Sermon for the 5th Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C)
Saturday, February 07, 2010 at St. Andrew’s in Montevallo, Alabama
Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13] Psalm 138 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11
The Rev. Steve Shanks, Deacon

Let us pray:
Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

So, today we’re putting out into deep waters with this great story about how Jesus calls the fishermen to follow him on the path to discipleship. This Gospel story from Luke the Evangelist, a physician from Antioch and a sometime companion of Paul, has three particular parts that I’d like to reflect on.

First, we hear how they’ve been out fishing all night on the Sea of Galilee and they’ve caught nothing, how Jesus borrows Simon’s boat and teaches the crowd on the shore and when he is finished, he turns to Simon and says, “Put out into deep waters and lower your nets.” That seems a pretty incredible statement, and one worthy to spend some time with. Of course, Simon Peter is at first resistant and tells how he knows all about fishing, and Jesus couldn’t know anything, and there are no fish to be caught… but then he gives in and does what Jesus says. In a poetic way, we probably all feel like we’ve spent our whole lives out on the water all night and haven’t caught anything, and along comes Jesus telling us to put out into deep waters. That’s God, always pushing us out to go farther than we think we can go, into the unknown, into uncharted waters. So the question becomes: how is Jesus pushing you these days out into deep waters? How are you going to respond to his call?

Then, they make a big catch and both boats nearly sink because of the great number of fish, and how does Simon Peter respond? He falls at the knees of Jesus and says, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” There is a great mystery here. I think the Gospel is telling us that whenever we enter into the presence of God, whenever we realize that we are in the presence of Christ, we suddenly recognize not only his light and holiness, but our darkness and sinfulness. So the Gospel calls us to recognize our sinfulness before Christ, to realize that we are sinners. But Jesus does not condemn Simon Peter or us. He loves us, forgives us and calls us. We are sinners but we are also greatly loved by God, and we need Christ to help us and save us. For me, I want to change Simon Peter’s plea to say, “Never depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man and I need you.”

Finally, Jesus says this great line to Peter, “Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men and women.” With that, they leave their nets, their boats, the fish, their parents… and follow him. Jesus says the same thing to us today. He does not want us to live in fear. Instead he invites us to live in relationship with him, to follow him and to join his campaign to change the world by leading one another and all people to God and God’s reign of love and peace. So we can ask ourselves: How are we dropping our nets and following Jesus? How do we practice discipleship to Christ today? How are we trying to catch people for Christ and the reign of God?
A stumbling block in considering how to respond to Jesus’ call to us is that it is can be all too easy to become so preoccupied with our inabilities and shortcomings, that it leaves us nearly in a state of inaction. It can be difficult to believe that God, who is holy and pure, can use the most imperfect men, women, boys and girls … people like you, like me. But God does.

Facing whatever feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, or sinfulness … whatever that loud voice in our ear is saying, in opposition to the small still quiet voice of God, and in the light of God’s holiness and righteousness… facing that is a necessary step if God is to use us as instruments of God’s love. Simon Peter, the prophet Isaiah, the Apostle Paul, and innumerable other women and men of God inside and outside of Scripture share in this experience. In contrast to God’s virtue, the women and men who God commissions will always identify their own faults and failures. But in spite of that, they will also recognize God’s readiness to forgive and empower, which frees them to work with peace and confidence on behalf of poor and hungry people in our nation and around the world.

And as we begin to respond to God’s call to us… with our minds to think, hearts to love, hands to serve… it is important to know, as best we can, what has worked, what has not, and why. To do that is what, in my vernacular, is referred to as participatory community based research so that the needs we’re meeting are indeed of those that we’re appointed to serve. That how we determine the needs, and how they’re met, is formed in equal partnership between traditionally trained “experts” and members of the community to which a ministry is intended.

In the wake of the earthquake and devastation in Haiti, thought it might be helpful to review an experience of “helping” that has become an example of what the result can be when other interests or concerns end up being placed ahead of the real and actual needs of the poor, working poor, and hungry.

I think that it is always important that we educate ourselves about whoever it is that we’re partnered in ministry with, in this case about the history of Haiti and its people's incredible struggle of resistance and self-determination against continued cycles of colonial and neocolonial suppression. The mainstream media continues to stress that Haiti is the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere without offering a serious analysis of why that is the case.
One way to begin to understand Haiti's experience with poverty and economic oppression is in the history of the eradication of the Haitian Creole pig population in the 1980's, a modern parable and as recounted by former Haitian president Jean Bertrand-Aristide.

“In 1982 international agencies assured Haiti's peasants their pigs were sick and had to be killed (so that the illness would not spread to countries to the North). Promises were made that better pigs would replace the sick pigs. With an efficiency not since seen among development projects, all of the Creole pigs were killed over a period of thirteen months.

“Two years later the new, better pigs came from Iowa. They were so much better that they required clean drinking water (unavailable to 80% of the Haitian population), imported feed (costing $90 a year when the per capita income was about $130), and special roofed pigpens. Haitian peasants quickly dubbed them “prince a quatre pieds [prahn-suh-a-ka-truh-pyay],” or “four-footed princes”. Adding insult to injury, the meat did not taste as good. Needless to say, the repopulation program was a complete failure. One observer of the process estimated that in monetary terms Haitian peasants lost $600 million dollars. There was a 30% drop in enrollment in rural schools; there was a dramatic decline in the protein consumption in rural Haiti; a devastating decapitalization of the peasant economy and an incalculable negative impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural productivity. The Haitian peasantry has not recovered to this day.”
With stories like this to inform but not discourage us, it reminds me of what I think is one of the most amazing dimensions of our faith… that God is willing to forgive each of us, all of us, and to empower us in our work on behalf of the least among us. What a wonderful God we worship, who knows our failures and yet says, “Your sin is blotted out. Don’t be afraid. I am sending you to do my work in the world.”

I think that Jesus is the greatest person who ever lived, and he really is worth following. That it’s worth it to drop our nets, change our lives, and try to follow in his footsteps. It’s also so very important that each one of us join his project of calling people to discipleship, of catching people for Christ, of being fishers of women and men. There are a lot of politics and campaigns these days, which has become the cultural norm it seems, but for me the Gospel campaign of Jesus is the only one worth joining, the one worth giving our lives for, the one that I choose to give my life to.

So, what does it means to join the Gospel campaign of Jesus?

I think that in this world of hate, indifference and fear, our job is to catch people for Christ’s love.
In this world of gossip, pettiness, hypocrisy and lies, our job is to catch people for Christ’s truth.

In this world of enmity, resentment, grudges, revenge and the death penalty, our job is to catch people for Christ’s compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation.

In this world of injustice and oppression, our job is to catch people for Christ’s justice.

In this world of selfishness and greed, our job is to catch people for Christ’s way of selfless service.

In this world of violence and bombing raids and colonial occupation, our job is to catch people for Christ’s nonviolence.

In this world of war, nuclear weapons, imperialism, and global militarism, our job is to catch people for Christ’s peace.

In this world of despair and death, our job is to catch people for Christ’s hope, for the new life of God’s reign of resurrection. From now on, we are catching women and men for the nonviolent Christ.

And in the words of Sir Frances Drake, who knew a lot about being called to deep water, let us pray…

Disturb us Lord when
We are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true,
Because we dreamed too little
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to shore.

Thanks be to God.
In Christ’s Name,
Amen. Alleluia.

