For Class

This post is just to make sure that the blog is ready to go for my Introduction to the Old Testament course.

Lord, In Your Mercy

Lord, in your mercy...

I came into work today and saw two barricades at the end of our block. When I turned the corner I saw numerous police cars and officers in an area just beyond our building. After talking to some neighbors I learned about that around two o'clock this morning there was a shooting. A 20 year old man had been shot and was in the hospital. An hour later the police told us he had died and I could see the sorrow in the officers eyes.

Our world, our country, our city, and our neighborhood suffer too much violence. Poverty has run rampant and with it so has violence. We are left with yet another tragedy. Yet another memorial on our block, the fifth in the area that I'll have seen in my time at AUMS. How many people must die before the cries of the people are heard?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?

We pray this day for healing, for the loved ones of this man, for the one who took another's life, for the neighborhood shaken by one more act of violence.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

Amen

Thanksgiving

It's easy to get mad at the stores that open their doors today forcing their low income workers to miss time with their families. It's easy to call for a boycott of these stores. It's probably pretty easy to actually stop shopping at these stores.

Huffington Post is leading with the headline "Happy Thanksgiving... Now get back to work!" due to these businesses that think sales are more important than respecting their employees.

But here's the thing, these stores are actually getting sales. People are actually forsaking their own time with their family to shop. Why are we not yelling about the people doing the shopping. Stores will keep opening up their doors on thanksgiving if we keep shopping there. All of these stores pay their workers extra for working on the holiday which means they need even more sales than normal to make this a good business decision. What's the outcome after stores were open last year? They're open even longer this year! Meaning they need even more sales to make it a good decision.

Many yell and complain about the corporate greed but we are only fueling it. Corporations don't do things that they think will lose them money. And they aren't. We're handing them money for being open on thanksgiving.

If you really want people to have a happy thanksgiving and you or somebody you know was planning on going shopping today, it's time to stay home, read a book, watch some football, eat some turkey, and spend it with your friends and family.

The only way to stop the black Friday creep is to starve it out. And on thanksgiving, that's the only acceptable form of starving around.

Happy Thanksgiving 

Some more sexism

This is getting ridiculous. After seeing a TV show talk about the realities of sexism in the media and politics, I decided I'd finally read one of the many articles that have been using a headline regarding Miley Cyrus smoking a joint while on stage at the EMAs. Like all articles about an award show it contained some information about who won certain awards, but most of the article was focused on Miley Cyrus. And in an article supposedly about her smoking weed, they couldn't help but mention that she twerked with her female dance partner in two different places in the article. Fine I guess. Whatever.

The part that shows the sexism is they have a gallery of pictures from the event in the article as well. After a few Miley pictures you come to some of Robin Thike, the man that performed at the VMAs with Miley Cyrus singing his high performing, pro-rape, song. The same man that was assigned zero blame in the outrage over what was done on stage even if Miley was just dancing, and he was singing a song that is, again, pro-rape. Not to mention that certain parts people took offense to, like the foam finger, comes directly out of Thike's own music video for his pro-rape song. And, of course we can't forget the part where he has an explicit music video of his pro-rape song that has all the women dancing topless in it. No outrage for him after the VMAs though.

And no outrage for him after the EMAs, despite the fact that he was, once again, singing a song that's pro-rape onstage. And wouldn't you know it, his backup dancers (all female obviously), were all wearing even less clothes than Miley Cyrus during the VMAs. The amount of clothes Miley had on was another source of outrage remember. Except in this case it was for backup dancers who would've had no say in what they wore. It was Thicke's choice to make them almost naked. Is Thicke going to get any large segment outraged for further reducing women to sexualized objects while singing his very pro-rape song? No. But are we going to hear that Miley twerked again? Yes.

Lisa Kudrow couldn't have been more right.

Sexism, with a healthy dash or racism

Isn't that topic a fun one? Don't worry, I'm keeping this one brief.

