The Opportunity Divide

I first heard this term while reading the website of Year Up, a very cool organization in Boston that has an audacious vision - "In the future, every urban young adult will have access to the education, experiences, and guidance required to realize his or her true potential."  How cool is that!  It is the word "every" that makes it audacious.  This is an organization with the power of conviction sufficient to claim its vision of making a major difference in its area of influence.

And they claim a mission that is up to the task as well - . . . "to close the Opportunity Divide by providing urban young adults with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education."

As I explore the nonprofit world, I continue to find amazing organizations that are doing incredible things to lift people up - in this country and around the world.  The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the nonprofit world as organizations use best practices and quantifiable metrics to execute their strategies and to measure their successes.  I am very excited to have this opportunity, at this point in my life, to make this career shift so that I can be part of this movement.

Okay, back to the "opportunity divide."  According to Year Up's website, in 2006 there were 4.3 million young adults who were neither employed nor enrolled in postsecondary education.  In a technologically driven and very competitive labor market, this won't work.  Young adults need the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to find meaningful work that pays a living wage.  Sometimes, young adults with ambition simply need a little direction and support to find their way.  What a great investment to make - to provide that opportunity!

By the way, Year Up was one of 45 organizations to receive the 2008 Fast Company Social Capital Award.  Cool!

British PM and Pope Share Correspondence on MDG Commitment

In a letter released today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown addresses Pope Benedict XVI on issues of development.  He notes, "As things stand today, we are not on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.  We are falling short on the commitments we made back in 2000."  I commend the Prime Minister for his honesty and for his desire to see through the commitment that his country (and many others) made in 2000.  Brown's fear is that the MDGs will "slide down the political agenda" and that "the opportunity to deliver on our promises to the developing world will be lost for another generation."  What a travesty that would be.  Now that we have the technology and the infrastructure to achieve the goals, we cannot let the moment pass because we lack the political will.  How can we sit back and allow millions to starve unnecessarily?  

His Holiness, in a response delivered by his Secretary of State, refers to the Pope's prior request for a "courageous effort to 'globalize the expectations of solidarity.'"  Indeed, a sense of solidarity that transcends national or ethnic boundaries is essential if we are to accomplish these goals.  Every human being is of infinite value, regardless of where they live or the circumstances of their lives.  The Pope also points to the need for a "deeply-felt and responsible sense of generosity."  Indeed!

How wonderful to see such a high level correspondence between two world leaders on such an important subject.  Hopefully, their efforts will go beyond words or political posturing and form the heart of their efforts to transform our world.  We can only hope that their work will help to mobilize the millions of people around our world who have the power to make a difference - if only they have the will.

Read the article in "Scoop" here.

A Brief Thought on Globalization

Bill McKibben, in Deep Economy, challenges the prevailing wisdom of globalization, claiming that it is destroying community rather than enhancing it. The cult of “more is better,” he claims, is having the unintended affect of making us less happy.”[1] At the same time, the relentless pursuit of more devastates poor communities around the world and takes a tremendous ecological toll.

One of my goals is to look beyond the question of what we can do to raise the standard of living of the poor (although, of course, that is essential) to ask the more difficult and challenging questions regarding our responsibility and our future well being. Are we willing to change our lifestyles so that others can move beyond poverty and so that the tyranny and seduction of consumerism will not numb us to the simpler joys of life?

McKibben focuses attention on the value of the local. “It’s enough to say that, for reasons of ecological sustainability and human satisfaction, our systems and economies have gotten too large, and that we need to start building them back down. What we need is a new trajectory, toward the smaller and more local.”[2]

I agree with McKibben. Buying local, participating in Community Supported Agriculture programs, and other efforts can be very helpful and satisfying. However, I would hate to think that we would become so local in our thinking that we forget about the rest of the world. After all, globalization is not all bad. It creates the opportunity to learn from people of other cultures, it makes us aware of the richness of diversity, it challenges us to be responsible with what we have and to care what others have (or don't have). It has generated the resources to lift millions of people out of poverty.

The debate about globalization is difficult. However, it is here to stay. So, how do we move find this new trajectory about which McKibben speaks and at the same time embrace the globalization that brings with it such incredible possibility?


[1] Bill McKibben, Deep Economy, 35.
[2] Ibid, 141.

My last sermon - The Road Less Traveled By

Preached at Emmanuel Church, Newport, RI, February 17, 2008

In his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost says,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Some four thousand years ago, Abraham confronted two diverging roads. He could continue to live with all of the familiarity that life offered in Haran, which was in present day Turkey on the border with Syria, or he could set out on a journey into the unknown. God called Abraham to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house and to go “to a land that I will show you.” That’s not much information. All he had was a call to take a journey to the unknown and a promise that God would make of him a great nation. Not really much to go on, is it? Yet, in Frost’s words, Abraham took the road “less traveled by” and his choice became the pivot upon which history turned.

This morning, I want to explore Abraham’s call because I believe that it is paradigmatic of the call that God offers to all of us who seek to travel the spiritual path. I would suggest that the spiritual path is more often than not the “one less traveled by.” Certainly, this was the case for Abraham and Sarah. They did not know where they were going, or even why they were going – only that God had called them. This goes against so much of what both human nature and the pressures of our culture call us to do. We are taught to journey from the unknown to the known, from what we do not have to what we want or think we need, from the unpredictable to the safe and secure, and from promises to guarantees. We demand security and act cautiously.

