For the two years and six months that he has been with us, I don’t really tell this to many people. I’ve casually and gently said that we recognize that we believe that there are many ways to raise children and we’re not judging other people; that this is just what works best for our family. And in many ways, this is true. On the one hand, this world asks so much of us. It is so hard. It is hard to be a parent in a world that does not support families or parents or value children. It is hard to be in a world where there is violence all around us and there are 101 guides and experts telling us what to do, all different things each week and month. Where we are struggling financially, spiritually. Where we are tired. I have had, in so many ways, a lucky and privileged life and who in the hell am I to tell someone else that they are not raising their children the “right” way?

Yet. Yet. Yet yet.

I’ve been discussing with my mom our parenting choices. She is supportive of our approach and does her best to be with our son as we would be with him: gentle, loving, supportive, teaching, guiding, listening. But at the same time, she defends with rigor parents who spank their children or, for instance, who take their young children to hunt, arguing that those parents love their children and they are “turning out well” and so to each his or her own. We do it our way. They do it their way.

Shortly after an intense conversation about this, I listened to a gut-wrenching report on NPR about a study about parents yelling at their children and spanking them. Small children. Who would not do what their parents said or wanted. Like, I heard parents hitting their kids and screaming at them on the radio. This wasn’t abuse in any traditional sense (“other bad people”). It was just regular families like the one down the street, randomly sampled, and it showed how routine and typical it is for parents to hit small children and scream at them over both large and small issues.

And something changed within me. I will no longer hide how we parent. I will not pretend that I think our approach is one among many approaches – hit them or not, yell or not, be kind or not, kill animals for fun or not, watch violent television or not… all personal decisions about what is best for your family.

Because how we raise our children is not just about our families. It is about the world we live in. And hearing on NPR children being hit and screamed at… I mean, I am shocked that people are surprised we have a “bullying” problem in this country. It is not a “bullying” problem, it is a kindness problem. If we treat our children unkindly, do not show them the respect we wish them to show others, and use violence with them, how are we to ever expect that they will grow up and reject violence? And unkindness?

I have been so profoundly lucky to have access to and read about people’s ideas on parenting. I think the most influential to me have been Mothering Magazine and a blog by Kelly Hogaboom. I have also been so lucky to have a partner who is not only with me on this, but teaches me about this – that trusted and continues to trust that when we explain things gently and repeatedly to our son, he will understand this in his own time and it will be real understanding rather than something he does because he is threatened.

This does not mean we are perfect (oh. my god. are we not. perfect.) or that we don’t mess up all the time or that we are not missing big important things that he will need therapy for someday. Or that it is not harder to do it this way. That it is not sooooo hard. This does not mean that I will go around glaring at parents who act differently than I think they should. Or will I be some sort of consensual family living evangelist. But it does mean that I am no longer going to pretend “I do it my way and you do it your way and, hey, it is all just fine.” It isn’t just fine. I have been lucky that people have been willing to gently and with deep compassion challenge me to be a different kind of person and different kind of parent. They risked that I would feel judged, that I would be nasty, that I would reject them. And I am thankful that they risked that. I think I will be willing to risk that in my life now.

i just walked past that place where i prayed with you and over you and held your hand and touched your chest just four short days ago. it was the flower that announced what happened after you rolled away in the ambulance with the sirens and the prayers and the tubes. a little sign on a flower – rest in peace. i told you that you would be okay, and although i know it does not seem like it to the people who loved you, it is a different okay because i know you are somewhere where there is no blood and there is no pain and there are no damn motorcycles or accidents or wounds. it is not the okay that i wished for you, but what is, is. this world is so damn unfair and unjust. i sit here crying over you – over your hurt, over the fact that we could not save you as we gathered around your delicate and precious self laying there. crying is so inadequate, i know. what else is there to do?

