That Stephen Colbert is dishing it out again... Because many of my friends know I'm a dumpster diver, or "freegan," I heard from multiple sources that Colbert was making fun of my ilk on his show this week, saying, "I'm not going to stand by and let these human rats live off our waste." Since I don't have cable, I didn't see the segment until I watched it online today over a tasty lunch that included smoked trout and chevre (goat cheese, that is—I had been eating lobster bisque all week and was kind of tired of it) all courtesy—you guessed it—of my nocturnal scavenings. And yes, the irony was also delicious.

But I haven't been so outraged since Colbert mocked our presidential candidates forum. And by outraged, I mean gratified by the free satirical publicity—which is second only to imitation as the sincerest form of flattery.

Now, as a person who gets 95 percent of my groceries from dumpster diving, I'm used to misunderstandings about the safety and legality of this lifestyle, but Colbert cut right to the heart of the matter, citing a recent New York Times article and taking issue with those who are "living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet." (Sorry, you can't read the article for free online anymore—maybe you can find it in your neighbor's recycling bin.)

Colbert may mock our efforts to "stick it to the man," but maybe he'd be more sympathetic if he read my article in last year's Sojourners special issue on food. In it, I cite Jesus' teachings on simple living as one of the motivators behind my dumpster diet. Is Colbert going to argue with Jesus? Actually, I'd like to see that.

And Stephen, there's still plenty of smoked trout in the freezer, and you're always welcome to come over for dinner ... if you dare.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

Too often, unions are portrayed in our culture as products of a bygone era, better suited for the days of nine-to-five industrial jobs than the more complicated global economic realities of the 21st century. It's certainly true that organized labor has declined in recent decades—a smaller share of America's workers belong to a labor union today than in any period since the 1930s.

But that's not for lack of trying: Workers who organize to seek a voice at work are threatened, intimidated, and fired with increasing frequency. As writer Harold Meyerson explained in a recent article:

Firing employees for endeavoring to form unions has been illegal since 1935 under the National Labor Relations Act, but beginning in the 1970s, employers have preferred to violate the law—the penalties are negligible—rather than have their workers unionize. Today, employer violations rank somewhere between routine and de rigueur. Over half—51 percent—of employers illegally threaten workers with the specter of plant closings if employees choose to unionize (1 percent actually go through with this threat, according to Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner).

It's outrageous enough that the world's wealthiest nation fails so miserably to enforce its own labor laws (not to mention the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), but the consequences of a declining labor movement go far beyond lofty ideals. The fate of the labor movement—which has lifted millions of working families out of poverty and into the middle class—is closely bound to the condition of "the least of these" in our society.

This makes it all the more troubling that the United States Senate missed an opportunity this week to give workers a free and fair chance to join a union by failing to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. (Click here to see how your senators voted.)

The legislation would have fixed the broken and unfair process through which workers currently form unions—in which employers are free to wage campaigns of fear and intimidation with impunity—in favor of simply requiring employers to recognize a union whenever a majority of eligible workers sign a card indicating their support. It also would have prevented employers from endlessly delaying contract negotiations, and dramatically increased the penalties they pay for breaking the law.

The good news is that the Employee Free Choice Act got further this year than ever before, passing the House and winning a 51-49 majority in the Senate (fewer than the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster), and that it is virtually certain to come back in the next Congress.

In the mean time, every 23 minutes someone in the United States will be continue to be fired or discriminated against simply for seeking to join with their fellow workers in seeking dignity and justice on the job.

Michael Sherrard is the online organizer for Sojourners/Call to Renewal. For more about the Employee Free Choice Act, check out Kim Bobo's article, "Justice at Work," in the July issue of Sojourners, or visit American Rights at Work on the Web.

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The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress. And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.

- Ezekiel 22:29-30

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Unity that is dictated by the powerful is not unity. Unity at the cost of the poor and the oppressed, at the cost of the integrity of the gospel, is not unity.

