Speaking to the Fears of Same-Sex Love and Recent Suicides: A Prayerful Response

The past month's headlines reporting the suicides of young people - who have chosen to end their lives because they are perceived as gay - has caused the deepest sorrow in my heart. I have been praying about how to respond.

My prayer is informed by my own life experience. My best friend committed suicide six weeks before we graduated from high school. The death of Greg Schulte has shaped almost the whole of my life, career, vocation on this earth to date. I have worked in many ways - since the events of March 28, 1987 - to be a person of great love, using the gifts I believe God gave me to inspire others in their life journeys; I have worked to cultivate young and old people's perceptions: to see and believe in themselves as beautifully, perfectly made and with a great purpose on this planet. Namely: to love.

When young people kill themselves in such alarming rates, I am called again to revisit my vocation, my response, my work.

My brain, heart, spirit go to my daughter. I look into the face and eyes of Marguerite Marie Kiemde: this beautiful five month old child conceived by François Kiemde and me. I don't want her journey as a young person to include such encounters with self-loathing, hate and fear that inspire such death. I don't want Marguerite - or any of her peers - to encounter the taunting, teasing, tormenting because they might be viewed as homosexual. I don't want any more young people to want to die and to act violently on this desire to not want to continue living.

I try to go to the root of this horrible phenomenon of young people committing suicide. I pray about the best way to address this, transform it, see a way toward a life-giving and loving response and solution.

I read. I listen. I pray. I talk to friends and family who are gay and those who fear homosexuality, and judge same-sex love and relationships as sinful.

I hold the news of these suicides alongside the recent release and mailing of a DVD by our archbishop in Minnesota who is working to define and defend marriage as that natural and appropriate for heterosexual men and women. And I pray. I hear a larger message about a call to partner and commitment, delivered I believe with the most sincere of intentions -- as one extended in love -- but also conveying a message of diminishment to all gay men and women who love and respond to their call to partner. I feel diminished in hearing the message.

I try to hold the contradictions. I wonder about how these messages of our church are connected with the deaths of young people? Is it possible our church leaders are part of the root problem inspiring a desire to die?

Ellen De Generes spoke recently to the bullying of gay young people on her TV show. I wonder how much of a problem this hate of gay children is with just younger people taunting them, as compared with their parents, teachers, priests, elders sending equally hateful messages that torment?


"Respect the person" is a phrase uttered repeatedly by our church and community leaders about our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. This is a form of the "hate the sin, love the sinner" mantra coming from a number of our Catholic priests and bishops, Christian leaders. And I have to say: It's simply not enough. I have to back up and challenge the sin that is being identified in the heart of homosexuals. I ask: "What is it? The sin of loving someone of the same gender? The sin is desire? The sin is attraction? The sin is acting on your desire to love and connect?"

I keep hearing Sr. Eileen Currie, my spiritual director at Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat Center in Colorado: "Who do you think gave you your desires?" After a brief pause, she answered emphatically: "GOD!" I can hear all the non-procreative arguments about the root of this desire to physically love someone of the same gender being wrong. And I hold firm: That any intentional alignment with another, of any gender, honoring the intimate soul and being of that person, is nothing, save for a generative and loving action. Period. Heterosexual. Homosexual. Love begets love. It fuels and inspires our every waking moment. If it can be honored, seen, as in fact what it is: the most natural and beautiful gift God gave us. The sin of our leaders, teachers, adults, preachers, is not seeing this, in my humble opinion. We diminish and trample on the dignity and gifts of whole faction of God's creation. It's rampant in our society, culture. And, then, it leads to this. Death.

Why does anyone want to live when all they see and experience are messages of how bad they are? When they are told their call to love is inferior, or rather, intrinsically evil and wrong?

I'm with Ellen. I'm with so many trying to create space to dialogue, educate, be in relationship, transform this fear-space and culture that perpetuates the desire of a person to die. I don't want this walk of fear, shame, death, tragedy for Marguerite, or anyone else's child. I pray for Love.

In peace and prayers,
Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

On Immigration Labor: Colbert Quoting Matthew 25

I wonder who caught this on C-Span 3, (or YouTube or Facebook or any television news source...?) It's Stephen Colbert speaking at the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Security. In the following excerpt from the transcript, he shares why he's there:

"At the request of Congresswoman Lofgren, I am here today to share my experience as an entertainer turned migrant worker and to shed light on what it means to truly take one of the millions of jobs filled by immigrant labor. They say that you truly know a man after you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, and while I have nowhere near the hardships of these struggling immigrants, I have been granted a sliver of insight."

