posted by sean mcconnell
On Sunday, July 22nd, my six-year-old son and I went to hear Bishop Marc preach at Grace Cathedral. It was our way to honor his first year as Bishop of California. There was unfortunately very little mention of the anniversary, but Bishop Marc preached an amazing sermon that cracked open a quote from Paul that I've always found to be really obtuse. You can hear this sermon at www.gracecathedral.org.
Guest blog by Jennifer Morazes
So much has happened this summer that it is difficult to process. Despite my intentions to write about my experiences and thoughts sequentially, my external communication has been stifled. Perhaps this stifling has been the result of a feeling I have experienced that, having worked both on the national and international level for ten years in the areas of homelessness, trauma/violence and resource distribution, I can no longer compartmentalize what I witness both nationally and internationally. However, expressing this synthesis becomes difficult in words and conceptually, as – especially as Americans – we tend to struggle with the question of "Who is my neighbor?" and we are very protective of the boundaries we form in answering this question.
Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation was born at a time when, as Americans, we felt vulnerable. Yet, in the vulnerability of 9/11, some Americans felt compelled to reinvigorate conversations about authentic and just relationships internationally. We recognized that, despite our best efforts, we cannot exist without others. We are (like others in the world) also at risk, but in this recognition comes the hope of partnership and relationship, an acknowledgement of our humanity.
No where has our vulnerability as a nation been more plain to me than in my trip to the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The reality of New Orleans is that while the risk we experienced from 9/11 was "external", the errors in New Orleans were human and domestic. New Orleans has been most affected not by the natural effects of Hurricane's Katrina and Rita, but by miscalculation, by ignoring the levee weaknesses prior to the hurricanes. And, if we seek to quibble about whether this was in fact "error", there can be no mistake that true neglect has affected residents since then. Here in the United States, it is important to honestly know that it was only three months ago that electricity and water was restored to parts the Lower Ninth, and the local public school is scheduled to open in August - two years after the levees broke!
In working with an area summer camp, it was apparent that in spite of the care and concern and investment of their parents and community, the kids are behind - at crucial development periods educationally. Many of the local men actively seek work but are not finding work, and overall people seek shelter, food, comfort - the most basic and Biblical needs! The scar and badge of the area is signified by the mark upon house after house by the Guardsmen who, after the searches, marked the house as searched with the number found dead. This image - which is actually a Cross on its side - is a reminder that as a nation and people, we are not far removed from two years ago, and we are all commended to invest in our neighbor in the Coastal region.
Some may debate the priority of investing in vulnerable communities locally or donating to projects globally. However, in reality, there is no "either-or." As Americans, we must realize that our commitments lie with our brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast just as they do in the Philippines, or Tanzania. If 9/11 or the levees breaking has taught us anything, it is that we must disregard artificial boundaries and see the common thread which weaves us together. Having worked alongside students in Southern Africa through the Anglican Students Federation, I can honestly say that many of the concerns of the students there were similar to those of the residents of Louisiana currently – economic investment, just resource distribution, and recognition of the collective strength and capital of those who have been disenfranchised. This national experience can help provide us with a small window into the daily experiences of others in other countries and their challenges for basic needs.
After returning from my trip to New Orleans, I participated in a class offered at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific taught by Dr. Sheila Andrus. Again, I witnessed many connections forming which replace some of these either-or divides, especially in regards to the environment. The air people breathe is literally influenced by the practices of adjoining countries. So, as we affect the health of people in Canada through our practices, we also breathe the air from China and are affected by their practices. We share air, we share water, and ultimately we all share responsibility. Along the lines of health care practices, the most effective measures employed in countries such as Haiti to administer medication –such as providing people transportation to their medical appointments and training peers in the community to teach about the medications – are very similar to assertive practices employed in community mental health settings to aid homeless people with mental illness and people with HIV in the United States. Sharing these models is also part of our collective responsibility.
My
entrance into this conversation, admittedly, straddles this
local-global connection in a vivid way. My father was drafted in the
Vietnam War and suffered trauma as a result of his service. At one
period, he was homeless on the street like many Vietnam War veterans.
This is a story of local-global misconnection – a story which
exemplifies a distorted relationship based upon violence, violence in
which no one wins. Through my own vulnerability and the struggles
which ensued from this experience, I seek to identify and form models
of hope and partnership, rather than those based upon violence and
power misused.
Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn as Americans is to offer non-intrusive support to our international neighbors. In 2003, I had the privilege of attending the Anglican Students' Federation of Southern Africa's yearly conference. I was inspired by the work of then student organizer Francisco Zandamela in his conviction that international ties must be formed around concerns such as viable economic solutions and HIV. The conference title was "Transforming Victims into Victors" and the point was that our call in our histories – personal, interpersonal, communal, even international – is not to be victimized by the past or what we may see as "failures." Instead, the process of identifying both the stones and seeds in our own hearts provides us with the potential for how we ALL can engage in the process of transforming our histories, through the promise of Christ, into victories.
Francisco almost single-handedly organized a conference for young adults on HIV, a very important conference for this very at risk population in Southern Africa. Through the conference, many young people were inspired to get tested and to change behaviors that may put them at risk. Another inspiring piece of the conference for me was seeing connections formed from people from very different parts of the world. For me, Francisco's life, which ended tragically in a car crash six-months later, was a testament to John's truth: Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. Our relationship to others and ourselves is a reflection upon our relationship to the Divine. I expect there are local leaders like Francisco emerging to engage the issues confronting the Gulf Coast.
I learned from Francisco in Southern Africa, I learned from residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I learn from those confronting homeless daily in the United States. Simply put, we all breathe the same air, we are each other's neighbor, and we all through our actions have the capacity to transform the crosses of suffering to those of resurrection. The ripple effects of our own everyday actions prove that our choices and the choices of others can no longer be considered in isolation. From what we buy, to what we breathe, our impact, OUR COMMUNITY, and OUR NEIGHBOR, extends from ourselves - globally. There is no longer a separation.
Jennifer Morazes, M.Div.
MSW/PhD Student
School of Social Welfare
University of California, Berkeley
Last evening, Sheila, Chloe’, and I got to catch up with two friends from pilgrimages we have taken in the past: Andrew Easton and Zara Renander. Andrew is here doing a pre-med internship at St. Luke’s Hospital, about to return to Sewanee where he is a senior.
Zara is the director of a center for Pilgrimage and Reconciliation that has been the recipient of a Trinity grant for the last three years. She has remarkable insights into pilgrimage, and thus, you might also expect, into the human soul. It is always inspiring to be with her for us.
Over these last few years of her work in pilgrimage, she has done some consulting with Trinity Parish, the source of the funding grant. There was great interest in responding to the huge number of visitors who now come to St. Paul’s Chapel, part of Trinity parish, that sits right across the street from the site of the World Trade Towers destroyed on September 11, 2001. Huge numbers of visitors, Zara properly calls them pilgrims, come to the chapel every day. The leadership of the parish has been seeking to know how best to respond to them, and the conversation with Zara was part of that prayerful seeking.
In the course of telling us about this, Zara related this marvelous story: Why wasn’t St. Paul’s Chapel damaged by the maelstrom of the towers’ collapse? Not a window was broken, or a chandelier crystal, while across the street all was chaos. I had never thought to ask how that could be. Zara said that a great, ancient tree, standing in front of the chapel, took the brunt of the destructive force. Perhaps as old as the chapel itself, which is the oldest church structure still in use in New York, the tree had shaded people for generations, provided homes for birds and squirrels, and with its great root system a whole unseen micro-ecosystem unseen by humans walking above.
I was very moved by this story. I thought of a little vegetarian restaurant in Berkeley where I sometimes have lunch on my Thursdays at CDSP. In the men’s room there is a funny, and yet meaningful poster that shows drawings of various animals used for human food, with a caption that says, “They pray for us.”
Now I am reading the Romans 8 passage slightly differently than I have in the past:
19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
In the past I have thought of creation and we all praying for ourselves. I suppose a typically ego-centric view of it. Now I think of creation praying in agape for us all, the kind of prayer that pours itself out for the life of others.
After a long, anticipated wait, I finally got to visit St. Dorothy's Rest, and during a most important part of their yearly rhythm of life. I have to believe that now is the time when I could have and needed to visit and begin to understand this unique, important part of our Diocesan family.
In addition to the church summer camps that St. Dorothy's runs, quite parallel to those at the Bishop's Ranch (it should be noted that both camping programs are fully subscribed), you might say that the heart of St. Dorothy's is the medical camping programs. In one session, children who either have cancer, or have siblings with cancer, are the campers, and in the second, children who have received transplants are the campers.
