Jerusalem, jerusalem.

I have been monitoring the protests against the promised withdrawal of Israeli settlements with interest. As we all know, the previous Israeli plan was to slowly shrink the bits of land that Palestinians held by establishing fortress-towns within the Gaza strip and West Bank. They hoped that the Palestinians would give up and move on, but the roots went deeper than expected. Now the settlers are being moved by force out of their homes.

At risk of sounding cliché, it seems like a gigantic case of "what goes around comes around." Consider the quote below in regard to Israeli protests that have erupted in violence:

'We are constantly reassessing the situation," Major General Dan Harel, the chief of the army's southern command, told Israeli reporters. ''If we feel we can't contain the situation, or that events are reaching levels we don't want to reach . . . we would have no choice other than to seal off the strip." The Boston Globe

So now they are considering sealing off the Gaza strip because of the attacks on the Israeli army by settlers. Perhaps they will build another wall- this one to keep the settlers out. I hate to see such violence on either side of the issue, but I suppose the settlers could begin to understand how the displaced Palestinians have felt the last fifty years. Or maybe I am just being optimistic.

A few things I saw today.

Travel envy.

I just talked to a friend that is leaving this week for Russia and Turkey. She will be traveling for three weeks with our mutual friend that has been teaching there. They are going to visit St. Petersburg, Moscow and Istanbul.

I’m getting the traveling bug. It has been just over a year since I returned from the U.K., but it feels like much longer. I can’t wait to dust off the ol’ passport and see more of this beautiful earth. If things go as planned, my next departure will be in November. It can’t come too soon.

A Midsummer Night.

I love this time of year. The moon is full and the air is warm. Evenings drift along slowly until midnight has slipped by unnoticed. Rooms fill with the sounds of laughter, children and murmured conversations. Everyone stays up too late. Ah, the joys of summer.

Speaking of storms brewing...

Robert Mugabe has begun dismantling the shanty-town communities of Zimbabwe. Families, neighborhoods and businesses are being torn down to "restore sanity and order" to the urban areas.

"Residents say truckloads of police descended on their neighborhoods, declared all the buildings to be illegal and ordered the residents to tear down their own homes." -NPR Online

The problem is that there are now 200,000+ homeless and jobless citizens. Mugabe and his government are destroying entire established economic systems because, some say, these areas voted against him in the last elections.

It makes me wonder, what will these 200,000 homeless, politically disgruntled people do with their frustration? What will the government do to respond? I feel a sense of foreboding.

Back from Seattle, and back in the saddle.

I had a great time at the wedding, and I really enjoyed catching up with the usual relatives and a few friends from my college days.

I love the sun, and I love thunder storms. We had both today. For a while the sky was an eerie orange color that made me feel like I was on a movie set instead of in my front yard. There was a distinct storm-flavor to the air. The taste is probably just humidity, but in Oregon it always means that a big storm is close.

Tonight at Vibrant we talked about truth. What a stirring conversation. Truth, the term that we lean our philosophies and actions against, is frustratingly slippery in nature. Is it subjective or objective or both?

In relation to God (as though is could be separated from God), I try to make truth objective. I want knowing what to expect and how to judge. I want the divine to make sense. Yet the mysterious Trinity consistently defies my objective push-pins and reshapes my expectations.

When it comes to my own life, I tend to allow truth to take on a subjective flavor. My words and actions often do not match. My truth is relative to my situation and company. It carries weight, but it is often informed by my not-so-innocent self interest. The inconsistencies of my own interactions with truth often comes back to haunt me when I make objective-truth errors such as, oh, blatantly contradicting statements.

So somehow I need to merge my understandings of truth. I need to be allied with some objectivity while being comfortable with the necessity of subjectivity. Neither should be applied alone or in excess. I don’t think I really know how to do that.