please know that being there with you was a great privilege. to see your precious life, and to hold your hand, and touch your skin. in such moments we are all so vulnerable. i want you to know, and i hope there is a way for your family and loved ones to know that it was only five seconds after your accident that you were alone. i got to your side and immediately reassured you, comforted you, prayed for you. shortly others joined who were equally as gentle and kind and helpful. you were surrounded by love. i believe that it is the case, wherever you are now, that you continue to be surrounded by love.

i did not pray in words the day that i was there with you. but here is my prayer now. i hope it finds its way to you somehow.

dear god, who is the god of love and peace, i do no not understand how this sort of pain happens. there are no good reasons for this. yet i know this happens. the world happens and pain happens and loss and hurt and unfairness and we are stuck here right in the middle of it, just trying to do something, trying to make our way. i am left only to breathe and pray and love and hope. to hope that there is a way to make sense of it, to hope that we can make less pain like this, to hope that the family of this man who laid there with me finds a way to make sense of this and live with this loss. it is all so fast. it is all so precious. in one second we are on our motorcycle, fast with the wind against us, and in the next we are laying there, everything changed. everything fleeting. in one second we are sitting in our car and in the next we are holding the hand of a stranger who is saying goodbye to this world. god, be with his family. be with those who loved him. be with him as he sits or floats or lingers in heaven, wherever that is or whatever that is, and looks down on the life that he had in all its beauty and brokenness. give us all the strength to be with each other as we hurt – as we long for those who we have lost, or as we lay in the ground one friday afternoon. give us the strength to love more, to remember well, to be at peace with the madness that is this world where things do not make sense and are not fair. may we keep loving. hard. may we keep praying. hard. praying with our hands and our feet and our hearts as we try to lessen the brokenness. in our own lives. and in others’ lives.

i’m so sorry, precious beautiful man on the motorcycle. may god have you in god’s embrace.

amen amen amen.

I struggled with what to do. Write a letter to his family telling them how much he meant to me? Probably not welcomed by the wife from the ex-girlfriend. As if anything I could say could possibly touch the chaos and confusion in the wake of such a death.

It is, in the end, so much about us – me – in the face of someone else’s loss, right? Like what does it matter to him or his hurting family how much I loved him? How much I understood of him, if, indeed, I did understand anything of him? In a way, wanting to do something at all is about me. How to live with the loss which feels intense. When I love, I don’t do it lightly. Perhaps a little less gravity in my love would be a good thing both for me and for those whom I love.

I thought of writing something thoughtful and profound on the memories part of the funeral website. I hoped to somehow capture how important he was too me and how amazing I thought he was in his own strange way. In a little gesture, to honor my memory of him. But I couldn’t bring myself to put it out there mostly because all of the other notes were empty and like syrupy bad Hallmark cards that said nothing about who he was and my post would have been weird and out of place if not just a little creepy.

I wasn’t able to go home to Ohio for the funeral because I was in the midst of my doctoral exams. But perhaps it was better because I know the funeral would have been eerily silent about the fact that he took his own life, alone in his barn, on a Sunday afternoon.

It would have been silent about his broken body.

It would have been silent about the hurt he caused those whom he loved and who loved him. He was a pretty selfish guy, to be honest. But charming and beautiful and funny and addictive. You can’t really say that at a funeral.

It would have been silent about his mystery and his brilliance and his hurt that was with him when I knew him quite some years ago and, apparently, remained in one form or another.

There would have been no way to remember his magic in this world along with and inextricable from his madness.

It makes me all itchy inside to think about the platitudes and careless use of religiosity that often, I suppose, feels like the only recourse at a difficult funeral where we are not to speak ill of the dead and in the process fail to remember them in all their humanity and fullness.

And so it goes.

This is my small way of remembering him.

I loved you so much, dear Levi and pray with all that I am that you find, in death – in absence – what you did not find in your short life.

