a dangerous question

I don't usually post things here that are political, but this is a topic I wonder about from time to time and just read/heard some interesting perspectives on it the past few days.

From Wendell Berry (an amazing writer/thinker who was way before his time on sustainable agriculture and all related things):

Mexicans cross the border because our way of life is extravagant; because our way of life is extravagant, we have no place for them - or won't have for very long. A generous immigration policy would be contradicted by our fundamentally ungenerous way of life.
- "A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey," in the book What Are People For?

Just after I read this, I happened to hear the same line of thinking in this YouTube video. (I found the video after searching for something by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who wrote a great book about working to erase the division between black and white churches that I just read.) The woman at the end of the panel describes America as hoarding all the resources in the world then drawing a line around them and not letting other people come in.

I realize that immigration is a touchy subject, but how do we reconcile what we are as America with how we're called to treat the poor, the aliens, the oppressed?

6 random things

I normally don't do things like this, but since I was a kid who always (well, almost always) followed the rules and my middle school English teacher tagged me to do this, I feel some sort of responsibility to do it. I am going to break the rules a little bit, though, and not tag anyone else.

1. I am not a vegetarian yet, but I am finding myself cooking more veggie meals and ordering the all veggie options from a menu if there's a choice. It usually sounds the yummiest.

2. I don't talk a lot, so sometimes people think I'm being judgmental and aloof when I really just don't have a lot to say.

3. I was called opinionated last week and it surprised me, but I guess I am getting more opinionated as I age. :)

4. Since I grew up in Texas, I should speak Spanish, but I don't. I took German in high school and college because I wanted to be different, but have forgotten all that. I can speak Korean conversationally and enough Chinese to take a cab and get what I need at the market.

5. I was a single issue voter for the past few elections, but now I've realized that even those single issues aren't as black and white as they seem.

6. I really want to live in a place that has four distinct seasons again. I miss cool and cold weather a lot.

questions

People know me at the homeless shelter. Few know my name, but they smile when I come in. We shoot the breeze. Sometimes they get mad at me for following the rules and not checking mail after 4:00 or not being able to help them with what they need, but that's rare. One time a guy asked for the monthly schedule of programs and I didn't know where it was, so I told him that. He got a little angry, but then later he heard me tell someone else that I was a volunteer and he came up and apologized that he'd gotten mad.

Last week, a guy that I sometimes chat with came up and asked me why I kept coming. He's smiling and inquisitive and asked some great questions. I told him that I'm there to learn, that I want to be able to identify with people who are different than me. I said that the poor, middle class and rich keep to their own circles and we need to mix up those circles in order to be aware of the problems of the world and learn what we can do about those problems. I told him it made me sad to go into schools on the East side and see only black and hispanic kids.

We talked about the main problems of the homeless. He told me the main problem was drug addiction. Another guy came up and told us that 90% of the people on the streets are there because they want to be, and he was one of them. He was proud of that. The first guy told me that he had kids and an ex-wife and was just there at the shelter temporarily because of a bad decision.

I love that this guy came up to me and started asking questions. I think we can make progress - probably only to a certain extent, but still some kind of progress - by being curious about the lives of others and building relationships with people who are different from us.

I don't volunteer a lot of information except in response to questions. Too many of us don't step out of ourselves for long enough to ask the questions of others that show we're interested. We'll talk about ourselves, but we won't learn what we can from those who are different around us. Or maybe, to give us some credit, we're afraid of being too curious. I can tell you though, that I'm glad for guys like this who ask questions.

Home

And then their return to the pays natal, where the same old willows swept the same ragged lawns, where the same old prarie arose and bloomed as negligence permitted. Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh, to be passing anonymously through an impersonal landscape! Oh, not to know every stump and stone, not to remember how the fields of Queen Anne's lace figured in the childish happiness they had offered to their father's hopes, God bless him.
...
That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.

- Home, Marilynne Robinson

This is the companion novel to Gilead, which I raved about a few years ago here, here, and here. Home doesn't have the same feel with words that just made me sit in wonder with Gilead, but it's a good book for sure. This piece of the book is resonating with me now as I still struggle at times not to feel as I'm in exile in my home, as I am feeling vulnerable in many ways, but trying to allow my soul to find its home.

(By the way, I had to look up pays natal. It means native land.)

waiting for a bloom

A few weeks ago, the night blooming cirrus on Mimi's front porch was ready to bloom. Mimi invited her friend over, estimating it would start to open around 10:30 PM. She chilled red wine (yes, she chills red wine) in preparation for the little party. I came home around that time and found them on the front porch, in the dark, but with a flashlight that they used to check on the progress of the bloom from time to time.
I had to work the next day, so I decided to go to bed around midnight, after taking a few pictures. I found out the next morning that they stayed up until 2 AM and it never opened. They had different opinions on why it didn't open. It was the night before hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, so one theory was that it was because it could sense some bad weather was coming. The other thought was that it had just been too hot for it too open.
I took this picture the next morning. This was as far as it got. There are now quite a few more blooms that may end up opening, so we might have another viewing party in a week or so.

a world planted in pennies

But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.
-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I'm becoming more and more convinced that "healthy poverty and simplicity" is where it's at. I'm in the middle, or perhaps just at the very beginning, of a reawakening to what it could be to live simply, to actually identify with the poor and the marginalized of society, to love them, learn from them and see the image of God in them.

I recently finished reading the Bible in a year and am now taking a little more time with a few books. Parts of Isaiah that speak to our responsibility to the poor are leaping off the page. I had no idea that I have skimmed over all that just to get to the sections like the calling in chapter 6 and the prophecies about the Messiah later in the book. How could I have read this Bible my whole life and missed these huge themes?

Yesterday at the homeless shelter, there was a young woman who came up to the desk to tell me she felt like she was going crazy. She had been evicted from her apartment, was separated from her kids, and it sounded like she was with a guy just because he was providing her some protection. At first I just gave her the numbers for two shelters that take women. One of which she had already checked and they were full. I asked some of the people who work there for more ideas, and we tried calling a few other places, but had no success. This has happened a few times before and always makes me sad. There has to be something that can be done for women who aren't abused and don't have kids, or don't have their kids with them. If nothing is there, I must be a part of the solution.

pictures, produce, pizza

I'm overdue for some pictures up here. I have only taken a few with my new (used, bought from a friend) camera anyway, and haven't really experimented with the settings like I need to in order to learn how to use it. But, I can't post the few I have taken because I can't upload them to my computer since I had a little computer trouble and had to have all the stuff on my hard drive reinstalled. For some reason, the installation CD isn't working. Hopefully I'll find a way to fix that soon.

Today I went to Boggy Creek Farm. I didn't get there until after noon, so most of the produce was gone, but I did buy the last of their tiny tomatoes, some goat cheese and milk, and local honey! I'm gonna have to go back when I have more of a choice of veggies.

While on the East side of town, I made a point to visit East Side Pies, a pizza place I just heard about. I got a big "Girther" (gorgonzola, onion, avocado, and bacon) and brought it home even though Mimi had already said she was making mac and cheese with turkey leftovers for lunch. I asked her if she still had room for pizza and she told me no, but then she took a look at it and said "well, maybe a little." Then, an hour ago, she came in and asked if we could have pizza for dinner. I told her she sure could, but I wasn't going to have any. She asked me to heat hers up for her, then. I guess she considers pizza reheating outside her area of expertise.