Category Archives: Social Justice

Too Many Days of Lent: I’ve Been Revelling in the Weather

Posted on 30 March 2012 | 2 comments

How much of a blessing has this weather been?! The trees are bloomed out with leaves and assorted flowers, the wild flowers are brightly colored and diverse, the grass is growing and growing and growing, and the birds wake me up every morning with their anger or sexual desire, whichever is worse I am unsure. They scream and chatter and occasionally whistle and chirp outside our bedroom window at the bird feeders. They are my natural alarm clock, beautiful and harsh.

Every time I look out the window at the beauty of the day, I want school to be over so I can play outside. I want to go swimming, biking, running, disc golfing, kayaking, and I want to do every other activity that someone can do outside! I want to roll down a hill and make myself sick. I want to be free. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: God wants us to play. There is a whole theology of play that helps us to better relate to the divine through spontaneous acts of creative play.

Part of play for me is recognizing who I am in Christ and being free from societal constraints. In other words, I feel free to play when I realize that my identity lies in Christ and not in what other people think of me. And, I play with reckless abandon, which means I have a few people in my life that don’t quite understand me. My greatest desire is to be unencumbered by those things that other people see as necessary. My mom always says to other people, “I think she just wants to be poor.” Yeah, I do. I don’t want to be tied down by earthly possessions or monetary things. I never intended to buy a house. I would love to get rid of all my stuff until everything I own or everything I need could fit in my camping backpack. I’m pretty sure that would make me perfect for monastic life, which is still a kind of dream of mine. I’m not sure I want to be monastic in the “I’m celibate and live in a cold cell with a hair shirt” kind of monastic, but more in the new monastic, communal living sort of way where I share things with my community members.

When I am having these thoughts, my morning prayers typically confirm my thoughts or dissuade me from them. Today they confirm with this quote from Peter Maruin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement: “The world would be better off if -people tried to become better. And -people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.” I think living in a self-sustaining community and trying to be better and more compassionate is definitely a way for me to be better off. I think of communities like Simple Way and the way they intertwine work and play in all aspects of their lives.

I would be able to work hard and play hard without trying to conform to some arbitrary economic constraints.

I would only have to please God and provide for my “family.”

I would have plenty of time to revel in the beauty of God’s world and word.

I could play.

Peace.

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Posted in Art, Capitalism, Christianity, CNF, Disc golf, Ethics, Goals, Homelessness, Lent, Mental Health, Play, Politics, Poverty, Relationships, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality

Tagged Christian, Lent, New Monastic, Play, Poor, Prayer, Spring

Lent Day 28 & 29: All My Stuff, Imago Dei, and the American Dream

Posted on 21 March 2012 | 1 comment

I have a lot of stuff. As I write this, I am sitting in a not-so-comfortable chair, suffering God knows what kind of allergies, thinking about how blessed I am. Within my reach, without even moving from this chair, I have books about lots of topics (John Wesley’s Sermons; Living Buddha, Living Christ; Reluctant Pilgrim; The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Revelations; Paradise; The Ask and the Answer; Mockingjay; the Bible), magazines as varied (Runner’s World; Sojourner’s Magazine; The Writer’s Chronicle), and a graphic novel (Billy Fog and the Gift of Trouble Sight). I have an empty (previously full) glass of clean water and a belly full of delicious food. I have clean clothes, electricity, and too many gadgets. I have every tangible thing I could ever want (except for a brand new Nissan Z). I am blessed.

A line near the end of Billy Fog and the Gift of Trouble Sight says, “Don’t waste your time being mean. Just watch—the years go by in the blink of an eye… Be good to your parents, and work hard at school.” For as blessed as I am, and likely you are, I spend an awful lot of time dwelling on those things I don’t have. I could list a handful of things I’d like to go buy if I had the money to. Are any of those, things I need? Not likely. I have a coat for the winter. I have shoes. Lots of shoes. I have so many clothes I can’t wear them all in a week (or probably a month), and I have access to a a washer and dryer in my house, so there’s really no need for it. But I compare myself to the people around me and come up short every time. There is always something I could do better, purchase bigger, be rewarded for more lavishly. Isn’t this, after all, the American Dream? To get ahead?

Sometimes, because they want to get ahead, people are mean. They’ll stop at nothing to get ahead, and before they know it, their lives have passed them by and they’re left with a closet full of clothes, shelves full of books, and enough shoes to outfit the Harlem Globetrotters. I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to live my life with meaning, because it seems fairly simple to “be good to your parents, and work hard at school.” Being good seems fairly simple, but it’s not for me. Being a competitive jerk is much easier, getting caught up the capitalist snare of trying to do better than those people around me until I no longer recognize myself or the imago dei inside of me. I lose sight of God in me. I can’t recognize the divine in myself, but I can see that my friends’ shoes are cooler than mine, that I don’t have the latest fashions, or that I need one more book. That’s the big one for me: books.

“Don’t waste your time being mean.” Instead, use your time to rediscover the image of God inside you, hiding there beneath all the layers of excess that have built up around you. Shed the American dream for the imago dei.