- Alan Boesak

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The most recent challenge to Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was rejected by the Supreme Court (5-4) this week, not on the basis of merit, but on the basis that the Freedom from Religion Foundation didn’t have standing to sue the Bush Administration to halt the expenditures of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. For those of us working with faith-based community initiatives in the trenches, we are unmoved by this ongoing church and state debate. Rather, we see the cruel impact of the constant cutting back of funds to help deal with the impact of low wages, lack of health care, and the use of prisons as a housing program.

At issue, in the narrow scope, was the 39-year-old exception (Flast vs. Cohen) to the general rule that taxpayers do not have standing to challenge spending on programs that they believe promote religion. The Court’s ruling, in Judge Alito’s opinion, leaves Flast “as it is,” but narrows the application.

The separation of church and state groups have vowed to continue. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is quoted in a Washington Times article saying, “the legal assault on the constitutionality of the faith-based programs will continue.”

Some of the barriers applied by the government that made it difficult to incorporate one’s faith motivations have been removed, but so have most of the federal funds for the programs that would make a difference. So it is a cruel hoax to spend so much money running conferences encouraging faith-based groups to apply for federal funds that are not there. Energy should be spent instead on changing priorities to promoting “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

Sadly, the Senate Immigration Bill failed a cloture vote yesterday morning (46/53—it needed 60 votes) and is now dead. This means the House will not be taking up the legislation and it isn’t likely to come back until at least 2009.

There is still much work to be done—holding our policymakers accountable for their lack of courage and leadership on this issue, making sure it remains part of the debate in presidential campaigns, and of course, more education work with faith communities and leaders about this critical issue.

Unfortunately, the workplace raids will continue and families will continue to be torn apart, making our collaboration with the New Sanctuary Movement all the more important. Please keep the millions of our country’s undocumented immigrants in your prayers in the coming month as they go on living in fear. May we not lose hope, but instead may this setback give us more strength and focus to grow the movement for inclusion and justice in this country.

And, thanks for all your support of our immigration work thus far. It has meant, and will continue to mean, a lot.

Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform has released a statement that reads:

It is a sad day in America when partisan politics can sideline one of the most important pieces of legislation to reach the U.S. Congress in years. Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform joins immigrant rights’ supporters around the country to express our extreme disappointment at the defeat of Senate immigration bill S 1639. What we saw in the United States Senate reinforces the polarization of our political system and condones xenophobia both in our country’s policies and rhetoric. We saw the defeat of reason, compromise and reconciliation.

As a result of these political games, the 12 million immigrants living in the shadows of our nation will continue in limbo, living in fear of deportation and separation from family. The legislation may have been defeated, but the issue is far from dead. Families are still in jeopardy, workers are still being exploited and the border is far from secure. As Christian churches, organizations and leaders, we are more committed than ever to holding our politicians accountable to the values they profess of family integrity and economic progress. We will continue our work in serving the needs of immigrant families and are merely beginning our campaign to appeal to the hearts and minds of Americans to do as Jesus instructed us, to welcome the stranger in our midst.

I want to introduce you to someone. His name is Gordon Brown, and he just became Britain's new Prime Minister. You have probably been hearing and reading the news about the transition from Tony Blair to Brown.

Among other things, Brown is a voracious reader, and reads many American books about politics, including those that focus on moral values and politics. That’s how I first met Gordon Brown: I was speaking in Britain and got a call from the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (his former position) saying that Brown wanted to get together that evening, if I was available. So I went over to his office at the Treasury, and he told me that he had read my books and had many questions for me. So we put our feet up and began talking, and have been doing so now for a number of years.

I’ve done several interviews recently with British newspapers and television networks about what kind of man Gordon Brown is. One asked me the word I would use to best describe him, and I said “passion.” That’s in sharp contrast to some of the British press, who refer to the new Prime Minister as “dour,” as one Guardian columnist did this morning on National Public Radio. But that is simply not the man that I have come to know and whose friendship I deeply value. I have taken American heads of churches and development agencies to visit with Brown, and they have been universally and amazingly impressed with his deep understanding of the issues of globalization and his personal commitment to tackling the moral challenge of inequality. I believe that Gordon Brown has more passion (and knowledge) about the issues of global poverty and social justice than any other Western leader today. And I believe his leadership could make a great difference. He is somebody you should know and follow closely.