Mr. Colbert had prepared comments which you can see and read in their entirety. It's this moment, when he's asked why he has chosen to come and talk about this topic today, that I find truly inspiring.

"people who don't have any power...we invite them to come here, and then ask them to leave...an interesting contradiction...the least of my brothers...."

My friend Bridget O'Brien posted this on Facebook; again, it moved me. (Bridget is a Notre Dame theology doctoral student, Maggie's godfather - Zac Willette's friend.) This video gave me pause, as any Colbert work does. I wondered watching it:

"Is this real? A comedic skit? More of Colbert's brilliant satire?"

After watching more closely: I realized this was citizen-smart-Christian-catholic-Colbert acting according to his conscience. And that rocks.

Thoughts?

Happy Contemplating!

"Treating Cancer in the Catholic Church" - Fr. Pat Malone, S.J.

The following is a journal entry from Jesuit priest, Fr. Pat Malone, posted on his CaringBridge website. Fr. Pat offers us all very life-giving words as he applies lessons from his personal battle with cancer - to the deep unwellness manifesting in the Catholic Church. I took the liberty to give his entry a title; I offer it here on Passion Sunday as part of my own attempt at prayer, contemplation, compassion, and love during this entrance into Holy Week.

Peace,
Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

Mistreated

In a 2007 article, Fr. Andrew Greeley wrote, “The Catholic Church is in deep crisis (always has been, always will be) and desperately needs reform (when has it not?)” ‘Crisis’ is too mild of a term for the current situation. Here are lessons from this health adventure that apply to the Church’s problem, and anyone else confronting deep disaster.

Recognize what is killing you.
It could seem rather routine to recognize cancer, but, as those involved with this health journey know too well, it can disguise itself, continuing to reek harm. (When medical people were not sure of the source of the problem, some suspected it was a painful, incurable nerve disorder. When the results returned with the correct diagnosis, a doctor beamed, “Good news. It’s leukemia.”) It is more difficult to recognize that which destroys our sense of decency, especially when such action requires we give up long-standing practices. One self-exam may this: what’s our reply when the innocent suffer because of us?

Something fundamental has died, or is on life-support, when the immediate response is anything but utter shame, remorse, and outrage that this occurs at all, in an organization that has as its creed to love God and neighbor. When our instinct is anything else, we need a very long retreat. There is a critical need to remember that this problem is universal. It may be right to question the motives of those who constantly probe. It is certainly true that these problems are not exclusive to a church, nor do they represent anything but a small percentage of priests and others who work with children.

But the soul of the church suffers fatally when the instant response is anything but rushing to the wounded (in this case, to the parents). Then we see the appropriate response is not to explain but to ask: how can we be forgiven? What must be done to move forward with hope? Such a first move would reveal the absurdity—and the deepening of the pain—of speaking how this problem occurs everywhere, and this overload of attention is unfair. Both may be true, though both point to how people hold a faith to a higher standard, and both may be needed for any formidable structure to see what is destroying it from within.

When our proclamations focus on the evils in the world while ignoring our own at home, part of our reason to be gets buried. We lose more than integrity; we risk forgetting why we have religion: to re-unite, to transcend the natural drives to satisfy ourselves first, to be on fire with a closeness that created it all, to find redemption is the worst of situations. In most religions there is an additional fundamental: that we must make this world more sane for the most vulnerable. When we put anything above the need to protect them, respect them, build them up, we may have a formidable structure, but it is not holy, nor life-giving. Good news: it can always return to this central belief.

Secrets keep us ill.
All patients have unique reasons to rejoice when they arrive at the day of discharge, though most would see the end of wearing flimsy gowns to be as liberating as able to breath again. Even Gitmo prisoners get pants. Those wicked gowns are thin and flimsy for a reason: no space for cover-up. They expose the signs of disease, danger, or distress. Without them (so patients are told) healing cannot occur.

