The children

Children, children, children. Children running away from violence and poverty in Central America, children sent back to violence and poverty in Central America, children killed on a beach in Gaza, children hungry and unsafe on the streets of these United States, children deathly ill with cholera in South Sudan. Cry out, o stones.

I first posted this lament on Facebook about 12 hours ago, Wednesday July 16, 2014.

Photo: Reuters, Gaza, July 16, 2014

Guns, Grief, and Gaudete: Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, after the Newtown Massacre

The Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), year C                                               

December 16, 2012                                                                                         

St. Mary’s House, Greensboro

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle 9 [from Isaiah 12:2-6]

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

In the name of God

Who creates us,

Who saves us, and

Who remains with us always,

Amen.

Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old

Daniel Barden, 7 years old

Rachel Davino, 29 years old

Olivia Engel, 6 years old

Josephine Gay, 7 years old

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 years old

Dylan Hockley, 6 years old

Dawn Hocksprung, 47 years old

Madeline Hsu, 6 years old

Catherine Hubbard, 6 years old

Chase Kowalski, 7 years old

Jesse Lewis, 6 years old

James Mattioli, 6 years old

Grace McDonnell, 7 years old

Anne Marie Murphy, 52 years old

Emilie Parker, 6 years old

Jack Pinto, 6 years old

Noah Pozner, 6 years old

Caroline Previdi, 6 years old

Jessica Rekos, 6 years old

Avielle Richman, 6 years old

Lauren Russeau, 30 years old

Mary Sherlach, 56 years old

Victoria Soto, 27 years old

Benjamin Wheeler, 6 years old

Allison Wyatt, 6 years old

[short silence]

Nancy Lanza, age unknown

Adam Lanza, 20 years old

Let us pray.

O God, who came into the world

as a fragile child

and who lived as one of us,

even unto death;

Risen One,

Mysterious One beyond our understanding,

who created and creates us,

who seeks us out,

and whom we seek;

Comforter and advocate,

our shield and our strength,

hold us in our grief;

Oh Holy One,

in Whose name we gather,

Amen

Like most preachers in this country,

I threw away the first draft of my sermon on Friday afternoon.

Advent took on starker colors.

It became more urgent, its prophetic calls more sharp.

At the same time

it went into slow motion

as our world does after trauma.

Twenty-six people shot and killed,

each shot several times, from the medical examiner’s account,

in an elementary school in a quiet, privileged community

in Connecticut.

Most of them children.

More than half of them girls.

Their teachers, all women,

killed trying to protect them.

A young man

not long out of childhood,

killing others and himself,

and before that, killing his own mother.

The rose color of Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of rejoicing,

this third Sunday of Advent,

and the words of our first scripture readings for today,

clash with our reality.

It shouldn’t happen.

The blood,

the guns,

the police,

the media,

the empty children’s rooms

   with weeping parents,

the questions.

I threw away my sermon.

And then I asked myself:

why don’t I throw away that sermon every week?

Where, in our sermons,

in our prayers,

in our community work,

are the names of the children

who die of gun violence

every day?

 In 2008 and 2009

—these figures are from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention— [1]

5,740

children and teens

were killed by guns.

Five thousand

seven hundred

and forty.

In two years.

This number would fill more than 229 public school classrooms

of 25 students each.

More than 170 of the children

killed during those two years

were pre-schoolers.

Black children and teens,

who were 15 percent

of the total child population in the US

during those two years,

accounted for 45 percent

of all child and teen gun deaths.

Trayvon Martin.
We remember his name – do we?
But do we know the other names?

Do our news media publish them?
Do we pray them?

Do we remember them?
Do we weep for them?

This shouldn’t happen

in a quiet suburban community.

It shouldn’t happen in a noisy urban community.

It shouldn’t happen to any mother’s child.

Or to any mother.

Or father.

Or human person of any kind.

Columbine High School, Colorado.

Wedgwood Baptist Church, Texas.
Atlanta day trading, Georgia.

            I know you want to put your hands over your ears–

bear with me and with this list for another minute—

Lockheed Martin,  Mississippi.
Living Church of God, Wisconsin.
Red Lake High School and Reservation, Minnesota.
Amish School, Pennsylvania.

Virginia Tech University, Virginia

Northern Illinois University, Illinois.
American Civic Association center, New York state

Fort Hood Army Base, Texas

Tucson congressional constituent meeting, Arizona

Oikos University, California

Seattle café, Washington state

Movie theatre, Colorado

Sikh temple, Wisconsin

I skipped some.