I am several months into being the president of our congregation, a role that I treasure and, at the same time, wonder what exactly I was thinking in terms of time management. Such is life though, ehh? We follow our callings and our passions and try to fit as much into  life as we can. I am lucky in that our congregation is gracious and supportive, and amazing in that there is minimal bickering, so I am learning a lot, and loving church life even if it was not the wisest choice in terms of being careful not to over-commit.

And, painfully, my general exams for my doctorate are coming up in October. It is my hope, at this point, that I am prepared enough not to fail or at least almost prepared enough not to fail. But I wish I felt solid about them rather than sickly and worried.

And our boy. He is a little person now, not a bundle of baby. He has is own baby doll which we have creatively named Baby. He loves his frog boots and insists on listening to Fat Boy Slim all. the. time. Which was cute, but now I am tired of Rockafeller Skank and Not From Brighton. When I try to put on Natalie Merchant he says no no no nonononono. It is such a joy, though, that he can say what he wants. Cracker. Baby. Mama. Dada and so on. He is at a daycare with goats and chickens, several bunnies, cats and a dog, and he loves loves loves the animals. And there are five other children that love him and rub his head and say Eli Eli Eli Eli. Which still scares him, but it is sweet none-the-less.

My parents, who are now, primarily, The Grand Parents, visited and doted on our boy and cuddled him and read him endless books and put the rocks in the bowl and out of the bowl and in the bowl with him 201,883 times. He ran to the guest room this morning and said, “Where go?” So we miss them.

I have more thoughts. I think about vegetarianism and animals and our recently rescued cat that I don’t really want, and how to handle/think about our fish tank at church and our mouse problem at church, and then more generally, about the 1001 moth larvae I recently killed in my pantry and the ants I kill that crawl around our living room and the spiders that live in our house that I want to move out but I feel really bad smooshing yet I do not have the time to lovingly transport each one of them outside. How to love the earth’s creatures, even little tiny ones that seem gross to me, and still have a house and church that does not crawl with such creatures. How to balance the beautiful look of a fish tank and swimming little magic animals, with the fact that I think they really don’t like it in there and would be happier in the ocean or a lake. I think about the exceptions I make when I eat eggs and the little chickens that suffer quite the life of misery for my breakfast sandwich. I want to do less harm in the world. But it is hard.

I think about how sad I am about all the fear and unkindness and hurt and harm and injustice expressed around the Muslim Community Center near the site of 9/11… How naive I was about the public’s understanding of Islam. And how easy it is to express outrage at such things from my comfortable little life – how little it costs to feel bad about such things and how I somehow probably think that Feeling Bad and Knowing Better somehow at least a little bit absolves me from my complicity with the injustice in our world. It is so easy to write blog posts of lament, preach to the choir, sign petitions and repost things to facebook…. Yet, my middle class, pretty-easy-relative-to-most-lives is contingent on cheap oil, using too much of my share of the world’s resources, and accessing my white, class, pass-as-heterosexual, have-a-Christian-heritage privilege which is all wrapped up in the U.S.’s history and present that produces/reinforces the sort of hysteria we see around Islam, immigration, and race politics around the presidency. I don’t write this to be all dramatic – oh what shall we ever do – but simply to put it out there. I struggle with it. It seems to easy to let me off by just saying we can’t solve everything and do everything, even though I know we can’t, I guess I still feel called to be with the impossibility of living a life of comfort that I want while it does violence, albeit pretty indirectly. My partner and I talk about this all the time – if you are somehow more removed from the harm you cause, are you better than those closer? Or just more easily able to distance yourself from seeing and doing with your own hands the harm that is done for you, from a distance, for a price. I’m not sure there is a terribly good answer. I was touched by someone in one of my classes who is writing a paper and he wrote that he would like to explore thinking about humanity “in ways the depend less on ‘agency,’ ‘autonomy,’…and more on malleability and incomprehensibility – a wounded soul that is also the site where God works.” Maybe I just want to make sense of my profound sense of woundedness and all the woundedness I see, but somehow it feels like a relief to me to give in to the incomprehensibility of it all and hope that God can work there.