What has most rattled the world, believers and non-believers, is not that an organization has criminals and disturbed individuals within its ranks, but that those who could put the individuals out of harm’s way did not always do so, sometimes until a public outcry demanded it. The way forward was to conceal. There is a place for discretion, especially when it helps the wounded find a new normal, but secrecy too often feeds on itself: it makes it easier to stay clandestine the next time, and the next time. When we do not speak of the corruption, we do not stop it.

Secrets keep us ill. They perpetuate shame; simmer our grudges, lock us into bleakness. Keeping things secret helps us to rationalize the worst of our behaviors. They make it possible to deny that any of us can do horrific things, especially to the weak. They block us from accepting that we can act contrary to the most cherished ideals of our better selves, or that we will sometimes do the expedient rather than the right thing. Worst of all, secrets convince us that we either do not need redemption, or its beyond our reach.

Ask a nurse how to heal from the hidden decay and dangers in our lives: Take responsibility for self-care. Let others see it, name it, help evaluate its problem. Stop making it worse by pretending there’s no need for a painstaking cleansing. Don’t let your disease make more people ill. Use what is good in your body to help fight it. In this case, use the church’s under-rated tool (handed down from the Jewish faith) of reconciliation. Use it to see hear how others have paid a price for one’s lack of self-care. Use it because it gets easier to openly speak the truth the next time, and the next time.

Welcome visitors.

Listen to those who know you are not well. Welcome their questions, even if you have no answers, even if you don’t know why they ask it. Let yourself be available, candid, trusting. Do this not because it is comfortable, but because it keeps us from getting unaccountable, gruff, and removed from the day to day realities of the people around us. Welcome and listen to them, knowing we learn most about ourselves when we have interruptions.

Our hope for healing may be in how much we allow others to show where we are weak. We do not always see what is obvious to others. We may know we obsess over some small points; they may see the big points we are blocking. We may have grown accustomed to our manageable mess. They may see the mounds of chaos that surround us. We may be convinced we have the answers to this terrible tragedy. They may show us we are avoiding the tough questions.

Receive the full strength of women.
It’s a scary thought to imagine a hospital without the dedication, leadership, and joy of women. Now we know this absence is a frightening scenario for any institution. Its hard to imagine that the skewed priorities of preserving an institution’s reputation over the well-being of a damaged child could occur had there been at least one grandmother in the conversations. Men are certainly able to avoid the trappings that come with holding moral authority. They can be kind care-givers. It is just that the current betrayal of trust requires us to no longer impede anyone who can restore guidance, credibility, and confidence to a hurting institution. Golda Meir wrote, “Whether women are better (leaders) than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse.”

We need the wisdom from those who have moved civilization forward when others have gone to war. We need the perseverance from those who have stayed with the sick, the uneducated, the hungry. We need the passion from those who know the sting of being ignored. We need the love of those who stay focused an organization’s core mission. Dorothy Day wrote in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness: “I loved the church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal for me."

This week, followers of this Christ enter into their High Holy days, and hear again—to confirm Andrew Greeley’s point—stories of betrayal, angst, and innocent suffering. May this eternal love become more visible, trustworthy, and humble in this vessel that desperately needs reform. May our own encounters with life’s fragility help us to make the church ever closer to what its founder intended; a place where the mistreated, the ill, the sinner all find healing.

Week's End Assignment: Passion Reading!

If you are anything like me, you are tense navigating this past week's news. You might be celebrating the passage of Health Care Reform, while holding the conflicting responses emerging in a polarized nation's warring verbiage. You recognize the complexity of financial costs associated with such Health Care legislation, and hold these dollar amounts alongside images of uninsured friends and family members, (maybe former students and their relatives) with whom you are in direct relationship. You work diligently to defer judgment about enraged people's responses bombarding your email inbox, Facebook page and television screen, and try to navigate calmly the barrage of words, posing your own critical questions:

(What does health care cost? What does it mean to lead as a democratic nation? How do we model liberty and opportunity for all? How does a government's allocation of tax dollars reflect the priorities of a nation? Where is creation and wellness in this financial picture? Where is education? What is life-giving? What results in death or further destruction? What research and experience do we all need to read, reflect on, or engage in?" )

Perhaps your heart aches with anger and outrage over the headlines announcing the current pope's connection with the sex scandals in the Catholic church. Perhaps you align yourself compassionately with a stance of forgiveness and mercy for all perpetrators, while seeing the past sins in not recognizing the need to acknowledge the many victims. Maybe you struggle as a catholic or religious person who wants to celebrate the tenants of his or her faith in a life-giving, liberating fashion. You want freedom and joy and radical love to be known -- and justice for all people, regardless of their beliefs or skin color or economic standing. You wonder about how you move forward in faith, in hope, in love for all that is at hand in these messy human circumstances. You try to trust that something powerful is at work in the collective conscious of a church -- or in a politicized nation and impassioned people.

