“It’s a mind blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma… Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

--U2’s Bono, from Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, as quoted in The Christian Century

I started to write out my usual philosophical schpiel based on this quote about grace, but then I thought, “Let it stand alone; let them draw the meaning out of it.” So for once, I think I’m just going to do just that—shut up and let it sink in.

Have a fantastic weekend.

“...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” --Romans 3:23-24

Kelsey

The good news today? I'm recovering quite nicely from my weekend cold—during my morning commute, when Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” came on the radio and the dude hit the high note, I actually croaked out a vaguely corresponding noise.

But the bad news is that fall is upon us—I busted out the wool skirt and nylons to wear to work. Granted, fall really is the nicest season in Kentucky, with the drier air, milder temperatures, and beautiful leaves changing. But the advent of fall means that winter will soon follow. And I hate winter.

Thanks to a kind note sent by Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns member Jerri Rodewald, I just remembered that yesterday was my prayer day in the Mission Yearbook. Yes, my friends—the Catholics have their saints’ days, but Presbyterians have the Mission Yearbook. The only difference is that while one prays to the Catholic saints, the Mission Yearbook prays for the Presbyterian saints. And on September 28, wedged between Tina Rhudy of Building Services and Joan Richardson of the Office of the General Assembly, there I am: “Kelsey Rice, NMD.”

I feel almost like I forgot my own birthday (which, as should be obvious from several previous posts, I would never do). After all, how many days of the year can you legitimately command the prayers of the entire Presbyterian Church (USA)? You don’t want to squander the opportunity, especially when there are so many days where you need it. But alas, I’m afraid the day has gone by. And while I definitely advocate stretching birthdays into week-long events, I don’t think it would be fair to Chrissy Riggs, Antissa Riley, James Rissler, and Gwendolyn Rivers to try to steal their prayer day.

How many of us truly pray for other people? Even some of the new disciplines I’ve been incorporating into my prayer life, like the Breath Prayer, don’t really allow many opportunities to bring up the needs of others. It isn’t that I don’t care, or that I fail to think of others’ needs. Maybe I just don’t know exactly how to do it right. I guess I still have the old Pentecostal “prayer warrior” in my head, putting forth copious supplications to God on another’s behalf. Have any of you ever heard the gospel song, “Somebody Prayed for Me”? It says, “They fell down on their knees and prayed for me.” That’s what I picture when I think of praying for someone else. And I feel guilty when I don’t do it.

The Pentecostals do have one thing right, though—prayer has to do with action. When we pray for others, we become attuned to the needs of those around us. I may not be able to physically help the person I’m praying for half a world away, but God may guide me to ways I can help my neighbors in similar situations. And I may become better able to emotionally respond to those I care about.

One of the reasons I attend the church I do here in Louisville lies in prayer. During our service, we have a true “Prayers of the People.” People grab the mike and go around the sanctuary, sharing their prayer requests. On the surface, it can drag things out quite a bit. But through these prayers, I’ve begun to feel like I actually know people in the congregation. I can relate to their lives, understand some of their struggles. The church begins to feel like a group living in it together rather than disparate people coming to be entertained by church.

I may not get on my knees today, but I will be praying for the Network and its members. And if you can squeeze in a belated prayer for me, that wouldn’t be so bad, either.

“Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.” --Ephesians 6:18-19

Kelsey

It’s World Tour time again!! That’s right, my friends, after a five-month hiatus, I’m about to embark on another wondrous World Tour. And after playing with schedules, I’ve finally nailed down the details.

The Fall 2005 tour will visit four states in nine days, November 1-9—my shortest tour yet, although that probably won’t diminish the number of schools I actually visit. As I’ve mentioned before, the tour will take in western Tennessee, northeast Arkansas (where I’ll finally meet my 93-year-old great-uncle Floyd), eastern Kansas, and Missouri. Schools currently scheduled on the tour include:

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN
Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
Lyon College, Batesville, AR
Southwest Missouri State, Springfield, MO
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
United Campus Ministries of Kansas City, Kansas City, MO
Westminster College, Fulton, MO
University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO

I’m also discussing possible visits with several other campuses right now, but I can use your help—if you happen to be in this region as part of a congregation, presbytery, Presbyterian Women group, or congregation, please contact me about visiting you. As always, I’m looking to reach out beyond simply campus ministries to connect with congregations and others interested in learning more about ministry with young adults. I have no fewer than seven regular program options I can do for you (and a few others in my back pocket from previous adventures). I would love to come visit.

One other travel adventure that might be significant to note, for you dedicated blog readers—from October 25-31, I will be traveling with NNPCW alumna Ann Crews Melton and Associate for Women’s Advocacy Molly Casteel to the International Forum of the Association of Women’s Rights in Development in Bangkok, Thailand. I understand that a cyber café will be available to conference participants, so I’m hoping that I can do regular blog updates about the wonders of Thailand and the conference while I’m there. I will also be sure to notify my mother via the blog if I have contracted avian bird flu. Stay tuned for more information.

So keep me in your thoughts as I enter a pretty heavy traveling period in a very short time. The flight to Bangkok from Louisville will be about 25 hours, plus a crazy time change. Any jetlag-busting tips would be greatly appreciated.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” --Isaiah 6:8

Kelsey

Why so late a blog, you might ask? Because today was the annual “If We Give You a Party You Might Not Quit” day in National Ministries Division (NMD), otherwise known as the NMD Staff Retreat. It is fairly rare that the minions of PresbyLand get to see the sunlight (unless you happen to have a coveted window), and even rarer to see division director Curtis Kearns in anything but a full suit (although I still don’t think khakis count as truly casual, even when you try to dress it down with the baseball cap).

But on that one celebrated day of the year, NMD puts us all on buses and hauls us out to some random deserted farm in Indiana. There, we frolic like children, gorging ourselves on sweets and playing fun farm games most of the day. This year’s site featured such allurements as sand volleyball, catch-and-release fishing, hiking, and a fully stocked snack bar with games.

I whiled away the morning with several fun activities—my team beat Brianne’s in the corn bag toss, 19-17. And I made the clinching hole-in-one!! Then I went upstairs to the arcade and (I hate to admit this, my non-violent, vegetarian friends) shot 5 bucks and 12 wild turkeys in the destructive hunting arcade game. That game had this sick habit, too, of doing an instant replay of the buck falling every time you killed one…. I finally got bored with all that and hung out with some other folks before departing to lunch. I did get in trouble for getting on the wrong bus when we left, though, and they had to send out the search party for me. Bad, bad Kelsey. That’s what happens to you when you’re one of the youngest people in the division.