This is not meant to be a “downer” post. My life is so wonderful and so rich in so many ways. But I sit with these questions a lot. Especially as I lead in my congregation and in teaching and in raising our little cuddle bug, I am even more aware that my responses to these struggles aren’t just for me, but that they will influence others. I want my life to match my desires for love and justice. It is so much harder than it seems.

Also, I sometimes hesitate to write about these things because it could reinforce the idea that these sorts of questions are the real questions of life – that our little internal UUA decisions are somehow what we should really fret about. I know I know that politics is of course deeply connected to spirituality and prophetic work and so on. I just fear that there is a tendency of us Unitarian Universalist to somehow think advocacy work in and of itself is the work of the church and to take ourselves extremely seriously when it comes to our political stances and in terms of sort of impact our decisions have on the world.*

So, like with my last post, I did spend quite the time in preamble here. Anyway, if you are still reading, for whatever reason, even given my caveats, I still somehow feel compelled to write about the potential boycott of Arizona and switching of the GA location

Well, lets be honest. It isn’t like I “somehow” feel compelled to write about this. Really, I am compelled to write it because the potential $615,000 cost (in penalty fees) of boycotting Arizona seems like it might not be the best use of that much money. I think of this in the context that I owe a lot in student loans from getting my M. Div. And I am not some crazy anomaly. I know many-a ministers and future ministers who easily owe as much or more than me. I am not suggesting that $615,000 should go to pay off student loans for ministers or ministerial candidates, but rather that it behooves us to consider the very high cost of becoming a minister when we are considering the use of Unitarian Universalist resources now and in the future.

The second reason I feel compelled to write about this is that our congregation is in the middle of canvas (i.e. yearly pledge drive) and our minister is retiring and so we are, at the same time, looking for an interim minister and thinking about the period to come when we search for a settled minister.  How we will ever manage to pay a decent wage to our future ministers is not a minor issue. It is very serious and we are struggling with it. We vastly underpay our current minister for going over and above the call of ministry, including no health insurance. We are struggling to get pledges to meet our current budget which involves no pay increase for an interim minister. Part of the struggle is (as imagine is the case at a lot of places) that people simply don’t give enough to cover the cost of what it takes to run a church and rely on big givers and “the regulars” to step up. This said, it is also very much because people are trying to pay for houses, live on a fixed income, pay for college, pay off debt, and just sort of cobble enough together to make it. I do not know for sure, but I image that our per capita income is on the low end of most New England Unitarian Universalist congregations. I am not really suggesting that the $615,000 that we might raise to cover the cost of this boycott should be use to pay ministerial salaries or support struggling churches, but rather just to highlight how much money $615,000 is and the various other very pressing financial needs Unitarian Universalism faces.

(See also Boy in the Bands on what $615,000 could buy (or really he does $1.3 million which takes into account the desire of the board to raise an “equal or greater amount” to support public witness efforts in Arizona). And see also the UU World article which notes that “it is unclear how the resolution would raise this money—or the ‘equal or greater amount’ it also pledges to raise to support public witness efforts in Arizona—without cutting funding for other UUA programs and services.”)

So, given these two things that are quite present on my mind, coupled with the fact that many people who want to be ministers can’t even begin to afford school and other costs of ministry, I just can’t get my head around spending $615,000 to boycott Arizona. Not because I am somehow against the boycott of Arizona in general, and not because I don’t think that the law is just terrible in so many ways, but because I’m not sure that that would be $615,000 spent in the best way. That is more than half a million dollars. I wonder if we could somehow do very important work by holding GA in Arizona? How could our presence there be a move of solidarity with people there who are working for equality, justice, and the daily struggle for life and love and bread?

Via the UU World article, Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, minister at the Phoenix church notes:

One of the things that religious groups bring and UUs would bring is a moral voice, an ability to engage around social justice advocacy. There is value that UUs bring that’s beyond financial, that’s something other groups don’t bring in terms of morally and politically engaging with what’s going on in Arizona.

