Justice, Beauty, Grace, and Other Big Words

Praying for Justice

This Lenten season I’ve been in a small group that’s been reading the stories of Jesus leading up to the cross. Last week the story was the parable about the persistent widow, meaning a woman who had no financial means or societal protection since she was no longer provided for by a man. The widow repeatedly goes before a judge, a godless judge, and asks for justice. Give me justice! No! Give me justice! No! Give me justice! No! Finally, the judge is worn down by her persistence and gives her what she asks. He gives her justice. Jesus ends the parable by saying if even a godless judge will eventually reward persistence and give justice, God will certainly answer persistent prayers for justice, and quickly. In the group we wrestled with how some prayers seem never to be answered, let alone quickly, despite the apparent promise in the parable. We wrestled with the factor of time, persistence, why the waiting, how to be patient when to us “quickly” means a day and to God it may mean a thousand years.

The sermon that followed on Sunday focused on the same parable, and here the minister emphasized that this parable isn’t about any kind of prayer but prayers for justice. And the person needing justice isn’t just anyone but a widow, a character type used throughout scripture, along with orphans and aliens, to represent the powerless, those for whom justice is most lacking. The minister gave statistics for groups suffering injustice today: 27 million in human trafficking; 2 million kids in sex trafficking, with 1 girl per day taken from the Mall of America for that purpose, according to the FBI (disclaimer: at one time it was thought to be this number but it’s more complicated than this now with the use of cell phones and websites that lure and trap girls). Pray for justice, keep praying for these groups, he said. Don’t stop.

I went home and thought more about this, about how often I forget to pray for issues of justice, about the promise of quick responses to prayers for justice, and about those statistics. How easy it is to look at big problems and big statistics and see no movement. How easy it is to lack imagination for the effect a single prayer may have on the margins. But maybe the statistic for kids in trafficking would be 2 million minus 1 tomorrow because of my prayer this morning, and minus 10 the next day for 10 more people who prayed. Maybe that 1 or those 10 are indeed rescued quickly and miraculously. Maybe the number would be 4 million were it not for those who never fail to keep praying for justice. Maybe a prayer goes up and a girl who would have been tagged just inside the west entrance of the Mall of America instead is quickly and divinely shielded from the man who was about to tag her. The thought that a single prayer may indeed be answered quickly in terms of justice to a single powerless person creates urgency. There’s no time to waste, no day to skip.

Reading Stack: Image Journal and the Lexicon of Art and Faith

The current issue (75) of Image journal features a series of short essays on the “lexicon of art and faith” by fourteen past contributors. Each was given the assignment to think deeply about the big words that are part of that journal’s common lexicon: beauty (Erin McGraw); mystery (Robert Cording); art (Theodore L. Prescott); story (Brett Lott); presence (Julia Spicher Kasdorf); community (Kathleen Norris); human (Linford Detweiler); discipline (Jeanne Murray Walker); form (A. G. Harmon); freedom (Joel Sheesley); image (Matthew J. Milliner); incarnation (Martha Serpas); suffering (Robert Clark); word (Richard Chess).

Here are some excerpts from “The Word-Soaked World: Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith.”

Erin McGraw on beauty: “Once we’ve been in the presence of beauty, and once the more crotchety among us have batted down the strange resistance to feeling our hearts moved, we are forever vulnerable, limping like Jacob after the angel’s blessing. We know what beauty is, and from now on we will be seeking it or shrinking from it. Why should we hope to attain such a state? Why should we call it good?” You can read Erin McGraw’s essay on beauty in its entirety here.

Robert Cording on mystery: “Our time is marked by our supreme belief in Enlightenment rationality. We are all too ready to say that a word like ‘mystery’ is a nostalgia; we limit the meaning of ‘mystery’ to a quantity of the unknown, thereby opening the possibility that the inevitable acquisition of further knowledge will reduce that which is unknown and, in the future, erase the unknown entirely. A mystery is simply something to be solved--if not now, then later. But the biblical usage of ‘mystery’ (from the Greek mysterion) refers not the quantity of the unknown but rather to the quality of the known; it refers to awe rather than ignorance.”

