The Lost Son

I found one of my printed out sermons lying around, re-read it, liked it, and decided to post it here. For those not used to church services, the sermon/homily/reflection/talk is often based on one or more set Bible passages. The passage for that Sunday that I used was from Luke (Luke: 15: 1-3, 11-32)
 

Jesus tells this parable to a group of Pharisees who have criticised him for eating with outcasts - beggars, tax collectors(!), and other undesirables. Pharisees usually appear in the Gospels as the Smug Self-Righteous, more concerned with obeying religious laws than real people.  He also tells two shorter parables about a lost coin and a lost sheep, and the joy when they're found again.

Here beginneth the sermon:

In my Good News Bible, this parable in Luke is called the Lost Son. It’s more familiar name, is, of course, the Prodigal Son. Prodigal means recklessly and wastefully extravagant, and therefore it’s quite clear which son is meant. The Lost Son however can be seen as a bit more ambiguous. There are two sons here – are we quite sure we know which one is to be seen as ‘lost’?

I want to state up front that I like thinking about different shades of meaning and unusual perspectives, even radical perspectives. To me, they give me something to think about, and encourage me to go deeper into a passage. I think one of the most dangerous tendencies in religion – and elsewhere- is the desire to establish something as dogma. Something not to be questioned or discussed, but just accepted. A line in the sand, used to decide who is in and who is out.

Which is exactly what the Pharisees are trying to do here. Eating with outcasts is just Not Done, and puts Jesus’ whole credibility into question. Jesus responds with 3 parables about lost things, the desire to find them again, and the joy when they are found.

The first two parables are about a lost sheep and a lost coin. A lost sheep and a lost coin are both valuable objects, so being happy when they’re found and making an effort to do so are not difficult to understand, even if it could well be argued that the search for the one sheep put the others at risk, and the celebration on finding the coin may cost more than the coin’s worth.

But coins and sheep are not responsible for their own lost-ness. Once found, the owners does not have to ‘forgive’ them. There’s no offence given to make the owner think ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ and decide not to look for them. It’s not reported in Luke, but it’s easy to imagine the Pharisees making these points in between the parables. Sheep and coins can’t be thought of as ‘sinners’.

So in the third parable Jesus raises the stakes. This time it’s about a human being, and one who has definitely brought all his troubles on himself, and upset as many people as he could, as badly as he could, while doing it. It’s hard for us to really feel just how shocking his actions would have been in the Palestine of 2000 years, so perhaps consider one possible modern day version:

A young woman in a Western country runs away from her parents’ house. She travels to Syria, and joins up with ISIS. She denounces her family. One of her duties with ISIS is to report on other women – whose burka is too tight, who is not covering up. Women are severely whipped as a result of her actions. Eventually she falls from favour and decides to return to the West.

It is a lot harder to imagine this return being received as a joyful blessing. But Jesus insists that it is so. People have value, in spite of their mistakes and errors and crimes. The son has not destroyed his value in his father’s eyes by his actions – the Father still loves him, will protect him. This is a deep challenge to the Pharisees, and to us. To truly imagine unconditional love for an adult human being is almost impossible. For most of us, love of parents, friends, partners, will survive the normal ups and downs that require forgiveness and understanding. But the wasteful son’s actions are extreme. And also, we (and the Pharisees’) think, shouldn’t the Father care more about sin? Shouldn’t a Holy God be a bit tougher than this? What about consequences?

Someone definitely thinking these things is the other Son in the parable, the older son, the ‘good’ son. The one who stayed home, did all the things he was supposed to. The one who obeyed the Law. But when he speaks to the Father, we realise that he too is a Lost Son. Again it is hard for us to see just how disrespectful this ‘obedient’ son is being. But he disobeys his father by not joining the party so his father must go to him, rather than the son coming to him, and he doesn’t address his Father using the traditional respectful address. Instead he orders his father to listen up. This is insulting. Consider this as a modern ‘translation’ of his complaint:

 ‘Just shut up and listen to me for once, old man! I’ve stuck it out here at home, obeying your stupid commands day in and day out. I work like a dog here, but do you ever notice? Ever say thanks? Of course not. And now your no-good son turns up and you roll out the red carpet for him.”