This brings me back to an earlier post about faith. (June 10). Sometimes I am taken aback by the claims of faith because it projects itself onto truth. How can we know truth? It is a bold presumption to make, and it carries ramifications that I am not sure that I can answer. But perhaps it has more to do with a balance of perspective. Like Hebrews says, faith is the substance of what is hoped for and the evidence of what is unseen. That seems to combine the concrete and the abstract relatively well.

Faith then is inextricably connected to truth (or at least one’s perspective of truth), and it directly affects the behavior of the individual. Here is a little equation that I came up with:

Faith           Action
-----     ≥     ---------
Truth           Understanding

So maybe my theological mathematics it won’t hold up, but the idea intrigued me. Both faith and truth contain undeniable attributes of the known and unknown, and these directly connect to the interior and exterior life of the individual. I just hope that someday I will be better at balancing these within myself.

PS. from the 47th parallel.

Apparently those using a Firefox browser are getting a jumble of letters instead of my poem on the post below. That's a little more deconstructed than I intended. It shows up fine on Internet Explorer, but please let me know if you are having trouble.

In other news, I am in Seattle for a cousin's wedding. Major props to the city of free wireless. I don't expect to have much time to post while I am here, but I will be back in Portland on Sunday.

Postmodern Poetry -or- Some Simulacra Action.

"This is the generalized brothel of capital, a brothel not for prostitution, but for substitution and commutation."

-Jean Baudrillard

language
threads of sound

w         i         m
o         n         e
v         t         a
e         o         n
n                   i
                    n
                    g

separate

without w e i g h t

or physical substance
elusive tones in the air

poetry cannot cage it

bare power in nuance

mystery of truth
in this tapestry

Back to the books.

Today the House of Representatives blocked a provision in the Patriot Act that allowed the government access to citizens' library and bookstore records.

Whew! I guess my summer reading list is finally safe.

The timeline of an apology.

Today the Senate passed an apology for blocking anti-lynching legislation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Several bills were approved by the House of Representatives and various Presidents during that period, but all were stopped by a faction of Southern senators with segregation priorities.

Lynching is variously defined as, “a violent act, usually racial in nature, which denies a person due process of law and is carried out with the complicity of the local society.” Certainly every member of the town may not have participated in the act, but it was the neglect to prosecute the perpetrators that allowed this behavior to continue. The Senate unwittingly became party to the process by allowing States to overlook their responsibility to uphold the rights of all individuals in recovering slave societies.

While lynching now seems like a distressing but distant part of our nation’s history, this apology does not shrink in importance. It cements in writing the reality that our government got it wrong. We failed to stop harm - even to the point of propagating a known evil. While it cannot correct the wrongs of the past, the apology brings to mind how easily we neglect justice toward a few in exchange for the comfort of the general public.

The problem is that the general public is very uncomfortable seventy years down the road. And it is too late to do anything about it. There was never really a question about the morality of lynching; a decision was simply put off by those in power.

Forgive me, but I must make the connection here to Guantanamo Bay and the other detainment centers. Does anyone really question the improper conduct or unnecessary mistreatment of holding prisoners without legal proceedings? Do we debate whether the proven abuse has any moral defense? Yet we put off making a difficult decision because it is simpler to force these moral resolutions, these necessary apologies, on our grandchildren.

Let’s review our definition of lynching again: “a violent act, usually racial in nature, which denies a person due process of law and is carried out with the complicity of the local society.” Complicity- when we finally recognize that the lives of these prisoners deserve defending, will our complacence have ruined our chances to enact real justice? Or will we be left with only our overdue apologies?

So much better than math.

My heart feels very full tonight. I went to a graduation party for Qadra, one of the girls that I have been tutoring in math through the last few months. Qadra is one of my favorites, and I am sad that we won't be exchanging jokes with her over a Geometry book anymore. I loved being with her family, and we danced the night away with her girlfriends and little sisters.

My friend Denise was along for the evening. She posted a beautiful description of the details on her website.

Here are a few cell phone-quality pictures to share with you:

Erin and Qadra

The girls at the party.

Huni and Mona wave to the camera.

A traditional Somali dance.

