Putting our Words into Action

This is an excerpt from my blog and deals with the undertaking of informing voters about prop 8.

"Day 6 - Photo 6. This is Loring Fiske-Phillips and he is a volunteer for a phone bank making calls to voters encouraging them to vote no on California's Proposition 8. If voters pass Prop 8 on November 4th it will eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry.

Dozens of volunteers spent hours making thousands of phone calls. Volunteers are from every walk of life and every type of relationship. In fact many of the volunteers are in heterosexual relationships and they do it because as one volunteer says, "I want my children to grow up in a world where they choose who they love. I believe in the separation of church and state. This should not be a religious issue. This should not be a political issue."

I am moved by the power of people who believe in change, of people who are willing to spend their time, physical and emotional, and of people who will stand in the face of adversity regardless of the cost. This is about simple fairness and equality. And by the way, after looking at Day 5 - Photo 5, a friend of mine told me, "stay with your family, friends and things you believe in. You told us in your very first photo that you start each day and end each day with your family. Right?" Right my friend. Right."

Looking back on this posting...prop 8 is indeed about our friends and family.

I Do

The following is an excerpt from my own blog 31Days31Photos.blogspot.com and was taken from just one of the nearly 12,000 weddings since prop 22 was overturned.

Day 25 - Photo 25. The wedding day had finally come. They stood before the alter and committed their lives to each other. Members of the audience smiled and nodded knowingly. At times the couple giggled breathlessly like school kids. They blushed. They faltered. They exchanged vows and slipped rings on each others fingers. And then, they turned to face a church filled with family and friends as a married couple.

They stood in a reception line and accepted the handshakes, hugs, smiles and congratulations. They mingled amongst well wishers. A friend lifted a glass and toasted the couple and finally with hands intertwined, they cut the cake. As weddings go, events and people stayed to the script. Unless of course you take into account that the happy couple were two women who've waited on this day for 15 years.

The camera is a bully pulpit. As photojournalists, we will often say we prefer to remain in the background, the shadows, attempting only to portray people and events, never wishing to influence the outcome with our presence. That much is true. Though the photojournalist has great power for change by what and who we show with our cameras. Many a social injustice has been brought to light through the lens.

On November 4th voters in California will defeat or approve proposition 8. If passed it would amend the state constitution to define the word marriage as "between and man and a woman." Many look upon this as a religious issue, a legal issue, a moral issue. Simply put, it's a social justice issue. It was within my lifetime that a mixed race marriage was illegal. Illegal.

I never wanted this blog to be process driven. I started it as a photographic journey. Part of the journey was to find the passion that had driven me to be a photojournalist. I found something unexpected though, part of my heart and soul that had been missing. I don't want to lose them again.

On November 4th I will follow my heart and soul when I step into the voting booth.

Feinstein: Vote Against Discrimination

Vote NO on Prop 8 Forum

You are probably aware that the struggle to retain marriage equality in California is VERY CLOSE. Proposition 8--the marriage INequality proposition--seeks to take away current rights of same-gender couples to marry. Whatever we think about marriage, taking away rights from a particular group of citizens, rights that have already been granted by the state constitution, is unfair, unnecessary, and wrong.

In the spirit of equality, I invite you to a NO on 8 forum this Saturday, November 1st, 10:00-11:30 am at Redlands United Church of Christ. We will listen to speakers representing legal, historical, and faith perspectives, all sharing why proposition 8 is a bad idea.

Please download and pass along this invitation (PDF) to those you think would be interested.

Blessings,
Sharon

Our Faith Our Vote

Voter fraud, or more accurately, election fraud, is a serious threat to our democracy, especially in this crucial period of our nation's and the world's history.

Election Protection recounts true stories from real people from all over the nation, stymied and thwarted from exercising their right to vote. Here is the experience of Aaron E. of Indianapolis, Indiana:

Aaron was first told to vote at a nearby retirement home in his Indianapolis neighborhood. Once there, Aaron, and many other voters, learned they had been misdirected and were told to go to a local library to vote. Aaron headed to the library only to find that once again he had been misinformed. A poll worker at the library told Aaron that a nearby firehouse was his correct voting location. Unsure if he would ever find the right location, Aaron made the trip to the firehouse to learn he had reached the correct location, but that the polling station had closed. In utter disbelief over the absurd ordeal he just endured to cast a simple vote, Aaron called Election Protection to complain. His only hope now is that he will be given the correct information for the general election in November.

UCC has a valuable resource on its website called Our Faith Our Vote, dedicated to voter rights, general voting information and ways you can become active this election season.

