Everyone looks for “tipping points” -- the place in a social structure where the smallest input will have the greatest effect. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term with his 2000 book by that name. Tipping points can be, and often are, little things overlooked by people obsessed with the bigger picture. In New York, apparently, fixing broken windows and beautifying basketball courts started the city towards renewal. Polio vaccines and Rick Mercer’s mosquito nets have also captured tipping points -- small individual actions that can make a huge difference. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the obvious. Erika van Oyen thought she was going to Uganda in 2008 to teach in a local school there. In Uganda, all school children receive free education. But a lot of girls dropped out about the time they reached puberty. It took a while to connect the dots.
The unmentionable subject Uganda has come a long way since Idi Amin ruled it. It’s lush and beautiful. Lake Victoria provides water. A dam on the Nile supplies electricity -- most of the time. The country uses its abundant sunlight for solar panels, in homes and in kiosks for recharging phones and computers. But poverty is still endemic. Although education is free, school uniforms and school supplies cost money. Some families cannot afford underpants for their girls, let alone sanitary napkins. So when girls have their first period, they often get blood on their uniforms. In a traditional culture, menstruation is still considered unclean. Some households will not let menstruating females cook food, go to church, or go to markets. Bloodied uniforms are seen as a disgrace. That attitude may seem archaic in our society, where TV ads promote an endless variety of feminine hygiene products. But you may have noticed -- the ads never show blood. That suggests that we’re still squeamish discussing menstruation. In Uganda, it’s taboo. So when pubescent girls have accidents, they feel embarrassed. Humiliated. They go home; many stay home. Some will get married off. Some will be raped. Many become pregnant. And their education ends.
Making a difference Erika found her tipping point. Since 2008, she has gone back to Uganda every year. She teaches workshops on Reproductive Health. She invites schools to gather a group of up to 50 girls. She usually gets 100 -- on one occasion, more than 200. And she hands out simple kits: two pair of underpants, eight reusable flannel absorbent pads, two waterproof shields, two Ziplock plastic bags (so that girls can take soaked pads home in a sealed bag for washing), 
all in a drawstring bag. Everything but the poly-urethane shields (like Gore-Tex) and the Ziplock bags are made for Erika’s program in Uganda. Each kit costs about $15 Canadian. Each kit lasts a girl for about three years. Think about it -- $5 a year, to keep a girl in school. So far, Erika has helped about 2,250 girls stay in school. Next year, she expects to take ten volunteers with her, to reach another 2,000 girls. They’ll also train Ugandan mothers and teachers to carry on their work and to distribute kits through the rest of the year.
Health kits The micro-charity she founded -- ISEE Solutions (the initials stand for Investing in Sustainability, Education and Empowerment Solutions) -- does more than just women’s kits. Working with local organizations in Uganda, it empowers women to set themselves up in businesses; it provides hard to find equipment such as musical instruments for school programs; it supports a vocational school. But other charities also do those things. Erika van Oyen’s identification of menstruation as a tipping point catches my attention. And my admiration. Especially with this coming Friday being World Health Day. ISEE Solutions is so small that its programs have to be based on donations received. Volunteers cover their own travel expenses to and from Uganda. As a registered charity, it posts its annual financial statements on Canada Revenue Agency’s website. Erika will talk about her programs at a special event, Thursday April 14. Her charity is partnering with Kelowna Sunrise Rotary Club for an event called “When Women Empower Women, Incredible Things Happen,” at the Laurel Packing House, 1304 Ellis St. in Kelowna, from 5:00-7:30 pm. Tickets cost $100 each, and include gourmet appetizers, a signature cocktail, and door prizes. Contact erika@iseesolutions.org If all tickets sell, and if the Sunrise Rotary club manages to negotiate a matching grant, this one event could provide reproductive health kits for 2000 girls in Uganda. Quite a tipping point! ******************************************************** Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca ********************************************************
YOUR TURN
Tom Watson had the first reply to my musings last week about Easter and The Resurrection: “Just as the questions you raise won't be dealt with in most pulpits this morning, neither will the question: Does the Resurrection produce Faith, or Faith produce the Resurrection. Truth is most churches will pretty much avoid the deep questions today, preferring not to rattle either the usual troops or those who attend today just because...well, just because it's Easter. Sing some hymns, some Hallelujahs, and retire to the church hall for some coffee and fruit bread, and chocolate eggs for the children. “Not that that's totally wrong, for it's still a gathering of people who are there out of that innate sense that ‘something happened’ and whatever that something was it has mattered. “This morning's New York Times carried a provocative arti cle by King's College philosophy professor William Irwin, entitled ‘God is a question, not an answer.’ Perhaps the same holds for Easter: It's a question, not an answer.”