Yesterday was election day in America and Albany elected it's first female Mayor, Kathy Sheehan, after having the same guy at the helm of the city for the last twenty or so years. I saw on facebook today a friend in Albany posting about her win and the historic nature of it. Of course sexism is alive and well in our country so somebody commented saying:

Now hopefully; she's competent. I find a lot of people are obsessed with this notion "its (sic) time for a woman ins ((x)position)) -- for what reason? Because we need a woman!" Sort of like what we did for presidencies. 

Now perhaps this white male isn't being sexist or racist. Maybe, when a white male wins an election he says something like:

Now hopefully; he's competent. I find a lot of people are obsessed with this notion "it's time to keep white men in ((x) position) -- for what reason? Because white men are better! Sort of like we've done for most of our history. 

Of course, that's almost completely unlikely. Considering he posted a second comment about how he was willing to concede that the other options against President Obama were awful choices but he adds the caveat that we've romanticized the notion of a minority leading America, or as he put it: 'murrica (yes, double r and all). After my friend posted a thing about everybody being equal he had to add on that comments like that stank of affirmative action which is a bad mindset because

being someone outside the norm of things doesn't make you more qualified for the sake of equality, it simply makes you different.

I didn't see that last comment by the time I responded to him. I was focused solely on the Albany Mayoral election. I did a quick fact check since he brought up how we've romanticized electing minorities I checked. And it turns out that women outnumber men by about five million people in this country. Looking more specifically I found that white women also outnumber white men by about three million people in America. In other words, electing Kathy Sheehan is a member of the majority of the majority. How crazy is that? Did you have any idea that women outnumber men both across the board and among whites? Or have white men been so steadfast in their (our) privilege that they've (we've) hoarded the power and influence so that we can think of women as being a minority group?

This is the heart of white male privilege. We are so privileged that if you're not one of us, you're a minority. Louis CK has made a joke about this. He says:

I read something in the paper that really confused me. It said that 80% of New Yorkers are minorities... Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80% of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like "look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority!

It's time for true equality. We should ask whether Kathy Sheehan is competent to be mayor. But we should ask that of every person we vote for, not just women and minorities.

Also if you want an extra little helping of humor know that Kathy Sheehan got over 10,000 more votes than the other three people on the ballot combined. The second place candidate didn't even hit 1000 votes. It was known that whoever won the Democratic primary would win the general election. And Kathy's opponent in the primary? A black male who would've also made history if he had been elected. Turns out sometimes your options are making history, or making history. And some people just can't stand that.

Connecting the Church in Mission Part 2

Back in February I wrote about my experience down in Georgia and highlighted how connected I was to the disparate groups of missionaries in the United Methodist Church even if most of us came from different parts of the world and worked through different organizations. It was the connectionalism of the United Methodist Church at work.

My experience in Georgia highlighted how the global church can move together and support each other. I have recently noticed that this highly connectional part of the church doesn't always translate very well down to local levels, particularly in the Albany area. In fact, it is in noticing this that I have finally been able to begin to form my justification for seeking ordination in the church.

Disclaimer: if you are not familiar with how the United Methodist Church is organized this post could get confusing. If you read this and get lost let me know and I'll write a post that explains the basics of it all. But if I don't hear from anybody than we'll just leave good enough alone.

Yesterday was Bishop Mark Webb's district day with Albany. I attended the afternoon session set aside for a discussion on urban ministry. Clergy from most of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area urban ministries attended the session, and while Bishop Webb sat with us, District Superintendent Rich Weihing led us in conversation around how we think our district should conduct urban ministry.

After listening to us for a while Bishop Webb interjected, looking to push us in figuring out how to lead the conference in urban ministry and the phrase the Bishop used was to become one church with many locations. And if I may twist his words a bit, we should have one mission with many locations.

Good old Missio Dei.

It was affirming and energizing for me to hear the Bishop and the DS say the things they were saying. After thinking about how poorly the Albany District connects to one another, having the Bishop look at us and tell us that we should connect with each other and have the DS express this same desire was just incredible. As I've been thinking about the nine months I have left it felt a little daunting. I cannot change this district in nine months on my own. But with the DS and the Bishop clearing the path, calling for a church that is active and engaged in the urban setting there is no excuse anymore.

