Women of the ELCA

I’ve always enjoyed growing plants and flowers. It’s something my father instilled in me. No matter how inept I was, Dad always let me help with our gardens. He even taught me to graft fruit trees, although today I’d be hard pressed to remember how. As soon as I was on my own, I was growing flowers and vegetables, even if only in a window box.

A riot of chive blossoms.

Right now I’m caretaker for the second garden that I have designed and created myself, with the long-handled-tool help of my husband. My garden is adjacent to our patio, right outside our back door. I love to sit on the patio on a cool morning, a cup of tea in hand, and admire the plants. Bumble bees, birds and bunnies come to visit the garden, too, and they seem to like what they find. It’s just as nice at the end of a long day, to relax on the patio or even sit within the garden.

Despite good planning, sometimes the garden holds a new surprise. This spring I found columbine and forget-me-nots growing in my garden, plants I had not added.

Yarrow beginning to blossom

I can lose time in the garden puttering about. There’s something about working in the soil that is calming and restorative for me. I much prefer having my hands right in the dirt, no gloves needed. (That’s how my husband and I split the garden tasks well – he does the work requiring long-handled tools and I do anything that let’s me play in the dirt.)

I can’t even begin to imagine how God felt on that first Sabbath, as God sat back and reflected on creation, but I do know what a joy it is to admire the herbs, vegetables, annuals and periennials in my garden. Some of my closest encounters with the Holy have come in my garden.

How do you encounter the Holy when experiencing nature?

Linda Post Bushkofsky, executive director and inveterate gardener, is passing on her love of plants to three-year-old grandson, Jayden, these days.

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There are over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles in which no one was killed.

 All of them are in the United States.

 As of last week you can subtract one person from that total, and probably many more in the next few months, as the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

I didn’t realize our justice system allowed for juveniles to be sentenced to life without parole, or one could say life without hope, in this manner. It seems barbaric to me that we would put a 16-year old in prison for life for committing two armed burglaries, which is what happened in this particular case. When the juvenile committed the second burglary while on probation for the first crime, the judge sentenced him to life without parole. 

Prison?  Yes.

For life? 

We have a ban on cruel and usual punishment in the United States–the Eighth Amendment.  Five judges agreed that this amendment should forbid life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders who do not participate in homicides. 

My biggest difficulty is in understanding that there are four judges on our Supreme Court who voted against that rationale.  

And it just makes me pay all the more attention to the nominee who will be the next judge to serve.

Emily Hansen is director for stewardship and development, Women of the ELCA.

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Last Friday afternoon I was having a great day. I’d gotten a lot done, and I scored a free yogurt left over from a grants committee meeting. (That meeting closed with over $60,000 being awarded to non-profit organizations that focus on the emotional and physical health of women and girls.)

It was a good day.

Then shortly after 3:00 pm, a news report flashed across my computer screen. A couple in their 20s was shot in what appeared to be a murder-suicide at the Old Navy clothing store on Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago.

My heart sank. I couldn’t help but imagine this young couple lying on the floor in contrast to the brightly lit store. I knew that by the time I saw the news report, a parent or sibling had already learned of the tragedy.

There are so many questions and no answers. Did they have a fight? How did he get a gun? What disagreement could have been so significant that it left him with no other option but murder? Did she try to break off the relationship? Nobody knows.

But what we do know is that if they were in a romantic relationship, there was likely other evidence, or warnings, that she was a victim of domestic violence. According to the National Coalition of Domestic Violence, in “70-80% of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.”

Had she confided to a friend about his temper? Did she feel that she could express her feelings about the relationship with her parents? Was there anybody who had witnessed the abuse prior to the shooting?

I am only slightly comforted by knowing that the organization that I work for is working to make a difference in the lives of women and girls, as are the large volunteer networks of women in this organization.

Elizabeth McBride is the editor of Café and director for intergenerational programs.

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Illegal immigration is a federal crime. Immigration law requires federal reform.  Ever since 1952, when U.S. immigration law changed to allow non-whites to be naturalized as U.S. citizens (prior to 1952 only whites were allowed to be naturalized), U.S. immigration law has grown into a contradictory maze of policies and practices riddled by trade agreements and enforcement failures. Talk to any immigration attorney for more than ten minutes and your head will begin to spin. Our current system is simply unworkable!

Behind the statistics on those who have entered the U.S. illegally, overstayed their visas or committed visa fraud are real people with real lives who contribute to our gross national product. One example: Lisa was brought illegally into the U.S. when she was 3 years old. Since then she has received a free public school education and worked and paid taxes for 20 of her 35 years. Her family and life are here. Hers is a common story of how undocumented immigrants live alongside us creating enterprises and communities.

Early in his presidency, George W. Bush courageously set out to do immigration reform. His efforts got nowhere. Immigration reform is overdue!

