Keeping Our Retirement Funds Busy

MEDA photo

Imagine having the money you've set aside for retirement working around the clock accomplishing things that really matter to you, like helping farmers in South America grow and market their own coffee, providing capital for women in Africa developing small businesses, and funding alternative energy projects at home and abroad.

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Instead of investing in Wall Street traded corporations, Alma Jean and I have been blessed by having the bulk of our retirement funds in microlending and other programs that benefit the poor and help the environment.

Our local financial adviser Glen Kauffman, with Everence Association Inc., a fraternal benefit society, has helped us do this through Calvert, MEDA, Oikocredit and similar organizations.

For us this represents the best of both worlds, having our money meet the kinds of needs we typically associate with charitable giving, yet also having it available for later use as needed for our retirement.

For example, Everence offering an Advantage Select High Impact Annuity for individuals wanting to save for retirement while their money is invested helping others. It offers an annual interest rate guarantee of 1.7% for two years or 2.05% for four years.

That may not seem like much, but it helps provide loans for causes that are priceless:

• Emerging and socially engaged congregations growing their ministries and community services.
• Green lending for nonprofit organizations making environmentally friendly improvements.
• Community development needs in underserved areas in the U.S. and around the world.

“We are excited to offer our members a way to help others while also saving for their own future,” says Michael Horn, Everence Director of Charitable Products and Church Loans. “The Everence Advantage Select High Impact Annuity gives people an opportunity to live out their faith and values through their financial decisions. It’s another way we are doing better, together.”

As a disclaimer, I am not a part of any organized effort to promote Everence or any of its products. But as one of its customers, I definitely approve this message.

Check this link for previous blogs on this subject.

How Local Church Of The Brethren Opposed Virginia's Massive Resistance To Integration

Past Governor and US Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr.

I owe special thanks to EMU classmate Kenneth Eshleman  for permission to use the following remarkable and untold story, excerpted and condensed from an unpublished 1964 research paper of his I recently found in my files, one he wrote for a Senior History Seminar course. Dr. Eshleman recently retired from teaching history and political science at Messiah College, Grantham, Pennyslvania.

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional, Virginia's Senator and ex-governor Harry F. Byrd, Sr., his son Harry F. Byrd, Jr., and other prominent politicians in the Commonwealth created a policy known as "massive resistance" in opposition to any form of racial integration in the commonwealth's public schools.

Under then Governor Thomas B. Stanley, a 32-member member commission came up with the "Gray Amendment" to the Virginia Constitution, one that would change the section that prohibited the use of public funds for private education and that would allow school boards to fund alternative segregated schools. A referendum was passed by both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates that had to then be approved by Virginia citizens. Meanwhile, even stronger legislation was passed that would actually cut off funds to local public schools that chose to integrate.

Some key members of the Church of the Brethren in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, led by Paul Bowman (president emeritus of Bridgewater College) and Pastor Robert L. Sherfy (then president of Harrisonburg's Ministerial Association) wrote letters to the editor and ran ads in the newspaper actively opposed the measure and urged County and City residents to vote against the ratification of the referendum. They were joined in this effort by the local Committee for Free Public Schools, led by two Madison College professors, one of whom, Rev. Ward McCabe, was also an Episcopal rector.

On the opposite side were such community leaders as Madison College president G. Tyler Miller, superintendent of Rockingham County Schools Wilbur S. Pence, State Senator George Aldhizer II, and the two local state delegates, Lawrence Hoover and Charles Wampler, who happened to be members of the Church of the Brethren (as was Wilbur Pence) but who went along with the amendment.

Remarkably, the efforts of Bowman, Sherfy and others prevailed as far as the outcome in this area was concerned. Rockingham turned out to be one of the few Virginia Counties that voted against the policy of massive resistance, along with Arlington, Fairfax, Charles City, Montgomery, Highland and Pulaski Counties. The City of Harrisonburg was joined by only three other cities in opposition, Radford, Waynesboro and Bristol.

