The Ability to Work for Change

I think often of being in this new place, of the happiness in small moments, in smiles and jokes and the presence of those among us. As the employees of the school I work at sat in the school chapel yesterday for an end of year celebration marking retirements and employment milestones, I looked around and knew the names of the 75 people sitting all around. I thought of knowing and meeting and being aware of each of these people and just how quickly time moves, just how quickly we become acquainted and adjusted and a part of our surroundings.

I began learning Spanish a few weeks ago. It was a friend who recommended the free app which teaches and tests your language skills. We made plans to get together and continue learning through conversation with one another. The truth is we both hear it almost daily here and know it's spoken by so many who work in jobs we seldom see. It's similar enough to English, and while challenging, I'm looking forward to improving!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I met up in San Luis Obispo. She was coming north from Los Angeles and I was heading south from Monterey. We walked through the town, caught up, told stories and laughed, and toured the San Luis Obispo Mission after a tasty taco brunch. The Mission system here is quite beautiful, with 21 Catholic Missions established by the Spanish in the 1790s along the coast of what was then Mexico. They stretch from San Diego to San Francisco. I have no photos of the San Luis Obispo mission, but on my drive north through the hot desert, I drove past the tiny town of San Miguel and loved the bell tower ruins I spotted. I pulled over and found another mission I didn't know existed. It was evening and 92 degrees. A train passed by as I began to walk around. A monk was watering the roses and a group of women recited the rosary in Spanish in the chapel. The light and color of the sky was beautiful. 

While in SLO, I purchased a small book, The World as 100 People. It's very visual with graphs and drawings and the facts listed below continue to stay with me.

If the 7 billion people in the world are represented through 100 people,

61 are from Asia and the Middle East, 4 are from the United States.
5 people speak English. 63 speak more than 6,000 other languages other than the 9 most spoken.
1 person owns 48% of the world's wealth.
50 people do not trust their government.
48 people do not have freedom of speech.
20 people live in fear.
48 people live on less than $2.50 USD a day.
40 people cook using solid fuels in open fires.
17 people are unable to read and write.
7 people have a university degree.
11 people own a car.
15 people are undernourished. 1 person is starving.

It is so easy to forget those who live among us, down the street or across the world. I think of the ability we all have to lobby for free press, speech, and governments and how we can all work to stop war and discrimination. The continuing vast inequality in access to food saddens me until I remember how unequal food and wealth distribution can be born of the inequalities we can work to change -- fairness, care, and governments that work for their citizens.

Learning to Speak, Engage, Go Forward

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've been reflecting recently on the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Baghdad and realizing that while media and our surroundings work to convince us that today is more dangerous than yesterday, people all over the world have always lived in challenging times. When I feel sadness at the islamophobia and fear that's arose in the past weeks, I've been reminded of the importance of youth, of new ideas, of inter-faith dialogue and communication and not allowing fear to take control. I like these words spoken by Robert F. Kennedy in South Africa in 1966, I think they ring true today:

"Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of difference which is at the root of injustice and hate and war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ended at river shore, his common humanity enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town and views and the color of his skin.It is your job, the task of the young people of this world, to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man."

Concord, NH a few January's ago.

More than Marking Genocide

I admire nearly every one of Nicholas Kristof's weekly columns in the New York Times. His column was required reading for a college journalism class I was in a few years ago, and his thought-provoking writing and reporting makes him easily my favorite journalist for exposing issues beyond American borders. He focuses on the plight of women and children around the world while bringing light to issues of poverty and human rights violations in nations seldom covered in mainstream American media.

Over the weekend, the Times published Kristof's latest column, titled "Heroes and Bystanders." Writing of 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the beginning of the Armenian genocide, Kristof wrote of the likely global discussion and remembrance the anniversaries will spark, yet he explored further what the anniversaries should spark:

"...the lesson of history is that the best way to honor past victims of atrocities is to stand up to slaughter today. The most respectful way to honor Jewish, Armenian, or Rwandan victims of genocide is not with a ceremony or a day, but with efforts to reduce mass atrocities currently underway."

Kristof does give credit to humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and more recently in the eastern Congo and for the Yazidi minority in Iraq. All atrocities which have seemingly slowed when pressure was applied by the international community.

Yet that intervention, through awareness, discussion, acknowledgement and an understanding of the truth, will always be needed.

In recent coverage of the decade-long war in the eastern Congo, two quotes have stuck with me:

"Imagine nearly 6 million people dying in the middle of Europe and yet we're silent" (Claver Pashi).

