It's likely obvious that someone with my politics would be glad that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has at long last been repealed. DADT was a stupid, discriminatory policy & law from the outset, making little sense, & pandering to the basest sort of homophobia & stereotyping. So I am both glad & relieved that President Obama will soon, by his signature, send DADT to the failed policies' slag pile of history, and lesbian women & gay men will soon be able to serve in the US military openly without fear of discharge simply for having her / his sexual orientation known.
At the same time, as a Friend on Facebook pointed out, there are many ways to serve this country other than joining the military. Many in the US of North America forget / ignore the idea that the military provides only one option. As a decades-old anti-war activist, the military option has always been my least favorite. The nearly-exclusive focus on military service seems to be a counter-reaction against much of the mythology that developed after the end of the Vietnam War, when the public began to hear stories about how poorly troops were treated when they returned to the US, that they were spat upon, called "Baby killer," shunned, etc. (None of the "spat-upon" stories was ever verified.) The cry went up that we should never again blame those doing the front-line fighting for the failed policies of their generals & civilian leadership back home. I strongly concur with that sentiment. What troubles me is that this determination seems to have morphed into an almost-uncritical idealization of the military.
This idealization is unfortunate, because it ignores other forms of service in which people, young and old, are engaged. Opportunities exist, from teaching through Teach for America, the goal of which is to end educational inequality; to union organizing in the health care industry; to joining the Peace Corps. Someone seeking spiritually-based service could become a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps or the Maryknoll Missionaries Lay Missioners. Now, granted, a Peace Corps or Maryknoll Lay Missioner would likely be sent to serve outside of the US; still, in addition to serving people in a developing country, upon return to the US, he or she will bring back valuable knowledge & experience to share with his / her US community.
And while I am delighted that DADT has been repealed -- because it was blatantly discriminatory against gay & lesbian people -- to me, there has always been a deeper issue, a deeper question. That is, the issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers (air personnel, sailors, marines); rather, the issue is dead soldiers (air personnel, sailors, marines). Now that we've ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," it's time to get back to ending war. Not just the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, but war and the spectre of war.
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; it's dead soldiers. The US has spent -- wasted -- billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan & additional billions of dollars on new weapons systems; weapons systems' r&d; & the maintenance of a nuclear stockpile that could still destroy everyone & everything on the planet several times over. To sustain the wars & weapons, & to maintain our consumption-oriented lifestyles -- or, our consumptive lifestyles -- we have put this nation into an unsustainable debt & deficit, borrowing money from the People's Republic of China. By dedicating so much of our economy & our social fabric, our national energy, our national psyche to the products of war & the waging of war, we have little economy, energy, psyche, or social fabric to put toward those efforts & products that help to create & sustain that which fosters life, health, social well-being, a healthy economy & healthy environment. (If I recall from my learning in the mid-1970's, this is basic Marxist analysis.)
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; the issue is dead soldiers. With its current national & international adversarial ideology, the US & the world faces increasingly grave & less controllable national & international crises. This is especially obvious when one considers the nuclear weapons' sabre-rattling by North Korea & Iran (despite denials, I suspect Iran would like a nuclear weapon). Other non-yet-nuclear-armed countries may be heading that way. And it is widely accepted that enough nuclear materials from former Soviet Union nations to fuel at least crude weapons if in the hands of radical Islamic terrorists, to say nothing of poor control over the nuclear materials in Pakistan. How much good has our current -- & long-standing -- ideology done? How well has it served us & / or the world? How could we begin to get beyond this adversarial ideology that makes certain countries & peoples our enemies & others our friends?
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; it's dead soldiers. In just a few days, we will celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. Jesus of Nazareth, born poor, in an occupied country, belonging to a minority religion, lived, taught, & died in a time similar to our own. Enemies were all about; one entity held imperial power over a much larger majority; religious & social rules & regulations strictly regulated the behavior of people regarding religion, society, & each other. Jesus, poor, Jewish, born in a barn had no legitimate authority to teach, preach, heal or forgive, yet he did all of that, and more. He called people to metanoia, to conversion, to a radically altered way of thinking, acting, living, and loving. In a world in which the Roman Empire exacted a terrible price upon all who disagreed & acted against it. Jesus called people to trust the Holy One -- HaShem -- & to trust him -- Jesus. He called people, his disciples, his followers & those who went with him from town to town to a new & radical love, including love of their enemies -- including, I imagine, the Romans -- and to not be afraid, during a time when fear likely made a good deal of sense.
"Be not afraid." "Love your enemies." "Turn the other cheek." "Blessed are the Peacemakers..."
