Acholi Beads

The Blessings of the Burdened

It's difficult for any left-leaning Christian, much less a right-leaning or middle-ground walking Christian in today's world to feel happy for more than the 30 seconds it might take him or her to realize that she has no right to be happy in today's world. How can one be happy, when others most certainly are not? How can I laugh at Boston Legal knowing there are those without food, much less televisions? How can we be happy when we beat Rainbow Six on medium, with the knowledge that somewhere someone's REAL life is much more gruesome than the grenade launching death "REAPER" [my brother's Playstation 3 handle] just rained down on all the animated terrorists?

I don't know how we CANNOT be happy...because all those people we so pity with our fake guilt, they are happy. Well, maybe they aren't, but they have joy.

Why is it that old negro spirituals fill our songbooks, with each one on a dog-eared and well-worn page; but the songs of happy well-fed rich slave owners are on the pages still white as the day they hit the presses? Why is my church full of people who still insist on worshiping Sunday morning as if the Lord has given them nothing to sing and be happy about? Why moreover, is a church in Uganda or Zaire or those underground in China full of such happy people in the face of our Lord? We eat each day, many Christians do not. We have water, clean water, and many of our brothers and sisters in Christ do not. We have much and we are unhappy - perhaps even ungrateful. They may need our help but they do not need our guilt or pity.

And frankly, it does us no good either.

Look at the eyes of a child who lives in BelAire and has everything he could ever want or need...but has never had to fight to keep it...never had to risk to defend it...then look in the eyes of a child beaten for his faith...starving for food and water...hungry for death as a relief...who's eyes make you sadder? That's always the question we ask...because we would complain to live that way so it must be intolerable...but somehow...the promise is enough for them...

why not for me?

more on this later...but it seems that those burdened always manage to bless me more than I am able to save them

Scrap Blanket

Most of you who know me, know that I like to knit. I love it - blankets, potholders, scarves, afghans (different than blankets, just so you know), dishcloths, doileys, whatever. I have amassed quite the yarn collection too. You see, whenever you make something, unless it's a really thin scarf, it takes more than one skein [thing] of yarn. And you have to make sure you buy enough for each project the first time around. Yarn is dyed in lots. So if you are making a blanket out of terra cotta brown, all 20 of the terra cotta brown skeins at Hobby Lobby or Michaels or whatever, are not exactly alike. They were dyed 15 or so at a time. Each skein has a dye lot number written on the label. If you need about 8 or 9 skeins to get the job done, you better buy 9 NOW...because you have to make sure you get 9 with the same lot number, so your project has consistency...it would be awful to come back and end up with the last foot of your blanket lookin' a little off...

If you buy yarn like this for years, you end up with a little bit left of all kinds of colors...then of course there's the yarn you can't pass up...you know, the yarn that's usually 4 dollars a skein but's on sale for 99 cents...it would be just perfect for this scarf pattern...that you never get to. So every couple of years or so, I make something out of the scrap yarn. But since law school started for me three years ago this August, I've slown down a little on the knitting, and haven't had the chance to get to a scrap ANYTHING.

Well, today I started on a scrap Afghan. Knitting with two skeins at a time, I'm making a blanket with black as the constant color, and the other will be all the scraps of all the colors I have left. When I finish, the blanket will be black with many colors. There will be some of the orange chennille left over from the UT scarf I made my best friend for his birthday two years ago; frilly pink and purple mixed yarn left from the scarf I made my cousin Erika when she went skiing; red, white & blue yarn from the Obama scarf I made this year, and a different tinted red white & blue mixed yarn from the Bush scarf I made in college. There's green from the blanket I made my mother; UN blue from the blanket I'm making John; purple and white from the ACU blanket I made, and red from the GATA diamond scarf I made Kat. There's various shades of purple left from the blanket I made Shirley, and a small ball of blue mixed from the blanket I made Jay for his 24th birthday. Somehow, somewhere, I bought all this yarn...across the country and across the years, hauling it with me everywhere I go. And even though it's been sitting, stored and sorted by color and kind, for a while - some for years - now I need it. Now I'll use it.

Everytime I make one of these projects - these scrap projects - I'm always amazed at how beautiful they turn out. You'd think that all these mismatched colors, all these undertones and seemingly clashing hues would look absolutely terrible together. But they don't. Somehow, the undertone color makes it all fit...makes it look like somehow I knew I'd need enough Boston-Celtics-In-The-Finals-Again-Green for seven rows of this blanket, but only enough I-Dated-Too-Many-FRATS-And-Not-Enough-Kinsman-Blue for one row. All it takes is that black undercurrent. All it takes is one underlying consistent thought to string it all together. I guess not all that is random is aimless.

Not all who wander are without purpose.

In violation of copyright laws...

I bring this to you all as a violation of copyright laws, but I don't really care. Think of it as my reading it to you.



The Cure of Troy
by Seamus Heaney


Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt, and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyeard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and birth cry
Of new life at its term.
It means that once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So You Think You're A Radical

So I have been reading these Human Rights Watch reports on torture and the war on terror etc. and I gotta say, I'm really really disappointed. As I'm reading, I notice that if I turned any one these reports in for a grade in High School English [and not the AP stuff I'm talking "Hi my name is Bob and I can barely read because I smoke pot all day" kind of English Class] I would probably not have passed...and thats saying a lot because somehow there are Bobs all throughout the US who manage to pass...

These reports are terrible!! They are poorly written, redundant and don't really conscribe to any particulary set of academic standards. They cite what they find convenient to cite, but never the most important stuff. For instance, In a report I just read about Command Responsibility for Torture [which was way too long - the reputable information they had was about 10 pages], there is a HUGE section about memos written by White House Lawyers. HRW asserts that the memos attempt to reason away the Geneva Conventions, that the lawyers are responsible for nuclear holocaust and spiders under your bed, etc. but they do NOT cite the memos!!