"Millions of Congolese people have lost their life as a result of the crisis and it has warranted almost no sustained and enterprising reporting from the media of the world. It has obtained no great purchase on the popular imagination" (Howard French).

I like Kristof's proposal for 2015. History shouldn't be marked, but knowing today's truth should be.

Memories, Race and Images

Greetings.

I'm not sure why it's been so long. I try to only write when I feel the want and need and lately it hasn't been there. Instead, memory and the speed at which time passes has been a constant theme. It used to be that occasionally words and ideas would need to be written, but recently, it's been memories emerging suddenly.

Words spoken, sights and people seen, and the smallest gestures have been coming back. Sound and smell and taste suddenly bring back so much from the past. It's introduced a reminder of how quickly life changes and how and why we adapt to our surroundings.

It might be the shift of season that's caused me to think, but opportunity and possibility and choice are such strong and positive forces too. The last few months have flown by. I've embarked on changes in location and career and have been happy, realizing too how strong my memories are of this past summer shortly before the changes and of the summers and seasons before this year and what I've gained from each passing season.

Like many others, I've been angered by racial relations in the U.S. that both are finally receiving the media coverage and mass American attention span they deserve, but also are sadly proving the division of race and class existing in the United States. It's made me think back to learning of Civil Rights throughout my public school education. I don't know what's taught today to students, but if the curriculum is anything like the one I absorbed, it makes me wonder why racial relations of the 1960s are taught (despite being extremely important and thought-provoking) when so much of the violence and laws today on race and discrimination mirror those of 50 years ago. Perhaps if we didn't add these events to history class and chose to introduce them to young students 20 years later, more could be positively changed for our world today.

I'm trying to figure out this space of writing too, and thinking more about how we perceive ourselves and others. Much has changed since beginning this blog two and a half years ago and I no longer want to use this space to write about myself but am working on finding a balance and focus elsewhere. We'll see what happens.

(NH) White Mountains and moon.

I attended a conference for work at the Mount Washington Hotel in early November. 

I was originally terrified of the ghost potential, but enjoyed a pleasant ghost-free stay.

Just hanging outside college counseling (at my workplace).

Woodstock, Vermont.

My grandmother's typewriter.

Concord, Mass.

Finance land and 9/11 memorial, New York City.

Holderness, New Hampshire, late December.

Reflections on Ferguson

I've long enjoyed the "Best American Series" of essays and poetry, published annually by Houghton Mifflin. I recently began "The Best American Essays of the (20th) Century." I've digested an essay a day, and with every year of the last century represented, I've jumped from 1928 to 1941 to 1957 to 1963 thus far.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" representing 1963 is my current favorite, and the most thought-provoking of the few I've read. While I'd read the essay before, one passage in particular often sticks with me, even more so this month:

"I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.

It's a choice of thought that I've struggled with before, the belief that certain geographic areas are immune, that we live in an equal society, that we don't have issues of race or class or discrimination, that our surroundings are safer and more just than others. It's a mistake made far too often, a belief of separation.

This past spring, I wrote a book about race for my senior thesis. Focusing on the homogenous state of Vermont, which at nearly 96% white, is one of the whitest and most liberal in the nation, I interviewed black and white Vermonters, local and state law enforcement, government officials, civil rights attorneys, veterans of the Civil Rights movement and educators. In the process, I attempted to prove that due to it's homogenous nature, Vermont lacked a civil rights moment and while socially accepting, issues of racial acceptance remain. While geographic regions experience different racial demographics and different experiences with racial inequality, I believe we share a responsibility of awareness relating to the discrimination and racial inequality within the United States.

In a similar light, I've watched the events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold these past two weeks and have thought often of the history of American racism. I heard it in the interviews I conducted while writing the book and I understand it better today: a 400-year history of what whites have done to blacks in America cannot be erased in 50 years.

In this light, I began to think of what's changed in American racial relations in the past 50 years; yet in doing so, immediately noticed the disparity between the amount of legal changes, not the unmeasurable societal changes.

I focused on unconscious racial biases in the book, on how we perceive, react, and act towards those unlike ourselves. In reflection of Ferguson, it appears that racial acceptance in the United States has yet to be achieved. Between media perception of young black men, the socio-economic divide present between black and white and police brutality, we're holding ourselves back as a people and nation from true, progressive change in racial acceptance. The legalities might exist, but full racial acceptance hasn't occurred.