Gordon Brown is the son of a Church of Scotland pastor and grew up in a manse where the biblical vision of justice seems to have found its place in his heart. Quotes from Isaiah and Jeremiah pepper his speeches about the kind of global economy we must be working for, and as I said in God’s Politics, Brown’s words often remind me of the prophet Micah, who knew that true security requires that “all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.”

Let me share a few of his words from his speech this week on his transition to the new post of Labor Party Leader and Prime Minister.

First on his values and moral compass:

All I believe and all I try to do comes from the values that I grew up with: duty, honesty, hard work, family, and respect for others.

And this is what my parents taught me and will never leave me: that each and everyone of us has a talent, each and everyone of us should have the chance to develop their talent, and that each of us should use whatever talents we have to enable people least able to help themselves.

And so I say honestly: I am a conviction politician. My conviction that everyone deserves a fair chance in life. My conviction that each of us has a responsibility to each other. And my conviction that when the strong help the weak, it makes us all stronger. Call it ‘the driving power of social conscience,’ call it 'the better angels of our nature,’ call it ‘our moral sense,’ call it a belief in ‘civic duty.’

I joined this party as a teenager because I believed in these values. They guide my work, they are my moral compass. This is who I am. And because these are the values of our party, too, the party I lead must have more than a set of policies – we must have a soul.

On children in poverty:

... let me say also that in the fourth richest country in the world it is simply wrong – wrong that any child should grow up in poverty. To address this poverty of income and to address also the poverty of aspirations by better parenting, better schools, and more one-to-one support, I want to bring together all the forces of compassion – charities, voluntary sector, local councils, so that at the heart of building a better Britain is the cause of ending child poverty.

On foreign policy:

Our foreign policy in years ahead will reflect the truth that to isolate and defeat terrorist extremism now involves more than military force – it is also a struggle of ideas and ideals that in the coming years will be waged and won for hearts and minds here at home and round the world. And an essential contribution to this will be what becomes daily more urgent – a Middle East settlement upholding a two state solution, that protects the security of Israel and the legitimate enduring desire for a Palestinian state.

Because we all want to address the roots of injustice, I can tell you today that we will strengthen and enhance the work of the department of international development and align aid, debt relief and trade policies to wage an unremitting battle against the poverty, illiteracy, disease and environmental degradation that it has fallen to our generation to eradicate.

Gordon Brown is one of a new kind of political leader who seeks to practice moral politics. He has already worked very closely with the community of faith and seeks a vital partnership. He knows that even politicians like him need to be challenged and held accountable by social movements with spiritual foundations. He once told me that without Jubilee 2000, the church-based movement to cancel Third World debt, the Labor government would have never done so. He encouraged me to keep building such movements because the world of politics needs them.

So pay attention to what Gordon Brown does now and please pray for him. I believe he could become the kind of international leader who really helps to change things. I watched his remarks on the BBC, just before he and his wife walked through the door of #10 Downing Street to spend his first night as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I’m glad he is there.

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It is better to be of a lowly spirit among the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.

- Proverbs 16:19


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The church has only two alternatives in its confrontation with the world: either it adapts itself to the world and betrays the gospel, or it responds to the gospel and enters into conflict with the world.

- Rene Padilla

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I participated in the National Religious Campaign Against Torture rally and press conference held on Capitol Hill yesterday. Here are some excerpts from two very short talks I gave. The first asserts that it is "an unconditional aspect of Christian faith that torture is always immoral."

The biblical injunction to love our enemies, the fact that our bearing the image of God requires that the dignity of every human person be taken seriously, and the recognition of our own fallibility provide basic theological underpinnings for why Christians must not fall prey to the temptation to try to justify the use of torture. There are some behaviors that, quite simply, are never justifiable, and we must recapture the realization that torture is one of those morally unjustifiable practices.

The second asks, "On what basis are we normally assured that torture of detainees is an acceptable practice?"

If a detainee has information that might make it possible to prevent a terrorist act that would cause pain or death to a great many, then we may use any means we deem necessary to extract that data—including torture. You have all heard the argument, right? But does this justification really work? Does the scenario wherein we have captured a bad guy that we know has relevant information really fit with experience?

