King Abdullah of Jordan to U.S. Congress

Speech to U.S. Congress by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Thank you for such a warm welcome. It is an honor to stand, as my father did, before this historic institution. Allow me to thank you, on behalf of all Jordanians.

Jordan and the United States have had a long friendship. It is a special privilege to be here in the year that the American Congress welcomes its first woman Speaker, and its first Muslim-American member of Congress. These milestones send a message around the world about the America I know so well, a place where individuality is nurtured, a place where hard work is rewarded, a place where achievement is celebrated. The America I know so well believes that opportunity and justice belong to all.

In my days in Massachusetts, I also learned something of New England virtues. There wasn't actually a law against talking too much, but there was definitely an attitude that you didn't speak unless you could improve on silence. Today, I must speak; I cannot be silent. I must speak about a cause that is urgent for your people and for mine. I must speak about peace in the Middle East. I must speak about peace replacing the division, war, and conflict that have brought such disaster for the region and for the world.

This was the cause that brought my father King Hussein here in 1994. With Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin beside him, he spoke of a new vision for the Middle East. Their courageous work for peace received bipartisan support from your leaders. And there was tremendous hope for a new era. There was tremendous hope that people would be brought together. There was tremendous hope that a final and comprehensive settlement of all the issues would be achieved. Thirteen years later, that work is still not completed. And until it is, we are all at risk. We are all at risk of being victims of further violence resulting from ideologies of terror and hatred. It is our greatest and most urgent duty to prevent such dangers to our region, to your country and to the world.

The choice is ours: an open world full of promise, progress and justice for all; or a closed world of divided peoples, fear, and unfulfilled dreams. Nothing impacts this choice more than the future of peace in the Middle East. I come to you today at a rare, and indeed historic, moment of opportunity, when there is a new international will to end the catastrophe. And I believe that America, with its enduring values, its moral responsibility, and yes, its unprecedented power, must play the central role.

Some may say, ‘Peace is difficult, we can live with the status quo.' But, my friends, violent killings are taking place as part of this status quo. Palestinians and Israelis are not the only victims. We saw the violence ricochet into destruction in Lebanon last summer. And people around the world have been the victims of terrorists and extremists, who use the grievances of this conflict to legitimize and encourage acts of violence. Americans and Jordanians and others have suffered and survived terrorist attacks. In this room, there are representatives of American families and Jordanian families who have lost loved ones. Thousands of people have paid the highest price, the loss of their life. Thousands more continue to pay this terrible price, for their loved ones will never return.

Are we going to let these thousands of lives be taken in vain? Has it become acceptable to lose that most basic of human rights? The right to live? The status quo is also pulling the region and the world towards greater danger. As public confidence in the peace process has dropped, the cycle of crises is spinning faster, and with greater potential for destruction. Changing military doctrine and weaponry pose new dangers. Increasing numbers of external actors are intervening with their own strategic agendas, raising new dangers of proliferation and crisis.

These are groups that seek even more division: faith against faith, nation against nation, community against community.

Any further erosion in the situation would be serious for the future of moderation and coexistence, in the region and beyond. Have we all lost the will to live together in peace celebrating one another's strengths and differences?

Some may say, ‘But there are other, urgent challenges.' How can there be anything more urgent than the restoration of a world where all people, not only some people, all people have the opportunity to live peacefully? This is not only a moral imperative, it is essential to the future of our world, because long-term, violent crisis is the enemy of all global prosperity and progress. Certainly, our era faces critical issues. There is great public concern here, just as in our region, about the conflict in Iraq. The entire international community has vital decisions to make about the path forward, and how to ensure Iraq's security, unity, and future. But we cannot lose sight of a profound reality. The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.

There are those who say, ‘It's not our business.' But this Congress knows: there are no bystanders in the 21st Century, there are no curious onlookers, there is no one who is not affected by the division and hatred that is present in our world. Some will say: ‘This is not the core issue in the Middle East.' I come here today as your friend to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world.

The security of all nations and the stability of our global economy are directly affected by the Middle East conflict. Across oceans, the conflict has estranged societies that should be friends. I meet Muslims thousands of miles away who have a deep, personal response to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They want to know how it is, that ordinary Palestinians are still without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice. Yes, my friends, today I must speak. I cannot be silent. Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair, on all sides.

It is time to create a new and different legacy, one that begins right now; one that can set a positive tone for the American and Middle East relationship; one that can restore hope to our region's people, to your people, and to the people of this precious world. Nothing can achieve that more effectively, nothing can assert America's moral vision more clearly, nothing can reach and teach the world's youth more directly, than your leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year.

How do we get there? Not by a solution imposed by one side. A lasting peace can only be built on understanding, agreement and compromise. It begins with courage and vision. We, all of us, must take risks for peace. The Arab states recognized that reality in 2002, when we unanimously approved the Arab Peace Initiative. It puts forward a path for both sides, to achieve what people want and need: a collective peace treaty with Israel and normal relations with every Arab state, collective security guarantees for all the countries of the region, including Israel, an end to the conflict, a dream every Israeli citizen has longed for since the creation of Israel, and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, a withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967, and a sovereign, viable, and independent Palestine.

The commitment we made in the Arab Peace Initiative is real. And our states are involved in ongoing efforts to advance a fair, just, and comprehensive peace. His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia initiated the 2002 proposal; today, he continues to rally international support. Momentum is also building among Muslim countries outside the Arab world.

Ten days ago, in Islamabad, the foreign ministers of key Muslim states met. They came together to assure Palestinians and Israelis that they are not alone, that we back their effort to make and build peace. The goal must be a peace in which all sides gain. It must be anchored in security and opportunity for all.It must be a peace that will free young Palestinians to focus on a future of progress and prosperity. It must be a peace that makes Israel a part of the neighborhood, a neighborhood that extends from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, across the breadth of the southern Mediterranean, to the coast of the Indian Ocean. It must be a peace that enables the entire region to look forward with excitement and hope, putting its resources into productive growth, partnering across borders to advance development, finding opportunities, and solving common challenges.

This goal is visionary, but my friends, it is attainable. History shows that longtime adversaries can define new relationships of peace and cooperation. The groundwork for a comprehensive, final settlement is already in place. At Taba, as in the Geneva Accords, the parties have outlined the parameters of the solution. But we need all hands on deck. The international community, especially the United States, must be engaged in moving the process forward to achieve real results. Above all, we must make our process serve our purpose. We must achieve an agreed solution to the conflict.

Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Members - your responsibility today is paramount. Your potential to help Palestinians and Israelis find peace is unrivalled. This is because the people of the region still regard the United States as the key to peace, the one country most capable of bringing the two sides closer together, holding them accountable, and making a just settlement reality.Time after time, there has been progress towards peace when Americans have actively engaged. Camp David, Madrid, Wye River: nearly every breakthrough was accomplished when America was determined to help the parties succeed.

On behalf of all those who seek and strive for peace in my part of the world, I ask you now to exert that leadership once again. We ask you to join with us in an historic effort of courage and vision. We ask you to hear our call, to honor the spirit of King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin, and help fulfill the aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace today.

Let me reaffirm that Jordan is committed to playing a positive role in the peace process. It is part of our larger commitment to global co-existence and progress. Ours is an Islamic country with a proud record of diversity, moderation, and shared respect. Allow me to say, we thank the Congress and the Administration for supporting Jordan's progress and development. I deeply value the partnership between our peoples, and the contributions of so many Americans to the future of our country.

My friends, "A decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small." That's how President Roosevelt - the great F.D.R. - described the basis of American foreign policy. He pledged American support for the four freedoms, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, everywhere in the world. The Four Freedoms speech was given right here, before Congress. And that's entirely fitting. Because it is here in the People's House, that the voices and values of America have made hope real for so many people. Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for these four freedoms.

Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for new hope, hope for a future of prosperity and peace. We have seen the danger and destruction of violence, hatred, and injustice. But we have also seen what people can achieve when they are empowered, when they break down walls, when they commit to the future. And we know that Middle East peace can be a global beginning, creating new possibilities for our region and the entire world.

We look to you to play an historic role. Eleven American presidents and thirty American congresses have already faced this ongoing crisis. For not the future generation, but the generation alive today, let us say together: No more!

Let us say together: Let's solve this!

Let us say together: Yes, we will achieve this!

No Palestinian father should be helpless to feed his family and build a future for his sons and daughters.

No Israeli mother should fear when her child boards a bus.

Not one more generation should grow up thinking that violence and conflict are the norm.

As Roosevelt also said, "the justice of morality must and will win in the end." But he knew that it was up to responsible nations to stand up for justice when injustice threatens. This is our challenge as well. And we must not leave it to another generation to meet this challenge.

Thirteen years ago, my father was here to talk about his hopes for peace. Today, we are talking about a promise that is within our reach. We can wait no longer and that is why I am here before you. We must work together to restore Palestine, a nation in despair and without hope. We must work together to restore peace, hope and opportunity to the Palestinian people. And in so doing, we will begin a process of building peace, not only throughout the region, but throughout the world.

How much more bloodshed and how many more lives will it cost for this grave situation to be resolved?

I say: No more bloodshed and no more lives pointlessly taken!

The young boy, traveling to school with his brother in Palestine, let him have a life of peace.

The mother, watching with fear as her children board a bus in Israel, let her have a life of peace.

The father in Lebanon, working hard to provide an education for his children, let him have a life of peace.

The little girl, born in Iraq, with her wide eyes full of wonder, let her have a life of peace.

The family, together eating their evening meal, in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, let them all have a life of peace.

Today my friends, we must speak; we cannot be silent. The next time a Jordanian, a Palestinian, or an Israeli comes before you, let it be to say: Thank you for helping peace become a reality.

Thank you very much.

King Abdullah of Jordan to U.S. Congress

Speech to U.S. Congress by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Thank you for such a warm welcome. It is an honor to stand, as my father did, before this historic institution. Allow me to thank you, on behalf of all Jordanians.

Jordan and the United States have had a long friendship. It is a special privilege to be here in the year that the American Congress welcomes its first woman Speaker, and its first Muslim-American member of Congress. These milestones send a message around the world about the America I know so well, a place where individuality is nurtured, a place where hard work is rewarded, a place where achievement is celebrated. The America I know so well believes that opportunity and justice belong to all.

In my days in Massachusetts, I also learned something of New England virtues. There wasn't actually a law against talking too much, but there was definitely an attitude that you didn't speak unless you could improve on silence. Today, I must speak; I cannot be silent. I must speak about a cause that is urgent for your people and for mine. I must speak about peace in the Middle East. I must speak about peace replacing the division, war, and conflict that have brought such disaster for the region and for the world.

This was the cause that brought my father King Hussein here in 1994. With Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin beside him, he spoke of a new vision for the Middle East. Their courageous work for peace received bipartisan support from your leaders. And there was tremendous hope for a new era. There was tremendous hope that people would be brought together. There was tremendous hope that a final and comprehensive settlement of all the issues would be achieved. Thirteen years later, that work is still not completed. And until it is, we are all at risk. We are all at risk of being victims of further violence resulting from ideologies of terror and hatred. It is our greatest and most urgent duty to prevent such dangers to our region, to your country and to the world.

The choice is ours: an open world full of promise, progress and justice for all; or a closed world of divided peoples, fear, and unfulfilled dreams. Nothing impacts this choice more than the future of peace in the Middle East. I come to you today at a rare, and indeed historic, moment of opportunity, when there is a new international will to end the catastrophe. And I believe that America, with its enduring values, its moral responsibility, and yes, its unprecedented power, must play the central role.

Some may say, ‘Peace is difficult, we can live with the status quo.' But, my friends, violent killings are taking place as part of this status quo. Palestinians and Israelis are not the only victims. We saw the violence ricochet into destruction in Lebanon last summer. And people around the world have been the victims of terrorists and extremists, who use the grievances of this conflict to legitimize and encourage acts of violence. Americans and Jordanians and others have suffered and survived terrorist attacks. In this room, there are representatives of American families and Jordanian families who have lost loved ones. Thousands of people have paid the highest price, the loss of their life. Thousands more continue to pay this terrible price, for their loved ones will never return.

Are we going to let these thousands of lives be taken in vain? Has it become acceptable to lose that most basic of human rights? The right to live? The status quo is also pulling the region and the world towards greater danger. As public confidence in the peace process has dropped, the cycle of crises is spinning faster, and with greater potential for destruction. Changing military doctrine and weaponry pose new dangers. Increasing numbers of external actors are intervening with their own strategic agendas, raising new dangers of proliferation and crisis.

These are groups that seek even more division: faith against faith, nation against nation, community against community.

Any further erosion in the situation would be serious for the future of moderation and coexistence, in the region and beyond. Have we all lost the will to live together in peace celebrating one another's strengths and differences?

Some may say, ‘But there are other, urgent challenges.' How can there be anything more urgent than the restoration of a world where all people, not only some people, all people have the opportunity to live peacefully? This is not only a moral imperative, it is essential to the future of our world, because long-term, violent crisis is the enemy of all global prosperity and progress. Certainly, our era faces critical issues. There is great public concern here, just as in our region, about the conflict in Iraq. The entire international community has vital decisions to make about the path forward, and how to ensure Iraq's security, unity, and future. But we cannot lose sight of a profound reality. The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.

There are those who say, ‘It's not our business.' But this Congress knows: there are no bystanders in the 21st Century, there are no curious onlookers, there is no one who is not affected by the division and hatred that is present in our world. Some will say: ‘This is not the core issue in the Middle East.' I come here today as your friend to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world.

The security of all nations and the stability of our global economy are directly affected by the Middle East conflict. Across oceans, the conflict has estranged societies that should be friends. I meet Muslims thousands of miles away who have a deep, personal response to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They want to know how it is, that ordinary Palestinians are still without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice. Yes, my friends, today I must speak. I cannot be silent. Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-and-go peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair, on all sides.

It is time to create a new and different legacy, one that begins right now; one that can set a positive tone for the American and Middle East relationship; one that can restore hope to our region's people, to your people, and to the people of this precious world. Nothing can achieve that more effectively, nothing can assert America's moral vision more clearly, nothing can reach and teach the world's youth more directly, than your leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year.

How do we get there? Not by a solution imposed by one side. A lasting peace can only be built on understanding, agreement and compromise. It begins with courage and vision. We, all of us, must take risks for peace. The Arab states recognized that reality in 2002, when we unanimously approved the Arab Peace Initiative. It puts forward a path for both sides, to achieve what people want and need: a collective peace treaty with Israel and normal relations with every Arab state, collective security guarantees for all the countries of the region, including Israel, an end to the conflict, a dream every Israeli citizen has longed for since the creation of Israel, and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, a withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967, and a sovereign, viable, and independent Palestine.

The commitment we made in the Arab Peace Initiative is real. And our states are involved in ongoing efforts to advance a fair, just, and comprehensive peace. His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia initiated the 2002 proposal; today, he continues to rally international support. Momentum is also building among Muslim countries outside the Arab world.

Ten days ago, in Islamabad, the foreign ministers of key Muslim states met. They came together to assure Palestinians and Israelis that they are not alone, that we back their effort to make and build peace. The goal must be a peace in which all sides gain. It must be anchored in security and opportunity for all.It must be a peace that will free young Palestinians to focus on a future of progress and prosperity. It must be a peace that makes Israel a part of the neighborhood, a neighborhood that extends from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, across the breadth of the southern Mediterranean, to the coast of the Indian Ocean. It must be a peace that enables the entire region to look forward with excitement and hope, putting its resources into productive growth, partnering across borders to advance development, finding opportunities, and solving common challenges.

This goal is visionary, but my friends, it is attainable. History shows that longtime adversaries can define new relationships of peace and cooperation. The groundwork for a comprehensive, final settlement is already in place. At Taba, as in the Geneva Accords, the parties have outlined the parameters of the solution. But we need all hands on deck. The international community, especially the United States, must be engaged in moving the process forward to achieve real results. Above all, we must make our process serve our purpose. We must achieve an agreed solution to the conflict.

Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Members - your responsibility today is paramount. Your potential to help Palestinians and Israelis find peace is unrivalled. This is because the people of the region still regard the United States as the key to peace, the one country most capable of bringing the two sides closer together, holding them accountable, and making a just settlement reality.Time after time, there has been progress towards peace when Americans have actively engaged. Camp David, Madrid, Wye River: nearly every breakthrough was accomplished when America was determined to help the parties succeed.

On behalf of all those who seek and strive for peace in my part of the world, I ask you now to exert that leadership once again. We ask you to join with us in an historic effort of courage and vision. We ask you to hear our call, to honor the spirit of King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin, and help fulfill the aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace today.

Let me reaffirm that Jordan is committed to playing a positive role in the peace process. It is part of our larger commitment to global co-existence and progress. Ours is an Islamic country with a proud record of diversity, moderation, and shared respect. Allow me to say, we thank the Congress and the Administration for supporting Jordan's progress and development. I deeply value the partnership between our peoples, and the contributions of so many Americans to the future of our country.

My friends, "A decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small." That's how President Roosevelt - the great F.D.R. - described the basis of American foreign policy. He pledged American support for the four freedoms, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, everywhere in the world. The Four Freedoms speech was given right here, before Congress. And that's entirely fitting. Because it is here in the People's House, that the voices and values of America have made hope real for so many people. Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for these four freedoms.

Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for new hope, hope for a future of prosperity and peace. We have seen the danger and destruction of violence, hatred, and injustice. But we have also seen what people can achieve when they are empowered, when they break down walls, when they commit to the future. And we know that Middle East peace can be a global beginning, creating new possibilities for our region and the entire world.

We look to you to play an historic role. Eleven American presidents and thirty American congresses have already faced this ongoing crisis. For not the future generation, but the generation alive today, let us say together: No more!

Let us say together: Let's solve this!

Let us say together: Yes, we will achieve this!

No Palestinian father should be helpless to feed his family and build a future for his sons and daughters.

No Israeli mother should fear when her child boards a bus.

Not one more generation should grow up thinking that violence and conflict are the norm.

As Roosevelt also said, "the justice of morality must and will win in the end." But he knew that it was up to responsible nations to stand up for justice when injustice threatens. This is our challenge as well. And we must not leave it to another generation to meet this challenge.

Thirteen years ago, my father was here to talk about his hopes for peace. Today, we are talking about a promise that is within our reach. We can wait no longer and that is why I am here before you. We must work together to restore Palestine, a nation in despair and without hope. We must work together to restore peace, hope and opportunity to the Palestinian people. And in so doing, we will begin a process of building peace, not only throughout the region, but throughout the world.

How much more bloodshed and how many more lives will it cost for this grave situation to be resolved?

I say: No more bloodshed and no more lives pointlessly taken!

The young boy, traveling to school with his brother in Palestine, let him have a life of peace.

The mother, watching with fear as her children board a bus in Israel, let her have a life of peace.

The father in Lebanon, working hard to provide an education for his children, let him have a life of peace.

The little girl, born in Iraq, with her wide eyes full of wonder, let her have a life of peace.

The family, together eating their evening meal, in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, let them all have a life of peace.

Today my friends, we must speak; we cannot be silent. The next time a Jordanian, a Palestinian, or an Israeli comes before you, let it be to say: Thank you for helping peace become a reality.

Thank you very much.

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq - following the Prince of Peace

Friends,

The Christian Peace Witness (www.christianpeacewitness.org) is a week away. Next Friday night, March 16th, there will be thousands of Christians who will gather to worship together at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. at 7:00 p.m. Following our worship service, we will create a joyous procession to the White House, celebrating the Prince of Peace as we walk three and a half miles down Massachusetts Avenue. Worship will continue in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, and at around 10:00 or 10:30, we will surround the White House in a circle of light and prayers for peace and an end to the war in Iraq. Simultaneously, there will be close to one hundred other services going on across the country as Christians gather to insist that we are united by the Jesus who chose the way of the cross. Together, we stand against this war.

As of now, close to 3,500 people have registered on-line as participants, with more signing on each day. Perhaps most significantly, over 700 of the registrants have indicated that they are prayerfully discerning whether they feel called to risk arrest as the procession forms around the White House late Friday night. Though the point of our witness is not to be arrested, our resolve to carry out this nonviolent witness in a way that will be heard is strong.

It’s not too late to be a part of this important witness. Close to thirty partner organizations representing a wide spectrum of Christians have worked together to plan an event that will reflect the best of our traditions and beliefs as followers of Jesus.

There is nothing simple about standing against war. Many will call us naïve, foolish, stupid, or perhaps most troubling – subversive – as we stand firmly with the Jesus who calls us to love our enemies.

Still, it is our conviction that Jesus’ teachings about reaching out in love and friendship to those of whom we are most afraid are, in the end, the only way to achieve genuine security in a world that is increasingly violent and insecure. In a post September 11 world, the people of the United States must reach out rather than turn inward. This message is no more difficult than what Jesus asked his earliest Jewish followers to do as he insisted that they “cross over” to the other side – to the land of the gentiles – those whom they had been taught to hate.

In First John, chapter four – that Gospel message is driven home once again. “There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear. . . and those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars. . . The commandment we have from God is this, those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

So this is your opportunity to join in a witness that you can trust grows out of an authentic commitment to our faith. This event is not about partisan politics, it is about being firmly rooted in the biblical tradition and insisting that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus had serious political implications in his time, and has similar implications in our time as well.

This witness will call for a clear plan to end the war.

We will ask for a timeline to bring our troops home and we will call on all of us in our churches and across our country to honor the sacrifice made by our soldiers and their families. The project of providing pastoral care for those families will be long and will demand our deepest resolve.

We will be clear that the gospel calls us as a people to commit to the difficult, long-term work of helping Iraqis to rebuild their communities. The only way to begin to build trust in communities in the Middle East and around the world is to make it clear that we have no intention of enriching our own corporations as we support an international reconstruction effort.

We will insist, again, that we believe our nation is called to renounce all torture, for we know that it is both ineffective as a security measure and morally abhorrent to our God.

We will ask for a clear commitment from our government to recommit to the things that we know will make for peace and genuine security here at home in our own country: affordable health care, a dignified wage, a full-education, and genuine food security for every family in our country.

