Quo Vadimus

2009-04-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

Maundy Thursday 2009,
Christ Church Cathedral
St. Louis, Missouri
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I’m a baseball nut, and one of my all-time favorite movies is Bull Durham. How many of you have seen it? OK, for those who haven’t, let me tell you a bit about it. On the surface, it seems like just a movie about minor league baseball, but really it’s about two people who are at crossroads in their life, who feel that everything that has been familiar to them and has given meaning to their lives is either slipping away or is about to be taken from them. It’s about two people who are at that time in life when you stop feeling like you’re going to live forever and you start realizing the phrase “the rest of your life” has a clock ticking inside it.

On one hand, there’s Crash Davis. Crash is a longtime minor league catcher, and baseball is his life. It’s all he’s ever known, he can’t imagine life outside it, and for as long as he can remember his dream was to play in the major leagues. And one year for 21 days … the 21 greatest days of his life … he was there. But now he’s reaching the end of the road and he finds himself not at the top – in the majors – but at the bottom, with the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League. And the only reason he even has that job isn’t because the major league club thinks he has a future, but because they think he can help the future of someone else, some new hotshot pitcher.

On the other hand, there’s Annie Savoy. Annie has always been a free spirit. She teaches at the local community college, but mostly she’s a fulltime life-long spiritual seeker who latched onto what she calls the "Church of Baseball" as one of many philosophies she has embraced and whose maxims she can spout as a way of making meaning from her life and keeping control of it. And every year, Annie chooses a player on the Bulls to be her lover/student. To “give him life wisdom and help him on his way” is how she puts it. But she’s careful never to let anyone get too close. But as the years have passed, this “religious practice” has seemed more and more empty. The meaning isn’t there any more. And she feels like she’s losing control.

What Crash and Annie don’t want to admit to anyone, much less themselves, is that they’re scared. They’re not young anymore, and remaking themselves doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun and they have no idea how they’d do it even if it did! Each in their own way, they’ve spent their whole lives keeping other people from getting too close, and while that’s helped them keep control, it’s left them facing these crossroads alone. Until…

They find each other. And at first they fight because they’re so much alike and on one level that makes them so scared of each other. But then they fall in love. And the struggle of Crash and Annie’s love is that of two proud people letting down their guards and not just admitting that they need each other but inviting the other into that space inside where they have been living alone for so many years. And when they finally do it, when they finally let down their guards and put themselves out there and let each other in and embrace each other, man it is a seismic event. The richness of the lives, the dreams, the pains, the joys that come together as Crash and Annie, well, crash into each other, man it just flows off the screen.

But where the quake really leaps off the Richter scale, where the intensity of the intimacy reaches its peak, is not in some x-rated scene that’s only on the DVD versions, but a shot of what can’t be more than 15 seconds in Annie’s bedroom, where Crash is sitting on Annie’s bed, gently holding her foot in his lap and with a loving, even slightly impish smile on his face, painting her toenails.

About 10 years ago, Harlequin asked movie critics to pick the top 10 all-time most romantic bedroom scenes, and right there on the list, right up there with the steam of Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in Body Heat, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest and even the sultry morning after of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind was Kevin Costner as Crash Davis gently, tenderly, intimately, joyfully, painting Susan Sarandon as Annie Savoy’s toenails.

There’s something about the feet.

“Then Jesus poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”

This night we do something we do no other night of the year. We wash each other’s feet. On one level, we do it for a pretty simple reason … because Jesus set an example and told us to follow it. The Gospel reading makes that clear enough. And, usually, we primarily see it as an act of service, and yeah, sure, it is. But it is so much more than that.

I’m not sure why, but there’s something about the feet. They’re intimate and private. That’s why that scene with Crash and Annie is so powerful and that’s why this night is so powerful, too. I really don’t know why it is. Maybe it’s because for most of us our feet bear the weight of our lives. You don’t just let anyone give you a foot massage … and I’ve had a pedicurist tell me that their job often is more like a bartender than anything else, they spend so much time listening to people’s problems.

Washing feet is not just about an unpleasant, humbling task and it’s certainly not just about podiatric hygiene. It’s about letting what happened between Crash and Annie happen among us. About letting our guards down and letting each other into our lives in an intimate way. It is literally putting ourselves, the weight of our lives, in each others’ hands. That’s why Jesus said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” It’s not about washing feet. It’s about saying “Unless you let your guard down, let go of your fear, let go of everything and let me in, you can’t experience who I am and what I bring.”

And it’s no accident that Jesus does this immediately after his last supper with his friends, the moment of the first Eucharist. Because both the Eucharist and the footwashing are different ways of saying the same thing. It was like Jesus, after sharing the meal said, “Let me put it another way” and began to fill the basin. Because the Eucharist is also about experiencing everything Christ is and all Christ gives by letting go and letting each other and Christ in.

Think of what happens when we gather at this table. We come forward and gather round and present our gifts --- sure, the bread and the wine and the money we offer --- but those are mere signs of something greater, what the Rite I service expresses in those beautiful words, “we offer and present unto you, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies.” That’s not about holding back and giving a little. That’s about taking all of us, the parts we usually show and especially the parts we don’t … and laying it right there on the table. And two things happen at that point.

The first is that Christ, whose life is on that table, too, sees our lives, embraces our lives and tenderly lifts them up, all our tragedies and triumphs. All our wholeness and brokenness. All our pain and all our joy. All our Crashness and all our Annieness and wraps them up with his and calls it holy and gives it back to us new.

But the second is that if we are really to enter into the Eucharist. If we are really to have a share in Christ together, it can’t be just about “me and Jesus.” And so when we gather around that table and lay our lives, “our selves, our souls and bodies,” tragedy, triumph, wholeness, brokenness, pain, joy, Crashness and Annieness on the table, if we’re doing it right, Jesus ain’t the only one who sees it … we all see it, too. I see yours and you see mine and we all see each others’. And then as we leave the table fed with new life, we have the opportunity truly to be the Body of Christ. Because having gazed on the holy chaos of each others lives, we can take each others’ lives gently into our laps and cleanse them, kiss them, even paint their toenails … but mostly just be with them. See each other for who we really are, and just BE with each other.

That means the Eucharist is more than just a personal filling station … though it can certainly be that, too. It means the Eucharist is nothing less than a vision of God's future. We heard in the Epistle reading a few minutes ago the first record we have of the church’s Eucharistic practice. But we really started the reading a few verses too late. If you go back and read it from verse 17, Paul talks about how as the Corinthians gather for the meal, each one needs to be willing to give precedence to the other. Everyone should be waiting on everyone else, attending to the lives of others.

A few years back, I heard Rowan Williams talk about this passage from Corinthians and our need to have peripheral vision when we come to the Eucharistic table.

He said: “When we come to the Eucharistic table, the needs of the neighbor come first. We must look sideways as well as forward, and as we see others fed we ask, 'How may I be part of Christ's feeding of them?' Because the first thing -- and sometimes the only thing -- you know of the person next to you at Eucharist is that they are Christ's guest. It is imperative to ask, 'How may I join in Christ's nourishment of them?'"

That’s about not just coming to Eucharist but living Eucharistically. And what we do here tonight, both in washing one another’s feet and sharing our lives and Christ’s at this table, is a sign of that Eucharistic life, of God’s future for this world and for this Cathedral community. A future where we aren’t just looking forward but also always looking sideways. And it is a glorious future.

It’s a future where we don’t need to hide who we are, where we don’t need to closet the parts of our lives we think others might disapprove of or not understand. Where we can share our joys and triumphs without worrying about offending and share our pain and fear without worrying about rejection. Why? Because we know the person next to us at this table is looking not to ridicule us but to be a part of Christ nourishing us too. A future where each of us can look sideways and ask that wonderful question. And like Crash and Annie, find that it is in caring for the other, being a part of Christ nourishing the other, that we find meaning, deep joy, and even love for ourselves.

And as we find that, we will naturally, enthusiastically and maybe even contagiously realize that this is WAY too good to be kept to ourselves. And we will go out into the streets and our schools and our workplaces and tell people of this new life we’ve found and we’ll bring them to the table, too. We will be the blood of Christ and Christ at this table will be the heart, drawing us to it and pumping us out and drawing us to it and pumping us out.

It is our future. And it is out there waiting for us. And there have been places in this community where that future has already been and even now is being realized. Where friendships of 30 years or 30 days give an abundance of life. Where prayer groups have sustained and even brought joy where there was nothing but pain because people have had the courage to let down their guards and actually tell people what they need prayer for. Where lecturing and debate has given way to listening and conversation. Where we have reached out in love and not fallen back in fear.

It is our future. A future that grows out of the best of our present and past. And it begins here at this table, and here at these chairs. With you and you. And me and you. And you and you. And you and you! And you, bishop, and me! Washing each other’s feet and feeding each other’s hearts. Always having that peripheral vision and asking the question as we see one another “How may I join in Christ’s nourishment of them.”

It begins like Crash and Annie, with us letting down our guards and letting each other in and discovering the joy of the embrace. It might be scary at first, but we’ll get the hang of it. And as we do it will be a seismic event that will send waves of love from this place to, well, who knows how far. And by this everyone will know that we are Christ’s disciples, because we truly will have love for one another.

Amen.

2008-12-05T14:50:00.004-06:00

Help our sister Heather!

Many of you know Heather Voss Barta . She and her husband live in Owosso, MI and last Friday night a fire totaled their garage is totaled - to a crisp (2 cars and a motorcycle, too).

The fire then jumped and caught the house on fire - one side is pretty fried... kitchen and dining room have wall and lots of water/wet insulation damage.

No injuries -- including pets, chickens, etc. ... but lots and lots of loss of property and the house is unliveable for the forseeable future. She has posted more on www.heathervoss.net so you can learn more there.

Heather is trying to frame this as best she can, but this is an incredibly difficult time for her and Henry. As most of us would be, she was initially resistant to me asking for help on her behalf, but I convinced her that part of being the Body of Christ is letting others be graceful to you in times of need.

So, we're going to do what we did last year for St. Peter's ...only this time it's the Voss Barta Relief Fund. You can click on the DONATE button to make your contribution!

I'm running it through my PayPal account and will make a complete accounting available to anyone upon request.

Let's rally around our sister. Even a $5 or $10 gift will be great -- and there isn't anyone on this list who can't click and do that. But if you can give a little more that would be great. Let's show Heather and Henry how we Christians love one another.

2008-07-25T10:37:00.001-05:00

Lambeth on the Colbert Report!

2008-02-08T15:39:00.000-06:00

The Audacity of Hope

I don't post much on this blog anymore ... at some point I will again, but now most of my work is being channeled into the EGR website (www.e4gr.org) and the EGR blog (www.e4gr.blogspot.com).

Occasionally, though, I will pop back and share something I have nowhere else to put ... not that I figure anybody's reading anymore.

You've probably heard that last night in a mostly-white suburb of St. Louis an African-American man who had longstanding conflicts with the city government came in and shot and killed a bunch of people.

I bring up the issue of race because even though this was obviously the terrible act of an incredibly unbalanced person, it -- and how it is being covered -- are a window into some of the terrible problems in our metropolitan area that are all about race and class.

I'm a big supporter of Barack Obama's and am on the St. Louis for Obama listserv. Earlier last week, someone posted on that list disputing someone else's claim that St. Louis was one of the most racially divided cities in America. Today, someone posted a rant about what had happened that showed absolutely no consciousness that extreme racial tensions exist in this city.

For any who are interested, below are my two responses to those respective emails. I'd be interested in any comments or discussion.

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Over the past 20 years, St. Louis has consistently been in the top 10 on lists of the most segregated cities and metropolitan areas in the country. I remember a few years back we were at the top of the list (prompting a cover story in the Saturday P-D). I live in a somewhat diverse neighborhood, too ... but our neighborhoods are the exception rather than the rule.

I'm on jury duty (on a lunch break) and yesterday I was with a group going through voir dire, and one of the questions the prosecutor asked was whether we were likely to give a police officer more credence or less credence than another witness. Of those who didn't say "same" it was absolutely divided down racial lines -- with people of color saying they didn't trust the police and white people saying they gave them more credence.

When we were asked about we or our families being victims of violent crime, almost none of the white people in the room came forward while a substantial number of people of color raised their hands -- and most of them felt the police had done little or nothing to help them.. Ditto for having family members convicted of violent crimes ... and most of those who said they had family members convicted of violent crimes felt they had been screwed by the criminal justice system.

Now, you can have a legitimate debate about perception and reality in terms of whether people were actually screwed by the justice system, but this speaks to a huge racial divide in our city. Remember, this is a random sampling of St. Louis citizens.

One of the big hopes I have of the Obama campaign is that we will finally have a president who has the courage to take on the problems of our cities and not sugar-coat them.

-------------

Two days later, an African American man walks into the Kirkwood City Council Meeting and starts shooting.

--------------

Dear friends,

a few days back I wrote a post to this list about someone's objection to calling St. Louis a racially divided city. My point then was that both statistics and personal experience for those who have eyes to see bear out that we have serious racial problems in our city/metropolitan area.
This does not make St. Louis unique in America but St. Louis certainly is a tragically excellent example of what life is like in many urban areas across the country.

I would hope any rational person would agree that the shootings in Kirkwood last night were horrific and there is no defending them. I have not heard anyone on this list say otherwise.

But events like this rarely happen in a vacuum. One of the gifts John Edwards brought to this campaign was his lifting up of the reality that there are two Americas. There are. And there are certainly at least two St. Louises. There is the St. Louis in which I live where events like this still shock me. And there is the St. Louis that many poor, mostly African-American people live where shootings and violent crime are a normal part of life.

Shootings happen all the time in that "other" St. Louis. But the Today Show doesn't lead its broadcast with the shootings that happen in that "other" St. Louis. The St. Louis I live in doesn't wake up stunned and angry the way I and the other citizens of my St. Louis woke up this
morning. That's because it didn't happen in our St. Louis. We can agree it is tragic and "a shame" ... perhaps the same way we look at civilian casualties in Irak ... but it doesn't rock us to the core like this shooting. And that's to be expected. Because we live in two Americas, two St. Louises. And except for incidences like what happened last night, it's not really happening to "us".

What John Edwards lifted up and what I believe Barack Obama continues to lift up is a message of unity -- of there being one America, one St. Louis. That's not a pep rally, folks. That's hard work. That's those of us with the privilege of not living on streets where shootings and gunpoint robberies are an everyday occurrence putting ourselves out there in common cause with those for whom they are. That's about us being every bit as outraged at the elderly woman who was gunned down by stray bullet fire from a driveby in north St. Louis this month as we are
by the senseless death of the people in Kirkwood last night.

Yes, it's about us holding the people who do these things accountable. But it's also about recognizing that the Meacham Park neighborhood is in the state its in today not just because of its own actions but because of a long history of segregation and discrimination and that unity means TOGETHER we are going to have to look honestly at the past we have wrought and how we can walk TOGETHER on the hard road to a future we can embrace.

I was listening to talk radio this morning and someone was railing against the "idiots" in Meacham Park, showing a profound ignorance of the deep racial divide in our city and the deep pain and frustration of the people who live there. That's not about excusing the action, it's about
opening our eyes and ears and truly seeing what the world is like -- all of it.

My wife is a Hillary Clinton supporter. One of her beliefs about Barack Obama is that we who are supporting him have been captured by inspiring flowery rhetoric ... and that both the rhetoric and we who have been captivated by it lack substance behind it.

What happened last night is a tragedy, but it is also a moment of opportunity. I believe there is substance behind Barack Obama's message ... but it is a difficult and challenging substance. It is the substance of opening our eyes and honestly tackling our past and our future. It is the substance that goes beyond rhetoric and easy answers to the complexities of life in a stratified society where there are at least two Americas and St. Louises and Philadephias and more.

If we are really about the "Audacity of Hope" ... then that cannot just be a pie in the sky phrase. Because true hope comes not from ignoring the past and the present but honestly examining them -- especially the worst parts -- so together we can create a future that doesn't just look
good, but truly is good ... for everyone.

Are we up to that task?

2007-12-17T13:06:00.000-06:00

Give to the St. Peter's, Chicago "Tongues of Fire in Advent" Fund

Last Wednesday night, my Gen X Episcopal clergy colleague Sarah Fisher had a minor disaster at her church -- St. Peter's, Chicago. The advent wreath was not extinguished after the 6 PM eucharist ... and overnight it burned and melted what was the form, charred the rug (which the vestry had already voted to replace) and left significant smoke damage in the chapel. It is nothing short of a miracle that the chapel stands at all (and for that Sarah is definitely grateful). Whether the fire is the result of human error or a smoldering ember that nested inside the greens is anyone's guess and really beside the point.

It's been a rough time for St. Peter's, especially since this came on the heels of the death of one of the parish matriarchs.

It's just times like this that we show who we are as Christ's body ... and how we can come together in times of need.

St. Peter's isn't equipped to accept donations online, so I've set up a PayPal account to receive them for them. Between now and Christmas, let's see how much money we can raise to help St. Peter's pay for the smoke and fire damage (they haven't even calculated the bill yet). Even a $5 or $10 gift would be a wonderful thing.

Just click and give ... and help give this one church a tangible sense of what it means to be part of an Episcopal Church.

2007-10-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

The numbers game, all of our fundamentalisms and being unafraid

If you stay awake in the Episcopal Church long enough, the same conversations repeat themselves over and over ... and the causes of the numerical decline of the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations is one that's made the circuit several times.

Besides people of every theological/political bent succumbing to the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, which assumes that just because something preceded an event it caused that event (i.e. -- the church has declined since GenCon 2003 so that's what caused the decline), the debate is generally confined to finding "THE cause" for the decline. The world is much more complex than that (praise God!). And as much as we might not like to think so, individually and corporately we are all heavilly influenced by many societal factors. There is no ONE marker event cause for the decline. There are enormous global forces at work.

So given this ... a few not-so-brief thoughts and reflections:

Human beings want to control their environment. Chris Argyris at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard has done some great research into the values that govern human behavior and the four major values that he has found cut across all cultures all have to do with either achieving control or at least maintaining the perception of control over our worlds.

We want reality to be predictable and controllable. We don't like feeling out of control, because that makes us feel powerless and believe that others will see us as powerless and insignificant, which in turn will make us even more powerless and insignificant (a pretty vicious circle). This is pretty basic -- systems of all sorts seek equilibrium. Chemical reactions will tend toward stability. Same thing with humans. So given a situation where things are out of control and chaotic, human nature is to try to establish control.

One way we establish control over our environment is to establish rules and absolutes. One way we do this in a chaotic universe is through the scientific method -- testing hypotheses to see which are trustworthy enough to make the transition from theory to fact -- things we can count on that allow us to predict (and control) reality.

As people of faith, we are no different. Part of what we love about God is the assurance the divine gives us. "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus" is the height of comfort for me. I think and hope I believe it for reasons that go beyond that desire for comfort, but I also more quickly flock to that assurance during points in my life where I need that comfort, where I feel unloved or like all the rugs in the world are being pulled out from under me. As Christians, communally we take vows at baptism that give structure to our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. Those vows, and the scripture, tradition and reason from which they spring are a polestar for us that help us navigate the chaotic seas of life.

We live in an age where the pace of global change is faster than perhaps at any point in human history. Much of this has to do with increased global connectivity and that we are now face-to-face with the diversity of this planet in ways my grandfather never dreamed of.

A mere hundred years ago traveling to Africa was unheard of for all but the most adventurous Westerners. Last March, I sat in my friend's living room in Kigali, Rwanda and video-chatted with my wife and kids back in St. Louis on my laptop! As we become increasingly interconnected, the boundaries which once gave structure to our lives are becoming more permeable (or disappearing altogether!) and we are becoming truly a global community.

We see this perhaps most clearly in immigration and economic/trade patterns but also in the evolution of political structures. The nation-state, the primary locus of power for centuries, is rapidly taking a backseat to other confederations of people -- be they Al Qaeda for Microsoft or even Facebook and MySpace! Even the nation-state is not autonomous anymore, as more than $2 trillion of our national debt is owed to foreigners ... $1 trillion to Japan and China alone!

Much of this change has happened in the past 20 years -- the two watershed moments probably being the dawn of the internet age (which broke down geographic walls of global separation) and the fall of the Berlin Wall/end of the Cold War (which opened the world up economically and also for the first time -- in the West at least -- created a world without clear definition of who was "enemy," a core unifying principle for any society).

Going back further, the biggest marker event was 50 years ago today when Sputnik's beeps signalled the opening of a new frontier previously untraversed by humanity.

For most people whose formative years were before those watershed moments and for whom "home" is a place of relative isolation, safety and predictability (particularly those who were the "haves" and not the "have nots" oppressed under the old, predictable reality and for whom change is welcome!) these changes are incredibly challenging, stressful and anxiety producing. For those people, there will be a natural longing to go back to the way things were. For EVERYONE, there will be a natural longing to establish SOME sense of control over and predictability of reality.

History has shown us that periods of intense change inevitably bring about rise in fundamentalisms. Fundamentalism can be broadly defined as a single-minded devotion to a guiding principle or principles. There are fundamentalisms of all sorts -- not just the conservative right with whom the term is usually identified. This is also not just about having standards ... it's about living by absolutes that cannot be challenged -- to the extent that everything has to be black and white.

And it's all perfectly natural.

Because fundamentalism is all about establishing control or at least enough of an illusion of control to bring comfort and ease the stress and anxiety of the rapid pace of change. It's about taking the unpredictable and confusing grey and separating it out into black and white. That is what is happening in the world today. There is a rise of fundamentalism of all stripes, and it is a direct response to the rapid pace of change and how those things that we used to count on are becoming less and less trustworthy. We need to feel safe. We need to feel in control and powerful.

Fundamentalism gives us that control. It helps us know right from wrong, and even more, know that we are right and our enemies are wrong (and even gives us enemies over and against whom we can define ourselves).

It's very predictable and very human.

Does this mean that the "fundamentals" to which people are clinging are wrong? Not necessarily. It DOES mean that the reason people are clinging to them probably has a lot more to do with many, many other factors than whether they are right or wrong. Fundamentalism is attractive because it makes us feel powerful and right. That is completely apart from the truth of the "fundamental" in question. But we cannot determine the truth of any principle unless we are willing to test it. So we can't claim numbers of followers as proof that our particular fundamentalism is right or that "God is on our side!"

Fundamentalism is a natural reaction to a changing world. Because of that, and because the power of fundamentalism as a whole is completely apart from the question of truth of any "fundamentals" it is an external societal force that has us in its grip and prevents us from determining what Truth really is. And until we get in touch with and name the anxiety and fear that grips us. Until we acknoledge that a part of what makes any of our fundamentalisms attractive is the sense of power and control they give us -- and that's human nature and nothing of which to be ashamed. Until we can step out in faith away from that fear and anxiety, we will not be able to discern Truth because we will be too heavily invested in one answer to that question to give alternatives any possibility of emerging.

This is where our faith comes in. And this is where Christ, as always, is our best and truest model.

If there was ever a time in human history where an event happened that shook the foundations of everything people had thought was reality, it was the resurrection. People who died stayed dead. OK, there were a couple examples of Jesus disproving that ... but he had to be around to do the job! Now Jesus had died. They saw it. They laid him in the tomb. And then there he was appearing behind locked doors and having fish breakfasts with them. And what were his first words to them every time?

Don't be afraid.

Be at peace.

Jesus knew he was blowing their minds and rocking their worlds, that he was taking everything that had ever made their reality seem predictable and controllable and shattering it ... and he knew when that happened the natural human reaction was anxiety and fear. And he also knew that they couldn't enter into this new reality he was revealing to them ... they couldn't become resurrection people themselves ... if they were in the grip of that fear, if their actions were in reaction to that fear, if their need for control superceded their capacity for awe and wonder.

He needed to give them a safety zone where they could deal with this ... and that safety zone was his love and the promise "lo, I will be with you always until the end of the age."

In this time of intense, foundation-shaking, boundary-permeating change, Christ is standing in our midst still -- even when we have locked ourselves behind the doors of the "safe" realities our fundamentalisms create for us.

And he is saying "Don't be afraid! Be at peace! Yes, lots of things are changing, but what will never change is my love for you and my presence with you. And because of that, you can face anything. Because of that you can burst through those locked doors and go out to the world beyond them. Because of that you can be freed from your need for control ... and you can even celebrate your lack of control because that is the life of true faith ...because all the control the universe needs is me. And you can rest in that ... and be loved ... and not be afraid ... and be at peace That is the resurrection life!"

And so, being freed from anxiety and fear, being freed from the need to control reality, being freed from the NEED to cling to fundamentals to give us the illusion of control, we are free to engage with God in the wonderful discernment of what Truth is. We are free to be open to revelation -- not one of absolutes that speak of a universe that is black and white with nothing in between, but of guiding principles of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ through which God will reveal to us tiny pieces of a Truth that is far too big and wondrous and complex for us to apprehend fully, that certainly can NOT be controlled by us, that is far more interesting and beautiful and kaleidoscopic than the dull black and white world of fundamentalism.

A Truth that we approach kneeling in awe not stiff-necked in certitude.

The principles are ancient and simple and they permeate the writings of our faith. We find them in the parables-- the talents, the Good Samaritan, the lost coin, and on and on. We find them in Jesus' teachings on the greatest commandment -- love one another as I have loved you! We find them in the Christ hymn in Philippians -- where Christ sees ultimate power -- divinity -- not as something to be grasped but empties himself ... choosing self-giving love in relationship over grasping power.

I'm a big believer in the truth behind Psalm 127 -- "Unless God builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." There is truth, but that truth must be tested -- and Paul recognized this, too, when he talked about recognizing the "fruits of the spirit" (Galatians 5:22-26) and also exhorting the faithful to be "guided by the Spirit" and "not become conceited, competing against one another." but rather "crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires." -- words that to my ears are about humble submission to the awesome wisdom of God which we can NEVER fully apprehend nor control and not about feeding our addiction to control and worshipping absolutes that we believe we have fully apprehended and thus can use against one another.

1John 4 talks about "testing the spirits" and immediately exhorts his listeners to love one another. How do we determine truth? By following Jesus. By following the greatest commandment ... the law of self-giving love. The law that was made flesh in Christ incarnate, crucified and risen again. And in practice is there anything less black-and-white, anything more difficult to control, anything more wondrous and complex and messy and less prone to fit into the neat and tidy controlled categories of fundamentalism ... than love?

It is incredibly human that we as Christians -- like the rest of humanity -- are so prone to cling to the illusory safety of fundamentalism. But it's ironic, too. Because while very human and understandable, it's a reaction of fear in the name of one who stands among us saying "don't be afraid!" It's a vain attempt to control and predict reality in the name of a Christ who showed and shows us that reality is anything BUT controllable and predictable by anyone but God (Forget the resurrection ... do you think the people of Israel saw God choosing Moses? or David? or a young nobody girl named Mary? Think they saw that coming?). And it's more than ironic ... fundamentalism is an enterprise that is doomed to failure for two reasons.

First, because God is bigger, and "unless God builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." We can cling to all the fundamentals we want and pretend we have absolute control over Truth and an absolute corner of the market on it. But that will be a house of our building ... and it will not stand. Have fun.

Second, because the generations that are coming of age in these times of intense change are natives to that landscape the rest of us find so alien. And they aren't afraid. In fact, they're having a blast with it! Do they have the same needs for control over their environment and predictability of reality that the rest of us do? Absolutely! But change is relative and human beings are remarkably adaptive (that great "image of God" thing again, I suppose!), and the generations that are coming of age and will come of age in the decades to come are generations whose foundations are rooted in the same things that give the rest of us the heebie-jeebies! That's why they are able to have strong diverse and even contrary opinions about many things (human sexuality being but one) but largely don't feel the need to re-enact Sherman's March to the Sea OVER them.

Why is the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations declining? Well, one reason among many is that younger people -- raised in a generation with permeable boundaries all over the place -- aren't naturally creatures of brand loyalty the way the rest of us were raised to be. Maybe it's because just as we're moving into an age where nation-states will have less and less power, we're also moving into a post-denominational age as well.

And while that makes many of us older folks anxious and fearful, it's going to seem perfectly natural to my 8- and 5-year old.

The Good News is that God is doing what God always does ... sticking with us! If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, God is raising up a new generation of leaders who will sustain the Body of Christ -- ever changing and ever changeless -- into this new world. A new world that seems to many of us as radically different from our old lives as the one those women encountered at the empty tomb that Easter morning seemed to theirs.

We all have our fundamentalisms -- or at least most of us do ... or at least I know I do. They are seductive because they feel like they're about righteousness ... only they're inevitably about our righteousness and not God's righteousness. It's so, so tempting to get into the battle of my fundamentalisms vs. your fundamentalisms -- and to treat each other with limiting definitions that deny the beautiful complexity of one another and our lives as images of God. It's so, so tempting to cling to that which makes me feel right in part because it means you are wrong ... and it's so, so scary to step out from that into a reality that I cannot control or predict ... where that which is most dear to me is bound to be challenged or even stripped away.

But if that isn't the Christian life ... what is?

If that isn't the Way of the Cross ... what is?

If we're not about taking that radical leap of faith -- not individually but together as Christ's Body bound together in all our frustrating and wondrous diversity by his infinite love -- then what exactly are we about? And what purpose does this bizarre enterprise we call the Church serve other than to make us feel powerful and safe and RIGHT just as we are no change needed (a way of life I challenge anyone ever to find Jesus embracing!)?

And so if we are to be the Church, if we are to be worthy of the honor of being called the Body of Christ, we have to at least try to act like Christ. And that's not about easy answers. It's not about black and white and "I'm right and you're wrong." It's about being fools for Jesus, and loving those who hate you, and "give us this day our daily bread" and no more and tomorrow I'll pray it again and trust you'll give me enough for one more day, and meeting Christ in the unexpected eyes of the person living on less than a dollar a day, and being nailed to crosses all the while forgiving the guy with the hammer and trusting that even that is not the end but an amazing new beginning.

The problem with searching for THE reason for the church's decline is that the seeds of the decline lie in the very asking of that question! Our task is not to answer the question but to discard it and the search for absolutes it shrouds and instead to embrace the wondrous new, uncontrollable, unpredictable reality the shrinking of our church heralds. A new age in which God will shape us in new ways.

Scary? You bet! But we are up to the challenge. For we do not stand alone. For even as we hide behind the locked door of our fundamentalisms, Christ breaks through and stands among us saying.

Don't be afraid.

Be at peace.

Do you love me?

Feed my sheep.

2007-09-26T10:21:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow ... a new post!!!

It's been more than three months, and I've been meaning to get back to posting but haven't had the time. I just wrote the following in an email to my friend Rand, who sent me an editorial (excerpted below) from yesterday's NY Times. I decided to put it up here too ... mostly because I think my brother will fall out of his chair seeing that I've actually posted something....

