Category: Reflections

The Empty Silences

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It’s been quiet here on this blog of late. It’s been hard to write. Hence the silence.

I feel like my life has been buffering – in such a constant state of transition that nothing ever seems to be fully resolving. Ideas that bounce around in my head of all the intriguing topics I want to explore in writing remain locked away inside there. When life just seems to be one giant emotional quandary that I can’t (for a variety of reasons) write about here, it somehow seemed false to prattle on about theology, and culture, and faith, and all those things that felt so far outside myself. And so I inevitably became silent, even as I ruminated in my own silence. Yet the longer I kept my thoughts inside and kept my voice silent, the more filled with silence my own mind became. Because I felt I couldn’t speak, I lost the ability to have anything to say.

The silence became an empty silence.

121On my trip to England and Wales this past December I visited the ruins of Caerphilly Castle in Southern Wales. My visit fell on a weekday in the off-season on a near-freezing and drizzling day. Needless to say I was the only person touring the castle that afternoon. At first I was secretly delighted to have the crumbling archways, damp corridors, and blustery towers to myself. But I wanted more than just the silence of the ruins. I wanted to know its stories or at least to populate its grand hall with tales of conquering knights and court intrigue. But devoid of listening ears, the emptiness of its silence pervaded instead. More than that the stories weren’t being told, it felt like they had drifted away over time as the silence retook the crumbling stones.

 

It reminded me of that thoroughly Welsh poet R.S. Thomas’ poem “In Church”

Often I try
To analyse the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.

Sometimes it takes encountering the emptiness and asking questions into the silence before one realizes that the shadows have advanced on an inanimate body. Sometimes to embrace that silence in the darkness is a needed respite. But sometimes it slowly takes possession until the moment one realizes the walls no longer tell stories and that inanimate body in shock realizes that it is half-sick of shadows and wonders if it is possible for dry bones to live once again.

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Remembering September 11th

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I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 both nervous and excited. I had spent the last two months slowly proceeding through the application and interview process for an entry-level editorial position at Christianity Today to work with their Christian History and Christian Reader magazines. I’d had multiple interviews and had to write a few research heavy articles along the way. For someone with degrees in English and History and a graduate degree in Missions, it seemed like the perfect job. My final evaluation involved joining the staff at an all day off-campus retreat where they would be evaluating potential articles for magazines. I was a bit nervous, but an insider in the company had told me the job was mine so the excitement of finally landing my first real job after school prevailed.

So on the morning of September 11, I arrived at the country club where the retreat was being held and situated myself at the conference table in a room with a panoramic view of the far west Chicago suburbs. We dove right into discussing the submitted articles, but about an hour later when the waitress came in with more coffee and Danishes she mentioned that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was another personal plane incident like the one that had flown into the Empire State Building a few years before and continued working. When we broke for lunch the head editors called the office and then quickly left. The rest of us stayed on and even watched a Bibleman episode for possible review, fairly oblivious to the events of the day.

It wasn’t until I left the country club in the late afternoon and turned on the car radio that I began to have an inkling of the magnitude of the day. I rushed home to my tiny basement apartment which had no TV reception and tried futilely to get online but the dial-up lines were all busy for hours. I recall going out to get the special evening edition of the newspaper and crashing the Wheaton College student lounge (with their TV and cable hookup) just to get some idea of what was happening. The next day I was scheduled to host my church’s table at the Wheaton College ministry fair, which meant I spent the day surrounded by not only college students but also representatives of every church and parachurch ministry in the Wheaton area. It was a surreal day as people attempted to process the shock and openly shared the subsequent anger and hatred that had started to develop. That evening my church held a prayer meeting, and I recall praying that this act of terror would not lead to people lashing out against the innocent as a form of revenge. I was informed afterwards that my prayer was inappropriate. Three weeks later I heard back from Christianity Today informing me that they had a hiring freeze and the position I was applying for was eliminated in favor of restructuring the department.