When we affirm that we are followers of Jesus, it must mean something. We must be willing to take risks for and with the Prince of Peace. We must be willing to extend a hand of genuine friendship to all people, of all faith traditions, and insist that we can and will create a world of genuine security.

Next Friday night, join us in Washington as we lift our voices in a proclamation of what it means to be Christian. If you can’t come to Washington, go to https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/Sojo/event/distributedEventSearch.jsp?distributed_event_KEY=249 to find a Christian Peace Witness service near you.

Many blessings as we take action together to move us toward peace and genuine security.

Rick

The Circle of Elders

Friends,

A couple of quick updates.

First, the website for the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq is now totally live, including online registration. If you're planning to come, don't hold off on registration, because there is limited seating at the National Cathedral and you'll be able to print a free "ticket" to get in as you register. If we go over 3,500 people, we'll have to figure out what to do next - spill out onto the lawn, use other churches, etc. If you're looking for a positive way to voice your opposition to the war, check out www.christianpeacewitness.org.

Keep in mind that the Presbyterians will have a networking gathering (co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, and the PC(USA) Washington Office, on Saturday from 11 - 4. (Some who have chosen to risk arrest as an expression of their conscience and their faith may not make it to that gathering). There's a place in the on-line registration where you can sign up for that as well.

Also, if you are organizing a group (and I'm praying that you are) to come from your church, presbytery or campus, please send us a note at ppfcpw@gmail.com so that we can try to keep up with you. I remain convinced, (most days), that we can turn out five thousand Presbyterians for this event.

Also,

Some of you may know that the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is in the early stages of developing a "Circle of Elders" in which we will match interested young adults who are committed to active, nonviolent peacemaking work with elders on our database who have given their lives to the practice of integrating peacemaking and their ministries/careers.

We have a list of about two dozen elders who have expressed interest in being the charter members of the Circle of Elders. If you are roughly between 16 and 35 years old, and you'd like to be mentored in this kind of relationship, please write to us at ppfwitness@gmail.com to let us know. We're hoping to encourage you into a relationship that might include email correspondence, regular phone calls, meetings face to face (if possible), and perhaps even doing nonviolent direct action work together.

I must say, as I work on these different initiatives, the energy around peacemaking that is deeply grounded in our faith is pretty tremendous.

The church is on the move. Can you feel it?

rick

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq March 16th

Friends,

It's been several months since I've written, and some of you have been letting me know lately that you kind of miss it. I confess that I needed a break, and the opportunity to reconnect with my family. I've also been extremely busy with my work and travel with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and I've spent the fall working hard on my "ecological footprint." I convinced my wife to trade our minivan in on a ten-year old VW Passat converted to run on used french fry oil, and I've been developing a plan to purchase renewable energy credits to compensate for my fossil fuel use as I fly for my work. More about all of that in the coming weeks. In fact, I'll catch you up on the epic cross-country grease car adventure that my family and I took over the Christmas/New Year holidays.

For now, though, I want to give you a heads-up on the work that has been consuming almost all of my time and much of my creative energy over the last few months. (If you don't have time to read the story - just go to www.christianpeacewitness.org to learn more about the huge event we're planning for Washington D.C. on March 16th.)

Many of you read that I was arrested with some seventy other people as a result of our interfaith, nonviolent action against the war in Iraq during the week of protest planned by the Declaration of Peace in September. After that event, I was contacted by each of the four Presbyterian Pastors who were arrested with me (Gwin Pratt, Tim Simpson, Andrew Foster Connors, and Roger Powers) to ask about what we might do next. All of us felt that the experience had been deeply meaningful, and we wondered what we might do to invite other Presbyterians to take similar action.

To make a long story very short, after a few conference calls with a dozen or so folks from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, it was clear that this was an idea that wouldn't let us go. It was easy for us to name the kind of event that we were looking for. We wanted to call people we know together for an action that would express a prophetic call to end the war in Iraq and a pastoral concern for both our soldiers and their families as well as Iraqi families who have suffered so much in the violence. This event would be intentionally Christian, clearly committed to nonviolence, open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, positive in its tone , and unabashed in its grounding in the scriptural command to be peacemakers and to love our enemies.

Perhaps most importantly, we were hoping to craft an event that would call out to everyday, average Presbyterians (and others) who might be nervous about showing up at the typical peace rally; folks who know deep in their hearts that the war must end, but who are also concerned about their family members and friends who are serving in the military. This would be a moment to call our elected leaders to a vision of security that is built on being in right relationship with one another, not on the elusive security promised but never delivered by responding to violence with more violence.

Anyway, the bottom line is that we broadened the conversation to include more than twenty other Christian peace fellowships and organizations. On our first conference call with close to thirty people, I was blown away by the deep resonance I felt in the group. Getting consensus on our basic commitments was easier than in any other collaboration I've ever been a part of . The idea that has jelled as the leaders and representatives of those organizations have worked together through the fall looks like this.

On Friday, March 16th, at seven p.m., thousands of Christians will worship together in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. (that's where the memorial was just held for Gerald Ford, so you probably so it on tv). Following the worship service, we will process together (in a candlelight vigil) down Massachusetts Ave. about two and a half miles to the White House (transportation provided for those who can't make the walk). Then there will be a late-night (possibly all-night) witness/vigil in Lafeyette Park where there will be speakers and music and prayer. There will also be an opportunity to participate in "Divine Obedience," some kind of intentional, nonviolent action that risks arrest for those who feel led by their conscience to do so in order to make clear their opposition to the war.

This is a peace witness to bring your children and grandchildren to. All participants will be asked to affirm a pledge of nonviolence, there will be no rocks thrown through windows, and the chants will be about what we affirm because of who God calls us to be. I'm hoping that many of you, like me, have been waiting and watching for an opportunity to act on your faith in a positive way. More than fifty thousands Iraqis have been killed in the war, along with 3,000 U.S. soldiers and more than 28,000 soldiers who have been wounded. Isn't it time for us to lift up our commitment to the Jesus who repeatedly insisted that we must reach out to those we're most afraid of?

Please mark your calendar now to be in Washington with us on March 16th. Go to www.christianpeacewitness.org to learn more about the event and to register to attend. If you want to help us organize, you can contact us at ppfcpw@gmail.com to get involved. College and seminary students, please get in touch if you're willing to help organize on your campus!

This is a chance for all of us to lift up a vision of a great nation that is known and respected around the world for our commitment to justice and basic fairness for all of God's people. I hope you'll join us - and the naive Jesus who dared to call his own followers to love their enemies - in insisting that security is possible, and that it will come as we extend a hand of friendship - never at the point of a gun.

By the way, we've talked a lot about whether this should be an interfaith witness, especially inviting our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers to join us. All folks are welcome, and we are asking those of other faith traditions for their support and their prayers as we organize. We're clear, though, that much of the violence has been carried out in the name of Christianity. We have a special responsibility to reclaim our own gospel tradition, to repent of the violence that has been done in our names, and to show our country and the world that there are Christians who are willing to follow a nonviolent Jesus into a world of fear, trusting that God is indeed, our hope and our salvation.

That was pretty scary stuff when Jesus led his disciples into the land of the gentiles, and it's pretty scary stuff today. I'm pretty sure that it's the fundamental message of a people who build their faith around an empty cross - a Jesus who responded to violence with love over and over again, even at the cost of his own life. We hope that our brothers and sisters from other faith traditions, and those who count themselves as non-believers as well, will welcome this initiative and anticipate our common work in the future for a world without war.

Stay tuned,

Rick

An Op-Ed on Prop 107 in Arizona

Friends,

Arizona, like many states, is increasingly turning to ballot propositions in our governance - something I have grave concerns about because it tends to reduce complex and nuanced public policy issues to twenty second soundbites on t.v. or yard signs that do nothing to create an informed electorate. This round, we've got 19 of these initiatives. I spent over an hour and a half reading the various proposals and their critiques and justifications, and still found it difficult to sort through them when I went to cast an early ballot last week. One of the most pernicious is Proposition 107, which would change our constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal in our state (it already is), and to deny any marriage-like benefits to all persons who are not married.

I felt strongly enough about this one to write an opinion piece for our local paper, the AZ Daily Star, which ran it in it's electronic version of the paper about a week ago. As it's circulation has widened, I've been asked by several people to share it more broadly through my blog.

So for those of you who are interested, here's my own take on this one - limited to the 500 words allowed by the newspaper. . .


Proposition 107 would explicitly deny any “marriage-like” benefits to persons who are not married, and would constitutionally define marriage as only being available to persons of opposite gender. Like the broader society, the faith community is deeply divided on this issue.

My experience as the highest elected official of the Presbyterian Church (USA) from June of 2004 to June of 2006 gave me a glimpse into the passion and divisiveness of this debate. Though it is clear that there is currently no consensus in our churches to broaden the definition of marriage, our denomination has been clear that we will not become unwitting participants in any movement to isolate gay and lesbian persons as a group, nor will we condone discriminatory practices against the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender community from our legislative, executive or judicial branches of government. This is entirely consistent with our denomination’s historic advocacy for women, persons of color, undocumented persons, and those who live with mental or physical disabilities, all of whom also face the possibility of discrimination because of who they are.

I long for the day when all who desire to make a lifelong commitment to one another are able, as I am, to do so within the bonds of the covenant of marriage. Someday, it could happen. After all, the biblical story is full of examples of God’s people being surprised by what God had in mind for them. We Presbyterians believe that God is constantly being revealed to us in ways that challenge, trouble, and occasionally delight us. For that reason, I will continue to be in dialogue with my sisters and brothers with whom I disagree about this matter. As people of faith, all of whom are struggling to be faithful to their understanding of God, we must find respectful ways to wrestle with this and many other issues that divide us.

However, what we must not tolerate are laws motivated by hate or discrimination, or that single out an entire class of people to be treated differently than the rest of us. Prop. 107 would take away domestic partner benefits such as health insurance from public employees. It would remove domestic violence protections from unmarried persons. It makes simple things like the right to visit a loved one in the hospital impossible.

Questions of how marriage is defined will continue to be debated within our faith communities and across our society. In the meantime, let’s assure that our laws embody the best of what our country has always been – a safe haven for those who might be targeted elsewhere because of who they are or what they believe. Let’s honor our country’s history as a place of tolerance, mutual forbearance, care and concern for all members of our communities. Those are values that all of us, both in and out of the church, ought to be able to affirm.

Please, vote “no” on Proposition 107.

Blessings on each of you as you also go to the polls in the next few days.

Rick

Witness against the War

Sisters and Brothers,

Here is my promised update on how our interfaith witness against the war played out on Tuesday.

It was a beautiful day in Washington, and I rode the subway into Union Station and walked to Upper Senate Park with Mike Benefiel, who was one of our Presbyterian Peace Fellowship accompaniers in Colombia this year. Mike graciously agreed to house me for a couple of nights, and also gave up an entire day to support the witness by acting as my “support person,” in case our witness led to an act of civil disobedience for which I would be arrested. Thirty-five or forty other Presbyterians joined us for the day as well, including four pastors who ended up being arrested.

By ten o’clock, there were between 250 and 300 people gathered in the park for our peace liturgy. We were led in song (“Siyahamba – We are walking in the light of God,” “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around,” “Peace is flowing like a river,” “We shall overcome,” “Freedom,” etc.), and then we heard from a young man from Iraq who is Muslim and who spoke about the Iraqi peace movement. Then we began the liturgy itself, which included words from myself, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, a responsive reading with representatives of a number of different faiths, and a chant with a Buddhist peace group. As I emceed the gathering, I led with a reflection about the importance, when we gather in an interfaith context, of lifting up the best of our religious traditions, rather than watering our traditions down to the point where they are no longer recognizable in the interests of not offending one another. I began with a reading from the book of Luke, Chapter 19:38-43, where Jesus was entering Jerusalem and he broke down and wept over the inability of the people to see the things that make for peace.

As the liturgy ended, we read a statement of commitment to nonviolent principles, and were led in a moving prayer by Rev. Seiku, a pastor who heads the organization called Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq. We then formed a procession and walked toward the Capitol building to a point where we had agreed that a small group would break off for their own witness – attempting to place a mock coffin on the front steps. Rev. Andrew Foster Connors went with that group and was among those arrested as they walked across the lawn toward the front steps of the Capitol.

At that point, the rest of us turned and walked back past the park and on toward the Hart Senate Office building, where it was our intention to hold a public ceremony of prayer, scripture reading and song in the atrium in the center of the building. About a block from the building, we were met by D.C. Capitol Police, who formed a cordon of officers to block us from continuing.

Over the next hour, the group continued to sing as several of us negotiated with the Chief of Police about our intentions and how our witness would be carried out. The police were, at all times, unfailingly courteous, and even helpful as we tried to agree together on a way that our public witness could continue that would be acceptable to them. I was so gratified that those who were participating in the demonstration also remained courteous and respectful, even as they waited for a very, very long time for the negotiations to play out. There was a small group of about eight people who chose not to wait for those negotiations, and they were the second group arrested as they moved into the street and tried to go around the police barricade on the sidewalk.

Eventually, the rest of the group agreed to put down our signs and to continue with only strings of paper peace cranes that had the names of soldiers and others who have lost their lives in Iraq. The police asked us to continue individually if we wanted to see our Senators, but the group remained clear that we were there as a group to participate together in a public, interfaith expression against the war. The process of negotiating was fascinating as we would speak with the Chief, and then return to the group to decide together what was acceptable to us, while the Chief would speak on the phone with his superiors to make similar determinations.

When he agreed to let us go on toward the Senate Office building, the Chief was clear that we would have to be individually screened for security (which we expected and were fine with) and that, if we re-gathered together inside the building, he would be forced to consider that an unlawful assembly. We were clear at all times that we intended to have a peaceful witness as a group when we re-entered, and that we understood the possible consequences if we did so. As we moved forward and entered the building, about forty of us who were comfortable risking arrest moved to the front of the procession, while most of the rest stayed behind.

The Hart Building has a beautiful atrium that is seven or eight stories high, with balconies on all sides of the atrium on each floor. As we were processed into the building, we formed a circle there in the atrium, and Ken Butigan, one of the founders of Declaration of Peace (please sign the petition if you are so moved at www.declarationofpeace.org) spoke about our insistence that the War in Iraq must come to an end. I then read a few verses from Jeremiah 29, and reflected on God’s instructions to the people of Israel about how to relate to their enemies at one of the most pivotal, and fearful, moments of their history – while they were being held captive in Babylon. After instructing God’s people to make their homes, start families, and attend to the welfare of Babylon, God assured the people, “Surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

Pastor Gwin Pratt, participating with his close friend and colleague from Jacksonville, FL, Rev. Tim Simpson, then shared the marvelous verses from the second chapter of Isaiah about “beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore.” There was singing, and some fairly quiet chanting, and all the while more and more people were coming out of the offices and lining the balconies. The police warned those of us assembled that we were in violation of the law (three times during our witness), and then announced that arrests were beginning. At that point, spontaneously, about fifteen or so people did a “die-in,” lying down on the floor in the center of the circle as the rest of us continued to sing.

The police continued to demonstrate the greatest professionalism, and I was proud to be a citizen of a country that bends over backward to protect the right of public dissent. As I was arrested, my arresting officer, named “John,” gently escorted me by the elbow to a waiting police van outside, where he gently patted me down before I joined the others in the vehicle. From there on, the day became an exercise in patience, and in building friendships with one another and sharing stories. It took almost eight hours to process charges against seventy-one of us who were arrested in all three incidences. In addition to Tim, Gwin and Andrew, my good friend, Roger Powers, who is also a pastor from Baltimore, was also arrested with us. I’ll have to return to Washington to pay the fine (fifty dollars for unlawful assembly) in a few months.

If you’re interested in more about the day, you can check out a great article in the Baltimore Sun that appeared the next morning, or another solid article by Evan Silverstein of the Presbyterian News Service. Here are the citations:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.clergy27sep27,0,2593888.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06489.htm

I’m aware that my actions have generated, and will probably continue to generate, a lot of conversation. I thought it important to share my own perceptions about how the events of our witness against the war unfolded, though I’m aware perceptions always vary depending on one’s predisposition and point of view. For instance, the coverage by the Washington Post described us “shouting” scripture in the Hart building, and though I cringed a little when I read it, I realize that it is certainly factual given the fact that we were raising our voices to be heard by one another, though we made no attempt to be heard by those up on the balconies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601359.html?sub=new

In the end, it seems to me that many of our disagreements with one another – both in the church and in the broader context of our country, often come down to differences in perception like this.

As these things are debated, I do want to be clear that this was, and remains, a very personal decision to me, though I was pleased to see a clear, faith, witness - for peace and against war - lifted up by the media. I hope that all of us who are followers of Jesus, like Peter and the earliest disciples in the stories of the Acts of the Apostles, are clear about what we’re willing to risk as we seek to live our faith and to follow the Jesus who stood against the destructive powers of his own time. This one, in the end, turned out to be small risk (though we were told ahead of time by the police that it would be called a felony rather than a misdemeanor).

I will continue to seek ways to stand against this war, and the broader “War against Terror” for as long as it takes (perhaps my whole life) to bring about a different way of approaching our enemies that will, Jesus assures us, lead to greater security. In the meantime, I will also continue to also seek ways to put even greater energy into living a positive, and probably more risky, commitment to peacemaking through activities like Accompaniment in Colombia with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, or Nonviolent Direct Intervention in situations of extreme conflict with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Somehow, we must risk everything for the “peace that passes all understanding.”

Thanks for taking the time to follow my own journey around these tough questions.

rick

Update on plans for Interfaith Witness against the War in Iraq

Sisters and Brothers,

Some of you have written to ask for more information about the events to be held in Washington D.C. later this week and next. I am still planning to participate (after continued prayer and discernment) in the Interfaith Service and Procession to be held on Tuesday the 26th.

The event will begin at 10:00 a.m. in Upper Senate Park. There will be an interfaith liturgy beginning at 10:30, followed by a procession near or around the Congressional building. As I wrote several weeks ago, some of the participants are considering an act of nonviolent, civil disobedience as a part of the procession. There is more information about all of those events at www.declarationofpeace.org and at http://www.iraqpledge.org/, and both websites have registration forms to fill out if you will be participating.

I am not unaware of some of the conversation that's been going on about my decision to participate in these events, and especially to consider participating in nonviolent, civil disobedience, in Presbyterian blogging and list serve circles.

Ched Myers has written, in his one of his two amazing commentaries on the book of Mark, called "Who will roll away the stone," about the powerful image of Peter warming his hands at the fire of the temple guards while Jesus is being tried, beaten, and condemned to die on a cross just a few feet away. He suggests that Peter's struggle is a metaphor for our own. In a sense, we are all inside the temple gate, warming ourselves at the fire of- and receiving the benefits of - the empire. In the meantime, there is a world of suffering, and it doesn't take a lot of effort (though perhaps it takes incredible courage) to listen to the cries of a suffering Jesus just a short distance away.

The agony that Peter expressed as he denied Jesus and then broke down and wept is our own agony. Perhaps better said, it is my agony. The opportunity to travel around the world and to worship with sisters and brothers who live with violence, and disease, and poverty, and yes - war too - carries a special burden. My own struggle is to try to figure out how to pull away from the fire and to try to move where I can stand with that suffering Jesus.

Lest I be accused of sanctimony or shallow acts (accusations I take quite seriously), let me say also that I continue to feel doubt, and to experience my own brokenness, as I try to move to stand with that Jesus. I felt it last week as I spent a couple of days in the desert vainly searching for migrants who were lost or ill. I am feeling it this week as we meet as leaders of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship to talk about how to make our own feeble efforts at accompaniment meaningful even as we recognize that our privilege means we will never really understand the suffering of others.

And I'm certain I'll feel it next week, as I stand with a relatively small crowd in front of our Congress to witness to my conviction that Jesus' instructions to love our enemy are more than empty rhetoric or religous flourish.

And still, I'm certain we must all do more to live what we believe.

Please join us in Washington, or in your own communities, in standing against this war. And please, keep our religious leaders, our soldiers, and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in your prayers.

Rick

From the first night of planning with the Peace Fellowship

Friends,

It's late, late at night on the first day of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship National Committee planning retreat. About forty of us are gathered from all over the country (including college students from six Presbyterian Colleges and one Seminary) in order to dream a little about what our commitments, our work and our organizing strategy will be over the coming year.

We began this evening with a brainstorm about those commitments, and it was really quite moving. Integrity, humility, openness to working with others, and reconciliation were lifted up as attitudes that should characterize our work. Being right with God, commiting to follow the nonviolent Jesus, openness to the movement of the Spirit, and an unwavering desire to do justice were named as the fundamental building blocks upon which our work is built. Folks talked about accompaniment, a desire to renew the church and local congregations, and an uncompromising commitment to nonviolence.

Then, though, the conversation got more interesting as we entered into a time of "confessional questioning." Folks in the room were invited to lift up doubts that they have about our work, or about their own commitments as peacemakers, and to share openly with one another about the areas where we're not sure of ourselves.

We talked about the struggle to maintain a healthy tension between our prophetic role and our pastoral role as leaders in our churches, communities and even our own families where some of our loved ones are serving in the military.

We wrestled a little with whether there is a difference between pacifism and active nonviolence, and what each of those words mean.

We talked about whether we in the peace community have been strong enough in our condemnation and clear witness against all violence, including extreme acts of terror and violence. We tried to define what it means when we say we are against war, and how we define war.

There were a lot of other questions, as well. We wondered, together with the young adults who have joined us this week, about what it's going to take to inspire the next generation of leaders in the faith-based, activist community, and we wondered whether it will be possible to build our mission around strengthening local congregations.

We started the day today by reading Isaiah 55. The whole chapter is wonderful, but I find the words of verse 12 especially moving as a vision of what God might have in store for is if we dare to live faithfully:

"For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."

What if those words are true? This week, having begun with confession, we're looking forward to a week of trying to dream up such faithful, exciting, daring acts that - if we summon the courage to carry them out - even the mountains will burst into song and the trees will clap there hands.