We don’t feel much like rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday.

And religious platitudes won’t help us.

The voice and visions from today’s scriptures from Zephaniah and Isaiah,

words of justice and joy,

speak to some of us

but fail to reach others among us.

Some of us feel more like the passage from Jeremiah,

the same passage quoted in the gospel of Matthew on the massacre of the innocents:

“...a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refused to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more.”[2]

When children die,

our God dies.

Our faith is shaken.

Our hope begins to faint.

Our visions and dreams turn to nightmares.

Into this world

this very world

Jesus was born

and is born

and will be born.

In this world,

John the Baptizer

spoke,

and speaks,

to both rich and poor,

to the occupied and the occupiers,

the conquered and the empire,

the religious and the not so religious,

the violent and the silent.

Last week we encountered John already,

preaching repentance –

-- repentance and forgiveness.

Repentance first.

And did you notice that the author of the gospel of Luke

very carefully named the context, political and economic,

of John’s preaching -- do you remember?

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea..." and so on –“the word of God came to John...”

We might well say:

In the seventh year of the Roberts Court at the Supreme Court of the United States, the seventeenth year since the founding of the World Trade Organization,[3] the one hundred and twelfth Congress, the fourth year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Bev Perdue was governor of North Carolina, the word of God came...

This week,

the gospel’s author, and John the Baptizer,

get very practical.

 
What should we DO?

What should we do?

One of the things we tend to do when a catastrophe happens is to simplify.

We want a cause. We want a reason. We want a simple answer.

We want it theologically

and we want it socially.

We want it theologically:

You know that saying, “Everything happens for a reason”?
What a load of theological hogwash that is. 

As if we could know.

 

On an emotional and spiritual and theological level,

we don’t know.

We need to sit, in Advent, in the night,

in our not-knowing,

the not-knowing in which faith is forged,

the place where hope will be born

–in this we trust—

in the faint light of the rose and purple candles.

But this will not happen fast

or easily.

And socially, we want a simple answer too.

That is another kind of “everything happens for a reason”

which might be rephrased as 
“everything happens for one reason.”

No; I think

that things generally happen

for several reasons.

In the case of the Connecticut killings,

and of other killings by gun violence in this nation,

the lax gun laws, yes.

Yes. Yes.

AND

the fact that it is easier to get a gun

than to get mental health care.

The lack of good mental health care.

The stigma

that those of us who have suffered from mental illness still bear.

The glorification of violence in our entertainment industry

and the shaping of our desires

through this industry.

The images and models of masculinity in our culture.

Social isolation.

And this country’s particular sin:

We enslaved each other through violence.

We are a country enslaved to violence.

AND

whatever it is

that causes humans to kill each other,

as the ancient story of the brothers Abel and Cain recounts.

We are all entangled with this.

Call it evil, call it sin, call it the way of the world;

call it what you want.

We are, one way or another, a part of it –

- some perhaps more than others, but all of us.

Today’s collect[4]

puts it in old-fashioned language: “we are sorely hindered by our sins.”

We hear this against the backdrop of last week’s gospel:

the reality of repentance

and that of forgiveness.

What should we DO?

Say the people

in today’s gospel.

John the Baptizer,

in the Gospel of Luke,

encounters different audiences

who ask what they should do

to change.

The crowd asks.

The tax collectors ask.

Even the soldiers ask.

John takes these groups of people

where they are.

They are not starting from the same place.

No hoarding, he says to one group.

No skimming, to the other.

No extortion, to the third; no abuse.

It’s not everything.

But it’s a place to start.

In Advent,

we live

between God’s patience

and God’s impatience.

Advent is a time to rediscover

both of these,

God’s patience

and God’s impatience,

and to discern

when and where 

to respond to them

by living in them:

Living God’s patience:

in grieving together,

in holding each other’s hands,

in listening,

in doing the small, daily things

that assure us, after the catastrophe,

that we are still alive.

Living God’s impatience:

in outrage

and action

for justice;

for change.

Dorothee Soelle, the German theologian,

has always been helpful to me.

She grew up during the Shoah [the Holocaust]

and after World War II, she said,

she didn't have much stomach for

“the God who so gloriously reigneth."

For her,

in that period of history,

God was weak

and did not have enough friends.

The God who is with us

in Advent,

and who will be with us at Christmas

as a fragile child,

needs us 
as friends.

