Finding love in limbo and labor

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

                -Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet

I read an article in the NewYork Times this past week that talked about how young people since the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession have struggled to find jobs that would start them out on the upwardly-mobile career of their dream. Business majors from various Ivy League schools found themselves working as bartenders, servers, cashiers and paralegals. While some relished the flexibility that their underemployment gave them, most complained bitterly with a refrain along the lines of “but we did everything we were supposed to do”.

This, of course comes as no surprise to most people, excluding those at the Hamptons and Capitol Hill. The Times article categorized my peers and I into “Generation Limbo” because the overachieving graduates of 2009 and later are more or less waiting for the jobs climate to improve before we try and start a career. I know that a large of number of my friends from Bucknell, a “sub”-Ivy League university, have gone to graduate school, done programs like Teach for America, Americorps and other similar relatively low-paying, temporary gigs to wait out the great, Siberian winter of employment. I can relate to this.

But gosh, does it reek of privilege and entitlement.

This coming Monday is Labor Day, a holiday which was established in 1894 after the bloody Pullman strike in what is now the South Side of Chicago. The federal government was careful to observe a holiday celebrating labor in early September, far away from May Day, the more radical International Workers Day. The United States has come a long way since the days when federal troops were regularly brought in to break strikes. Certainly all American workers owe an awful lot to folks like Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, and A. Philip Randolph.

I have to admit that I’m tempted to go down a path of labor history—to talk about the Wobblies, Walter Reuther, Caesar Chavez—but the times don’t quite allow us to get too sentimental. The old factories have shut, leaving eerie industrial shells of former economic might. The new factories that are being built are either across the ocean or are rabidly anti-union. Wages are stagnant, and that college degree sure doesn’t get you as far as it used to. Ah, and yes, unemployment is holding at 9%.

In the face of all that, Kahlil Gibran’s words sound kinda hollow. We would love to work a job that is fulfilling, but we’ll settle a job that pays the rent. And our student loans.

But we are still celebrating something this weekend. Maybe it’s not necessarily the strength of the union movement, though there is still a lot power in it. I think we’ll be celebrating something more basic. It’s about sharing food and drink and sports and music and fun. It’s about community.

See, while things are tough, and we should be angry at how the government is acting, we ultimately depend on each other. While my college-educated brethren and I have a certain right to be disillusioned about careers right now, we still carry on with life just as past generations have. 

The real beauty in Gibran’s text is not really the self-help portion, but that it touches on the most basic of human needs: love. People will suffer all sorts of indignities and wrongs if it means that they can continue to act on the love they have for others. Of course, it is also my job to show how loving one’s children also means joining the picket line. 

So what does this mean for Generation Limbo? It can mean a few things. I’ve already mentioned that the six-figure salary will have to wait. However, this is also a wonderful opportunity for folks who are accustomed to the highest amount of privilege to truly understand solidarity with people who have been categorically denied it for generations. So the fine arts major waits tables with the undocumented immigrant who washes dishes. The dude with the 5-year-plan sweats with the H2-B visa worker. Nothing builds solidarity and—dare I say it?—love like suffering.

This Labor Day you can have the barbecue like you usually do. Eat a Polish sausage and watch the Cubs-Pirates baseball game. After all, one of them has to win, right? But keep the gate open and invite your neighbors over. Times are tough, but we get through it because we care about each other.

I promise you, community based on love is that one thing that does not sour.

Moving Beyond Clout and Towards Direct Action Organizing

The room was full of one of the oddest assortments of folks I've ever seen. Ages ranged from 2 years old to seventy-odd-years old, though the toddler did not participate as much as the senior citizen. The group was fully multi-ethnic and multi-lingual. There was also a very obvious wide range formal education and personal health. Folks represented churches, labor unions, community groups, businesses, senior citizens centers, and just their blocks.

And oh-my-God it was chaotic.

I went to a community meeting last Thursday to discuss and plan actions to bring back a city bus to run on 31st Street in Chicago, and that is what I saw. It was beautiful in the way that uncleaned home is when you unexpectedly visit it. It was a brutally honest view of my neighborhood, just letting it all hang out there. People rambled. People ranted. People got up and left entirely. People ran up and down the room squealing (okay, that was just the toddler).

Ah, community organizing in Bridgeport, Chicago.

