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Open source in the technology world often means that the code, or set of instructions, that make up a computer program are available for anyone to look at. For computer programmers allowing others to see the nuts and bolts of your work is a window into how that individual or individuals thinks. It is also an opportunity for others to learn from, borrow from, and improve on the original work. Over this Thanksgiving weekend I took some time to watch Sarah Vowell promote her new book The Wordy Shipmates, a book that chronicles the 17th and 18th century history of Puritan colonists in Massachusetts. During the question and answer session following her presentation she pointed out how amazed she was that the colonists she studied made the time to write so much about their lives despite having to work long and grueling hours carving a life for themselves in a new and somewhat hostile land. They had in essence "open sourced" their lives and in so doing allowed the generations that followed to gain an understanding not only of the actions that they took but also the thoughts, dreams, and values that they held dear.
This tradition of of recording and documenting both our professional and personal lives has had a great effect on our nation. Ours is a nation of words, on January 20th when president elect Obama takes office he will swear to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." These Words however cast a long shadow, even today countless people wrestle with how to meet the challenge of this pledge and often they wonder what the founding fathers were thinking when they put the document together.
What were they thinking, is one of the great questions and often is a query with no answer. We ask it often of historical figures. These figures are not limited to past titans of the worlds stage. I often wonder what my ancestors thought as they made the middle passage, what my grandfather thought when he decided to move north to Detroit from the deep south, my list could go on and on. The day after Thanksgiving is the national day of listening, a time to ask our relatives and elders to tell us their story. I respect this process but, I think it should be expanded we should all take the time before the new year to write a letter chronicling not only what we did this year but what we were thinking. Each of us casts a shadow, makes an impact, on this world often in ways we cannot predict. We may not be there when it happens, I doubt the puritan settlers could have know that their collective works would inspire a writer centuries later but, their words floated through time yours could too.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Advent Conspiracy
This Sunday is the last before we transition into the season of Advent (by far my favorite liturgical season). Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and is a season of preparation for the coming holiday. Over the next four weeks the theme and teachings will contemplate and commemorate the life of Jesus. A large part of this contemplation takes place outside of the church. Movies, new and old, will champion the power of loving your neighbor and selfless acts of kindness. Miracle on 34th street (one of my mothers favorites) and It's a Wonderful Life are two great examples. The media will report heartwarming true stories that also remind us of the impact we can have on the world when we give back.
In the secular world, Advent marks the beginning of a race to capture as many holiday dollars as possible. Retailers and manufacturers have been preparing for months in anticipation of shoppers annual search for the "perfect gift." Television is filled with ads promising that if you buy that gadget, gizmo, toy, or machine you'll put a smile on your loved ones face and create a holiday memory that will last a lifetime. The pressure is turned up even more as the news airs a parade of stories about the impact that holiday shopping has on our economy; all of them implying that if you don't spend you will doom us all to an eternal recession.
Every year these two messages seem to battle one another: Buy or Give. Let me be clear, I don't think we should abandon our custom of gift giving. It's fun and a great way to celebrate but we have to abandon the myth that objects bring happiness. Given our current economic crisis, many of us will have to deal with what it means to have a smaller less consumer oriented Christmas. That prospect can make the days and weeks that build up to Christmas seem like a sad and stressful time for those who have to cut back and for those that have put too much weight on the "buy" side of Christmas.
This year I would like to encourage all of our readers to try something new on the “give” side to add balance to your holiday or at least take some of the consumerism out of it. You could do something small, like organizing a Yankee Gift Swap or Secret Santa for your family or office. In addition, you could balance your spending by giving as much to charity as spend on gifts. If you're feeling really ambitious go bigger and give your time and not just your money. For more information and ideas check out this video and then visit the advent conspiracy website. One of our parishioners passed this site along, and I was truly impressed with the message and I hope you will be too.
In the secular world, Advent marks the beginning of a race to capture as many holiday dollars as possible. Retailers and manufacturers have been preparing for months in anticipation of shoppers annual search for the "perfect gift." Television is filled with ads promising that if you buy that gadget, gizmo, toy, or machine you'll put a smile on your loved ones face and create a holiday memory that will last a lifetime. The pressure is turned up even more as the news airs a parade of stories about the impact that holiday shopping has on our economy; all of them implying that if you don't spend you will doom us all to an eternal recession.