Let us pray.

Come, o brother Jesus.

Come, o wounded savior.

Come, weak God who shows us strength where there is none.

Come, challenger of empires

and of the language of empires

and of the weapons of empires.

Come to us and make us your friends.

Come to us who are charged with protecting

you,

your children,

your life.

Come to us who fail;

come to us who struggle;

come to us who need forgiveness.

Come to us

and teach us to work

patiently

stubbornly

together

for life.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Weep with us.

Hold our hands.

Stay in our hearts.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Anger us.

Be our guide.

Teach us to be your friends.

Teach us your hope.

Amen.

---

[1] These figures and others are detailed and analyzed in the Children’s Defense Fund report on children and gun violence, "Protect Children Not Guns 2012." http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/protect-children-not-guns-2012.pdf

[2] Jeremiah 31:15.

[3] In a shorter, related meditation for an Advent retreat, I also included in this enumeration “in the sixty-eighth year since the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions.”  I include these transnational economic institutions (the Bretton Woods institutions –the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund— and the World Trade Organization) because politics and economics, as they were two thousand years ago though in different ways, are deeply connected, and because our lives are affected by economic as well as political institutions. You can replace the names and institutions above at will. Try it.

[4] Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, the Book of Common Prayer.

Holocaust map - Europe and the teaching of 20th century theology

The link to this map doesn't work, but I saved the image as a jpg.

I am linking a Facebook post to this since the link is cranky and refuses to show up on Facebook.

Make sure you click on the image to enlarge it. (Click twice and it will get really big and detailed.)

Post on Facebook:

Map for the little darlings to study. Yeah, I'm teaching a Christian theology course and they are also getting a good dose of theological vocabulary & questions. But woe unto those who study European theologies in the mid-20th century & after without looking this in the face. And without asking whether & how this affects the questions & the language. And how we understand God. And how theology & ethics are related. And what responsibilities Christians bear.

End of speech. I'm off to edit the Tome.

Memorial Day, 2010

"Photos of a Prophet" - a Romero retrospective and tribute

Andy, in the comments to the previous post, recommended this wonderful pdf-format slide show. It's actually a book available in exhibit form available in slide show form. The wonders of technology!

These are archival photos of Monseñor Romero and his people, from Romero's childhood to the days after his death. Well worth a look.

The exhibit is currently at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. Information here.

Priests carry Archbishop Romero’s coffin out of the Metropolitam Cathedral of San Salvador, March 30, 1980. Photo: Private collection of the Photography Center of El Salvador

Oscar Arnulfo Romero, ¡Presente!

Today was the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Monseñor Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador.

I will post more when my teaching week is over, but for now, here are two links.

At this one, which is mostly in Spanish but has links to other languages, you will find a wealth of resources including a slide show in PowerPoint (click on "XXX Aniversario") with rich quotes by Romero and many other words and images to ponder.

This one is a biography in English by a U.S. poet and activist who has engaged in Central America solidarity work for many, many years and knows what she is talking about.

"A church that does not unite itself to the poor in order to denounce from the place of the poor the injustice committed against them is not truly the Church of Jesus Christ."*-San Oscar Romero de las Americas

¡Romero vive!

50th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre

21 March 1960. Remember.

Ruth Olver, R.I.P.

Two years ago my parents' dear friend John Olver died. I only wrote the first of two posts I had planned to write on him. We had a visiting lecturer from Botswana at school on almost-last-minute notice and I never got to write more. But the first post is here and will tell you a bit about him. (There is a good link to a short bio.) John was a warm, witty, intelligent man who worked for UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, for most of his life. I think of him when I hear news of Gaza because he was one of the few people who managed to get anything done there. In his case, it was bringing fresh water to Gaza. He wrote a book about it, but I think it was a self-publish and never got out there into the wide world. I once saw a used copy on Amazon, though. It was called Roadblocks and Mindblocks: Partnering with The PLO and Israel.

John died in March of 2008, a month full of deaths and with Holy Week in it besides.

Today John's wife Ruth Olver died. Ruth and my mother met at Hunter College in uptown Manhattan when they were in their late teens. They used to study at the library together, taking turns napping. Later, when they were both married, the two couples became close friends and my mother became godmother to Ruth's second child, a daughter. I used to get hand-me-down clothes from Amy; they would arrive in a package at our house in Paris, all the way from wherever the Olvers were at the time. For a while they lived in Geneva.

