Ten Things To Know About Burns Strider

The #MeToo movement was used today as a tool to feed into the media's never-ending and ever-failing quest to prove Hillary Clinton an enabler and protector of abusers. And so today there are hundreds of stories floating titled things such as - - "Who is Burns Strider?" and "Five Things You Need To Know About Burns Strider." Well, I know Burns Strider have ten things for you to know about him. To know Burns is to know a true friend.

Canoe in the Rapids, by Winslow Homer

1.) Loyal and available to his friends, Burns Strider is a guy who will stay on the phone with a childhood friend until 4:00 am when she is suffering from a life crisis and needs support.

2.) Burns is the friend who will invite you for coffee at his office and tell you stories about growing up in Grenada, Mississippi. You’ll enjoy the stories. They are colorful and vibrant and you'll walk away not exactly sure what any of those stories had to do with anything. You will go to sleep. You will wake up in the morning with your eyes as big as the planets and understand that the point was to live authentically. To tell the truth. To tell your own truth. To live your own truth. To be proud of your truth, warts and all. And you will carry this message with you wherever you go. And you will think of the words “lemony yellow aura,” forever, with great meaning.

3.) He is the guy who will meet you for dinner on a Tuesday night between dropping his kids off at sports practice and picking them up because you had a panic attack at work and are afraid of the future and are forgetting to breathe.  

4.) Burns does not let his friends off the hook. He tells us he loves us and worries about us and that he better get a call back and when he knows everything is not ok we are not allowed to say that everything is ok.

5.) Burns is a guy who might not tell you that a piece of kale is stuck in your teeth during a lunch because he knows there is a wall of mirrors that the two of you will pass as you exit and you will see it and try to remove it with a fingernail. When you do this, he might encourage you to just leave it. After all, it is important to be authentic.

6.) When confused, a friend can text Burns at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night and ask, “Why is my boyfriend hiding copious amounts of Kings Hawaiian bread rolls up high in the cupboards of our kitchen?” Promptly, he will respond: “Because they make the best sandwiches. They really do.”

7.) Burns loves his children (even more than he loves Mississippi State Bulldogs sports). His sons are his life. He is devoted to documenting nearly everything they do around town in DC, on road trips, and on charmed adventures. He invites the rest of us to witness the love and the celebrations of their life together.

8.) The relationship Burns has with the Clintons is a sacred one. He will tell funny stories about diet cheating on the campaign trail with former President Bill Clinton, or when Secretary Hillary Clinton scolded him about procrastinating on a health concern. He will let you know how and what they are doing, but that’s it. He is like that with all of his friends. He protects us all from whatever we need protection.

9.) He wears a Make Mercy Great Again hat. #MMGA

10.) His southern accent allows you to enjoy it when he is making fun of you. I was once complaining about paying for my storage unit back in Ohio - and within the context of my very nomadic life - Burns suggested that I make one of those interactive maps with blinking lights to show all the cities where my possessions reside and he said, "And over here, in Ohio, this is where I keep my books and grandparents’ furniture, but if you want to hear about the emotional things I have stored here, you will have to pay extra.”

Lastly, Mary Oliver, a poet both Burns and Secretary Clinton enjoy wrote, “I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing— that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.” 

And I do too.

food for thought

But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. and being found in human form. - Philippians 2:7

During Lent, for Christian sub-communities - - specifically converts (pre-baptismal catechumens), new christians (neophytes), and penitent apostates (atoning sinners)- - and the community as a whole there exists a season of abstinence, discipline, self-restraint, and contemplation. Therein lays flesh filled optimism, turning toward the resurrection of Christ. Lent, therefore, provides the church with a unique opportunity to be active contrarians to the norms and ways of our sick, scarce culture; it is a time to live over and against the selfish and unequal mainstream values of modernity.

One way in which this can be activated is through fasting, as recommended by Paul in Acts 14:23. Fasting activates a bodily attempt to “die” of self in order to live for Christ. This self-denial resides in union with Christ’s sacrifice not only of his life, or in his resistance of temptation in the desert, but in his humiliating experience as a smelling, pained, tortured body, hanging on the cross.

