Waking Up Earley

Thoughts, Ideas and Inspiration by Melissa Earley

Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 6)

It’s How You Play the Game

April 6, 2017 / / 2 Comments

The collapse of our democracy won’t be by a nuclear blast, a dirty bomb or a cyber attack. It will be a slow leak of our sense of fair play, the art of compromise, and civility that will sink us.

The Democrats in the Senate have enough votes to filibuster, a procedural move that requires 60 votes to move on to the main vote on nominees and legislation, the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Neil Gorsuch. In response the Republicans have vowed to eliminate the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, a vote that only requires a simply majority. It’s a procedural change and it matters. A filibuster prevents the bullying of the minority by the majority. The majority have to negotiate with the minority. The filibuster pushes Senators out of entrenched partisan positions into bipartisan negotiation.

Outcomes matter, but process is more important. As a pastor a big part of my role is to safeguard the way we make decisions. I’m ordained to “Word, Sacrament, Service and Order.” I started out thinking of Order as the boring stuff of administration and building management. After close to 20 years in ordained ministry I’ve learned that “Order” is about more than church budget spreadsheets, roofing material and shared building use contracts. Order is about how we decide what we decide. How do we hear from everyone and not just those with the loudest voice? How do we be sure we are doing what’s right and not just what’s comfortable.

In elections I want my candidates to win. I want the legislation I support to get passed. But I also want the rule of democracy to thrive. I want to live in a country where our common good is more important than winning at all costs. Our leaders in Washington (and in Springfield) have forgotten an important lesson from elementary school gym class: “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”

 

Stories not Statistics

March 22, 2017 / / 6 Comments

The lines on the form are too short so I draw small arrows indicating that the reader should flip the paper over to read more. Most Saturday mornings that I volunteer at the Justice For Our Neighbors immigration legal clinic I could fill a notebook with the stories I hear.

I started volunteering at JFON a little over a year ago because I wanted to practice my Spanish. I usually do intake interviews which means filling out paperwork that the lawyer will review when she meets with the new client. The forms ask about income and savings and members in the household. They ask about arrests and imprisonments and jail sentences. They ask about entrances and exits from the United States. They ask if the person has ever been a victim of a crime and if they came to the United States against their will. Sometimes the questions feel intrusive. But each question could lead to an answer that provides a path that leads to a door with a lock to which the person on the other side of the desk from me in the bare church office may learn they have a key. Or not. It’s not my job to assess the case, only to hear the first telling of it.

Behind every word I write on the form is a story – a story of family left behind, of danger escaped, of hope followed, of fear of being caught. I asked Luisa, “Are you afraid for your life if you return to your country?” Her twenty minute answer of black eyes, broken teeth, a broken arm all at the hands of her common law husband, whose drinking buddy is the chief of police, whom she finally left when he threatened her with a knife didn’t fit in the lines. I asked Minerva, whose husband Rogelio had been deported, Has he been convicted of a crime? She told me about their home being broken into multiple times and Rogelio had gone after the perpetrator when they ran into each other on the street, but Rogelio’s lawyer hadn’t told them that the plea bargain would result in Rogelio’s deportation and they didn’t know that Rogelio’s deportation may have been stopped because he had helped the police investigate their home invasion.  I asked Mario, “Were you brought to this country against your will?” he laughed out loud. His answer, a commentary on the devastating effects of NAFTA on the Mexican farmer, was that he hadn’t wanted to leave his town, his wife, his children, but in 1996 it was no longer possible to survive on the income from his small family farm. I wrote, “No,” on form.

Behind every statistic is a story. Behind every applause line in a political speech are actual people in actual circumstances. To learn more about the complexities of immigration check out these websites:

Northern Illinois Justice for Our Neighbors

Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

Why Not “Fearless Woman?”

