2014.01.22 Emergency Alert, Super Bowl Not Just the Violence of Football

In my opinion football is not sport but regulated violence. The "game" elicits cheers and competition all right but also has painful consequences for many of those football player "heroes" whose head injuries will likely have lasting effects.  This is not heroic!

Thanks to the information below I see that the Super Bowl has more than just football violence attached to it. I received this information from the Episcopal women’s order, Companions of Mary the Apostle, in West Park, New York.  I consider it urgent and important—for us to know, for us to pray, for us to do whatever we can with our awareness and resources, and for us to write and talk about this sin.

I find it ironic that Super Bowl Sunday falls on February 2, when one of the traditional focuses for this day in the Christian church was the "Purification of the Virgin" or the purification of women after childbirth.  I tell you women DO need purifying, not from child birth or menstruation, but rather from the filth imposed on them by such cruel captivity and enslavement to sex abuse for profit!! 

Here is what the sisters have to say: "Now, we know that football is the real national religion. One of us has a long history and fondness for Super Bowl parties. But we have learned of the pervasive human trafficking associated with the Super Bowl. 10,000 prostitutes were brought to Miami for Super Bowl XLIV.

Let's be clear.  They did not "come" to Miami.  They were brought by their captors.  They are routinely forced to have sex, some as many as 50 times a day.  And when the Super Bowl ends, they will not be freed.  The Super Bowl is just the peak event for a year-round, daily hell for thousands of women, boys, and children.

And it's not just sex trafficking we're faced with. 10 to 20 million people in the world are enslaved. Some of them are cleaning your motel rooms, working on your lawns, waiting on your table, or making your clothes.

We were stunned to read the facts about human trafficking.  We are still trying to fathom the depths of this evil. But fathom or not, we have to fight it. Our baptismal covenant requires it.

Please don't turn away.  The Episcopal Church has many resources on human trafficking.  You can start here:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/human-trafficking

For information about the Super Bowl, go to:
http://episcopal.grassroots.com/thoughts/details/super-bowl-and-social-justice

And please pray for everyone involved in this crime - for the victims, for their freedom; for their captors, that their hearts might be freed; and for us, that our eyes and our mouths may be opened."

May I say AMEN. 

2013.06.05 Women and Violence—Again and Forever?

I’ve just read The Anglican Journal’s small report on a meeting held on March 1-3, 2013, sponsored by Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE, nice acronym!). The meeting was held in Manhattan, New York and was attended by eleven women who traveled from Africa and America to have conversations.

Conversations took place in small groups with the goal of breaking the silence about violence against women.  The groups had the topic and the structure and, as the Indaba model encourages, each group established its own focus and process.

Indaba is a South African term that basically means meeting. The just retired Archbishop of Canterbury appropriated the term for the Lambeth Conference of Anglican clergy in 2008. The idea is that medium-sized groups (not plenaries) come together to converse about large, even global, issues and problems. Call it a family meeting.

Here’s an eye-opener that shot my eyes nearly out of my head.

A youngest woman participant  at the AWE gathering, Faith Meitiaki from Kenya, expressed surprise that women in the developed world struggle with life challenges and sexual abuse and domestic violence in the same way women in less privileged circumstances do.

She said: “For me it was an eye-opener: that, as long as you are a woman, you will always face violence. That was the common denominator between the women from Africa and America.”

As long as you are a woman. So why have I and so many other women continued to write, work and preach against violence against women?  Are we hopeless cases because of our gender? Is there safety for women without a man to protect her? 

I have no good answers but I will think and pray about this “eye-opener.”  The only one thing I am completely sure of is that this painful common denominator, which I suspect is no different for women in general than it was for those women at the AWE meeting, is not God’s will, God’s desire, God’s dream, or whatever else you want to attribute to a power greater than human power, a power more loving than human power—even if you don’t believe in God.

We earthlings with our free will and the best of our good will just aren’t doing very well with justice, compassion, truth and love.  Simply so.

But is it because we are godless or humanless?  Or both?