At all!!

Later they cite a memo by Colin Powell, but there's not even a shout-out to one by Gonzales or Yoo. Now, we may all have read these memos, or some of them already, but that doesn't excuse HRW from being lazy or un-academic.

The problem I have with all of this is that if you want people to think you're talking about more than some vision you had smoking pot in a drum circle with your friends from the Yale Human Rights Clinical, then I'm going to need for you to cite things. You need to have EVIDENCE. This is why those who put their lives on the lines in war zones in the Sudan cannot stand overly educated lawyers and marketing majors and fancy-pants carpetbagging senators who don't know what fascism looks like. Because they see America for what it really is - the coolest country on earth and the ONLY one in the world where you can, during war time, stand on a corner in a busy metroplex with a sign blaming the President for actively causing the deaths of your country's largest terrorist attack to date and NOT DISAPPEAR. Instead, the people you accuse or terrorizing the whole world at will are dying out there so you can continue to stand on street corners like the loudmouth ignorant fool that you are.

My solution is that we send all of these people to Somalia for a little while, then ask them how they feel about the evil oppressive force that is America. If the world wants to eat McDonald's and drink Coca-Cola, let 'em! Honestly, the only people who are oppressed around here are these people - they are too stupid to think for themselves, to a little research, or make an intelligent decision about ANYTHING. Instead, they jump on whatever bandwagon Barbra Boxer is driving, and grab their kids along for the ride. You tell me, how is a Palestinian kid with a gun because his parents taught him to have one any different than a 5 year-old on a Malibu street corner with a sign calling Bush a fascist? This person's world may be even MORE dangerous then the kid with the gun...

and only in America, will we let that kid's parents continue to teach him to keep on truckin'

Well Played Brother

The Last Unicorn

As I sit up in bed, the exhaustion teems over my eyes, but still sleep escapes me. Like the love you can never quite hold on to, so too lately is undisturbed sleep. So numerous are the unconnected thoughts that swarm in my mind that were they colors, the greatest of Klimt's masterpieces would still pale in comparison to the sea of pigment it would produce. But amidst the rushing thoughts and the din I create in my mind, there is one thing that brings me peace - the image of a small porcelain unicorn.

As a child I had such the fascination with the enchantments of childrens' fairytales. I was awed by the simple beauty in a kind woodland maiden aiding a lost creature, or the nobility with which a noble steed would stand by his master. It seemed more than just "too good to be true," for I really believed that kindness and mercy existed in the world. All I knew, is that somewhere there had to be a place where my favorite of playtime fantasies, the Unicorn, existed.

And why shouldn't it? Lonely streets and cold nights numbered many in our silent and fearful world, but I had always felt warm. So many lived without a home, but I had one. And so, I began to love unicorns. And when I moved away from my first best friend, she gave me a small porcelain unicorn to connect us, for always. I remember it well - it had a main of rainbow colors that were far brighter in my mind than they could ever have been represented by cheap paint in the uninspired spectrum it had been painted. It was small enough to fit in my cupped hands, tiny though they were, but big enough to fill my whole heart.

As I grew, many other depictions of this fair creature began to mark the shelves and spaces of my humble bedroom. But no matter how beautiful each new addition was, no matter how intricate the detailing or the awesome talent each new artist had for her art, no image or figure could take the place of that one tiny icon. I remember talking to it when I moved away from all my friends as a little girl. I remember holding it when I wished I could go back to my "old home," where everything was alright. And as the years passed and I perhaps had grown to like my new home, I would still glance at it, or hold it, whenever I was disheartened because it reminded me of the beauty of true friendship. I recall often with a smile, and perhaps even a small tear, the day my prized possession broke in half. My mother understood that I could not just throw the gift away! She knew that none of the others would matter without this one precious pearl. She helped me glue it back together and proudly I continued to display it as if everyone else would also be indifferent to the obvious crack all around my little unicorn's neck.

As I grew, I lost my affinity for child-like knick-knacks in my room, and one by one, my unicorns disappeared. They grew old or shabby or tacky with the changing of the seasons [and my moods] and were gradually thinned out. But not the one - the Last of my Unicorns. I still have that unicorn, wrapped in tissue paper in my hope chest. From time to time I take it out and stroke it and remember...The thing about the unicorn, is that she represented mercy and justice. She protected all the creatures in her forest, and if she left it they would all be in danger. All those who were truly good knew her when they saw her. But then, so did all those who were truly evil. Much like the soldier of Christ, she is easily recognized by both friend and foe.

But what of the Last Unicorn? She would have hardly anyone left to recognize her in eyes of love. What would it be like to be known by your enemies, but by very few friends? What would it be like to stand for good and justice, and still go unrecognized by most?

I saw a man, a man whom I knew to be evil in my recent travels. He is large, he is powerful, and I am not. He owns much, I own little. He commands attention, I am just a small woman. But when he saw me, he stared at me. And when he stared at me, I could tell he knew me, and the one who sent me. God's army is full of Last Unicorns.

THE LAST UNICORN

When the last eagle flies
Over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars
At the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest
Though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving
At the Last Unicorn

When the first breath of winter
Throught the flowers is icing
And you look to the north
And a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying
And would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear her laughter
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive

When the last moon is cast
Over the last star of morning
And the future is past
Without even a last desparate warning
Then look into the sky where through
The cloudes a path is formed
Look and see her how she sparkles
It's the Last Unicorn
I'm alive... I'm alive.