March 15, 2017 / / 2 Comments

I wonder what the reaction would be if the statue were of a woman and not a girl. Fearless Girl was installed near Wall Street early in the morning, Tuesday, March 7, 2017, the day before International Woman’s Day. It is of a girl, staring down Charging Bull. Her hands are on her hips and her bitch wings are out. Charging Bull’s head is down and he paws the ground. The two are locked in a battle of wills. And it looks to me like Fearless Girl is winning.

I like the statue. I like the plaque on the ground that says, “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” I even like that Fearless Girl is a commercial from State Street Global Advisors to highlight their work encouraging companies to put women in top leadership positions. SHE is their exchange traded fund which invests in companies that have high levels of women on their boards and in senior leadership. The statue is supposed to highlight women in leadership, so why is it a girl?

When I imagine the sculpture as a woman I immediately anticipate the comments: Her butt is too big. Her breasts are too small. Why isn’t she prettier? Her shoes wouldn’t just be shoes. They would be “Power pumps exerting the force of her femininity,” or “Mannish shoes for a man’s world.” Instead of defiant, her face would be called “resting bitch face.” Someone would suggest she smile more.

If Fearless Girl were Fearless Woman we might have some questions: Does she have a partner who is sharing the load of raising the kids? Does her company provide adequate childcare? What about family leave so she can care for her aging parents? Does her health plan include contraception and prenatal care? Does she make as much money as her male colleagues? Is she interrupted more often than they are? Are her ideas only taken seriously when a male coworker repeats them? Is she ever mistaken for the secretary?

I like Fearless Girl. I like the way she draws us into her story. She sparks our imagination and triggers our aspiration. I like the photos of girls standing beside Fearless Girl, imitating her defiant pose. They learn from her to be tough and confident. They learn the power of bitch wings. Watch out, world. Those fearless girls will grow up.

 

Nesting birds in Lake Chapala, Mexico

Vacationing While the World Falls Apart

February 25, 2017 / / 5 Comments

I’m on vacation while the world is going to hell. I come back from breakfast and learn that Trump has banned immigrants and refugees from certain “Muslim” countries. I wake up from a nap and discover he’s fired the Attorney General for opposing his ban. My friends are protesting at O’Hare airport while I kayak on Lake Chapala and hike to the capilla. I see a boy on the street wearing a white t-shirt with black block letters that read: “Tuck Frump.” I laugh and then apologize.

I want to be informed and I want my vacation. I want to speak out about Trump’s follies and I want to just watch dog videos on Facebook. It’s strange to not be painting my own placard to carry at a demonstration or listening to updated reports from NPR, and it’s a relief. I don’t want to hide from what is happening. I don’t want to stick my head in the sand and pretend it will just get better. But I don’t want give Trump permission to set up residence in my soul.

The next few years will be long ones. There will be many demonstrations to attend, letters to write, calls to make, articles to read, information to vet, conversations to engage, money to send. Even if Trump resigns or is impeached, Pence is waiting. I suspect he will be harder to resist because he will appear more “presidential.”

Resistance will be a marathon not a sprint. We will need to find moments to breath deep, to laugh long and hard, to enjoy those we love, to seek out joy. Sabbath was God’s gift to the Hebrew people. God gave the Sabbath so that they would remember that they weren’t under Pharoah’s thumb anymore. Sabbath rest may be a profound act of resistance for us.

Freedom Isn’t Free

February 18, 2017 / / 2 Comments

The military can protect our borders. It cannot protect our freedom. The greatest threat to our democracy is not an enemy amassing along our borders or terrorists lurking in our midst. The greatest threat to our democracy is our willingness to let it go.

Protecting our borders is important. Within our borders are our homes, our jobs, and our children. Within our borders are natural wonders and means of production. Within our borders we practice our faith, celebrate our traditions, and raise our families. But protecting our borders is not the same as guarding our freedom.

