Every City Has a Kathryn

A person who always has room for you to stay the night at the last minute, who will open their home for the writer's conference and feed everyone too, who will organize the food bank and who will exhaust herself caring for those who need it. These Kathryns don't make a lot of noise about what they do, they don't tell others what to do either. They are not likely to spend much time on Facebook or twitter or developing PR strategies because their lives are taken up with the needs of nurture. Their impact on their cities are like gold in the bank but they don't have much of that metal in their accounts. Their influence on their communities are like the Reverend Doctor in the pulpit but you won't hear them preaching. They will be out there dealing with the most difficult and contentious issues without complaint. They are strong but not domineering, they have a message but do not shout. Every city has at least one Kathryn and if they left you would feel it, although most of them don't receive awards or much notice of any kind - in fact they probably eschew applause and praise. Not all of them are named Kathryn - some are called Mary or Jack and you can sometimes recognize them by their manner - the word "I" doesn't find its way into daily small talk.

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About Humanity

"A chosen people is the opposite of a master race, first, because it is not a race but a covenant; second because it exists to serve God, not to master others. A master race worships itself, a chosen people worships something beyond itself. A master race believes it has rights; a chosen people knows only that it has responsibilities." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Not in God's Name, Schocken, New York. 2015.

As someone who does not identify as a chosen people or part of a master race, I ruminate about how to respond to the world, particularly that part of the world I cannot endorse. So I am comforted by the people who have taken on ministry and who feel responsible enough to care for community.

How do I act on a feeling of responsibility without assuming that I know what other people should do, or what we should do? It's very easy to slip into a political preaching that suggests I know, or that my being a good example means that others should follow it. Or worse yet, create…

Albert Camus: Our task

"Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all." Brainpickings on Albert Camus

Creating Chaos

A very important article in The Guardian analyses the rise of hyper-masculinity and the phenomenon of Angry White Men. "Sociologist Michael Kimmel is one of the world’s foremost experts on the phenomenon. - His recent research has looked at topics including spree killers (who are overwhelmingly male and white), as well as the relationship between masculinity and political extremism."

In the article there is a report on a study on testosterone where 5 monkeys are observed. The one who rises to the top beats up number 2 and number 2 beats up number 3 - and so it goes down to number 5.

"So the experiment is: he takes monkey three out of the cage and he shoots him up with testosterone, off the scale, and puts him back in. What do you think happens? When I tell this story my students always guess that he immediately becomes number-one monkey. But that’s not true. What happens is that when he goes back in the cage he still avoids monkeys number one and two – but he beats the …

Infinite Power

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