Jim Henderschedt wrote, “Thank you for putting into words what many, including myself, have been wrestling with. The substitutionary atonement theology of the Middle Ages just does not sync with the gospel message and revelation.”
David Gilchrist had similar thoughts: “I'm glad you had the courage to open this ‘can of worms’, which I hope will lead to a whole lot more discussion on a subject that people seem to be terrible afraid of dealing with honestly. Good Friday has become increasingly difficult for me to take part in. The culture of revenge seems to be so deeply ingrained in people that they attribute it to God! So they believed that the only way to atone for their sin was to ‘pay’ God with the most precious thing they had. We see this cruel, self-centred theology rear its ugly head very early in the Christian era, when the interpretation of Jesus personal sacrifice (his willingness to die rather than compromise his conscience) led to the idea that GOD had SENT him to die! This would contradict the teaching of Israel's best teachers… “As soon as I say: ‘Jesus died for my sin’, with the implication that therefore I am no longer a sinner in the eyes of God, and am guaranteed my place in heaven, I am implying that all the millions who lived before Jesus, or who have never heard his Name and responded to it with the correct formula, are doomed -- even if they lived far worthier lives than I have! I believe that our Eternity is the hands of the Creator, whether I am of the flock of Jesus, Mohammed, Gautama, or a stray in the wilderness of the world and history. Micah said God does NOT require a sacrifice: He requires that we love mercy, live justly, and walk humbly. Isn't that what Jesus meant by ‘The Sheep and the Goats’?” 
Isabel Gibson commented, “Frankly, a lot of theology seems like nonsense to me. On the law: do we need more than, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’? On the nature of Jesus and the resurrection: do we need more than to stand in awe of something that kick-started a rag-tag bunch of scaredy cats into a force that moved empires?”
Karen Bueno said something similar: “’Something’ happened to start our beloved church. But if a person must believe that Jesus rose from the dead to be a part of that church, that is not going to work. It is the 21st century, for goodness sake. The best explanation I ever heard was from Joseph Mathews: ‘Do wolves talk to little girls? Of course they do. It's in the story.’ But first we have to admit that it IS a story to bring intelligent folks into our churches.”
Art Gans drew attention to an article in Maclean’s magazine: “Did Jesus really exist?” Art commented, “According to Maclean’s, the whole thing is a myth based on faulty memories. The socalled scholars they quoted have made a business out of mythologizing everything to do with Jesus for a number of years. As far as I know they are not supported by anyone I would classify as reputable.”
Judyth Mermelstein thanked me for “another sensible column on the reasonings of long-ago theologians. I confess I am mystified that people can argue themselves into believing the absurd rather than accept that much of the Bible is not literally the word of a God who never uses metaphor.” Judyth offered her own theory: “It seems to me that the Resurrection was one of those rare cases where a person subjected to extreme trauma shuts down, giving all the appearance of death, without being quite dead… Given that the test for death in Jesus' time was to see whether the person was visibly breathing and had a perceptible pulse, a mistake seems quite likely… “Of course, I'm not a Christian...but, then, neither was Jesus. He would have had no idea his resurrection would have such an impact on the world. I suspect he hoped his actual teachings would, but that is another story...” 
Fran Ota expressed some thoughts similar to mine in her own blog: “Something happened. Barrie Wilson, in the book ‘How Jesus Became Christian,’ talks about the 'Jesus Movement' and that something which made them come together in real community. My take on it is that they 'finally' understood what Jesus was talking about.”
