Social Justice: Are We Mandelas or Afrikaners?

In all of our memories in the wake of the death of Nelson Mandela, I think it's important to remember that the outcome we know now--Mandela released to become the first freely elected president of South Africa and a nation transformed--that outcome was so impossible that few of us dared to hope for it. Somewhere in my photo albums, I have a fading picture of a friend wearing his "Free Mandela" t-shirt. Mandela had been in jail for our whole lives, and we expected he would die there, t-shirts or no t-shirts.

I think it's important to remember how strong the forces of evil seemed then--and it wasn't just South Africa.  I spent many years in the 1980's meeting refugees from Central America.  They had tales of horror that were hard to believe.  And then to find out that our government supported El Salvador--and to watch Missing, and to discover that we weren't always a bright, shining light of freedom as a country.  During those cold war days, it seemed a hopeless task to advocate for liberty.

But we built our shantytowns on the Lawn, we helped Central Americans get to Canadian safety, we demanded changes in U.S. policy which were ignored or dismissed. We bought our protest albums and went to concerts. Elders sneered and warned us about the dangers of not establishing anti-communist bulwarks, even if they were staffed by genocidal maniacs, as much of Latin America was in the 1980's.

For many of us, it was a spiritual fight too.  I remember going to Jubilee Partners in Comer, Georgia.  At that time, they were a group working to get Central American refugees to Canada.  Later, I read a book, With Our Own Eyes, by Don Mosley, one of the founders.  He remembers not only the 1000+ people that they helped/saved, but all of those who perished.

I went to many a candlelight vigil, many a prayer service, many a demonstration.  I remember a multi-faith gathering that assembled to mark the 15th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. We prayed for the end to apartheid. I can't speak for the others, but I didn't expect it to happen. It's not the first time I've dismissed the power of nonviolent protest and prayer, and happily, it's not the only time I've been proven wrong. For more on the power of non-violence and the intersection of faith movements, see this great article by Jonathan Schell and Taylor Branch.


All the coverage, particularly of Mandela's speeches, all this coverage makes me think about my own life.  What would I be willing to die for?  Would I be willing to die for it even if it wasn't clear my sacrifice would make a difference?

I think about the value of a moral compass and all the ways we can ignore our moral compasses.  I wonder about my own life and all the compromises I worry that I am making.

But I also think of vignettes from my past few weeks as an administrator and teacher.  I work hard to stay a person of compassion, and I think it's vitally important to have people of compassion in positions of power, whether that power be nationwide or more local.

I may not be ending a brutal system like apartheid, but I can help students in their struggles to finish their educations before their money runs out, and I can fight for good working conditions for my faculty.

Some days, I believe that.  Other days it seems like a gross rationalization to me, a way to let me stay in middle class comfort, enjoying the fruits of oppression.

I want to be Nelson Mandela, but I fear I'm an Afrikaner.  I want to write missives that will inspire people to take the arc of history in their hands and bend it towards justice--but I fear I am missing my mark.

The Feast Day of St. Nicholas

If you came here hoping for a piece on Nelson Mandela, head on over to this post on my creativity blog.

I've run this blog post on St. Nicholas before, but that's fine.  I don't have much more to say about this holiday.  And like many of us, I'm a bit pressed for time this week, between the end of Thanksgiving travels, a Church Council meeting, and coming into the home stretch of several academic terms.

But today is the feast day of St. Nicholas, a good day to stop and think about the Christmas season which is upon us.  I need to start slowing down or the season will have zoomed on by before I have a chance to catch my breath.

 It's always a bit of a surprise to realize that Saint Nicholas was a real person. But indeed he was. In the fourth century, he lived in Myra, then part of Greece, now part of Turkey; eventually, he became Bishop of Myra. He became known for his habit of gift giving and miracle working, although it's hard to know what really happened and what's become folklore. Some of his gift giving is minor, like leaving coins in shoes that were left out for him. Some were more major, like resurrecting three boys killed by a butcher.