In the meantime, I wonder at the possibility of choosing to not sit idly by, but to choose to travel the extra mile and actively work to understand, recognize, acknowledge and prevent our own unconscious racial biases. Perhaps in doing so, we may positively define the next 50 years of American racial equality.

In Search of of an American Religion

Late last week, I ventured to Sharon, Vermont in search of the birthplace of Joseph Smith, the founder and original prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the summer of 2010, I read one of Oxford University Press' "A Very Short Introduction" books on Mormonism and continued reading from there. Recently, I've enjoyed reading and following the writing and actions of Joanna Brooks, Kate Kelly and other Mormon feminist leaders.

Sharon, Vermont

I learned long ago that the LDS church is not a religion for me, but I hold respect, interest and appreciation for the faith, and am particularly interested in how the LDS Church has spread throughout the world through its missionaries, and how the faith is one of few sects of Christianity that was founded in and had monumental religious experiences occur near exclusively in the United States. Further, the intersection and influence of religion and culture is interesting. I see Mormonism as interwoven with American history, especially westward migration and the freedom to worship.

When I arrived for my visit, I was greeted by a mile-long driveway lined with oak trees. A sign informed visitors that the property is owned by the LDS church and that both a worshipping house (a bit different than a temple, as anyone is permitted to enter) along with a visitor's center and walking trails were available. Colorful flowers were planted sporadically and the location was physically beautiful, a bit like a postcard capturing summer in Vermont.

I was greeted by a female missionary who appeared to be in her sixties. She was friendly, kind and outwardly beautiful, with a long skirt and modest clothing, upholding the Church's guidelines of the physical appearance of a missionary perfectly. The tour began with a focus on genealogy, a popular and cherished topic for the LDS Church. A poster board displayed an intricate spider web diagram in which Joseph Smith was shown to be distantly related to Sir Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and both the Bush Presidents. I wondered if these names were carefully chosen, or if Joseph Smith held no distant relation to political leaders who might be less favored by members of the church. The tour wasn't extraordinarily fascinating, but explained a bit about Joseph Smith's early years at the turn of the nineteenth century living in Sharon and later, West Lebanon, N.H., working on farms and overcoming life-threatening illnesses with the assistance of doctors at nearby Dartmouth Hospital.

After watching a 20 minute video about Joseph Smith's life in upstate New York where as a teenager, he discovered the golden plates and founded the church, I emerged into the sunlight, where I was greeted by a large framed picture of the LDS Church's current president and prophet, Thomas S. Monson. The man was wearing a suit and tie and something about the image immediately made me feel uneasy and uncomfortable in the confrontation that a major religion was in the hands and power of an 86-year old man. In the seconds that followed though, the papacy and Catholic Church's hierarchy of powerful men suddenly occurred to me.

I spoke with my missionary guide about these beliefs. We spoke about our own religions (Catholicism for me, Mormonism for her) and of our respect for the commitment's of our respective religions in working for others. She finished our tour by showing me the granite monument representing Joseph Smith's life, planted a hundred feet from the home he was born in. The monument stands 50 feet tall, with the base and inscription, but the 38.5 feet of polished stone is seen as the most important, with each foot of granite representing a year of Joseph Smith's life. 

A few years ago, I pondered religious conflict and a lack of acceptance and peace between people, and after some time, came to my own personal belief that every religion (with the exclusion of religious beliefs endangering or putting individuals at risk of harm of any kind) is true and absolutely valid in our world. I believe too, that a better and more cooperative world can be built upon religious understanding and acceptance. We can accomplish far more with our time and lives through understanding one another. I do not identify as Mormon, but the I see the faith, like many religions, as beautiful and true.

Elie Wiesel's Night and Day

I have many favorite genres for books but desire above all else, to seek literature and writing that works for the world, that tells a necessary and untold story that remains with me, that changed my view and urges me to work harder for others, for myself and for our shared surroundings. Literature that dives into culture and religion will always be favored. I was attracted to Nobel Peace prize recipient and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel's trilogy of Night, Dawn and Day but as my local library held only Night and Day, I skipped Dawn and found both to be extraordinary.

I preferred Night of the two. I had greatly enjoyed the Diary of Anne Frank earlier this year and found Night to be a companion of sorts, the latter part. Wiesel's descriptive writing, short sentences and autobiography of his experiences in Auschwitz and later, Buchenwald as a Romanian-Jewish teenager during World War II were powerful and can't thoroughly be explained or appreciated here.