Kathleen Norris on community: “We do not belong to a church because it’s a self-selected group of like-minded people with whom we feel comfortable. We are there because God has called us to a be a community of faith. We are called there by love, and are asked to love the people who are there, even if we may not like them very much. Hard as it is to believe, it’s this unlikely, contentious, and motley crew that God has gathered to be accountable, both to God and to one another.”

Joel Sheesley on freedom: “If freedom is something that we apprehend metaphorically rather than by definition, it means that we are ever probing to fully grasp its tenor. We are searching for it in every conceivable direction. We yearn for it. Saint Paul sensed that the whole creation is yearning for its liberation, its freedom signaled by the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of resurrection within all his followers. This freedom is no escape, but rather a reinvestment in a world undergoing transformation.”

Robert Clark on suffering: “With such words, whose etymology and resonances are so vast, so rooted and entangled, be careful that what you mean and what you intend (two more overlapping words) do not come to loggerheads. Do not tell me suffering is a blessing, for I will despair; do not tell me it is a curse, for I will despair again. Do not tell me either--since both imply God’s deliberation--for I will not know what to make of such a God at all.”

This issue also includes an interview with Luci Shaw, a poet, writer, adventurer, and overall lovely wise woman who has long been one of my role models.

Image is a quarterly literary and arts journal that publishes work that is “informed by--or grapples with--religious faith.” You can read more about it--and subscribe--here.

 

Giving Up Chocolate for Lent

My good friend Rebecca Kasperak has been a contributing blogger this Lenten season at the blog ExperiLent. In one of her recent posts about giving up chocolate for Lent, she writes, “Semi-sweet chocolate’s velvety texture, its minor jolt of caffeine, and my responsive endorphins light up my pleasure sensors for a brief respite and escape.” I couldn’t agree more. She goes on to examining the connections between craving and longing and grace, and suggests “cravings are arrows to grace.”

“I often approach God with a full heart and mind and schedule. I envision grace, without realizing it, as a gift that tops off my life, like non-dairy whipped cream, something partially hydrogenated that puffs up to fill in the cracks. Nothing obtrusive, you understand, but something that smoothes out the bumps. I often stumble over the truth that grace is a free gift from the consuming love of my life. This Lent, even though I’m giving up chocolate, I’m also trying to shed some hackneyed views about grace, to allow a healthy emptiness to set in, to not rush to fill it with other sweet things.”

You can read her whole post here: “Cravings crack open space – chocolate, emptiness, and grace.”

 

Final Word

Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood was first published in 1948. Edited by Mary Strong, the book is a collection of anonymous letters.