See, I've recently committed to staying more in Bridgeport to get to know the neighborhood and hopefully draw the very diverse crowds together into some sort of working community group that can speak and act on its own accord. There are several campaigns going on in Bridgeport currently--to shut down the dirty coal power plants and to bring back the 31st Street bus, just to name two--but they're largely organized by outside organizations like the Sierra Club, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, and the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization. I am very glad that groups are organizing my neighbors, but it touches a bit of a nerve.

The philosophy can be summed up in a favorite quote from Mother Teresa: "Don't wait for strong leaders; do it alone, person to person." I try to reframe the quote a bit to focus on collective action, but the point remains that we shouldn't wait for others to do what we can do ourselves. Of course the counterargument is strong as well. One middle-aged woman at the bus meeting insisted that we before we put too much effort into doing it ourselves, we need to get the one Daley brother still in the neighborhood to fight for us. After all, the Daleys' got clout, y'know?

I'm all for good advocacy. As a Christian, it is my duty to speak and act for those who can't do it themselves. However, especially as good ol' American citizens, we depend too much on our elected leaders. We lull ourselves into passive outrage and eventual apathetic disillusionment as we continue to vote for congresspeople and presidents that won't get the job done. We believe that America is exceptional, that its representative democracy is unique in the world, that the grand experiment of the Founding Fathers was an unquestioned success.

And if you believe that, then I have bridge to sell you. For the exact amount of my college debt. Cash preferred.

In Bridgeport, this myth was manifested by the Mayors Daley, Richard J. and Richard M, and life was good. While the neighborhood's favorite sons ruled city hall (for a combined 43 years), life was good. Streets were well paved, crime was low, city were jobs abundant. Oh, and only white people lived there. But wait, Daley the Younger didn't stay in Bridgeport...and neither did all the nice things.

So the myth is shattered these days. While Bridgeporters thank God that they're not like the rest of the South Side, they spit venom when talking about North Side politics. I hope that we will stomp the shards of this myth even more.

The more I get involved in community and labor organizing, I become more and more convinced that the most effective methods of effecting social change lie in what the Midwest Academy calls self-help and direct action. Self-help is an action that a group does by itself to accomplish its goal without the help others. Cooperatives, whether worker- or resident-run, would be a particularly imaginative example. It could also be as simple as a community crime watch group.

Direct action means classic organizing to pressure others to do what you want. It challenges standard operating procedures and hierarchies. It can be as little as a letter with a lot signatures or as dramatic as civil disobedience. It is not getting someone elected--it is getting the folks whom you elected to do what you want.

In local politics, even politics as complicated and corrupt as Chicago city politics, I have seen how this "grassroots" organizing can really change things for the better. It might take a long time, and it might require a stroke of luck as much really smart strategy (like a certain sitting mayor deciding not to run for another term). National politics is a much different, more frustrating beast which I won't discuss in this post.

In Bridgeport I am seeing the beginnings of both of self-help and direct action. Our alley isn't plowed of snow yet? Fine. We will shovel our own alley, having a wonderful, community-building time while doing it. And then we will take that snow and block the 11th Ward office with it. Do you see how self-help and direct action can quite happily work together?

So--I amend Mother Teresa's quote. Don't wait for strong leaders; do it together, person to person.

Why I Am Uncomfortable with Mission

Mission work in the Christian church is booming all over the world, and I am very honored and blessed to be a full time missionary of the United Methodist Church.

But.

Talk to young people in missions today, and you will very likely hear that contrarian conjunction drifting off into the ellipsis of thoughts uncomfortable. Young people in churches love to go on mission trips. I have heard from many different sources that the mission trip today has taken the place of summer camp in previous generations. However, short-term mission trips often allow the participant to be a “religious tourist”, as one young pastor recently put it, and she is not any different from when she is at youth group.

She would not likely call herself a missionary.

I do call myself a missionary. It’s kinda what I do.

This does not make me any kind of academic expert on missions. There is a branch of ecclesiology called “missiology”, and I am but a casual reader. Having said that, I do still have a voice and opinion of some weight. I think the official commissioning grants me that much. And so that allows me to speak of my, and my young adult colleagues’, uncomfortableness (not quite discomfort, mind you) with being identified as a missionary.

