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Contents:
What are our prayers for the future if
not prayers for the children? Our care for our children and for the
promise of their lives us as natural to us as breathing. This bond and
commitment is in our blood and bones; it is hidden in the seeds deep
within our bodies. It is the covenant of our species: to protect and
nurture our young, and to prepare a good way for them. We of the living
generations are here only because our ancestors remained loyal to this
covenant.
Anthony Piccione
“Jesus and the Children,” Hans
Rudi-Weber
According to rabbinic treatise, the resurrection of the people of
Israel will happen when “God embraces them, presses them to his
heart and kisses them, thus bringing them into the life of the world
to come” (Seder Elijahu Rabba 17). Something like that has happened
to the children. . . .
How did the children merit such a reception? Absolutely no
condition is made. The children have not even reached “the age of
the Law,” and they therefore have no merit. Nothing is said about
their innocence, their childlike confidence or any other such
qualities. . . . God’s will is to present the children with God’s
realm, and against all human calculation this is done in a totally
gratuitous way. . . .
This gratuitous love of God, assured to the children in Jesus’
prophetic words and action, turns upside down. . . classifications.
Children receive a place of preeminence, if human realities are
considered from the point of view of God’s dominion.
Keep your heart clean with peace.
Don’t get it dirty with greed. It’s not too late to clean it.
Kaila Spencer,
Age 8
top of page
September 17, 2006
The sovereign God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may
know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning God
wakens – wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The
Sovereign God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious.
Isaiah 50:4-5a
In
an introduction to Faust, I remembered the writer/editor quoting
Goethe as saying, “In the beginning was not the Word. In the
beginning was the Act.” I blurted aloud, “Ah! No! In the beginning
was not the Word. In the beginning was the hearing.”
Nelle
Morton
Education . . . becomes an act of depositing, in
which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the
depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués
and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize,
and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education . . . .
Those truly committed to liberation must reject the
banking concept . . . adopting
instead a concept of humanity as conscious beings . .
. . They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and
replace it with the posing of the problems of humanity . . . .
In “problem-posing” education, people develop their
powers to perceive critically
the way
they exist
in the world
with
which
and
in which
they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static
reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.
Paulo
Friere
I can
never teach your children everything they need to know. But I can teach
them to be curious and discontent.
Marva
Collins, West Side of Chicago
You may think / I am a shadow, / But inside / I am a sun.
Damia
Gates, Grade 4
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Jesus deals with a deaf-mute. He takes
suffering to heart. Following his example, we want to be as caring for the
deaf and residents with speech impediments in our community as he was in his
day. . . . We call attention to the deaf and mute in our midst, and we want
to show that one can also communicate with them, albeit in a different
manner.
Gijs Okhuijsen and Cees van Opzeeland “Ephphatha,”
Wayne Saffen
Now listen to this, / You hucksters of
religion, / All you faith healers, / Gatherers of crowds, / Who come to
smite the populace / With miracles, spectaculars; / When Jesus healed a deaf
man, / he took the man aside, privately, / Away from gawkers. Jesus did not
yield to crowd promotion, / As some do who appear in his name (in vain?). /
He took the man aside, apart, away / From the multitude. He put his fingers
/ Into the deaf-mute’s ears. He spat / And touched his tongue. Does Jesus’
/ Spit offend you? He looked into heaven. / He sighed and said,
“Ephphatha! Be opened!”
Do you think you know his secret now? / Do
you think method is the key to power? / Repeat the procedure exactly. / Try
the sequence in proper order. / Isolate the experimental subject. / Stick
finger into ear. Spit on finger. / Place finger on tongue. Look
heavenward. / Sigh. Say the magic word. Got it? Try it. When his ears
were opened / And his tongue released, / The man spoke plainly. Of course.
Now that we have rehearsed the event, / Do we understand it better? / Of
course not. Let’s start with something easier. / Try listening to what
others say. / Experience the loss of your own deafness. / Say how you feel,
and watch your tongue come untied. / Get someone you can trust to practice
on. / Try it on your wife or husband, / Father mother, brothers, sisters,
children, friends.
You already know how to sigh. / Now learn to
open up. / Ephphatha! Be opened! / See, that’s all there is to it!
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We support the right of public and private (including farm, government,
institutional, and domestic) employees and employers to organize for
collective bargaining into unions and other groups of their own choosing.
Further, we support the right of both parties to protection in so doing and
their responsibility to bargain in good faith within the framework of the
public interest. In order that the rights of all members of the society may
be maintained and promoted, we support innovative bargaining procedures that
include representatives of the public interest in negotiation and settlement
of labor-management contracts, including some that may lead to forms of
judicial resolution of issues. We reject the use of violence by either
party during collective bargaining or any labor/management disagreement. We
likewise reject the permanent replacement of a worker who engages in a
lawful strike.
