Contents 2004:
A gift my mother has given me is the
understanding La vida es la lucha – The struggle is life. For over
half my life I thought my task was to struggle and then one day I would
enjoy the fruits of my labor. This is the kind of resignation and
expectation of being rewarded in the next life that the . . . Church has
taught for centuries. Then I began to reflect on what my mother often tells
the family: “All we need to ask of God is to have health and strength to
struggle. As long as we have what we need to struggle in life, we need ask
for nothing else.” This understanding gives me much strength in my everyday
life. It has allowed me to be realistic – to understand that, for the vast
majority of women, life is an ongoing struggle. But above all it has made
me realize that I can and should relish the struggle. The struggle is my
life; my dedication to the struggle is one of the driving forces in my
life.
Ada Maria
Isasi-Diaz
The stage seems to have been set for
the millennium by Patriarchy and Capitalism with wars and counter wars at
the personal and at the political levels. Attack and reprisal seem to be
the pattern of interaction of all. Even suspicion of intent to attack is
thought to justify counterattack. The cycle of violence is based upon
exchange, tit for tat, which is a development of the logic of the market,
giving in order to receive a quantitative equivalent.
There is another logic, the logic of
unilateral gift giving, that has not been considered, yet it is practiced in
society at many levels all the time. . . .
Gift societies existed prior to
Capitalism and some still exist today. Indigenous peoples practice gift
giving both in interpersonal interactions and in regard to the Spiritual and
natural worlds. Matriarchal societies (which are not the mirror image of
patriarchies) on all the continents continue to practice gift giving. There
are many gift based areas within capitalism as well. The home, where
children are parented free, is one example of this. In fact mothering may
be considered as a vestigial gift giving practice and homes as pockets of a
gift economy. An example at a different level of a gift within Capitalism
is the huge quantity of remittances that immigrants to Northern countries
send home to their families and friends in the South, equaling or sometimes
surpassing sources of income in their countries of origin. In fact the free
distribution of goods to needs can be considered as a working gift economy
with its own priorities and values. Any time a need is satisfied free, a
gift is given.
Genevieve
Vaughn
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“Unrighteous Mammon (Luke
16:9)”
In respect
of riches, then, just or unjust,
of goods
be they ill-gotten or well-gotten:
All riches
are unjust.
All goods,
/ ill gotten.
If not by
you, by others.
Your title
deeds may be in order. But
did you
buy your land from its true owner?
And he
from its true owner? And the latter . . . ?
Though
your title go back to the grant of a king / was
the land
ever the king’s?
Has no one
ever been deprived of it?
And the
money you receive legitimately now
from
client or Bank or National Funds
or from
the U.S. Treasury,
was it
ill-gotten at no point? Yet
do not
think that in the Perfect Communist State
Christ’s
parables will have lost relevance
Or Luke
16:9 have lost validity
And riches
be no longer UNJUST
Or that
you will no longer have a duty to distribute riches!
-- Ernesto Cardenal
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September 12, 2004
lady in red / I waz missin
somethin
lady in purple / something so
important
lady in orange / something promised
lady in blue / a layin on of hands
lady in green / fingers near my
forehead
lady in yellow / strong
lady in green / cool
lady in orange / movin
lady in purple / makin me whole
. . .
lady in red
i sat up one nite walkin a boarding house
screamin / cryin / the ghost of another woman
who waz missin what I waz missin
I wanted to jump outta my bones
& be done with myself . . .
til the only tree I cd see
took me up in her branches
held me in the breeze
made me dawn dew
that chill at daybreak
the sun wrapped me up swingin rose light everywhere
the sky laid over me like a million men
I waz cold / I waz burnin up / a child
& endlessly weaving garments for the moon
wit my tears
i found god in myself
& i loved her / I loved her fiercely
All of the ladies repeat to themselves softly
The lines ‘I found god in myself & I loved her.’
It soon becomes a song of joy. . . .
