Happy (Lead-filled) Christmas?

Now when you're about to deck the halls with bows of holly, you probably aren't thinking, "How delightful, my holiday lights are wrapped in lead, which is known to cause infertility, insanity and cancer." Unfortunately, this year, that's exactly what ran facetiously through my head, as my husband hauled our fake, pre-lit Christmas tree out to the dumsper -- wearing protective gloves, after reading those little paper tabs on the Christmas lights that actually say the strands of holiday cheer are chock full of lead and "other chemicals." God knows what.

David and our oldest daughter Nika trooped out to the Garden Center and bought a mini real tree and marched on CVS in search of non-lead Christmas lights.

Apparently, CVS doesn't carry any lead-free holiday lights.

"Deck the halls with bows of lead, fa la la la la la la la. Dawn we know our gay apparel, fa la la la la la la la, soon we will all be dead, fa la la la la la la la, tis the season for jolly folly, fa la la la la la la la la la!"

So our humble, scrawny little Christmas tree will have no lights. We'll stick with our one candle, which we light for advent each night. It is enough. Every night when we say what we're thankful for, Gabriel always says in his sweet, almost-two-year-old voice. "candle."

And I'll be sending a message to the EPA about what the *F&^#@* is wrong with us that we keep letting lead products infiltrate the consumer market place, putting our kids and future kids at risk. Because if they'd had lead Christmas lights in 30 BC, maybe Mary would have been infertile and a virgin birth and a fertility miracle just seems like overkill, in my opinion. Like having steak and bacon on the same night.

Happy (un-leaded) Christmas, and to all an un-leaded night.

America, Genocide and a Haunting Echo of "Once Again"

I just began a book -- which happens far more frequently than the event of actually finishing one -- called Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

The book got a Pulitzer, and a well-earned one. This is a thick, heartbreaking, yet objective read that you cannot absorb without feeling shocked to the point of confusion. Over and over the signs are clear: large scale human slaughter based on being one kind of people and not another is about to happen, and it's not even news until everyone is dead. Yet however depressing, this book is readable and captivating, as good journalistic writing is, and I'm going to see if I can open my eyes and get a better look at the picture, however gruesome or complex.

In the preface, author Samantha Power makes the point that "It is in the realm of domestic politics that the battle to stop genocide is lost...No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and No U.S. president has ever suffered politically for this indifference to its occurrence."

As human beings, why on earth isn't genocide one of the top issues in the campaign climate these weeks and months? Can we make it important enough to get the matter of large scale human slaughter boosted above tax tug-of-wars and terrorism?

Can we make it important to intervene in genocide when we aren't sniffing after foreign oil?


A little piece of hope: I found this press release on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website:


Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen today announced that they will co-chair a Genocide Prevention Task Force jointly convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace. The Task Force will generate practical recommendations to enhance the U.S. government's capacity to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities."We have a duty to find the answer before the vow of 'never again' is once again betrayed," said Secretary Albright.

The "once again" buzzes in my hear, hauntingly.

Milky Multitasking: Places I've Breastfed My Baby

1. In front of the soft porn section of Borders (don't you know breasts are FOOD)
2. Walking up the steps, carrying the mail
3. While dancing
4. In the kitchen while extracting Rice Milk from the fridge
5. In class
6. In her crib (desperate times call for desperate measures)
7. On an airplane
8. At the park
9. Over coffee at Starbucks
10. Hiding behind the coffee table at church

Yes, of all the places and circumstances under which I've fed my baby with the food God created just for her, the only place I've felt (and feel) uncomfortable breastfeeding my baby is at church. Hmmm...

Yarmulke

I live a few miles from a place rich with Jewish culture and community centers, where the traffic is noticeably light on Friday afternoons or Yom Kippur. And driving home from picking up my daughter, I notice a father and son walking close, arm in arm, something connecting them beyond genes or little league and I see the boy is wearing a yarmulke. The tradition they share seems especially poignant because it is something that, in however small a way, sets them apart with a sense of dignity and pride, and maybe also a responsibility to carry an important torch for future generations, or even perhaps, for God.

As a child, my gentile mother was the one who introduced me to Jewish holidays and rituals. My Jewish father didn't know anything about his heritage. He remembers one time asking his mom to light Hannukah candles. She did, but her inner light was no longer lit; it had been blown out with the holocaust and the blotted history of our ancestors.

