My soul is disturbed after having seen the movie, “Precious.”
It is disturbed for a couple of reasons. One, because it was real. I sobbed after seeing the movie because I know so many people, so many children, live like that. Mothers have babies and then in essence destroy their lives; they do so because they are destroyed themselves. Those who have not known love cannot give love, and it is a fact that too many children in our community do not receive love. They are told they are worthless; they are blamed for everything wrong, and then society wonders why they act out. Too many young girls in OUR community are being sexually molested by fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and mothers’ boyfriends, and having their babies. The cycle of despair just keeps spinning … That thought, that reality, hit me squarely between the eyes. The blessing for movie character Precious was that she had a teacher who cared. Someone cared. One person taking the time to care can change a person’s life. That is not an opinion; it is a fact. Precious, in that regard, was lucky in spite of all she endured.
The other reason my soul is disturbed is because “Precious” will probably win a slew of awards, which is good, but it seems that movies with African Americans win critical acclaim only when they depict African American life the way most white people think most African Americans live. Denzel Washington, an amazing actor who has done amazing work, won critical acclaim for “Training Day.” While I was proud, I wondered why he hadn’t won that kind of recognition for his depiction of Malcolm X? It seems that America is still caught in the need to nestle in the bosom of stereotypes or fantasy about African Americans.
I am bothered still by another fact. There is so much mission work to do on these shores. People go gallivanting off to Africa and India and Honduras, where there is despair, for sure, but there is plenty of despair in these United States. Somehow, Americans have glamorized, or made more acceptable, the suffering “over there,” while ignoring the suffering, pain and despair that runs rampant within our own boundaries. There are people here who need Christian love. Jesus’ compassion works as well here as it does in a forlorn village in Africa. We somehow demonize those who suffer here; we blame them for their situations, if not openly then certainly surreptitiously. The myth is that anyone who wants to do well here can, and while it might be easier here to “succeed” than it is in other countries, it is not a given. There are scores of horribly poor people here who cannot get out of their poverty, aided by a capitalistic system which specializes in keeping poor people poor, but using those same poor people to maximize their profits. There are scores of working poor who are working their fingers to the bone without any possibility of climbing out of their holes of financial despair. Prosperity gospel notwithstanding, the playing field is not even in this country, and poor people are suffering big time here. There are lots of children who, like Precious, are caught in a culture of despair aided and abetted by our economic system.
My mind goes to what we as a church do to address and alleviate the suffering, to provide help to children who, like Precious, need to know that someone cares. What ministries can we do to help? Remember, it was education that helped Precious. It was a teacher who took time to talk to her, and listen to her, and help her to know that she had abilities, that she was special, and that she was worthy to be loved.
That seems to me to be the most basic “missionary” work a Christian can do. And it seems that the more we address and alleviate suffering on our shores, the more foot soldiers we will have to send to other parts of the world. We really cannot sufficiently help the world until we help ourselves. If our children are suffering, we are not equipped to help the children in other parts of the world. We have to put our own oxygen masks on before we try to get the oxygen masks on others.
I doubt that I will read the book “Sapphire,” on which the movie “Precious” is based. Too hard to become a co-partner in that kind of suffering on that level. But I am praying for us as a church to have “mission” work flourish in 2010, working with the children in our community in ways that will help give them hope.
It has to be that we recognize what we can do to help “the least of these” who live amongst us.
Happy New Year! Let’s get this party started!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Finally, Hope for Health Care Reform
I don’t know what the final health care reform bill will look like but I am glad that it feels like we’re on the road to something being different, so that “the least of these” will have access to health care.
When President Obama began his drive to get a health care reform bill passed, I had no idea that health care reform had been an issue since the days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I had no idea that President Richard Nixon had worked on the issue as well. I have learned so much.
When I have listened to Republican senators say that we need to slow down, to wait, I have been flabbergasted. Wait? How much longer ? Why? What about the people, the poor, the working poor, and others, who are suffering? Could they have been serious?
They were and they are …but there comes a time when there’s been enough waiting. Martin Luther King Jr. said as much in his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” responding to Christian ministers said to him that he and African Americans must wait for justice and for civil rights. Huh? Are you kidding? It had been hundreds of years already when the Civil Rights movement got into its rhythm, pushing steadily toward its goal of justice. Wait??? Only those who have all they need can admonish others to wait. They have no vantage point, no place of personal knowledge, to fuel their arguments. It is easy to be an ideologue.
But people are suffering, and in this nation, when it comes to health care, that kind of suffering makes no sense. The government is not controlling people; big business is, in the form of insurance companies. Insurance companies do not care a hoot if patients live, die or suffer. Their concern is their bottom line: their profits. If people suffer, tough. So be it. That’s life. Or…at least that’s the way the capitalist mind thinks.