It’s strange to reflect back on the day the world changed. And a bit eerie to recall that I spent the afternoon of September 11 watching the Bibleman episode about how good Christian students need to stop hanging out with their non-Christian peers because they can be a bad influence on their faith and then spent the next day listening to Evangelical leaders responding to their enemy in hate. I couldn’t have know it at the time, but within those first two days after the attack I caught a glimpse of how the events of Sept. 11th would shape the church over the next ten years. The world has irrevocably changed – despite the ongoing attempts to pretend that that the false security and pride of American exceptionalism is still a viable option in a globalized world. Over this past decade this new world has forced me to abandon a naïve faith that cared only for the state of my own soul, and embrace the fact that I am connected to others as a child of God. Who I am is as much dependent on how I honor the image of God in them as it is on any acts of ritual or piety I engage in.

Perhaps it took 9/11 and the response of fear and hatred I found in the church to push me to finally realize that my faith had to be more about God than myself. I don’t know if I will ever know for sure, but it has assuredly been a decade of change from which there is no going back. And sadly, constantly living in a culture of fear has prevented many in the church from wondering what sort of people we are being changed into. But the questions need to be asked. Are we more Christ-like now? Is God’s Kingdom more visible ten years later? Maybe simply asking those questions this Sept. 11th can help us turn a day that could easily kindle new waves of hatred into one that pushes us outside of our all-consuming selves and back to the sort of people Jesus calls us to be.

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Back to Narnia

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Aside from the Bible, The Chronicles
of Narnia have been the most formative books in my life. My parents hung a
Narnia map in my nursery, and my dad started reading the books to me at age
three. Soon I was reading the books a couple of times a year.

Wheaton College houses C.S. Lewis’s papers (and has the wardrobe),
and we students lovingly referred to him as St. Jack. My husband and I got to
know each other at the Wheaton Children’s Literary Interpretation Society,
where we’d read children’s books out loud during study breaks. The first
semester we read The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. My husband was Aslan; I was the White Witch.

So regardless of the reviews, I am excited to go see the movie
version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The story
is an integral part of my faith journey and I love it. But it’s strange to
encounter Lewis apart from the evangelical lens I’ve always seen him
interpreted through in the past.

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The Entitlement Trap

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As posted at The Christian Century Blog

I can’t stand the word “entitlement.” I use it sometimes, when people annoy me with their belief that the world owes them something or that their needs are more important than those of others. But when I do this, I’m guilty of the same thing they are: dismissing the importance of someone else’s desires and asserting the importance of my own. I get caught in an entitlement trap.

Looking at the story of the prodigal son in church, I found myself focusing on the theme of entitlement. The story is one of those passages that reveals something different each time I encounter it. What struck me this time was how each brother thinks the world owes him something.

The younger brother’s sense of entitlement is obvious: he demands his inheritance so he can live as he pleases. But the older brother displays a similar sense of entitlement in his condemnation and rejection of his brother. He believes that his hard work and good behavior entitle him to the economic benefits and stability of his father’s love. Each brother is deeply flawed, yet the father graciously extends mercy to both.

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My Wild Goose Chase

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I love the use of the Celtic “wild goose” as the symbol of this gathering exploring creativity, justice, and spirituality.  It evokes that other distinctly Celtic idea of peregrinati – journeys or wanderings of an undefined but spiritual nature.  It is the wild goose flying where it will, exploring new territories and discovering new horizons amidst even the everyday and the familiar landscapes of home.  The Celtic monks followed that call of the wild bird on their peregrinati, journeying with the spirit on undetermined paths.  They served, and worshiped, and reflected along the way but often had no real goal or destination beyond the journey itself.  They embodied Tolkien’s famous “not all who wander are lost” phrase, for it was their wanderings – their wild goose chases -that held the meaning in themselves.

Over the last decade or so I have come to embrace this idea of peregrinati.  Static systems that enforced doctrine, demanded conformity, and discouraged questions had left me hollow.  Those were expressions of faith focused primarily on enacting a transaction that guaranteed what would happen to me after I died.  There was no continual quest for truth, no moving to where the spirit led, no grasping of the idea that following Jesus was the purpose of my faith and not just a means to an end.  It was at the point when I was about to walk away from that façade of a faith that felt so lifeless and bereft of soul that I stumbled upon the most basic of truths – that the wild goose cannot be caged.