Let me explain more. During my missionary training we did an exercise one night where we drew pictures with crayons of what we think of when we hear the word “missionary”. There were pictures of hearts and crosses and perhaps a physiological representation of femininity. Keep an open mind, please. I drew a scene from “Heart of the Darkness”, the influential novel by Joseph Conrad about rescuing a civilized Englishman from his own madness deep in the Congo jungle. There was a Bible, a flag, a musket, and a mysterious collection of greens and browns and blacks meeting the edge of a river. You see, by end of my undergraduate experience I had learned of the parts of missions that I hadn’t learned in Sunday school. Like how conquistadors had priests with them to baptize indigenous people as they were being slaughtered. Or how the mission outpost doubled as a fortress for the imperial forces of Europe (think “Things Fall Apart”). In the colonial context which I was trying to draw, imperialist violence was almost always accompanied by the presence of a clergyman, who often gave his blessing to the expansion of Christendom over the devil’s dominion of the heathen. 

That is not really something I want to connect myself to.

But I still chose to go into the mission field. I like to think that my reasons were quite different than the imperialist accompaniment of the conquest of the New World.

See, for me, mission, in the Christian context, in the 21^st century, is much more about connecting groups of people who are normally separated by vast geographical and cultural distances. For example, the average Methodist church with a children’s choir and the occasional pot luck dinner will not have much of a concept of what people in Ulaanbaatar are like. Nor will the Mongolians know really what people in Iowa are really like. However, the missionary connects these two groups in the love and grace of Christ that knows no boundaries. The Iowan church will then likely support the ministry of the missionary in Mongolia, hopefully in a financial way because, believe you me, mission work rarely lands you in a penthouse apartment.

And that brings us to a very interesting discussion about the differences and the interplay of ministry and mission. Really, I believe the differences are more or less just semantic, but let’s just accept for now that they are different. Individual churches, eklesias, have ministries, like youth group or Sunday school or music or collecting food for pick-up to the local food pantry. It is something local and routine. However, mission requires you to go outside of your routine and your comfort zone, which likely means you aren’t staying local either. It does not require you to travel long distances, but perhaps you may have cross 49^th Street to the “real South Side”. Or indeed get on a bus or train or plane or ship and cross time zones. The point is that mission work is not terribly routine, and that break from the routine requires a leap of faith. Hence the commissioning ceremony that brought tears to my eyes last fall.

What motivates that leap of faith is what truly separates my generation’s thoughts of mission from those who were commissioned long before us. For me, it is compassion, mercy, and justice. God broke my heart with the terrors and evils of the larger world, filled me with righteous indignation, and now I work to clear some metaphorical money changing out of my Creator’s temple. It not so much about converting the unbelievers as it is helping people find Christ where they already are. And giving the devil a swift kick in the captain’s quarters. With picket signs. And TV cameras, if possible.

Glory and Jacob Dharmaraj write in their small book, Mutuality in Mission, “the ultimate goal of Christian mission is to make men and women fully human—the way God wants them to be—not merely turn them into religious or spiritual beings” (7). That is something I can connect with. There may be parts of a certain group’s behavior that really isn’t compatible with the Way of Christ—be it corporate greed or child brides—and we then must help those men and women become more fully human. That is a very difficult thing to do because I for one know I am not very good at being fully human all the time. However, if indeed, as missionaries, short-term or long-term, we share the love of Christ with everyone and bridge the gaps that divide the body of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven is truly coming on earth.

And I am most comfortable with that concept.

The Politics and (Clean) Power of Coalition

The public action, for me at least, was actually quite a diappointment. My roommate canceled at really the last moment, leaving me to represent Trinity House. Then I noticed it was still drizzling after the explosive thunderstorms of the previous night. 30 minutes later I discovered that those same storms had knocked out the electricity of the man whom I was to meet at the L stop. The alarm of this man, also named Joe, was thus disabled, which extended his beauty sleep until I called him while watching the trains go past. Joe commented that traffic was in the Loop was worse than normal (as a rule I avoid driving downtown), so we had only five minutes when we passed by Daley Plaza. But we still had to park. Joe told me to just go, take his sign along with mine, and he would join me at City Hall.

I walked hurriedly by the ominous brown-tinted windows of the Daley Center, trying to dodge raindrops and suit-clad lawyers. Wait, did I fail to mention that I had never been to City Hall before? Crap! I entered into the classical revivalist building and was greeted by "office of the mayor" signs. This was the place, all right. Following the sound of cheering coming from somewhere through the stairwell, I finally got the hallway where over 100 people, most dressed in green shirts, hooted and hollered for the aldermen who were introducing the ordinance. And then it ended. I waited around, signed in, got a t-shirt, and then checked my watch. It was going to be late day at the office. Oi.

Why do we do this again?

"This" referring to attending planning meetings, writing op-eds, knocking on doors, and occasionally attending public actions. Essentially, community organizing. Seriously, after a frustration like Thursday morning, why do we try to organize for change?

