Harvspot

Monday, April 30, 2018

LOVE: It's What Makes A Human Being A Human Being

Love is what gives us life, and what sustains our life.

A child's "failure to thrive" and even survive can be the result not only of genetic or medical conditions, but to a lack of nurturing relationships with loving caregivers. To be loved, held, touched, embraced, and interacted with from infancy is vital to a child's healthy development, and to his or her ability to grow up being able to love and care for others.

In understaffed orphanages in war-ravaged Europe in the last century, children who were kept in cribs, where they may have been routinely fed and diapered but provided little else, grew up being unable to talk, walk or care for themselves, demonstrating that it takes loving interactions with human beings to produce thriving human beings. And many of these children simply died.

As we grow into adulthood, we continue to need God-given love in a network of caring relationships in order to maintain good emotional and physical health. In an age of communicating through texts and experiencing fewer than ever close bonds with others, I'm concerned about increased incidents of depression, anxiety disorders and even suicide.

Our local RISE congregation has as one of its mantra's "Receive Love. Give Love. Repeat." That pretty much sums up what makes us healthy and happy children of God. Without it, we find ourselves seeking every substitute possible to fill up the hole in our soul, and then wonder why we are left with a sense of loneliness and despair.

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Why Jail "Keep Fees" Should Be Eliminated

Extra costs to families of having a loved one in jail are already
high enough, without adding an additional fee.

As part of our local Reentry Council’s Family Support Committee I helped conduct a survey in August involving 86 members of inmate families visiting our local jail. Their two greatest concerns were costs—of pricey phone calls, medical co-pays and commissary items—and care, including counseling care for addictions and other mental health problems.

On the cost side, one of the 17 items that over 80% of the respondents considered ‘extremely important’ was the $1 a day keep fee that has to be paid before their son or daughter, husband or wife, can have access to phone services or can buy expensive commissary items, even things like deodorant, or packets of condiments like mayo and ketchup, or other items not provided by our local jail.

I think most of us would agree that it is unjust to place such a levy on friends or family members who are not guilty of the crime for which their loved ones are awaiting trial, or for which they have been sentenced. Even if there were some merit in a keep fee, it is inmates who should be billed for that as a part of their sentence, along with any fines or court costs for which they alone are responsible to pay when they are released.

Meanwhile, the $70,000 plus raised each year through this arbitrary "rent" represents only 7/100th of 1% of the Jail’s budget of over $10 million, but it may represent 1.5% of the income of the average low wage family member, already missing a bread winner.

Some of us have already discussed this with the sheriff, who has the discretion of whether, or how much, is charged ($1-3 a day is permitted, but not mandated). Faith in Action, a coalition of 25 local congregations, is urging that this fee be eliminated, or become a matter of judicial decision, not something an individual sheriff decides, or as in the case Middle River, a regional board. There it’s $3 a day, or over $1000 a year, which would be 4% of a family’s earnings of $25,000 a year.

To me this is just wrong on so many levels.

Here's a link if you want to send a respectful email to the sheriff expressing your own concern about this: bhutcheson@rockinghamcountyva.gov

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

10 Things Jesus Never Told His Followers To Do

It's as important to note what Jesus didn't teach as to pay attention to what he did.

Here are some example of instructions Jesus never got around to giving:

1. Join and support the National Sword Association.

2. Make sure you stash plenty of cash for your retirement.

3. Design and build esthetically impressive temples and church buildings for your weekly worship (except when you're at your mountain cabin or ocean front home for frequent weekend breaks).

4. Enlist in an underground militia movement to take your country back.

5. Give a tithe (10%) of your income to charity and use the rest for whatever you wish.

6. Be careful about your reputation when it comes to who you hang out with.

7. Treat yourself to a luxury cruise every couple of years.

8. Build yourself a big dream home to enjoy during your retirement.

9. Regularly pledge allegiance to "the flag of the United Kingdoms of the Roman Empire and to the Republic for which it stands".

10. Avoid befriending a) Samaritans and others with heretical religious views, b) eunuchs and others with different gender identities, c) enemy-supporting tax collectors with differing national identities or allegiances, and d) all kinds of no-good, low-down sinners and criminals, all folks with whom you have nothing in common.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Questioning Our "Lay" and "Ordained" Divide

While most of us agree that healthy congregations need to use all of the varied and multiple gifts of its members, Mennonites have generally adopted the Protestant practice of elevating pastors to a special place set apart from other ordinary folks. It is a chosen few who are honored with ministerial ordination, given special titles, offered salaries and benefits, provided with office space and support staff, and given a major share of time and attention in the weekly service.

Meanwhile, most members do not receive financial support for their ministries in the church and are referred to as "lay" persons, a designation ordained persons no longer claim. In some denominations, in fact, clergy may not even be members of their own congregations, but hold their membership in some separate category with other clergy.

But if the word "lay" come from the Greek "laos", meaning the people, do we really want those we appoint to offices of oversight, teaching and leadership to no longer be one of us?

Perhaps our baptismal "commissioning" should be thought of as an ordination to full time service for everyone, howbeit in many different settings and with the exercise of many different gifts. And among the baptized there will often be appointments to special tasks, accompanied by congregational prayers and the laying on of many hands, and as needed, adequate financial support as well. But to have only a small percent of our members blessed and commissioned in this way, to me, may create an unhealthy dichotomy that is foreign to New Testament faith and to Anabaptist practice.