All God's creation in celebration. Perhaps God deserves nothing less.

Rick

Charges against AZ Humanitarian Aid workers dismissed

Friends,

Many of you have followed the case of my friends Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz with great interest. They were arrested by the Border Patrol in July of 2005 as they were providing a medical transport out of the desert for three men who were in serious medical distress.

Below, I am posting a copy of a press release I drafted for Christian Peacemaker Teams about a week ago after attending and speaking at the Press Conference held by the "Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime" campaign.

Rick

Release: Next steps for No More Deaths in the Arizona borderlands

As many CPT supporters have heard, last Friday, September 1rst, District Judge Raner C. Collins, in Tucson Arizona, dropped all charges against No More Deaths volunteers Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz, declaring that the U.S. Attorney does not have a credible enough case against the two young volunteers to go to trial.

In July of 2005, Sellz and Strauss were apprehended while transporting three Mexican men to medical care from a desert location about eighty miles southwest of Tucson. On that day, No More Deaths volunteers discovered a group of nine men in a wash near the “Arc of the Covenant,” a migrant aid camp staffed for four months each of the last three summers. Six of the men were in good physical condition, and the volunteers gave them food and water but did not offer a medical transport. The other three were in advanced stages of heat stroke and dehydration, evidenced by clammy skin, vomiting, and diarrhea laced with blood. After consulting by phone with a physician and notifying an attorney that they were about to transport the men to medical care, Shanti and Daniel put the three men in their car and headed for Tucson. They were apprehended en route and arrested.

In a press conference held in Tucson by Shanti, their lawyers, and No More Deaths volunteers on Thursday, September 7th, 2006, Shanti expressed gratitude to the entire No More Deaths community in Arizona and across the country. She said that while they never would have invited the charges to be placed against them, she views the last year as a great gift. “When I called my mom from the Border Patrol station,” Shanti said, “her first words were ‘I’m so proud of you’.” The full sanctuary at Southside Presbyterian Church burst into applause and offered a standing ovation for Shanti’s and Daniel’s courage.

Retired Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court Stanley Feldman, who volunteered his services with the pro-bono legal team that mounted the defense for Shanti and Daniel, explained the ruling to those present. “While there is a great deal to give thanks for in this decision,” he said, “we should be clear that this decision was based on Judge Collin’s assessment that Daniel and Shanti were acting on their belief that the Border Patrol had either explicitly – or implicitly – approved of the protocol developed by Samaritans and No More Deaths volunteers over the previous three summers, which called for medical transport in cases of extreme medical danger.” Justice Feldman explained that this decision clearly stopped short of ruling on the primary assertion of the human rights and faith-based volunteers that “Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime.”

“That assertion,” Collins wrote in his opinion, “will have to be left for another day.”
After Shanti and each of the lawyers had spoken, Kat Rodriguez, Director of the Tucson-based human rights organization, “Derechos Humanos,” gave a sobering recitation of the death statistics in the desert. One hundred seventy-one people lost their lives between October and the end of July this year. That number set the stage for the religious voice that followed, as representatives of the Christian and Jewish communities made it clear that Daniel and Shanti are considered heroes, and that the faith community has a moral imperative to offer humanitarian assistance so long as people are continuing to suffer and to die in the desert.

While each speaker at the press conference made it clear that the work must continue, each also spoke of No More Death’s willingness to sit down with representatives of the government in order to develop a protocol that will clearly recognize and protect the right of faith-based and humanitarian volunteers to offer aid to migrants in the desert. This also was a recommendation in the legal decision handed down by Judge Collins. “There must be some way,” he wrote, “that both the government and the aid organizations can meet their obligations.”

Christian Peacemaker Teams was represented at the event by long-termer Scott Kerr, who has served as the project coordinator for the last several summers, and Reservists Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase. As Scott leaves for seminary, Rick has agreed to coordinate a continuing presence of CPT delegations and reservists in the Arizona borderlands.

Notes from Colombia

Many of you have been following the work of Presbyterian Accompaniers in Colombia. Our current volunteers, who have been there for more than a month now, are Christine Caton and Rachel Ernst.

I thought some of you might like to check out Rachel's blog about her experiences there.

http://what-i-can.blogspot.com/

Check it out when you have a moment! It's much, much prettier than mine. :)

rick

Sisters and Brothers,

I have written and spoken often about my conviction that our witness as people of faith should, wherever possible, be a positive one. What we as followers of Jesus are for is far more compelling than what we are against, and we must accept the challenge to live out Jesus’ absurd conviction that we are most secure, and most right with God, when we love our enemies.

It is that desire to be a witness for Christ that has led me to become a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams. It is what has compelled me to be involved in the work of trying to save the lives of folks who are dying in the desert. It was what compelled me to become the Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship with the hope of creating a corps of Presbyterians who will offer nonviolent accompaniment wherever sisters and brothers in our partner churches are at risk around the world.

Though I remain firm in that core commitment to offer positive, Christ-centered, alternatives to violence, I also believe that there are times when evil is so strong, and so interwoven into the fabric of our culture, that God demands that we rise up in protest.

For me, the moment to stand up and say “no” can no longer be avoided.

I have decided that I will join in an interfaith procession and witness against the War in Iraq in Washington on September 26th. If God opens the way for me to do so, I will risk arrest to make it clear that I believe the War in Iraq is a violation of my most fundamental beliefs as a Christian. Whether or not such a witness is effective, it is clear to me that I must do everything in my power and in keeping with my values as a follower of Jesus Christ to stop this war.

I believe that – when called to protest - our protest must be completely nonviolent.

I believe that we must insist that our stand against this war is not unpatriotic, nor can we allow it to be misconstrued as a lack of support for our soldiers. The most supportive thing we could do for them is to bring them home and reunite them with their families.

I believe that we must be clear and unequivocal in our support for Iraqi families that have been torn apart by this war as well. Pulling back militarily must go hand in hand with an unwavering commitment to support the Iraqis with all aspects of the reconstruction of their society. Our churches should be willing to take the lead in helping to rebuild communities that have been destroyed in Iraq, and we must demand the same of our Congress.

We can and we must stand firmly on the international rule of law to hold accountable those who commit evil in the world today. Anything more is naked aggression and vigilantism that leaves the world community more afraid and more vulnerable than ever. Anything less is an invitation to extremists to continue to hold the world hostage to terror.

There is nothing weak or cowardly about a principled, nonviolent, constructive approach to seeking security in this world. Was Jesus weak when he allowed himself to be hung on a cross as a common criminal? Was Gandhi weak when he insisted that only nonviolence could stand against the injustice of the colonization of his people? Was Martin Luther King Jr. weak when he put to words and lived in deed the power of a people who refused to be provoked to violence in the face of overwhelming injustice?

If they were not weak, nor should we be. Now is the time for all people of faith – especially Christians, Muslims and Jews whose faith traditions are being used to fuel hatred rather than to sow the seeds of peace – to make a stand for peace.

I would invite Presbyterians, and any others who are moved to join us as well, to meet us in Upper Senate Park at 10:00 on Tuesday, September 26th for a service of worship, a procession, and a nonviolent witness to the power of our belief that Jesus meant exactly what he said. I welcome any who would like to join me in risking arrest, and any who would come to provide support for that witness. I would also be grateful for Presbyterians who carry out a witness for peace and against the war in your own communities during the Week of Peace from September 21rst to the 27th.

I will post more details as I learn them. At this point, I understand that those who feel called to risk arrest will be asked to participate in a training for nonviolent action on Monday the 25th. The witness will begin at 10 a.m. and last several hours, plus any further time for those who choose to risk arrest. More to follow on all of of this.

If you intend to join us in Washington on the 26th, please send me an email at ppfwitness@gmail.com so that I can be in touch to coordinate our Presbyterian witness, and go to http://www.declarationofpeace.org/regform-nvcd to register how you intend to participate in events during the week of peace.

I am aware that many others crossed this threshold a long time ago, and I’m grateful for their courageous witness. I repent that it has taken me this long to decide that I must take greater risks in speaking out against the war.

Finally, I ask for your prayers. We are a people who trust that God does listen to prayer. Please pray for this witness, for wisdom and courage for decision makers in Congress, for the safety of our sisters and brothers in the military as well as their families, and also for Iraqis whose families have lost so much in this conflict.

This summer I had the opportunity to spend an hour with a group of Military Chaplains who are members of the Presbyterian Council for Military Personnel and their Families. As I was leaving, after a thoughtful conversation about the challenges confronting chaplains at this time, a Navy Chaplain approached me and said, “Rick, I want you to know that, if my church is going to come down on the side of either war or of peace, I want it to be peace.” We agreed that day, even as we recognized the different ways God has shaped us, that the church must find clear, pastoral ways to make a firm stand for peace.

I hope you’ll join me in personal discernment about how to live out that challenge.

With prayers for the peace of Christ,

Rick

On foundational commitments as peacemakers

Friends,

I’ve spent the summer thinking about my own personal commitments regarding how to be effective in the work of peacemaking. What are the principles that guide my decisions about how to prioritize my time and energy when the task of peacemaking and the opportunities for engagement so often seem overwhelming. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts as I begin in my new role as Executive Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. Please remember that these are my own musings, and they don’t necessarily represent the consensus of the PPF’s national steering committee. My goal here is not to be definitive about what is or isn’t worthwhile for others, but to get all of us thinking about how we make such decisions ourselves. I would welcome the opportunity to learn about your own commitments. I also recognize that my own beliefs and actions as a peacemaker are a work in process.

I believe that peacemaking is an expression of my faith. I am a peacemaker, first and foremost, because of my formation as a Christian and my commitment to follow Jesus.

Peacemaking is an activity that must be done in community. To me, it seems critical that our efforts strengthen local congregations or other faith communities so that our actions are sustainable over time and provide ongoing support and accountability for one another.

I think peacemaking must be a physical act – it can’t be accomplished in our heads. It is about accompanying those who are experiencing violence and standing together with them as they struggle to survive. It’s about modeling genuine alternatives to war, terrorist acts, and other violent conflict. We must expect our peacemakers to take the same kinds of risks that we expect soldiers to take.

Though I will seek ways to work cooperatively with those of other religious traditions and with non faith-based activists, I will only do so when that cooperation does not violate my fundamental understanding of who God calls me to be, and I will seek always to be clear about my own grounding as a follower of Jesus.

In general, I’m more comfortable with being FOR something in a proactive way than I am in being AGAINST something. For instance, I would prefer to practice hospitality in the desert borderlands - in a way that shows that we have nothing to fear from migrants – rather than focusing on protesting immigration policy that violates our fundamental commitment to welcome the stranger. In fact, I believe that living that proactive witness in an intentionally public way is the best thing we can do to impact public policy.

I do believe, however, that there are times we must protest violence by participating in nonviolent public actions and even risking arrest to call attention to the seriousness of the matter at hand. (More on this soon, as I have made a commitment to risk arrest in a religious protest of the War in Iraq on the 26th of September and I would like to extend a call to Presbyterians to join me in that witness.)

Though I have always thought of myself as a pacifist, I no longer lead with that word when I describe myself. It’s not that I don’t believe in the power of nonviolence to overcome violence. Rather, when a conflict can be described as genocide, I find myself wondering how we can move more quickly to stop the genocide, and my current thinking is that a unified, international police action (not an act of war) is quite likely to be necessary to stop a powerful force from committing that act of genocide. (As you can tell, my thinking on this one is a work in process.)

I’m pretty sure I believe that there is no longer any such thing as a “just war.” I say this primarily because, as the war in Iraq and the recent war between Israel and the Hezbollah have made crystal clear, war is now directed primarily against civilians, and not against soldiers. There are other reasons as well, but this one seems the most compelling to me.

It seems to me that the only way to have integrity as we negotiate the difficult political waters of conflict in the world today is to insist that we will stand against all violence. That means the violence of powerful warmakers and the violence of extremists whose people are being oppressed. It means the violence of military occupation, wherever it may be taking place, and the violence of those who would pick up a gun or strap a bomb to their body in response to their powerlessness. Taking such a stance will allow us to insist that Peacemaking is not a politically partisan activity, though it will almost always have political implications if we are truly witnessing to our faith.

I dream of a day when the PC(USA) might create a new confession about the ways in which we have historically participated in violence, and I dare to dream of a day when we might affirm a commitment to join the Quakers, Brethren and the Mennonites as a “Peace Church.” I doubt such a commitment will take place in the foreseeable future, and I would settle for a strong commitment to insist that we do in fact believe that it is possible to love one’s enemies and to model that belief by actively promoting alternatives to violence – especially the violence of the so-called “War on Terror.” If the church is unwilling to name the impossibility of finding security and peace through the making of war, then who will step forward to do it?

Finally, a word about patriotism and supporting our troops. I am unyielding in my insistence that our first allegiance as Christians is to our God. There is nothing unpatriotic about standing against policies that neither make us more secure nor embody fundamental, Christian commitments to human rights, justice and the safety of civilian noncombatants. Jesus calls us to stand against the pervasive, gut-level assumption in our culture that violence can in some way be redemptive.

At the same time, it is clear to me that faithful Presbyterians - or people of any faith tradition - can come to a different conclusion than I do. I think we would all be wise to adopt a measure of humility about our own understanding of what God desires for the world. It’s such a fine balancing act, isn’t it? How will we live with conviction even as we recognize that we are a work in progress and God is continually shaping and molding us?

In the end, I feel torn. On the one hand, I can embrace and even affirm the Presbyterian assumption of total depravity in the world, for I’ve seen that depravity far too closely as I’ve worked with victims of torture, war, and economic injustice whose oppression can be both overwhelmingly global and devastatingly focused on individuals. On the other hand, I stand with the Quakers in their assumption that there is that of God in everyone. For every evil I’ve seen in the world, I can name a concomitant act of kindness and generosity, and I’m convinced that nothing could be more pragmatically proactive than the assumption that people will do the right thing if given the opportunity to do so. I’m pretty comfortable living with the juxtaposition of those two ideas – total depravity and inherent goodness. Perhaps it’s something akin to being as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.

I welcome your own thoughts on the “it’s-your-turn discussion group. If you’re not already signed up, you can do so from the front page of my blog.

May God be with us as we go as Peacemakers into a troubled world.

Rick

Life as a "Former" Moderator

Friends,

Slowly, life has been returning to what I now remember was normal at one time in my distant past. I spent most of the month of July reconnecting with my family and regrounding myself in the things that sustain my spirit. After two weeks with my family touring the lake district of northern England - a Quaker roots exploration with my wife and son and my wife's family. I returned for one last hurrah in a more moderatorial role. I attended a conference with church leaders, most of them former moderators, in Montreat early in July, followed by attending the Presbyterian Women's gathering in Louisville.

A few days later, I spent a week at Ghost Ranch on a trip called the "High Desert Spiritual Quest" led by John Fife and Gene LeFebvre, both retired Presbyterian pastors who have been leading this trip together for fifteen years. The week included hiking, my first experience of a Native American sweat lodge, and three days on the Wild and Scenic Chama River. It felt like the first thing I had done that was solely to nurture my own faith and spirit in a very long time. The plan is that my good friend Brandon Wert, who is a pastor in Tucson and the coordinator of our Young Adult Volunteer Site on the border, will take over co-leading this trip with me starting next year. If you're interested, keep an eye on the Ghost Ranch website this fall.

Then I went back east and spent almost three weeks traveling with my eleven year-old son, Teo. We backpacked twenty-two miles of the Long Trail in Vermont, and then headed out on a 1900 mile road trip that included spending time with Teo's best friend (whose parents happen to be two of Kitty's and my closest friends) on the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula in upper Ontario - right between Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay.

Finally, after a month of decompression that didn't involve cell phones, blackberries (other than the kind one competes with bears for) and email, I felt ready to engage my vocational side once again. I've spent the month of August getting up and running in my new position as the director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. My job will include some national organizing on college campuses, providing trainings in nonviolent accompaniment in churches and Presbyteries, and re-engaging the work with migrants who are at risk in the borderlands, this time as the Arizona representative for Christian Peacemaker Teams. Mostly, I figure I'm tasked with moving Presbyterians to take direct action to live out Jesus' clear call for peace, even - maybe especially - in times like these. If I could have named my dream job as I did my discernment work about my vocation over the last six months, I'm fairly certain it would have looked like this.

I must say that I've thought a lot about the seduction of serving in a position like the one of Moderator for Presbyterian Church. As I've shed myself of the technology that goes with that position, I've realized that I must let go, also, of the rush of always being needed. I'm trying to relocate myself, once more, with folks on the edges. In many ways, it feels like serving the church in this way has been one more experience in crossing borders. I've learned that for all its faults, the world of the connectional church is also a wonderful, rich, vibrant, spiritual world that I hope to be able to move in and out of for the rest of my life. The trick, I think, will be to straddle the border that exists between the world where the church is and the other world where the church is called to be.

I'll begin writing more regularly again now. As always, please remember that I write mostly for me - as a way to process the experiences I'm having and share my reflections on those experiences with others who are interested. The danger of blogging is that it calls for quick impressions, so I'll ask my readers to stick with me as my impressions continue to shape and change me over time. All of us are, I think, a work in progress. God clearly isn't finished with us yet.

Blessings on all of you this weekend as the familiar rhythms of the fall begin again.

Rick

Endings and Beginings

Friends,

It has been a busy week. I intended to share impressions as the worship, fellowship and business of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church unfolded, but most days began by 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning and ended at midnight or later. Perhaps next year I'll be able to function more as an observer and less as a participant.

I am so grateful to all of you who have encouraged and engaged with me as my moderatorial term has progressed. This has been, and probably will remain, the greatest vocational experience of my life. I've discovered that I love the whole church, and that there is far more out there to appreciate than I ever could have imagined. I am a far different person, and my faith is far deeper, because of the way God has spoken to me through my preaching and studying the lectionary, and through all of the amazing experiences of God's people around the world.

Some of you may not have heard that I have been asked to serve as the first full-time, Executive Director in the sixty-two year history of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (www.presbypeacefellowship.org). I have accepted that offer with enthusiasm, after months of wondering where God was calling me, and especially after a week of ruminating on the questions of vocation and call as I hiked the migrant journey in the desert earlier this month.

This call will allow me to honor the core convictions that God has placed on my heart over the past twenty years: that we are called to the margins, that we are called to take risks for what we believe, that we are called to build up a strong church, that we are called to pick a particular place in the world and to commit to that place and its concern's until God places a clear call on us to move on.

Kitty and Teo and I will remain on the border, and we will continue our work with migrants who are at risk in the borderlands. As we thought about the possibility of trying to move to be closer to our families, we realized that we couldn't leave the border at a time when so many lives are at stake in this part of the world.

Kitty and I hope to recommit to another three years as reservists with Christian Peacemaker Teams, and the National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship has encouraged me to understand that commitment, as well as my volunteer commitments with migrants, as a part of my work with PPF. Kitty will remain in her job as the Faith Community Coordinator for the Food Security Office of the Southern AZ Food Bank, which she has loved since being invited into that position a year ago. Teo will go to school at a small school two blocks from our home that he got to choose (with some input from his parents) as he transitions to his middle school years. The three of us will remain connected to Sitting Tree, the intentional community where we live in Tucson. Kitty will remain active at Pima Friends Meeting, where she has just led the Quakers into establishing a weekly "Meeting for Worship with a concern for Peace" as an expression of concern regarding the War on Terror. And I expect that I will recommit to my home church, Southside Presbyterian, and help us to transition into whatever God has in store for us next.

I will begin my responsibilities with the Peace Fellowship on August 1rst. We hope to become a vibrant organization that will welcome a new generation of Presbyterians of all ages into direct action for the causes of God's peace and justice in the world. There are many places where the work will begin, but you can certainly expect that one of the priorities will be to begin by choosing half a dozen Presbyterian Colleges and Seminaries where we will make serious organizing efforts.

I have appreciated your encouaragement to continue writing for U-C:What-I-See. Of all the strategic decision I made as I started my moderatorial term, this one was by far the most important and has had the most far-reaching consequences. I have decided that I will continue writing under the same blog title and at the same address. By late August, you can expect to see a link to the blog from the Peace Fellowship website, along with a somewhat refreshed and more up-to-date personal website.

I have also enjoyed the conversation that many of you have had at "It's-Your-Turn" in response to my blog. (By the way, I enjoyed the recent spate of submissions regarding globalization and Latin America, and I was sorry not to have time to engage.) So, yes, let's keep that conversation going as well!

Dave Hackett has earned my undying gratitude for turning me into a blogger! Thank you.

This afternoon, I will be leaving for ten days in England with Kitty, Teo, and Kitty's family. We will be doing a "Quaker Roots" tour, which seems a particularly appropriate way for a consensus-building moderator to finish my term. Later, I will spend a week with John Fife and Gene LeFebvre doing the High Desert Spirituality Week at Ghost Ranch in July, and then two weeks of backpacking and traveling in New England for my son Teo and me. You should expect only sporadic entries on the blog over the next two months as I reconnect with my family and make the transition to the work of the Peace Fellowship. I will attend the Moderators' "Hope for the Church" gathering at Montreat and the Presbyterian Women's gathering in Louisville in a few weeks.

That's it for now. Blessings on all of you as your summer unfolds. Please keep the concerns of migrants in the desert in the summer heat, and the cause of nonviolent peacemakers around the world in a time of violence, before you as you spend time in prayer, worship and work this summer.

Gratefully,

Rick

A final Migrant Trail Reflection: Death in the Desert

It wasn’t real, but the emotion evoked in me surprised me. At the end of our seventy-five mile trek through the desert, a group of about twenty of us agreed to a nonviolent witness as we passed the Border Patrol Tucson Sector headquarters in Tucson. It was to be a “die-in,” a simple dramatization on the sidewalk of migrants who are dying in the desert. Though I hadn’t intended to volunteer, my thirteen-year-old traveling companion Ben attended a gathering of those interested in participating that was held in our last campsite on Saturday afternoon. A little later, each of those who were to “die” on the side of the road asked someone to be their “mourner,” and I agreed to do so for Ben.