I've read many powerful endings to pieces of writing in journalism, poetry and fiction, and think that any ending that carries a lasting effect of any sort is powerful writing. When I finished Night about a month ago I felt immediately then, and remain confident now, that Wiesel's ending lines were the most lasting I had ever read in literature. I listened to the book as an audio-book while driving and I can remember so vividly exactly where I was and what I watched as I heard his last two sentences. Describing seeing himself in a mirror for the first time in years two weeks after being liberated from Buchenwald, Wiesel writes,

"From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."

Day was far more fictional in comparison to Night although select themes did appear to arrive from Wiesel's own life as he writes in the first person of a Holocaust survivor living in New York and contemplating the existence and power of God in the modern day. I felt that Wiesel closely examined the Jewish faith against the backdrop of a city of immigrants, and the emptiness the main character experiences in his relationship with God as he works to understand the injustices seared into his memory from half a world away decades earlier. Day was far less direct than Night, speaking instead to general and familiar issues of memory, loss, and recovery after tragedy, yet in the context and frame of a tragedy that few will ever experience or understand.

When Religion and State Collide

As I looked up towards the New Hampshire state house late yesterday morning behind newspaper and a half-eaten burrito, I was reminded of the Supreme Court's ruling the previous day in which a narrow decision struck down an integral part of the federal health care mandate, ruling that for-profit businesses of any size are permitted to restrict contraception to female employees if the employer cites a religious reason to do so.

The New Hampshire state house, July 1st.

In my mind, I asked the state house how and why it became less relevant in comparison to religion, how it could happen that the law could no longer protect every American citizen no matter whom they were employed by. Growing up in that small city and looking across the skyline, I thought momentarily that I had received my answer. No building except for a house of worship is permitted to be taller than the building I was facing, the seat of New Hampshire government. I knew that religion and law must, and always will, co-exist. Yet I couldn't understand where religious freedom came into play in the law.

For personal reference, I like religion, I'm religious, but I've long felt that it must exist independently of the law. The U.S. might be an overwhelmingly Christian nation (roughly 80%) but it's been built upon the ideal of welcoming immigrants from every culture and religion. While Americans can and should practice religious freedom in being able to worship free of prejudice within the U.S., I can't quite understand why I might inflict my religion on others and include it within my own definition of religious freedom.

How is religious freedom achieved by asking one's employees (in the case of Hobby Lobby, (the main plaintiff in Monday's ruling) 13,000 Americans of various faiths) to conform to a particular (very private) aspect of a particular religion? It's as if the definition of religious freedom has curved into asking others to conform.

By taking power  away from government and placing it into the hands of people to choose if employees receive the full benefit of the federal health care law, the ruling reminds me a bit of Citizens United a few years ago, which ruled that corporations can be defined as individuals and provide political campaigns with as much financial support as possible. It reminded me of the wealth needed now for an American presidential campaign and the power that corporations, not people, hold in the United States today.

I want to understand all sides, I want to understand the victory this could be viewed as, but I simply can't if one's choice is being taken away. Surely an employee can work elsewhere, surely they can purchase out of pocket, but how far will religious freedom lead individuals in erasing the health care mandate and mandating the lives of others? When did religious freedom become a method to conform the lives of others?

Updates and Religion

Greetings! I wish I had a really great post full of images and fun experiences to write about, but I don't today. Life has been busy!  It's certainly been busier before, but it's still pretty crazy. I've been waking up ultra-early each morning this week and despite the struggle, it's been an excellent choice! Mornings are inspiring too. I'm happy to share that my thesis will be finished on Sunday! It's just about there now, but could use a few more healthy read-throughs. This week I've begun to wonder about what I'll do with my time once it's turned in. Thankfully, there's still plenty to accomplish!

While at my parent's house last week, I set down the introduction of my thesis that I was editing at one point, and thought the scene might make a nice picture. 

On Tuesday evening, the Saint Michael's College center for peace and justice hosted A. Rashied Omar, a scholar at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. When not teaching at Notre Dame (June-December), Omar works as an Imam (the Muslim equivalent to a priest or reverend) at a mosque in his native Cape Town, South Africa. I was particularly interested in Omar because of his involvement in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and relationship with both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. He spoke about intra-religious dialogue, the practice of Christians speaking with and communicating with Christians who may hold more or less strict religious views and Muslims doing the same with Muslims along with other faiths. The next morning, he spoke to my peace and justice class about the role of religion, emphasizing ten points. He elaborated on every point, citing specific examples and ideas, but just the list itself is eye-opening and informational. It made me think and I hope it does the same for you. 

