Run

I saw a dead man tonight. I was walking out of the underground train station area where I meet up with my friend Bill every week to read poetry and chat. I rounded the corner near the stairs and there were a bunch of guys and a couple cops just standing around waiting for paramedics and just staring silently. He was just laying on his side, hood up so I couldn't see his face as I passed behind. But I could see the big pool of blood right in front of where his head was.

My feet passed, maybe 4 feet from where he was laying. No one asked me to stay away. No one urged me to move on. I just kept walking. Up the stairs, out into the cold and across the street to Love Park. And then I just started running. I was parked 6 or 7 blocks away, and I just ran the whole way there. I had to. Not because I was scared of something happening to me. But because something just clicked in me. And it made me want to scream so loud. And my insides were screaming. So instead I ran.

I have no idea what happened to that man, but I can guess. And what made me scream was not necessarily just this man, but the way that he all of a sudden brought to life all 67 homicides that happened in Camden this past year. I kind of got numb to them after hearing about it so much and seeing so many RIP sorts of facebook posts from old friends and students and neighbors that live there. And that's just Camden. This stuff happens all over the place. (Please please please don't read into this and start thinking that cities are filled with evil, violent people. They're not.)

But blood belongs to people. And seeing this man's blood just made him so starkly and vulnerably real. He was a person. With gifts and opinions and friends. He is someone's son. Maybe a brother or an uncle or a father.

And all of those 67 people, those 67 children... they each had a pool of blood that belonged to them, too. That made them real. All of those pools of blood became very real in my mind. Each one intimately represents two victims in my mind - the recipient and the doer of hurt: both victims of violence and hate.

68 pools of blood is enough to make anyone run.

Okay Fine, I Can't Resist Them

It's been pointed out to me recently that I have absolutely no resistance to adorable animals. And while I would like to deny this to be true, just look at this rat. Come on. A miniature teddy bear. I can't take it.

Un-apathy

Honey Bees Are Disappearing

Help bring them back.

Saying No

I am convinced that this is the hardest thing in the whole wide world to do.

Fort Building

I read some really great stuff this weekend (go read something by Margaret Atwood. She's kind of a literary god), but having spent nearly all of it doing homework, I am ready to give up and build a fort and lay in a mess of bodies and fall asleep. Who's in?

I Love Men

Just thought I would lay that reminder out there, since feminist movement is so often (sometimes fairly, but more often unfairly) associated with man-hating. Sometimes I still hate considering myself a feminist. But then other times I think that it's doing more harm when I try to separate myself from the title. It kind of reminds me of the struggle many followers of Jesus have with claiming the title "Christian." It's complicated.

With that being said, I'm pretty sure that my blog doesn't reach any of the people that need to hear this letter the most. But I am posting it anyway. Because I think it's good.

A Letter to the Guy That Harassed Me Outside the Bar

Parents, Professors, Tomato, Tomahto.

One of my favorite things is when I'm sitting at work in my little box of an office and my sociology professors walk past the little window I sit behind on their way to lunch. Their faces light up and they wave with such dorky fury, every time without fail, like parents at their child's middle school orchestra concert who don't realize how incredibly low their child has sunk into their chair. Except I don't feel embarrassed. Just a whole crap ton of love for these two delightfully weird and jolly men I call my teachers.

And, as if to affirm what I just wrote, they just called the phone I get paid to answer (from the table they're sitting at 15 feet away) to harass me. =P

How to Talk to Little Girls

Some really great thoughts on talking to young girls in a way that encourages interest in all sorts of wonderful things about life without talking about body image, cuteness, or beauty.

A Prayer For Some Friends

Seed, you fear that nobody will see you
But if you never plant yourself, no one will
So plant yourself, plant yourself and heal

Winter tree, you're terrified that they'll all see
A disgrace in the gnarled skin that you can't love
Become naked, and come naked to me

Grow, grow
Old roots go so deep
And healing is slow
For fear has no faith
In redemption below
Don't live in a seasonless world
Dare to weep all your tears
And laugh all your laughter

Warm spring boughs, scared to let the new leaves out
Yes, they will leave you in the fall, but life gives more
Trust that they're, oh trust that they're not all.

Grow, grow
Old roots go so deep
And healing is slow
For fear has no faith
In redemption below
Don't live in a seasonless world
Dare to weep all your tears
And laugh all your laughter

Bleed into the ground with joy. 

The Power of Introverts

When I Can't Sleep...

...you get quotes about feminism. I'm not sure if this is actually a good deal for you or not, but I'm going to go with the assumption that it is. :)

“Feminist struggle to end patriarchal domination should be of primary importance to women and men globally not because it is the foundation of all other oppressive structures but because it is that form of domination we are most likely to encounter in an ongoing way in everyday life. Unlike other forms of domination, sexism directly shapes and determines relations of power in our private lives, in familiar social spaces, in that most intimate context – home – and in that most intimate sphere of relations – family. Usually, it is within the family that we witness coercive domination and learn to accept it…” -bell hooks

“It is necessary for us to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound. It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist – the potential victim within that we must rescue – otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.” – bell hooks 

“Working collectively to confront difference, to expand our awareness of sex, race and class as interlocking systems of domination, of the ways we reinforce and perpetuate these structures, is the context in which we learn the true meaning of solidarity. It is this work that must be the foundation of feminist movement” -bell hooks

Galations 5

It is some good stuff.

Paradax

I probably find this more humorous than it actually is. But I like it a lot.

Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!

Defending Your Faith and Stuff

Tidbits I liked from a theology book. Maybe you'll like something, too:

"My communications... sound as if they came from a besieged defender of the faith. I know well enough that it is not a defense of the faith, which don't need it, but a defense of myself who does." -- Flannery O'Connor

"I doubtless hate pious language... because I believe the realities it hides." --Flannery O'Connor

"How much does the church lose of the gifts and enthusiasm of its members because it creates an atmosphere where honesty and risk are not welcomed?" --Daniel Taylor

"We should all recognize the extent to which we... want to tame God and the claims [God] makes so as to keep our lives safer, neater, and under our own control." --Daniel Taylor

"The church is continually tempted to confuse its mission to spread and embody the 'good news' with the need every organization feels to perpetuate and enhance itself." --Daniel Taylor

"Ministration of the word is not administration, however smoothly it may go." -- Karl Barth

Soul Kitchen

Cool stuff. Bon Jovi started it, which makes me wonder how sustainable something like this is for average joes without celebrities backing them, but regardless... I like it.

Soul Kitchen

Annnd, she finally finished it.

Because it was due back at the library and she ran out of times to renew it and doesn't have money to pay a fine. =P

The Stanford Prison Experiment

I've spent the past couple days sifting through a bunch of potential things to use for a class I'm TAing. Last night I rewatched a short documentary I saw in high school recounting an experiment conducted by this guy named Zimbardo on the psychological effects of prison on inmates and prison guards. Still just as crazy as it was when I was in 12th grade.

"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

Sabbath

I need to learn how to sabbath. Real bad. It's probably on the top 5 list of things I am the worst at. Maybe even higher than forgetting to turn off the oven.

Prayers of a 5 year old

"God, keep giving little bits of hope to everybody in the whole world. Even if they don't know it's from you. And maybe someday they'll find out."