As we took our last water break on Sunday morning, our little group took some foam sleeping pads and went on ahead. It was telling that those who were dying needed the pads to lie on. At one hundred and six degrees, the gravel and concrete right-of-way between the sidewalk and Ajo Road would have badly burned them. Ben was seventh among those who had agreed to die. Without saying a word, he lay down on his stomach, fully extended with an arm outstretched, reaching toward an empty water bottle. Silently, I knelt beside him, leaning over his prostrate form on the gravel with my head in my hands.

My own emotion shocked me. Perhaps it was a natural feeling that welled up in me as we came to the end of a powerful and deeply meaningful experience. Maybe it was the particular connection I feel with Ben, and my more visceral realization that thirteen-year-olds like Ben account for some of the death statistics in the desert each year. Maybe it was the memory of encountering folks in similar condition during my “Samaritan Runs” in the desert over the last few years four years.

I never looked up as the line of walkers, now almost two hundred strong, moved silently past our witness. I focused on Ben, and on what it means when we lose children in the desert every year. Already this year, our current death count is ninety-nine men, women and children since October 1rst. Every one of those people has a story and a family that mourned for them the same way Ben’s family and I would mourn for Ben. It’s way to easy for the bodies to become statistics. As we finished our walk and drove home, the local NPR affiliate announced the death of someone in the desert over the weekend, just twenty miles or so to the west of where we had been walking all week.

Something is drastically wrong with the kind of desperation that leads thousands of people each day into the danger of the borderlands in an attempt to help their family survive. It’s wrong theologically for those of us who profess the Christian faith but then refuse to take seriously the Biblical imperative to welcome the stranger and to care for the suffering. It’s wrong politically for those of us who profess to be a caring and generous people to turn away from the crossers, insisting that they made their own choices and we’re not responsible for their welfare. It’s even worse when we demonize them as “potential terrorists” even while most agree that our economic well-being is built on the labor they desire to offer. It’s wrong economically for those of us who receive the benefits of cheap goods in the global economy to refuse to recognize that we will be unable to sustain the vast, growing, inequity that exists between those of us who have the good fortune to be the winners in the global economy and those who work on the underside of that economy and who find it impossible to feed their families, much less dream of something better for their children as I do for mine. It’s misguided from a security point of view to think that we can ever provide for the security of our children if we are unwilling to recognize the need for a modicum of economic stability for the children just to our south.

Seven days in the desert. Seventy-five miles. Temperatures well above one hundred degrees. This has been an experience that Ben and I won’t soon forget.

May God’s blessings rain down, this day, upon all of God’s people, and may each of us commit to be a part of that blessing.

Rick

A Pentecost Moment

Sisters and Brothers,

This is our next to last day in the desert. Because it is Saturday, our ranks have swelled to over one hundred people as we’ve walked almost thirteen miles along State Route 86 toward Tucson. We’re facing the Tucson Mountains now, and each step brings the low, ragged peaks out of the haze and our destination a little bit closer. The group arrives at our campsite around one p.m., though this dusty lot covered with broken bottles and fire ants barely counts as a campsite in any of our minds.

Just before dusk, storm clouds darkened the sky over the mountains to our east. As the mostly dry dust storm moved crossed over the mountains from the Tucson into the Altar Valley, the wind began to gust so hard that they blew some of the powerlines off their poles and started a small brush fire about a tenth of a mile to our west. Within moments, the dust and grit in the air was so thick that I couldn’t see more than a few feet away. There was nowhere to go for protection from the stinging sand and dirt. Some in our group huddled between a couple of cars and trailers. Others simply laid face-down on top of their tents in an effort to keep them from blowing away. A little distance away, several from the group huddled together on the ground and hugged one another – facing in – trying to protect themselves from the dust and pebbles and grit in the air.

I couldn’t help but think of the passage in the second chapter of Acts that described the moment of Pentecost as the “rushing of the wind.” I’ve never really thought of that moment as a violent moment before, but perhaps that’s what it was for the disciples too.

This land can be so unforgiving. I continue to marvel not that so many die trying to cross this desert – but that so many others pit themselves against these harsh conditions and manage to survive.

The wind has died down, now, and I’m sitting on a tarp in my camp chair, writing by the light of my headlamp. Our last night in the desert. Tomorrow there are just a few more miles to the end of this remarkable pilgrimage.

Our small delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams that has hiked together all week reflected earlier in our trip on these words from Jeremiah 17.

Thus says the Lord:

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord – whose trust is the Lord.” I’ve been thinking all week about our notions of security as a nation and as a people. Somehow, spending billions of dollars in an effort to militarize the border and protect ourselves from migrants trying to come find a job seems a long way from the kind of trust that doesn’t fear, isn’t anxious, and doesn’t cease to bear fruit.

May the winds of Pentecost blow strong.

Rick

Water from "Arizona"

Friends,

We walked a twelve-mile day today. Light cloud cover. Temperatures around 104 or 105 degrees. Humidity much higher than normal for the normally dry month of June. This is the kind of day that I’ve learned over the years is cause for concern for the groups I’ve shepherded through the desert. The less direct sun seems somehow less threatening, but it is no less deadly and heat stroke is a constant worry.

As we were walking through the little crossroads community called Three Points, we hit highway 86 and turned east for the last twenty miles that would take us into Tucson. Babaquivori – the distinctive mountain that had been our companion to the east throughout our journey, now lay well behind us. It seemed strange to me – a little disorienting – not to be able to look at the mountain as we walked.

As we walked past the few stores on the highway that passes through Three Points, I noticed a white pick-up truck with a man and woman seated in the cab, parked on the opposite side of the road. I confess that I wondered about them. Though most folks honk and wave as they drive by, not everyone is friendly towards the walkers. After the entire group had walked by, the truck swung a U-turn and drove slowly past us again. As the truck disappeared, I still couldn’t tell if its occupants were friendly or not, but I put them out of my mind and concentrated on the last mile of the journey for the day.

Twenty minutes later, we entered the beautiful, brick floored adobe sanctuary of Serenity Baptist Church in Three Points, a community deeply divided over the issues around undocumented folks. This courageous pastor and congregation, while recognizing the ambivalence about migrants that exists in their community, have graciously received the walkers for each of the last three years. You have no idea how it felt to be welcomed with air conditioning by the fifth night of our journey.

As Kat Rodriguez, the lead organizer of the walk, finished orienting us to the building and reading a welcoming letter from the pastor, she acknowledged, in Spanish, the man standing next to me, and then explained in English that he and his girlfriend had seen us on the highway. They were so moved as they watched the group pass by single file, each of us carrying a cross as we walked in the mid-day heat, that they had driven to a nearby convenience store and purchased two cases of bottled water. The cases were stacked at his feet, and he seemed shy and a little non-plussed as Kat introduced him by the name “Arizona.” When we invited him to stay and join us for lunch, he declined, saying that he had to go because his girlfriend was waiting in the truck.

Two days later, as we finished our walk now more than one hundred and fifty walkers strong, “Arizona” reappeared and passed out dozens and dozens of the water bottles as the walkers marched past.

A simple gift – maybe the most elegant gift possible – water in the desert.

Rick

A Sixteen Mile Day

It’s three a.m. when someone shakes me awake. It’s my third night sleeping in the desert. The moon has shifted, becoming a little bit larger each night than the tiny sliver it was when we began, but by three o’clock it has disappeared behind Baboquivari – the holy mountain a few miles to the west where the O’odham people believe all life originated. Slowly, the sixty or seventy of us begin to move quickly and quietly to pack our things, and grab a quick cup of coffee and a fistful of granola or a bagel. By four a.m., we’ve circled up for announcements, and formed a line – two by two – to begin the longest day we will face this week, sixteen miles and about eight hours of hiking.

We begin hiking in the dark, each person making out the shape of the one in front. In some ways, this is the kind of hiking that is the most authentic to the migrant experience. At this time of year, the folks who are savvy walk all night, preferring to encounter the dangers of cactus and rocky washes in the dark to the intense, brutal heat of the day. Our commitment is similar. We hope to be finished our hike by noon and then to huddle under tarps or the shade of mesquite trees through the desert heat in the afternoon.

By four thirty, though the sun has yet to break over the mountains to our east, we are walking in the soft, gentle light that is common in the early morning of the desert. We try to walk quickly, though our large group makes it difficult to move efficiently. By six thirty, the sun is fully visible over the mountains and now climbing into the sky as we leave the protected nature preserve that we’ve been hiking in for the first few days.

Now we’re walking straight north along route 286. On the website for Derechos Humanos, a human rights organization in Tucson that co-sponsors our journey, I’ve read the names of those who have died in the desert, and the places where their bodies were discovered. (http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net) Many, many of them have made it out to this road, only to die waiting for someone to stop and offer them aid. Just this week, we learned the story of a woman who fractured a bone in her leg, was abandoned in the desert, and somehow survived for more than three weeks, eventually crawling on her hands and knees to make it to the road.

We walk single file along the shoulder of the road, stepping further to the right each time someone in the back yells “car,” then back to the edge of the pavement when the vehicle has passed. Five out of every six vehicles that pass us are the Border Patrol, and after a few miles of walking in the increasingly hot sun, we arrive at a Border Patrol check point. It’s located about twenty miles north of the border on this road, similar to most north/south roads here in the southwest. All cars are stopped going north so that the Border Patrol can determine citizenship. As we stand in a long line in front of their trailer, several agents go down the line, questioning each person: “What’s your citizenship?” they ask. “U.S.,” most of us reply. “Where were you born?” the agents continue, and most of us satisfy their questions with our answers. Those with brown skin, however, are singled out. “Let’s see some I.D.,” an agent demands when the person in front of me says that he is from San Antonio. “Why do I need to show you I.D.,” the walker asks, “when no one else does?” “Hey man,” the agents responds, “if you’re from San Antonio, you know that you always have to carry you’re I.D.”

Eventually, the agents are satisfied that we aren’t smuggling anyone, and we walk on. We’re ten or eleven miles into the day now, and stopping every mile and a half to refill our water bottles. Each time we do, I give thanks to God. I’m drinking at least a quart of water per hour, with no thought at all to conservation. What if I was responsible to carry all I could consume? Most migrants I’ve met hike into the desert with with just a gallon jug of water in each hand, and maybe a small backpack with some cans of tuna fish and refried beans. Many of them will be in the desert for at least three or four days – and maybe for a week or more.

By eleven a.m., we still have several miles to go, and the sun is now almost directly overhead. The temperature is still only a little over a hundred degrees, well below what it will be almost every day starting a few weeks from now. My feet are hot, but I’m grateful that both Ben and I are blister free. I’m fighting a pretty bad heat rash that covers my legs, in spite of the fact that I’ve worn long pants all the time. I’ve been using 50 SPF sunblock each day, and I feel fortunate that I’m not burned. My muscles ache, but I began the walk in good physical condition and I’m feeling relatively strong.

As we finish up for the day just after non, I think about the migrants – probably as many as several hundred of them – who are spread out within a fifty mile radius of us. They’re likely to be sitting in washes under mesquite, hiding from Border Patrol flyovers, and more importantly, trying to keep from baking in the hot sun. Mostly, I expect that they’re trying to conserve their energy and not to drink any more than they have to, hoping to be well-prepared for another night of hiking in the desert.

You know, among the laws that God gave to the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness was the repeated admonition to welcome the stranger. They were both a wandering people themselves, and a people who understood that true security comes only in offering to share what little one has with those who are even more needy. Later, Jesus picked up on the same theme as he continually pressed God’s command to reach out to those on the margins. “I was hungry, and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger (read – without documents) and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to me.” God is clearly invested in our commitment to live our faith by welcoming the stranger.

I’ve never felt that so strongly as I do today.

Rick

Reflection from Altar Valley, in the Sonoran Desert

Desert heat cannot be contained. It is unbridled and headstrong and destructive and beautiful and brutal.

Hugo Rodriguez Ramirez - 41 years old, died 04 - 05

Hugo Rodriguez Ramirez – 41 years old, died 04 – 05

That’s all I know about Hugo, He was 41 years old when he died in the desert about a year ago – sometime between October 2004 and September 2005. I just turned 42 in mid-May, so we were the same age when Hugo died last year. The differences between us probably could not have been more pronounced, and as a result, I am hiking seventy-five miles through the Sonoran Desert as an act of spiritual discipline and remembrance for the thousands who have died on the U.S./Mexico border over the last ten years. And I’m carrying a small, white cross with Hugo’s name on it.

I wonder about his family. As I walk along through the desert, I find myself wondering where he lived. Was he a farmer in a village in the La Condon jungle of Chiapas? Did he live on the outskirts of Mexico City where he worked as a taxi driver, or a high-school teacher, or a construction worker? Maybe he was living in Nogales or Hermosillo, Sonora, and working (like well over a million other Mexicans) in a U.S.-owned factory for about fifty dollars a week in a town where a gallon of milk costs three dollars and fifty cents.

Wherever he lived, and whatever work he was doing, Hugo felt desperate enough to head into the desert. I’ve been out here for three days now. We’ve hiked about thirty miles in temperatures that have been hovering right around one hundred degrees each day. So far, I’ve drunk eight or nine gallons of water – water I drink with the guilty knowledge that there will be a trailer with supplies to refill my water bottle and a handful of fruit or trail mix about every mile and a half or two miles. Dinner and lunch meals are being prepared in Tucson and brought to our campsite each afternoon. Five gallon plastic buckets fashioned into composting toilets and tarps for shade come out of the U-Haul each afternoon when we finish our hike, and my sleeping bag has kept me warn even as the temperatures have dropped forty degrees each night. My route is planned and I have no fear of deportation if I’m discovered. Hugo knew none of these luxuries.

Hugo’s trip is likely to have gone more like this. He is likely to have arrived in Altar, Sonora, about sixty miles south of the southwestern Arizona border, having already contracted with a coyote who committed to smuggle him across the border, probably as part of a group of fifteen or twenty people. It would have cost him between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars, paid for by borrowing the money at thirty-five percent interest against any property he might have owned – either a house or maybe a small plot of land. If he had no collateral, he might have been fortunate enough to have a family member in the U.S. who agreed to pay for his passage. Failing either of those options, it is quite possible that he sold himself into a form of indentured servitude, committing to pay the coyote with his earnings from a job already arranged for him in the U.S.

In any case, he probably had instructions to go to a private dormitory once he got off the bus in Altar. For a few dollars a night, he might have found refuge in a hostel operated by families that have built an extra room onto their homes or filled their living rooms with crude, plywood bunk-beds (three levels high with no mattresses) in another family’s effort to create a livelihood on yet another small part of the migrant journey. Maybe, though, Hugo ended up at CCAMYN – the Community Center to Support Migrants and the Needy, run by a group of volunteers from the Catholic Church in Altar. They would have taken his basic information, offered medical care and a brief talk on surviving the desert, a hot meal, and a bed and a shower before Hugo headed off the next day.

From there, the dangerous part of Hugo’s journey probably began. He almost certainly traveled north from Altar to “The Brickyard” – a poor neighborhood a few miles south of the little, dusty town of Sasabe, Sonora, located right on the border. That trip probably took place in a van – where he was one of twenty-five to thirty men, women, children and infants who each paid twenty dollars to travel the sandy, rutted, washboard road at breakneck speeds as his van made the two-hour journey. Along the way, he would have stopped by a checkpoint, set up by the Mexican Government’s migrant support agency called “Grupo Beta,” in order to be counted and given last minute counsel about the dangers of the desert crossing. On a recent trip I made down the Sasabe/Altar road, the agents told us that they had counted more than twenty-one hundred migrants headed north that day.

And then, finally, Hugo would have begun the hike in the desert that I began three days ago. Perhaps, as happened with a young man someone in our group encountered yesterday, he couldn’t keep up with his group and eventually was abandoned – left to his own devices with a couple of gallons of water, wandering in the brutally hot, unforgiving Sonoran Desert for a couple more days till his body succumbed to the intense heat and he could no longer survive. Maybe, as often happens, his group scattered when a Border Patrol helicopter flew overhead – as one just flew over my own head while I was writing these words. I have met dozens of migrants who became separated from their group in moments like that one.

Maybe Hugo actually managed to stay with his group for the fifty or eighty or one hundred mile hike until they were picked up by their driver, crammed into a Chevy Suburban or the back of a Ford pick-up. It’s quite possible that Hugo made it that far, only to be chased by the Border Patrol at high speeds until the driver rolled the vehicle, or hit someone else, or blew a worn tire. I have been called to the hospital several times over the years to provide pastoral care for the survivors of such accidents.

If Hugo had made it wherever he was going, he would likely have found work – maybe using false papers – within a week of his arrival. Perhaps he would have started out carrying shingles for a roofing crew in Denver, or washing dishes in northern Indiana, or cutting chicken parts in Western Kentucky, or maybe picking tomatoes in Central Florida. He would have moved in with ten or twelve other men where he would have paid twenty-five dollars a week toward his share in a single room with a sink fridge and stove in one corner and a toilet and shower in the other – rented to the group for a total of $800 to $1,000 per month. In any case, he would have started sending half his paycheck home to his family as quickly as possible.

As I walked today, with temperatures hovering near one hundred and five degrees, I thought about Hugo’s family. I realized that I had been thinking mostly about the emotional hole left in their lives by his death. I thought a lot about my own wife and son and how unbearably painful it would be if we were to lose any part of the whole that is our family. What I hadn’t thought much about until today, though, was the reality that Hugo’s family must have already been right on the precarious financial precipice when Hugo made the decision to head into the desert. What happens next to his family? Where will his wife turn to now in order to find the money to feed their children?

It’s been a lot to think about as I’ve walked, and I’ve certainly had plenty of time to think. I’ve tried to carry Hugo’s cross upright, with his name facing me so that I see it as I walk. Toward the end of our second day, I set the cross down next to my daypack beside the road. When I came back after filling up my water bottle, it had been picked up by someone else. Perhaps it was irrational, but I felt a deep sense of loss. There are almost one hundred of us hiking, and well over a hundred crosses – so it seemed kind of silly to try to hunt down and reclaim that particular cross. The next morning at daybreak, though, I rediscovered Hugo’s cross among the haphazard alter of crosses that folks had built as they arrived at the campsite the night before. I reclaimed it, and I find that I am much more careful about keeping an eye on it.

Somehow, it now feels like this is about honoring Hugo’s life and making a commitment to his family that I will see this through, and carry his memory with me as I do so. I’ll remember Hugo’s name long after we finish our trip this week, and that memory will be a reminder that every person who attempts to cross this desert comes with a story, and a family, and a spirit that hovers somewhere in the vague, undefined space that exists between desperation and hope.

Rick

Friends,

I arrived home last night after three weeks of travel - mostly in churches in the mid-west. Today I am trying to prepare for the last major event of my term as Moderator. This week I will be joining a group of ninety people who will spend the week walking through seventy-five miles of the Sonoran desert to follow the trail of the migrants. The event, called the Migrant Trail: We walk for Life http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/migrant_trail_2006.php4 will begin tomorrow, Memorial Day in the border town of Sasabe where so many of the migrants are beginning their journey. It will finish seven days later with a rally in Tucson, Arizona.

I'll be hiking with many colleagues from the border region, of course, but I'll also be accompanied by a thirteen year old named Ben from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I met Ben and his folks at an event at Maryville College in February of 2005. During my talk, I encouraged those present to consider getting rid of their televisions as a step toward creating the space in our lives for more active engagement in living our faith. This is a pitch that I often make, and it typically finds resonance with some folks, and others often to write me letters expressing outrage that I would make such a ludicrous suggestion.

Anyway, on this particular evening when I finished my talk, Ben was the first person in the audience to raise his hand. He wanted to know how he could convince his folks to let him go on a mission trip. Somewhat glibly, I responded that if he would agree to get rid of his t.v., I would convince his folks to let him go "do mission." With ear-to-ear grins, Ben and his folks, Peggy and Dan, shook hands on it right there in front of everyone.

What I learned over the next few days is that the Terpstra family is actually quite committed to all kinds of mission service work, and Ben's dad has led groups of students into Latin America on environmental trips, they've participated in Katrina relief work - and the list could go on. Ben's situation is special, however. When he was nine, he contracted a life-threatening illness, eventually diagnosed as "Guillion Barre Syndrome." It was not at all clear that Ben was going to make it, and he lost the better part of a year in recovery. The experience clearly deepened Ben's interest in living life as fully as possible, and put him in touch with his faith and his desire to do something meaningful in a way that is foreign to the vast majority of eleven-year-olds in our country. It also is quite reasonable that his folks' tendency could tend toward caution and protection.

Well, to make a very long story short, Ben and his folks did, indeed, give up cable and put the television away, and last October, all three of them joined me for a BorderLinks trip that I led in Arizona and Sonora. Toward the end of the trip, we attended church at Sol de Justicia Presbyterian Church, part of the Presbyterian Border Ministry project in Sonora called "Companeros en Mision." (You can check out their website at http://www.binationalministry.org/companerosenmision). Sol de Justicia has made a pretty consistent effort to offer an evening meal to migrants in the shelter that is less than a block from their church. One of their needs, they explained, was to provide phone cards for migrants to be able to call their families, and they said that it was beyond their budget to come up with the forty or fifty dollars a month to support the migrants in that way.

After a quick consultation with his folks, Ben asked to speak with the young woman who was pastoring the church. He suggested that their family would be willing to send the forty dollars they were saving on cable service each month to the church to buy phone cards.

During the week, Ben also learned about the migrant trail that has taken place each of the last couple of years during the first week of June. By the time he left, he was trying to cajole his parents into letting him return to do the walk. His parents agreed when I suggested that I also wanted to do the Walk this year, and that I would be willing to take responsibility for Ben if they wanted to send him.

So last night, a couple of hours after I arrived home, my son Teo and I returned to the airport to pick up Ben. Tonight, we'll join the rest of the walkers for an orientation, and tomorrow we will begin the journey. I will do my best to journal during the week, so that I can post a couple of blog entries when I return.

