update. and a soul-health break.

merry christmas eve from nashville

all is good but my email isn’t working. i can receive messages but can’t reply.
so, to jude smithey et all who’ve been in touch, i’m sorry for not getting back to you. i’ll try using joel’s email as an alternative over the coming days and in the meantime, all is good here – great, actually. busy. and exciting. and relaxed. and full of love and togetherness.

there’s a beautiful tree and paper chains and after lots of fun shopping there’s a big bundle of gifts to be wrapped and present-ed at the Dark family gathering tomorrow.
i’m feeling very at home and we’ve got a really good thing going on here. so much to celebrate and joy to be felt.

i’ll post photos tonight. but right now there’s two gifts to be tracked down before the stores shut for the holidays and then we head to Christmas Eve communion at DPC.

hi to all in belfast. wish we were closer.
more soon, i promise.

so, until later, take 5…

peace be with you, dear friends…

LB

under the pink

or, suffer the little (girl) children…

(in 1918) the Ladies’ Home Journal wrote: “There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

– Ben Goldacre, Out of the blue and pink in the Guardian

fast forward to 2009 and there’s a pink car accessories aisle in Halfords. seriously. (cue loud gagging)

somedays it’s hard not to think the world has gone completely mad.

this article on feminist books for kids has provoked some heated opinionating over at The Guardian. amongst the almost two hundred comments, i discovered a reference to PinkStinks – a website devoted in part to battling the ubiquitous pink trend in products for girls…

who will speak up for love and justice if not us…?

For the past several days, myself and Joel have been discussing the truly disturbing, “Anti-Homosexual Bill” on the table in Uganda and how best to communicate with those who might bear influence to block it. of what we might each want to say in any such communication we try and make to them.

it is easy to feel hopeless when one hears little more from Christian leaders than weak evasions that avoid taking an actual stand against legislation that would be rightly described as fascist, or an avoidance of voicing principled support for basic human rights.
this is not a controversial issue. there should be no thinking through what the response of Christians should be when faced with this level of civil oppression. but it is seen as controversial. as if there is more than one reasonable response to this kind of law.

i hope more denominations follow the path of the United Reformed Church in standing up unequivocally for what is right, and just and good.
i hope, and pray that a strong collective, ecumenical chorus will rise up on this issue and show its support for the human rights of those in Uganda and Rwanda.

will that happen? i fear not.

i continue to be deeply troubled by the scapegoating being made of LGBT community in the name of Christianity, much of which claims these days to be against homophobia but fails to be in active support of love and would deny one group of people the experience and gift of loving partnership. instead, encouraging life long celibacy as the way of discipleship even while acknowledging same sex attraction may never be “overcome”. as if this ‘lifestyle’ was a disease or an addiction and such celibacy an act of faithful sobriety. i consider it a horrible exercise of heterosexual privilege to claim that one person’s love can be fully and mutually expressed and another’s cannot. that God will bless one but not the other.
as Keith Olbermann said a year ago after Prop 8 in California, “What is it to you?”
but i don’t want the situation in Uganda and Rwanda to be about criticizing Christians who do not support everyone as equal, as whole. instead along with my hope that people will choose the side of justice, i want it to be about what it is we can be for… and i am certainly for this:

marriage equality didn’t make it through the senate in New York state yesterday. however disappointing yet another defeat for equality may be, this speech made before the vote by New York State Sentator Diane Savino, who i’ll confess i’d not been aware of before today, is incredibly powerful. it is in support of love and commitment. i somehow believe the arc is bending toward justice and these words of Savino’s, like Olbermann’s, will stand the test of time…

LB