Here's the editorial that started it:

The Center Holds
By DAVID BROOKS

In the beginning of August, liberal bloggers met at the YearlyKos convention while centrist Democrats met at the Democratic Leadership Council’s National Conversation. Almost every Democratic presidential candidate attended YearlyKos, and none visited the D.L.C.

At the time, that seemed a sign that the left was gaining the upper hand in its perpetual struggle with the center over the soul of the Democratic Party.
But now it’s clear that was only cosmetic. Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups — high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.

In the first place, the netroots candidates are losing. In the various polls on the Daily Kos Web site, John Edwards, Barack Obama and even Al Gore crush Hillary Clinton, who limps in with 2 percent to 10 percent of the vote.

Moguls like David Geffen have fled for Obama. But the party as a whole is going the other way. Hillary Clinton has established a commanding lead.

Second, Clinton is drawing her support from the other demographic end of the party. As the journalist Ron Brownstein and others have noted, Democratic primary contests follow a general pattern. There are a few candidates who represent the affluent, educated intelligentsia (Eugene McCarthy, Bill Bradley) and they usually end up getting beaten by the candidate of the less educated, lower middle class.

That’s what’s happening again. Obama and Edwards get most of their support from the educated, affluent liberals. According to Gallup polls, Obama garners 33 percent support from Democratic college graduates, 28 percent from those with some college and only 19 percent with a high school degree or less. Hillary Clinton’s core support, on the other hand, comes from those with less education and less income — more Harry Truman than Howard Dean.

Third, Clinton has established this lead by repudiating the netroots theory of politics. As the journalist Matt Bai makes clear in his superb book, “The Argument,” the netroots emerged in part in rebellion against Clintonian politics. They wanted bold colors and slashing attacks. They didn’t want their politicians catering to what Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos calls “the mythical middle.”
Read the whole thing here.

This article rings pretty true to me ... speaking as one who falls into the affluent, educated intelligentsia category and has worked for Paul Tsongas and Howard Dean and is now supporting John Edwards (unless Al Gore gets in).

The thing is, I think Brooks misses the key point here ... and that's what media is shaping what group's opinions.

The netroots are largely confined to the smaller demographic group of the "affluent, educated intelligentsia" because that is the group that has both the continual internet access to read/participate in those online discussions and the time to do it. Many of them are people (like me) who spend a decent amount of their work time online and who use that time reading and writing about politics online. They are probably more likely to listen to NPR than Rush.

The broader demographic is shaped by the mainstream media. They listen to talk radio. They watch CNN and Fox News and the rest.

I don't think this is about one type of media giving more favorable coverage to certain candidates than the other ... after all, Oprah, who is the queen of influence and mainstream media, has vigorously endorsed Obama. It's about the broader message that comes from these two very different types of media.

Mainstream media deals in generalities, broad brushstrokes and sensationalism. They have discovered that drama ... and melodrama even better ... draws viewers. One leve of this is when OJ breaks into a hotel room in Las Vegas, everything stops. But it also means that they buy right into fear-mongering, because fear creates drama in the mind and heart of the viewer. Fear gets the adrenaline going. Fear is seductive and makes you keep tuning in because you want to be informed and you don't want to miss anything.

Fear also encourages us to think in the same black-and-white, broad brushstrokes that 24-hour cable news is built for. Fear and anxiety also make people long for the secure and familiar. For Democrats or anyone who is leaning that way, that's Hillary. Obama is black and inexperienced ... people can get excited about new ideas and inspired to hear him, but new ideas are risky, and when you're talking about a huge demographic that has been baptized into the fear culture, risk isn't something you're really interested in.

Edwards isn't risky in that way, but he's risky in another in that he is so deeply colored by his past failure. It used to be that you could run for president and lose and come back again later (without having been VP in the interim). Not anymore. There is risk in supporting Edwards because that roll crapped out last time.

Is there risk to Hillary? Well, she's a woman and for some people that's a risk ... but compared with the other candidates, she is definitely the safest bet. She is a Clinton, and for most Democrats/liberals/centrists, the Clinton era is looking better and better every day. She's also turned into a real hawk, part of which is to counteract the possible perception that she would be soft because she's a woman but (I think) mostly because it sells to exactly the group of people that Brooks is talking about and that she is capturing. Hillary is blowing away the competition because she is a known quantity and she makes people feel secure. And when you have people who are shaped by a media that trades on making them afraid, the candidate who makes you feel secure is the one you're going for.

That's also the only reason Giuliani is polling as well as he is. The guy is an absolute lunatic (there was an excellent article in Harper's called "a Fate Worse than Bush" about Rudy. Read it here - http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2007/Giuliani-Worse-Bush1aug07.htm.), but he's got this iconic status because of 9/11.

Most people are shaped by mainstream media so most people are going to go with the candidate that makes them feel more secure. People who are more educated and affluent not only have more inclination and time to be reflective ... because of their wealth they are more likely to feel insulated from fear and more likely to want their leaders to take risks. They are more likely to go for the risky candidates -- and are thus more likely to support candidates who just don't appeal to mainstream America.

What could shake this all up is a significant shift in who actually goes to the poll and votes.

Because there is a much larger group. A group of people who don't watch CNN or listen to NPR. They don't read Daily Kos or listen to Rush. Many of them work multiple jobs and many of them have no jobs. What ties them all together is that they will not go to the polls because they are convinced it doesn't matter ... or at least that it's not worth the piece of their overburdened time it would take to be an informed voter.

These people don't go to political rallies or post online. They don't call into Dennis Miller and they don't write letters to the editor of the NY Times. And when they talk to their friends, the only politics they generally talk about is local ... unless it's in broad, largely critical terms.

If there was ever a candidate that could ever rouse this mass of people it would change the face of American politics. The problem is, for any candidate to be financially viable on the national stage they have to be sufficiently removed from the reality of this mass of people to render them unappealing to that group. Who is the last candidate that the lower middle-class and below actually believed cared about them. Bill Clinton had it a little bit, but before then? It hasn't been in my lifetime -- and, the more I think of it, I'm not sure it's ever been. I'd have to learn a lot more about electoral history before I could say.

The funny thing is, might not even know a candidate was doing this until the votes were cast. Because most of the polls were of likely voters, and as Amy Gardner said to Josh Lyman about when a third-party candidate might ever win the presidency "it's going to be the unlikely voters who do it." Josh calls them the people who are "too lazy-ass stupid to even raise their hands." I (using my own broad brush) call them people who have been completely convinced that raising their hands makes no difference whatsoever.

That will be something if that happens. But I'm not holding my breath.

2007-05-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

Memorial Day

Yesterday morning, we were driving home from church and Schroedter asked what Memorial Day was -- and it sparked a discussion. Not so much a discussion with Schroedter but a discussion between Robin and I about how to define Memorial Day.

Robin's immediate answer was, I imagine, the one she's been taught her whole life. Memorial Day is the day we remember the people who died fighting for our country, fighting for our freedom. (not an exact quote, probably, but I remember the words "our country" and "freedom" in there).

At that point, I objected.

The "fighting for our country" bit is tricky. Certainly the soldiers in Iraq are fighting under the flag of our country and are commanded their by the President of our country ... and in that respect they certainly are "fighting for our country" the same way Albert Pujols is "playing for the Cardinals." But when a war is not in the best interests of our country, it's hard to parse that.

The "freedom" piece is a no-brainer, though. There is nothing about what is going on in Iraq that is about fighting for our freedom ... in fact it is having the opposite effect.

For me, Memorial Day has always conjured up images of WWII vets, and so "fighting for our freedom" really did fit ... so I completely understand how those words came to mind. But that really hasn't been true in awhile and certainly isn't true, now.

Yet still, the sacrifice of these soldiers must be honored. Our troops in Iraq -- drawn overwhelmingly from the poorer economic classes and young men and women who signed up to be part of the National Guard (a force that, by it's own name, connotes domestic deployment ... and by the way, now that it turns out that in places like Arizona and Kansas we might actually need it, it's not there) ... they need to be honored, the living and the dead.

What did we end up telling Schroedter? I suggested "people who died in war wearing the uniform of our country" is who we remembered this Memorial Day.

It's sad when you have to parse Memorial Day.

2007-05-26T11:32:00.000-05:00

Make the candidates talk about the Millennium Development Goals

Do you want to hear the democratic front-runners' answer to this question?

In the Millennium Declaration of September 2000, 150 heads of state committed to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Are you committed to the Millennium Development Goals, and what is your view on the role of the U.S. in global partnerships to extinguish extreme poverty?

I sure do. Go to the Sojourners website and vote for this question.

On June 4, Clinton, Edwards and Obama will be live on CNN with Jim Wallis of Sojourners for a conversation on faith, values and poverty. Sojourners is giving us a chance to pick one of the questions -- so this is your chance to make the candidates talk about the MDGs and what they will do to make them happen if elected.

Go and vote ... and then go tell your friends to vote. Making poverty history means making our leaders know that we care -- and that we're watching them.

2007-05-19T07:15:00.000-05:00

Church, State and St. Dunstan

"The Church shouldn't be involved in politics."

I hear this one all the time ... particularly when I'm talking about the ONE Campaign or urging people as part of faithful living, to be in dialogue with their senators and representatives particularly about issues concerning the poor.

Enter Dunstan, 10th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, whose feast we celebrate today. Dunstan led a reform movement that closely bound the monasteries of England to the crown. He was a trusted friend of King Edgar and had a great deal of in the royal court.

Talking about Dunstan today as a positive model is liable to make lots of people nervous. Certainly the kind of merging of the State and a particular institution of the Church that existed in England (and greatly encouraged by Dunstan's efforts) is part of what this country was founded over against. Certainly a great fear with the current administration is that they are repeating exactly what happened with Edgar and Dunstan -- that the Church is being invited into the courts of the State and that the Church is actually doing the ruling.

I'm not arguing a return to the court of King Edgar. But I am arguing that even though it isn't part of our tradition as Americans, it is part of our tradition as Christians not to shy away from involvement in affairs of State. Sam Portaro, in his great companion book to Lesser Feasts and Fasts, "Brightest and Best," makes this point better than I:

"People are sometimes rattled (or annoyed)that I do not often wear my clerical collar. It is not that they need the symbol, but that they resent a religious person who goes stalking their world in plain clothes. Collaring their priest is rather like belling the cat so the birds will hear it coming: clerical collars warn the unsuspecting of a dangerous intrusion of religion into those spheres of life they prefer to keep separate from the church.

Dunstan believed that such separations are false, even contrary, to God's reality. There is no place in this world where God is not, and no place where we should not be. For him, politics and government were as much a part of life in God as his monasticism.

...God formed the earth and made us keepers of the chaos, co-creators. Dunstan brought this conviction to everything he did, closing the gap between religion and government, between religion and the arts, between religion and labor. He believed that the work of reconciliation entrusted to us is more than bringing affections together, uniting sentiments; it is also bringing the physical world back into union with its Maker. Doing just that, nothing more nor less than doing the work God has given us to do, here and now, is as sure a recipe for blessedness -- happiness -- as any."

The separation of Church and State is a critical thing to maintain ... but it is up to the State and the vigilance of the people to maintain it. It is about avoiding a merging between the State and the official structures of religion. It is about avoiding a State that is coterminus with the Church, where participation in the State mandates participation in the Church. It is not -- as it has developed into in much of the public consciousness -- a prohibition of the faithful from public life and discourse.

My problem with the Bush administration stocking the Department of Justice with graduates from Regent University and with trying to elevate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is not the intrusion of people of faith into the court of the King. It's that religious affiliation and a certain political bent were given greater weight in hiring than basic levels of competence.

Put another way, there are many reasons I wouldn't vote for any of the candidates who raised their hands at the recent Republican presidential debate saying they don't believe in evolution. None of those reasons have to do with their faith ... but some of them do have to do with me disagreeing with the path that faith has led them down.

When we say "The Church shouldn't be involved in politics," we're perpetuating a dualism that not only bankrupts the Church but cuts the legs out from under the State. If there is a clear demarcation from the sacred where the Church should be and the secular where the Church should not, then what relevance does the Church have as a transforming force for the world. Likewise, if we eliminate from the State all vestiges of theological thought, all words and actions motivated by faith, we rob the public sphere of not only some of the great thinkers of human history but of some of the best motivation for positive change.

2007-05-17T12:52:00.000-05:00

Where faith and freedom meet

I started this off as a comment on my brother's blog, but (predictably) it was going to be too long for a comment -- so I'm expanding on it here.

This morning, Ian (who has mastered brevity) posted this:

Two recent blurbs from an article in this week's New Yorker make me wonder why I have spent the past year studying the Bible:

'...A large survey in 2001 found that more than half of American Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians believed that Jesus sinned—thus rejecting a central dogma of their own churches...'

and

'...Surveys by the Barna Research Group, a Christian organization, have found that most Christians don’t know who preached the Sermon on the Mount...'

The article in question is called "Atheists with Attitude" -- and it's a pretty good read. It gets its kick-start from people like Christopher Hitchens who has been making the rounds hawking his book, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." So far I've seen him on the Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maher, of course, has been Hitchens long before Hitchens - and George Carlin was Maher before Maher ... and then there was Karl Marx, of course. Point is, taking shots at organized religion is nothing new. But there is something new happening -- and it's a natural progression of a society shaped by the freedoms of the Bill of Rights -- particularly freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

And I think it may be the best thing to ever happen to religion.

Look through history for when it was acceptable to criticize the dominant religion. You're not going to find a lot of instances. In many (most?) cases the dominant religion was so intertwined with the power of the state (the Marx argument) that to criticize the religion was to be a revolutionary. Even when our country was founded with the separation of Church and State, Religion -- particularly Christianity -- was so much part of the dominant culture (check what's written on your money) that criticizing it was risking social and economic ruin.

But something happened. The history of this country has been one of the people continually discovering what the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution really mean, continually pushing the envelope. And that's a good thing.

In many ways the U.S. is entering its teen years -- and we're acting like it. We've gotten a sense of what freedom is, and we're reveling in it. We're putting "question authority" buttons on our backpacks and radical quotes in our .sig lines. Combine this with the flattening of systems globally and the increasing ease to make our own communities rather than have to fit ourselves into the ones that happen to exist in our neighborhoods and there is much greater freedom to explore -- and to reject.

And so we're rejecting. As new generations come of age, and as a Boomer generation that pretty much thought it was God incarnate anyway moves into retirement, people like Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens are slowly moving from cranky voice on the margins to the voice of the people.

Of course, the Bush administration and the neocons have hastened this to worp speed. Take an administration that has so closely aligned itself with a cariacature of Christianity that is easiest to tear down to begin with ... and then have that administration be incompetent in just about everything it does ... and then have them stubbornly not only deny their own incompetence but also attest that -- inexplicably and with a wink and a nod toward the religious right -- history will prove them wise beyond reckoning some day in the future after we're all dead, and it doesn't take a lot of talent to prop up and tear down this straw man of faith.

But there's even more happening. As the flattening trend happens around the world. As people are experiencing more than the world outside their front door and are discovering their own freedom ... there's a backlash. It's a backlash of religious fundamentalism/extremism. A backlash that, using the worst of the religions they purport to embody, claims that it is cosmic forces of evil that are behind this new emerging world. And so what is happening is what always happens in times of extreme change -- those who resist it are circling the wagons (and in some cases, are going on the offensive) and trying to keep the sun from rising and the tide from coming in. The Bush administration and Al Qaeda are merely two sides of the same coin in this regard -- only the former has at least outwardly clung to some veneer of being civilized (though that truly is only a thin veneer).

So why is this a good thing?

I loved working in campus ministry. I still love being around young adults. I love being with people when they are taking the beliefs (or lack thereof) that were instilled in them in their formative years, and taking them out for test drives. I love that because what they end up with will truly be theirs ... and there's a chance for there to be a depth to it that can really change their lives -- and even change the world.

That's the opportunity if we don't fear this time of questioning and rejection of religion, but embrace it as an opportunity.

Does it surprise me that mainline Christians are ignorant of a basic historical tenet of faith? Does it shock me that a majority don't exhibit the slightest sign of Biblical literacy? Not at all. Because in this country the days where being a person of faith (particularly a Christian) was necessary for social and economic survival are fading fast.

The church, by and large, sees that as bad -- after all, it's harder to get people into church and there are definite financial rammifications to that. But I see it as good. Because when you really have a choice whether or not you want to be a part of a community of faith, saying yes has a much better chance of actually meaning something.

Either way, the world is what it is ... and The Church (broadly speaking) has several options for responding:

First, it can go the route of fundamentalist extremism. Hey, it worked for the Essene's right? We're the righteous remnant and we will be vindicated in the end. Problem is, when's the last time you saw an Essene? Sure, in the short term, the're going to be the ones who will answer Barna's questions correctly. But the forces that are reshaping the world are not the command and control of fundamentalism -- and churches that are fighting against them are just shouting against the tide. (BTW, this represents the right wing of the Episcopal Church)

Second, it can go the route of accomodation. Frankly, this is the one I find the most disturbing. This is when the Church sees that culture is becoming more secular so the Church mimics culture ... becoming more secular itself to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from the culture around it -- thus eliminating any real reason for being a part of it! It's this group that is the reason for those ridiculous statistics -- because in rigorously avoiding the traps of fundamentalism, they're so de-emphasizing the substance their faith does have as to become vapid and void. It's the church that says that what it stands for is "inclusion" ... without any sense of what they're including people into. (BTW, this represents the left wing of the Episcopal Church)

But then there is a third, middle way. A way that I think Anglicanism is uniquely poised to take, historically bent as it is toward via media. That's to do what my brother has been doing -- going back and really looking at scripture, but also looking at how God has worked through the life of the Church throughout the centuries and at the experience of God in our lives today. Honestly wrestling with the questions that honest engagement with those texts raise. Asking individually and corporately -- where are we being invited into a new incarnation of this faith? One that is not about the command and control Church of Empire. One that is not about a feel-good Gospel of "everyone's OK just the way they are, so let's join hands and sing Kum Ba Yah 'till blood spurts out of our ears."

There's a third way that isn't as easy for Bill Maher and Christopher Hutchens and even Karl Marx to tear into and tear down. About intelligent engagement with mystery. About rejoicing in beauty and the power of self-giving love. About the refining fire of discipleship that doesn't just leave us fat, dumb and happy where we are but which shapes us into something better, something that makes not just our lives better but makes the world better. An antidote for selfishness. A true hope for the hopeless.

Because Bill Maher and Christopher Hutchens and the rest of the "Athiests with Attitude" (though, Maher does say he's not an atheist, just an apathetic agnostic) have a point - religion has been used to poison a lot of things. But where they're wrong is that it doesn't mean religion is bad. It means human beings are broken and fallible (no news flash there) -- and it means religion that has been used to manipulate and control and be about one person trying to restrict another person's freedom for their personal gain is probably something we want to avoid.

But somewhere there is that place where faith and freedom meet. Where people can be invited of their own free will into a place where they see the good in giving up themselves for the sake of the other. Where they see the transforming power of self-giving love -- God's and ours -- and of their own free will may choose to embrace it.

I believe that will be the faith of the future. And that is why I hope and do not despair.

2007-05-11T11:03:00.000-05:00

Stephen Colbert explains the proper etiquette for requesting disaster relief
Perhaps the scariest thing about the Bush administration (now that would be a debate) is that we've moved so far past the point of hoping for competence that normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill incompetence doesn't make us blink. After all, there is so much off-the-chart, no-freaking-way incompetence that anything that falls beneath, let's say lying to Pat Tillman's family, or political motivated firings at DoJ or the clusterconsumation that is Iraq gets virtually ignored. The result is that the Bush administration can get away unnoticed and unscathed with ridiculous negligence and incompetence under a cover of its even greater incompetence.

Take the recent tornadoes in Kansas. Especially in the wake of Katrina, you'd think the administration would want to be pro-active (or at least active) in terms of disaster relief. But no. Not only were they not proactive, they were pretty well nonresponsive. Turns out at least part of the reason was that some of the equipment needed to move rubble off people in the Sunflower State is moving rubble off people in Fallujah.

Fortunately, the crew at Comedy Central doesn't let stuff like this fall through the cracks. I'm a little disappointed in Jon Stewart right now for the complete softball job he did in his interview with George Tenet. But Stephen Colbert his the Kansas disaster relief story out of the park.

Thanks to Crooks and Liars, here's Stephen Colbert sharing what Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius wishes she had known when she was hoping her national government would actually show up to the party this week.

2007-05-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

This morning, I was reading the reading assigned for today (Thursday in 5 Easter) in Celebrating the Seasons, and it struck me as a good one to share. It's from The Power and Meaning of Love by Thomas Merton.

The union that binds the members of Christ together is not the union of proud confidence in the power of an organization. The Church is united by the humility as well as by the charity of her members. Hers is the union that comes from the consciousness of individual fallibility and poverty, from the humility which recognizes its own limitations and accepts them, the meekness that cannot take up on itself to condemn, but can only forgive because it is conscious that it has itself been forgiven by Christ.

The union of Christians is a union of friendship and mercy, a bearing of one another’s burdens in the sharing of divine forgiveness. Christian forgiveness is not confined merely to those who are members of the Church. To be a Christian one must love all people, including not only one’s own enemies but even those who claim to be the ‘enemies of God’. ‘Whosoever is angry with his brother or sister shall be in danger of the judgment. Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute and speak calumny of you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.’

The solidarity of the Christian community is not based on the awareness that the Church has authority to cast out and to anathematize, but on the realization that Christ has given her the power to forgive sin in his name and to welcome the sinner to the banquet of his love in the holy Eucharist. More than this, the Church is aware of her divine mission to bring forgiveness and peace to all men and women. This means not only that the sacraments are there for all who will approach them, but that Christians themselves must bring love, mercy and justice into the lives of their neighbours, in order to reveal to them the presence of Christ in his Church. And this can only be done if all Christians strive generously to love and serve all people with whom they come into contact in their daily lives.

With all this talk about "instruments of unity" that is really nothing more than a misplaced attempt at a technical solution to the adaptive challenge of living in Communion, Merton offers something wonderful. What binds us together is not a common confession or an organizational structure or even a way of doing theology. What binds us together is our shared consciousness of our individual and corporate brokenness -- of our deep inadequacy and even deeper need of God. What binds us together is our common call to forgive because we ourselves have been forgiven of so much.

Our power lies not in drawing lines of who is in and who is out. Not, as Merton says, in our "power to anathematize" but in the power of hospitality. The power of welcoming. And not just welcoming as virtue in itself (as the left has inexplicably elevated "inclusion" to a high virtue often without considering word itself exactly what it is we are "including people into"!) but welcoming one another (for we are all sinners) to "the banquet of (Christ's) love in the Holy Eucharist."

Our welcome is not extended to something of our construction. Our welcome is only an extension of the the welcome we have received. Our love is only an extension of the love we have received. Our forgiveness is only an extension of the forgiveness we have received.

Of course there is room for people on both sides totally not to get what I'm driving at here. There's room for people on the right to feel self-righteous in that "love the sinner and hate the sin" kind of way and disguise through flowery phrases and high-sounding rhetoric the very anathematizing Merton rails against. There's room for people on the left to feel morally superior as more forgiving, more open and more loving -- even though such self-righteousness cannot coexist with the humility to which Merton (and Christ) calls us.

And, of course, there's plenty of room for me to feel self-righteously above the fray, to let my own anger at the conflict and the major players in it consume me and to bask in the glow of my own supposed wisdom in knowing better than them all.

And yet, as always, all these things bring all of us back to the same place -- convicted by our sin and brokenness, in deep need of forgiveness and love, and bound together most profoundly not by that which we fight over but by the brokenness that keeps us so deeply entrenched in the foxholes.

One of my favorite 1980s movies is Broadcast News. In it Albert Brooks plays what he plays best, an intelligent neurotic ... in this case a TV news reporter who is in love with Holly Hunter, who in turn is falling in love with a pretty-boy anchor (William Hurt) to whom Brooks feels morally superior but in every other way inadequate.

But before all this comes to a head, Brooks is musing with Holly Hunter on the phone about relationships:

"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive. If 'needy' were a turn-on?"

Maybe he's onto something. Only maybe today we could say:

"Wouldn't this be a great church if our brokenness and failure drew us closer together? If forgiveness and mercy were how we defined progress and victory?"

I think Merton would have liked that. I know I would like that. I wonder if Jesus would like it, too.

2007-05-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

"O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against a rock!" - Psalm 137:8-9

My silence on this blog hasn't been the usual "too busy" ... but not knowing where to begin.

It's been more than six weeks since I returned from Rwanda, and I feel like I'm just about ready to start talking and writing about it. There is so much to say, and yet there are not words to say it. But over the next week or so, I will try.

The picture you see is the wall of the church in Nyamata. Nyamata is just down the road from Mayange, where lies the Millennium Village I went to Rwanda to visit. It is in Bugesera district -- which is notable because it had the highest percentage of its people killed during the genocide -- nearly 70 percent.

This is no accident. In the decade leading up to the genocide, Tutsis were "relocated" into Bugesera. In the years leading up to the genocide, places like this church were the sites of "practice genocides" -- where the Hutu Power movement would see how many Tutsi's they could kill in an hour. Outside the church are the graves of the clergy who tried to stop them.

When the genocide began to happen, the people flocked to the church for sanctuary, for safety. They did not find safety there. The crowds found them there.

When you walk into the church and look up you see hundreds of tiny holes in the roof made by shrapnel from the fragmentation grenades that were thrown into the packed church. You can still see the bloodstains on the wall from when the crowd entered the church, ripped small children from their mother's arms and smashed them against it.

The church is a genocide memorial now. From behind the benches that once served as pews you can now descend staircases into a room with a large display case filled with skulls and bones -- remains of the dead. Out the back door there are two large mass graves -- mausoleums you can walk down into and stand in narrow passageways with coffins piled up on either side of you from floor to ceiling.

I went to Nyamata in the afternoon of my first day in Rwanda. That morning, I had been to the genocide museum in Kigali ... which I imagine I'll write about another time. In some ways that visit had anesthesized me... dulled the starkness of the skulls and coffins. Or maybe it was just that it was all too overwheming. I walked through it in somewhat of a daze ... with the most powerful feeling being that I didn't belong here. That this place was made sacred by the blood of the people who died there and what connection did I have to that other than being from a country that stood by and let it happen.

The altar stood as it had that morning ... only with a display case on it with some artifacts from people who had died there. Not thinking I walked up behind it.

I have been ordained for 10 years now, but long before then, the sanctuary of a church has felt like home. It's difficult to put into words, but there is a feeling of "rightness" ... of "home" to standing behind the Holy Table wherever it might be. And so it was in Nyamata as I slowly walked behind the altar. I wasn't expecting it, but all of a sudden I went from feeling like an outsider who was too much of a tourist in a place that needed penitents instead of tourists... I went from that to being a priest, a priest where he belonged -- at the table.

It felt right. It felt like home.

And then I looked down. And I saw the fair linen, the same one, I imagine, that lay on that table the day the genocide reached Nyamata. Only it was not a fair linen. It's whiteness was stained with dirt and dried blood ... the blood of those who had literally died on this altar.

I suppose going to Nyamata is a lot like going to Auschwitz. But what if something about Auschwitz was the most sacred place in the world to you ... a place where you have always felt perfectly at home and at peace. A place where even in the worst, most out-of-control times in your life, everything somehow made sense.

That's what it was like to stand behind that altar in Nyamata.

For all its beauty and incredibly hope, being in Rwanda is like staring into the abyss. I wasn't ready for it. I thought I would be, but I wasn't.

I suppose there are several levels of experiencing horrendous evil. There's hearing about it second- or third-hand from a distance. There's going to the place where it happened and seeing what it has wrought. And there's it actually happening to you.

I thought I'd been to that second place before. I thought I'd been to it in the Western Region of Ghana when I saw starving children literally living on top of a gold mine. I thought I'd been to it in Southern Sudan when I saw the militarization of the heart that had happened with 20 years of brutal civil war. I thought I'd been to it at the AIDS orphanage outside Pretoria.

But I really hadn't. Because as horrible as all those other places were ... the genocide is different and far, far worse. The genocide isn't just people's lives being torn apart and ended by the unthinking, unfeeling forces of corporate greed and the conscienceless marketplace. The genocide isn't even people being brutally tortured and murdered by invaders from another land.

The genocide was people -- from the wisest elder to the tiniest baby and everyone in between -- being raped, brutalized, maimed, tortured and murdered ... by their friends and neighbors. By people who knew them. Sometimes even by people in their own family.

In all the other horrendous evil I'd voyeuristically encountered in my travels, in every case I could explain its existence by our human ablity to demonize that which we don't know and understand. "If we could only see each other face to face," I believed. "If we could only really know each other in a way that would balance out the propoganda we could keep things like this from happening."

Only in Rwanda, they did know each other. The people who came into that church and dashed the children's heads against the stone, who covered that altar in blood, were not strangers from a distant land but their co-workers and friends. People who knew them.

And standing there at that altar, that place of surpassing love that in that love I had always found peace amidst all the unanswerable questions, all I could see was the blood. And perhaps for the first time I said out loud three words I have been saying over and over and over again since that day.

I don't understand.

And that's why I've been unable to write about this. That plus an almost overwhelming feeling of guilt that I should be so torn up over something that didn't happen to me, that it is an incredible almost self-indulgent luxury to feel pain about this when I didn't have to suffer any of it (and in fact by my and my countries inaction was a silent partner in causing it). But that's another story for another time.

Mostly it's because I don't understand. I don't understand how people can do this to each other. I don't understand how this horrendous evil can exist in the world. It doesn't make sense. It shakes the foundations of my life to the core. I have always believed that down -sometimes deep, deep down -- in all humanity, in all creation you will find good.

Standing at that altar for the first time that belief was seriously challenged. And even as I write this now, my head shakes almost imperceptibly, but uncontrollably side to side. No. No. No. I don't understand.

Standing at that altar, I looked into the mouth of the beast. I have seen darkness before, but I have always been able to spot the light shining in its midst. And yet at that moment, my eyes strained and were unsure.

I spend my life these days traveling around the country, around the church talking about God's mission of global reconciliation, about the Millennium Development Goals -- yes, about the horrors of extreme poverty, but mostly about What One Person Can Do about it. It is a message not of death and destruction but of possibility and opportunity. I have always been able to cast it in terms of resurrection ... and not just as spin but really believing that.

But how can that be here? As inexplicable as Psalm 137 has always been to me -- and yes, I realize it was written in anger by a people in Israel who were longing for the day when they could do to their captors what had been done to them -- I never looked at it square in the face. Stood in a place where children were dashed against walls by people rejoicing to do it.

I have a great urge to tie this up with a message of hope. To talk about the wonderful things I saw in Rwanda. To write of the resiliency of the people and how they are coming together to rebuild a country. And those things are true.