On a personal note, I’ve been in an athletic slump for about three weeks. I haven’t run in at least as long, and I have a 9 mile race in two weeks. I doubt that’s going to happen, and I seriously doubt the 13.1 miles that are supposed to happen in May are going to happen. Some prayers would be appreciated on the exercise front. In order to help hold myself accountable, I signed up for this College Swim Trip from March 26 to April 27. During that month, I am supposed to swim a total of 57 miles, the distance from Ball State to Butler. My goal is to run 2 miles and swim 2 miles each morning. That’s an hour of swimming and a half hour of running, which isn’t really too much to ask, right? I’m really not sure why I’ve been in such a funk. Here’s to healthy eating, healthy exercise, and to mental and spiritual health.

Peace.

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Posted in Capitalism, Christianity, Ethics, Goals, Grace, Lent, Mental Health, Relationships, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality

Tagged Capitalism, Christianity, Communism, Jealousy, Jesus, Lent, Stuff

Lent Day 18: Your Kingdom Come

Posted on 10 March 2012 | 1 comment

“Through our lives and by our prayers, may your kingdom come!” —Midday Prayers

I sometimes forget, when I pray the Lord’s prayer, that the way God’s kingdom will come here and now is through those of us who believe in Jesus, who are part of the body of Christ. (If you know me well, you know I don’t discount the inherent goodness of humanity, but this specific Jesus kingdom, I think, is ushered in by those of us who are Christians. Good thoughts and actions come from all kinds of people.) God’s kingdom comes through our lives and through our prayers, and I love this midday reminder.

Too often I sit around, navel gazing, wondering why the world isn’t a better place, and I spend too little time consciously going out and making the world look like God’s kingdom here on earth. It’s easier for me to think about and write about how God’s kingdom works, than to make the necessary strides for it to actually happen here on earth. Sometimes it simply takes too much energy. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed by all that needs to happen to make this earth look like the Kingdom of God. Sometimes I am simply too self-focused to help others. Sometimes I flat out don’t feel God. Sometimes, though, I simply feel like I am stuck in a situation where I can’t really bring the Jesus to party, because I can’t figure out how to get past the injustices, the inequalities around me.

For example, I was having coffee with a friend of mine the other day, and she very seriously said to me, Corby, I don’t think you’ll ever be happy. Everywhere you work, you’ll always see something wrong. Everywhere you look, you see the negatives. True story. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment, but I sort of took it as one anyway. I don’t want to be happy, which I think in the above sentence really means complacent, within an institution that is corrupt. I want to be able to see those points of injustice or arbitrarily laid out hierarchies, and I want to have the wisdom and the grace to change them. And, yes, I will likely not be happy until we bring God’s kingdom, which looks so much different than what we’ve got laid out before us right now. And, no, I probably won’t be happy untilall people have equal rights, equal access, equal respect, or simply put equality. As Jesus said in Matthew 20:16, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” May your kingdom come.

As usual, my day in photos:

A Pretty, Mossy Stump by the White River

A Little Brook at the Mounds

Man Only Chapstick: It sits flat in your pocket, so your bros don't know you like soft lips.

A Circle Window at Gordy's Framing

Replica Canoe, I'm Driving

Obsessed With My Own Shadow

Twentieth Century Flats

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Posted in Christianity, Grace, Lent, Photos, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality

Tagged Body of Christ, Christianity, Jesus, Kingdom of God, Lent, Lord's Prayer, Photos

Lent Day 16: Do the Best You Can Where You Are

Posted on 8 March 2012 | 4 comments

We are all complicit in the world in which we live. Unless we live completely off the grid, self-sustaining, and 100% independent of anyone else, we are complicit in what US culture (or global culture for that matter) has become. Wealth is made on the backs of the poorest and neediest. We criticize even those who try to make a difference. Perhaps because they aren’t making a big enough difference in our opinions. Or maybe they aren’t making the right difference in the right way.

What I learned in a succession of strange and serendipitous interactions today is that we each have to do the best we can to live our lives in a way that we can live with the choices we make, in a way that we can live with ourselves, in a way that we can look at ourselves in the mirror and not feel ashamed.

For some people, that way of living may be completely and totally morally reprehensible to someone else. For example, my Starbucks habit may make Fair Trade only coffee drinkers cringe. Someone else’s insistence on wearing Nike (or insert other brand) tennis shoes may perk up my sensors for labor abuse. People may look at my Mac and curse my choices, and I may see their copy of The Purpose Driven Life and question were those profits are going. Each of us has a commodity-related Achilles heel. Each of us has a love (or necessity) that is bound up in immoral and unethical practices.

But, if each us will do his or her little part to make the world a more ethical place, instead of continually judging each other for what we’re not doing, then we will see much ethical and moral growth. With each person making small strides, together we’re making great strides, right? I realize this is a little more pie-in-the-sky hopeful and optimistic—and even quite a bit cheesier, possibly a bit preachier—than my usual posts, but we have to start somewhere. If we start somewhere, it’s better than simply sitting around finger pointing, right? Right?

Now I’m respectfully stepping off the soap box.

A good portion of the beauty of today (and every day) was in simplicity.