President Obama is to be commended for taking on health care reform and for sticking with it. It may cost him, politically. The bill that may pass the Senate (I am writing this four days before Christmas, when it is expected to pass) is not perfect. It does not contain the public option. It doesn’t extend Medicare benefits …there is a lot it doesn’t do, and Liberals are angry …
But Conservatives are angry, too, because some of the way improved health care will be financed is by increasing taxes on people who make more than $250,000 annually. Some things, like getting botox treatments, will be taxed … and there are other things that will be taxed that will make people angry …but at the end of the day, what is important to me is that more people who do not have health insurance will be able to get it. At the end of the day, the insurance companies will not be able to refuse coverage to people who have “pre-existing” conditions.
Thank God.
I think that having access to health care is a right, not a privilege, especially in this country. I am glad that the President, the House and the Senate have pushed this. It’s been mean and unkind, the war of words…but I am glad that the momentum was never stopped.
It’s a wonderful first step toward giving “liberty and justice to all.”
Have a good week as we end 2009 and enter 2010! See you at Watch Night Service!
Pastor Smith
When President Obama began his drive to get a health care reform bill passed, I had no idea that health care reform had been an issue since the days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I had no idea that President Richard Nixon had worked on the issue as well. I have learned so much.
When I have listened to Republican senators say that we need to slow down, to wait, I have been flabbergasted. Wait? How much longer ? Why? What about the people, the poor, the working poor, and others, who are suffering? Could they have been serious?
They were and they are …but there comes a time when there’s been enough waiting. Martin Luther King Jr. said as much in his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” responding to Christian ministers said to him that he and African Americans must wait for justice and for civil rights. Huh? Are you kidding? It had been hundreds of years already when the Civil Rights movement got into its rhythm, pushing steadily toward its goal of justice. Wait??? Only those who have all they need can admonish others to wait. They have no vantage point, no place of personal knowledge, to fuel their arguments. It is easy to be an ideologue.
But people are suffering, and in this nation, when it comes to health care, that kind of suffering makes no sense. The government is not controlling people; big business is, in the form of insurance companies. Insurance companies do not care a hoot if patients live, die or suffer. Their concern is their bottom line: their profits. If people suffer, tough. So be it. That’s life. Or…at least that’s the way the capitalist mind thinks.
President Obama is to be commended for taking on health care reform and for sticking with it. It may cost him, politically. The bill that may pass the Senate (I am writing this four days before Christmas, when it is expected to pass) is not perfect. It does not contain the public option. It doesn’t extend Medicare benefits …there is a lot it doesn’t do, and Liberals are angry …
But Conservatives are angry, too, because some of the way improved health care will be financed is by increasing taxes on people who make more than $250,000 annually. Some things, like getting botox treatments, will be taxed … and there are other things that will be taxed that will make people angry …but at the end of the day, what is important to me is that more people who do not have health insurance will be able to get it. At the end of the day, the insurance companies will not be able to refuse coverage to people who have “pre-existing” conditions.
Thank God.
I think that having access to health care is a right, not a privilege, especially in this country. I am glad that the President, the House and the Senate have pushed this. It’s been mean and unkind, the war of words…but I am glad that the momentum was never stopped.
It’s a wonderful first step toward giving “liberty and justice to all.”
Have a good week as we end 2009 and enter 2010! See you at Watch Night Service!
Pastor Smith
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Advent Conspiracy ...and Other Thoughts
The Pastor’s Page
There were two moments this week, no, maybe three, where I inhaled what this season is all about.
One was when I read online about something called “The Advent Conspiracy.” A group of religious leaders have banded together and taken a stand: do not spend yourselves into debt, but rather, “conspire” to serve others.” If there is something to be given, they say, let it be yourselves, and your willingness to serve God.
Hooray.
Then, I was getting my nails done, and my technician said that the shop had voted, instead of exchanging gifts, to adopt a needy family, and give to that family. “We have enough already,” she said.
She said that the family chosen was a lesson to all of them, helping them to keep things in perspective. The mother has died, and so the 31 year old father is raising his four children alone. He recently lost his job and his home, so the family has moved back in with his mother. They have no healthcare.
Their situation was hard to listen to, but what they asked for warmed my heart. The grandmother wants a cross to wear around her neck. One of the children wants a mattress for his bed. One of the daughters wants new socks; all of hers have holes.
As my technician was talking, my eyes filled with tears. That’s what the gift-giving should be about: giving to those who do not have, not even the things many of us take for granted. Christmas isn’t the time to go into debt buying things just to buy things. If the truth be told, if someone is close to you, he or she ought to be worthy of receiving gifts all year long, not for a specific holiday, but just for being in your life.
This is not “bah, humbug,” this is “yes, Lord!” theology.