My favorite story is the one of the poor man with three children who had no dowry for them.  No dowry meant no marriage, and so, they were going to have to become prostitutes. In the dead of night, Nicholas threw a bag of gold into the house. Some legends have that he left a bag of gold for each daughter that night, while some say that he gave the gold on successive nights, while some say that he gave the gold as each girl came to marrying age.

Saint Nicholas is probably most famous for his associations with Christmas. Today, all over Europe, the gift-giving season begins. I had a friend in grad school who celebrated Saint Nicholas Day by having each family member open one present on the night of Dec. 6. It was the first I had heard of the feast day, but I was enchanted.

We don't give gifts much, in my various social circles, but if I did, I'd want to start on St. Nicholas day and not end until Epiphany, Jan. 6.

Saint Nicholas is also the patron saint of sailors, who used to leave each other by saying "May Saint Nicholas hold the tiller!"

So, on this day, may we be led by the spirit of generosity, especially generosity to the poor. May Saint Nicholas hold our tillers and guide us to open our purses and wallets and bags of gold.

Advent Dreams, Building Transformations

Tonight we are likely to have the kind of church council meeting that I dread.  We will likely talk about how our income is nowhere close to matching our outflow of cash.

I suspect that these conversations are not uncommon in churches across the land.  But oh, how I am weary of this conversation.

Our situation may feel more acute because we've just finalized a loan so that we can take care of building repairs (the roof, the AC, some parking lot issues).  Instead of rejoicing that the money is in the bank and work can begin, we are feeling a bit of panic because now we must repay the loan.

As a woman who did a lot of the work to get us the loan (e-mails, phone calls, e-mails, photocopying documents, e-mails, more phone calls, e-mails, filing paperwork at the Broward county office, and yet more e-mails), I'd like to spend a bit more time in gratitude before we move to panic.

Or maybe we just skip the panic please.  Do we trust in the Holy Spirit or don't we?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm not sure I do.  Wait, let me clarify.  I'm not sure I trust in the Holy Spirit to send us money to pay the bills.  In my quieter moments when I'm not doing tasks to finalize a loan, I'm wondering if the Holy Spirit isn't telling us something that most of us don't want to hear.

I had these thoughts again when I read this blog post and wondered if we'd rather have staff or a church building.  We can just barely afford our pastor and our building.  I'm not sure we can afford our staff members.

Of course, we have a building that's on lots of land for a South Florida location--we haven't even begun to explore utilizing/maximizing those resources.  Is the Holy Spirit nudging us that way?

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you've read my thoughts on my uneasiness with buildings; this piece is typical, plus it has a link to a great post by Nadia Bolz-Weber about the Babylonian captivity of our buildings.  Jesus sent his earliest followers out into the world, and they weren't scouting for locations for new church buildings.  Sigh.

Lately I have been wondering if Church Council is not the place where I'm supposed to be.  I just do not care about this building.  It's ugly.  The space is poorly designed.  And did I mention how ugly it is?  Why must we spend so much time talking about the building?

In this time of Advent, what is the Holy Spirit saying to me?  To phrase it another way:  if we have to spend so much time talking about this wretched building, what kinds of conversations could thrill me?

I've been thinking again about the church as a center for the arts.  Could I transform this ugly building into such a vision?

Could I make it possible for others to do that?  It doesn't have to be about me, after all.

I'm more interested in the programming than in the building.  What would that programming look like?

It's Advent, the time for diving deep into our dreams and visions.  I shall try to be more open to mine.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 8, 2013:



First Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Second Reading: Romans 15:4-13

Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12


Today's Gospel continues with the theme of watching, waiting, and listening for the call. Today it's John the Baptist who tells us of what's to come.

The real, living Jesus was not who John's listeners expected. Many of them probably thought that John was talking about himself; after all, first century Palestine was full of self-proclaimed Messiahs, and I expect many of them spoke of themselves in the third person telling (or warning) of the deeds they would do. Many of John's listeners probably had no idea what he was talking about; humans seem incapable of thinking in terms of metaphor and symbol for very long. Many of them probably expected a Messiah that would come in a form they'd recognize: a warrior to save them from the Romans, a temple reformer to get rid of corrupt priests, or maybe someone who would lead them into the wilderness to set up a new community.

