Ponderings

My daughter came home from high school yesterday with an application for ANYTOWN. ANYTOWN is a week-long leadership program for youth. As she showed me the application last night she asked, “Am I ready?” My immediate response was a resounding “yes”, but I found myself this morning unpacking my immediate and passionate affirmation.

Having grown up in the segregated towns of southern Michigan in the wake of the infamous Detroit riots (summer of 1967), I wanted my children to grow up with fewer stereotypes and less fear. Before my children started elementary, we intentionally moved to a racially diverse city and to church committed to inclusivity. I wanted my children to grow up delighting in God’s diverse creation.

Our first home in St. Louis was on an integrated block and we cherished the friendships our preschool aged children made in the neighborhood. Although we quickly discovered that the diversity we assumed existed in St. Louis was an illusion, our own little corner of the world was precious. The neighbors across the road told tales of “block busting” in the 1960’s when as African Americans they moved into the then all-white neighborhood. An added bonus was that my neighbor’s daughter (my age) and grandson (my daughter’s age) were living with her while building a new home. Our children became fast friends and spent many happy hours together.

Unfortunately, we moved from that neighborhood about the time my children started school. All too quickly, my utopian ideals for my children were shattered. One of the ironies of public education is that we often choose public schools believing that they will enable our children to live more respectfully in a diverse world. I continue to be amazed, however, at how segregated an integrated public school can be. Without anyone intending it, our schools end up being one more venue in our children’s lives reinforcing unhelpful stereotypes and destructive patterns.

ANYTOWN is a week-long summer intensive led by NCCJ (The National Conference for Community and Justice) for youth to “explore and address the complexities of critical issues of discrimination such as race, sex, sexual orientation, class, age, physical ability, and religious oppression.” In short, a chance to unlearn the racism and classism that she has already learned. My daughter’s readiness for ANYTOWN is an appropriate question, but not the one to which I was responding.

The underlying assumption about our children’s need for the experience is for me the more critical point. Tragically the assumption is correct. Children are not born racist, but when born into a world permeated by racism the results are inevitable. So too with classism, heterosexism, and an endless list of prejudices. Despite our best intentions, the world in which we live is permeated by the bigotry that from which we would shelter our children. Allowing our children to embrace the world in which we live is unwittingly also enabling another generation to learn things which will need to be unlearned.

Is she ready? Yes, but more important is the realization that she can’t afford not to be.

My first experience of public demonstrations was in 1984 at the ripe old age of 21. I had traveled to Minneapolis to register my dissent with Honeywell’s profitable manufacture and sale of “cluster bombs”; bombs designed for maximum human destruction, with children often the victims. The Honeywell protest was an annual gathering of peaceniks from Minnesota and Wisconsin coinciding with the Honeywell stockholders meeting. Committed and righteous as only a youth can be I even remained on the sidewalk, daisy in hand, when the officers told us to move. I had my first ride to the police station, was fingerprinted and booked.

Moving though the experience was for the protestor, I was disheartened to learn several years later that Honeywell had finally caved to public pressure and sold off it’s weapon making division. Effectively this meant the same weapons would be made by a lesser-known enterprise for which protests would rankle fewer stockholders. Our success really wasn’t.

Meanwhile I married, accepted a call to parish ministry, and became a mom. My forms of dissent became edgy sermons, rants around the house, and an occasional diatribe on the computer. And to be totally candid, I don’t much care for crowds at this point in my life.

But I found myself inexplicably spending the afternoon trying to arrange travel to Washington DC for January 27.

Opposed to this war but desiring to take the high road, I have not participated in public dissent since the fighting began. I keep trying unsuccessfully to believe that those who started this unceasing violence have a practical plan that will stop the bloodshed. While I don’t personally believe that violence can ever lead to just peace, many people for whom I have deep respect have explain that perhaps an escalation of troops, a bigger wave of violence, can finally quell the hatred. Maybe so, but I’m remain deeply troubled by the prospect of an escalation in this endless war.