Part of my role as a missionary is to Connect the Church in Mission, and that just got a whole lot easier to do.

Amen and amen.

Breaking Bread

We're going to do an exercise. Something to get you to realize just how big of an impact we, as individuals, as churches, and as NGOs have on feeding the hungry in this country. Take a look at the section of circles below. There are 24 of them, each representing an equal portion of the monetary value of all supplemental food in the United States. How many of these 24 circles do we, outside of the federal government, represent? Think it through thoughtfully before you continue.

0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0

Now that you've thought critically about how large of an impact those outside of the federal government have, here's how it really breaks down. The red circles are non-federal giving.

0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0

Do you see that? One circle. 1/24th of all supplemental food is given by sources outside of the federal government. If you haven't heard yet the House of Representatives past a bill this last week that would cut SNAP benefits by $40,000,000,000 over ten years. That's $4,000,000,000 a year. It just so happens that each of the circles above represent $4,000,000,000. Which means in ten years time, if this bill were to become law, would get rid of ten of the circles. Here's what we have now compared to what we could have in ten years, side by side.

Now........Ten years from now

0 0 0...0 0 0
0 0 0...0 0 0
0 0 0...0 0 0
0 0 0...0 0 0
0 0 0...0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0

Food pantries are over worked already. Money going into the pantries has decreased and there are more people that need to use the pantries than ever. My placement site, AUMS, has struggled to meet the growing demand as support as diminished. In order for those most in need to still just barely get by at the current level our churches and NGOs and individuals would have to double their giving next year. Then they'd have to do that every year after that until 2024. And that's only to stay at the current, too low, levels. We cannot meet this need with food drives or store donations. 

The United Methodist community, the ecumenical community, and the inter-faith community need to respond to the food crises in this country and we need to respond in a way that doesn't give us warm and fuzzy feelings. We need to write, call, and email our representatives in the house and senate and tell them to not cut SNAP. In fact we need to tell them that SNAP needs more money. Congress doesn't like to look at the facts. But SNAP is the most efficient government program. For every dollar spent by the government $1.79 is put back into the economy. No other government program can touch those numbers. 

But why should we care?

Is not this the fast that we have chosen? Is it not to share our bread with the hungry? Feeding people, even if economically painful, is the right thing to do. But when it makes sense economically, how can we even debate it like it's an issue? Yet we debate it, and our nation pushes to cut the help for those in need. So let me take a moment to talk about where we are in this debate.

Justice is far from us and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but there is darkness. For brightness, but we walk in gloom. We reach for the wall like the blind, reaching as if we had no eyes. We stumble under the sun at noon as if it were pitch black out. We have become as if we are dead in a desolate place. We all growl like bears and moan sadly like a dove. We look out for justice, but there is none. We look for salvation, but it is so far from us because our transgressions have been multiplied. Our sins testify against us, because our transgressions are with us. And as for our iniquities, we know them: in transgressing and lying against our God; and departing from our God; and speaking oppression and revolt; and conceiving and uttering from our hearts false words. Justice is turned back and righteousness stands far off. Truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. And so truth fails, and those that depart from evil have made themselves prey. And God has seen all this and it displeased him. That there was no justice. He saw that there was none and has been appalled that there has been no one to intervene. 

So I beg all of you, organize your friends, family, loved ones, communities, and churches around standing for justice. We need to intervene. We need to advocate. The more you advocate the stronger our voices will be heard. So please, go to www.bread.org and read about what's happening and email your representative. Or click here to go straight to the form to email your representative. But do more. Use that website to find resources on how to engage and organize your church and community into action. And then click this link to get the phone number for your representatives and senators and call them and tell them how SNAP needs more funding not less. Together we can stand for justice and make an impactful change in Washington. It is time for faith communities to come together and join their prophetic voices for the change the world needs to see.

In the Peace of Christ,

Amen.