St. Leo the Great said that Lent was a time to prepare for salvation. Those awaiting baptism, the church-going, and those returning to the church can engage in a communal fast as preparation for salvation, and a “rebaptism” in Easter. Lent presents spiritual struggles, and fasting is a tool to assist in working through those struggles. It is also an act of social justice. When I consume less, I leave more for others to consume. When I take in less food and water, there are gleanings for the needy as commanded by scripture.

In the same vain that hunger strikes are a means of non-violent resistance to oppressive conditions, fasting speaks truth to power. In pre-Christian Ireland, hunger strikes were used to publicly bring attention to injustice. During the early 20th century, hunger strikes were used by Gandhi in India against the British. Suffragists, Caesar Chavez, and Guantanamo detainees have fasted in opposition to inequality in gender, labor, and justice, denying ones body of bread, speaks over and against the system and the worldly emptiness that pervade society, hoping for a new bread of life in Christ.

The story of Elijah reveals the power fasting has in connecting with God. Elijah goes into the desert to hide after great violence. He asks God to end his life, takes nothing in, and then gives his life over to God entirely. Soon food is delivered, and not by the Sala Thai delivery guy: BUT BY AN ANGEL! Then comes revelation and courage. Elijah may return to Israel. Fasting may help us all return to Israel. Caution however, after Moses fasted, he received the Ten Commandments. With self-denial comes wisdom, followed by responsibility in a world of irreversibility.

virginia is for lovers (of barack)

On the evening of Election Day, Barack Obama spoke in front of half a million people in Chicago, while others all over the world huddled around radios or were watching on TV. At 4:30 pm in a cold garage in Fairfax County, Virginia I spoke to the final group of canvassers, many of whom had been out in the rain all day, all of GOTV weekend, or all election season.

The group was diverse. An elderly white woman stood next to a young black woman. The gay middle-aged man shared his umbrella with the pregnant immigrant. They were all neighbors in the precincts in which they were about to talk to voters for the final time in this election. I looked at these eighteen volunteers and thought about what they needed to hear. They eagerly looked at me for direction. Throughout my life, I have been part of the democratic process at various levels in different places. On Tuesday, with very little sleep, and while dressed in a strange Norwegian sweater donated to me by one of the canvassers, I rededicated myself to the bread & butter of the political process, and of this campaign: the effectiveness of neighbors talking to neighbors.

I told them that the 21 months of voter registration, identification, persuasion, financial donations, stress, and dedication in the field - would all be for naught if Getting Out The Vote failed. And the only way - the ONLY way - GOTV will not fail in Virginia, would be if we cranked it up and turned it out in Fairfax County. The next two and a half hours of their lives came down to the answer of one question: would there be a President McCain or a President Obama? Therefore, I told them, it was time to do one thing and one thing only, to get bodies to the polls. I told them not to come back to see me with any information until 7:00pm, and that I only wanted a number of people who had definitively delivered a vote for Obama. I said I don’t want you coming back here to tell me about how many yard signs or dogs a house has even though you couldn’t find away to get a hold of the people living inside. I want you to be married to your turf for the next two and a half hours because this is your last chance. This is not about ANYTHING other getting voters to immediately go and vote for Barack. The people on your list are your responsibility. And mark my word, we will lose Virginia if we do not turn out Fairfax County at a historical margin. If we win Virginia we don’t need places like Florida and Ohio. So, it’s all you. Keep your head in the game. You don’t get to redo these 2.5 hours tomorrow.

Before I knew it, it was 9:30 pm and I was at a fancy cocktail party at The Willard in downtown DC. The TV said we were losing Virginia, and I knew that Fairfax had not reported yet. When Virginia went blue for the first time in 44 years, I received calls and texts from a couple of those canvassers exclaiming things such as, “wow! You were right about Virginia! I am so glad I was out there this weekend!”

In my mind, the most invigorating thing about politics and of this campaign in particular, is that all the experts and operatives in that room at The Willard would be nothing without the labor of people like those whom I spoke to in the cold garage.