Well, we all have our reasons. That's called self-interest.

To give a brief lesson on organizing (get a longer one by checking the Midwest Academy's "Organizing for Social Change"), it pretty much begins with identifying one's self-interest. That does not mean that one is interested in only oneself, or selfishness. A mother's self-interest in a community policing program could be keeping her children safe when they play on the playground. Of course, that safe self-interest in a mother's children's safety might also persuade her to support the failed war on drugs, which has not really made the streets safer but has needlessly locked up an awful lot of African-American men (and spend billions of tax-dollar money). The next lesson in organizing might have to be "framing" the issue...

My self-interest that drove me to City Hall on Thursday was the health of my adopted home neighborhood. Fisk Power Plant in Pilsen, just across the river from my home Bridgeport, has been linked to about 40 deaths annually from the particulate matter that it spews every day. Apparently, a coalition of national and community groups has been organizing to clean up Fisk and its sister plant, Crawford, just a bit south and west, for years. The plants had been grandfathered past the Clean Air Act regulations of the 1970's with the condition that they eventually get up to snuff. But they never did.

What about the other groups that were represented in that hallway? Well, that's the tricky part. Some were expected: the Sierra Club, which recruited me at my church, Greenpeace, and a smattering local green organizations. But then there were the labor unions. And that's where the story gets interesting. SEIU and the Steelworkers both supported the ordinance. Why? Green jobs would likely be new opportunities to organize workers. And that's where the electrical workers get angry. Closing Fisk and Crawford would mean the loss of over about 200 jobs taken by IBEW-represented members. The ordinance would provide funding for transferring of jobs and retraining, but everyone knows that it's not the same as keeping one good job.

As a quasi-labor organizer, this fascinates me and fills me with dread at the same time. There are some real power players involved here, including Midwest Generation, which owns the dirty plants, several powerful labor unions, several more community and environmental groups, and of course, "dose guys" we voted into City Hall. It thrills me to part of such a showdown.

However, it pains me to see unions fight each other when collective bargaining is being cut all over the United States and "right-to-work" legislation is rearing its ugly head. The cruelest cut is how unions sometimes back policies that destroy communities. In this case, it is IBEW that supports the maintenance of out-of-date coal power plants that are poisoning my neighbors (and likely yours truly, but on a lesser scale). Another example is in West Virginia where the Mineworkers were advocating for strip mining Blair Mountain, where one of the great labor conflicts in the United States took place a century ago. Far too often business style unions support actions that alienate them from the local community and from the larger public.

Unfortunately, what I see in my near South Side neighborhood is the creation of a false dichotomy; choose between good, union jobs or clean air for breathing. I am an organizer for a worker justice group, so I am well aware of what the loss of even more jobs means. But I am also a neighbor, so I see people have asthma attacks too. There must be a way that these two identities, these two forms of self-interest, can work together to create a cleaner, safer, and more prosperous South Side. That's why I waited in the rain for a sleeping man and why I showed up to my office 2 hours later than I usually do.

I support the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance. I hope that many others--union, environmentalist, alderman, Bridgeporter--do the same.

He's Just a Boss: Ministry With Low-wage Workers

It was a chilly day in Chicago—nothing that would compare to true Windy City winter, but still. The group of 30-40 people was a mixed bunch. We were union members, clergy, community organizers, journalists, and most importantly, low wage workers. We made a picket line outside the carwash on Broadway and made our presence felt. Luckily, the owner got word pretty quickly, and he invited us—all of us—into the waiting room, out of the November chill.

We stayed there for about an hour and a half, waiting for the owner to negotiate some sort of settlement with a Methodist minister, the Arise Chicago workers’ center director, and, most importantly, the carwash worker who was owed several thousand dollars in back wages. Finally, the trio came out of the office, announced that they had reached an agreement, and we filed out of the waiting room.

The carwash worker left with a $1,000 check in his hand. And a warning to never come back. The worker stood with us outside the carwash and thanked the group for accompanying him. He told us proudly that as long as we stay together, there is no reason to be afraid of unethical employers. “Es solamente un patrón.” He’s just a boss.

We work in a culture these days where we have good reason to be afraid of our bosses. 10% unemployment is reality all across the United States. Wages aren’t even worth what they were back in the 1970’s. And for folks who work for the lowest wages, missing work for a week means not eating. Or not making rent. Or not buying medication for your children. But workers’ centers are fighting the fear.

