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Ophelia Dahl, in her 2006 commencement address to Wellesley College, contextualized her work as a humanitarian and activist with a quote from Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, an account of the British abolitionist movement. “The abolitionists succeeded where others failed because they mastered the one challenge that faces anyone who cares about social and economic justice: drawing connections between the near and the distant.” I have struggled to define what exactly it is that I should be doing as an activist to find my part, and my voice, in the global struggle for human rights.
In a conversation with Islamicist Reza Aslan, about the challenge presented by the history of religion, the Christian theologian Jack Miles asked, “Is there a way to tell the stories that we tell on this planet so that they become intertwining stories? So, that they become a common story in which everyone can have an acceptable place?” It is somewhere between these two challenges, of drawing connections between the near and far, and telling an intertwining story in which everyone has an acceptable place, that I have come to see my responsibility as an artist and activist. Throughout my first week at CSW I listened to stories about caregiving from across the globe and sought a common story. For every story I heard from far away I have remembered a story from my own life as the daughter of two caregivers.
This weekend I attended a benefit exhibition for Iraq Veterans Against the War and heard stories from veterans that are part of our common story. The exhibition, titled 2,191 Days and Counting, was co-curated by Maya Joseph-Goteiner and Chere Krakovsky and considers “a broad range of reactions to the two wars: grief, rage, despair, cynicism, and even compassion.” The opening started with cocktails and general carousing, but then the mood changed decidedly when the performance half of the evening began. We were introduced to some of the men and women of IVAW. Immediately, I flushed with embarrassment. In all my conversations at CSW about women’s rights, caregiving, and peace, I had neglected to consider women’s rights violations in the American military and the burden of care placed on the families of veterans. Read the rest of this entry »
A former professor of mine, a cultural critic and a lecturer on the history of photography, loves to tell a story about an experience she had walking home one day with her stepson. It was a humid day in August in New York City and she and her stepson saw an older neighbor struggling with a heavy bag of groceries. My professor and her stepson took the groceries and helped the neighbor up the stairs of her building and made sure she recovered from the heat. As they were leaving the little boy turned to his mother and said, “Is this going to be on the news tonight?” “No,” the professor replied. Her stepson smiled and said, “I suppose if we’d hit her and stole her groceries it would be.”
In the past week we have talked a lot about how we can work together to eliminate gender stereotypes. Employing new media can be an important way to continue this work after we leave CSW and return to our communities. How can we make sure that good, decent work is portrayed in the media? How can we use social networking technologies to change attitudes around caregiving thereby helping to eliminate its stigma?
The Salvation Army Children's Choir
Once again we were blessed this morning with a worship service that seemed to perfectly restore and replenish our spirits. Yesterday, the children’s choir of The Salvation Army was unable to make it to our worship because of a traffic hold up. Last night they stayed in a hostel near the United Nations so they would be sure to worship with us this morning. So much the luckier are all of us, because surely we were all in need of the blessing of energy today, in particular, as we received word late last night that Ecumenical Women were chosen to be part of an interactive expert panel at the UN on “the gender perspectives of the financial crisis.” The leaders of our advocacy teams were up late into the night tightening and refining our contributions to the agreed conclusions. Gulping down coffee, I made it into the worship service as the children were finishing their first song. Luckily, Rev. Stone called the children back to wild applause from the packed pews. The children launched into a fierce, beautiful song called I am a friend of God. Quickly, we all were on our feet, waving our hands in the air and feeling the tremendous blessing of being able to gather together every morning, sing, dance, march, and, today, join voices with joyous children.
Later in the afternoon, before going into the Anglican Consultative Council panel Empowering the Girl Child I tried to remember the energy of our children as my own energy was flagging. In 2007 the focus of the 51st Session of the Commission on the Status of Women was on ending all forms of discrimination and violence against girls. Therefore, the focus of this important panel was on giving girls from across the globe a space to talk about the progress and challenges they have experienced in the two years since the Agreed Conclusions on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and Violence Against Girls. The panel started with members of the Anglican Consultative Council calling on all the girls in the room to introduce themselves to all of us. As these girls were introducing themselves I couldn’t help but wonder what my life would be like today if I had had the opportunity to involve myself in the pursuit of women’s rights at the UN. Indeed, all the girl panelists affirmed their desire to be involved in our processes. As church women we can stand to learn much from listening to our children’s experiences as child soldiers and as survivors of gender based violence across the globe. After the girl panelists spoke, members from the Working Group on Girls facilitated a powerful discussion about practical ways we can engage with girls and integrate inter-generational conversation into our communities. One easy way to start this process is to visit the Working Group on Girls website. You can find a toolkit for introducing the 51st CSW Agreed Conclusions to small groups of girls with girl friendly language, including sets of Indicators on the issues of Health and Poverty.
Throughout the course of my first week here at my first CSW I have heard strong, smart women advocate for the involvement of women on all levels of policy-making. Surely, it is just important for women advocates here to provide space for the voice of girls as we move forward in our pursuit of gender equality.
For years my brother has listed simply “Sam Cooke” under religious views on his Facebook profile. I suppose those not close to my brother think this to be a rather tongue in cheek declaration of atheism, at worst, or agnosticism, at best. However, privileged as I am to be his sister, best friend and compatriot in musical taste, I know that my brother’s devotion to the music of soul singer and Civil Rights Movement icon, Sam Cooke, comes from a deeply Christian place.
Sam Cooke
The longest running argument in our family has pitted my brother and me squarely against our father with Sam Cooke in the middle. Tommy and I maintain that, regardless of Bob Dylan’s authorship, Sam Cooke’s interpretation of Blowing in the Wind is the definitive version. My father’s young adulthood as a hippie flowerchild deluded him into thinking that Bob Dylan’s voice is pleasant. But, our very favorite Sam Cooke song is Hem of His Garment. The song is an interpretation of Matthew 9: 19-23; Jesus’ healing of a woman who, having suffered twelve years from hemorrhages, touches the hem of his cloak and is cured by the steadfastness of her faith in Him.
This morning in our worship service we heard a story from Papua New Guinea that has stayed with me all day and led me to reflect on this story from Matthew and my relationship to it. A pregnant woman, a woman who loves to dance, starts to hemorrhage during childbirth. The Salvation Army is called and arrives on the scene with a car to take the woman to a hospital. The woman’s husband will not allow his wife to enter the car because she is bleeding so profusely she is sure to ruin the interior of the car. The husband does not want to be held responsible for any damage to the car. The local caregivers agree with the husband. Nothing can convince them to allow the woman to get in the car and she consequently dies in childbirth. Similarly, the woman in the story from Matthew, because of constant menstrual hemorrhaging, is deemed unclean. Under Jewish law she cannot be touched. She is on the margins of society: isolated and vulnerable.
Sam Cooke’s version of the story goes like this:
Oh, She spent her money here and there
until she had no, had no more to spare,
the doctors, they’d done all they could
but their medicine would do no good.
When she touched Him The Savior didn’t see
but still He turned around and cried
‘Somebody touched me’
She said
It was I who just wanna touch the hem of Your garment,
I know I’ll be made whole right now’
She stood there crying
‘Oh Lord, Oh Lord and Oh Lord, Oh Lord’ Read the rest of this entry »