Onlookers clap and sing along.

Authentic Somalian cuisine. So good.

Goofing off with the youngest ones.

Have faith.

What is true faith? It is more than speaking faith-filled words. I know because it is easy to do, and it hasn't improved my confidence in God.

I had and interesting discussion last night about the ethics of genetic engineering. A friend said (something to the effect of), "These morally ambiguous choices that we face in life are what usher us into maturity. We recognize that we cannot make a right choice. We are forced to live by faith." Earlier in the same day I had a conversation about child-like faith. It was defined as "living in the simplicity of not knowing, and not worrying about not knowing."

These two examples, while differing in rhetoric, seemed to make the same point. It is a relinquishing of control that brings true faith. In a sense, it requires maturity and immaturity (child-like nature). I remember an essay I read by a philosopher (I believe it was Alvin Plantinga, but I am not sure) that discussed coming to a second understanding of simple faith. He wrote about revisiting the children's song "Jesus Loves Me" after acknowledging the troublesome nature of the world that we live in. His article gave weight to a type of second simplicity where one can sing the lyrics and believe them even in the midst of a distorted, broken world. It is child-like confidence infused into the inevitable jaded nature of adulthood.

In considering the nature of faith, I also think it is interesting that we use ownership language to discuss it. Example: we would say "She has faith," not "She is faith-filled." Is faith external to our personalities? Is it something to acquire? We certainly talk about it that way. So perhaps it is appropriate to seek faith as an element to add to our spirituality instead of an actual alteration of our spiritual sight. Does that make sense? I'm not sure what I think.

I cannot claim to have arrived at a second simplicity of faith. I am still struggling with trying to figure things out in my own head. Humanity seems too overwhelming, and I cling to control. I continue to reject grace in the hope that logic and law will somehow grant me the knowledge of good and evil, that ever-tempting power. I hope that someday I can get beyond this stage and find traces of this childish-maturity in my own spiritual journey.

Irony of ironies.

Kay O'Connor, a female state senator who once said that allowing women to vote was a symptom of weakness in American society, is now running for Secretary of State in Kansas.

Ahem.. Secretary of State- the executive official that is in charge of state elections. Hmm. Link to the story here.

¿Hasta luego Guantanamo?

President Bush recently made a statement that allowed for the possibility of the Guantanamo Bay "detention center"/prison/military camp being disbanded at some point in the future. When asked in a recent interview whether shutting the camp down was an option, he stated: "We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America. What we don't want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us," (emphasis mine).

True, there was no actual statement of intent to disband the camp, but this is significantly not an absolute "no." There has been mounting pressure for this type of change, including the recent criticism from Jimmy Carter. The US is now working on its third year of holding more than 500 prisoners without charges brought against them, and the public is growing increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of human rights offered in these camps. As we put time between ourselves and 9/11, these systems become very difficult for the majority of individuals to justify.

I wonder if we are focusing on the symptoms instead of the illness. The picture of Guantanamo painted for us has consistently darkened with each revelation of inhumane treatment, and there is also evidence of several other military prisons that serve the same purpose for an unknown number of international prisoners. Guantanamo is simply the only prison that is familiar to the public. If there are this many problems with the camp that is being scrutinized by the media, what is going on in the other camps that have no external accountability?

Because we have the secret camps (regardless of their ethical viability), I wish we could be confident in a military that supported principled and just treatment of all human life. Until internal military reform establishes humane standards of practice that are actually enforced, I am afraid that we will continue to hear stories from new camps and new prisons where the same problems occur.

I hope that the President does decide to disband Guantanamo, but I hope that he does it as a symbol of a new era in national security policy: an era where human life is valued, and where national security begins with solidarity and mutual trust among our citizens.

Fear of commitment.

I am about to become a homeowner, and I am scared out of my socks.

While it seems like the wise and right thing to do for where I am in life, there is a part of me that is deeply resistant. I have always cherished my portability. I haven't felt tied down to a location for the last six years.