Are we not the same way? How many of us read the Bible literally, expecting specific answers to social or political issues that would have been unheard of thousands of years ago when the Scriptures were written? How many of us expect our salvation to come in the tired old ways? We go to church, we sit in our pews, we wait for God to appear. We wonder why we don’t feel the presence of God, as we go home to take a nap and gear up for our secular week ahead. We scurry through the rat race of our lives, substituting other things for God. We worship at the churches of Capitalism, buying things at the mall or on the Internet, which means we have to work overtime to pay for those things. We wonder why we feel unfulfilled. To try to fill that emptiness, we do more of the activities that leave us with gaping holes in our Spirit. We hear that voice, the voice of the Spirit--maybe it cries or maybe it whispers. It scares us, so we eat some more or flip through ever more cable stations or go to bed early--because we can't deal with the implications.

John warns what happens to those of us who don't listen: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (verse 12). Some of us don't like this vision of a God with a winnowing fork in hand. How does this mesh with a God of grace and love?

But I'm reminded of the situation I find myself in, when students come to see me to complain about their teachers, teachers whom I supervise. I often see students who don't come to class, they don't do the work, they make no attempt, and so, they fail. Maybe they tell the stories in a familiar narrative that blames the teacher. But truth be told, they didn't fail the class because of the teacher. On the contrary, those teachers would have worked with them and led them out of the valley of failure and despair. But they can only do so much, without a student working with them.

Likewise, God doesn't have to do much winnowing. Our lifestyles are already punishing us. Many of us are already feeling that unquenchable fire.

The good news is that there is time to change our ways. There is still time to "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." (verse 3). Advent, traditionally a time for getting ready, is a good time to think ahead. How could we make the next year to be our best spiritual year ever?

Choose just one simple action, whether it be keeping a prayer journal or making gratitude lists or learning to play or sing sacred music. Choose just one action and attend to it faithfully.

In this way, you will be in a much stronger spiritual place a year from now. You will be bearing fruit. God will call, and you will hear. God won't have to go to such great lengths to get your attention. Your deepest yearnings, the ones you didn't even know you had, will be filled, as you move towards God--and God moves towards you.

Missing the First Sunday in Advent

I really like the years when Thanksgiving comes earlier.  I like the years when Christ the King Sunday is the Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end.  I don't mind missing that service.  I mind missing the first Sunday in Advent.

We usually leave our family reunion on Saturday and go as far as Jacksonville, where we stay with an old college friend and his wife.  Would they be interested in Advent services?  It's hard to say.

This year, I left our Thanksgiving reunion with a variation of the stomach bug we'd been passing around, so I was not in any shape to go to church.  I spent Advent I sipping ginger ale and nibbling saltines and hoping for the best.

Last night, after we got unpacked, we set up some Christmas ornaments.  We have a tabletop tree which is very small, but my spouse figured out how to the get counted cross stitch Chrismons onto it.  I miss having a big enough tree for all the ornaments we have, but that will have to wait for next year.  This year, the tree would be in the traffic pattern, and we'll have lots of houseguests and visitors.  It's just not feasible.

We have not one, but two Advent wreaths, and I have one at school.  Will we actually light the candles this year?  Our track record isn't good, but we can hope.

I feel the season rushing by already.  I need to focus.

Last night, I changed the markers in my prayer book.  I try to pray the liturgy of the hours that Phyllis Tickle created with her series, The Divine Hours.  In the past years, I've managed the morning prayers and little else.  But last night, I was able to pray Compline.  I read some verses from Isaiah, and I felt my heart relax into the vision of the ancient prophet.

I will continue trying to slow down, to focus, to enjoy Advent.  That is my Advent wish, for me, for us all.

Keeping Our Seats and Our Eyes on the Prize

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This act is often given credit for launching the Civil Rights Movement, but what many forget is that various communities had begun planning for the launch, even before they could see or know what it would look like.


