Imagining living in a large, congested city, with people crammed on top of people, animals freely roaming the streets, and without any kind of facilities for disposal of the products of human and animal digestion. The odor, filth, and disease of such a place! The city of London, England, was very much like that in the middle of the 19th century. Several million people stuffed themselves into one square mile—and all human and animal waste was dumped in the filthy... Read more
Try typing into a search engine these words, “Saudi woman to be whipped for driving a car” and see how many links pop up. Dozens–it is in the news everywhere. Yep, a brave Saudi Arabian woman, who, by the way broke no law, is to be whipped (ten lashes) by the religious authorities for having the gall to drive a car. Why? Apparently the radical Islamist group that has a religious chokehold on the region is just sure that by... Read more
I recently received an email with this image. The photo is by NY Times photographer Tyler Hicks, and he took it of a victim of the awful famine in Somalia, a famine made far, far worse by the actions of The Shabab, an Islamic militant group with ties to Al-Qaeda. I stared at the photo for a long time. I had woken that morning with a to-do list so long and so heavy I had no idea how I was going... Read more
To think or to obey?That appeared to be the dilemma that Mary Johnson ultimately faced in her desire to live her life as an MC, or member of the Missionaries of Charity, the Roman Catholic order founded by Mother Teresa to work in ministry with the poorest of the poor of the world. Late last week I began to read Unquenchable Thirst, Mary Johnson’s fascinating memoir of her experience as an MC, and the internal dissonance that finally led her... Read more
As this brutal and oppressive summer finally winds down, I head outside to assess the shrubs, flowers and grass. Much of it is damaged. Much is beyond repair. It will be a big job to change it, but it will look differently after I replant. More heat hardy plants, those needing less water and attention. I will learn from this difficult summer, and honor those lessons well. But I will not stop gardening just because this weather all but destroyed the... Read more
I just finished reading a musing on the necessity of disconnecting ourselves from the social network in order to reconnect with our inmost selves. I found myself resonating with nearly every word written. Although I did not backpack around Europe as a young adult, as did the author of that piece, I did leave home and move across the country as a young woman, very much on my own and engaging in that often painful journey to self-discovery. The aloneness... Read more
I’ve been hearing about this for a couple of weeks but didn’t want to think about the horrific implications of this particular scientific discovery. You may have heard also–a simple home test can now tell expectant parents the sex of their baby when the pregnancy is only seven weeks along. Here’s the NY Times version of the story. India and China are beginning to see the implications of selective sex selection now. There are many more live baby boy births... Read more
A church member recently invited me to read a book called Poseranity where the author contends that what he experienced as Christianity is really “poseranity.” Pretense, covering up, showing only the best parts, having much cognitive dissonance between internal thoughts and external behaviors, hypocrisy. When one person shows up on at worship, but a totally other person, inhabiting the same body, shows up outside worship, then is it possible we have one practicing poseranity. I’d like to think a little... Read more
A young United Methodist clergy woman, Rev. Lorenza Andrade-Smith, has sold everything she has, given up her salary for the time being, and is living under a bridge so that she can learn what is means to do work with the poor, not for the poor. The article describing this can be found here. Engaging in ministry with the poor is one of the four major initiatives (global health, new places for new people, and developing principled Christian leaders) that all... Read more
There is a really, really, really good article on the NYTimes website about decision fatigue. It’s long, but is worth the read. We just run out of brain energy when faced with too many decisions. Been there, done that. And it is one of the reasons I avoid shopping and intensely dislike malls and large, cluttered stores. Every piece of stimulus coming our way requires a decision of some sort–stop? pay attention? reject it? consider it? ignore it? Deeply fatiguing.... Read more
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