Blessings and peace to all you Presbyterians. For my last blog post as your peacemaker I’d like to share what I wrote in this week’s bulletin for our little church that meets at St Joe’s, Oscar Romero Church. I have loved being your peacemaker, and pray that this presbytery may grow ever stronger in its commitment to justice and peace.

and here’s the bulletin:

We had such a lovely Pentecost celebration at St Romero’s. Rachael really made the day with her flaming peaches at coffee hour! Real tongues of fire! We celebrated part of the Mass in Spanish, in preparation for our first Mass in the migrant camps this Thursday. A man came in during the service who needed our help. At the kiss of peace he told us what was going on with him, and at the end of Mass we gave him a blessing. After Mass, Rachael and Linda helped him find some new clothes, and we all had scrambled eggs (that Linda made) and sausage (that Louie brought and made) and big slabs of pineapple that made me think of El Salvador. He looked a lot better by the time he left, and really I think it was the community, at least as much as the clothes and food, that fed him. I thought of something one of the guests at the Corpus Christi supper program said, many years ago—”If you all stopped serving food, we’d still come. We’d come for the love.”

We’re living in an age of amazing things, including the ability to communicate across distances, to build relationships via computer. Saturday night when I finished making my “cheat sheet” for saying Mass in Spanish, I sent it off to Olga, a woman priest in Columbia—- whom I have never met, but who helps translate the bulletin into Spanish each week [as does Mary Wilkins] and then posts it on her blog!—- and pretty soon she had sent it back to me with corrections. Isn’t that wonderful? I have found myself instant messaging with a friend in El Salvador while having a facebook conversation with someone from my hometown I never expected to see again. Our church is even made possible in part by the internet—- over a hundred people get the English bulletin, another half dozen get it in Spanish, and it doesn’t cost us anything. It really is amazing. (And even the translation starts out on the internet!)

So in this age of wondrous forms of communication it is more important than ever to remember to interact one-on-one, to build relationships of caring and trust. You can’t touch a person through the internet, can’t hold their hand. Tonight in the hospital I sat at the bedside of a woman who could talk but not hear. All the comfort I could offer was with my eyes, and holding her hand. And it was enough. You can’t do that in cyberspace. I was called to the bedside of a Spanish-speaking man (imagine being in the hospital and not understanding what is being said around you) – and held his hands and prayed—- again—- there is a lot of wonderful stuff you can do with computers, but nothing replaces the human touch. Nothing replaces being able to look into someone’s eyes, to laugh and cry together.

This Thursday we’ll be going west of the city to offer that human touch, and leap over language barriers, and hopefully make some new friends. Please pray for us! Life feels rather barren out there. I pray that our Masses might be water in the desert, a source of life.

love to all
Chava

Yesterday morning at St Romero’s we were once again celebrating in the hospitality room instead of the dining room at St Joe’s, this time because people were getting ready for the Memorial Day Picnic. I loved our Mass; because of the picnic we had more people than usual coming in off the street, and it was a lively bunch.

We talked about the difficulty of Memorial Day for pacifists: that desire not to glorify war, but at the same time to honor the choices and sacrifices made by our sisters and brothers—- often times quite literally our sisters and brothers —and how very many of our guests at St Joe’s are veterans. I talked about the man I met in El Salvador who had been a guerilla during the civil war there, who said, “During the war, I believed in what we were doing. But now, years later, I see that on both sides, rich people were profiting from the sale of arms, and poor people were killing each other. And in the end, things are not better for the poor.”

This morning, Memorial Day, there was a “Memorial in Time of War” at the Sister Cities Bridge, led by Karen Keenan and Tom Moore. They have done this every year since the war began in 2003. There is a simple inter-faith service, then everybody lines up and takes turns reading out loud the names of people who died in the war – soldiers from the U.S., children and adults from Iran and Afghanistan. As each name is read, a bell is rung. Then we go up on the bridge and drop roses in the river. It always seems such a waste, throwing that beautiful rose in the river. But the waste is nothing compared to the waste of the human lives we commemorate.

Life is hard. Honest people can disagree about how we go about solving the problems of the world. I want to be careful that, sure as I am about some things – like that Jesus calls us to non-violence, that the way to change the world is the way that Jesus did, changing hearts, taking on pain instead of inflicting it – sure as I am, I don’t want to inflict more violence by disrespecting my sisters and brothers who believe in other ways. How do we live with each other? That seems to me both the most challenging and most exciting question there is. How do we love?

