map legend

how to find your way (taken @ a Berkeley bus stop)

california is not the midwest

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself what time of year it is.

trigger points

This weekend I had the choice of attending a workshop on “Learning to Manage Emotional Trigger Points” or attending an ordination ceremony for classmates who are being ordained Catholic deacons (and who will soon be ordained priests).  Since past ordinations I’ve attended have tended to be a bit on the triggering* side for me, it seemed fitting to opt for the workshop.

Part of my decision to leave the Catholic Church has to do with needing to distance myself from negative triggering events.  I miss attending Mass on Sundays, but I don’t miss being reminded on a regular basis of the hurt inflicted on me and on people I love by Catholics in positions of authority. I don’t miss the feeling of tense dread that would sometimes invade my prayer, painful memories surfacing and making it difficult to stay for the entire liturgy.

I am happy for my classmates who were ordained this weekend.  I know that they are doing their best to follow the Spirit’s call and serve God and neighbor.  I will continue to try to do the same.

*Being triggered is when a person “experiences a current event that activates feelings or thoughts associated with a past event, often a traumatic one.”

a resource for burnout prevention

Over the years I’ve seen many people go through burnout.  It happened a lot to volunteers in New Orleans, and I saw it happen during my brief stint as a youth minister.  The activist community also has a very high rate of burnout.

This past April I had the privilege of working with the Youth Worker: Collective as they revamped their workshop format on self-care and rejuvenation for people who work for or on behalf of youth.  But the workshop isn’t just a professional resource for youth workers; it can be used in any community looking for new ways to avoid burnout.

In addition to helping draft the curriculum, I wrote a paper that explains some of the whys and hows of what we did  (I happened to be taking a pedagogy course at the time).  I tried to keep the academic jargon out of this draft, so hopefully it’s an accessible read.

The workshop curriculum and materials can be downloaded for free at the Youth Worker: Collective website by clicking here.  Use all or part of it as it makes sense for your particular community.  And if you’re in the Bay Area and would like some facilitators to do a workshop, get in touch with the folks at the Youth Worker: Collective.

Niagara Falls, not just for honeymooners

Visitors to Niagara Falls today got a reminder that the natural beauty and well being of our planet is threatened if we don’t put an end to environmentally disastrous practices like the production of tar sands oil. Major props to my friends Nick and Logan and all the folks who took part in this action today!

clipped from itsgettinghotinhere.org Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate and Native Rights activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil. Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian Federal and Provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

Sarah, Shane, and Josh

It’s been 1 month since three hikers from the U.S. were detained for accidentally crossing into Iranian territory. They are known and loved by people I know and love, and I continue to pray for their safe return.

Please go to the website posted below and support them.

clipped from freethehikers.org FREE THE HIKERS SHANE BAUER, SARAH SHOURD, JOSH FATTAL Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd have been detained in Iran since July 31, 2009, when news reports say they accidentally crossed an unmarked border during a hiking trip in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. They were in a peaceful region of Iraq that is increasingly popular with Western tourists. The three young Americans, all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, are believed to be held in the Iranian capital, Tehran. They have not been charged with any crime, have had no contact with their families, and have not been granted their right to consular access. Shane, Josh and Sarah care greatly about the world. They admire and respect different cultures and religions and share a love of travel that has taken them to many countries. That’s why they went to Kurdistan, not because they wanted to enter Iran.

more about Tristan

I think that feeling a sense of righteous anger at this latest news would mean that I was also feeling some kind of surprise or shock. Sadly, the continuing injustices done to Palestinian civilians and their supporters is far too commonplace. The only difference in this latest injustice is that it is directly impacting someone I know, and that makes my sadness deeper.

I continue to pray for Tristan’s recovery, and continue to hope and advocate for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

clipped from www.maannews.net Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israel has declared the shooting of unarmed American demonstrator Tristan Anderson in the West Bank to be an “act of war” in a bid to avoid compensating his family. Tsemel, the civil suit attorney told Ma’an that the “act of war” designation automatically releases the government from paying compensation under a recently-amended tort law. Israel makes this designation “all the time,” in tort cases involving Palestinian victims, she said. “If a process by which unarmed civilian demonstration is classified by Israel as an ‘act of war,’ then clearly Israel admits that it is at war with civilians,” said Attorney Michael Sfard, who is handling the criminal side of the Anderson case, in a statement circulated by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Anderson was shot at a distance of 60 meters while standing with a group of Palestinians and international activists, hours after the demonstration had been dispersed from the construction site of the Wall.

