I Will Never Be Able to Do Enough...Even So

...I can do something.

These past few months I have been profoundly grieved at the worsening global food crisis which has emerged as a result of a perfect storm of global events. In recent days the the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been holding an emergency summit in Rome to address the current food crisis. Today they announced a significant increase in funding which will allow the hardest hit countries "to grow enough food for themselves in the coming planting seasons, as well as [help] them to achieve continuing food security through investment in agriculture and research."

Earlier today BBC News reported significant resistance to this plan at the Rome Summit from Latin American countries as they are apparently benefiting too much from the cultivation of crops for biofuel (not the sole cause of the global food crisis, but undoubtedly one element of the perfect storm).

I have felt overwhelmed by this global food crisis, especially once the catastrophes hit in Burma/Myanmar and China last month. All of these have been spinning around in my mind particularly in relation to the scripture from several Sundays ago in which we are reminded that God's eye is on the sparrow. It is so difficult for me, as a person of privilege who wants for nothing, to read that scripture of God's loving care for human beings even while unfathomable numbers of people are dying daily from hunger, catastrophically in natural disasters, and horrifically as a result of corrupt government practices.

In their 11th Hour Preacher Party for the Birds & Lilies week over at the RevGal's site, many of the preachers were focusing on the command Jesus issued for people not to worry. This was also what my own pastor focused on that Sunday in worship. I know it is a hugely important focus for our 21st century, North American context. But I found myself struggling with it in light of everything I've already mentioned here.

"I am wondering," I wrote in a comment on the RevGal site that day, "how I can better incarnate God's eyes and hands to help provide for others in an aching, suffering, starving world? I do worry: that I'm not doing enough and never can do enough."

Since articulating those words for the first time a few weeks ago, they have stayed with me like some kind of irritant, like sand in an oyster. I am letting it work on me and in me. It is variously confrontational to my spirit and my living; it is upsetting; unsettling; and it is asking of me to do something.

Even in the midst of this ever-present irritant, I have found myself, well, hungering for hope. If I cannot do enough, if I cannot fathom these many unrelenting deaths, if governments and corporations are just so corrupt--then what? How do I have hope in the face of these realities? In the face of death?

I have glimpsed hope in two people over the past couple weeks, two witnesses to hope: Howard Zinn and Dorothee Solle.

In his article "The Optimism of Uncertainty" published in The Nation on September 2, 2004, Howard Zinn writes:

"If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

I absolutely love this image of the future being an infinite succession of presents. And the notion that by acting even in the smallest ways, we contribute to the shaping of that future in significant ways.

The other witness to hope came to me this morning as I was re-reading Dorothee Solle's fantastic book Thinking About God. She writes:

"In a conversation about the situation of the peoples oppressed by Western countries, a young Swiss teacher recently asked me from where I could derive my hope. At first I wanted to reply to him, 'From my faith in God, who once rescued an oppressed people from slavery under a great military power.' But then it struck me that it is not 'my' faith which bears me up. It is really the faith and the hope of the poor who do not give up. As long as they do not despair and give up, as long as they go on, we do not have the least right, whining and resigned in an analysis which counts money and weapons but does not see the pride and the combativeness of the violated, to say, 'There is nothing one can do'" (20).

Despair, Solle seems to be suggesting, is an emotion of the privileged. Tossing up my hands, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this aching world, is a privileged choice. I will never be able to do enough...even so...I can do something today.

For about ten days now I have started my morning by visiting The Hunger Site. I click through each tab on the site, which manages to bend even our consumerism toward justice. It is, in the spirit of Zinn's reminder, a very small action. But I am hoping that by making this small action a part of my morning spiritual discipline, it will be a part of that infinite succession of presents that contribute to the future.

Even as I click on each tab, the irritant troubles me again and again. It is not enough! And I must not be fooled into thinking it is. But it is an action which, done prayerfully, roots me in the world's need, enacts a small contribution toward justice, and troubles my spirit to continue to look to do something more.

Friday Five - Hit the Road, Jack(ie)

Time to do a little dreaming. This week's Rev Gal Friday Five has us taking a little trip:

Suppose you were told to pack some essentials for a trip to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Describe your location, in general or specific terms
I would love to go away to a little cabin, nestled in the midst of some very tall trees. Somewhere where it will get hot enough for a swim during the day. But cool enough for a fire at night. A place where you can smell the pine trees. Drink coffee out on the porch in the morning. No other human-made discernible sounds--just the sounds of birds, wind, insects, maybe the lap of the water if it's close enough. -sigh-

and....

1) What book(s) will you bring?
California
A White Teacher Talks About Race
Weavings

2) What music accompanies you?
I hear only one song in my head at the moment, as I imagine sitting in the cabin: Norah Jones' singing Come Away with Me.