We received news of Ruth's passing from Ruth and John's son this evening. (Interesting note: both he and I entered the Episcopal Church in our middle age.) Ruth had been very ill for several years. She had Parkinson's and other ailments, and she had recently turned 92 years old.

Ruth Olver was an early civil rights activist, attempting to integrate public facilities in Washington, D.C. in the early 1940s (as did my mother's late brother, Don Rothenberg). Her son wrote, "A brilliant woman of her generation, after her marriage to the late John Olver in 1944 she devoted herself to raising her children and supporting the UN career of our late father. However, she was always very active in organizing schools, supplies and other social support for children wherever he served, especially in Libya and later in the Palestinian Territories."

In her forties, back in the U.S., Ruth became a psychiatric social worker. In addition to an active clinical practice, she was a pioneer in campaigning against spousal and other domestic abuse in Westchester County. (For those of you who don't know, that's a suburban county north of New York City; part of it is fancy shmancy and it also has middle-class neighborhoods and towns and pockets of poverty; domestic abuse does not know class lines.) Ruth was a founder of the Women's Justice Council, which lobbies the police and courts for justice for victim-survivors of domestic abuse and and provides childcare and other support to them while they are pursuing their rights. (I'm paraphrasing Richard's letter here.)

Ruth was a founder of My Sister's Place, a Westchester County shelter for victims of abuse. The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to that shelter.

Please remember Ruth Olver and her children and grandchildren in your prayers. Remember also John, who preceded her in death two years ago and who like her worked for the good of humanity. Remember also my parents, who have yet again lost a dear friend of their generation.

International Women's Day: taking action

Casa Myrna Vasquez in Boston urges us to support

the International Violence Against Women Act.

So does Amnesty International-USA.

The Massacre of the Holy Innocents in European Art

European artists of the late Middle Ages painted the Massacre of the Holy Innocents in the landscape and clothing of their location and era. Giotto's painting, below, is one of the two best known.


The other well-known one is by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.



I just discovered a third which doesn't get as much exposure (at least to my knowledge) but is well worth a look. It is by Duccio di Buoninsegna.


(The Innocents, all boys according to the biblical story, seem to have no genitals. Also, the mothers are as important as the babies in this picture.)

This one is part of a much larger multi-paneled work now known as the Maestà, a panel for the Siena cathedral's high altar. The term Maestà usually indicates a representation of Mary the Mother of Jesus, the Madonna, seated with the child and surrounded by angels, and there was in fact such a representation on the panel.

Written Dec. 28, posted Jan. 1 once the image insert function started working again. Click on the images to enlarge them and see more detail.

Holy Innocents, cont'd: agencies working for children

More on children in commemoration of the Holy Innocents.



United Nations agencies working for the safety and well-being of children include UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency (the initials stand for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.

UNICEF commemorated this year the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Eloquent photo essay, with quotes from the CRC, here.



In the U.S., the Children's Defense Fund is the leading advocacy organization for children. ("We champion policies that will lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education, and a moral and spiritual foundation.")


Remember that old poster, War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things?

The World Council of Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence (2001-2010) website is here. Did you know that European countries violate children's rights on a daily basis? Every continent suffers from the scourge of violence against children. The Council of Europe's book on eradicating violence against children is here.

Remember also that domestic violence affects primarily women and children. (Need help? Here's the National Domestic Violence Hotline.) An international downloadable (free) book on domestic violence and its causes and consequences is here. Got it from the World Council of Churches' Decade site too.

Children who experience violence in their homes have a strong chance of growing up using violence.

They don't have to. We can interrupt the cycle of violence. Well-loved, healthy children have a good chance of growing up healthy and with alternatives to violence in their experience and in their hearts and minds.

Love a child. Work and vote with the welfare of children in mind. Pray with the images of children before your eyes. Honor the Holy Child and all children. Remember the Holy Innocents.


Photos:

"Immigrant children, Ellis Island, New York." Brown Brothers, ca. 1908. Records of the Public Health Service. The National Archives.

"Two Latin girls pose in front of a wall of graffiti," Lynch Park, Brooklyn, NY, June 1974. Danny Lyon. 1999 print from the original 35mm slide.Records of the Environmental Protection Agency. The National Archives.

Child rape victim from war in eastern Congo. Hazel Thompson, The New York Times. See related article and slide show.