Sadly, in our entertainment-oriented society, we find that telling stories where this scenario is dramatically portrayed is particularly effective for drawing high ratings. Even more sadly, one member of the Supreme Court of the United States recently responded to the torture question not by appealing to hard fact, but rather by asking what jury would convict Jack Bauer. Thereby, this Supreme Court justice conflated reality and drama in such a way as to create the illusion that a scenario from the hit TV series “24” was an accurate representation of the world in which torture is used. Every torturer, then, is justified because the payoff will be the same as we see on TV. But is this really the case? As best we can tell, the answer is no, for at least three reasons.

Read the full post about those three reasons, including this quote from South African Bishop Peter Storey:

There is a price to be paid for the right to be called a civilized nation. That price can be paid in only one currency—the currency of human rights. ... The rule of law says that cruel and inhuman punishment is beneath the dignity of a civilized state. ... We send a message to the jailers, interrogators, and those who make such practices possible and permissible: "Power is a fleeting thing. One day your souls will be required of you."

Chuck Gutenson is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and blogs at www.imitatiochristi.blogs.com

What intruders took from our church office in Bogotá: two computers.

What they apparently wanted—given what they left behind—was highly sensitive information on victims of violent human rights abuses, those who document the cases, and local churches courageously working for peace.

In the early morning hours of June 14, intruders entered through the roof, disabled the alarm system, and stole two central processing units (CPUs) from the office of the justice and peace ministry of the Colombian Mennonite Church, Justapaz. They left behind other computers, a fax machine, and the office safe. Soon after the break-in, night watchmen from a hotel and a clinic a block from our office observed policemen stop two men with a CPU, but the policemen didn’t arrest them or report the incident. The Justapaz break-in was at least the sixth in a series of political robberies targeting the information of nongovernmental organizations, but it was the first time a church organization was attacked in this way.

The attack chilled me to the core. It reflected intimate knowledge of our organizational workings. It ripped from our staff the ability to protect the subjects and collectors of the sacred stories shared with us in strictest confidence. It shredded our desperate desire to believe that doing nonpartisan truth-telling could continue unmolested, even as the world began to pay attention and ask, “What can we do?”

Stories like Manuel’s, a lay leader and lawyer, fill my mind. “I trembled,” he confessed when the armed group responsible for the atrocity he had just documented stopped him at a roadblock. His wife took his hand and said calmly, “We’re doing the right thing.” The soldiers who searched Manuel didn’t find the notes hidden in his shoe.

On the Sunday after the attack, a persecuted widow with five children sought me out after church. She was on the stolen lists because she had documented her horrific story of loss and continued persecution. The widow (I’ll call her Maria) cried as she clung to me, choking on her fear that her whole family was now going to be killed, just as her husband had been a few years ago.

Many others across the country, like this widow, had told me that our program was their only hope for release of their deepest pain and grief. It takes personal, face-to-face interviews to record meaningful testimony because phone lines may be tapped and e-mail is not secure. For many, the government’s formal procedure for receiving testimonies of human rights abuses is neither trustworthy nor safe. Maria’s fears are founded in the repeated attacks on survivors and the reprisals experienced by witnesses who dare to speak their truth.

Especially targeted are those demanding the return of lands stolen by the paramilitary, which is a militia group that is currently engaged in a questionable disarmament and peace deal with the government. The government is unable or unwilling to guarantee the safety of witnesses who speak out.

One colleague reflected on the attack on our offices saying, “Yes, these are the consequences of following Christ in an insecure environment.” Those who “lift the veil of silence” may increase their risk of being the next victim. But the “extreme scandal of the cross,” in the words of Miroslav Volf, comes when “radical obedience,” leads to pain. Yet those who steal and kill enjoy impunity for their crimes, and the power of the perpetrator is strengthened. In the face of violent attack, personal sacrifice to stop these cycles of death becomes a “cry before the dark face of God.”

What these brazen thefts created in me, however, was a new appreciation of the power of two things: the strategic use of fear as a political tool, and the power of the Holy Spirit within transformed believers to deny fear its victory.