But to end like that would be to seem that I don't still scream those three words at God and mutter them silently to myself every day: I don't understand.

And maybe that's where this needs to end. Maybe as much as I want to understand how this was possible there is no way to understand because there is simply no reason to it. What happened happened. Sometimes what was, was and what is, is.

Perhaps it is not for me to understand. Perhaps it is just for me to experience a piece of it, and to let it haunt me, to let it change me, to let it make me profoundly uncomfortable.

Either way, that is where I am.

2007-05-04T19:53:00.000-05:00

Tired of what passes for electronic journalism today?

A glimpse back to the best the late 70s had to offer. More news and Les Nessman!

A real post coming tomorrow (finally!)

2007-04-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

This Lent, Christ Church Cathedral gathered a community of artists (and a few of us non-artists)to construct a stations of the cross. We drew stations randomly at the beginning of Lent and got to work. You could use any medium you wanted, and there were a couple opportunities for the artists to gather and share their process during the season.

I drew station 8 -- Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem -- and at some point I'll probably put that one up and my reflection on it. But as we end the Triduum today, I wanted to share one of the most powerful stations I'd ever seen: Phoebe Dent Weil's expression of the 11th station -- Jesus nailed to the cross. You see the image above.

There is much I could write about this piece and what it brings up in me. But I think it best just to leave you with it, the photo that inspired it and Phoebe's words:

"My image of this station was inspired by a startling photograph on the front page of The New York Times (Tuesday, January 23, 2007) attached to an article. "88 Killed as Car Bombs Devastate Busy Baghdad Market" (by Marc Santora, Photo credit:" Wissam al-Okaili/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images). (MK note: here is a more complete and less sanitized story and analysis of the bombings)

"The photograph was taken in the immediate chaotic aftermath of an event of stunning horror inflicted by human beings against other human beings. A kneeling and weeping man tenderly covers the bodies of the dead lying on the ground. There are two guards attempting to keep order: one at the center wearing and Arab keffiyeh who motions towards a grief-stricken boy to keep at a distance; the other, off-camera on the left, whose white glove hinders the approach of the photographer. Between the two guards stands a young man whose impassioned grief can hardly be imagined; the cry of anguish, the outstretched arms, the half-kneeling stance -- all a total-bodily response to the deepest experience of pain and loss with its accompanying despair and anger and questions shouted to God, to the Universe, to all of us, "Look at this! Behold the horror! Why?" Behind him stands a weeping young boyh who reaches out to support him with one hand and comfort him with the other.

"It is a daring move to connect the act of nailing Christ to the Cross with the continuing acts of violence in Iraq that confront us daily in the news media, but the connection for me was immediate. In my interpretive rerarrangement of the photograph I have placed an image of the Crucifixion by the late 16th century sculptor, Giambologna, behind the main protagonist.

"We tend to resort to a kind of psychic numbing to protect ourselves from experiencing the depths of anguish that such horror demands. So, also, with the event of the nailing of Christ to the Cross: a moment of torture of one human being by another, the physical pain, the anguished cry of the victim confronted by the dark forces of the torturer who drives in the nails. The outstretched arms of the victim become the embracing arms of compassion in the face of those dark parts of humanity where compassion is absent. I have transformed the weeping boy who reaches out to comfort the grief-stricken man into an angel."

2007-04-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

Update on Mohammed

If you've been following this blog, you will remember an online conversation I had in February with "Mohammed Ibn Laith" (not his real name for security reasons), that began with me quoting some of his blog in a sermon and posting it and with him responding to my sermon and me responding to him.

Since then, I've been in conversation with the person who has set him (and others) up with their blog from Baghdad. Both Mohammed and I are interested in continuing to "meet" online in some sort of environment that would maintain his security but would allow us to continue to talk. While waiting for that to be set up, I got this word from the go-between. I actually got it at the beginning of my trip to South Africa ... and then a few weeks later got permission to post the words I am posting below.

Mohammed's father (Laith Abu Mohammed) was killed in the Arbaeen massacres of March 6th. Mohammed's mother (Zeynab Um Mohammed) died of her wounds incurred in the same attack on March 7th.

Hussayn Ibn Laith died a few days before his parents as he ran with his team to the scene of a bombing to rescue survivors - it was a cascaded bombing attack. In other words, more than one bomb ... the second one being timed to kill the rescuers and or people fleeing the scene. Hussayn was the brother who Mohammed mentions in "what will we talk about." He was 17.

Ali Ibn Laith (younger brother) was wounded together with his father and mother in the March 6th attack. He is physically recovering well. Mohammed and he completed the pilgrimage on foot to complete what their parents were doing. Ali is 8.

Mohammed is now in a 40 day mourning period. I am hopeful after that is over that we will be able to talk. But I also realize he very well may have no desire to be in touch with me. This was his last post, dated March 10:

Let us understand one another, you and I

O God! Pardon our living and our dead, the present and the absent, the young and the old, the males and the females.

I am a Muslim I am Iraki.

Do not come to me talking of your feelings. Do not come to me asking for forgiveness. Who do you think you are?

I will not ever forgive or forget what your country has done to us. I will not ever forget or forgive what your country has done my family, my city, my country, my people.

Never.

My grandchildren’s, grandchildren, will teach their grandchildren to hate America for what she has done to us. Never ever ever will I, or they, forget or forgive what your barbaric country has done to us.

Never.

Mohammed Ibn Laith

This week, we walk with Christ to the cross and beyond. An image that always comes to me this week is from Dorothy Sayers' "The Man Born To Be King," in which she talks about the dream Pontius Pilate's wife had (MT 27:19). In her mind, the dream was Pilate's wife hearing the words "suffered under Pontius Pilate" said ... not just by one person, but by generation after generation after generation of people for centuries in overlapping chorus.

We are judged by our actions not just in the moment, but throughout time. Pilate stepped back in cowardice in the face of the crowd at his defining moment and because he did, those voices of castigation have echoed throughout history.

The actions of our nation ... and the inaction of those of us who have not done enough to stop it ... are preparing their own echoes. They are the voices of people like Mohammed, whose pain and anger have voice that will carry long after the 40 days of mourning have passed.

2007-03-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

Connecting the Communion in the Mountains of Rwanda

Through a mutual friend, I was put in contact with the wife of the bishop of one of the Province of Rwanda's 10 dioceses and was warmly invited to come up for a day to visit. Today was the day, so I went to the bus park and crammed myself into a matatu (a mini-bus that probably should hold 12-14 people but in this case carried 20) for a bumpy and curvy trip into some of the most beautiful mountain country and agricultural regions I have ever seen. We are just entering the rainy season here, and this part of Rwanda is lush and green and beautiful.

When I arrived at my destination (a little unnerved by the policeman with the automatic weapon sitting in the seat in front of me the last part of the journey), the bishop's wife was waiting for me. After a quick stop by the office where she works (an organization that provides two meals a day for children orphaned by the genocide and HIV/AIDS), she took me by the Cathedral and (attached to it) a diocesan training centre. The centre is used by the whole community for vocational training and also training of leaders for reconciliation work. We then walked back to their house, many people stopping to greet us along the way (everyone here speaks Kinyarwanda, quite a few people speak French and almost no one speaks English. I've spent the whole week wishing I had retained more of my college French and speaking Berlitz-level Kinyarwanda -- I do know that "muraho" means "hello" and "murakoze" means "thank you" -- it's amazing how far those words and a smile will take you!) and also stopping by a class where orphans were being taught craftwork for sale in the market.

The Bishop joined us when we got to the house and we had a wonderful conversation and lunch. I was full of questions and they were both very patient with me -- and also eager to talk about their church. I'm very hesitant to talk about the genocide because I have only been here a week and even though it feels like I have seen so much, I am such an outsider and know I'm only seeing a few pieces of the puzzle. But one thing is for certain and that's this is a land and a people who have been through hell. The genocide hangs over and undergirds everything about Rwanda. The bishop and his wife were forced to flee during the genocide, and afterwards he spent time in refugee camps in several countries figuring out who among his clergy and others were alive and who was dead. Then as soon as they could, they came right back home and started rebuilding the church.

Both the diocese and the mother's union are a huge part of the social structure there. The primary school is run by the diocese, as is a secondary school many kilometers away from the diocesan center. There is a great deal of intentional ministry around HIV/AIDS, family planning, education, and health care. Most of all, the church plays a huge role in post-genocidal reconciliation -- helping those who were imprisoned for helping commit the genocide re-integrate into society after going through the local gacaca courts, bringing together survivors with the parents and spouses of the genocidaire. I have seen this ministry in other places in Rwanda. There is an organization called REACH/Rwanda (the diocese of SW Florida has been a big supporter of them) that is based out of the Kigali Diocese that trains religious leaders of all faiths in reconciliation and trauma healing. In a nation where there are THREE psychiatrists in the entire country (yes, that's right THREE), the church is providing ministry that is life-saving and life-giving.

We talked about the importance of women's leadership in the church -- and how the ordination of women had enriched both our churches.

And then over lunch, conversation turned to the current situation in the communion. And my experience talking with this bishop was the same experience I have had talking with other bishops and clergy and laity in Ghana and Sudan and South Africa. We disagreed - but we listened to each other. I heard him speak of how America loves to make big splashes and announce it is changing the world. How there is an arrogance about our country that assumes that others should fall in and follow behind us. How he thought the Lambeth resolution in 1998 was a wonderful thing because in his mind it affirmed homosexuals (his term) as children of God -- which absolutely is something we should do ... and which was a huge leap from where much of his society was, casting them out and calling them horrible sinners. How he interpreted General Convention 2003 as us taking us off that point of Lambeth -- a place he was happy to go, but was culturally a big stretch -- and forcing "our issues" on them.

And I tried my best to listen -- and to really hear him. This is a good man and a good bishop. He has risked his life for his people and continues to give his life for his people. He is not hateful - not toward gay and lesbian people, not toward Americans, not even toward the people who slaughtered his clergy and people. Even though part of me kept wanting to raise my hand and say "what a minute .. you don't understand" by grace, I was somehow able to restrain myself (those who know me will recognize a minor miracle!). He deserved a listen. And more than that, I realized I needed to really listen to what he was saying.

When it came my turn to respond, I knew I needed to be as straightforward with him as he had been with me (and he had warned me he would be blunt!). I told him how I voted at GenCon 2003 and that I thought the sin we (and I) needed to repent of was not what we did but not recognizing the deep effect it would have on the Communion. I said I agreed that we come off as arrogant and at times really are arrogant, that we have a cultural self-assurance and conviction and that it is too easy for us to confuse self-righteousness with God's righteousness. I said we are a culture that emphasizes individual rights and that our actions come out of that framework -- our concern for the rights of GLBT people, and our primary understanding of autonomy in the communion vs. their primary understanding of community in communion. I said that most Episcopalians I know really want to be part of the Anglican Communion. That we feel torn between wanting to honor these relationships and following what we really believe God and Christ would have us do with the GLBT people who are full parts of our church.

We disagreed. But we agreed that eventually, what was of God would stand and what was not of God would not. We agreed that we need each other and that there is so much we can do together. And when conversation turned to kicking the American church out of the communion and I said, "but let's say for the sake of argument that I am wrong and in need of conversion ... how can that happen if you push me away?" he laughed a great, booming laugh and said "Yes! That is good! I must draw you closer!"

And then conversation turned to more important things -- the great work he was doing. The training of lay catechists for their 300+ congregations. Education. Care for widows and orphans. Spreading the Gospel. The work EGR is trying to do bringing the church together around God's mission of global reconciliation in the MDGs.

As he left for a meeting, I asked him for his blessing -- and he laid his hands on my head and asked God's blessings on me, on my travel, on my work and on our relationship.

This is not the first time I have had a conversation like this, and I doubt it will be the last. I believe this is the true face of the Anglican Communion. Honest and even passionate disagreement? Yes. But disagreement while gathered (literally, in this case) breaking bread around the table. Disagreement while celebrating each other's missions and dreaming how we can labor together. Disagreement while greeting with a hug and parting with a blessing. No ultimatums. No threats. No walking out or dueling press machines.

Tomorrow I leave for home ... and I've actually spent a refreshingly little amount of time talking about issues of schism in the Anglican Communion during my week in South Africa and my week here in Rwanda. But I have spent a lot of time with Anglicans of many stripes. And the one thread that has run through all those encounters was a commitment to common mission. Through proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed.

That is the real face of the Anglican Communion -- "alive and well" as Archbishop Ndungane says.

At least it was this afternoon in the beautiful mountains of Rwanda.

2007-03-18T07:27:00.000-05:00

Random Rwandan Ruminations

There are about a dozen things I could write in depth about, but all of them need more reflection and less reactivity. I'm trying to gather pieces of a complex puzzle in less than a week, which is an impossible task. All I can really do is get a small sense of things and go from there.

I'm trying to hear as many stories and perspectives as possible. I've met with a lot of the Millennium Village people here and feel like I've got a good handle on what's going on with that. Yesterday, I spent a few hours with an Episcopal laywoman who is working for the Anglican church in one of the outlying dioceses and heard about Rwanda from her perspective. Today I went to church, coffee and lunch with Kimberly Buxton, who is working with Partners in Health in Rwinkwavu (I was hoping to go out to the site with her tomorrow, but those plans aren't going to work). Tonight, I'm having dinner with someone from REACH, a faith-based organization that is doing reconciliation work here (the Diocese of SW Florida has been involved in working with them).

Everyone has a different perspective ... which is really valuable. Some of them jive together. Some don't. I'll need awhile to put it all together.

So in the meantime, two random slices of life/other thoughts.

*Just to let you know the little I am learning about Kigali. It's a city of about a million people, but it's really a lot of sprawl -- there is definitely no downtown or skyline. It's very hilly. Most of the roads are unpaved, though major arteries are paved. There are plenty of stoplights but none of them work because the electricity is too expensive (they say they turned them on when Bill Clinton came).

The primary way people travel is walking, because that's the cheapest way to go -- and when you have close to 70% unemployment you really gun for cheap. The other popular mode of transport is thousands of little motorbikes that you climb on the back of and hold on. Traffic here is like NYC ... the lanes are more suggestions than anything else. And the motorbikes are always zipping in and out of everything.

The combination of all this -- lots of pedestrians (who just wander into traffic with great regularity), zipping motorbikes, permeable lanes and no stoplights makes traffic an interesting experience. But like in most places like this, people seem to have an intuitive sense and so nobody gets hurt.

*There seems to be a real catch-22 with developing industry here. Labor is incredibly cheap (which has its pros and cons, obviously). But raw materials are incredibly expensive. Why? Because there is little infrastructure here to produce and refine raw materials, so they have to be imported. A major source of revenue for the Rwandan government is tariffs on imports -- which drives the prices of materials WAY up.

The argument for this is that the tarrifs protect domestic industry that would have a hard time competing against cheaper foreign goods (This is where Andrew Langan will get interested). Problem is, there is no domestic industry to protect and the high cost of goods with which infrastructure could be built to actually BUILD domestic industry prohibits domestic industry from developing.

This is a great example of how a comprehensive approach of aid, debt relief and trade is important. You need aid ... but the ultimate goal is to have a society that doesn't need aid. Aid industries should be in the business of putting themselves out of business and aid should be used in ways that promote local development. That's why microfinance -- when done properly (and I'm still learning what that means) is such an intruiging option. But in this system, protectionist trade policy is actually preventing economic development -- and all the aid and debt relief in the world isn't going to enable Rwanda to stand on its own two feet economically if those don't get eliminated or at least phased out.

More later.

2007-03-16T03:54:00.000-05:00

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Crucifixion and resurrection are at the heart of our faith. They're also metaphors that are used often enough that it's easy for them to lose their power. None of us were at Calvary that Friday and none of us have every seen a crucifixion -- but if we had we would understand that it's not a metaphor for difficulty but it is blinding pain and the desolation of death. And none of us were there Sunday morning to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emtpy -- but if we were we would understand that it's not a metaphor for triumph but it is awesome and impossible, wonderful beyond words and yet terrifying.

I think if I were really at the crucifixion and having to write about it, I wouldn't be able to. Ditto for the resurrection. And that tells me a little about yesterday.

It would be easy to talk about Thursday in terms of crucifixion and resurrection. And it would be a useful metaphor -- if not all too easy to use. And there are definitely ways it would be accurate. But still it seems inadequate. We'll see.

First, crucifixion. I didn't witness crucifixion yesterday, but I heard tell. And I saw the aftermath. In the morning, I spent 2 1/2 hours at the National Genocide Museum in Kigali and in the afternoon, I visited the genocide memorial in Bugesera District (where 65% of the population was slaughtered -- the hardest hit district in Rwanda).

And I can't write about it. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to. But for now I can't. I just can't. Suffice it to say that the genocide hangs over and undergirds everything that happens here. If the genocide is crucifixion and the rebuilding of Rwanda is resurrection, there is no neat dividing line of Holy Saturday. Crucifixion, the blinding pain, the desolation of death continues even as resurrection begins.

And so ... resurrection.

I can write about this part ... which tells me something, too. It's not as in-your-face. In many ways it's more of a hint, a peripheral glance rather than in your face.

Resurrection in Rwanda isn't happening all at once. And in many places it's not happening at all. The unemployment rate is near 70%. Economic growth has been trumpeted and it has been good but so far the benefits have only been felt by the top economic strata (though there is lots of hope it is trickling down because lots of important infrastructure is being built).

But slowly, it is happening in one of the least-likely places. It is happening in Mayange in Bugesera, where the Millennium Village is.

If you've read this blog before, you've heard me talk about the Millennium Village in Mayange. It's an integration of development principles starting with a target group of 1,005 households aimed at meeting all the MDG goals and targets at once. What makes Mayange different from other MVs (and many other programs) is the degree of buy-in of the government (and the comparatively low corruption index of the government), methods of intervention that encourage sustainable development rather than dependency, and a plan to scale the project up beyong the village to the entire country.

Mayange isn't an oasis. It has a long way to go. There is still incredible poverty. There is still malnutrition. Domestic violence is epidemic. There is lots of undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. But there is positive momentum. Something is happening here, and it's incredibly exciting.

I tagged along with Josh and a group from a medical conference for a tour yesterday, and I'm heading back this afternoon. The first stop was the health centre.

The first thing you notice about the health centre is that it's bursting with people. The waiting room is full. There are lines outside the lab, the pharmacy, and many other places. It's not a large complex and they are maxing out the space and need to grow.

This is a good thing. No -- this is a great thing. The centre serves about 500 people a day, and that's great news because it means people are accessing the health care. It also means they are accessing health care earlier on in illness when prevention and early-stage treatment are possible.

One example: The under-five mortality rate is 15 percent in this district. When they got here, they would have 3-4 funerals (mostly of children under five) a week. They haven't had a young child funeral in four months.

Another example: When they first opened the centre, about 80 percent of the patients had malaria. Now that's down to 10 percent -- thanks to an integrated system not just of distributing bednets, but of education, monitoring of use and tying bednet use to availability of other things -- like agricultural interventions (ERD's Nets for Life program is using similar strategies).

The key has been not just fighting disease but working hard to change the health care system. By removing barriers like co-pays and the need to travel long distances and pay fees to have pictures taken for IDs (they now have a mobile webcam and printer that goes to where the people are and takes the pictures for free), they now have the vast majority of the people enrolled in a system where people pay what they can but nobody is denied treatment.

Expensive? Not as much as you might think. The per capita cost for health care in this MV is $25 with fixed costs (staff salaries, electricity, infrastructure) and $8 without fixed costs. That's below MV hoped-for standards and certainly sustainable.

People are getting in, getting treatment and getting better. You can make an argument that health care is more accessible to the entire population in Mayange than in St. Louis!

We then went to one of the fields and heard about the agricultural innovations, like progressive terracing, which uses trench-digging to maximize the ability of rainwater to get to the lower levels of soil and not just run off taking all the nutrients with it. They've planted nitrogen-fixing trees every three meters to help replenish the soil over time.

But the big new thing is a massive fertilizer loan program (I'm headed back for the big celebration of its launch this afternoon).

Other programs (and most, if not all, of the other Millennium Villages) give away the fertilizer, which creates a culture of dependency. The loan program will enable growers to sign up for a loan of fertilizer and maize. At the harvest, they will pay it back in maize or in cash. 70-75 percent of the people have signed up (they were hoping for 30%). And they've tied it to use of progressive terracing and membership in the health care system.

If there is an icon for what is going on in Mayange, it is the children.

That there are children at all is life and light. The genocide was 13 years ago (though massacres began years before that), and our visit was greeted by children much younger than that. Children who are the rising generation of post-genocide Rwanda

There are children at the health center. They are sick, but they're getting treatment.

There are children on the street. They are poor, but they are not hopeless.

Most of all, they are children with dignity. Walking up the street toward Josh's house yesterday morning I was approached by a child asking for money. The children in Mayange don't do this. They don't beg. They smile. They follow us everywhere. They clamor to have their picture taken so they can see themselves. They try to practice their English on you. But they don't bed.

They have dignity. And dignity, more than anything, is the foundation for development not just of an economy but of the identity of a people.

And maybe that's the real resurrection. Rwanda is a nation the West looks on with guilt and pity. It has a horrible past that flows into the present and will flow into the future.

But it is a place of great beauty. And at least in Mayange, it is a place of dignity and pride.

And as much as the shadow of the past is still cast into the present, in those children you can catch a glimpse of the future. A future worth looking forward to.

2007-03-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

I'm in Rwanda -- and Blogger knows I'm here!

I'm writing from Kigali, Rwanda -- and apparently when you log on to Blogger from Kigali, it knows you are in Rwanda and so everything is in French -- which is kind of interesting (Google comes up in English but offers links to versions in French and Kiswahili).

The conference ended well. There is a very lengthy outcomes document that will eventually be up on the EGR website -- 12 or so recommendations for the Anglican Communion and for Lambeth. Really good stuff, and it works really well as a summary document of the program content. It doesn't capture the really amazing relational content -- but of course there is no real way to capture that. Still have lots of stories to tell from that conference, but I'll space those out over time when I get back.

The flight to Kigali was an easy 4 hours -- and it really feels like I'm in Africa now. Whereas Johannesburg (until you get out to the townships) has a really European/British/first world feel to it, just flying into Kigali felt like flying into Accra. Low-light streetlights so the streets don't really show up from the air. Most of the stoplights were off on the way to Josh and Alissa's place ... don't know if that's a power outage or if they just turn them off after a certain time.

Anyway I'm at Josh and Alissa Ruxin's house now. Josh is the professor of public health at Columbia University who does the Millennium Villages Project in Mayange (and Alissa is his wife). They've got a nice place. It's also kind of a hostel for folks who visit him from out of town, so I fit right in.

There's an interesting crowd staying at the house right now. THere's an old friend of Josh's who is the recently-appointed New York Times bureau chief for East Africa. His wife works with him shooting video of the stories he files for the NY Times website. They're here after spending time in the Congo (which she was telling me all about tonight -- and trying to explain the three-way dynamics of the conflict there, which was really not easy at all). Also staying here is a nurse practitioner from NYC who has been volunteering for Josh doing public health work in Mayange for the past six months, and also the director of the public health track at Columbia (who's specialty is clinical psychiatry in epidemiology).

Another thing that makes it feel a lot more like my previous trips to Africa than staying at the conference center is the need to be much more mosquito-conscious. I have a net over my bed and the one house rule is to make sure the screens are secure (Josh and Alissa have both had malaria and don't want a repeat -- and needless to say, I'd rather avoid it, too!)

Tomorrow is a day in Kigali and will be pretty relaxed. I'm going to grab a taxi to the Genocide Museum in the morning. I've got some phone calls to make to try to set up some other stuff, but it looks like I'll be in Mayange on Friday and Saturday, back in Kigali on Sunday -- possibly out to Buyumba on Monday. The whole country is the size of Massachusetts and the roads apparently are fairly decent, so it doesn't seem like it's going to be too hard to get around.

Exciting things are happening with the Millennium Villages Project here. Paul Kagame (Rwanda's president) brought just about all of his senior government officials out to Mayange last week and it became official that things have gone so well that they're going to scale up the project for the whole country. They're changing the name (making it part of their 2020 development programme) so they can have ownership of it, but it will be all the same interventions.

This is incredibly exciting -- and because the churches are such integral service providers in the communities, it presents a lot of potentially cool opportunities for the Anglican church here to get involved. That's my potential trip to Buymuba -- thanks to the Rev. Amy Coultas (who has the daughter of the Bishop of Buyumba in her campus ministry at Louisville), I'm going to get a chance to go meet the Bishop and his wife and talk about some of this stuff.

Well, it's late and I need to crawl under my net and get some sleep. More tomorrow.

2007-03-12T10:31:00.000-05:00

God grant us...

The only downside to skipping out on Saturday with the Pilgrimage to Peace group was that we missed hearing from the Rev. Michael Lapsley (ENS' Matthew Davies did an excellent story on his presentation here). Michael is an Anglican priest and director of the Institute for Healing of Memories in Cape Town. A native New Zealander, he became a tireless and prophetic advocate for the end of Apartheid upon moving to South Africa in 1973 -- continuing even after the government expelled him from the country a few years later. In April, 1990, he came back from a trip abroad and opened a magazine that had come in the mail. The magazine contained a bomb. The explosion took both of his hands, an eye and shattered his eardrums.

This morning, the P2P crowd got a chance to meet with him in a small group and +Marc Andrus invited me to tag along. Powerful doesn't even begin to describe the experience, but I'll try to convey his talk in as many of his words as possible.

He framed his talk with the serenity prayer. You know it:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

And through telling his story he talked about doing just that ... and how that process helped change the course of a nation, the world, and his life.

Michael Lapsley never thought he'd end up in South Africa. He never particularly wanted to. He had joined a religious order and when it was time for him to be sent out he asked to go to Japan ... but they sent him here. He talked about what he expected to find:

“I assumed that when I got to South Africa that I would find three groups. The oppressed, the oppressors and the third group – the human race – that I would belong to.”

“The day I arrived in South Africa, I stopped being a human being and became a white man. Because every single part of my life was determined by the color of my skin. I lived in my white suburb because by law that was the only place I could live.”

There were lots of examples. Bathrooms labeled "whites only" and "non-whites." Restaurants where whites ate inside and blacks had food passed to them out the window. And then there was the greatest icon for him, the elevators he saw when he went to the university -- one labeled "whites only" and the other "freight and non-whites." If you weren't white you weren't even considered human.

In South Africa, being white decided everything. And as much as he hated what his color meant, his color was one of the things he could not change.

"My color meant that I was part of the oppressor group regardless of whether I wanted to be or chose to be. I could choose to fight against it, but I would fight it from the side of the beneficiary.
He did have a choice -- between two options. A pretty simple one, as he saw it:

Beat 'em or join 'em.

And with that choice began what he called a long "journey of accompaniment" with the people of black South Africa.

"Apartheid had turned me into an oppressor, but I wanted to be a human being. So fighting it was not first to do something for other people but to free myself in solidarity with others."

He noted that parallels have been drawn between the U.S. civil rights movement and the battle against Apartheid. That doesn't do the anti-Apartheid struggle justice. In America, the civil rights movement was about asserting rights under the constitution. In South Africa, the constitution was part of the problem. This was about people who were non-entities, for whom the constitution did not apply. This was not a civil rights struggle but a struggle for national liberation.

As I've heard about the struggle against Apartheid the past few days, I keep coming back to Bishop Peter Lee of Christ the King Diocese telling me how South Africa is 85 percent Christian ... and that is how so much of the reconciliation was able to happen, because of that basic commonality.

But if that is true in the aftermath of Apartheid, in the truth and reconciliation process, it means it was also true during Apartheid.

In 1976, children -- young teenagers, 13, 14 and 15 years old began protesting in Soweto. Protesting bad schools. Protesting having to learn lessons in Afrikaans. And in the streets of Soweto, these children began to be shot. All in all more than a thousand of them were shot.

And for Michael, in addition to the horror, with that came a revelation. That “those who shot children went to church on Sunday, read the Bible every day and shot kids.” Apartheid and the brutalism it supported was being carried out by people under the banner of Christ -- even though it was in direct opposition to the Gospel of Christ.

The church has a long history of association with oppression. That we are here talking about the Millennium Development Goals as a Christian body has to include an acknowledgment that these goals are necessary in large part because of the actions of largely Christian western societies. Marching as the oppressor under the banner of Christ is nothing new. But it is a life of great dissonance.

Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, and he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Yet oppression prevents us from living that great commandment, that "love commandment" because it prevents the relationship of neighbor.

This realization led Michael to join the African National Congress, an organization not looking to substitute oppression of whites for oppression of blacks, but looking for a South Africa without oppression. The vision of the ANC was simple – South Africa belongs to all South Africa

"Freedom has to be for everybody or it is for nobody."

"Apartheid was a choice for death carried out in the name of the gospel of life. It was an issue of faith to say no to Apartheid. At stake in South Africa was the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because either the Gospel was true or Apartheid was true."

As far as the ANC's uses of violence, Michael had this to say:

“The only automatic weapon I’ve ever used is the one I’m using now – my tongue. Eventually they were so stupid that they took away my hands, which I didn’t need to shoot, and they left my weapon working reasonably well.”

Struggles over fundamental issues of justice and human rights are not unique, but what made a difference was how South Africa's struggle became a global struggle.

"Most western governments supported apartheid even though they said different. But they were brought kicking and screaming by their populations. By people of conscience around the world. People realized there was something in South Africa that concerned the humanness of all of us."

And something else was happening:

"In South Africa, the struggle was getting younger and younger. Desmond Tutu called it 'A generation of young people that had iron in their souls that could face the bullets and go on'"

And the struggle began to work. Through pressure brought on by people of conscience rising to demand their leaders listen and act. Michael began to be more in demand as a speaker to rally the world for the cause. And it was in coming back from one such trip (to Canada, I believe) that he went to his desk and opened the magazine that would change his life forever.

The blast maimed him permanently. He stood before us with hooks where his hands used to be and only one functioning eye. But he holds to the memory with more than just pain.

"It’s important that I remember the moment not to remember the pain but to remember the strong sense that God was with me… That the great promise of scripture had been kept … Lo I am with you always even to the end of the age."

It also gave him a choice. If he chose to give in to despair they would have won. If he chose to continue to embrace life and the mission God had called him to, the Gospel would remain victorious.

But it was not easy.

"I could not have made a lifegiving response by myself without the community of prayer and support."

And that was another lesson. We don't make lifegiving choices from death-producing situations by ourselves. We need each other. We have each other.

"The peoples of the world walked beside me on my journey of healing. God was calling me to walk beside others on their jouyrney of healing."

And so as Michael healed and Apartheid fell, he began to ask the Quo Vadimus question. "Where are we going?"