This, implies Jesus, is what the Pharisees are saying when they complain that Jesus is eating with outcasts. And this speech says loud and clear that the older son is not in a right relationship with his father. How long has the son being carrying these resentments? The speech shows us that he is also a lost son, that his relationship with the father is also broken. While the outward laws were kept, the true love and respect for the father, the sense that in working for his father he is also working to build his own inheritance and to pass it on – all that has withered. The Father has re-gained one son, but discovered that his other son is also lost – or in danger of becoming lost.

So not one lost son but two. Both sons need to repair their relationships with their father. It is also clear from the Father’s speech to the older son that repairing the relationship between the sons is necessary in order to repair the relationship with the Father.

The two sons also represent the two groups in conflict in Jesus’ own life at that moment. The older son in the parable represents the Pharisees, and the younger the outcasts. So we have many more lost sons.

And even more, if we think of all the people throughout the last 2000 years who have heard or read this parable and recognised in themselves either the obedient, but jealous and resentful older son, or the wasteful, immoral, but returning son.

Jesus’ parable of the Lost Son is his answer to the Pharisees grumbling about his eating with outcasts. He is saying two things – firstly that obvious sinners and outsiders are not the only ones who are lost, and secondly, that the Pharisees complaint is, literally, un-Godly. God’s acceptance and forgiveness is miles beyond that of the Pharisees who claim to be acting out of their obedience to God. It was an enormous challenge to the Pharisees, and is still an enormous challenge to us today.

But there is one more Lost Son I want to talk about. And that is Jesus. To the Pharisees, and to many others since, who you keep company with is who you are. So can the prodigal son be, not only the outcasts he eats with, but Jesus – and therefore God – himself? This is the suggestion posed by David Henson, an Episcopalian priest in the U.S. I read his article while preparing for this sermon, and while I don’t think it completely fits the parable, part of it shines an extremely bright light. And it's certainly a radical perspective! So I want to finish by reading the final part:

“Jesus isn’t the father.

Jesus is the prodigal.

He asks us whether we will accept him, even if he reeks of what we think is unwashed sin.

He asks us whether we will embrace him, unclean and unsavory to our tastes, with the lavish grace of a banquet.

He asks us whether we will run out to meet him when we see him lost, alone, bedraggled, and abused; whether we will be eager and expectant to do the irresponsible thing of living out the Good News.

He asks us whether we, like the father in the story, have the generosity to accept him as he appears; or whether we, like the brother, will demand that God not be so irresponsible and insist that God come to us only in the ways we find acceptable.”

A Mother's Day sermon

One of my hats is a lay preacher for the Methodist Church here in Manawatu. The following is a sermon I preached at Ashhurst on Mother's Day. The readings referred to are Acts 10: 44-48; John 15: 9-17; and 1 John 5: 1-6.

These first two readings are beautiful and generous, and are at the heart of Easter and the joy of an Easter people. The reading from Acts tells of the Gentiles receiving the holy spirit - representing the reconciliation of God and non-Jews. The reading from John recounts Jesus calling the disciples friends not servants, emphasizing that God’s love in not hierarchical. Both the passages describe incredibly powerful moments in the relationship between Christ and his followers. And at these points the disciples had a couple of choices – they could see this as the setting them aside in an exclusive club or they could see it as both a generous invitation and command to go and do likewise. Most Christians know that the second view is the more Christ-like.

But there’s a third New Testament reading today which made me uneasy because of its focus on ‘the world’. There are Various New Testament passages that rail against ‘the world’.  A earlier section of Johns’ letter makes it clear why victory over the world is so important:

Don't love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you cannot love the Father. Our foolish pride comes from this world, and so do our selfish desires and our desire to have everything that we see. 1 John 2: 15-16

This idea of the world being evil has played out in the media recently. Those of you who watch Campbell Live will have seen the stories it has been running on the Gloriavale community on the West Coast. For those who haven’t, Gloriavale is a not closed but very secluded community of about 500 people. It is run like the early church, with all belongings held in common. People don’t go out to work, instead they live and work in the community, usually in farms, or doing cooking and cleaning for the community, caring for children. They take a very literal approach to the Bible. Women are not able to be leaders, birth control is forbidden. They have their own school and higher education is not encouraged. On entering, members are required to sign over all their possessions and earnings to the community.

The stories about Gloriavale have covered people who have recently left the community, an act which leaves them disowned by their families, and with no resources and very frightened. Frightened because they have been told all their lives that the outside world is ‘evil’. Further stories about Gloriavale have explored issues such as bullying, financial exploitation, sexual and physical abuse, particularly of children and young people. It’s been very painful to watch.