There is that. Or, in the end, if we actually could raise $615,000 to support immigrants and civil rights in AZ, why not give it to some organization in Arizona that would likely put it to much better use than cancellation fees which, I imagine, ultimately end up with corporations?

I get that it is important and seems very prophetic to join a big boycott against such an obviously terrible terrible and unjust law. I have no doubt that the intentions of most if not all who believe we should boycott come from a place of compassion for those who will suffer because of this law and a hope for justice – a hope to bring about change.

Yet, I think the minister in Rev. Frederick-Gray has a good point:

I understand the reasons to support the boycott and even support some of those reasons myself… The groups calling for boycotts want to create an immediate financial impact and pressure on the state of Arizona, yet it is unclear if canceling GA in two years brings that kind of immediate financial impact.

Given the lack of clarity about the impact this will have, I just wonder with the relatively few resources available, if there is not perhaps a better use of half a million dollars? Is it a prudent and responsible use of our limited resources? Is there better way to use our energies to be in solidarity with Arizonans who are struggling for justice and to be in solidarity with undocumented people who live and work in the United States?

*One could also surmise that someone takes themselves too seriously when their blog posts on relatively minor topics are very long and detailed. That is to say, I know this post got too long. I will try to be clearer and shorter in the future. Darn it. How does that always happen?

I am also not a mom that is totally awed by all the amazingly wonderful and brilliant things my baby does. Yes, he is really quite cute. And seems to be a bright little bee. But I am pretty low key about him and his magic. I think in a pretty good and healthy way.

I say all of this for two reasons. First, because sometimes I feel like maybe a sucky mom because I don’t run around saying how wonderful life has been since he has been born and how it has changed everything and the sun rises and sets differently and all. I think there is this cult of motherhood that tells women that you have to just love your child and have him or her change your world and it will be immediate and like magic. I think this sets people up to feel pretty terrible when they are in month number six (or in my case, 14) of not sleeping through the night and all of a sudden your house is chaos all the time and you only see your partner in passing while one of you is changing a diaper and the other is… oh, I don’t know… studying for her general exams in October. Anyway, so on Mother’s Day when everyone is crooning about how magic mothers are and how much they love mothers and flowers and roses and all of that, I guess for whatever reason I felt inspired to bring it down a notch for all those moms out there who sometimes wonder if they are doing it right even though the fireworks of love and peace and perfect joy didn’t/don’t go off like they “should.”

The second reason I wrote about all of this is so that the next thing I am about to say about my little toddler boy doesn’t sound like the ultimately cheeziness. That is, it isn’t my style to go around crooning about the boy, so when I say something like how he taught me a really profound lesson, it doesn’t get lumped into the pile of 101 profound and beautiful things my baby did THIS MORNING.

Geez. I did too much lead up to this. I do this in my papers too. I go on and on in the intro setting everything up and then I have two and half sentences of substance to say.

Anyway, our boy loves to drink out of classes. Sippy cups are okay, but he really prefers to drink either water or apple juice out of the big glasses that are obviously too big for a one year old. But we’re pretty flexible, so we do it even though it often means that when he is done he pulls the glass away pretty fast and the juice or water gets on him or us.

And he has taken to insisting on sharing his drinks, and then tonight, his strawberries. He is insistent – he takes a drink, and then puts the cup to mine or my partner’s mouth in a very insistent way and we take a drink and then he takes another drink. He mushes the strawberries up between his fingers and sort of shoves one in into my mouth, with such a pleased look on his face, and then squishes one up and puts it in his mouth. And somehow this led me to “get” communion in a way I never have before. Regular readers of this blog know I have a highly ambivalent relationship with Christianity and can never decide really if I am Christian or not. And for some reason I have always loved communion – there was something that was so special about it – like this thread that went back throughout my life and childhood and then back throughout time. It felt like a very connecting sort of ritual. Like I was part of something really special. Yet, for the last few years, I never take part because I just feel like I can’t do it until I know more where I stand. This has been sad for me.

