Beacon Broadside

Rev. Forrest Church: Love's Tribunal

The staff of Beacon Press mourns the passing of Forrest Church, author, friend, and long-time supporter of our work. Forrest Church (1948–2009) served almost three decades as senior minister and Minister of Public Theology at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in New York City. He was educated at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in early church history. He wrote or edited twenty-five books, including God and Other Famous Liberals, Life Lines, Lifecraft, The American Creed, Bringing God Home, Freedom from Fear, So Help Me God, Love & Death, and, most recently, Cathedral of the World. He contributed this post to our blog earlier this year, and we thought it would be fitting to share it again now.

I'm agnostic about life after death, but believe deeply in love after death. Not only do I believe in it, I experience it. We can arrange the pictures on the walls of our mind in any way we choose. As I slowly die of terminal cancer, blessed with the opportunity to rearrange those pictures more thoughtfully I fill my memory wall with images of love. The pictures that adorn my mind illuminate my life. Past and future disappear. Eternity, for me, is not a length of time extending on forever, but depth in time. In the time's eternal depth, through love's portals we enter heaven on earth. One with God, self and neighbor, we are saved.

This lesson lies at the heart of my final book, Love & Death. As I reflect upon it further, it grows in both clarity and power. I know how deeply love can hurt and how sensible it seems sometimes to rip its recurring promise from the tapestries of our lives. I also know how tempting it can be to armor our hearts from the pain of being broken, not only the pain of betrayal but also the abiding pain of loss.

Grief, you see, is love's measure. The courage to die is nothing when compared to the courage of those who live on after us, their hearts broken by their loss. Yet it is precisely at these moments when we are invited to stand before love's tribunal to be judged. Are you guilty of love or not guilty? That is life's ultimate question. Again and again over the course of a lifetime we are brought before the Tribunal of Love, where the innocent are damned and the guilty are saved.

Maria J. Kefalas: The Kids Aren’t Alright

Maria J. Kefalas is the author, with Patrick J. Carr, of Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. Kefalas held positions at the Brookings Institution, the University of Pennsylvania, and Barnard College before joining the faculty of Saint Joseph's University, where she is associate professor of sociology.

With the nation's unemployment rate closing in on 10 percent, its highest level since Ronald Reagan was president,  "celebrating the contributions of American workers to the nation's prosperity" over the recent Labor Day holiday made about as much as sense as drinking a steaming mug of hot chocolate in 95-degree heat.

And though every segment of the economy has been touched by what's going on, working-class jobs for workers without college degrees, especially those in manufacturing, have been taking the biggest hits: Since the recession started, the nation shed 1.9 million manufacturing jobs and 136,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared in a single month, from May to June of this year.  Outsourcing and automation put downward pressures on the demand for blue-collar labor during the best of times. However, in the wake of this historic slow-down, positions that have been absorbed by other workers or taken over by computer robotic systems are never coming back.

Next time you pick up groceries, take note of how many of the supermarket cashiers have been replaced by self-checkout stations, or how, when you call your doctor's office, there's an automated message system instead of a medical secretary getting you a prescription or test results. Experts warn that when this recession ends, we will most likely see yet another jobless recovery, a term used to describe this distinctively post-industrial phenomenon of economic growth that comes without firms hiring workers.

During the nation's recessions, the media pays most of its attention to the hardships of middle-aged workers getting laid off. The reality is that young workers struggle the most in an economic slowdown and face higher unemployment rates than the population as a whole. While 45 to 55 year olds have a lower jobless rate than the rest of the country (6.8 percent), 25 to 34 year olds, the largest segment of the labor force, face a 10.5 percent unemployment rate, experienced the greatest number of job losses since May 2008 (4.5 million), and remain the most likely to be underemployed (more than 2 million hold part-time jobs when they want to work full-time). The news for the youngest workers is actually worse: 15.2 percent of 20- to 24-olds and 24 percent of teenagers are out of work and seeking jobs.

Sonia Sanchez: 4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)

As a companion to today's post from Helene Atwan about attending a 75th birthday celebration for poet Sonia Sanchez, here is a poem from Sanchez's forthcoming Morning Haiku, written for the poet Eugene Redmond.

4 haiku
(for Eugene Redmond)

1.
Blue atom
poet transcribing
our flesh

2.
your quicksilver
words waterfalling in
sweet confession

3.
you have taken down
the morning turned it into
a roar of blackness

4.
your poems...
butterflies fluttering down
to earth.