The Role of Religion (by A. Rashied Omar)

1.) Modernization Thesis

2.) Definition of Religion

3.) Sanctity of Human Life

4.) Human Dignity

5.) Embracing "the other"

6.) Prophetic Theology

7.) Religion -- State Typologies

8.) Civil Society

9.) Social Spirituality

10.) Faith and Hope

Origin

I've been thinking and writing lately about our relationship to the clothing we wear and where the pieces come from. It might have been the media attention on the fires and deaths in Bangladesh clothing factories last year, or it might be something else.

I've begun to wonder how the western world has continually exported jobs that can be done faster, cheaper and far less safe beyond our borders. Slavery seems a harsh term to use, but as modern-day human trafficking and workers rights projects have used it, including this startling and upsetting quiz on how many modern-day slaves one owns, slaves might be the best term to use for those who make our food, clothing, and allow us to live the way we do, wherever we do.

A few months ago, I read the 2000 year-old work 'Slaves' by Seneca. Two passages remained with me, "Whenever the thought of your wide power over your slave strikes you, be struck too, by the thought of your master's equally wide power over you," and "Remember, if you please, that the man you call slave sprang from the same seed, enjoys the same daylight, breathes like you, lives like you, dies like you. You can just as easily conceive him a free man as he can conceive you a slave."

Lastly, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, one of my favorite quotes from Robert F. Kennedy's 1966 speech in South Africa,

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle, or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation, those who seek to enter the moral conflict, will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe. For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success, so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us." 
 

Boston and Books

I visited Boston a few days ago, met with a few friends and laughed for what felt like several hours.

The city was beautifully decorated for Christmas and it was a welcome relief to emerge from the deep forest and be surrounded by people.

I met my friend Julie from Scotland outside South Station. We usually traveled to and from Boston - St. Andrews together last year as we were both full-year American abroad students. We hadn't seen each other since we both returned and it was wonderful to share the readjustments we've both experienced.

Julie and I in the Highlands in April.

Later, I met up with one of my best friends from Saint Michael's, Katie.

We could not stop laughing. It was joyous.

Katie and I at a ball when she visited St. Andrews last February.

Seeing the ocean...those shades of blue...it was majestic. It was also quite warm with barely any wind. If the snow hadn't been there, it might have been July...or March.

We were hoping to run into Paul Revere in this Quincy Market alley.

This was incredible. After literally stumbling upon Quincy Market and the Faneuil Hall Marketplace, we saw dozens of new Americans emerging from Faneuil Hall with their families, certificates and American flags. There was so much joy and excitement among everyone. We stood for a while and smiled at it all. :)

As we walked towards Charlestown, we found ourselves across from the Vermont Building!

Friday was warm in New Hampshire with quite a bit of snow meltage. I woke up...

to this dangerous peril! These snow-ice clusters were hanging from the roof... 

As for the "Books" part of the post, the bookcases were bathed in sunlight on a recent afternoon and I like what I captured below:

Books are so meaningful to me. I think they're physically beautiful on bookshelves too. I haven't yet embraced the kindle, but perhaps someday.

My Mom's Robert Frost collection from college. :)

My poetry anthologies. Each one has such a story behind it which I love. I see one of Joan Didion's in here that I found on a 'free book' table in the School of Business and Management in St. Andrews, another that I received as a gift from my Dad, others that I picked up at a used book store while in San Francisco with my brother, a few that I purchased over the summer at Bookstock, one from Amazon, and others with stories from their past. 

Lastly, religion continues to interest me and I've thought often recently about the politics of religion that divide us. I see our religious decisions, ideas and beliefs in politics and persuasion. I wish I could express it all better and had a better explanation and grasp of my own beliefs or ideas, but I'll leave it to the following quote that I read earlier by Kathy Reich from her book Cross Bones. My friend Susanna is to thank for it.

"Despite the rituals, the rhetoric, and even the bombs, every religion is saying mostly the same thing. Buddhism. Taoism. Zoroastrianism. Sikhism. Shamanism. It doesn't matter, take your pick...The Torah, the Bible, the Koran. Each offers a recipe for spiritual contentment, for hope, for love, and for controlling basic human passions, and each claims to have gotten the recipe straight from God, but via a different messenger. They're all just trying to provide a formula for orderly, spiritual living, but declare the boundaries of correct belief, outsiders are labeled heretics, and the faithful are called upon to attack them. I don't think it was meant to be that way."