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He strikes them for their wickedness while others look on, because they turned aside from following him, and had no regard for any of his ways, so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted—When he is quiet, who can condemn? When he hides his face, who can behold him, whether it be a nation or an individual?—so that the godless should not reign, or those who ensnare the people.

- Job 34:26-30


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The closer this kingdom is and the more its coming is God’s doing, the more must human beings conform to it by a radical change in their way of life.

- Jon Sobrino

Quoted in Cry Freedom, by Charles Ringma

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A month before the war in Iraq began, I took a delegation of religious leaders to meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, to urge that he find a better alternative. We met with Mr. Blair for nearly an hour, and along with Iraq, the critical need for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict figured prominently in our discussions. The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-As, told Prime Minister Blair, "The road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem." Even then, the British government was making the critical connection between peace in the Middle East and the problem of terrorism and Iraq, much more than the U.S. government. The Middle East “Roadmap” to peace was one of his priorities, and he thought he could secure a strong commitment from President Bush. But the war in Iraq became the Bush administration's almost-sole priority.

Tomorrow, Blair steps down as Prime Minister, and the news is that he will be named as special envoy for the international diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East. He has long had a deep interest in Mideast peace, and according to The Guardian,

The idea of Mr. Blair doing this job is understood to have originated with the prime minister himself in conversation with George Bush, who then suggested it to the U.N. The U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is said to be a keen supporter and Washington was reported last night to have mounted "an enormous push" to ensure Mr. Blair got the post.

The Guardian also notes the job description (a thankless task):

The job description does not look attractive. The envoy has four bosses: the U.S., the U.N., Russia and the E.U., who frequently disagree and are currently in despair over how to reunite the Palestinians and inject some life in the peace process.

I believe Tony Blair has a deep passion for peace and human rights, despite our disagreement about the war in Iraq. In the last months before leaving office, he was strongly pressuring the international community to finally do something about the genocide in Darfur. I certainly wish Tony Blair success in his new job, and hope he will be the right person for this crucial role. A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a key to resolving many other problems in the entire region.

When I was a girl in the 1960s, one of my favorite parts of summer was Vacation Bible School at St. John’s United Methodist Church of Hamilton in Baltimore. That, of course, makes me sound like a church geek—as if I was eager to go to church five days running instead of only on Sunday. But it was not the five days I looked forward to; it was the weeks before when my mother prepared for VBS.

Every June, she bought yards of oilcloth, pulled out a large collection of permanent magic markers, and created colorful signs announcing the upcoming VBS. She would draw all sorts of pictures, based on biblical themes, with playful graphics that came from her imagination. I was not allowed to touch them—she said that the markers would stain my clothes. But I think she wanted full artistic control of the project, as these signs graced the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare. Before she married, she wanted to be an artist, an ambition she sacrificed to a 1950s vision of motherhood. The VBS signs served as her yearly art show, with Harford Road as her personal gallery.

She would, however, let me help with the crafts. We sat on the living room floor sorting through old socks, bits of yarn and fabric, old buttons, and pipe cleaners. From these scraps we would sew sock puppets of biblical characters. We made Moses and Pharaoh, David and Jonathan, and Mary and Jesus for our amateur productions in the church’s handmade puppet theater. We cut up old Christmas cards for shellac projects and paper-mache collages. We made Bible map stencils to mimeograph and color. And we built the Temple at Jerusalem from sugar cubes.

Preparing for St. John’s VBS took weeks—with pieces of the Bible, in the form of yarn, paint, colored paper, and sugar cubes, scattered all over the house. It was a glorious theological mess and I loved it.

My daughter is now nine. It has been a long time since I attended summer Bible school, and now it was her turn for the childhood ritual. As I investigated local programs, however, I was in for a big surprise: Vacation Bible School now comes in a can.

All the programs were pretty much the same. Christian publishing companies have developed Disney-quality VBS weeks bearing names like “The Plunge,” “Holy Land Adventure,” “Quest for Truth,” “Great Bible Reef,” and “SonForce Kids.” Prepackaged, these “complete Bible adventures” come in large cans (admittedly, one arrives in a woven basket) advertising that they contain “everything you need” for a successful Bible school, “just add kids”!