With hope,
Kate

inshalla

A couple of weeks ago, I called my friend Uzma for the first time in many months. While Uzma is someone I greatly admire and feel quite close to we do not speak frequently. She and I were catching up about all the things women talk about in these sorts of conversations. (And she always makes time for me when I call.) Uzma is going to be a Mom, so we talked about that. Having finished her Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins, she has a new job in North Carolina, so we also discussed that. During this conversation, I realized she was at the same time running errands for her husband, Nadim. First she went to the drug store to get him a prescription for heartburn. Then she went through the Arby’s drive-thru. Then to another place to retrieve a specific type of freedom fries. Nadim, a heart surgeon, was at home watching the Redskins with a friend.

Realizing it was about 7 pm on the east coast I asked Uzma, “Are ya’all breaking fast now or something?”

“Yes! And I am running all over the place to get Nadim what he wants!”

“Happy Ramadan, I guess?”

“Ha ha ha- thanks,” she said.

Today, I watched an A&E special on Queen Noor (Lisa Hallaby) of Jordan. And I remembered Uzma driving through the drive-thrus. And I also recalled Sarah from Austin in Bangladesh telling me of her arranged marriage and the early struggles with it as the commitment she and her husband made grew stronger - endured the test of time and ultimately celebrated an irreplaceable bond.

I envy these women.

In a day and age where my favorite Presidential candidate Barack Obama marches around asserting that he is “not a Muslim” I sometimes wish there was place for me in the Muslim culture. Islam means “surrender,” and at risk of sounding pathetic, I must say, as a single woman, I would love nothing more than to give, surrender, and love with all of my being, in choice and devotion like my Muslim friends do in their marriages.

I missed my friend Iram’s wedding in August, but she was gorgeous and I am sharing a photo.

kill your television, or that annoying couple on the eharmony commercial

I’ve been watching an enormous amount of TV lately. What at first was a treat has since been a reminder of why I don’t own a television, (despite my angst of baseball-season-separation and lack of opportunity to conquer the Daily Double). For me, turning on the TV exposes my most sacred peace to the chronic illnesses of consumerism, anxiety, fear, and reality TV shows (that I somehow can watch numerous episodes of). But please don’t reduce my aversion to TV to an assumed, snobbish, distaste for that which lies outside of the intellectual, because through the internet and grocery check-out magazines, I too indulge the absurdities of pop culture. All-in-all, I guess I understand my distaste for TV to be founded on the same reasons I don’t like Las Vegas: too much stimuli and not enough space or time to sort it out. My basal ganglia can only handle so much.

During the past couple of days, on the couch coping with illness, it has just been me and the TV, while my books and pens lie neglected on the floor, lonely, and unused- - all of us wondering when - - if ever - - energy and focus will allow utility again. These days of re-exposure to TV have evoked a new reason for my dislike (and now distrust) of TV – there are families, and couples, and committed people all over TV. Everywhere, a culture where people couple-off and reproduce, and society encourages and rewards them for it. For this togetherness is not a communal one. I am not witnessing community where it ‘takes a village’ – rather, I am told (and learning) that it takes a husband, and a Mom, and there are usually heavily deciduous dogs running on freshly cleaned, white tiled floors.

Oh God, every time I see that commercial about the cell phone Family Plan Free Minutes and the spilled milk, I first wonder why I can’t seem to understand what the milk connection is and then I just want to cry my eyes out because I feel so lost. Oh, and on “Trading Spouses” today- I had endure witnessing two families as they experienced the longing for the temporarily traded spouse, but I kept on watching, almost dreaming that someone was missing me. Is this what it is sometimes like for kids of divorced parents? Is this how my gay friends feel in this heteronormative society? Or is just me, and somehow, I have step-by-step and year-by-year violated the governance of American society? I have noticed that the weather reports cause a similar sensation for me. Like the storms in the northeast yesterday - - I kept watching and it made me think about growing up in New York, and having a family, and listening to the scary rain on the roof at night after I moved to my room in the refurbished attic of our little house.

But I also discovered a new good thing about TV today. The Country Music channel. While tuned in there, I feel understood. There, exist others who feel alienated, too. They’re always on the outside looking in, too. Although, that Jesus Take the Wheel song freaks me out a little bit. I am not so sure I want Jesus driving my car.

and at the National Zoo the sign says "no feeding the animals"

Comment Card
Harris Teeter, 16th and Kalorama
Dear General Manager:

When I moved to DC in 1997 I did not even know where 16^th and Kalorama was. Today while in town to visit a friend in the apartment building next door to your new store, I was excited to go in and spend around $7.50 on a package of strawberries, $8.00 on a wedge of brie, and $3.00 for a bottle of sparkling water to wash everything down. However my sentiments quickly changed upon walking up to the door of your store. On it is a sign: “No panhandlers or Loiters. Customers, please do not contribute to panhandlers on premises.”

