"For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: 'It is Zion; no one cares for her!'" - Jeremiah 30:17
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
We Are One
8-5-2012
These are words posted below the one bullet mark left to remember the senseless loss of so many lives.
This is what it took for a nation to pay attention to a little known religious minority in its midst. It is a minority that believes to its core that they are American, but their faith makes them stand out, and political rhetoric has cast them as “Other.”
I know deep in the recesses of my heart that the Sikh community has been preparing for something horrific since 9/11. It was just a matter of time.
On Sunday I was at the Oak Creek, Wis., gurudwara (Sikh place of worship). I was there with my family to show support and to pray with my community. I brought my daughters, Jind Kaur (4), and Sahib Kaur (7). Sahib was afraid to be here. She couldn’t grasp how it could happen at Gurudwara, a place she goes to every Sunday. She said before we left, “Will we see the bodies?” My husband and I reassured her that she need not be afraid. We were going to Gurudwara — a place that she should never be afraid to go.
The Gurudwara had its first Sunday services exactly a week after a gunman opened fire killing six innocent people before killing himself. Three others are still in the hospital in critical condition. Sunday’s prayer was a testament to my community’s resilience and its collective will to carry on. The Sikhs are used to adversity.
In the aftermath of 9/11 so many South Asian and Middle Eastern community groups reached out to law enforcement and local governments to tell them who they are. The message was simple. We are not the terrorists. We are here and believe in the American dream. It was a plea on their part to make sure their families were safe and not targeted or profiled in an atmosphere of severe anger, mistrust, and a political scenario that demanded action and in its midst created an “other” that matched the look of all of those groups. It was a time when the American flag was used by so many as a sign saying, “I’m American; I am one of you.”
Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. - John 6:47-48
When I was in my 20s and totally out of control and pretty much estranged from my conservative Christian parents I used to joke about how my mom would try and guilt me into connecting with them more often by saying in her Kentucky accent “Nadia, the least you could do is come visit us more often … since we won’t be spending eternity together." Which made me wonder if the church she went to realized that the promise of spending eternity with my mom and her friends wasn’t exactly the best-selling point. At least not for a 21 year old.*
But that’s kind of what I was taught: that being a Christian was all about where you will spend eternity after you die – kind of like purchasing a life-insurance plan for the hereafter. And if you manage to be good enough here on earth then when you die you get to go to heaven and be like the spiritual 1 percent for eternity and live in big mansions with Jesus and wear awesome jewels and walk streets of gold.
Which made it sound like eternal life is basically about getting to live like Liberace Forever.
American nuns facing a Vatican takeover of their leadership organization on Aug. 10 rejected Rome’s plans to recast the group in a more conservative mold, but declined — for now — to respond with an ultimatum that could have created an unprecedented schism between the sisters and the hierarchy.
Instead, the nuns said they wanted to pursue a negotiated solution to the showdown that has galvanized American Catholics in recent months and prompted an outpouring of support for the sisters that left the Vatican with a black eye.
The statement from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious came at the end of the LCWR’s annual assembly here and was the first formal response to the Vatican from the entire organization, which represents most of the 56,000 nuns in the U.S.
The Vatican announced in April that it was assigning a team of bishops to take control of the LCWR in order to make the organization — and by extension, most U.S. nuns — hew more closely and publicly to orthodox teachings on sexuality and theology.
Sister Pat Farrell, the outgoing president of the LCWR, on Friday read the official response that expressed the organization’s “deep disappointment” with Rome’s verdict. But the statement also said the nuns wanted to keep talking with the hierarchy in hopes of “creating more possibilities for the laity and, particularly for women, to have a voice in the church.”
There is a wonderful scene in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird where the all-white jury has returned an unjust verdict against Tom Robinson. Atticus Finch begins to wearily walk out of the courthouse. His children, Jem and Scout, are in the balcony with the black folks of the county. They all rise as Atticus walks out — except the children — so the Rev. Sykes says to Scout, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”
During the first weeks of school, Scout's story came back to me as I was benchmarking the reading levels of our first- and second-grade students. Before I took the students through the benchmark test, I asked them open-ended questions and listened to their answers. At first they were shy, as children often are when they meet a new teacher. But soon they were telling me their stories with confident voices and dimpled smiles.
Tony Jones has asked some of us progressive Theobloggers to chime in on God, you know, perhaps some kind of definition or doctrine (that word many of us progressives despise). You can read his invitation here. Tony doesn't want us to talk about Jesus, per se, but about God. I get that. He's in his evangelical context and he gets tired of all the Jesus talk. Lately it seems that the Emergent conversation has been all Jesus all the time. Now, that doesn't bother me, but then again I feel that in my end of the progressive mainline (free church progressive) we don't talk about Jesus enough. We talk about God all the time. Jesus, well, he's a bit of an enigma. What else is there to say? Nevertheless, Tony's invitation is an interesting one and I'm willing to chime in.
One caveat: I'm doing this as a way to speak of one Person of a Trinity. To speak of the One is, in many ways, to speak of the Three and the Unity. But this is just a blog post and not a 20-page essay. So ... yeah.
My answer: If you want to know God, get Religion. (Have you got good religion? Certainly, Lord!) Religion is a combined set of activities embodied by people. These activities are not limited to but may include the following behaviors: liturgy, charity, politics, and even theology (mystical and systematic), and doctrine. Religion can be communal or individual. Religion is the principal craft by which we know (cognition) and understand (hermeneutics) God.
The first violence happened on May 22, 2011 when a tornado killed 158 people, injured 1,000 more, and wiped out more than 25 percent of your town. That was nature's violence.
A human form of violence began 14 months later, with two attempts in 2012 to burn down the mosque of the Islamic Society of Joplin. The first attempt, which took place on America's 236th Birthday, July 4th, only burned part of the roof. The second attempt on Hiroshima Day, August 6th, was successful in totally destroying the mosque.
You are not alone. Around the country, other forms of violence have occurred this year — daily, weekly, monthly:
- Chicago's daily shootings have led to more than 300 gunshot homicides so far this year. (1/3 happened this summer.)
- The July mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colo., killed or wounded 70 people.
- The August shooting in a Sikh Temple by a neo-Nazi in Oak Creek, Wis., killed or wounded 10 people.
What can I say to the good folks of Joplin?
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential pick early Saturday morning. Romney is set to officially announce the Wisconsin representative at 9 a.m. in Norfolk, Va.
Romney made the announcement via his smartphone app, and his website refers to the duo as the "A" team, saying: "This is the team to beat. This is the team that can restore greatness in America. This is the team that can fix America."
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U.S. gymnast McKyala Moroney is not impressed with much in this new Tumblr page --- four sisters recreate childhood photos --- designer public toilets in New Zealand --- remembering author and journalist David Rakoff --- vintage photos of bulldogs wearing human clothing in the early 1900s. See these and more in today's Links of Awesomeness...