Ah, yes, Blessed are the Peacemakers... None of what I've written above is anything new. Jesus came to call us to a radical revision / re-vision of our lives; he came as G-D's Preferential Option for the Poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed. He came to teach, to preach, to heal, to forgive, and to witness the radical, unconditional love of HaShem. In living as he did, in teaching & preaching as he did, the Roman authorities considered him a threat & feared he would lead an insurrection during Pesach in Jerusalem. Some of the Jewish religious authorities whose power & positions depended upon staying in the good graces of the Roman Empire, feared that Jesus would stir up the people & that no one would be able to control them or prevent a rebellion. So the Roman soldiers arrested Jesus & later executed him by crucifixion at the orders of Pontius Pilate, the top Roman authority in Jerusalem.
Blessed are the Peacemakers ~~ No, I'm not writing anything new, anything that anyone reading this doesn't already know. What it all tells me, however, is that Jesus still calls me / us to a radically revisioned / re-visioned way to live ~~ a way of peace; a way of solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized; a way of increased simplicity & quiet; a way of greater attention, focus, consciousness & conscience; a way of greater faith & trust in G-D.
The Season of Advent is a time of waiting & paying attention, listening to the signs of the times, & listening to the silence. In preparing to welcome the Lord Jesus, the Incarnation of G-D born into our midst as one of us, we are called to prepare our own hearts & minds; to peel off & discard those layers that have accumulated to keep us from following Christ -- the fears & anxieties; the accretions of "stuff" that society insists will make us happy & content; the desires that keep us from our deeper desire for G-D as the center & source of our lives. As we wait, pay attention & listen, we come closer to being prepared & thus ready to say, "Maranatha -- Come, Lord Jesus."
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thoughts on Advent
What a boring title, no? It's all I could think of at the moment. I'll try to think of a better title for the next piece. I do want to write about Advent tonight.
Advent has long been my favorite liturgical season. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, when I came into the Catholic Church in 1975, the Church was in the liturgical season "Ordinary Time." Think of boring... Rather than baptizing & confirming adults only at the Easter Vigil that year, the parish to which I belonged had continued to baptize & confirm adults at different times during the year, usually at a Sunday Mass. So my baptism & confirmation happened in mid-June. By then, we had gone through Easter Season & Pentecost & had hit Ordinary Time. Of course, people told me that, for a Christian, no time was truly ordinary. Instead, they taught me the difference between chronos and Kairos. Chronos is truly ordinary, whereas Kairos is time touched by G-D & thus transformed.
While that was no doubt true, it seemed that Ordinary Time stretched for a really long time that year. Yes, there were special celebrations: The Feast of the Assumption in August, All Saints' Day & All Souls' Day at the beginning of November & Christ the King at the end. By then, I had grown tired of the unrelieved green liturgical color & was ready for a change.
On the first Sunday of Advent, I walked into a transformed chapel; the purple wall banners, lectern & altar cloths gave the space a rich, deep tone; the priest's stole was the same color. Then, as I stood in the pew, I heard the first strains of a familiar chant-like tune -- familiar not because I'd heard it before in church but because I'd heard it on the soundtrack of Godspell, the off-Broadway play which it opened.
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord --
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord.
A single voice, a capella, began the chant; it was joined by another voice, and then another. The tempo picked up, instruments joined in, &, by the 4th or 5th time 'round, drums & a cymbal supplied percussion in a very up-tempo song sung by the choir & congregation. By the time it ended, I knew well & for certain that we had entered a new liturgical season.
It was during this first Advent season that I began to go from being a new, lone parishioner to meeting people with whom I became close friends &, along the way, a member of the parish. A small group of parishioners offered a Vespers service each Saturday night after the 5 pm Mass, & they invited me to take part in it as a worship leader and chantress. One foggy evening, perhaps a Sunday, three of us drove down to Modesto to visit another friend. On the way back, we realized that thick, heavy tulle fog had developed; we couldn't see to drive, but we didn't want to pull over & wait til the fog lifted. (It might not have lifted until morning!) So, good, still-slightly-pre-Vatican-II Catholics that we were, we each pulled out a rosary & together prayed the rosary all the way back to Berkeley. All of this was a tremendous balm to me, since it had become obvious that my marriage was at the point of total disintegration & the majority of relationships I'd had before I'd converted had fallen apart because I'd become a Catholic. During those very doctrinaire leftist days, it was pretty much impossible for me to say anything that would make sense to my Marxist friends about why I'd made the decision I'd made.
Thus, the Season of Advent brings back some very wonderful memories. In addition, Advent has some of the loveliest readings & music of the liturgical year. More than that, however, is what Advent reminds me to do and to be.