3) What essentials of everyday living must you take (as in the health and beauty aids aisle variety)?
Other than toothpaste, toothbrush, and other basic hygiene items? Nothing. Okay, maybe mascara.

4) What technological gadgets if any, will you take with you or do you leave it all behind?
I'd leave 'em all behind except my cell phone. If I have my laptop with me it will be open in front of me. Gotta leave it behind if I'm really going to get away from it all. Otherwise, it all comes with me.

5) What culinary delights will you partake in while there?
Oh, what a lovely question. How about some wine. Maybe even a bottle of champagne for one night. And maybe make some pasta with shrimp, garlic, olive oil, and hot pepper for dinner one night. Maybe make a pot of chili one day. Let's see. Fresh strawberries. Peaches. Granola in the morning. Coffee, of course. I wouldn't mind picking up hoagies from a deli one day for lunch. Some pretzels for snacking. Maytag blue cheese, pears, and french bread one evening while dinner cooks. How about some s'mores over the coals at night? Mint juleps. Or mojito. French toast one morning. We could make salmon one night, wrapped in foil with some asparagus spears, maybe some dill, lemon, and butter, all cooked together in the coals. Oh, life is so good. Ain't it?

As a bonus question, what makes for a perfect day on vacation for you?
Waking up whenever we wake up--no alarm. Reading. Going for a hike. Canoeing. Conversation. Writing. Cooking a simple meal. Quiet.

Friday Five: Potato, Po-tah-to Edition

from the RevGalBlogPals
There are two types of people in the world, morning people and night owls. Or Red Sox fans and Yankees fans. Or boxers and briefs. Or people who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. Let your preferences be known here. And if you're feeling verbose, defend your choices!

1. Mac? (woo-hoo!) or PC? (boo!)
To my Big Brother's delight, we finally became a Mac family in March--and we love them! Our old PC's (beloved for a time) had slowed to a snail's pace. And I hate to admit it, but I'm sure we were marketed right into the decision by those wonderful Mac/PC ads. Ultimately, though, the new computers (a MacBook for me and an iMac for my editing partner) were a celebration of my new appointment to Assistant Professor--why, an Apple for the Teacher, of course! By the way, have you ever seen the spoof of the Mac/PC ads with the Christ-Follower/Christian ads? They're pretty clever.

2. Pizza: Chicago style luscious hearty goodness, or New York floppy and flaccid?
Chicago style takes an hour to cook! If I wanted to wait that long to eat, do you think I'd settle for pizza? I like a pizza that requires two hands to eat. World's best pizza? Mack & Manco's in Ocean City, NJ. (It was my son's first solid food, he'll be more than proud to tell you.) But one requirement for floppy pizza--it's wrong to eat it folded in half! If you want to eat your pizza that way, order a stromboli.

3. Brownies/fudge containing nuts:
a) Good. I like the variation in texture.
b) An abomination unto the Lord. The nuts take up valuable chocolate space.
Depends on my mood. Uninterrupted gooey chocolate brownies fill my heart with a deep contentment. Such a wonderful comfort food. But when I'm feeling engaged, thoughtful, and open to a challenge? Well, then I like the sharp contrast of a brownie with nuts. In this case, the nuts seem like the conductor of the symphony--somehow guiding the taste of the brownie, but ultimately deflecting the applause to the delicious yumminess of the chocolate. I think I need a brownie for breakfast...

4. Do you hang your toilet paper so that the "tail" hangs flush with the wall, or over the top of the roll like normal people do?
Like most things in life, I'm over the top on this one. And since it seems I'm always the one who has to change the role, I usually get my way. Last December, D changed the role right before he left for a trip back East. But he changed it "wrong" so the tail hung flush against the wall. For three days I made myself live with it that way, telling myself I should be thankful that he changed it and not be such a control freak about it. After the third day, I couldn't take it any longer. In a spirit of defeat, I flipped the role around.

5. Toothpaste: Do you squeeze the tube wantonly in the middle, or squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go just like the tube instructs?
The tube has instructions on it? Who knew? I'm a middle-squeezer. Truth is, the times I have tried to be a bottom flattener, I've found it's a Sisyphean task--inevitably the very next time you go in the bathroom, someone else in the family has already squashed it all out again from the middle.

Watcha Doin'?

It's been ages since I've participated in a RevGal Friday Five! But I'm delighted to take on this easy assignment of listing five things on my To Do List for today! :) How 'bout you?

1. Go watch Monk play recorder with The City Symphony at his school! :)
The kids (K-5) have been practicing on their instruments for months now for this special concert. Now how cool is that?

2. Finish planning Sunday's worship service and put together the bulletin.

3. Read for pleasure not for work!
I'm in the midst of Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church. An enjoyable read, especially as one who straddles the church v. academic world.