There are only two other large-scale celebrations for NMD staff—the building-wide All-Staff Picnic (see the May 12 post) and the NMD Christmas Party. While the food and activities are much better at the NMD Retreat, they give us gifts at Christmas.

So that was the day… since they didn’t make us do anything too incredibly cheesy, I will refrain from any sarcastic remarks. And hey, I’m not going to complain when they pay me to hang out at a retreat center all day. Particularly when there’s a fully stocked snack bar.

“Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do.” --Ecclesiastes 9:7

Kelsey

Well, apparently God has called a pox upon my head for criticizing the stay-at-home mom article… because I really could have used my own stay-at-home mother fawning over me and my cold this weekend. Instead, I had to make my own Jell-o and hot tea while downing doses of my Crestwood IGA miracle cold drug. I literally left the apartment only twice over the course of the weekend. David, bless his heart, indulged me with quite a few hours of phone time from Boston so that I wouldn’t get too starved for human contact.

But I’m back in the saddle today—I don’t believe in coddling a cold for too long, or it gets used to the attention. Armed with my Crestwood IGA pills, my water bottle, and a roll of toilet paper for the copious amounts of flem exuding from my nose (to put it nicely), I’m bunkered down in my office for another day of NNPCW fun. I just got several photos back from the CoCo meeting a few weekends ago, so I may try to post one here for you. I’ve heard that Blogger allows you to do these things, and you might enjoy a photo of September 16th’s guest blogger, Sacha, astride the noble Peace Seeker.

I somehow managed a few weeks ago to be talked into helping out with my church’s youth group (one of the two reasons I left the apartment this weekend). The problem is that kids scare me a bit in large groups. I do well enough with kids one on one (I’m a friendly sort of person, I think), but when they get together I’m just not sure how to connect with them. Moreover, I’m not a good disciplinarian. Yesterday, a couple of boys were bouncing off the walls while these elderly missionaries were telling the group about India. I kept giving them “the eye,” hoping that this would calm them down. But I have the authority of a peanut when it comes to kids. It took one of the other leaders, a college student who had once been part of the group herself, to separate the two. But (sigh), I try my best.

So it was with interest that I read a recent article in The Christian Century entitled “What Teens Believe.” Results of this survey of 3,000 US households and 267 interviews with teens reveal that most teens consider their beliefs somewhat or very similar to those of their parents (particularly their mother’s), and that those beliefs fall under traditional Judeo-Christian categories. In fact, the article asserts that most teens are pretty conventional when it comes to religion.

But what disturbed me was what the article said those beliefs actually were. The article labeled teen beliefs “Moralistic Theraputic Deism”—while most of these teens believe that God exists and that this God wants us to be good to one another, they also assert that “the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself” and that God isn’t really involved in our lives except as a problem-solver.

But what happens to these kids when real life hits? When someone dies, when you lose your job, when broken relationships occur, and God doesn’t immediately show up to wave a magic wand and make it all better? What happens when you pursue the god of happiness through two BMWs, one broken marriage, and an addiction to Prozac? If this is what our faith communities are raising kids to believe, in our attempt to make religion palatable, then we’re setting them up for failure. Christianity proclaims a God of hope, a God of joy, a God who stands with us through trial and hardship. But it doesn’t proclaim a God who fixes life for us so that we can feel good all the time. If that were the case, we’d never grow into the people God calls us to be.

So maybe the youth group isn’t such a bad place for me to be. Not because I know all the answers about God, but because we all need to challenge youth to tackle the tough questions of faith. Sugar-coating religion for teens only creates major faith crises when they are adults. And if we haven’t ever made them think, will they be able to survive it?

“You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” --Deuteronomy 11:18-19

Kelsey

As you can tell, I made it out of Texas without a hitch yesterday. It was a good thing, though, that my connecting flight wasn’t in Houston. Then I would have been nervous.

I received an interesting article the other day from NNPCW alumna Mashadi Matabane from the New York Times about women at Ivy League schools who are training for high-powered careers, but plan to be full-time mothers (“Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” September 20). My first thought, for those of you who read my May 27th post, “Ivy Souls for Jesus”—the Times seems fixated on conservative trends in the Ivies, when there are thousands of other diverse higher education institutions out there with a variety of perspectives. What they’re talking about isn’t that earth-shattering anyway. I knew several women of the type they’re describing when I attended Whitworth more than two years ago. Sheesh, tell me something I didn’t know.

Mashadi also forwarded me another article (at Slate.com) critiquing the journalism itself in the Times article. As it mentions, using terms like “many” and “some” are meaningless without hard data to back them up, something this article sadly lacks. So you surveyed some women, but what did you ask them? How large was the overall sample?

But those are all sidenotes to what I’m really thinking about, and why I’m wondering how much of these Ivy trends have relevance to the rest of us. And basically that has to do with the whole privilege factor. The women surveyed are likely children of the elite—I just read a statistic yesterday that your chances of being admitted to Harvard jump to 40% if you’re a “legacy,” compared to something like 12% for the overall admissions rate. And they’re probably going to marry the wealthy elite, as the article acknowledges. They actually do have a choice to be a full-time mom, a choice that is becoming increasingly closed to the middle class.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke, by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, reports that an average middle class family needs both parents working to afford a house. I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely the category I would consider myself in. When I went to college, I didn’t see it as a fun exercise in the working world before I settled down. I saw it as a necessity, an investment into my own ability to provide for my family and myself in an increasingly uncertain future.

It is one thing to make choices that are the best for you in a given time, whether that is to provide care for children or stay in the workforce. Neither choice is good or bad in itself. In fact, I personally think about stay at home scenarios once in a while. But the sort of insinuation this article perpetuates, that women see their overriding purpose in life as that of mothers, just takes us right back to 1950. And it justifies all those discriminatory hiring and wage practices that assume women are just working as a hobby, that men are the real breadwinners and deserve higher wages as such. I can tell you right now that my mother is the primary breadwinner in her family, and I’m sure she’s not alone in the workforce. But an article of this tone from the New York Times can justify such myths as fact, which makes Mom’s everyday struggle to earn a living wage that much harder.

