SFNM Network Journal - May/June

Broadmoor Presbyterian Church, Daly City
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 1:16b-21

Walking by the Main Library this week, a loud, angry, intimidating voice jolted me to a stop. “What’s wrong with you!?” Looking back, I saw a man with a bunch of children in neat school uniforms – 4th graders, I guessed – and his reddened face was thrust into the frightened face of a girl. He sent her into the library for something, ordering the others to “straighten up that line.” Turning back, I saw that my friend had walked several steps farther along and when I caught up with her she murmured:“It scares me to hear a man yell like that.” I wondered what in her history prompted that reaction. Ironically, we had just been discussing the women who come to SafeHouse for Women and the childhood histories of abuse so many of them bring, as well as the difficulty of shielding a victim of domestic violence from the attacker. Did you know that in San Francisco when someone files a restraining order against an attacker it takes 6 weeks for that order to be processed and entered into the record? Attack takes many forms and our society still does not truly treat this seriously.

My friend and I parted company and I continued walking to our office, unable to shake the memory and the feeling of that sidewalk scene.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?

I flashed back to the day before when I met individually with the SafeHouse women for another session of trying to learn the simplest, most basic principles and practices of managing their own money responsibly.This is an integral part of their transformation: learning to gain power over their finances. Thanks to a grant from a Catholic women’s group, SafeHouse has launched an internship program for our residents. Two residents are now receiving a stipend from that grant, while learning to be reliable employees each under the tutelage of a businesswoman who has taken on this mentoring role. MaryAnn is our first intern and is receiving glowing reviews from “her company.” They say she “takes initiative, asks good questions, searches out data, is curious about our work, and just generally has a great attitude.” There is a good chance that they will actually employ her when the internship is over. She is also the very best “money management” student I have at SafeHouse, keeping close track of her expenditures (which of us does that?) and faithfully putting money into her savings account – investing in her future. She beamed as we talked about how well she is doing and then a concern about her physical health arose and her face and body sagged. A tear rolled down her face. “What’s happening?” “I don’t know.” “Sit with yourself a moment and give words to what’s happening.” “It doesn’t seem like I can please anybody. I’m just not good enough.” The conversation continued. We went back over all the good things she is doing and that are being said about her. But I know her history and wonder what it will take to overcome all the threats, intimidations, insults, physical and mental suffering inflicted on her from early childhood as part of that omnipresent “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?”

MaryAnn has been attending church with some other residents and she is a generous giver to that church’s coffers. She tithes the $422/month she receives, dividing it 60/40 between the church and the Narcotics Anonymous group in which she participates. I suggested she ask another question to replace the one drilled into her mind. Instead of thinking in terms of being good enough, think in terms of worthy. Of how God is showing me, telling me, that I am worthy in Her sight. Not because of what I do, but just because God chooses to make me the recipient of unconditional Love – God’s perfect Love which casts out fear. Not our perfect love. God’s perfect love. Not because of who I am. Because of who God is.

How may, how can I enact God’s love, turning the question of my own goodness – the wrong question – into the question of how I can affirm the worthiness of my SafeHouse sisters in God’s sight – the right question.

It is a question we each might examine for ourselves. Not the wrong question: How well did I do with my life before now or how well am I doing now? The right question: What newness of life is God creating in me now?

“As surely as God breathed life into our earthly frames, God continues to create and to sustain in us a capacity for love that, as Karl Barth put it, ‘does not ask or seek or demand or awaken and set in motion our love as though it were already present in us, but which creates it as something completely new, making us free for love as an action which differs wholly and utterly from all that we have done’” before. (New IBC, Vol. XII, p. 433)

Consider the Scriptures we just heard, beginning with Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. This man, whose name we never learn, was a sincere spiritual seeker. He had made a long and arduous journey across a lonely and dangerous wilderness to learn more of the faith he had embraced. To worship in the Holiest Place. But he was barred from entering that place because of what had been done to him and, perhaps, because of the color of his skin. Obviously a man of some significant social standing, he nevertheless had to stand humbly on the fringes of the worshippers and inquirers; he had to study the Scriptures without benefit of teaching he so earnestly sought.

No one asked him: what’s wrong with you? They told him. He was not whole. Not deemed worthy to enter the holy places or be accepted as a sincere spiritual seeker. Reflecting on this, I thought of Diane, another SafeHouse resident. Clean and sober for a good while now, learning to be a good mother, working in a good job, going to City College and making good grades. We got a new volunteer, Cheri, and Diane walked into the office while Cheri was talking to a staff member. Diane wheeled around and fled.Turns out Diane and Cheri are classmates at City College and have become friends. Diane was horrified, mortified, frightened that her new friend had discovered she bears this stigma both church and society have placed on our sisters on the streets. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? they have heard instead of HOW MAY WE SHOW YOU love as an action HOW MUCH GOD LOVES YOU?

