These reds were volunteers in the asparagus bed. The whites, golds and blues we planted are a couple of weeks behind. I replanted all the tiny ones, and we will have a third crop in this bed before the rains set in. The first Quakers in this area called this The Garden of the Lord. I have no argument.

I am not sure I have ever seen a better garden year here in the Willamette Valley, and that is saying something.

Things are coming on early and abundant. They are producing long. I am not sure I have ever seen the snow peas last through the blueberry season. We have been eating buttercrunch lettuce for a month and it has not yet bolted. The strawberries were abundant. The tomatoes are many and mid-range orange. The potato crop makes me think we need a root cellar.

I wish I had planted more.

Our only mistake.
We had a fine big batch of compost ready at the end of may. I mounded several wheel barrows, and then planted not one, but TWO zucchini. They are producing two to three six inchers every day. Last evening I picked every zuke that was out there plus a handful of radishes to take to church. This evening before dinner I went out to get some peas, and there was a happy eight inch zuke, and another six. In under 24 hours.

Why, oh, why, has no one figured out how to make bio diesel from zucchinis?

Turns out it was hard to get rid of the zukes at church. Even the first time, even with cute little ones, even with hungry people.

We are in trouble.

This last selection come from the section of topical columns. This evening happened in the Spring of 2007

Star-Belly Sneeches and Modern Day Cossacks

So there I was ...

walking the halls of democracy and sitting in the midst of hostility.

The Capitol Building of the State of Oregon is a short distance from my house. I had received a phone call from a clergyperson I associate with and she was trying to turn out bodies for a series of evening hearings at the Capitol. The legislature was considering two bills, one to limit discrimination against gays, lesbians, and trans-gendered people, and one to set up a way for the same people to legally protect their relationships in a manner akin, but not equal to, the institution of marriage. I could go, so I did.

My problem was that I was two weeks home from a Central African war zone. I still had a pretty bad case of the social/emotional/spiritual bends. It takes me about a month to re-adjust from the effects of genocide to the comforts and concerns of American life. I cannot do counseling during this time. I just cannot immediately work up compassion for normal American problems after being emotionally present to people living in actual Hell. I get over it. I reset all the dials. But it takes a while.

That night as I walked into the Capitol, I was not real enthusiastic. But I remembered that I normally felt quite strongly about this issue and I figured I could be bodily present, if not spiritually present.

The first thing I noticed as I entered was that everybody was labeled. It was Dr. Seuss and the star-bellied Sneeches. Everybody was wearing stickers to designate their side. There were folks in the doorway discerning what party you belonged to and handing you your sticker. I don’t really like stickers on my person. I was picked out by the Basic Rights Oregon person and offered my progressive sticker. I was not real sure how I was spotted, but I declined out of sheer rebelliousness. The young man then took another look at me and spotted my grandmother’s cross that I often wear around my neck. He actually took a step back, and said “Oh, sorry.” That was my first clue.

The next thing I noticed was that the building was overflowing with people. I had trouble finding any of my friends. There was the main hearing room and then many overflow rooms with closed circuit TV and because those were all full, the lobbies were filled with chairs and people and additional TV sets. And security. Lots of security people. The security people looked nervous. Second clue.

By observing stickers, I noticed that all the gay families were huddled together in the hearing rooms. The lobbies were full of their opponents.

The next thing I noticed was that the people opposing the bills all looked like each other, really - they did. Round, scarved, middle aged women who looked like nesting dolls, and droves of tall, good-looking, clear skinned, brown haired blue-eyed men. A smattering of pretty blonde girls.

I found my clergy friend.

“Who are these people?” I asked.

“They are all from one church here in Salem. It’s a Slavic fundamentalist church. They can turn out 300 bodies any time the pastor calls for it. Thanks for coming, Peggy.”

“Where are your folks?”

“They are all together in the hearing rooms; nobody feels comfortable mingling.”

Well then, that gave me my mission for the night. Mingle with the Slavic Christians and see what was what. I don’t like fear-based segregation. I do not often find that it is based in reality. I like to challenge it and look for the good in the other side. That’s my default setting.

There was a seat open in front of one of the TV’s right in the middle of a knot of young men. I took the seat. The energy was really quite amazing. I could feel it in the air. Primal, like big sexual energy only about anger, not sex. Anger pheromones. I watched as people testified before the legislators - three pro, then three against. The rule for the evening, both in the hearing room and in the lobby, was no vocal demonstrations. But the young men around me were having a hard time containing it. Quietly cheering the people who predicted the fall of civilization if a couple of lesbians made a civil union, and jeering, hissing, and spitting invectives at anyone who disagreed with that analysis. There were many dozens of testimonies that night. I got weary, but the young Slavic men did not. They seemed to gain steam from each chance to hate, which did not dissipate with the speakers who they supported. They had a one-sided reaction that ratcheted up with each round.

