“Where’s the outrage?” Denise Provost, a Somerville state representative to the House wondered aloud recently. Good question.

Brilliant, a progressive, an environmentalist—she was cosponsoring a local showing of “Gasland” when she’d said this—and hip to both Somerville’s and Massachusetts’ political minefields, Denise doesn’t need masses of angry people outside her office demanding she vote for or against some issue. She can figure it out for herself—especially since she’s the kind of pol who actually reads documents! Still, like any elected official, she needs both one-to-one interactions and masses of people letting her know we’re mad as hell about X and aren’t going to take it any more.

Which brings me to an ironic statement I made last week to someone I just met. Nancy. She, too, was wondering about the lack of outrage—specifically about America’s 3 wars.

“Oh,” I told her blithely. “Things are really beginning to heat up.”

“Really?” she asked. I could tell she wanted to believe me.  (I’d been introduced as a Quaker so she might have assumed I had the inside track.)

“Well,” I immediately backpedaled. “I live in this lovely little Somerville-Cambridge bubble. So among the people I know, things are heating up.” (There had been a fascinating online conversation the day before re the Somerville peace movement and the Somerville Climate Action people working more closely; “it’s all interconnected.”)

“Yup,” I continued. I’ve received four e-mails on this just yesterday!” And grinned.

So I guess I want to make 2 observations:

1. Those of us spending lots of time and energy e-mailing about issues among ourselves need to remember to go massively public, too. We need to break our bubbles.

2. Having stood on Boston Common for two hours on Good Friday—with 90 other Quakers—to silently witness for peace, I will report that overwhelmingly, the response around us was warm, receptive, supportive. Only one F-bomb? Pretty good, I’d say.

Good news.

The Good News continues:

Our Prison Fellowship Committee’s fundraiser dinner on Friday night raised $1,200!

But here’s what I want to tell you:

Three African-American women, whose lives have been impacted by  the mass incarceration of African-American men in ways I will never experience, came to the dinner. And contributed store-bought cookies and a jar of freeze-dried nuts.

And just as I can never know how it feels watching so many men from your community—including members of your own family, perhaps—sent to jail, I cannot adequately express how deeply touched I was and continue to be about their contribution.

Today at Meeting, an elderly widow sheepishly handed me a $10 bill for the Cambridge Bail and Legal Defense Fund *: “I wish I could give more,” she whispered as she handed me the money.

So, of course, I thought about the widow’s mites story (Generally this Bible story is called just that, employing an old word meaning coins of little value):

Once [Jesus] was standing opposite the temple treasury, watching as people dropped their money into the chest. Many rich people were giving large sums. Presently there came a poor widow who dropped in two tiny coins, together worth a farthing. He called his disciples to him. “I tell you this,” he said: “This poor widow had given more than the others; for those others who have given had more than enough, but she, with less than enough, has given all that she had to live on.”

Now, to be truthful, the Meeting widow is not destitute—but, nevertheless, like most old people, has to be very careful with her money. So her contribution feels like what Jesus was talking about: that a modest gift, donation, contribution given in love  and with an open heart—yet with some hardship—is beyond price.

The widow’s selfless act this morning also makes me think about another Bible passage: Isaiah 61: 1:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the humble, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release to those in prison.

Maybe the Meeting widow’s heard this good news, too?

* This is a fund started by Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s Prison Fellowship Committee so that we can help those in need whom we’ve met while doing prison ministry. Currently, we are raising $ to pay the legal costs for a man in prison so he can appeal his life sentence. [See my February 2, 2011 entry]

So here are your instructions:

1. Find a quiet, don’t need-to-be-anywhere time to watch this link.

2. No matter where you are, try to listen to the wind blowing as you watch. Do the hawk’s feathers ruffle in the NYC wind at the same time it’s blowing where ever YOU are? (That happened to me! In Somerville, MA!)

3. For a minute of so, simply watch the number of viewers increase. And as deeply and thoroughly as you can, connect with your fellow viewers.

4. Leave a comment here—especially about your experience with # 2 & 3.