The Book of Discipline, “Collective Bargaining”
Let every word be the fruit of action and reflection.
Reflection alone without action or tending toward it is mere theory
adding its weight when we are overloaded with it already.
Action alone without reflection is being busy pointlessly.
Honor the World eternal and speak to make a new world possible.
Dom Helder Camara
Every person has the right to a job at a living wage. Where the private
sector cannot or does not provide jobs for all who seek and need them, it is the
responsibility of government to provide for the creation of such jobs. We
support social measures that ensure the physical and mental safety of workers,
that provide for the equitable division of products and services, and that
encourage an increasing freedom in the way individuals may use their leisure
time. We recognize the opportunity leisure provides for creative contributions
to society and encourage methods that allow workers additional blocks of
discretionary time. We support educational, cultural, and recreational outlets
that enhance the use of such time. We believe that persons come before
profits. We deplore the selfish spirit that often pervades our economic life.
We support policies that encourage the sharing of ideas in the workplace,
cooperative and collective work arrangements. We support rights of workers to
refuse to work in situations that endanger health and/or life without jeopardy
to their jobs. We support policies that would reverse the increasing
concentration of business and industry into monopolies.
The Book of Discipline, “Work and Leisure”
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Morton
Kelsey, Episcopal parish priest, counselor and retreat leader of 35 years
experience, wrote of his thoughts on the nature of loving:
I realized that the basic problem in the parish was the
same as my own problem in loving: most of us were more interested in being
treated like Ming vases than in caring for others. I realized that emotional
maturity only begins in us as human beings when we begin to give
consolation, understanding and love without expecting anything in return. The
essential mark of true adults is their ability to give of love without looking
for what they can get back.In that moment … I also understood for the
first time that we cannot follow Jesus of Nazareth and his way until we find it
more important to give understanding and love than to receive them. As we give
up our desire to be consoled and understood and loved, we die in a very real
sense and something new has a chance to live and grow within us. If we continue
on this way, we lose our lives in order to gain them. We die and rise again.
This is the creative way of the cross which any of us can follow. As we try to
live by this insight, the whole gospel begins to make sense. It opens up like a
tight bud. The meaning of the Christian way becomes clear.
From
Caring, Paulist Press,1961, pp. 2-3.
top of page
Pending the time of fulfillment, the ministry of all Christians is
shaped by the teachings of Jesus. The handing on of these teachings is
entrusted to leaders who are gifted and called by God to appointed offices
in the church: some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors
and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up
the body of Christ. For these persons to lead the church effectively, they
must embody the teachings of Jesus in servant ministries and servant
leadership. Through these ministries and leadership, congregations of the
church are faithfully engaged in the forming of Christian disciples and
vitally involved in the mission of God in the world.
The Book of Discipline
Discernment cannot be empirically judged; it is ultimately a faith
statement. It is a gamble of faith. It is obedience to an inward monitor –
and upon that we risk all. . . . Discernment, far from keeping us “safe,”
puts us at the outposts of our comfort zones. We choose to live into the
fullness of our Light – regardless of the consequences. With Job we echo,
“Even though he slay me, yet will I trust that God is at work in me.”
Alastair Heron
My mother prayed on her knees at midday, at night, and first thing in
the morning. Every day opened up to her to have God’s will done in it.
Every night she toted up what she’d done and said and thought, to see how it
squared with Him. That kind of life is dreary, people thing, but they’re
missing the point. For one thing, such a life can never be boring. And
nothing can happen to you that you can’t make use of. Even of you’re
wracked by troubles, and sick and poor and ugly, you’ve got your soul to
carry through life like a treasure on a platter. Going upstairs to pray
after the noon meal, my mother would be full of energy and expectation,
seriously smiling.
-- Alice Munro
top of page
August 13, 2006
We deplore war and urge the peaceful settlement of all
disputes among nations. From the beginning the Christian conscience has
struggled with the harsh realities of violence and war, for these evils
clearly frustrate God’s loving purposes for humankind. We yearn for the day
when there will be no more war and people will live together in peace and
justice. Some of us believe that war, and other acts of violence, are never
acceptable to Christians. We also acknowledge that many Christians believe
that, when peaceable alternatives have failed, the force of arms may
regretfully be preferable to unchecked aggression, tyranny and genocide. We
honor the witness of pacifists who will not allow us to become complacent
about war and violence. We also respect those who support the use of force,
but only in extreme situations and only when the need is clear beyond
reasonable doubt, and through appropriate international organizations. We
urge the establishment of the rule of law in international affairs as a
means of elimination of war, violence, and coercion in these affairs.
