The Miller Spotlight

Never in thirty years, studying complicity with abuse in the faith community, have I had more encouragement and interest in my work than now.  All thanks to Roy Moore and the State of Alabama. Not in my wildest imagination could I have imagined that such encouragement would come from a southern state.  Of course, this encouragement isn't particularly intended by Alabamans--so many of them that I know read some of my work in 1995. That's when, published in the popular, young Baptist "tabloid," known as Baptists Today. What was published back then was both detested and devoured by the critics of the Convention's traitors, such as the rebel Jimmy Carter, who was speaking his own truth back then, too, though it would be years before he would throw in the towel on the Southern Baptist Convention. The struggling paper, published every three weeks, had an extremely courageous editor, Jack Harwell, bruised and beat up because he'd dared to speak truth already in t...

I cannot keep up with all that's going now, bearing fruit from the seeds planted twenty-five years ago!  I find it totally exhilarating, empowering, yet exhausting as I look back and ask why it has taken so long. On the other hand, I am in awe at what's happened in ONLY 25  YEARS.  Considering the centuries of groundwork done to keep patriarchy so entrenched that the evil of sexual abuse still remains so awkward and taboo in so many circles to even speak about.  Many times I've asked myself why this should be so awkward, and always I find the same answer after searching the "data base" of my soul and experience. I'm totally convinced it's because we see this problem as SEXUAL abuse, rather than sexual ABUSE.  Same as we see DOMESTIC abuse rather than Domestic ABUSE.   I keep going back to the illustration Rev. Elizabeth Stellas gave in a retreat I attended to help women work thru the trauma of whatever type of sexual violation had been experienced ...

I'm a reluctant caregiver. That makes me an oddball in my profession of nursing, I know. I sense that some of my colleagues have seen this as a problem, or even a character fault.  Maybe it is. Now, don't get me wrong. I do care. Immensely.  About many things, and about people who are interested in changing lifestyles or attitudes or endemic psycho-social issues or family issues to improve quality of life and health for all. Otherwise, I detest care-giving. Some say I should have been a teacher, a writer, or a lawyer. I've got a low tolerance for resistance to change, though I am capable of accepting things that cannot be changed if every last option for change has been explored before reaching that conclusion. That's why I suggested a new way  to pray The Serenity Prayer several years ago--something that's also included in  Enlarging Boston's Spotlight: A Call for Courage, Integrity, and Institutional Transformation . There's a lot of room in the nur...

Yesterday Jim Zeigler, the Alabama State Auditor speaking to the fact four women had come forward to accuse the much-older Roy Moore of sexual abuse in their teen years,  told the Washington Examiner : “There is nothing to see here … the allegations are that a man in his early 30s dated teenage girls.” Zeigler also defended Moore by citing Biblical examples of men involved with younger women. “Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. … There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.” These allegations are being called a smear attack by Republicans, even though one of the accusers was a Trump supporter!  The recent groundswell of evidence to show the long-standing, wide-spread problems some of us have been writing about f...

Anybody out there got connections with KCUR (the regional NPR station in Kansas City)? Just had an empowering 45-minute interview with the manager of Kansas Public Radio. Will let you know when it's aired, where it will be available on line, and how you can help get it (or something similar) into the larger NPR arena in the weeks to come. Dan Skinner was great to work with. Definitely not like a couple of challenging characters I encountered in 1993-94--some so right-winged with ulterior motives than mine--which I "wrote up" in Enlarging Boston's Spotlight . He'll have to edit out about 2/3 of the content, including a time or two when I got deeper into sub-topics than I intended, like collusion in the publishing industry. That's the beauty of not being live, though, as I usually was in the scores of interviews I did over twenty years ago. I spent a lot of time talking about issues with Protestants not having big enough pockets, about the gender oppr...

A few weeks ago, I got a box from the mother of a convicted felon. This box was full of belongings of my mother.  Keepsakes from her past high school graduation reunions that she'd attended with such joy for decades. Photos went as far back as 1990.  Letters galore from some of her friends, too. So how did it end up in the hands of a convict?  Long, long story.  Like so many of mother's stories, some that would make your hair stand on end. Suffice it to say that the felon's mother found it among other items he'd left in her home that he'd managed to take from my mother's after he invaded it under the guise of being a legitimate craftsman, a fact that people in the community who knew him years earlier vowed was true. His mother figured out the stuff belonged to my mother and that he'd somehow gotten it into his pile of belongings "by mistake" after Ron and I succeeded in getting this crook and ne'er-do-well out Mom's old run-down house...

There is still SO much more work for us to have an equitable world for those with accessibility issues. Most of us who are able-bodied take a hundred things for granted every day, believe me. I now see many that others do not see. I was oblivious to the barriers myself until 6 years ago when my husband was suddenly spending most of his waking hours in a power wheel chair. Like yesterday, one of the most frustrating days we've had in a long time. First, in our lovely South Park here in Lawrence, KS. You'd think it would not be a problem. Well, think again. A great international event, right down our alley. Except we were totally frustrated. Back home, Ron said it was just another "mistake" he'd made in trying to go. Every two feet, I had to tap somebody on the shoulder because we couldn't even get down the sidewalks due to the groups of folks in conversation who stood way above Ron's head. We understand why they weren't looki...