Because I’ve just been talking about the middle class—don’t even get me started on how the assumptions of this article fly in the face of students whose parents are part of the working class, students who must attend college to even have a chance in this world. Where are the interviews with those women? Would the response be different?

So maybe next time, the New York Times will expand beyond the Ivy League and look at how those of us in the rest of the country’s colleges are doing—those of us who don’t belong to the most powerful echelons of society. Maybe then they’ll see that portraying this generation’s young women as traditional domestic goddesses does a huge disservice to all of us who really have to make tough choices about the balance of family and career.

“I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” --Hosea 11:4

Kelsey

PS—What really got me, though? The part in the article about the men in the American Family class who thought it was “sexy” to want to be a stay-at-home mom. Of course they think it’s sexy!! They’re the ones who get the most benefit out of the deal! No significant childcare responsibilities, time to focus exclusively on one’s career…. Oooh, I’d better stop ranting. I might get myself in trouble soon.

A phone call from my mother awaited me when I got out of the shower this morning, here in Austin, Texas. She has been in an absolute panic watching CNN all morning, convinced that I’m going to be swallowed up by Hurricane Rita. I’m really not too worried about it, at least not the prospect of its hitting Austin. After all, the city is a good 200 miles inland!! They’ll get an ugly storm, but probably nothing catastrophic. Nonetheless, I’m glad to be beating it out of here as a flood of evacuees heads north through this city. My flight leaves at 11 am, and I have every intention of being on it. Still, keep in your thoughts all the people who don’t have a ready-made way out of Texas right now.

I have to get going, so I’ll leave you with a verse I think is particularly appropriate to times like these. My church in Louisville used to sing it as a benediction at the end of every service.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” --John 14:27

Kelsey

Good afternoon from Austin, Texas, where it is HOT… hot to the tune of 101 degrees. This makes it a bit difficult for me to contemplate exploring Austin in the manner to which I am usually accustomed when in a new city, which is to wander around aimlessly until I hit a tourist spot. I’ve heard the Texas state capitol is lovely to tour, but unless I catch a bus I don’t want to get out.

Actually, I’m in Austin right now for work. I am part of a planning team for a vocational discernment retreat sponsored by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary for college students. The retreat theme, “Drop on Inn,” will allow people to explore Frederick Buechner’s well-known quote, “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” We’re thinking about not only exploring that in terms of understanding yourself and where your deep gladness lies, but also in talking about how we can be more aware of the world’s hunger around us.

The retreat will be January 27-29, 2006, here in Austin. The seminary would like to see people outside Texas come, so there should be travel stipends available if you’re interested. Plus, the actual registration fee will only be something like $25—pretty doable in my book.

Our planning team had a great conversation this morning, one that really provoked me to think about my own understanding of vocation and call. Some members of the team really challenged the idea of vocation as that one specific life task God is calling you to do. For example, the context in which I went to college promoted this idea that God created you for one specific purpose. If you miss that purpose now, you’ve missed the boat—basically you’re going to spend the rest of your life scrambling around being miserable, trying to find your way back to that one thing. Of course, this produces many anxiety-filled nights of prayer, wondering if you’re on the right path.

Yet perhaps, my colleagues suggested, vocation isn’t about finding that one particular thing you’re destined to do with your entire life. Perhaps vocation is about finding the next step, what God is calling you to do right now. Maybe God has many different plans for us, many possible paths in which the Holy One could use us to promote God’s realm. If I work in faith-based non-profits for the next ten years and then go for a PhD in Christian ethics, for instance, was one of those choices invalid in God’s book? Or are both these professions callings from God specific to a particular point in my life?

I have become increasingly aware of how often we’re guilty of shortcutting life—we refuse to live with the daily bread that God promises us, and instead demand the loaf to last us a week. Yet just as God only gave manna to the Israelites to last for one day, we can’t assume that our future plans today won’t just rot by morning.

Maybe vocation is less about playing “God detective” and more about knowing the gifts God has given us and the needs God has shown to us. Then, regardless of the situations we’re thrown into, we’ll know our call that transcends the moment and instead permeates our entire way of life.

“Give us today our daily bread.” --Matthew 6:11

Kelsey

You may have guessed by now that the contemplative life is not my strong suit. I’m much more into action, much more into application. Maybe it is an attempt to burn off the years of sitting in a college library, reading endlessly. Maybe it is just that I belong to a generation that doesn’t do well with sitting still.

But I do try to fit the contemplative in. I usually read Scripture before I go to bed at night (although I’m trying to finish up Sirach, in the Apocryphal texts, and just can’t seem to make it. The guy goes on and on and on!), and once in a while I’ll read when I get into the office. This morning I opened the office Bible to the story of Jonah. Now I’ll bet most of you know at least a little bit about Jonah—he was the dude whom God saved by making a whale swallow him. Now, that in itself is a bit trippy… you’ve got to love Jonah 2:10, where basically the whale vomits Jonah out. God’s rescues can often be described as prosaic at best.

Probably most of us have forgotten, however, what happens to Jonah after his up close and personal experience with a whale’s digestive system. He heads off to Ninevah, tells the people to repent, and they do. Now, this really ticks Jonah off, strangely enough (he’s kind of a self-righteous guy). So God teaches him a lesson. When Jonah goes off to pout outside the city in the blazing sun, God makes a bush grow to shade him. Then the next day, God kills off the bush. Of course, Jonah pouts even more about this. But God says,

“You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about the Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” –Jonah 4:10-11

First of all, it is kind of encouraging to think that God can use stubborn cranks like Jonah for good. This passage reminds me, too, that God really does look upon all of us with compassion. The whole book details God’s love for us, starting on the individual level with Jonah’s disobedience and rescue, and then spreading itself out to God’s salvation of an entire society. The beauty of Scripture is that, despite what the Jonahs of the world want to happen to us, it all points to a God that loves us, sees us with compassion, and does everything possible to save us from our own stupidity.

The whole passage also brought to my mind how self-righteous we all can be. We tend to like seeing people get what we think they deserve. And even though we know that’s not a Biblical ethic (remember the plank in your own eye?), it doesn’t really change our thinking in the end. Jonah wanted to see Ninevah go up in hellfire and brimstone for disobeying God, and would have been quite gleeful watching it happen from his little tent outside the city. Never mind that he had disobeyed God himself, and God had been merciful.