It was freeing to discover that to be led by the spirit was what it meant to follow Jesus.  Both require movement – intentional wanderings where the life of faith is to be lived.  My peregrinati were not just missional moments in my faith journey, they were the shape of my entire embodied faith.  Embracing how God’s image is creatively reflected in my life and pursuing the call to seek justice for the oppressed became more than just optional additions to an unchanging faith, but the very substance of the journey itself.  To follow Jesus and be led by the Spirit means engaging in this intentional wandering.  I am now free to be always seeking, always serving, always following as I wander on this journey.  And it was stepping out on that wild goose chase that not only saved my faith, but drew me onto the path where that faith is ever developing and discovering new things.

So I look forward to merging our peregrinati at this gathering and sharing our stories of where this wild goose chase has led us.

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Why Cook Well

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I’m good at the self-centered, me-first sort of living thing.  Hell, most of us could win employee of the month in that category.  We’ve got that rugged individualist out of American legend role down pat – each of us hell-bent on living the American Dream, not caring who we have to screw-over to get what we want along the way.  Strangely enough it isn’t working too well for us.  Instead of launching us each into a nirvana-like state of self-actualization and bliss, this narcissistic soul-masturbation is tearing us apart.  The white picket fence and car in every driveway dream we were sold (complete with well stocked supermarkets of course) failed us.  In the “every man for himself” scramble we lost our connection with each other, with the people who produce our food, and with the earth it grew in.  And as the community that defines our humanity crumbled around us, we lost a part of ourselves as well.

Take the food we buy in those well-stocked supermarkets.  As long as the tomatoes stay cheap, we don’t care if the guy who picked them is paid an unlivable wage or was trafficked into this country and kept as a slave to work in the fields.   We don’t care if villages in Pakistan have no access to clean water because a major water bottle company obtained exclusive rights to their local spring.  We just want our bottled water.  Me-first all the way baby.

Or take the ubiquitous canned-food drive.  As we clean out our pantries, instead of asking what are the healthy foods people who can’t afford to buy food might need or even desire to eat, we toss them the nasty crap we want to get rid of anyway.  Or we go to the store and buy the ultra-cheap generic foods full of trans-fats, preservatives, and “that-color-sure-as-hell-doesn’t-exist-in-nature” food dyes.  It’s far more about us feeling good about ourselves (or cleaning out our pantry) than it is about giving food to others.

This is why we so desperately need to cook well.  As crazy as it sounds, it can function as the antidote to our disease.

Cooking well pushes us beyond ourselves.  Cooking well allows our family to come together to share and enjoy a meal at the same table.  Cooking well ensures that our children can have healthy and nutritious food that strengthens their minds and bodies.  Cooking well implies caring that the people who grow our food are treated with dignity and respect and paid the wages they deserve.  Cooking well challenges the continued rape and destruction of the earth for the sake of high yield and momentary convenience.  Cooking well reconnects us with who we are, with the people we love, and with the community around us.

Food holds power.  It brings people together.  For too long we’ve used food to divide, oppress, and destroy.  Let’s start cooking well so that we can get over ourselves and start healing the world instead.

Cooking well is the antidote to our disease of being self-centered jerks.  It forces us to care not only for the people we’re cooking for, but also for where our food came from.

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Freedom in America

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In this week after the Fourth of July, I’ve heard a lot of talk about what it means to have freedom as an American. Not that I necessarily agree with this view of history, but that sort of talk generally focuses on a sentimental reflection on how a ragtag people’s movement stood up to the evil and oppressive British and paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Who cares that when other countries do that nowadays we call it insurrection or communism, for us it was all about our freedom. To be American means to have freedom.
I love freedom; I appreciate the freedoms I have. What I find intriguing though are what exact freedoms it is that we celebrate in this country and which ones we could care less about. The freedom to hold a sign with a racist slur about the President is apparently something we hold dear, as is our “right” to have free and immediate access to porn (not to mention guns). The government had better not interfere with our access to junk food or dare tell our kids how to eat healthy; we’ll develop diabetes and drive up insurance rates if we want to. But we’re okay though with the government tapping our phones and having a kill switch for the internet. And apparently we are also okay with the government allowing companies to sell contaminated meat to our schools and passing laws making it illegal for us to publicly question the companies that do so. Let’s just say our relationship with freedom is complicated.