Son of domestic violence survivor. From The American Domestic Violence Crisis Line [different from the above hotline] via globalgiving.org.

Children posing for a photo, India. Target Magazine #2, 2007 (TEAR-Australia, "engaging Christians in God's work of justice and compassion")


This post was composed between Dec. 28 and Jan. 1 and posted Jan. 1 using a Dec. 28 posting date.

December 28: Feast of the Holy Innocents

The Feast of the Holy Innocents commemorates the boy-children under the age of two whose slaughter King Herod is said to have ordered around the time of the birth of Jesus. (See the Gospel according to Matthew, 2:16-18.)

It is a good day to remember the children of the world, many of whose lives are threatened by violence, lack of clean water, inadequate health care, and hunger.



Photo: Refugees who fled the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region run for shelter during a dust storm at Djabal camp near Gos Beida in eastern Chad June 19, 2008. Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters. Nicked from here.

Resources and information in next post.

Not so random theological quotes

I am convalescing. Whether or not the bug was H1N1 is unclear, since I have half of the symptoms from the "nope, it's not H1N1" column and half the symptoms from the "yup, you got it" column. Either way, I have been sick, without a fever but with a lot of lung involvement and some head and nose heaviness as well. The latter went away relatively fast; the former is lingering. Much better the last two days, though.

I am back at work at my theological writing during this fall break (which gave me the time to be sick and sleep and now gives me the time to think a little). I'm up against a deadline, so the time for coherent posts has not yet returned, but I'll share with you some quotes from the works of authors I have been reading and about whom I have been writing.

So this first. We're not in light material here.

To believe in God means to take sides with life and to end our alliance with death. It means to stop killing and wanting to kill, and to do battle with apathy which is so akin to killing. It means an end to the fear of dying and to its counterpart, the fear of failure. To take sides with life means to stop looking for some neutral ground between murderers and their victims and to cease looking upon the world as a supermarket in which we can buy anything we want so long as the price is right and the system is preserved.

******-- Dorothee Sölle, Death by Bread Alone
********(German original 1975; English, 1978)

Reminder:

But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)

More Sölle:

****Taking sides with life is not an easy or simple thing, It involves a never-ending process of change whereby we constantly renounce the self that is dead and enamored of death and instead become free to love life. To take sides with life and experience how we can transcend ourselves is a process that has many names and faces. Religion is one of those names. Religion can mean the radical and wholehearted attempt to take sides with life. ...

****What I have to say is said from a particular point of view. I am a Christian. When I seek help against that ever-present death by bread alone I turn instinctively to Jesus Christ, learning from him how to fight and conquer death. I do not claim, however, that this way is the only way to do so. I know many Jewish, humanist, socialist individuals and groups who, with the help of other guides and patrons and saints, fight the same battle and have similar experiences. As far as I am concerned it is not important or necessary that we all embrace the same faith, perhaps some common faith of humanity, What is important is that people be able to communicated and share their religious experiences.

****Turning to religion must not mean turning away from each other but rather turning to each other. When I try to say what Christ means to me, threatened as I am by the strangling death that is all around us, I am trying to speak about the steps that can lead all of us out of the prevailing state of death. The recollection of Jesus derives its power not from “one-way” slogans and bumper-sticker theology but from what that recollection says about happiness, peace, love, and justice. It speaks of those things not as requirements or demands to be imposed upon humanity, but as things that can and do happen in the lives of each of us. One of the things the Jesus tradition says is that learning to love means also–indeed primarily–learning to die, and therein lies the offer of finding our identity.

**** Jesus took sides with life. He battled against death wherever he found it: the death of outcast lepers with whom none would speak, whom none would touch; the death of the publicans whom society held in utter contempt; the physical death of those who had not yet begun to live. Here note must be made of something without which Jesus’ relationship to death cannot be understood. Neither Jesus nor those who, like him, battle against violent death looked upon a physical death as the worst thing that can happen to us. They feared a life that is ruled and controlled by death more than they feared death itself…. For Jesus and others like him natural death is by no means the greatest enemy.