From South Africa to Brooklyn

I've been home in New Hampshire for a couple of days and the snow is deep and the air cold. I'm reading a variety of books ranging from Christian mysticism to the Vietnam War to Harry Potter. I've been writing a few essays recently on various themes and have been pleased to be editing and organizing old work.

I've tried to put together my thoughts for several days about Nelson Mandela and a piece I read recently on poverty, but haven't got to blogging. It was on a recent night at 1:30 a.m.-- either the night before or perhaps the night after my finals last week (they were all in one day this year!) that I couldn't sleep and needed to write most of what's below into the notepad section of my phone to add to this blog at a later date.

I've written before about my interest in and respect for Nelson Mandela. Sometime in May or June 2012, I read a few books about him and I remember writing a few quotes by him that inspired me. I kept them in a notebook that I brought with me to Scotland. When my Dad texted me last week informing me of Mandela's death, the sadness wasn't quite there. It may have been the knowledge that he died at 95, presumably alongside family, an image of death we all wish for. I remembered a BBC article I had read the previous day quoting his daughter saying he was towards his end, and days before, I remember thinking of him, although it may have been that my eye caught a glimpse of a quote of his on my wall. I'm thankful, like many, to have shared a world and overlapping time of existence with him. I remain humbled by his leadership and forgiveness, and interested in his nation and the opportunities that I hope lie ahead for South Africa. I'm no expert at all, and barely feel as if I can comment at all, but South Africa -- despite being the most wealthy nation in Africa, remains one of the most unequal and dangerous areas of the world. With Mandela's blueprint though, I, along with many, hold great hope.

One of my favorite quotes by Mandela:

"In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence, and popularity, wealth and standard of education...but internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being: honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve your fellow men -- qualities within the reach of every soul."

I spent about four hours on Thursday night (my final ended that afternoon!) in between laughing and packing with one of my housemates, reading this 5-part New York Times series, Invisible Child. I had heard of it through a few journalism circles and I can say that it is the single most amazing piece on poverty, particularly youth poverty I have ever read. It portrays one child in Brooklyn, New York over one school year. Invisible Child proves that today's American poor are unlike our images or expectations of the poor. Today's poor have similar access to media, advertising, culture, yet lack resources. They are among all of us, living and surviving on far less.

Fifty Years Onwards

I've thought over the past weeks and days how I best want to write about and mark today's 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. As the day has approached and as I think about the anniversary now, I've struggled to find the words. It's a celebration and a marking of success, perhaps, but one that continues to evolve. It's beautiful and terrible and an anniversary of a day, a year and a decade that created the world we live in today. I listened to President Obama's speech earlier, and his politics and presidency aside, I was touched by his word choices, descriptions and remembrance of fifty years ago today.

The following excerpts from his speech were especially meaningful:

"We rightly and best remember Dr. King's soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time."

"When millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I wish I could write about some personal comparison or experience I've had in the fifty years since 1963. But I can't. Then, I heard these lines spoken by the President:

"There's a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young, for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream different and to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation."

While flying to California last week, I brought along Time Magazine's August 26/September 2 double issue. The majority of the publication explores the March on Washington and King's speech. Each of the lengthy articles was fascinating, but the following paragraph resonated the most with me:

'The most obvious observation about life since August 1963 is also the most accurate: we have traveled far, but not far enough. Revisiting King's speech, the religiously infused culture from which it sprang and the political moment in which he delivered it suggests that he, for one, wouldn't be surprised by the ambivalent state of affairs in the America of 2013. Like our more familiar founders (Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson), he was a practical idealist, a man who could articulate an ideal but knew that human progress, while sometimes intoxicatingly rapid, tends to be a provisional enterprise. The march, he said that day in Washington, was not an end; it was a beginning. We live in a world King helped create. We do not yet live in the world he helped all of us dream of." --Jon Meachem, TIME

Lastly, this BBC video combines wonderful images and audio of August 28, 1963 with present-day global peace activists. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23853578 

Nature & Catholicism

Hello again.