In my own twenty years of serving as a partially salaried pastor in a medium size congregation, I came to realize that some of the greater honor that went with being the called, ordained and professional "minister" set me up for a problematic set of stresses and temptations. The very design of our church's "auditorium" enhanced this sense of elevation and potential isolation, with my having a weekly audience seated in orderly rows all facing a central pulpit which, yes, was also used by other members, but mostly for secondary and introductory parts of a service that led up to the main feature, the pastor's sermon. And who was I to go to when I needed to acknowledge my own need of pastoral care?

I may be wrong, but some of this seems like a far cry from the church described in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, in which all are to bring their psalms, teachings, and other revelations, all are to be fellow members of the laos, the people, and all are commissioned to a lifetime of service.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Local Mennonite Pastor Gets Facelift Surgery

Last Friday I had an ectropion procedure done at Sentara RMH, not for cosmetic purposes but as a kind of "facelift" to correct a sagging lower eyelid, as recommended by my ophthalmologist, Dr. Kenlyn Miller. This turned out to be an amazing experience.

In the first place, a total of 12 different professionals, from the receptionist and intake person who welcomed me on the first floor, to the nurses and surgeon assistants on the second, were involved in the many steps of preparation and follow-up for what was a mere 20-minute procedure.

For the surgery itself I needed only a local anesthesia, which allowed me to remain fully awake and engage in some conversation with Dr. Miller. We discussed a church-sponsored seminar we had both attended the day before and I was able to ask questions about the various steps involved in the surgery.

This experience also greatly added to my appreciation for my good wife Alma Jean, who was by my side for everything but the surgery itself, and who provided the best post operative care imaginable. While my eye was a gruesome sight to behold for a couple of days, I've gotten along just fine with her help and with some of the Tylenol she insisted I take for the first couple of days.

I have never been more impressed by the quality of medical services available to most of us that we mostly take for granted. The wealthiest and most privileged people in all of the ages before us would have given anything to have this kind of healthcare.

God is good, in sickness and in health, and this has given me a greater urgency to do what I can to support good healthcare as a right for all human beings everywhere.

Monday, April 16, 2018

More Law Officers Urge Jens Soering's Release

I met Jens (Yens) some years ago (we've
since corresponded) and have read some of
the books he's written in prison.

One week ago, April 9, 2018, Albemarle County Sheriff J.E. "Chip" Harding held a press conference, featuring F.B.I. Special Agent Stanley J. Lapekas. Also in attendance were Detective Sergeant Richard Hudson and Senior Investigator Chuck Reid. Together, they issued a "Call of Pardon", addressed to Governor Ralph Northam.

Below is the "Call of Pardon", plus links to a video of their conference and other important media reports.

REMINDER:

Please write a letter of support for Jens' pardon to
pardonjenssoering@outlook.com

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Some Serious Problems At Our Middle River Jail

I recently presented the following to our Community Criminal Justice Board, then submitted it as an op ed piece which appeared in today's Daily News-Record:

Three years have passed since our City and County negotiated a buy-in with Middle River Regional Jail due to a 600% increase in the number of people incarcerated in our local facility since it was built in 1885. Meanwhile our population had grown by only 25%.

At any rate, it would seem appropriate to now have a committee or commission be appointed to review how our arrangement with them could be improved.

At the time, many of wished the long standing lease option we already had with MRRJ could have simply continued until we were able to implement many of the Mosley Architects’ recommendations and get our incarceration rates down to a more reasonable number or until we could build something like a proposed “Judge John Paul Honor Camp” as a rehabilitation, treatment and work release center for non-violent inmates.

In the meantime, here are some of the concerns about Middle River many of us keep hearing and that we believe call for such a review:

1. When inmates from here are transferred to MRRJ, their families immediately have to pay three times as much for their “keep fee”, to the tune of over $1000 a year. This a burdensome and arbitrary charge that innocent family members from our area should not be required to pay just because, through no fault of their own, their loved ones are moved to another location.

2. When that transfer is made, whatever commissary or clothing items (food, hygiene products, socks, underwear, etc.) an inmate has acquired are not allowed to be transferred, so again it is family members who need to pay for new and high priced items to replace them, another hardship.

3. MRRJ has inmates on lockdown for 18 hours a day, not for disciplinary reasons but simply because that requires fewer staff members. This is inhumane and contrary to standard jail practice.

4. Complaints about medical care have long been a matter of concern. I understand we have never done an independent investigation into some of the inmate deaths documented in the NBC 29 documentary two years ago, or the quality and adequacy of medical care in general, issues over which we could face liability. Meanwhile, over the past decades MRRJ has consistently underspent its medical budgets by thousands of dollars.

5. All inmates complain about jail food, but there is a clear difference between the quality and quantity of food served at MRRJ (reports of moldy bread, stone bits in lentils. etc.), compared to the quality of meals served at our local jail. As long as we share ownership of MRRJ, we should be able to expect comparable levels of care and service.

Who in the combined authority of city and county could look into these issues on behalf of concerned citizens in our community?

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