You pray.

If you are anything like me, you want to not be so tense. You long to release anger, frustration, and see each headline, email, television broadcast with Love's eyes.

Here's an assignment that I gave my praying, searching, spiritual self this morning, given all at hand. Perhaps you will find this helpful?

Read Passion Sunday's scriptures: Luke 22: 14- 23:56.

If you can make space in your brain, meditate on the story of betrayal. Move closer to the suffering of Christ. Hold fast to the tensions present in the innocent being tortured. Marvel at all the human dimensions that this enfolding drama extends -- while recognizing the radically transformative outcomes - of Divine proportion -- that are possible in this Passion tale.

Then find yourself in this story. Locate your current leaders. Consider present lawmakers alive and in this narrative. See the uninsured and abused. See how you are all connected, all one. And let your heart, mind, and spirit be softened, as you let go of your need to know everything, be in control, or be right.

Let Love lead you.

The Conversion and Calling of Oscar Romero – Alive and Inviting us to North Minneapolis?

The following was originally posted at the Visitation Sisters of North Minneapolis blog site.

"I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people."
-Archbishop Oscar Romero

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Salvadorian Archbishop Oscar Romero. As I hold this man's legacy and witness to the gospel in my prayers, I think about Romero's story. I meditate on his conversion experience. I think about how he went from being a bookish sort of fellow, intentionally removed from any sort of gospel activism, to one who became immersed in prayerful action for an oppressed and impoverished people, unpacking and applying the tenets of liberation theology. I am moved as I contemplate what transformed his heart, his spirit, his presence in the warring nation of El Salvador. I imagine the night, just three weeks into his appointment as archbishop, that he traveled from the capitol to a country side church in Paisnal, where one of his priests had been murdered - along with two other parishioners - for standing with the peasant farmers in their desire to create farming cooperatives. I see the people gathered around Romero, quietly beseeching his support, and I ache fathoming what anger mixed with compassion must have started a fire in his own heart.

As I contemplate Romero's presence among the terrorized people in this rural community, I wonder how any of his experience inspires or relates to my own - so far removed from Central America? How does his life and witness to Love inform my own call to live as a catholic in this global community? Where am I being invited to stand in solidarity? What spaces of poverty or injustice am I called to witness first hand? How am I being invited to recognize the struggle that calls for the immediacy of Christ's presence?

"God needs the people themselves to save the world . . . The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation." - Archbishop Oscar Romero

Romero's conversion hinges upon his knowledge and first hand experience with the poor. It's his relationship with the victims of violence, his proximity to the peasants and priestly people struggling to live in peace, that informs his transformed ministry and leadership in El Salvador.

Today in North Minneapolis, the Visitation sisters are going about their daily lives of active prayer and communal ministry. They rise for early morning prayer at 7am, attend mass at 8am with neighbors and friends; go about their days with a commitment to open the door to whoever rings the bell, inviting them to be their vocational calling and "Live Jesus!" They pray again at noon, 4:45pm and 8:15pm. In each internal experience of prayer, the sisters will tune into how they are experiencing Christ alive and calling to them through their neighborhood. They, not unlike Romero, are witnessing to the transformational power of relationship, of proximity to the poor and those living on the margins. They are following in the footsteps of their founders, Francis and Jane, and finding alignment in the gospel narrative of Mary and Elizabeth: visiting and tending to the love wanting to get born in each of us.

In our urban ministry, the Visitation Sisters of North Minneapolis choose to reach out in a special way:

1. to companion and affirm those who are impoverished and lonely — those living on the fringes of society.
2. to support those committed to a ministry of peace and justice by sharing our Salesian spirituality with them.
3. to educate and network with those who, in being materially secure, seek ways of growing in faith, hope and love by bridging with people in our multi-cultural community.
4. to provide spiritual formation for those affiliated with us in a variety of ways.
   - From "Ministry of Prayer and Presence"

Tonight, a group of people ranging in age from 20-45 will convene under the auspices of the Visitation sisters in a space devoted to discernment. These young men and women will be dwelling inside the questions of calling, of vocation; they'll be prayerfully focusing themselves, at least for two hours, on the invitation to live their gifts and honor their divine purposes. They will, not unlike Romero, be invited to "come and see" the love on fire within their own hearts for a ministry, career, calling -- in possible proximity to the poor.