It is green and comfortable here. I skyped earlier with my friend Joseph from St. Andrews and it was the most wonderful and bittersweet conversation. He skyped from where we lived and I gave him a brief outdoor tour of Vermont. Hearing him and seeing him there brought every memory back and when familiar workers from our residence hall walked by in the background, it was the nicest yet strangest sensation of being where I was for so long yet not being there physically at all.

Last night after work I visited Northfield, Vermont briefly. I weeded with a family member, fed cows, tasted sugar snap peas and rolled away a 35 year-old wire fence to be put away for the winter. The sky, distant hills and peaceful outdoor sounds of July were beautiful.

 

 

I'm currently reading 'Almost Catholic' by Jon M. Sweeny. Sweeny, a born Protestant-now-Catholic-Thelogian focuses on the mystery and traditions woven into the Catholic faith. As I continually question and explore my own following of the Catholic faith, Sweeny provides insight and meaning into what Catholicism is at its core. A few of my favorite passages:

 

'To be Catholic is to live in the largest of all possible worlds. This includes spanning time, reorienting space and changing within. The Catholic imagination reaches back to the catacombs when Christians first began to seek faith mediated hrough symbol, art, sacrament scripture and the mystical oneness of community.'

 

'Two millenia of saints and practices and teachings and mystery form a golden string that connects us to our beginnings. These paths are very much about the future as they illuminate our past.'

 

'The world is all wrapped up with God; both the good and the bad, hurricanes and fair autumn sunsine, the Haitian poor and the entitled rich, spiritual doubt and religious certainty; it is all One Mystery.' 

 

Lastly, my lovely friend Charlotte from St. Andrews just had an Op-Ed published in a student magazine.  Titled 'The Royal Treatment', Charlotte explores if the life of the young Prince George is to be envied or pitied, while envisioning the societal restrictions placed upon the other 4 million births in Britain this year. It's wonderfully-put and well-written.

                            http://www.thetribeonline.com/2013/07/the-royal-treatment/ 

 

--'Some people try to spin the myth that modern Britain is now a classless society, but these statistics show otherwise. The class system rests on the simple and odious belief that some people are worth more than others, and that your personal value is based upon the purity of your blood.'

 

 

Montpelier & Immigration Reform

This evening, instead of jumping on the highway to drive the 40 miles north to Burlington, I stopped briefly in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont and a few miles north of my work place. I love Vermont in the summer. I think I can truthfully say I've never spent a summer in a more visually appealing place. I view the green mountains as more beautiful than the Scottish Highlands. Each day, the twists and turns of the highway reveal uncovered patches of rolling hills ahead. I love living among the mountains and fear that I now might unfairly judge flat areas that I inhabit in the future. I picked up dinner in Montpelier and while there, under the 80-degree evening summer sun, I admired the architecture. The golden Vermont state house dome. How enormously round and blindingly gold it is. The view of the dome when approaching the capitol city and when rolling down hills in the (very small) city. The brick buildings surrounding. The art galleries and local shops and parks and benches and gardens and people.

Driving back to Burlington, I was so fascinated by a Vermont Public Radio (VPR) story. I thought I knew a good amount of Vermont's share of undocumented immigrants, but I didn't. Certainly the issue can be controversial and I'm inclined to disclose that VPR displays a somewhat-bias, but just putting the facts together and understanding the wider issue was fascinating. My opinion now is that the state of Vermont could not prosper without undocumented immigrants. 90 percent of Vermont's 1000 to 1200 undocumented immigrants work on the state's dairy farms. All are paid. 90 percent come from Mexico. Of those 90 percent, over 50 percent come from Mexico's southern-most state. Those who make it to Vermont are attracted by its isolation. They can work long hours and earn good pay in an environment where they cannot walk to nearby towns or businesses. Vermont has plenty of work yet violent seasons and extreme temperatures. More often than not, these workers return home and become small business owners and farmers. As hard as it was to believe, VPR spoke about Vermont residents not competing for dairy farming jobs. With Vermont as one of the oldest states in the nation now (along with New Hampshire), farmers and the members of the towns and counties these dairy farms are located in are too old to dairy farm all hours of the day and all days of the week. I understand and agree that immigration reform is necessary. I understand the issues surrounding the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Yet I struggle to believe (and perhaps this VPR story and my own liberal education has influenced my own thinking) how the 1000-1200 undocumented migrant dairy farm workers in Vermont are hurting the Vermont economy or society by performing the jobs that need to be performed. Rather, they seem to only be boosting productivity and continuing Vermont's dairy farming traditions.