Category Archives: Uncategorized

Overbooked but not Overburdened

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Thank you for the many responses, both via the blog and privately, about the American Association of University Women having Don to speak here in Wytheville. The response was 9:2 that I should go to the meeting and confront him on being a part of the problem, not the solution.

As it turns out, I am overbooked that day. In the morning I’m speaking to a non-profit attempting to build an in-patient facility where people can work on overcoming substance abuse disorder. They want to talk about my book Fall or Fly, which details how the opioid crisis is crashing the foster care system, because it was never designed to take in kids with living parents. And has not been sustainably updated. Of 500 children in the foster care system, 496 had living parents court-ordered to be separated. We need this in-patient facility. I can be one small piece of them getting that done? Yes please!

Then it is up to the Governor’s Summit on Rural Prosperity, where we will listen to the great and good make promises they have no interest in keeping. But hey, we also get to network with some people who can actually make things happen because they work for them, so it’s totally a good thing to do, and we will get info to help us further our advocacy. This might make life better for some; we shall see.

But at 8 pm I will leave the schmoozefest reception to tuck up in my hotel room and run the Grandmothers Collective Storytelling Circle. Which makes the world brighter.

The storytelling circle is a monthly gathering of those who have dedicated their lives to beating down that stone wall Don and people like him represent, the back room discussions that don’t match the front facing smile, that upholding of the old order because it’s better for everyone—where everyone is defined as people like them. The Grandmothers Collective makes space for elders now in their eighties, who marched for votes, marched for access to birth control, lobbied for women to own property after divorces, staffed campaigns for Black women to get elected, matched climate change to domestic violence in developing countries and wrote about it, and otherwise hold the world together.

That is the difference I was looking to help make when I joined AAUW, the feminine genteel ferociousness of women who weren’t gonna take it anymore, but small towns run on their own ecosystems. It’s not that I want to whistle blow so much as jump the tracks. If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we keeping getting what we’ve always got. Truth, justice, and democracy aren’t lost in one big swoop so much as every small slide where we say “not today; it’s not worth it.”

When will it be worth it? When does “we can let this chance go by” turn into not getting more chances?

Many small town guys make small deals and live small lives of pretense. These other events, they might help, while small guys don’t tend to grow from self-reflection brought on against their will. I can’t be there to challenge the wrongness, so onward to honor those elders who really did live up to the sacrifices and joys of changing the world by their decisions, actions, and integrity.

If anyone wants to join the storytelling circle (you don’t have to be female, elderly, or a grandparent) you can register here: https://www.grandmothercollective.org/what-we-do/storytelling-circle

And I am done wrestling with this. Thank you for helping me work it out. It may seem like a small thing, but aren’t big changes made up of small things?

Ruining the Psalms

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So the Psalms are generally considered almost a dessert when reading the Bible. The number of songs that come out of them, you can hear in your head as you’re reading. Sometimes I am almost singing along as I breeze along.

Except….. okay, I did a Samuel, Kings, Chronicles deep dive. These books are a little bit out of chronological order, but they feature the rise and fall (and rise and fall and rise and fall….) of Israel when it was one kingdom, and then Israel and Judah when it was two. And its exiling and rebuilding (twice) etc.

But the bulk of Sam/King/Chron complex features the adventures of David, from his anointing through the reigns of his descendants, (roughly running from three hours to 54 years). And when you have read them carefully, and used some online study guides to sort the chronology, you will see how hard David worked to get into power and keep it. And some of the very nasty acts that included.

Then you read Psalms, and you see that David and the other authors (there are at least six, but authorities differ) are basically either saying “Thanks God it’s going great and we owe it all to you” or “Help God, why aren’t you helping us, this is embarrassing in front of our enemies?” Plus a lot of them are very…. ehm…. flattering about David. Definitely meant to be sung at throneside banquets.

I grew up in a narrative that framed David’s life in a particular way. David was God’s chosen king. Therefore, whatever David did to become and stay king was fine. And, you know, that Bathsheba thing, that was just in there to show God could use flawed individuals.

OKay….. but reading these beautiful songs of worship in historic context, well, it gets conflicting. No pun intended, because many of them are about battles won or lost, and whether God showed up to help. And who he showed up for.

David once lined up a bunch of men and killed them by numerical order. David couldn’t figure out who was lying to him and who wasn’t when he had to flee his royal city (for the fifth or sixth time, I lost count). David knew better than to kill Joab (who was his nephew) even though he really really wanted to, because he needed this warrior to keep him powerful. They spent their lives eyeing each other, knives behind their backs.

The Psalms are complicated when you read them in this way. Summon your power, O God, because we want to fight. Hide me in the shelter of your wings, because we’re losing. Lead me beside still waters, because I’m exhausted with fighting.

What is the message of Psalms? For many, many commentators, it is that God chose someone and no matter what that asshole did, God stuck by him–and his increasingly awful grandchildren. For many charismatic churches, it is the source of beautiful worship music; sing the melody, never mind historic context.

For me, it is a reminder that nothing in this world has EVER been simple and Trump is not the worst threat OR promise Christianity has ever seen. Work out our salvation with fear and trembling and perhaps a modicum of common sense.