Every year these two messages seem to battle one another: Buy or Give. Let me be clear, I don't think we should abandon our custom of gift giving. It's fun and a great way to celebrate but we have to abandon the myth that objects bring happiness. Given our current economic crisis, many of us will have to deal with what it means to have a smaller less consumer oriented Christmas. That prospect can make the days and weeks that build up to Christmas seem like a sad and stressful time for those who have to cut back and for those that have put too much weight on the "buy" side of Christmas.
This year I would like to encourage all of our readers to try something new on the “give” side to add balance to your holiday or at least take some of the consumerism out of it. You could do something small, like organizing a Yankee Gift Swap or Secret Santa for your family or office. In addition, you could balance your spending by giving as much to charity as spend on gifts. If you're feeling really ambitious go bigger and give your time and not just your money. For more information and ideas check out this video and then visit the advent conspiracy website. One of our parishioners passed this site along, and I was truly impressed with the message and I hope you will be too.
From the desk of the Administrator
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Dear Friends in Philadelphia and Elsewhere,
Before hundreds of us go off to Philadelphia City Hall on Saturday or to rallies elsewhere to rage against the outcome of marriage equality initiatives in last week's vote, I implore you to read this. It's really important--so important that I am breaking a self-imposed silence about my experience as Director of the Philadelphia AIDS Consortium in the early and mid-1990's.
As some of you know, I have spent a lot of my life as a GLBTQ and HIV/AIDS activist in Philadelphia and to some degree nationally. During the early and mid 90's I was repeatedly and some would say severely castigated as Director of the AIDS Consortium for improperly driving federal and state HIV/AIDS funds away from African-American community based prevention and care efforts toward organizations perceived as and in most cases in fact largely white "owned and operated." Despite some sense of vindication when it was discovered that some of the leaders of some of the African-American organizations were in fact dishonest (but that was also proved true of at least one white based organization, a fact which few made very much of), the general point made against me, I now believe, had real merit.
Like those in the vanguard of the current struggle for equality in marriage, I am white; and in cultural terms in this country, where the notion of "post-racial" is about as valid as the idea of "post-gay," that whiteness may be the most important thing about me, socio-economically-culturally speaking. That being said, I am, in the latter years of my life, seriously about the business of owning and exploring my own racism and trying to combat racism, not just as a matter of individual behavior but as a product of hundreds of years of white legal, economic and institutional hegemony in the United States. It is out of my experience as a white gay man and from the point of view of someone shaped by and enmeshed in that white hegemony that I now ask other white GLBTQ people the following very important and urgent questions:
Something is broken in our organizing fabric, and I believe that torn fabric reflects accurately the broken state of our community. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, when many of us were organizing and negotiating for Philadelphia's early gay and lesbian civil rights protections, the building blocks for so much achieved since then, we were advised and joined, publicly and powerfully, by a substantial contingent of powerful and respected African American community and religious leaders, including the Black Clergy of Philadelphia. Where are these allies and friends now? How have we, who were then allies, become so alienated? More important, how can we repair and strengthen those bonds as we reorganize to achieve the many remaining goals of the struggle for LGBTQ rights?
I would suggest that we white folks have once again lost our way and that a large measure of the alienation falls to us who have created it by accepting gladly that early alliance but then turning our backs on the other urgent needs and aspirations of our then allies. Having achieved a measure of civil equality in the city, we return to our white assumptions, privileges, and ways. We adopt children, but engage hardly at all in the urgent fight in Philadelphia to rebuild public education. We grow businesses; but mainly they are businesses in and for what I call white world. We engage in powerful real estate enterprises; yet the face of those enterprises is nearly always white. Red lines shift but don't change. We reshape whole communities (Mt. Airy and Northern Liberties come to mind) but we can pretty much color them white too. We are increasingly engaged in Philadelphia's vaunted health care industry; but even as that sector flourishes, community health and mental health systems serving the city's poor crumble. And this is just the most obvious stuff of our abandonment.
We need something very different.
I would suggest we begin with that analysis of the California vote and that we take what it tells us seriously. I suggest we self-consciously craft a new alliance of GLBTQ leadership that is from this new beginning both black and white, in which people of color are drivers of a shared agenda and not just taken for granted because we share sexual orientation or a "history of oppression." I suggest we assiduously avoid comparing our struggle with the struggle of black people in the United States; those of us who are gay and white have certainly suffered the dangers of living for so long in places where our kind of love dared not speak its name; some of us have died in those places. Yet none of us has been owned. None of us has lived or died the property of another. None of our families have been sundered by the rape and destruction of entire communities. None of us lives under that very low and still visibly crystal clear glass ceiling that denies equality and access to people because of race. Barack Obama is one man who has achieved greatness by forging a new coalition; behind him all these other battles remain, and their resolution will depend far more on the coalitions we are able to repair or rebuild than on the Obama victory.