Sermon for the 1st Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord (Year C)
Sunday, January 10, 2010 at Trinity Church in Clanton, Alabama
Isaiah 43:1-7 Isaiah 43:1-7 Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17,21-22
The Rev. Steve Shanks, Deacon

Let us pray:
Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

You know, if you were a member of the Orthodox Church and following the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian civil calendar that we follow, the twelve days of Christmas would have only just begun, and the feast of the Epiphany wouldn’t be here until January nineteenth. I mention this because in the Orthodox churches, the gospel lesson you would hear read on Epiphany is not the story of the visit of the Magi that we heard proclaimed last Sunday, but the reading we just heard about the baptism of Jesus. For the Orthodox, this is the primary story of God’s manifestation, which they call by an even stronger word than “epiphany.” They call it “theophany,” the blazing forth of God.

Why this story in particular? Well it’s not because they have such a high theology of baptism (although they do), but because this is the only story in all of the gospel accounts where all three persons of the Trinity are named as present – are acting in the world. There’s Jesus, of course, obediently but surprisingly being baptized in the river Jordan. There’s the Holy Spirit, descending like a dove from the heavens to Jesus, and There’s the voice of God, heard blessing Jesus, and claiming him as beloved Son.

God the creator, the first person of the Holy Trinity, doesn’t show up in person much in the gospels. Jesus mentions God a lot, of course: talks to God, talks about God, teaches others to do the same. But there’s only one other personal appearance, at the Transfiguration, where God does and says the exact same thing as in today’s story. The rest of the time it’s angels and prophets and especially Jesus speaking on God’s behalf.

So what can we learn from this unique “blazing forth” of God in all three persons at Jesus’ baptism? Well… other than that Jesus’ baptism was taken seriously enough that the whole family showed up?

First of all, notice what the three of them are doing. Jesus is doing what he always does: being fully human, fulfilling and yet somehow subverting rules and expectations in a single action, over turning social understandings of power and priority just by showing up – being a different kind of Messiah than everyone was expecting.

Secondly, and to use a word from John’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit is paracleting away: in other words, mediating between the divine and the earthly, and in so doing showing that the two are intimately connected, that God has both the will and the means to act in human lives.

And then there’s God the creator. That voice, doing again the most important act from the creation story, which is not the making itself but the divine assessment: “It is good.” “Behold my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” This final quality report, both in the creation story and in the gospels, is the part of the creative act that often seems to be ignored, both in our lack of respect for the things and people God made and declared to be good, and in the contrary assessment of Jesus made in his lifetime and after by so many. Humankind has not always been as well-pleased with Jesus as God was.

So God is revealed to us, in all of God’s three-personed godliness, in the moment of Jesus’ baptism. It is a moment we uniquely recall when we baptize; when you were baptized. In communion we call on the risen Jesus to be known to us in the breaking of the bread, but in baptism we expect all three persons of the Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to be present and involved.

We pledge ourselves to them, all three, in the Apostle’s Creed. And in the rest of the Baptismal Covenant, [which we will have a chance to renew in a few minutes,] we also pledge ourselves to do the same things that God is doing in the Theophany, God’s blazing forth, at Jesus’ baptism.

We pledge to continue in the Apostles’ teaching, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers, and to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin repent and return to the Lord. In other words, we pledge to embrace being fully human – to live into (and occasionally to subvert or transform) the stories and traditions that we have been handed, and to hand them on to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And we pledge to recognize that our failings, our shortcoming, our sins, do not set us beyond the reach of God’s love; that God is always ready to love us and to receive us when we repent.

We pledge to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ. This is Holy Spirit work – to be the messenger and message to those who ache to hear of and to experience the love of God. We, like that dove, are bearers of God’s Word, and our Baptismal Covenant reminds us of the seriousness and solemnity of the charge… to carry the good news to the ends of the earth.

And, finally, we pledge to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Do you see how those pledges give life and force to the recognition of God’s proclamation of the goodness of creation and of Jesus? The indignities, the uncharitableness, the cruelty that we visit on one another and on the world reflect a failure to embrace the goodness, the God-pleasing rightness of all that God has made, of all that has been given into our care.

And one of the great things about these pledges is that they make wonderful touchstones. They are an ‘easy to carry with you’ guide to Godly action.

When I am cross ways with someone, or am making judgments about him or her, am I truly seeking Christ in that person?

And whether or not I find the Christ that I know is there in that person, are my choices and actions serving Christ?

Am I, by my words and actions at this moment, showing the world the good news about God in Christ – that the embrace of love reaches beyond all boundaries to draw the children of God together – that God can and does love you, can and does love me… extravagantly, passionately, without limit?

And perhaps most importantly, for ourselves and for our institutions, am I respecting the dignity of every human being?

Do the choices that I am making right now, that my family, or committee, or Vestry are making today; honor and uphold the dignity of every person those decisions will affect?

Because if not, if the answer to any of those questions is “no,” our Baptismal Covenant, and indeed the love and example of God, calls on us to make different choices, to keep struggling with our choices, to keep learning from and repenting our mistakes, until we can honor those pledges with our lives as well as with our words.

And when we do that – when the gospel is proclaimed in all we do, and Christ is sought and served, justice and peace are striven for, and the dignity of every human being is respected and cherished, then God will blaze forth again and again, and we shall all be well pleased.

Thanks be to God.
In Christ’s Name,
Amen. Alleluia.

Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost 2009 (Proper 18B)
Sunday, September 06, 2009 at St. Andrew’s in Montevallo, Alabama
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 Psalm 125 James 2:1-17 Mark 7:24-37

Let us pray:
Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

In the first half of the 7th Chapter of the Gospel According to Mark, that we heard last week, Jesus says that you can't judge a book by its cover; you must look beyond external factors like nationality or religious heritage or social position to get the real story on someone's faith. He then puts this theory into practice by traveling a good 100 miles out of his way into the region of Tyre and Sidon – into the heart of paganland – to make the arduous journey from the theoretical to the practical.

So, here we find ourselves with this week’s gospel that poses difficulties from a variety of angles. Jesus encounters a Gentile woman who wants him to heal her daughter. He says no, essentially calls her and all Gentiles dogs, and states firmly that his mission is only to Israel. She argues with him. He then agrees to heal her daughter. So, what happened?

One thing that has happened in this encounter is that when Jesus answers the woman, regardless of what specifically he says, he is recognizing the woman’s right to speak with him. Just by making the request, she is implying – even if perhaps solely out of desperation – that she has a right to claim his time and power. By arguing, she implies that she is worthy of challenging him. And by answering, Jesus affirms that she has that status in his eyes. This is a profoundly counter-cultural recognition of her dignity. But then Jesus insults her by calling her and her people dogs (and no, there's no trick of Greek translation that can make it about cute little puppies – Jesus is calling her people scavengers of the lowest sort).

But then, to all appearances, Jesus changed his mind – not only about healing one girl, but about his mission. This bothers a lot of people; most sermons I've heard that have spent time with this aspect of the story, have suggested that Jesus really knew all along that his mission was to Gentiles as well as Jews, and that he was only pretending to think otherwise to help the woman increase her faith, or to further demonstrate his power, or some other reason.

Personally, I find that kind of reading offensive as well as unconvincing. If Jesus changed his mind, then Jesus can’t be the kind of eternally changeless “unmoved mover,” to use Plato's phrase, that a lot of people present God as being. But if Jesus didn't change his mind and was just saying things he didn’t believe so that he could accomplish some other end, then Jesus is a liar – and a pretty cruel one at that, since the poor woman is clearly worried about her child.