I hold all this information as I pray through my writing this day, marveling at the juxtaposition of the beloved Romero, the presence of the Visitation sisters in North Minneapolis and the way a whole host of men and women are entering into this space of intentional reflection.

Please join me in prayer for all that is at work on this day, and in the many to come, as the spirit of Romero is felt alive and resurrected in the people of Salavador, as well as those many miles beyond: in the hearts and minds and actions of the spiritual beings in North Minneapolis.

Peace and gratitude,
Melissa Borgmann Kiemde
Visitation Companion

Desmond Tutu on Human Rights

I came across the following writing by Desmond Tutu this week when a friend in Cape Town, South Africa, posted a link to this Washington Post article on her Facebook page. For the past couple of days, I've returned to Archbishop Tutu's words, and been inspired by the simplicity of his message; the largeness of love conveyed in his writing.

I've boldfaced passages that struck me in particular. Let me know what strikes a chord in you.

In love, peace, solidarity,

Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde

In Africa, a step backward on human rights

By Desmond Tutu

Friday, March 12, 2010

Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.

It is time to stand up against another wrong.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

"But they are sinners," I can hear the preachers and politicians say. "They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished." My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family. Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? Does God love his dark- or his light-skinned children less? The brave more than the timid? And does any of us know the mind of God so well that we can decide for him who is included, and who is excluded, from the circle of his love?

The wave of hate must stop. Politicians who profit from exploiting this hate, from fanning it, must not be tempted by this easy way to profit from fear and misunderstanding. And my fellow clerics, of all faiths, must stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The writer is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

One Tribe! One People! Meditating on the Black-Eyed Peas' Tune...

My friend Emily Burt-McGregor tagged me in a facebook post last evening as she referred to this Black Eyed Peas video. I had never seen or heard this tune, but found myself playing it and smiling. The song's lyrics made me tap my toes, nod my head and sing back to the screen, (my apartment windows, Marshall Avenue, the Mississippi River -- the world):
WE ARE ONE PEOPLE! ONE TRIBE!
ONE PEOPLE!

Do you agree?
Amen.
Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

Poetry on Palestine and Israel: Check out Sunday, 10/25 in D.C.

"We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

" - Kevin Coval, excerpted from the Huffington Post, 10/24.

I'm posting the following as an act of support for the poet activists speaking out on behalf of dialogue on a complex issue of our time. How to address Israel? How to understand the US's role? How to unpack the many narratives told by Palestinians, Israelis, World Leaders, Military and Peace figures? I received a letter earlier in the week describing a truly sad and unfortunate censoring of these poet activists, Kevin Coval and Josh Healey, who were originally invited to come and speak at JStreet. I know Josh through his work at Madison's First Wave Spoken Word program, as well as meeting him at Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. I encourage any and all who are able to tune in to this important dialogue, and participate on Sunday.

Peace,
Melissa
***
WE WILL NOT BE SILENT: POETRY ON PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

with Kevin Coval and Josh Healey

Sunday, October 25
4:00-5:30pm
Busboys and Poets, Langston Room
2021 14th St, NW (near U Street Metro station)
Washington, DC

This past week, Kevin Coval and Josh Healey were censored and un-invited from this weekend's J Street conference in D.C. as a result of attacks in various right-wing blogs and online magazines. In defiance of these McCarthyist attacks, and J Street's subsequent accommodation, Coval and Healey have decided to proceed with the original event.

They will share their poems and dialogue about Israel/Palestine, identity and justice, and (especially now) free speech. No longer part of the J Street gathering, this event is open to the whole community: conference attendees, artists, activists, youth, elders, Jews, Palestinians, gentiles, and anyone down to build.

Free event. All-ages, all are welcome.

