I am lucky to sing in a wonderful church choir at St. Paul's - K Street Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. We sing enough music to fill a concert, every Sunday, all year. Although I've been singing my whole life -- sacred music in particular -- I'm constantly amazed at how little of this music I've sung before. There are new composers, new pieces, every week.
Last Sunday, we sang an anthem by Timothy Hagy (b. 1958) with a text by Eleanor Roosevelt. It was called, simply enough, "A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt." I don't know more than what's commonly known about Eleanor Roosevelt: her strength, her resilience in the face of all her husband's weaknesses and challenges; her travels, her independence of mind.
But this: she wrote prayers, too. Hagy, the composer, set it beautifully and simply, without accompaniment, so that the words were made prominent. In this season of Lent where (sometimes confounding) scripture abounds, Eleanor's words spoke to me with immediacy. Here they are:
A Prayer of Eleanor Roosevelt
Our Father, who hast set a restlessness in our hearts and made us seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far off goals. Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to thee for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
Just putting that out there . . . it all speaks to me.
My former students--all of them, young men and young women--are generous and determined.
A group of young women who are now in grad school or are working have created a charity for their classmate and my former student at the school in India, Sylvia Gift Nabukeera, who was found dead in Nairobi in June 2011 as she was traveling back to her home in Uganda.
My former students have worked tirelessly through their grief to make something positive out of the death of a friend. Sylvia was generous and determined and powerful, too. She had started an initiative--Springs of Peace (click link above)-- to raise money to bring clean water to people in her home area. This may sound like an easy thing to us in the West, who drink water from city-wide sanitation systems that we assume we can rely upon. In rural areas in much of the world, women walk for miles every day, often accompanied by their young children or carrying a baby, to bring back water for their families. They carry it in a huge jug balanced on their head, a stunning and beautiful picture in itself. But this keeps women in a place of almost Biblical servitude; of course, it also means that families rely on women and girls for water. Finding, and competing for, clean water in an area with no distribution system is an all-consuming job which keeps women and girls from education or from tasks which might earn them a small living.
There are many effects of the lack of clean, readily available drinking water. I am no expert. My former students have educated themselves, though, and some are working in these areas. They know. You can trust them with your money!
There are two more days in this month of February to give to Springs of Peace. We are over 90% there to raising $10,000. If Springs of Peace can raise this amount by the end of February, a donor will match that amount. This means work can get started on Sylvia's dream.
Sylvia was full of love: for people who didn't have much, for her friends, for those around her, for every new day she was given. Please consider a donation, large or tiny or in between, to help the people Sylvia knew receive the love she wanted to give them.
It's hard to know what to say, watching former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at her own political rally two years ago, now pleading with her former colleagues for laws to promote responsible gun use and curb gun violence. She is partially blind, needs help to walk, and is very slowly re-learning how to speak. Today, her little girl's voice and child's hand-gestures implored members of Congress to Be bold and Act now. I felt guilty thinking, as I watched her painful testimony, that her prepared speech and its delivery had the look of a Saturday Night Live sketch except it was much too real and sad. Gabby Giffords will never be her former self. She will probably always speak in a child's voice, with a child's hand gestures, to people who sympathise but have no empathy for her situation.
And this is because of a crazy twenty-something guy with a gun. Yes, it's true that we need better mental health care in this country. It's true that in some cases, it should be easier to commit someone showing dangerous, unhealthy behavior to a mental institution.
But Wayne La Pierre of the NRA (National Rifle Association) would have us believe that knowing the whereabouts of severely mentally ill people, keeping some of them in a national database, is fine while keeping a national database of gun owners is not. It infringes on our right to privacy; to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
He asserts that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is all we have to do, so we won't infringe on the rights of lawful gun owners just trying to protect their families.
To me, the first statement is hypocritical and the second is simplistic. Because when does a criminal become a criminal? Maybe he's already committed some criminal act before he buys a gun at a gun show. OR, maybe she doesn't become a criminal until she takes the gun out of her purse one day and shoots someone in the grocery store parking lot. Maybe he's always been a mild-mannered dentist until one day he gets depressed or angry, slides the gun out of the drawer, and shoots his wife and children.
Criminals may be able to get guns, and that's "criminal," but using a one's own legally bought gun when you've never used one before can make you a criminal. It usually does make you a criminal, immediately. Charged with murder, attempted murder, or something else.
So I hope we can get beyond the simplistic, the hypocritical in this issue and pass legislation that's practical, based in public health and common sense. Guns are too easy a tool for killing and injuring people.