I was so offended by this sign that I almost turned around and walked away. But then I quickly remembered that the only other full, non-specialty grocery store in the area is what is known as- - or at least used to be known as - - “the Socialist Safeway” over on Columbia Road. The nickname comes from the long lines and lack of food inside.

Your sign is obnoxious first and foremost because it presumes a harm done by, or reason for suspicion caused by, the poor in this neighborhood in Washington, DC. How DARE a corporation that OPENLY charges over 500% for a loaf of bread claim that the poor man, woman, or child standing out front of the store is a danger or problem! Corporations like Harris Teeter are the problem. You came into this neighborhood to cash in on and perpetuate what is clearly irresponsible gentrification. I should be suspicious of you, not those in the neighborhood harmed by you.

Secondly, it offends me that you would tell ME what to do with MY OWN money. If I wish to contribute to a beggar, that is my business, not yours.

Finally, I suggest that you remove the current sign and replace it with one inviting beggars inside for a discussion about how Harris Teeter can assist members of this community who continue to struggle. I also suggest that you provide free meals to the poor three times a day. If you would like to speak with me further about these ideas, I am available until June 5^th and have included my phone number at the top of this card.

With serious concern,

Kate Burke

14th and You

Forty years ago today, the prophet Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred.

Like other cities, Washington, DC broke out in riots. In my opinion, DC has never recovered from these riots. I am not only speaking of the store fronts, and the buildings in-and-of-themselves, I mean that in many places the physical ruins of the riots continue to symbolize the brokenness of race relations and the punishment of poverty prevailing in our country.

Today, white residents in Washington, DC continue to fail our black brothers and sisters with irresponsible gentrification- having left the post-riot neighborhoods in decay for thirty years- and then buying cheap, moving in, driving up property costs, pushing folks out, and taking over the neighborhoods with places like Whole Foods where an apple costs two dollars.

Don't get me wrong, I think the intentionality of living in diverse and walkable communities is fantastic. And of course I want my city to flourish, and to be safe. I love having food and cocktails at some cornerstone places like Busboys and Poets, and Saint-Ex, - I just think we must exercise caution and awareness when throwing our hats into the inequity game of home-ownership. This of course means different things in each situation, but participating in gentrification comes with responsibility. Being white, we are the minority in DC, - -and as George Clinton said, "We didn't get our forty acres and a mule but we did get you, Chocolate City."

toward the illuminative way

During my 20’s the instances when I have thought, ‘what am I doing here?’ Or, ‘I do not belong in this situation,’ have certainly outweighed in number the times I have thought, ‘this is exactly where I am supposed to be.’ At dinner with my new boss and community on Friday night, I had a profound sense of blessed assurance ~ this is my story, this is my song.

In June, I am moving to Haiti to serve as a hospital administrator for a beautiful new facility situated between the ocean and the mountains, providing care to the sick. In Haiti, there is one doctor for every 13,000 people, so the need is tremendous. This opportunity is a leap for me personally and professionally. It will also serve as a great challenge in “conversation morum”- the ongoing conversation of mind, heart, and life. The early monastics believed that there are four renunciations one must encounter to begin a new life, and I might remember them in this endeavor: 1) renounce your former way of life; 2) renounce the thoughts and desires of that way of life; 3) grace will invite us to renounce our self-made thoughts of God; 4) we are then allowed to renounce our self-made thoughts of self.

My boss has been one of the “players” in Haiti for the past 30 years, along with Dr. Paul Farmer, and the rest. Her deep commitment to the Haitian people transcends the difficulties of getting things done in Haiti. Her faith boils over not with words, but with deeds, truly believing that she is called to serve with a preferential option for the poor. She has shown me that I too may live a unique and meaningful life in solidarity with the Haitians who have been harmed at the hand of my own country, over, and over, and over again. The dinner on Friday included others who have dedicated their hearts and resources to Haiti. There is a humility among them that was sincere, and they all love and respect my boss.

