If Men are Really Like That....

It's time for men who aren't like that to stand up and cry foul!

It's time to show that respect is manly.

It's time to get our image out of the locker room and gutter and stand up for decency.

Call it what it is- abusive to women and demeaning to men.

Don't let others get away with it, either.

A Last Minute Post

Well, last minute in the sense that I am actually writing this just prior to posting it. Most of my work on the blog is, by nature, done ahead of time. That way it doesn't become a rush to get something written and posted at the last minute before midnight.

But because of scheduling up ahead of me over the next 10 days, I knew that if I waited to post these thoughts, it might be "old news."

So I decided to post this one today. That way it really is current events.

• It's about that lion in Africa and the Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to have it lured from a sanctuary so he could shoot it with a bow and arrow then track it for 40-hours in its agony and then kill it.

• It's also about the Cincinnati university police officer who has been arraigned for murder in a traffic stop gone bad.

• It's about the insanity of the alleged Planned Parenthood videos that purport to show that the organization is a venal, baby-killing group out to make money from fetuses.

• It's about the presidential [sic] candidates calling Mexicans rapists and accusing the sitting president of leading Jews to the ovens over a nuclear arms deal.

• It's about denying climate change because it will hurt business and profits to do otherwise and the hell with the health of the planet.

• It's about having to have 30+ women claim to be raped by a well-known celebrity- and even then saying it didn't happen until his own words describe exactly what they have claimed.

It's about our human tendency for hypocrisy, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and the belief that I am right and everyone else is wrong. (Myself included).

What got me started was seeing the incredible world-wide and national reaction to the lion killing. The reaction was far beyond that for any of the other killings we are hearing about. The reaction to a lion (and I AM an animal conservationist!), even a "famous" and protected lion, raises more anger than much else that is REAL news. Every time three is a mass killing somewhere in the country we are told to pray and NOT politicize. Yet every killing like that does have a political side to it. We are told to remember that all lives matter, not just black lives, even when it is the black lives that seem to be of far less value in how, when, and where they are killed.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• all black lives matter, and when they are being killed in traffic stops or as the result of incredibly far-fetched traffic stops, THEY matter and we need to pay attention.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of billions on the planet matter when we are facing potentially catastrophic changes to our environment that will put those lives in severe jeopardy.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of the Israelis and the lives of millions of others in the Middle East matter enough to work hard at preventing nuclear weapons from continuing to proliferate and putting all of them at risk.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE, why do we ignore the cries of

• women who have been raped, 
• veterans who have been denied health services, 
• poor people who can't get health care, 
• police officers who are under incredible pressures and need better support, stress assistance and training for their difficult jobs, 
• bullied gay youth, 
• the mentally ill who are seen as crazy and to be held in contempt, 
• prisoners in overcrowded prisons that are filled with non-violent offenders incarcerated because they possessed marijuana
• the immigrants who, like most of OUR OWN ancestors are here to build the American dream and rape and pillage?

I could go on. I can rant on this for hours, but all I will do is get myself all worked up and feel like I am helpless and powerless to do anything about it. I had to get it off my chest, now, when it is news.

• Pray for peace
• Work for peace
• Uphold peace
• Make peace a reality 
• Live peace each day

We all matter- let's act that way and not just say it as a way to reinforce our ideology or put down someone else's life.

Let's live today as if each person we meet has a life that matters and then treat them that way.

An Extra Quote From The Saints

This week's Celebration of Saints was from women who were pioneers in the work of equal rights. I found an extra quote from one of them that seemed to me to more than appropriate for some of the conversations we have been seeing in the country these past months. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for rights and change and freedom for more people, she made the following powerful observation as a note to those who don't want to see things change. Heed this. Please.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Calendar of Saints: Women Pioneers for Equal Rights (2)

Twice a week I post a quote from saints from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. They are to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.


Women Pioneers for Equal Rights
July 20

The Episcopal Church has added to its Calendar four American women who were pioneers in the struggle for black emancipation and for women's votes. The date chosen for commemorating them is the anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, 19-20 July 1848.

Harriet Ross Tubman was born in 1820 in Maryland. She was deeply impressed by the Bible narrative of God's deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and it became the basis of her belief that it was God's will to deliver slaves in America out of their bondage, and that it was her duty to help accomplish this. In 1844, she escaped to Canada, but returned to help others escape. Working with other Abolitionists, chiefly white Quakers, she made at least nineteen excursions into Maryland in the 1850's, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. During the War of 1861-5, she joined the Northern Army as a cook and a nurse and a spy, and on one occasion led a raid that freed over 750 slaves. After the war, she worked to shelter orphans and elderly poor persons, and to advance the status of women and blacks. She became known as "the Moses of her People."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815 and reared in the Presbyterian Church. She found the Calvinist doctrine of predestination dismaying, and rebelled against it. She denounced the clergy of her day for not upholding women's rights, but as she travelled giving speeches on the subject, she found no lack of pulpits available to her. She undertook to write what she called a Women's Bible. It never got beyond a series of notes on selected Biblical passages.