Like the ostracized man in the passage from Acts, Diane is eager to study the Good News. Like the eunuch like Mary Ann she is asking the right question:Who is the one of whom the Scriptures speak? How can I grow in faith, learning to accept God’s love for me and to show that to those around me?

Today is Mother’s Day. Not a religious holy day nor a day to profit greeting card companies.The history of Mother’s Day is exciting and instructive.

I just learned that Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker, gave rise to this idea in 1858 when she organized women to improve sanitation, averting deaths from pollution and disease bearing insects. Known as Mother Jarvis, she organized brigades of Appalachian women to care for the ill and injured from the Civil War no matter which side their men had chosen. After the war, she worked to bring reconciliation between Union and Confederate supporters. At 12 years old, her daughter Anna, listened to her mother teach a Sunday School class on mothers in the Bible, saying in passing that she wished we could have a day to honor mothers. Following her mother’s death in 1905, Anna wrote dozens of letters, enlisting the support of influential men, including presidents Taft and Roosevelt, as well as the wealthy merchant John Wannamaker, to fulfill her mother’s dream.A Mother’s Day service was held, second Sunday of May, 1907, at the Methodist Church in Grafton, W VA, where Mother Jarvis had taught Sunday School. That same Sunday, a similar service was held in Wannamaker Auditorium in Philadelphia which could seat only l/3 of the 15,000 who showed up.The custom spread widely and in 1914 Congress passed the resolution establishing Mother’s Day which was signed by Pres. Woodrow Wilson.

Overlapping this effort, in 1872, the Boston poet and pacifist, Julia Ward Howe, called for a special day for mothers and for peace. After an unsuccessful attempt to pull together a global peace conference, Howe wrote, “while the war (Franco Prussian) was still in progress, I keenly felt the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest”, believing that it could have been settled without bloodshed.“Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the loss of human loss of which they alone bear and know the cost?” Howe’s version of Mother’s Day which served as a time to advocate and to rally work for peace, was held in Boston for several years, but lost favor just before World War I.

Mother’s Day has continued. No matter what the relationship, Mother has a special place in our lives, our hopes and our hearts.

God is Father. God is Mother. God is beyond human imagery. God is Unconditional Love, which is beyond knowledge but not beyond knowing.

Ponder the origins of Mother’s Day. Ponder the worthiness the Divine Mother imputes to us, empowering us to be love as an action.

How do we enact such love? How to best honor our Mother God?

Work for peace. Keep pressing our elected officials in Washington to reduce the bloated military budget and to bring US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan safely and soon.Their phone numbers are in the front of your phone book.
Will calls and letters and marches do any good? Wrong question! How may I honor my Mother - my Divine Mother of Unconditional Love? Right Question.Work for peace.

Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, January 5, 1916, under the auspices of the Women’s Peace Party and the Labor Forum.

To begin with, I have a word to say to my good friends, the editors, and others who are moved to pity me. Some people are grieved because they imagine I am in the hands of unscrupulous persons who lead me astray and persuade me to espouse unpopular causes and make me the mouthpiece of their propaganda. Now, let it be understood once and for all that I do not want their pity; I would not change places with one of them. I know what I am talking about. My sources of information are as good and reliable as anybody else’s. I have papers and magazines from England, France, Germany and Austria that I can read myself. Not all the editors I have met can do that. Quite a number of them have to take their French and German second hand.. No, I will not disparage the editors. They are an overworked, misunderstood class. Let them remember, though, that if I cannot see the fire at the end of their cigarettes, neither can they thread a needle in the dark.All I ask, gentlemen, is a fair field and no favor. I have entered the fight against preparedness and against the economic system under which we live. It is to be a fight to the finish, and I ask no quarter.

The future of the world rests in the hands of America. The future of America rests on the back of 80,000,000 men and women and their children. We are facing a grave crisis in our national life.The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists.You are urged to add to the heavy burdens you already bear the burden of a larger army and many additional warships. It is in your power to refuse to carry the artillery and the dread-noughts and to shake off some of the burdens, too, such as limousines, steam yachts and country estates.You do not need to make a great noise about it. With the silence and dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfishness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up and fold your arms.