I heard things like how during the coup in 1991 my boss (in her late 50’s at the time), stared down the Haitian Army with guns pointed at her, while she secretly delivered money to priests for the hungry parishioners. There was something about going to an island to see Aristide while he was held up in a church. And another story about a tight situation driving through a river and two waterfalls. My boss was very quiet during this, only piping up to correct some of the details, “and we had to chop up that cocoanut tree to get it out of the way.” I told my boss that I would like to write her biography. “No," she said, "I have always said that the book should be about the churches and the work that…” I interrupted, “Well, what if you are not writing the book?” There was a roar of support for my idea from the table.

I will move to Haiti by June 15th, for a year or two, before applying to other graduate programs back in the states. But who knows what will happen next!? I will keep my friends posted as more details about my departure are finalized! I expect visitors!

the mortgage crisis

The Our Father prayer has been spiritualized and privatized in modernity. The truth of the matter is that Jesus was speaking directly to the very immediate concerns of the poor and oppressed. The debts are financial. The bread is the tangible food necessary for life. Take a look at the Gospel of Luke - it is an economic project asserting an abyss between poor and rich; proclaiming Jesus' solidarity with the poor (and the judgment of the rich); and the importance of sharing. Jesus makes programmatic announcements and healings in an attempt to reverse the process of dehumanization caused by poverty and power structures. Jesus as the fulfillment of the Judaic law repeats Torah law with the following commands: Reduce debts. Lend without expecting reciprocation. Invite the poor into your hospitality. Provide services and goods to the poor.

There is so much to celebrate about Christianity! It embraces the best of the classical ethicists, the richness of the Hebraic tradition, and a fine balance between the contemplative and the active. And one thing is undeniable - Christianity is first and foremost about a concern for poverty. The poor challenge us at all times, and when we wake up in a world where poverty exists, we fail God and we fail one another.

In my opinion, poverty is the result of a systematic behavior of allegiances toward and participation in certain economic and political ideologies that ultimately provide material wealth to those able to operate with structurally supported self-interest, while oppressing the world's masses who live on less than two dollars a day; poverty comes from putting our will before the will of God. Private property is part of this problem. What would the world look like if property were a public good? After all property has many life-giving functions. Economist Karl Polanyi has noted that land is used for lots of things – like stability, habitation, physical safety, and he said that living without land is like "being born without hands and feet." Private property prohibits inclusive human survivability, and this is directly against God's will for life. According to the market, the private nature of property is seen as "natural," but the harms done by private property are anything but natural according to Christianity.

resurrection

Even though the world has failed, the healing capacity of the human experience has no limits. I can never know your pain, but I can tell you about mine. Together, we may live in communion, and change the failures of the world.

Today, in a lecture on the ethics of sex (within the context of the norm of the black church's no-talk policy), my professor discussed “sexual consent” and his own experience as a rape survivor. He read some of his new book that addresses this topic. Needless to say, I was profoundly surprised by his choice to speak so openly about something so painful and rarely discussed. He said that he has had a lot of time and therapy to get to the other side of this, to take power from it, name it, and talk with people about it. After class, I went to his office to thank him for the lecture. I said, “That room is full of rape survivors. You just know it.” We will never be able to measure the impact of Victor’s lecture today. He inspired future church leaders to speak about the sexual problems going on sometimes right in the choir chambers of the church. He also gave permission to all of us, to take back our lives; lives that have been slowly stolen from us at the hands of sexual violence, shame, and silence. There is a life after the silence.

Eight years ago, I was followed into a public restroom in Washington, DC, and my head was slammed against a mirror several times, and I was raped. People nearby could hear my frantic laughter as it was happening. I was left alone with my attacker, and then taken by him to a second location where he continued to rape me. Thank goodness, the only thing that I can remember from the second location was waking up and screaming when my head was being bashed again. The following day was probably the weirdest day of my life. During the weeks of panic attacks, issued blame, and months of anxiety, I worked closely with a therapist, as I tried to reclaim my life, and get better. My parents and friends helped me too. It was an imperfect journey, ignited by the social sin of rape, and guided by the human instinct for survival. By being honest and committing to do this work, ultimately my life was saved. Obviously this is the very abbreviated version of what happened to me, and of how it profoundly affected my life and my personhood. But at the end of the day, the details are not the story.