● Ntozake Shange, from
A Choreopoem: For Colored Girls
Who Have Considered Suicide / When the
Rainbow Is Enough
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“Everyday Heroes & Heroines”
(to be played as gathering music)
From the heart of the country / To the bright city streets
There’s a rhythm to the living / And it always repeats
With a whole lot of soul / And a measure of pride
We are ordinary people / Simply living our lives
THE SUN COMES UP / AND YOU START ANOTHER MORNING
WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN / IT’S THE END OF THE DAY
WE DON’T HAVE MUCH / BUT IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER
IF YOU GET AHEAD THE GOVERNMENT / JUST TAKES IT AWAY
SOMETIMES YOU LOSE / MOST TIMES YOU CHOOSE
TO LAUGH A LOT AND LEARN TO CALL / ANY DRAW A WIN
WE ARE STRUGGLING IN THE BACKFIELD / EVERYDAY HEROES AND HEROINES
We’ll never be famous / We’ll never be rich
We’ll never stop hoping / That we hit the pick six
We work in the diners / We work in the mines
We’re working at the office / Clocking in right on time
We come in all kinds of colors / And every kind of size
The love in our hearts / Burning deep in our eyes
Mothers and fathers / And families of friends
Workers and lovers / Straight gay lesbian
Deidre McCalla,
“Everyday Heroes & heroines” album
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Jesus, according to Matthew, felt the danger so strongly, that when people
who were ill or in trouble came to him and asked him to exercise his powers
as a sign of his mission, he was irritated beyond measure, and refused with
an indignation which they must have thought very unreasonable. To be called
“an evil and adulterous generation” merely for asking a miracle worker to
give an exhibition of his powers, is rather a startling experience. . . It
is clear from Matthew’s story that Jesus (unfortunately for himself, as he
thought) had some powers of healing. It is also obvious that the exercise
of such powers would give rise to wild tales of magical feats which would
expose their hero to condemnation as an imposter among people whose good
opinion was of great consequence to the movement started by his mission.
But the deepest annoyance arising from the miracles would be the irrelevance
of the issue raised by them. Jesus’ teaching has nothing to do with
miracles. If his mission had been simply to demonstrate a new method of
restoring lost eyesight, the miracle of curing the blind would have been
entirely relevant. But to say “You should love your enemies; and to
convince you of this I will now proceed to cure this gentleman of a
cataract” would have been, to a man of Jesus’ intelligence, the proposition
of an idiot. If it could be proved today that not one of the miracles of
Jesus actually occurred, that proof would not invalidate a single one of his
didactic utterances; and conversely, if it could be proved that not only did
the miracles occur, but that he had wrought a thousand other miracles a
thousand times more wonderful, not a jot of weight would be added to his
doctrine. And yet the intellectual energy of skeptics and divines has been
wasted for generations in arguing about the miracles on the assumption that
Christianity is at stake in the controversy as to whether the stories of
Matthew are false or true. According to Matthew himself, Jesus must have
know this only too well; for wherever he went he was assailed with a clamor
for miracles, though his doctrine created bewilderment.
-- George Bernard Shaw
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Dr. Bernie Siegel is an oncologist, who writes that he has learned much of what
he knows about love from his patients. He tells about Thornton Wilder’s play,
“The Angel That Troubled the Waters.” The legend is that the first person who
enters the pool is healed.
In the play a physician comes periodically to the Pool of Bethesda: it is
believed that healing will occur there whenever an angel troubles the waters.
The physician…waits for the angel, hoping to be the first in the pool and to be
healed of his melancholy and remorse. The angel appears, but blocks the
physician as he is ready to step into the water and be healed… The physician
pleads, but the angel insists that healing is not for him; and then come these
telling words from the angel: “Without your wound where would your power be?
It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men.
The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children
on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love’s
service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back.”
Later the person who was healed rejoiced in his good fortune and turned to the
physician before leaving the pool of Bethesda and said, “But come with me first,
an hour only, to my home. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I—I do not
understand him, and only you have ever lifted his mood. Only an hour…My
daughter, since her child has died, sits in the shadow. She will not listen to
us…but she will listen to you.”
Bernie S. Siegel, M.D., How to Live Between Office Visits: A Guide to
Life, Love and Health, Harper Collins, 1993, pp.143-44.
