NY Times Op-Ed from Desmond Tutu

There's an interesting piece by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in today's NY Times, calling on President Obama not to cut support for anti-AIDS work in Africa. It is a little bit frightening to think that President Bush allocated more money than President Obama has so far. Perhaps it's time for those of us who tend to be good at raising money to also get better at the advocacy side of that coin. The timing is interesting for me, since it was just yesterday I started trying to learn more about the Lutheran Malaria Initiative (also see here) and was at the same time reminded of the ELCA's commitment to fight HIV/AIDS. Our VBS is the first week of August (assuming we can find enough volunteers - I will confess I have moments when I'm tempted to just cancel the whole week this year) and our offering "project" this year is the Lutheran Malaria Initiative, despite the fact that the official fundraising efforts don't begin until 2011. Our curriculum has an African theme and we thought mosquito nets will fit right in...

Things I Didn't Know About Hannukah

Hannukah begins today - and no, it's not a "Jewish Christmas," though it surprises me how many uninformed Americans think it might be. A few years ago I bought a couple of children's books about Hannukah to have on hand to help tell the story. It's too bad so many folks have Bibles without the Apocrypha, since the Hannukah story is alluded to in the "in-between" books of 1 and 2 Maccabees. Maybe the best way to learn the story and how it's understood today is to expand our circles of friends to include more folks of different faiths.

One of the experiences I am most grateful for during my seminary days is CPE - Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE tends to get a pretty bad rap from pastor-types, and in some cases, rightly so. It's no good to be taken apart and then not put back together again. What made my CPE experience so good, besides a good supervisor, was the friendship forged with the only other woman in my group, a rabbinical student named Sarah. Early on in our summer of hospital-chaplaincy-fun, Sarah and I decided that there would be no "dumb questions" between us - and I got to learn a lot about her tradition, the different branches of the Jewish family tree in America, and to see my own tradition through different eyes. (All of the rest of our group were Christians, and we had to promise not to baptize Sarah if she ever fell asleep in the break room...).

So, here's a link to an OpEd piece from today's New York Times, which helped me put Hannukah in some historical perspective. I'd encourage you to read the comments, too, as they were interesting, also.

Op-Ed Columnist The Hanukkah Story By DAVID BROOKS Published: December 11, 2009 Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. Its lesson is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices.

True Confessions: Sarah Palin makes me crazy

We're having a fairly lazy Sunday afternoon and evening at our house. After worship, Sunday School (I co-teach the high school class) and worship again, Grant and I took a handful of college students out to lunch. There were a bunch more students in worship, I'd expected more to stick around for free pizza at Old Chicago, since we were buying. But whatever. This afternoon I napped for close to two hours - I hadn't realized how tired I was, but a belly of greasy goodness probably helped. Now we are watching the Vikings play the Arizona Cardinals, and I'm catching up on the stack of newspapers that we've accumulated over the last week +. Grant is a die-hard newspaper reader. He reads two every day: the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal. When we were in Redmond, WA for Thanksgiving, he bought a New York Times every couple of days. Including last Sunday, November 29th. I'm working my way through the New York Times Magazine from that paper, and this article about Sarah Palin, and why so few women like her, caught my attention: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29FOB-wwln-t.html The Way We Live Now Why Women Can’t Let Sarah Palin Go By LISA BELKIN Published: November 29, 2009 If life is like high school, then today’s educated, ambitious women are the student-council presidents and Sarah Palin is the head cheerleader. Please let me know what you think...