Yet, somehow through sharing my apple juice and strawberries with my boy – I got something. This idea of table fellowship. Communion not as some ritual that we do in church – that marks us as in or out – but as joyful sharing of nourishment, in communion with each other. It is an intimate thing to feed and give a drink to someone else. This is why the bread and wine is not sat out on a table for each person to go up and get themselves, but we give it to each other.

I think with a lot of things, the meaning of a moment can’t quite come through so well in words. The sweet smell of my little boy and his juice. His pre-linguistic self knowing that there is something important about me taking a drink and then him and then me and then him. The clear joy and satisfaction he gets from making sure that we are sharing – that we are a team, that in many ways we are one.

It helped me better understand why I am so drawn to communion and miss it so much. Yes, yes, I know there is that whole bread/body, wine/blood thing. But that is for another post. For now, I will commune with my little one, and appreciate what he has to teach me about life and love and faith.

All is well at Camp Baby Toddler. Although I know all parents feel a bit overwhelmed and crazed with their cuddle bug, I feel like somehow the fact that our little one does not sleep ever ever ever more than eight hours per twenty-four hours legitimizes, somehow, the ensuing madness and chaos that is our life. Or at least makes me feel less inept. At our Mama-Baby play group last week a mother was kindly trying to give me advice (which I appreciated, useless as it was) about how they try to include their son in daily activities (thus not “over-doing” the adjustment of their own needs to their son). But, she told me, “After 7:30, then that’s our time. We stick to that pretty clearly.” I had a hard time not spitting my water out in hysterical, semi-diabolical laughter since we feel extremely lucky if our boy goes to sleep by 10pm. It is usually more like 11 or 12. And yes, I know I know, we could just put him in a bed and let him cry until he falls asleep of exhaustion and discouragement. But we just can’t do this for a range of reasons, and that is that, so our life is a whirlwind of lovely, crazy, hard, rewarding, sleep-deprived madness.

If I was not studying for my comprehensive exams and being a parent and sort of trying to keep our house from turning into a public health disaster, I would write about our church’s transition and growth as our minister of many years retires (and what is like to be one of the few young families in a church of mostly retired families), my on-going struggle to decide if I am in or out of Christianity and a potential realization that it is okay if I don’t make a firm commitment, how to graciously and kindness deal with watching your parents get a bit older and transition into different ways of being/different approaches to life… how to balance between love and support, one’s own feelings and, okay, I’ll just say it, anger, and thoughtful respectful care and attention.

Also, as a journey along on this whole parenting thing, I really learn a lot, especially from three blogs that I’ve added to my (generally shrinking) Google reader: Ph.D. in Parenting, Raising My Boy Chick and Kelly Hogaboom. Might I especially recommend this recent post, “on which it somehow did not take a turn for the Awkward,” by Kelly Hogaboom to OWL facilitators and parents far and wide considering how to teach our children about sexuality.

If I push through two more articles in three hours, I might reward myself by writing a real post.

Hasta La Pasta, Dear Readers.

All of this is to say that we are sort of into what is called babywearing, although I just like to think of it as carrying your baby with you. This worked well for us because our boy would cry cry cry very easily and just liked to be close to us AND I hated trying to navigate the damn stroller around places. Found it to be a huge hassle and much easier just to tote him with me. So, in a way, I am psyched that the Times is highlighting baby carriers because I think they are a great invention and I think more families might really like to have them.

What I just can’t stand is that the NYTimes article makes it into this THING. Is it SAFE??? Are sling-wearing mamas against EVIL STROLLER MOMS???