For South Africa, the answer was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- a work of grace and genius credited for helping a country transition out of Apartheid without the bloodbath that had been almost universally predicted.

But what people don't often recognize is that the TRC only heard the most extreme cases - murder and rape. Sure, 22,000 people gave testimony before the TRC. But South Africa is a nation of 43 million people. Those who got to participate in the process were only an icon for those who did not.

And that's where the Institute for the Healing of Memories began. It's a place where people can come in groups to "take the first step on the road to healing." It's a place to start. And the work he is doing there is being replicated around the globe, for as Michael says:

"Each country in the world is different, each country has different histories. But pain is pain is pain."

As I write about this, I think of last November when I sat in the Waverly, Iowa dining room of Kathryn Koob. Kate Koob was one of 52 Americans held for 444 days in Iran from 1979-81. And yet today she teaches reconciliation at Wartburg College.

In two days I will get on a plane for Kigali and spend a week in a land where a dozen years ago one group of people, as part of a cycle of oppression going back more than a century, rose up and slaughtered nearly a million of their fellow countrymen and women. And yet through a process similar to the TRC, they are rebuilding their nation.

The human capacity to embrace reconciliation is beyond amazing. And we need it.

The system of global wealth and poverty is an Apartheid system. There is nothing else to call it. Those of us in the (largely white) rich nations separate ourselves from the (largely non-white) poor two-thirds world. And like the destitute townships and shantytowns I drove through yesterday that grew up around the whites-only towns to house the people whose sweat served white South Africa, our wealth has been enjoyed on the backs of the poor.

And as if the image weren't clear enough, now we're actually, physically building a wall on our southern border to keep the "other" out.

When people looked at South Africa in the 1970s, they looked at it several ways:

Some saw it as an acceptable state of affairs -- perhaps somewhat evil, but necessary to maintain "the way things ought to be".

Some saw it as an intolerable state of affairs. A fight that must be joined.

Was Apartheid sustainable indefinitely. Some on either side would have said yes. But those with eyes to see and those who knew history knew differently. And almost all of them said the same thing:

There's no way this ends well.

And yet look what happened. Not without pain and death -- Michael would be the first to say that -- but the truth is I sit in a Johannesburg in 2007 that 20 years ago nobody would dare to dream. Sitting in a room with people of many colors listening to a man with no hands talk about loving the neighbor that did it to him.

So we have our Apartheid. An Apartheid that says for billions of people that where you are born decides how you live and even whether you live.

And many see it as an acceptable state of affairs -- perhaps somewhat evil, but necessary to maintain "the way things ought to be".

And some see it as an intolerable state of affairs. A fight that must be joined.

But is it sustainable? Some will bury their heads and say yes. But those with eyes to see. Those who know about economic and environmental sustainability and yes, those who know history will say differently.

And many of them are looking at the handwriting on the wall and saying the same thing they said of South Africa in the 1970s:

No way this ends well.

But that is not us. We are not people who shrink back in despair. Despair is not a Gospel value.

I was born in Santa Clara, California. I am an American. My children are Americans. As a straight, white, educated, homeowning American I am part of a class priviliged beyond any on earth.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

But here's the thing. As intractable as the systems that keep billions of people in poverty, that kill a child every three seconds, that keep water toxic for more than a billion people... as intractable as these systems seem, are they really more intractable than the system that went from blacks taking elevators as freight to being elevated to the highest office in the land?

I have a choice. I choose to believe those systems are changeable. I believe that is wisdom -- to not resign myself to intractability, to recognize that this is something we can change. That where we are going is on a road to freedom for all. A road that South Africa has made just a little bit smoother before us.

God grant us the courage.

2007-03-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

Other looks at the TEAM Conference

There are lots of people here and lots of good ways to find out what's going on. Here are some highlights:

Mary Frances Schjonberg and Matthew Davies of Episcopal News Service have been providing excellent coverage, both of the TEAM Conference and of the Pilgrimage for Peace. For the nuts and bolts and some good features, there's no better source.

There are a couple young adult blogs. The Pilgrimage for Peace group is blogging at www.bishopmarc.com and the young adult delegation to the conference is blogging here.

Also blogging from here are the Rev. Amy Real Coultas, a priest from Kentucky who is here with Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Also is the Rev. Will Scott of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (here with P2P).

2007-03-11T15:29:00.000-05:00

Church in the townships

This morning we got on buses that distributed us to different congregations in and around Johannesburg and Pretoria for church services. The bus I was on made four different stops and we were the last stop. That meant we arrived when the service was 2/3 over. That was really OK. First, there was still an hour left in the service. Second, I got to drive through all these townships, which was really interesting. A lot of it is shantytowns ... just acres of people living in little shacks made of pretty much whatever they can find to make a shack out of. It was like the worst parts of the neighborhood where James lives in Accra.

I sat next to one of the volunteers for the conference for most of the trip. She was a marketing student at a university in Johannesburg and really bright. We talked a lot about the government and she told me a lot about life in the townships and I told her about some of the urban problems we have in America -- which really surprised her. Since her vision of America pretty much comes from TV and movies, she had no idea that we had homelessness and that a lot of our city schools were really bad.

I was the only American in the group I traveled with (there was one other, but he identified himself as from the Dominican Republic because that's where he's living doing medical mission work). The rest were from Madagascar, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique and Zambia. What was interesting (and a little disturbing) about that was the distinctly different reaction I got when I introduced myself and said where I was from. Everyone else got an enthusiastic greeting, but when I said I was from the United States it went up several decibels and then there was this noticeable buzz afterwards ... and then the priest made a comment after in Zulu and the only nation he mentioned was "United States" ... and there was more buzz.

Of course the people were wonderful and the hospitality incredible. Probably the most powerful moment for me was when one of the lay ministers got up to talk and talked of how this is a nation that lives reconciliation and hospitality. I wish I could remember the words exactly, but he spoke of Apartheid and all they had been through and how through it all their common identity in Christ had seen them through.

Another interesting thing about the service was that the church was full -- but about 90-95% of the congregation was women. I asked the priest about that and he said it was "a South African phenomenon" -- you couldn't get men to come to church. He said it wasn't as bad in his last congregation, but this was extreme. I told him it wasn't just a South African phenomenon ... that in many American churches, women are the clear majority (it was interesting that all the service leaders were men, though).

Upon returning we had a plenary session with the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme. They do good work, but the presentation was really dry. The best part was the questions -- not so much her answers, but the passionate questions that came from the audience. Two Sudanese people stood up and talked about Darfur and also the challenges of the South. Someone asked about genetically modified food (she never answered that question ... too bad). Lots of questions about moving people to self-sustaining solutions -- which is their goal, but the truth is a lot of the people they serve are so close to starvation they're just medically quite a ways away from being able to function in the economy.

For the workshop time, I chose one on refugees -- not so much because of the topic but because the format was listed as "group discussion." I wasn't disappointed. Details of that are below.

And with all that, the highlight of the day was yet to come. At the last minute (i.e. this morning), the Pilgrimage to Peace crew were told that they were leading evening worship tonight. They came up with the most amazing, lively-yet-still-contemplative worship service. The two young adult musicians from Mozambique wrote a song for the service. The whole crew danced in singing and got the whole congregation moving. The prayers were wonderful. There was a wonderful period of silent meditation. And after it was all over they all (and a few others of us) stayed and danced and sang for another 15 minutes or so.

It was a real breath of fresh air and hopefully gave people a taste of the energy that is available to this movement if we give power to young people. Another plus for me is I got to watch Amber help lead worship, which always makes me not only proud and happy but incredibly thankful for how much God has blessed me with intersecting my life with wonderful people like her for so long.

Tomorrow the focus is HIV/AIDS. Hope you all are well. More later.

2007-03-11T12:23:00.000-05:00

Invisible People

When I was in high school, my church – St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Tucson, Arizona, -- was a participant in the Sanctuary Movement. Sanctuary helped people who were on death lists in countries like El Salvador get across the border illegally and find safety in the United States. Occasionally when we were over at the rectory for youth group there would be some of these people. Sometimes they would play a guitar and sing. They didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak more Spanish than to ask where the library was (not quite conversational), so that was the extent of our relationship.

Three years ago this June, I was living in Accra, Ghana and went with a Liberian friend, her cousin, and one of my students (Mackinnon Webster) to the Buduburam refugee camp (you can read my old blog entries about it here). I stumbled onto an Episcopal Church and school there and met a seminarian named Eddie Hennings … a Liberian refugee who was starting his theological education and hoped to come to serve that congregation (All Souls) if and when he was ordained. They not only had no priest, they had no money for one.

We raised about $2,700 for All Souls and they took that small amount of money and built a computer training center from the ground up (the dollar can go a long way in Ghana) so that children and adults alike could get computer skills to make them more employable. Eddie and I have stayed in touch ever since.

There are more than 12 million refugees in the world today … and that number is WAY soft. And that’s not counting the millions more of “internally displaced persons” (IDPs)– who cannot be classified as refugees because they have not crossed a border but whose lives are often in greater peril because they have no protection from the persecution they are fleeing.

Refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers are probably the most vulnerable people on earth. In our country, we put them in detention centers that are basically prisons – where they can remain without processing for decades. They cannot go back where they came from and the people and governments where they are don’t want them. Even as a rising generation that is increasingly interconnected, globalization, the internet and increased travel are making national boundaries more permeable, increasingly rigid and xenophobic immigration laws and policies are turning many nations – including our own – into gated communities in the global village. And refugees are, as the vulnerable usually are, the ones most adversely affected.

That the Millennium Development Goals fail to mention refugees is not surprising. They are the world’s invisible people – so why should this be any different. And yet many live in the same kind of poverty the MDGs strive to address.

The programmatic highlight of today was a “group discussion” (praise God – an ACTUAL discussion with many people taking part) led by Richard Parkins of Episcopal Migration Ministries and the Rt. Rev. Ian George, an Australian bishop who works on refugees for the Anglican Communion. EMM does amazing work in refugee resettlement and political advocacy here in America, but still can only scratch the surface of the problem. The Anglican Communion, seemingly well-positioned as a global network to share information and resources about refugees can’t get its act together. Repeated messages from Bishop George to all the primates to help form the most basic of networks have yielded responses from only half of them.

This is an area where we really could make a difference – not only for current refugees and more just immigration policies – but because refugee crises are always preceded by human rights abuses, the Communion could potentially function as an excellent “early warning system” and mobilize resources to try to stop the crises before they happen.

If I hadn’t been raised in a Sanctuary parish, if I hadn’t gone to Ghana, it’s very likely I wouldn’t have any clue the degree of the refugee problem in the world – or the incredible vulnerability these people face. And all over our country – including in St. Louis – refugees who have been fortunate enough to have made it through the Herculean resettlement process face enormous challenges integrating into society and functioning even on a subsistence level.

And yet they are right there in our communities – and they are a gift to the rest of the Body. They are a gift for what they bring to the table as the people of God. They are a gift for their stories and experiences – stories that can open our ears, eyes and hearts to the lives of people who are invisible to the world. Stories that can help us wake up to the call the Archbishop of Canterbury drew out of scripture for us – a call to create a world where nobody is invisible.

2007-03-10T13:52:00.000-06:00

Words made flesh

This is Tena. At least I think that's his name. He's probably only 3-4 years old and that's the best I could understand him the several times I asked him.

Tena lives in a township outside Pretoria called Lekgema. He doesn't live with his parents. His parents are both died from AIDS. Tena is probably HIV-positive, too.

One of my struggles with the conference thus far is how almost completely didactic the program has been. The content has been mostly excellent, but other than breaks (of which there aren't many) there have been almost no chances to really mix it up in dialogue. Program has been fairly well confined to speakers (again, most of whom have been very good) and then Q&A with them ... but no chance to engage each other -- even in workshops.

The result is content that engages the head without the relationship that engages the whole person. And as someone who thrives on relationship, it's been a little frustrating ... and I've been living for the breaks!

No such problem today. Today I skipped out on the conference and went with Mark Andrus' Pilgrimage for Peace Group on a trip to a township outside Pretoria ... to Lekgema ... to a day care center for AIDS orphans administered by the Diocese of Pretoria called Tumelong Mission.

That's where I met Tena.

There were lots of kids there, but Tena captured me immediately -- literally. As we got off our bus and were guided into Tumelong Haven (a day care center for AIDS orphans we were visiting) to hear song and drama performances by the children, there was a cooler with bottled water for us. I hadn't yet gotten one and so Tena came up to me, grabbed me by the hand and dragged me over to the cooler to get my water. Later, when I slipped out of the room to look around and found him, he smiled at me, grabbed me by the hand and dragged me back to the room where he felt I was supposed to be.

This was a child with purpose!

A little bit later when we were standing out on the porch, I came up to him again and he smiled and then tried to run in between my knees. My younger son, Hayden, is about his size so I did what I do with H -- waited until he was halfway through and closed my legs and said "gotcha!" And just like Hayden, Tena laughed and wriggled free ... and then came back again and again and again to continue the game.

Tena is one of about 75 children who come to the Haven six days a week. Admission is free ... well ... that's not exactly true. The children don't pay anything to attend, but the admission fee is the death certificate of your parent. Christina, the woman who runs the Haven, told me that all of the children there are orphans and almost all of them are HIV-positive, too.

The HIV infection rate in S. Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho teeters near 30%. In South Africa, among children it is estimated between 5 and 6 percent. It is the region on earth most devastated by the pandemic.

In this context, Tumelong Haven does remarkable work. The staff of close to 20
*brings them to and from their homes (headed by grandparents or older siblings
*gives them nutritious meals
*ensures they are properly cared for and cleaned
*provides school-going children with uniforms and stationery for schools, counseling, homework supervision and school fees.
*does home visits to assess their emotional and physical conditions
*provides food parcels to those that need them most
*teaches Saturday classes for school-going children

Everywhere we looked was evidence of an operation that strived for excellence. And yet despite this, and despite the dire situation, Tumelong Haven is in danger of losing its primary funding. A good portion of its money comes from the National Lottery ... only their grant ran out last month and they haven't heard whether it will be renewed. If not, Christina says, they will not be able to afford any staff salaries.

"Will the staff still come?" I asked.

"Of course!" she answered quickly.

She looked genuinely surprised at the question.

Others who were there witnessed a drama put on by some of the older children (I was outside playing with Tena!). Bob Brooks, rector of Grace Church in Providence, told me about it on the bus ride back. He said one by one, four or five kids came forward while the rest of the group was singing softly and told their story, dropping to their knees. They told the story in their native tongue, but Bob said he asked afterward what one of them had said and they said he was telling the story of the death of his parents and about how "life was suffering."

The story was a common one.

And yet as Amber noted as we were leaving, these children were as loving and affectionate as any we've ever met -- even the older ones. They hadn't un-learned unbridled affection as children often do as they get older. They laughed and played. They took our sunglasses and wore them and paraded around for each other. We gave them our cameras and they took pictures of each other. We stood in a circle and played games (I tried teaching them to sing "Louie, Louie" as part of a circle game and experienced the same inability to grasp cultural mores that they experience when they try to teach us their songs!)

A young man in the Pilgrimage group named Eric, who had also taken a side trip that only a few went on to the AIDS hospital, where many of these children's parents died, marveled on the way to our next stop how despite the deep tragedy of their lives they were still able to choose joy.

This week so far has been full of facts and figures. It's been full of beautiful theology and some mind-boggling and even heart-rending stories shared over meals and tea.

But if the theology is really true -- and it certainly is. And if the facts and figures are really true -- and they certainly are. Then where the two meet is in children like Tena.

And if, as Rowan Williams suggests, as we come to the Eucharistic table we should as we are looking forward, look sideways and ask how we can be a part of Christ nourishing our fellow guest -- it's in places like Tumelong Haven where the rubber hits the road.

And if the Word was really made flesh and not made text ... then it has to change us. It has to change our hearts ... and change our actions.

I know I will never play the "run between my knees" game with my children again without thinking of Tena. But as with all encounters like this, the privilege of choice is mine. Will Tena remain a picture on a blog page, a story told of a trip past, a memory revisited from the vantage point of safety.

Or will I choose to let what touched my heart, change how I live my life?

2007-03-09T13:46:00.000-06:00

Dinner and Dancing with the Anglican Communion

Most of what I have done the last two days is sit in rooms and listen to people talk. And so I've spent a lot of space reporting what they have said. And a lot of it has been really good stuff. And so it was today. Today we heard from Salil Shetty, director of the UN Millennium Program; Helen Wangusa, the Anglican Communion's official observer at the United Nations; and Steve De Gruchy, a really cool professor of religion and theology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. I also went to a workshop on attaining the MDGs in local communities led by Grace Phiri from Zambia.

Most of it was really good and I have plenty of notes that I could just pour into this blog (as I did with some of the presentations yesterday), but that just seems way too dull. Mostly because what the MDGs are about for me is relationship ... and the healing and transformation that comes from really living a Gospel life together. And even though some of the stuff I heard was pretty compelling, as I lie here in bed on a Friday night it all just seems, well, pretty dry.

And so I keep coming back to the people I meet. Breakfast with a bishop from Burundi. An ongoing conversation with a woman from Yei in Sudan (not too far from Lui) about the continuing struggle with the Khartoum government's trying to eradicate anything that isn't Arab and Islam from the south. Dinner with some folks from Ghana ... two of whom were from Accra and knew my friend Emmanuel Quartey who I met several years ago when I (and Robin) visited.

In chapel, I sat next to a woman from Sri Lanka and we struggled to communicate because her English was below functional and I don't know her language so she was forced to struggle with mine -- we did OK, I guess. During a tea break, had a great conversation with Maureen, who teaches at CDSP. Tonight I had a chance to talk with the young adult group about EGR and pump them up to dream about what they could do for God's mission of global reconciliation -- and then got to hear Odwa (whom I'd met at General Convention) talk about the Anglican Student Federation, for which he works here in S. Africa.

Everyday is this abundance of riches of relationship. Some of it is easy. Some of it is more difficult. Most of it is probably just scratching the surface. Some of it I'm sure is just politeness ... but some really gets below the surface and goes somewhere.

And then something clicked. It happened when Janette O'Neill, who is ERD's director of Africa Programs, was introducing one of the afternoon speakers and she mentioned what an honor it was to be here ... and that bishops got to get together with people from all over the communion every 10 years at Lambeth but that this was a unique event for everyone else -- a chance for people of all orders and sorts to get together from all over the Communion.

It was kind of one of those V-8, knock yourself upside the head moments for me. Maybe it's because I've been at places like General Convention and traveled in places like Ghana and Sudan that being around people from different lands is nothing new ... but having us all together in one place is something new. We don't do this all the time. In fact, we hardly do this ever.

Maybe that's why as good as the presentations and everything is, and whatever pronouncements or plans we come out of this meeting, maybe the really great thing this gathering is is sort of a first or second date for the Anglican Communion. Sure lots of people here seem to know lots of others (the people who come to something like this are the kinds of people who have traveled a lot and tend to know one another) ... but having us all together is different.

Maybe the best thing that can come out of this is another date. A chance to do it again. A promise to call the next day that we all actually keep. Maybe more than the wonderful theology and praxis of ministry and missiont that's being shared here, maybe that's what's really going to last.

I think of this especially with the young adults -- particularly since they've been joined by some others from S. Africa and Mozambique. And even today they're talking about projects they can share. That's the future.

Tomorrow I'm ditching the TEAM conference and going with the young adults to Pretoria on site visits (AIDS hospice & AIDS orphanage). I can't wait. Mostly because I love hanging out with them and because I really want to get out and see some stuff. But I have to admit, part of my joy is realizing that I won't be spending the whole day sitting behind a table listening to someone talk!

So ... something to look forward to tomorrow. News from Pretoria!

2007-03-08T15:49:00.000-06:00

Hoping it gets tougher

There is so much I could write about today even beyond the accountings of the keynotes. Had a long conversation over breakfast with Jackie Price, who co-chairs the HIV/AIDS work of the Anglican Diocese of Namibia. Heard a challenging talk from a Pakistani bishop who spoke of the role development work has played in reconciliation with hostile fundamentalist Muslim neighbors. Spent an hour and a half with the young adult delegation listening to them process their experience so far (side note: it is wonderful to see Bishop Marc Andrus at work with young people. He sits on the floor and really mixes it up with them. No pretense. Really honoring and engaging them and not just paying lip service. If he weren't a bishop, he'd make an excellent college chaplain). During and after dinner had an extended conversation and coffee with Peter Lee, the bishop of Christ the King diocese (one of four dioceses that make up Johannesburg) all about the history of the end of Apartheid, the current situation in South Africa, the changing role of the church. Then to a fire pit where we listened (and danced) to the same band that played at the Eucharist last night.

So much to absorb. Any one of those things I could relay details of things learned and experiences. And at some point I probably will. But I can't do it all now and I don't want to pick just one.

But through all this, one thing did stick out that has me reframing a lot, including what is happening here.

In my conversation with Bishop Lee, he said that one thing that made reconciliation possible in South Africa is that the nation is 85% Christian and that even people and factions that were poles apart politically could be brought together by the commonality of their Christian faith. It's part of the reason Desmond Tutu was such a critical figure (he told me a great story of how F.W. de Klerk, who regularly consulted with Tutu, called Desmond one morning just as Desmond was preparing to go on retreat and asked to speak with him. Desmond replied that he would have to wait until he was done praying -- three days later. Can you imagine someone the president calling someone and being told he had to wait three days until he was done praying? But that's what Desmond did. He had to listen to God before he talked to de Klerk. And Tutu being who he was, de Klerk waited).

Anyway, that's off track. Here's the question -- if that was such a critical element in South Africa ... is that possible for us?

I'm not even so much talking about "the late unpleasantness" in the Anglican Communion. One of the elephants in the room at this gathering is the large number of Americans here (I believe there's around 70 of us, and if you add the young adult contingent that's well over 100 ... for a conference of about 500). Americans are bankrolling much of the gathering, and while that makes this possible there is also the tension of what do we presume our money buys?

The people sitting in back of me today (both from Southern Africa) routinely grumbled and commented to each other whenever something about America or prosperous nations was mentioned.

I'm not asking "is this possible for us" in the sense of "can't we all just get along" but will we over the course of this week and in the course of our continuing life together in the Church be able to have honest conversations about these things. Because as someone who benefits from the overprivilige of my country, I need to hear what is on the hearts and minds of those who are underprivileged -- and not just eavesdropped literally from behind my back. I need help in determining where confession, repentence and amendment of life are necessary.

Even though I didn't vote for the current administration ... one which, I have to tell you, if this gathering is any barometer, has done more to alienate America from the rest of the world than I would have thought possible ... I still am an American and can't escape my connection with their actions. Have I really done enough to try to change things? Probably not.

I am here representing the American church. The Church is supposed to be power for the powerless -- and yet are we really living into that. This isn't about guilt. This is about what Rowan Williams was talking about and what I have been preaching -- we are prisoners of our own wealth and overprivilege because when our way of life impoverishes another, we become impoverished.

But can we talk about it honestly. And what about me. If we were to talk about it honestly, can I bear the anger without being defensive? Can I try to really hear. I think of Mohammed's words of "cold anger" against America and yet his willingness to be in conversation with me. But can I receive the anger as well, even when so much that is in me would want to smooth it over and say "but that's not me!"

Right now, this gathering has been wonderful -- like an amazing smorgasboard of wonderful people with great and terrible stories and lots of hope. But I'm interested -- and hopeful -- for what happens tomorrow when we begin to get out of plenary and into smaller groups. If it doesn't start getting more difficult, it's not going to be real.

So I guess I'm hoping it gets tougher here on in.

Good night, everyone.

2007-03-08T14:40:00.000-06:00

Rowan Williams on Mission, the End of the World and the MDGs

The second keynote of the morning was the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was tasked with laying out a Biblical foundation for our engagement with the MDGs. I hope we are given copies of his talk, because it was outstanding. Briefly, here's the basic gist (and this just scratches the surface). Quotes where I'm sure I'm quoting him. Sorry I don't have time for all the cool hotlinks I could put in. Use Google or bible.oremus.org if you want to look stuff up.

He began with a working definition of mission as "that set of actions and habits that makes God in Jesus Christ known" -- so the ultimate goal is knowing God ... intimate knowledge, not just acknowledging God's existence.

He then went to Jeremiah 31:31-14, which looks forward to the period of Israel's restoration to peace as a time when "everyone knows the Lord." And what is knowing the Lord? Jeremiah 22:16 says knowing the Lord means "giving the poor a fair trial" -- doing justly by the poor.

Knowing God is not a "religious awareness" or an individual mystical glow but knowing how to "see the world with God's eyes." Sharing God's perspective on the world that God has made.

"Knowing God is in anticipation of the end of time when all will know God. It's a glimpse of God's final purpose -- God's perspective becomes instinctive and natural to a redeemed people."

The essence of Old Testament law/justice is that no one is forgotten, no one is invisible. "All are responsible to God and each other for each other." Fairness to the poor is central to the law that all Israel received (he relayed an interesting piece of Jewish midrash that every single Jewish soul -- past, present and future -- was actually present with Moses on Mt. Sinai). Fairness to the poor is central to the law. The true community is one where no one is invisible.

This ultimately spills over from the chosen people to the rest of the world -- particularly in the second part of Isaiah where it talks about Israel being a beacon of hope for all the nations.

The theme is continued in the New Testament. The NT operates from the perspective that the end times are already at hand -- "God's final purpose is being uncovered in the life, death and resurrection of Christ."

Jesus is the embodiment of life in the restored Israel -- a world seen perfectly through God's eyes where no one is invisible, no one is forgotten. The community of Christ is a community that shows what the end of world looks like -- "where each is interested in the good of all."

"We are part of the end of the world -- where God's love determines the boundaries of human living."

After Christ's resurrection, the new Christian community begins to explore its role. Paul in his talk about the body of Christ pulls out a positive and a negative aspect. The positive is that every Christian is gifted for the good of the other -- mutual enrichment. The negative is that every person deprived is deprivation of the community -- mutual impoverishment.

As this is lived out, the Kingdom of God becomes real and concrete.

And like in the Hebrew scriptures, thie isn't just about the community of believers. The promise of Christ, the Christlike life is not just for those who have heard but for all.

The kind of community that makes God known is the kind of community that lives this deep concern for the empowerment of all and the deprivation of none because they know they all are enriched or impoverished by EVERY member of the community (or their absence).

"Every action in which God's justice becomes manifest is a kind of sacrament in the sense that it shows God's future."

That makes the Eucharist a sign of God's future. 1 Corinthians 11:20-22 talks about as they gather each one is willing to give precedence to the other. Everyone is waiting on everyone else, attending to the reality of others.

When we come to the Eucharistic table, the needs of the neighbor comes first.

"We look sideways as well as forward (at the table), and as we see others fed we ask, 'How may I be part of Christ's feeding of them?'"

"The first thing -- and sometimes the only thing -- you know of the person next to you at Eucharist is that they are Christ's guest. It is imperative to ask, 'How may I join in Christ's nourishment of them?'"

"The Eucharist is an open door into a new world. We are cutting ourselves off from our deepest roots when we fail to realize that all communion comes from that foundational event where all are heard, seen, welcomed and nourished at the Lord's table."

"There are no gated communities in the kingdom. There are no communitites protected from the loss or trauma of others."

How is this applied?

The Biblical imperative is not a set of orders, but a revelation of God in reference to a community that lives in a way that knows God -- where no one is invisible, unloved or forgotten.

This is "not an indifferent 'yes' to everyone." Conversion and repentance are required. But still no one is left invisible.

"The Church, faced with the Millennium Development Goals is bound to ask:
-who is being forgotten?
-whose deprivation is wounding us all?

Church has to be involved in creating participation and empowerment. Church is "where people learn to make choices that affect themselves and others."

"The Church has a deep committment to the absolute significance of every moment of change because it is sacramental." No moment is too small. Take the example of the widow's mite -- her two coins won't make much of a difference to the world, but it will to her. She's doing what she could. Make the difference you can make. "you don't have to do it all but you do have to make the difference you can make."

So what is the difference we can make as the church? "The church is probably the only organization in civil society that can deliver these goals on the grassroots level in concrete ways." That's the real difference no one else can make.

The church needs also to put this question to the wealthy nations of the West and North: "Have you understood that YOU are deprived by a system of global injustice?"

WE are victims of injustice. "To be a perpetrator of justice is also to be a victim of it. We become less human."

Quoted Augustine -- the problem is not just the suffering of the oppressed but the corruption of mind and heart of the oppressor.

We need to say as the prosperous (and help the prosperous to say) "I am caught up in something that I need help to see and find my way out of."

Working for the MDGs is "not just working for *the poor*. It's working for our own healing -- "that form of healing we usually call 'conversion'"

Quoting St. Antony "Our life and our death is with the neighbor."

Finally, closing, he mused "What will future generations look back on at us and say 'How on earth did they miss it?" (as we do with the church's complicity with slavery).

------------------
I don't have a lot to add on this. I could go on about various points, but I think I'll just let this sit for itself for now. I welcome your comments.

2007-03-08T02:50:00.000-06:00

Words to ponder from Archbishop Ndungane

Archbishop Ndungane is the Archbishop of Cape Town and the primate of the Anglican Province of Southern Africa. He called together this conference, and these are some quotes from his opening address to the 415 attendees at the TEAM conference here in Boksburg (including 60 youth in a parallel session). The quotes are as accurate as I can get from my typing speed. In some cases a word or two might be slightly off but the meaning is preserved. Powerful stuff.

"This is a momentous period in the life of our church. We have people of God gathered together in the context of prayer and theology … renewing the church’s commitment and capabilities to respond to God’s call to service in the 21st century. Bound together by bonds of affection that unite us and united against poverty let us seize this moment, seize this opportunity by blowing fresh winds of change into the lungs of the Anglican Communion."

"Mission is bringing the fullness of peace of love and of justice. It is the building of God’s kingdom so his will may be done on earth as in heaven. Mission is about comprehensive salvation. It must take us beyond the false idol of vertical vs. horizontal – the mistaken idea that we have to choose between preaching the salvation that brings eternal life and working to bring the kingdom here and now. None of us has that option. We must all do both." (he was in part quoting David Bosch here)

"The word was not made text. But the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

"The church is called into being by mission for the sake of salvation. The church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning. The centrality of mission, not only for Anglican life, but for all life as a global communion, has been an explicit part of our self-understanding. Mission is to be understood as an activity that transforms reality. At the same time mission itself must be continually transformed." (again, quoting Bosch)

"We come together for God to transform us and to make us agents of transformation."

"This is a time in the life of our communion when it would be good for us to step back and take stock of the fullness of our calling. I do not deny that we face deep and difficult issues in our internal life. I do not want to pretend they don’t matter. We are rightly concerned with what it means to live faithfully and obedient to our Lord … but this must not be at the expense of God’s mission in God’s world.