Clearly such programs entertain children—while serving as an evangelistic tool to reach parents and gain new church members. No doubt they ease the creative burden of countless VBS teachers across the land. Buy Vacation Bible School online, then recruit some teachers (assuring them this will not take too much of their time), unpack the can, and invite the children. An easy, quick way to learn the Bible and grow the congregation.

Lately, I have been reading Bill McKibben’s fine new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. McKibben argues that growth—based on “hyper-individualism”—does not create human happiness, health, and wholeness. Rather, local community and close connections make us happy. We must shift away from a Wal-Mart economy to what he calls a “deep economy,” defined as “the economics of neighborliness.” Less stuff, he suggests, will create more connections by transforming the human economy and makes a “durable future” for the planet.

Although McKibben writes of economics, his argument carries over to faith. Successful American churches are Wal-Mart type congregations, built on the idea that bigger-is-better, hyper-individual faith, and entertaining programs meet an infinitely expanding religious market. That vision creates a culture of religious sameness across the country—indeed, across the globe—that subsumes local cultures in its wake. Want your church to grow? Attend the latest pastors conference offered by a celebrity minister. Do 40 days of purpose or seven steps toward mission. Put on a dazzling Christmas spectacular. Buy Vacation Bible School in a can. You, too, can have a successful church if you lay out the cash.

My mother is nearly 70, has had two heart attacks, and is slowing down. When I think of her—as I do a lot these days—I remember sitting in the piles of scraps, creating biblical worlds together. I remember making the Virgin Mary out of a sock. I remember the deep economy of being Christian, of practicing our faith in the living room with scissors and glue, not the size or success of our congregation. I remember our neighborhood church, small and quirky, where we produced our spiritual lives with our hands and from our hearts.

I no longer want to belong to an efficient church, a big one, or even a successful one. I just want to be part of a good sock-puppet church. And, as I have traveled this year, and spoken to many thousands of Christians, I had heard them, too, longing for sock puppet church, a deeper congregation, a community that stitches memory from scraps, one that (as McKibben says) “rebalances the scales” of our religious economy—and, in the process, may well transform the world.

Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) is the author of the award-winning Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper, 2006). Her daughter is not attending Vacation Bible School this summer, but Diana is collecting socks to spring a puppet project on her in August.

In the March/April issue of the University of Chicago magazine, an article announced that the University decided not to divest from companies connected to the genocide in Darfur. I wrote a response and it was published in the May/June issue:

Advocacy organizations have done a commendable job of educating the public about this ongoing genocide. While this increased awareness represents progress, knowledge without action is worthless. I commend the University on the creation of a fund to underwrite faculty and student work (a truly creative and worthwhile idea), but it is no replacement for divestment (or any other proactive measures). The University is correct in claiming that its antidivestment decision is not a sign of neutrality; inaction in the face of clear injustice given the opportunity to act is complicity, not neutrality.

While we can hope that the $200,000 fund will indeed advance human rights, I challenge the false choice between providing an “umbrella of open, free inquiry” and the University’s moral duty to divest. These options are not mutually exclusive. Budgets are moral documents, and within them are the keys to our priorities. We should not pretend that prizing open inquiry absolves us of the moral duty to examine our possible complicity with injustice.

Bob Francis is the organizing and policy assistant for Sojourners/Call to Renewal, and earned his masters degree in social science from the University of Chicago in 2006.

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The message of the good news is of the liberation of human beings from everything and everyone that keeps them enslaved.

- Elsa Tamez

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Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss.

- Proverbs 22:16-16

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The power of community, interdependence, and burden-bearing is so penetrating... It just busts through the pain of loss like grass through concrete. I live with tears in my eyes right now, every moment, mesmerized by this big family we have.

In Iraq some folks taught us a saying in Arabic that translates: "When all is well, it's easy to forget who your friends are. But when things get hard, you will know exactly who your friends are." I have learned once again the depth of their wisdom, a wisdom that comes from many tears.

Moments of crisis seem to bring out the best or worst in people. Tragedies can paralyze us in despair or they can be a catalyst for hope. This week we have seen hope shine. While it is