Anthony Bourdain addresses the food contamination issue in his latest book, Medium Raw, wondering why we are okay giving up the freedom of our access (our children’s access) to uncontaminated food. His snarky, uncensored take on the subject is one of the best I’ve read yet. And this is from Bourdain, the guy who is not shy in his frequent mocking of vegetarians or the organic/locavore movements. He writes on the meat industry in America –

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product to grinders who agree to not test their product for E.coli contamination – until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources. Meaning, the company who grinds all that shit together (before selling it to your school system) often can’t test it until after they mix it with meat they bought from other (sometimes as many as three or four) slaughterhouses. … It’s like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five guys immediately before sleeping with you – just so she can’t point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.
…
I believe that, as an American, I should be able to walk into any restaurant in America and order my hamburger – that most American of foods – medium fucking rare. I don’t believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning label to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria. I believe I shouldn’t have to be advised to thoroughly clean and wash up immediately after preparing a hamburger. I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste. I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph – much less the same sentence. Unless you are talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.
…
Is it too much to feel that it should be a basic right that one can cook and eat a hamburger without fear? To stand proud in my own backyard (if I had a backyard), grilling a nice medium-rare fucking hamburger for my kid – without worrying that maybe I’m feeding her a shit sandwich? That I not feel the need to cross-examine my mother, should she have the temerity to offer my child meatloaf? P.98-100

Seriously, when did cheap and convenient become more important to us than avoiding consuming fecal matter, chemicals like ammonia, and deadly viruses (or for that matter the right to question the presence of such things in our food)? In the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world, that we have given up the freedom of knowing that the food we eat is safe is telling. Or perhaps it’s just that we value the freedom of the meat-industry to serve us contaminated food more. Like I said, our views of freedom are complicated. Or just plain crazy.

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LOST Narrative

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It’s been a busy week around here and while I originally told myself I wouldn’t do this, I feel like writing something about the Lost finale since it’s all I’ve been thinking about this past week.  Let me say upfront, that I fall into the “I loved the finale” camp.  Even now, I have a hard time thinking about it without getting choked up by the final scene in the church.  Sure, there were a lot of mysteries left unresolved, but the finale moved us beyond the need to master and understand the Lost universe.  To leave no loose ends would have turned Lost into a formula to be packaged instead of the story about life and community that it was.  But then again, I’m a Christian; my day to day life is about following a path of unresolved mysteries written about in book full of loose ends.  I think my life would feel hollow if everything I did or believed or if every person I met or event I attended made perfect rational sense or fit seamlessly into a narrative arc with a structured plotline.  Lost subverted the standard trite entertainment storyline, and left those mysteries wide open, leaving us with a story that pushed the boundaries of what modern storytelling is even allowed to do.

Lost, a story about the redemptive power of community, forced the viewer to enter into the communal act of storytelling.  Instead of consuming a product that told us what to think or enjoy, or even what questions we should be asking, Lost provided the space for the viewers to participate in the unfolding narrative.  Our story intersected with the stories of the passengers of Oceanic flight 815; who we were, what we valued, what truths mattered to us simply became another thread in the developing story.  The questions we had, the mysteries we debated were not thrust upon us by the writers of the show, but formed through the community brought together around the common center that was Lost.  The finale gave us a glimpse of how important a community formed around a certain event can become, and invited us as viewers to continue to create meaning out of the never ending intersection of our own stories.

This isn’t what TV is supposed to be about; this isn’t what modern storytelling is even about.  And it’s certainly not what the modern American individualist has been conditioned to be all about.  But the way Lost captured our attention and the way it (especially the finale) connected us on a visceral level to the longing to be a part of something bigger than just ourselves demonstrated that perhaps “the way things are” is not how they are meant to be.  “Live together or die alone” was a central theme to the series, utterly undercutting the messages most of us have been taught to believe our whole lives.  Participating in community, understanding the world and even our whole lives as communal rather than individual acts, is unsettling and challenging to some, but spoke to hearts of millions of viewers who were all wanting to be part of something more.  Perhaps it is just that Lost was truly the first postmodern television series, but it took the pieces of what was expected of a TV drama, and handed them to the audience to hold in faith.  That act of trust allowed us to then step outside the binds of convention and discover larger truth that held far more meaning than a momentary “a-ha” ever could have dreamt of.