“The time has come for you to march against this tide of darkness and carry your lighted lamps quietly, steadily. Heal yourselves, your bodies, your characters; get out of this slough of indefiniteness and bewilderment; come in where you belong and give this tragic world the infinite qualities of the Spirit when you let it have its way with you as channels for joy, beauty, and truth.” -from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood

~~~

Clothes and Books, Ethics and Passion, Poetry and Prayer, High Standards and Low

Dress Shopping

The last couple weeks I had reason to shop for a new dress. I had an idea what I wanted: a wardrobe staple, nothing fancy but a little classy, neutral color, something that would last more than a year or two. I had this list of criteria in my head, but since reading Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashiona couple months ago, I also had another list in my head. In Overdressed, author Elizabeth L. Cline surveys the clothing industry and what she finds make you think twice about picking up the latest fashion steal at the nearby mall or discount store.

Her premise is that our growing desire for more and more clothes and our unwillingness to pay a reasonable price for them or to keep them for more than a season is driving the industry to produce ever greater volumes of ever cheaper clothes with ever poorer wages to the sewers. And Cline is very clear, there are actual sewers (as in sew-ers), real people, in this chain of production who need their wages to live and raise families.

 Here are some images the book will leave you with:

• Holes in the floors of production plants so that sewers don’t have to leave their stations to go to the bathroom or the dorms where sewers live
• Garments made of such cheap materials they fall apart after one washing
• Charity resale stores, like Goodwill or Salvation Army, being deluged with clothes of such poor quality even they can’t sell them but yet are left to sort and dispose of them at significant cost
• Tons and tons of discarded tank tops and t-shirts and plastic shoes on their way to landfills
• Closets crammed with more clothes than any one person could possible wear
• Stores switching out complete inventories every 2 weeks to not only meet demand but to create demand

Her key suggestions include to shop for labels known to pay their sewers living wages and provide good work conditions, and to buy less, investing in pieces that will last for a long time. Cost of course is a stumbling block there. Manufacturers who pay living wages are more likely to make expensive clothes (comparatively speaking). She suggests buying better clothes but on sale or at consignment or thrift stores, and to forego the multitude of cheap pieces in lieu of one or two that will last. She suggests learning to sew or at least learning to alter your clothes (or hire someone) so that they fit well or so that you can update them to last longer. Check out Cline’s website for more suggestions and resources.

I found a dress, one that should last and that was marked way down at end-of-season clearance. At its original price I would have had to pass it by. For those of you who know me, you’ll probably see me in it for years to come.

The Lost Art of Making Things

There’s a great little sewing store not from where I live, Sewtropolis. When it first opened, I met the owner, Nikol, and asked her about why she went into business. To help reintroduce people to the lost art of sewing, she said. Her business is doing well, now in a bigger and better location from its original site. Sewtropolis has a fun blog, unique fabrics, sewing machines onsite for your use, and tons of classes that let you walk away with a finished garment.

One of my intentions for this year is to sew more. Sewing anything would be sewing more. So far, I’ve bought a pattern. But the year is still young. The last time I sewed anything was a couple summers ago. I had taken the week off work to make progress on my manuscript. After scratching and scribbling for a couple days and to no great effect, I realized what I really needed was to be quiet for a while, to stop the flow of words, and so I sewed a sundress. The last time before that was probably a maternity dress (and my sons are now in their twenties).

In high school and college I sewed many of my clothes, but a friend of mine took sewing to a much higher level. When we went shopping, instead of buying she would sketch the clothes she loved while in the dressing room, converting her sketches to patterns at home. If she’d followed her passion as the experts suggest, correctly or incorrectly, she could just as easily have taken the path to fashion designer as she did the path to physician. (That little story raises interesting questions about giftedness and vocation, doesn’t it?)

Lenten Poems

Lent started last Wednesday. I try to mark it with a practice, although I often fail to be consistent. A few years ago during Lent I listened to and prayed along with the Pray-As-You-Go Jesuit devotional, which I’ve written about before on this blog. Every day I wrote some notes or reflection in response to the devotional on an index card. It turned out to be a good thing. I liked flipping through the cards to review what I’d been thinking about, and even now I like that those cards are held tight with a binder clip.

This year I’m again listening to the Jesuits, but this time I’m trying to write a small poem in response to the daily reading. Writing a poem is a good way to break routine linear thinking and enter into a prayer or text in a new way, particularly if it’s a text, or reading, you’ve heard multiple times before. Let me be the first to say, these are not good poems, but they will help me think in new ways and be markers of something.

I’ve been reading Early Morning, Kim Stafford’s biography of his father, William Stafford, one of America’s greatest and most prolific contemporary poets. Stafford published more than 60 books via his practice of getting up every morning long before dawn, making himself a piece of toast and cup of instant coffee, and laying down on the couch with a sheet of paper, getting up only when his daily poem was written. When asked how he could write a poem every day, he answered that it was only by lowering his standards. I’m adopting that stance also in this daily practice--the goal not being to produce anything of literary value but to let the Word produce something in me.

Reading Stack: Punching In

A review in the Onion pointed me to Punching In: One Man's Undercover Adventures on the Front Lines of America's Best-Known Companies by Alex Frankel, although the review wasn’t complementary, giving it only a C+. I give it an A-.

Frankel is on a mission to explore the culture of workplaces and how new front-line employees are indoctrinated and made to manifest that culture, particularly in the short time allotted by the typical training period. Like Ehrenreich in her well-known Nickle and Dimed Frankel goes native, posing as a grad student and taking a false name. Unlike Ehrenreich, Frankel’s mission feels more gentle, to explore rather than expose, although to be fair, the stakes were higher for Ehrenreich, linking her daily survival to her ability to find and keep a job as she did. Frankel got hired at UPS, Starbucks, Gap, Enterprise, and Apple Store. He also tried but failed to get hired at The Container Store and Whole Foods. 

Halfway through the journey, I came across a statement that captured the spirit of the project quite well. In the formative years of UPS, its founder, James Casey, was known to repeat a basic phrase: 'Anybody can deliver packages.' It was both modest and profound, with clear implications: Anybody can deliver packages, so we had better be the best at it…It's the same sentiment, really, at any leading company. Anybody can pour a cup of coffee, rent out cars, sell pairs of jeans. Except, of course, they can't. The places, it seemed to me, that are the best at these things take 'anybodies' off the street and make them their own 'somebodies.' This completely intangible transformation of individuals is something increasingly critical to the success of companies. By organizing and running a small, yearlong experiment with myself as the subject, I would see and feel this transition in process. The journey would be this: I would walk in as an anybody and depart as a somebody. Or at least that was the idea.

I thought back to my early part-time jobs and wished I’d been more attentive to the forces behind the training and the philosophy of the places where I worked. Read this and you’ll look at the man or woman handing you a latte or folding jeans behind you at Gap with some empathy and even admiration. As with everything in life, there is so much more going on than we can see on the surface.

(If you’re curious, UPS comes out looking good.)