There is one book that I found to be tremendously helpful, and I think everyone should read it, rape survivor or not: After Silence, Rape and My Journey Back, by Nancy Venable Raine.

Before Raine published the book, close friends said things to her like, ''Let's face it, no one wants to hear about such terrible things.'' And, ''I just can't imagine how you can write about something so . . . so very personal.'' And, ''Shall we get off rape to something . . . agreeable?'' Shame presupposes wrongdoing. The things we do not talk about are the things we have done wrong, right? A DUI? A divorce? An F in a class. She writes: ''The sense that I was responsible for the rape supported a more important belief, one that I could not give up, although it had been severely damaged. It was the belief that I could control what happened to me, that my actions had a bearing on the outcome of my life.''

The vast topic of rape is something I occasionally talk to friends about. I never know what they have been through. Without it becoming my identity, I hope that my openness about this can somehow help others who have suffered with the aftermath of a rape, - -people who understand that it is the terror of the violence and the power and the robbing of one’s personhood that is the story of rape, or repeat rapes. It is about being told: "you are not human." Eight years later, I remember dealing with the anxiety, panic, depression, helplessness, and confusion, - - but I usually think of the people who do not have access to help, or who never got help in time. I on the other hand, have been given a new life.

We all need to be part of an open conversation about this social demon, in order to save the lives of those suffering in silence. Inspired by Victor’s lecture, today I am reaching out to you.

you done made clawed z. eagle and me proud

It was quite an experience to watch an NCAA March Madness game featuring the powerhouse of the University of Tennessee and hear the commentator say, "The American University is situated on Embassy Row in our nation's capital, Washington, DC." Had I entered some kind of alternate universe? With five minutes remaining, the game had been tied a few times, and AU was making UT work for their one point lead (49-50). While I still blame American University for poisoning me with their arsenic, and have never felt that my school pride extended far beyond the results of the multi-million dollar endowment dedicated exclusively to flowers on campus, - - today I was certainly cheering!

I actually live in Tennessee, a place where fans paint themselves orange and use all kinds of crazy language like "dominate over" and "suck it." Even my sweet and soon-to-be ordained Divinity School friends Khette and Lillian, have already been ordained by the religion of UT and are the most loyal Vols fans I know. They have even been known to create fear in hearts with their subtle (i.e. orange striped socks) and not so subtle (i.e. "I BLEED ORANGE" t-shirts) displays of allegiance to their team. As you can imagine, this is quite a contrast to my relationship with my undergraduate experience. Perhaps AU might have had a little more luck in the end, if last night I had slept in my black Ann Taylor suit and US Congress ID badge: the uniform of my undergraduate University.

During the final two minutes of the game, when AU apparently forgot how to play basketball, the announcer said, "This will look a lot different in the newspaper tomorrow than it felt watching the game. American University has tenacity about them, don’t they?!" Maybe the tenacity comes from that fact that they are required to sit in class. The Patriot League: scholars, athletes, future leaders. . .

Question: What language do they speak in Haiti?

Answer: Haitian Creole (Kreyol) is spoken in Haiti.

One minute answer. . . ready. . . set. . . go:

Creole languages have a substrate language, with an adstrate lexifier overlay. So, for Haitian Creole, the substrate is African and the lexifying language is French which provides the roots and some of the articles which are then blended with the word or put after the word which is a trait of African languages. In Creole languages, the substrate is rarely identified specifically because the language originated among slaves who were purposely in mixed groups from all over Africa. This was a “secret” language used to communicate apart from the slave masters.

Some people want to call Creoles “pidgin French.” This is not the case. A pidgin language does not have native speakers, whereas Creoles do. It is believed that Creole was created by the children of slaves. Not having a “native tongue,” they blended the African languages they heard with the French from the masters. Creoles are morphologically developed languages. Pidgins are more like the equivalent of “glass drink me,” which could mean: “I will drink out of the glass.” Or, it is more like a variation of / dialect of a given lexifying language. Jamaican English is considered a Creole, but it could be debatable that it is a pidgin.