Here at St Joe’s we have welcomed our second Muslim staff member in a year. Trying to find ways to pray together, we decided that while he is here, we will change our New Testament reading at morning prayer to one from the Sufi mystic, Hafiz. The Sufi poets are a great source of spiritual nourishment for me and I am happy to make the substitution. We heard from another Sufi, the poet Rumi, this morning at the memorial. Let me share that poem with you. (The translation is by Coleman Barks):

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn’t make any sense.

Much peace to you… however you believe. May we find that place beyond ideas and “isms,” and live in respect and awe.

Blessings and love to all,
Chava

This Wednesday night, June 1 at 7 pm, the Rochester Committee on Latin America will be showing the movie, “Return to El Salvador” at Downtown United Presbyterian Church. This documentary features Ruth and Alex Orantes of Santa Ana; some of you met Ruth when she was here last year for my ordination. One of the issues featured in the film is that of gold mining. People are dying for their resistance to this ecologically disastrous exploitation of the land. After the film I’ll talk about the visit Eli and I made to El Salvador in April, and the people we met there who are trying to stop the gold mining. Please join us, if you can.

Did you see Susan Orr’s op-ed piece in the D&C?

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011105290315

At a recent community meeting at St Joseph’s House of Hospitality we realized that there was a need to look at one of our rules, which didn’t seem to be working well. After talking about it for a while, we realized that the people who would be impacted by the decision needed, not just a voice in the decision, but as much as possible to make the decision themselves. So today we gathered the people most affected, and sat in a circle together. What a world of difference it makes, talking as equals. There’s just a whole different spirit when we can say, “let’s talk together and find a way that is just and that works for everyone,” instead of one person or group imposing rules on others.

When we do that at St Joe’s, we are not only making a decision that is owned by the people it impacts. We are also providing an opportunity for people who don’t have much power in our society to see themselves as people who have an equal voice, who can make decisions. I hope that such a way of doing things not only has a positive effect on St Joe’s, but on everyone involved, and that it plants a seed that will bear fruit in the slow, day-by-day transformation of our society.

I don’t believe that the world will be healed without the empowerment and self-determination of the people who are currently on the bottom economically and socially. I don’t believe that healing will happen without people like me and you sharing the power that we have. Very few of us are totally at either the top or the bottom of the heap. Most of us are somewhere in between, having more than some and less than others. We need to both claim our own power, never buying into seeing ourselves as “less than” because we are women or poor or physically challenged or young or old or because of the color of our skin or the language that we speak——and at the same time we need to be aware of our own power and not treat others as “less than” because of our own level of education or authority or financial comfort, and mindfully walk in equality with all.

On Wednesday, April 6, a mixed group of people sat in a circle, upstairs on a terrace of the “popular market” – el mercado popular, what we in the States might call a public market – in Santa Ana, El Salvador. Twenty-five or so red plastic chairs held Salvadorans as well as we visitors from around the United States, all here at the behest of Alex Orantes, Baptist pastor, organizer, director of the popular market, and friend to us all.

One by one, Alex introduced people to us: the man in the pink shirt, who would succeed him as director, as Alex was about to promoted to greater responsibility; a woman who spoke words of welcome; another woman whose birthday it was, and we all sang. I looked around the crowd, thinking of what we’d heard prior to the meeting, that at least one of the men here had been a torturer during the war [“the man with the scar” – but there were several men with scars], that others were members of gangs. Police officers, looking formidable, stood in a wide circle at the perimeter of our group. Alex introduced us all to each other as “good people,” as “my brothers and sisters.”

No one’s past behavior or current choices were on the table for judgment or accountability. All that was of interest was, what might we do together to make things better? All these good people, these people who are so much more than the worst thing they’ve ever done – how might we together make a better world, a better city, a better market?

Everybody knows Alex, and everybody knows he believes in them. Children, youths, tired families, police officers, gang members, visitors from the States – we’re all “good people” and potential partners in the work of healing this place, this world. Like the others in the room, I’m here because Alex asked me. Five years ago on my first visit to El Salvador, he asked me to come back. This past December on my fifth trip here, he asked me to come back in April for this study trip. Always, when Alex asks me to do something, my first response is, “it’s not possible.” Then I go away and think about it, and wonder if perhaps it might be possible, after all. Then I do it. I’ll bet that’s a pattern for lots of people, with Alex. He asks for impossible things that turn out to be possible, once we start dreaming.

