Questions for Reflection: • Have you ever found yourself on the unpopular side of a peace and justice issue? How did you respond? • What virtues do you think it takes to voice support for unpopular truths? How do we receive these virtues? Discuss this month's Questions for Reflection from “God in Our Midst.”

More than 30 years have passed since my oldest child left for his first day of school. Up until that September day I was able to watch his every move. It was a rare morning we spent apart. Then came the fall morning that he began a life independent of me. I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, asked God to bless him and watched him leave.

I continued to bless all five of our children on significant occasions: the first day of school, during final exams, before they went trick-or-treating, when they left for class excursions or trips. I remember when that same firstborn son (newly graduated from high school) left for Florida with a group of buddies. I blessed not only him but also his friends—and would have blessed each of the car doors and the steering wheel if they had let me. I realized, of course, that the prayer was as much for me as it was for them.

A simple "God bless you" reminds us of God's vigilant presence and constant love. And when we mark those three words with the sign of the cross, we remember who we are and the faith that binds us together. Like so many prayers this blessing not only speaks to our needs, but also satisfies them.

For our family, each September seemed to mark another step to independence. It was a September morning in 1991 when the whole family blessed that oldest son, handsome in his tux, just an hour before his wedding. And another September morning when our youngest son blessed me before I took my first trans-Atlantic flight. It was probably at that point that I realized all of our steps to independence had led us to a healthy state of interdependence. And all the "God blesses" I had said, worked.

For Family Response: Have a family prayer service this month to celebrate new beginnings. End the service by having family members bless each other. Discuss this month's FAMILY CORNER.

Welcome a brand-new children's classic. Finding Nemo employs extraordinary imagination and animation to tell a story that children of all ages can love. Although this is a totally imaginary world created beneath the ocean waves, the characters become very real to the audience, thanks to the father-son relationship that forms the basis for the search for the child Nemo.

At the start, we are immersed in a colorful and wildly diverse paradise of sea creatures on a coral reef where a clownfish, Marlin, and his wife have found the perfect home and happily await the hatching of their 400 "children." But danger lurks in these deeps, and in a flash Marlin and one egg, named Nemo, are the sole survivors of a barracuda attack.

When the first day of school comes for Nemo, his fiercely protective father does not want to let him go. When finally he does relent, Nemo dashes off in a moment of rebellion and is snatched by humans, ending up in a fish tank in the office of a Sydney, Australia, dentist. There another delightful set of fish characters becomes part of the drama.

Back on the reef, Marlin is desperate to find his son. He is joined in his search by a ditsy blue fish named Dory with short-term memory loss, which helps support her eternal optimism. Their destination is based on a name and a Sydney address inked on a pair of goggles that the snorkelers had dropped.

To achieve their goal Marlin and Dory must survive a trio of sharks, an abandoned shipwreck surrounded by mines, a seductive monster fish, a whale and a forest of deadly jellyfish. They are assisted by a school of sea turtles surfing the Eastern Australian Current, but must escape an attack of seagulls before reaching their Sydney Harbor destination. There Marlin's unstoppable paternal love becomes a legend in the underwater rumor mill.

Finding Nemo is a lively, exciting adventure filled with laughs targeted not only at children but also at adults (as when using a musical phrase lifted from the movie Psycho to signal approaching danger). Another example: The three sharks that seize Marlin and Dory are members of a self-help group formed to overcome their compulsion to eat fish. Their mantra is "Fish are friends, not food."

The adventures of Marlin and Dory are intercut with the life-threatening danger now faced in the fish tank by Nemo, who believes that his father will not be coming to rescue him. Under the tutelage of the tough tank leader, Gill, Nemo becomes self-empowered and courageous, enginerring his own escape.

Finding Nemo carries uplifting messages for both children and their parents: finding the balance between caution and courage, between protecting and empowering, and the different gifts afforded by diversity.

 

For Media Watch: What values do you find in this film? Discuss Frank Frost's film review in this month's MEDIA WATCH.

The estimated 1,000 slaves per month who survived the 60-day journey from West Africa to Cartagena, Colombia, in the 1600s arrived full of disease, dread and despair. They may well have wondered if God had forgotten them as they first saw the seaport, teeming with merchants and slave traders, and envisioned the horrors that awaited them.

Into this forbidding world stepped Peter Claver, a small, humble Jesuit priest who had left his native Spain in 1610 to become a missionary in the New World. Whenever word reached him of yet another new arrival, he rushed to the port, holding high a cross to announce his mission. He would board the ship and make his way to the infested bowels of the slave hold. There he offered its wretched human cargo food and clothing, tended to their medical needs and listened with compassion to their fears. Then, when they were ready, he spoke of God's love and mercy and assured them of their dignity.

"We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips," said Father Claver, who called himself the "slave of the slaves."

He continued his apostolate for 40 years, employing interpreters and using pictures to help communicate the basics of the faith. He baptized an estimated 300,000. Even after the slaves were scattered among the various plantations in the countryside, Father Claver conducted annual missions for them. He also came to be a moral force within Cartagena, preaching to sailors and traders in the city square and hearing confessions. Illness forced him to be inactive for his final four years, but his funeral was a major public event.

In 1888, Pope Leo XIII canonized Peter Claver. His feast day is
September 9.

Jim Keady didn't set out to be a social justice activist—until, as he puts it, "God kidnapped me."

It happened when Jim was a theology department graduate student in a social ethics class at St. John's University in New York. For an assignment he wrote about Nike labor practices in light of Catholic social teaching. He got an "A." But more to the point, what he learned about Third World sweatshops so startled and appalled him that it changed his life.

Jim, now 31, is founding director of Educating for Justice, a human-rights initiative. Its present target is sweatshops, and Nike is the group's test case. But, Jim told Every Day Catholic, the well-known manufacturer of sports goods has no corner on the market when it comes to unjust working conditions, excessive hours, dangerous working conditions, abusive situations and starvation wages. These can be found all over the globe, including the U.S.

The mission of Educating for Justice is to raise awareness at the grassroots level and spark social change. To date, Jim and his staff have spoken on 140 college and high school campuses. The message: Don't try to close sweatshops or boycott products made in them; neither action will help laborers. Instead, "learn about the issues involved, become active, write letters, apply political pressure.

"The gospel asks for radical, decisive action on behalf of the poor and oppressed," says Jim. He learned that at St. John's, and for several years he taught it as a high school religion teacher. He learned it in a deeper way when he spent five weeks in Indonesia and got to know Nike laborers personally.

His is another David vs. Goliath story. But, Jim observes, "in the end, David wins."

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