A January 6, 1955, issue of the Daily News-Record quotes Dr. Paul Bowman as saying:

"There are those who say that this is not a moral issue... Let the church, they say, preach the gospel, baptize sinners, bury the dead and keep its hands out of business, politics and public education... (But) the church of Christ is concerned with every movement which affects human life and touches human character... Whatever contributes to the enrichment or impoverishment of the human mind is the business of the church... It is not enough for the church to preach the gospel of love and goodwill and do nothing about those instruments of society which breed ill will, mistrust and injustice."

In spite of these efforts here locally, Virginia nevertheless held out against fully integrating its schools for another ten years. But the voices of members of the Church of the Brethren and others, in hindsight, were clearly on the right side.

What lessons can we take today from their courage and persistence?

A Respectful Appeal To Local Supervisors

photo from Old South High blog

I welcome your feedback on the following draft of a three-minute speech I hope to present at our local Board of Supervisors' meeting this Wednesday at 3 pm:

Thank you, Chairman Ceuvas and other members of the Board, for this opportunity to address my concerns about how our community can better serve the increasing numbers of mentally ill men and women in our local jail.

I know you are in the early stages of determining how to respond to the final version of the Moseley Architects' proposal due this month, and I understand it may include a space for people needing mental health treatment. As a therapist, I find that heartening, but I also have some serious concerns.

As you see from the copy of Thursday's op ed piece on this issue you have in front of you, we currently have the most meager budget for mental health services of any regional jail in our area, one that pays for only 10% of the personnel time as does the new RWS Regional Jail, for example, with a total of 375 beds, and  only 5% of the mental health personnel time as the Winchester Regional Jail, with 600 inmates.

So when someone is considered at risk for suicide at our Rockingham/Harrisonburg Regional Jail, for example, the staff there often feel they have no choice but to put such inmates in restraint chairs or to strip them and place them in the isolated padded cell, sometimes for hours on end. There are simply no counselors of any kind available.

I applaud any improvement in this area we could provide in a new facility. But just creating physical space doesn't provide clinicians for a viable mental health program. To staff such a program would require an additional budget of at least $100,000 a year, even for only two mental health clinicians. Compare that to the clearly inadequate $18,000 ($9000 from the County) the Jail pays the Community Services Board for the services of one very part time nurse practitioner to meet the psychotropic med needs of a population of 400 plus people at a mere three hours a week.

With the additional financial burden of funding a new multimillion dollar facility, to say nothing of the additional cost of staffing and maintaining it, how can we expect to have even more money to invest in an adequate mental health staff, given the fact that we currently feel we can afford only $9000 a year for such services?

A lot of people I talk with in our community wonder whether it wouldn't be wiser to continue to rent available jail space at Middle River for the time being, at what may be a bargain compared to new construction and personnel costs we're looking at now, regardless of what we decide to build. And then to invest more dollars in our CSB, for example, to enable it to provide more adequate mental health and drug treatment programs that could help keep as many people as possible from having to become incarcerated in the first place.

Gemeinschaft Home, an already existing local treatment and reentry program, could be a model for the kind of structured environment many drug offenders could be assigned to as an alternative to incarceration--before they get into the criminal justice system rather than after they have served a sentence. The Fairfield Center is also prepared to handle cases through their Restorative Justice program that could divert many offenders from our courts and our jails (see the article on the McDonnells in front of you).

All of these kinds of programs have been proven to be more cost-effective, and just far more effective, period, than incarceration in many cases. We will still always need to have a facility such as the one on Liberty Street to house violent offenders and for those who may represent a flight risk, as well as for those fail to take advantage of the kinds of alternative work-based programs our community could provide for low risk offenders. But if we were able to get by with 70 jail beds prior to 1995, we shouldn't need over six times that number in just two decades, when our population has increased a mere 25% during that period, if my numbers are right.

I close with a recent statement by Ken Cuchinelli, our former Virginia Attorney General:
  
“For far too long, the only answer to decreasing crime was to put more people in prison. We built prisons at rates we didn’t need and couldn’t afford, especially for non-violent offenders.  Now, we know there are alternatives that cost less and work better.  I am proud to sign on with the Right on Crime initiative to help fix this problem by making cost effective, data driven public safety decisions that reduce recidivism rates.”  