My comfort is that I love Portland. I don't really mind settling here for a while, and I do like the little house I am buying. The backyard looks like a park (and it looks like a workout for mowing). Wish me luck as I sign my soul away...

I have a pet theory:

It seems that all formalized human organizations (whether business, nonprofit, government or community) are simply a thin disguise for an underlying chaos.

The G8 is preparing to meet next month and discuss, among other things, poverty in Africa and global warming. This summit is an informal meeting of the seven leading industrialized countries (US, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada) and Russia. I am glad that rich nations are working together to solve these issues, however I wonder what will happen beyond just surface talk. While our nations disagree about the very essence of funding underprivileged nations, will we really be able to make progress to help human beings? Or is it just a platform to air our differences?

I hate to think that an entire continent is used as political fodder in a debate that affects the ability for African countries to escape from poverty. For instance-the US disagrees with the UK on the mechanism to finance debt relief. While I understand that procedure is immensely important to actually enacting change, I hate to see real issues delayed by bureaucratic ideologies.

As a follower of Christ, I am convinced that my first responsibility to my neighbor (local or global) is to meet immediate needs. While it shouldn't be done unwisely, that work should not be delayed. The systems can be put into place to support and sustain the work, but -for heaven's sake- feed the hungry! I am certainly personally responsible to meet those needs as I encounter them, but I want to support a government that sees immense value in that first stage of healing.

Women's suffrage advances in Kuwait.

Two women have been appointed to a parliamentary council in an election where women were not allowed to vote. Kuwait will allow women to vote in its next major election: 2007. See the article here.

Onward brave foremothers!

A poem from a few years ago.

Cigarettes In Blank Verse
On Childhood

There was a filter once upon a time
To keep out all that God-forsaken tar.
It stood between the smoke and most the taste,
And all the while provided peace of mind.

Now filters altogether are not bad;
They simply should not make one feel secure.
Despite the distance from that cursed spark,
When faced with flame the filters always burn.

Pomp and circumstance.

I went to the high school graduation for my alma mater tonight. The son of some close family friends was part of the class of 2005. It is a small school on the outskirts of Portland suburbia, and I haven't been to an event like this since my own commencement into adulthood. Mixed in with the cameras and grandparents were some of the members of my own graduating class, and I had the chance to have a few generic "What are you doing now?" conversations.

Wow. I am amazed at the insecurity that I feel when I am around my peers from that time in life. I have changed, and I know that they have also. I like the person I have become, yet somehow I always feel unnaturally self conscious when I am near these specific individuals. This is not to say that I had a particularly bad relationship in high school with anyone/anything besides my own self esteem. I think my subconscious just allows doubt and fear to somehow be triggered by their faces (think Rorschach ink blot type: "Uh, I see disapproval," all projected from the interior.) Fortunately these feelings come and go quickly; I don't have many lingering relationships with my former classmates.

What frightens me is that those insecurities can still regain control at the slightest emotional trigger. It makes me feel powerless. I know that the development of my identity through university and into adulthood was largely defined in contrast to the person I had been in the past, so perhaps it forces me to accept that there is more of that primitive Erin inside than I typically acknowledge.

The evening was a time of reliving an era gone by. I'll happily put that off again for another couple of years, thank you.

Famous first words.

Why start? I first seriously considered a blog after I heard the report that women are a significant minority among the blogging community. I am certain it is not for lack of opinion or insight. I thought, "Why not balance the cyber voice here a bit while airing out my own internal processes?" So here we are. I made the plunge to affect change within myself by putting my thoughts and ideas at risk of criticism and refute, but I also hope that this will open doors to conversations and ideas that I would otherwise not encounter.

I am not certain what this will become. I suppose at this point it could go in one of any directions: a sounding board for global issues, a dialogue about my faith, a personal journal to satiate my narcissism or perhaps all of the above. Welcome aboard.

And the name? A pebble can disrupt the surface of even the deepest pool. I hope my writing creates some change, if only within myself.