Creoles are not merely variations of or a dummying down of the lexifier language. They are a mixed fusion of language with a specific history rooted in a slave economy. All language is fluid. Spanish is not called pidgin Latin. Nor is it called a Creole. Yet modern day Castilian Spanish is also about 30% Arabic. To flip this thinking, a scholar at MIT has deemed Creole languages to actually be romance languages.

Let’s look at the ever-changing story of English. In England there was Gaelic, and then in the 6^th or 7th century the Anglos and the Saxons showed up. By the 8^th century there was old English, and a lot has changed since then. English is a Germanic language with its closest relative being Dutch. Yet, it could be called a romance language because so many of the language’s more sophisticated words are rooted in the Latin signifiers - - “entirely,” “collaborate,” “innovate.”

Is English known as “pidgin Latin”? No. Do people ask “is English a real language”? No. Do people ask, “Why do English speakers spell the words funny?” No. This is where the history of the language comes into play. French speakers find the written Creole to be a “phonetic spelling” of the French. This is incorrect, because of the complexity of Haitian Creole. But, it is also an incorrect and insensitive thing to say based on the history of Haiti revolting from the oppressor of the French.

The island of Hispaniola was the richest and most lush place on earth. In the seventeenth century, the French controlled the western third portion of the island while the Spanish controlled the eastern two-thirds. It was a slave economy. In the late seventeen hundreds 500,000 slaves revolted on the 40,000 French masters. The first president of Haiti was an ex-slave. The Haitian Revolution is responsible for a series of events in western history, including the Louisiana Purchase. Haiti is the first black republic. The Haitians have been punished by the US, French, Canada, and the western world ever since. For a closer and more elaborate history of Haiti, the Haitian people, and the US occupation of/influence in, I strongly suggest a fantastic book by Dr. Paul Farmer called The Uses of Haiti.

“Bonjou msye dam. Ki sa m kab fe pou nou?”
(Good morning sir and madam. What can I do for you?)

“M bezwen yon kostim. Madmwazel la vle we wob abiye yo. Montre nou bel bagay, paske nou vle abiye byenn bwode.”
(I need a suit. The lady wants to see the formal dresses. Show us nice things because we want to dress up.)

To hear more Haitian Creole, check out this video of Belo, a popular singer in Haiti. I saw him in concert in 2006, and I am a huge fan!

nashville in harmony

My friend Susan has a bumper sticker on her car that says "I'm straight. I'm married. I support gay rights." She is a member of Nashville in Harmony. Nashville in Harmony is a choir addressing GLBT-ITT issues in the community, (www.nashvilleinharmony.org).

Tonight I attended their concert at Blair, at Vanderbilt. I sat with my friend Kara from school. When they sang the Charlie Brown Christmas song I told Kara that I was about to cry! I recall watching it with Gracie, years ago. And just then a mobile Charlie-Brown-Christmas-Tree traveled across the front of the stage, and my nostalgia was comforted by laughter.

My roots are a mix of New York, Washington-DC, and California, and despite my bizarre experiences of travel in Montana and abroad, moving to Nashville was a surprise to me for numerous reasons. I was primarily, (and continue to be), shocked by the silenced voices of so many, here. People who are from here seem to notice this but accept this better than I do. One silenced voice is that of the gay community, - a very suppressed voice in the south.

Nashville in Harmony is a place for these voices. And the voices are amazing!! Nashville in Harmony shows that there are many ways to use one's voice.

Here is one of the songs they sang tonight:

sam under the tree

During a small group discussion in class tonight, Fred was talking about the values of our class and how in some ways our class experience embraces the principals of Bob Moses in community organizing theory and praxis during the civil rights movement, specifically a lifting up of the importance of personal connections. While I am both convinced of and moved by the intimate exchanges and encounters in class, I challenged Fred’s claim. I told the group that I have an imagination about what their lives are like on a daily basis. I said that I listen to and think on the information about their lives that they graciously share with me, but really I can’t know what it is like to live at Riverbend. I mentioned what I wrote in my post yesterday about comfort, and also of how my faith is weaker than theirs for a variety of reasons, one reason being that I am allowed to comfort myself with all sorts of things in order to survive the day. Sam (a calm and centered man around my father’s age, with whom I have been in regular conversation since August), piped right up, saying with a very excited look on his face, “you mean like take a bath?” This really caught me off guard. He knew right away what he wanted to do for comfort.

