Boston?

I think I’ve probably seen goodwill hunting too many times.   Cause whenever I imagine myself in Boston, i am a janitor at one of the 1000 universities…accept without the being a supergenious part.

God has it that my future may involve a big move soon, along with some other big changes.  This is no anouncement of anything, other than its what is on my mind…moving to Boston that is.

I mean really what would I do there?  I have worked for a grassroots int’l NGO for 3 years now.  Boston has lots of NGO’s but they are all the suit and tye type, with million dollar budgets, and lobbyists.   I don’t want to wear a tye or report to my boss, who reports to a boss, who reports to a boss.   But I am certainly not feeling that my life in int’l development is over. But competing with the Harvard, MIT,  Cambridge, BU graduates doesn’t sound too appealing.   I am not one to sell myself.

I know, should I end up in Boston, I will be trying to be a goodrole model for an oddly independent 8 year old and  a good partner to an ambitious law student.   That alone sounds like a full time job to me.   Maybe I could write music and a book while I wait for them to get home.   That sounds nice too, but I don’t think I’ll make more than like a dollar doing that.

I’ve been trying to think of independent business ideas, to make some cash without being tied to any thing.

Boston is not for sure by any means.  But I am taking advice should anyone have any.

i voted for Obama cause he is black

I just want to address this out loud.

I have had a couple conversations with people about the recent election that went something like this.

me: “well how do you think the election went.”

other: “i am not too excited about it.  I think that people just voted based on race.”

me: (in my head or out loud) “of course they did…so did I”

Why are we so arrogant to think that race is no longer an issue in this country.  Perhaps its time the “minority” had someone in office who could actually understand the racism that still exists and how discrimination is still a fundamental part of the “American” system.  My “issue” if i had to have one is AIDS.  We may not think it but it is a race issue. HIV in America is on the rise among young black men.  And AIDS is a socio economic issue.  And AIDS is a race issue. And AIDS is a inequality issue. And AIDS is a political issue.   So yes I might just have voted on race alone.  Perhaps more people should have.  And I have HOPE in all the ways that Obama made cliche, because they are true.  I still don’t place my hope in the government. But I do place it in a culture that maybe one day will wake up and say, “what the fuck are we doing? Love looks completely different than this.”  And this I believe was one of those baby steps towards being awake to a world the Creator made to be good.

The Church in Joyous Obedience: Biblical Expositions

So I am playing catch up a little on here.

Last night I went to see Walter Breugemann one of the most prominent and widely read old testament theologians of today.  He is unique in his scholarship in many ways but perhaps most strikingly in his bold calls to action and justice.   Last night he spoke on the structure and poetic progression in Isaiah(emphasis on poetic).   I won’t outline it all here but his conclusion involved calling out the US gov’t on its continued arrogance and repeated acts of hubris(not his words).  In particular our economic policy and the damage it is causing and its impending collapse.  This was not a doomsday claim but a prophetic(in my opinion) call to the reality of our situation.  In response, and using Isaiah as a model we must grieve the loss of our stability and begin to rebuild in a new way that is just. (i.e. taking care of the poor, feeding the hungry, seeking peace between nations, and all of that other stuff we seem to always forget is in the bible)

The world is moving

I stole this from the “Chasing the Flame” blog.   It is showing the movement of people around the world by cars and planes. Maybe this will make you want to ride your bike a little more and fly a little less.

The great schlep

I am not Jewish, but this kind of makes me wish I was. Though I am not sad I will never ever need to travel to Florida in my life.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Bush on Diplomacy…don’t be a bully!

I took this quote from a recent BBC article about developments in the Russia/Georgia conflict.

President Bush has accused Russia of “bullying and intimidation”, saying it was an unacceptable “way to conduct foreign policy in the 21st Century”.

I don’t know enough about the nature of the conflict to take a side yet, and perhaps even if I did there would be no side to take. Yet, it seems as history reveals itself, our government usually sides with the country that benefits us the most at whatever expense to human life or suffering. And the nonsense is furthered as it “trickles” down to the middle and lower class through biased and well funded, middle school journalism. I hope our next president doesn’t assume every child was “left behind.” Perhaps Bush himself, in light of his own bad theology, should be in fear of being Left Behind.

Really, unacceptable? Woe to those who have eyes but do not see, have ears yet do not hear. And woe to those who condemn the very acts they promoted by being the prime example. Of these I am the worst I admit. God, please let the ironies of the world shake us from our slumber.

digging for dirt and finding some roots

Probably the biggest reason I haven’t blogged in a while is my lack of immersion in anything. So far this summer I’ve been in Bellingham. I went for a bike ride around western washington. Went to a music festival on orcas island. I played soccer and read a book about becoming a monk.

Work has been relatively slow lately and it has left me adequate time to think about what I do. Not so much why I do it, because helping people is always good, right? But what I do is, I am finding out, so plagued with double edged swords that some days render me useless, slumped in my desk chair in front of my donated flatscreen. I love who I work for and I even love how we do our work. But so often I hate the environment we do it in, the foreign aid environment. I would always like to think that organizations large or small working in other parts of the world have their constituent’s best interest in mind. But it seems we(Americans) are so far from taking off our glasses of opportunistic empire building that we can’t see the pain empire is causing. But as much as I hate the damage the “aid” of empires expanding their empire is doing I don’t know shit about it. So I have been letting a completely ignorant anger grow in me without knowing the fact. So I bought some books off recomendations of people who have experienced the “aid” of empires first hand.