4. Go buy a sack of sand!
I think I want to do a "station" at church on Sunday where people can come forward and place long taper candles in a big box of sand--in prayer for those at war in the desert regions of our world. (Gifts in the Wilderness and Rivers in the Desert is our theme for Lent this year. Given that this weekend we commemorate the start of the war, it seems important to be especially aware of not over-romanticizing the desert experience. I've got the candles. Now I just need the sand...

5. Go to a Sake Tasting session at our sake museum right down the street from us!
Yummmm.

The Gift of More

Last Spring when I wrote my two devotionals for the RevGalBlogPal's book Ordinary Time (advertised at right), November seemed so unimaginably far away. But here we are, about to heft the last days of the month onto our backs and carry them into December. I shamelessly invite you over to Ordinary Time to read the devotionals I wrote for yesterday and today. Both of them are based on the same text--David's last words--which are part of the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday when we celebrate Christ the King.

As I recuperated over the past couple weeks during my blogging hiatus, I sadly missed my first blogiversary. I published my first entry here on the Blanket in the Grove on November 14, 2005. If you're disposed to such things, I invite to you to take a step back for a moment and read my debut here. At that time I had just returned from the East Coast (as I have now, as well!); I was preparing with great (and as it turns out, unnecessary) trepidation to propose my comprehensive exams, (I'm now preparing for my final, oral exam next week); and had just been licensed for ministry in my congregation (where my hours expanded considerably for this current year).

Each of these things continue to be the benchmarks that help me know my place in this world. I had titled that first entry "In Between" and in some ways I wonder if this is always my experience. There is an enduring sense of being on a journey (as I know so many of us feel) and that the in-betweenness of that journey is the gift of it. Every arrival eventually becomes an invitation to set out again toward another unknown.

So I am recently returned from the East Coast again--arrived Tuesday night from Washington DC where I attended my first-ever Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature. As D pulled the car up at the airport about 8:00 on the night I arrived, Monk spotted me and opened his door before the car had come to a complete stop--so eager was he to greet his ol' Mom. There was no danger, really, the car was going slow enough by that point and he was well-strapped in. But it did give me a bit of a start!

I want to always remember the moment, though--the prodigal son who looks with overflowing eagerness for the return of his mum. In the car as we drove back home, Monk burst over with stories and laughter. When I would turn and look at him, I was amazed at the light in his eyes. I felt it all as gift.

Going to AAR was everything I needed it to be. I am so glad I was there this year. It got me out of the cozy box I'd had to live in over the past year as I answered the questions for my exams. It reminded me of all the amazing questions being asked by academics all over the world. It demystified some of the Big Names I've been reading all these years--I got to see them as people, laugh at their jokes, appreciate their three-dimensional humanness rather than their two-dimensional texts!

I was also able to reconnect with old friends in a way that simply helps me remember who I am.

I also was able to talk with people fruitfully about the next step in front of me--proposing and writing my dissertation. I won't say much about that now, but imagine it will be a subject which accompanies me in this blog for some time to come now.

One of the highlights of the trip, rather unexpectedly, was the opportunity to go to an exhibit at the Sackler Gallery (one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institute) where they featured Bibles (as in codices, scrolls, papyri, and eventually manuscripts) prior to the year 1000. You can read more about it here. What an awesome experience! With all the talk about fragmentation in postmodernity, it was humbling, indeed, to see the fragments out of which we have pieced together our scriptures. There is something fundamentally deceptive about the neatly contained, uninterrupted solidity of our bibles published by major publishing houses today. It was truly humbling to see the fragments of our scriptural origins, their very physical tentativeness seems to stand as a crying plea to careful, gentle, tentative exegesis--rather than the heavy-handed, confident, and stern certainty that all too often is our approach to biblical texts.

Not only that, but the reverent beauty with which many of these pages were created was awe-inspiring. Though I have to say that it occurred to me at one point that these pages were once somebody's deadline. Perhaps merely what had to get done, somebody's work. My sense is that they were not alienated from their work, as we so often are from our own. But I bet there were at least some moments when the monk working on his page felt the pressure to simply get it done. Perhaps he suffered from a sleepless night on occasion, worrying about the page he had yet to finish. This thought pleases me for some reason. To see the page a thousand years later seems to give those moments simultaneously unbearable weight and unbearable lightness. It matters; it matters not.

Well, there still feels like more to say. And for this, in and of itself, I am grateful. Too many weeks of dry silence in my world. So good to wake up to fresh dew on the grass.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Simple Pleasures

This week's Friday Five with the RevGals is beautifully simple. Exactly what I needed to get myself back to the empty page here after a week away. My week has been phenomenally busy. Ironically enough, not a moment to spare to write about what turned out to be a beautiful service celebrating Sabbath-Rest last Sunday! So, without further ado, here are five things I enjoyed this past week:

1. Meeting the students I'll have in my course this semester. I'm so excited about the semester with them!

2. My little Monk kissed me goodnight last night, then said, "Mom, you're the prettiest girl I've ever known." I guess that means he's forgiven me for my hair cut.