Freedom isn’t license to do or say whatever we want, no holds barred, uninhibited by the potential consequences to ourselves or others. Freedom depends on our capacity for civil discourse, respectful disagreement, and informed debate. It depends on our willingness to be engaged and not merely to react; to be involved and not manipulated. Freedom is our ability to govern ourselves without giving over that responsibility to a tyrant or a bully.

“Freedom isn’t free,” shout bumper stickers. It’s not free. To be free we must bear uncertainty, complexity and nuance.   To be free we must be willing to protect the rights of others to think differently than we do. To be free we must diligently keep watch over our elected leaders and hold them accountable.

We depend on a free press to relay the news, and not just report the sensational things that people say. We depend on our religious institutions to give people the vision of what is possible and a sense of the deep connectedness of all people – that what’s in my poor neighbor’s best interest is in my interest as well. We depend on our educational system to equip us to think deeply about difficult issues.

Our democracy is more than the white marble buildings that house our institutions and more than the people with American flag pins that staff our government. Our democracy is more than the piece of parchment with calligraphy. Our democracy is the people who vote, march, write letters to the editor and public officials, and who run for local office.

Our military can’t make qualified people run for office, or equip the electorate to tell the difference between a statesman and a clown. Our military can’t protect us from our acceptance of sexy sound bites as gospel truth. Our military cannot protect us from our unexamined bigotries and untested biases. Tyrannies are kept in place by militaries. The militaries of Hitler and Mussolini did not bring freedom. There is a military in North Korea, China and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I am grateful to the men and women of the armed services who protect our borders and our interests. May we create a nation worthy of their sacrifice.

The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

Why I Call Them the Cleveland Ball Club

November 1, 2016 / / 3 Comments

I don’t call the ball club from Cleveland by their name. Seeing close-ups of their players makes me cringe.  It’s not superstition or anxiety about the game.  Every time I hear their team name and see their cartoon mascot I think of the Sand Creek Massacre.

I visited the site of the November 29, 1864 Sand Creek Massacre this summer when I was in Colorado. I took an interstate to a highway to a narrow road to a dirt road to get to this sacred site that is a long way from everywhere.  I couldn’t even see the Rocky Mountains from this sun-baked patch of south-eastern Colorado.  I squinted even wearing sunglasses. Sagebrush and cottonwood trees marked the landscape. The Sand Creek riverbed was dry.  The rangers warned of rattle snakes.

John Evans was the Colorado Territory Governor in 1864.  He exploited the growing tensions between White settlers and Native Americans for his own political and business gains.  His speeches added to the fear-filled air, even issuing a proclamation in August, 1864 for citizens to “kill and destroy…hostile Indians.”

John Chivington was the commander of the Third Regiment of the US army.  He had been a popular Methodist Episcopal preacher.  His regiment wasn’t seeing any action and Chivington was eager for advancement.

Evans and Chivington invited “friendly Indians of the plains” to go to designated places of safety.  One of the negotiated places of safety was Sand Creek.  By mid-October there were 700 people living at Sand Creek, mostly Cheyenne and some Arapahoe.

When the sun rose on November 29 the village at Sand Creek started to stir. Children and grandparents, young men, old women, mothers, fathers, tended to chores.  They heard the beating of hooves and called out, “The buffalo are coming.”  But the thunder wasn’t from buffalo.  It was from hundreds of U.S. soldiers.  Peace Chief Black Kettle raised the white flag and the U.S. flag.  And still the soldiers came.  Cheyenne and Arapahoe chiefs walked toward the soldiers to ask for a parley.  The U.S. soldiers fired and all the chiefs except Black Kettle were killed.

On top of horses, the U.S. soldiers chased the fleeing Cheyenne and Arapahoe.  Some, mostly women, children and the elderly, dug sand pits in the river bed. Chivington ordered the U.S. soldiers to fire the howitzers. The soldiers executed those who surrendered.  They gunned down those who fled.  The firing stopped when the U.S. troops ran out of bullets.  Between 165 and 200 Cheyenne were killed, two-thirds of them were women, children and the elderly.  Another 200 were wounded or maimed.