We face all sorts of moments in life where we’re tempted to give people what they deserve. We want to point out the things we know can wound them because they’ve wounded us. It is one thing to talk honestly about the things that have hurt you, and hold people accountable for that. It is another to stick it to them.

Because God has all sorts of ammo to stick to us… and refuses to use it. If we’re really following in the footsteps of Christ, shouldn’t we be merciful, too?

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” --Matthew 5:7

Kelsey

I’m a little bit late on the blog this morning. When the alarm went off at 6:30 am, I said to myself, “I just spent a whole weekend working overtime, and I stayed up until 2 am the night before this. The church can stand to have me come in an hour late this morning.” So I reset the alarm and rolled back over. The act was immensely satisfying.

CoCo went very well this time—it excited me to see the six new people on the committee gel and open up to the group. Of course, they couldn’t have done so well without the excellent planning of our “wise old turtle” Melissa McNair and song-leader extraordinaire Maren Haynes, our co-moderators. They both were great about keeping the group on task and using consensus to move things along. They amazingly managed to keep us ahead of the agenda most of the time… my kind of women.

For years our problem on CoCo has been a dearth of young applicants. This means that we end up with a lot of seniors on the committee who drop it when they graduate. This year, however, we have a bumper crop of sophomores involved—five in total. With one first-year as well, half of our committee is comprised of people who will complete their entire terms during their college years. I appreciated the enthusiasm and energy they brought to the meeting. It was kind of weird, though, to realize that one of the members of the committee was my little sister’s age. I felt kind of old when they were talking about not being born yet in 1985.

What did we do? Well, the good news is that after a year and a half of discussion, we finally have a working diversity definition (which may be the topic of a later blog). The committee also did an exciting new design for the brochure—it will be a four-panel brochure that includes our mission commitments and objectives in English, Spanish, and Korean. How they’re going to work this out is beyond me, but that’s why it is Brianne’s project (I loved doing the newsletter and website as the intern, but I hated working on promotional items).

Speaking of the newsletter, the Resources Working Group also decided to revamp it. We’re moving away from a newsletter look and into more of a zine-style layout. Planned articles, written by students, include a discussion about new Supreme Court nominees and two op-eds presenting different opinions on over-the-counter availability of the morning after pill.

We’re also thinking about producing a new NNPCW t-shirt by the end of the year, one that can complement the current “Jesus Loves Feminists” shirts. Our hope is that the shirt will include a quote by either a womanist or mujerista. So send me your favorite Alice Walker quote or the like, and we’ll take the best one and put it on the shirt.

And finally, NNPCW is plotting a new project, one that would involve a scholarship program for NNPCW members. Keep posted here to find out more about it as the project unfolds—I’m really excited to see where we take this one.

“If you offer your food to the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.” --Isaiah 58:10

Kelsey

PS-- Yes, Lindsey is correct about the timing of the V-Day CoCo meeting. And yes, she also remembers correctly about CoCo's part in the early days with The Bogdan. I will forever be indebted to their advice ;).

Kelsey's Note: No, I didn't wimp out on writing today. I just wanted you to hear about the CoCo meeting from the perspective of an actual member of CoCo. So here's our guest blogger...

Kelsey has wimped out of writing today’s blog. So I, Sacha Maxim, have graciously offered my services (as blogger extraordinaire) to do the dirty deed for her.

Today is COCO’s second day of meeting in Louisville, KY. I’ve visited here before for NNPCW-related meetings, but never to PCUSA’s headquarters. It’s a lot larger than I expected. Actually, I don’t really know what I was expecting…Perhaps a southern-version of my home church but with extra cubicles.

It’s very nice and clean, which is important, but it’s very cold. We’re still trying to figure out how to make the room a bit warmer.

We’ve been moving right along with our reports and keep surprising ourselves with finishing ahead of time. Poor Rufaro just flew in this morning and is exhausted from her red-eye. It is amazing to see NNPCW continue to thrive even with everyone’s busy schedules. I wasn’t too thrilled to fly out east this fall what with all the stress I’ve been under as of late. I swear it’s a miracle I haven’t had a breakdown yet. But I am so glad that I came out because I’ve realized that I’m not the only one trying to stay afloat amidst college life drama. Every other girl here has their schoolwork, jobs and after school activities to worry about.

That’s what I’ve always appreciated about NNPCW. I actually feel comfortable sharing my doubts and concerns regarding faith because I know I won’t be judged for it. Back home, my spirituality is the butt of everyone’s jokes and it really gets tiresome after a while, kind of like the oppression that I face within the church for being gay. It’s too bad I can’t have the best of both worlds but it is nice knowing that I can make an impact through the leadership development I’ve received within NNPCW.

I am looking forward to dinner tonight. Why is it always about food with me?

Oh, and I just realized that right across the Ohio River is ANOTHER state. That boggles my mind. Also, for being the 16th largest city, Louisville is really quiet small but what’s neat about that is it makes the Presby center look even BIGGER.

Sacha

I promised a quick blog, and since Jennifer Ross’ plane had problems, I’m now able to deliver. Her delay was surprise number two of the day, number one being the discovery, upon my arrival at Cedar Ridge, that they threw away all their silverware and pots/pans that we used last year. So most of my kitchen has now relocated to Cedar Ridge. As long as I get everything back, it’s all good.

Rebecca, I did bake your cake a few days ago, and David’s parents enjoyed it very much when they joined me for dinner last night. What’s left of it has also gone to Cedar Ridge, where it will be devoured by the ravenous mouths of the Coordinating Committee. They like a whole lot of chocolate, which is why I bought bunches of it at the grocery store. But you have to be careful—too much chocolate, and they’ll say that there aren’t enough greens and other healthy snacks. But there is mass riot if the Milanos aren’t there at all. With six new people, there’s no telling how my morning’s grocery shopping will go over.

Well, I have to go and pick up the next set of CoCo members at the airport. These are three complete strangers to me—Kristin Williams, Maisha Johnson, and Carrie Weisbard. Perhaps I’ll make a sign to hold up… nah, that will take all the fun out of it.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” --Isaiah 9:2

Kelsey

CoCo comes to town tomorrow. I’m thinking I may invite one of the committee members to be a guest blogger for the next few days, so that you can hear someone other than me blabber on.