Workers’ centers make up a movement of low wage-earning, mostly immigrant, often undocumented workers who stand up out of the shadows imposed by irrational laws and unscrupulous bosses and demand respect. They often work in industries that are intentionally excluded from labor laws—domestic workers, farmworkers, restaurant workers, day laborers—and far too often ignored by labor unions. They endure abuses that make your stomach turn, your eyes water, your fists clench.

But members of workers’ centers are far from powerless. They have made national networks that wield growing influence (NDLON, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, ROC United, and Interfaith Worker Justice) in local, state and even federal policy. Workers’ centers are on the front lines in the struggle for comprehensive immigration reform, fighting against the scourge of wage theft, and supporting their sisters and brothers in formal labor unions. These often invisible workers leave the margins that dominant culture has left for them and then take center stage.

I am very blessed to work with the workers centers in the national network of Interfaith Worker Justice. The organizers and the worker-members of the workers’ centers continually inspire me with their creativity, courage, and perseverance.

 One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible comes from the first epistle of John, "There is no fear in love, because perfect love drives out all fear..." (1 John 4:18). Surely it is love - love of their families, love of their friends, love of their neighbors - that drives low-wage workers to support one another in their struggles for a life of respect and dignity. After all, I saw no fear in the "carwashero" on that chilly November day.

I pray that we all minister with no fear as we minister with our all of our neighbors.

Courage, Coalitions, and an Ethic of Love

For several months now I've wanted to write a blog post about alliances and solidarity with regards to LGBTQ issues. For those not familiar with the acronym, LGBTQ stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/gender, and queer, and because of the controversy that goes with the discussion of LGBTQ rights, I have avoided making public stands on the topic. I am prayerfully changing my policy on that issue today.

Let me now be very clear about this. On this blog, "Red Poppy Fields", I express my own views, and they do not necessarily represent the views of either the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church nor Interfaith Worker Justice. These are my own musings and meditations, and I invite you to join me in musing and meditating in the Red Poppy Fields.

I both accept and affirm LGBTQ lifestyles, and as a heterosexual ally, I do whatever I can to support my LGBTQ sisters and brothers in the love of Christ. I did not always take this stance, but then again I also did not always knowingly work and live with LGBTQ folks either. My experiences working, residing, and sharing life with folks who do not self-identify as heterosexual has only edified my faith as a Christian and my passion for godly justice.

However, as a missionary and an organizer, I do not only represent myself. I was commissioned as a US-2 missionary last fall to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, so I do represent the United Methodist Church. I also work for the national worker rights group Interfaith Worker Justice, so I represent its efforts to organize and mobilize folks for living wages, good benefits and dignified workplaces. Neither of these bodies officially takes the same stance that I take on LGBTQ issues, which naturally disappoints and frustrates me as an ally.

Recently I read a blog post at Sojourners that helped me to understand why these two institutions may not share my own views on LGBTQ issues. Brian McClaren, a well known progressive Christian leader, wrote about how Sojourners does not advocate for LGBTQ rights in order to preserve the delicate coalition of mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and evangelicals to fight against poverty and promote economic justice. The stance is difficult for Sojourners because it does alienate some folks who are invested heavily in the struggle for equality for LGBTQ people.

For IWJ, the question is even more difficult. IWJ is a network of people of faith, and it coordinates a national network of affiliated organizations. Recently a few organizations have lost funding due to the crackdown by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development on organizations that hold views that are not in line with official Roman Catholic doctrine. These issues are primarily LGBTQ rights and abortion. CCHD has long financially supported worker rights groups, but with the shift to a more conservative Vatican and greater influence by conservative Catholic groups, it has forced many organizations to make the painful decision to cut ties with LGBTQ-affirming and pro-choice groups. Or be cut off from your CCHD funding.

The question is also very live in the United Methodist Church. While many congregations join the "reconciling" movement, many others, particularly in the American South and outside the United States, hold a hard line in a conservative interpretation of scripture regarding LGBTQ issues. Especially as we approach the 2012 General Conference, the only body that can change the content of the Book of Discipline which governs the United Methodist Church, there is much anxiety that the United Methodist Church could suffer a split similar to that which the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Episcopal church recently experienced. No one wants the United Methodist Church to go down that path.

At the same time, the Methodist Church has experienced this before--over the question of the rights of non-Whites, especially African Americans. Methodists split between North and South, just as the entire nation did during the American Civil War, a violent, 4-year long conflict that resulted in more than 600,000 lives lost. Praise be to God, we are nowhere near that magnitude of violence, but even one life forever altered or lost due to bigotry and oppression should move anyone who follows the path of Christ. When oppression is institutionalized, prophets appear.