****But Jesus’ attitude toward death and that of others like him is contrary to ours. We prefer to cling tenaciously to the “honeysweet Christ.” We want no part of the Christ of vinegar and gall. We accept more or less as fate the kind of death that surrounds us in all its forms, the kind of death imposed by society’s structures and forces; war and starvation; robotized, impersonal existence; the monotony and routine of going through the motions of living. But what we struggle against is natural death from sickness and age, regarding it as our bitterest foe. It is natural death that we fight and resist with every means at our disposal. …

****The desire for a future life and for some form of continued personal existence is most deeply rooted in the resistance to death of those who have not lived an authentic and genuine life. The only weapon against such death is that of love. Those who die without ever having plunged into the stream of love die a hopeless death. Death can be accepted only by those who know what it means to live. Only they can take sides with life against the death that comes by bread alone.

****Being a Christian means that we have passed from death to life. We have gone beyond death. In the case of a Christian, the biological order of birth followed by death is reversed. The Christian dies first, then [s]he is born. Passing from death to life, the individual Christian will not need such a crutch as the hope of reunion in heaven with loved ones. Nor will the Christian need the crutch of a hope for continued personal existence in a heavenly realm. Absolutely nothing –not even the knowledge of our transitory personal existence—can separate us from the love of God.

************-- Dorothee Sölle, Death by Bread Alone


Discuss...

Image: "Jesus of the People" by Janet McKenzie

Señor, ten piedad

That's "Lord, have mercy" in Spanish.

Brutal news from El Salvador from our friend Caminante, here. Mother of God!


San Romero de las Américas, camina con nosotros.

Prayer Posse alert for the Adorable Godson

Cross-posted on Facebook:

Those of you with a spiritual practice, do send prayers, good vibrations, incantations, and meditations of healing to my godson Robbie (aka Lopi) who was assaulted and robbed yesterday and is in hospital bruised and with broken leg.

This was in Greensboro, just before I left town. In cheerier news, I have arrived at destination and have begun frolicking with friends. A quiet afternoon of writing now. More frolicking this evening.

Please pray also for Robbie's attackers.

Good Friday: the life and death of Sister Dorothy Stang

Yesterday evening I began my Good Friday reading, Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang, by Roseanne Murphy.

Somehow I didn't want to read about Jesus. I wanted to read about someone who was living Jesus.

Dorothy Stang, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, lived and worked with Brazilian peasants in the landless people's movement in the Amazon. She was killed there in 2005.

Apparently there is a new documentary on her. There was a segment about it recently on PBS's "Now" program. Even the New York Post has written about it.

Website for the documentary, "They Killed Sister Dorothy," is here, with beautiful images and music and a trailer and all kinds of information. Narration by (yes!) Martin Sheen.

Stang was from Ohio and the Dayton Daily News wrote a three-part series on her after her death.

* * * * *
In related news, the Episcopal Café has a series of Stations of the Cross up. The one from Central America (El Salvador) is haunting. (Do not look at it if you are a trauma survivor; it is made up of drawings of tortured men and women. It resides at La UCA - the Jesuit-run University of Central America.) Another one is for children. Yet another is a series from Kenya. (I'd posted an image from that one two years ago here.)

Last year I posted the Arcatao Stations of the Cross from El Salvador. (That's a different series from the one mentioned above.)

And the year before, more Latin American Stations --images by Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel with words from Argentina-- and some Stations by a Tanzanian artist with words by a womanist theologian from the U.S. (The latter, in a book called Where You There? is a favorite of mine.)

Oscar Romero, ¡Presente!

A busy day, but I cannot let it pass without remembering that today, March 24, is the 29th anniversary of the assassination of Monseñor Romero.

Here's the blog post from two years ago on this day, with an illustration and links.

Mary Hunt on the recent Brazilian abuse/ pregnancy/abortion/excommunication case

My friend and colleague Mary E. Hunt has an essay at ReligionDispatches.org again. This time it's about the recent and tragic case in Brazil. The mother of a nine year old girl who was pregnant with twins (a pregnancy which would have killed her) was excommunicated for helping her have an abortion. The doctors were excommunicated too. The girl's stepfather has admitted to sexually abusing her.

Dr. Hunt, a Roman Catholic feminist theologian, writes:

........ My sadness in this case comes not only from what has been done in the name of God to people who are living a nightmare, but from what might have been done to help. Sexual abuse, especially incest, is hard to stop. But once perpetrated it need not be made worse by ecclesial sanction.

A proper pastoral response would include: support for the pregnant child as she lives through an abortion; care for the mother who is responsible for the child and the rest of the family; protection for the family from the stepfather whose arrest may trigger backlash behavior; sensitive work with the other daughter who has also been sexually abused; HIV and venereal disease testing for the girls and the mother; economic support for the family; counseling for the family, the community, even the neighbors and parishioners who have been affected by this trauma; prayer and pastoral attention, including reception of the sacraments according to the family’s wishes. They need a spiritual community more than ever. Instead they got excommunication. “Is there anyone among you, who if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?” (Matthew 7:9). Apparently there are several in Rome and Brazil.