In fact, for generations, people had prepared for just such a moment. They had gotten training in nonviolent resistance. They had come together in community in a variety of ways. They were prepared.

Someone asked me once how I had come to be such an optimist. I've always had an optimistic streak, but frankly, my whole world view shifted when I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison. I fully expected him to be killed, but again, my worldview shifted when I watched South Africans stand in line for days (days!) to elect him president. And he was ready to be president because he had spent those decades in prison thinking about how he would run the country and making plans.

I have seen enormous social change happen in my lifetime--in the face of such evidence, I must agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, who said the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

Today is also World Aids Day, a somber day that recognizes that this plague has been one of the most destructive diseases in modern human history. We don't have a cure, although we do drugs that make the disease manageable. We don't have a vaccine. Happily, so far, the disease is fairly preventable. Imagine how this disease would shape us if it was airborne, not blood born.

Those of us who work towards social justice and human dignity for all know how long the struggle might be. We are similar to those medieval builders of cathedral: we may not be around to see the magnificent completion of our vision, but it's important to play our part. In the words of that old Gospel song, we keep our eyes on the prize, our hands on the plow, and hold on.

Here is a prayer I wrote for today:

God of Justice, we pause on this day to remember Rosa Parks and all the other Civil Rights crusaders who worked so unceasingly for justice.  We celebrate their accomplishments that brought us all closer to the peacable Kingdom that you want for us.  We know there is work yet to do,and we pray for the strength to do it.  God of health, we pray for all those who are sick, and we pray for vibrant health:  for them, for us, for the whole world. 

The Feast Day of St. Andrew

On November 30, we celebrate the life of St. Andrew. Unlike his more famous and flamboyant brother, Simon Peter, Andrew often fades into the background.
It’s important to remember that we wouldn’t even know about Simon Peter if not for Andrew. Andrew followed John the Baptist, and John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the true Messiah. Andrew believed, and Andrew brought his brother to see what he had seen. Andrew is remembered as the first disciple.

Tradition has it that the brothers didn’t give up their family fishing business at first, but eventually, Christ requested full commitment. I’ve always wondered about the family relationships that simmer in the background of the Gospels.

I remember one Gospel reading that mentioned Jesus healing the mother-in-law of Simon Peter. I thought, mother-in-law? That means there must have been a wife. What did the mothers and wives and mother-in-laws think of the men abandoning their fishing business to follow Jesus?

I also think about the sibling relationships here. What does Andrew think about Simon Peter, who quickly moves into the spotlight? Is Andrew content to stay in the background?

We know from the passage in Matthew that begins with Matthew 20:20, that there is competition to be Christ’s favorite. We see the mother of James and John who argues for her sons’ importance. We see the other disciples who become angry at the actions of this mother. I extrapolate to imagine that there’s much jockeying for position amongst the disciples.

Christ never loses an opportunity to remind us that he’s come to give us a different model of success. Again and again, he dismisses the importance that the world attaches to riches, to status, to a good reputation. Again and again, Jesus instructs us that the last will be first. Jesus tells us that the way to gain prestige with God is to serve.

We see stories that show that Andrew is the kind of disciple who is working for the glory of Christ, not for other reasons. In John’s Gospel, Andrew is the one who tells Jesus about the boy with five barley loaves and two fish, and thus helps make possible the miraculous feeding.

Andrew was the kind of disciple we could use more of in this world. Andrew so believes in the Good News that he brings his family members to Christ, and he continued in this path, bringing the Gospel to people far and wide. We see him beginning this mission in John’s Gospel, where he tells Christ of the Greeks that want to see him.

Andrew gets credit for bringing Christianity into parts of eastern Europe and western Asia: Kiev, Ukraine, Romania, Russia. He’s the first bishop of the Church of Byzantium and patron saint of all sorts of places, from Scotland to Cyprus to Russia.

On this day when we celebrate the life of the first disciple, let us consider our own discipleship. Are we focused on the right tasks or are we hoping that our Christian faith brings us non-Christian glory? How can we help usher in the miracles that come with the presence of Christ? Who needs to hear the Good News as only we can tell it?