The low point was a scene where a young woman who’d left, Julia, tried to visit Gloriavale in order to contact friends and family. Before she can get there she is stopped by her father, who tells her: ‘‘I don’t want to see you unless you want my God. That’s the only thing we have in common.” And: “the only reason I’d love you, is to see your soul saved. I don’t love you for any other reason.”

I don’t believe this is a Christian community. I don’t believe a man who can say that to his daughter knows anything about love. And on Mother’s Day, a day that celebrates the love and sacrifice of parents for their children, this feels particularly foul.

But think again about that passage from John’s letter about the world and we can see where this attitude might come from. And let us acknowledge that there are passages in the Bible that lend themselves to that belief. Jews, Christians, and Moslems all have to recognize that their holy books contain passages that can easily be interpreted as teaching prejudice and violence, and in fact reading them in any other way is quite difficult. And in Gloriavale, bible verses about separating from the world are the justification. As I say, passages about the world make me feel uneasy. Because this same world that is so evil is the same world that God so loved that he gave his only Son to it. It’s the world that God created, that Jesus commanded us to go out and serve. When I read these passages I want to shake the writers and say “what do you mean when you write ‘the world’? Don’t you really mean ‘sin’ or ‘selfishness’? If so, just stop using ‘the world’ as a convenient shorthand!”

Because to me, it’s a call to the urge to see ourselves as an exclusive club. Gloriavale is an example of taking the exclusive approach to extremes and the result is a sick society. They do no good to the outside world, and they do no good to themselves. Abuse grows and is justified as keeping people in line. Free thought is stifled as being likely to give rise to dissent. Their power corrupts the leadership. Love, the command of Jesus for us to love one another takes a very secondary place to the need to control. Julia’s father, faced with two conflicting Biblical commands – ‘love one another’ and ‘shun the world’ has chosen the cruelest.

The Gloriavale community claims that they do not ‘interpret’ the Bible – they take it literally. But everyone interprets the Bible in their own way – even the decision to take it at face value is an interpretation. And when there is a conflict between texts – what do you do? John Wesley used four sources when coming to theological conclusions – scripture; traditions of the Church; personal experience; and reason. I suspect Julia’s father did so as well – but the traditions of the church and reason were both warped by his experience in Gloriavale and drowned out the calls to love coming both from scripture, and the natural love of a father for a daughter.

Love one another is rightly recognized as one of Jesus’ most important commands, if not the most important, and all the rest of scripture should be read through that lens. Love is acceptance and a desire for the best for the person loved. And that also means allowing them to be free, as the mother in the poem I read earlier* knew. Love requires thought and interpretation. Many of the mothers I know have told me that they have had to adjust their parenting style for their different children. What worked with one child didn’t with the next, or one child posed completely different issues to the other. Love required them to take into account ‘scripture’ (parenting books?), tradition, personal experience, and reason.

And thinking of love in scripture sends us back to Acts – the generous gift of the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, those previously apart. And to John. Love is trust, love is friendship, love is service. Amen.

*Poem: A wish for my children, by Evangeline Paterson

On this doorstep I stand

year after year

and watch you leaving

and thing: May you not

skin your knees. May you

not catch your fingers

in car doors. May

your hearts not break. 

May tide and weather

wait for your coming

and may you grow strong

to break

all webs of my weaving. 

Comments on some recent books

I'm home at present, with some grotty virus, so before I watch another movie, and do some more knitting, I'll write a bit, including comments on the books from my last post. I'll polish those off first.
1. Four seasons: a year of Italian food. Well, I didn't do 10 recipes - I did three. Two will definitely get made again, the eggplant slices wrapped around mozzarella, although I will bake not fry the eggplant slices. Too oily. The other was a hazelnut praline semifreddo which was very yum, even without the hazelnut liqueur. I just need to get better at unmolding things. But it was certainly easy to identify recipes I wanted to make, and could see myself making. A cookbook to be owned, so that you can work through it at your own pace.
2 and 3. The wedding wallah and Moon over Soho were very enjoyable. Definitely recommend in the romance and detective genres and will hunt down the authors' other titles.
4, 5, and 6. Didn't get to. I borrow far more than I read, and always will. I think of it as a shopping spree where I can return things with no questions.

Ok, that's them out the way. Now on to the book I really want to write about. Big Brother, by Lionel Shriver.

