The concept of family possesses so many different textures and has so many different sources.  Its texture can be rough, gentle, comforting and sometimes brittle.  Its source is like a river and we are tributaries springing from one Head River – not always seen or easily mapped.  Recently my siblings gathered in Seattle to finally go through a cedar chest kept by my mother for over 60 years.  My sister Claudia is in possession of the chest and she was anxious for everyone to go through the items, make their selections and then get the “junk” gone.

I couldn’t believe all the stuff my mother had kept in that chest, nor I could I believe the rich diversity of our family history I saw recorded.  It included my mother’s 4^th grade report card with signatures from Blanche Koch, my mother’s aunt.  What was intriguing about the report card from 1935 was that it was issued in the midst of the depression and my mother and four of her siblings were living with their aunt because the family of 10 children was too much for my grandparents.  They needed help.  And, like so many other families of the depression era — children in large families were split up and shipped off to relatives to ease the burden.

Also inside the chest was the dress blues — the navy uniform worn by my father in the Second World War (WWII).  Complete with his four year stripe and his rank of Chief Boatswain’s Mate, the uniform seemed so tiny that there was no way my father could have fit in that narrow bundle of wool.   He did and we have pictures of him in that uniform.  He was one good looking guy and my mother was one good looking woman.  They had a difficult life compared to most of their post-WWII generation peers.

My dad ran through more business adventures succeeding and failing in rapid order that it felt like we were moving every two years or were run out of a house because some loan collector was coming after us.  They did an amazing job shielding us from the pain of those experiences.  They bore it all in stride and they never gave up on any of us or on themselves.

The pictures in the cedar chest unleashed memories, laughter, some quiet and sad moments as we trampled through their memorabilia.  I was surprised to see that my mother had kept all the news articles where I was featured or editorials I had written.  The fact that they were in that chest reaffirmed a pride in her son that she didn’t often give a voice to.  I wanted to put my hand on her face and thank her for keeping all that “stuff.”  Items in a gigantic cedar memory box that that she wanted to keep and it was evidence that she cherished them.  A lot in the chest — none of us could figure out where or who it came from and why she would keep it.  It was hard throwing those things away for fear we were throwing away a mystery or the key to an unsolved riddle of her past.

Now the kids were rummaging through their past dividing up the spoils of memories in the vain hope that our children might be interested.  As the content of the chest was being divided among those with special interest in the specific contents, the texture of this family felt smooth and attached — strongly linked or bound to each other.  Childhood smiles and the tight pen curls on Amarie’s hair or Ron’s dashing navy pictures looking as if he could conquer the world or the ladies that inhabited his world or Claudia’s rakish hair images and her loyalty to her mom as she cared for her in the last days of her life and Bill’s Mr. Universe pose flexing his 5 year old muscles that made us all laugh — all captured by Kodak.  Some pictures in color most in black and white.

We have all taken different and divergent paths in our lives.  But the source of the various tributaries that constitute the lives of a family is found in a cedar chest — free of moths and mold — kept tight in boxes of no distinction and now being opened to remind us — we all came from family.  An amazing family with good hearts and a fierce determination to be the best we could be.  Those messages are in that chest — you have to decode them from all the “stuff” but they are there.

Oh, what messages do I leave for my children, nieces and nephews and grandchildren?   I think I am going to go buy a cedar chest and let them be surprised by the joy of discovering the source of their lives.  They will realize that the texture of their lives — while rough and sometimes out of sync all come together in the source of our identities — the family.  Ah, the smell of cedar!

The number 107 million launched off the pages of the Sunday New York Times Magazine like a missile exploding across my conscience. Is it possible that there are currently 107 million women who have gone missing because of rape, torture, infanticide, starvation and neglect? In the 21^st Century, modernity has permitted the enslavement and abuse of women at a rate that numbs the imagination. 130 million women around the world have been subjected to genital cutting. In Ghana, 21% of young women surveyed reported that their sexual initiation was by rape. ¹ In the midst of the genocides that have occurred since the holocaust — Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor and most recently, Darfur the trafficking and slaughter of women overshadows the numbers found in these political nightmares. And even the genocides of the past 50 years — one wonders how many of the victims were women or victims because they were women?

Eleven trips to sub-Saharan Africa in the past two years have brought these numbers into sharp relief. Focusing on HIV/AIDS and the pandemic that his killing 3,000 children a day on the continent of Africa one sees the devastation this disease has had on the women of these cultures. When men acquire the “sickness” the women nurse them to health or stay at their side until the disease is abated or consumes the men. When women acquire “dirty blood” the men leave and abandon them in pursuit of other women less dirty. Women living with HIV/AIDS are found living by themselves or in small support communities of other women living with the disease. Their survival is dependent upon a network of care supporters that roam the country side of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa providing access to precious ARVs or nutrition.

In the midst of this reality stands the Church. The Church, quite often is the only thing that prevents these survivors from falling off the face of the earth. However, one is forced to ask, to what extent has faith, the Church, the Mosque, the Synagogue or the traditional faith healer in villages across Africa contributed to this neglect and to the marginalization of women in all cultures? I continue to be outraged by a superficial theology that justifies an inferior status for women. Every church, every faith that “proof texts” its way across its scriptures justifying the exclusion of women or relegating them to the back pew of leadership should be called to repentance. Like the prophet Amos we should stand outside the city gates of religion and cry Woe to You for the sin that is gender discrimination. We must no longer tolerate governments and leaders that abuse and neglect our mothers and our sisters. These behaviors in policy, in practice and in belief are an abomination to God. The gender silos that once separated us were shattered in the biblical admonition — there is neither male nor female.

We must approach the institutions of our faith(s) and confront them and condemn them if necessary when they say no to a woman simply because of her gender. Faiths that exclude women and tolerate their abuse or submit them to torturous rituals and deny them voice in schools or pulpits should fall to their knees in repentance. As harsh as it may sound, these very acts are in solidarity with those that practice infanticide of young female babies, rape and torture of teenage girls and deny young women access to education. These gender biases permit the powerful to justify exclusion and when you can justify exclusion you are complicit in the marginalization and victimization of women.

In recent months the Obama administration, through their Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has catapulted this issue before the global community. Gender and women’s health issues are part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in a new book soon to be published by Nicholas D. Kristof and his colleague and spouse, Sheryl WuDunn; they argue that women’s rights should be the “cause of our time.” I am perplexed that these movements are initiated by government and media. Where is the voice of the faith community? These women are our mothers and our sisters, they are our wives and our friends — the Church cannot remain silent but must set the example by removing any and all barriers to women’s access to all roles and responsibilities in the institutions of faith.

Any religious leader who advocates for gender exclusion in the full work of their faith is by definition a false prophet. Any religious tradition who dares to proclaim the Kingdom of God and discriminates against the full participation of women is by its action and definition a bearer of a false truth. The voices of 107 women have been silenced — their screams for help are the screams of our own mothers and sisters — we must all share in their voice and that voice must rise to a shout that will tumble the walls of exclusion that deny them safety, security, health, education and the joys of full participation in our global community.

¹ Statistics for this Blog were taken from the Sunday New York Times Magazine, August 23, 2009 pp 28-43.