Last week I told you what CoCo actually does. Today, though, I thought you might enjoy a sort of “behind the scenes” look at what goes into preparing for a CoCo meeting. Although it mostly involves a lot of e-mail, you might learn a few fascinating factoids about how our office works.

The journey to a CoCo meeting starts about a year in advance, when CoCo decides the date for the following year’s meeting. The fall meeting normally takes place in September or October, the spring in January or February. A while back we even met on Valentine’s Day, which members of that year’s committee may remember for a series of phone calls and Lucy’s rice trauma….

Usually we like to secure one of two conference sites—Kavanaugh’s Conference and Retreat Center, out in Crestwood, Kentucky, or Cedar Ridge Camp, somewhere between Louisville and Taylorsville. While Cedar Ridge is a Presbyterian facility, Kavanaugh’s is close to the Crestwood IGA grocery store that sells the best generic cold medication I’ve ever taken. Sacha Maxim and I will both vouch for its ability to bring you from a state of the living dead back to contributing member of society. I keep an extra box on hand at home. Maybe that’s why our winter meeting is always at Kavanaugh’s.

We then let the meeting sit until about a month before the date. At that time, if we’re talking about the fall meeting, the Nominating Committee (comprised of the outgoing class of CoCo) selects their replacements in the group. Those women, along with the returning members of the committee, all start making their flight arrangements at that time.

In the weeks before the meeting, Brianne and I wile away the hours writing and collecting reports from different liaisons and task forces, planning the educational activity for the group, and designing our own worship services (although there’s no set rule that staff have to lead some of the two daily CoCo worships, we always do).

As the days get closer, you see us spending more time around the copy machine. The pile of stuff going to the meeting grows in my office corner. This pile not only contains art supplies and charts explaining Presbyterian polity, but also our linens. Yes, that’s right, CoCo has its own set of linens that we take to our meetings. A few years back, our ever-frugal staffer Gusti Newquist went out to Goodwill and bought mass quantities of washcloths, towels, pillows, blankets, and bedsheets for our meetings, so that we didn’t need to rent linens from the retreat center. Let me just say that I’m glad I live in Louisville and can bring my own linens to the meetings—I think the linens are kind of sketchy, personally, even though I’ve washed them myself after the last two meetings. They also bear all sorts of ugly prints that throw you right back into the 1970s.

Tomorrow is the big day, though. At about 9 am, I’ll head to the grocery store and buy all our food for the meeting. While we do eat out for lunch and dinner here in town on Friday, most of the time CoCo cooks for itself. On the menu this weekend? Spaghetti, and my very own Cincinnati Chili (the real reason people want to join CoCo, of course). At 10:30 I’ll drop all the supplies off at Cedar Ridge and head straight to Louisville’s airport, where I’ll pick up the first arrival. In fact, Brianne and I will spend all afternoon shuttling our passengers back and forth from the airport. By the time I start my PC(USA) 101 lecture at 5:45 pm, it will already have been a long day… and the meeting is just beginning.

So keep us all in your thoughts and prayers this weekend as we make important decisions for the Network. I’ll look forward to reporting back to you next week!

“Cast your burden on the Lord, and God will sustain you; God will never permit the righteous to be moved.” --Psalm 55:22

Kelsey

Thank you, Rebecca, last week for your cake recipe. I think I may actually have an opportunity to make it soon. My only problem is that I don’t have a bundt pan—will a regular 9x12” cake pan or whatever suffice? I hope so. It is difficult being a single cook, since you don’t have all those snazzy specialty gadgets that these recipes call for. And anyway, who really knows what dough hooks are? What the heck does it mean to cut the butter into the recipe using a pastry blender? It is no wonder that people just make things out of a box these days.

My cooking style can be best described as “clueless.” For instance, of late I’ve encountered an age-old philosophical problem—does the expiration date really mean anything? I have some packets of instant Quaker Oatmeal in my cupboard with an expiration date of May 2005 on them. I’ve been eating them, and they haven’t killed me yet. I know stuff like that never really goes “bad,” per se, but then I think about how scientists speculate that witch-hunts in the Middle Ages were fueled by psychedelic hallucinations caused by moldy flour or something like that. Hmmm….

Or take the pound of raw roast that has been in my freezer since February. According to guidelines I looked up on the Internet, this roast is still technically safe to eat for up to nine months. But again, it goes back to being a single cook who doesn’t really cook much beyond quesadillas… I didn’t have the proper freezer paper to wrap it in, so I just put some Saran wrap around the Styrofoam packaging. Brianne, who grew up on a farm in Indiana and knows everything there is to know about beef (which goes to show that veggie-lovin’ NNPCW opens its doors to everyone), now tells me that my roast will be tough and taste like cardboard. Sheesh, my mom is a vegetarian and my dad didn’t mention this meat-prep tidbit. How would I know?

This, my friends, is why I advocate for everyone living on her own for at least a little while. Get away from the protective confines of the campus dining hall or the warm coziness of your parents’ kitchen. Be independent; venture out on your own. I learned a lot in school—I can tell you about everything from sun/Son puns in medieval English literature to the 1949 Chinese Revolution. But it is pretty apparent that I knew jack about cooking until I started living independently.

And that’s not all. Other skills I’ve acquired since getting an apartment range from changing the oil in the ‘Stang to assembling furniture. After a rather traumatic experience attempting to disassemble a bed frame the other night (which ended with David’s dad and me setting up shop in the dining room to drill holes in the bed with noisy power tools), I now know what a ratchet is. I can also tell you the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver. I even bought myself a hammer last week. I still have a lot to learn, of course, but I’ve come a long way.

With this learning process comes confidence in your own abilities. It wasn’t that I lacked opportunities to learn the above life-applicable skills. When it came right down to it, though, I wouldn’t go to the trouble to figure it out on my own as long as someone else was ultimately responsible. But because I’ve had to take responsibility for my own life since coming to Louisville, I’ve discovered that I can cook and change my car’s oil. I can find my way around a strange city by myself. This has helped me realize that I can learn other skills, too, whether that is managing an office budget for NNPCW or using power tools to drill holes in my wall.

We can be ineffectual and dependent on others as women, or we can find maturity and wholeness in taking responsibility for ourselves. I would definitely prefer the latter.