Whoever told us that we don’t love someone unless we go into debt buying them “things?” How did Christmas get to be that? When I was little, Christmas wasn’t so much about getting a lot of things; we children usually got one book and one toy…but we were happy. Why? Because there was the Christmas tree, and there was the smell of all those cookies and pies and cakes that my mother baked. There was the fudge that my father made once a year. There were Christmas lights in the house, and in the stores. One of our traditions was to go down to the J.L. Hudson Department store to see all the animated figures in the windows. I loved them. It was enough. It was simply enough.
I like that Advent Conspiracy thing. I like what my nail shop is doing. And I am hoping that nobody in this congregation, or reading this piece, feels bad if he or she cannot buy lots of “stuff” that supposedly says “I love you.” Love isn’t stuff. Love is giving self. That’s it, plain and simple. A pair of expensive sneakers does not say “I love you” if you cannot spend time with the one whom you say you love. More clothes, when one’s closet is already filled, doesn’t do it. Actually, one little gift that says, “I know you and I appreciate who you are,”something that will be around when you are dead and gone … something that the receiver can always pick up and remember you …that’s love.
I think that’s what Jesus would do.
Well, I think that’s what Jesus DID do. He left us … himself.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
There were two moments this week, no, maybe three, where I inhaled what this season is all about.
One was when I read online about something called “The Advent Conspiracy.” A group of religious leaders have banded together and taken a stand: do not spend yourselves into debt, but rather, “conspire” to serve others.” If there is something to be given, they say, let it be yourselves, and your willingness to serve God.
Hooray.
Then, I was getting my nails done, and my technician said that the shop had voted, instead of exchanging gifts, to adopt a needy family, and give to that family. “We have enough already,” she said.
She said that the family chosen was a lesson to all of them, helping them to keep things in perspective. The mother has died, and so the 31 year old father is raising his four children alone. He recently lost his job and his home, so the family has moved back in with his mother. They have no healthcare.
Their situation was hard to listen to, but what they asked for warmed my heart. The grandmother wants a cross to wear around her neck. One of the children wants a mattress for his bed. One of the daughters wants new socks; all of hers have holes.
As my technician was talking, my eyes filled with tears. That’s what the gift-giving should be about: giving to those who do not have, not even the things many of us take for granted. Christmas isn’t the time to go into debt buying things just to buy things. If the truth be told, if someone is close to you, he or she ought to be worthy of receiving gifts all year long, not for a specific holiday, but just for being in your life.
This is not “bah, humbug,” this is “yes, Lord!” theology.
Whoever told us that we don’t love someone unless we go into debt buying them “things?” How did Christmas get to be that? When I was little, Christmas wasn’t so much about getting a lot of things; we children usually got one book and one toy…but we were happy. Why? Because there was the Christmas tree, and there was the smell of all those cookies and pies and cakes that my mother baked. There was the fudge that my father made once a year. There were Christmas lights in the house, and in the stores. One of our traditions was to go down to the J.L. Hudson Department store to see all the animated figures in the windows. I loved them. It was enough. It was simply enough.
I like that Advent Conspiracy thing. I like what my nail shop is doing. And I am hoping that nobody in this congregation, or reading this piece, feels bad if he or she cannot buy lots of “stuff” that supposedly says “I love you.” Love isn’t stuff. Love is giving self. That’s it, plain and simple. A pair of expensive sneakers does not say “I love you” if you cannot spend time with the one whom you say you love. More clothes, when one’s closet is already filled, doesn’t do it. Actually, one little gift that says, “I know you and I appreciate who you are,”something that will be around when you are dead and gone … something that the receiver can always pick up and remember you …that’s love.
I think that’s what Jesus would do.
Well, I think that’s what Jesus DID do. He left us … himself.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Advocate for the Children!
The Pastor’s Page
Even as the Senate begins debate on health care reform, and the House celebrated the passage of its version of a health reform bill, one very vulnerable segment of our population remains in danger of not having adequate health care benefits.
Children.
A report on National Public Radio said that if the Senate bill passes, childrens’ hospitals will suffer because they will get less funding. That will compromise their ability to treat a large segment of their patients – children who are on Medicaid.
And the Children’s Defense Fund points out that both the House and Senate bills threaten the vitality and survival of CHIP – the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
CDF says that the House bill will keep CHIP only until 2013 and then require as many as 10 million children to enroll in a new and untested health insurance plan that will be more expensive with fewer benefits.
The Senate bill keeps CHIP until 2019 but fails to fully fund it or make it easier for uninsured to become enrolled in the program.
The Children’s Defense Fund, under the guidance and direction of Marian Wright Edelman, has been working tirelessly to get all children health care. Statistics show that it is poor children who too often have no health care benefits, and in addition to that being a travesty in the so-called wealthiest nation in the world, it is also a death knell to many children who end up seriously ill or even dying from what have come to be known as preventable diseases and illnesses.
