When I first read about the rape of Tamar, I was astonished. This tragic story of a beautiful princess — sexually violated by her half-brother and then betrayed by her powerful father — left me aghast. What could I do with this troubling tale, tucked among pages of scripture where I sought spiritual guidance?
Throughout my life in the church, I had never heard the name “Tamar.” No reference to this daughter of King David. No remembrance of her profound suffering and grief.
It’s not an easy story to hear, especially within the biblical narrative of God’s love and providential care for God’s people. It’s like a well-guarded family secret no one dares mention, as if it might swell into a crushing typhoon, leaving devastation in its wake. Following tradition, I hoped not to encounter Tamar’s story again.
If shunning the ancient biblical story of Tamar is all too easy, avoiding news of unrelenting violence against women is becoming harder.
First started in 2013, the Carnival de Resistance is a traveling arts carnival using dance, music, participatory theater, and fire performance to recover the ecological themes in the gospels and the Hebrew scriptures. During the carnival, midway games, costumed characters, and theater performance under the big top "enchant people of all ages with a holy wildness that questions faith in progress and technology."
Some of this year’s crop of politicians tell us that illegal or undocumented immigrants pose a deadly threat to our country. I say that anti-immigrant rhetoric is the more dangerous threat. It has been deadly before, here and in other countries. It can easily become deadly again.
You can watch the rhetorical escalation up the ladder — or down the slippery slope, choose your metaphor — toward danger.
Step one: It is perfectly reasonable for those concerned about illegal immigration to express concern about our nation’s ability to secure its borders, especially from those who might pose a real threat. As one who regularly waits in lines to pass through border controls, I get it. In a nation-state world, borders matter. All nations attempt to secure their borders. The United States has a right and a need to secure its borders.
Facing throngs of people on the National Mall, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan called for justice Oct. 10 as he rallied African-Americans, Latinos, and others during an anniversary protest at the U.S. Capitol.
In a speech that lasted more than two hours, Farrakhan said the United States was hypocritical for insisting other nations were violating human rights, all the while describing its own misconduct as something that causes Americans “dissatisfaction.”
His “Justice or Else!” event came 20 years after hundreds of thousands of black men came to the same stretch of lawn between the Capitol and the Washington Monument to rededicate themselves to being better fathers, sons, and citizens.
Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, named by Pope Francis to that high-profile post a year ago, has issued a powerful call for tougher gun control laws in a move that may push the volatile issue further up the Catholic hierarchy’s agenda than it has been before.
The original intent of the Constitution’s right to bear arms has been “perverted” by a gun industry that is seeking profits at any cost, Cupich wrote in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. The founding fathers could not have anticipated the widespread availability of “military-grade assault weapons that have turned our streets into battlefields.”
“It is no longer enough for those of us involved in civic leadership and pastoral care to comfort the bereaved and bewildered families of victims of gun violence,” he wrote in the column, which was published Oct. 9.
“We must band together to call for gun-control legislation,” he concluded.
The phrase has captivated my imagination for some time now, as I seek joy in the midst of a world crying out in pain. In a nation of mass shootings and executions, in a world devastated by war crimes and the crime of war, where working for peace means learning the depths and pervasiveness of violence, despair threatens to seep in through the air I breathe. Hope often evades my grasp, and fear like a weight drags down my every movement.
But when I find myself in a morass of bitterness, my soul gets a jolt of energy from my laughing toddler, or the accidentally insightful comment from my precocious 6-year-old, or the warm hand of my husband on my shoulder. I savor the comfort of these gestures and let them lift me out of my cynicism. And as the tears clouding my vision disperse, I remind myself that joy, too, permeates the world and can be found by those with eyes to see it.
I never liked “Imagine.” I am not the only Jewish teacher who feels this way.
“Imagine there’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too.”
Lennon was saying: Let’s get rid of nations; let’s get rid of religion; let’s get rid of the idea that there is something above me that is worth dying for, and that might even be worth killing for.
Let’s get rid of the passions that help us transcend ourselves. Maybe that’s why the melody of “Imagine” is so subdued — almost like sleepwalking.
“Imagine” is a dream, and not a very good one.
Without question, abuse ministry—including abuse education—has been the most challenging (and the most rewarding) of all the ministries we’ve experienced. Abuse creates soul damage, including high levels of toxic shame. It creates confusion and pain for those who try to help victims, so it is challenging to teach students about abuse, as it can trigger past trauma. Finally, one of the greatest challenges we’ve faced domestically and globally when educating others about abuse is patriarchy. Until one comes to recognize the prevalence and malevolence of patriarchy, it is difficult to understand, let alone deal with, abuse in the church.
The nightmare continues.
After four students at Northern Arizona University were shot early Oct. 9, another school shooting occurred near Texas Southern University in the middle of the day.
There is one reported fatality in each shooting. The shooting near Texas Southern involved a second injury.
The statistics are staggering: One in three women will experience violence in their lifetime. Ending this cycle of abuse can seem impossible. But, as Jesus tells us, “for God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).
The Scheherazade Initiative is putting this issue center stage at Carnegie Hall on October 19 through a benefit concert for the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, featuring the great Scheherazade-inspired works by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Maurice Ravel. As the narrator of One Thousand and One Nights, Sheherazade not only neutralized violence directed against herself but enriched global folklore. She embodies the creative power of women over the centuries and around the world who have worked privately and publicly to stop violence.