And besides, who – other than Plato – says that Jesus isn’t allowed to change his mind, to learn something he didn’t know before? Certainly, learning is part of what it means to be human. Try to turn Jesus into someone who knew everything and could do anything from day one and you'll quickly get drawn into fairly silly speculation about how Jesus could have spouted the full Sermon on the Mount (and in any language to boot!) on the day he was born, but faked being able to talk only like the baby he was – perhaps so he wouldn't give away his secret identity, like Clark Kent having to hold back from running at full speed on Smallville. That kind of speculation is evident in some of the later gospels that are outside the Christian canon, but it’s not in any of our canonical gospels, which consistently portray Jesus as a real, honest-to-goodness human being who as a baby needed his diapers changed and who, like the rest of us, learned to walk and talk and function by playing and otherwise interacting with his mother and other people.

In other words, Jesus had to learn words and speech when he was a child. As Luke puts it, “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40). Jesus changed, not only getting taller and physically stronger, but learning things he didn't know before. If that idea is offensive, it's the offensiveness of the Incarnation, of the idea that God could dwell among us in the flesh. Human beings aren't born knowing and doing everything they will ever be able to know and do. They learn and grow, and in particular, they learn and grow in relationship. Jesus did too – all his life, as human beings do. I might even go so far as to say that part of being made in God's image means that we become more fully ourselves in relationship. Knowing others and loving others changes us, teaching things we didn't know before and helping us to grow into the fullness of our identity and vocation, and our capacity to grow in relationship comes from a God who experiences that too.

I know that doesn’t fit in very well with that picture of God as an “unmoved mover,” never experiencing a change of mind. But that picture is Plato's far more than it is our bible’s. Our scriptures are full of stories of human beings trying to change God’s mind. We call it intercessory prayer, and scripture shows it as working at least sometimes – God is moved to show mercy, to act in deliverance because someone asked. Observing that raises a great many problems of theodicy and the nature of evil in the world, among other things, but there it is, scattered throughout our canonical writings. And though it doesn’t make things any easier for me, I’m glad it’s there.

I'm glad because it is a wonderful corrective to our human tendencies toward arrogance and hardness of heart. Why should we listen to someone else's view on a matter of importance when we already know what the scriptures say, what those words mean, and therefore what the truth of the matter is? If any had the right to that kind of posture, it would be God. But if we take our scriptures seriously, we have to allow the possibility that God too is changed in relationship.

That may sound radical, but I find that radical message in our scriptures; as God is moved after observing the destruction wreaked by the great flood to say “never again,” and hangs God’s bow – God’s weapon – in the sky as a sign of God’s permanent swearing off of such moves. God – the one Plato presents as “unmoved mover” – is MOVED to mercy, and makes a covenant of mercy with all of humanity.

Is it so radical, then, to think that Jesus, God’s agent, might also be moved by his encounter with a Gentile woman seeking healing for her daughter? I not only don't think so but I thank God for people who aren’t willing to take “no” for an answer – even or especially “no” plus “Godtalk” coming from a perceived religious authority which is a particularly potent combination when coming from powerful men – but rather I thank God for people who will push for compassion and mercy. They prove to us that even God isn't the sort to say, “God said it; I believe it; that settles it.”

They teach us something that we would have gathered anyway had we been paying attention when Jesus says, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” and then makes clear that the “perfect” he means isn't about being static in a “right” position, but rather compassion toward righteous and unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:43-48).

They teach us that no one should be so certain that they are right that she or he cannot make room to listen; and to listen in a way that allows us to be changed by what we hear.

They teach us that God is love, and of course it’s a very poor lover who is eternally unmoved by her or his beloved.

So when Jesus encounters a man who is deaf and therefore mute – someone who is unable to listen and therefore was unable to learn to speak – Jesus is very well prepared.

“Be opened,” he says. He says it not only with compassion for someone who has suffered, but also with the authority of one who has experienced what it is that he’s talking about. That is, after all, what the persistence of the Gentile woman said to him when he was deaf to her cries and therefore unprepared to speak of God's love for all peoples. “Be opened” – and Jesus was.

And so must we. And so shall we.

We must forgive, deepen our love.

In so fulfilling our vocation, we ourselves are healed.

Thanks be to God.
In Christ’s Name,
Amen. Alleluia.

Mission to New Orleans - Advisory Group on Forced Evictions

Since 2005, New Orleans residents – particularly in low-income communities – have been fighting against forced evictions resulting from the city’s rebuilding plans. As part of the city’s overall development approach, which favors private sector interests over the interests of low-income residents, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has demolished thousands of public housing units without regard for residents' human right to housing and denying them the chance to participate in the development process.

In response to this, and at the request of local activists, between July 26th and July 31st 2009, the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (AGFE), an independent international group that advises the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, is conducting a fact-finding mission to New Orleans, to investigate the city’s continuing forced eviction issues. The issues that will be addressed range from the destruction of public housing to the lack of adequate rebuilding or rental assistance at either the federal or local level which has effectively left thousands of people homeless since the storm, to new plans to evict residents who have rebuilt in favor of large development schemes.

This page will be documenting the AGFE mission with a series of videos featuring testimonies from affected local residents and the groups involved in coordinating the mission.

Download this factsheet to learn more about AGFE's Mission, and this schedule to see who they're meeting.

THURSDAY: AGFE to New Orleans Day 5 - DC meetings
Eric Tars, Human Rights Program Director at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, reports from DC on visits with federal officials, including Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the Housing & Community Opportunity Subcommittee, with the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions mission, July 30, 2009.

Watch the previous vlogs by following these links:

TUESDAY: Day 2 AGFE to New Orleans - Charity Hospital and Mid-City Visits - Eric Tars reports on the second half of the July 28, 2009 site visits of the international Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, to the Mid-City area of New Orleans, where hundreds of residents are threatened with imminent eviction due to plans to construct a massive hospital complex that government studies have shown is unnecessary and disregards the needs of the community.

MONDAY: Day 2 AGFE to New Orleans - Homeless Site Visits - Eric Tars reports from two squatters settlements in New Orleans about homelessness since Hurricane Katrina as part of the international Advisory Group on Forced Evictions visit.

SUNDAY, Part 2: New Orleans Town Hall Meeting Wrap Up - Eric Tars reports from the town hall meeting with New Orleans advocates and residents for the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions [July 26, 2009].

SUNDAY, Part 1: Setting the Stage for the Advisory Group Visit - Eric Tars, on his way to New Orleans for the AGFE visit, provides additional background information on the origins of the mission and some of the housing rights violations that have occurred.

SATURDAY: Forced Evictions - Public Housing Residents Speak Out: In this video by the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), two residents of public housing in New Orleans talk about their recent efforts to save public housing.

FRIDAY: Preparing for New Orleans - Eric Tars explains the background to the AGFE mission, and gives a preview of what he'll be vlogging about throughout the week of 27th July.

HUMAN RIGHTS & HOUSING
So what is the Human Right to Housing, and what are the actual provisions in human rights law that guarantee this right? Here's an overview from NESRI:

The right to housing guarantees the right to live in security, peace and dignity. This right must be provided to all persons irrespective of income or access to economic resources, and the housing provided must be adequate, meaning 'adequate privacy, adequate space, adequate security, ... adequate basic infrastructure and adequate location.'

The right to housing is guaranteed in human rights declarations and treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care." - Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Excerpted from NESRI's Human Right to Housing Info Sheet no. 1. See also NESRI's factsheet on the Human Right to Development.