1. the road to hell by Micheal Maren

2. the shock doctrine by Naomi Klein

3. confessions of an economic hitman by John Perkins

20 pages into “confessions” i am already feeling the anger grow.

But with this sort of anger always comes a sort of “fight or flight” response…except that flight isn’t really an option since it is an affront to humanity not just myself. So we are forced to fight, to take some sort of action. The response is simple, yet complicated.

I have begun constructing a theory of action which I am sure is not my own, new, or anything profound. But it involves removing oneself from active participation in economic systems that promote shitstorms while increasing involvement in social systems. Oh…does that make me a socialist? Maybe as I read I’ll describe what I mean by “shitstorms” in more detail.

But let me just say the situation of empire, foreign aid, and child sponsorship(maybe another post) is much worse than you think. But the response is, I think, much more beautiful than we imagined.

VANDU

Every year a university somewhere on the west coast hosts a large international health conference. This year it was at Simon Frasier University in Canada, this weekend. Apparently they either didn’t check the US calendar or didn’t want any americans to come since they decided to have it on Memorial Day weekend.  Last year there were over a thousand people at the conference at UW in Seattle and this year there were less than 300. This is not to say the quality of the speakers or presentations were less, but certainly much less inspired. Perhaps some of the participants got lost in dark woods that surround Simon Frasier or the confusing roads that always go in a circle no matter where you are. It was worse than finding your way around Evergreen State College which is clearly a better experience when you’re high. But it was worth the 1 of 3 days I actually attended and I am beginning to understand the beast that is conference planning and have definitely excluded that from possible careers for Jesse. That still leaves…well everything else.

But I didn’t want to just write a complaint, instead I want to highlight one issue that I had known about but became increasingly aware of at one of the seminars during the conference. Through the poetry of Bud Osborne and the activism of church communities and friends, the lower east side of Vancouver BC has brought the burdens and inequities of disease and poverty to our own backyards. The East Hastings district currently has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates IN THE WORLD reaching as high as 30-40%. The only other place you see this rate of infection is in Sub-Saharan Africa in regions of Zimbabwe, Western Kenya, and South Africa. Less than an hour from my home AIDS in what painfully resembles a leaper colony, is ravaging the native populations of that region. And if you are thinking well…they must receive treatment and must be able to live somewhat healthy lives. In East Hastings you are technically considered a senior citizen when you are 47. Life expectancy rates are between 10-15 years less than other non-native Canadians.

Two of the three presenters were academics showing graphs and numbers that merely provided quantitative evidence for what the third group of presenters proclaimed from first hand experience. This third group was from an organization called Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users(VANDU). This organization sets up (legally or not) safe needle exchange and injections sites for the thousands of injection drug users in East Hastings. Richard Utendale who is now the director of VANDU and works on many other projects is a recovering drug addict and has lived on the lower east side for over a decade.

There is certainly a difference between the AIDS epidemic in Vancouver and the one in Sub-Saharan Africa. The main mode of transmission is needle sharing instead of heterosexual sex. The populations impacted the most are minorities instead of…everyone. Yet we see the same causal relationships that determine likelihood of contraction. Non-white, poor, uneducated, and homeless. The most extreme factors being the first and the last. I could go into why, but I think we all can do the math.

So if you think AIDS is far away, think again. www.VANDU.org

his Holiness, Desmond Tutu, a panel discussion review(that rhymes!)

People review books, movies, albums, and other stuff we entertain ourselves with. So I thought I would review a recent panel discussion I attended.

Seeds of Compassion has managed to host one of the largest public free gatherings of world religious(all faiths) leaders probably anywhere. Over five days 2-300.000 people had the opportunity to engage questions of faith, violence, war, ignorance, media, etc. To what extent each individual considered and reflected on their own personal vestment, point of view, concern for these issues will only be evident in the coming years. But no 1 event can cause true repentance.

I only found out about this huge event a week or so before it actually occurred when I received a phone call from a friend who had tickets and had carefully (l would like to think) chosen who she thought would invest in the content being presented and discussed. I jumped on the chance to attend the final day of the conference/event where there would be a panel discussion with these people:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rob Bell, Sister Joan Chittister, Jasmit Singh Kochar, Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Rabbi David Rosen, Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Roshi Joan Halifax, Sheikh Ahmed Tijani Ben Omar, Bishop Stephen Charleston, Linda Kavelin-Popov, Reverend Samuel B. McKinney, Doug Pagitt, Father William Treacy, Shelia Evans-Tranumn, Steven Shankman

and 2 kids, Ben and Uriah.