For background on the situation, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-coval/searching-for-a-minyan-ou_b_327597.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1122325.html

For more info, contact jewsthatareleft@gmail.com

* * * * *

"ONE:" The Fight Against Global Poverty

This website inspires me. I got turned onto this work when my friend Ibe Kaba posted a link to the "ONE" organization during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, on his facebook page. The idea of this summit being hosted somewhere on the continent of Africa is being proposed. This notion excites me. Check out the mural. Check out the website. Sit with these basic questions:

What is the fight against global poverty?
What does this mean for me?
What does it require of you?
What must each of us get conscious of?
How is each and everyone of us an agent of change?

Peace, Love, Contemplation, ACTION!
Melissa

On the Murder of Chris Dozier: Reflecting on the Lives of Former Students

Marcus White. Toua Xiong. Quincy DeShawn Smith. And now Christopher Dozier. All former North High Students I had the privilege of knowing and teaching. All killed in North Minneapolis.

***

I woke up Friday morning to an email from the Peace Foundation. A "Peace e-lert" is what the message was entitled, sent to inform those on the list-serve of recent news, events in and around North Minneapolis. In this case, the email contained information about an upcoming Vigil, sponsored by MADDADS and the Peace Foundation organizations, to honor the life of Christopher Dozier, who was murdered Monday, August 31st in North Minneapolis. The message states that Chris "was found shot to death in a car." It includes a photo of him holding a small child. It relays information about his life. It reads:

Chris, the father of two sons, Christopher Jr. (3) and Sincere (1), was an active member of St. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church and a graduate of North High School (2004). He also attended Dicker College in Louisville, Kentucky & Barber College (2006-2007). His family says that he was a loving son and brother—a true family man—who will be remembered for his big smile and his creative designs.

It offers details about the vigil itself, which is held in the location the violence occurred:

The PEACE Vigil will be held on Sunday, September 6th at 2:00 p.m. next to 1416 11th Ave North.

I read. I take a deep breathe. I sigh. I look closer at the picture. I scan my memory. I know this young man. I knew him as a teenager. I re-read the bio and process information: Class of 2004. I do the math. I place Mr. Dozier in my sophomore English Class at North High in 2001/ 2002. I see his broad smile, his lanky frame at 16. I scan my class list, and look for his attendance records. I imagine my clip chart with student data, and try to see his grades. I ask myself, "Was he a good student?"

And then I stop. And I take note of what I've just done, subconsciously. WAS HE A GOOD STUDENT?

I ask myself, "What does it matter if he was a good student or not?" As I pause, I wonder what else is really trying to get constructed in my brain.

If Chris was a good student, then he was a good kid.

If he was a good kid, then he was a good human being.

If he was a good human being, then he would not have died.

He would not have deserved to die.

This is what happens in my brain -- in a split second! I am sick as I do this simple interrogation of my own psyche, begging to know what is behind my question, "Was he a good student?" What if he was a rotten student? What if I kicked him out of class for being disruptive? What if he skipped sophomore English on a daily basis? What if he bombed out on assignments? What if I gleaned gang graffiti on his notebook? Who cares? Would that have one little bit of bearing on whether or not his death was tragic, and whether or not mourning him was an important action? Would it change the fact that he was a human being who was loved by and loved others?

Whew. It makes me sort of ill writing this. Who deserves to die? Who deserves to be shot to death in their car? Who deserves to live? Who gets to decide any of this? Who gets to judge?

***

I see Chris. I recall his jovial demeanor, and replay scenes of him poking his head into my room between class periods. He smiles. He goofs. He comes into the classroom corner where the props for drama activities are held. He grabs a sword. I see him pretending to be Bottom, in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and prancing around with this plastic prop that makes silly sound effects with each wielding gesture. I remember being annoyed with that sword and the ongoing pranking of Chris and his peers. I see this former student performing his assigned scene from the Shakespeare comedy before his classmates. We laugh. We are entertained. In the scene, Chris' character fakes his own death. I am stopped again replaying this scene in my mind's eye.

***

In Julie Landsman's book, "Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism" she addresses her own inherently held racist tendencies. In the book, she takes an inventory of moments when she's realized her white privilege is at work, and how her own responses to students of color as "victims" has played a possible part in perpetuating the disparities in education. She describes a moment in class at Sheridan Middle School in Northeast Minneapolis when she's doing a residency and asks the students to write a letter. When one little girl with brown skin submits what she has written to her mother in jail, Julie is aghast. She records her deep sorrow and dismay over the situation of the little girl. She holds the circumstances of the child's incarcerated parent as the largest factor determining her success. Julie reflects on how her notions of the little girl are shaped by this single fact, and notes how later, she realizes she overlooked the child's present and loving grandmother, the girl's vocabulary and well-constructed prose. Julie recognizes she has reduced this child to a single detail and that this is part of the problem we all have as humans who seem to focus on reductionary facts that perpetuate inequity and victimhood. As the author of the book, she models the work we are all called to do: getting conscious of how our thoughts and attitudes shape our interactions and subsequent relational outcomes.