RELATED VIDEOS AND RESOURCES
"Coming Home": A clip of this forthcoming documentary about the demolition of public housing in New Orleans, featuring Mayday NOLA.

HUD Secretary Donovan Denies Community Participation: A brief video from Mayday New Orleans about trying to reach HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan when he visited New Orleans. Not only does this second video underscore how public housing residents have been denied their right to participation, but it also inspired a similar video from a housing advocacy organization in North Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Further links:
NESRI
NLCHP
Mayday New Orleans
Terms of Reference for AGFE
NLCHP Wiki on housing issues on the Gulf Coast

NOTE: This post is a product of NLCHP and NESRI, with the assistance of WITNESS, and not affiliated with AGFE or UN-HABITAT

Salsa at The Granada

the lovely erin is my one and only daughter *smiles*

Jubilee Ministry Centers —

Providing Refuge and Hope
By the Rev. Deacon Steve Shanks,
Our Diocesan Jubilee Ministry Officer

When Jesus stood in the synagogue in Nazareth, unrolled the Isaiah scroll, and read God’s promise of good news to the poor, of Jubilee—the Year of the Lord’s Favor, he opened for us a window into the Kingdom of God. As we see the work of congregations, congregational clusters, and ecumenical clusters doing the work of compassion—feeding, clothing, sheltering, and visiting, and the work of justice—speaking, teaching, and prophesying, we honor the commitment they are making to reflect to the world the generosity of God and the invitation to live in his Kingdom.

The concept of Jubilee was established by the words of Leviticus 25:10:“You shall hallow the fiftieth year, and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”The stated goal of Jubilee Ministry in the Episcopal Church is to teach others to connect the talk of faith with the walk of peace and justice for all people.

Jubilee Ministry is faith in action—faith that can be expressed as that which grows out of loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and action that can be expressed as that which compels us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jubilee Ministry seeks to hold these two important dynamics of our spiritual journey in tension so that God’s reconciling work is known by our witness.

Jubilee Ministry Centers throughout our diocese serve as places of refuge and hope, living expressions of our Baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

St.Timothy’s in Athens provides a multicultural preschool, tutoring, basic language skills programs, English as a Second Language classes,AA Groups (including a prison AA group) and a Hispanic Al-Anon, and a drop-in pantry.

Christ Church in Fairfield (Birmingham) provides CityWorks:The Fairfield Initiative, an interfaith Community Development Corporation that offers affordable housing with “strategic neighbors”; a literacy program; a thrift store; a prison ministry; and emergency services.

Grace Church in Woodlawn (Birmingham) provides 55th Place Thrift Store, Grace-by-Day, the Interfaith Hospitality House, emergency food packs three days a week at the Woodlawn Christian Center, Community Kitchens, and a Hispanic ministry.

Good Samaritan Health Clinic in Cullman provides free primary healthcare for low-income, uninsured, and under-insured county residents; hearing testing; eye disease exams; dental exams; free medications; and diabetic/nutrition education.

St. John’s in Decatur provides a Community Free Clinic offering free healthcare and prescription drugs, health-related education programs, eye exams, and dental care; Parents and Children Together (PACT) offering services for at-risk families to prevent child abuse and neglect as well as child-wellness programs; and Camp Joy offering camping experience and adult and youth volunteers to serve at-risk children.

Nativity in Huntsville provides individual tutoring for reading, math, and computer skills in the Adult Learning Center of Huntsville; English as a Second Language classes; and the HEALS free medical clinics at target elementary schools.

The Jubilee Community Center in Montgomery provides an after-school program with tutoring and mentoring by volunteers from local colleges, entrepreneurial class for ages 15 and up, clothing, direct health services, the Jubilee Choir, youth-enrichment programs, lobbying on issues affecting the community, job training, Vacation Bible School, and a free tax-filing service for working families.

Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry Inc. (CVEM) supported by St. Matthew’s in Seale and St. Stephen’s in Smith Station provides direct economic assistance; continued community revitalization efforts; programs for children and youth; women’s mentoring; housing advocacy; services related to homelessness, race relations, and prison inmates; and a Peace and Justice Group that meets regularly to study social issues and offer forums and other means of education and action.

Bishop Parsley and Bishop Sloan invite every congregation in our diocese to examine the work they are doing with and among the poor, both here in Alabama and around the world, and prayerfully consider applying for designation and affirmation as a Jubilee Ministry Center. Holy Trinity in Auburn and Trinity in Clanton are currently in the process of applying to become Jubilee Ministry Centers.

Sometimes a Center starts with a single congregation that wants to begin walking in faith. Sometimes it begins with a cluster of churches within a community that perceive a need to serve the poor in a particular way. Any of these congregations or clusters of congregations can become designated by the Episcopal Church as a Jubilee Ministry Center if they agree to do one or more of the following: advocacy on behalf of the people they serve, empowering staff and volunteers to connect their work with their Baptismal vows, evangelizing through prayer or pastoral presence, and inviting others to share in worship. In this way all Jubilee Ministry Centers give back to God through what God has given them.

For more information about applying to have your outreach initiative designated a Jubilee Ministry Center, please contact the Rev. Steve Shanks, Diocesan Jubilee Ministry Officer, at srshanks@gmail.com or 205/960-1826.

Excerpted from the Alabama Episcopalian, The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, Pentecost, May-June 2009 / Vol. 94, No. 4

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Easter, Year B
at Trinity in Clanton, Alabama
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Psalm 1 1 John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19

Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

"If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son." That's what we hear in the reading from the First Epistle of John. And a friend has reminded me that thanks be to God that the testimony of God is greater – because we certainly have some pretty odd ways of discerning and trying to testify to God's will.

I think that the passage from the book of Acts makes for a pretty good case in point. The role of the Twelve is on one hand so very, very important that it just can't be left to eleven or thirteen; and on the other hand, the person to fill the seat left vacant by Judas Iscariot is chosen by lot. The judgment of Israel left to a couple of thrown rocks or bones. Sometimes, reading things like this, one has to say to oneself what might be the ultimate question in life… "Just what is God thinking??!"

It's a question that I've asked myself more than once, and I'm glad to say that it's a question that God fears no more than I might have the capacity to answer it for myself.

What I believe is that God is calling us to abundant life in a world that welcomes, facilitates, and spreads abundant life; and yet I pick up a newspaper that tells me about deaths in battle, in traffic accidents, in inexplicable illnesses. It's all well and good for John Lennon to encourage us to imagine a world of peace, compassion, and responsibility to further these qualities, but imagining it will only get us so far… "so", in this case, being a synonym for "not." Imagine all the dreamers, yes – but imagine what would have happened to their work if they had only stuck with what seemed realistic. And if we're really going to take Jesus seriously, we might want to ask what's realistic anyway.

… and speaking of where our dreams bump up against reality… church unity is a highly desirable goal and will undoubtedly be a topic of continuing conversation and likely some debate at our church’s General Convention in Anaheim this summer. Actually, it's more than a goal; it's a description, a word we say when we see people living as God intends, as sisters and brothers with any who will break bread and share resources with them. It's an appealing goal, and so a lot of people get on board with it without pausing to think about how they want to actually build a world, a network of people and resources, to help the Church move toward being what God truly intends for it to be.

