Tragedy that is Brazil plays out in nun's martyrdom

"The Greatest Gift,"
by Binka Le Breton

Read this story about the life of Sister Dorothy Stang and you'll get angry about the evil and the injustice in our world.


Sister Dorothy would look you in the eye and very kindly tell you not to get angry -- do something about it.


This sister with a passion to help the poorest of the poor and a mind all her own about how to that help would tell you that working for justice is difficult but wonderfully rewarding. Unfortunately, Sister Dorothy isn't alive to tell us anything. A pistol was emptied into her in the Amazon jungle in Brazil just three years ago.


Fortunately, because the murder of this petite Sister of Notre Dame de Namur happened not long ago, many who knew and worked with Sister Dorothy are around to tell her story: the poor who strive to eke a living out of Amazonia; other nuns and lay people who shared her work; a bishop who opened his house to her whenever she needed shelter and sanctuary; and even an eyewitness to her murder.


"The Greatest Gift" shares a little of what many will find typical in the early life of Dorothy Mae Stang, daughter of a Dayton, Ohio family. Those early-life chapters may be the only ones in the book that don't deliver eye-opening insight into the violence that is life for so many in the developing world. This is a book that lets us in on what is happening in parts of the planet where "development" equals greed and where law and civic authorities fail in their duty to protect people's rights -- even their right to life. It's a book, too, that explores just what it is that makes a person live and die for a cause, for others.


Initially a teaching nun and then a principal in the United States, Sister Dorothy's work with the migrant community in Arizona earned flattering copy in the Arizona Republic. It was that work with the poor in the Southwest that whet her appetite to work with those who have little or nothing. She asked to be assigned as a missionary, and spent 30 years in Brazil, most of it helping that country's poor stay alive, feed their families, and take steps toward fulfillment -- both temporal and spiritual.


When Sister Dorothy arrived in 1966, the part of Brazil to which she was sent was best described as a feudal state controlled by a few families of landowners and politicians. When the missionaries put religious texts to Brazilian music, the authorities confiscated the song sheets and threw some priests in jail. Their crime? The lyrics said that God created all people equal. Obviously the ruling class couldn't have that.


During Sister Dorothy's three decades in Brazil, the government was encouraging large-scale settlement of the western Amazon. The mantra was "Land for Men for Men Without Land," and the poor and the landless poured into the forest, felling trees and planting crops by the thousands of acres. Sister Dorothy was one of the missionaries who went west with them. She taught people about their rights, helped to establish farm workers' unions, gave literacy classes, built a center to train teachers, started some little stores, a warehouse, a fruit processing plant, a community trading post, a women's association that focused on health care.


It was when she fought for land reform that she ended up on a death list. She stood up for stewardship of the land, conservation and interdependence with nature. She developed a program -- adopted by the government -- that taught people an agriculture method that utilized the forest instead of cutting it down. She travelled to civic offices to secure the paperwork that would verify her people's ownership of the tracts they had settled on and planted only to have corrupt politicians, police and the Brazilian military sit by and watch greedy ranchers send armed men to chase the poor off that same land.


Her best friend, Joan, talks about Sister Dorothy Stang with these words:


"She was a strong woman," Joan said, "but sometimes very obstinate. She had a soft voice that echoed through the halls of government offices and bounced off the giant trees of the forests, the same soft voice that could soothe an aching heart and assure someone that God loved them."



She added, "Dot had a mind that could understand the laws of land reform, the intricacies of sustainable farming, the impact of the destruction of the forest on the world now and in the future, and the hope and conviction that one voice could make a difference."


In June of 2004 the Brazilian Bar Association gave Sister Dorothy the Humanitarian of the Year Award. Nine months later, a paid gunman shot her down on a dirt road in the jungle. More people need to know about this heroine, so that her work continues. -- bz

"Essentials for Christian Living,"
by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

I know what I'm giving Alec, whom I'm serving as sponsor for for his Confirmation this spring.
This little book may or may not be "essential" for his spiritual well-being, but it could be a wonderful asset if used as intended.

A paperback of just over 120 pages, "Essentials for Christian Living" is uniquely put together, offering prayers and truths about the Catholic faith one page at a time and encouraging readers to stop and reflect on what they just read. Each page has space below to jot thoughts that come to mind.

It's perfect for times when you don't have a lot of time. Open to any page and you're sure to learn or be reminded of something worthwhile. For example, could you explain why we Catholics make the Sign of the Cross before and after prayer?

One of the notes makes a great point: "Think of what you are doing." That may be this book's biggest plus: It pulls the reader into giving some thought to what defines us as Catholics -- our prayer, our sacraments and our creed.

Easy to slip into a purse or the pocket of a backpack, "Essentials for Christian Living" can be used by anyone who cares to put a little more effort into their relationship with God.

The basic prayers included are just that, basic. The Formulas of Catholic Doctrine -- The Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, the cardinal and theological virtues -- are excellent reminders of what is expected of us.

Taking the creed line by line, one sentence per page, forces readers to think more deeply about what they are saying in ways we aren't likely to at Mass.