If you would like to make a donation to help with Tristan’s ongoing medical care, click here.

What if it’s true?

My mom and her siblings are plotting to kill their elderly mother. Well, according to the rumors being spread about proposed health care legislation, this is what they’re doing. It’s true.

They meet every several months to discuss “advance care planning” issues regarding my grandmother, who is now in an assisted living facility due to dementia and related health concerns. They discuss such awful things as “living wills and durable powers of attorney.” Now that their mother is not able to make fully informed decisions regarding her care, a family member needs to have power of attorney to make important decisions regarding her ongoing care. This person with the “role and responsibilities of a health care proxy” needs to be informed about “advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.”  It sounds pretty sinister.

As they gather in their private meetings, my relatives have no doubt discussed possible resources for providing for my grandmother’s ongoing care as her mental and physical health deteriorates. Perhaps they even consulted “a list of national and State-specific resources to assist… families with advance care planning,” or discussed the “continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” as well as “orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar orders…”  I know, it’s quite shocking.

According to the logic of opponents of health care reform, this kind of “advance care planning consultation” my family members are doing is exactly the same as figuring out how and when to euthanize our mother/grandmother so that she’ll no longer be a financial or emotional burden on our family. See, the words in quotations above are taken directly from page 425 of HR3200, the page that critics are citing when they claim that health care reform will mean that senior citizens will be forced to meet with doctors who will bully them into committing suicide or signing away their rights to ongoing medical treatment. I took a look at that page of proposed legislation as quoted at factcheck.org, and realized that all that fancy talk of life-sustaining treatment and discussing important matters ahead of time (so that in the high emotion of an end-of-life crisis the family can already have a plan in place) must be just coded, secret language for “how to kill old people.”

So, given that my mother, aunts, and uncles are already engaging in the kinds of actions listed in the proposed legislation, I now know the truth: they’re plotting to kill my grandmother.

No, I don’t really believe that.  I know that they are all extremely caring people, trying to make difficult decisions in what can be a very emotional and stressful situation.  I also believe that giving senior citizens the option to meet with a medical professional to discuss end-of-life issues as part of their ongoing health care is a responsible and ethical thing to do.

(And if you think it’s crass of me to use the example of my aging grandmother to make a satirical point in a blog post, you must be even more upset that millions of elders in the U.S. are being deliberately lied to in order to score a political victory and block health care reform.)

recommended reading

I don’t have much more to say on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates that hasn’t been said better and more intelligently by others, so instead I’ll link to some my favorites.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon writes about the growing acceptance of police brutality and willingness to blame the victim in this and other situations of abuse.  I also appreciate that she notes how so few have questioned whether the police report contained inaccuracies about the incident (having had firsthand experience with police writing outright lies on arrest reports, this was one of the first things I noticed in the coverage of the story: the way in which the incident report was taken as factual truth, instead of the subjective reporting of an officer who just might need to cover up any misconduct on his part.  But I digress…).

Inspired by Marcotte’s post, Fred at the Slacktivist does his usual brilliant job of looking at the issue through the lens of his progressive Christian faith, this time using the story of Job to look at victim blaming.

Finally, I highly, highly recommend Tim Wise’s essay “Denial is a River, Wider Than the Charles: Racism and Implicit Bias in Cambridge.” Yes, it’s a little heavy on the academic language and may be a tough read for some, but please, especially if you are a person with white skin in the U.S., take some time to struggle with this one.

fasting for Gaza

I am taking part in this fast. Please consider doing the same, or doing another action to help bring an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  A simple action such as donating to the Milk for Preschoolers Campaign sponsored by American Near East Refugee Aid is a great way to start.

clipped from www.fastforgaza.net http://www.fastforgaza.net Today, Thursday July 16, over sixty American rabbis, representing all of the liberal streams of American Judaism, will initiate the Jewish Fast for Gaza, a monthly fast that seeks to end the Jewish community’s silence over Israel’s collective punishment in Gaza that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis of overwhelming proportions. They are joined by over five hundred religious leaders and people of faith from across the United States who will participate in the fast. Why Fast? In the Book of Leviticus we read, “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s blood is being spilled” (Leviticus 19:16). In Jewish tradition a communal fast is held in times of crisis, both as an expression of mourning and a call to repentance. In this spirit, Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza is a collective act of conscience led by rabbis and other Jews but supported by Christians, Muslims, and a wide diversity of other people alarmed by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.