I was touched in some way by all the testimony. I was pretty put off by the fear-mongering, but when someone stood up and spoke eloquently on behalf of their alternative family, it warmed me, gave me hope, and trust that love would eventually win out. One young woman did an especially good job, and I just couldn’t help but say a quiet “Amen, preach it sister.” The young men on either side of me, sat bolt upright and looked at me.

“Hi, my name’s Peggy, I’m with the other side – I just didn’t get my sticker.” I put out my hand to the young man on my left.

He did not take it.

The next speaker was a clergyman from some progressive protestant denomination. He wore a Roman-style collar. He spoke of God’s love for all people. This really heated up my area. Much gasping and hissing. They really didn’t like the pro-gay clergy guy.

The young man on my right sat with his fists and probably a few other body parts clenched. “Using God’s name to defend an abomination! God should strike him dead,” he hissed. I had the distinct impression that if God didn’t do it, that this young man would volunteer to be God’s agent.

I suddenly remembered why I cared about this issue. These fine Christian folk, would, if they knew everything I believed and everything I preached, and if given a free rein, likely stone me dead without a second thought.

Think that couldn’t happen in America? Quaker preacher Mary Dyer was hung in Boston Commons by fine Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving Day, Christian folk. The framers of our constitution knew that well and attempted to prevent it from happening in the new union. But they knew it was a real problem that needed to be addressed.

I remember something Garrison Keillor said about the Puritans, his forbearers. He said, “They came to America to practice religious persecution at a level not actually allowed under British law.” He was right, the Puritans, of course, thought they were fleeing religious persecution and protecting their faith by hanging Quakers. The Slavic Christians gathered around me also fled religious persecution and believe that they are protecting their faith.

There was one other person sitting in that group that stood out even more than I. An orthodox Jew – side curls, hat, fringe – the whole thing. We don’t see a lot of that in Salem. From his sticker I could see that he was in harmony with the Slavic Christians on this issue. When I got the chance I moved and sat by him.

“Hello, Friend, so you agree with these folks?” I said

“I do, they are on God’s side of this issue.” He said, stiff, not looking at me.

“Don’t they remind you of anyone?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Like, I don’t know, Cossacks, maybe?”

“You do not know what you are talking about.”

“Probably not, no, I’m sure I don’t. But are you really sure that if they managed to put down the gays like they wish to, that they wouldn’t come next for, oh, say the Jews?”

Then he looked at me.

“Just a thought.” I said and I moved on.

It's Bastille Day!

Continuing the celebration of "So There I Was ..."

From the Section of Post-Modern Theology

So there I was ...

sitting at a lunch table with a group of insightful, visionary, powerful, spiritual women. We were talking about what it would take for our corner of the Body of Christ to embrace an application of our professed testimony of equality. Specifically, what it would take for the spiritual sea to change enough to make gender identity and sexual orientation non-obstacles to membership and ministry.

“What if we just opened that door and walked through it and let them watch? – Maybe they’d follow.” I proposed.

“Yeah, when Hell freezes over!” said one of my sisters.

That phrase haunted me for a while after that. It rattled around in my heart like a marble in a glass milk bottle. Then the bottle broke, and it was spilt milk all over, but I had a jagged glass epiphany.

That is our job. That is precisely our job. We are supposed to be freezing Hell. Turning the thermostat of evil down till the devil is wearing thermal underwear.

Hell requires conflagration. Badness expends huge energy. Evil itches and requires lots of scratching, which leads to angry inflammation. Hellfire can be quenched.

The best way to chill inequality is to not participate in it, not cooperate with it, not ignore it. Racism is not by any means conquered in our world or our church. But in our country in the last century, it has been moderated by courageous people refusing to accept that it is the norm. Racism lives, but Jim Crow is history. People, a few people at first, just refused to be segregated, black people and white people. They just stopped participating. They had a chilling effect on evil.

We were created to be effective. Each one of us individually and all of us together.

Individually, we can douse and stomp on fires of evil that spark up around us. As a people of God we can be the cool soft rain that puts the forest fire to bed.

Hell loves a mob; especially a trauma crazed mob, an unthinking, angry mob. Hell especially loves an armed mob; guns are nice, but machetes will do. But it is amazing what a few people or even one person can do to a mob. Hell was having a picnic in My Lai, Vietnam when Hugh Thompson, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta landed their helicopter between their comrades and their comrade’s innocent prey. They stopped the carnage. The devil considered those guys to be party crashers. They were called traitors when they got home. Eventually, they were decorated as heroes.