Sanchez, Sonia. "4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)." Morning Haiku. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

Helene Atwan: Sonia Sanchez Celebrates Her 75th Birthday

Today's post is from Helene Atwan, Director of Beacon Press. She recently attended the 75th birthday celebration of Sonia Sanchez, an award-winning poet, playwright, activist, and scholar whose work includes Shake Loose My Skin and the forthcoming Morning Haiku.

On Saturday, September 12, I had the joy and privilege of sharing in poet Sonia Sanchez's 75th birthday celebration, at her home in Philadelphia.

The lovely old house and fall garden freshly planted with mums of all colors were jam-packed with celebrants. Some were crowded into the music room picking out tunes on Sonia's baby grand piano, which had been given to her by Max Roach, the world-renown Jazz musician and composer, and which had traveled with her over five states before being planted here and covered with photos, awards, and precious memorabilia. When two musicians started playing Monk, poet Amiri Baraka came by to recite and even sing. Others were taking turns on Sonia's native drum set, making wonderful music. Among the musical guests in attendance were Ursula Rucker, and Evan Solot, along with the two women to whom Sonia dedicated her book, Shake Loose My Skin, former lead singer Bernice Reagon and vocalist Adisa Douglas of Sweet Honey and the Rock.

Guests were busy devouring spicy b-b-q wings and tangy collards, and admiring the art that crowds every wall, every surface, every nook and cranny in the 1940s Germantown house. African sculptures, all of women, from all over the continent, stood guard imposingly in the entry. In this photo, poet Eugene Redmond stands next to one of the most impressive in Sonia's collection, a Nimba statue from the Baga people of Guinea.

David W. Moore: Those Bobbleheaded Polls on Health Care

Today's post is from David W. Moore, author of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls (out in hardcover now, paperback with a new afterword available this fall). Moore is a senior fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, and he is a former senior editor of the Gallup Poll, where he worked for thirteen years. He frequently contributes to Huffington Post, and blogs at SkepticalPollster.com, where this post also appeared.

A recent series of polls brings to mind a bobblehead doll, whose head wags from side to side and from front to back in a random fashion. That disconnected movement seems to be a visual representation of what the polls have been saying about the general public and its views of President Obama's efforts to reform the health care system.

Before the president's nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, for example, several polls announced that either a majority or plurality of Americans disapproved of the president's performance on health care. They didn't tell us if the people were dissatisfied because he was trying to do too much, or because he wasn't trying to do enough. All we got was the dismal information about how the public felt let down by the president.

Then, on the Friday after Obama's speech, a CBS poll declared that the public had rallied in favor of the president. A majority of the public now approved of his handling of health care by a 14-point margin, compared to a week earlier when a plurality disapproved by a 7-point margin. That represented a 21-point swing in opinion, which is no mean feat for one speech. (For all poll results, see pollingreport.com.)

Monday Media Roundup

Varda Polak-Sahm discusses the Mikveh, a Jewish rite of purification, at the Washington Post's OnFaith blog. The comments have been pretty lively.

While you're there, read Eboo Patel's powerful reflections on faith since 9/11.

The Kansas City Star calls The Khaarijee "heartbreakingly vivid." 

The authors of Hollowing Out the Middle look at rural brain drain in the Chronicle Review, highlighting the disturbing similarities between inner city and rural downturns, and looking at the ways that small towns can be a key part of our country's economic recovery.

Terry Galloway earns high praise for Mean Little deaf Queer in the Austin Chronicle.

Thomas N. DeWolf: Jimmy Carter, Joe Wilson, and Racism in America

Thomas N. DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Tom speaks regularly at schools, conferences, and other events around the country. For further information go to: www.inheritingthetrade.com, where you can also find his Inheriting the Trade blog, where this post originally appeared.

My first thought when I heard the voice shout out “You lie!” during President Obama’s speech before Congress last week was that whichever kook had been so inappropriate was surely being escorted out from the spectator’s gallery by security officials posthaste.

Like everyone else, I learned the next morning that it was a U.S. Congressman from South Carolina who had been so rude. Then several days later Jimmy Carter said on NBC that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Is racism really at play here?

Jennifer Culkin: Nurses on Television Miss the Mark

Today's post is from Jennifer Culkin, author of A Final Arc of Sky: A Memoir of Critical Care. Culkin, winner of a 2008 Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, is a writer and longtime neonatal, pediatric, and adult critical care nurse. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines, including the Georgia Review and Utne Reader, and in the anthologies Stories with Grace and The Jack Straw Writers Anthology 2006.

