mother of exiles?

mother of exiles?

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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Except no more. No more the “mother of exiles.” No more a world-wide welcome. The lamp has been set down and the gates closed. If you are from Syria or Iran or Libya or Yemen or Iraq or Somalia or Sudan – stay away! We don’t want you! We won’t welcome you!

We are not turning away terrorists. We are turning away their victims. And we are betraying our nation’s heritage.

We need to speak up. We need to object. We need to say: “This is not who we are!”

You can start by visiting the website of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

OUR VISION
Immigrants, refugees, and uprooted people will live dignified lives with
their rights respected and protected in communities of opportunity.

OUR MISSION
To protect the rights and address the needs of persons in forced or
voluntary migration worldwide and support their transition to a dignified life.

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fire with fire?

fire with fire?

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Trump on waterboarding: ‘We have to fight fire with fire’

When you fight fire with fire, that’s what you get: more fire. When you fight fire with fire, you are no different than your enemy. When you counter something immoral with something immoral, you are immoral. This is not a partisan issue. This is a moral issue. Torture is NEVER the right thing to do. Torture is a betrayal of everything we claim as a nation to stand for: justice, certain inalienable human rights, and the rule of law.

If you agree, add your name to the petition: Torture is not an American value.

Torture harms not only those who are tortured; it also damages the souls of those who torture and of those who turn aside and allow people to be tortured.

In 2015, a new law authored by Senators John McCain & Dianne Feinstein and passed by Congress permanently banned the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding and sexual humiliation, that were part of the CIA’s torture program.

We call upon President Trump and his Administration to follow U.S. law and common decency by respecting the dignity and worth of each human being and rejecting torture in every way.

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holding on to hope and compassion

holding on to hope and compassion

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A New Year’s reflection from Rachel Held Evans: 2016 and the Risk of Birth

An excerpt …

For me, the dissonance of this strange year is compounded by the fact that motherhood turned my bleeding heart into a hemorrhage. It’s as though I’ve become porous, my skin absorbing the pain of others, particularly other mamas and babies. (Speaking of which, why did all the good shows this year involve children in peril? I’m looking at you, “Stranger Things”!) Every night, as I nurse my boy in that cozy armchair in his nursery, I think of the Syrian mama nursing her baby in a raft adrift in the Mediterranean Sea. I think of the shell-shocked boy from Aleppo. I think of how every Latino kid taunted by classmates, every soldier sent to war, every autistic kid who will lose his therapy when ACA is repealed, every black man shot by police is somebody else’s baby boy, somebody else’s most important person in the world. I still, almost every day, think of Sandy Hook.

“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”

Motherhood invited me into other people’s skin in a way I’ve never experienced before. So my joy is big and real and consuming, but also incomplete. I am overwhelmed by the conviction that every mother should be able to feed her baby like this, in safety and contentedness, and I am haunted by the reality that this is still far from the case.

In 2016, I became more aware than ever of the darkness around us, and more invested than ever in lighting the path.

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let the mountains (and the people) be!

let the mountains (and the people) be!

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I have just returned from a nine day stay in West Virginia, enjoying the “wild and wonderful” landscape and doing work to help a low income family in Summers County. The people of West Virginia are hardworking and independent and more vulnerable to environmental health risks than residents of almost any other state.

Mountain top coal mining is doing great damage to the longterm viability of the West Virginia ecosystem and already constitutes a dire threat to human health by contaminating and/or shutting off sources of drinking water.

The Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act (H.R.526 – ACHE Act) asks the federal government to put a moratorium on new mountain top removal projects until its health risks are properly and fully assessed. Please ask your representatives to co-sponsor this bill and show that we are indeed “united” states when it comes to protecting each other from grave threats to health and well-being.

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we are the temple of the living god

we are the temple of the living god

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We are the temple of the living God …

For my personal devotions at the beginning of each day, I read from a book by Frederick Buechner, entitled “Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith.” It is alphabetical dictionary of daily readings, each focussed on a single word. I am currently in the “h’s” and Monday’s word was “holiness.” The entry begins this way …

Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God’s holiness is God’s Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God’s mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize.

It got me thinking about holy places. Do you have a holy place?
… a place removed from the distractions and noise and clutter of your daily routine?
… a place where you see and hear more clearly?
… a place where you know that God is because you recognize his mark, because you feel God’s presence?
… a place where you know that regardless of whatever it is that someone or something else has done or may do to you or whatever it is that you have done or may do to yourself, that here you are OK?
… a place where you feel whole, where you feel connected, where you feel peace?
… a place where you are healed, forgiven, saved?
… a place that is not at all about you, but where, more than any other place, you feel yourself?
… a place that is full of God?

I pray that you have such a place. And as I think of each person I know and love, I am praying that they may have such a place …
… a place where you will know God is.
… a place you will know who you are.

We are the temple of the living God …

We are meant to be a holy place. Wherever we are, among whomever we are, you and I are meant to be a holy place, so that whenever friends or strangers are with us …
… they will see and hear more clearly.
… they will feel connected, forgiven, healed.
… they will feel OK.
… they will know God is, because they recognize the marks, because they feel God’s presence.

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responding to terror

responding to terror

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If this is indeed a spiritual war, as I believe it is — not Christianity vs. Islam — but the way of peace vs. the way of violence, it must be fought, and may only be won, with spiritual “weapons:” prayer, steady resolve, unflagging attempts at reconciliation, refusal to let fear or grief, as real as they may be, diminish our hope or our joy. We will win, the earth will win, not by annihilating the enemy, but by loving the enemy, not by making war, but by making something beautiful of our selves and our world.

Answering violence with violence may make small gains and win some short-term sense of security, but in the long run, this security is illusory, and the only winner is violence itself and all of us are the losers.

Is this way expedient? Does it pass the common sense test? No … but common sense and expediency are never the arbiters of what is right. Let’s not be stronger, but wiser … and better.

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