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NOTE: Here's an online petition to the local Community Corrections Board, which is to have a meeting that's open to the public to consider the Moseley Architects proposal on December 8, and to members of the Harrisonburg City Council and to Rockingham County Board of Supervisors, who are to approve it by December 31. Even f you have already signed a hard copy of the petition, please circulate and share this link as widely as possible.

A Sin We Seldom Talk About

      "Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around."

Frank A. Clark

In our catalog of sins, gossip is seldom one we rank as especially serious. Everybody does it.

Yet it's hard to think of anything that can do more harm to what we prize most--our good reputations. Nor does engaging in it get close to respecting this version of the Golden Rule, "Speak of others only as you would have them speak of you."

Whenever we're about to pass on some unflattering information about another, we should consider the words of the late Jewish poet and theologian Jonathan Laveter, “Never tell evil of a man if you do not know it for a certainty, and if you do know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, ‘Why should I tell it at all?'”

If anything we should practice spreading positive "rumors" about others' good deeds instead of talking about their faults.  

Rabbi Joseph Teluskin, in his book Words that Hurt, Words that Heal, suggests that the most likely reason we gossip is to "raise our status through lowering the status of others", which he says is why we are less likely to speak ill of those we perceive as being of lower rank than ourselves.

Another motivation, he believes, is to be perceived as being "in the know". Here he quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson of two centuries ago as saying, "The vanity of being trusted with a secret is generally the chief motive for disclosing it."

Of course I have no problem keeping secrets myself. The problem lies with all the other folks I tell them to ;-).

Christian Aid Ministries: An Amazing Amish and Conservative Mennonite Relief Organization

CAM worker on the cover of Christianity Today

Christian Aid Ministries is a growing Amish-Mennonite based organization established in Berlin, Ohio, in 1981. While supported largely by Amish, conservative Mennonite and other "plain" Anabaptist groups in the US, it has since gained contributors from many other denominations as well. For clarification, the Amish involved are mostly not Old Order but are from the more progressive branches of the group.

Like its older sister organization, Mennonite Central Committee, based in Akron, Pennsylvania, it reaches out to needy people all around the globe. Last year CAM distributed approximately 15 million pounds of food, clothing, medicines, seeds, Bibles, Bible story books, and other Christian literature, according to their website. Their annual budget has reached nearly $100 million.

Countless volunteers donate their time to the work of the organization year round, and their fundraising and administrative costs represent only 2.4% of their total outlays. Their CEO's salary is very modest by most standards, paid in part by CAM's for-profit publishing side of its operation.

This is an amazing organization, led by a dedicated group of people administering aid projects in nearly every major hotspot in the world.

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This Thanksgiving season should be a special time to make a generous gift for people in unimaginable need, like the ones pictured in the above refugee camp for Yesidi refugees in Iraq.

Here are some links where you can make a donation right now:

Christian Aid Ministries

Mennonite Central Committee

 Oxfam International

CARE

CAM photo 

 

Bold Statement By Fairfield Center On Jail Expansion Issue

165 South Main Street • Suite A • Harrisonburg, Virginia 22801 Phone (540) 434-0059

WHEREAS Harrisonburg and Rockingham County have contracted with Richmond-based Moseley Architects to conduct a community-based corrections study and facility planning study that must examine current trends and future projections relative to jail population, as well as consider possible alternative programs and overall facility needs; and

WHEREAS the Fairfield Center and other area organizations and community groups currently plan for the expansion of existing and the establishment of new programs designed to divert misdemeanant and felon defendants and offenders detained in jail awaiting trial or actively serving sentences; and

WHEREAS the Community-Based Corrections Plan must, at a minimum, include: ... a description of the proposed services, staff and other resources necessary to implement expanded or new [alternative] programs; and

WHEREAS advantages of such alternatives have been proven to be more effective and require less tax dollars than detention; and