Advent reminds me to be silent. Not 100% silent 100% of the time -- an obvious impossibility -- but more silent than I would normally be. It reminds me to turn off the radio, turn off the iPod to give me the opportunity to listen for the crows in my back yard; for the squirrels scurrying along the sidewalks; for the sounds of the rain, the wind, the sleet, & the snow; for the many different kinds of music, religious & secular, Chanukah & Christmas; and for G-D.
Advent also reminds me to slow down, wait, & be patient. As a person with a disability, I've had to learn to wait & be patient. The buses may not be running on time; the paratransit company may have dispatched a van with a non-working wheelchair lift. Advent reminds me that we are living in sacred time, not regular time. in Kairos, not chronos. It reminds me that there are far more important things on which to focus, for which to wait & be patient, than buses, vans, slow-moving lines in the grocery store, unhappy clerks at the Dept of Motor Vehicles, etc. We've all been there; we've all had those experiences; they could drive us crazy, or we could turn to G-D, perhaps struggling a bit for good humor, & ask G-D to help us.
A few nights ago, I could have used some of that help as I waited for my very nice next-door neighbors to decide to turn the music down or, better yet, end their party & send everyone home. The distraction of the music & noise made it nearly-impossible for me to concentrate. However, instead of becoming impatient & eventually upset, I wondered if perhaps this distraction was G-D's way of calling me to stop what I was doing -- since my living room wall where I was working is on the other side from their living room wall -- save a draft of this piece, go into my bedroom, shut the door most of the way, & read, or spend time stroking & grooming the cats, or pray. Or take a leisurely shower & exfoliate & moisturize my newly-out-of-its-cast right leg.
I guess my point is that we do have choices. The previous day, I had read about Jesuit saint Francis Xavier, one of founder Ignatius Loyola's closest companions & friends. St. Francis Xavier engaged in ministry as a Jesuit even before the Society of Jesus had been officially established. He hoped to go to the Holy Land but ended up going to India and later to Japan to preach, catechize, and baptize people in those countries. Because travel by ship meant frequent delays, sometimes of several months because of weather, winds, currents (to say nothing of politics), St. Francis Xavier & his companions often had long waits before they could leave for their missionary destination.
What struck me as I read about Francis was that, where ever he & his brothers were, once they learned that they couldn't leave right away but would instead have what could be a long wait, right away they began ministering to the poorest, most needy, most marginalized people right where they -- the Jesuits -- were. They visited prisoners, cared for the sick, particularly people with leprosy, visited people in hospitals. He didn't "hang out" while waiting for the weather to change or the tides to become favorable. He immediately & constantly responded actively & positively to the call of G-D, believing that G-D was always present everywhere.
That caused me to begin to wonder how I spent / spend my waiting time, the time in-between, when I've finished one project & not yet begun another; when I'm waiting for a bus or a van; times when I simply have time. I couldn't clearly answer that question so I thought that, over the next couple of weeks, through the rest of Advent, I would track that more intentionally, although not obsessively. Perhaps, I thought, I'll learn something. Then, for circumstances that now escape me, I totally forgot about that idea. On some days, and some nights, my mind acts life a sieve -- the ideas simply run through & out. So I'll try again, beginning later today, the Feast Day of 16th Century Carmelite mystic & theologian Saint John of the Cross.
Advent has long been my favorite liturgical season. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, when I came into the Catholic Church in 1975, the Church was in the liturgical season "Ordinary Time." Think of boring... Rather than baptizing & confirming adults only at the Easter Vigil that year, the parish to which I belonged had continued to baptize & confirm adults at different times during the year, usually at a Sunday Mass. So my baptism & confirmation happened in mid-June. By then, we had gone through Easter Season & Pentecost & had hit Ordinary Time. Of course, people told me that, for a Christian, no time was truly ordinary. Instead, they taught me the difference between chronos and Kairos. Chronos is truly ordinary, whereas Kairos is time touched by G-D & thus transformed.
While that was no doubt true, it seemed that Ordinary Time stretched for a really long time that year. Yes, there were special celebrations: The Feast of the Assumption in August, All Saints' Day & All Souls' Day at the beginning of November & Christ the King at the end. By then, I had grown tired of the unrelieved green liturgical color & was ready for a change.
On the first Sunday of Advent, I walked into a transformed chapel; the purple wall banners, lectern & altar cloths gave the space a rich, deep tone; the priest's stole was the same color. Then, as I stood in the pew, I heard the first strains of a familiar chant-like tune -- familiar not because I'd heard it before in church but because I'd heard it on the soundtrack of Godspell, the off-Broadway play which it opened.
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord --
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord.