I can think of no better way to wrap up my term as moderator than to spend time in the desert. The desert wilderness is such a theme throughout scripture, time after time God's people end up in the desert as they look for renewal or a clearer sense of God's call. I'm looking forward to the coming week, at least in part, because I am in need of serious discernment as I think about where God might be calling me next.

I remember that Gandhi quote that I found and blogged when I was in India last January:

A Talisman:

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Remember the face of the poorest and the weakest man you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate will be of any use to him? Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions. Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.

Mahatma Mohandis Gandhi

I think this is probably the best place I could be to do the kind of memory work that Gandhi proposes. Please keep Ben and I, and all the other walkers, in your prayers during the coming week. Even more importantly, please remember the migrants who are crossing the borderlands themselves this week in search of survival for themselves and their families. As you move around your own community, keep your eyes open to see where those folks are, and stay ready for the possibility that God might be calling you to accompaniment, to the margins, with those who are most at risk right there, wherever you live.

We cry out for peace, though there is no peace.

Rick

What a commencement should be - thoughts from Bloomfield College

Friends,

Thursday morning found me participating in a second commencement, this time at Bloomfield College located a few miles from downtown Newark, NJ. (Check out their website at www.bloomfield.edu) Like most of the other schools I've visited, Bloomfield has strong Presbyterian roots. This school was started initially as a seminary for German speaking immigrants, and over the last century it has morphed into an amazing liberal arts college. What makes Bloomfield almost entirely uniqe among our Presbyterian related colleges and universities is its high level of commitment to diversity.

As I sat on the stage, under a tent in the small quad at Bloomfield, I felt like I had been transported from "Presbyterian land" into another world. I'd say fewer than twenty percent of the student body was European American. Most of the students were African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, African, and even a smattering from eastern Europe. Most are the first generation in their families to go to college, and many are participating in a creative, non-traditional, weekend oriented academic program that allows non-traditional students to work on a degree while continuing to work to support their families.

The graduation ceremony was barely controlled bedlam. While the students were listening and thoughtful when each of the speakers spoke, the place erupted in between speakers and the din never dropped throughout the hour of hooding each one of the 227 graduates. Students were yelling to one another, screaming (supportively) for each graduate that crossed the stage, and standing on their chairs in order to wave and yell their gratitude to their families. There was laughter, and more than once a group of students would break into song, or yell in unison "we love you, Dr. so and so" to one of their professors.

These students know they have something to celebrate, and their deep appreciation and profound sense of community put a lump in my throat. Bloomfield College's mission statement says that the institution is committed to preparing a generation of students who know how to be leaders in a multicultural and global world, and it was clear that they are doing it. Many of these students speak English as a second language, and many more grew up speaking English as a first language but maintaining the language of their immigrant parents.

I was proud to be offered an honorary degree from this institution, because folks here are living the commitments that every one of our Presbyterian Colleges should be striving for (and many are). Presbyterians were known one hundred years ago for being on the frontier, where they founded institutions of higher learning in the places where no one else wanted to do so. In today's world, that frontier is going to be discovered wherever we are at work creating a new generation of leaders who know how to live their faith in a way that boldly stands against all of the hatred and violence and mistrust and inequity that currently characterizes our relationships around the world.

So there you go, two honorary degrees last week (you can just call me Dr. Dr.) from two Presbyterian institutions that are working hard to propel a new generation of leaders with border-crossing skills into the world. Pretty different contexts - from Hastings College in the plains of small town Nebraska, to Bloomfield College on the edges of Newark and the New York Metro region, these and many others of our Presbyterian schools are preparing students to stand against the ego-centrism and nationalism of the dominant culture and to prepare students to live as God calls them to live in the world.

Kind of a hopeful week.

Rick

Friends,

Becky White Newgren, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, sent me this photo of Princeton students who wanted to make a statement about their common commitment to unity as we approach the Presbyterian General Assembly in June. Here's her explanation of how it came to be and the message they wanted to send:

One hundred and twenty-five students including many faculty and administrators stood side by side on the steps of Miller Chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary on April 17th, 2006 to symbolize their commitment to the unity of the Presbyterian Church (USA). They responded to a couple emails and a few signs that asked them to put their face behind the following statement:

Being aware of many issues that could divide the PCUSA, we stand here representing different viewpoints on these issues, but we desire to reflect the unity of Christ and to serve in ministry together.

Organizing this photo is something that God laid on my heart. I procrastinated for a while, but then realized that if I, a future PCUSA minister, felt like I wanted to say something to the General Assembly this summer, maybe others at Princeton Seminary did as well. As a denomination, we have some very serious issues before us that we need to consider humbly before our God. The Church for centuries has let serious issues divide it, and I pray that the PCUSA can find a way to be the body of Christ together in all of our diversities. It is my prayer that the PCUSA will realize that the unity of Christ is much stronger than any current issues that divide us.

Those are my words. The people in the picture agreed only to the statement. But the photo itself was an event. At any seminary, students are often given the opportunity to agree and disagree over theological and political matters, but that day on the steps of the chapel, people who are typically on polar opposite sides of any debate came together in a spirit of humility and gratitude, in the Spirit of God, to stand for unity in the PCUSA. Our hope is that this photo will make a positive impact on the commissioners and visitors at General Assembly this June.

Friends, as we approach this Assembly, I ask you to be in prayer for our church, not for its own sake, but for the sake of all that we can accomplish when we agree to put first things first and to truly live our faith in Jesus Christ in the world.

As Moderator, I've grown into a new respect for the letters of Paul. He also was dealing with early Christians who were deeply divided - over what they believed to be matters of great substance. Check out his advice to the Philippians in the second chapter (New Testament - small book toward the back :)

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete; be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in hman likeness. And being found in human for, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.

May we hold Paul's words, and this powerful image from the students at Princeton, in our hearts as we approach this important moment in the life of the church.

Thanks Becky!

Rick

What's an education for? Migrant Art from Altar Sonora

Friends,

It's not such a very long way from Nebraska to the U.S./Mexico border.

Last weekend I had the honor to offer the commencement address at Hastings College, a small, liberal arts college founded by Presbyterians that is located about one hundred and seventy miles west of Omaha. I was pleased to be asked, because lately Hastings students seem to be showing up in many of the places that are important to me. For instance, more than a dozen students have spent time at BorderLinks learning about migrants over the last year, and several of them came down to hang out for more than a month last summer.

While I was on campus, I was re-aquainted with two of the students I had met on the border, affectionately known by friends and faculty alike as "the M & M's. Melissa and Molly are part of the Vocaton and Values program that Hastings offers for students who want to explore ways in which their faith is integrated into their sense of vocation.

This spring, Molly and Melissa decided to do a class project on migrant art. They raised enough money to spend spring break on their own in Altar Sonora, and they took paints and forty canvases with them. Then, they hung out in the plaza in Altar where migrants are getting off the bus and trying to figure out how to get across the border. When they invited some of the folks they met to paint their feelings about their journey, they were overwhelmed by the response that it ilicited.

I've asked them to put the resulting paintings up on the Hastings website. You can find it at http://www.hastings.edu/igsbase/igstemplate.cfm?SRC=MD014&SRCN=index&GnavID=144&SnavID=289&TnavID=274

If you're at all interested in the current conversation in the media and in our congress regarding migrants, I hope you'll take the time to look at these paintings, which are quite moving. If you have access to email networks or other blogs, I hope you'll post this link to help us get these images out there.

Both graduating seniors and the rest of the student body impressed me a great deal during my visit to Hastings. Somehow, Hastings is pulling off a major shift in the campus culture, and their students are becoming more and more invested in how to make a difference in the rest of the world. When you finish looking at Molly's and Melissa's project, you might take a couple of minutes to learn more about the Vocation and Values program, and to check out the rest of what Hastings has to offer.

Peace,

Rick

Presbyterians, Israel/Palestine, and Corporate Engagement

Comment and advice from the General Assembly Council to the 217th General Assembly (2006) regarding all overtures relating to our witness for peace and expressions of conscience in Israel and Palestine

The Office of the General Assembly has received more than two-dozen overtures related to the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004) regarding Israel and Palestine. The General Assembly Council (GAC), with guidance from an informal group convened by Rick Ufford-Chase, Moderator of the 216th General Assembly (2004), at the request of the GAC, has carefully reviewed these overtures and submits the following comment and advice to the 217th General Assembly (2006).

Comment

The General Assembly Council recognizes the goodwill and concern for peace and justice reflected in all the overtures. The intense debate occasioned by the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004) regarding “phased, selective divestment” from companies whose products, activities, or services support the violence of the conflict in Israel and Palestine is grounded in the inescapable reality that as Presbyterians we have deep, meaningful, and historic ties with many of the primary players in the conflict.

Our Christian partners in the region ask Presbyterians to hear and act on their grave concerns about the injustice of the occupation. They are clear that a peaceful resolution of the conflict will be unattainable as long as the occupation continues to make it impossible for Palestinians to create a viable state that offers genuine hope for their children’s future. The church’s own mission experience in the region impresses upon us that no Palestinian can be secure in the midst of the violence and daily oppression that define the military and economic occupation of the West Bank.

Our Jewish partners, both in the United States and Israel, are clear that no legitimate peace can be possible without a guarantee that the State of Israel will be respected by all of the surrounding nations in the region, or without genuine safety for the citizens of Israel who live under the constant threat of attack against civilians. Further, they have worked hard to help Presbyterians understand that we must “go the extra mile” in an attempt to stand against a two-thousand-year history of Christian violence against the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust.

Our partners in both Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations have continued to call on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to find ways to support their positive efforts for reconciliation and the creation of a lasting, just, and durable peace that will allow their peoples to live together in two viable, side-by-side states.

Presbyterians have learned that most people—including many of our own members—who care deeply about these matters find it difficult, perhaps even impossible, to articulate the concerns and desires of one of our partners in this entrenched conflict without denying the validity of the concerns of the other. This is perhaps our greatest challenge, a critical balancing act as we continue to move across the high-tension wire of working to be a genuine partner for peace in the region.

The General Assembly Council notes the following concerns, many of which are broadly shared across our denomination, for careful attention by the 217th General Assembly (2006) as it considers these overtures:

Many Presbyterians are fully committed to the ongoing support of our Christian partners in the Middle East who have called on us to continue the sensitive and careful implementation of the work of the Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) committee as regards the action of the 216th General Assembly (2004) to engage those corporations in which we hold stock about our social witness policy.

Many Presbyterians are extremely concerned about the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004)—especially regarding the specific language of “divestment”—and its unintended meaning and consequence for our Jewish sisters and brothers.

Many Presbyterians are calling on the 217th General Assembly (2006) to encourage the exploration of alternative investments that promote peace (especially joint efforts by Palestinians and Israelis), strengthen the economies in Israel and the occupied territories, and work toward a viable, two-state solution.

Some Presbyterians have called on us to empower a working group to continue to work intentionally on these matters with special attention to the following concerns:

- The quickly changing political realities in both Israel and Palestine;
- The need to build consensus around our core values as people of faith, even when some of those core values may appear to be in contradiction with one another;
- A commitment to strengthen and support all efforts to build positive understanding and relationships within and among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Israel and Palestine, in the Middle East, and in the United States.

The General Assembly Council urges the 217th General Assembly (2006) to keep in careful balance all of the tensions we have noted above as it sorts its way through the various proposals and overtures.

Advice

As commissioners and advisory delegates wrestle with these sensitive issues, the General Assembly Council advises the 217th General Assembly (2006) to:

1. Empower the Moderators of the 216th and 217th General Assemblies to create a working group of seven members that will:

a. Carefully monitor ongoing developments of the situation in the Middle East;
b. Intentionally listen to Presbyterians and our Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends in the Middle East and the United States; and
c. Develop guidance that honors each of their concerns as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) considers how to move forward on these sensitive issues.
d. Report its findings to the 218th General Assembly (2008), in conjunction with the General Assembly Council.

We urge the Moderators of the 216th and 217th General Assemblies to ensure that the working group be made up of Presbyterians who are committed both to our continuing accompaniment of Palestinian Christians who seek the end of the occupation and to the deepening of our historic and ever-living relationship with our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers. Further, we recommend that any guidance or recommendations on next steps from the working group be forwarded directly to the General Assembly Council for its consideration by February, 2008. Given that the working group is not tasked with developing policy, any recommendations or comments the members may wish to make regarding policy should be referred to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy.

2. Refer any overture—including overtures and commissioners’ resolutions not yet received—that may affect the investment policy of the PC(USA) or that calls for boycott of or divestment in a specific company, country or region, to the MRTI committee for their recommendation to a future General Assembly, through the General Assembly Council.

3. Encourage the Board of Pensions, the Presbyterian Foundation, and the MRTI committee to explore new or existing alternative investment possibilities that promote peace and strengthen the economies both in Israel and the occupied territories, and to report their findings to the 218th General Assembly (2008). We give this advice in humility, noting the serious fiduciary responsibility of these two partner agencies and seeking genuine partnership as we explore any possibilities cooperatively.

Rationale

In encouraging the formation of such a task force, we note the following:

The important work of the MRTI committee is proceeding deliberately. We urge the 217th General Assembly (2006) to acknowledge that the MRTI committee’s work cannot and will not result in the selling of any corporate stock until (at least) the deliberation of the 218th General Assembly in 2008.

The political situation in both Israel and Palestine is changing extremely quickly, and we believe it would be helpful to have a group that is tasked with working to follow, interpret, and understand the potential impact of those changes.

We are convinced that our church would benefit greatly from a serious effort to listen to one another and seek a solid consensus for our actions in the delicate task of peacemaking in this troubled region of the world. The alternative is an “us vs. them” debate that misses the fundamental reality that most Presbyterians care deeply about the issues of peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.

In the end, we are clear that Jesus calls us to just such an effort in peacemaking. In the second chapter of Philippians, we are told that Paul’s deepest desire for the church is to “make my joy complete,” calling us to “be of one mind, having the same love, being of one accord, and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

It is clear that, somehow, Christ calls us to stand with our Palestinian sisters and brothers—Christian and Muslim—and our Jewish sisters and brothers as each cries out for justice. We can stand with those bold and courageous leaders on both sides of this contentious debate who insist that there is a way to share the land of our forefathers and foremothers in peace and security with one another.

May it be so.

The first Presbyterian Podcast

Friends,

If you're interested, here is a link at a "Presbyterian Podcast" put up by three guys who clearly have way to much free time on their hands.

It includes an interview I did last week with them, but lot's of other cool interviews as well.

Check it out at daio.typepad.com. If it takes awhile to load the interview itself, be patient. It eventually worked even on my low-end computer at home.

Moving toward the future,

Rick

Musings on trade, immigration, and faithfulness

Friends,

With all of the energy around the immigration debate at the moment, many have asked for my opinion. I thought I would post a response I wrote to someone this morning. This is a very cursory reflection,

If you are Presbyterian, and interested in becoming a positive part of the immigration conversation in our church, please send an email to Dana at ddages@ctr.pcusa.org to ask for an invitation to participate in the Immigration network in the PC(USA).

So here are some quick thoughts that are based on my border experience over the last eighteen years:

First, the unspoken conversation underlying our broken immigration policy is our flawed trade policy. Until we create trade policy that makes a legitimate attempt to build up the infrastructure, local economies, and job opportunities that provide a genuine future in Latin American countries with whom we would like to trade, we will continue to see a border and an immigration crisis here in the U.S.

Current trade policy is designed to promote economic growth for multinational corporations by dropping trade tariffs, but the result is a policy that sucks most of the economic resources out of the Latin American country because the driving motivator for the corporations is always going to be access to cheap labor and cheap natural resources. The problem, of course, is that the money leaves the communities, and although the workers often do get a steady paycheck, none of the profits remain to be re-invested in the community itself. (Note that this is no different than the arguments taking place in many of our communities about “big-box stores” that wipe out local businesses.)

Though no one has really asked me, it seem to me that the elegant solution would be to insist that if we sign a trade agreement with any country, we will concurrently sign legislation allowing the free and open movement of workers back and forth between our country and theirs. (Think about the way it currently works between states in the U.S.) I would note that this is not only good theology, it's also Capitalism 101. The ability of the worker to move for a better job is supposed to create a pressure that will drive up wages, and a "rising tide will lift all boats." That's not what's going on with trade policy we're developing in our hemisphere, where we allow capital and products to cross borders, but not workers.

Some folks respond that then “everyone would come here.” That’s probably true, which suggests that we would be much more intentional about designing trade legislation designed to create sustainable communities from which the immigrants are originating, offering them a legitimate choice to stay where they are because they can actually support their families without migrating to do so.

Second, we could solve many of our immigration problems very quickly with a good, readily accessible visa program for any Mexican or Central American who shows up at our border with a passport and a clean bill of health. As far as I'm concerned, I'd even be willing to see a hefty fee of $500 to $1,000 to cover administrative costs, since migrants are typically mortgaging everything they own or entering into indentured servitude to pay several times that to smugglers in order to get across the border right now. Once those folks are fully documented, it means that they are paying taxes. This is how we solve a serious problem of lack of infrastructure that exists in many communities that have been overwhelmed by undocumented migrants. If we want hospitals, schools, community security and transportation systems that create good quality of life in our communities, the answer is to use the tax base to put those systems in place, the same we our country has been doing that for decades.

Further, the church community has continually insisted, and will continue to insist, that any documentation program must provide the ability to reunite families, allow workers the ability to move independently to look for work (so that they don’t become a captive, “slave” labor force for an employer who can threaten them with deportation), and the ability to work toward citizenship if they are solid members of the community.

Finally, until these macro problems are solved, churches must find out where migrants are and support them. To be without documents in our country today is to be at extreme risk. It will take great courage and serious commitment for our churches to stand against the “anti-immigrant” lunacy that currently is infecting our country and insist that we will live the gospel values of welcoming the stranger and caring for the dispossessed.

I hope that you, like I, have been moved by the sight of several million people who have been demonstrating peacefully over the past few months to let us know that they are here, they are doing critical work this country depends on, and they only desire to be full and productive members of our community.

Peace to you,

Rick

A sermon from Havana

Friends,

I recently returned from Cuba. I thought that some of you might appreciate a copy of the final sermon I preached there at First Presbyterian Church of Havana. If you are a Spanish speaker, you can listen to the audio at the following website: www.prccuba.org. I didn't follow my outline word for word, and this is my hurried translation from English to Spanish, but it is quite close.



Reading from John: 12:20 – 33

Sir, We want to see Jesus!

I studied Spanish during a season of Lent almost twenty years ago. I’ll never forget the experience, which had a great impact on me. Each week there was a vigil in a different Catholic Church in the villages surrounding the city of Antigua. The people would create beautiful carpets made of sawdust died different colors, carpets that were so finely constructed that they looked almost oriental. Everyone would bring fruit and vegetables and flowers to offer during this important time of marking the season of Lent, and they would vigil most of the night in prayer and song in preparation – and act of faithful remembrance in preparation for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Then, on Maundy Thursday, all of the people of Antigua stayed up all night, and many families constructed their own beautiful, sawdust carpets in the street in front of their homes. Later, at daybreak, we all gathered in one of the ancient convents destroyed by earthquake over one hundred years ago, and as the sun rose, men dressed as Roman soldiers entered the inner courtyard on horseback and arrested Jesus from our midst. Then, we formed a great procession, following a huge, wooden platform with the figure of Jesus dragging his cross up Calvary, carried by more than one hundred men. As we followed the rest of the procession, we walked through the streets of Antigua, trampling the carpets so laboriously prepared during the long night before.

I supposed that that after all of the focus on the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion, that the service marking the resurrection on Easter Sunday morning would be significant, indeed. However, when I attended Mass at the large Cathedral on the square in Antigua that Sunday morning, I was surprised to find a service that felt fairly typical, with little celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. It made me realize that for Catholic Guatemalans, Lent was all about the pain and suffering of the crucifixion, with little or no emphasis on the empty tomb. Perhaps their focus grows out of their experience of five hundred years of conquest and close to forty years of a bloody civil war in their country.

This is a dramatic contrast to my own experience of Lent. In the church of comfort and privilege in which I grew up, there was little or no emphasis on the crucifixion, by Easter Sunday morning was a marvelous celebration! For us, Lent was primarily about the empty tomb and the resurrection, with little or no focus on the suffering experienced by Jesus in his crucifixion.

A few months later, I arrived on the U.S./Mexico border where I joined Southside Presbyterian Church, which is the only Presbyterian Church I’ve ever attended that has a crucifix on the wall in the sanctuary instead of the traditional cross. Over the years I’ve learned that this is a theologically intentional statement. This church has learned from its experience with Central American refugees over the years that you can’t get to the moment of resurrection without passing the way of the pain and suffering of the cross.

This seems to me to speak to my experience of the Cuban church during my travels here this week. This is a church that has passed through incredibly difficult moments of crucifixion, in which the church of the 1970’s and 1980’s almost died on the vine.

It makes me think that during those difficult years for the church, there were clearly people who were brave and courageous, much like the witness of the Greeks in this passage from John this morning, who came to Philip saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” This was no easy task for them either, was it? Remember that this was a moment in which Jesus was hiding from the religious authorities, (not because he was afraid but because his time had not yet come), and they were seeking to arrest and try both him and Lazarus. Seeking out Jesus at this moment demanded great courage.

Perhaps, that’s the kind of courage that was shown by those of you who helped keep the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Cuba alive during those incredibly difficult years. I’m told that the seminary was largely empty and that most folks were afraid to go to church during those years, and yet there were some of you who kept the church alive in spite of all of the challenges that you confronted. You, like those Greeks who approached Philip, were saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

And now, some fifteen to twenty years later, many others have joined that chorus of those who remained faithful during those difficult years.