In reflecting on these themes in the Lost finale, I was reminded of this paragraph from Colin Greene and Martin Robinson’s book Metavista: Bible, Church, and mission in an Age of Imagination – The world we inhabit is a labyrinth of unfinished narratives, stories and plots.  As we intentionally or accidentally bump into them and enter these often strange, perplexing and disquieting worlds, so we become implicated in their intertwining, overlapping, sometimes imploding and at other times rapidly expanding plots and subplots.  As George Steiner contends, we may have to make a wager on transcendence, that there is in fact a hidden code, teleology, or design to these narratives that it is our task to decipher.  But to do so necessitates that we construe the text, the story or the plot in a particular fashion.  To refuse to do so as individuals and communities is to refuse to indwell the text and to become hearers only of the word and not doers (Jas. 1:24-25).  In other words, what has taken place is a failure of constructive imagination.

Lost has changed the way television works.  Sure, the old patterns of merely entertaining an audience and feeding them the nightly moral of the story will continue.  But with this one show, we were invited to not just reflect on the nature of community but to enter into the communal act of creating our own meaning out of our intersecting threads.  Our entire life experience – the books we’ve read, the films we’ve viewed, the philosophies we’ve debated, the religious paths we’ve trod – contributed to the construction of this particular narrative.  We had to take that wager on transcendence and were rewarded with a mirror into our own souls.  Storytelling must change in the postmodern world as our apparent interconnectedness is unavoidable.  Lost was the herald of that change.

 

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Why N.T. Wright is Wrong About Social Media

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The Out of Ur blog recently posted a video of N.T. Wright going off on the dangers of social media. He warns that blogging and the like will stand in the way of real communication with others and he calls the popularity of social media “cultural masturbation.” Now it’s nothing new to hear some voice or other going off on modern technology, putting their own particular “it’s the end of the world as we know it” spin on the matter. And on many issues I truly love and respect N.T. Wright, so I was disappointed to hear someone so knowledgeable about history and faith jump on the “caution people about the perceived dangers of the Internet” bandwagon. Admitting the irony that his video was posted on a blog to be discussed on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, let me just rant for a moment about why I am tired of this discussion.

Let’s just get it out of the way: The warning that Wright and others give is that social media takes people away from actual face-to-face interaction. If we spend too much time blogging and tweeting, we will reduce our time spent with huggable (Wright’s term) people. The problem is — that just isn’t true. A recent Pew Study busted that myth. It reported that, yes, about 6% of the population are isolated and asocial, but that is a number that has stayed steady since 1985 — before the widespread advent of the Internet. The study also found that people who spend time on the Internet are actually far more likely to go out and be with real live people than those who don’t use the Internet. The point — social media actually builds community, even of the huggable people sort. Not only that, but that community is actually more diverse than the communities of those who don’t use social media.

Now I admit, there is the temptation online to not present one’s true self to the world. I think using the Internet for role-playing and gaming is one thing (come on, you can freaking FLY in Second Life!), but aside from people who are already social deviants, I see most people being themselves online. For example, I recently decided to alter my blogroll to a list of people’s names. Aside from group blogs and the occasional anonymous blog, most people are known these days by their true identity and not just their blog name. That wasn’t the case when I first started blogging or interacting online. Back then, most people hid behind cute avatars and handles. Most of the blogs I read, especially those by women, were anonymous, but over the years people have moved towards being themselves by using their real name. Same thing with e-mail addresses. It used to be that everyone had some personal descriptor/alter ego as their e-mail — like JesusGirl98 or SurfrBoy123. And yes, my first email address was [email protected] (ah, the musical obsessed highschool girl demographic). I still cringe a bit when I sign into a site I’ve been on for a long time (like The Ooze) and have my user name be some variation of MaraJade. Back then, I assumed that the internet wasn’t real community and that I could hide behind my username, but I’ve come to realize that I have to be true to myself. And that involves using my real name and only writing the things I am not afraid to own up to.

So as I present my true self to the world and see others doing the same, I get more and more annoyed with those that accuse online communication of not being real communication. I’m sorry, but how is it not real? Communication of this sort has existed for ages; blogs and Facebook and Twitter are just its newest forms. Back in college we had message boards and blog posts — only they were of the paper and pen variety. Someone would write out a few paragraphs or pose a question and tape that paper to a wall in the student center or even in a bathroom stall. We would add our replies with pens. Same thing in grade school. We would fill notebooks with Facebook-esqe questions like “What are your favorite bands?” or “Where do you want to live when you grow up?” and pass them around class getting everyone’s responses. And go back a few hundred years. You have Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door. You have pamphlets being printed to disseminate ideas, and counter-pamphlets appearing in return. Sure, it took longer, but it’s the same idea as blog posts. Or the way letters to the editor used to function as a forum for discussion. Or even the popularity of pen-pals one would never meet. Communication of this sort has all happened before, so why is it that this time it isn’t real?

