be found in the First, and the First in the Third."

In the movie, it is painfully obvious that it doesn't matter how developed a country is if that development is limited to a certain portion of the population, i.e. whites in South Africa. Another thing Dr. George always said, along the same lines as the quote above, is that the term "developed nation" is not an accurate term, and it is even misleading. It implies that America has made it, and has no where to go, and is what all nations should strive to be. What Americans have is what they should want.

But, what good is development in America if it is restricted to certain economic classes? What good is it to have good hospitals and medicine if millions can't afford it? Apartheid is a comfortable enough subject for movies because the injustice is obvious. Institutionalized racism is wrong. Everyone agrees. But what about institutionalized classism? [Disclaimer: I'm not saying America is as bad as apartheid SA, don't get carried away...]

Where Invictus causes the right questions, movies like Pursuit of Happyness give the wrong answers. Pursuit tells the story of a statistical outlier, but it pervades the consciousness of American cultural expectations for what the poor "should" be able to achieve if only they "work hard enough." The bad news is, poor people in America work hard and stay poor.

So, should health care be only for those who can afford it? Should the benefits of America's development go only to America's rich?

I don't pretend to know how to "fix" America's health care. I'm just saying that conservatives should understand that health and justice are linked. And justice for the poor matters a whole lot to a certain 1st century rabbi that seems to get people elected a lot...

And remember, its always the children of the poor that suffer anyway. Even if kids get health care, imagine what happens to the kids in a family that is already poor and a parent gets sick and can't work.

To end, some exhortations:
1. Christians in America, think eternally for a second. Christ endures, America dies. Think about the ethical/political implications of that!
2. Think about who really benefits from your political views: the rich or the poor? Then think, between those two groups, who does Jesus want justice for? (Open your Bibles to Luke 6:24-27, underline it like a good evangelical, and just stare at it for a while. If you're a Christian and you're going to defend the rights of an economic class, it has to be the poor.)
3. Figure out what the presuppositions of your political views are! Then, examine your presuppositions!
4. Seek truth in politics, not victory!

"Justice is what love looks like in public." -Dr. Cornell West

Grace and peace (and apologies if I'm not graceful or peaceful enough),
Charles

Things keeping me awake until 5:48 (at least) in the morning.

1. Prednisone (I had an allergic reaction, and they gave me steroids with numerous side effects)
2. My massive complaints about Biblical Studies (I got downgraded on a paper because it wasn't irrelevant enough)
3. An excerpt from Kierkegaard about despair (I really related to it two hours ago, at 3:48 am (and I'll probably relate to it when I'm well rested too...))
4. Wanting to move to Peru (To do/learn/teach sustainable agriculture)
5. Thinking about moving into the community house next week (aka Mat Schnetne's commune)
6. Wondering if I could take down my college's bookstore by getting everyone to give their books to each other (Maybe watch Facebook to see if that materializes into anything once I'm thinking more clearly)
7. Getting excited about almost being done with college and having an idea of what I want/should/need to do next (see number 4)
8. Wondering how I am going to survive finals on Prednisone (and a presentation in a couple hours, and Winter Ball tonight, etc etc etc)
9. Thinking about philosophical absurdities (I don't exactly know what other people mean by that, but I basically mean "things that don't have any worthwhile reason for existing" (that I can think of, or deem worthwhile) i.e. rubber chickens, gourmet dog food, caring about who wrote the Gospel of John, etc etc etc)
10. Wanting to live in a country where people love it for the reasons I love Wisconsin, because it is home and because of its people, culture, food, nature, etc (and not because of a fanatical, uncritical, religious devotion to its history, politics, or economic system!)
11. Writing! (and ranting, see numbers 2, 9, 10)

Goodnight/good morning!