I see it in the young people who are energizing each of the congregations that I have visited this week. In them, I see a church that is insisting, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

I see it in the faithful of this congregation here in the center of Havana who have committed to come and open the sanctuary each day so that anyone who desires can come in for moments of prayer and respite and escape the pressures of life in this city. This is another way of saying “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

I see it in the growth that I say happening in almost every congregation we visited this week, and made obvious in the fact that so many of your churches have taken on huge renovation and building projects as new members have begun to knock on your doors. So many of your churches, like the one at Sagua La Grande, have insisted that God isn’t finished with your yet.Yet another way to say, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

I hear that chorus in the churches I’ve visited this week that understand their mission to reach out to those in need all around them. Several of the churches I visited are cooking meals for shut-ins who are disabled, and others are cleaning laundry for older folks who can’t get out and about to do it themselves any more. I felt that witness of courage so strongly as I encountered churches and projects designed to support persons with Aids and HIV, offering them a safe place to gather and support one another. Each of these is another expression of that insistence, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

I felt the courage also as I learned of small group Bible studies that are taking place in your homes – forty-three of them right now in this congregation, and dozens more in many of the other churches I’ve visited this week. This is another sign that you are a people who will continue to say, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

Finally, I felt the desire to see Jesus in the young Pastors I met this week who are filling the pulpits in many of the churches I’ve been to. They are clear that, in spite of the many hardships that exist, they are called by Jesus to create the new church for the future of Cuba. Another way of insisting, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

Sisters and Brothers, in this anniversary celebration of forty years since the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Cuba became independent, a celebration of one hundred years since the building of this church here in Havana, and twenty years since the renewal of the partnership between our two denominations, we say once again with one another, “Senor, we want to see Jesus.

But celebration of courage isn’t the whole story for us, nor was it the entire story of the text before us this morning either. Jesus is clear in this text as he prepares his disciples for the difficult moments still to come, that he is calling us to sacrifice and to take serious risks. Jesus said, “if you serve me, follow me.” This is no easy task. After all, Jesus wasn’t crucified for being sweet. Rather, he was crucified because he was calling into question the fundamental underpinnings of his own society. He was questioning the unfair structures of oppression that marginalized the vast majority of people and pushed them to the edges of the society. Make no mistake, Jesus was a threat to both the religious and the political leaders of his time, and that ‘s why we’re remembering his trial and his death on a cross during this Lenten season some 2000 years later.

Jesus was insistent. “If you serve me – follow me.” Follow me through the pain and the suffering of the cross, follow me to the margins.

I’m not sure I can speak with any authority about your experience of the cross here in Cuba – or what it would take to be genuine followers of Jesus in this context as you follow the “Jesus of the cross,” but I can reflect on our task as followers of the Lenten Jesus in our own culture. Here are the critical questions I believe that our church must ask:

How will we, a church of privilege and wealth and power in the most powerful and wealthiest nation on earth, respond to the growing gap between us and 2/3 of the world’s population? Every day the members of our churches are more and more separated from our sisters and brothers around the world. How will we respond to our sisters and brothers who don’t have enough to feed their children? Do we have the courage to stand with this kind of Jesus who insists, “if you serve me, follow me” – even to the margins.

How will we as a church respond to the growing conviction that terror rules our world and that we must dominate the entire the world, even attacking without provocation others whom we think might attempt to harm us. Are we willing, as the church of Jesus Christ, to insist that our security comes from fundamental Christian values of love and care from one another. Genuine security, we must insist, will come only when we free ourselves from the conviction that it is reasonable to impose our will, in the interests of our security, all over the world?

“if you serve me, follow me.”

How will stand against our fear of other and our xenophobia when it comes to receiving the stranger? Will we stand – together with Jesus - with the migrants and immigrants who are being cast out in our society? I believe that Jesus is entirely serious and he is speaking directly to us on this matter when he says, “if you serve me, follow me.” During Jesus entry into Jerusalem, it is quite clear that he is suggesting we must follow the way of the cross. Jesus is not playing around. His words are not easy and they offer little comfort to those in my own church during these troubled times. But what if he means it?

“if you serve me, follow me.”

Having named some of the challenges we will confront as church in the United States, it isn’t hard to name some of the more obvious challenges in your own context here in Cuba. These will be your own challenges, along with many others that I know you can name.

How will the Church of Cuba respond to an obvious sense of malaise among your young people? It is clear to me after a few short days that many, many of your younger generation feel no genuine sense of hope. Why get an education if there is no way to ever get ahead? What future is there for us here?

And, how will your church respond to and critique the development of what I have heard some call the “double economy” here in Cuba? In a land where there has been so clear a commitment to basic equality, fairness and equity, it seems clear to me that your church also will have to the respond to the reality of economic “haves” and “have-nots.” The gap between those who have access to the new economy and those who will never have access is only likely to grow and grow.

“if you serve me, follow me.”

And how will your churches respond to the growing lack of even the most basic services that everyone knows is a reality in your country. What is the role of the church in articulating a critique in a country where housing is substandard and overcrowded, hospitals are without medicine, and schools are underfunded? How will we create a church presence that will insist that it will stand for the fundamental values of Jesus Christ in your country as well as in mine?

Brothers and Sisters, as you celebrate these important anniversaries, I expect that you, like my sisters and brothers in the church in the United States, are asking yourselves how you also will take that basic demand of Jesus seriously, “if you serve me, follow me!” Your challenges, like ours, are huge.

As I return to the United States, I commit to you that I will continue to challenge my own people about what it will take to be faithful in our context. And, I will share the open, alive and wonderful spirit that is so strong in your church – a spirit that gives lie to the statements by my own government that there is no religious liberty here to have church services or to live ones faith, and therefore there is no church. But I will also say to my people that you, like us, face great challenges in your own church. Your church in your context here in Cuba, is also struggling to be faithful to that call to follow Jesus.

Together, we can create a world that will honor our God. Together, we can insist that we will find the courage, together, to say:

“Senor, Queremos ver a Jesus.” May God bless all of us in responding to the challenges put before us by our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Rick Ufford-Chase,
First Presbyterian Church, Havana, Cuba
Standing room only (more than three hundred people present)
April 2, 2006

Friends,

Many of you will remember the writing I did last May about my three weeks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (you can find it in the archive of the blog under May, 2005).

There has been a grass-roots effort from the Congo Mission Network, with some support from the Worldwide Ministries Division, to bring a choir made up of members from our two partner denominations in the DR Congo for several weeks of touring this summer. I am posting a note from the Mission Network below, for two reasons.

First - if they are going to be anywhere near where you are, don't miss this opportunity to hear the best (without qualification) choir you will ever hear, and to learn about how we can be supporting our partner churches in the Congo as they confront overwhelming challenges.

Second - there are a few empty spots left on the tour. Check out the scheduling holes below, and if there's one that you and your church can fill, please do so.

This is the best of what church is going to be in the future, Presbyterians! This entire project has been organized and funded by volunteers across the church who care a lot about the Congo because many of them have been there. Our colleagues in the national office gave some support and agreed to follow the energy of the group. This is a great example of how the new mission patterns are going to work.

Presbyterians are raising the bar on what it means to be faithful. Please help if you can!

Rick

The Congo Choir Tour is a new type of mission partnership with theDemocratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Because there are more than 38,000 people dying monthly in the DRC due to the effects of civil war, including poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDS and the fact that the Congolese have not had a democratic election for more than 40 years, the Congo Mission Network (CMN) of PC(USA) Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) has heard God's call to action.

By the grace of God, the CMN has launched the Congo Choir Tour in partnership with the Presbyterian churches of the DRC to bring 12 Congolese singers/drummers from the various Congolese presbyteries to the USA from June to August, 2006. This Congo Choir will be part of Opening Worship at the 2006 GA Meeting inBirmingham, AL in the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley (named for the first Presbyterian missionaries to the Congo in 1891). They will also perform at the Peacemaking Program 25th Anniversary Dinner and during the WMD GA presentation time. In addition the choir will perform at Our Cultural Connections in Sarasota, FL and at the Black Expo in Indianapolis, IN. We hope that they will appear at the PW Churchwide Gathering in Louisville, KY and they will tour various cities/presbyteries in the eastern part of the USA.

The MISSION of the Congo Choir Tour (CCT) is to "celebrate and share the musical gifts and cultures of the Congolese people. The U.S. visit will provide a means to inspire a more hopeful view of this large nation of Central Africa, while encouraging participation and aid, nurturing self-sufficiency, and promoting health, education and well-being in the DRC. The tour will raise public appreciation for the challenges facing communities in DR Congo and their dreams for a better life for their diverse people."

The CCT Planning Team is eager to find congregations to host the CCT in some intermediary locations along the tour. Hosting the CCT will involve providing housing for 15 persons with willing families, an evening meal, breakfast and taking a free-will offering to support the cost of bringingthe CCT to the USA or to support education in the DRC through UPRECO, the Presbyterian University of Congo. In return, those receiving the CCT will hear some wonderful music, learn about the Democratic Republic of Congo, and be blessed by the faith of the Congolese.

Please note the routes and dates below:

From Wilmington, DE to Louisville, KY for the night of July 7
From Indianapolis, IN to Baltimore, MD for the night of July 17 and/or July18
From Raleigh, NC to Birmingham, AL for the night of August 8

If your church is on the routes mentioned above and you think that there is support in your congregation for such an adventure, please let me know.

Sue FricksNational Coordinator of the CCT
sdfricks@mindspring.com

A Presbyterian Creation Conservation Corps?

An open letter to Presbyterians for Restoring Creation and the Presbyterian Church Camp and Conference Association:

Friends,

I would like to challenge you to consider an idea that has been rolling around in my head for some time. After being with the PRC gathering at Silver Lake last summer, and visiting many of our Camp and Conference Centers over the last two years, I am convinced that there is an opportunity to fill a significant void in leadership development in our churches, and possibly to provide renewed energy in both the PRC and the PCCCA.

I’d like to see us develop a “Presbyterian Creation Conservation Corps” for juniors and seniors in high school. The idea would be to recruit the PCC members from among students who have distinguished themselves in our camping programs and/or as strong advocates for restoring creation. I would gather them together regionally or nationally (depending on the number of participants) for two weeks at the beginning of the summer for intensive training (Biblical study, analysis of environmental protection concerns, skill-building for alternative technologies, land reclamation, organizing skills, etc.).

Following the training, the participants would fan out to our participating Camp and Conference Centers across the country for an eight-week, intensive, volunteer experience. Each Camp would have a focus for a particular project of land conservation that particular year (e.g. land erosion projects, wetlands protection, home-made solar hot water heaters, water purification, composting toilets, etc.), and they would go to work. In addition to the projects they’re given, Their tasks might include educating campers and coordinating events that would be open to other adults who want to come and work on the project.

The PRC would need to help us to design a curriculum of study (theological, academic, spiritual, and practical) that the students would begin during their orientation week together, and then continue during the summer (we might even have a weekly internet chat or a yahoo group for the PCC interns to remain in touch with one another throughout the summer.)

Following the summer, the students would be expected to commit to some agreed upon number of educational events or even a demonstration project at churches or in their presbytery.

Over time, I wonder if our camps could begin to design camping opportunities starting with elementary or Junior High students that would prepare them for (and entice them into) this opportunity. For instance, our camps could design curriculum to start preparing our kids with a basic, foundational eco-theology and a way to get their hands dirty by the time they are ten or eleven. By Junior High, they could be coming to a camp that has a particular theme and project – like building a composting toilet, for instance. By early high school, they could be mentored by the older high school kids who are already experienced PCC member/campers.

The Rationale:

During my moderatorial term, I have met many high school students who are anxious to serve God in some active way. They are too young for our Young Adult Volunteer programs, and certainly too young for some of the higher risk, accompaniment work that we are doing in places like Colombia, but they are still anxious to “do mission.”

There is a huge need for a camping renaissance that will engage the next generation, and there is currently little that distinguishes Presbyterian camping from the myriad other camping opportunities available to kids today. Perhaps a Presbyterian Conservation Corps could provide a unifying theme for that renaissance in Presbyterian camping, while allowing each individual camp to show great creativity in how it designs its own program around the a clear Presbyterian commitment to eco-theology. Sure would be nice for Presbyterian camps as a whole to be known for something distinctive, wouldn’t it?

Further, I would name four major challenges that the church confronts in the world today: 1) captivation by secular culture that corrupts our faith or causes many people to ignore the church entirely as a way to be faithful to God, 2) the destruction of our environment and God’s good creation that sustains us, 3) overwhelming violence, and 4) endemic poverty. This project would be designed to disciple a new generation of church leaders to respond directly to the first two of those concerns, and it would potentially create a fair possibility for raising awareness in that new generation of leaders about the second two.

I also wonder what the synergy might be for evangelizing/discipling kids who are unchurched (kind of Young Life style) into this program? It seems like this could be a way to reach out to kids who are disaffected with church, but who really want to make a difference in the world.

How would we pay for it? There are lots of questions, but here are a few ideas to get the juices flowing.

I would think we could ask the camps to put up the cost of room and board for the campers, and many camps could probably afford a small stipend of $500 or so for the summer. I would ask PCCCA to coordinate a rotation of camp facilities for the orientation, and ask each camp to take a turn at subsidizing the program by providing room and board for the orientation. (up to twenty or twenty-five students – if it got bigger than that, I would recommend regional gatherings to keep costs low and the setting more intimate for group building.) I would ask the students to raise any transportation costs for the orientation and the summer experience, and possibly to help raise the stipend itself. (I would keep the stipend pretty low the first year, and then double it if they come back the second year.)

How would we get it off the ground?

What if we formed a task force of college-aged young adults and asked them to work with a couple of reps from PCCCA and PRC to meet by phone and email to work out the kinks and design the program. It might need at least one coordinator (depending on the number of PCC Interns) to coordinate the project. Perhaps we could look to ten presbyteries to put up $300 a piece to pay a stipend, and asked the coordinator to match it through his or her own fundraising. That would probably create enough money for travel, a tiny administrative budget, and a reasonable stipend for the summer.

It is probably too late to begin even a small program for this summer, but there is plenty of time for a task force to put a program together to begin the summer of 2007. I’ve tried to give enough detail here to capture folks imaginations, but I expect that many of my ideas would be modified as the planning task force put it together. My point is that we probably don’t need to go raise a whole bunch of money if we’re willing to talk about in-kind contributions and asking our potential PCCC members to step up and help with the fundraising from their own churches. I’m pretty confident we could get ten students in a heartbeat, and that it would grow like crazy from there.

Anyway, just to prove I’m not sleeping when long periods of time go by without word on the blog.

What do you think PCCCA and PRC?

For the next generation that wants to serve God,

Rick

Friends,

I've been feeling guilty about my inability to keep up with the blog for the last month. I just finished a nineteen day itineration, most of which was in Ohio and Michigan. One amazing, wonderful group of people after another - sometimes several in one day. On top of all the sensory overload, most of my travel was by car, which is not good if one keeps up with blogging by typing while on planes.

Anyway, today I'm headed for Puerto Rico for a long weekend, and then I go on to Cuba to visit with our sisters and brothers in the church there. I'll try to do some writing during the coming week.

I came across this email, from Emily - a young adult volunteer in Miami, and thought folks might enjoy her energy and spirit as I do. Read on.

Blessings,

Rick



Family, Friends, Fellow Young Adult Volunteer's…

I don't think that I am alone in the feeling that time is flying by as my year as a YAV continues. There are so many things to be excited about, and so many things to be done, and it's hard to stop and realize that we are in the here and now, so focus!

In February, 22 youth and five adults went to the Casting Crowns concert at the University of Miami. Only a handful of the youth had heard of them, but they were excited nonetheless. Looking across at the two rows on the floor that we inhabited, I was struck by their attention to the speaker, and their reaction to the worship service that we encountered that night. They were so attentive, hanging on every word that Tony Nolan spoke. Afterwards, while we were walking towards the car, singing songs, one of the girls in the youth looked at me and said, "I want to be this excited about God every day, not just after camp or a concert, but I don't know how." My heart leapt! The fact that she was recognizing how fun it can be to worship Christ was amazing. So we spent the next thirty minutes on the way home talking about different ways that one can be excited about Christ every day of the week. What an opportunity! I love the youth at PPUMC. They have seemed to fill a spot in my heart that I hadn't known was empty until I came to Miami. My cup overflows.

Do you ever have moments where you just have to stop what you're doing because you are hit with an overwhelming feeling of just how amazing God is? This happens to me mostly when I'm listening to music or riding in the car, and I don't know what it is, but I just start smiling and my eyes start to fill up with tears because I'm so excited for the things that God is doing and will do in my life and in the world. But why doesn't everyone understand? Why don't people believe? Eternal life! Who wouldn't choose that? It mesmerizes me. The youth laugh at me because the ringer on my phone is a song by Stellar Kart, and when it rings it belts out "Life is good, eternal life is better!" And I just start singing or dancing around a bit. But really, that's exciting, right?!

Youth ministry can be frustrating; I'm not going to lie to you. It's funny, because I don't really get discouraged, I just get frustrated right after a meeting where some people pay attention and some throw pencils across the room the whole time. But then it only takes about five minutes for me to get excited about the next week and doing something different to get their attention, and to show them the love of Christ. One Wednesday night we were sitting around talking about the fact that God sent his only son to die for each one of us, and one of the high school boys was like "That's just ridiculous!" And isn't it? It's ridiculous in the sense that an overwhelming love is given to us through this act, free of charge. The Caring Place kids, while poking each other, sing about how "There's nothing my God cannot do, for you and you and you!" Nothing! Including the fact that He sent his only son to die on the cross for each and every one of us. Sin after sin, up there on that cross. Ridiculous!

Just yesterday Pastor Brian, Jackie and I were talking about youth groups, and I believe that Pastor Brian put the words together beautifully: "There's no such thing as a perfect youth group, and if there is one, it won't be after I join it." Amazing. So true! Who, in their right mind, can envision a perfect youth group when not one of us can claim perfection.

I leave you with some lyrics from the Casting Crowns that always seem to make me tear up, right around "hands and feet." I'm clueless as to why, except maybe it's because I stand in awe of the fact that here I am, small little Emily, yet lifted up in Christ and the work that I am here to do. Of course I continue to struggle in relinquishing everything in my own life to Christ, but I know that is what I strive for, and I know that through that, amazing things will happen.

Lord I give my life
A living sacrifice
To reach a world in need
To be your hands and feet.

Please keep the mission field universal in your prayers, and recognize that there are people of all walks of life and denominations spreading the wonderful Gospel across the world. I even encourage you to find out who some of them are, maybe those whom your church supports, and write to them! Nothing beats knowing you are being prayed for and supported from all over.

Peace,

Emily--

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." John 14:27

Prayers for Peace

Friends,

There is much to pray about this week as we read about violence around the world.

Milton Mejia, General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, and Mauricio Avilez, a young law student who volunteered in the human rights office of the church there until he was jailed for more than four months last year, both received renewed threats against their lives last Friday. The church there continues to insist that they will stand against the violence of all parties and work for a real and lasting peace. Please pray for their safety, and for the emotional and spiritual well-being of their families. You can find a copy of my letter to President Uribe on their behalf at http://www.pcusa.org/oga/newsstories/death-threats.htm.

In Palestine and Israel, there is a great deal of political turmoil in the wake of Prime Minister Sharon's debilitating illness and the Hamas victory. There two, I urge all Presbyterians to pray this week for visionary leaders on both sides of the conflict to renounce all violence and work for peace. This week, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick and I have written to Palestinian leaders to make a bold commitment to provide that kind of visionary leadership. You can see a Presbyterian News Service article about our letters at http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06088.htm. Our call to "pray unceasingly" has never been more important for peace in the Middle East than it is right now.

I now have friends in Pakistan. That means that I can't simply run by reports of increasingly violent protests among Muslims there (regarding the unbelievably inappropriate cartoons published in Denmark) without thinking about my new friends in the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan, our PC(USA) mission personnel and their families, and the many Muslims I met there who are as deeply committed as I am to nonviolence and peace. Please pray, today and in the coming days, for all those who are affected by the violence in Pakistan.

I had breakfast last week with Colonel Brenson Bishop of the U.S. Army, who is a chaplain currently serving at the VA Hospital in Louisville, KY. Regardless of our deep differences of opinion about the War in Iraq, hearing stories like the ones that Bren Bishop shared with me about the commitment of both soldiers and their families can move all of us to a shared commitment to pray for peace in that troubled region. Even as we pray for our soldiers, and for those 250 non-Iraqis (like our Christian Peacemaker Teams www.cpt.org brothers) who are currently being held, we must also pray constantly for an end to the daily violence that is affecting countless Iraqis as well.

I spent yesterday on the Gulf Coast in Southern Mississippi. When I was here in late September, the destruction boggled the mind, and signs of hope were very hard to come by. This time, though the task of rebuilding this region will clearly extend years into the future, I was moved by the high level of commitment and organization and the depth of the partnership between the Presbytery of Mississippi and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. I met work groups from Albany, New York and from upstate Wisconsin. I saw God at work through our church. The crisis of lives turned upside by Katrina, Rita and Wilma also demands our prayers.

I may have written to you before that I heard Professor Brian Blount from Princeton talk about prayer at the General Assembly in Richmond. He said that his mother taught him that we don't get down on our knees to pray unless we are ready to get up and go to work for what we've prayed for. In every one of these crises that are on my mind this morning, there are ways for Presbyterians and other people of faith to offer that kind of prayer that leads to action.

I invite you to join me this day, together and on our knees, in prayer for sisters and brothers around the world.

Rick

Ignorance ends where relationship begins

Friends,

You know, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my own ignorance. As an American, if you had asked me to describe Pakistan to you before my visit here, about all I could have come up with would have been a vague impression that it is a very dangerous place that is a breeding ground for terrorism.

Four short days later, I have friendships here. I’ve gotten to know pastors and seminary students. I’ve visited schools and met with leaders of the church and clinics and outreach ministries. I’ve learned about the incredible compassion and generosity that Pakistanis have shown one another in the wake of the earthquake. I’ve hung out with some of our long-term mission workers here, and played with their kids.

I’m embarrassed. This culture is so rich, and as one person sadly put it, “Pakistanis have been known around the world for the way they have defined the word “hospitality, but all we can think about in the U.S. is terrorism.”

Ignorance ends where relationship begins.