I'm so confused. To judge by two current television series about nurses, TNT’s HawthoRNe and Showtime's Nurse Jackie, are we nurses angels or 'hos? Self-righteous, micromanaging do-gooders in lab coats, or adulterous, vigilante prescription-drug addicts in scrubs? Granted, Jackie comes off as intelligent and realistic. Her black humor feels right. But how does she find time for lunch at a restaurant, let alone the sort of restaurant that has wine glasses on the table? And how, during the course of her shift, does she manage a roll in the hay with a hospital pharmacist? There are days I don't have time for a drink of water. I want to work where she works!

Except I'm not into narcotics, and certainly wouldn't use (Snort! Now there's a nice touch... and it's so lovingly filmed) them at work. Thirty years ago, when I was young and clueless, I sometimes had a glass of wine with lunch at noon before a shift that began at 3 PM. Now I'd never do that, and neither would the vast majority of nurses I know. My patients, like other consumers, have a right to expect that I'll save the wine for my time off. That I'll care for them unimpaired.

And then there is Christina HawthoRNe. I suppose it's a good thing that the public sees there IS such a thing as a chief nursing officer, that nursing is an independent profession with its own management hierarchy and that the CNO is a high-level administrator with her share of clout in the organization. But despite 30 years as a critical-care nurse, I have yet to see one charging around so ostentatiously, setting everyone straight: other hospital administrators, the Emergency Department nurses, her own daughter, a patient and his MD father. The disappointing bottom line is, Christina isn't any more realistic than... a TV doctor.

Robert Kunzman: The Case of Amanda Kurowski and the Purposes of Homeschooling

Today's post is from Robert Kunzman, author of Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling. Kunzman spent ten years as a high school teacher, coach, and administrator and is currently an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Education. He is also the author of Grappling with the Good: Talking about Religion and Morality in Public Schools.

How firmly should a ten-year-old child hold her religious beliefs? How much exposure to alternative viewpoints should she have? These questions are at the heart of a recent controversy out of New Hampshire, where a family court has decreed that ten-year-old Amanda Kurowski-- who has been homeschooled by her mother since first grade-- should enroll in public school this month. Conservative Christian news organizations and blogs are vehemently protesting this decision, pointing to the court's own acknowledgment that Amanda is "generally likeable and well liked," "social and interactive with her peers," and "intellectually at or superior to grade level."

Let's be clear at the outset that this is a custody case, which is the only reason the state is involved. The parents, who share joint decision-making responsibility for Amanda, disagree about whether homeschooling is the best educational choice for her, and have asked the family court to decide. Under homeschooling regulations in New Hampshire (and everywhere else in the U.S.), the state would have no cause to step in if this weren't a custody issue.

But apart from those legal complications, the controversy nonetheless highlights some central concerns by outsiders about religiously-inspired homeschooling. "The counselor found Amanda to lack some youthful characteristics," wrote the court. "She appeared to reflect her mother's rigidity on questions of faith." While it's not clear what forms this rigidity took (other than Amanda's apparent attempt to proselytize the counselor), it's this observation that most infuriates critics of the court's decision. Should we really be so concerned about religious dogmatism in a ten-year-old? How many ten-year-olds hold a nuanced view of their religious commitments anyways? And what if her rigid beliefs were about environmentalism or politics—would outsiders still be so concerned?

Eboo Patel: Interfaith Solidarity During Ramadan

Today's post is from Eboo Patel, the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Patel is the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement, and is a member of the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives, where he is working to realize President Obama’s priority of interfaith cooperation. He writes "The Faith Divide", a featured blog on religion for the Washington Post, where this post originally appeared.

Brian McLaren, the great Christian writer and activist, called me up a few weeks ago with a remarkable request: Would I be his fasting partner during Ramadan? He explained to me that there was a long-held Christian tradition of fasting, although it is not practiced much in contemporary Christian communities. Brian's goal was to live more fully into that Christian tradition during Ramadan, while also feeling solidarity with Muslim communities.

There are a number of Christians Brian knows who are doing this. As he writes in his blog: "We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness. Each of us will have at least one Muslim friend who will serve as our partner in the fast. These friends welcome us in the same spirit of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness."

I shared the story with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf at the beginning of Ramadan, and he told me that he was reading a book about the Judeo-Christian tradition of fasting, and learning a great deal from it.

Link Roundup: Some Reading for the Long Weekend

Meredith Hall's Without a Map continues to resonate with readers.

A Q&A with homeschooling expert Robert Kunzman addresses some of the criticism his book has received from conservative bloggers.

Kathryn Joyce uncovers the dark side of Christian adoption agencies.

The Ethicurean looks at Nancy Gift's A Weed by Any Other Name (Gifted posted here today).

Marcus Rediker has a stimulating discussion about pirates with the inmates of Auburn Prison.

Mark Winne looks at the link between obesity and poverty.

Nancy Gift: Trying Again

Today's blog post is from Nancy Gift, author of A Weed by Any Other Name: The Virtues of a Messy Lawn, or Learning to Love the Plants We Don't Plant. Gift is an assistant professor of environmental studies and acting director of the Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and a lawn full of weeds. This post originally appeared at Gift's Weeds and Kids blog.

Whatever sense of crazy excitement or optimism August brings, I usually associate this time very strongly with new beginnings, having had an academic-year schedule for at least 32 of my 38 years. So when we were down in Kentucky last week, perhaps we were drawn to the boldness of the idea of another new beginning, this one by choice. Or perhaps we just couldn't resist. But we are, once again, raising chickens.

At left, you see Emily cuddling with one of the most cuddly chickens I have ever met, one belonging to Louisville garden writer and commentator, Jeneen Wiche. This chicken was practically purring while the girls held her, having been hand-raised by Jeneen's niece. That was Wednesday. Thursday found us at the Kentucky State Fair, looking at chickens of all sorts, plus a few odd pens of chicks, at $3 apiece. I was thinking how I wished we could try again, when Emily came up to tell me "Daddy said we could get a couple of chicks!" Given that it was Brian who witnessed the fox's massacre last time, if he was ready, I could be ready.

Each girl picked out two, Hazel two black ones - Japanese cochins, the farmer told us; Emily two yellow, with brownish marks, which she hopes are Ameraucana, like her favorite chicken from our last group. I took it as a sign of both remembrance and healing that these choices reflected their favorites from our last batch.

Rick Ayers: Education as a Commodity

Today's post is from Rick Ayers, co-author (with Amy Crawford) of Great Books for High School Kids: A Teachers' Guide to Books That Can Change Teens' Lives. Ayers is an Adjunct Professor in Education at University of San Francisco and teaches at UC Berkeley and New College. He is in the Language, Literacy, and Culture PhD program of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. He blogs at the Huffington Post, where this post originally appeared.

I teach a course on adolescence at a nearby university, exploring the various challenges and rewards that new teachers will encounter in the middle and high school classrooms. In addition to the university's computerized evaluations, I always hand out my own feedback and evaluation form near the end of the semester. Amidst the many positive comments and suggestions, one negative evaluation stood out. Of course I wondered who wrote this and I imagined it was the class grump. One tries to be professional, to reflect on what was learned from the overall feedback. But, of course, it is easy to obsess, to keep coming back to the negative one.

What the student had to say was interesting. "I was looking back at my expenses this semester and I calculated that I pay $150 for each class session I have. Sometimes I wonder... was it worth $150 for me to attend a movie (The Class) with you and chat about it afterwards? Did I get my $150 worth when we did that artifact share activity?"

Robert Kunzman: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child vs. the Parental Rights Movement

Today's post is from Robert Kunzman, author of Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling. Kunzman spent ten years as a high school teacher, coach, and administrator and is currently an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Education. He is also the author of Grappling with the Good: Talking about Religion and Morality in Public Schools.

Quick—who are the only two nations who haven't ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Somalia is one of them—no bonus points for that guess. Who else stands against the 193 nations who've ratified the treaty? None other than the United States of America. This may change under the Obama administration; U.N. ambassador Susan Rice recently proclaimed the situation a disgrace and indicated that U.S. ratification of the treaty was under active discussion.

But not if the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has their way. Calling the UNCRC "anti-family" and "anti-American," they have urged their 80,000 members—as well as those who've joined ParentalRights.org, a "grassroots" organization founded by HSLDA—to voice their opposition. To further their cause, they have been a driving force in promoting a Parental Rights Amendment, which now has more than 110 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

Why does the most powerful and prominent homeschool advocacy organization in the world see the UNCRC as such a threat? Ultimately, it's an argument about who should have a say in the raising and educating of children.