“For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death.” --Proverbs 8:35-26

Kelsey

So the flood of information about Hurricane Katrina relief continues to bombard us. Personally, I’m amazed that the mainstream media has been able to fixate its two-second attention span on a news story for this long. Of course, this is a unique disaster, with lots of compelling news to fuel the fire. Now the refugees are the story—even Louisville is expected to take in hundreds of people.

I volunteered to be a Youth Group leader at church this Sunday, and kids said that a local high school had raised $10,000 for disaster relief. Students were giving away their lunch money because they had nothing else. I’m sure many of you are doing the same on your campuses. Maybe some CoCo members and I can go volunteer next Sunday afternoon at the Salvation Army, if they’re still looking for people then. It may be that CoCo will decide to take some action relating to the hurricane. You never can tell at the CoCo meeting.

Last night at Youth Group, we discussed the disaster—why did God allow this to happen? Many people, of course, suggest that God made it happen, that it was some sort of punishment on the people of New Orleans for… well, exactly what depends on your theological bent, really. I’ve discovered that we humans really like to have some sort of explanation for why bad things happen. Maybe it makes us think that we can do something to prevent them from happening again.

But is God really that simple? I think about the personal disasters we deal with every day. Is God punishing the faithful Christian, who has darkened the doors of a church since birth, when she finds out that she has breast cancer? Can we really explain those events by saying that tragedies happen because God is punishing us?

Of course, lots of people would rather think that God caused it than assuming that God couldn’t stop it. So we’re left with the longstanding dilemma—are we dealing with a God that inflicts pain on good people for the heck of it, or are we dealing with an ineffectual God that can’t help us when it really matters?

I don’t think God falls into either camp. We live in a fallen world, one in which the “natural consequences” (words my pastor used) of our actions, both individually and corporately, can bring about suffering. But I also hear the words written in a pastoral letter by the leaders of our denomination to Presbyterians affected by the disaster:

“We cannot answer why such tragedies happen. What we can do is speak with the sure and certain conviction deep in our souls that God is present in the midst of the pain and panic, and that God will continue to be present each and every hour. God’s faithfulness will endure.”

I hear this, and I think of all the people who have donated their time and money to help the people of these devastated regions. I think of all the people who are praying, even now, for people they’ve never even met. I think of the flood of people calling the PC(USA) offices, asking how they can help. I think of those Louisville high school kids who raised $10,000 for the relief effort, elementary kids raising hundreds of dollars at their roadside lemonade stands.

We are God’s tools, God’s hands and feet in this world. And prompted by the Spirit, we show the Holy One’s faithfulness to all people. Working through us, God proves that good will always overcome evil.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” --Romans 12:21

Kelsey

PS-- The word verification feature was just added to prevent spam comments. We haven't had a problem up until now, but that doesn't mean we couldn't in the future. I just didn't want "Hair Club for Men" ads peppering the bottom of the blog.

Okay, so I got to thinking about yesterday’s blog post last night on my commute home from work (strange, huh, the things that occupy your attention when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway. Complete sidenote—I read last weekend that going 5 mph over the speed limit is like adding 10 cents a gallon to your gas bill). I wasn’t really satisfied with it. First of all, I was wondering whether I should have given you my personal opinion on Calvin’s doctrine of sin, and Jones’ take on it. If this were my personal blog, I might. But the church doesn’t pay me to make theological pronouncements, especially without the authority of a Master’s of Divinity to back me up.

Second, I talked about how I have difficulties dismissing parts of the Bible or confessions. As I got to thinking about it, I realized that I was implying that all previous Christian feminist works do discard them. Undoubtedly there are some who encourage us to throw out chunks, or even all, of Scripture, the most prominent being Mary Daly in Beyond God the Father. However, today’s wave of feminist theologians aren’t the first to grapple with Scripture to find ways in which it can uniquely speak to and empower women. Many others have already done so. In fact, groups like NNPCW come directly from that tradition.

For those of you who are members of NNPCW, you probably received the primers on feminist theology, womanist theology, and mujerista theology in your membership packets. If you’re not a member and you’d like to read them, go to www.pcusa.org/women/education/theology.htm, where you can order them for free. It is a great place to start if you’re wondering what this whole thing is all about. The primers also include some great references for further reading. And coming soon is a fourth primer, on theology from Asian American women’s perspectives.

It is very possible that none of you are interested in this topic, and I’ve now just spent two days boring you stiff. But perhaps there are a few of you out there reading this who are interested in talking more theology. I’ve been thinking for a long time how awesome it would be to run an online young women’s Bible study or theological discussion forum. There are so many young women out there who don’t have campus groups, possibly don’t even have outlets for exploring their beliefs as women (depending on the culture of the campus you’re at). What if we all got together?

There are a couple of feasible ways we could do this. One would be an online bulletin board, where people could post questions and comments for response. I just saw that Presbyterian Disaster Assistance set one up, so why couldn’t we? We could also have regional forums for campus group questions and the like.

We could also do a set weekly chat time, using some very simple chat browsers that we’ve tested here at the office. The advantage to the chat is that we could run it any time that you all wanted—if midnight Eastern is the only time people aren’t rushing around doing homework, we could meet then. If I got even five people who were willing to commit to showing up weekly or monthly, I would put in the effort to do it. We could start off by discussing the women’s theology primers, or even use pieces from other places, like the 2005-2006 Horizons Bible Study on the liturgical calendar. I know your schedules, and this wouldn’t be reading or labor intensive if you didn’t want it to be. It would mainly be an opportunity for women to discuss and learn from one another.

If you’re interested in any of these options, or have more ideas, e-mail me directly at karice@ctr.pcusa.org and we’ll go from there!

Have a great weekend!

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” --Ecclesiastes 3:1

Kelsey

For those of you who follow contemporary feminist theology, you might find a recent article in The Christian Century quite interesting. The July 26 issue’s cover story features “Women’s Work: Feminist theology for a new generation” by Joy Ann McDougall. The article dealt with new theological trends that, rather than shunning Christian symbolism and tradition, reincorporate and reinterpret them for relevance in the modern global context.