What we don’t know is how many similar atrocities, in that war, and in the wars since then, including the travesty of a conflict we are engaged in now, have been stopped short by one person saying, “Hey, that’s not what we’re here for” or “Don’t even think about it.” They don’t get written up as heroes for preventing evil. It happens all the time. The devil doesn’t want you to know that he gets thwarted a thousand times for every time he succeeds in getting drunk on mayhem.

And don’t think that it is only warriors who block disaster. I have seen a pig-tailed eight-year-old walk into a knot of bullies and take a scared six-year old by the hand and walk them out with a “Shame on you – I’m telling” look.

The truth is that evil is the sissy. Our spiritual adversary and all his minions are cowards of the first order. Hell can be frozen by the kindness of a child, the courage of a man, the voice of a boy, the persistence of an old woman. All we have to do is wake up, speak up, and step right in.

Continuing the celebration of "So There I Was ..."

From the section "Where I Came From" - the early stories

So there I was ...

walking the green mile.

OK, it wasn’t a mile, it just seemed like it. But the long corridor was a sort of turquoise green. I wasn’t actually condemned to death, though for a second grader I might as well have been. Dead little girl walking, and worse, I had to do it every Tuesday afternoon for all of second grade.

The call came at two p.m. every Tuesday, just before all the other kids went to recess. My teacher, Miss Cartier tried to be as subtle as possible, sidling up to my desk and whispering, “Peggy, it’s time.” But it didn’t matter because all the kids knew where I was going. They snickered behind their hands, and giggled as I got up from my seat and left the room. I was nervous and often managed to kick something or bump into something on the way out. Kids would stick their foot out and try to trip me if the teacher took her eyes off me. Miss Cartier didn’t let them get away with any words, but it didn’t matter, because there was after school, and before school, and other recesses to get the taunts in. I was labeled for the rest of grade school.

I was walking down to what the kids at school called the “retard room.” Even in 1965 nobody was allowed to call it that in front of teachers or staff, it was officially the classroom for the “handicapped” children. But on the playground that is what they called it, and they called me a “retard.”

I actually got to know the kids in that classroom. Some of them spent their whole days there. Some kids assigned to that class spent part of their days in a regular classroom. It was a pretty progressive school district. Some of them had physical difficulties, some had developmental difficulties, and some of them didn’t seem all that different from the kids in the regular classes.

I was pigeon-toed. Seriously pigeon-toed. I tripped over my own feet all the time. I scuffed my Mary Jane’s all to death. They tried making me wear those special stiff high shoes, but they didn’t help. So I got sent to Miss Belknap the physical rehab teacher.

Here’s what the other kids didn’t know. The long walk down the green hall was hell, but heaven was just on the other side of the door to Miss Belknap’s room. The room was full of giant toys and gymnastics equipment. She wore sneakers and shorts while all the other teachers were in heels and dresses. She was kinda loud, and funny, and she was pretty masculine for a lady. She called me “Girly.” I didn’t know anybody else like her. But she liked me. I think she liked all her kids. When I walked in the door she welcomed me, like a beloved lost lamb. As if she was surprised to see me. As if I was the best part of her day. She was the best part of my week.

She taught me how to walk. How to turn my hips so that my toes would go straight. How to tuck in my tiny little butt so that my hips would open out. We practiced many walks, we walked like ducks, we walked like cowboys. She would have me put my hands behind my back as if they were tied and I would pretend to walk the plank – with plenty of pirate talk to go with it. We laughed a lot. Wednesday mornings during second grade I was always a little sore. I remember one day in the spring when she was pretty pleased with me and she said, “Well, we could quit now, Girly, but as long as we’ve taught you to walk straight, we might as well teach you how to walk pretty.” I did not object. Then I spent a few weeks walking like Miss America with a crown on my head. If they would have let me stay with Miss Belknap for the three R’s I would have stayed. Miss Belknap was my secret treasure.

There is a stanza in the Serenity prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr that goes

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardship

As the pathway to peace.

I learned the truth of that every Tuesday in second grade. After the mocking there was grace. After the loneliness there was kind attention. After the pain came fun. I could have let the humiliation ruin the joy, but I didn’t. And in my memory the grace is huge and lively and the persecution is ghostly and pale.

Perspective is a choice.

So there I was ten years later, 1975, in the grocery on an errand for my mother. I whizzed around a corner in my three-inch platform sandals and mini skirt. I heard a loud voice from the back of the store yell,

“Stop right there! – Is that you Peggy? Peggy Senger?

I executed a perfect pivot turn and faced Miss Belknap, now a retired teacher. I grinned. She whistled a loud wolf whistle as all the patrons of the store turned and looked.

“Look at that walk! Look at that pretty, humdinger of a walk! Give me a bit more, Girly!”

So I gave her my best strut and then a hug and we laughed. And she said,

“Well, Girly, when you walk that plank they are gonna remember the last thing they see! Go get ‘em.”

So I did.