Category: Kim’s Blog

This week several people from the church participated in the annual Cities of Light observance shining light on the death penalty and the moral and religious imperative to end capital punishment. The death penalty is certainly a place of darkness in our society. And since this policy is implemented by the government, and “we the people” are the government, this terrible practice implicates all of us.

This past summer when I was in Wisconsin visiting family at their cabin on a lake, we enjoyed catching up on past issues of the New York Times Magazine. There was one issue with an article about the death penalty. The article focussed on the five counties in the US with the worst records relating to the capital punishment. With trepidation, I opened the magazine, and sure enough, out of this whole big country of ours, our county, Pinellas County, was one of the five countries featured in the article. I was afraid of that. So, we here in Pinellas have even more work to do on this.

Will we just turn away from this darkness and ignore it? Is it someone else’s problem? Since we may not have direct involvement with anyone on death row, do we think we can just bury our heads?

A few weeks ago, I was speaking with our 21 year old son, Malcolm, and I told him that when I was young we didn’t have the death penalty. There was a moratorium. It was not being implemented anywhere in the United States. He did not believe me. He actually thought I was lying or mistaken or something. He couldn’t believe that this terrible practice had been abolished in the relatively recent past.

That memory, that knowledge, is our hope. It is our light shining in the darkness. Our society put this practice to an end once and we can do it again. It is possible. We must make sure that the light still shines on the horrors of capital punishment and on the realistic hopes of its abolition once again.

Prayer: In these dark days, may I trust that the light of Christ still shines. May that light shine especially for those on death row and those involved with implementing capital punishment. Amen.

Is there something you would like to write in your Advent journal today about seeing light in dark times? Or maybe you want to note something related to capital punishment.

And don’t forget your donation to The Micah Center to help shine the light for a student in need of support. People who end up on death row tend to be poorly educated. By supporting the students at The Micah Center we may be helping to keep them out of the criminal justice system.

World AIDS Day

36.7 million people were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2015. That’s close to the entire population of California.

Of those 36.7 million people, 25.6 million are living in Sub Saharan Africa. There is no way to fully calculate the devastation that this is causing in that area.

Of the 36.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, 1.8 million are children. Most contracted the virus from their mothers.

In 2015, Cuba became the first country to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV and syphilis. In 2016, Armenia, Belarus, and Thailand also received this designation.

Only 60% of the people with HIV know their status.

2.1 million people were newly infected in 2015.

1.1 million people died of HIV/AIDS in 2015.

35 million people total have died of HIV/AIDS.

While 46% of those with HIV/AIDS are receiving antiretroviral treatment, neither a cure nor a vaccine is available largely due to underfunding of research and development.

And before you glaze over from all of these remote statistics, remember that each and every one of these numbers represents people. With families and friends. Individual human beings. Created in the image of God. Many of whom feel forgotten or stigmatized because of their disease. And several of whom are part of the LUCC church family.

Prayer: In these dark days, may I trust that the light of Christ still shines. May the light of comfort and compassion shine brightly for those living with HIV/AIDS. Amen.

Note: Statistics cited in this post are from the World Health Organization. WHO.int

Apparently yesterday was “Giving Tuesday.” I got many emails from wonderful organizations and causes encouraging me to donate. From what I can gather, Giving Tuesday has now become part of the Thanksgiving aftermath: Black Friday shopping at malls and big box stores, Local Saturday shopping at local one of a kind stores, Cyber Monday shopping on line, and finally Giving Tuesday. It’s a kind of wave. Only, I think the wave is going backwards.

On Thursday, we eat a feast and express our thanks. And what should come after thanks? Giving! Thanks and giving go together. We are grateful so we share. We celebrate our bounty so we are generous. We remember what we care about so we offer our support. It’s a perfect link.

Instead, after three days of shopping, with much gratuitous spending, there’s Giving Tuesday. An afterthought to salve a remorseful conscience? And how generous are people really likely to be after they have just spent three days running up their credit cards?

Advent shines the light on our culturally ingrained consumerism and materialism which in addition to rotting our souls is ruining our planet.