3. Talking with my friend Amy about my old seminary. She's visiting there soon and I HOPE she chooses to attend there! In fact, take a minute to visit her blog and give her some encouragement as she enters that turbulent, exciting, nerve-wracking time of discerning her call!

4. Watching the Pittsburgh Steelers win last night. I'm not really a Steelers fan. I'm just so happy it's football season again.

5. Planning this Sunday's service. We're using the Mark 7 text where Jesus says, "Ephphatha!" meaning, "Be Opened!" And we're using sea anemones as our image on the bulletin (the picture included with this post). I'm going to put together a little slide show for the opening moments of worship featuring pictures of anemones, too. They're beautiful.

The RevGalBlogPals Rock the World!!!

I'm very late to this RevGal Friday Five, but had to take part in the homage to our wonderful RevGals. Happy Anniversary friends!!!!

1) What is your first memory of the RevGalBlogPals?
I started blogging for the first time in November 2005 and soon after found myself in the midst of one of our most intense Advent experiences at church. Looking for some hearty bread to sustain me through the Advent season, I did a search on blogger for the word "advent." The search brought me to the doorstep of the spectacular LutheranChik. Having graduated from a Lutheran seminary not so many years ago, I felt immediately at home in LutheranChik's oh-so-Lutheran way of expressing her life and faith journey. And it was there that I first encountered the link to the RevGalBlogPals web ring.

2) Have you met any of the Ring Members in real life?
Not yet--but I can't wait until we arrange our first conference/retreat!
I have recruited a new member to our midst, though. My good friend SpiritMists.

3) Of those you haven't met, name a few you would love to know in person.
Update: I like the way some of the other RevGal's answered this better than I did originally-I'd be happy to know any of the RGBP's personally. Absolutely.

4) What has ring membership added to your life?
I have been trying to cultivate friendships with women in ministry since my seminary days--feeling certain that if we didn't figure out how to be supportive of one another, we would never survive. But it's been hard to sustain these relationships in seminary and grad school because we're in such a temporary life situation. I have been astounded at the depth of the conversation among the RevGals. And it has fed me! I've also loved the wit along with the wisdom--I've never sat and laughed so much while being in front of my computer!

5) Describe a hope for the future of the Web Ring.
Well, I love Katherine's idea that we ought to be featured on the cover of The Christian Century! I'd love for us to keep publishing books--though I know it's a ton of work. Most of all, if we really could find a way to connect, to meet up face to face as a group, well, I think the world would never be the same. Something would happen.

RevGal Friday Five: Pet Peeve Edition

Reverendmother has given us permission to vent in this edition of the RevGal Friday Five Meme, and I just couldn't pass up that opportunity. With all due respect, here are my little pet peeves . . .

1. Grammatical Pet Peeve: Misuse of the semicolon. Once an English teacher, always an English teacher! (Or is it: Once an English teacher; always an English teacher?) Runner up: not using a hyphen when using two words to modify a noun. For example: "The wide-mouthed frog gobbled up tasty flies." Gotta have the hyphen there.

2. Household Pet Peeve: Not replacing the cap on the toothpaste. 'Cause then the opening gets all gunky and soon the paste comes out in a thin, gross stream. Ugh. I'm fully aware this is karma. My Dad always hated it when I would leave the cap off the toothpaste when I was kid. I never knew what the big deal was. Yep. Now I get it.

3. Arts & Entertainment Pet Peeve (movie theaters, restaurants, concerts, etc): Selling a 12-oz can of soda for over a dollar. Seriously! Ain't that price gouging? I think we oughta start a class action suit for being defrauded over the years. (Wait. Is class action suit supposed to be hyphenated?)

4. Liturgical Pet Peeve: (Don't get me started!) I'm gonna go with a really small one, but one that has baffled me for some years now. What is the tense that worship leaders suddenly start using when they get into the pulpit? It's never, "I welcome you to worship," but "I do welcome you to worship." Or "We invite you to write your name in the friendship pad," but "We do invite you." Why does do suddenly come into the whole thing? What's up with that? And what tense is it? Subjunctive?

5. Wild Card: I can't stand it, (die a little every time it happens) the first time the cover of the book I'm reading gets bent. Funny thing is, once it's really beat up (coffee stains, water marks from being read in the bath, dog-eared) I just love it. It's just the first crease that does me in.

6. Because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, what do I do that might be a pet peeve for others? I leave my wet towel on the bed after a shower. And almost always on D's side of the bed. I'm the worst.