Now, I know that this might be starting to sound like some kind of a "get back to work" speech, but it isn't. The reason rests in Jesus' prayer that we hear in the Gospel: “that we all might be one, as he is one with God.” The unity of the church isn't just a goal toward which we strive; it is a reality that we live into more deeply as we explore, with others in community, just what it might mean that we are children of God.

That's not just a fancy theological way of saying "Get back to work" either. What might it mean to us – to you and me – if we really took Jesus' prayer in, really believed that God's children are one because God is one, that the unity of Christ's Body is a consequence of Christ, rather than the end goal toward which we strive, but most often fail?

One of the main consequences of taking that leap of faith, I think, would be the dismantling of a lot of our excuses. Without it, we might convince ourselves that we can treat those around us anyway we want to until such a time as they ‘toe the line’ and thereby effect the unity for which Jesus prays in this Sunday's gospel. In other words, I'll wait and treat that person as a brother or sister the moment that he or she behaves!

And, of course, that path is one of madness. As long as we're waiting for everyone, but us, to meet some standard before we'll declare ourselves to be of the same Body as them, we're choosing the thankless and joyless task of monitoring those around us, and perhaps the world itself, for signs of dysfunction and misery.

It's a destructive way to live, in the way that our mind's “background processes” work. We are constantly on the lookout, making judgments and reevaluating them. The “search requests” we make on our brain most frequently become “wired” into the brain and the life of our psyche. If we call upon our brains several times a week, or a day, to figure out what's wrong with those around us and the world in which they work and live, it's natural for our minds to start performing these tasks in the “background,” constantly creating categories and placing people in them. A theology based on that is going to dwell on what's wrong with the world in ways that is going to use up energy that we could devote to participating in God's work of making things – all things – right.

In other words, we don't have to struggle to become a member of the Body of Christ; Meister Eckhart reminds us that we can't find God shouting and chasing after him in the wilderness, we have only to open the door and let him in, it is a free gift Christ offers, and what we do in response to that gift is up to us. The hard part of that oftentimes is that it places us in the company of people who aren't much like us, and the more differences arise, the more we stress about whether the relationship will fracture. And the more we stress about whether the relationship will fracture, the more likely we are to avoid a sense of loss both of relationship and of control by coming up with reasons why fracture and decay are inevitable. It gets in the way of our becoming close with one another and with God.

A friend is fond of saying that we waste too much time in church “building community.” Community, oneness already exists. We may not see it, may not act like it, but it pre-exists our recognition of it. This is the hope I take away from today’s Gospel, the hope I preach.

Me and my worst enemy are one. Jesus asked it of the Father. It’s done. Now, what shall I, what shall we, do about it?

So, what if we took as our starting point that we are members of the Body of Christ, not because we achieved a goal but because of who Christ is and what Christ has done?

It just might give us courage to be honest about our differences, since our connectedness with others is based not on what we think or what we do, but on who and whose we are.

It just might challenge us to search for avenues of compassion toward others; if we are by action of the Creator of the universe one with our sisters and brothers around us, we ought to get used to it, since our fellow members of the Body of Christ will depart from us only when Christ departs (that is to say, sometime between "never" and "later than never"), and our central task shifts from trying to find ways to figure out who should matter to us, to one of learning to live as joyfully and lovingly with those with whom we are, one way or another, journeying.

And it just might give us what we need to change the world, bring healing to the sick, sufficiency to the destitute, freedom to the captives, because as members of one Body we are called to witness to Christ's presence everywhere it is, and that's throughout a world being made new by grace, and called to respond in extending grace.

Thanks be to God!
Amen. Alleluia.

Neko Case Interview and Music

saw Neko at Workplay a few weeks ago and have been a long time fan of her writing, wit, and esthetic, and really enjoy the interview and music

Jubilee officers roll up sleeves to clear ruined houses during gathering in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

By Rebecca Jones, March 27, 2009

[Episcopal News Service, Cedar Rapids, Iowa] The Rev. Canon Debbie Shew gripped her crowbar and tugged a sheet of rotted paneling from the wall of a flood-ravaged home and thought about the carpenter who nailed it up. She thought about the children who grew up there, the family that called the house home.

"I thought about leaving them a note," said Shew, jubilee officer for the Diocese of Atlanta. "It might be cool for them to find it and know that people from all over – from Georgia and Puerto Rico and Kansas and New York – all helped to clean it up."

Shew was one of nearly three dozen diocesan jubilee officers from all over the country and the Caribbean, and others associated with the Episcopal Church's Jubilee Ministry network, who met here this week to discuss the 27-year-old network of about 600 programs aimed at alleviating poverty.

Participants spent March 25, their first full day together, rolling up their sleeves and doing the dirty work of helping rebuild a city laid low. In June 2008, the Cedar River overflowed its banks. In that summer, the devastation exceeded 500-year flood plains. Some 20,000 people were forced to evacuate and an estimated 5,400 homes were left ruined. It was, said chroniclers of the city's reclamation project, Iowa's "storm of the millennium."

Nine months later, the city is still drying out and cleaning up. Whole neighborhoods still contain empty shells of ruined houses, the water lines clearly visible high on their walls. Cedar Rapids' catastrophe didn't get the national attention that New Orleans or Galveston, Texas received after hurricanes Katrina and Ike, but the devastation was no less real.

That's why the Rev. Chris Johnson, the Episcopal Church's program officer for Domestic Justice and Jubilee Ministries, decided to schedule the meeting in Cedar Rapids. He wanted to make sure the city's pain did not go unnoticed by the church. "I didn't know what to expect, but I just knew it was important that we find a way to embrace the community," said Johnson. "We had to meet somewhere, and I'm glad we can meet here. Now people from all these points will take these stories about what happened in Cedar Rapids away with them."

Johnson and Shew were among a dozen volunteers who spent the day mucking out two houses, one of them untouched by any cleanup effort. Across town, another crew of Episcopalians worked hanging dry wall in the basement of St. Wenceslaus Church, a Catholic church in the heavily damaged Czech Village neighborhood.

Still others spent the day in the kitchen at Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids, baking thousands of cookies, brownies and cakes that will continue to fuel the reclamation work long after the visitors have gone home. The sweets will help feed the hundreds of volunteers that continue to come to Cedar Rapids every week.

"We must have more work projects like this," said Phillip Mantle, jubilee officer for the Diocese of Chicago, who spent the day at St. Wenceslaus. "It's not good enough just to go to a hotel and have a meeting. We need to be of service in the community. And besides, I learned a lot of things about building today. I learned how to do framing. And I learned that if you're just a quarter of an inch off when you cut, you're in big trouble."

The Rev. Colleen Lewis, jubilee officer for Diocese of Nebraska, took up a broom and began sweeping at St. Wenceslaus. She's taken numerous mission trips to the Dominican Republic, where she's helped on construction projects. But this was her first such project so close to home.
"It's been a long time since I've done drywalling, so they'd have to coach me on that," she said. "But sweeping, I can do. Sweeping, that's a deacon thing."

Lisa Butler, director of congregational life at Christ Church, has been coordinating that church's response to the flood. The church, which is hosting the jubilee officers' event and providing meals for the visitors, is able to house teams of up to 20 volunteers per night. Christ Church, which is also home to a jubilee ministry, has been booked to capacity through much of March as school-age volunteers from around the country have come to Cedar Rapids during their spring breaks to assist with clean-up efforts. After a brief lull in April and May, Butler says she'll be booked again come June and through much of the summer.

Many of the churches in Cedar Rapids have come together to form Faithful Response, a group that coordinates the work of most faith-based volunteers. The group works with the United Way, which assigns Americorps workers to accompany volunteer groups to projects that are identified as being that day's priority.