A professor studying environmental issues in China went to one of the largest malls there. There was a waterfront beach inside the mall! It was over the top. He talked with shoppers randomly. One young woman told him, “They have everything you could want and even things you never realized you wanted.” Another young shopper said, “We all want the same thing – a beautiful life.” The implication was that this was to be found at the mall. While the professor was dismayed at the responses, he quickly realized that he would probably hear much the same thing if he spoke with shoppers at a fancy mall in the US.

Our faith teaches us that a beautiful life comes from giving everyday, not just the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. And it comes from giving of ourselves and our core resources, not just our leftovers. Everyday. All day.

This would be a good time to put a donation in that container for The Micah Center and then go on from there!

Prayer: In these dark days, may I trust that the light of Christ still shines. Amen.

Consider for your journal, what have you been given today? What have you given? Where do you see light or darkness in this?

Last year about this time my husband and I were visiting some friends when the wife brought out a small lighting device with a cord. She was very excited about this new Christmas light decoration that she had just gotten. She explained it to us with great enthusiasm. Then she plugged in the fixture and turned it on and there were some colored spots to be seen but it really wasn’t very impressive. Well, we were sitting outside on the patio in broad daylight after all.

But evidently this wouldn’t do. We had to get the full effect. So, we were ushered into the house, and after a bit of discussion between the husband and wife, the four of us squeezed into a small closet and the door was closed. It’s good none of us suffers from claustrophobia! Then, inside the dark closet, the light was turned on. Well, wasn’t that a show! The countless spots and the changing color of this laser light device was truly impressive. It was very much worth being crammed into a closet to see! I could see why our friend was so excited about this new addition to their Christmas decor.

The lights of Christmas do truly bring joy, at least to some of us! And, of course, they are most impressive at night, when it is dark.

In this season of Advent, we are preparing ourselves to receive Divine light. We are getting ready to celebrate and give thanks for that light. Spiritual guides throughout the ages and across traditions remind us that sometimes we see the light most boldly in the darkness. In the dark times of our lives, we may feel the healing presence of the Divine in a direct and powerful way. In a time of great discouragement or grief, we may look back and see Love’s hand working all things together for good. In a time of deep desperation a door may open, and we see the light ahead and can proceed onward.

Life brings much darkness and heartache. But that must not stop us from looking for the light. That may be when we see it shining most brightly.

Prayer: In these dark days, may I trust that the light of Christ still shines. Amen.

Is there something you would like to write in your Advent journal today about seeing light in dark times?

And don’t forget your donation to The Micah Center to help shine the light for a student in need of support.

$110,000. What can you do with $110,000? If you want to build a hospital or start a company in the US, it’s not much to go on. In many cities in the US that amount of money won’t even buy you a small starter home.

I recently heard a post election interview on National Public Radio in which the person being interviewed said that their family income, for a family of four, was about $110,000. She went on to say that each year it was becoming more and more of a struggle to “get by.” And she was really worried about that. Get by? Really? $110,000 is about four times the poverty line for a family of four in this country. For millions of people in America, $110,000 looks like an unimaginable sum. And to the millions of people around the world living on less that a dollar a day, $110,000 looks like winning the lottery.

This Advent season is a time to examine the darkness that surrounds us. Often that darkness is of our own making. Our attitudes and assumptions and perspectives may be leading us to see a bleak picture. And that view may be distorted, skewed, and in need of refocus.

Advent is a time to step back and try to see afresh our context, our circumstances, and our assumptions. It’s a time to recalibrate our reality and get our perspective realigned. Or at least start to admit that we may not be seeing as clearly as we thought we were.

It is also a time to let the light in that may show us what we would rather not see. What does the light of Christ reveal about our incomes and our economic arrangements? While we may not be able to verify many facts about what is in the Bible, we can be sure that Jesus was poor. It seems by choice. And that he never saw the equivalent of $110,000 in the denarii of his day in his entire 33 years.

Examining the darkness and letting the light in may help us to see that we are far more blessed than we realized! And we may have thought we were just “getting by”!

Prayer: In these dark days, may I trust that the light of Christ still shines. Amen.

Remember to add an entry to your Advent journal about where you have seen darkness and light today. And consider putting a donation in your container for The Micah Center.