"Too often the world around thinks we care only for one thing and one thing only and that is sexuality. This week’s meeting shows this is not the case. … As we live our tomorrow fully, the whole breadth of what it means to be God’s people in God’s world, we shall better understand how to tackle the differences and divisions among us .. Through following Jesus' example in serving the needs of others we will know better how to follow Jesus' example in other areas of our lives.

"This is the moment for the church to be more visible as the credible voice for the poor, the destitute and the disadvantaged. This is the moment for the church to unite against poverty and bring hope to the people of God."

"We are treating the climate as a credit card with no credit limit and no repayment date." (quoting someone, didn't get who)

"Unchecked global warming will more than quickly wipe out all the gains of development assistance of the past 50 years."

"It is for God’s peole to remind the world that human people are more precious than we can possibly imagine. The world has to rediscover how quality of life matters far more than quantities of dollars."

"It is for us to stand up together and declare loud and clear that we stand by the standards of justice, integrity, dignity and humanity and call everyone else to stand by them, too. We stand for equitable sharing of God’s abundance and responsible stewardship of the resources to which he entrusts us. We stand for sustainable development – environmental and economic. Poorer nations must be allowed to continue to develop, and rich nations must allow this to happen, taking responsibility for their larger share of global environmental costs.

"Globalization means that we are all neighbors now, whether it comes to economic systems or climate change. Our lives are intimately caught up in each other. We need a new morality for our global village – one that equally values every child of God on this planet. We need a new and effective earth ethic. It is for people of faith to make this message heard loud and clear."

"God’s world is crying out to him, and we know our God hears and our God acts. We meet because the hour demands it and we know we serve the living God who says TODAY is the time for salavation. We meet because God has calls us and we know those whom God calls, God directs, God equips to carry out those directives. Let us carry on with joy for we know that God has a purpose for us. "

2007-03-07T15:21:00.000-06:00

TEAM Conference Day 1 - Opening Eucharist

Today was our first full day in Johannesburg -- mostly registering and getting details sorted out. That is, until 3 pm when all of us boarded buses from the hotel/conference center we're staying in at Boksburg and traveled down the East Rand to Tsakane -- a township about 40 minutes drive away.

No matter how good the program is at this conference, it will almost have to be secondary to the people you meet just hanging out. My seatmates on the bus trip were two wonderful women --The first was named Sandra (left). She is Guatemalan, but lives in Costa Rica, where she is married to a bishop there. She runs a diocesan day care center and showed us a picture of her daughter, who is just starting medical school (I responded with pictures of the boys, of course). The other was Nangula (right), and she is the brand new provincial executive officer of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. She was hired by Archbishop Ndungane 6 months ago away from her job as dean of a cathedral in Namibia. (side note: I'm never sure where other parts of the communion are on women's ordination ... but she was not only a dean of a cathedral but a candidate for bishop in a recent election, so that's fabulous!) We talked a lot about life in Cape Town (she loves it) and about the work she has been doing.

Sitting behind us on the trip was a bishop from one of the four dioceses that make up the Johannesburg area. He was talking to some people next to him and basically playing tour guide during our trip. Once we realized that, we all got quiet so we could listen. He told us we were traveling up the East Rand, which ran north out on the East side of Johannesburg. The towns and townships (during Apartheid, there were towns where only whites could live and townships outside them where the blacks, who did all the service work in the towns, lived) were mostly mining-related.

When we got to Tsakane, we were greeted by throngs of people waving tiny flags with the TEAM conference logo on them (that's the picture above) and brought into the church where there was amazing music (wish I could post the video/audio of it ... I'll be sure and do it when I get back). The Eucharist was wonderful. My seat was way off to one side -- parallel to the altar. It meant I was blocked from seeing the sermon and anything that happened up front, but had a good view of the altar. I was also sitting right next to a portable a/c unit, which was great. I actually was sitting in the section reserved for the local clergy, which was also great because I got to know a really nice local priest named Sam.

The service was about 2 1/2 hours. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the preacher. The sermon was nothing that would set your life on fire, but it was OK. The Gospel text was the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin and he used it to talk of our great need of each other. That's really what this whole conference is about -- how much every single one of us needs every other single one of us as a global community. At one point he said "each one of us has a voice without which our neighbors cannot be themselves." ... and I thought about the people I had met today -- people like Sandra and Nangula --and how much fuller a person I felt from just having spent time with them and knowing about their lives.

One of the highlights of the day came at dinner when I finally connected with Amber Stancliffe Evans. Amber was one of my college students early on at Wash. U. and now she's an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of California. She's here with her bishop (Marc Andrus -- who is on our board at EGR) on something called Pilgrimage for Peace. +Marc did this for several years when he was suffragan bishop in Alabama -- a pilgrimage with young adults, usually something civil rights related. This time it's young adults from San Francisco, Alabama and also Bob Brooks' congregation in Providence, Rhode Island. They're going to be with us at TEAM for all the plenary sessions, but when we have workshops they're going to do other things -- like site visits to places like an AIDS orphanage. I'm going to hang out with them one night and talk with them about EGR and get their thoughts about the MDGs and young adults in the Episcopal Church. I think I'm also going to go with them on some of their site visits -- I really don't want to spend the whole time in S. Africa just in the conference center.

Well, it's getting late and I need to head to bed. More tomorrow, I'm sure.

2007-03-06T09:38:00.000-06:00

In Johannesburg!

I've arrived in Johannesburg after a long but wonderfully uneventful journey. The conference (www.team2007.org) doesn't start until tomorrow so people are still slowly arriving and getting settled.

There is wireless internet here, but it is slow and spotty -- but I think it will be good enough for me to post regularly and even to get some photos in. I think I'll have to write offline and then wait until things are connected and then do a quick cut-and-paste into blogger!

Called Robin's cell via the miracle of Skype just a minute ago and talked with her -- wonderful to hear her voice after a long trip.

It's close to 5 pm here. I'm going to take a shower I'm sure I REALLY need and then take a walk around. More later.

2007-02-27T13:25:00.000-06:00

Quo Vadimus

I've wanted to change the title of my blog for a long time ... because even though I loved the quote from C.S. Lewis it came from, I just couldn't help feeling like it was WAY too self-important.

Of course it takes a certain kind of twisted mind to, in an effort to make something sounds less self-important, change a title to something in Latin!

I've been toying with various ideas for a couple months, and this is the one that stayed with me. It's from a couple different sources. It would be cooler and more rc (religiously correct) to say that it came from St. Peter's conversation with the resurrected Christ on the way to Rome (though "where are YOU going?" is the question Peter supposedly asked Jesus then), but the truth is it comes from the final episode of the excellent and short-lived Aaron Sorkin show, Sports Night.

Calvin Trager is not some great philosopher, he's a character that emerges as the show charged toward real-life cancellation. The show, which is about the staff of a SportsCenter-like show, is living in fear because their network is for sale and they figure anyone who buys it is going to sell it -- and them -- for scrap.

Only a new bidder emerges, a strange entity called "Quo Vadimus"... which means "Where are we going?" Around the same time, Dana Whitaker (played wonderfully by Felicity Huffman) begins running into this strange, coy man in a pub down the street who seems to know things about the negotiations before they happen.

That man's name is Calvin Trager, he's a venture capitalist who has made a huge success of himself because instead of being afraid of failure, he has embraced it. Because failure is an opportunity to stop and ask the all-important question "Quo Vadimus" ... "Where are we going?" And so he tells Dana:

"Dana, I'm what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I've failed much more than I've succeeded. And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, "Where are we going?" And it starts to get better."

It takes an incredible amount of humility, groundedness and just plain common sense to take that approach to life. And as I've been back-burnering this blog name over the past couple months, that phrase and that philosophy kept coming back to me.

And I've come to believe that Quo Vadimus is at the heart of the Christian faith. We have a faith borne out of failure -- out of Jesus not being crowned king but raised up on a cross. A faith out of which our savior saves us by continually asking us to look at our lives and ask that question: Quo Vadimus. Where are we going?

If arrogance and putting ourselves in the place of God is original sin, then certainly a corrective to that is not fearing failure but embracing it as an opportunity and gift from God. Of continually stopping and re-examining our lives and asking that question -- where are we going? Is it really where we should be going?

But we don't do that. Candidates for public office get roasted over open flame for "flip-flopping" on issues ... and while sometimes that is suitable when the cause is pandering, it creates an environment where self-examination and legitimately changing one's mind is admitting grave weakness. It's given us a president who will still not say the words "I made a mistake." It's given us trench warfare in the church between sides that are so dug into their positions that they refuse to give even an inch to the "other side" for fear of being overrun.

Quo Vadimus.

Where are we going?

Bill North once told me that most priest really only have one sermon and they find a way to preach it in lots of different ways. I don't know if that's true or not, but I find as I post my thoughts here, a lot of them have to do with that question -- Quo Vadimus.

A 16-year old boy quotes Martin Luther King to me as he curses what our country is doing to his.

I travel to Ghana, Sudan ... and soon to South Africa and Rwanda ... and see a world where a child dies every three seconds while the wealth and power that could save him is in the hands of so very few. And yet also a world where so many are coming together in hope and joy with the conviction that this deep brokenness is not a death sentence but an opportunity for deep healing.

Abbie Coburn tells of Palestinians who literally live surrounded by walls cut off from their families ... walls built by my tax dollars.

I watch my children grow up, I watch my wife with them, and I know I've never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life. I listen to my son tell me he wants to make a lemonade stand and send the money he makes to the people in Africa I'm going to visit.

I travel around the church and meet amazing people for whom church is not a place they go on Sunday but a community that challenges them and prods them to live their faith out loud in the world. Who look at the movement to make poverty history and respond with a simple "where do I sign up?"

Where are we going is not an easy question to answer. It's probably one of those questions where the point is at least as much in the asking of it than the answering of it.

Sports Night was cancelled ... which allowed Aaron Sorkin to say "quo vadimus" himself ... and develop another project called "The West Wing." (looks like he'll have to do that again after the Studio 60 debacle).

Failure is an opportunity. An opportunity for a great question.

2007-02-20T14:48:00.000-06:00

"Mohammed's" Postcard from Baghdad

I haven't heard from "Mohammed" more, but I have been reading the current entries on the blog he uses. Through intermediaries, I have found out more about him. That "Mohammed" is not his real name -- he has to use a pseudonym for security ... fear of being targeted for his postings. He's a 16 year old boy and the person who has organized the blog has given him and a few other bloggers laptops that they can charge and use. Only because of the frequent electrical outages they are able to charge the computers infrequently and it makes posting difficult.

I'm hoping he will continue our conversation, but I also won't be surprised if that doesn't happen. Needless to say, he has a lot going on. But I will continue to read his posts and comment on them there -- and occasionally to pull posts out and link to it here.

More later.

2007-02-13T20:22:00.000-06:00

A Response from Baghdad

The world is getting smaller, flatter and more interesting by the minute. Ten years ago, I never would have been able to preach a sermon using text from an online journal from occupied Baghdad. And ten years ago, I never would have had the young man who wrote that journal read my sermon and write a response to it.

But that's exactly what happened. (You can get a little bit of how the connection was made by reading the comments from that last post)

And so, reprinted from the original blog and minus his quotes from my sermon, here is Mohammed Ibn Laith's response to my sermon.

+++++

A friend who monitors references to this site using google alerts forwarded a link to this internet version of a sermon called “Things Of Infinite Importance” of a priest who is a member of the American Christian sect called “Espiscopalians” (sic)

It seems to me from reading about them that they are the American version of the English Christian Sect called the “Church of England”. These episcopalians which seems to mean people who follow the guidance of bishops split from the English sect at the time of the American indpendence from England and called themselves episcopalians because the American revolutionaries forbade that there be a “Church of America.” The “Church of England” are in turn a sect that has split from the sect called “Roman Catholics” because some English king or another wanted a new wife. Wherever they went the English brought wth them their Church except that they called it things like the “Church of Nigeria” and the “Anglican Church in Kenya” Keeping track of all these sects can be confusing and is not relevant to my purpose which is to reply to his criticisms of how America is behaving which he is making using his terms as an American and as a follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH).

My reply is in my terms as Muslim and as an Iraki. My purpose is not to open a dispute but to show some of the differences and to show that despite those differences all who try to submit to the will of God and who recognise that though we are not brothers and sisters in religon we are brothers and sisters in humanity have common ground and a common interest in opposing the idolatorous worship of empire which is I believe the root of the war against the people of Irak being waged by the modern colonial power called America and that it has its roots in idolatry. To do this I have used the teachings of Islam and also the teachings of another American Christian who was a member of one of the many Christian sects called Baptists.

(Snip ... I'm cutting out three lengthy quotes from my sermon here)

This is my reply, this is a follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) speaking to other Christians using the terms they will understand, I am not a Christian I am a Muslim and I am an Iraki this is how I see the matter:

The Prophet Jesus (PBUH) taught the importance of compassion and performed miracles by the grace and power of God who restrained the children of Israel from violence to him when he showed them the Clear Signs, and they mocked him as nothing more than a magician.

This also is why God lifted him up when they thought they had killed him. My father’s Irish friend markfromireland the follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) has told me often of how the Prophet Jesus drove the defilers from the Holy Places because they had turned it into a place thieves. He has told me also that the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) said that he had come to bring not peace but a sword.

From this we can see that Christians who truly try to follow the teachings of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) also know that they are required by God to resist the tyrants who arise using either money or arms and seek to crush those who strive to submit to the will of God under their feet.

This is why I think this:

“History speaks to us — if we have the ears to hear. And if we don’t, it will gently, powerfully repeat itself until we get the message.”

is in error in the Holy Qur’an God speaks and tells us that he created us of a male and a female, and made us into nations and tribes, then God tells us of his purpose in doing this which is that we should know another not not that we despise each other.

From this we can see that those who despise the different tribes and nations are to be resisted. This is why we fight. Because they despise us they are false prophets and in opposition to God’s will which alone is what we are required to submit to.

As a Muslim you cannot say ”history …..” as though that is some abstract force that exists independently. This is because history is the unfolding of God’s will as he constantly engages in creation. What Gandhi was saying was that because the British despised his nation they were in opposition to God’s will and that God would destroy their empire which he did.

Similarly America despises all other nations and God is saying “stop or I will punish you” There was an American follower of the prophet Jesus (PBUH) called Martin Luther King who warned of this:

“Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America “you are too arrogant, and if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.”

The Vietnamese as communists denied God but still God used them to work his will to start to break the backbone of the power of the American and European tribes who despised and exploited all others because of the colour of their skin.

What Martin Luther King was warning you of was that Americans like to believe that just because they are Americans they are better than everyone else more kind more charitable more benevolent and therefore everybody should be more like them and that therefore all who resist must of their nature be evil. They also believe that they are entitled to take what they want. In the way that a corrupt policeman lies to himself and says that this is not corruption but his just reward. A corrupt policeman is not only a common criminal he is worse than that because he has betrayed his sacred trust to uphold the order decreed by God. This is what America has become.

America has set itself to despise all others in defiance of God’s clear will and see them not as your brothers and sisters either in religon or in humanity but as “legitmate targets” ripe for exploitation to be destroyed if they resist.

My message as a Muslim to those who call themselves Christians is you should listen to the teachings of true Christians like Martin Luther King.

You should be more like us not us more like you :-).

+++++

This is my reply.

I am honored that you would take the time not only to read my words but to consider and answer them. It gives me more hope than I can say that even though we are separated by miles and perhaps by distances greater than those miles that we can have this "conversation." I hope you will have the time and desire to respond again, but I certainly understand if you do not. You can also respond to me privately at MKinman (at) gmail (dot) com.

In reading your response, there was much I agreed with -- and even more about which I think we're essentially in agreement but for differences in phrasing and point of view.

First, let me tell you how I approach this. As an Episcopalian Christian, I have three sources for authority in my beliefs. The first is our Holy Scripture. The second is the tradition of the church as it has been handed down through the centuries. The third is reason -- our belief that the Spirit of God works through our minds and hearts ... and through conversations like this one ... to reveal the divine will in new ways even today.

That's an inexact way to do theology. It leaves much room for interpretation. It also demands theology be entered into and proceded from not with absolute certitude but with deep humility -- recognizing that we need God to redeem even our best attempts at faithfulness.

Now ... to your response.

First, about "history." I believe God acts through history -- but not in a micromanaging, proscriptive way. God gave us free will, and yet did not abandon us to it. God is present in every moment of creation, luring us deeper into the heart of the divine. History is the chronicle of creation. And so when I say "history teaches us" I am really talking about God's patient and steadfast presence with us ... not some random force. We might agree or disagree over how much control God exerts over specific events ... but I think we agree that God is the force behind all history. It would have been more accurate for me to say "God teaches us through history."

So let me begin by telling you some more about how I see Jesus -- particularly in terms of some of the points you made. I'm not going to get into some of the finer points of doctrine but broader issues of Jesus' nature and the nature of his teachings.

I believe Jesus did not just "teach the importance of compassion" but that he was literally the enfleshment of God's compassion for us. This might seem like a small point, but it is not. C0mpassion -- and more than just compassion but the complete self-giving love that comes from ultimate compassion -- is not just an important quality to exhibit but the very nature of God. And since what is happening in your country at our hands is the polar opposite of compassion, this becomes critical.

As a follower of Jesus, I am to participate fully in that life of compassion. I am to submit myself to Jesus' command to love God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind and to love my neighbor as myself -- knowing that Jesus defines my neighbor as the one it is most difficult for me to love.

Jesus did drive the moneychangers out of the temple because they were worshipping the idol of wealth and defiling the holy place. Jesus did say "I did not come to bring peace but a sword." -- but he said that in context of sending his disciples out into the world and telling them how complete their devotion to the divine must be. It was not a call to take up arms against those who disagreed with them. In fact, Jesus said in that same passage that when their message was not received their response should only be to leave that place.

Elsewhere, Jesus preaches that if someone strikes you on one cheek you should offer them the other. Certainly, as both Gandhi and Martin Luther King and our Christian scripture often reference, Jesus did not shrink from conflict or hesitate to stand up against unjust authority ... but he did using nonviolent means. Jesus ultimate weapon for justice was his own self-sacrifice on the cross. Gandhi (who was not a Christian but who drew from the best of Christ's teachings) summed up the life of Christ and the Christian life in general when he talked of causes for which he was willing to die but there not being a cause for which he was willing to kill.

Taken together (history and Jesus), I believe God's dream for the world and for all of us is the life of the divine ... the life of self-sacrificing love. And God has created the world and set it in motion in such a way that though we have free will the only lasting success and joy and, ultimately, life will come from embracing that life. God does not wish us to despise one another. God does not wish us to exalt ourselves over one another (that is idolatry). God wishes us to love one another and give ourselves up for one another. That is the way of joy. And though other ways might seem to prosper for a time, all else is ultimately doomed.

For that reason, I would not say that God destroyed the British Empire, but I would see that God knows how the seeds sown by our freely-chosen actions will sprout and in that way the British Empire was doomed as surely as if God had "destroyed their Empire."

Similarly, I do not believe God is saying to America "stop or I will punish you" ... but I do believe God grieves not just for what America is doing but for the ultimate fruit of the seeds we are sowing -- seeds of our own pain and destruction. So it is more "stop or you will be punished by the fruit of your actions." The end is the same, but I think the difference in God's attitude is significant -- though in the end, perhaps both my view and yours (or what I'm interpreting as yours) can be held together in truth in some way.

And so that is how I would interpret Dr. King's words -- and I do think those words convict us today. You have interpreted his words -- words that express the heart of the Christian faith -- most accurately and have pointed them at us most appropriately. That was the point I was trying to make comparing us to the Roman Empire -- another Empire that was governed by a myth that exalted itself and who because of that myth was destroyed.

Arrogance is chief among our sins as a nation. It is our original sin, founded as we are by stealing land from indigenous people with proud, long histories in the name of "civilizing them." And as our wealth and power has increased, our national arrogance has increased -- to the point where today all that is truly good about America and the values upon which we tell ourselves we were founded are being betrayed. It is a piece of that arrogance that you know more about my nation and history than I know of yours.

And you are right to note that race plays a huge role in this -- that a strong current of white supremacy runs through this national sin of arrogance. It exists in our own society and it most certainly exists in the way we seek to dominate and exploit nations of darker-skinned people and even in the condescending and disempowering way we give (or withhold) aid from nations of the same.

I agree with all of those points you have made -- and that is why I preached that I believe God's blessing is not upon us because we are the oppressor. God's blessing is upon the oppressed of the world ... of which includes you and your family and friends in Baghdad and throughout Irak.

And I further grant you that it is up to we who have the power of being American citizens to make this right -- to not just save you but to save ourselves.

And this is where my question is for you. If we were to be more like the Christians that Martin Luther King (and I would say Jesus) dreamed we would be... If we were to be, in your words "more like (you)" ... what would that look like? What would American atonement for sin look like to you?

I ask you because it would only be a continuation of the sin of our arrogance to think I knew an answer only you and those like you can give. And I really want to hear your answer.

I love my country. It is my home. I believe there is much good in my country -- both because I believe there is good in people everywhere but also because I believe the ideals our better angels strive for our deeply good. And that is why it is all the more painful for me when we fall so short, when we embody just the opposite to the world, when we so continually let our sin overshadow our virtue.

I do love my home. And I have no idea what it must be like for a home you love to be utterly destroyed by invaders. I am humbled that as I am one of those whose taxes pay for the weapons and soldiers that have invaded and devastated your home, as I am one who has certainly not raised his voice enough to stop this invasion and devastation, that you would take the time to engage my words.

I hope this conversation can continue ... for all our sakes.

Please know I hold you and your family in my prayers ... and for me that means not just fondness and good wishes but asking God to use me to bless you. Your words have already been God's blessing to me.

2007-02-11T20:39:00.000-06:00

What Will We Talk About Today, You and I?

A sermon (basically) that I preached at Christ Church Cathedral this morning. It is the family worship service, which is more informal (I preached without a text and this is what it would have been with a text). Also, we are not bound to the lectionary at this service, so at the suggestion of the Rev. Susan Nanny, I split the Lukan Beatitudes up into two weeks. I'll deal with the "woes" next week. It's a service that has a lot of children in it, so I did some background explaining of things that I won't include here -- and also edited some of the langauge (you'll know what I'm talking about when you get to it). This will be the "over 16" version. Oh, and because of the wonders of the internet I've edited things to be read instead of heard. Got it? Anyway, enough introduction.

What will we talk about today, you and I?

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and it was Gandhi's fault.

Well, not exactly Gandhi's fault ... but Richard Attenborough's Gandhi's fault. I was flipping through the channels trying to find something that would lull me to sleep and instead I found that movie, one of my favorites of all time.

And it got to the point in the movie where Gandhi is sitting at a table in the government council room. With him are Patel, Nehru, Jinnah and Azad. On the British side are the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, several generals, and a senior civil servant, Kinnoch. And Gandhi says:

We think it is time you recognized that you are masters in someone else's home. Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us. General Dyer is but an extreme example of the principle. It is time you left.

Now, the British are stunned almost to speechlessness – the audacity, the impossibility of it – and from Gandhi of all people. The senior civil servant, Kinnoch, is the first to recover.

"With respect, Mr. Gandhi, without British administration, this country would be reduced to chaos."

To which Gandhi responds, gently and patiently:

Mr. Kinnoch, I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the "good" government of an alien power.

I sat there watching this and my mouth dropped open. Gandhi's words were so elegant and gentle ... and timeless. And I could think of nothing else than our own occupation of Iraq as his words echoed in my ears.

Let me play devil's advocate for a second. Let me take the current administration completely at its word and accept all its best intentions -- even as that word has changed from time to time, but no matter. Let's accept that we went into Iraq as liberators to save the people from a cruel tyrant. Let's say we came to bring peace and establish order. Even if that is true, there is no escaping the current reality.

You can't get any decent news of what is happening in Iraq from the major networks or major media. You have to look elsewhere. One place I look is several excellent online diaries written by people on the ground there. This morning, I read an account from a young man named Mohammed Ibn Laith, who lives in Al-Sadriya, Baghdad. It was poetry and tragedy. I want to share an excerpt from it with you;

When I heard the bomb explode last Saturday the first thing I did was telephone my father. But there was no reply. Again and again and again I tried to phone him. My fingers hurt I stabbed them onto the buttons on my phone so hard. I fell onto the floor and prayed please let him not be dead. Please let it be that he died quick if he is dead.

And my heart was sick inside me.

What will we talk about today you and I? I do not want to talk about last Saturday. Shall we talk about peace? I would like to talk about peace. I love the word. No, perhaps we are not ready to talk of peace yet you and I, we are not at peace, we are not even at truce.

My father is one of the organisers for the men who protect the people in our neighbourhood who have fled here from the death squads. When they go to get food we go to the market with them my father, my brother, myself, some of the men in our neighbourhood.

They do the same for us.

What will we talk about today you and I? I do not want to talk about last Saturday. Shall we talk about peace? I would like to talk about peace. I love the word. No, perhaps we are not ready to talk of peace yet you and I, we are not at peace, we are not even at truce.

Does “peace” mean that your aunt does not weep as she talks of how the young couples she serves ask her after the X-Ray

Well is it a child or is it a monster?

And how she curses the Americans who littered our land with Uranium munitions and then denied us the cancer drugs. Because we needed to be,

contained.

We sand niggers who had been abandoned to the tyrant you had supported for years needed to be,

contained.

And though it was hard for you, though compassion swelled in your noble and peaceful heart we sand niggers needed to be,

contained

For my own good. I needed to be,

contained.

The new world order and the peace dividend required that the sand niggers be contained, and you assured the world, that I was indeed,

contained,

You told me that though it was hard for you :

We think the price is worth it.

Shall we talk about peace you and I? I would like to talk about peace. I love the word. No, perhaps we are not ready to talk of peace yet you and I, we are not at peace, we are not even at truce.

Will we talk about how the Americans urged our people to rise against the tyrant? Will we talk about that you and I? Will we talk about what happened to the men who believed the American lies and rose?

What shall we talk about you and I?

(PLEASE READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE)

History speaks to us -- if we have the ears to hear. And if we don't, it will gently, powerfully repeat itself until we get the message.

Two thousand years ago there was a great empire, beginning in Rome and stretching as far across the world they knew as any empire they had ever known. And they believed the gods were with them -- and that their great success in conquest was a sign of the gods blessing on them, a sign of divine providence.

And that empire had a story -- a governing myth that they told themselves and they told the people they conquered. They were there to bring peace and order. Pax Romana they called it -- the peace of Rome.

Yet the people knew then what Gandhi knew in India, what Mohammed knows today -- that there is no people on earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the "good" government of an alien power.

And it was in this empire, in a small backwater of this empire that a teacher arose named Jesus. Now the people were looking for a leader. They were looking for a hero. They were looking for someone to rise up and smack down the Romans, to defeat them and send them back to Rome so that they might have home rule, control over the land they believe was destined for them. And as Jesus' teaching began to draw crowds and stories of his signs and wonders began to sweep across the countryside, some began to wonder if he was the one -- the one who would lead them out of oppression.

But that's not the leader Jesus was. Jesus was not there to overthrow the Romans by force of might, but eventually he would lead to the downfall of that Empire with a question.

Where is God in this? Where is God's favor in this life to which we are resigned?

And Luke's Gospel tells us that a huge throng followed him and crowded around him, drawn by his power. And he lifted up his eyes and said:

Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God

Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Where is God's favor? With the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the outcast. Jesus was not going to mount an army and defeat the Romans, but no matter -- the war was already won. For the Romans' strength was not a sign of divine favor, but the Jews' poverty.

My friends, this passage is not about us.

Yes, there are times when we relative to others we think we are poor, times we feel hungry, times when we are deeply grieved and times when we endure the hatred of others ... but not like this. This passage is not to be read in the context of our lives but in the context of life on this planet. Jesus' words play out in places like Iraq, like Darfur ... and on the cold streets of our own city every night.

The word "bless" literally means "to speak well of." Whom does God side with? Whom does God speak up for and speak well of. It is those. It is Mohammed and his family. It is not us.

But if we are not the blessed, then there is but one question for us to ask:

How can we be part of the blessing?

When we see the face of the poor,the hungry, the bereaved, the hated. When we read Mohammed's words. When we read Nick Kristof's missives from Darfur. When we hear Deb Goldfeder tell of our daughters and sons in Lui who can't go to school because there is no water for the makeshift schoolhouse. When we hear and read and see these people, we know that they are the blessed, not us. And so what God leaves for us is not reward but privilege:

How can we be part of the blessing? How can God speak well of them through us?

What will we have to say to them. What will we have to say for them, on their behalf, in the halls of power their voices cannot reach.

What shall we talk about, today you and I?

2007-02-06T12:30:00.000-06:00

Maybe I would have cared in 1978

I pretty much stopped reading the endless stream of blather on the ongoing political situation in the Anglican Communion or with various wranglings about human sexuality. Nothing so much against any of the authors or what is written, but more and more the whole situation seems incredibly disconnected from reality.

But this sermon from Marilyn McCord Adams came through my inbox a few days ago and I broke my pattern. Marilyn was one of my favorite and most brilliant seminary professors a decade ago at YDS, so I can't pass her stuff up. But even as I'm reading her sermon and weighing its merits, I'm feeling this disconnect.

I can't get over the feeling that the attention given to and energy expended on what is happening on the upper political levels of the Anglican Communion comes not from its real importance but because enough people are saying loudly enough: "This is important!" and enough people are believing that voice because volume and credibility are easily confused.

I've chosen my words carefully here. I've called this 'the ongoing political situation" and described it as what is happening "on the upper political levels of the Anglican Communion" because that's what I believe the energy is being expended on. There is a huge difference between that and there being a crisis in either TEC or the Anglican Communion.

The key question I see debated over and over again is about membership in the Anglican Communion. But the importance of that membership is talked about in terms of things I really don't care about because I think they are of minimal importance. Whether or not bishops can go to Lambeth. Who sits with whom at Primates meetings. It is about who gets seats at the human tables of church meetings. To that my response is -- I don't care. I don't care who gets invited to Lambeth. I don't care who snubs whom in Tanzania.

Now, until very recently, these gatherings -- young as they are -- were really important. We invested so much importance in structures like Lambeth and Primates meetings because even until very recently, they were just about the only practical avenues possible for us to be in relationship with one another in a global community. But in the last decade, the geographical and technological walls that divided us from each other have come crashing down.

It's part of why we have such a scramble for control right now -- we were used to the distance and being able to deal with images of each other rather than the reality of each other. The reality of each other is far more complex and it's much easier (and a natural human reaction) to try to establish command and control in the face of the chaos of real relationship than to take a deep breath and enter into it fully.