-Link

Calendar of Saints: Women Pioneers for Equal Rights (1)

Twice a week I post a quote from saints from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. They are to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.


Women Pioneers for Equal Rights
July 20

The Episcopal Church has added to its Calendar four American women who were pioneers in the struggle for black emancipation and for women's votes. The date chosen for commemorating them is the anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, 19-20 July 1848.

Sojourner Truth, originally known as Isabella, was born a slave in New York in about 1798. In 1826 she escaped with the aid of Quaker Abolitionists, and became a street-corner evangelist and the founder of a shelter for homeless women. When she was travelling, and someone asked her name, she said "Sojourner," meaning that she was a citizen of heaven, and a wanderer on earth. She then gave her surname as "Truth," on the grounds that God was her Father, and His name was Truth. She spoke at numerous church gatherings, both black and white, quoting the Bible extensively from memory, and speaking against slavery and for an improved legal status for women. The speech for which she is best known is called, "Ain't I a Woman?" It was delivered in response to a male speaker who had been arguing that the refusal of votes for women was grounded in a wish to shelter women from the harsh realities of political life. She replied, with great effect, that she was a woman, and that society had not sheltered her. She became known as "the Miriam of the Latter Exodus."

Amelia Jenks Bloomer was born in New York in 1818, reared as a Presbyterian, and as a young woman became an activist for the anti-slavery, anti-alcohol, and women's votes movements. Mrs. Bloomer and her husband eventually settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she worked to promote churches, schools, libraries, and progressive and reform movements. On one occasion she said:

The same Power that brought the slave out of bondage will, in His own good time and way, bring about the emancipation of women, and make her the equal in power and dominion that she was in the beginning.

-Link

Heroes: Part 3- Women Heroes

When I started writing about my heroes, I listed a bunch of men. Well, here's the group of women who would make my list of Top Heroes. Their witnesses have been just as powerful to me as the men. (Listed alphabetically.)

• Dorothy Day- Co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, she was a tireless advocate for the poor and social justice based firmly in her understanding of the faith. A confirmed pacifist, she often found herself in trouble with the established church and government.
• Betty Ford- It took courage for a First Lady to admit to being an addict. Much of the progress we have made in reducing the stigma that chemical dependence has had is thanks to her.
• Anne Frank- For one so young, Anne Frank is perhaps the hero of heroes. She was able to maintain hope and light in her life in spite of the horrific circumstances. This quote says it best: "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
• Helen Keller- A personal fight against her own disabilities make her another of those special heroes. An activist and outspoken author, she was the first deaf-blind person to get a Bachelor of Arts. When I think my problems keep me from succeeding she and Anne Frank humble me.
• Mother Theresa- a human saint. She had many demons no one knew about but kept on moving forward in faith. Perhaps without her doubts she wouldn't have been so faithful. "If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
• Rosa Parks- To take a seat on a bus and thereby start a revolution. It is not in the BIG things that we make a difference. Sometimes it is just sitting down in the right place.
• Eleanor Roosevelt- Another First Lady who took stands of courage. She spoke out on racial issues, she held her own press conferences, she was more than just Franklin's spouse. She was Eleanor- and in many ways FDR was her spouse. An example of feminism before it existed. What a role model for anyone.
• Theresa of Avila- A mystic with a heart open to God's grace, this 16th Century Spanish nun was a theologian, guide of the inner life, and instrumental in the Spanish renaissance.There is deep truth in her understanding: "I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him."

The Passing of a Pioneer

Hers is not a name that will go down in the great annals of the wider Christian Church, but in our little corner of the People of Christ, she was a first.  Her name was Mary and she was the first woman to be ordained in the Moravian Church, Northern Province.

It was the early 70s when she entered Seminary- the same time I did. I was ordained in September 1974, she a few months later. She opened the door to a whole new way of ministry and being the church. It was a wondrous day when the clergy of our denomination opened up to the possibility and joy of being an inclusive clergy population.

Hers was a second career, something unusual for clergy in that era, far more common today. She was the wife of the Dean of the seminary. She was a calm presence among us younger, hot-headed idealists and angry young men. (There was another woman student.) She faced the same questions about women clergy that all women entering the field did (and still do in some places.)

She just did her thing. She was able to do it with a sense of grace that many of us younger students probably didn't appreciate at the time. She peacefully paved a road that had not been traveled before.

Mary died this week. A quiet pioneer who did what she had to do to follow her calling.