If You Are Angry...

If you are angry, let your anger be fire
So it can warm someone chilly.
If you are grieving, let your grief be a river
So someone thirsty can drink.
If you are numb, let your numbness give you capacity
To walk in hard places and not feel hurt.
If you are broken, let your brokenness
Be what makes space for a new thing to enter.
If you are fearful, let your fear be a warning signal
That others may look up.
If you are lost, let your being lost
Make a new place and call it home.
However you are,
Keep going.
However you are,
Keep going.

Rev. Laura Martin, 6/28/18.

(Reminder, this blog is mostly inactive.  For weekly inspiration, try:  smalldeedsdone.com.)

Taking a Break

Dear activists,

As has probably been obvious, I have been taking a break from this blog.  Here are some other sources of inspiration to which you can subscribe:

smalldeedsdone.com

www.celebratesmallvictories.com

And keep an eye out for the good work of your local League of Women Voters.  I had no idea all the great stuff they do till just recently.

Yours for a vibrant democracy,
Terry

Climbing off the Bench

U.S. District Judge David Carter takes photos at the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

David Carter cares enough about justice to climb off his bench, roll up his sleeves, see for himself, and issue creative rulings that help make a difference.  This Orange County Federal judge has insisted that the county plan to empty the Santa Ana river of homeless people (the encampment numbered at one point as many as 900 people) must be done humanely and respectfully.  In order to understand the problem, he walked the riverbed personally, engaging city and county officials and homeless people in conversation.  While no long term solution to the county's skyrocketing homeless population is in sight, at least in the short term, somebody with legal power cares about the rights and dignity of the people involved.

Read the whole story at:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-judge-carter-profile-20180220-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter

Finer Music

Excerpts from Zadie Smith, at a speech in Germany in 2016, from the essay collection Feel Free. Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive. People who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world — and most recently in America — the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

Love and Justice

Love and justice.  We need both.  Love doesn't mean feeling a certain way. It means actions that care for others.  Justice doesn't mean an abstract notion of fairness, or punishing transgressors, but a system of government, laws, policy, enforcement, and public sentiment that prioritizes the well-being of all over the privileges of some.

We can disagree over specifics, but when we take one short step back from concrete policies to the values behind them, our blind spots come clear.  Just after a friend told me that his nephew had been shot dead by a relative, the New York Times reported that January 23rd had seen the eleventh school shooting in 2018.  To our shame as a country, we have failed to protect all citizens in order to privilege a virtually unregulated use of lethal objects by a few, and the profits of those who equip them.

While this injustice remains, love is at work. In a Momastery blog post called, "Share this with all the schools, please" Glennon Doyle explains the systematic efforts, over years, of one math teacher to identify and remedy the kind of alienation among her students that could lead to another Columbine-style school shooting.  With math! And love.
http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/.

A Litany for Justice and Equality

Litany for Justice and Equality (in honor of Martin Luther King)            by Fran Pratt

Oh God, we are reminded today of Your infinite Love for all people:
         All races
All colors
         All political affiliations
All religious persuasions
         All social classes
All economic statuses
         All nations.
We confess our tendency to think that we are the best,
our perspective the most righteous.
         Forgive us our arrogance, Oh God.
We confess our tendency to judge others, and to condemn those we find unworthy.
         Forgive us our impertinence, Oh God.

We see others with criticism.
         You see us all with love-filled eyes.
We see only in part.
         You see the world with infinite wisdom.
We see the external.
         You see the heart.

Mold us to Your way.
         Form us to Your heart.
Shape us with love.
         Make us new with grace.

Our way is not of violence and empire, but in the power and beauty of the cross.
            Our faith is not in politics, but in the transforming love of Christ.
May we work diligently to help meet the needs of those You love,
 both physical and spiritual.
            May our eyes be opened to the value and worth of each person we meet. 
May Your kingdom come, Your will be done
            On earth as it is in heaven. Amen

Other MLK sermons, litanies and essays can be found at textweek.com.

Dorothy is Door-knocking!

I was catching up with friend and neighbor Dorothy over the holidays.  After we shook our heads over the political situation, I asked if she was taking any action.  Indeed she is!  She has been door-knocking on Saturday mornings for the Orange County Democratic Party.  She is using the "Neighbors in Action" approach of listening to people about what matters to them and building relationships, to prepare for political action closer to the 2018 elections.

I have heard all about this, but haven't quite stepped up to doing it myself.  Dorothy noted that door-knocking is out of her comfort zone, but that she has been pleasantly surprised that people are almost all friendly and want to be listened to!

We in Orange County are fortunate to be in a place where our action for the 2018 elections can make a difference.  Door-knocking is out of the comfort zone of most people.  But if Dorothy can do it, so can we!  (I'll let you know how it goes...)