McDougall profiles cutting-edge theologians who exemplify this reclaiming of traditional Christian doctrine in order to apply it to global realities. Serene Jones, in Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace, apparently finds an empowering message even in John Calvin’s doctrine of sin. For those of you who don’t know, in the 16th century Calvin (the guy who kind of came up with the whole Presbyterian thing) said that sin is essentially “unfaithfulness” that prevents us from “living according to God’s purposes by accepting God’s grace.” Calvin was also big on the idea of total depravity—humans are completely corrupt and cannot help themselves without God’s grace because of original sin (Adam and Eve in the Garden). Past feminist theologians haven’t been too keen on this, mainly because our good ol’ Christian patriarchs have used Eve to essentially blame women for sin’s existence. This blame game often forms the keystone in men’s oppression of women in Judeo-Christian cultures.

Yet in Jones’ view, according to the article, “no aspect of Christian theology has a deeper resonance with feminist analyses of oppression than the doctrine of sin. Feminist theologians are wise to call upon this doctrine to denounce the structures of domination and injustice that human beings perpetrate against one another” (21). She identifies with Calvin’s assertion of the ever-changing guises of sin in our lives, while still insisting that sin happens on the institutional as well as the individual level. Moreover, Jones argues that total depravity accurately depicts the ways in which sin eats away at our humanity as women. We become less of the empowered, self-confident women God created us to be, in part because of the power of patriarchal structures in our lives.

For me, the concept of reclaiming the heart of our faith holds great promise. The male theologians who have written about Christianity for the past 2000 years aren’t complete jerks—their teachings hold inspired wisdom, even through the corrupted carnage of their more oppressive interpretations of scripture. I’m excited about the prospect of struggling with our own heritage, wrestling “a feminist blessing” from the past that has relevance to the new challenges of contemporary culture.

Because personally, perhaps due to my Pentecostal upbringing, I have difficulties outright discarding or dismissing parts of the Bible and the confessions. The crucifixion and resurrection stories, for instance, mean something to me. I see clearly where the doctrine of a self-sacrificing God can be problematic as a tool the patriarchy has used against women. At the same time, I do believe that it provides us with a powerful and life-affirming alternative to selfish, consumer-driven global capitalism. The new lenses that women’s theologies (womanist and mujerista, as well as feminist) bring are necessary to uphold the continuing witness of Scripture to modern problems.

Our God does not change. But the contexts in which we live do. And it will be our generation of young women that opens the door to see even more insights into the eternal, infinite Divine.

“Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’” --Genesis 32:26

Kelsey

I had the somewhat appalling realization this morning that the fall CoCo meeting is only a week away. I have no idea where the time goes!! That is the problem with a slow month like August—it lulls you into thinking that everything is way off in the distance, and then you awaken to find that your event is only a week away.

What does the Coordinating Committee do at its meetings? Well, it sets the goals and direction for our work on a national level. For example, the topic and location of the NNPCW Leadership Event are CoCo decisions. Who decides which people get to attend church conferences with NNPCW? CoCo. And if a new resource comes out of NNPCW, CoCo is usually behind it. Most of the inspiration behind our work comes from the Coordinating Committee.

The large items on the docket for this CoCo meeting include a redesign of the NNPCW brochure and a diversity definition. At the spring meeting, CoCo decided that it should show its commitment to racial ethnic diversity by creating a completely Spanish/English bilingual brochure. In addition, CoCo will define what the word “diversity” means for NNPCW and add that to the brochure as well. Now, if you’ve ever seen NNPCW’s main brochure, you know how full of text it is. No one is quite sure how we’re going to add a definition, translate the whole thing into Spanish, and then fit all the text onto one tri-fold. Don’t forget that groups have also told us more photos would be nice. So, in good Presbyterian fashion, we will establish a committee to figure it out.

Of course, we’re never quite sure what will come out of a CoCo meeting. Every business session includes a 45-minute “Brainstorming/Big Ideas” session, in which members just shout out ideas and then assign those ideas to working groups. Once the working groups have refined them, we consent as a group to the outcome. Then Brianne and I take the projects back to the office and work to implement them.

CoCo isn’t all about business, though. We worship God both in the mornings and at night during the meeting. On Saturday night, we also come together as a community to share with one another in a “check in.” At this point, each woman on the committee has the opportunity to talk about whatever she wants for as long as she wants, without interruption. The point is to create a place where our voices as women cannot be silenced, where others see, hear, and acknowledge our thoughts and feelings. Perhaps this component leaves the most lasting effect on CoCo members.

On that note, I need to get to work planning for this meeting. After all, I only have a week left to get ready!

“God’s mercy is for those who fear God from generation to generation.” --Luke 1:51

Kelsey

I’m sorry, everyone, that the post has been so late… I’ve been booked solid with meetings today, and it doesn’t promise to get any better tomorrow. Tomorrow Women’s Ministries will welcome the long-awaited new Associate for Racial Ethnic Young Women Together, Bridgett Green, into the office. And for those of you who read my initial post announcing Bridgett’s hiring, you’ll have to forgive me—Bridget Young is the name of my dentist.

Now, we all know what a new staff person at 100 Witherspoon means… party!!! I’ve already mentioned that I feel Women’s Ministries, an infinitely superior department in every other way, is a bit lacking in the party arena. I look across the atrium and see Worldwide Ministries Division throwing a bash at least once a week. It usually takes a cataclysmic event, like a birth in the office, to bring the food our way. So when Mary Elva asked how we were going to commemorate Bridgett’s arrival at Thursday’s staff meeting, I volunteered to make or buy the cake. As we all know from the August 25 post (everybody now): It’s not a party without a cake.

So let’s get domestic—does anyone have an awesome cake recipe that I can bring back to Women’s Ministries, one that doesn’t require lots of baking hardware? Because living alone means that a stand-up mixer is a bit beyond my means. In fact, even a large cake pan is pushing me a bit. And last time I baked a cake (for Ann Crews Melton’s birthday), it was not very good.

I don’t know how many of you college folks out there cook or bake. I never had time for it in college myself, and why cook when you’ve already paid for good food in the dining hall? For those of you who have moved off campus, though, cooking may be a necessary evil. I didn’t start cooking until after I graduated and moved to Louisville, where frankly, I needed something to fill all the spare time I had without homework.

If there were one cookbook I would recommend for the college student or young adult, though, it would be Jane Doerfer’s Going Solo in the Kitchen. My friend loaned me this book when I first moved to Kentucky. For those of us who are not mathematically inclined, it is great to have recipes already listed in one-serving proportions. Plus, the book details some great storage tips for how to keep food edible long after you cook it.