 I have read that one of the great challenges that progressives face is that the front is plural. Worker justice, gender equality, environmentalism, the peace movement, racial equity, LGBTQ rights...the list goes on. Some groups are "multi-issue", but usually folks organize around one set of issues and then make coalitions when the opportunity arises. Organizing for social change does involve seizing opportunities when the present themselves, but I feel that people should also work based on a system of ethics. For Christians this system of ethics is based on the teachings from the Bible and the wisdom of the saints. It is an ethic of love. 

Here is the problem that I see now. Do we compromise that ethic of love due to the risk of fracturing the coalition and losing our funding? Or will we have the moral courage to integrate our ethic of love into our institutions as well as our personal lives?

Dear friends, as I write this a sister in Christ is facing a trial in Wisconsin in which she could suffer defrocking, that is, losing her ordination as a United Methodist minister, because she married a lesbian couple and then got married to her woman partner of 15 years. Will we, as Christians, follow a legalistic road in which we condemn courageous people like Rev. Amy DeLong or will we embrace an ethic of love in which we are all truly one in Christ (Gal. 3:28)?

I pray that you will join me in the Red Poppy Fields as we sow love and reap justice.

A Mother's Day Reflection

Arise then...women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by

irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with

carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity,

mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country,

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up

with

Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice…"

Julia Ward Howe, Mother’s Day Proclamation, 1880

 

We in the United States observe Mother’s Day this Sunday, and I can’t help but recall how I’ve tried to honor my mom on past early May Sundays. I would get up early and make breakfast, just like she taught me years before. I did that several years. I remember that when I was senior in high school I bought her an artisan glass kerosene lamp from Gatlinburg, Tennessee. As it so often happens, those acts changed to cards and phone calls as I went away to college, and now being 700 miles away, that will have to suffice again (barring any sudden bursts of creativity).

But this year’s Mother’s Day is positioned in a rather unique period of time. Not only am I employed full time as a worker justice organizer, but it is less than a week after the death of the demagogue and global warlord Osama bin Laden at the hands of American military forces. My experiences as an organizer in Chicago have heightened my sensitivity to what true justice is, and while I am relieved that bin Laden will not be inciting more acts of murder, I cannot see this act truly bringing justice to a broken world. I recently tweeted (yup, you can follow me at Missionworker on Twitter) that “justice does not occur in the death of one man, but justice only occurs in the rebirth of many people”. This is my reaction to the vengeance killing of the former leader of al Qaeda.

Now how do I see Mother’s Day, situated in a time when young people have flash mobs to celebrate the demise of bin Laden? Well, I have to think about the lessons that I’ve learned from my mom. Mom is a bookkeeper for the Perry County Office of Aging, quietly making sure that funds get to the senior citizens of the much-mocked rural area northwest of Harrisburg. She is also a cancer survivor and long-time Sunday school teacher for 5-6 year-olds at our Methodist church. Maybe most importantly, at least to me, she is the mother of my older brother, younger sister, and me.

She taught me the importance of hard work, honesty, and persistence from her, and I also learned about sacrifice and boldness from Mom. Though Sarah Palin has claimed the “Mama Bear” title, I feel that my mom could run circles around her. She would be relentless in the pursuit of justice, and looking back, God help any folks were in the least bit unfair to us kids.

Though Mom and I no longer share a lot of the same views on politics, I can see how these lessons woven into my personality. I am not afraid to confront authorities or approach strangers, and maybe I can trace my endurance runner mentality (particularly useful for 8- and 10-k races) to these lessons. These traits are very useful in organizing and in ministry, and I’m sure that they will only manifest themselves further as I continue to pursue the intersection of ministry and organizing for social change.

I suppose that is one of the truly amazing about Mom. When it was becoming evident that I was diverging from the conservative politics of my upbringing, Mom still encouraged me to seize any opportunity that caught my eye. She helped me navigate the process of packing to live in South America for a semester. And I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have made it this far in my time as a missionary and organizer without her help. This is the greatest lesson that I learned: love transcends all causes, campaigns, and ideologies.

It is this love that guides me through the complex world of worker justice and community organizing. The world is not so simple to divide folks into good and evil camps, therefore I constantly fall back to the foundation of love from which grows my faith. I came to know this love through the life and behavior of my mom, and I still look to her to know this love in its most tangible form.

Thanks, Mom, and I love you.