 ~~~

 Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend! If you want, share with me what you’re doing for Lent, or if you've found a bargain on a garment that will last forever or made anything fun lately or are on your way to becoming a somebody at your job.

Thanks be to God, and surgeons, and ...

One year ago, on this first Thursday of February, I spent the day in a Lord-have-mercy prayer mode. Someone I dearly loved was having the first of two scary surgeries. This morning I revisited the long written list of bad outcomes I had begged the Lord's mercy to spare him.

Spared he was. Healed he is.

Thanks be to God, and surgeons, and operating room nurses, and lab techs, and surgical instrument designers, and custodians, and researchers, and bandage makers, and antibiotic manufacturers, and the list could go on and on.

~~~

(Photo credit: NASA, Hurricane Frances; colorized.)

What is Success? For What Are We Grateful? A Film Recommendation

If you’re adding film titles to your 2013 must-see list, here’s one to consider: Longford, an HBO drama telling the true story of British Lord Longford, played by Jim Broadbent. I’ve recommended it many times since I first saw it in 2009 and did so again a week or so ago. Few films still have me thinking about them years afterward.

A devout Christian, Longford visits prisoners as part of his spiritual practice. In the beginning, the film shows him in an interview saying that the greatest achievement in his life is visiting and helping prisoners. Then the story begins.

A notorious criminal asks him to visit her, a woman convicted of a heinous crime involving the most vulnerable and precious members of society. They begin meeting regularly, and he helps her over many years in her legal battle. His long-term relationship with her becomes the greatest achievement of his life’s greatest achievement.

Yet his efforts collapse in complete and utter failure. If I told you why it would be a spoiler, yet your guess probably comes close. Lord Longford is devastated and broken, an object of public scorn.

Time passes and he eventually writes a book on another topic. In an interview about this book, the subject of his visits with this prisoner comes up. The interviewer asks him if he regrets helping her. Longford pauses and says no. (Disclaimer: I don’t have a transcript of the film and so this is my memory + paraphrasing kicking in.) He says he is grateful to her. He says that deepening his faith is what his spiritual journey is about and that his experience with her helped him at that. The film doesn’t end there and I won’t say anymore about the plot lest you plan to watch it and think I’ve spoiled it enough already.

