Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Immigration

I got to Sunday School late, about halfway through. On the dry erase board, Patricia had already jotted down a quote from the BCP: “God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth.” Also on the board were the words: widows, orphans and aliens. While I was there, she added the phrase: legal does not equal moral. The topic: immigration.

The handout was entitled “A Pastoral Letter from the House of Bishops”, written from Phoenix in September last year. The salutation: Dear People of God. The content is basically the church’s position on immigration, as a reflection on the immigration crisis in Arizona, the US and everywhere.

As a class, we know we were charged with contemplating what our duty or response as Christians should be to the issue. What does God say? As the Evangelicals so eloquently put it, WWJD? (What would Jesus do?)

It is a very tough topic though to get your mind around. It has to do with legal issues, economic issues, border issues. It has to do with political issues. Are the illegal workers treated humanely? Are they getting healthcare for free? Should they be rounded up and deported? Or granted amnesty and allowed to become tax-paying citizens? And what about the ranchers on the border in Arizona? What’s our Christian duty to them? What about guest worker programs where we bus them in and get the cheap labor, then bus them back? And why don’t they do something about their own economies?

I guess being from the South, I don’t think about racism in terms of Hispanic people, though I know that is real. But one thing I do know from personal experience is that racism is not just about fear of the unknown, fear of not having enough, fear of that which is different. It’s also about letting those things bubble up into hatred, where all of a sudden it’s ok to do to other people (or allow to be done to others) what would be unthinkable if it were a person’s own sister, daughter, wife, brother, son, husband.

The House of Bishops’ letter made nine points (and I’m abbreviating:
1) People cross borders to escape poverty, hunger, injustice and violence. “We categorically reject efforts to criminalize undocumented migrants and immigrants, and deplore the separation of families and the unnecessary incarceration of undocumented workers.”
2) Deplore inhuman policies like raids, separation of families, denial of health services.
3) Calls on the US government and all governments to create fair and humane immigration policies.
4) Respects that governments have to protect their people, including securing borders.
5) The Episcopal Church is committed to getting rid of racism, and recognizes how it impacts debates on immigration.
6) “We confess our own complicit sinfulness as people who benefit from the labor of undocumented workers without recognizing our responsibility to them.”
7) Don’t discount concerns about the danger of uncontrolled immigration to our safety and economic well-being. But says concerns should be “approached within the broader context of a national commitment and covenant to inclusion and fellowship across all lines for the sake of the common good.”
8) Citizens should remember the good of a nation lies beyond its own self-interest.
9) It offers a resource for further theological study, “The Nation and the Common Good: Reflections on Immigration Reform.”

So that’s what the House of Bishops thinks. Now I wonder WWJD?

Monday, March 21, 2011

1,000 Cranes

The idea started with Michelle Mundth at Village Supper last week. Why don’t we have the kids make origami cranes in Sunday School as a response to the crisis in Japan? The next day Ellen and Tricia took the idea a few steps further, deciding to hang the cranes in church from the beautiful Asian-looking branches that are our Lenten arrangement. And, they wondered, could some of the kids make cranes at home before Sunday so that we could have enough to distribute to everyone in the congregation as a symbol of our prayers for Japan?




The answer to that question was yes. Molly Herman Gallow, Michelle Mundth, and Joseph Henry Monti went to work and by Sunday morning the three of them had made almost 70 cranes. They then taught the rest of the Sunday School kids how to make the beautiful symbols of healing and peace.



The cranes were a wonderful addition to our already planned service of prayer for Japan yesterday. It was one of those Sundays when the music, the art on the bulletin cover, the special prayers, the sermon, and the cranes all came together as true worship and prayer.



The response to the cranes was so positive that we now have another idea. Wouldn’t it be great if the people of St. Dunstan’s could make 1,000 origami cranes during Lent? Then we could bless them on Easter morning and send them to a church in Sendai.




To pull this off our Sunday School kids will need help from willing adults. We will set up a “crane making station” in the parish hall with paper, instructions, and a prayer for Japan. We’ll also have a “crane nest” in which to put the completed birds. We’ll make cranes on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings – and at home. Please help!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Come and See


It’s a terrible thing to admit, but our Lenten speaker author and food pantry guru Sara Miles made me feel somehow inadequate in the realm of doing God’s work. Don’t get me wrong—I was a fan before she came, have read both books (Take This Bread and Jesus Freak) and was thrilled when Patricia asked me to write a preview Q&A, which required a phone interview with Sara.

Anybody who has read her books or heard Sara Miles speak can’t help but be in awe of her physical work running a food pantry that feeds 600 people each Friday out of her home church, St. Gregory’s of Nyssa in San Francisco. It is a place where those in need of groceries, without exception, can go and “shop” for mostly whole foods piled up on tables covered in beautiful cloths and situated in the sanctuary around the altar. It is a quite literal example of God’s feast, of God’s Word made flesh.

And it all began—the story she told to the 85 of us who showed up for her Lenten lectures, Friday at St. Dunstan’s and Saturday morning at St. Bede’s—when she in mid-life wandered into a church (St. Gregory’s), took communion for the first time and had what she calls a “radical conversion,” she actually tasted God in her mouth. And she kept coming back because she was hungry for more. She was baptized. She took what she experienced and set out to take God’s word to heart: Feed my people.

