The Miller Spotlight

It's the story of social activists the world over, whether one is out leading a crowd of marchers or sitting alone, working quietly to do the grueling work of a dissident writer. That's what I do most days for hours, quietly nurturing readers while looking for opportunities to strengthen and enlarge the platforms to address the complex problems of complicity with sexual and domestic violence. Every one of us have to fight against the voices in our heads. "Why don't you just give up this passion of yours?" That's not my voice, I reminded myself early this morning. It seldom is. This morning it was the voice of a 75-year-old scholar I heard from yesterday, telling me she had given up and was winding down. Unlike me, she's made a career, rather than an avocation at this work for which we share a passion--the work of trying to wake the sleeping giants who hold the power to change the world and to join forces with women to fight the terror that exists in

All of us involved in social activism of any kind want to see a bee-line from the point we became aware of a problem to it being solved. If we understand the very nature of the beast, we know it never goes that way. That's why very few who start out with a passion for change stick with things over the long-haul. Unable to pace themselves, the majority burn out for any cause after a few years. However, true social activists aren't "normal" folks. We get frequent reminders of this, in case we happen to forget. While we don't all have the same personalities, many of us come out in profile testing as "reformer." What most "normal" people do not understand is that those of us with this profile are also working on ourselves internally and thru our relationships, pushing ourselves toward self-reform even while doing the hard work of pushing against the 80-90% of "tuna" who have no interest in swimming upstream against the stagnation, and s

Just had in our home, as guests this weekend, a middle-aged couple whose lives are intertwined with immigrants thru the school system and the juvenile detention system in S. TX, as close to Mexico as Lawrence, KS is to Kansas City. Our conversation at breakfast was centered around the intertwining of Adverse Childhood Experiences and immigration. The two issues cannot be separated in the youth they both work with every day. What's really scary is that these two issues together are going to produce adults with increasing dysfunction. We're "nurturing" criminals when we could be spending our efforts on rehabilitating people who are willing to do very important work for much lower wages than most Americans would think of working. All of this with our nation in such denial about the true NEED we have for immigrants in order to even move forward in the business world. So much for having a big businessman in the White House.

Just today, I heard from a middle-aged woman who tells me she recently gave up on religion entirely. Finally. After struggling for years to try to make sense of it all, she resolved herself to giving it up.   What made it doubly hard, I'm certain, is the fact she grew up immersed in religion, as the daughter of missionaries.  Like many MK's (Missionaries' Kids) and PK's (Preachers' Kids), there was a big price to pay with that decision--a decision she does not "broadcast," she's quick to tell me. Nobody understands more than I do. In fact, I was so sick of religion that I decided not to formally be a member of any church for fourteen years after my husband Ron went on Disability, forced to leave the pastorate because of several chronic conditions that left him unable to do anything beyond part-time work, a few hours each week. I made that decision as a quiet act of protest, a way to be true to myself, to give myself space, though I never ceased a