Everyone involved in these camps is so evidently full of grace: the campers, the counselors, the nursing staff, the camp administrators, cooks and maintenance staff. I was surrounded, enveloped, floored by the compassion and grace that abounded at St. Dorothy's.
Let me simply sum it up by recounting the morning gathering today: Campers and counselors all standing in a circle, holding onto each other, asked by our chaplain, the Rev. Chip Barker-Larrimore, to name one thing for which each of us is grateful. When two tiny boys, at different points in the circle said, "Scientists," my heart was pierced, but when perhaps the smallest child said, simply, "Life," I was not sure I could trust myself to walk, in all truth. To see so clearly, to say it with such simple honesty, at such a young age, tutored by loss and pain, and also by love - I was overwhelmed.
So, I'll try to be as simple as that little boy. I'm grateful for the graceful human beings at St. Dorothy's and for the hospitality they showed me in allowing me to visit. I will be doing all I can to forward the ministry of this sublime place in the future.
Henry Carse, of St. George's College, Jerusalem, says that the earliest story about the meaning of the Jerusalem Cross is that it is a pilgrim's cross. The central, largest cross, represents the pilgrim, and the four surrounding crosses are smaller as they are community sending forth the pilgrim, standing behind, supporting with prayer.
When the pilgrim reaches the ultimate point of pilgrimage, that source of spiritual meaning for pilgrim's tradition, and turns to make the journey home, the reference of the four smaller crosses changes and becomes the pilgrim community, all those whom the pilgrim has met and with whom her soul has mingled in communion. For me, this is inclusive of the originating community, as, through their prayers, they too were pilgrims, and indeed, in some ways, have the more difficult pilgrimage, unaided by the renewing link to central places of the faith, and only journeying by naked prayer and faith.
After New Orleans, our pilgrim group was plunged into the life of the Taize' Community with about 1,800 other pilgrims, mostly from aged 15 - 30, from many countries and Christian denominations around the world. The national complexion of each week of Taize' from March through November, the period when guests join in the life of the community, varies according to school schedules. Our week had large groups from Sweden, Germany, Finland, Poland, France, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as smaller groups and individuals from many other countries.
While at Taize' we shared the life of the Taize' brothers, with three periods of prayer each day, Bible introductions and reflections in smaller groups, work for the life of the whole community, meals in common, and workshops led by the brothers, on such topics as seeing icons, and fair trade and micro-credit.
There is a tree near the Taize' church which has become, over the years I've been involved in leading pilgrimages there, our group meeting place for the meals. Over the course of the week our pilgrims brought more and more of their friends to join our little meal for checking in and companionship within the larger community. This year we were joined by Swedes, Americans, French, English, and Poles, among others. The pilgrim community was growing before my eyes, embodying the story of the Jerusalem cross.
The life at Taize' is very simple, and it is a powerful lesson that most pilgrims respond to this simplicity with real happiness. The meals are quite simple, but we relished them. We sat on the floor of the Taize' church for at least three hours of the course of each day, yet there was never a complaint about this; we were too absorbed in the prayer of chant and of silence. Our pilgrims found the work of cleaning toilets, for example, to be something to which they looked forward, done as it was with singing and in community, often involving deep discussions of their life journeys.
Leaving was tearful. Many of the pilgrims expressed their feeling that in the course of a week they had grown very close to so many others, which I attribute to the extreme liminality of Taize', a characteristic of pilgrimages and places of pilgrimage; we were betwixt and between, and thus open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
From Taize' we journeyed to Chartres Cathedral, to visit not only that great pilgrimage destination, but also because of the ancient labyrinth built into the floor of the cathedral, the origin of the Rev. Lauren Artress' incredibly influential work on labyrinths, and the model for not only the two at Grace Cathedral, but uncounted others across the United States and the world. We were blessed to be met at the cathedral by Lauren herself, who gave us a spirited and intelligent introduction to the labyrinth and to the cathedral.
The last evening in France, over a meal at our hotel, we shared our reflections on the pilgrimage. I the pilgrims' stories to be full of courage, awareness, love, and hope for the future. The pilgrims come back with great gifts of the spirit to share in the Diocese of California. I know you will welcome and support their visions as you supported them during the pilgrimage.