Big Brother is narrated by Pandora, a 40ish married-with-stepkids businesswoman. The Big Brother is her older brother Edison, a self-aggrandizing but down on his luck jazz musician. At a particularly low point, she agrees to allow him to stay, over the objections of her husband Fletcher, who loathes the guy. She hasn't seen her brother in several years, and is devastated when at the airport she discovers he has gained weight. Like over 200 pounds.

The rest of the book is a meaty consideration of sibling issues, dieting issues, food issues, and I have to say that I read the book in about two days. I find her compulsive reading. But I found her writing about weight and dieting to be both jarring and fascinating. Her depiction of everyone's repulsed reaction to the new, fat Edison seems both sadly plausible and slightly hysterical, and this reaction occurs before anyone has any idea why Edison has become so fat. It turns out that Edison is a compulsive eater, gorging himself on enormous amounts of food. (The fact that Fletcher is a health puritan does make this conflict entertaining as well.) And Edison is described as disgusting. Not just his body, but the mess he leaves behind in the kitchen. The culmination of this 'fat Edison is disgusting' comes when Edison finally confesses that his career is completely washed up and he has nowhere to go once he leaves his sister's. Fletcher has given her an ultimatum at this point - if Edison stays on past his scheduled flight, their marriage is over.

Hearing a cry from the bathroom, Pandora enters to find:
"The toilet was brimming. Floating on a skim of waste water, turds were scattered all over the floor - under the sink, beside the shower, against the wall of the tub, and dammed at the door, so two balls escaped before I closed it behind me." (p. 153, and sorry if anyone was eating)

Is a bowel movement like this even possible? Anyway - this is a man at a low ebb, hitting rock bottom in classic alcoholic-before-rehab style.

On the other hand, because Shriver is an intelligent woman, she can reflect on our culture's bizarre and obsessive reaction to weight and size, for instance:
"Ever since Edison gave me cause to, I've made a study of this: the hierarchy of apprehensions when laying eyes on another person. Once a form emerges from the distance that is clearly a human and not a lamppost, we now log 1) gender, 2) size. This order of recognition may be universal in my part of the world, though I do not believe 'size' has always been number two. Yet these days I am apt to register that a figure is slight or fat even before I pick up a nanosecond later that they are white, Hispanic, or black." (p. 139-40)

In the second part of the novel, Pandora stages an intervention with Edison and offers to rent an apartment and live with him while he loses weight, as long he doesn't cheat at all. This part of the novel , for me, read as if it had been written by someone who had never dieted, and actually didn't know that much about the process. The third part of the novel (which I won't give away) gives an indication of why this is so, but it's still very discordant to anyone who knows anything about weight loss or dieting. Edison is able to go from binging on anything available including wheatgerm to a 500 cal a day liquid diet for 6 months, and only cheats once. And without having to be hospitalized? And the doctor they see at the beginning has no objection to a 500cal diet? I'm still not sure how much to see these, and other, aspects of part 2 as a failure on Shriver's part, or whether they were deliberate.

Equally bizarre is the fact that Pandora sees weight as the only thing that needs to be 'fixed' about Edison, or maybe she believes it's the thing that will solve all his other problems - his lying, his lack of responsibility, his lack of motivation, his addictive behaviour. If anyone is crying out for therapy, it's Edison. But again, there are perceptive descriptions of the feelings of superiority of the successful dieter, plus the recognition that achieving weight loss can be a hollow victory.

Perhaps it's a case of actions speaking louder than words - the author's disgust with obesity not being able to counteract the other intelligent points in the novel. Which the author (through her narrator) admits to as well:
"I scoffed at Fletcher's association of physique with vice and virtue, but I bought into the same equivalence myself." (p. 137)

Ghosts, animal madness, and Italian food and Indian marriage

The New Zealand Spring is behaving in its normal way - gorgeous weather in early September has given way to standard blustery and cold October, so going to the library seemed a logical activity for today.

 I had considered finding a book on salads to try and encourage me to eat more veges and less fruit (and sugar generally), but it not being salad weather I ended up getting Four seasons: A year of Italian food, by Manuela Darling-Gansser. It does have a lot of vege recipes, although being Italian reduces their chance of getting the Heart Society's healthy tick. Like a baked onion recipe for 6 calling for 175g of butter, and the (fried) eggplant slices wrapped around mozzarella cheese. Yum yum. Lots of recipes call for anchovies, which I'm prepared to try but may start with using my chili rule - halve the amount suggested. I'll challenge myself to cook at least 10 things from it before it goes back. 

