Reflections on Lent: Not your typical story

TED Blog: Leymah Gbowee

In 2004, working on women’s rights, she was asked to take a 9-year-old, who had been raped every day by paternal grandfather for months. And she did. Every day the child lay beside her, saying, “I wish to be well, I wish to go to school.”

Reflections on Lent: Seeing Wide and Praying Long

With the rise in public awareness of child trafficking, most of it is focused on the sex trade and women and children lured to the US to be trafficked. Unspeakable evil and pain comes from this and it is truly a horrible situation. It is however only half of the problem. Human trafficking also refers to labor bondage, organ solicitations, and many other forms of problems.

According to UNICEF, of Zimbabwe's 1.3 million orphans, some 100,000 are living on their own in child-headed households. Many such children are forced to leave school and find work as street vendors or labourers on tobacco farms, tea and sugar plantations, and in mines in order to support younger siblings.

Reflections on Lent: International Woman's Day

When I want to explain why empowering girls and women is critical to fighting 

poverty, I often tell a person's story. It's easier to relate to a personal story than to global data 

telling us that the majority of the billion people who live on less than $2 per day 

are women and girls. We are often told to never treat a person like a statistic

....Rina Begum is a real person -- 

Reflections on Lent: It's here too

Truth. Identity. Injustice.

"In to many places the opposite of poverty is justice...Ultimately, we won't be judged by our technology. We won't be judged by our design. We won't be judge by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of the society. Not about how they treat the rich and the powerful and the privileged abut how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it is in that nexus that we begin to understand truly profound things about who we are. "  

- Bryan Stevenson

To listen to the rest of this amazing words on identiy and injustice here in America, go to ted talks at  http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html

Reflections on Lent: May my words be few...

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: 

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. 

- Romans 12 (The Message)

Dearly Love by Jimmy Needham

Reflections on Lent: Sacrificing Surrounding Scenerie

For those of you that know me personally, you know I left part of my heart back in Malawi in 2008. 

My Malawi Sisters

Mawali is a very small country in southeast Africa around Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique. It's mainly known for it's lake - Lake Malawi - which is the only body of water naturally containing kampoyo (fish). What is not as well known is the fact that though it is the 16th poorest country in the world, it is the "heart of Africa". They truly gave me more than I could have ever given back, but I will continue to try every way I can.

Reflections on Lent: Sacrificing Surrounding Stereotypes

When I speak about prostitution and sex trafficking in Chicago, people often ask the same questions. They want to know the scope of the problem in our city, which neighborhoods have the most activity and how to identify trafficking victims. These are normal questions, of course, but it's rare that people ask the questions that drive my work: "Who is profiting from the sex trade, and who are the men buying sex?"

This is the opening paragraph to a great Huffiness Post Chicago editorial by Rachel Durchslag, University of Chicago graduate, founder of Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, and long time advocate of ending the demand of sex slavery. There is the some more of what she writes:

Sexual exploitation is caused by exploiters. This isn't a revolutionary idea, but it's one that our culture buries in favor of other messages, especially when it comes to the sex trade. Just think about the last time you saw a news article about prostitution. Undoubtedly, it was accompanied by stock images of women wearing high heels, or mug shots of women who were arrested and charged criminally. What most articles do not explore is that many of these women are victims of sex trafficking, which happens when someone uses force, fraud or coercion to recruit or keep that woman in the sex trade. 

Most johns (men who buy sex) know that they cause harm when they support the sex trade, but they continue to buy sex because they face very few consequences. I know this because I conducted a study that interviewed 113 johns in Chicago, and only 7 percent of those interviewed had ever been arrested for buying sex. When men are targeted by law enforcement it's called a "reverse sting." Why is it a reversal to arrest purchasers? 

Click here to read the full article.

This week as I sacrifice my surroundings, i am sacrificing my naivety and ignorance. I am sacrificing being an complacent advocate of the status quo and stereotypes. Will you join me?

Reflections on Lent: One Person, One Action, One Prayer

Why not add something to your day during Lent...

...you may just change the world (or your little part!)

Pastor to end rooftop vigil following donation from Tyler Perry

 

A South Side pastor who has spent more than three months living in a tent on the roof of an Englewood motel said he will end his vigil today, thanks to a promise of $98,000 from movie mogul Tyler Perry that will allow the pastor to buy and demolish the motel to make way for a community center.

For more on the story, go to (click Title above!)

Lord to hear my prayers

"Even in fasting, we have the choice."

Something seems disingenuous to "fast for solidarity" with the poor or against human trafficking -- we can never know their experience and no day or hour or meal without food will have the ability to teach us that. 

Today is my first fast in solidarity to the poor and on the walk to the train, I realized just how silly this felt. Not the act of fasting or the idea of lifting up the poor; but the idea that somehow I am can choose to be in solidarity with the poor by simply overlooking the food in my fridge, in my cubicle, in the grocery story next door, or in my friend's hands. Nothing I do or do not eat or do can every place me in their position, I will never know their experience because I have the ability to choose.

Pray with me today for those who have no choice.