AIDS Walk San Fran
June 29, 2008 at 8:40 pm (Uncategorized)
A Personal Side to Global Climate Change
June 28, 2008 at 11:36 pm (Worldliness)
Tags: brethren priestess, climate change, environment, politics
written in response to yet another of those ignorant posts refuting global climate change science as propaganda
Two winters ago (in 2006) when I visited Samoa with a group from my seminary, we stayed at the major theological seminary in Pago Pago, in the American Samoan territory. There were about a hundred students there with their families, all training to be pastors. Among the students were about a dozen students from Tuvalu, a nearby island nation. These pastors-to-be had left Tuvalu to come to Samoa because they knew that it was only a matter of time before sea levels rose and completely submerged their nation, leaving them nowhere to live and nowhere to preach! They were trying to start out making a life for themselves and their families in this new culture, with a new language, because they knew they had no future at home.
So while some might dismiss global climate change rhetoric as just a scheme by scientists, it’s pretty clear that more and more people are being forced to “vote” their opinions on this issue with their feet – with their own life choices. Frankly, I would be embarrassed to share with my Samoan friends the ignorant arguments of some climate change doubters. The people who are actually living through this crisis would no doubt be saddened by the lack of responsibility some in the US are taking about this issue.
It’s easy for us to sit here in privilege in the United States and debate whether or not to do something about climate change (or even, to debate whether it’s real!), but lots of people around the world do not have a choice about whether or not to act. Their lives – and their children’s lives – depend on it. Are we willing to see such people as our neighbors and help them, as we will soon need to be helped?
So pull out the hideabed and get ready for company. The poor people of the world – especially from those “exotic” island locales US folk seem to think of only as vacation spots and not places real, impoverished people live – might be coming to join us pretty soon.
and here’s something for a laff about another environmental crisis:
Is it time for drilling? No. Well, is it time for drilling now? No. What about now? NO!
June 20, 2008 at 6:04 pm (politics)
Tags: brethren priestess, empire, environment, gasoline, off-shore drilling, politics
Why must we keep having the same misguided discussion, over and over? Why would anyone be duped into believing Bush’s “solutions” to the energy crisis his administration brought on us? I don’t like paying $4.50/gallon any more than anyone else, but I know that lasting solutions to this mess will require more than spreading the plunder to new corners of the globe.
Here are 10 Reasons to not lift the off-shore drilling moratorium. And here’s a laff (with sigh attached):
They say all change entails some death, but, really?
June 17, 2008 at 6:02 pm (Worldliness)
Tags: dead mayors, politics, Romania
So, the Romanian village of Voinesti, up in Moldavia, has just re-elected their mayor, over his upstart rival. Only problem is that incumbent mayor Neculai Ivascu died last weekend.
Said one pro-Ivascu voter,
“I know he died, but I don’t want change.”
That opinion could sum up many a US voter’s mentality, too, methinks….
Clinton loses because of peace activists? That’s good!
June 5, 2008 at 4:41 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: Bush, caucus, Clinton, Iraq, Obama, peace, politics
One of the inspiring things about this long primary season and Clinton finally leaving the campaign (not that she had much choice about it at this stage, of course) is that it’s shown how powerful we really are. The main difference between Clinton and Obama, which is responsible for him winning and her losing, is their positions on the Iraq war. Obama knew from the start that it was an evil idea and he said so, while Clinton, whatever she believed about the war, was willing to let Bush&Co. take the lead and run the country into a vicious, horrific war. (Their campaign styles were another big difference between the two, which made me infinitely glad to be in Obama’s camp from the start, but the war was the main reason I got into that camp in the first place.)
Even Clinton knows that it was her non-peace stance, coupled with the many, many of us “activists,” peace-mongers, and other trouble-makers (sometimes known as the Democratic base), which cost her the election:
Clinton’s Diagnosis: She Lost Because of Activists and Iraq
by: Matt Stoller, Wed Jun 04, 2008Here’s Clinton’s unwitting diagnosis of her problem.
“We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist
base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into
Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn
out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our
positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that
drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So
they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate
people who actually show up to support me.”Without the caucuses, Obama doesn’t win this. As Chris notes, it is the
activists who put Obama over the top, and Clinton has a long history of
antagonizing them over Iraq. Jonathan Schwartz tipped me off to this New
York Times article, from 2007, about her strategy of not apologizing for her
war vote.
Guns on Peace Church campuses make me sad.
June 2, 2008 at 5:37 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: Carl Bowman, Church of the Brethren, Donald Kraybill, Elizabethtown College, gun violence, Juniata College, pacifism, peace church, school shooting, Washington Post
School shootings have horrified pacifists along with all other citizens of our fair nation. We all want to prevent such violence. We all want our campuses to be safe places for higher learning, not danger zones that put students’ lives at risk. We all know that this is a terrible challenge to discern how to keep our schools safe, and that there is no one perfect answer. But shouldn’t peace church members use different means of keeping our campuses safe than our less-pacifist brethren?
Apparently not, at some Brethren schools, that is. An embarrassing Washington Post article explores how different colleges affiliated with the three historic peace churches – the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Friends/Quakers – have equipped their campuses in response to the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. What’s embarrassing about it is that it’s only Brethren colleges (two of our seven schools), not Mennonite or Quaker schools, that have resorted to the tools of empire to (supposedly) protect students, by hiring armed guards.
Sure, even at these schools there were voices of dissent. And sure, many of the other schools rely on armed local police, but it’s only Brethren schools that have taken the initiative to bring weapons onto their campuses. Somehow, most of these schools remember their identities as peace churches, while it’s Brethren college representatives who forget and think adopting the violent means of our state will end violence. How does this make Brethren look to others, that we’re so confused about what it means to be a “living peace church” that we bring guns onto our campuses? (How does this make me look when it’s my Quaker friend sending me the link to this article?)
If any of us needed evidence of the phenomenon Carl Bowman and others are propounding, that Brethren have lost much of their peculiar identity, they need look no further than this article. Why is Brethren heritage not a “huge part” of the “culture and identity” at some Brethren colleges? Or, why is pacifist renunciation of the tools of warfare not a huge part of our Brethren heritage? Where are the Brethren pioneering “another way of living” and another way of responding to tragic violence? Do the Juniata trustees really think guns will make the campus safer? Are none of the peace church voices loud enough to drown out the national cacophony meeting violence with more weapons – are there no recognized alternatives?
The closing line of the article, a quote by Donald B. Kraybill of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at E-town, pretty well sums up my feelings on the matter:
“I would hope that colleges in the peace church tradition have the brainpower to come up with creative nonviolent alternatives.”
Indeed.