..... They claim to know the law of God. But here’s the rub: even if they do, an overwhelming number of Catholics and others of goodwill do not care. We do not believe in the cruel, vindictive, callous God they cite. Many believers put our faith in a loving, merciful divinity whose response to human tragedy is to weep not condemn, to embrace not exile. That is a Catholic view, well-supported by scripture and life experience. The bishops are welcome to their views, but beware of people who think they know more about God’s will and God’s law than the rest of us. They are selling a product we are not buying.

.............Let this case signal the end of any credible claim to authority such bishops might make, and the beginning of a new era when local communities determine their own members.

Read the full text of Mary Hunt's commentary here.

The essay is titled "Excommunicating the Victims."

Institutions

Dealing with a lot of them these days. But, as a member of my family said to me yesterday, "If Obama can become president, you can get through this."


Meanwhile, in the big outside world, the President is going to close Guantánamo. A decision not without risk. But a human is a human and torture is wrong. We become what we dole out to others. So beware what you sow.

Better to sow the good seed -- even if you never see it grow and bloom. Others will.

How hard it is to live by principle, to live truthfully, to negotiate the shoals of institutional life -- all institutions, without exception.

Gaza

(First two paragraphs slightly edited from a comment over at PJ's.)

Yesterday at my "other church" (the one where I am three Sundays a month till May-ish) the rector (always a fine preacher) preached about Gaza and the refugee baby Jesus and the love of all humankind. That wasn't when I cried; I was actually distracted half the time. At the Prayers of the People we prayed for everybody on the planet including people serving in the armed forces, and in this congregation they name about four or five people specifically after the general prayer so people must have relatives on active duty.

And then we did what we do every single Sunday after communion and have been doing since the latest wars began (wars in the plural, yes): we kneel and sing "Dona Nobis Pacem" (the full round, several times) as a prayer for peace. I wept and wept while singing. Big fat tears rolling down my face into my mouth, singing for peace. All of us kneeling.

* * * * * * *

I want to remind people that there is a diversity of views within Israel and that there are active dissenters there. There is also diversity in the U.S. Jewish community. Let me draw your attention to two organizations that used to be one but are now separate and both serve important purposes.

Jewish Peace News (JPN) offers an excellent news roundup to which you can subscribe on e-mail (free) by first going to JPN's blog here. Their sources are diverse. The mainstream media, whatever that is these days, does not expose us to this news. Neither, much of the time, does the alternative media, whatever that means. We do hear about the suffering of many --and there are so many more whose tears and deaths and fears we will never see or hear-- but we don't hear much about work for peace and voices of protest. Do have a look at their blog, where you can find subscription info and samples of the news they send out.

Which leads me to the second organization (which as I recall gave birth to the first, and, to no one's surprise, they are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I first heard of them), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). They send out e-mails too, but they also have a website which I urge you to visit.

On the JPN website, in addition to news from Gaza, you will find information about the recent campaign in solidarity for the Shministim, who are the young conscientious objectors in Israel. They are very young (high school seniors) and look as if they could be your children or mine and they have gone to prison for refusing to participate in unjust military actions.

There's also a helfpul "New to the issue? Start here." link. It leads to a FAQ on "Israeli Palestinian Conflict 101." You will see it is primarily aimed at the Jewish community since this is a Jewish organization, but it's worth reading if you are a Gentile, too.

There are also media campaigns (there was and is one about the news blackout on Gaza, which long predated the current military action; things have been very bad in Gaza for a long time and we haven't been hearing enough about it) and statements condemning anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry. JVP also has a news blog called MuzzleWatch: Tracking efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy.

If you are press, or even if you are not, there are fact sheets here about JVP and its mission.

So remember these names: Jewish Peace News and Jewish Voice for Peace, and stay informed.

* * * * * * *

So much for blog break. I am still in hiding working on writing projects till mid-month and not really posting in a fully attentive way. The cat is doing better at it than I, and she has an Epiphany sermon for you. Also, I will post in a couple of days a link to my new essay at the Episcopal Café. I'm really still on break and not all there. But I cannot stay silent about Gaza.

Godde help us all.