Immediately I like the father and son. I wonder what it would be like to be that son, to have that kind of relationship with my father.

I would ask him all kinds of questions about Torah. And he would ask me questions back. I would debate and quote from the Talmud, and my father would tell me a great story, wiser than my line of arguing. And we would go home and break Challah bread together over candles and sweet wine.

I do not like the Jewish megaplexes that sport banners blowing to zionist winds blazing on huge corner lots in Cherry Hill. "Support Israel."

What about Shalom? Why isn't the voice of Judaism in America predominantly, "support Shalom."

When did the victimization of the Jewish people give license to oppress yet other human beings? Did not God say in the Hebrew bible, 'Remember how I heard your cries and brought you out of slavery in Egypt? So treat the alien with kindness and welcome.'

And in an era when no one literally sacrifices lambs, can it truly be justified that the holy land is a literal Jewish entitlement, even when getting it involves the victimization of palestinian families -- and a violation of Torah ethics toward the alien among us?

And what of the Christian voice? It is becoming a voice closer to fair, closer to truthful. But it is a quiet hum compared to the Christian voice on sexual topics. Do we care more about what grownups do in their bedrooms than about Palestinian babies dying because they can't get to a hospital in time? Sex is so much more titillating. Breasts. sex. gay marriage. refugees. desperate youth. wailing. walls between us. Victim, victimizer. sex.

Shalom (where is?)

Peace

Public Servants? The aspirations of the candidates

I heard Al Gore say on NPR the other day that he's set his sights, in a most determined way, on making climate control the #1 issue for both candidates during the next presidential election. He has pinned his goals on making a difference rather winning a position; a smart move for anyone, but especially someone who cares passionately about an issue and isn't likely to win the fancy position anyway.

But what I want to know is why Hillary and Obama are wasting lots of money on individual campaigns when they could run together on a shared ticket and promise to switch drivers if they win this time and get a second term? Obama's fresh charisma and vision, Hillary's knowledge, experience and saavy...I think they would be a good team. No only that, I think they need each other. And maybe in the end they'll run together. But all that money spent before the primaries could be put to some decent use, like education, sustainable agriculture, clean drinking water worldwide, helping the poor become self-sufficient in the next generation, finding true cures for Malaria and AIDS. Why can't those who do have a shot at president put the wellbeing of all people before individual aspirations?

Are there times I need to ask myself that same question? Heck yeah. And it hurts. In love, it hurts so good.

Hanging Saddam

Did Saddam face death with dignity or pride? Buried in his subconscious, what did he sense about himself, his life, his impact on humanity and his death? He held his head high until the oxygen entirely vacated his dead brain. He treated his American jailors with class. He asked his Iraqi taunters if they were behaving in a manly way. What a life. What a death. And so much of what we know about Saddam's hanging we see because of an illicit video tape snuck onto someone's modern-mojo cell phone. And there is still a mess in Iraq, so many bloody bodies and families with holes: missing people, broken souls carrying out crazy violence for a plethora of interesting and tragic reasons. How can we heal what is broken in ourselves, our children and the future generations of the human community? How can we forgive the broken sinners who left us with the mess in our souls, our families, in Iraq, in Sudan, and bring healing the our oppressors, that we might all run free in Christ's path of Grace? Grace. What a messy, bloody word. The only way to release from endless cycles of death. And not cheap grace either. Grace accepted comes with the responsibility to change. Repentace means turning around, doing a 180 toward a lifegiving way of being with self and others, including God.

Grace and Truth. What a hysterically complicated duo Christ embodied for us. A table-turner who forgives enemies, loves intimate betrayers and takes on the care of strangers? A Savior who loves the tainted, mocked ones dearly, and asks his father father to forgive the same people he once called, "children of the devil," because, "they know not what they do?" We serve a Lord who called hypocrisy into the light, who was anything but a doormat to oppressors of mercy and justice. He laid down his life out of a profound sense of calling, not out of a ridiculous martyr complex or a lack of self-worth. God stood up and laid down, and rose above, according to God's will. And we are made in her image. In God's image we live and move and have our being. In her image we dance and die and live again.