The importance of these meetings, the importance of these structures was based not only on practical issues of bridging divides that no longer exist but on a centralized organizational model that is passing away as fast as those divides are closing and walls are falling. The idea that there need to be "instruments of unity" that involve commissions and committees and gatekeepers ad nauseum to define and preserve our relationship is modernist thinking in a postmodern world.

Ask just about anyone under 30 if they think some small group should be able to decide who they are in relationship with and they will laugh in your face. Go to sites like Chat the Planet and Couchsurfing.com and you'll see young people talking with and staying with each other not based on whom principalities and powers say they should be in relationship with but based on their own ever-expanding webs of relationship based on affinity, common purpose and a desire to "do life" together (a wonderful term I've encountered frequently in nondenominational churches).

Huge shifts like this are really, really hard for those of us who grew up in other worlds. (Leonard Sweet uses the wonderful language of "natives and immigrants" when talking about the postmodern shift ... and as someone from a Generation that has one foot in each world, that image has a lot of resonance with me and I can only imagine what it's like for people who were completely formed by modernism). We need to be patient with each other. We need to realize that fear and anxiety are a natural part of these shift -- and that's why we see a rise in extremism in all walks of human life, because there is a surety to extremism that can feel like a safe bulwark
against the incoming tide of time.

But as King Knut knew, shouting at the tide will not stop its advance. And if we continue to grant importance to outmoded and reactive ways of being, we are spending our energy shouting at a tide that will teach us humility whether we want it to our not.

Because the truth is, the future of Anglicanism will not be decided by Primates meetings or Lambeth Conferences or by these incredibly well-funded (on all sides -- you want to talk about sin, think about how this money COULD be being spent!) campaigns to subdivide the church. That's because God is ahead of the curve and a part of the tide. That's because despite all attempts to pretend it is, Communion is not a human construct that needs to be defended by us but a divine gift that calls us to enter into it. It is the Mystery that Marilyn preaches - and a Mystery needs not to be commanded and controlled but entered into with our shoes off and heads bowed, with awe and humility. The Mystery is not for us to define and it certainly is not for us to own. The Mystery invites us to participate.

It's true, God is calling the future of Anglicanism into being around a table. But not the Primates' meeting table or the meeting table of the Network or Integrity or CANA or General Convention or 815 or any other such table. God is calling the future into being around Christ's table of Eucharist. God is calling the future into being around Christ's table of common mission where we seek and serve Christ in the poorest of the poor. God is calling the future into being around Christ's table of the coffeehouse and the dining room and the IM chat and the countless other places where people treat each other's lives as the Mystery -- as holy ground on which to seek and serve Christ.

Of course, maybe I just don't get it. And there will certainly be plenty of people on all different sides lined up to tell me just that. But as much as my capacity to "not get it" is deep and wide, I don't think that's the case here.

"Not getting it" is when people refuse to sit at Eucharist with each other.

"Not getting it" is when people cling to old vertical, command and control models in a world that is becoming almost entirely horizontal in structure.

"Not getting it" is when we think something is important just because people with loud voices tell us over and over again that it is.

"Not getting it" is the thousand ways we shout at the tide in fear and anxiety instead of trusting that God is in it and that what is of God will endure and what is not will be washed away. When we look for the safety of the Wall instead of the safety of the Cross. That's right, the SAFETY of the cross. Because as my mentor Victoria Sirota preached to me, when we are on the cross there is no lower to go.

A friend of mine once saw the old bumper sticker "The one who dies with the most toys wins" and commented "wins what?" That's kind of how I feel about the current wrangling on the upper political levels of the Anglican Communion. In the end they will decide the winners and losers. Who is in and who is out. And I suppose that will have as much power as people give it. But with every passing day, people on this planet and, specifically, throughout our global church will attribute less and less power to gatherings like the Primates meetings.

And in the end, I believe the "victors" in this battle -- whomever they might be -- will end up realizing they haven't won anything at all. That the tide has come in. That the Church -- and God's dream -- has gone on without them.

2007-02-02T06:14:00.000-06:00

Back to Africa

It's official. I'm heading back to Africa next month. At least it's official in that I've bought the plane tickets. This time it's a two part trip.

The first part is the TEAM (Toward Effective Anglican Mission) conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. TEAM was put together by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican primate of Southern Africa and Desmond Tutu's successor as Archbishop of Cape Town. (I had a chance to spend some time with him several years back when he spent a few days in St. Louis talking about the MDGs ... and even preaching at a Wednesday night at Rockwell House). It's a gathering of people from all over the Anglican Communion to focus on the Millennium Development Goals and specifically on how the Church is addressing the AIDS pandemic.

For me, it's an incredible opportunity to network and listen. Even as I learn more and more about what is happening in the American Episcopal Church to eradicate global poverty, I know so little about what movements are happening elsewhere in the communion. Unfortunately, the press about the Anglican Communion is almost always about certain leaders screaming about sexuality (though read an article here that finally exposes the house of cards I believe this truly is) and we hear precious little about how people are living out their faith in ways that are literally saving lives.

Whenever I have had chances to be around people from around the Communion (for example at General Convention when we got to spend time with Bishop Ochola from Kitgum in N. Uganda), it's been an incredibly moving experience and I have come away just in awe of how huge and deep and wonderful God's creation is. As much as we hear about the terrible things happening all over the world -- and they are terrible -- there is such deep beauty. I've never been in a place where there are literally people from all over the world gathered for one purpose (the Ikea at Potomac Mills probably doesn't count) and to say I'm excited would be a definite understatement.

But even that pales in comparison to the second leg of the trip, which is a week in Rwanda. My friend Josh Ruxin, whom I've blogged about several times, has been bugging me to visit him and see what is happening with the Millennium Villages Project he administers in Mayange, Rwanda -- and this trip to TEAM was the perfect opportunity. So I'll be spending a week in Rwanda seeing that operation ... and also seeing what the Anglican Church is up to, hopefully connecting with Paul Farmer and his Partners in Health Clinic and learning about the post-genocide reconciliation process.

As much as I feel a sense of awe about the TEAM conference, it is far greater with going to Rwanda. There was something I felt powerfully in Sudan -- that in places ... physical places ... where people had undergone great suffering, there was a hallowing effect. Lincoln spoke of it at Gettysburg and we know it from those places in our own lives. Places become sacred by what we and others go through there.

What happened in Rwanda was some of the deepest horror humanity can wreak on itself. The stories are haunting ... particularly of clergy rounding their people into churches supposedly for safety and then directing the machete-wielding mobs into the sanctuaries. That people can survive -- not so much physically but spiritually and emotionally -- after being through what they've been through is nothing short of incredible.

But what's even more amazing than simply surviving is that the stories I hear coming out of Rwanda are those of thriving. That Rwanda is becoming one of the great success stories of sub-Saharan Africa. That out of this devastation -- and in many ways because they have been through this devastation and are committed to never going back there again -- there is springing new life.

I'm drawn to Rwanda because from my safe vantage point here in America, it seems a nation of crucifixion and resurrection -- not just the linear chronology of genocide and reconstruction but lived as crucifixion and resurrection happen in our lives ... over and over again, overlapping each other, feeding into and off of each other.

Jesus promises us that we will find him in the poor, in the destitute, in the hopeless -- but he will also be the form of abundance of life, a fullness of joy, and hope. When it comes down to it, I'm going to Rwanda not to see the great work being done on the Millennium Development Goals. Not to see what the Anglican Communion is up to. Not even to spend time with my friend. I'm going as part of my ongoing search to meet Christ.

And if I can let that encounter change me. And if I can bring back here even a bit of the sense of that presence ... a sense of the gift God is giving us when we are drawn closer in relationship with each other ... then, well, that's why I think God has made this movement and EGR and all this happen.

2007-02-01T09:42:00.000-06:00

Daily Affirmation with Senator Smalley

Al Franken is running for Senate in 2008.

Perhaps the most sobering thing about that news was my first reaction to it:

Cool.

Not cool in the same way that it was "politics as entertainment" cool when Jesse Ventura ran for governor of Minnesota (after all, outside of Minnesota, what harm could that do?). No, this was honest excitement ... as in "finally a voice of reason in the Senate" kind of excitement.

It's come to this.

Al Franken does have opinions with which I largely agree. He's also articulate in expressing them, clever and witty in debating opponents and uses humor well to make a point. He might just make a darn good senator -- who knows? He's running in the right state for this kind of campaign and because of the nature of his media image he's likely to be one of the few Democrats not to cower in the corner saying "please, don't hurt me" when the political pressure heats up.

But still, the main reason we know this guy is because he sat next to a mirror on SNL and said, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." (which , incidentally, was probably his rationale for running for Senate). Most recently, he's been the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh on Air America Radio (which was doomed to either failure or embarrassment because truly dealing with the nuances of situations is considered bad radio and Democrats trying to act like idealogue tough-guys is just pathetic).

So why does this bother me?

Well, first of all, we are a nation of brilliant and creative minds in a world of brilliant and creative minds. And yet fewer and fewer of those people seem to find their way to public service. I think the reason is similar to the reason why St. Louis as a city has such a hard time retaining good, young, creative people. St. Louis is a city of old money and as such is very conservative and phobic where change is concerned. There are too many barriers for creative people with new ideas and ways of being to breach for many of them to stay here. Most get frustrated and leave. (This is the theory of several friends of mine in their 30s who have worked extensively in the city and it completely jives with my experience).

Same thing for politics. You have to jump through so many hoops and become beholden to so many people to even get on the state stage, much less the national stage, that most creative people realize that they can have much more freedom, money and fun in the private sector. We end up with a lot of candidates who are basically picked by the larger (on the national level, usually corporate) interests that dominate parties -- candidates picked by their willingness to shill and/or their marketability.

So the fact that I'm happy because a smart, creative guy like Franken is running for office is really an indictment of how bad it's gotten. It's a microcosm of Obamania. I don't know if Barack Obama has what it takes to be president. Frankly, he doesn't have any kind of a track record to prove it either way. But he's got this American Idol-type thing going for him which is completely apart from any substance he might or might not have.

Joe Biden is getting nailed today for his idiotic remarks about Barack Obama -- as well he should (particularly the "articulate" crack, as if it's an anomaly to have an articulate black person). But really he should be getting nailed for saying in his fumbling "what I really meant" on the Daily Show that what he really meant to say was that Obama had fresh, new ideas. WHERE? I haven't heard any! I've heard commentary on what others are doing delivered very charismatically and enthusiastically by him but I haven't seen any broad new vision for America. I haven't heard him say one thing that I haven't heard others say many times before.

So the first reason it's sobering that I'm so excited about Al Franken is that in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. And Al looks like he's got one good eye.

The second reason is that it's just one more piece of evidence that our elections really are a lot more like American Idol and Survivor than serious discourse and discernment. Of course, this is nothing new. But it's still disheartening. It's like the Biden thing again. He gets scrutinized for attacking Hillary and John Edwards about their Iraq policy. And all the attention was on the fact that he attacked them -- not on the substance of what each said and who might be right about the best way to proceed in Iraq! It reminds me of a moment midway through the Dean campaign when Howard said that the war in Iraq had made America less safe. He got slammed from every side for being unpatriotic and not supporting the troops ... with little or no attention paid to whether or not he might actually be right (which, BTW, he was).

This has devolved into a full-on rant, which isn't where I meant to go with it. I need to learn more history because I'm sure part of it is just idealizing a past I don't know enough about. I'm sure a certain amount of this is just the 21st century, public and tabloidized version of the smoke-filled room.

But it still bugs me.

Oh well, gotta get some work done.

2007-01-23T09:15:00.000-06:00

Hillary? Obama? Wanna bet?

If you do, you'll get a better return on Barack (6-1) than Hillary (even money)according to a live betting line posted on sportsbook.com. John McCain, the ultra-conservative in moderate maverick's clothing the top GOP candidate at 3-1 (same as surprise ... at least to me ... Dem runner up Al Gore).

Here are how's everyone posting at 50-1 or greater odds stack up (includes some who have not - and may never -- declare)

Hillary Clinton 1-1
Al Gore 3-1
John McCain 3-1
Barack Obama 6-1
John Edwards 8-1
George Allen Jr 10-1
Rudy Giuliani 10-1
Sam Brownback 10-1
Bill Richardson 12-1
Mark Warner 15-1
Mitt Romney 10-1
Wesley Clark 20-1
Mike Huckabee 20-1
Evan Bayh 20-1
Chuck Hagel 22-1
Colin Powell 25-1
Joe Biden 30-1
Condoleezza Rice 30-1
Newt Gingrich 40-1
Tom Vilsack 40-1
Russ Feingold 40-1
Rick Santorum 50-1
Tom Tancredo 50-1
Mike Gravel 50-1
Tom Ridge 50-1
Tom Daschle 50-1
Bill Owens 50-1
Bob Kerrey 50-1
John Kerry 50-1
George Pataki 50-1
Chris Dodd 50-1

Then it really gets fun. Check out some of these others:

Dick Gephardt 75-1 (what would a Democratic primary be without Dick Gephardt?)

Dick Cheney 75-1 (I would say good for entertainment value, except I've already been proven that "he can't possibly win" are words you sometimes have to eat)

Howard Dean 75-1 (Funny thing is, if you tune out "the scream" and just read the stuff he wrote and said -- particularly about Iraq and the ill-named "war on terror" -- he was, well, how do you say it ... right!)

Alberto Gonzales 75-1 (Preserve and defend what? I don't think I'm familiar with that document.)

Charles Schumer 75-1 (Shocked he hasn't declared already. If America was 25% as fond of him as he is of himself, he'd win in a landslide!)

Harold Ford Jr 75-1 (an interesting choice. Couldn't win a seat in Tennessee, but got vaguely Obamaesque buzz nationally)

Jack Kemp 75-1 (Is he still alive? Never thought he'd be a good president, but he always looked like the guy who plays the president in movies)

Jeb Bush 100-1 ("You were supposed to be the chosen one!!!" If W. hadn't screwed things up to the point that "Bush fatigue" is making "Clinton fatigue" look like a post-buffet burp, he might be a serious candidate)

Ralph Nader 100-1 (Please, God, no.)

Paul Bremmer 150-1 (Campaign slogan: "Rebuilding America the way I rebuilt Iraq ... no, wait a minute")

Joe Lieberman 150-1 (but on which ticket?)

Michael Bloomberg 150-1 (a moderate Republican who would be an intruiging darkhorse)

Tommy Franks 200-1 (pretty much think anyone with a significant role in Iraq has about as much chance as General Westmoreland running in 1976)

Jesse Jackson 200-1 (see Dick Gephardt)

George W Bush 200-1 (I'm convinced this line is in here to catch all the suckers who never heard of the 22nd ammendment. I hope it's that ... something more nefarious could be afoot.)

Dennis Kucinich 200-1 (the lowest-rated declared candidate. Sad when your chances are winning are the same as a guy who is constitutionally prohibited from winning. Then again, with W.'s pliable relationship with the Constitution...)

Arnold Schwarzenegger - 250-1; Bill Clinton - 300-1 -- Bill Maher's dream matchup. Get rid of Clause 5 of Article 2 and the 22nd amendment and give each side the candidate they really want.

Alan Keyes 750-1 -- (Obama rematch ... 'cause it went so well the first time?)

Clint Eastwood 750-1 (hey, you laughed at the Governator.)

Ted Kennedy 750-1 (It's a sad commentary on the Democratic field that I actually think I would like Teddy better than a bunch of the people out there. I think he's gained some wisdom over the years. According to Wikipedia, he was pulled from a plane wreckage in 1964 by ... Evan Bayh's dad!)

Bill O'Reilly 750-1 - (... starting to price houses in Montreal while pondering this one)

Laura Bush 1000-1 (... a viable candidate until the debate when Hillary reaches over and tears off her plastic human face revealing the lizard alien creature beneath)

John Ashcroft 1500-1 (more likely the bottom half of the Alberto Gonzalez ticket)

Donald Rumsfeld 2000-1 (anyone who can say "I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said." can't be discounted in politics)

Pat Robertson 2000-1 (that's if we survive the "mass killing" God told him we would suffer this year. The "I told you so" factor could weigh in his favor).

Bill Maher 2500-1 (New Rule: Potato Bongs at all State Dinners)

Donald Trump 2500-1 (Seriously, if Bill Maher, who would have no chance of winning, is at 2,500 to 1, then Trump's odds should be a lot better. This is just the kind of scary bastard who could make a run.)

Michael Moore 7500-1 (But he would make Kucinich look centrist if he got in the race).

2007-01-23T06:47:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Final Installment

Part 8 of Abbie's reflections traveling in the Occupied Territories. As always, published with permission.

Perhaps this email should be called Movement...or maybe, Lack Thereof. It's the buzz everywhere. Restrictions on Palestinians, internationals, cars, animals. And it's only getting worse.

As internationals pass through Jerusalem on their way out of the country everyone is talking of hw bad checkpoints have gotten, how difficult it is to stay longer than 3 months, and how to make sure that at the airport you aren't detained.

Internationals are being denied re-entry all the time. People who have been working here for years are being deported. No agencies are safe. Someone who was meant to travel on birthright unplugged was detained for hours and deported back to the States. It's a gamble coming here. If you get the wrong guard, in the wrong mood, you could be denied from ever returning.

I have carefully mailed back almost everything that has 'palestine' written on it. And yet I am still highly anxious. Everyone is told to get to the airport 4 or 5 hours early, because almost everyone I know has been questioned and detained.

Passing through checkpoints is no easier. Travelling from one town to another is similar to going through airport security in the States. Metal detectors, xray machines, lines of waiting people. Israeli guards who shut down the gates as collective punishment, refusing entry to anyone. I went back to Dheisheh refugee camp a couple days ago. This time I was with two Jewish-Americans who had not been in the West Bank yet. The checkpoint to pass from Jerusalem to Bethlehem can be daunting. It's massive building, reminiscent of an airplane hangar, but with an eerily empty feel. They have doors, gates, walls, turnstiles, booths everywhere, but no signs. We yelled out, but no one responded. We had to wait for a Palestinian to come so that we could follow them through a maze of doors, known to him only because he is forced to do it everyday.

They are building more walls in front of the Apartheid Wall everywhere. When we came back through they had shut down all the turnstiles. An Israeli guard stood on the other side of the fence. Instead of opening the gate in the fence, which is usually open, so that we could enter the checkpoint, he made u walk a mile around a maze of new fences to where tour buses pass
through.

Laws restricting further restricting the movement of Palestinians are being carried out everyday. Palestinians can't travel in cars with Israelis or internationals. They are so many different levels of identification one must have - all of them racially discriminatory. Keeping them prisoners on their own land.

I worry about coming back. I worry about not being allowed back because they will know I am coming to the West Bank. I worry that I won't even be able to cross through the Wall anymore. Talk now is that Israel wants to turn the West Bank into Gaza, where it is nearly impossible for internationals to enter. And where they will wall the Palestinians away as they take their aggression out on one another.

It's not going to get any easier any time soon. Consider yourself forewarned.

I'm off tonight, unless I'm detained at the airport. You haven't heard the last of me. But, maybe I'll take a break for a short time. And then I'll be back in your inbox. Hope everyone's well. Thanks for reading. Let's all keep talking about how to make things better. More than talk - let's act. Do something. Let me now what you're doing to bring an end to this Apartheid. And I'll spread the word. Justice sure ain't gonna come on it's own.

Love and respect,
Abbie Coburn

2007-01-22T07:01:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part VII

This is the next to last installment (though Abbie might write occasionally when she's back). As always, published with permission.

Dear all,

I could make a career out of being critical. Critical of the situation here, critical of what's being done, critical of who's doing what, and who's not doing what. In my idealism I see only big steps. Drastic changes that need to happen. I have little patience for small steps. And yet it seems that in small steps is the only place where change is found these days. Am I giving in? Am I thinking inside the box too much? What choice do I have?

Here's some examples of solidarity and nonviolent efforts that make a difference ere. You can check them out and see what you think. These are vehicles that extraordinary people are using to make sure that peace and justice are brought to this area. They are making sacrifices that I am yet unwilling to make, and they do it without the prospect of hope, because I fear there is little hope here.

Last week my group (birthright unplugged) visited the village of Haris in the Sulfit region, north of Ramallah. It's a small agricultural village, slowly being surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, as settlers creep closer and closer. There, in a small apartment, is an organization called the International Womens Peace Service. Started about 5 years ago they have been a continuous presence of women from all over the world who join in nonviolent solidarity with Palestinians. They are present at the Olive harvest, at checkpoints, at house demolitions, anywhere where international presence may make a difference. That's girl power for you. (Ali Michael - I couldn't help but think of you). There were two women from South Africa there when we were there and they talked about all the work they had been doing and ways that they are trying to tie the apartheid in S. Africa to the apartheid here.

The past few days, since my group ended, I've been able to meet with some Christian folk to figure out what they're up to. A hot topic around here is accompaniment programs, two of which are Christian. Christian Peacemaker Teams is located primarily in Hebron, a city south of Bethlehem, and the city where my group was denied access to a Palestinian's home, for all of you following along. CPT accompanies people to checkpoints, kids to school, hospital visits, often stepping in the way of Israeli soldiers harassing Palestinians. What astounds me about them is that all of them that I've met have been retired folks from Canada and Europe. They're not scruffy idealistic backpackers. They've lived 65 years and yet still see this as their way to make the world better.

The other group is EAPPI - Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. They've got folks all over - accompanying at checkpoints, making sure Paletinians are able to get to the hospital, etc. They have impressed me the most, simply by the people I've met who are here with them, but I'll know more tomorrow after I meet with them. As well, they are very international, but hardly any Americans, sadly. Yet, are we surprised?

I could go on. And on. But, that's what's been on my mind the past couple days. How is the presence of internationals being used to support the human rights of Palestinians? How is being a witness to this apartheid making a difference.

And again, is this enough? Is it enough to bear witness, to stop the bullet, to raise our hands in protest? I fear not because, as anyone will tell you, the situation is only getting worse. Imagine - everyday your life is getting worse. Every single day. When is enough enough? When does oppression end, and life begin? What does one person have to give in this world? When can we stop being pragmatic and start allowing ourselves to be idealistic?

Another day in the occupied territories. So many stories left untold. More to come. I hope.

With love, Abbie

2007-01-19T06:24:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part VI

Republished with permission.

Dear all,

Did I tell you the one about the house surrounded on four sides by the Wall? It sounds like a joke, right? Are you waiting for the punch line?

Well, there isn't one.

There is a house in Mas'ha, north of Jerusalem and Ramallah. Driving for miles in olive tree country. The land is beautiful. Dense and dry, but beautiful. Apparently the Israelis thought so too. There is a house that refugees buiilt after being kicked off their land in 1948. And again in 1967. But they refuse to be made into refugees again.

This is all a joke right? We dirve up along the road and are met by an iron fence 30 feet high. Barbed wire spills over the sides, dragging along the floor. To the right is a large cylindrical building rising 50 feet in the air with armed Israelis guards on top. A small gate in the fence where we are greeted by welcoming Palestinian children. They invite us into their yard, into their home. Stepping through the gate, turning in 360 degrees, we are surrounded by the Apartheid Wall. Completely locked in. Someone has found it necessary to build the Wall entirely around this one house.

The house sits in the middle of a yard, which is edged on all sides either by a 30 foot high cement Wall, or a 30 foot-high fence. Can you believe that? Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea?

These people are not terrorists, they are not involved in any violent organizations. They are a poor family of 7 that lives on land that Israelis want.

Are you still waiting for the punch line? I haven't even told you of their neighbors yet. You see, in 1986, Israelis wanted the land so much that they decided to build them some neighbors. Directly on the other side of one of the walls is an Israeli settlement.

Now, I don't know what you think of when I say settlement, but this neighborhood is just like where Mr. Rogers would live. Looks just like suburbia in the States. Cookie cutter, picket fences, yards fed with water from Palestinian land. Just enough right angles to make one puke.

Standing on the roof of the Palestinians' house one could piss into the flower beds of the Israelis. No one did, but, y'know....you could. It's really that close. All of the shutters on the windows that face the Wall were closed. Closed to reality. Of course they want this Palestinian house demolished. It's an eyesore. It doesn't fit into their utopia mold.

I can't even tell you of the injustices this family has witnessed. The activists who have been shot, holding vigil outside their house; the number of fences and road blocks that have been put up in front of the Wall to their house; the constant presence of armed Israeli guards on their land.

Land that used to be rich in vegetables and plants, now trampled under the feet of armed men who harass their children on a daily basis.

So, what now? Do we watch as houses, families, villages, cities are choked to death under apartheid and oppression? Do we stay silent for fear of being called anti-Semitic? Do we try to be diplomatic? Do we try to please the ones with the money? Who knows what can be done? Do you? Tell me.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of being voyeuristic. I'm tired of people patting me on the back for coming. I'd rather you give me ideas how to keep going, sustainably, challenging these models of oppression, standing up for heroic acts of courage committed by palestinians. What does solidarity look like to you?

What does making a difference look like to you?

Good shabbos to all you Jews. A peaceful Friday to the rest of you.

Abbie

Have any ideas for Abbie (or the rest of us)? Leave a comment. - MK

2007-01-18T09:19:00.000-06:00

A New Chance for Peace? -- Carter speaks out against critics

As I've been publishing Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal (latest installment below), there has also been considerable controversy around President Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He has been pretty brutally criticized by loud voices in the American Jewish community.

In today's Washington Post, President Carter speaks out about the controversy and says it is missing key points he was trying to make in the book. It's an excellent editorial and a great companion piece if you've been following Abbie's accounts:

A New Chance for Peace?

By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, January 18, 2007; Page A23

I am concerned that public discussion of my book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" has been diverted from the book's basic proposals: that peace talks be resumed after six years of delay and that the tragic persecution of Palestinians be ended. Although most critics have not seriously disputed or even mentioned the facts and suggestions about these two issues, an apparently concerted campaign has been focused on the book's title, combined with allegations that I am anti-Israel. This is not good for any of us who are committed to Israel's status as a peaceful nation living in harmony with its neighbors.

It is encouraging that President Bush has announced that peace in the Holy Land will be a high priority for his administration during the next two years. On her current trip to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for an early U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian meeting. She has recommended the 2002 offer of the 23 Arab nations as a foundation for peace: full recognition of Israel based on a return to its internationally recognized borders. This offer is compatible with official U.S. policy, previous agreements approved by Israeli governments in 1978 and 1993, and the "road map" for peace developed by the "quartet" (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).

The clear fact is that Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights. With land swaps, this "green line" can be modified through negotiations to let a substantial number of Israeli settlers remain in their subsidized homes east of the internationally recognized border. The premise of exchanging Arab territory for peace has been acceptable for several decades to a majority of Israelis but not to a minority of the more conservative leaders, who are unfortunately supported by most of the vocal American Jewish community.

Read the whole piece here.

2007-01-18T09:09:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part V

The fifth installment of Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- emails sent back from her trip this month. Re-printed with permission.

Dear all -

Walking in the forest of Al Lajun, where the air was cool and clear, the ground padded by pine needles and fresh rain. Fields in front stretching for miles. It was the perfect place for a picnic...or a massacre.

In 1948 the Israeli army stormed the peaceful village of Al Lajun forcing the residents to take what they could and flee. Raping women, killing countless. Are you enraged yet? Should I mention them killing children, because they did that too. Will that make the story matter more?

Our companions for the day Abu Omar and Adnan were both young men in 1948 and were forced to flee to nearby Um al Fahm with their families. It's where they live to this day, waiting as the situation gets worse. Again the Israeli army is confining them, restricting their lives, taking away their humanity. They've already taken 80% of the land of Um al Fahm where countless refugees have come to over the years. It's a slower massacre this time.

And what of the land? What of the land that Adnan and Abu Omar can see on a daily basis, but never live on? Well, it still stretches for miles, but it now falls under the control of a kibbutz. They use the land for their cows to graze. (Oh, it all makes sense - of course the palestinians needed to be kicked off, otherwise the cows would go hungry!). And in 1951 Israelis forced the palestinians to plant trees on the land that was once theirs.

So, it looks like a peaceful forest that was there all along. (What palestinians? I don't see any palestinians!). And the bricks of the houses that were destroyed in '48 were made into roads that crossed the fields. So the massacre lay beneath us as we walked along stolen palestinian land.

It's calculated. These Israelis are smart. Everything is thought out. Nothing is accidental.

Driving along the highway, leaving the West Bank. The Israelis have denied access to these roads to all Palestinians so it's just us and the Israelis now. Those palestinians will have to make do with tunnels beneath the highway. Looking alongside the road there are high trees and plants all along. They seem to be blocking a small cement wall on the other side.

It's small though, only a couple feet high. Y'know why? Cause Israelis are smart like that. What I see appears to be a wall only a foot high, but from the other side, the Palestinian side, it is 30 feet high! That's what some strategic landscaping can do for national security. The Israelis don't want to be reminded that they're living in the midst of apartheid. That they are supporting apartheid. That they are creating something far graver than apartheid. So, we'll just put some pretty trees for them to look at instead.

Are you disgusted? Are you okay with this? Are you tsk-ing? Are you sighing? Are you outraged?

Here's some more places to get info:

www.stopthewall.org

www.endtheoccupation.org

www.btselem.org

Stripping people of their humanity, imprisoning them on their own land, tearing apart families, having cows eat the blood of their ancestors...doing this in the name of security? I am not okay.

There's more to come. But, tonight I'm off to Ramallah for a night with a friend and the two group leaders. Our trip is done, but we can't quite seem to get enough of each other. At least there are other radicals in this world. Why must I be a radical to support humanity?

Peace,
Abbie

2007-01-17T11:41:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part IV

The fourth installment of Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- emails sent back from her trip this month. Re-printed with permission.

Everyday I compose emails back home in my head. But email is sparse, and time is packed. Last night at the Dheishe refugee camp outside Bethlehem I ranted and raved in an inflammatory email for 45 minutes. And when I pressed send it disappeared. So I awoke today, determined to write an even more inflammatory email. But it's 11 p.m. and we've been moving since 7 a.m. I've decided that I will continue writing updates, but they won't be so up to the minute. Slightly delayed from when they were actually experienced.

As a preface I want to let you know that I take my emotions out by using profanities, so you may find this mail littered with them. I make no excuses, just don't say you weren't warned.

Israel is f*cked up. It is inexcusable. I'm sick of rationalizations. I'm sick of people asking why Israel would decide to bulldoze thousands of houses. Or why they would jail 8 year-olds for throwing rocks at tanks that are coming to kill them. Or why Israel imprisons Palestinians in their own land by stealing their water and crops an building a NINE METER wall around them. You want to know why? Because Israel is F*CKED UP. That's why. I find myself becoming more and more radical everyday.

There is no excuse for this kind of apartheid. And don't get me wrong - there is massive apartheid going on here. Calculated separation and domination. Everyone is clear that there is a two class system. That shit is not okay.