Social media doesn’t destroy or hinder community, it builds it. As a fairly extreme introvert, I had far fewer friends before I started connecting through the internet. Because of online connections and discussions, I am now spending much more time with flesh and blood huggable people. Like any community or form of communication, the online world has its flaws — no one is disputing that. But I am tired of being told to fear something for dubious reasons. So Wright can call this age-old form of communication cultural masturbation if he wants, I’ll just send him a virtual pint on Facebook and have fun discussing his ideas with my friends — both on- and offline. Because that’s real community.

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Justice in Real Life

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I’m a mom.  I have diapers to change, groceries to buy, and lunches to make.  Between keeping up with the kids and paying the bills, most days I’m happy if I can squeeze in the luxurious “me moment” of a shower.  But as a follower of Christ I also know that I am called to love my neighbor as Jesus did – by proclaiming good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free (as mentioned in Luke 4).  Seeking justice for others in these ways is at the heart of what it means to follow Christ.  It’s not just a call for some Christians; it’s for all of us – including us busy moms.

But it can be hard to figure out how I can be seeking justice for others in the midst of my chaotic life.  I read books by guys like Shane Claiborne and am inspired by how they have fully committed their lives to serving others.  Yet even as I am inspired by them, I know that I can’t move into a commune in the inner-city in order to devote my life to others.  It’s a great idea, just not very doable at this stage in life.  It’s frustrating that doing justice in this world often seems to fall into these all or nothing extremes.  Either one devotes every aspect of who they are to seeking justice or they opt out because they just can’t see how they can fit it into their lives.

But seeking justice doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing.  Many of the most serious justice issues in our world today are actually intimately connected to our everyday lives and therefore can be addressed through simple everyday actions as well.  Those diapers I change and those lunches I make are justice issues connecting me to people all over the world – my neighbors who Jesus has asked me to love.  Even in my busy life as a mom, I can be choosing to serve others through these daily actions, seeking justice even in the everyday.

It took me awhile (and a decent amount of research) to realize these things, and even longer to start to implement them into my life.  The whole process started for me with a deliberate choice to only buy fair trade coffee.  I had read the stories that coffee farmers around the world were literally being cheated of their wages for the coffee they grew.  They could no longer send their children to school, and were struggling to even put food on the table.  Many of these farmers were being forced off their land simply because the price they were being paid for their work no longer allowed them to even survive.  Fair trade companies though choose to respect the dignity of the coffee farmers.  By purchasing fair trade coffee I know that the farmers were paid a decent wage for their work, allowed to have a say in how the coffee is grown, and were not abused or threatened as they worked.  Sure, it costs me a little more to buy this coffee, but I’m fine paying the full cost of my coffee instead of cheating the farmers of their wages so I can have cheap coffee.  My morning cup of coffee is a justice issue.

From there I learned how the clothes I wear often are made by children in abusive sweatshops, that the cell phone I use has connections to guerilla squads that terrorize and rape women, that the chocolate I eat was grown by children trafficked into slavery, and that the energy I use has destroyed communities in Appalachia and Nigeria.  My daily life connects me to people around the world, and often my choices inadvertently harm others.  If I wanted to seek justice for them, I needed to start by (slowly) changing habits in my everyday life.  As with coffee, I could buy things that had been fairly produced, seeking alternatives to oppressive systems.  But I could also use my power as a consumer to send letters to companies and the government telling them that I care about how those who produce the goods I consume are treated.   My everyday life would continue, but I wanted to make sure that even in the small things I choose to pursue the paths of justice and love

My life is crazy as a mom, and it would have been easy to think that seeking justice is one of those things I’d get around to one of these days.  But seeing the connections in my everyday life to worldwide justice issues changed me.  I realized that I had no choice but to start seeking justice for others since I was already so intimately connected with the injustices they experience.  It just took figuring out the small everyday ways that I could integrate justice into my life to start that journey.

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