Rick

To learn more about our work in each region, including the Central, South and Southeast Asia region that includes both India and Pakistan, go to http://www.pcusa.org/worldwide/

There's an amazing resource of letters from our Mission Workers around the world that can help make people in other countries more real to you. Check it out at http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/

Youth Rally in Pakistan

This one is short.

On Saturday the 21rst, I was invited to spend the day at a Youth Rally organized by the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP) and the PCP Education Board that manages dozens of schools across the country. The even was held in Lahore, on the campus of Foreman Christian College, and the theme was “Challenges facing the Christian Youth of Pakistan.” Their focus was on what it means to be a minority church, how to live harmoniously in a multicultural society, living peacefully together, responding to natural disasters, and educating themselves.

Once again, there was a huge tent of brightly colored fabrics set up on the campus, with chairs for at least three hundred people. Once again, there was the obligatory ceremony of being garlanded. This time, however, dozens of young people had prepared a program for our delegation that lasted more than three hours.

A young pastor preached from a text in First Timothy, exhorting the young people to recognize that they must work hard to honor the gift of education that they are receiving, and reminding them that as a Christian minority their conduct must be above reproach. “In a country where Christians make up roughly three percent of the population,” Philip said, “people are watching their behavior and whether they live what they believe.”

Several students at Foreman made speeches as well, and then there were a series of skits put on by different classes from several of the Education Board’s Girls Schools (some Boys schools were represented as well, but they weren’t active participants). One school did a series of dances, in costume, from different regions around the country. It made me think of similar “baile folklorico” events I’ve seen from the different states of Mexico.

The skit that moved me the most was one in which a group of older girls acted the what took place with the recent earthquake, and then worked together to provide medical care to the victims and to reconstruct the houses, all to the tune of the song, in English, “Make the World a Better Place,” that was so popular a couple of years ago. It made me think of my visit to the seminary at Gujranwala a couple of days before, where we learned that the students of the seminary had disrupted their studies throughout the semester to travel with material aid to a village in the mountains that was wiped out in the disaster. Many of them stayed for days at a time in order to act as translators for the relief organizations that were working there, and I was told that one student was so moved by the tragedy that he took a one-year leave of absence to live and work in that village.

As the event began to wind down, we could smell food cooking over open fires just on the other side of the tent wall. Hospitality in Pakistan appears to begin with garlands and end with food, every single time. However, before I could eat, I posed with dozens of classes to have our picture taken together. Being the moderator, on that day, was a great joy. For our Pakistani partners, it means more than we in the U.S. can understand to have a visible expression of our solidarity with them.

These kids care about making a difference in the world, and our support of the PCP and it’s related schools is preparing them to be able to do so. I felt both gratified and challenged by this visible expression of the importance of that partnership.

By the way, Presbyterians reading this should know that Foreman Christian College (FCC), where the event was held, was nationalized in 1973 and operated for thirty-one years by the Pakistani Government. By all accounts, it was a disaster that drove the school into the ground. However, in 2003 the Government agreed to de-nationalize the school, and it is now being operated by an independent FCCBoard of Trustees. Out of 3,000 students, close to three hundred are Christian. Out of 180 faculty, roughly one third are now Christian. The “Islamic Studies” department has been replaced by “Religious Studies,” and all students are required to learn about both Islam and Christianity. The government, US AID, and many Presbyterians in the U.S. are re-investing millions of dollars to bring the physical plant back up to high standards, and the mood among students, faculty and administrators is one of excitement and enthusiasm.

Supporting Foreman, and supporting the PCP as it works to denationalize and rehabilitate other schools that were founded by our missionaries, is one clear way to support the next generation of both Christians and Muslims who will be tasked with building a society of tolerance and opportunity.

From Lahore,

Rick

On Presbyterian-Muslim relationships in Sangla Hill, Pakistan

I had never heard of Sangla Hill until I arrived in Pakistan. As is true in the rest of the country, Muslims make up the vast majority of the population in the town of Sangla Hill, but there are also strong Presbyterian and Catholic Churches there, and on the outskirts of town the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP) has a large girl’s school founded many years ago by missionaries.

Two months ago an altercation broke out between a couple of teenaged boys. There are different stories of exactly what took place, but the bottom line is that one of the boys was Muslim and the other was Christian. Most versions of the story agree that the argument eventually led to the partial burning of a Koran, and the incident escalated into a mob action by a group of Muslims. By the end of the afternoon, the Presbyterian Church and the pastor’s home had been completely destroyed by deliberate acts of arson, and much of the Catholic property in Sangla Hill was damaged as well. Through an act of God’s grace that no one can fully explain, the Presbyterian school where over one hundred girls were staying escaped all damage, though some of the angry demonstrators actually made it onto the property. All of that is important backdrop, but it isn’t the point of the story.

I visited Sangla Hill on Friday the 20th of January. The context for my visit was complicated by the U.S. attack in the Darjour Agency on the border with Afghanistan, in which eighteen people were killed, most of them women and children who appear to have no connection whatsoever to the person who was the stated object of the U.S. attack. For the Christians who are a tiny minority in this country, attacks like this one can make life very difficult, since many Pakistani’s associate the U.S. government with the Christian faith proclaimed by our President and the overwhelming majority of Americans who profess the Christian faith as well.

As a result of the Darjour missile attack, the Government of Pakistan (which the U.S. considers an ally in the war on terror) was reluctant to allow me, as the Moderator of the PC(USA), to visit Darfour. The last thing they wanted was the possibility of another blow-up at such a sensitive time. However, about mid-morning on Friday we were given permission to make the visit. The conditions for that permission became obvious to me as we stopped on the outskirts of town and received a police escort that accompanied us throughout our time in Sangla Hill.

After visiting the school, which is well run and would make the missionaries who founded it quite proud, we drove back into town. The crowd of Christians in the streets to greet us was huge, so we had to get out of the van we were traveling in and walk the last block to the church. People threw rose petals at our feet as we walked (except for the kids, who had huge grins on their faces as they pelted us with them instead), and there was a huge sign on the front of the church that welcomed us to the community. As we walked through the street, I neither saw nor perceived any animosity from the Muslims who lined the streets just beyond the crowd that was welcoming us. There were smiles on people’s faces, and many waved as we walked by.

The church is a large, adobe brick structure, perhaps thirty feet across and more than sixty feet long. Though the walls are still standing and the metal roof is intact, all of the windows and their frames were entirely burned, and all of the contents of the church were lost. The walls were black with soot, and I’m told that the building will have to be razed due to the serious structural damage it sustained.

As we were led into what remains of the Sanctuary, we paused to remove our shoes outside church, as is the custom in many of the churches in India and Pakistan. Inside, old carpets covered the floor and there was a makeshift, carpet-covered stage at the front of the room. It was difficult to get there though, because the room was jam-packed with people sitting on the floor. Men, women, and dozens of children; I bet there were at least five hundred people crammed into that little building. As I stepped up onto the stage, I pulled my Bible out of my backpack, along with a small, wooden, hand-painted cross from Central America that I have carried in my bag for at least ten years.

The service was what I had come to expect. There was the singing of the Psalms, accompanied by a choir with an old fashioned, accordion-bellows, style piano and an instrument that looked like a musical recorder with a small keyboard. The pastor welcomed our delegation from the United States as well as the church officials who were accompanying us from the PCP. Of course, we all had to be garlanded, and then Edwin, Raafat and I were each given the gift of a beautiful, handmade, Pakistani rug. As the speeches were translated, I learned that Christian and Muslim leaders in the community had moved quickly to enter into a formal reconciliation and to restore a sense of peace in the community. The government has agreed to pay the expenses to rebuild the church and the parsonage, though replacing the contents of the buildings will be the responsibility of the church. The small podium we used as a pulpit was a gift from the Catholic church.

When it was my turn to speak, I unrolled my carpet on the stage and stepped onto it in my stocking feet. I reflected that even if the church had burned entirely, we would still be worshiping on Holy Ground. I promised that I would share their story in the United States, as a witness both to the resilience of the members of that church and as a testimony to the power of love and care for one another among the great majority of Sangla Hill as they rebuild and repair their relationships in the wake of the violence and destruction of a relatively small handful of individuals.

I also asked the Pastor, a tall, thin man wearing a somewhat threadbare, pinstripe suit, to step forward. I showed my Central American cross to the congregation and explained that those Salvadoran crosses - with their simple, hand-painted scenes of hope painted on them - have come to represent the power of God to overcome even the hatred and violence that killed hundreds of thousands of people in their countries in the 1980’s. I applauded the efforts of that church to do the same, and then placed the cross, with its worn silk cord, around the Pastor’s neck. There was great applause as the pastor and I embraced.

After the service, we were hosted for a meal in the home of a Muslim who is a great friend of one of the elders in the church. We were also were joined by a Muslim representative to the regional government. Every conversation we had was an expression of solidarity and commitment to one another, and for me it was a great sign of the fundamental goodness that exists in the vast majority of the people everywhere I’ve been. Events of violence, like the one that took place at Sanla Hill, offer an opportunity to live Jesus’ absurd conviction that we should love even our enemies. Perhaps his wisdom was that in doing so we rediscover that we weren’t enemies in the first place.

Please pray with me for the Christians and Muslims of Sangla Hill.

Rick

On practicing hospitality in India and Pakistan

Kohlapur, India

Although Kohlapur is a small city, the streets were still crowded as we drove toward the city from the airport. I was expecting to go directly to the offices of the Diocese of the Church of North India (CNI) in order to receive a briefing on the visits we would make during the day. Instead, our driver stopped the car on the busy street and we were invited to get out and join throng of people who clearly had been waiting for us for some time. As we stepped into line, a band began to play in front of us, and there was a group of pastors who were all wearing their robes (men and women) just behind us. The crowd surged forward and fashioned itself into a long line, five people abreast and several hundred yards long, and I realized that we had just joined a parade, complete with our own police officer to attempt to manage the traffic.

After walking about a kilometer with folks waving at us from the side of the street, the parade turned to the left into a dusty lot about the size of a football field. There were old buildings scattered on the back of the property, and off to the left there was a large tent made with billowing red, yellow, purple, and pink fabrics. Leading into the tent was a red carpet (I’m not making this up), and inside there were several hundred chairs facing a large, elevated stage that was also covered with carpet. Edwin, Raafat and I were led to the stage and seated where we looked out over a crowd that was standing room only.

There were the obligatory speeches of welcome, and a ceremonious presentation as red turbans were placed on each of our heads, we were each given a ring, and then we were invited forward to be garlanded. As we stood at the front of the stage, three women stepped forward and each placed a beautiful garland of freshly cut flowers around one of our necks. As I started to turn and return to my chair, however, I realized that others were lining up with their own garlands. One by one, three people from every church and ministry came forward and placed another garland around our necks. Eventually, we were wearing dozens of them, and they were piled up so high around my neck that I could no long see. I have a marvelous picture in which only my clapping hands are visible; my head has disappeared behind the flowers.

Just when I thought that I couldn’t take any more, all of the flowers were removed and I thought we were finished. However, there were still dozens of people lined up with more flowers, and we proceeded to load us up once again until we could no longer see the crowd, all of whom had broad smiles and were laughing as we struggled with the weight and the bulk of the flowers.

Ludhiana, India:

Shazia was a vivacious, articulate young woman in her early twenties who came with the delegation that met us at the train station as we in the city of Ludhiana in the Punjab region of northern India. There was a sparkle in her eyes as she educated us about the food we were being served in the restaurant where they took us for dinner, and she teased us about our inability to handle the spicy food of the Punjab. As we learned about our agenda for the following two days, she and her father Unys, who works for the Diocese, insisted that we must come to their home for tea on Sunday evening.

Tea is an event in India and Pakistan. It feels as if most of my itinerary for our nine days in the two countries involved being offered tea by everyone we met. I guess I expected something similar when I arrived at Shazia’s house – an hour of conversation in the living room as we sipped cups of tea together.

When we arrived, we were greeted by Shazia, her father and mother, and her younger brother who is studying at the university. (I must apologize because I’ve misplaced my notes from this part of my trip and therefore I don’t have all their names.) There was also a second family, a younger man who also worked for the Diocese, his wife, and their two young daughters. It was a little uncomfortable at first as we made small talk over soda and cookies. Then, however, the two families decided to sing. The Christians in this part of the world have a wonderful tradition of singing the psalms. Shazia’s younger brother set up an electric keyboard, and then Shazia and her mother led everyone in singing. After several songs, we began to try to think of songs that we all knew, and I eventually discovered that Shazia’s mother and I had in common a great many of the songs I learned back in vacation Bible School. All of us began to smile as we dredged up songs like “Father Abraham,” “I’ve got the Love of Jesus down in my heart,” and we were laughing together when we got to the version of “Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Alleluia, Praise ye the Lord” where we assigned the parts and each group had to stand only while they were singing.

After well over half an hour of singing, we slipped back into conversation as we sipped tea together. Each of us shared about our families, and I was fascinated to hear Shazia’s mother and father speak of meeting one another for the first time on the day they were married. The love that they have for one another is obvious, and I found yet another of my preconceptions slipping out of my grasp as I though about the ways in which my wife Kitty and I really knew so little about one another or what our married life would be like before the wedding. Perhaps arranged marriages, still very common in India, aren’t the forced, oppressive arrangements that I must admit I’ve always imagined them to be. Stereotypes die where friendships and relationships begin.

Finally, Shazia insisted that we must dance. She turned on the computer in the corner and first selected Indian music, and we watched her as she danced. Then, confirming my worst fears, she insisted that the rest of us dance as well. I was the one at the high school dances who stood in the background and tried to disappear. Since I don’t drink alcohol, I’ve never quite been able to find that mental state in which it doesn’t really matter what other people are thinking. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become a little more graceful about my discomfort, but my insecurity persists. The only dancing I feel confident about are the jitterbug moves I learned from a girl who took pity on me in the seventh grade.

That’s right, we found the closest thing to rock and roll that we could, and I tried to teach Shazia to jitterbug while everyone else looked on with great amusement. I suppose it would have been no less embarrassing trying to waltz in the tiny living room, had I ever learned to do so. What was even more embarrassing was that Edwin, my colleague from the GAC who comes from Puerto Rico and who also insisted he couldn’t dance, finally was talked into some of the best salsa I’ve seen in a long while.

After close to three hours of “tea,” it was finally time to leave. As we hugged, it felt like the distance between India and the U.S. had almost entirely disappeared and the cultural distance had melted away as well. I long for this kind of experience for everyone I know in the United States, for when we build those kind of boundary crossing friendships, nothing can remain the same.

Gujranwalla, Pakistan:

The Presbyterian Church of Pakistan has a seminary in Gujranwalla, a city located about an hour’s drive away from Lahore. On our first day in Pakistan there was a great celebration at the seminary that was attended by pastors, lay leaders, and the directors of the ten different institutions and ministries (many founded by Presbyterian Missionaries from the U.S.) that are related to the church.

Each time I’ve thought that no experience of welcome could surpass the ones I’ve already experienced, someone manages to do it again. This time, Edwin, Raafat and I were offered a ride up the long driveway to the seminary in a horse drawn carriage. There were two white horses pulling a high, fancy carriage that was a throwback to England circa the mid 1800’s. Shade was provided by two large umbrellas made of Pakistani cloth of brilliant colors. Ribbons and brightly colored ropes decorated the carriage, where I was offered the high, cloth covered seat from whence I could wave at all the kids who ran along beside the carriage.

As we came around the last corner and faced the seminary chapel on one side and another of those bright, cloth tents on the other, the carriage was brought to a stop and everyone smiled and clapped as the three of us climbed down and were in led into tent. Like our experience in Kohlapur, we walked up a long red carpet to the stage at the front of the tent, and were offered the seats of honor.

Once again, we were turbaned and offered garlands (though I was grateful when we stopped at one garland each. Once again, there were words of welcome and appreciation. Once again, I promised to do my best to share with my sisters and brothers back home the richness and the depth of emotion we felt as we received such a warm welcome. Once again, I greeted them in the name of Presbyterians across the United States who are connected to them across the miles by our common faith, and by a legacy created by the first missionaries who came here to partner with these people one hundred and seventy-two years ago.

My wife will tell you that I’ve never liked pomp and circumstance. It’s always made me uncomfortable to be treated differently than others. On this trip, as on others that I’ve made outside our country, I’ve learned about the importance of receiving gracious and abundant hospitality. I suppose I needn’t worry about getting used to it, for my family keeps insisting that when I get home I’ll be back to washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom and telling jokes with the kids who live in our small, intentional community.

On this day, however, I know that I receive these welcomes on behalf of all of those in the United States who believe, with me, that we are one body, one community of faith that supersedes all the borders that have been placed between us. That seems like a particularly important recognition from a place like Pakistan, a country about which our preconceptions in the United States tend to be unbelievably negative.

Friends, we have a lot to learn about hospitality and community from our sisters and brothers in this part of the world.

Peace to you,

Rick

Mission is messy business

Friends,

(This is a long reflection on the challenges and opportunities in creating mission partnerships around the world. If you’re not into such things, feel free to skip it. I’ll post again tomorrow with a description of hospitality in India and Pakistan.)

Arriving in Mumbay (used to be Bombay), which is the largest city and the financial center of India, I found myself back in the kind of chaos that comes with a country that has great poverty as well as great wealth, and serious challenges to match the richness of its history and culture. India isn’t the sleek, modern airports or the fancy hotels of Korea and Taiwan, nor is it the relatively good manners on super highways that I Edwin and I noticed as we traveled in Seoul and Taiwan.

This is different. Traffic is pandemonium, the noise never stops, the streets are both dirty and full of life, and one cannot escape the press of people, more people and even more people – all the time. We arrived at our hotel after 10 p.m., after flying all day from Taipei through Hong Kong and Bangkok. When we arrived at the hotel we were greeted by a delegation of a dozen or so people from our partner church, the Church of North India (CNI). After quickly putting our luggage in our rooms, we moved to the basement of the hotel for our welcoming reception. A little before one a.m., we rolled into bed.

By eight, we checked out of the hotel and headed back to the airport. This time, we headed several hundred kilometers south to visit the diocese of Kolhapur. The CNI is a united church that was founded around 1970, with heavy involvement from Presbyterians and Anglicans, among many others. Like the Catholics, they are organized into dioceses with presiding bishops, though the bishops are elected by a representative council rather than by a Pope. Kohlapur is an area that was largely Presbyeterian before the merger took place. Pastors are called Presbyters, and they often have responsibility for more than one congregation, which is an attempt to cover the small, rural congregations that proliferate. The CNI has roughly 1.5 million members and it is a growing church.

Presbyterian missionaries came to India more than one hundred and seventy years ago. Just as I experienced when I visited our partner churches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, here the missionaries founded dozens of churches, hospitals and schools. At one point fifty or more years ago, there were more than two hundred missionaries here. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, there was a move to hand over responsibility for the various ministries to the churches that we had planted. As I’ve traveled, I’ve learned that most leaders of our partner churches were grateful for our missionaries’ attempt to recognize their maturity and help them to become independent, but they remain bewildered, and often angry, by the almost complete disappearance of their sisters and brothers in the United States in the years that followed.

In India, and also in Pakistan, the pulling back of our missionaries meant that our local churches back home largely lost contact with (and interest in) the churches and ministries of the church that they had created. Here in India, that put huge responsibility on the churches, because we left behind large institutions – and buildings - that have to be maintained. Further complicating things, we typically continued to hold the property in our names (often for good reasons that included complex tax and property ownership laws), so that the bottom line was that our partners were not free to carry out their own decisions when they had to deal with the increasingly valuable land that they were sitting on.

In the last thirty years or so, there has been another problem as well. Many of the hospitals and schools initially founded in conjunction with local congregations have now become largely independent of the church. Given their history and their obvious need, they’ve often been able to develop their own support systems in the United States, and so there has been a false division that has sometimes grown up between the institutions and the church. Further, some institutions have been more effective at telling their story and fundraising than others have been, and there is wide disparity of resources among the institutions that I was able to visit. Though we began in India, I learned that these problems are equally serious with our partner, the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan, and its related institutions and ministries as well. In both countries, leaders of the churches and the institutions have spent recent years working proactively to seek common ground and to reconnect with one another, and our staff and mission workers have attempted to support their efforts.

Even while those leaders are trying to renew their commitment to one another in their own countries, our understanding of mission has grown far more complex back in the United States. Presbyterians, their local congregations and many presbyteries have rediscovered their own vitality as they have become directly involved in mission themselves, forming partnerships and designing exchanges and delegation opportunities, and seeking joint projects to work on with their partners. Though we have far fewer long-term missionaries in the field today, it’s also true that there are thousands more of our members who have had a direct experience with our partners around the world. Although this creates all kinds of opportunity for difficulty, it is exciting to see the ways that it can transform individuals lives on both sides of the relationship.

The possible difficulties are obvious:

What if the majority of our potential partners in the U.S. all want to go to countries that are close by and easy to get to?

What happens when partners tend to bunch up around a particularly compelling pastor in the partner church because he or she (mostly he) is fluent in English and quite charismatic, or even just because that person’s church is closer to a paved road?

Further, given that we have mission partnerships in roughly eighty countries around the world, and in some of those countries we have more than one partner institution, what do we do with the fact that there are quite likely to be far more partnership opportunities out there than we have the energy to sustain?

Mission partnerships are complex and, like a good marriage, they take years to develop. Who provides the glue that holds everything together as lay leaders and pastors in the two partners change and as there are serious challenges in coping with the cultural differences that both enrich and challenge us?

Finally, what happens when Rick’s first rule of mission – “mission is messy business” – takes over and there are misunderstandings and conflicts that can become quite serious?

Here are some of the principles of what makes a good partnership that have become clear as more and more partnerships have been created:

First, Presbyterians do mission in partnership. That means that there should be a local partner, whether it is a church or an institution or a faith based non-governmental organization or an emerging ministry. A good partner church or ministry can provide long-term stability, outlast individuals as they come and go on both sides, and provide the checks and balances necessary to counter the concentration of power in the hands of one individual.

