Lent's Walking Companions

He said his name was Seymour but I may have misheard him. We met on the express train from 14^th Street to Grand Central—he was blind and panhandling. I realized later that he’d timed his pitch - “Ladies and Gentlemen, good day, I’d appreciate it if you could spare any change” - to coincide with arrival at the next stop. He perfectly negotiated his cane and cup through the entire car just as we pulled in. It was nice to watch a real professional in action.

A Special Kind of Justice

I sat in court with a friend waiting for his case. As it turned out—three hours later--he was the last to be called. But the intervening time wasn’t wasted.

Street Messages

It's unusual for me to attend more than one liturgy in a three day span these days but a friend was ordained and another had died. Social psychologists say there's a truth in search behavior "you perceive what you are most alert for." Maybe, I like to think the Holy Spirit is in that transaction. I was apprehended by obvious messages from the streets; apart from the liturgies' intention to transport us to a more ethereal place.

Debt's Revelations

As OWS evolves it brings the population’s awareness of the corporate death grip on society along with it. Currently a cluster of working groups are considering all the consequences of debt. 


So, from the new Debt Resisters' Manual, 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/105887484/Occupy-Wall-Street-Strike-Debt-The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual, and the latest issue of Tidal magazine, I note two things of interest: the connection to climate change, and, plain old greed.

Occupy's Special Kind of Violent Arrests

As you can see from this clip Occupy Faith was ready to help the protest on September 17th and our consistent message of civil disobedient--non violence--was the tone of the day, from the protesters' side.

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MNqEZF5Cx6s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

If the story only stopped there. Since I was arrested early in the day I sat in central booking and watched as my sisters and brothers came in as the hours wore on. Many arrived in bad shape, more with curious stories of being taken into custody.

Media Malaise or Something More

Since I sat on a bench after jail time for a half hour--postponing a pee mind you--talking to a Daily News reporter I was kinda curious about what he would write. So I checked it out the next morning. Nada. This happens all the time but later when I was reading the New York Times there was a spare article back on page 20. The reporting was disappointing to boot.
Later, the local public station had a call-in about the Occupy event so I made my first call-in. I kept it simple: "My wife and I left Citibank and moved to a cooperative bank because of OWS." Other than reading The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/170001/more-180-arrested-occupy-wall-streets-first-anniversary that brief conversation on the radio was the only true coverage of what happened over this past weekend.

It's Better in Jail

You're getting sick of this excuse: I wasn't trying to get arrested. Brook and I had stayed overnight in the financial district because we didn't want to miss the 6:30 AM muster call for Occupy Faith that Monday morning. She was juggling the phone-texts to our 30+ clergy and I was stumbling around. I'm not functional at that hour, usually squinting, and taking for granted you are who you say you are. Three cups of coffee helps but I was only on my first. Our modest group met in a square across from Zuccotti and from there things radically changed.