The wedding wallah is a novel set in modern India, and looks fun in a Jane Austen/Alexander McCall Smith kind of way. Romance and humour in an international setting. 

Two London books - The Victorian city: everyday life in Dickens' London, by Judith Flanders was a bit of a no-brainer for me really. Social history - tick. Dickens/19th century - tick. The only question was actually did I want to read another book about London? What about Manchester, or Edinburgh, or New York? The author has written another book with a very intriguing title: The invention of murder. 

Speaking of murder, Moon over Soho is a police procedural where the gimmick is that the murders are supernatural and the protagonist is an apprentice wizard. I bought another book in the series for David's birthday - Whispers underground. It was enjoyable although the style won out rather over the plot I thought. Anyway, Diana Gabaldon's describes the series as: 'What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz.'

Interestingly, Moon over Soho was shelved in Horror, which is not really where I would have put it, but I guess it fits with all the paranormal romance/hip dark horror of the Charlaine Harris and Kelly Armstrong school. In acknowledgement of Halloween at the end of the month, the Dark is a collection of contemporary ghost stories. I like ghost stories and they're a bit out of fashion these days, so fingers crossed. Searching for a good link, I see reviews are mixed. Hmm.

Lastly, Animal madness: How anxious dogs, compulsive parrots and elephants in recovery help us understand ourselves, by Laurel Braitman. Animal behaviour and welfare is another thing that interests me, so it came home too. Again checking reviews while link hunting, it's based on a very sad experience adopting an adult, quite disturbed, dog. 

Staycation reading

So, I've been on leave this week, at home, kicking back, so what have I been reading? Trashy chick-lit? Re-reading old faves like Georgette Heyer and Terry Pratchett? Some thrilling page-turner by Stephen King? Not quite...

I've just finished reading Laying down the sword: Why we can't ignore the Bible's violent verses, by Philip Jenkins. It's written partly as a response to the constant casting of Islam as a violent religion, and the Qu'ran as a violent text. As Jenkins points out, the Qu'ran contains nothing as atrocious as the genocide of the Canaanites by the Hebrews described in Deutoronomy and Joshua, a genocide that is a commandment from God.

From this, and other similarly revolting passages, Jenkins considers various issues, the key one being how Jews and Christians throughout history have interpreted, justified, or excused those passages. A common interpretation or reading has been symbolic - that Canaanites and other condemned groups represent the inner struggle against our own sinful natures (sic). A common justification has been probably along the lines of God's response to Job - roughly, it is not for humanity to question God. A common excuse is that things were generally far more barbaric in those days - this sort of warfare was not unusual. Jenkins lists many other examples - these passages have been troubling people for a very long time.

To respond to the examples I give, the first has probably the most going for it. The second is impossible, really. And the third is wrong - complete extermination of enemy groups including women, children, and livestock was not common practice.

The other issue Jenkins considers is fact that on a practical level, these verses have ceased to be a problem for the average believer because they have largely fallen out of use. The lectionary, the prescribed Bible readings for each Sunday throughout the year, pretty much ignores those books. Exodus is the most used, with the dramatic Moses narrative. Also, when we do read them, various common psychological defenses kick in to dampen down their true horror. And at least in the West, those verses have pretty much ceased to have any moral authority at all. They are not used to justify current wars or crusades.

Past wars and campaigns are a different matter of course. This book was painful to read, both because I had to really consider the horror of those genocidal passages in a way I hadn't before (see the para above), and also because I had to read about the ways they had been used throughout history, to modern times, when politically expedient. Particularly in colonial times, and their potential to be used again remains.

One of the biggest issues raised (for those who are religious) is what all this means for the idea of scriptural authority. One of the interesting points Jenkins makes is that it is often religious teachings that make these passages so horrific and pose us such problems. Christian examples are the parables of the Good Samaritan, and command to love your neighbour and turn the other cheek. Judaism and Islam have equivalent commands to mercy. Faced with how to reconcile these contradictory types of passages, most people recognise compassion as the higher call. For which thank God.