So, to get very specific, in Philadelphia, white gay men and women have largely abandoned the HIV/AIDS wars to which we brought so much passion and so much of our wealth when AIDS was "our" disease (though it never really has been white, in this city or anywhere else). What's up with that, when a recent op ed in this week's Philadelphia Gay News by the Black Gay Men's Leadership Council, COLOURS, Inc, and The House of Blahnik summon all of us to come together to find new answers to this community epidemic now in its 27th year, today as always claiming a hugely disproportionate share African Americans in the still huge number of those newly infected each week in our city? We should join with this coalition of black gay leaders to insist that Philadelphia understand why HIV incidence among MSM is 20% LOWER in Philadelphia than nationwide at the same time as incidence our communities of color continues to soar. Clearly we M who have S with M are doing something right. Right there may be the beginning of a new alliance. Yet the epidemic persists and grows elsewhere. I think if we could find ways to change that, we might find new ways toward other equalities we'd klike to see.
Is it too much to suggest that the BLGMC, COLOURS, House of Blahnik Community Forum this Thursday, November 13, at 6 PM at the Arch Street United Methodist Church (Broad and Arch) to summon new energy and devise new strategies in the fight against HIV/AIDS in communities of color is at least as important, and perhaps more important, in our common struggle for equality as Saturday's City Hall rally for marriage equality? If we really want to forge a new alliance that will work for shared goals and real civil equality, then white GLBTQ people will be there on Thursday, not to hi-jack a culture or a movement but to learn from them and to offer again our lives and our resources to save the lives and assure the fundamental rights of our sisters and brothers of color? That just might be the start of something truly new. Maybe I'll see you there.
Peace to you all,
Jim
Before hundreds of us go off to Philadelphia City Hall on Saturday or to rallies elsewhere to rage against the outcome of marriage equality initiatives in last week's vote, I implore you to read this. It's really important--so important that I am breaking a self-imposed silence about my experience as Director of the Philadelphia AIDS Consortium in the early and mid-1990's.
As some of you know, I have spent a lot of my life as a GLBTQ and HIV/AIDS activist in Philadelphia and to some degree nationally. During the early and mid 90's I was repeatedly and some would say severely castigated as Director of the AIDS Consortium for improperly driving federal and state HIV/AIDS funds away from African-American community based prevention and care efforts toward organizations perceived as and in most cases in fact largely white "owned and operated." Despite some sense of vindication when it was discovered that some of the leaders of some of the African-American organizations were in fact dishonest (but that was also proved true of at least one white based organization, a fact which few made very much of), the general point made against me, I now believe, had real merit.
Like those in the vanguard of the current struggle for equality in marriage, I am white; and in cultural terms in this country, where the notion of "post-racial" is about as valid as the idea of "post-gay," that whiteness may be the most important thing about me, socio-economically-culturally speaking. That being said, I am, in the latter years of my life, seriously about the business of owning and exploring my own racism and trying to combat racism, not just as a matter of individual behavior but as a product of hundreds of years of white legal, economic and institutional hegemony in the United States. It is out of my experience as a white gay man and from the point of view of someone shaped by and enmeshed in that white hegemony that I now ask other white GLBTQ people the following very important and urgent questions:
--why do I see so very few faces of people of color in those many photos of demonstrations against the Prop 8 outcome in the pic section of http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon?
--if those pictures mean, as I suspect, that African-American and other LGBTQ people of color are much less invested in the marriage issue than white men and women, why is that?
--what does an analysis of the California vote for Prop 8 by race and class tell us about where people of color generally and African American people specifically stand on the issue of LGBTQ marriage equality?
--how might that knowledge guide future organizing efforts, from the new get-go, which needs to be beginning right now?
--is it in us, who are white, to engage people of color in a mutually respectful and serious conversation about how we can move forward together on this issue while at the same time perhaps, as white people, taking much more seriously issues of great urgency (far more urgency than marriage, I would suggest) that trouble, at best, and lay waste to, at worst, communities of color all over the country--issues of deep and fundamental human rights like freedom from poverty, assurance of decent health care, a real quality education, real access to the job market, real involvement in the places that shape how we see ourselves in this country (could there just please please please be a commitment to more than a token number of people of color in our Christmas catalogues, for instance? or in the commercial face of television and the Internet?)?