***

I think about Chris. I see Marcus White. I recall the last time Toua Xiong and I had an interaction. And I hold Quincy DeShawn Smith's death in my mind. Each of these young men were once my students. Each of them had families and home lives and work lives that shaped who they were, and spoke volumes about their characters. Each of them were loved by someone - many - and in turn loved beyond themselves. Each of them were North Side residents at one point, whose lives also came to a brief halt in North Minneapolis.

What is the sum of each of their lives? How do we hold and measure the hearts and minds and spirits of young men murdered in North MInneapolis? How do we hold and measure our own hearts and minds and spirits? What value do we place on life? Those of our children here, and those of our children there? How do I reflect honestly about the violence in North Minneapolis? How does it relate to violence anywhere in the world? How do I celebrate fully the life and love and potential there, as well as in my own St. Paul home? What is my job as a former teacher from North High, who still prays and volunteers and works in and around the homes and streets, businesses and schools of North Minneapolis? What am I called to pay attention to? What are you called to stop and take note of?

***

As I mark this fourth tragic death, I consciously work, like my friend Julie Landsman, to mark the fullness of these young men's four lives. I invite you to do the same.

In peace,

Melissa

NYC 2009: Celebrating Francois' 40th!

A year ago right now I had the awesome privilege of going to NYC with my mom and little sister to celebrate two significant birthdays: my 40th, Molly's 21st. This year, I have the awesome privilege of accompanying one dear love in my life, Francois Kiemde, for his 40th birthday. It's a joy. It's a wonder. It's a gift to make the journey this season alongside my fiance, and to simultaneously experience the city through his eyes, and alongside his best friends. What follows are photos from our three night, four day adventure. Big love and gratitude go out to Mr. Kiemde and his beautiful network that embraced me, and helped us celebrate love and birth on so many levels.

Enjoy!
Melissa

Yes!

Hey Baby!

Sleepy but excited at the Baggage Claim.
(Can you tell we rose at 5am for this flight?)

The Algonquin!

The Historic Hotel in Mid-town Manhattan, known for Dorothy Parker and her crew of literary, artistic, political peeps...AND THE ROUND TABLE!

NYC Hallway complete with clever cartoon wallpaper from the New Yorker.

Sweet!

What would a trip be to New York without a stop at a Street Vendor?

En route to Times Square: Health Care Protesters!

Please...

Message with Humor!

Self-portrait in the subway...On our way to Freddie and Carmela's in Queens...

Where we are warmly received.
(From Left to Right: Francois, Eduard, Fred, Carmela all raising a glass.
There's so much to toast this weekend!)

More ensemble shots, including baby boy Cedric.

This meal will be my favorite all weekend. Love to Carmela's multicultural cooking skills, this menu honoring her Italian heritage.

And then there's my guy, who just loves his chicken!
lol.

Times Square, baby!

Time to get Tickets from TKTS

Happy Man back in his NYC home

Who knew this would be the first Broadway Musical Francois would ever see?
An LA love story set to 1980's Rock and Love ballads? The Humor of it all!

Walking down Broadway through the Street Fair

Psychic Reading on Francois' 40th Year:
Yes, I'm your soul mate, and you will be wildly successful in your next bakery business!
LOVE!!!

Jazz in Central Park

St. Raphael spotting..

Checking out the French Bread...

Delish!

Onto a BBQ back in Queens with Little Cedric and family...

Fred's on prep...

Beautiful father and son.

And two beautiful parents!

Lots of photos taken today..

Carmela and Frederique

Another gorgeous father and son;
Ed and his guy are goofs!

It's a theme. Happy Dads with their boys....

Celebratory Birthday Cake and Champagne!

I love this guy!

A toast to Carmela's birthday!
Leos and Virgos in the house!

What a crew! Stay tuned to more from these men in my life!

The city at night...

Love.