~~~

Dana Gioia - Prayer at Winter Solstice

“Blessed is the road that keeps us homeless.

Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way.”

This is the start to “Prayer at Winter Solstice,” a poem by Dana Gioia and included in his new book, Pity the Beautiful. On Thanksgiving, he recited it on American Public Media’s program, “Giving Thanks - A Celebration of Fall, Food and Gratitude.” My husband and I were in the car at the time, chatting but also listening along to the program of interviews and music, but then hushed up quick when Gioia started talking, particularly when he began this poem. Originally titled “Thanksgiving,” the poem is about being humble in and grateful for life, no matter what it brings. And sometimes, often even, what life brings is hard.

“Blessed is the pain that humbles us. 

Blessed is the distance that bars our joy.”

You can listen to the entire interview with him and his recitation of the poem in its entirety by clicking this link to the Thanksgiving program. You’ll find a 2-hour and 1-hour program option. If you choose the 1-hour option, Gioia’s interview starts at 24:43 and the poem starts at 25:43. You’ll also hear him in the 2-hour program, but there you’re on your own to find the minute markers.

“Blessed is this shortest day that makes us long for light.

Blessed is the love that in losing we discover.”

~~~

For a review of Pity the Beautiful, see also "Redemption Songs" by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell in America magazine.

Today, prayers all around

Today I’m praying for love and grace and healing of all varieties to infuse the circles in which I live and move. A family member will be undergoing surgery. A good friend’s husband will be having an operation for cancer. Two people I love will be battling in court. I’m thinking also of an aquaintance I care about who is hospitalized. And a dear friend who has been waiting far too long for a new employer to call and say “we want you”; maybe today’s the day.

[Here is space to acknowledge all your “todays,” dear readers.]

I like this little “caim” prayer, a prayer of surrounding, from the Celtic Daily Prayer book. You personalize it within the parentheses. The prayer in the book is longer, but this is the beginning and really, sufficient in itself to carry along on a day of needs.

Circle (name), Lord.
Keep (grace; comfort; hope; or?) near
and (discouragement; despair; danger; or?) afar.
Keep (love; peace; health; or?) within
and (turmoil; anxiety, illness; or?) out.

Amen.

Judging a book by its cover

Common wisdom is that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But book publishers bet on book covers all the time. Covers and titles. 

Once I heard an editor--or was it an author?--offer this suggestion for confirming a working book title's merit. Stop in at your neighborhood coffee shop and tell the barista as he's foaming the milk for your latté that you're writing a book and here's the title. Go back the next day. Hopefully the same barista is there. Order again and ask him to tell you the title of the book you mentioned to him yesterday. If he can remember it, the title gets a couple points in its favor. If not, discard it and try again with something else.

Recently I was at the Festival of Faith and Writing, where tables of books abound, and this book pictured here, When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, caught my eye. It was the first day of the conference and I hadn't yet taken out my wallet or started forming my to-buy list. By the end of the next day, however, I couldn't get this book--its title or its cover--out of my mind, so I went back to the table and bought it without knowing anything about it or the author, Jane Redmont, other than what you can read on the cover and bio page. Kudos to the book's designer, Katherine Robinson Coleman.

The title of this book is apparently drawn from one of the chapter titles, and what a great title it is. A word of wisdom in and of itself: when in doubt, sing. It's like a getting a freebie prize along with your purchase.

I haven't started reading it yet but have flipped around and dipped in a few places. Each chapter has a number of prayers attributed to other people, some I'm familiar with but most I'm not. Here's an excerpt of one that's new to me, "Benedicite Aotearoa" from a New Zealand prayer book:

All prophets and priests, all cleaners and clerks,
professors, shop workers, typists and teachers,
job-seekers, invalids, drivers and doctors:
give to our God your thanks and praise.

All sweepers and diplomats, writers and artists,
grocers, carpenters, students and stock-agents,
seafarers, farmers, bakers and mystics:
give to our God your thanks and praise.

All children and infants, all people who play:
give to our God your thanks and praise.