I was pleased to see Jenkins use my favourite passage in the New Testament, Matthew 15: 21-28, in which Jesus initially rejects the request of a Canaanite woman to heal her daughter, but changes his mind when she challenges him. I love the idea of Jesus being open to experience and learning from the people he meets, but I did shock some people once when I expounded this idea - the idea that Jesus could be wrong was clearly disturbing and they preferred the idea that Jesus was 'just testing her'. Jenkins agrees with my interpretation, and emphasises that she is described as a Canaanite, indicating a reconciliation between the two groups.

I highly recommend this book, and I hope to do a sermon on these ideas if I get a chance. It is written from a religious viewpoint, Christian in this instance, but if you aren't religious yourself, I still recommend it. Atheist writers such as Mark Twain and Richard Dawkins underline the violent side of religion, so this gives a very thoughtful perspective on how believers deal with these texts, and it has to be said that a lot of the ways people have done so are pretty feeble (another painful part for me to read). I also found the discussion about the influence of secular and non-Muslim terrorist tactics on modern Islamic terrorists, and the whole relationship between Islam, the Qu'ran, and violence very informative.

That Book

How do I talk about Dirty Politics? I really wanted to read it, so much so that we downloaded the Kindle app and downloaded the electronic version. David and I read it concurrently on the iPad - I'd read it at night and first thing in the morning, he'd read it after I went to sleep and during the day.

This is probably going to be quite an emotional post, because I'm not sure I can be that objective. Part of that is because reading material written by Cameron Slater, in any context, is a serious blow to my faith in humanity. I believe in civility and the right of everyone to be treated with respect. I dislike foul language, racism, and misogyny. I dislike intolerant rants. I had read a post on Whale Oil before - can't remember why - but realised quickly that this was not a blog I wanted to follow. Leaving aside Hager's book and clinging to Voltaire's statement 'I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it', I will concede that my feeling that anyone who associates with Slater anyway should be ashamed of themselves is unfair. But my gut reaction is that if his blog reflects his true feelings, he is a horrible human being. If it doesn't, then he is still a horrible human being, because the world does not need that kind of venom.

What about taking into consideration the content of the book? Well, let's see. Being a gun for hire, taking money from people intent on protecting their profits, and damn the fact that you make money off things that kill people, like tobacco and alcohol. The hounding of a young woman to tell details of her affair (with Len Brown), and leaving her to the wolves once she does. The attacking of people supposedly on their own side - i.e. National Party members not sufficiently rabid.

And of course, the collusion between senior cabinet ministers and Whale Oil, which was clearly used as the attack dog of the party. I find it amazing that Judith Collins has been cut loose by emails which only report on her actions and attitudes, rather than the emails written by her that show gross misconduct. Of course to do that would give Hager's book too much credibility. And John Key? I definitely think there is a case to answer. As leader he has to choose between looking complicit or incompetent. If he didn't know what was going on, why the hell didn't he?

I have to confess to an extremely uncharitable pleasure in watching those involved squirm. Which only proves the point that dirty politics taint everyone involved. I have some sympathy with those voters repulsed by the whole lot of them, and politics in general. Who wants to get involved?

Well I'm sorry, but you still have to. If you pull out, no matter how noble your motives, think about who you're leaving the field to. If the debate over That Book turns your stomach, concentrate on your local candidates. Or focus on the parties' policies. Choose a issue, or issues, close to your heart - climate change, child poverty, science funding, arts funding - read the different parties' policies on that issue and vote according to which policy you prefer. Stay engaged at some level.

I'm quite involved in this campaign, in fact on Thursday for 2 hours I will be phoning complete strangers and asking them if they are enrolled to vote. But this isn't so much a result of Dirty Politics, but a documentary film I saw a couple of months ago - Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the story of the Liberian women who stood up and said 'enough' to Charles Taylor, and the warlords he was fighting. At one point during stalled peace talks, they stormed the discussion hall and refused to let delegates out. Told by one security guard that they were disturbing the peace, one leader threatened to strip (apparently in West Africa it is a curse to see your mother naked). Once Taylor was ousted, and elections scheduled, they worked hard to educate people about the elections and the candidates. They were instrumental in the election of the first African female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Those women were so staunch. They made me proud to be a woman. They also made me decide that if they could risk death to stand up for what they wanted and believed in, I could do a bit of phoning, door knocking, and pamphlet delivering to stand up for what I believe in. And unlike the women of Liberia, I'm lucky enough to be a position to vote on issues that are more nuanced than 'Please stop killing and raping people'.