A final story about cooking… once upon a time, David and I decided to make a recipe I had pilfered from NNPCW alumna Kristy Graf for chicken pesto pasta. Now, this recipe called for “3 toes garlic.” Now, I knew what a clove of garlic was, but I’d never heard of a “toe.” So I assumed that this meant three bulbs of garlic were supposed to go into the recipe. David was a bit dubious about putting three bulbs of garlic into our little pesto sauce. But I’m not Type A for nothing—I insisted that we put in at least two large bulbs of garlic, since that was what the recipe called for.

So David started mashing garlic as best he could with the blender, while I worked hard at peeling clove after clove. When my roommate at the time walked in, she immediately wanted to know why the apartment reeked of garlic. So she sat down in the chair and watched as David and I finished cooking and sat down to our fresh, homemade pesto pasta. He took a bite, and I took a bite. I said, “Man, that’s pretty strong garlic.” David replied stoically, “It’s not too bad,” and kept shoving it in his mouth.

Mary later said that the funniest thing about the tableau was that neither one of us said a word to the other—we just tried to eat the nasty, rancid chicken pesto pasta with complete concentration. Finally I put down my fork and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” We both had garlic breath for a week after that.

“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” --Romans 10:12

Kelsey

Report from the front lines:

David and I are having a wonderful time. We've visited everything from the tavern where the Revolutionary War started to the setting for Little Women to the "Spirit of '76" painting.

And now I'm going to go back to having fun. Have a wonderful Labor Day!

Kelsey

I read William Makepeace Thackeray’s Victorian classic Vanity Fair for the first time last fall. In one portion of the novel, which I don’t have in front of me, the lying, cheating opportunist heroine, Becky Sharp, ruminates on what her life would be like had she been born into wealth. Her conclusion, in a moment of narrative candor on Thackeray’s part, is that she would have been as respectable and honest as any Victorian lady, given their means. The passage stuck with me.

This week we’ve been hearing horror stories of what is going on in New Orleans. I have to admit that some accounts sound downright apocalyptic—looters running around shooting at rescue workers, angry mobs going for days without food, people writing “Help” from almost-submerged rooftops, destitute refugees camped out throughout the South. We are almost deadened to such scenes on the news from other countries, whether drug lords in Colombia assassinate Colombian Presbyterian ministers or Sudanese refugees in Egypt and Kenya plead for help as they starve to death.

Perhaps what shocks us so much about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina is that such horrible things aren’t supposed to happen in the richest nation on earth. Because money not only provides power, but also protects. We get the best technology we can buy so that our buildings won’t fall in earthquakes, our levees won’t break in floods, our homes won’t burn to the ground in fires. We buy expensive houses in the ‘burbs so that we won’t have to worry about crime in the city. We lock down our borders with high-tech gadgets so that terrorists can’t get in.

My family, like most Americans, spent years trying to shut the bad out. My mom wouldn’t even let my sister and me ride bikes down to the store in rural Eastern Washington, for fear we’d be kidnapped. But you know what? Six years ago this Sunday, after all the money and time and worry we’d spent trying to protect ourselves, my dad still collapsed of a heart attack on the softball mound and died at 39 years old, hours after being inducted into the regional men’s fastpitch hall of fame.

And so we find that our meager attempts to buy our way out of human suffering are futile. Whether in the Gulf Coast or in the hospital bed of a cancer patient, we cannot escape the evils that come from living in a fallen creation. Instead, we find that the only difference between ourselves and the Becky Sharps of the world is our wealth, and the illusion of security it brings. Strip that away, and we become the clawing desperation that is New Orleans today.

I believe that the light of God is there. I know that God is here now, with us in our suffering. I know that God loves us. But like Job, on some days it can be hard to feel it.

“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.” --Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

Kelsey

PS—To donate to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, go to www.pcusa.org/pda/. Our goal is to raise $10 million in disaster relief.

Unfortunately, the end of my favorite season is almost upon us—Labor Day weekend is coming up. I don’t know about what you all will be doing, but I’m going up to see David in Boston for the first time since he left me standing at the airport security gate in Chicago a month ago. So don’t expect much (if anything) posted on Monday.

Do any of you even know what Labor Day is all about? It has been a while since I’ve done a “holiday education” blog post—I’m thinking Cinco de Mayo was the last one. Perhaps the key to why none of us have much of a clue about Labor Day lies in its sordid origins in the national labor movements of the 19th century.

Today the mention of organized labor calls up images of the Teamsters for some. For me, growing up in a household where both adults were union members, organized labor was the group that rented a local theater so that we kids could see Lady and the Tramp at Christmas. Yet when Labor Day became law in 1894, Americans identified organized labor with several bloody clashes against corporations and law enforcement to gain rights for workers that we take for granted today—things like the eight-hour workday and essential safety regulations in workplaces.

The movement for a national worker’s holiday started in the early 1890s, when labor unions pushed cities to recognize workers’ contributions to the strength of the American economy. Labor Day’s entry into the national scene, however, came after the violent Pullman Strike, in which federal marshals fired on and killed striking workers of the Pullman Railcar Company near Chicago. Seeking to appease the nation’s workers in an election year, President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law only six days after his troops had broken the strike.

The other day, Interfaith Worker Justice (www.nicwj.org) sent me a card asking me to honor my favorite worker with a donation. When I think of my “favorite worker,” I think of my dad. As I said, he was a union member for over twenty years. Dad was what I’d imagine most workers of the past and present are really like—not necessarily itching to cause trouble for trouble’s sake (something unions often get accused of), but a decent person doing decent work to support himself and his family.

When I think of labor, I think of this—if I’d grown up in my family a hundred years earlier, I probably would have been working in the factories myself by the time I was twelve. Instead, I got health insurance, braces, even my college education based on the living wages my dad earned as a union member. Perhaps I’m biased when it comes to the labor movement. But we all come at these things from our own perspectives.

Yet today, the “working class” aren’t folks like my dad, who work at well-paid manufacturing jobs. The people who struggle today (and who, by the way, probably won’t get Labor Day off), are the low-skilled, low-wage service industries, from retail workers to migrant laborers to the janitors in our workplaces and dorms. On this Labor Day, how are we honoring those people? Particularly when a high number of those people are women like us?

We believe in a God who set the captives free and lifted up the lowly. Look around this Labor Day at the lowly in our community. How are we going to lift them up?

“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” --Luke 1:52-53

Kelsey