--if those pictures mean, as I suspect, that African-American and other LGBTQ people of color are much less invested in the marriage issue than white men and women, why is that?
--what does an analysis of the California vote for Prop 8 by race and class tell us about where people of color generally and African American people specifically stand on the issue of LGBTQ marriage equality?
--how might that knowledge guide future organizing efforts, from the new get-go, which needs to be beginning right now?
--is it in us, who are white, to engage people of color in a mutually respectful and serious conversation about how we can move forward together on this issue while at the same time perhaps, as white people, taking much more seriously issues of great urgency (far more urgency than marriage, I would suggest) that trouble, at best, and lay waste to, at worst, communities of color all over the country--issues of deep and fundamental human rights like freedom from poverty, assurance of decent health care, a real quality education, real access to the job market, real involvement in the places that shape how we see ourselves in this country (could there just please please please be a commitment to more than a token number of people of color in our Christmas catalogues, for instance? or in the commercial face of television and the Internet?)?
Something is broken in our organizing fabric, and I believe that torn fabric reflects accurately the broken state of our community. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, when many of us were organizing and negotiating for Philadelphia's early gay and lesbian civil rights protections, the building blocks for so much achieved since then, we were advised and joined, publicly and powerfully, by a substantial contingent of powerful and respected African American community and religious leaders, including the Black Clergy of Philadelphia. Where are these allies and friends now? How have we, who were then allies, become so alienated? More important, how can we repair and strengthen those bonds as we reorganize to achieve the many remaining goals of the struggle for LGBTQ rights?
I would suggest that we white folks have once again lost our way and that a large measure of the alienation falls to us who have created it by accepting gladly that early alliance but then turning our backs on the other urgent needs and aspirations of our then allies. Having achieved a measure of civil equality in the city, we return to our white assumptions, privileges, and ways. We adopt children, but engage hardly at all in the urgent fight in Philadelphia to rebuild public education. We grow businesses; but mainly they are businesses in and for what I call white world. We engage in powerful real estate enterprises; yet the face of those enterprises is nearly always white. Red lines shift but don't change. We reshape whole communities (Mt. Airy and Northern Liberties come to mind) but we can pretty much color them white too. We are increasingly engaged in Philadelphia's vaunted health care industry; but even as that sector flourishes, community health and mental health systems serving the city's poor crumble. And this is just the most obvious stuff of our abandonment.
We need something very different.
I would suggest we begin with that analysis of the California vote and that we take what it tells us seriously. I suggest we self-consciously craft a new alliance of GLBTQ leadership that is from this new beginning both black and white, in which people of color are drivers of a shared agenda and not just taken for granted because we share sexual orientation or a "history of oppression." I suggest we assiduously avoid comparing our struggle with the struggle of black people in the United States; those of us who are gay and white have certainly suffered the dangers of living for so long in places where our kind of love dared not speak its name; some of us have died in those places. Yet none of us has been owned. None of us has lived or died the property of another. None of our families have been sundered by the rape and destruction of entire communities. None of us lives under that very low and still visibly crystal clear glass ceiling that denies equality and access to people because of race. Barack Obama is one man who has achieved greatness by forging a new coalition; behind him all these other battles remain, and their resolution will depend far more on the coalitions we are able to repair or rebuild than on the Obama victory.
So, to get very specific, in Philadelphia, white gay men and women have largely abandoned the HIV/AIDS wars to which we brought so much passion and so much of our wealth when AIDS was "our" disease (though it never really has been white, in this city or anywhere else). What's up with that, when a recent op ed in this week's Philadelphia Gay News by the Black Gay Men's Leadership Council, COLOURS, Inc, and The House of Blahnik summon all of us to come together to find new answers to this community epidemic now in its 27th year, today as always claiming a hugely disproportionate share African Americans in the still huge number of those newly infected each week in our city? We should join with this coalition of black gay leaders to insist that Philadelphia understand why HIV incidence among MSM is 20% LOWER in Philadelphia than nationwide at the same time as incidence our communities of color continues to soar. Clearly we M who have S with M are doing something right. Right there may be the beginning of a new alliance. Yet the epidemic persists and grows elsewhere. I think if we could find ways to change that, we might find new ways toward other equalities we'd klike to see.