Book of Discipline, “Social
Principles”
This morning I said to Jopie, “It still all comes down to the
same thing: life is beautiful. And I believe in God. And I want to be there
right in the thick of what people call ‘horror’ and still be able to say: ‘life
is beautiful.’ And now here I lie in some corner, dizzy and feverish and unable
to do a thing. When I woke up just now I was parched, reached for my glass of
water, and, grateful for that one sip, thought o myself, ‘If I could only be
there to give some of those packed thousands just one sip of water.’”
-- Etty
Hillesum
We want no one else ever to suffer the hell we have
experienced. “Make no more Hibakusha [nuclear victims]” is our appeal, for
which we give our lives. It is not until our wish becomes a reality that
the Hibakusha will be able to live as a foundation of peace, and the dead
will rest in peace. . . . The Hibakusha will live on and keep protesting
until all nuclear arms are abolished. Fulfilling this mission is the real
heritage we can pass onto coming generations.
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August
6, 2006
Utah Phillips, “Enola
Gay”
Look out look out from your
school room window
Look up young children from
your play
Wave your hand at the
shining airplane
Such a beautiful sight is
Enola Gay
It’s many a mile from the
Utah desert
To Tinian Island far away
A standing guard by the
barbed wire fences
That hid the secret of Enola
Gay
High above the clouds in the
sunlit silence
So peaceful here I’d like to
stay
But there’s many a pilot
who’d swap his pension
For a chance to fly Enola
Gay
What is that sound high
above my city
I rush outside and search
the sky
Now we are running to find
our shelter
The air raid sirens start to
cry
What will I say when my
children ask me
Where was I flying on that
day?
With trembling voice I gave
the order
To the bombardier of Enola
Gay
Look out look out from your
school room window
Look up young children from
your play
Your bright young eyes will
turn to ashes
In the blinding light of
Enola Gay
I turn to see the fireball
rising
“My god my god” all I can
say
I hear a voice within me
crying
My mother’s name was Enola
Gay
Look out look out from your
school room window
Look up young children from
your play
Oh when you see those war
planes flying
Each one is named Enola Gay
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There is but one ministry in Christ,
but there are diverse gifts and evidences of God’s grace in the body of
Christ (Ephesians 4:4-16). The ministry of all Christians is
complementary. No ministry is subservient to another. All United
Methodist are summoned and sent by Christ to live and work together in
mutual interdependence and to be guided by the Spirit into the truth
that frees and the love that reconciles.
The
Book of Discipline
The table
fellowship of Christians implies obligation. It is our daily bread that
we eat, not my own. We share our bread. Thus we are firmly bound to
one another and not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being.
The one bread that is given to our fellowship links us together in a
firm covenant. Now none dares go hungry as long as another has bread,
and anyone who breaks the fellowship of the physical life also breaks
the fellowship of the Spirit.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I had been hungry, all the Years
-- / My Noon had come – to dine -- / I trembling drew the Table near
-- / And touched the Curious Wine –
‘Twas this on Tables I had seen
-- / When turning, hungry, Home / I looked in Windows, for the
Wealth / I could not hope – for Mine –
I did not know the ample Bread
-- / ‘Twas so unlike the Crumb / The Birds and I, had often shared /
In Nature’s – Dining Room –
The Plenty hurt me – ‘twas so
new -- / Myself felt ill – and odd -- / As Berry – of a Mountain
Bush -- / Transplanted – to the Road
Nor was I hungry – so I found /
That Hunger – was a way / Of Persons outside Windows -- / The
Entering – takes away –
Emily Dickinson
The decision to feed the world is the
real decision.
Adrienne Rich
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The
Holy Spirit calls us toward an all-inclusive attitude, a theology of the
wind, a relationship to God and the world that does not try to make things
easy by ruling out whole areas of human experience and whole groups of human
beings. When one goes out to fish, one does not dictate to God what may or
may not be attracted to the bait.
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
“Resting in Peace,” Mark Milligan
There is a cemetery – /or perhaps two – /deep in the city
at the intersection of / Narragansett & Montrose Avenues.
It is located, undeniably, / on one piece of ground
but with two entrances, / two names,
two accents, / separated by once fence.
In the north, / Children of the Cross
with names like /
Anderson . . . Olsen . . .
Arthur and Anna Christenson . . . / rest forever.
They call their home / Mount Olive.
In the south, / Children of the Menorah
with names like / Rosenberg . . . Weiss . . .
Rebecca and Abraham Goldstein . . . / wait in silence.
They call their home / Mount Mayriv.
The fence -- / a strong, high fence with
three strands of barbed wire on top – separates the graves of / Israel
Weinstein / and / Harold Hanson.