Author Dan Clendenin writes that responding to God’s call requires that we “move beyond three very powerful and deep-seated fears – fear of the unknown that we can’t control (ignorance), fear of others who are different from us (inclusion), and fear of powerlessness in the face of impossibilities (impotence).”[1]

Lets look at each of these. First, choosing the road less traveled by requires that we embrace ignorance – that we move from the certain to the uncertain. Abraham’s move was not simply a change of geography. It was a giving up of the familiar, of all that gave life meaning, of the rhythms of life that brought comfort and security. Ignorance sounds negative. However, ignorance simply is a lack of knowledge or information. When we contemplate stepping out in faith, when we say yes to God, when we choose the road less traveled by, we can’t wait until we have all of the answers. We can’t wait for certainty. That is why the spiritual journey is a journey of faith, of movement into the unknown, of trust that God will lead us where God wants us to go.

Second, choosing the road less traveled by requires that we over come our fear of those who are different, that we embrace inclusion. Abraham’s ancestors had moved from Ur, in what is now southeastern Iraq, to Haran, in Turkey. They moved into a different culture. Now Abraham was doing the same. The move from Haran to Canaan placed Abraham in a foreign land with people of a different culture and language. To say yes to the call required that Abraham leave behind not only his homeland but also his narrow-minded parochialism that limited his vision of the larger world around him. It can be challenging for any of us to see beyond the world that we inhabit day by day.

The promise that Abraham received was that God would bless the entire world – not just his family, not just the people he knew, not just people who believed in the same God or who dressed the same way. Inclusion is a difficult challenge. We tend to surround ourselves with people who are like us, people with whom we are comfortable, and people who do not threaten our way of life. Yet, in order to embrace God’s call, Abraham, and we as well, must expand our horizon to embrace the other.

Third, choosing the road less traveled by requires that we overcome our fear of being powerless in the face of the impossible. Impotence is not a kind word. However, we don’t have to spend a lot of time in this world to recognize that so much is out of our control. When we try to manipulate our world or when we try to live with preconceived notions of how life must unfold, we usually are disappointed because it just doesn’t work that way.

Life is uncertain enough. Then, in the midst of that uncertainty, God calls us to do something or to be somebody that seems completely impossible. How could Abraham and Sarah be the parents of a new and great nation? What did they have to offer? Were they crazy to step out in faith as they did? They could have been paralyzed by fear instead. They could have seen the impossible in God’s call rather than the possibility that unfolded as they trusted that God was with them.

What about us? God calls each of us to do great things – to proclaim God’s love, to live in ways that lift others up, to strive for justice and peace throughout the world. Are we afraid of the impossible? Can we look beyond what we cannot do on our own and catch a glimpse of what God can do through us? That is the road les traveled by, the road with God, the road that leads beyond our ignorance and our powerlessness in the face of the impossible.

I invite you to journey with me to the place that can only be reached by the road less traveled by. On that journey, we will discover that, indeed, God can work the impossible in our lives! Amen.

[1] http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20080211JJ.shtml

Promises, Promises

The Financial Times reported yesterday that "leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations are set to backtrack on their landmark pledge at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 to increase development aid to Africa to $25bn a year." You can read the article here.

If you want your voice to be heard so that your government does not backtrack, go to ONE and sign the petition.

The world is half way through the allotted time to accomplish the goals. Great progress has been made. But, we can't stop now. Our governments, and us, must keep working to make a poverty free world a reality.

The Kingdom of God is Like . . . Sweetgrass

My parents used to live in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. One of the local crafts is the making of handmade baskets using sweetgrass. This morning, I read a reflection on sweetgrass in a newsletter from Holy Cross Faith Memorial Episcopal Church in Pawleys Island, SC. It quotes Karl Ohlandt, an ecologist and landscape architect. He says, "Sweetgrass thrives in poor, sandy soil exposed to hot sun, strong winds, and salt spray." He note, "It's a tough life." Apparently, some time ago, people tried to increase sweetgrass yields by planting it in rich soils away from the hardships of its natural habitat. It grew well. However, the "easy living" produced "long, weak leaf blades," wholly unsuited to making good baskets. As Ohlandt says, "the grass has to have survived difficult times: long periods of drought, storm winds carrying salt spray, and soil with little nutrients." (Thanks to Callie, of Holy Cross, for writng about this in the newsletter.)
I love these types of parables. I can almost hear Jesus starting a story with, "The Kingdom of God is like the sweetgrass that . . . " As much as we want life to be easy, as much as we plan to avoid the hardships, it is just those times that bring strength to our weary souls and minds. This parable applies to life in general. It also applies to the struggle for economic and social justice that inform the MDGs. The struggle makes us stronger. It nurtures us, teaches us, strengthens our resolve to press forward. The struggle helps us to weed out the wheat from the chaff of our lives, helping us to see what we truly value and where we really want to go.
Thanks for the sweetgrass that thrives in less than ideal conditions, for the Kingdom of God is like that too!

Do Morals Matter?

In Do Morals Matter?, Ian Markham says, “It is the unnoticed and unappreciated ease of the middle class in the western world that makes it possible to create a world that is so small it stops at the limited interactions of oneself with the immediate environments.”[1] The lack of reflection caused by this ease leads to a life marked not by gratitude but self-absorption. Markham’s project is to address this problem by creating what he calls “morally serious person(s)” (MSPs) – people with “an attitude that believes moral questions are of fundamental importance.”[2]

This world needs MSPs who take the plight of the poor seriously and who share a willingness to move beyond the "ease of the middle class" so that they can ask the difficult questions:

What does it mean to live with such abundance when so many live on the equivalent of less than $1 per day?
What does it mean to us to live with such massive gaps between the rich and the poor when most of us live as we do simply by accident of birth?
Can we make changes to our lifestyles that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of others? I am reminded of Bishop Geralyn Wolf's words: "After living for many years below my means so that others can live above theirs, I wouldn't have it any other way" - words to contemplate in our culture that is obsessed with material abundance.

[1] Ian Markham, Do Morals Matter? A Guide to Contemporary Religious Ethics, 182.
[2]Markham, 181.