But to keep me from being puffed up with pride because of the
many wonderful things I saw, I was given a painful physical ailment, which acts
as Satan’s messenger to beat me and keep me from being proud. Three times I
prayed to the Lord about this and asked him to take it away. But his answer was
“My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak.” I am
most happy, then, to be proud of my weaknesses, in order to feel the protection
of Christ’s power over me.… For when I am weak, then I am strong.
St. Paul, 12 Corinthians 12:7-10
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In the
circle of life we each have a special gift, a special function. In the
Native worldview there is no in or out; everyone in the circle is
necessary. The gift and function of each person are necessary for the
benefit of the whole family of human beings and those that walk, crawl,
swim, and fly. We are all relatives. It is this wisdom of compassion,
seeing things in their balance, that is so significant in turning aside
illusions of scarcity and bringing peace to our own hearts.
The third
creative fire is the fire of creative intelligence, building intelligence,
that dreams may succeed, that our works may actually manifest for the
benefit of many.
Dhyani Ywahoo,
Voices of our Ancestors
Sweat ran down her neck. She put her face close to her baby’s little
head and smelled his hair. She remembered her wedding china, carefully
packed in the wagon, and the fine silver cup her baby’s Scottish grandfather
had given him the day of his christening. She recalled the soft words the
pastor had spoken. Her son was given his name, the air was sweet, and
bright sunlight had fallen on the clear baptismal water. She looked up and
caught the level gaze of one of the Indians, and held her child to her
heart. . . .
Once, when they were camped, they heard the Indians coming and made a
circle with their wagons. The men all ran to the wagons to get their guns,
but this little boy’s mother took him in her arms and went out in the
direction the Indians were coming. When she met them, she handed them this
tiny baby. They knew that baby was the most precious thing she had, and if
she handed him to them, it showed that she wasn’t afraid of them. The
Indians took this baby and passed it around from one to the other – the
first white baby they’d ever seen. The Indians laughed and talked, then
they handed him back to her, and went away. Isn’t that a nice story?
“A Single Woman,” A performance
mosaic by Jeanmarie Simpson
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It isn’t what the issues are, but the methods of settling disputes! If, at
the first sign of trouble, we circle up the wagons and go for our guns, we
have already declared war, we’ve already put guns in the hands of our
children . . . War is a habit! It’s like alcohol to an intemperate man.
We’ve got to break the war habit and find other ways to get rich.
Jeannette Rankin, “A Single Woman”
The ugly dance of retribution perpetuates itself. In a hundred years,
nearly 200 million civilians have died on this beautiful Earth at the hands
of armies, governments, causes and platforms. In the name of “patriotism,”
“liberation,” “freedom” and holy “democracy,” we have torn the
compassionate heart from the collective human soul.
War is wrong. There is no way to make sense of it, civilize it. Or justify
it. We must seriously explore alternatives to war, or we will continue
dancing toward certain obliteration.
Jeanmarie Simpson,
Reno Gazette Journal,
5/16/04
We face a new dimension of destruction – not a matter of disaster or
even of a war –but rather of an end.
We reject that nuclear end. We believe in – commit ourselves to – the
flow and continuity of human life, and to the products of human
imagination.
We believe in the possibility of a collective power on behalf of change,
awareness, and ultimately on behalf of human survival.
We believe in the possibility of a non-nuclear world – a world that
reasserts the great chain of being and directs its energies toward
humane goals.
We recognize that our lives must be inevitably and profoundly bound up
with this struggle.
In confronting the threat rather than numbing ourselves to it, we
experience greater vitality. We feel stronger human ties. We turn to
beauty, love, spirituality, and sensuality. We touch the earth and we
touch each other.
In struggling to preserve humankind we experience a renewed sense of
human possibility in general. We feel part of prospective historical
and evolutionary achievements. We feel not only ourselves but our
species and relationship to the species, to be newly alive.
Robert J. Lifton, “A Nuclear-Age Ethos”
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O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
Focus your light within us – make it useful:
Create your reign of unity now –
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold
of others’ guilt.
