Rolling jubilee...

Every day during Advent, many of those in our community of faith have committed to taking one minute of silence (with their loved ones when possible) to simply rest in the presence of God's love.  As I've noted before, for those with overly busy lives, this is a real challenge - 60 seconds feels like an eternity when you are overbooked and stressed - but also a gentle way to unplug from the madness that surrounds us. Most nights, Di and I find ourselves resting in bed, holding one another's hand quietly for a minute as a gentle close to the day.

About two weeks ago I came across another gentle blessing - this time from our friends in the Occupy movement - who are putting into practice the radical liberation Jubilee principles that not only inspired Jesus but have guided Jewish social justice ethics for thousands of years: forgiving another's debts. A headline in American Blogger cuts to the chase: Occupy Wall Street offshoot to buy-back consumer debt and then forgive it. (check it out @ http://americablog.com/2012/11/occupy-wall-street-offshoot-launches-debt-jubilee.html)

Occupy Wall Street has bred a number of offshoots that are specifically focused on providing mutual aid to members of the 99% who are in crisis. I’ve been involved with Occupy Our Homes for over a year – it’s a housing justice campaign aimed to keep people in their homes and stopping bank theft of houses. More recently, Occupy Sandy has provided crucial aid to affected areas following Hurricane Sandy. And now, Strike Debt has launched a Rolling Jubilee, a campaign meant to leverage the cheapness of debt to reduce it for others.

On the Rolling Jubilee website (http://rollingjubilee.org/) they describe the campaign like this:

Jubilee comes from many faith traditions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A jubilee is an event in which all debts are cancelled and all those in bondage are set free. It worked in Biblical times and it can still work today. For example, a kind of jubilee happened in Iceland after the 2008 economic crisis: instead of bailing out their banks, Iceland canceled a percentage of mortgage debt. What these examples show is that debts are just a promise which can - and should - be renegotiated or cancelled when the circumstances warrant. Strike Debt believes that now is the time for a jubilee for the 99%.

So for every dollar contributed another $20 of debt is forgiven - not deferred or purchased by a credit agency - but forgiven as in the Lord's Prayer:  forgive us our debts/ sins/ tresspasses as we forgive another's.  Freakin' brilliant, yes?  This is not only personally transformative - like our 60 seconds of silence - but socially redemptive.  I am so down with this...