The volunteers' efforts produce results in two ways: they provide clean-up labor and the Federal Emergency Management Agency grants $19 in matching assistance money for every volunteer hour logged. So far, volunteers have generated more than $900,000 in federal assistance grants.
Butler said she expects the clean-up efforts to take at least another five years. But she said the benefits that have come to the community through its response to the catastrophe will last far longer than that. "When this (clean-up) is all finished, we'll still have issues we have to address in this community," she said. "The coalition that all the faith-based groups have formed needs to stay strong."

By early afternoon on March 25, the crew had moved on to its second house. Inside, amid the ruined furniture and fetid carpeting, they found a birth certificate, a diploma, ruined photo albums, military medals, old letters.

"It became a sacred space," said Deacon Stephen Shanks, jubilee officer for the Diocese of Alabama, who witnessed a similar phenomenon when helping clean out houses ruined by Hurricane Katrina. "People became very quiet when we were handling teddy bears and birth certificates. It was very personal. This was what was left of someone's former life."

Shew got out her camera and began photographing some of the items, so that at least they would be preserved in some form before going out in the trash. She also took the military medals, in hopes of cleaning them off and somehow returning them to their rightful owner.

"I sat there thinking that if some stranger was going through my stuff, I'd want them to take a picture of my Hannah's baby book," she said. "By the end, I felt like I knew a lot about that family."

-- The Rev. Rebecca Jones is a jubilee officer in the Diocese of Colorado.

Lenten Reflection
by Elizabeth-Anne Vanek

You thumbed grit
into my furrowed brow,
marking me
with the sign of mortality,
the dust of last year's palms.

The cross you traced
seared, smudged skin,
and I recalled
other ashes
etched into my heart
by those who loved too little
or not at all.


**************************************************

Mememto,homo,quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.

Remember, human, that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Genesis 3:19

Nonviolence and Direct Action Training
School of the Americas Watch
Columbus, Ft. Benning, Georgia
November 21, 2008



... thanks to Wilton Vought for sharing his vlog "Other Voices, Other Choices"

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Advent 2008 (Year B)
at Trinity in Clanton, Alabama
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Psalm 126 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8,19-28
The Rev. Steve Shanks, Deacon

Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Joy is the cry of the Third Sunday of Advent. This Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, has historically been called Gaudete (Gaw-day-tay) Sunday. This Latin word "Gaw-day-tay" means "Rejoice!" and was taken from the first words of the Latin introit for the day "Rejoice in the Lord" "Gaw-day-tay en dominum." This is part of an ancient liturgy that we continue to use in our worship today.

During the past week, as I was spending time with our Scripture readings for this morning, I was reminded that scholars are not certain who wrote Isaiah 61, though it seems to be someone who has returned to Jerusalem and is part of the nation’s rebuilding. The powerful words are perhaps the Spirit of God calling this person, in a way reminiscent of the call of the eighth-century prophet in Isaiah 6. The substance of the call is to reclaim the Jubilee tradition of Leviticus 25. This tradition is based on the sovereignty and holiness of God and challenges God’s people to live socially and economically in a way consistent with God’s nature. The tradition’s specific platforms are radical, calling for structural change in the society and not simply charity. That means protecting the environment by letting land lie fallow, canceling debt, freeing slaves, redistributing resources, and sharing economic power in ways that avoid a permanent underclass.

Isaiah’s words are familiar because Luke 4 records Jesus’ use of them for his inaugural sermon in his hometown synagogue. Jesus reads the Isaiah text and proclaims: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). Whether he chooses the text because the passage reflects his understanding of his mission or because it is assigned him as part of the synagogue lectionary, the congregation reacts negatively. Turning from being glad to have a child of the church home, the crowd becomes a lynch mob wanting to throw the hometown kid off the cliff. Even though they aren’t rich, they have too much invested in the system to want such a radical agenda imposed on them.

The Jubilee tradition that Isaiah and Jesus reclaim is a clear call to mission for the Church today. It contains the vision for being and doing: for political liberation, economic reversal, and social revolution – a way of life that lets no one live without life’s necessities. Just as Jesus incarnates the Jubilee tradition, the same words challenge today’s Church, as Christ’s Body, to reappropriate this radical understanding of life in community. And as with Jesus, such structural change can create lynch mobs of those who, even if not wealthy, have investment in the status quo.

If Isaiah’s call to mission isn’t hard enough, God speaks later in the lesson: “For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing” (61:8). Covenant relationship evokes works of justice, emulating God’s central concern for the underdog and for justice. As Sharon Ringe writes: “The Jubilee traditions point to what happens whenever humankind encounters the factor of God’s sovereignty.”

These Jubilee traditions motivated the Episcopal Church at our 67th General Convention in New Orleans in 1982 to create what was described as a priority ministry commitment by this Church that is called “The Jubilee Ministry”. As stated in that year’s Resolution 80A, the Ministry of Jubilee in the Episcopal Church is an attempt at being “a Christian community in which the drama of the streets, and the inner silence of which God speaks, are bound together.” (The Standing Commission on The Church in Metropolitan Areas—1982)

In Jubilee Ministry we recognize that while we are called to feed the hungry, we are also equally called to address the cause of that hunger. Therefore, our goal is to know the difference and to be prepared to work for both charity and justice for the glory and honor of God.

It can be a pretty daunting call to ministry. For me, it is helpful to remember, for example, that some are called to be prophets, others teachers. We have to identify the needs, and then seek to discern those gifted or equipped to address those needs. We do not all have the temperament to contribute the same gifts, but we can all understand our work as fulfilling a common purpose to embrace the “least of these.”

So, what is the Mission of Jubilee Ministry? It is to make a direct and dynamic link between our theology and our ethics - said another way - the talk of our faith and the walk of our faith.

We do this by calling the church to live out its prophetic role of empowering local people to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God” (Micah 6:8) and by responding to the Gospel’s call to “feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned” (Matthew 25:35)

The work of a Jubilee Ministry Center, or Jubilee Parish, is connected to four primary ways in which we serve the least of those among us, which starts by meeting direct human need, and then continues by providing advocacy with poor and oppressed people to address the root causes of poverty and all its ramifications, empowerment of the population being served to support them in beginning to recover their sense of self-esteem and dignity, and evangelism by providing the opportunity for the Church to exercise the faith it proclaims in word and deed.

So, what does the work of a Jubilee Ministry look like in the Episcopal Church in 2008? It is “Feeding the Hungry” through daily meals that are prepared and delivered to people with HIV/AIDS in a lunch program provided at St. Andrea’s Church in Tucson, Arizona; it is “Clothing the Naked” at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ada, Oklahoma where The Matthew 25 Mission provides Men’s Wear and Household Items; it is “Welcoming the Stranger” at the Refugee and Immigration Jubilee Center in Valladolid, Spain that provides services for immigrants from South America, as well as it is those caring for Children and Seniors at Episcopal Social Services in Kansas City, Missouri; it is “Caring for the Sick” at Naco Wellness Center Located on the Arizona/Mexico Border that is serving people on both sides of the international Border… and it is opening the doors of this church every 1st Saturday in Clanton, Alabama to welcome and provide food and hospitality to the poor, working poor, and hungry of Chilton County.

In contrast to Mark’s understanding that we encountered in last week’s lessons, the writer of the Gospel of John presents John the Baptist, not as the one calling for repentance, but as a witness. The one who comes baptizing denies being Elijah or the Christ or a prophet; rather he comes to prepare and give testimony – to witness.