And now we have Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1070.  All Latinos (and anyone that might look Latino) become suspect under this law and need to be able to prove their citizenship at any time. Were I to travel to Arizona, the fact that I speak English beautifully–it  is my first language–might help, but who wants the humiliation of being stopped and asked, “Show me your papers?”  

Now any local law enforcement can harass and persecute any Latino under the guise of following this law. There are some pretty toxic situations along the border of Arizona that are only fueled by this.

Churches doing as Jesus instructed, welcoming the stranger and doing for the least of these, are criminalized by SB 1070.  The U.S. Catholic bishops stand in solidarity with the bishops of Arizona in opposing this, in their words,  ”draconian law.”

Perhaps Arizona’s clear racializing of immigration law will wake us all up.  Maybe Congress will see the importance of moving forward with well thought out, greatly needed immigration reform. Maybe we will all take a closer look at how the U.S. economy has required the exploitation of undocumented immigrants for generations, for both our daily food and our daily conveniences.

Perhaps Arizona’s attack on brown-skin Latinos will cause us all to consider that the solutions for this present drama and suffering lie within us.

 And hopefully, we will respond.

Inez Torres Davis is director for justice, Women of the ELCA.

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At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept. (Mark 14:72)

Last month, I attended a Women’s Funding Network (WFN) conference. Women of the ELCA is a member of this consortium of women’s funds with wildly different reasons for existing, but all with the mission of helping women and children.

So I was bothered by my behavior when I failed to help a woman asking for help on the downtown streets of Denver.  Here’s the way it played out.

A 30-or-so-year-old white woman, dressed at least as well as I was, walked up to me on the downtown street and pointed to her significant other, a well-built Black man, and said, “Can you give us . . . ”  That’s all I heard before I curtly shook my head and walked on.

And then I felt bad. Here I was, at this women’s conference that is all about helping women in need, and I didn’t even let her finish her sentence. So, I decided I would watch the couple for a while to see if I made the right decision. It was raining pretty heavily, so I crossed the street and stood under an awning and observed.

Both she and her partner were approaching people and pointing, maybe to the bus line . . . I’m not sure. They were largely successful in receiving handouts. A lot of people opened their wallets. In fact, they barely had finished pocketing money before they turned to the next person and asked for money.

Ha! I thought. I was so right in not giving them money. And then they crossed to my side of the street, and the man approached me for money. I said, “I’ve watched you take money from about 10 people before me, so I don’t think so.” (Did I just hear the cock crow for a second time?) He ran to his wife or girlfriend or partner in crime or poverty and hustled her onto a bus, and they got out of there.

Was I right or was I wrong?

I talked to a colleague about it when I got back to the office, and she said she often gives money to people on the streets because she believes they wouldn’t ask for handouts it if they didn’t need the money. “If I feel like it, I give it to them, and I don’t think about it again,” she said. “I don’t wonder what they spend it on because once I hand it over to them, it’s not my money anymore.”

My husband frequently drops coins into the cups of people sitting on downtown Chicago streets, but many of those people look like they’re in dire straights. This couple didn’t look quite so helpless.

I have some compassion. If I didn’t, this incident wouldn’t plague me, and I certainly wouldn’t blog about it.

What would you have done?

Terri Lackey is managing editor of Lutheran Woman Today magazine.

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You know that label that describes a mini-van driving, suburban, overextended mom who spends a lot of time taking her kids from one sporting event to another?  “Soccer mom.”

Hmm . . . I drive a minivan and I drive our son to soccer practice twice a week and two games on the weekends. I live in a suburb and I consider myself a pretty busy person. Does that make me a  “soccer mom”? I hope not.

I don’t want to be one of them. I’ve met the “soccer moms” that fit the stereotype that popular culture perpetuates. They have really nice lawn chairs so they can watch the game in style. They have a blanket and a bag of toys ready for the younger siblings. They have a delicious assortment of snacks and pricey thirst-quenching sports drinks ready for their young soccer stars. They always seem to have time to get their nails done, and while their kids are eating chocolate muffins, they’re munching on celery sticks. And their minivans? They’re called SUVs.

These are all generalizations of course, but they come from my own real observations–so they must be true!

I can’t be a soccer mom. My minivan is actually a minivan, and it’s a disaster. The younger sibling? I always forget to bring toys, so she’s running around munching from a bag of stale graham crackers that I found under the seat in my . . .  minivan. And I don’t own any lawn chairs; I sit on the grass or I just stand there. But at least I’m paying attention to the game! Those soccer moms I described earlier? They don’t even watch the game! They just talk to their friends and play on the iPhones! Oops, there I go again . . .  another generalization!

I don’t know why I’m opposed to being called a soccer mom, but I am. Maybe it’s because I’ve only known one kind, and they’re just not my type. 

There are a lot of women out there opposed to being a part of Women of the ELCA. Why? Because they’ve only experienced one kind of what a Women of the ELCA participant can be, and they believe in that stereotype.

The label has stuck. How do we change it?

Emily Hansen is director for stewardship and development, Women of the ELCA.

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