I learned about the gathering in DC on January 27th at church last Sunday. One of our parishioners is planning to go and put up a big sign to invite others. This gathering in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial is a call to protest the escalation of this war. I love my church and I love the enthusiasm of this man and I love his sign. It is comforting to know that even when I am timid, other prophets step forward to speak. I was definitely moved, but not yet to action.

Then on an otherwise innocuous drive across the river on Wednesday, I was confronted with the real cost of this warring madness. On my way to the Shrine of our Lady of the Snows I followed the road map from mapquest. Unbeknownst to me the most direct route (chosen by the mapquest brain) is the road less traveled. It is not the faster route. It is, however, the route that drops you directly into the heart of East St. Louis, a heart in need of transplant.

Having finally found Illinois Route 15 (a couple of scenic detours later), I found myself face to face with what can only be called a war zone. Although I noticed no homeless wanderers and no unsupervised children about whom to fret, I soon realized that there was no one on the streets at midday. Never have I experienced such utter desolation. The tears that flowed welled from a place not only of sadness but also of shame. This kind of desolation is the kind of communal sin that makes Sodom look like Disneyland. Although my initial inclination was to consider my own charitable shortfalls (doubtless a few less trips to Starbucks would yield more food for the pantry!) all of our Starbucks coffees together will not fill the gaping hole I was facing.

The real cost of our war making in Iraq now has a face. We have already spent more than $359,385,225,155 - 359 billion dollars - to send weapons and soldiers halfway around the world in the name of safety while right next door the public schools are infested with rats and the fire department depends on charity. The industrial barons have moved on with their assets and left their mess behind for those forced to remain. The so-called War on Terror is a sham when people are afraid to step outside of their homes. The security we crave in our homeland can only begin from within.

Maybe a trip to DC is impractical, but silence is no longer an affordable option. In addition to sponsoring others who are traveling to DC, our local Instead of War Coalition invites us to gather at the corner of Grand and Arsenal from 11:30am-12:30noon on January 27th (while our sisters and brothers gather on the National Mall). I’ll be there. Will you join me?

At a particularly tumultuous time in my life when the winter winds were blowing in the northland that I called home, I was facing several major life crossroads with no clear direction. The stakes seemed high, they were. And I wanted to make the right choice. Though I sought direction in every form of prayer I knew, still the voice of God seemed eerily silent.

One afternoon I found myself in the relatively anonymous office of an administrator to whom I was to report at least one of my decisions. For reasons that will forever remain a mystery, I spilled my sorry tale on this dear woman’s desk that was undoubtedly already filled with plenty of tales of her own. She listened, or at least pretended too, and then looked at me with remarkable compassion and spoke what I would come to understand as the Spirit’s words.

“Katy, life isn’t about right and wrong choices. Life is about choices and consequences.”

At any given crossroads, any and every choice we make will produce both expected and unexpected consequences. Letting go of the need to define and identify the right choice enables us to prepare for and be open to the consequences of life as they unfold. Although this philosophy would preclude my ever getting it ‘right’, I would also never be ‘wrong’. And most importantly, I would never be without God’s blessing. With this assurance, I was able to get ‘unstuck’ and move on with my life, both personally and professionally.

I have made many choices that I’m very proud of and a few I’d rather were forgotten. Some of my choices have had delightfully unexpected blessings, some have offered unexpected challenges, most have offered some of both. One of the life choices that was most difficult to make was that of marrying. I wasn’t one of the starry eyed brides who feels “right” and I agonized that silence. I plunged into marriage wide eyed and fearful but comforted by the Spirit words of choice and consequence, and I have been utterly amazed at the continually unfolding blessings of my relationship with Gary (the challenges will hold until another article!). Another choice for which the right answer was missing was our move to St. Louis and Evangelical UCC. By the time we actually signed a contract together, we knew enough about each other to have legitimate reservations. Yet with the gift of a decade shared in ministry, I find myself utterly overwhelmed with the blessing of our shared joys and sorrows. Never would I have anticipated some of the challenges we have navigated, never would I have guessed the incredible fun that ministry has become.