After all the introductions, we are taken on a tour of the market. Twenty or so Salvadorans, including five police officers, accompany us seven North Americans as we talk to people in our broken Spanish, explore unfamiliar fruits, and each get our own coconut, with a straw to drink the slightly sour but refreshing juice. As our tour draws to a close, we are suddenly hurried away, as there has been an incident somewhere in the market.

Before I came on this trip, I prayed that I might be shown the ways that I need to grow. That prayer was answered with a resounding “Yes!” as I came flat up against some prejudices that I didn’t know I had. It would not have occurred to me that a former torturer could be an ally in the work of healing Santa Ana. Alex stretched my world with his embrace of every person as a friend and brother or sister. My companions on this journey stretched me, too. One of the great gifts of this trip was the mix of people: two American Baptists, two radical Catholics, and two Evagelical young men. I was forced to confront my prejudice about Evangelicals as being rigid in their spirituality and having a narrow theology – that prejudice got smashed to smithereens by these two, so eager to explore all the riches of Christian spiritual traditions. It gives me great hope for the church – for all the God-lovers together. May we break down the walls and find friends on the other side.

Don’t ever give up on anybody. I want to be like Alex – ready always to see “good people” and “my brothers and sisters” in every person – ready to work together to heal the world.

This is such a pretty time of year in Rochester! The magnolias are blooming, there are tulips everywhere, and we have the hope of lilacs very soon. There is a lilac in my back yard that is about to burst into bloom. It was planted for me by my friend Jimi Waffle before he died fifteen years ago of AIDS. I have often wondered how Jimi’s life might have been different, had he grown up in a gay-friendly world—or a gay-friendly church. Imagine a world in which every teenager growing up knows that their sexuality is a healthy and good part of the person that they are, and where there are good role models for healthy relationships of all kinds, among church leaders and other adults they know. Imagine a world in which the AIDS virus had been taken seriously right from the beginning and not dismissed as a “gay disease.” How many precious people like Jimi would still be here to grace the world?

The Presbyterian Church (USA) took a giant step forward this week by voting to allow gay and lesbian people to serve in ministry. There have been many long hard years of struggle by people like the Rev. Janie Spahr, who started a ruckus here in Rochester in the 1990’s when she came out as a lesbian minister and Downtown United Presbyterian Church tried to hire her as its co-pastor. The highest Presbyterian court ruled that she could not serve. Janie and DUPC creatively found another way for her to minister, traveling around the country as an evangelist, in a ministry called “That All May Freely Serve.” In the early days of the 1998 struggle at Corpus Christi that led to the formation of Spiritus, Janie told us that in her travels around the country, she heard the name of Corpus Christi whispered with hope. And that gave me hope! Blessings and gratitude to Janie and all whose courageous witness has at last borne fruit in the Presbyterian Church (USA). May all of our churches be safe places for everyone.

One of the gifts of being a woman priest, and thus being on the outside and forced to find alternate ways to serve in ministry, is that I have sometimes found work with other denominations. For the past two years I’ve served here at the Presbytery of Genesee Valley as Peacemaker. I’ve been so impressed by the way Presbyterians do process, so careful to hear all the voices, to include as many voices as possible in discussions. Every two months there is a Presbytery meeting with pastors and representatives of all the churches, and staff members like me. Those meetings have often felt as holy to me as any church service. The way we make decisions is an important part of who we are as church. I am delighted to see this wonderful new move toward justice for all. Hooray for the Presbyterians!

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

How has your week been? There are a lot of feelings in the air following the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden: sadness, jubilation, hope, relief, confusion. For me, remembering all the deaths these past ten years, those terrible deaths on September 11, 2001, and all the deaths in the wars since, the children, families, soldiers, so many many lives ended by violence and hatred and fear – and now the death of bin Laden – well, as one of the young men who went to El Salvador with Eli and me said, it makes my heart hurt.

But there is something that has given me hope, as well. On Monday, person after person posted on facebook, “I can’t rejoice in the death of anyone.” That’s God’s response! “As I live, says the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11) God is always hoping that we will turn around and embrace life. God is love, remember, and we know what St Paul said about love: that it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and it never gives up. That needs to be our attitude with each other: don’t ever give up on anybody. Ever. The deepest desire of God is for healing and life for all of us! No matter what we’ve done.