A couple days later I was also given a ticket to a much larger address by the Dalai Lama at Qwest Field the Saturday previous to the panel discussion. Tickets to all of these events were totally free accept for those people who think nothing is ever free and bought tickets from con-people on Craigslist. There were around 30,000 in attendance for the highly ceremonious and cheesy event which stood in painfully stark contrast to the brief unadorned speech and brutally honest responses of the Dalai Lama. Oh how we can miss the point so gloriously! I was excited for a more honest exchange between him and other world leaders who deserve as much attention and equally (i can imagine) despise it.

The panel discussion took place at UW’s basketball arena next to its football stadium. I grumbled on the way in as they announced their strict security measure of no bags or food. “Oh, so they can charge me $20 for a hot dog and bottled water?” We entered and there were box lunches on tables dispersed evenly throughout the building with attendants handing them out happily. “They are free!” They had to constantly remind everyone since nothing is free, ever! And if it is there are strings attached.

Anyway, my grumbling was humbled and I was well fed.

The 1st of 2 panel discussions began without too much ceremony. The long line of panelists sat in differing chairs depending on their importance. Kids on the outside in black metal framed chairs with little padding. The Dalai Lama in the center lounged in his bright red thickly padded reading chair. Everyone else sat in cream colored, well upholstered corner chairs…even Desmond Tutu. Between Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama(can I just call him Buddha its easier?) there was a table with water and tea. This meant that many of the other panelists who spoke had to be brought water when their throats became dry. The hierarchy of importance was obvious. Each member received a brief introduction accept for the kids on the edges of the panel who were merely introduced by their first name and also their age. Ben was 18 and Uriah was 12.

The questions placed before the panel were all extremely general and abstract which meant each member took the opportunity to give their impassioned speeches about peace, equality, and justice from their unique religious and political perspectives–each earning a hearty and well deserved applause. Ben and Uriah responded briefly, paraphrasing what they understood from the previous icon’s rhetorical outburst…no context for their audience to listen and no room for their originality to find expression. Also being on the edge, the margin meant they either had to speak first or last, meaning they had to either follow some of the worlds best minds and rhetoricians or respond first to a question not meant for them but the best minds and rhetoricians. The focus of the conference was, “teaching our youth compassion.” Here was what to me seemed like a lose lost situation for these young kids, amidst what was presented to be a great honor and privilege. Though they had for some reason that was never expressed to the audience, earned their way to this place, this stage, no one was actually there to hear what they had to say. It was about the Dalai Lama and his friends.

If its not obvious this was my main criticism of an otherwise amazing event. A conference about youth needs to actually make an effort to highlight youth despite the pillars of wisdom in attendance. There were many workshops and activities that did just this that i was unable to attend. I was just saddened that when it came time to actually follow something other than our normal idolatrous tendency, we failed.

Aside from this criticism, I was as beside myself as I ever get to see Desmond Tutu, Buddha, and others interact, but especially, Bishop and Buddha. They undid all of the pomp and circumstance that surrounded them. I knew it was coming but I longed to hear it. As leaders answered questions with answers that incorporated philosophy, politics, non-violence, and the fundamentals of their faith all with an intro, climax, and conclusion, some even with notes, Buddha responded once with “I don’t know” and then turned to Bishop and they laughed hysterically. That was why I came and why I left so pleased that I had. A leader in exile and a religious and political punching bag for warring and divided nations, both lead the arena in worshipful laughter not at anything, but because that is how joy is often expressed outwardly.

a not-so-distant need

Slum Doctor Programme is responding to the needs of those halfway across the world. We fulfill those needs by supporting those who have already responded locally(in their own regions of Kenya/Uganda) with appropriate and effective solutions. We are proud and honored to do so.

However, over and over we end up confronted with local needs and the shortfalls of our own society, our own leaders, our own social systems.

Last year SDP initiated a global AIDS education program addressing the local need for a global perspective. AIDS has been killing people for 30 years now all around the world. Yet, much of our education system has ignored the depth and the breadth of the suffering and destruction AIDS has caused.  So it has been our hope to reach out to our youth locally and begin a conversation about AIDS, not just what it means for them, but what it means for the world.

However, my personal experience in discussing AIDS with students has been mixed.  The naive zeal that I initially had for describing the horrors of poverty and disease in far away places has been burdened by the harsh realization that many of these young people face, to some degree, the same hardships in their own home.  Many of them are ignored, abused, sick, hungry, voiceless, and desperate.

These students usually identify themselves with an angry retort after our introduction. “Why should I care?”   From no other lips could this question be valid.  Tears come to my eyes when I am forced to agree.  Why should you care about someone so far away who is sick, when those in your home seem to care less about you.

I don’t think this is a reason for us to stop speaking to students about what we might think are “far away” problems. In fact I think its even more reason to introduce a world that is large, diverse, mysterious, and full of pain yet full of hope to young people. I imagine the kid whose home is completely broken and getting through the day is as far ahead as they can think as the one who nees the gobal perspective most. They need to know that the brokenness they are experience is 1. an experience held by much of the world and 2. not simply “the way the world is.”  They need to know that their parents or whoever their oppressor is, is but a thin wall blinding them from a world that doesn’t accept the way things are or seem to be.

So as I had to argue with one of my recent students,  “social studies IS important.”