Pain

 

“It demonstrates the deep pain of American people of color in an age of one police killing after another,” I wrote in 2016 of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me. How many more killings have occurred since then? More than I can count. (There appears to be a Washington Post data base of police killings that might answer that question,  but I’m afraid I’m not a subscriber, so I don’t have access.)

A Psalm for Covid Worship

We had a parking lot service this morning. Our church had one last week as well, but it was pouring down rain, and we didn’t try to make it. Instead we watched the on-line Sunday school class (pausing for discussion among the three of us at the appropriate times) and the on-line sermon (after listening to a couple specially chosen YouTube praise songs.) You may have done something similar.

Travel in a Time of Covid

​My husband has been going stir crazy ever since the drought of TV sports began, eager to go somewhere. Anywhere!  We cancelled last week's trip to Baltimore to see our daughter and family. In April we intended to return to where we used to live in Brazil for a wedding. We won’t be going. We hadn’t planned a road trip to Montana, but that’s where we went. 

In February my mother-in-law flew out to see her daughter’s family an hour south of Seattle for a birthday and a couple concerts. (Hey! This is a musical family. We’re very supportive of one another’s performances.)

I was supposed to fly to Baltimore today to visit my daughter and family for her birthday. We had tickets to go to Brazil in April for the wedding of our foster daughter’s son on a beach east of Rio de Janeiro. All that has changed. At our age it doesn’t seem responsible to travel for fun in the midst of a fast developing situation. Our isolated house in the Northwoods seems much the best place to stay.

Praying Together for the Elections

 

We are in the midst of this election season, and I am concerned as I suspect you are. The angry rhetoric on TV raises my blood pressure; the name calling and accusations on both sides break my heart. I’m conflicted by brothers and sisters in the faith who see things differently from how I see them. Consequently, I am making a list of things we all (Democrats, Republicans and independents) can pray for at this time. 

Hearing my Native American Neighbors

​I live in the Northwoods where my mailing address is a tiny Native American town dominated by a large casino. In my desire to better understand my Ojibwe neighbors, I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and a book of local history. Friends recommended several other titles, one being the autobiographical novel April Raintree (reviewed here) and another the shockingly titled Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria, an Oglala Sioux and executive director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), 1964-67.

April Raintree--In Search of Native Identity

Recently I have been trying to educate myself about the Native Americans in my community. When I posted a review of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee on Facebook, several friends made suggestions of further reading. The semi-autobiographical April Raintree by Beatrice Culleton/Mosionier was one of these.

In this powerful exploration of what it means to be native in modern Canada, we follow the lives of two Metis (mixed blood) sisters who take different paths in response to their heritage. The girls are taken away from their alcoholic parents as young children and placed in different foster homes. Some of these are very supportive situations, but not all, and school is full of bullies. Mrs. Semple, April’s social worker, chooses to believe the abusive foster mom instead of the girls ​and tells them their attempt to escape indicates they are headed for what she calls “native girl syndrome”—fighting, running away, lies, paranoia, uncooperative silences, feeling sorry for themselves, and eventually, pregnancy, alcohol, drugs, prostitution and jail. April “thought if those other native girls had the same sort of people surrounding them as we did, [she] wouldn’t blame them one bit.” (Culleton 1984: 49)