This is not helpful. I think the bottom line is is that there are quite a few things you can do to harm your baby. Driving, for instance, can be very dangerous. Putting your baby in a crib can be bad. Having your baby sleep in your bed can be bad. Bad things can happen if you vaccinate. Bad things can happen if you don’t vaccinate. Your kid can fall out of a tree. But if you are too protective he or she can end up being sheltered and turn out weird.

I think it is reasonable that bad things can also happen with baby slings if you don’t, you know, read about them and learn the safe way to carry your child in the sling. Some moms hate strollers. Some moms love them. If you put your child in a stroller ALL THE TIME and listen to your ipod and never ever talk to your child, probably that is not ideal. But it is my sense that this is not what happens to most children in strollers, so lets just all chill out a little bit, ehh?

My point is that I wish people would stop making parenting some sort of DRAMA competition (good moms vs. bad moms) and high risk danger-fest. This is not good for parents. Not good for kids. I happen to like many of the attachment approaches to parenting. Although I understand why this does not/cannot work for a lot of families.

So, New York Times, could you please tone it down? If you want to report on increased sling usage, can we just say that it is increasing – it is great that there are so many (increasingly stylish) options for ways to tote your child around and more ideas about how to love our children the best we can. And, like with everything, we should read about it. And take reasonable precautions.

So yay for parents who are trying hard. Cuddling their children. Exploring options. Supporting each other. And de-dramatizing approaches to parenting. Because it isn’t some sort of competition or sport. It is about how we can be in the world with peace, how we can love and be loved, how we can flourish and find ways for our children to flourish.

Hat tip to CT for sharing the link (on the blog of Rev. Scott Wells where he blogs Lent, Google, Animals, and Meat).

Sometimes I tell my partner that I think we talk about the suffering in the world and how awful it is and how inadequate our response to it is more just to somehow tell ourselves that we are doing something by being aware of it – aware of our great indulgence living in a house bigger than we need, getting organic fruit at Whole Foods for our little one and spending as much on surgery for our kitty Grace than many families in the world make in the whole year. As if we are somehow one tiny ethical step ahead of those who do all of this without thinking or reflection or people who don’t feel as bad as we do about it.

I often tell myself there is no good answer to this, but I wonder in the back of my mind if there really is a good answer and I just don’t really want to do it. I mean, it seems like the good answer would be to live with what we need – decent food, decent shelter, warmth, the transportation we need to get to our decent jobs – and then spend the rest of our time and money working to change the savage injustices that we see on the front page of the newspapers, or, too often, as a side story in the back of a newspaper or a completely unknown story never told. I guess that would be the good answer. But instead, we resign ourselves (sophisticated resignation, as Forrest Church says) to the fact that we just sort of don’t really want to do that and even though such dedication is needed to help address the profound and deep suffering in our world, we would rather live a more comfortable life in our nice warm house, washed in the privileged of where we were born.

And so it goes. Another earthquake. More pictures of misery, and hurt – not far-away hurt of other people that must somehow not be like our own deep hurt – but real hurt that is just as deep and just as acute and terrible as I would feel if it was my sweet boy sick, without shelter, without the food he needs. I remember when it first occurred to me that the pictures of the children with the swollen bellies were not just images flashed on the screen to get us to send money, but they were actually like me – with real lives and real suffering just like my own. It is so easy to see the suffering of others and take a step away from it and get back to what we feel like we must do – live our lives, do the dishes, pick the boy up from daycare – because really – I mean what else could be expected of us? I mean, we can’t GIVE UP OUR LIFE for all these injustices, right? And although I have this funny relationship with Christianity, and pretty much don’t think of it as my spiritual home, I remember the idea of giving up our life to the call that Jesus made to be with the poor and oppressed and give our enemies the shirt off our back and the idea of taking up our own cross and it speaks to me. Not a call to attend another social action committee meeting, but the call to live a radical life of giving and love when it is really really hard – not part-time, not on the weekends, but a life that gets at the very heart of what I know I say I want – a just world.

But instead I write a blog post on it and then get back to writing my paper which is due January 28th.