Meditation - A Working Title

The title to a mediation, book or movie sets the theme we want an audience to follow. And when Carla emailed me asking for the title to this meditation, I didn’t have one. I had no idea what to do. I toyed with a number of ideas and nothing worked. Finally in an act of humility and sophomoric desperation I replied to Carla in an email with the next thing that came to mind. Meditation, A Working Title. And as read today’s Gospel and wrestled with Jesus’ words to his apostles, the title began to make some sense. These three lines of Matthew, were Jesus’ final words to his apostles as the 12 prepared to go on with the mission of spreading the Word. They had the full authority of Jesus, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cure leapers and cast out demons. And the message seems fairly straightforward. Straight forward if you understand the language.

“Who ever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes the prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.” Well you get the idea right? Good, because I don’t.

Jesus supposedly used propositional logic as it expresses a rule of inference. While in the history of logic, it is shorthand for the theory of consequence. Well you get the idea right? Good, because I don’t.

Okay, how about this?

1. Redlands Centennial Bank donates money to RUCC.

2. RUCC uses that money to send people to help rebuild communities and lives in Mississippi.

3. Therefore, Redlands Centennial Bank helps rebuild communities and lives in Mississippi.

Okay. I get that. And while Jesus, in Matthew 10:40-42, doesn’t exactly state the conclusion of his words explicitly, I think we can agree we understand the meaning. Those words spoken by Jesus to his apostles still apply today. God is Still Speaking right? But are we listening and are we understanding the language?

Recently while sitting in an airport waiting on a connecting flight. A teenager sat next to me. His head bobbed to music wired directly to his brain as his fingers flew wildly over a miniture keyboard on his cell phone. It was a pretty cool looking device and when the boy’s head stopped bobbing and swaying I took this as a queue the music in his brain had subsided and used the opportunity to strike up a conversation and remark on his cell phone.

“Hi.”

“Wassup?”

“That’s pretty a cool phone.”

“Word Yo, it’s Sick”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah dude, it’s cool.”

“Ah. Talking to one of your buddies?

“Uh ah, not talking gigging, texting. I’m gigging my Shorti”

“Excuse me?”

“My Shorti dude. My girlfriend.”

“Ah. Oh, is that her picture on your screen.”

“Yeah. She’s Phat right?”

“Ah, she’s doesn’t look very heavy.”

“No dude, she’s no Salad Dodger. She’s hot, you know, ah-trac-tive. Right?”

“Right. Well, hey look at the time. Gotta go.”

So, our messages should to be delivered in a language that the audience speaks and understands. In our families and communities we’ve built a means of communicating our messages even when we don’t always speak the same language. We’ve built that means of communicating in this community here at Redlands United Church of Christ to share our experiences in our journey of faith. I’d like to share with you a story of God is Still Speaking.

During a particularly low point in my life, it seemed as though the world were crashing down about me. As I drove through town running from errand to errand, nothing seemed to be going well and I was taking full advantage of the moment to feel incredibly sorry for myself. No one’s pain could have been worse. Job had no worries compared to the misery that had been bestowed upon me. And I decided that God had abandoned me. After all, he wasn’t speaking and I’d been asking for “a little help here please.” I was listening but I wasn’t getting anything accept the woe is me mantra that’d been playing over and over in my head. Come on God I dare you to speak to me. I double dog dare you. Where’s my burning bush? As I continued on my rant, I now had bumper-to-bumper traffic to throw into it. I noticed a shabbily dressed man standing on a traffic island holding a cardboard sign. And on the sign was a painstaking perfectly handwritten message. It said, “I HAVE NOTHING.” Oh my God! Yes, my God. It was a message for me and this man standing on the traffic island stared at me with his piercing blue eyes as I passed along. Passed along as time slowed to a crawl in a moment of life imitating art.

And Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes the prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” All my petty worries slipped away. I have a beautiful family. I have a job and a home. I have everything. I laughed with the heady knowledge that God had spoken. I was on a new rant, planning how to spend this message, planning what I would do and planning where I would go. When suddenly the car in front of me stopped abruptly and as I screeched to a halt I noticed the car’s license plate frame. It read, “When I make plans, God laughs.” Now, nearly hysterical, I pulled to the curb threw my hands in the air and declared. I get it! I get it! Please stop. Then silently added, and for God’s sake… please…no burning bush.

Will we welcome the one who welcomes God? Will we welcome the prophet? When God speaks will we be listening?

“Who ever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Welcome to Redlands UCC. Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome here, even if you are a working title.

Amen and Blessed Be!