Everywhere, we hear fear advanced as argument for armament. It reminds me of a fable I read. A certain man found a horseshoe. His neighbor began to weep and wail because, as he justly pointed out, the man who found the horseshoe might someday find a horse. Having found the shoe, he might shoe him. The neighbor’s child might some day go so near the horse’s heels as to be kicked, and die. Undoubtedly the two families would quarrel and fight, and several valuable lives would be lost through the finding of the horseshoe.You know the last war we had we quite accidentally picked up some islands in the Pacific Ocean which may some day be the cause of a quarrel between ourselves and Japan. I’d rather drop those islands right now and forget about them than go to war to keep them.Wouldn’t you?

Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors in Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippine Islands. Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines.

It was no accident that the Navy League came into prominence at the same time that the National City Bank of New York established a branch in Buenos Aires. It is not a mere coincidence that six business associates of J.P. Morgan are officials of defense leagues. And chance did not dictate that Mayor Mitchel should appoint to his Committee of Safety a thousand men that represent a fifth of the wealth of the United States.These men want their foreign investments protected.

Every modern war has its root in exploitation.The Civil War was fought to decide whether slaveholders of the South or the capitalists of the North should exploit the West. The Spanish-American War decided that the United States should exploit Cuba and the Philippines. The South African War decided that the British should exploit the diamond mines.The Russo-Japanese War decided that Japan should exploit Korea.The present war is to decide who shall exploit the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and Africa. And we are whetting our sword to scare the victors into sharing the spoils with us. Now, the workers are not interested in the spoils; they will not get any of them anyway.

The preparedness propagandists have still another object, and a very important one. They want to give the people something to think about besides their unhappy condition.They know the cost of living is high, wages are low, employment is uncertain and will be much more so when the European call for munitions stops. No matter how hard and incessantly the people work, they often cannot afford the comforts of life; many cannot obtain the necessities.

Every few days we are given a new war scare to lend realism to their propaganda.They have had us on the verge of war over the Lusitania, the Gulflight, the Ancona, and now they want the workingmen to become excited over the sinking of the Persia.The workingman has no interest in any of these ships.The Germans might sink every vessel on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and kill Americans with everyone – the American workingman would still have no reason to go to war.

All the machinery of the system has been set in motion. Above the complaint and din of the protest from the workers is heard the voice of authority.

‘Friends,” it says, “fellow workmen, patriots; your country is in danger! There are foes on all sides of us.There is nothing between us and our enemies except the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Look at what has happened to Belgium. Consider the fate of Serbia. Will you murmur about low wages when your countries, your very liberties, are in jeopardy? What are the miseries you endure compared to the humiliation of having a victorious German army sail up the East River? Quit your whining, get busy and prepare to defend your firesides and your flag. Get an army, get a navy; be ready to meet the invaders like the loyal-hearted freemen you are.”

Will the workers walk into this trap? Will they be fooled again? I am afraid so.The people have always been amenable to oratory of this sort.They are taught that brave men die for their country’s honor.What a price to pay for an abstraction – the lives of millions of young men; other millions crippled and blinded for life; existence made hideous for still more millions of human beings; the achievement and inheritance of generations swept away in a moment – and nobody better off for all the misery!

We are not free unless the men who frame and execute the laws represent the interests of the lives of the people and no other interest.The ballot does not make a free man.There has never existed a truly free and democratic nation in the world. From time immemorial men have followed with blind loyalty the strong men who had the power of money and of armies.

The kind of preparedness the workers want is reorganization and reconstruction of their whole life, such as has never been attempted by statesmen or governments. The Germans found out years ago that they could not raise good soldiers in the slums so they abolished the slums.They saw to it that all the people had at least a few of the essentials of civilization – decent lodging, clean streets, wholesome if scanty food, proper medical care and proper safeguards for the workers in their occupations. That is only a small part of what should be done, but what wonders that one step toward the right sort of preparedness has wrought for Germany! For eighteen months it has kept itself free from invasion while carrying on an extended war of conquest, and its armies are still pressing on with unabated vigor. It is your business to force these reforms on the Administration. Let there be no more talk about what a government can or cannot do.All these things have been done by all the belligerent nations in the hurlyburly of war.

It is your duty to insist upon still more radical measures. It is your business to see that no child is employed in an industrial establishment or mine or store, and that no worker is needlessly exposed to accident or disease. It is your business to make them give you clean cities, free from smoke, dirt and congestion. It is your business to make them pay you a living wage. It is your business to see that this kind of preparedness is carried into every department in the nation, until everyone has a chance to be well born, well nourished, rightly educated, intelligent and serviceable to the country at all times.

Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war. Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be heroes in an army of construction.

Source: Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years (International Publishers, 1967)