Category: musings

Water, women, and Jesus

Yesterday was World Water Day and the lectionary readings for today were also about water, including the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, all in the month of March, which is Women’s History Month in the US.

Women and girls are most likely to be dealing with water access and pollution problems as they are usually the ones most in charge of fetching, carrying, cooking, washing up, laundering, etc., especially in the parts of the world where clean hot and cold water do not run abundantly from the tap, as they do for me and my neighbors. Water is a necessity of life and access to it is a justice issue.

In the gospel story, it is a woman who comes to fetch water from the well of Jacob, her ancestor. She is in a socially vulnerable position, female, a Samaritan, sexually exploited. Yet Jesus asks her for a favor and engages in conversation with her, breaking with the norms of the society both on gender and ethnic grounds. What is even more astonishing is that he reveals his identity as the messiah to her and that she, despite her lack of community standing, becomes an apostle of the Good News, one who “goes and tells” others of salvation.

Preaching on this gospel often revolves around the woman’s sinfulness, because she has been married five times and is living with a man who isn’t her husband, but Jesus, although he tells the woman that he knows this about her, never condemns her for it or discusses any need for forgiveness. He offers her the living water of the Spirit, truth, salvation, and the love of God, which she gratefully receives and, energized, brings other people to meet Jesus so that they too can encounter him and believe that he is the messiah.

The woman, unnamed as are many of the women who encounter Jesus in the gospel, stands for all the other nameless women who are exploited or marginalized because of their gender or their ethnicity. Her modern descendants in spirit might live in Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, or might be victims of human trafficking in Thailand, Brazil, the US. God offers radical, unconditional love, not guilt or blame about their exploitation.

We are called to do the same.

Daylight Savings Time

Time for my (semi-annual) rant about changing clocks. Daylight changes a few minutes at a time. Changing what the clock says when sunset happens does not “save” daylight; it just re-names it.

DST puts me out of sync with the seasons. At my latitude, going on daylight savings time when it is still winter means that many more weeks of getting up to start the day in the dark. In the summer, it barely gets dark for bedtime. In the fall, we are back to dark mornings for a much longer time than we should be.

Admittedly, changing clocks is difficult for me personally. My circadian rhythm is very stubborn. Even one hour’s change throws me for a loop. I joke about being a “delicate flower,” but changing my sleep pattern can quickly devolve into multiple body systems going haywire. (And writing a blog post at 4:30 AM on no sleep.)

As you can guess, I don’t do well when I have to cross multiple times zones…

putting away Christmas

In my faith tradition, this weekend marks the end of the Christmas season, so it is time to pack away the rest of the decorations. We had already taken down our tree last weekend, after the celebration of Epiphany, a tradition we share with several friends.

While putting up the tree is more festive, taking it down is more meditative. We place all the ornaments on the dining room table before we pack them into their boxes, so, at a glance, I can appreciate their diversity, and, focusing in, can celebrate their uniqueness and the memories each holds.

Ornaments from our trees growing up – my favorite silver ball with handpainted pink roses – the horn from my husband’s tree that actually makes a sound if you blow into it…the rocking horses and unicorns that I made from a kit when we were newlyweds that became the bottom-of-the-tree ornaments when our daughters were small, due to their cute and colorful, yet indestructible, nature…the circus animal ornaments from my friend Angie, who passed away eight, almost nine, years ago…Hawaiian ornaments from my daughter and son-in-law, who live in Honolulu…ornaments made by my artist-friend Yvonne…the cedar ornament that became a teether for my older daughter’s first Christmas…the set of small wooden angel-musicians and all the other music-themed instruments which commemorate the many years of church music-making in our family…the felt horse heads -a pair made by my husband as a child, another pair made by his mom when she was helping her third-graders make an art project/gift for their parents – that transform into hobby horses with the insertion of a candy cane…a Florentine-paper origami bird, folded by our younger daughter…the nature-themed ornaments, made by Latin-American artisans using native gourds…gifts from friends and relatives over the years…ornaments we have bought in our travels – a painted ceramic ball from my first and only European trip to Sicily – a carved wooden house from Deerfield – cloth ornaments from Skaneateles – enameled ornaments from Winterthur…

Though the ornaments are packed and stored away, the memories linger and warm our hearts, so the peace and joy of the season last a little longer.

Christmas cards

Much of my writing time this month has been taken up by Christmas cards. While many holiday preparation tasks have been retired, evolved, or relegated to others over the years, I continue to make writing and sending cards one of my top priorities.

Perhaps due to absorbing the etiquette of my childhood, I still sign and address cards the old-fashioned way – by hand. On some cards, I also write notes. For the few to whom I write longer letters, I do resort to writing on the computer and printing out the enclosures.

Because I have a long-standing tendon problem with my writing arm, I have to pace myself, spreading the task over ten days or so to keep my arm functional. I take the time to choose a card that I think fits the recipient, and sign the card according to if the person knows me or my husband better, with the more familiar person’s name first. I even choose the postage stamp that I think the recipient will like – Madonna stamps for those who are more religiously observant and secular stamps for those who are more cultural observers of Christmas or who are non-Christians to whom I am sending New Year’s wishes.

