For quite some time she has had to listen to us talk about emails, Facebook messages and photos, but now these are coming especially for her. I’m not sure she will be posting on Facebook anytime soon and counting how many friends she has there but it is quite sweet to see her pleasure at receiving an email just for herself or watching a YouTube clip that someone thought she should see. Most of us have grown quite immune to amazement when it comes to this technology but for Annie Siebring she is quite in awe when I find a Dutch choral group singing Psalm 42 accompanied by a large church organ and real Dutch folk, whole-heartedly singing from across the world right into her living room. And she will be amazed even to read this post.
I can’t recall my first encounter with a computer so it must not have been terribly dramatic. I do remember when our school got some Commodor 64’s and watching the little cursor slowly beep its way across the screen as someone stroked the keys. Last week we purchased a laptop for my 91-year-old mother-in-law and it was really quite wonderful to watch her joy at receiving emails from children and grandchildren.
For quite some time she has had to listen to us talk about emails, Facebook messages and photos, but now these are coming especially for her. I’m not sure she will be posting on Facebook anytime soon and counting how many friends she has there but it is quite sweet to see her pleasure at receiving an email just for herself or watching a YouTube clip that someone thought she should see. Most of us have grown quite immune to amazement when it comes to this technology but for Annie Siebring she is quite in awe when I find a Dutch choral group singing Psalm 42 accompanied by a large church organ and real Dutch folk, whole-heartedly singing from across the world right into her living room. And she will be amazed even to read this post.
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Complicity is the fact or condition of being involved with others in an activity that is unlawful or morally wrong. As the #MeToo response gathers momentum, I feel as if it could be a defining moment in our history to bring about cultural change if we dare to look in the mirror. This can only happen if men step up even as women do. I have been complicit. James Simpson is Senior Adviser to the President at Sojourners and writes an important article in Sojourners called Men: Women Spoke Up. How Will We Respond? There are very few of us who could not says as he does, “As a man, I am responsible for this. At worst, I have actively engaged in this behavior, and at best I have stood passively by as I watched it happen.” Wouldn’t it be something if we could point to this moment from sometime in the not to distant future and say, that was the start of significant change. Courageous women stood up and finally were joined by men who did as well. James Simpson again, “And finally, we must commit ourselves to use this moment to create a movement that recognizes and celebrates the full humanity embodied in each living person. A movement that recognizes that everyone should be able to live their lives free of harassment or fear, and work equally for the betterment of themselves and the benefit of all those around them…. This is a problem that will only be resolved when more women are invited to the table to make decisions and lead in our governments, our board rooms, our organizations, our families, and our places of worship….We hear you. We believe you. We are sorry. We are committed to challenge and we are committed to change. I promise to do better. Will you?” It’s taken me a while to get to this book. I had missed Curt Gesch's July review in Christian Courier. I think this is an important book for Christians to read. Joel Salatin is always an entertaining read even if you don’t agree. I think he writes like he probably drives tractor. It does run a bit rough shod over some things but maybe that is part of the charm. Salatin has always been an outsider: most evangelicals think poorly of “creation-worshipping” environmentalists and most serious environmentalists have a negative idea about most Christians. This is a book, published by a Christian publisher, that Salatin writes for “his own people.” There is a lot of King James Version Bible quoted in the book, which reads a bit awkward at times but all in all I think he brings some fresh understanding to the text. Salatin is frustrated that Christians can be so ignorant of what they are eating, how it got to their plates and what impact it has on the creation and yet speak so stridently about “Pro-Life” issues. It’s all connected and he helps the reader see the connections. This book is both entertaining and important. “Things that the religious right would abhor if they were promoted by churches are embraced warmly in the food system. While preachers rail against bringing junk into our homes via TV, the Internet, and pornographic literature, few bat an eye at a home stashed with high fructose corn syrup, potato chips, and Pop-Tarts. Indeed, some even suggest that the cheaper we eat, the more money we’ll have to put in the offering plate. And to top it off, they denigrate anyone who would suggest part of caring for children is caring about what they eat. “ ― Joel Salatin, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation I’ve watched this United Methodist Church video presentation called #HerTruth: Women in Ministry Break Their Silence a few times and it strikes me that if we pay careful attention to it, the embedded solutions would go a long way to solving the issues raised in the recent and ongoing #MeToo campaign. The Reverend Stephanie York Arnold, the main voice in the video, directly faces the church’s slow progress in women’s leadership and influence. The early part of the video uses a dozen or so men’s voices to speak the pain and injustices that women experience. York says, “If I was given a dollar for every time I was told I’m too pretty to be a pastor, I could pay off the church building debt.” Those are painful words to hear and experience. York led this video project produced for the North Alabama Conference’s Commission on the Status and Role of Women. I’ve heard recently of a large denomination in the Lower Mainland of BC that is reversing its much earlier decision to allow women into church leadership roles. Are they serious? However, having said that, my own denomination, the Christian Reformed Church is still very far from equality on this issue and I too hear and feel retraction at times. To move forward it will mean men will need to step up by stepping down and working actively to create leadership models that reflect the spectrum of the churches population when it comes to gender. This requires a posture of humility and learning from myself and all men for justice to prevail. In his Op-Ed Column Lovers, Prospectors and Predators of November 2, New York Times writer David Brooks adds some sound insights into the pathways toward sexual harassment. He uses the metaphor of moving from one room to another: the room of love, the room of the prospector and the predator’s room. Men are socialized toward the predator’s room depending on the influences and choices in their lives. Well worth reading to keep this important conversation on the table. He concludes with this paragraph, “It is necessary but not enough to have a negative vision of what men should not do. It would also be nice if there were some positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich life, how it flourishes in the private sphere as a (very fun) form of deep knowing. If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship we’d also have a clearer concept of what predatory behavior looks like and what it takes to eradicate it. In a degraded environment, the predators, who are few and vicious, are more likely to be tolerated by the many, who are numb.” It is important that #MeToo not just disappear from headlines and it’s important particularly for those of us who may live and work out of a church context. Read Ruth Everhart’s new Sojourner’s article I Am a Pastor and Rape Survivor. #MeToo Is an Opportunity for the Church . For much too long the church has been the place where it is impossible to go when sexual violence has taken place because its leadership ignores and hides this fact and at worst it contributes to it. For many women, the suffering only gets worse when the church knows about it. What is wrong with this picture? It is not OK that in the 21st Century women are not serving in equal capacities in all church leadership roles. In my denomination we are still surprised when we get to hear a woman preach. There are still many churches that do not allow women into all church leadership positions. All of that simply perpetuates and encourages abuse of one kind or another. There needs to be a long and concerted effort on the part of males to change this paradigm. A good place to start would be to read Eugene Hung’s 4 Ways the Church Can Respond to the #MeToo Movment. And then to begin conversations with women about how this could all look very different, and how the church can become a place that promotes all human flourishing. It’s rather ironic that Reformation Day is celebrated on October 31, and this year celebrating 500 years since, and that All Saints Day falls on November 1. So close and so far away. All Saints Day is another example of babies going out with bath water. What a good idea to celebrate the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. We are not alone. It is also ironic that the Lutheran church does celebrate this day when most protestant churches do not. Martin Luther was not overzealous on that point I guess. We need places and opportunities to celebrate the lives of those who inspire us to faithfulness, to hang in there when it would be easier to give up, to have a long view, to be courageous even when we are shaking in our shoes. I’m going to spend some time today remembering the Saints in my life. There are many. Light a candle for them. |
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