I'm playing in another blogosphere.
Dear handful of readers, will you come find me over here?
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Mirroring
Sometimes you just need a different pad of paper.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
what the garden does
... is pay you back for showing up.
if you go every day – to water, deadhead, weed – you don't only see the fruits of your labor, you can taste them.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Thinking Pink: Listening beyond the noise
When the topic is women's healthcare, I often feel like I'm standing on bare ground between two warring castles.Blazes of gunpowder and noise and fiery light fill the air overhead. Unyielding voices shout loudest from the ramparts, drowning out the quieter, more thoughtful points of view on both sides. Torches are hurled from one wall to the other. Each side wants to win.
On the ground in between, you have to make your own path. With all the flares above, it's harder to see the gentler lights that can help you find your way.
On the face of it, you'd think the topic of healthcare would be as benign for women as it is for men. But because you can't talk about women's health without talking about their reproductive systems – and everyone has an opinion about what they should and shouldn't be able to do; or about what "healthcare" means when it's about women – it has become next to impossible to have a civil conversation about it.
Today's news that the country's biggest breast cancer advocacy group has been spending considerable time and money on issues beyond breast cancer research and "finding a cure" – has, in fact, been seeking to divide women, for political gain – has whipped up the frenzy yet again.
A genuinely surprised American public rose up, flooding the Internet with rage and shock and an outpouring of support for the women's healthcare group that has, for more than 60 years, been providing free or low-cost care for all women, regardless of their ability to pay.
While I wade into this latest firestorm a little reluctantly, with flak jacket and hip boots on, I can't stay silent.
In 2002, I did the 3-day Breast Cancer Walk in the name of friends and relatives who had died from breast cancer, or were newly diagnosed. I wore their names on my shirt and kept them in the front of my mind every time I got tired or sore or thought I couldn't go on. It was the Avon Walk then -- but it's become the Komen Walk, so I consider myself an alumna of the original, and deeply concerned about how it evolves. In my 20s, when I would drop out of college (forfeiting student health services) every few months so I could work full-time at the first newspaper to win my time and love (dramatically prolonging the time it took to graduate), I relied upon Planned Parenthood for all my health-care needs. They would always see me; whatever my immediate concern, they never turned me away, keeping me and many of my friends healthy and supplied with birth control at a time when few of us had insurance.
I see no contradiction in considering myself Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, and feel only deep sorrow at how far apart good women have become on the topic of our life and health, and frustration at those who continue to seek to divide us with shorthand labels that insult the nuances of our lives and beliefs.
So I'm remembering the cornerstone of what I learned in newspapers, which is: When in doubt about an issue, read from as many sides of the conversation as you can bear.
Spend some time thinking for yourself.
Helpful questions to keep in mind, while you do:
What's at stake for the major players here?
When you follow the money trail for each party – who is spending the most, and why – where does it lead?
When you look at the extreme sides of each argument – i.e., who is most interested in shouting into the megaphone and least interested in listening, or having that old-fashioned civic enterprise known as a Real Conversation – what do you find?
Don't turn off your brain for any principle. If you believe that a higher power granted you life for a purpose, do Him / Her the supreme favor of using the marvelous brain you were born with, and be brave enough to live in the bands of gray where most Truth lives.
As quietly powerful religious thinkers Frances Kissling and Richard Mouw gracefully show in a moving episode of Krista Tippett's American Public Media show On Being, it is only when you stop talking long enough to really hear those with different views that you stand a chance of getting past this national shouting match over abortion and women's healthcare.
To me, the greatest human value of all is respecting one another's divine essence enough to actually see the light inside each one of us. Efforts to obscure that truth with one-topic bludgeons, to divide us from one another so we can no longer communicate with civility, is the greatest evil of all.
If you care about reading beyond the headlines, here are a few places to start. I welcome anything you've found that adds to the conversation.
The first place I found the kind of context I was looking for this morning was in this surprising backgrounder from The Daily Kos – the "largest progressive community blog in the U.S":
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/01/1060885/-Behind-the-Pink-Curtain-Komens-Political-Agenda
Here's AP's story today, on what Planned Parenthood's role in securing mammograms for women actually is:
Here's the take from the Weekly Standard, a leading neo-conservative blog founded by William Kristol:
When you get dizzy from the volleys, take a quiet minute to consider a more thoughtful conversation about the issues that have divided us so, from Krista Tippett, host of American Public Media's show about values and ethics called On Being:
Finally, a related essay from Christian ethicist David P. Gushee on the importance of listening:
If you care about women's lives and health, become someone who refuses to play the Divide and Conquer game.
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