Israel soldiers with their big-ass guns walking up and down Palestinian streets. Indiscriminantly arresting whoever they want. You don't have the 3 dozen papers it's necessary to have in order to walk down this street? You left one of them at home? So sorry, we're gonna have to arrest you and hold you for an undetermined amount of time.

We walked into the Tel Rumeida (google it) neighborhood of Hebron yesterday. It's the only place we were told to fear violence this whole trip. YOu know why? Cause the Israeli settlers that bulldozed Palestinian houses in order to build their houses were going to throw stones at us because we were visiting the house of an 80 year-old Palestinian who wanted to give us tea. The fucking settlers are the ones who we have to fear.

But, we never had the luck of being stoned. Instead, heavily armed 17 year-old Israeli army shits stopped us two houses away from where we were going and told us we couldn't go. So we stood in the freezing rain for half an hour while we asked for a second opinion. They called their commander, paraded a dozen more heavily armed shits in front of us to instill some fear in us, and then told us the commander said this family wasn't allowed any visitors that day. As all this was happening the palestinians stood at their gate watching, waiting, and all we could do was wave.

Are you fucking kidding me? This man's family has been in that house for 400 years. Then along come some Zionists who bulldoze his neighbors houses, steal the farm land, surround him with settlers, and guard the roads all around to make sure that he and a few other remaining Palestinians don't get any visitors. God for-fucking-bid.

One example of 5,653. I am not okay with any of it. I am not okay with Zionism. I am not okay with the state of Israel. And I will not apologize. The situation is getting worse every minute. Road blocks go up, settlers invade like the plague, palestinians become prisoners in the sewage land at the base of settlements. No one can convince me that that is okay.

I have not once felt my "security" threatened by a Palestinian. Only by the boys with big guns. I would stone them too. I want to scream, "Get your fucking gun out of my face!" And all I have is this small rock. And so much rage. Push me and watch how close my edge is.

So, because I'm with a bunch of Jews who are experiencing their deconstruction of Zionism that has been ingrained in them since birth, I get a lot of questions like, "well, what would you do about the Israelis that live here if the land was given to the Palestinians?" You know what? I don't give a fuck. I am not here to placate both sides. I'm not here to hold their hands and watch as everyone takes baby steps. I have no doubt the international Jewish community will support their fellow jews. But, who the fuck is supporting the palestinians?! I am concerned with supporting their right to return to their lands they own and have lived on forever. I am concerned with their right to live. I am concerned with their humanness. I will not be quieted just because I don't have a plan for what should happen to the Zionists who are living on stolen land.

And that's my rant for today. There's more where that came from. Just know that I'm sitting with a lot of rage these days. And I want you to be enraged as well. Even though I know you won't be. But, I also wanted to include you in that aspect because by the time I see any of you I have no doubt I will be calmer and more composed. Unfortunate, but true.

And sit with the fact that as you go about your day the U.S. is giving another $15 million dollars to support this apartheid. And they'll do the same tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.... until people wake the fuck up and scream "This is NOT OKAY!" Or something like that...

-Abbie

p.s. don't worry, I'm not gonna throw any stones...But I really really want to sometimes.

2007-01-16T11:42:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part III

The third installment of Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- emails sent back from her trip this month. Re-printed with permission.

Am I boring anyone with my emails yet? Have they made their way to your trash box? I suppose there's enough of you worrying that i find it necessary to let you know that I'm alive and well. There was an invasion by the Israeli army into Ramallah yesterday. People were killed, nobidy here seems all that worried. So, I won't worry. And I won't be in Ramallah for a couple more days. Plenty of time for peace to come to the region.

I am totally spent though. Awake since 1 a.m. due to jetlag. Met the Birthright Unplugged group today. All come from Jewish backgrounds. I wasn't expecting that. It's hard not to feel like an 'other' within this group. they're all good folks though. Lots of them being shaken at the core. I'm being patient. I feel like I've done this group thing before once or twice, though.

Met with Israeli anarchists today. Also met a few people who are part of the World Council of Churches. Picked their brains. Think I'll join them in their merrymaking next week. They join Machsom Watch (check them out!) at checkpoints to make sure people aren't being messed with (although they still are). They also pick up Palestinian cancer patients (kids) who can't make it to the hospital. Good stuff.

Okay. gonna keep this short cause we're headed to Bethlehem in the morn. Just in time to meet the three wise men as they finally get there. I'm sure there'll be some kind of celebration. Although, as I said, I'm with Jews so who knows if I'll get any gold or frankincense. I'll let you know if I meet them along the way.

peace 'n' love 'n' stuff, abbie

2007-01-16T09:38:00.000-06:00

Help Tara Teach Tap

Before I present Abbie's latest Palestinian post, here's a great way to help someone doing something really cool.

Tara Lohr is an ECM alum (2005) who teaches via. Teach for America in a Title 1 middle school in the Bronx, NY. All her students receive free lunch. The school is the site for an after-school program for our students, as well as students from a nearby elementary school.

She has recently begun working in the after-school program as a tap teacher. The program recruits a large variety of staff to give the students exposure to some arts they wouldn’t normally encounter.

Through tap so far, her students have begun learning about a form of dance they’ve never practiced. Soon they will discuss the roots and influences of tap dancing. Perhaps most importantly, the students are getting more physical exercise: exercise they sorely need, as many are not allowed to play outside on their streets. Tap dancing is a great opportunity for them to build strength and express themselves–very loudly–through movement.

However, the same way teachers aren’t given paper for handouts during school, Tara was not provided with tap shoes for my students. The students are currently stomping and shuffling with their sneakers, and asking her every day when we will get our tap shoes.

Tara teaches three groups: 1st and 2nd graders; 3rd and 4th graders; 5th and 6th graders. Together, this totals approximately 50 students. With tap shoes at $20 a pair, She's trying to reach her goal of $1,000 by February 1. You can make this happen. Please donate what you can by clicking here. Thank you!

2007-01-15T21:06:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part II

The second installment of Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- emails sent back from her trip this month. Re-printed with permission.

Dear all,

So, I guess this means I made it. I'm sitting in a hostel in the muslim quarter of the old city (Funny enough it's called the Golden Gate Inn - I'm never far from home). I arrived when the sun was coming up, and now it's long-past gone, so I suppose I made it through my first day. There's a falafel in my belly and a cup of tea to keep me warm. The last call to prayer was about an hour ago, so all is quiet outside. News of shootings today in Bethlehem and Ramallah play on the news in the lobby area. No one seems too concerned.

There's lots I could comment on - my first sight of the Wall; the Israeli who questioned my sanity when I told him to drop me at Damascus Gate; the loud young American Jews on the plane who were bragging about how many times they've come to Israel; the bustling Old City which reminds me of Istanbul and Fez, and other ancient places that appear as ordered chaos; the 7th station of the cross which is a couple doors down from the hostel (where am I?!); the Israeli soldiers with fingers on triggers permeating everywhere...

A side-note that seems slightly relevant...I wandered outside the walls of the Old City in search of St. George's (only saw it in the distance). Along the way I noticed a Palestinian man walking very closely behind me. I turned to let him pass, and he asked where I was headed. Up ahead were a group of Israeli soldiers questioning a van full of people. The man next to me asked if he could walk along beside me, as if he were Jewish, so that the guards wouldn't question him. I faltered, unsure of how one is to react in this situation. Contrary to what I would have done in any other situation were a strange male ask to accompany me, I told him it was fine. We chatted, passed the guards, and then he left. It was surreal.

Tomorrow I meet with the Birthright Unplugged group. I don't know when I'll email again, but know that I've at least made it the first 12 hours, which is usually the biggest hurdle for me. I'm thinking of you all.

With love, Abbie

2007-01-12T08:44:00.000-06:00

Abbie Coburn's Palestine Journal -- Part I

I first met Abbie Coburn very briefly when I was in seminary and she was the young daughter of the co-rector's of my friends' (Manny and LouAnn Faria) parish in Danbury, CT. But I really met Abbie last month on a trip to San Francisco. My friend Kevin Jones hooked us up for a drink one night because he knew this was someone I'd want to know. He was right.

Abbie is pretty amazing -- and she's doing a pretty amazing thing. We sat there over a beer that night and she said she wanted to go somewhere where she could make a difference, where she could see a story that's not being reported on American television. She had chosen the occupied territories of Palestine ... and she wanted to leave in a month. She wanted to go there and learn and be changed and then come back here and tell the religious communities in America what she had learned. Could I help her?

I didn't know if I could help her, but I told her how great I thought her idea was and connected her with some people who might help. Through email, I introduced her to Bob Tobin, former rector of Christ Church, Cambridge, who has dedicated his life to the plight of the Palestinians. I also hooked her up with Michelle Spike, who serves with me on the Standing Commission on Anglican and International Peace with Justice Concerns, who had a conversion experience during her trip to Palestine in 2004 and is now as passionate an advocate as I know for the Palestinians. I also tried to hook her up with Stephanie Rhodes, an ECM alum who spent a semester in Bethlehem and surrounding areas, and Lara Friedman, the legislative director of Americans for Peace Now (and an old high school friend).

And then off Abbie went. And she started sending back these amazingly, brutally honest and eloquent emails to us. Finally, I asked her if I could post them here to begin to share them with a wider audience. She agreed and so here is the first one. This one is more of an introduction, but trust me, they get better and better. I'm heading off to Miami with Robin for the weekend so probably won't get to post another one until Monday evening (so far I've received six from her), but I'll try to do one a day after that so you don't have too much to read and you can feel like you're traveling with her. Once she gets back, I'll get some pictures from her so you can share that part of her story, too.

So with that ... here's Abbie:

Greetings from San Francisco! I hope you all are having a peaceful beginning to the Gregorian New Year. I started mine with a wonderful motorcycle ride along the Pacific coast. Not too shabby...

In any case, the real reason for this email is to let most of you know that in 24 hours I will be on a plane to Palestine where I will spend the next 2 weeks, returning January 17. I will be spending the first week with a group called Birthright Unplugged (www.birthrightunplugged.org), and the second week I think I will be in Jerusalem visiting with Sabeel (a Palestinin christian organization) and connecting with a few other organizations. We shall see.

There are many reasons for this trip and quite a few of you have been included in helping me get to this point, so I wanted to include you in the rest of the journey as well. Some of you are already in Palestine, or have been, doing work that I admire and respect. And some of you knew me long ago, when jetsetting around the globe was a natural occurence in the life of Abbie Coburn, and I wanted to include you in these new adventures.

The conditions in Palestine are getting worse everyday as more Jewish settlements are going up on Palestinian land, and as the wall closing Palestinians in gets longer and higher. I want to be a witness to what is going on there. At this point in my life I don't want to turn my back. Some important people in my life have been witnesses to the atrocities of life in Palestine and the occupied territories. And here in San Francisco there has been quite a bit of teach-ins and demonstrations to show solidarity with Palestinians who are being killed on a daily basis.

However, I have found that while the Jewish peers I have are organizing around solidarity with Palestine, the Christian communities I am part of are not engaged in the conversation. It is as though we, as Christians, don't want to step on anyone's toes. I am looking to change that through this trip and through follow-up work done after this trip. I'll keep you all posted as those thoughts develop. Where to go from here? I also want to encourage you to challenge me and help me in how to proceed from here. Many of you were witnesses to South African apartheid, and can help to bringing an end to what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza.

As many of you can attest to I have not been known for my mass emailing capabilities, however I feel that I am not taking this trip just for myself, but rather for the purpose of being able to converse with all of you about it. And to hopefully find ways to encourage others to get involved to stop the apartheid happening in Palestine. So, for better or worse, you can expect to hear quite frequently from me in the next two weeks.

In the meantime, know that you all are on this list because you have made a difference in my life and have helped me get to this exciting place in my life. I hope you are well and enjoying yourself.

With love,
Abbie Coburn

P.S. And don't worry - I'll be safe!

2007-01-10T12:21:00.000-06:00

The ONE Campaign, of which the Episcopal Church is a partner, is putting out an urgent call for everyone to call or email their senators and representatives TODAY to co-sign bi-partisan letters to protect nearly a billion dollars in critical funding to fight extreme poverty and AIDS -- most of which would be taken from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (the most effective multilateral organization addressing these diseases).

You can do this by calling 1-800-786-2663 and using the talking points below. You can also email directly from the ONE Campaign site.

The Episcopal Church embraced the ONE Campaign in resolution D022 last summer and called on the U.S. government to continue to make a fair-share contribution to the Global Fund in D054 in 2003. Some other notes about the Global Fund:

*The Global Fund (a multilateral initiative) is working in 130 countries – expanding prevention as well as treatment. (Compare this with the president's bilateral initiative - PEPFAR - which is doing good work but in only 15 countries)

*The Global Fund provides 3/4 of all global HIV spending, 2/3 of TB spending, 1/2 of malaria spending.

*The Global Fund has put 400,000 people on lifesaving treatment

*The Global Fund has treated one million people for TB

Here you can find more information on the Global Fund, more info on Global AIDS and info about what ERD is doing about Global AIDS.

Now, here are all the details from ONE Campaign buddy Kim Smith:

Right now $1 billion in funding to fight poverty has been eliminated from the United States budget. Congress is set to pass a year long Budget Continuing Resolution which will keep government funding at 2006 levels through 2007. This means that almost a billion dollars to fund the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty could be lost. Please call your Senators and congressperson now to ask that they support funding that fight against Global AIDS. Urge your leaders to fully fund the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty.

Call 1-800-786-2663 today and ask your two senators and congressman to support fully funding the fight against global AIDS and extreme poverty.

It is not too late, if we work together as ONE we can make a difference. Currently, there is a bipartisan and bicameral effort to support life saving funding. Senators Richard Durbin and Sam Brownback and Representatives Barbara Lee and Christopher Shays are circulating “Dear Colleague” letters to protect additional funding allocated to fight global AIDS, TB, and Malaria in 2007. Urge your congressional leaders to sign onto this “Dear Colleague” letter today!

Make the difference and call your members of congress today: call 1-800-786-2663 today to be connected to your senators and Representative. Remember to tell them:

*I am a constituent of YOUR TOWN in YOUR STATE.

* You're calling with the ONE campaign- an effort started by Americans to unite as ONE voice to fight extreme poverty and global HIV/AIDS.

* You're calling to ask your Members of Congress to sign on to the Senate’s Durbin-Brownback and House’s Lee-Shays “Dear Colleague” letter to protect $1 billion in life-saving funding to fight extreme poverty, AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

Thank you for joining ONE in taking action to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty. Your voice will make a difference!

Other information you can share:
* Please also tell them it is imperative that this funding be additional to other poverty fighting assistance.
* Make sure to emphasize the urgency of this issue. Those living in extreme poverty can not wait a year for assistance, they need the help now.
* Without this additional funding as many as 350,000 people with HIV/AIDS will not receive life-sustaining treatment. Nearly 1 million anti-malarial bednets will not be distributed, and 120,000 people will not receive treatment for tuberculosis.

Kimberly Smith
ONE Regional Field Organizer
kim@one.org
502-475-5564

2007-01-09T15:17:00.000-06:00

The Lynching of Iraq

Excellent op-ed piece in the Boston Globe yesterday by James Carroll. To get the whole thing you have to register with the Globe website -- but it's free and worth it to read this piece.

THE HANGING of Saddam Hussein Dec. 30 offered a view into the grotesque reality of what America has sponsored in Iraq, and what Americans saw should inform their response to President Bush's escalation of the war.

The deposed tyrant was mercilessly taunted. As he stood on the threshold of the afterlife and was told to go to hell, the world witnessed a chilling elevation of the ancient curse, making an absolute villain an object of pity.

And then, in chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose family had been a particular target of Hussein's his executioners made clear that the execution was an act of tribal revenge, not of national restoration, much less justice. It was a lynching. This Shi'ite brutality is guaranteed to spawn Sunni savagery. Iraq itself is hell.

Officials of the United States, from military commanders in Baghdad to members of the Bush administration in Washington, sought to distance themselves from the bedlam, but they are essential to what happened at the last moments of Saddam's life. Decorum would have been the main note of his death if Americans had managed it, but the execution would have been no less an act of false justice.

The harsh fact is that the Shi'ite dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki, in its contemptible treatment of a man about to die, laid bare the dark truth of Bush's war. This is what revenge looks like, and revenge (not weapons of mass destruction, not democracy) drove the initial US attack on Saddam Hussein every bit as much as it snuffed out his life at the end. The hooded executioners took their cue from George W. Bush.

And why should they not have? Let's remember who this man is. As governor of Texas, he presided over the executions of 152 people, including the first woman put to death in Texas in a century. Her name was Karla Faye Tucker. Bush's response to the world-wide plea raised in her behalf was an astounding display of cruelty, a mocking imitation of the woman begging not to be killed.

Bush rejected appeals for clemency in every death penalty case that came before him. The Texas death chamber, with its lethal injection gurney, is a place of decorum. And savagery. That executions defined the main public distinction that Bush brought to the US presidency sums up the national disgrace, while suggesting also how little surprise there should be that America is presided over now by an executioner-in-chief.

Read the rest here.

2006-12-22T18:45:00.000-06:00

Who will define Africa?

One of the things that bothers me more and more about the aid and development industry (the "aid industrial complex?" is the great possibility that it is creating a welfare state writ large. My friend Josh Ruxin in Mayange says (and I agree) that the problem with most aid and development agencies is they don't realize that their job is to put themselves out of business.

My dream for EGR is that by 2015 we have become irrelevant. The Millennium Development Goals have been achieved and we are on to what's next. As we look to build a companion relationship with Lui in Southern Sudan, how can we create a relationship that is not one of dependence. Where we each bring to the table what we have to offer, what we have to be appreciated. Where we can marvel at each other and help each other.

An example I gave of this at our last companion diocese meeting is the problem of race. It exists both in Lui and in St. Louis. Both places are full of racial strife that spills over into violence. How can we learn from each other? How can we teach each other out of our own experience?

I stumbled upon this letter by South African president Thabo Mbeki called "Who will define Africa?" It's a scathing critique of how Western journalists portray Africa as being defined by poverty and corruption -- and never report anything else.

It's a great letter. Anyone who has been to Africa knows there is poverty but also knows there is so much more. It is the cradle of civilization. There are amazing people doing amazing things. There is beauty and courage and industriousness and creativity.

Mbeki's concern is that Africa will let the Western media define who it is and will become that definition.

It's a real concern ... and it goes hand-in-hand with the problems of much of the aid industry.

It looks like I'll be going to Rwanda this spring, and I'm thrilled. Not to see what has happened there, but to see what is happening. Rwandans rebuilding their country. We need to hear those stories. We need to hear them much more.

Mbeki begins:

Everyday the African and global media publish articles about Africa, based on events that have taken place on our continent. In time, these stories begin to define who and what we are. In due course, as we come to believe the resultant image of ourselves, we also begin to act the part.

For some years now, our continent has been engaged in a sustained effort to change the lives of our people for the better. The 30 July democratic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the great rally at the Union
Buildings in Pretoria on 9 August to promote the emancipation of women, stand out as but two examples both of the good news emanating from Africa, and what our continent is doing to redefine itself.

It is in this context that many on our continent and elsewhere in the world have, once again, as reflected in the reports we cite below, raised the issue of consistent and seemingly compulsive negative reporting about Africa.

Read the whole thing here.

2006-12-22T18:35:00.000-06:00

War is too bad a phenomenon to be returned

This article in New Sudan Vision, was written by Nhial Tiitmamer de Nhial - a Sudanese based in Canada. It is a lament in the same order of what I spilled out a few days ago -- only particular to one who has seen his land torn apart by war for more than two decades.

It begins:

War is too bad a phenomenon to be returned
Friday 22 December 2006

By Nhial Tiitmamer de Nhial

Dec 21, 2006 — Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish satirist and historian
wrote, " Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with
clenched teeth, and hellfire eyes, hacking one an other's flesh,
converting precious living bodies and precious living souls into
nameless masses of putrescent, useful only for turnip manure."

How many times have many precious bodies and souls been converted into
putrescent masses useful for manure? How many times have the birds of
the air and the animals of the wild been feasting on the precious
bodies of our loved ones? Enough is enough. War is too bad a
phenomenon to be returned. Let us seek dialogues and seek no more wars
to put an end to more woes. This piece is a lamentation of the souls.
It is the voice of love drowned in the sea of hatred. At some points
in time; my heart is loaded with optimism and at other times, I take a
heavy dose of pessimism.

My optimism lies in our ability to put our embattled past behind us
and accommodate each other's differences to give chance to peace. A
chance to peace will not only save life but it will also be an impetus
to development, eradication of poverty and diseases.

I get drowned in a heavy dose of pessimism when setbacks to peace in
Sudan strike. The shocking events of the last few weeks in South Sudan
are a painful slap in the face of peace. These events are a vivid
indictment of our resolve to incorporate the values of peace into our
blood stream. The Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Sudan
Armed Forces (SAF) with its militia broke the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement (CPA) resulting in the drowning of the city of Malakal in a
heavy flood of blood.

Yes, war is too bad a phenomenon to be wished to return. It bears some
of the deadly woes that have rocked our society since time immemorial.
War does not only take innocent souls but it also corrupts the
people's morals and their ability to think fairly and make sound
judgement.It robs them of age old ethical values that distinguish
mankind from animals.

Read the entire post here.

2006-12-19T11:53:00.000-06:00

Children, Soldiers, Child Soldiers

Berkeley got me up at about midnight last night needing to go outside, and while I waited for her to finish up in the backyard I started channel surfing and came across the last hour of "Saving Private Ryan."

I've never understood war. I just don't understand what makes people feel they have to kill each other. That sounds incredibly naive, but it's really how I feel. I get how power corrupts. To some extent, I get how sin and brokenness work. I get how sometimes force might even be necessary as a lesser evil to prevent a greater evil. I can even understand the geopolitics and psychology involved in war. But what I just can't understand is why people kill each other.

And so I'm watching the final scenes of SPR and watching the American and German soldiers killing each other. I'm listening to Ryan tell Captain Miller about his brothers -- knowing that they have all been killed in the war. I'm listening to Capt. Miller tell Ryan about picturing his wife working in the garden with a pair of his work gloves -- knowing in a few minutes that he'll be dead, too.

And I'm thinking -- don't people get how horrible this kind of death is? Why would people knowingly do this to each other. It's bad enough when someone dies peacefully after a long life - -when we lose our grandparents, parents, favorite aunts and friends. It's bad enough when a six-year-old dies of leukemia or when a 21-year old dies is a stupid car accident. And yes, I believe that nothing -- not even death -- can separate us from the love of God ... but that doesn't make it not suck.

And so as I'm watching these soliders kill each other very graphically -- so graphically that it's tough to watch, what is troubling and fascinating me and bringing tears to my eyes is knowing that every one of those people - American and German -- had a mother who will cry when they get the news. They had brothers and sisters and friends.

I was in Schroedter's class yesterday afternoon for his birthday celebration (his birthday is Thursday, after school is out, so the party was yesterday). And as I'm looking at this movie, I think about all the kids in his class -- Ben and Ethan and Richard and Emma and Matthew and Jack and Diego and Skyler and all of them -- and I'm thinking that every one of those soldiers was once a child like this, who played at school, who had 8th birthday parties, and whose life would end with a bullet or a grenade far from home.

Why? War is reported like a ball score. We never see the fear. We're not even allowed to see the coffins coming off the plane anymore -- because that would be too disturbing.

I was watching my latest Aaron Sorkin addiction, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" last night while scrubbing the floor upstairs. There's a great story line that just started. The fictional network (NBS) is being fined millions and millions of dollars by the FCC because during a live news interview with a soldier in Afghanistan, a rocket propelled grenade slammed into some rocks just feet from the soldier who, predictably, swore. Only it was live and the offending word got carried over live TV and now the FCC was fining the network for an obscenity violation. The slightly heavy-handed point being that our definition of obscenity is WAY off and that our view of war is incredibly sanitized ... and that's a problem.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe not. Probably there is no "the problem" but instead a whole bunch of problems. But I still don't understand.

I lay in bed last night unable to sleep after seeing this movie. I kept thinking about Schroedter and Hayden. Thinking that if they were over in Iraq right now that I would never be able to sleep at all. That all I would want to do is catch the first plane over there and shield them with my body -- not only to not let them die but to keep them from being caught up in this infection that is violence.

Why do we turn our children into soldiers? Not a new question ... but not one that has ever been sufficiently answered. Watching "Invisible Children," and in my own travels in southern Sudan what broke my heart more than anything were the children turned into soldiers. The 14 year olds walking around with AK-47s. I don't understand. Do we not see how terrible this is?

I came across this photo (above) in an amazing photo essay from Darfur in Vanity Fair. This one caught my eye and wouldn't let it go. How old is this child? When Robin used to teach at Grant Elementary School in Columbia, MO she talked about "children without souls" -- kids who had been so beaten down by even the kind of material and emotional poverty that exists in Mid-Missouri that there was an emptiness and disconnection behind their eyes. Mostly young girls of color who had been convinced that the world didn't care about them and who had walled themselves off so it couldn't reach them and hurt them. If it was that bad in Columbia, MO, how much worse is it here?

I know this is a rant. I don't have any answers. I guess this is the definition of "bleeding heart," huh? I know there are lots of arguments for war. I know the irony that in Darfur what is probably most needed is an armed force to come in and stop the killing. And that means other people's sons and daughters will die ... but at least they'll be dying trying to prevent killing, trying to stop it from happening. I guess that's what those soldiers in SPR were doing, too. But there are sure a lot of places where that's not what is happening. And it still doesn't answer the Why question. Why does the killing start in the first place?

It's Advent. I think I need this season more than ever. When Jesus was born, things were looking pretty bleak. The people of Israel were living under occupation. Mary and Joseph having to schlep to Bethlehem to be counted and taxed. Poverty everywhere. I wonder what the child mortality statistics were. I wonder if the incarnation happened other times before the person of Jesus ... only for the child to die ... and maybe the reason we know about Jesus is he just happened to be the one who lived to adulthood.

And yet into all this, God comes. Quietly. Beautifully. In a child. Small and vulnerable. In "Wake Up, Dead Man," U2 sings:

Jesus,
Jesus, help me
I'm alone in this world
and a fucked-up world it is, too

God didn't say "wow -- y'all have really, really fucked up this world and I'm going to leave it to you." No, God said, "wow, this IS really fucked up and I'm going to come right in the middle of it and just be with you." God didn't come with the answer to the why question. God came in the midst of the why question. God became the voice of sanity in the midst of the insanity. And the insanity killed him. But the dead man woke up.

And that's what we're supposed to do. Not understand it. Just follow. Follow the star to the manger and gaze with wonder at the child -- my child, your child, the child with the AK-47 in Darfur -- any child. Seek out God's presence in the midst of the fucked-up world. Realize that God hasn't given up on us and we can't give up either. Pray for the courage of Christ to see each other as God sees us -- as beloved children. When the world tells us to kill, we must say no. When the world tries to co-opt us into its systems of power, tries to crown us king in Jerusalem, we are to say no -- we are of a different power. A power of love. A power that says the greatest good is service. A power that says that its favored locus is not upon the throne but on the scaffold, in the ghetto, in the refugee camp, in the child standing a post against the janjaweed.

And when the world shows us that child, maybe our job is to be the voice of sanity in the insanity. Maybe it is to hold up a mirror to the world and say "Why? Have we stopped to think about what we're doing?" Maybe for us, being the Body of Christ is to be Mary at the foot of the cross weeping ... seeing the world through a mother's eyes.

As Captain Miller dies, he pulls Ryan close and says "Earn this." And Ryan spends the rest of his life trying to make sure his life is worthy of the sacrifice so many others made so he might live.

The paradox of Advent and Christmas is that Captain Miller was right and wrong at the same time. We need to make our lives mean something. That's not a burden but an opportunity. Life is sacred. That's what makes death, particularly senseless death, so unbelieveably obscene and ridiculous. We need to live lives worthy of the gift.

And yet the good news of Advent and Christmas is that God's grace and love is not something we have to earn. In fact, it's God's promise that no matter how little we really do "earn it," no matter how long the question "why?" goes unanswered, no matter how long the forces of death seem to win, God isn't going to leave us alone.

2006-12-18T11:54:00.000-06:00

The Quotable Rumsfeld
As of this morning, Donald Rumsfeld is officially no longer Secretary of Defense. Crooks and Liars has posted a compendium of some of his most famous quotes.

Among my favorites:

"[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive."

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."

"It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." -in Feb. 2003

"Secretary Powell and I agree on every single issue that has ever been before this administration except for those instances where Colin's still learning."

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know."

and my favorite...

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

Read the whole list here.

2006-12-13T16:15:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the world, Luke Alexander Gaynor!

My old friend, Christie Chatfield Gaynor, is the happy mother of Luke Alexander Gaynor. He arrived on Dec. 2nd at 4:31pm, 7 lbs. 10 oz., full head of long brown/blond/redish hair and big blue eyes. Christie, husband Joe, and Alexander are doing wonderfully.

2006-12-11T21:38:00.000-06:00

Five Years

So, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna liven up the cold, stand-offish intellectualism of our group? We'll smile and giggle and tickle Michelle and laugh at Doug and hit Noah and tease Rob and hug Stratton and abuse Mike until we accentuate everyone's flaws and force them to realize that we see through their personas and love them anyway and that they'll just have to get over the terrible shock of being loved and being happy. :) Then we'll be a fuzzy warm cuddly community and we can start reaching out b/c we won't have to focus on our own problems anymore.

Yes, I know, it's a fairly overly simplistic and idealistic and possibly even blind solution, but I do truly believe that all anyone wants is to be told that he/she is failing miserably at "being" what he/she wants to be (that is "being" is present tense and "wants to be" is future. The two cannot, logically, coexist unless you are God, which we are not.) Anyway, that we all see what he/she is now, which is nothing extraordinary or underordinary. . . that all he/she wants is to be loved and adored and to have people seriously interested in his/her well-being is what makes them so lovable. . . that he/she craves and fears being so vulnerable and TRUTHFUL is what we love most about them. I know that personally if everyone saw me as a confused mass of contradictions and idiosyncrasies with nothing brilliant or even interesting about it and loved me simply for existing and wanting to be loved, I would not know what to do with myself and would most likely respond by being totally secure. And in that security I would become sincere and would lavish love on everyone b/c I really am interested in everyone else and want to love them and be part of their lives.

So. . . what's my conclusion? That we are fallen. We are not God. That we will never be anywhere close to perfect. Some of us are deformed, some are not so quick, some of us are weak, some of us are downright weird. We all are constantly sinning and, even worse we are all FAILING in every thing we do b/c we are striving for that perfect image of self. So, let's just admit it: we are not brilliant, we may not get that job or make that audition, we may not be as attractive as we would like to be, we may fear that there is something wrong with us, we may have no idea of who we are or exactly what we believe, we may fear that life is meaningless and that if we clear away all the nonsense around us we'll find that we are nothing at all. . . but So What?!!!! That's what we are! If we lay ourselves bare, if we admit that our goodness and badness are integral, inseparable parts of our beings and that we are STILL, after ALL OF THAT, LOVEABLE, than we can stop hiding. we can begin to love. And it is in doing that that we encounter God. And we are no longer nothing. We still have faults which we can work on without concealing, but we realize that we are nothing without God, and that that is something to be celebrated and not feared.