WHEREAS through a number of independent efforts, many community members and leaders have met to discuss advantages and options of alternative measures; and

WHEREAS the Department of Criminal Justice Services offers assistance concerning the development of alternative programs; and

WHEREAS the Fairfield Center, based on its mission, advocates for broad stakeholder involvement in important community decisions;

NOW, THEREFORE, the natural progression of these developments leads Fairfield to the next step of inviting you to a formal conversation on November 6, 2014, at Community Mennonite Church, 70 South High Street, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., about what expanded and new programs, as alternatives to incarceration, should be included in any community-based corrections plan.

Goals for the Meeting:  

Participants in this facilitated meeting will...

• Become more informed and engaged in current criminal justice matters locally;
• Review 6VAC15-80-110 for clarity on what a comprehensive Community-Based Corrections Plan must include;
• Identify alternatives to incarceration – pretrial detention and post-disposition punishment:
• Develop an up-to-date list of existing community resources;
• Begin to identify the need for and resources necessary to expand existing and establish new pretrial detention and post-disposition punishment alternatives, and for additional resources necessary to improve criminal justice caseload and jail population management;
• Suggest the necessary components (stakeholders, process-structures, and timelines) for appropriate criminal justice decisions in Harrisonburg-Rockingham County; and,
• Provide a written summary to the Community Criminal Justice Board in advance of their meeting.
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• Here's a link to an online petition you can sign appealing for extending the time and expanding the stakeholders involved in coming up with the state-mandated Community-based Correction Plan required for applying for state funds (It is not the same as the one I circulated earlier asking for an additional year of time). Do not sign this one if you have already done so on a hard copy, but please urge others to sign on.

A Prayer For All Souls Day 2014

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November 1 is observed as All Saints Day in many churches, a day to reflect on the witness of Christian saints and martyrs of the past. Today, November 2, is designated as All Souls Day, a time to remember the rest of our deceased loved ones.

In my Anabaptist tradition, we tend not to make a distinction between "saints" and other ordinary followers of Jesus, believing that no one can be a "saint" alone (the word is always in the plural in the Bible), but that we are all, by the grace of God, a part of one global and eternal "communion of saints" spanning all space and time.

But we haven't been especially known for honoring our deceased saints.

I personally like the tradition of families in some Appalachian communities gathering each year at their family cemetery for a day to honor their departed loved ones. They celebrate the day as a kind of reunion, with good food and fellowship and often with singing and the sharing of memories of loved ancestors.

In the church I grew up in we always placed the obligatory gravestone with the name and birth and death dates of our buried deceased, but never brought flowers to their graves and seldom made return visits to the cemetery to honor their memories. Were we missing something?

One thing for sure, our lives don't begin and end with our own life stories. We have all been profoundly shaped by the experiences of countless others from near and far, and from both our present and our past, by all those who have gone on ahead of us. We owe them our gratitude.

This surely includes all of the 3237 individuals named in the Bible. Even though some were scoundrels, we can nevertheless learn something from each person's life, and of course from the multitudes of those who were flawed but worthy examples well worth following.

Since the Bible is largely a book of life stories, we wouldn’t have a Bible as we know it--and likely wouldn’t have a faith, period--without these very human people from our past. And while they are all dead now, as far as an earthly existence is concerned, they are still very much a part of our everyday lives, our experiences of worship, and the instructions and teachings we live by. There is only a "thin space" separating us.

I used to think of all of the people in the past as being behind us, and we the living as being on the front lines of history. But I no longer think of the deceased as bringing up the rear, but rather that we are actually behind them. They are the pioneers of our faith journey, and we are following in their train.

Here's an ancient Lithuanian Prayer for All Souls Day:

Dear souls of the dead,
you are still remembered by my family;
you are most worthy of our perpetual remembrance,
especially you, my grandparents, my parents,
also our relatives, children,
and everyone whom death
took away from our home.
I invite you to this annual feast.
We pray that this feast be agreeable to you,
just like the memory of you is to us. Amen.