St. Gregory’s, of course, may have lent itself to this expression of faith, this calling. It’s located in an urban area, where poor, homeless, disenfranchised folk tend to congregate, a place where there are public services and transportation.

As Sara spoke Friday night at St. Dunstan’s, I imagined our sanctuary filled with nourishing food for the hungry. Our altar was overflowing with carrots and onions and potatoes. I could see Gilda and Pricilla and Elizabeth, and Rick and Steve, everyone, happily manning “battle stations” working alongside the guests, also volunteers who had become a whole second congregation. I even saw Peachy and Helen outside in the sunny spot by the parking lot, directing workers in a lush, bountiful organic vegetable garden.

That’s such a great image. But we have one problem, which Keith Latimore pointed out in the Q&A part of the lecture, we have no bus service. We are politely located in what some might call a “residential” area. But I think the more accurate impression was one I heard the next morning at St. Bede’s from one of the ladies from the Cathedral bookstore: “You’re from St. Dunstan’s? It’s very . . . affluent, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, and no. Our rector’s office was called the most beautiful in Christendom by her predecessor. She looks out to nature, hawks, foxes, trees, ponds, birds. We are affluent in that we care for each other and affluent in our desire to share what we have with others. We’d love all of our neighbors in the big mansions with the rolling lawns and $13 million for sale signs to worship with us and fill our adult and children's Sunday School classes, to clutter up our sign-up sheets to bring food to Holy Comforter, to fill the Beech Grove with children’s laughter, to walk the Stations of the Cross, now set up and ready for the Lenten season, up the long path through the woods. But truth is, a good portion of St. Dunstan’s congregation commutes, from places like Avondale and Decatur and Duluth. Many of us choose to make a 30-minute drive on Sunday mornings to get to St. Dunstan's, even though there are other Episcopal churches much closer to where we live.

For example, a group of us St. D’s folks were sitting around a table in St. Bede’s parish hall Saturday morning before Sara's talk, eating the beautiful breakfast they put together, partaking of their generous hospitality (fresh fruit, egg casseroles, bagels, thick bread, butter, cream cheese) when I noted to Patricia, it actually only took only seven or eight minutes for me to drive from my home in Avondale to St. Bede’s. “No, it doesn’t,” she said definitively. “You just went the wrong way.”

I wouldn’t dare think of going any place else. I am nourished. I am comforted by our intimate community of faith. It’s unlikely because of our location (no bus line, buried deep in an expensive residential neighborhood) that we’ll ever be home to a food pantry teeming with hundreds upon hundreds of people, strangers that we can welcome en masse as our honored guests.

But I know that we do look for ways to welcome the stranger and we do have affluence to offer (not in our treasury unfortunately) but in that we are in a unique location where we can see the absolute beauty of God’s hand in the world. Now, I think part of Sara’s speaking serves to shake people up, to question themselves: Am I living as God would have me live? Am I following in the footsteps of Christ? Am I loving my neighbor unconditionally?

But like Sara, who’s calling was so obvious, so in the moment, such a clear need, I think we can’t try to find our great love. Lovers show themselves, they are seldom sought out. And I don’t know what that one thing is for us. We had a vestry meeting last night and Patricia mentioned she was attending a meeting next Monday in which a bunch of area churches are looking at providing shelters for homeless families and the organization actually has a van. Could that be our calling? Our way to live out God’s plan for us? I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I think there’s another Sara line that could benefit us greatly as we go about our daily work during the week, as we meet people and talk to friends and family—to put out the invitation to come and see.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Lent Begins

I step forward as the greatest offender of missed deadlines, one who has said too many “thank yous” to others for picking up my slack in preparation for Lent. I was the wayward “chair” of a Lenten committee, started last year in May, the idea of which was to make plans that would lead to mass attendance during this most holy season of the year. We had planned a calendar (with all of the relevant dates and explanations of special services), daily prayers, Stations of the Cross (as in keeping them after our seminarian who started them had graduated on to ordination and a job), and other big ideas. While I was remiss in my duties, many others like Vicki Ledet, have not been.

I’d like to share here just a few pictures that Vicki took, with many more to come as the holy season unfolds.

Here’s a close up of the pancakes served at our Shrove Tuesday supper.




This year, Steve and Connor Mark and Joseph Henry Monti did the honors, flipping the mouthwatering pancakes and decorating the parish hall with Mardi Gras beads.



Note the colors—gold, purple and green. (Purple represents justice; Green represents faith; Gold represents power.)

The Ash Wednesday service was solemn and intimate.



From the BCP, I’ll just write out this short bit here (part of the liturgy), “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.”




Then we received the blessing from Patricia, the mark of the cross in ashes on our forehead: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.



The choir sang a haunting piece, “View me, Lord, a work of thine” with music by Charles Wood and words by Thomas Campion.



On Friday night, we had a crowd of 85 for a simple dinner of soup (made by Pricilla, I had the leek and potato) and salad, with cheese and capers and little red cherry tomatoes. Hearty whole grain bread with slabs of butter. Madelines, coffee, and fruit for dessert. Many others helped in the kitchen Friday evening, including Pat Berman, Nancy Jean Young, Claudia Gimson, and Nancy Dillon. We all came to hear Sara Miles, our special Lenten lecturer. She spoke at St. D’s Friday night and St. Bede’s Saturday morning. We’ll have more on the lectures here, in both images and words. Stay tuned.

Grace and peace to you all!