Don’t let surface things delude us.
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will,
the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all,
from age to age it renews.
Truly – power to these statements –
May they be the ground from which all
my actions grow: Amen.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos
The Lord’s Prayer has encompassed the whole path of humanity in its drive
toward heaven and its rootage in the earth . . . And to all of it we say
“Yes, so be it!” And we can say yes and amen to the threat of evil, to the
promptings of temptation, to the insults we receive, and to the onerous
quest for bread, only if we retain our certainty that God is our God, that
we are consecrated to the divine holy name, that we are confident that God’s
reign will come, and that we are sure God’s will is to be done on earth as
it is in heaven.
Leonardo Boff,
The Lord’s Prayer: The Prayer of Integral Liberation
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Scolded like an impolite child
stopped in mid gesture
with a wooden spoon in one hand
while a bowl falls
from the other
hidden in the dimness of the pantry
under a candelabra of spiderwebs
she is ashamed in the glow of the kitchen fire
she covers her dress with a blue apron
a small dark smudge over her breast
she shades her brow with a starched cloth
in the darkness the barrels are praying
patient with the maturing of malt
the oils’ truth settles in clay jugs
a tear trembles on a flaxen eyelash
greatly saddened shadows
brightened only by a glimpse of green gaze
humble and apologetic
but disobedient she still continues to serve
heart in a rush of love
even when her wise sister a poplar
calmly takes out of her hands a warm loaf of bread covered with snow
“Saint Martha,” Anna Kamienska
“Diakonia” became a technical term referring to Eucharistic table
service, proclamation, and ecclesial leadership. Luke distinguishes
“diakonia” [Martha] and “listening to the word” [Mary] as two distinct
roles.
Jane Schaberg in
The Women’s Bible Commentary
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Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of
the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos,
and say, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.” Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, “The spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the
poor. . . .”
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days
ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the
mountaintop. And I’ve seen the promised land. Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord.
Martin Luther King Jr., “I See the promised Land”
“The Good Samaritan et All”
The priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, and the man who fell among thieves
meet in heaven to talk over old times. Since heaven has no past or future,
they find themselves in the inn on the road to Jericho.
“I felt awful about not helping you,” the priest says. “My heart wasn’t
open enough. But I’m working on it.”
“The last time I had stopped to help a wounded man by the roadside,” the
Levite says, “he beat me and ran off with my wallet. I was afraid.”
“It was my good fortune to be in the right place at the right time,” the
Samaritan says. “I didn’t stop to think; the oil and wine poured
themselves, the wound bound itself. My only problem came later, dealing
with all the praise.”
The man who fell among thieves takes another sip of wine. “Charity
begins at home,” he says. “If I had been kinder to myself, I wouldn’t have
been in that mess to begin with. But I am very grateful to all three of
you. It takes great humility to step aside, for a parable’s sake. And
without the parable, I would never have been saved.”
Stephen Mitchell
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Of what are we really capable as a nation if the
considered judgment of politicians and people around the world means nothing
to us as a people?
What is the depth of the American soul if we can
allow destruction to be done in our name and the name of “liberation” and
never even demand an accounting of the costs, both personal and public, when
it is over?
We like to take comfort in the notion that people
make a distinction between our government and ourselves. We like to say
that the people of the world love Americans, they simply mistrust our
government. But excoriating a distant and anonymous “government” for
wreaking rubble on a nation in pretense of good requires very little of
either character or intelligence.
What may count most, however, is that we may well be
the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: “Kings take pleasure in honest
lips; they value the ones who speak the truth.” The point is clear: If the
people speak and the king doesn’t listen, there is something wrong with the
king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something
is wrong with the people.
It may be time for us to realize that in a country
that prides itself in being democratic, we are our government. And the rest
of the world is figuring that out very quickly.
from Sr. Joan Chittister,
“Does Anything Matter?”
“The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and
we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew
and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our
country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial
through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest
generation. . . . We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of
earth. . . . The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way which, if
followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”
“We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the
responsibility.”
Abraham
Lincoln, U.S. Congress, December 1, 1862
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