I was one of the “three kings” during the Maji thing at St. Patrick’s Church in Cleveland yesterday. Just before Mass I had to use the restroom in the back of the church (a challenge in itself given the robe.) One of the ushers looked at me and said I was a week late for the birth. I said I’d missed RTA’s #326 bus… Last night our family watched Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” about the critical, and imminent, threat of global warming. At one point in the documentary, Gore said he believed that how we deal with global warming is a “moral issue.” I recently took that a step further during a talk at First Methodist Church in Wellington, Ohio. I said our energy gluttonous lifestyles in America are tremendously fueling global warming, which in turn is causing things like super-charged hurricanes, droughts and famine in more arid countries. In other words, people are dying now because of our wanting to hold onto our comfortable lifestyles here. I said this is no different than firing “slow motion bullets” at people around the world. And do we think that will be lost on God when he asks us Americans: “So, how’d you do with: Thou Shalt Not Kill?”
1/5/08
We played “Social Justice Football” with the kids at the Catholic Worker House this week on a somewhat soggy field. In Social Justice Football, everybody gets a chance to run, pass, catch… And although the score was 21 to 14, in Social Justice Football that really doesn’t matter. (Except to the team that won and the team that lost, of course. Ok, so I’m not a purest.) Note: During our Campaign 2000 travels, we came across “Itch Field” (a lot of misquitoes) in tiny Arthur, Illinois. Some Amish guys had cut this ball diamond out of a corn field, ala Field of Dreams. I was told there was competition at “the Itch,” but not too much competition, during the games. As an example, a guy who was developmentally disabled played first base next to another infielder who could have been on a high school All Star team. If only the society at large mirrored this paradigm more, huh.
1/2/08
Average JoeOhio Tour cont: Leaving Mass yesterday morning, a friend walked up and said: “Well this is it Joe, (Election year) 2008.” And so it is… Since the polls are showing I’m still, oh, a little bit behind, I went to stump, and volunteer, at “The Storefront,” a Catholic Worker outreach to the poor in the area. One guy who was new approached me and said that someone had told him I was running for president. “Is that president like what George Bush is right now?” He asked somewhat incredulously. Ok, so I’m not a household name yet… On a more sober note, another group of guys who stay in abandoned buildings and vehicles in the area, told me they heard a lot of gun shots about 3 a.m. New Year’s Day morning. “Are you sure they weren’t fireworks?” I asked. One guy smiled and said gunfire sounds nothing like fireworks, especially close by. “Pow, pow, pow…” he demonstrated for emphasis. And thus another new year is rung in in Cleveland, currently the country’s poorest city.
12/31/07
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.