New Year’s eve… This week our family participated in a “Books to Prisoners” event at C-Space in Cleveland. C-Space has a pretty extensive library of donated books. Prisoners, in turn, write specifiying certain topics they’re interested in. And once every few months, volunteers converge to help match the requests with books on hand. The project is colloquially referred to as: Book ’em… Tim Musser, a friend of ours and a passionate peace activist, helped out at the C-Space event. A couple weeks earlier, Tim had given me the book The Horrors We Bless (Rethinking the Just-War Legacy). At one point, author Daniel Maguire writes about global warming and how this crisis, ultimately, could lead to a whole lot more world peace. “Since global warming threatens everyone, there is new reason for an international ecumenism. Shared fear can make friends of former foes,” Maguire writes. Note: In prefacing the latter, Maguire uses the Ministry of Tourism on the Maldive Islands (just a couple feet above sea level) to illustrate how imminent the threat of global warming is: “Come and see us — while we’re still here,” says one Maldive tourism brochure. Note 2: Global Warming; genocide in Darfur; crisis in Pakistan; ongoing carnage in Iraq; scores of children starving in Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria; increasing nuclear proliferation… It would seem to me it’s time for some significant global, and ecumenical, New Year’s resolutions this year.
12/26/07
On Christmas eve our family volunteered at a local outreach to the poor here in Cleveland. It’s called The Storefront and is run by a group of Catholic Workers. While Liz and I served food and washed dishes, our son Jonathan, 4, played Go Fish! with one of the guys. Cutest sight. At one point, I got in a conversation with an Hispanic man. I asked him where he was staying. He said: “In my van.” It was going to be 25 degrees that night. On a recent campaign tour, I told the Montgomery News in Montgomery, Alabama, that ‘slavery’ still exists in America. That is, there are so many who are slaves to rural and inner city poverty loops. Note: Some of this ‘slavery’ is in no small part because of those more advantaged in America. They think it’s their money to spend on, for the most part, themselves. When, in fact, it’s: God’s money.
12/22/07
Our family attended a Christmas party with a twist the other night. It was with a group of young, “20-something” Christians who had started a home church here in Cleveland. One of the activities at the party was making rather neuvo-hip necklaces out of beads from Uganda. As people made them, others at the party would buy them — as donations to an outreach in Uganda… On a campaign tour through southern Colorado several years ago, I interviewed a woman in Durango who had just returned from a missions trip to Uganda. She said she stayed with a family that’s parents, and several of the children, had AIDS. And there was little food, little water, little medicine… and they all slept on burlap bags on a dirt floor in their hut. What’s more, this was not the exception in Uganda. I told the newspaper in Durango the next day that as president I would go to Uganda, sleep on a dirt floor in solidarity, and plead with the American people: to help more. Note: I saw a bumper sticker in Cleveland today that said: “Except for Slavery, Facism, Communism and Nazism — War Hasn’t Solved Anything!” The statement gave me pause.
12/19/07
Our family does “prayer time” every morning, with our kids sometimes having the opportunity to prepare short “teachings” on their own. Yesterday our Sarah, 12, passed out sheets of paper to each of us that said: “A talent God has given you:” In turn, each of us was to write down one of the talents and then committ to using it more to help build God’s kingdom — before Dec. 25th. Sarah then collected the papers, wrapped them in a parchment-like shell (brown paper bag), tied it with purple yarn, and placed it under the Christmas tree as a “gift to God for His birthday.” Note: In the magazine Alternatives for Simple Living, author Shane Claiborne wrote a piece titled: Away in a Stank Manger. His gritty point being that Jesus was born in what was probably a rather dirty stable. Claiborne then goes on to write: “We will much more likely meet Jesus this Christmas in the filth of the ghetto than in the best-decorated sanctuary or the most festive shopping mall.” [Claiborne is the author of the book: The Irresistible Revolution.]
12/17/07
During our pit stop in Cleveland inbetween campaign tours, my wife Liz and I have been coaching a soccer team at the local Rec. Center. (Liz is from New Zealand where soccer is big. I’m from Cleveland where only recently did I learn what a soccer ball looks like.) Anyway, Liz is the head coach and my main role is to say stuff like: “Nice kick kid!” And I’ve had the opportunity to say that a lot the past six games. Tonight was the last game, and our “Comets” fought to the end — coming up just one agonizing goal short. Our final record was 3 and 3. But more importantly, I believe, is this was six games where these inner city kids were lost in play, learning lessons about determination, sportsmanship, discipline…. What’s more, many of these youth don’t have a Dad at home to say: “Nice kick kid!” So they need to hear it somewhere. And in all this, somehow, sometimes: there’s grace. Note: The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently did an article on Mount Pleasant, a predominately poor and Black region of Cleveland. The article noted that in the 1960s, eight of ten Mount Pleasant children had two parent families. Now two of ten children there have two parent families.
