I dreamed of my cousin.  An early morning dream.  In my dream he was alive.  There had been no accident, just a big misunderstanding.  He just needed to go away for a long time, and his absence just appeared to be permanent.  In my dream my refusal to fully accept his death wasn’t proof of emotional weakness, it was proof of my faith.  I was the one who had faith.  He knew I wouldn’t be shocked to see him again.

I woke up feeling grateful for such a visceral dream, a dream where I could touch him again, a dream where everyone was happy and relieved and we could focus on mundane joys like watching my nephew play.  I woke up smiling.

And then the morning coffee is brewed and breakfast dishes need cleaning.  And it’s been fifteen years.

Some days it feels like a lifetime ago.  Some days I weep like it just happened.

I am opposed to the death penalty.  I believe it is murder.  I was opposed to last night’s execution of Troy Davis.  But I was also opposed to the other execution that took place.  I’ll be honest, I shed tears over the death of Troy Davis, but I did not cry when Lawrence Brewer was killed last night.  Brewer was an unrepentant racist who gruesomely killed James Byrd, Jr. in a hate crime that still turns my stomach to read about.  Brewer was most certainly guilty.  It was still wrong to execute him.   

Another execution is scheduled for tonight, this time in Alabama.  I know very little about this particular case, but for me, ultimately, the details of the case are not the point.  There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty, such as the disproportionate number of men of color on death row, or the number of people who are wrongly convicted and not guilty of the crime.  But even in a case such as Brewer’s, where there is no doubt whatsoever of the person’s guilt and the condemned shows absolutely no remorse, the death penalty is wrong, period. Even the most despicable murderer should not be murdered by the state.

I went to the ocean, I sat and tried to listen.

The ocean said, “up.”

Up.

My favorite Fr. Opat story is a short and irreverent one.  Like many others, I got to know Fr. Opat many years ago through a Catholic retreat program in central Minnesota.  He was the coordinator of the program, and often a spiritual director on the weekend retreats.  On the evening before one of those retreats began, he and those of us who were volunteering as the team for that weekend were meeting and going over last minute details.  Someone was reviewing the readings that would be used for the liturgies, and noted that the text in the missal would need to be changed.  The U.S. lectionary had recently been amended so that instead of saying “This is the Word of the Lord,” the lector would conclude a scripture reading by saying only “The Word of the Lord.”

Someone asked why that particular change was made.  The first to respond was Fr. Opat.  In his gruff voice he casually mumbled: “Some a##hole in the Vatican didn’t have anything better to do.”

At the time, I was pretty shocked.  At that point in my life I had rarely heard a cleric openly criticize Rome, much less swear while doing it.  It was a good lesson for me, a demonstration that it’s OK to question, and even criticize, those in authority.  It was also a lesson in priorities: Fr. Opat was not concerned with living one’s faith in a legalistic way.  He was more concerned with practical matters, like how to ensure that a three day retreat could be affordable to anyone who wanted to attend (it still costs well under $100 per person).  He was concerned with encountering Christ in the people he served, not in the minutiae of how a particular phrase ought to be translated.

Don’t get me wrong: I definitely think there is a place for pondering and wrestling with the smaller details of theology, such as the wording of the Mass (as the U.S. Catholic Church currently undergoes a major change in the liturgy’s translation it’s clear that much can be at stake when words are chosen).  But I think of Fr. Opat’s flippant comment, and remember that we ought to always consider our actions: is there something better we could do?

City Hall, San Francisco, 5 February 2011

My favorite sight at today’s solidarity demonstration in San Francisco.  Egypt and Tunisia are teaching the United States how to re-imagine democracy.

(“¡Que se vayan todos!” is a chant popularized in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America, and means “All of them must go!”)

sticker pasted on a newspaper box

As it stands right now, there are pro-Mehserle individuals who don’t even think he should have been brought to trial in the first place, who think he was just doing his job as a cop, who give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he really did think his gun was a taser when he aimed and shot Grant in the back, and, though he he made a terrible, fatal mistake, should not have to spend even a few years in prison for it.  Even more extreme opinions on that side insinuate that Grant himself was to blame for causing his own death, calling him a thug or a criminal who, if he didn’t want to get shot, shouldn’t have been (allegedly) creating a disruption on the train that night.  (In other words, if there’s a chance that police will get a report that you’ve been in a fight, be prepared to get shot for it.)

The pro Oscar Grant side is already angry that Mehserle only received a conviction of involuntary manslaughter, and it’s unlikely that the sentencing will do much to relieve that.  From what I understand, chances are slim that he’ll receive the maximum possible fourteen year sentence, and may even end up released on probation with time served.  While I’m admittedly more sympathetic to the Grant side, I’m also seeing on a more systemic level how this is becoming a missed opportunity to ask some bigger questions about what justice looks like.  I know so many people who strongly believe that the criminal “justice” system in the U.S. is beyond broken and that locking someone up for an arbitrary period of time does little to help the victims of a crime nor rehabilitate the person convicted.  Yet how many of us fell into the trap of spouting cliches of how Mehserle should “rot in prison” or some other such nonsense?  The restorative justice model is admittedly difficult to envision, but if we only give it lip service in order to prove our virtue or correct political ideology and then in the next breath rant about what heartless pigs all cops are, then are we any better than the pro-Mehserle camp?  I’m not saying anger is uncalled for (and I want to be clear I’m speaking as a white ally, and not directing this at the communities of color that live daily with the threat of police violence), but I think we need to do more critical thinking about how we respond to injustice.