Choices and consequences… and in all of them the remembrance of a safe haven in a winter storm, the reassuring voice of God.

Gratitude is the only word I can find to describe the beginning of this new year. Gratitude for this incredible community of faith, for our precious staff, and for my family that shares this community with me. Gratitude for the ways in which this community has carried me and been carried by me.

Gratitude.

Gratitude not only for the incredible community into which we are called, but also for the Spirit’s push to claim it. Letting go of the pretences, of the misshapen answers, of the façade of control and claiming the incredible gift of community that is waiting.

Albert Schweitzer is quoted as saying: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Recently I discovered unexpected strength in vulnerability when I said “help”. The response was immediate and loving and real; totally without question or judgment. And I am reminded that this is one of the most important reasons we bother to share our time, our talent, and even our money on an enterprise so passé as organized religion. We gather not to pay homage to a distant deity but rather to experience the power of the Presence realized in community.

Community is the safe space in which to acknowledge the wick even when it is cold. Community honors the holiness of the candle we bear (flame or no) and our community, when we are ready, will relight the flame. This of course is the pageantry we play out each Christmas morn as the flame passes through our sanctuary, celebrating Jesus’ birth not in some distant long ago but rather here and now.

EUCC is our community. It may be one of many communities that buoy our spirits, but this community is a central one in my life and I am grateful. Which is not a bad way to begin a new year!

We welcomed the Prince of Peace as we watched the public execution of Saddam Hussein.—Grim.

We welcomed the Prince of Peace as we mourned the passing of President Gerald R. Ford.—Better.

We welcomed the Prince of Peace as we buried two earthly “princes”, one revered and another rejected.—Maybe.

As I searched for the right headline I found myself wondering about the connections; wondering if by following the tangled strands of history we can find a healing balm and the elusive peace proclaimed by our holiday greetings.

President Ford’s administration was very brief and remembered by many of us only vaguely. His image was that of the guy next door and he sought to restore our faith in the office of the President. To this end he was remarkably successful, if not well appreciated.

But as I flipped through the pages of history remembering Ford’s presidency, I was surprised to rediscover that those were also years of United States involvement in shoring up the power base for a Ba’ath Party leader in Iraq; for the man we would learn to despise, for Saddam Hussein.

As I’m reading about our support for Hussein (with our guns, our money, and our blessing), I also realized that political power in the United States shifted several times during this rise. The political parties changed, the stump speeches varied, even the wedge issues moved! But our support for a known tyrant appeared unwavering until the Kuwait incident.

Tragically I think our support was, in fact, well intentioned. Our support was intended to bolster weak alliances that would preserve some sense of what we might call “order”. Although my cynical nature cannot ignore the vast oil reserves to which our alliances provide access, certainly our commitments to Israel and other vulnerable populations were also in play.

Still the history reads more like a return to Herod’s reign of terror than a welcoming of the Prince of Peace. The abiding truth played out once again is the lesson we tried to learn in Kindergarten—that the ends do not justify the means. Slaughtering innocents will never bring the Prince of Peace, support for tyranny will not build democracy, and oppression for even a few will not result in freedom for anyone.

Our Rainbow Fish Tree couldn’t not be more timely. This is a quirky tradition we began at our church in memory of Matthew Shepherd. We begin each year by taking the decorations off our Christmas tree and placing a Rainbow Fish on top. The fish reminds us of the ancient Christians who, then a minority people, were persecuted. The rainbow is a modern symbol for inclusivity and also a biblical sign of promise. Throughout the season of Epiphany we hang ribbons on the tree in a commitment to becoming a more inclusive community.

In the shadow of the garish tree we see with stark relief the unpopular truths to which Jesus bore witness. In the shadow of the tree we remember that justice doesn’t flow from tyranny nor peace from violence. In the shadow of our tree, we pray for peace as we work for justice.