Bishop Marc

Pilgrimage for Peace: Going to South Africa

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:32:30 -0800

Guest blogger: Rebecca Nako

pilgrimage for peace, south africa 2007 california group

It’s an honor to be a member of the 2007 Pilgrimage of Peace that is journeying to South Africa, where we will also attend the TEAM Conference organized by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Bishop Marc led the first Pilgrimage for Peace to Alabama, where young people met with veteran Civil Rights Movement organizers, and we are continuing this pilgrimage to South Africa in that spirit, to an area where an intense struggle for peace, justice and reconciliation has and continues to take place. As Sheila Andrus has said, it’s particularly heartbreaking that South Africa has been hit so hard with the HIV/AIDS crisis, just as they have emerged from the horror of apartheid. Our pilgrimage to South Africa will be as God’s witnesses to this crisis, while we also learn about the reconciliation process that is occurring at both the spiritual and political levels. We will also actively participate in the TEAM Conference, where representatives from the Anglican Communion will come together to focus on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals—the fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty in particular.

We’re a diverse group of young people and adults, and it’s been a privilege to meet my fellow pilgrims, who have come together from around the diocese—and we will be joining more pilgrims from Alabama and Rhode Island (and hopefully Israel/Palestine) when in South Africa. In preparation for this pilgrimage, we’ve had discussions with Bishop Marc and Sheila, who have also shown us a couple of very challenging films on the global HIV/AIDS crisis (“A Closer Walk”) and apartheid (“Girls Apart”). Many thanks to Sheila, who has done a great amount of work in Africa as an epidemiologist and environmentalist, and who has given us much insight on the public health crisis in Africa. She has decided not to join us on this pilgrimage in order to allow another pilgrim to participate, and she will be greatly missed!

On a personal note, I find it particularly poignant that our preparation meetings for this pilgrimage took place right before and right after the communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania was released. As Bishop Marc has said, “The forty youth, young adults, and adults who will comprise the 2007 Pilgrimage for Peace at the TEAM Conference will be taking their part in Christ’s drawing of the world into communion.” At a time when there are forces that want to tear us apart, let us work for the love, respect, inclusion, dignity and care of every single one of our sisters and brothers, in every corner of the world, and may that take precedence in all of our interactions with each other.

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A short item on BBC's Today programme

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:44:03 -0800

Ontheair

I was on BBC Radio 4 this morning giving one American bishop's perspective on the commencement of the Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. You can listen here, if you have RealPlayer.

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The Keiskamma Altarpiece: Re-membering Creation

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:19:16 -0800

Keiskamma-Altarpiece-med

The Rev. Anthony Turney has worked to bring a great gift to the Diocese of California for Easter and the Easter Season. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is coming to Grace Cathedral during that time, from its latest stop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

The Keiskamma Altarpiece is the soulful work of a group of women and a few men, the last people left surviving the AIDS pandemic in Hamburg, a town in South Africa. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is made in layers, each one folding back to reveal another part of the reality of our incorporation of the the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ in our individual and community lives. It is patterned on the Isenheim Altarpiece, which is in Colmar, France.

I see the work of these 120 or so people in Hamburg as forwarding the truth of what Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of John: “If I be lifted up, I will draw all things, all people to myself.” As the Keiskamma Altarpiece makes its way from cathedral to cathedral in the Episcopal Church, we are drawn into communion with these people who have been diabolically isolated by disease, poverty, and inhumanity. The nature of evil is to shatter the integrity of creation; the nature of godly creation is to redeem and re-member that which has been broken. These women and men are working with and within the energy of the Trinity to bring us into the harmony of the new creation.

Isenheim-Altarpiece_detail

Thinking about the Keiskamma Altarpiece brought to mind the Isenheim Altarpiece, a point of inspiration for the Hamburg artists. One scene on the second layer of the Isenheim Altarpiece has fired my imagination for years. Flanking the Annunciation is an Angel Concert for the Mother and Child. In the angel choir is a startling figure, a wild, rough creature, wholly unlike anything else in the scene.

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In my view this wild creature, playing with the rest of the angel choir, rapt in adoration of the Mother and Child, is an illustration of what Jesus was proclaiming; that all those seen as living on the margins of the world, are, in Christ, being brought into relationship with all else, as they are related to Christ.

I used to say the marginal was being brought into the center, but I no longer think this. The threshold, the margin, is where God’s subversive, creative energy works, where we find our potential manifesting. So, it would be more accurate to say that we who imagined ourselves to inhabit a center, of privilege, are being drawn into the creative tension of the margins. But in the startling world of Christ-centeredness, the distinctions between margin and center disappear.

Our Presiding Bishop is on her way to Tanzania, to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates of the Anglican Communion. A woman primate who has supported the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people is apparently a de-centering experience for some. It is worth remembering, for me, the story of Nathaniel having to reconsider his preconceptions about the Messiah, who he is, whence he would come, upon his meeting with Jesus (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”). This God we worship, embodied in Jesus the Christ, reproduced in people who follow Jesus, seems to be in the habit of meeting us where we least expect, in the lives of those to whom we have not paid attention.

In March, a group of us from the Diocese of California, joining the Pilgrimage for Peace, will travel to South Africa to be part of the TEAM Conference. There we will focus on the AIDS pandemic, especially as it is being experienced in Africa, and on the relief of global suffering through the Millennium Development Goals, and we will do some work for HOPE Africa. The forty youth, young adults, and adults who will comprise the 2007 Pilgrimage for Peace at the TEAM Conference will be taking their part in Christ’s drawing of the world into communion.

I hope you will pray for Katharine and the Primates, for the Pilgrimage for Peace, and for the TEAM Conference. By praying for us, I wonder if you might think of supporting one of the young pilgrims from Alabama, Rhode Island, Olympia or California? I have learned that prayer is all we do when our intention is towards God. The pilgrims will be carrying you with them, and will be seeking to help us, when they return, connect to the whole, as the Keiskamma Altarpiece is doing even now.

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