Hearing the roar of the Blue Angels always reminds me of June, a resident at an assisted living retirement community where I worked in Chicago many years ago.  As a personal care attendant I sometimes had less enjoyable duties to perform (like trying to convince residents to take medications or helping change soiled undergarments), but one of my other tasks was to simply accompany June during her doctor recommended walks.  We’d chat a little if she wasn’t feeling out of breath, usually about family or some other lighthearted topic, and the walk was usually the favorite part of my work day.

One of our walks took place during a weekend when the Blue Angels were in town.  At times we would have to pause our conversation as the planes flew overhead because it was hard to shout or be heard over their noise.  At one point when the noise subsided, June set aside our usual light conversation and suddenly made this sad yet forceful statement:

“Only a country that has never gone through days of bombing could take pleasure in such a display.”

As I hear the jets this weekend, I will be thinking of the places in the world where the sight and sound of a military jet triggers fear and uncertainty.  Places where civilians will not gather in crowds to “oooh” and “ah” at the planes overhead, but will instead run for cover and hope that they and their families will not be the next “collateral damage” statistics.  I will remember June’s words, and the sadness in her voice as she spoke them.  I feel a lot of that same sadness.

But if the bishops are really looking to stop something that causes irreparable harm to a family, I can think of something that I’m certain is doing that kind of damage: the suicide of one of the family members, especially a child.

At the same time that the bishops are making same sex couples the supposed scapegoat for all that’s wrong with family life in the United States, there are a disturbing number of recent news stories of young teens who are or who are perceived to be gay committing suicide because they are being mercilessly bullied by their peers.  The bullying and physical harm being done to them became so great, and the intervention of adults on their behalf so lacking, that they put an end to their lives rather than go another day experiencing such abuse.

A question I’d like to ask the bishops in Minnesota: what’s more important, trying to “save” an already unstable and constantly changing institution like marriage* with a bunch of DVDs, or doing everything we possibly can to ensure that no more youth lose their lives because of unchallenged homophobia?  If “protecting families” is so very important, what are you and other religious leaders doing in order to show your concern to protect families from the pain of losing one of their members in a such a devastating (and preventable) way?

*The Bible says marriage ought to be defined as one man and one woman?  Really?

This morning I was glad to see a graphic essay by Jordan Flaherty and Zeph Fish that did a good job of striking that balance. Below are the first two panels of the essay, go to Truth-Out to read the whole thing.

clipped from www.truth-out.org Living in New Orleans After Katrina

From a friend’s status update on facebook:

NO WAY. I was in an LA courthouse this morning (don’t ask). Started chatting with 2 police officers, first about the challenges of knowing whether to call women ma’am or miss (don’t ask). I then asked if they could, in any possible way, confuse a TASER for a GUN. Even with a man on the ground, back turned. No way, they said. No way, no way, no way. NO WAY.

And from Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant:

“My son was murdered. He was murdered. He was murdered. He was murdered.”

The article linked below gives a lot of good information to counter the misconceptions that the three U.S. hikers detained in Iran somehow deserve to be in jail because they were naive, spoiled kids. Callous remarks about how they “should have known better” remind me of comments made about victims of rape: that it’s the fault of the person raped for dressing the wrong way or being out too late at night, anything but putting the blame where it belongs: on the perpetrator.

Sarah, Josh, and Shane are anything but naive, and have done more to make the world a better place than any naysayer sitting at a computer leaving nasty comments about people they don’t know.

(click on the title to continue reading)

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Take a Hike: Misconceptions and Machinations Keep Activists Incarcerated in Iran Randall Amster You’ve probably heard about the three hikers being held in Iran since last summer. Their case has become a political football, highlighting the inherent tensions and absurd machinations of the U.S.-Iran relationship. If you’ve followed the story even casually, you also likely have an impression of the hikers as either being dumb and naive or spoiled kids deserving of their fate. These perceptions are actually well off the mark, and in some ways have served to perpetuate their plight. Incarcerated for nearly a year now, we might finally consider taking a moment to set the record straight, and in the process come to appreciate the dedicated activism of these remarkable individuals.

A big reason why I know that the producers of Treme did their homework, and the reason I’m able to enjoy so many of the details, is that I was very lucky to learn a lot about the history and culture of the city from some local residents who took the time to explain things to us well-meaning but sometimes clueless out of town volunteers.  I’m thinking of people like Malcolm S. from the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, who spent countless weeks giving the same workshop to incoming crews of mostly white volunteers so that they’d have a better understanding of the history of predominantly Black neighborhoods they were working in.  He’s also the one who explained the roots of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition to us (which I later discovered is something that not even some of the white locals take the time to understand beyond a bunch of guys making elaborate costumes every year).

It was also the little things, like the patient folks who helped us spell words like Tchoupitoulas and told us the correct way to pronounce street names like “Burgundy” and “Calliope” (it’s Bur-gun-dy, and the “e” in Calliope is silent).  The people who told us where the best live music was, the places to go outside of the touristy French Quarter for good food.

So yes, I love that the creators of this show really took the time to get to know all the many quirks of the city, and that it’s giving the audience a glimpse of what NOLA is all about, the good and bad.  I also appreciate the show because for the most part they’re sticking to the story.  A lot of the story lines are based on real people and real events, there’s no need to invent more drama.  There really were people lost in the system at Orleans Parish Prison, and people really were prevented from coming home because the public housing units were sealed off and fenced in.  The potholes really were that big.