This is sounding perhaps a bit obsessive, but it is important to me to connect to friends and family at this time of year, even if we can seldom, if ever, meet in person. My list has friends going back to our teen years, college friends, neighbors and former neighbors, friends from our adult decades, and relatives, only some of whom send cards to us, but all of whom it is important to me to reach out to at this time, to let them know that I am thinking of them and wishing them well.

This year was especially poignant for me as I needed to start a new Christmas address book after using my former one for ten years. As I copied addresses into my new book, I paused over the names of those I have lost, not just the elder generation who had passed away but also a couple of friends closer to my age. It reminds me that there is no guarantee that my recipients will be here next Christmas – or that I will be. 

So, I will make the time, as long as I am able, to connect at this time of year and to send wishes of peace and love.

I wish a wonderful Christmas to those who observe it and peace, contentment, and love in 2014 to all!

Red Sox – World Series Champions!

I grew up in rural Massachusetts and the Boston Red Sox have always been my team, so, of course, I was personally happy to see them win the World Series last night.

But this year, the story goes beyond sports and stats and the worst-to-first mythos. It’s about pulling together and teamwork and healing and strength and honoring what is really important in our communal life.

I appreciate the Red Sox working together as a team and supporting each other on the field and playing as a team instead of individual stars, even when that meant growing scruffy beards as means of solidarity.

What was more important was their effort to live “Boston Strong” after the Boston Marathon bombings. The Red Sox players and organization have a long history of charitable work and community involvement. Even as a kid, I appreciated their support of the Jimmy Fund, fighting childhood cancers, work which has been on-going for decades. In the wake of bombings, the Red Sox did whatever they could to honor the first responders and medical teams who worked so hard to save lives and bring healing. They supported the injured in their recoveries and welcomed them to Fenway as they were able to be out and about again. Game days gave everyone in the Boston area a respite from the day-to-day slog of recovery, whether in person at Fenway, or on TV or radio. And they reclaimed the name “Boston” for the whole country, so that today the first thing that comes to mind is Boston Red Sox – World Series Champions, not Boston bombings.

Thanks, Red Sox, for giving Boston a reason to celebrate. You and the city are truly Boston Strong.

IBM

My relief over the last minute legislation from Congress last night is being tempered by two things. First is fear that the Republicans still have not learned their lesson that their job is to cooperate in governing, not obstruct it. I’m trying to develop hope that the budget conference committee will finally arrive at a more just and equitable budget by December, so that sequestration ends and other badly needed legislation can be debated and enacted, but I keep thinking about the Supercommittee that was supposed to have solved this because sequestration was too horrible a threat and didn’t.

The second is that, on a day when I expected the stock market would be trending up in relief at last night’s deal, IBM is tanking, down twelve points at the moment, after earnings fell short of expectations. IBM is very important in my area, which is its original birthplace. Virtually everyone who lives here has a connection to IBM, personally or through family, friends, and/or neighbors. For decades, employees here were loyal to the company and the company was loyal to them. That all changed when Gerstner became CEO. Instead of being valued assets to the company, employees became expenses, to be gotten rid of to cut costs or replaced by lower-wage workers overseas. In our area, workers retained their traditional loyalty to IBM longer than in other parts of the country, despite sale of divisions, offshoring, “resource actions” AKA terminations, buy-outs, the dissolution of the pension program, cuts in benefits, continual monkeying around with the salary plan, sale of IBM properties, and other indignities. Now, the last vestiges of that loyalty have crumbled, even here in IBM’s birthplace. Wall Street didn’t help, cheering every time more lay-offs were announced or more stock bought back. Instead of the traditional long view that IBM took, everything became about the next quarter and projecting a year ahead became long-range planning.

Today, the pigeons came home to roost.

Analysts are finally realizing how much of IBM’s gains have been from “financial engineering” rather than from the traditional strength of the company, its superior products, backed by the exceptional training, intelligence, and dedication of its committed workforce. The question is has IBM gone so far away from its traditional core values that it will not be able to regain its footing and continue as a driving technology force in the coming years. IBM workers here will continue to work hard for their customers, despite being overburdened with work as more and more workers are laid off with no reduction in the amount of work that needs to be accomplished. Will upper management finally notice?

Beginning

I’ve been meaning for a few months to set up a blog. Friends had asked me to set up an FB page to share some of my poetry, which I started to do but then deleted due to copyright concerns with FB.

I plan to post some poetry, some commentary – because everyone loves a good post on battling fracking in NY? – and whatever comes to the top of my mind, hence the title. Top of JC’s Mind is a bit awkward, but more involved names come with the territory when one is late to the blogging party.

I will probably post some writing from my archives, but will try to give approximate dates when I do so. I also may not post regularly for a bit yet. I hadn’t planned to set this up today, but was reading a post on another wordpress blog and one thing led to another…..