Second, our efforts must be coordinated on our end. One of the most exciting things to happen in the Worldwide Ministries Division of the PC(USA) has been the formation of “voluntary networks” of the churches, presbyteries and synods that are all working in partnership in a particular country. There are now close to thirty of those networks, and they tend to meet yearly in an effort to share stories, challenges, and best practices with one another. (Learn more about this at http://www.pcusa.org/partnerships/mission-networks.htm).

Third, we have learned that partnerships tend to work best when they are negotiated between a Presbytery or Synod or the General Assembly in our church and the most appropriate judicatory body in our partner church. Again, the reason is coordination. When we approach the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan to ask them where a partnership is most needed, they can provide the direction that spreads our efforts out appropriately. This can help in avoiding creating divisions due to jealousies about one church that has an active partner, while another has one that is inactive or doesn´t have a partner at all.

Fourth, experience has taught us that it is most healthy to develop a clear Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) about the expectations and responsibilities of each party in the partnership. The need for this is obvious, though it’s amazing how often I’ve seen partnerships that began on the strength of a warm, fuzzy feeling and were quickly destroyed as the honeymoon ended and misunderstandings arose.

Fifth, in my experience the mission personnel of our Worldwide Ministries Division are becoming far more important. Increasingly, we’re going to need people who know each of the cultures well and who are skilled at facilitating relationships and building cross-cultural relationships. Further, the simple truth is that some kinds of mission demand a steady, long-term presence. That means that even as we get excited about sending delegations for short-term experiences and taking on new projects with our partners, we must renew our commitment to the mission program of the larger church. The reason that we’re still doing mission in many places that other churches in the U.S. long ago abandoned is because of the mission workers who have made long-term commitments to our partners. That also means that we need to foster a renewed interest in long-term mission service back home. (If this entices you, go to www.pcusa.org/onedoor and check out some of the possibilities that are out there right now.

Finally, my experience has continuously reconfirmed a simple truth. The best mission efforts aren´t about money. In fact, when financial support is introduced too quickly into the relationship, it often corrupts the development of the long-term partnership. This is a tough one, because the need is great, and we are compassionate people. We’re also folks who want to fix things right now, and our partners are often desperate for that support. Still, I encourage new partners to agree (in their written MOU) that they will invest first in building relationships for three to four years. I could write pages about why this is important, but you get the idea.

I´ve now had the opportunity to travel all over the world to meet with our partners, and it is clear to me that God is leading us into a new moment in mission. The good news is that some of our churches, middle governing bodies and partners around the world have been doing this for awhile, and they have a great deal to teach us.

In the end, mission must be driven by God’s clear call to us to follow Christ into the world and to share his good news with all whom we encounter. My own conviction is that as we do so, we will discover the renewal of our own churches back here at home.

From Kohlapur – and in awe of the legacy created by 170 years of mission in this place,

Rick

If you made it all the way to the end of this long entry, you might actually be interested in checking out the PC(USA)´s document on how we do mission.
You can find it at http://www.pcusa.org/wmd/gathering.htm

Thoughts on Vocation

Sisters and brothers,

As I’ve traveled this month, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own sense of vocation. By the time I finish my term as moderator, we will have fully completed a transition to the new Executive Director of BorderLinks, the organization that I co-founded and have coordinated and directed for almost nineteen years. This is great news on a lot of levels. I’ve watched too many good leaders fall victim to “founder’s syndrome,” which is the term used to describe what happens to an organization when it grows too dependent on its founder and doesn’t effectively make the transition to new leadership. I’m excited that our Board of Directors was visionary enough to support me in transitioning out of the organization, and I’m so grateful to Delle McCormick, our incoming E.D., and the staff of BorderLinks, for stepping up to make this a healthy transition.

For the first time in almost twenty years, I find myself in the strange position of trying to figure out where God might next call me. It’s not that I’ve never had to think before about my vocation, or what we in the church would describe as a “sense of call.” One of the best parts of my work on the border as a mission worker for the PC(USA) has been that I have constantly felt the freedom to re-imagine what God has in mind for me, and I’ve often been encouraged by my colleagues and friends to grow in a new direction as the reality and demands of trying to “be church” in the borderlands has shifted.

The opportunity to serve the PC(USA) as moderator has been a wonderful gift from God that came at just the right moment in my life. I’ve seen profound attempts at faithfulness as I’ve traveled across the U.S., and I’ve grown immensely through my interactions and friendships with the partners I’ve met as I’ve traveled around the world in our own country as well as in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Almost everywhere I’ve been, I’ve found it easy to make an emotional investment in the congregation, ministries and organizations I’ve visited. I could imagine myself in many of those places, working with local folks to build a faith community that clearly reflects Christ’s values of love and compassion and goodness and nonviolence.

As I’ve traveled, I’ve found that my world has grown both larger and smaller through the personal relationship-building that goes hand-in-glove with being the Moderator. Each time I meet someone new, I find that my notion of church is expanded, and along with it my own sense of call. Along with my connection to the Latin American culture and the concerns of migrants and undocumented folks that I brought with me to this position, I’ve learned to care a great deal about campus ministry, peacemaking, creating multi-cultural congregations, seminary education, new immigrants, transforming dying churches, emerging worship styles for the next generation, and ministry in small, rural communities. Actually, the list of things that I find myself excited about seems to grow with each passing day and with every new friendship.

So how do I think about my vocation as a child of God? How do I figure out where I fit in? I have lots of questions as I think about how God calls me to be faithful in the world. Will I choose to be with communities of people made poor or in communities of privilege? Will I work within the institution of the church or put my efforts into building a movement on the fringes of the church? Will I adopt a prophetic role, or push in the direction of pragmatism in building coalitions? Will I focus on academia, or on the hands-on application of theory? The list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

In many ways, what I have loved most about our work with BorderLinks has been the possibility that we’ve had to be bridge-builders, and to stand with a foot in each of those worlds and try to bring them together. What I’ve learned in the messy, ambiguous world of the borderlands is that we rarely choose one end or the other of those scales. Life is all about trying to juggle competing commitments and priorities. Still, it seems like the folks I most admire are the ones who lived their convictions without compromise: Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Jim Corbett.

Here’s what I’m clear about. Genuine change in our world comes through the possibilities modeled by Jesus, and imperfect though it always seems to be, through the building of a healthy church that makes a genuine effort to reflect those values. That is to say, the work of creating political change in the secular world is extremely important, but it’s probably not for me. My commitment is most likely to be to continue to nurture the community of faith that will work to create the kind of world that is God’s deepest desire for us.

What started me thinking about all of this was a visit I made this week to the Gandhi Museum in Delhi. We spent three hours reading the sayings of Gandhi, learning his life story, and looking at photos. For me, as a peacemaker who is committed to nonviolence, I confess that it was something akin to a religious pilgrimage. Here’s the quote that has haunted me all week. Gandhi called it his Talisman:

A Talisman

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Remember the face of the poorest and the weakest man you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate will be of any use to him? Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions. Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.

Mahatma Mohandis Gandhi

And then I think about Jesus clear conviction about what will matter most on the day of judgement:

I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to me. And when you did it to one of the poorest of the poor, you did it to me.

Matthew 25

Holding those two things together seems like perhaps it might help during the coming months as I try to discern God´s call on my life.

So what about you? How do you think about vocation?

With a discerning spirit,

Rick

How does one describe an Indian Market?

O.K., try to imagine.

We’re in downtown Ludhiana, in the Punjab region of Northern India, and not too far away from the border with Pakistan. The buildings are three to five stories high. The first floor of each building is tightly packed with shops selling electrical supplies, clothing, housewares, convenience items, pharmaceuticals – I even saw one sign above a store advertising Hot Wheels and Barbies. On a Sunday afternoon, all of the stores have spilled over into the streets, putting tables in front of their shops and piling their goods high like you might see in a some kind of a super-manic flea market back home. Teenaged boys and young men stand among their products on top of the tables, hovering high above the crowd and hawking their wares at the tops of their lungs.

The street is paved, though it is so narrow that it clearly was never meant for cars. On this market afternoon, the cars have been blocked from entering the area. It’s still complete pandemonium, though. People move along shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting for space with old rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles, donkey carts and scooters. Most scooters carry an entire family, father and mother on the seat with a child sandwiched in between them and another standing on the little platform in front of her father and holding onto the handlebars. The record, for my afternoon, was held by the family of six, which only worked because it included an infant held in his mother’s arms as she rode “sidesaddle” on the back.

As in many other countries I’ve visited, electrical cables are strung “spaghetti” style in every direction just twelve or fifteen feet over our heads. In one short section of the street, instead of shops there was a brick wall in front of the police barracks. Creative entrepreneurs had mounted small mirrors on the wall. Their clients sat on packing crates before the mirrors – watching as they received a haircut. Others faced their barbers as they received shaves with old-fashioned, straight-edged, razors that the men paused to sharpen every once in a while.

At the end of every block the food vendors ruled. They stood behind old, dirty, wooden and metal carts, frying all kinds of foods I couldn’t identify in boiling oil. (Rick’s rule number one for international travel; be adventuresome but not stupid – never, ever eat from a street vendor!)

The noise is deafening. Hawkers of knock-off, designer jeans are yelling their prices and haggling with their customers. Everywhere I’ve been in this country there is the sound of cars, the ever-present, three-wheeled motorcycle “rickshaws” used as taxicabs, bicycles and traditional rickshaws, buses and trucks, scooters and motorcycles, all honking at one another as they jockey for position on the streets and roads. It’s like a high-speed game of chicken on narrow streets with the density of a parking lot at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving.

It is life lived fully and exuberantly at all times. About half an hour is enough for me. After that I begin to feel my senses closing down to protect my U.S., middle-class sensibilities. But when I spend an afternoon like this, I remember immigrants I’ve met in the United States who speak with longing of the vibrancy and excitement of life in their own cultures. Our culture seems positively antiseptic by comparison.

I can’t write fast enough, nor anywhere near well enough, to share all of the marvels of being with other people and learning of the richness of their cultures. I wish I could share this experience with everyone in the U.S. The world would be a different place if our eyes were opened to how the rest of the world lives.

Blessings,

Rick

Joyce McMillan - A life well-lived

Here’s a quick story.

Just down the road about fifteen kilometers from Tek Tung Presbyterian Church, there is a large campus with a sign out front that says, “Ehr-Lin Happy Christian Home.” Inside, there are several large buildings that house a state of the art facility for kids of all ages who have serious disabilities. It’s a great place doing amazing work, but it’s the story of how it came to be that really touched my heart.

On the top floor of the building there is a spacious apartment where I was taken to meet Joyce. She is originally from the United States, though she has been in Taiwan for so long that it would be reasonable to call her Taiwanese. She’s ninety-two years old now. We found her sitting in a wheel-chair watching television, connected by a tube to an oxygen tank. She isn’t very aware of her surroundings, but it is obvious that she is deeply loved by the folks at the Home, and we sat with her for a few moments and then prayed with and for her before we left.

Joyce was a member of First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. She was widowed when she was in her mid-thirties. About ten years later, at age forty-seven, she accepted an invitation to go to Taiwan to offer her services in mission, and she trained in nursing for a year before she left in order to prepare for her assignment. In 1959, she arrived in Taiwan, and she has stayed for the rest of her life. Together with a Taiwanese doctor, Joyce founded the Ehr-Lin home in 1964 (the year I was born), with the primary mission of working with kids who had polio.

Forty years later, the home that Joyce founded serves 220 children and adults at two facilities. She has received countless awards from the Taiwanese government, and I believe that she is the first person ever to become an honorary citizen of the country. The President has come to visit her personally more than once. This is a woman who has made a huge difference.

Here’s what I love about Joyce’s story. By the time Joyce was in her forties, she had experienced great loss. Though she might have coasted through the next few decades to retirement, it is now apparent that she was just getting started. She has spent the second half of her life changing the world. She went to Taiwan open to God’s spirit, and she joined her Taiwanese friends as a genuine colleague. What if all of us were unafraid to live life as courageously as Joyce has lived hers? What if all of us responded to that “still, small voice” that God plants deep within us at the moments of great opportunity that appear every now and then in our lives?

I think this is a time for dreams the size of Joyce’s dream.

On to India.

Rick

Church Transformation Work in Taiwan

Sisters and Brothers,

We arrived at Tek Tung Presbyterian Church well after one o’clock in the morning. The church is located in a small, rural community a few kilometers south of the city of Changhua, about halfway down the west coast of Taiwan. After arriving on a flight from Seoul at the modern airport south of Taipei, we were greeted by Stephen, the Ecumenical officer from the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan. We got into a Toyota minivan and headed south on a six-lane highway for the two and a half hour drive to the church. Upon arriving, we were greeted by Pastor Chuang, a pastor in his mid-forties, who led us to our rooms on the third floor of the new community center and retreat building that the church recently completed.

For my money, this pastor has created the textbook example of what a church transformation project should look like. He arrived at Tek Tung eighteen years ago, fresh out of seminary. All graduating seminary students are assigned their first parish for the first three years of their ministry. That means that they go wherever the Presbytery believes that the need is greatest. (I know this is anathema in a land of choice and opportunity, but this practice would go a long way toward supporting our small congregations in the U.S. that can’t attract pastors.) After three to five years, they are permitted to seek their next call, but Pastor Chuang has consistently rededicated himself to this little congregation. He is the best of what I think a pastor should be – ambitious in the sense that he spins out ideas for how to build a strong church faster than one can record them, and committed to staying long enough to do the hard work of implementing those ideas.

When he arrived, he found twenty members, and he tells me that they had pretty much given up on themselves. Sound familiar? What isn’t similar to our situation, though, is that he is trying to pastor a Christian Church in a country that is ninety-seven percent Buddhist. His little church had a high wall built around it, fortress-like, in an attitude of protection as it confronted the larger culture. Pastor Chuang’s early moves would strike fear into the hearts of Presbyterian pastors anywhere. He tore down the walls so that people walking buy in the street could see what was going on inside. Then, he realized that the huge tree, sculpted as a cross and planted right in front of the entrance to the sanctuary, made it impossible to see the front of the church.

Now he had a problem. The tree was planted by one of the older elders who had been a member forever. He went to the elder and explained that the large tree was “in the way.” “No problem,” the elder replied, “I’ll move it.” So that’s what they did. They dug up the roots of that huge tree and replanted it thirty feet away where it allowed unobstructed access to the church.

Finally, he took all of the wooden doors off the sanctuary and replaced them with glass, and he built a concrete ramp so that there was easy access for disabled persons. Inside, he lit up the large cross on the front wall of the sanctuary, and he left it lit up all night long. Now, there was no mystery left. Anyone passing by on the street could see everything that was taking place inside.

Of course, my first question was, “How in the world did you convince your members to let you do this.” “It’s simple,” Pastor Chuang replied, “they were so near death that they were willing to try anything.” That would confirm my own thesis about one of the primary criteria necessary to jump-start a struggling church in our own country. It’s not enough to be a small church in need of renewal. The church must be cognizant that, without bold action, they are probably at the end of the line. Simply put, they must be willing to take risks. This pastor makes it sound deceptively simple, but I’ve seen many churches that simply refuse to come to that realization.

So, here’s a laundry list of some of the other creative projects taken on by Pastor Chuang and his congregation. Right next to the sanctuary across the small parking lot there is a tree house. It is three stories high, and it is used not only to attract kids and teenagers, but also by adults who like meeting around the table on its high platform for their own classes. There’s also a climbing wall mounted on the side of the pastor’s house to the left of the driveway – easy to see from the street and a beacon to teenagers who might walk by. Behind the sanctuary there is a brand-new, state of the art, education and retreat center. It boasts a computer lab for the community, a high-school on the first floor for more than a dozen kids who are at risk of dropping out entirely because of their behavior problems, and rooms for up to thirty adults who come to participate in programs offered by the Presbytery.

As we spoke, the pastor emphasized that part of the secret for this church has been to band together with other small, rural churches in the area and to provide support for one another. The goal of creating teams of pastors and lay folks from the small churches in the presbytery are pretty basic. They are to promote holistic mission and ministry, empower the local churches and their ministers, support one another in taking risks, share resources with each other, take on mission projects together wherever feasible, and to transform their communities.

It helps that the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan requires that all elders and pastors participate in continuing education every year in order to keep their congregations vital and healthy. Pastor Chuang is clear that his task is to support the church in ministering to the broader community. “We care for our neighbors,” he said. “The goal is to show them the love of Christ, and to build relationships that will make us the place they turn for support when they face a spiritual crisis, or any other kind of crisis.”

Tek Tung Presbyterian Church is a model for transformation, but it clearly isn’t alone. Later in the day we visited with the PCT Moderator, Rev. Chen, in his church of mostly poor, aboriginal folks who have migrated to the Changhua to look for work. His congregation founded a business to offer diversified cleaning and environmental services in order to offer meaningful employment to their members and others who came from the villages looking for work. Now, the company employs three hundred people and half a dozen members of this struggling little inner-city church have found enough financial security to purchase their own homes in the church neighborhood. It may be slow and painstaking work, but this looks like a pretty creative model for church transformation work as well.

Members of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan have attended the PC(USA) Church Transformation conferences for the last several years. Their leaders were quick to offer their gratitude for what they have learned, but as I spoke with Pastor Chuang and Moderator Chen, it was obvious to me that we ought to be intentional about learning from them as well. They have been bold and unapologetic in pushing their agenda to revitalize their small congregations. Their support is backed up by a strong commitment at the level of their General Assembly to do whatever it takes to support Presbyteries and local congregations when they commit to the hard work of church transformation.

Maybe we should send a delegation from the U.S. to look at what they are doing in Taiwan.

Rick

A Day in Seoul - messages from our partners

Friends,

I only spent fourteen hours in Seoul with our partners from the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) and the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea, but the day was rich and full. Here are a few quick reflections.

I had to pinch myself to convince myself I was really here as we drove into Seoul from the big airport at Inchon about an hour away. With twenty degree temperatures, I was scraping away the frost on the window of the van in order to be able to watch the sun come up over the city of fourteen million people. Our only agenda for the day was to have lunch with the Moderators, General Secretaries, and Ecumenical officers of each of our two partner denominations. Since we only had one day in the city, our hosts took us to Kaesung Restaurant, named after a mountain in North Korea, that offered us a six or seven course meal and allowed us to try to compress the entire Korean culinary experience into just one meal.

The primary concern on the minds of our partners from both churches, though the leaders of the much smaller PROK took the lead in articulating it, was to ask for our support in their efforts to promote reconciliation between North and South Korea. “We have great affection for our sisters and brothers in the United States,” Rev. Park of the PROK said, “and we were in anguish with you after the events of 9/11. But we cannot support the way that you are conducting the War against Terrorism. Why not ask what is fueling such anger against the U.S.?”

Our partners expressed their own desire for the church to lead the way in letting go of the hatred and seeking reconciliation between North and South Korea. They insisted that most Koreans – from the North and the South - are ready to do so, and that they need support from our church to convince our own leaders that this is a time to promote peace between the two nations. They insisted that the U.S. government’s current posture in naming North Korea part of the “axis of evil” is working against the possibility for a genuine reconciliation between their countries. The PROK will be hosting a Peace Consultation in early May for partner churches from throughout the region in order to create an action plan to move boldly toward reconciliation, and they have asked the PC(USA) to send a representative in order to listen and to learn how we might be supportive of their agenda.

Rev. An, the Moderator of the large and thriving PCK, added that he recently attended the ground-breaking for the construction of a new church building in N. Korea. He said that the PCK’s commitment to nurture new churches in North Korea is a visible expression of the desire they share with their brothers and sisters in the PROK to bring down the borders that have divided South and North Korea for so many years.

Having listened carefully and affirmed the agenda of the leaders from the PROK, Rev. An then named the other agenda that was on the minds of many in their churches. He also began by affirming the historic ties between our churches and the great love that Presbyterians in Korea feel for Presbyterians in the PC(USA). His message was clear: though many in the PCK feel compelled to critique some of our denomination’s positions, they do so in love and with a clear commitment to work hard at improving our partnership.

“What you need to understand,” Rev. An told me, “is that the actions you take as a church have a direct impact on our church as well. We believe that there is a natural order of things articulated in the Bible, and that order proscribes only heterosexual marriage. Is it true,” he asked, “that same sex marriages are allowed in your denomination? If so, haven’t you gone to far?”

I assured Rev. An that I was there to listen, that I would do my best to faithfully share his concerns with others in our denomination, and that we value our historic and current ties with the Presbyterian Church of Korea as they do. I explained to him that our constitution does not affirm same-sex marriage, though it is no secret that there are many questions around sexual orientation that have our church deeply divided. On this issue, as on the questions around peacebuilding and U.S. relationships with N. Korea, Presbyterians in the U.S. are not of one mind. Where I do believe we have complete unity among Presbyterians, however, is in our commitment to a strong partnership with the PCK and PROK. All of us at the table agreed that we hold that commitment in common.

Our lunch conversation ended with an invitation. Rev. Cho, the General Secretary of the PCK, explained that their church experienced a moment of great renewal in 1907. In 2007, our sister congregations in Korea will celebrate the 100th anniversary of that renewal by rededicating themselves to building up the church. That revitalization will be grounded in four areas: church growth (fueled by Bible Study, personal commitment, evangelism and prayer), a strong commitment to service and mission, people-based ministry that focuses on those who have been most marginalized in society, and pursuing a vision for peace and reconciliation.

“Your missionaries had a great impact on us during that first revival.” Rev. Park of the PROK added, making it clear that their two denominations are clearly united on this matter as well. “We would like to extend an invitation to the PC(USA) to join by committing itself to similar renewal during our own celebration one hundred years later.”

So what do you think, Presbyterians? A revival of all of our congregations in the year 2007, animated by a strong commitment to church growth, mission, the power of “people-based ministry,” and pursuing an agenda of peace and reconciliation. It sounds pretty good to me.

I’ve been hearing about the dedication of Korean Presbyterians for many years. They are famous, and rightfully so, for filling their churches two and three times over before dawn each morning as Presbyterians begin their days in prayer. It was a great pleasure to meet with these dedicated leaders of our partner churches here. Next time, I intend to stay much longer than fourteen hours.

On to Taiwan tonight.

Rick