All this for only $6.95. Can't beat it. -- bz

Try a slice of politics, Chicago style

"Windy City,"
by Scott Simon

My wife, Barb, who grew up in central Illinois farm country, used to say that my Chicago friends and I were afflicted with the same disease: "You guys think that Chicago's the only place to live."

At the time, her diagnosis was spot on.

Chicago can spoil you, and until you take the antidote of living elsewhere, love for Chicago is a tough illness to shake.

Obviously I'm not completely cured, despite having lived away from the Windy City for more than 25 years. When I spotted Scott Simon's book, "Windy City," at a bookstore, I didn't think twice before plopping down $24.95.

The novel starts with the city's long-serving mayor found dead at his desk, his face in a prosciutto and artichoke pizza. Finding the killer or killers is part of the unraveling, but to be honest, solving the crime is really only background music. A whodunit this ain't.

The plot? Chicago politics. In the raw.

The characters? Chicago's aldermen. In all their humanity, all their sins, all their antics, all their shenanigans, all their deals, all their in-fighting, all their "character." How they work with and around one another in complex relationships that can't be described as all bad-- but they aren't all good, either.

What keeps you turning the pages, ostensibly, is the storyline about who will become the next mayor, since the City Council must elect a replacement until the next general election.

One aldermen recommends that another vote for a certain candidate because she "knows how to express her appreciation," wink wink.

But Simon, the host of National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition," has put together a package that combines accurate descriptions of Chicago's ethnic variety -- ward by ward -- with an inside-baseball view of Chicago's City Council and its city government operations. He captures life as every Chicagoan will tell you is exactly the way it is.

It's the speeches at the Museum of Lithuanian Civilization, the Baptist church and the wedding reception in a Chinese neighborhood, the flashbacks to how the now-dead mayor forced Chicago to live up to its motto as "The City That Works," and insight into machine politics -- aldermanic votes are dependent not upon who is best for the job but who will agree to put a police station in their neighborhood or vote for a tax enhancement zone in their ward. You get to keep you seat on the council if you do two things: fill the potholes and clear the snow off the streets.

"Windy City" was a fun read for me because I was able to identify with so many of the locales that Simon takes his readers to and with the ethnic mix that has such an impact on politics in Chicago.

Others will love the circus-like atmosphere in the City Council chambers that Simon portrays perfectly, almost historically!

There's really great writing, too. Simon doesn't just say an alderman is "in bed with" one of the city's unions, he "shares bedbugs" with it. When a City Hall worker commits suicide from a high-rise apartment, the police officer involved admits his investigation hasn't produce any reason. He tells an alderman, "All we know for sure now, sir, is that he wasn't Peter Pan."

The amazing thing about "Windy City" is that Simon doesn't involve the cardinal-archbishop of Chicago in the story -- not in any way. In this day and age, an author deserves a plenary indulgence for resisting the urge to take a cheap shot or to pile on the hierarchy and the church.

The most religious action in the whole story comes just before Chicago's 50 aldermen are to vote on the mayoral replacement. Because the Rev. Jesse Jackson is unavailable, an alderman who is also a rabbi is asked to do the invocation for the council session. And there's a bit of good old Chicago pride that seeps through, as you'll see in this excerpt:

"May God give us wisdom today. And if we don't choose the best or the brainiest candidate, please let us at least find a good man or woman who loves this city and will grow wise in the job."

Now for the worst part of "Windy City" -- the jacket design. A weather vane with a donkey, an elephant and an American flag, plus convention-type boater hats. Please. Chicago politics isn't akin to a party convention. And there's no Republican anything in Chicago, not even a weather vane. Sure, you could vote Republican in a city election -- but why waste your vote? -- bz

Dust Bowl history makes sad era a reality show

"The Worst Hard Time,"
by Timothy Egan

You may have seen photos of the Dust Bowl, but read Timothy Egan's comprehensive history and you can taste the dirt and feel the wind blast against your skin.

Egan's "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl," paints such a vivid portrait of those 1930s years of dry, violent storms that you'll find yourself coughing and swallowing hard just imagining what it must have been like when nature punished farmers for turning millions of acres of grassland into billowing towers of dust, dirt and sand.

Imagine how hard times must have been that people in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and southwestern Colorado would be driven to eat pickled tumbleweed to survive.

Imagine going three years without a paycheck.

Imagine your small town newspaper editor describing as "sissies" those who -- after losing all the top soil from their land, not having anything to feed their cattle, watching their children, spouses and relatives die from "dust pneumonia" -- didn't have the "courage" to stick out the hard times.

Through interviews with people who lived through the 1930s in the Dust Bowl counties and terrific research, including amazing diary entries from a farmer who lost everything, Egan helps his readers know this little-known era of American history.

It's a dense work, filled with information, especially information about real people - how they felt, how they cried, how they survived.

It's an honest history, too, one not afraid to acknowledge both the failed recovery programs of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration and the conservation-minded ones that began to work to revive the land in places.

Whether or not you believe that the planet faces climate change today, this is a book that should help everyone understand how connected humanity is to the soil. The consequences of not valuing the soil result in tragedies like the Dust Bowl -- something no one who reads this book would ever want to go through. -- bz