Is it too much to suggest that the BLGMC, COLOURS, House of Blahnik Community Forum this Thursday, November 13, at 6 PM at the Arch Street United Methodist Church (Broad and Arch) to summon new energy and devise new strategies in the fight against HIV/AIDS in communities of color is at least as important, and perhaps more important, in our common struggle for equality as Saturday's City Hall rally for marriage equality? If we really want to forge a new alliance that will work for shared goals and real civil equality, then white GLBTQ people will be there on Thursday, not to hi-jack a culture or a movement but to learn from them and to offer again our lives and our resources to save the lives and assure the fundamental rights of our sisters and brothers of color? That just might be the start of something truly new. Maybe I'll see you there.
Peace to you all,
Jim
Monday, July 14, 2008
Summer Sunday School Adventure
While our Sunday School is on break until September 7th they still found time to meet up this Saturday for a great activity. They took a hike in the Wissahickon Park, followed by Ice Cream treats at the Trolley Car Diner. All reports say that the trip was a success. While the weather was hot the ice cream was cold enough to make the hike worthwhile. The participants had so much fun there is already buzz about taking another excursion in August. Pictures from this summer Sunday School adventure below.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
World War I, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and the book of romans are tied together in a delightful way by one of our parishioners. Check out this fantastic article about this Sunday's reading Romans 5:3-4.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Welcome to St. Mary's New Blog
Hello all who stop and sojourn here in the Blogspace of St. Mary's, the Episcopal Church at Penn! We hope you'll stay a while, share your thoughts and prayers with others, find space here to reflect and refresh, and help all who pass through these electronic portals as we all seek to know more fully and move closer to the powerful love of God that fills and motivates us. The other half of our "rule" is to share that love concretely with others. In the words of our baptismal covenant, here we hope to "seek and serve Christ."
For those of you who may have arrived here on our digital shore from points unknown, let me tell you more about our community. St Mary's is located right in the middle of the residential campus of the University of Pennsylvania. At St. Mary’s, people have gathered since 1817 to worship God, celebrate the new life of Christ, and invite others into the love and spirit of God. Over the coming months, we hope to add more to this page including snippets, sermons, and discussions from daily life here at the church. We also hope you'll help with that by adding your own stuff.
We are not afraid here of lively and even disputatious discussion. One such dialogue between our Rector and Episcopal Chaplain to Penn, the Rev. Jim Literal, whom most of us just call Jim, and a visitor to St. Mary's on a Sunday when Jim preached about our complicity as citizens often (and residents, always) in torturing our fellow human beings. As you can see, that sermon sparked something and led to a long, difficult, interesting discussion that has led, so far, to a kind of understanding between the correspondents.
We do ask you to keep it clean. Some of our readers may be small children or those unused to or unaccustomed to some of the vocabulary commonly used on campus these days. Be kind to one another. And be honest.
Your feedback and suggestions about the blog, as well as pictures to tag, poetry, random thoughts, art, reading recommendations, great teachers lists, and much more--all is invited. We'll flag it if it gets too crazy!
Also, keep in touch via our web page where more of everything is posted.
Peace.
For those of you who may have arrived here on our digital shore from points unknown, let me tell you more about our community. St Mary's is located right in the middle of the residential campus of the University of Pennsylvania. At St. Mary’s, people have gathered since 1817 to worship God, celebrate the new life of Christ, and invite others into the love and spirit of God. Over the coming months, we hope to add more to this page including snippets, sermons, and discussions from daily life here at the church. We also hope you'll help with that by adding your own stuff.
We are not afraid here of lively and even disputatious discussion. One such dialogue between our Rector and Episcopal Chaplain to Penn, the Rev. Jim Literal, whom most of us just call Jim, and a visitor to St. Mary's on a Sunday when Jim preached about our complicity as citizens often (and residents, always) in torturing our fellow human beings. As you can see, that sermon sparked something and led to a long, difficult, interesting discussion that has led, so far, to a kind of understanding between the correspondents.
We do ask you to keep it clean. Some of our readers may be small children or those unused to or unaccustomed to some of the vocabulary commonly used on campus these days. Be kind to one another. And be honest.
Your feedback and suggestions about the blog, as well as pictures to tag, poetry, random thoughts, art, reading recommendations, great teachers lists, and much more--all is invited. We'll flag it if it gets too crazy!
Also, keep in touch via our web page where more of everything is posted.
Peace.
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