12/15/07
I’ve been doing some interior house painting at a place on 38th St. here on and off the past couple weeks. The people who own the place are extremely peace and social justice oriented. While many homeowners have things like generic paintings on their walls, these people display things like: a United Farm Workers banner. A couple years ago, we did a tour of California looking at migrant farm worker issues, both past and present. This tour, among other things, inspired me to write a column about the experience. For many of these farm workers, it is a torturous sun-up to sun-down existence, with little pay, poor working conditions, poor housing… I told a reporter in Lodi, California, that our administration would work stridently to change this. Note: Speaking of torture… The NY Times carried a piece yesterday explaining that “water boarding” is a technique where water is poured over a prisoner’s mouth and nose to produce a feeling of suffocation. According to the article, the Justice Department continues to insist water boarding is not torture. This can only beg the question: Are we nuts? It wouldn’t take, say, a Notre Dame ethics professor to figure this one out. C’mmon! Our administration would hold strictly to the Geneva Convention in regard to: not torturing anyone.
12/13/07
The front page of the NY Times carried a piece on the worsening situation in the Congo. A Civil War in the Congo, which ended in 2003 (and was the bloodiest in modern African war), is heating up again. There is now the beginning of heavy fighting and scores of people are being displaced. The article said much of the war is over a “quest to control unusually rich minerals and farmlands.” What the article doesn’t say is that many of us in America are complicit. That is, these resources, while “rich,” are limited in Africa. If we had cut back on our lifestyles in America, in tandem with, say, scaling back tremendously on things like the Defense Budget, we could have mobilized so much more help to allow people in the Congo to be as sustainable as possible — so they don’t have to fight over their limited resources. During a talk at Baldwin Wallace College recently, I said it is my belief God gave us an abundance in America to help, not hoard. What we do now foreign affairs wise, church outreach wise (the average Christian tithes approximately 3%), is a pittance in comparison to how much we really could help. And I don’t think this is lost on God, for a minute. It’s just that we have a hard time connecting the dots spiritually. However, once we know… Note: “Several weeks ago, Time Magazine did a Special Report titled: America by the Numbers. The following is a set of some of those numbers: “The vast majority of Americans believe in God, and more than 90% own a Bible, but only half can name a single Gospel, and 10% think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.” –That simply amazed me. I mean, I thought everyone knew Joan was his sister. Whoops… There goes my conservative supporters.
12/11/01
I did a blog talk radio show this week. I was asked about illegal immigration. I said during a “Border Tour” we went to Juarez, Mexico, where some 200,000 people live in total abject poverty. The streets were dusty, the homes were cobbled together shacks and the children were hungry, some dying. “A New York Catholic Worker newspaper this month carried an article on immigration. It started: “As politicians and mainstream media rally around the birth of border walls, violent raids and anti-immigration ordinances, Christians kneel around a little refugee baby who was born unwelcomed and on-the-run…” Just one of many Bible stories that would fly in the face of obsessive ‘American protectionism.’ Note: During the Border Tour, I told the Hobbs (NM) Sun newspaper that we should look at both legal and illegal immigrants as a tremendous spiritual opportunity to help… For our position paper on immigration…
12/8/01
I’ve just been approached by Ryan Yocum of the Ohio News Network. He’s an “average Joe” in Columbus who does a show about “average Joes” and sports. He’s coming to Cleveland to film me playing pick-up basketball with some of the youth at the Rec. Center up the street. I’m going to tell him to have his camera man bring the telephoto lens so he can get me ‘skying’ like, oh, LeBron James. (My wife Liz recommended I not do that.)… To stay with the sport’s theme: While campaigning in Ohio for Election 2004, in one of my lighter moments, I actually told CBS News in Columbus that when we get to D.C. I was going to have “…a big buckeye put on the top of the Capitol Dome.” And we still lost Ohio. Go figure. Note: The New York Times carried a piece today about “wave farms” being proposed for the Pacific to harness clean renewable energy. One application would be to place a field of buoys with turbines turned by waves about three miles off shore. Experts predict, ultimately, that wave action could provide up to 10% of American energy needs. And even more percentage wise: If we started cutting back dramatically on our energy use! (During Campaign 2004, we traveled to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where a similar wave action pilot project was underway in the Atlantic.)
12/6/07
Our family saw the showing of a documentary on Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day the other night at St. Augustine’s Church in Cleveland. Before it started, someone passed out copies of the magazine: Alternatives for Simple Living. The December issue is titled: Whose Birthday Is It, Anyway? One of the articles was titled: What Jesus Wants for Christmas. It starts: “When we celebrate a birthday, we are careful to give what the person really wants or needs. Is there any doubt what Jesus wants from us? He insists that in order to give to Him, we must find Him in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. By helping to provide a goat for a farmer in Honduras, a decent home for a family in rural Mississippi, or food for those who are victims of war, you can give Jesus a birthday gift he really wants…” As mentioned in an early blog entry, for Christmas this year we have decided to “give” our children the opportunity to help those less fortunate. Our Joseph, 10, has just spent a week restoring a used bicycle for a child in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Shaker Cycle in Cleveland is collecting used and new bicycles to send to a school of 1,100 students in Haiti, many of whom have to walk many miles to get to school every day. Note: The Dorothy Day Documentary, Don’t Call Me A Saint, featured the life of a woman who adopted voluntary poverty in solidarity with the poor and worked exhaustively to help them at every turn. During one of our campaign tours, I told the Havre News, in Havre, Montana, that it is spiritually essential we all help the poor (both here and abroad) more, and this starts — for many — with lifestyle cuts to free up more money.