Sitting with Sam after class, I asked him if he wanted to take a bath when he gets out of prison. He said, “I am going to. It is going to be one of the first things I do.” I asked Sam what else he would like to do. He calmly said to me: It’s the little things that you don’t realize you can do until you aren’t able to do them any longer. Like sitting on the porch after dark. I’m gonna do that too. Or walking down to the store to buy a pint of ice cream. Any flavor. Here we get ice cream about once ever couple of months, and it’s just a tiny scoop thing of vanilla. Before they moved me out here to Riverbend, I went ten years without seeing a tree. Here, they have two trees. People must have thought I was crazy, but when I got here, I walked right up to that tree and I just stared at it. And I touched it. I hadn’t been able to see a tree is so long, and sitting under trees was something I used to do a lot. I’m going to do that again too, when I leave here.

I told Sam about the time when I was in Haiti and I was really sick, all I could think of were baby carrots. I told him that I was lying under my mosquito net feeling stuck, hungry, and sick just dreaming about baby carrots. I told him that I had numerous fantasies about eating the carrots. I had running visualizations about going to buy the carrots and about how I would eat them, and about how I would surprise myself by remembering later that I had left over carrots in the fridge. Sam said that’s like his life.

I want to treat Sam as if the change has already happened, so to impact his visions and hope in a positive way. As I drink my glass of wine, in my comfy pajamas, surrounded by books about all the things I love, I’ve decided to start thinking of Sam as that guy over there, under the tree, with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in his hand, hearing the faint sound of running bath water.

prayer request

This morning at Hobson Methodist Church in East Nashville, the pastor reminded us of how very difficult it is to pray for others when we don't know anything about them, and when we don't feel we have anything in common with their pain.

I ask that you remember yourself at your loneliest. The moment when you knew that no one was in your corner. I know it is painful, but remember that saddest time when you put yourself to bed thinking, "I've got nothing and no one."

Now imagine that moment, and imagine being in prison. It's not what Paris Hilton went through.

Every Monday evening, I visit the Riverbend Maximum Security Institute, where Tennessee's most dangerous, (personally, I would say most harmed by market scarcity and a former slave society), convicted criminals are housed and executed. I've been taking a class there since August and intend on auditing future classes. Most of these guys have killed people. Some have been in for 30+ years and will never see the free world. Others have been in for a long time, but hope to get out in three to five years. A few of them still have at least twenty years to go.

From my friends living on the "inside" I have learned about two things: 1) reconciliation, and 2) patience. Paul Tillich said, "Waiting is its own special destiny. Every time is a time of waiting, waiting for the breaking in of eternity. All time, both history and personal life is expectation."

This semester I have agonized - - feeling that I have very little to offer these guys. But in moments of reflection, I know that I can in fact pray intensely on their behalf, and now I ask that you pray for them too during this month. Ask your churches to pray for the imprisoned. Do it at the dinner table. Pray for their comfort. You know, Christmas time can be the loneliest of all times even while being surrounded by Aunts and Uncles in tacky sweaters and eating cookies. Christmas time is when suicide rates peak. It is when our non-Christian friends feel a peculiar sense of cultural and socio-alienation or disconnect. It is when we long for that which we have given up. It is when we drink too much red wine. It is when we think about how things should be.

Please pray for the comfort and justice of the imprisoned during this time. When class ends and I walk in one direction and these guys walk in the other, I am reminded of all the silly things I am allowed to comfort myself with simply because I live in the free world. My friends need the prayers of those who are also broken and suffering: that's you and me.

fleets and harbors

America started the official stop-watch on my four days of thankfulness. On Friday I can once again be the greedy consumerist. In honor of the clock ticking, I’ve decided what I am thankful for.

A therapist once told me, “You are the commander of your own ship.” As a child, I regularly stared at a cross-stitch: “A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are made for.”

Through grace, I have seen that I am not a ship out at sea, alone and commanding my own destiny. In the eyes of psycho-therapy and the market system, I suppose I am a loner. If there were fewer material resources in which to place my faith, I would probably have had a stronger belief in community at an earlier point of my life. Community takes a lot of work to stand over and against the individualistic structure of this society; and for me, that reinforces the necessity of it.

So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my fleets and harbors, past and present.