For many Christians committed to living faithfully, giving verbal testimony or witness is difficult and often feels presumptuous. Yet John becomes the voice of promise, in a sense the voice of Scripture. He calls people to see and understand differently and to acknowledge the Word’s importance.

But John also knows how important it is to live that witness, to embody one’s words, to link the talk of our faith and the walk of our faith. When John, from prison, asks Jesus if he is “the one who is to come,” Jesus suggests that John look at what he does: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the poor have Good News preached (Matt 11:2-6 – again echoes of Isaiah 61). Deeds, as well as words, are testimony and witness.

Individuals and communities today seek to live into the biblical Jubilee tradition and give testimony in word and deed…

• through Communities that embody a life together that is nonhierarchical and inclusive of all God’s children, where the words of the faith come alive through experience;
• through Partnerships in which poor and wealthy people acknowledge their need for one another and to share one another’s gifts, insights, and material goods;
• through a Life lived for “the least of our brothers and sisters,” where none go without food or housing;
• through Acknowledgement of the Christ encountered in those who are poor and hurting.

In such transformational living there is “a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning” (Isa 61:3). The cry of the Third Sunday of Advent arises: Rejoice!

Thanks be to God! Amen.

School of the Americas Watch & the Pope

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I was with 20,000 other folks gathered again outside the gates of Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA for the vigil to shut down the School of the Americas. Or, as activists call it, "The School of the Assassins."

The SOA is a torture-training school-right here on US soil and funded by our tax dollars-where Latin America soldiers are taught counterinsurgency tactics, psychological warfare and Abu-Ghraib-style torture techniques. The School of the Americas Watch, a grassroots organization dedicated to closing the SOA and changing oppressive US foreign policy, has been holding these vigils for the past 18 years, the first one, with only 10 people. The Saturday rally and Sunday vigil features spoken testimony from torture survivors, family members whose loved ones were killed by SOA graduates, the sole survivor of a massacre, elected officials, actors, and activists from around the world, all interspersed with the most music, spoken word and visual arts you've ever seen at a demonstration.

Sign the Petition to President- Elect Obama to End Torture and Close the SOA, and come join us next November!

Now, for the Pope part...

The Friday of this year's vigil was also the day that SOAW founder, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, was to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Not for standing up to the military or to the US government, for that matter, but for participating in a Mass to ordain a woman priest.

Fr. Roy delivered the homily at that ceremony in August, saying:
"Sexism is a sin. . . The hierarchy will say, 'It is the tradition of the church not to ordain women.' I grew up in a small town in Louisiana and often heard, 'It is the tradition of the South to have segregated schools.' It was also 'the tradition' in our Catholic church to have the Black members seated in the last five pews of the church. No matter how hard we may try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is always wrong and immoral."

In October, the church hierarchy sent Fr. Roy a letter demanding he recant his position or be excommunicated. But, Fr. Roy didn't back down. He wrote a letter in response and he and others have pointed out the disturbing fact that, while it took the Vatican twelve years to begin to respond to the sexual abuse of nearly 5,000 children by US priests (with none of the priests, nor the bishops who remained silent about the abuse, being excommunicated) it took only three months for the Vatican to respond to Fr. Roy's support of women's ordination with the threat of excommunication.

We haven't heard conclusively whether the excommunication has gone through. Perhaps the media attention, the letter writing, the emailing (Did you know you can email the Pope? ) and the petitions are having an effect. We think the slogan of the Women's Ordination Conference's petition in support of Fr. Roy says it best:

"Break the Silence. Shatter the Stained Glass Ceiling."

SOA Pilgrimage of Resistance (2008)

a weekend of nonviolence training with Janet Chisholm, sitting and learning at the feet of Jon Sobrino, sharing meal and conversation with the peace and justice community of the Episcopal Church in Columbus, and sharing in the funeral procession and vigil with 20,000 faithful people... love and prayers, steve

Baltimore Airport

Well, it was proved true to me again that you never know who you might encounter while waiting to make a connecting flight on Southwest Airlines.

I was early for a flight that I had about a two and a half hour layover for, and the boarding area was packed because the previous flight had just been cancelled because Southwest had a part to fix a broken seat but didn't have a technician certified to do the install. While those folks were settling in for the next hour or so that it would take for the next plane to show up, I found the one vacant seat over by the glass and as I was reaching for my iPod and the new Jon Sobrino book I glanced over to the cadre that seemed to be spreading out in the area of seats to the right of me. As I watched with the kind of disinterested curiosity of one with hours of travel done and hours more to come, I noticed someone that I'd met in 1974 striding through the crowd and towards me... or more particularly to the group of young adults that had spread out and were now deep into their technology and undertaking what seemed to be one text or call or email after another without seeming let up.

Then I stood and smiled and greeted Ralph Nader letting him know that a conversation that we'd had, along with Dr. Sidney Wolfe, back in 1974 had helped me understand what it means to work unselfishly on behalf those who are marginalized and disenfranchised. A young man stood next to me as I made my introduction and expression of appreciation to Mr. Nader, at first I think to make sure that I wasn't a complete nutjob and to also remind me that if it wasn't for Mr. Nader's tireless efforts on our behalf over the years that we wouldn't be reimbursed by the airlines for getting bumped from a flight. I smiled and simply said that I'd been a fan of Mr. Nader's work for a very long time. He seemed satisfied enough to sit down, but close by in case of ... whatever.

So, for the next half hour, with one interruption for a telephone interview with a news radio station in St. Louis, we talked about peace, justice and nonviolence in the context of the current state of the world and the presidential election. I told him that I'd appreciated his willingness to appear in a theater of the absurd like Bill Maher's show the Friday before, and that for me it seems an increasingly difficult task to 'mine' the nuggets from what the media is willing to share with us. He reflected on what it was like having to go on Conan and have to be part of a skit with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. We talked about his being on the ballot in 46 states, or maybe 45, guess I should check, but I wasn't interested in engaging him on the relevancy of it this time since it really is about raising the issues that are important to so many of us. I did tell him that I helped put up signs for his campaign in Alabama in 2000 and seemed to enjoy that.

Then, he asked why I was there and told him about going to facilitate nonviolence training at Yale Divinity School starting the next day. He then reminisced on two things in that context. First, he was the person who did the last interview with William Sloane Coffin before he died. The second item that he talked about was a book that had made an impression on him many years before entitled "The Small Community: Foundation of democratic life" that was written in 1942 by Arthur E. Morgan and the link is to his organization that is still doing the work of finding community solutions today.

Finally, I asked him what he would like me to particularly share with people from our brief time together that morning. He said "Two things, connect with the veterans and keep up a public witness."

Thank you Mr. Nader, I will, and God speed as you continue your faithful and persistent witness.

I found myself this morning quoting this poem and made the comment that it is a poem that has continued to inspire me for I am indeed 'a fool who hath loved his folly' ... peace, steve

The Fool
by Padraic Pearse

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;
A fool that hath loved his folly,
Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses or their quiet homes,
Or their fame in men's mouths;
A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,
Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped
The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;
A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all
Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks
And the poor are filled that were empty,
Tho' he go hungry.
I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth
In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.

Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.
I have squandered the splendid years:
Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,
Aye, fling them from me !
For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard,
Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow's teen,
Shall not bargain or huxter with God ; or was it a jest of Christ's
And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?
The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,
And said, `This man is a fool,' and others have said, `He blasphemeth;'
And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life
In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,
To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?
Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin
On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,
But remember this my faith
And so I speak.

Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:
Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;
Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;
Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.
And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,
O people that I have loved, shall we not answer together?

Preaching Peace and Nonviolence at the Auburn UUF

On Sunday, September 28th, I was invited by the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and Auburn Peace and Justice groups to offer my point of view on living a life of peace and nonviolence during the Fellowship's principal Sunday service. The picture to the right was taken after the service with the Fellowship's minister, the Rev. Diana Jordan Allende.

The AUUF has posted this sermon as a podcast and it is available for listening at http://www.auuf.net/mp3/sept282008.mp3. It was a particular blessing to have Ruby Sales, of Spirit House in Columbus, Georgia, come to be present and then to have her share a response (part of the UUF tradition) after, and offered as part of, the sermon.

So, for those who might be curious as to what I might have to say to an entirely 'friendly' audience, I thought that this might be of some interest.

Love and prayers, Steve

Kirtan at Heartwood Yoga

Had a great evening of kirtan chant at Heartwood Yoga in Birmingham last night with Shantala (Benjy and Heather Wertheimer) and Jacqueline Westhead who's with them for this leg of their tour.

So, what's kirtan chant? One definition that seems to describe my experience best, says "Kirtan is the chanting of sound syllables, and is an active meditation that may precede a period of silence. It is often in Sanskrit, but may be in any language. Kirtan can be practiced alone, or in a group... Chanting the mantra sounds of kirtan elicits a feeling of well-being, calmness and harmony. Instruments for kirtan include the harmonium, rhythm instruments, and others, or just voices." Since for some it is also, or particularly, about a part of their spiritual practice, I thought it appropriate to include another definition that seems to fairly describe my beginning of that understanding "The yogic practice of kirtan chanting brings together devotional bhakti yoga, powerful mantra yoga, and profound jnana yoga, along with pranayama breath yoga, yogic posture asana, as well as the crown jewel of raja yoga..."

I went because I enjoy both plainsong and anglican chant, and because Heartwood is where I receive instruction in my yoga practice and I want to support them. The two plus hours of mostly call and response chant was way for me to begin to connect with that part of the yogic tradition. The challenge for me in the kirtan are the textual references to the divine spark within or of god dwelling within us. This is a bit gnostic for me, which is a heresy that can be seductive because it is based in part on a knowledge of transcendence that is arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means.

Of course, I know that the translations of the Sanskrit are being offered are from the translator's point of view. Though I don't anticipate learning Sanskrit to delve into the subtler and deeper understandings of the source material, I find that I do mentally edit in my own understandings of other possible translations. That instead of a divine spark or god within, it may be that, as in the gesture of Namaste, we are acknowledging the soul in one by the soul in another in a place of connection and timelessness that is free from the bonds of ego. I think that there's some truth in the understanding that we are all one when we live from the heart.

For me, the kirtan was great but the highlight was Jacqueline Westhead leading us in K’riyah, a chant in Call and Response form where one uses the breath and silence between chants to guide us. Every exhale is a practice in humility and every inhale is an act of receiving. From the silence we can know what it is to hear and respond from an authentic space in the heart. As Jacqueline writes,

"Listening and Love are at the center of Jewish prayer. The Shema with the call to listen, and the embracing of divine oneness, followed by the V’ahavta with a declaration to love.

"Devotional chant is a path of love and listening. Through chanting, the Love that is present in everyone’s heart is awakened and one can realize their innate connection to the Divine.

"Devotion is the act of deep, steady affection or faithfulness and the path of devotion is one of the most direct routes to an inner experience of G-d."

So, you can probably tell, I liked the kirtan but loved the K’riyah.

Tonight I was reminded again that chant opens our hearts to a natural flow of devotion that can be an aid for us on our journey to seek understandings. Devotional chant such as kirtan, K’riyah or Taize seem to exist in the simple acts of devotion, surrender, and intention. The combination of these allows us to clear our hearts and minds to receive and transform. This practice asks you to show up with a desire to open, listen, and love.

Namaste

Our Journey for Peace on Capitol Hill

It has already been three weeks since we were led by faith and conscience to the nation’s capital to pray for peace.

It was a profound experience to be numbered among the hundreds of us who prayed in houses of worship across Washington; who huddled amid the Upper Senate Park torrent; and who processed to the Hart Senate Office Building.

We later learned that when the Olive Branch delegation met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s aide, he said that one of the most important things the peace movement could do was civil disobedience. “Keep it up!” he said.

His eyes widened when the delegation let him know that, at that very moment, we were doing just that.

But, in fact, “civil disobedience” does not capture what we were about. We were, instead, bringing the prayer for compassion and justice to one of our country’s centers of power. Prayer delivered in person. With longing. With anguish. With composure. With lilting song. A circle of prayer. A quiet gesture of true obedience, not disobedience.

In the next months, we will be exploring what our next steps will be for our faith-based movement for peace in Iraq. I am thankful for those who witness – and look forward to our future journey of prayer and action.

PEACE ACTIVISTS WORSHIP, PRAY, GET ARRESTED

Forty-Two Arrested for Civil Disobedience in Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, DC, March 7, 2008 -- More than forty religious leaders and faith-based peace activists were arrested in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon for their non-violent witness to end the war in Iraq. Hundreds of people assembled earlier in the afternoon for a public demonstration against the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, and thousands of worshippers gathered at noon Friday for services calling for peace and an end to the war in Iraq.

The arrests came at the end of a day of worship and prayer. Following noon-time services in ten different houses of worship in Washington, worshippers processed in the rain to Upper Senate Park for an interfaith witness near the U.S. Capitol. In the midst of a driving rain, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Unitarian traditions insisted that people of faith will be relentless in encouraging their political leaders to take bold, unequivocal action for peace.

Multi-faith delegations from the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership, the organizing coalition of the afternoon’s events, met with high level staffers from both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offices. The religious leaders expressed grave concern that there must be both a clear exit strategy from Iraq and a regional, multi-lateral effort at development and diplomacy to bring about genuine security.Participants from across faith boundaries are clearly united in expressing five core convictions:

• The war in Iraq must end and diplomacy must replace the threat of war with Iran.
• We must provide far better support to our returning soldiers.
• We must commit to the long-term work of development in Iraq.
• There can be no equivocation in our renunciation of all use of torture.
• We must commit real resources to justice in our own communities in the U.S.

Among the forty-two people who were arrested were:

• Lois Baker, who is 86 years old, a World War II Veteran, great-grandmother, and committed Presbyterian Peacemaker.
• Joan Nicholson, 73 years old and infamous for her role in the legal decision Nicholson v. United States, which established the right to peaceful demonstrations on Capitol Hill.
• Will Covert, a Vietnam Veteran and member of Veterans for Peace.
• Khristine Hopkins, a strong advocate for housing and the environment, and traveled from Cape Cod for her second year in a row to join Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.
• Eighteen members of St. Luke Presbyterian Church traveled together from Minnesota to participate in the faith-based witness. Seven were arrested as they knelt in the atrium of the Hart Building to pray.
• Six students came from Hastings College in Nebraska, and three chose to risk arrest. Nathan Tramp said that he “came to learn a prayerful attitude toward the work of the peace movement, and to better discern how to make peace building a greater part of my life.”
• The Rev. Steve Shanks, deacon from Birmingham, Alabama and member of the National Executive Committe of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.