It was a beautiful thing, to read so many people expressing their confusion and pain as they watched people celebrating, and struggled with their mixed feelings of relief and sadness. I see the presence of God in our collective inner conflict, our struggle to know what is right. May that struggle lead us into the light.

Martin Luther King said, “The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” My prayer following the death of bin Laden is to break that chain reaction in my own heart. May all of us break the cycle of hate and revenge and turn our minds and hearts to finding ways to bring peace. It is possible but each of us must turn from death to life in our own lives and hearts, and we must also do it together. Life! May there be life, and love, and healing for all. Amen!

We took some steps toward life and healing here in Rochester last week, walking with Myra Brown, Roseanne Fabi and Mike Bleeg as they led us to various sites around downtown to talk with community leaders about racism. Walks like that do make a difference. They make each of us who participate more aware and more committed to change. They help to bring the conversation out into the open. For me as an educated white middle class woman, that walk helped me to be more aware of the privileges I take for granted, the acceptance that comes my way every time I walk into a store or a hospital – the privilege that is part of the air I breathe. Thank you, Myra, Roseanne and Mike, for your leadership!

“Forgiveness is the only way back from so much brutality”
here is a link to Mark Hare’s article, in case you missed it!

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011104260324

On Good Friday, thirty-seven people were arrested at Hancock Air Force Base, near Syracuse, after lying in the road wrapped in red-spattered sheets to protest the drones that are deployed from there. Harry Murray said, explaining his participation, that “the war is now being waged right here in upstate New York – not just across the seas.” On our end it is bloodless, but on the other end it is deadly.

People sometimes think that when we call for non-violence, it means being passive in the face of evil. It doesn’t mean that, at all. Non-violence means absorbing suffering, instead of inflicting it. In their act of “obstruction of governmental process,” which carries the possibility of up to a year in jail, these 37 friends are participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Remember how Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to God except by me”? I believe that means that the only way to life is through the cross, through our own participation in the way that Jesus demonstrated. Whether that is in big ways, like actually laying down your life for others like Monseñor Romero did, or by facing time in jail like these 37 – or in small ways, as simple as accepting the pain of looking at our own behavior and saying “I’m sorry” when we’ve hurt someone, rather than telling them it’s really their own fault – in big ways and in small, we participate in the healing work of God by walking through the pain. That’s the way to life!! We don’t get to healing by inflicting pain – or denying it – or running away from it – but by going through it, letting go of ego and power and control, dying to ourselves – in big ways and in small.

This Thursday we remember the night that Jesus gave the church some last-minute instructions about how we were to go on. He gave us a precious ritual that we’ve been celebrating ever since, remembering him with bread and wine – with lots of variations on the ritual and with different understandings of what’s happening in it – but all of us Christians united, nonetheless, by this simple act of sharing bread and wine in memory of the One who loves us.
 
Jesus also gave us an example of how we are to treat each other, by washing the feet of his disciples. That one we haven’t imitated quite so consistently. Sometimes it’s easier to love and serve people we’ve got a little distance from: the poor, people in other countries. Really loving the person who sits across from us at the dinner table or the person at work that drives us crazy takes actually more humility. In church, especially, we often hold each other to impossible standards instead of being in awe and wonder at the gift each person… each flawed, annoying, aggravating, wonderful person.
 
I believe the work of the church is two-fold: to nurture the spiritual growth of the people of God, and to build the world God dreams of, the world where everyone has what they need for fullness of life. How do we nurture each other’s growth? Well, I firmly believe that one way to do that is by treating each other as equals. The church has a long way to go on this, but one small way to start is if on Holy Thursday, all of us wash each other’s feet, and get our own feet washed, as well.
 
The very last thing Jesus told the church before they dragged him away to be put on trial was, “Put down your sword.” Among the horrendous “swords” human beings have invented lately are drones, instruments of destruction that can be deployed from thousands of miles away. This week people are walking towards Syracuse from all over New York State, to converge on Hamilton Air Force Base on Good Friday to protest the drones deployed from there. If you’d like to join them, they’ll be walking along route 20 to Syracuse. Please pray for all our walkers, and for peace.