Steve Roney assured me that my questions were not new: “The thing about Christianity, though, is that, having occupied the best minds of Europe for two thousand years, it is hard to think of anything that has not already been examined and analyzed. There are well-known answers to your questions. “If our sins are already forgiven, why do we still pay the price of sin? Justice and conscience demand that, although forgiven, we do our utmost to make reparations for the harm we have done. “Why does everything die? Everything does not die. The soul does not; God does not; angels do not; mathematical principles, rules of logic, do not. Physical things die. The New Testament uses the word ‘death’ in two senses: physical death, and spiritual death. Jesus conquered spiritual death… “Paul's ‘wages of sin,’ again, refers to spiritual death. Physical death happens regardless of sin. “Adam and Eve could not have been physically immortal in Eden. Otherwise, why did God worry that they might eat the fruit of the tree of life, and live forever? “Why did Jesus did, although he was without sin? Very fundamental: he died for our sins. That being so, it seems ungrateful to carp about taking upon ourselves the sin of Adam and Eve. “Why didn't Satan die? He did. Spiritual death. No physical death, because he is not a physical being. “You got to believe in the Resurrection. Without it, as St. Paul says, Christianity is meaningless.”
In a fairly long letter, Laurna Tallman disagreed with Judyth: “Jesus actually did come back to life again following His crucifixion. I do not happen to think he stayed interminably alive in the flesh for very long after that fact. What else does ‘He ascended into Heaven’ mean than that he died in the final sense? But the Jewish understanding of who Jesus was and what He accomplished was expressed in terms of the metaphors of their language and their tradition.  “You, and some Biblical writers, are conflating different meanings of ‘death.’ You are forgetting (and they did not know) that all language is metaphor. Actual death, the cessation of life, is used as a metaphor for a life that does not realize its potential in a specific way because of behaviour the Bible calls ‘sin.’ “Indeed, if He had not died He likely would have vanished from history. But His legacy of teaching about forgiveness, love, and holiness was preserved because He rose from the dead as He prophesied He would. “The rhetoric surrounding these realities and metaphors tends to get murky and magical as you justly point out.” 
Margaret Tribe felt favoured:” I think that our congregation, at Ebenezer United in Markham, ON, is among your estimate of the 10 % who heard a different sermon, both on Friday and yesterday (Easter Sunday). Our minister teaches that Jesus was killed by a domination system that disliked the way he was stirring up the people against them, and the way he was speaking of God's justice and peace coming to earth. He was killed because he was a political threat. “To say that it was all part of God's plan, or that Jesus' death paid for the sins of all humankind throughout all time, is inconsistent with our experience of a God of unconditional love and forgiveness. And I think it is also inconsistent with what Jesus taught about God. The Resurrection of Jesus, noted by his followers in several appearances, tells of God's triumph over the evil domination systems. It seems to me that the ‘something’ that happened was Jesus showing his followers, and us, that they/we did not need to be afraid, that they could move out from behind the locked doors of fear, and courageously continue his work of compassion, justice and peace, especially for the vulnerable and the marginalized. And that we must continue that work here and now, not in preparation for some afterlife that may exist, but for right now, ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done." “Jesus is crucified again and again, every time some domination system, be it an individual or a group, abuses, terrorizes, hurts, oppresses any of God's children. And, Jesus is raised to life again and again, wherever hands serve, hearts love, and acts of justice and compassion are done.”
Gary Taylor: “As a preacher on Easter morning I must have fallen into the 10% …I have thought about sin and death much differently over the last 12 or 13 years once I encountered the work and theories of Rene Girard (see for example "I see Satan Fall Like Lightning’) and others who build on his work, like Gil Bailie in ‘Violence Unveiled’ 
and S. Mark Heim in ‘Saved from Sacrifice’. The theory of mimetic desire and scapegoating violence that leads to peace and religion was eye opening to me and I see the world with new eyes.”
Peter Scott picked up on one phrase: “I like your idea of ‘death as a gift from God’. I think of death as the next great adventure. I was born without having any choice and I will die whether I want to or not. Life however, has been an great adventure and I look forward to death as another great adventure, although I have no clue what it will be like, just like I had no clue at birth about what life would be like. Would it help to worry about it? I don't think so.”
********************************************
TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.        If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.        To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedgesunsubscribe@quixotic.ca.        You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.        I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedgessubscribe@quixotic.ca
********************************************
PROMOTION STUFF…
 Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.com Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up,  http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>  Alan Reynold’s weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap” -- reynoldsrap@shaw.ca  Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com  Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town – not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net
***************************************