It was five years ago tonight that Julia McNeely died. Five years ago on a rainy stretch of road near Louise, Mississippi.

This strange twist my life has taken -- to places like Ghana and Sudan and being executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation -- in a weird way it all goes back to Julia. To the coffee we had at Bread Co. when she showed me her pictures of Kenya. To her inviting Blair Henneke into ECM to share all the work she was doing in Tanzania with TEAM.

I'm proud of all my students. I love them. They have made me the person and priest I am today. I have learned so much from them. The words above are from an email Julia sent me late one Sunday night after a particularly frustrating Bible study group. She was only a freshman, and I remember thinking, "Wow. This kid's really got it." I was so impressed, I forwarded it to the House of Bishops and Deputies list of the Episcopal Church ... hoping some of her wisdom would penetrate that dense forest! Mostly, though, I was grateful she had penetrated mine.

I think about Julia all the time. I think about her every time I break the bread at the altar. I think about her every time I see pictures of crowds of children following people in places like Nairobi (or when I'm the one those crowds are chasing). Mostly, I think of her when I'm dashing through airports on my way to my next destination to talk about the Millennium Development Goals, knowing that somewhere she's watching me and smiling that wispy smile that means she thinks it's really cool and quite amusing what I'm spending my life doing.

And I still have the dream. Not as often, but I still have it. That we're all together. Everyone. Sarah, Amber, Cori, Noah, Stratton, Rob, Laurie, Ryan, Johnny, Jen, Steve ... and David ... and on and on. And then Julia walks in. And everyone just surrounds her. And we're together. And what was broken is whole. And I just stand back ... and watch.

But until then, I'll just try not to forget what Julia taught me. If we lay ourselves bare, if we admit that our goodness and badness are integral, inseparable parts of our beings and that we are STILL, after ALL OF THAT, LOVEABLE, than we can stop hiding. we can begin to love. And it is in doing that that we encounter God. And we are no longer nothing. We still have faults which we can work on without concealing, but we realize that we are nothing without God, and that that is something to be celebrated and not feared.

That kid really did have it.

2006-12-11T11:57:00.000-06:00

Goodbye, you lizard scum

If Bill Hicks were still alive, he would LOVE "24".

Today is tedious paperwork catch-up day, so I'm watching Season Five of 24 while I pound away at financials and other stuff. This time, it's cannisters of nerve gas that Jack Bauer & co. are trying to prevent being spritzed all over L.A. And that's just today. Previously, Los Angelinos have been threatened by nukes, dirty bombs, Islamic terrorist types and biotoxins.

Oh, and if CTU Los Angeles calls you for a temp job, I'd think twice. They've got the lifespan of the average housefly -- and if you live, chances are you'll be hauled in for "medical interrogation" at some point. Hope they've got dental.

And you thought the smog, traffic and skin cancer were enough reason to move out of SoCal.

Another Monday midday musing:

Got to change the title of this blog. Even if you read the C.S. Lewis quote, there's no way around how self-important it sounds. Looking for better ideas. Got any?

2006-12-07T21:11:00.000-06:00

Some quick, excellent reads, views and to-dos

*ECM alum and new priest the Rev. Amber Stancliffe Evans blogs about the MDGs, eschatological imagination and a conversation with a friend on IrreverentEpiphanies.
*In case you missed it, 60 Minutes on Sunday aired the amazing story of Immaculee llibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who is now a tireless worker for reconciliation in that country and genocide prevention around the world. You can read the text of the story and see the video online here.
*Go to www.savedarfur.org and sign the online petition. Yes, I know, online petitions are one of the weakest forms of political expression, but it does only take about 15 seconds.
*Read this moving story about the return of Christ --- to the NBA (but the Hawks?).
*And after taking that elbow to the sternum from Salim Stoudamire in practice, our Lord and Savior can always patch up with a Jesus adhesive bandage (courtesy of the good folks at "Jesus of the Week"). Now, what could the "free toy inside" be???
*This article in the Guardian that reports (suprise!) that 1% of the world owns 40% of the world's wealth.
*Finally, you could bop by my brother Ian's blog -- A Good World -- he's always got an eclectic collection of thought-provoking or just plain bizarre stuff to read. Then leave him a nice comment -- he turns 40 today!

2006-12-07T16:22:00.000-06:00

Millennials, Disrupter Man and Death of the Church

Three interesting articles in USA Today today. Two about the Millennial Generation (sometimes called "Gen Y" or the "echo Boomers") and the third about Niklas Zennstrom, the "Disrupter Man" -- the founder of Kazaa and Skype (two businesses that took things that were centralized and controlled -- entertainment and telecommunications - and broke them into open access and individual control), who is now turning his sights on network television.

Taken together, these three articles (and I have to say, they're true to my own limited experience) paint a picture of a large, rising generation that is VERY different from the Boomers and Xers. While the Xers largely eschewed institutions, the Millennials are either radically remaking current ones or -- more often -- building completely new ones.

It's interesting to read these in the context of the unending wrangling over who owns the Anglican Communion and what the Primates are going to do and who gets the property and the friends. It's also interesting to read in the context of every side trying to spin declining membership in mainline denominations to prop up their particular position.

Ten years ago, Mike Regele wrote a very popular (at the time) book called "Death of the Church." The buzz around it at the time seems to have been forgotten in the largely Boomer-waged culture wars of the first decade of this century -- but it's proving to be pretty prophetic. Regele's thesis was that the institutional church in America was going to look very different in 25 (now 15) years -- some denominations would die out, all would be radically effected. This wasn't a threat to the Gospel because the Gospel has lasted 2,000 years in spite of humanity's efforts to equate preserving institutions with preserving the Gospel! But, with a direct parallel to the heart of our faith, the churches that would survive to be vessels of the Gospel for and by the next generations would be the ones who would embrace death of their current structures so that something new and wonderful could emerge.

I often quote a Kiwi church planter I met named Andrew Jones once who said "Churches spend too much time asking God to bless what they're doing. What they should be doing is looking around at what God is already doing and asking "How can we bless that?"

I believe much of what we are doing in the church is fighting over what of our actions and structures God is blessing -- believing that "claiming that blessing" will ensure us of eternal life. We are forgetting that God doesn't need the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion! In fact, while we muck about, God is alive and well and wonderful things are going on within the church and certainly without it.

It seems to me what this rising generation is great at is blessing what God is already doing and in being blessed vehicles of God doing pretty cool stuff. I don't see them spending a lot of time (or any, really) fighting about what "the institution" is fighting about. They're out seeking and serving. Some of them are doing it in the church ... but more and more they're doing it outside the church. Creating their own structures and ministries.

A key question for us is --- how can we become a church that values the entrepreneurial gifts of this generation, encourages them, resources them, celebrates them? Another is ... Can we be our own "Disrupter Man" -- breaking open closed systems to maximize creativity -- or will we be the companies that cling to outmoded systems while the world passes us by?

But the real question is the one Regele asked in 1996 -- Are we willing to let much of what we equate with "the church" die so that something new and wonderful can emerge?

And, as Regele said back then, our answer to that question will not determine the future -- only whether we will be dragged kicking and screaming into it or run to embrace it.

In case you're interested in the articles, the first is -- "Gen Y makes a mark and their imprint is entrepreneurship" and it begins

They've got the smarts and the confidence to get a job, but increasing numbers of the millennial generation — those in their mid-20s and younger — are deciding corporate America just doesn't fit their needs.

So armed with a hefty dose of optimism, moxie and self-esteem, they are becoming entrepreneurs.

"People are realizing they don't have to go to work in suits and ties and don't have to talk about budgets every day," says Ben Kaufman, 20, founder of a company that makes iPod accessories. "They can have a job they like. They can create a job for themselves."

Read the rest here.

The second is a sidebar called "Companies slow to adjust to work-life balance concerns of Gen Y" and it begins

Businesses are struggling to keep pace with a new generation of young people entering the workforce, who have starkly different attitudes and desires than employees over the past few decades.

"We're at the tip of the iceberg," says Steve Miranda, of the Society for Human Resource Management, in Alexandria, Va. "The next 10 to 15 years will bring significant changes to expectations of what employers need to provide.

Workers born since the early 1980s (known as millennials, Generation Y or echo boomers) crave a more collaborative work environment and detest drudgery, say workplace analysts. They want a work-life balance, which is often at odds with the values of the corporate world.

Read the rest here.

And the "Disruptor Man" article is here.

2006-12-04T10:59:00.000-06:00

Amber is a priest!!!

Saturday, ECM alum Amber Stancliffe Evans was ordained a priest at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Emily Mellott and I were there to present her on behalf of the Diocese of Missouri and it was just an amazing event ... as was the next morning when Amber celebrated her first Eucharist at Church of the Epiphany in San Carlos, where she is the Associate for Youth and Children's Ministry.

And before you go any further -- click over here to read Amber's reflections on her ordination and priesthood!

Another highlight was getting to see another ECM'er, Christine Stanley, who is in medical school at University of San Francisco and is doing a surgery rotation in Fresno. Also got to spend the night with another ECM'er, Michelle Davis Shaw, and her husband, Adam (see wedding pictures below), who had to put up with a very tired me after a wonderful but exhausting ordination and after-party.

For all my photos from the ordination and Sunday morning, go to my Flickr page. These are to get you started. More later when Amber's parishioner Millie (shown above getting a blessing from the new priest) sends me hers. The second picture is Amber with some of her "senior seekers" high school group -- part of a truly amazing ministry God is working through her at Epiphany.

2006-11-28T11:30:00.000-06:00

Suffering, humility and servanthood

The finest preacher I know (and I've heard a LOT of sermons) is Becca Stevens. She's also one of the finest priests and just finest people I know. She preaches and lives the Gospel with such light.

Every fall break, ECM goes down to be with the women of Magdalene House -- the amazing community of women breaking the cycle of abuse that comes with the life of street prostitution in Nashville, TN.

I checked out the sermon from the Oct. 22 -- the Sunday the ECM students were there last month -- and it is one of her very best. It's called "suffering, humility and servanthood" and it is as good a sermon as I have ever heard about the Christian life.

You can hear it yourself by going here - it's the audio of the whole service, so if you're in a hurry, you'll have to fast forward to the sermon. But if you've got time, listen from the beginning because the spirit of the congregation shows through in the liturgy and music.

She closes her sermon with these words -- so if you don't have time to listen, you can just sit with these:

"God forgive us when we're ever not humbled that people ever let us serve them. And God forgive us when our theology becomes a position to defend and not a story of serving others in our lives. May our theology be our story unfolding in service. And may God continue to get us to come round right to be compassionate to others in their suffering, to be humble in our own lives and to desire to serve our God."

2006-11-24T12:25:00.000-06:00

Schroedter has a blog!

When Schroedter was born, my brother bought the domain www.schroedter.com for him (having a unique name like Schroedter comes in handy when you're doing things like getting a website). Unfortunately because his dad only has cursory knowledge of things like building a website, and trying to guide a 6-7 year old through designing something with DreamWeaver should be against the Geneva Convention, we never put much up on the site.

Then my mom had the brilliant idea last night of setting up a blog for him. It's much easier to set up, still a lot of room for flexibility of design and anytime he wants to put something new on it won't be a a new adventure in torture-by-html.

So here it is -- schroedter.blogspot.com. Once I get my act together, I'll work through my brother and brother-in-law (who hosts schroedter.com through the most excellent Carpathia hosting (where he is COO) to transfer hosting of the site to schroedter.com so he can make use of that great URL.

So, the coolest thing you could do right now is go to it and leave a comment on his first post so he'll get even more excited about it. One can only hope he's more faithful updating it than his dad!

2006-11-24T12:07:00.000-06:00

Wedding Photos!
I've been long delinquent in posting photos from the two 2006 ECM weddings I officiated -- Michelle & Adam's (June in Detroit)and Ryan & Amanda's (October in Natchez, MS).

Instead of putting them all on the blog, I've posted them to my Flickr account so you can look at them all there.

But here's one from each just to get you started. The first is Michelle Davis and her maid of honor, Stephanie Rhodes (also an ECM alum and two-year roommate of Michelle). This was taken just a few minutes before the ceremony. The wedding was at a beautiful country club on an island near Detroit. It was an outdoor wedding that combined elements of Adam's Jewish tradition and Michelle's Episcopal tradition (the second time I've done a Jewish-Christian wedding ... though the first I was on firmer footing as I had a rabbi with me!).

Ryan and Amanda were also at the wedding. And speaking of Ryan and Amanda, here they are! Their wedding was at Trinity Episcopal Church in Natchez, MS. It was a gorgeous day -- about 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Couldn't have been more perfect! The wedding was late afternoon, but they took pictures before -- including ones like this one taken just a block or so away from the church. Oh, and Michelle and Adam came out from San Francisco for this one, too.

2006-11-20T11:30:00.000-06:00

GREAT U2Charist Ad!

Here's a great ad for a U2charist service at St. Matthew's in the city in Auckland, NZ. You can find other videos and a cool billboard here.

2006-11-02T12:07:00.000-06:00

All Souls Day

A friend of mine on my Gen X clergy listserv sent us this website -- the Boomer DeathCounter -- which is great in its own way. But mostly, I'm writing about it because it made me think of another one -- The Death Clock -- which, after entering some very basic information, gives you your own personal day of death (mine is Thursday, Oct. 27, 2067) and then has a ticking counter of how many seconds you have to live.

I preached on this once -- perhaps it was the passage about "all the hairs on your head being numbered" or something like that. But I think it's a powerful spiritual reminder in this culture that is so much into denying death that even though the DeathClock probably isn't getting it exactly right, every one of us has a personal day of death, and every one of us has that ticking clock.

My mentor, the Rev. Jim Fallis, who died a couple summers back, talked with me once about "living as if you believe." I think about that all the time. There are all sorts of things I believe with varying degrees of doubt and certitude ... but the key question is "Do I live AS IF I believe them?" Do I live as if I believe my life is a precious gift and is at once the scarce resource of the ticking clock and the eternal abundance of eternal life in Christ? Do I live as if I am aware of that clock and yet not afraid of it? Do I live as if I trust God to take care of all who and that really matters to me and not feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders and that everything would fall apart if I were not there? What if I get hit by a bus on the way to the Thai Cafe in 20 minutes? What if my death clock is ticking down to zero right now? (By the way, if that happens, someone please direct to this site whomever preaches my funeral homily -- it will at least be kind of cool and exceptionally spooky to be that prescient!) Do I live as if I believe God will take care of everything just fine without me?

I remember the morning after Jim died. I was driving around and started thinking that, for all appearances, it was a day like any other day. Only it wasn't. For the first time in 75-odd years -- and for the first day in my life, Jim Fallis wasn't drawing breath on this earth. The world seemed a little poorer. Mostly, it just seemed weird. Even more, I just felt small. Like there was a whole universe out there that I didn't have a clue about. That the comings and goings of life were a small part of that and I was only a small part of that small part. But that somehow, God was there and it didn't really matter if I had a clue about it -- only that I lived as if I believed God was there.

I think that's why I love All Souls day. Even more than Ash Wednesday every year, All Souls reminds me that in the end we're all worm food -- that the Death Clock ticks for us all. That's weird -- and it's a weird that I just need to sit with. As much as I love my life. And even more, as much as I love the lives of my wife, my kids, my family, the ECM students I've had the past 10 years, my friends -- they're all this weird combination of incredibly precious and incredibly fragile ... embodiments all at once of the scarcity of life and the abundance of eternity.

Jim Fallis and Julia McNeely. Grace Bush and my maternal grandmother. Scott Barker's brother and the four-month old child Dahn Gandell buried last month. The nameless (to us) legions killed in Iraq and Darfur this day. The child who died of malaria while I type this sentence. All Souls. All precious. All somehow connected in ways I can't even begin to fathom.

And someday I will join them. And when I do, I believe I'll find they were never really that far away -- and that my journey to meet them is a journey from scarcity into a greater abundance than this feeble mind can imagine.

In the meantime, it's up to me to live as if I believe that.

2006-11-01T17:23:00.000-06:00

A Muslim Voice: The Disgrace of Darfur

Aijaz Zaka Syed of the Khaleej Times writes this about Darfur from a perspective we usually don't hear in this country:

THIS is an issue that has been staring us in the face for the past three years now. Over 300,000 people dead; three million driven from their homes and a country at war with itself. Darfur remains a huge challenge for the conscience of the Arab and Muslim world and an ever growing black spot on its visage.

Why are the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, otherwise swift to protest any slight or perceived injustice in any part of the globe, then silent on the shame of this great humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Sudan’s Darfur?

For one, most Arabs and Muslims, an overwhelming majority of them, do not really know what is going on in Darfur. For two, they suspect that the hue and cry of the West over Darfur and its indignant condemnation of Sudan are politically motivated, as always. Most Arabs and Muslims believe that the West has an axe to grind in seeking action against Sudan on the question of Darfur. Given the current tendency in the West to target everything Islamic, this suspicion is not really without basis.

Indeed, the Islamic world has every reason to be distrustful of Western motives in seeking action against Africa’s largest, Muslim-majority and Arabic speaking country. After all, the Middle East and Africa share a long history of manipulation and exploitation by the colonial West over the past couple of centuries.

The West may indeed have an agenda in pushing for an international peacekeeping force in Darfur. Many in Sudan suspect, and not without reason, that the Western concern for the people of Darfur is motivated by a greed for the country’s rich natural resources. Sudan is home to huge and largely untapped energy resources.

But even if the West’s interest in Darfur is driven by its political and economic interests, should the Muslim world ignore the larger issue at stake? That is, the endless and systematic ethnic cleansing of the people of Darfur?

Read the whole article here.

2006-11-01T15:34:00.000-06:00

Nightmare on Pershing Ave.

Halloween has come and gone and fun was had by all -- especially by the boys who went as Yoda and Darth Schroedter. Observe!

2006-10-30T10:12:00.000-06:00

Advertising Terrorism

Once again, I've dropped off the face of the earth ... and so much has happened to post about. Ryan and Amanda's wedding in Natchez (and I still need to post pictures from Michelle and Adam's wedding in Detroit in June!), more about Rwanda, and of course, the Cardinals winning the World Series!

I'm just back from a weekend in Rhode Island preaching and speaking at their diocesan convention, preaching at a U2 Eucharist and preaching Sunday morning at St. George's Episcopal Church in Providence (a BEAUTIFUL congregation -- building and people) ... so I'm catching my breath. But I had to post this link, which was forwarded to me by Fr. Clint Fowler, who was rector and headmaster of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church and Day School in Tucson when my brother and I attended there.

It's from Keith Olbermann, the erstwhile SportsCenter anchor who has now become one of the boldest and most salient voices from the west in national media through his quirky MSNBC show, Countdown. In this "special comment" piece, Keith reacts to a recent commercial by the RNC that uses video and threats made by Al Qaeda by saying, in part:

The dictionary definition of the word “terrorize” is simple and not open to
misinterpretation:

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

Note please, that the words “violence” and “death” are missing from that definition.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act—but the fear of the act.

That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them?

Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans
put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear.

The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home.

Only the Republicans have a bigger bank roll.

Read and watch it all here.

2006-10-05T08:17:00.000-05:00

One World, One Standard

One of the great opportunities my work with Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation has provided is the chance to co-lead a global poverty module for Clergy Leadership Project. CLP is a program sponsored by Trinity Church, Wall Street. Clergy who are identified as some of the best in the country are nominated and come together for four one-week sessions over two weeks at Trinity's gorgeous conference center in West Cornwall, CT.

The second session, after doing some basic leadership strategy work, focusses on global poverty -- what it is, what causes it, and what the church's role can be in eliminating it. The first two pieces are led by Josh Ruxin, who heads up the Millennium Villages Project in Mayange, Rwanda. I'll write more about Josh and some of his work and theories in the next couple days ... and I'm very hopeful of visiting him in Rwanda in the next year or so. But this morning I want to write about something else he is doing ... and an experience I had last week.

During our CLP sessions, we talk a lot about the Millennium Development Goals ... and Josh is the first person I've met whose main problem with the MDGs is that they're too small. He encourages us to think about the step after the MDGs ... and the step after that.

And he has some really good problems with the MDGs themselves. For example, there's nothing in the MDGs about family planning and population control. According to Josh, that was eliminated from the final MDG draft under intense pressure from the U.S. government and the Vatican (what was left is MDG 5 -- improve maternal health). He also takes issue with MDG #2 -- universal primary education.

Now, Josh doesn't think universal primary education is a bad thing ... only that it's a terrible standard. "It's a goal suitable for the 19th century, not the 21st century" is the line he uses ... and he's right. We are adopting a standard as acceptable for the extreme poor that would never be acceptable for us. It would be inconceivable to me if Schroedter and Hayden were to stop going to school after sixth grade. I know they need more than that to be able to realize their potential in the world. We know that our country needs more than that for its citizens for us to thrive as a nation.

Universal primary education should be a given. The goal should be universal primary and secondary education and higher education for anyone who wants it.

After hearing Josh say this, I was not surprised to hear that he had been spending time with Paul Farmer ... because this idea of one world, one standard is what Paul has based his whole life on.

Paul Farmer is the founder of Partners in Health (if you want a great read, check out "Mountains Beyond Mountains," by Tracy Kidder, which is basically Paul's biography), which started in Haiti and has since become an organization that spans three continents and has revolutionized approaches to public health (as well as being one of the most effective combatants against tuberculosis on the planet). He started going down to Haiti while he was at Harvard Medical School and based his work there on one principle:

Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.

In other words, there should be one baseline of acceptable medical care. Not "Harvard acceptable" and "Haiti acceptable." One world. One standard.

I was not surprised to find that Josh and Paul are friends. As it turns out Paul is now living in Rwanda. Partners in Health has set up shop in a neighboring district to where Josh is and is offering high-quality medical care to anyone who needs it. And, unlike much of the aid/development industry, the MVP in Mayange and the PIH clinic are working together. The PIH medical professionals travel to Mayange to train health care workers there. The agricultural experts who work with MVP travel to the neighborhing district and teach what they know to the people there.

In a sense what Josh is doing is taking Paul Farmer's philosophy and applying on a broad level. If there is one world, one standard for medical care ... than it should be for other things, too -- like education.

And that's where Orphans of Rwanda comes in. Orphans of Rwanda is a partnership between PIH and Centre Memorial de Gisimba, an orphanage in Kigali. Josh serves on the board and his wife, Alissa, works tirelessly for them, too.

The concept is simple: Rwanda's future lies in making sure its best and brightest children get all the education and other help they need to realize the depth and breadth of their potential. Because of the terrible history of the Rwandan genocide, many of those children are in places like Centre Memorial de Gisimba, where they will never get those opportunities. That is not just to their poverty but to the poverty of the whole nation.

Orphans of Rwanda selects the best and brightest of these orphans and makes sure they get not only primary education but secondary education and college education as well. The stories are incredible. You can read one of them here. Orphans of Rwanda is literally building Rwanda's future one life at a time.

Anyway, Josh and I were talking a few weeks back (here's a great example of how small the world is. Josh and I can videoconference online free -- me in St. Louis, him in Kigali -- through Skype because we both have broadband internet. So every now and then we'll set up a conversation that has me getting up at 6 am -- which is around lunchtime for him) and he mentioned that he was going to have to leave West Cornwall right after his session on Wednesday because he was introducing Paul as the keynote speaker at a benefit for Orphans of Rwanda in Manhattan.

"Why don't you come?"

What an exciting invitation. How could I say no! So after the Wednesday session, we jump in a car and drive to Manhattan to this little club in the meat-packing district. It was about 350 people crammed into a space that, at least in the Midwest, would never hold that many people (though I imagine it was pretty standard for a downtown club). The average age was about 27, which was exciting. Lots of Columbia students. Several people from Rwanda. The club was owned by some Haitians, and when they found out that Paul was going to be there they donated not just the space and the hors d'oeuvres -- but the open bar as well. It was great seeing so much energy around something as wonderful as this.

Josh introduced Paul (and there was a mutual admiration society thing that went on for a bit), and then Paul went into his routine. And he is this great mixture of passion and humor. It's easy to talk about poverty in ways that make people depressed and guilty. The magic is when people talk about it in ways that fill you with hope and possibility ... and that's what he did.

Paul showed before and after pictures side by side on a big screen. One of them was a young boy who had been brought into his clinic in Haiti as a baby with HIV/AIDS. He said even the boy's grandmother was saying within earshot of the child that it was hopeless and that they should just let him die. But that wouldn't have been acceptable at Harvard so it wasn't acceptable in Haiti. They gave him the best care they possibly could. Got him the nutrition and the drugs and the education and everything that he needed. That was 20 or so years ago.

The picture next to the picture of that sickly baby told the rest of the story. A fine looking, strong young man standing next to someone in surgical scrubs. This was that boy 20 years later ... in medical school.

This is what is possible. Every child is God's image. Every child deserves every opportunity to let that image shine.

As I was walking toward the subway that night to catch the train to Brooklyn to Ian and Kathy's house, I kept remembering one passage of scripture, from John 12:

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

Judas sets up a false dichotomy here. Be extravagant in your worship OR help the poor. And a plain reading can be used (and has been used) to say "screw the poor, they're always going to be here anyway."

But I don't think that's what this is about. Scripture tells us that when we encounter the poor, we encounter Christ (Matthew 25) and that when we welcome a child, we welcome Christ (Mark 9). And this passage is telling us to be extravagant in our relationship with Christ. Shouldn't that mean we should be extravagant in our relationship to the poor.

When I think of Judas taking the perfume and selling it and giving the proceeds to the poor, the image that comes to my mind is a lot of money being spread over a lot of people so that everyone gets a little. That's our societal definition of charity -- giving just enough to survive.

But that's not what Christ is talking about. Christ is talking about extravagance. Christ is talking about the same standard by which you would treat your savior being the same standard by which you treat the poor. Excellence of care. Excellence of love. Excellence of opportunity.

That's what PIH and Orphans for Rwanda are about. That's what breaks us out of mindsets of charity from on high ... mindsets that I am convinced do nothing but perpetuate systems of poverty -- making it true that the poor will always be with us because we insist on treating "poor people" poorly.

This doesn't mean "a big screen HDTV" in every living room. More likely it probably means none of them in ANY living room. It's about saying there is one standard of excellence for all of humanity. And I need to look so carefully at where I go above it. And I need to stop myself before I decide that "good enough" still leaves others below it.

One world. One standard.

That's a goal worthy of the 21st century.

2006-10-03T20:52:00.000-05:00

Come Together. Right Now. Over Me.

A couple weeks ago, I was in Buffalo to preach at an evensong at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, whose rector, the Rev. Sarah Buxton-Smith, is a friend and seminary classmate of mine. It was a great time. Got to meet some wonderful people in her congregation. A group of youth from one of the local deaneries showed up and I spent a half hour afterward with them talking about the MDGs and how they could get involved. the Rev. Dahn Dean Gandell, another seminary classmate and one of the coolest people alive, drove all the way from Rochester with her husband and two girls to come to the service. Met with some excellent clergy from Western New York and had a great dinner with Sarah and Steven and the Bishop of Western New York and his wife (who is just fantastic).

And as if that weren't enough, the next day, the Dalai Lama was in town at the University of Buffalo. When Sarah first told me about the gathering on Monday, it sounded like an intimate gathering of religious leaders that she would be able to sneak me into. Well, it turns out it was an intimate gathering of about 8,000 in the basketball arena ... which was a lot more intimate than the gathering of 40,000+ in the football stadium the next day.

And it was great. Going into the arena was somewhat surreal. There were stands where people were selling Dalai Lama t-shirts ... what a completely American incarnation of a Dalai Lama visit! They were very understated and cool, so I bought one for Robin. (I was disappointed that they didn't have a "I went to see the Dalai Lama and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" ... but what're you gonna do?)

When we got inside and got to our seats, they were 8th row floor. Pretty cool, huh? Floor seats to the Dalai Lama!! Dude! And it's actually pretty fitting because the guy really is like a rock star. There were signs as you entered the arena that everyone was to observe silence ... which I thought would have been exceedingly cool if it had been pulled off. Not surprisingly, the signs were ignored and while the crowd wasn't rowdy, it wasn't exactly a prayerful atmosphere ... more like people in a movie theatre waiting for the coming attractions.

The occasion was an interfaith service and it was carefully scripted to last only an hour. Most of the service involved representatives from different faith communities getting up and reading passages of sacred text from their traditions -- interspersed with some modern dance from UB students that was actually rather good. Then the Dalai Lama stood up to talk. He really didn't say much. He spoke in rather halting English for about 7-8 minutes and basically said in several different ways that it was gatherings like this of people from all different faith traditions that was the hope of the future ... and that we should do more stuff like that.

It wasn't exactly the life-changing words of enlightenment I had been secretly hoping for. I mean, talk about a guy who gets built up as the ultimate living bearer of wisdom. So I have to admit my expectations were a bit higher than "this is pretty cool ... you should do this more."

But there were a couple things that made the event incredibly powerful.

The first thing was just being in his presence. I don't think it was the fame thing, because I've been around famous people before and I know what that feels like ... and frankly that doesn't really do much for me anymore anyway. No, it was the same feeling I got when I have been around Desmond Tutu and the time I took the ECM students to see John Paul II in St. Louis. That I was in the presence of two things - someone who had an incredible spiritual presence and someone who had an incredible amount of other people's spiritual energy focussed on him. Both are incredibly powerful. It creates a beautiful space ... kind of a time-suspended feeling ... where even though all hell might be breaking loose outside the door that in that time and place with that person there was some sort of peace, a high consciousness, a deeper joy.

But the second thing was even more powerful. It was the people that presence drew together. People from all sorts of faith traditions. And it wasn't just a perfunctory interfaith service. I've been to lots of those where people stand up, say their piece, the liturgy feels awkward and forced together and you walk away feeling like you did something you should have but not really anything that made a difference. But the Dalai Lama's presence made it different. When people read their texts it was with a deep sense of offering, of coming together around, if not him, than the presence of God that he carries with him.

And so it turns out he was right. And what he said was probably the best thing that could have been said. This was really, cool. And we should do this more. I would imagine he finds his fame incredibly amusing and would tell us all that the presence, peace and harmony that moved us to come together, right then, over him, wasn't about him but was something that was in each one of us, in all of creation. That he might have been a catalyst for this event, but certainly not a necessary component for the place that was created.

We should do that more often.