Food not Bombs

Here’s a way one city is addressing the homeless problem: Orlando bans charitable groups from the feeding homeless people in parks.

I did a bit of checking and discovered that Las Vegas passed the same ordinance one week before Orlando. It’s all in the name of safety and aesthetics of course. It will be interesting to see how far the anti-charity spreads among city councils…and if Canadian cities import the "solution".

It will also be interesting to see what charitable groups do about it. Yesterday, the organization Food not Bombs successfully managed to comply with the restrictive ordinance while still feeding the homeless. A resourceful bunch. Non-aggressive resistance is still alive. Huge kudos to "Food not Bombs".

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Jesus, Patriarchy and Misogyny

I was shocked to find myself in Minnesota last night, in 1989…and think that I could just as well have been living in the Longdale Mississippi in the early sixties (recall the 1963 murder of three civil rights workers). Well, that’s a stretch, but not much.

I’m referring to the movie "North Country", which I watched in some trepidation, with my wife, and my daughter and her boyfriend. It tells the story of Josey (Lois Jenson) who after ten years of witnessing and enduring both subtle and in-your-face sexual harassment at a Minnesota iron mine, launches America’s first-ever class action lawsuit for sexual harassment.

The film, while based on a real event, is "fictionalized inspiration" and can be charged with being preachy and inflated. But there’s a case here for some Flannery O’Connor wisdom: "To the nearly blind you draw with large startling figures, to the hard of hearing you shout." And this is what the film does with great effect.

It ends with a courtroom victory. Other women, inspired by the courage of Josey (Lois), stand up and join her, giving legal and moral weight to the class action.

But in real life it wouldn’t be until fourteen years later, in 1997, that federal appellate Judge Donald Lay, in reversing a lower court decision, would write concerning Jenson vs. Eveleth (Corp): "The emotional harm, brought about by this record of human indecency, sought to destroy the human psyche as well as the human spirit…. The humiliation and degradation suffered by these women is irreparable."

Allow me a wee bit of fulminating as I make this connection: Tragically, our own Christian churches have contributed to a Patriarchy where women, once chattel and non-entities, are still defined into "roles". The roots of this kind of Patriarchy, if not continually pulled up, will reestablish and poison again.

As followers of Jesus, we need always to read our culture, our bible, our theology, through the lens of the gospel. In Jesus, there’s not a whisper of misogyny.

Here’s Dorothy Sayers’ wonderful take on Jesus and women:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or The ladies, God bless them!; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Countercultural

I was impressed by a recent (July) Christianity Today interview with Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye, an African Bishop of a church in Uganda.

In responding to a question about how our Western churches can become truly countercultural, he said we need to begin by reading our Bible differently. He says we North Americans love the "Great Commission" passage because we read, "go and make disciples", and think, "go and fix." As the Bishop says,

But when read from the centre of power, that passage simply reinforces the illusion that it’s about us, that we are in charge.

He suggests we adopt instead, the "great invitation" of Jesus. That is, his "come and see", and "I will make you".

He’s right. When we learn to read the Bible from the perspective of the weak, the hungry, the disabled, the economic outcasts, the immigrant workers, it is possible to break down our barriers of us and them, our tribalism, our hidden racism. And where barriers are broken, people are touched.

But we will only learn to read scripture from this perspective by befriending those "on the outside". Willingly de-centreing ourselves, going beyond or outside of our "culture" in this way, of course, is truly countercultural.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Secret to Marriage (Happy 20th Deb!)

"The secret to a happy and lasting marriage", my wife said to a friend yesterday, "is learning how to fight well."

I have heard her say this before. I’ve never liked the answer…it seems so negative. Everything in me wants to say something like, "Having found the right person, love simply endures."

My wife however, hearing this, would smile and humour my quixotic side, and allow me to go on tilting at windmills, ah, for a time. Not that "compatibility" is unimportant. My wife would simply say that it’s not key.

DebcabYou see, she looks deeper. There is, within her "inscape", an intuitive amative (love expressing) pragmatism. In other words, she knows the value of true communication.

Her, "learning how to fight well", is really a way of saying that in a marriage it’s critical to tenaciously keep lines of communication open. She would tell you that it’s imperative to fight for those connections and openings, to keep things flowing, even when they hurt.

Well, I’m here to tell you that with me, Debbie almost met her match. I can close down like a prodded sea anemone. That is my default position. Another phrase comes to mind…passive aggressive, which when I heard the term for the first time, oh, twenty years ago or so, had me heading for cover. But my wife would find me and shine a light under the layers. Which I know for her was excruciatingly hard work.

Of course what that is, is nothing but active love. It’s caring enough to hurt. It’s saying that you matter, and not just for the moment.

What happens to you when you know you matter to someone? You either grow or run. I’ve done both but perhaps, as twenty years may indicate, I’ve learned to run less and grow more.

I’ve even learned, I think, to occasionally seek out and shine a light under my wife’s "layers".

And all this only because someone loved me enough to "fight well" with me.

Happy Twentieth Anniversary Love…, s.

Technorati Tags: