Spurred on by my failure to realize Monday was International Women’s Day, I’ve decided to start a small project to create a significant events calendar. Several years ago I had one of those pocket daily calendars with a random quote on each day, and those 365 calendars with a random fact or puzzle each day where quite popular. My idea back then was to create a similar calendar with historically significant events related to social justice (Juneteenth, end of S. Africa Apartheid, Assassination of Oscar Romero), and have that published as a planner.
Anyways, I’m going to start the project again, and this time I’m going to use a Google calendar, so it will have immediate use for those who are interested in using it, and allow for collaboration for those who’d like to help make it a complete 365 calendar. If you’d like to help create the calendar, just let me know and I’ll add you as an admin to it so you can add entries. If you’d just like to subscribe and get tidbits of information each day, you can view and then subscribe to the calendar here: http://bit.ly/eventsinhistory

Oh, and if you already have or know of something like this that exist, do let me know, I’d love to have it.

It’s 10:36pm on March 8th, and I just realized, thanks to my wife pointing it out, that’s it’s International Women’s Day. I’ll blame my own ignorance primarily, but it’s both sad and surprising that in my web browsing and activities of the day I didn’t notice a single recognition of this global celebration of women. I was well aware, thanks to several status updates, that yesterday was the Oscars, and I’ve already been reminded that St. Patty’s day is coming up, so how is it that we as a community can’t get it together to take one day to celebrate women? Okay, I know there is Mother’s day coming up, but apparently Minnesota officially believes catching fish trumps motherhood and regularly schedules fishing opener to conflict.

I have become, over the years, increasingly passionate about the issues and injustices that face women in our society and world. Both my amazing wife’s continual reminders and the past three years of raising our daughter have given me a greater passion and desire to speak out and act in solidarity with women against injustice. I know I probably won’t be the most eloquent or even accurate, but I encourage you, men and women, to step up and make your voices heard. I’m going to keep this from turning into a rambling rant and simply post some links to some random blogposts I’ve written on topics I think you should be concerned about:

• Killing Us Softly (A Must watch Video)
• The Wage Gap, and how the church can step up and address this injustice.
• Gender and the Attributes of God
• A Modest Proposal (article by Katha Pollitt)
• Encouraging women in leadership (link)

The Celebrity

Carrie Bloom was used to being a star, it came with the territory. Like others in her profession, her stardom hadn’t diminished over time, if anything, it actually had increased. The truth was, she had always appreciated the perks, it was a reminder to her that what she did was important. It had been her husband, many years ago at the beginning of her career, that had taken a while to come around.

“I’m not saying what you do isn’t important, honestly.” He had said that evening twenty years ago, “I just think I deserve a little more credit that’s all.” And he’d had good reason. Starting his career too, he’d been voted rookie of the year for the New York Yankees. A million dollar signing bonus, thousands of fans coming to games every day hoping to see him hit a homerun, pining for his autograph. A guy of his prestige isn’t used to being out shined by his wife, but without fail, every time they went out together, he felt like chopped liver.

“I love your work Mrs. Bloom!” The people would say. “Thank you so much for what you’ve given to the city, there’s no way we could ever repay you.” But that didn’t stop them from trying. Her husband rarely had the chance to pay for a meal, the chef or manager always coming to their table declaring the meal was “on the house” and spending a few minutes praising Carrie for her work.

It was odd to imagine a time, just a few years before Carrie had started her career, when men and women in her profession weren’t treated with the respect and reverence she’d come to take for granted. They pay had certainly increased, but it was the honor and accolades for the work that she did that she really valued and appreciated. You can only give yourself so many peptalks before you start to question the real value you have to society when your work is rarely acknowledge and, more often then not, blamed instead for societal problems.

“I want to teach third grade.” Carrie had told her parents at Thanksgiving her first year of college. Her father, an extremely successful lawyer, had been unimpressed. It had been her mother that encouraged her to follow her heart. And her mother was right. Even if the pay and respect hadn’t suddenly and amazingly increased, she knew in her heart that what she and the thousands of other teachers she worked with was important. Educating the next generation is by far and away the most important task of any society and teachers are commissioned to do just that. They are not and should not be alone in that task, parents, family, neighbors and community members need to heed the call as well, as it is said, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

(This was simply a fun writing exercise I did this morning that I wanted to share. First draft, welcome to critiques, but thought some might enjoy)

Dedicated and inspired by all the teachers I know, thank you for your selfless commitment to our children.

Want to honor a teacher? Or get involved? Leave a comment and ask me how.

“There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Even today, over a month later, thousands are in desperate need of help in Haiti. It has been encouraging to see the global community come together in the moment of crisis to help an entire country recover from near total destruction. But this post isn’t about Haiti. It’s not about devastation we saw when Katrina or the Tsunami hit or the carnage of lesser publicized natural disasters in China, Pakistan and Iran over the last several years. This also isn’t about belittling the need in those moments or the compassion and outpouring of goodwill that it sparks.

This is about what we are going to do between those moments. How we are going to live when the images fade away from the public attention and the relief effort coffers are full. What will our generosity look like when the need isn’t for a one-time “act of god” disaster, but for the daily un-natural disasters of poverty, contaminated water and disease. How will we respond when our interaction with these realities is an occasional commercial of a desolate child needing sponsorship? Just one of the millions of children across our globe struggling to survive, one of 30,000 dying every day of diseases we can treat, lack of clean water we could fix, or economic disparities our nations helped create.

It almost feels good responding to a natural disaster. There was nothing you could do beforehand to stop what happened, but now you can open your wallet, with no guilt, and only pity and charity, and help these unfortunate people in their time of need. It’s a one time thing, you can even sacrifice a little bit, and then you can move on and go on about your life.

What if the equivalent of the Haiti earthquake happened every week? And what if you knew it was going to happen the following week and the week after that and the week after that. What if it was an un-natural disaster that you could actually do something to prevent? What if God had given you and many others who believe “love your neighbor as yourself” the resources to stop this disaster, to turn the tide? What if you could stop an earthquake?

Today you have an opportunity to stop an disaster, tomorrow you’ll have the chance too. Will you stand in the way of the disaster of Malaria? Contaminated drinking water? Education? Will you make sacrifices, live differently, alter your decisions in the same way you did when the earthquake struck? Will you appeal to friends and rise up a community response to the desperate needs in your community or around the globe?

Q: What thing or area of your life have people told you that you can’t? Has that crippled you from venturing out and making it happen, or have you successfully said, “watch me”?

[photo credit, via]