The following day U.S. soldiers ransacked and burned the village.  They took trophies from the fallen bodies – scalps, fingers, genitals.

Some time later, The Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War found that Chivington had “surprised and murdered in cold blood….unsuspecting men, women, and children…who had every reason to believe that they were under [US] protection….”  No one was every indicted or tried in military or civilian court.  Chivington remained an ordained clergy person of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

I’ll watch the World Series tonight. I’ll cheer on the Cubs.  I’ll admire good plays by their opponent.  And I’ll remember Sand Creek.

 

Go, Cubs, Go!

October 25, 2016 / / 4 Comments

I was in Wrigleyville the night the Cubs clinched the NLCS championship. When my friend invited me to go I turned him down at first. It was a Saturday night and Sunday morning always comes early. I’m not really into crowds. Parking in that area was going to be a nightmare. But I realized that if they won it was going to be historic.

We watched the game from the street. Stadium neighbors had turned their TVs to face outward. A bar had put a couple of large screens on its outside walls. We could hear the roars from Wrigley Field. The crowds inside and outside the stadium were willing the Cubs to win. With every run people high-fived each other. Strangers congratulated each other, grasping shoulders and giving pats on the back. We landed in a small Korean restaurant for the final innings. Sitting at tables around us were Hispanic, African American, and Asian fans and Chicago cops. A community of hopeful longing formed in our restaurant. When the Cubs won the whole restaurant lifted off the ground a few inches. People poured into the streets. There was no destruction. Only celebration. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

I know it was only baseball, but it felt like a real Kingdom of God moment.

We have a chance to come together in an even more meaningful way by giving to Hurricane Matthew Relief in Haiti. Our Bishop, Sally Dyck, and the Bishop of the East Ohio Annual Conference Tracy Smith Malone have challenged each other to a cross-conference rivalry to see which annual conference can raise the most money for Hurricane Matthew relief in Haiti. Click on the link below to give your gift, be sure to mark Northbrook UMC so that our conference gets credit. Invite friends to give too. Dare Cleveland fans. Let’s do all we can to let Haiti be the winner of the World Series!

Give to Hurricane Relief

Join the World Series Cross-Conference Challenge for Haiti

A Misfit’s Heart Strangely Warmed

October 18, 2016 / / 8 Comments

I was surprised that I wanted to go to church. I was in the middle of a six-week renewal leave from local church ministry and had purposefully avoided anything to do with church the first few weeks. I ended up in a small church in a small town on a high mountain of Colorado.   I had been invited by a friend who couldn’t go with me. When I walked into the sanctuary almost half way through the worship service the entire congregation turned to look at me – all seventeen of them. There was the guy with unwashed, shoulder length hair who had his own oxygen tank. The woman in mismatched shoes. The family with the two children who ran around the edges of the sanctuary. The boy, about 10, pulled his arms into his sleeves and fluttered his hands like wings while he made wet motor sounds with his lips. I wanted someone to sit on him. There was one woman who looked like someone who could be my friend. “What an island of misfit toys,” I thought.

And then something happened. The prayer of confession’s words were familiar, “Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and what we left undone…” The difference was that in this church we knelt to pray. We knelt on the floor. We knelt on the worn carpet and muttered our prayers together, “We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” Tears pricked my eyes. They weren’t tears of guilt or shame. The prayer of confession became a moment of unexpected grace. Something snuck in.

And then the pastor sat on a pew facing the congregation and led us in a conversation about the scripture passage, Jesus’ story about a man whose harvest was so plentiful he decided to tear down his barn and build a bigger one but dies that night. The conversation touched on the congregation’s successful badgering of a local supermarket chain to provide food for the free community meals that they host several times a week. Among these folks, many of whom looked like at one time or another they had trouble paying their rent, or an electricity bill or buying groceries, I thought about how my own anxiety about money traps me. And how it traps my church.  I thought of how we want to be the “cool kids.” And in that moment I wanted to be one of the misfit toys.