Not much talked about is the reality that many children in urban areas who are labeled “behavior problems” are very often more likely to be sick and untreated. Youngsters with everything from abscessed teeth to psychiatric disorders to chronic disease are being sent to school ill and are in effect being blamed for being sick because their illnesses affect their behavior.
Not only do these children suffer physically, but their ability to be educated goes lacking, which in turn affects their self-esteem. What ends up happening is that sick, untreated children grow into sick, untreated adults, often with behavior problems related to their illnesses, and then become labeled as criminals. They end up, too many of them, in prisons, still untreated, regarded as monsters or bad people, when if they had been able to receive adequate health care, many of their problems, and the problems they end up causing society, their paths in life might have been dramatically altered.
It is chilling the way all these things – inadequate health care, untreated illness, compromised ability to learn, “acting out” behavior, antisocial behavior and finally, prison – are related. There is a thread of “injustice” which ties them all together. Because the poor are so often and too often seen as objects and not as people, these children fall through the cracks, with nobody to advocate for them.
I am including in this week’s bulletin a flyer of information about an amendment to the current Senate health care reform bill being sponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). I urge you to read this information, and then call Ohio’s senators to urge them to vote FOR his amendment. Our senators are Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican George Voinovich. Senator Brown’s phone number is (202) 224-2315, and Sen. Voinovich’s phone number is (202) 224-3353. I am going to also give our Social Justice Ministry the job of getting the word out to the Columbus community about what is at stake for children, and I urge you all to ask people to read this pastor’s page on our website, www.adventucc.org
If we don’t advocate for our children, nobody will. When a person is seen as an object, it is very easy to either step on or step over him or her. It is our job as people who say we love the Lord to make sure that we advocate for the children, who are surely amongst “the least of these.”
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith
Even as the Senate begins debate on health care reform, and the House celebrated the passage of its version of a health reform bill, one very vulnerable segment of our population remains in danger of not having adequate health care benefits.
Children.
A report on National Public Radio said that if the Senate bill passes, childrens’ hospitals will suffer because they will get less funding. That will compromise their ability to treat a large segment of their patients – children who are on Medicaid.
And the Children’s Defense Fund points out that both the House and Senate bills threaten the vitality and survival of CHIP – the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
CDF says that the House bill will keep CHIP only until 2013 and then require as many as 10 million children to enroll in a new and untested health insurance plan that will be more expensive with fewer benefits.
The Senate bill keeps CHIP until 2019 but fails to fully fund it or make it easier for uninsured to become enrolled in the program.
The Children’s Defense Fund, under the guidance and direction of Marian Wright Edelman, has been working tirelessly to get all children health care. Statistics show that it is poor children who too often have no health care benefits, and in addition to that being a travesty in the so-called wealthiest nation in the world, it is also a death knell to many children who end up seriously ill or even dying from what have come to be known as preventable diseases and illnesses.
Not much talked about is the reality that many children in urban areas who are labeled “behavior problems” are very often more likely to be sick and untreated. Youngsters with everything from abscessed teeth to psychiatric disorders to chronic disease are being sent to school ill and are in effect being blamed for being sick because their illnesses affect their behavior.
Not only do these children suffer physically, but their ability to be educated goes lacking, which in turn affects their self-esteem. What ends up happening is that sick, untreated children grow into sick, untreated adults, often with behavior problems related to their illnesses, and then become labeled as criminals. They end up, too many of them, in prisons, still untreated, regarded as monsters or bad people, when if they had been able to receive adequate health care, many of their problems, and the problems they end up causing society, their paths in life might have been dramatically altered.
It is chilling the way all these things – inadequate health care, untreated illness, compromised ability to learn, “acting out” behavior, antisocial behavior and finally, prison – are related. There is a thread of “injustice” which ties them all together. Because the poor are so often and too often seen as objects and not as people, these children fall through the cracks, with nobody to advocate for them.
I am including in this week’s bulletin a flyer of information about an amendment to the current Senate health care reform bill being sponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). I urge you to read this information, and then call Ohio’s senators to urge them to vote FOR his amendment. Our senators are Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican George Voinovich. Senator Brown’s phone number is (202) 224-2315, and Sen. Voinovich’s phone number is (202) 224-3353. I am going to also give our Social Justice Ministry the job of getting the word out to the Columbus community about what is at stake for children, and I urge you all to ask people to read this pastor’s page on our website, www.adventucc.org
If we don’t advocate for our children, nobody will. When a person is seen as an object, it is very easy to either step on or step over him or her. It is our job as people who say we love the Lord to make sure that we advocate for the children, who are surely amongst “the least of these.”
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith
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