I can’t help but / wonder / if that fence
is the same barrier / for the dead / as it is
for the living / and / if we couldn’t
get by with / just taking it down.
It is
often when a community is on the verge of breaking up that people agree to
talk with each other and look each other in the eye. This is because they
realize that it is a question of life or death, that everything will
collapse if they do not do something decisive and radically different.
Often we have to come to the edge of the precipice before we reach the
moment of truth and recognize our own poverty and need of each other, and
cry to God for help.
Jean
Vanier
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Acoma
Trembling
at the edge
hand coiled
seed pot in hand
hole so tiny
not even an ant can steel the precious contents
my heart
aches
Did you know
as you sprinkled the sacred cornmeal and
blessed the
four corners of my house
that my
heart longed
not to be
loved
but to be
broken?
It ached
with the ripeness of pregnancy
impending
birth
fruit
needing to be freed
seeds
requiring exposure.
It ached to
be smashed on the rock
of your will
and left
exposed
the precious
fiber of
my
possibilities.
Wantonly I
gave my fruit
spreading my
long gorgeous hard thighs
to receive
thousands of seeds
Indiscriminately
giving my
red juicy fruit
Until it
dried and hardened and rotted
and I said
"No more."
Blaming you
for what I gave.
I turned
inside out
crawled
inside myself
awaited
germination
The hard dry
seed planted in hard dry soil
and flooded
with love I did nothing for
I cracked
Ah, what
sweet relief
The bones of
my pelvis opened wide
Uncontrollably bearing down
I pushed
Between my
own legs,
laid at my
feet
I found my
most precious self.
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The ministry of all
Christians in Christ’s name and spirit is both a gift and a task. The gift
is God’s unmerited grace; the task is unstinting service. Entrance into the
church is acknowledged in baptism and may include persons of all ages. In
baptism, water is administered in the name of the triune God (specified in
the ritual as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) by an authorized person, and the
Holy Spirit is invoked with the laying on of hands, ordinarily in the
presence of the congregation. In this sacrament the church claims God’s
promise and the seal of the Spirit (Ephesians 1:13). Baptism is followed by
nurture and the consequent awareness by the baptized of the claim to
ministry in Christ placed upon their lives by the church. Such a ministry
is confirmed by the church when the pledges of baptism are accepted through
profession of faith, and renewed for life and mission. Entrance into and
acceptance of ministry begin in a local church, but the impulse to minister
always moves one beyond the congregation toward the whole human community.
God’s gifts are richly diverse for a variety of services; yet all have
dignity and worth.
“Ministry
of All Christians,” Book of Discipline, UMC
The work of Jesus is to continue, and for that
purpose the church is called and sent. For that work Jesus grants the
word and the power that characterized his own ministry. The church is
to go trusting this to be true, never contradicting that trust with the
excess baggage of security and wealth that offer the world the image of
unbelief. There will be rejection and refusal to listen, to be sure,
but there will also be those who will welcome both the ministry and the
minister.
Fred
Craddock
Those who set out to share the good news often
discover that they are changed in the process.
Martin Copenhaver
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The church as the community
of the new covenant has participated in Christ’s ministry of grace across
the years and around the world. It stretches out to human needs wherever
love and service may convey God’s love and ours. The outreach of such
ministries knows no limits. Beyond the diverse forms of ministry is this
ultimate concern: that all persons will be brought into a saving
relationship with God through Jesus Christ and be renewed after the image of
their creator (Colossians 3:10). This means that all Christians are called
to minister wherever Christ would have them serve and witness in deeds and
words
that
heal and free.
“Ministry
of All Christians,” Book of Discipline, UMC
We put our arms around each other / a pair of ordinary tax-paying human
arms
not to
rest them / but to harden them / a pair of ordinary concrete-accustomed
and marketed human arms / a pair of ordinarily needing
a pair of ordinarily hugging / human arms
how strong they are / sovereign, independent – / no matter where
no matter what the hour / no matter what the season / suddenly and for
all time human arms / without speculation / we put them around each
other
as if to show that their powerlessness / doesn’t exist
Marianne
Larsen, Denmark
The
true development of human beings involves much more than mere economic
growth. At its heart there must be a sense of empowerment and inner
fulfillment. This alone will ensure that human and cultural values remain
paramount in a world where political leadership is often synonymous with
tyranny and the rule of a narrow elite. People’s participation in social
and political transformation is the central issue of our time. This can be
achieved only through the establishment of societies that place human worth
above power, and liberation
above control. In this paradigm, development requires democracy, the
genuine empowerment of the people. The challenge we now face is for the
different nations and peoples of the world to agree on a basic set of human
values, which will serve as a unifying force in the development of a genuine
global community.
Aung San
Suu Kyi, Burma
(Democratic leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, now under house arrest)
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