As I worshipped with this strange little congregation I let down my defenses. This congregation couldn’t worry about slick church growth strategies or programs attractive to young couples with attractive children and baby boomers with money to give. One day they may not be able to fix the roof or pay their pastor. But for now they’ll follow Jesus in their little church in their little mountain town.  And my heart was strangely warmed.

You’re Climbing a Mountain, It’s Supposed to Be Hard

August 31, 2016 / / 4 Comments

“Shush, Nellie. Stop that whining. You’re climbing a mountain. It’s supposed to be hard.” If I wasn’t vigilant, Nellie’s constant whining and naysaying was all I heard on my way up Shuksan Mountain. “You’re not in as good of shape as everyone else,” she said. “They’ve all climbed Mt. Rainier, and you never have. Who do you think you are?” “You are already so tired, do you really think you’ll make the top?” “If you quit now you could spend the next several days hanging out in the hotel.” “You’re too old to be doing this.” Nellie smiled smugly when I swayed a bit after putting on my full 45lb pack at the trailhead. She crowed when I vomited up water and Kind bar on the first day of the hike (likely caused by insufficient salt intake).

Nellie wasn’t a registered member of our group of seven hikers and four guides. She is the voice in my head who points out my weaknesses, keeps track of my mistakes, keeps a running commentary of why I won’t make my goal, and tries to convince me that people are only pretending to like me. I learned from a friend to give Nellie a name (some of you may remember Nellie Olson from Little House on the Prairie) and to keep her occupied. As it turns out, Nellie is pretty good at counting steps, a helpful activity when on the slow slog up a glacier, and she likes to sing. She and I gave new words to the song “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” Over and over again, she sang in my head “We are climbing Shuksan Mountain…” and then “Every step goes higher, higher.” Sometimes we would both get distracted by a stumble or steeper part of the ascent and Nellie would start complaining again. That’s when I reminded her that it was supposed to be hard, that we were in it together, and that I was going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I had to get tough, “Nellie, you are not the boss of me.”

The Gift of Not Knowing

August 1, 2016 / / 8 Comments

“It’s a gift to not know what to say,” was my writing teacher’s response to my whining about the weekly grind of producing a Sunday sermon. I was looking for an escape from being caught between the wall of what I am supposed to say and the ocean of silence of what I can say with conviction. When Diana Goetsch, our writing instructor, met with us the first night she said that, “writing is not self expression. It is other expression.” She explained that the goal of the workshop was to slip the noose of the ego because “the lease creative force is the human ego.”

I like being told that my writing is good. I enjoy likes on Facebook and praise comments on my blog posts. During class Diana would give us writing prompts and we would write for five or ten or fifteen minutes. If we wanted we could what we wrote. But we didn’t give feedback. In the silence after sharing what we read I could feel the little ego inside of me jumping up and down and asking, “what did you think? Was it any good? Am I any good? Do you like me?” But writing, or any art for that matter, that is motivated by the ego’s need to be admired will never tap into the holy.

And that’s not the only way the ego gets in the way of art or revelation. The ego likes to be in control and thinks it has the right answers. We can’t truly explore if we already know where we’re going.

During one class we spent a significant portion talking about “negative capability,” a phrase coined by John Keats in a letter to his brother. He writes, “…several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…”

Negative capability is demanded by true spirituality and so often squashed by the church. We like our doctrines and our disciplines and our clear understandings of right and wrong. We like to pin God down, and stick him behind glass where we can point at him with admiration and pride and say, “see what I found.” Negative capability invites us to understand the Holy as a hummingbird that flits into and out of view in the same moment.

 

« Older posts Newer posts »

Subscribe to my blog

* indicates required

Most Recent Post

Recent Discussions

Social

© 2024 Waking Up Earley

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