A single voice, a capella, began the chant; it was joined by another voice, and then another. The tempo picked up, instruments joined in, &, by the 4th or 5th time 'round, drums & a cymbal supplied percussion in a very up-tempo song sung by the choir & congregation. By the time it ended, I knew well & for certain that we had entered a new liturgical season.
It was during this first Advent season that I began to go from being a new, lone parishioner to meeting people with whom I became close friends &, along the way, a member of the parish. A small group of parishioners offered a Vespers service each Saturday night after the 5 pm Mass, & they invited me to take part in it as a worship leader and chantress. One foggy evening, perhaps a Sunday, three of us drove down to Modesto to visit another friend. On the way back, we realized that thick, heavy tulle fog had developed; we couldn't see to drive, but we didn't want to pull over & wait til the fog lifted. (It might not have lifted until morning!) So, good, still-slightly-pre-Vatican-II Catholics that we were, we each pulled out a rosary & together prayed the rosary all the way back to Berkeley. All of this was a tremendous balm to me, since it had become obvious that my marriage was at the point of total disintegration & the majority of relationships I'd had before I'd converted had fallen apart because I'd become a Catholic. During those very doctrinaire leftist days, it was pretty much impossible for me to say anything that would make sense to my Marxist friends about why I'd made the decision I'd made.
Thus, the Season of Advent brings back some very wonderful memories. In addition, Advent has some of the loveliest readings & music of the liturgical year. More than that, however, is what Advent reminds me to do and to be.
Advent reminds me to be silent. Not 100% silent 100% of the time -- an obvious impossibility -- but more silent than I would normally be. It reminds me to turn off the radio, turn off the iPod to give me the opportunity to listen for the crows in my back yard; for the squirrels scurrying along the sidewalks; for the sounds of the rain, the wind, the sleet, & the snow; for the many different kinds of music, religious & secular, Chanukah & Christmas; and for G-D.
Advent also reminds me to slow down, wait, & be patient. As a person with a disability, I've had to learn to wait & be patient. The buses may not be running on time; the paratransit company may have dispatched a van with a non-working wheelchair lift. Advent reminds me that we are living in sacred time, not regular time. in Kairos, not chronos. It reminds me that there are far more important things on which to focus, for which to wait & be patient, than buses, vans, slow-moving lines in the grocery store, unhappy clerks at the Dept of Motor Vehicles, etc. We've all been there; we've all had those experiences; they could drive us crazy, or we could turn to G-D, perhaps struggling a bit for good humor, & ask G-D to help us.
A few nights ago, I could have used some of that help as I waited for my very nice next-door neighbors to decide to turn the music down or, better yet, end their party & send everyone home. The distraction of the music & noise made it nearly-impossible for me to concentrate. However, instead of becoming impatient & eventually upset, I wondered if perhaps this distraction was G-D's way of calling me to stop what I was doing -- since my living room wall where I was working is on the other side from their living room wall -- save a draft of this piece, go into my bedroom, shut the door most of the way, & read, or spend time stroking & grooming the cats, or pray. Or take a leisurely shower & exfoliate & moisturize my newly-out-of-its-cast right leg.
I guess my point is that we do have choices. The previous day, I had read about Jesuit saint Francis Xavier, one of founder Ignatius Loyola's closest companions & friends. St. Francis Xavier engaged in ministry as a Jesuit even before the Society of Jesus had been officially established. He hoped to go to the Holy Land but ended up going to India and later to Japan to preach, catechize, and baptize people in those countries. Because travel by ship meant frequent delays, sometimes of several months because of weather, winds, currents (to say nothing of politics), St. Francis Xavier & his companions often had long waits before they could leave for their missionary destination.
What struck me as I read about Francis was that, where ever he & his brothers were, once they learned that they couldn't leave right away but would instead have what could be a long wait, right away they began ministering to the poorest, most needy, most marginalized people right where they -- the Jesuits -- were. They visited prisoners, cared for the sick, particularly people with leprosy, visited people in hospitals. He didn't "hang out" while waiting for the weather to change or the tides to become favorable. He immediately & constantly responded actively & positively to the call of G-D, believing that G-D was always present everywhere.
That caused me to begin to wonder how I spent / spend my waiting time, the time in-between, when I've finished one project & not yet begun another; when I'm waiting for a bus or a van; times when I simply have time. I couldn't clearly answer that question so I thought that, over the next couple of weeks, through the rest of Advent, I would track that more intentionally, although not obsessively. Perhaps, I thought, I'll learn something. Then, for circumstances that now escape me, I totally forgot about that idea. On some days, and some nights, my mind acts life a sieve -- the ideas simply run through & out. So I'll try again, beginning later today, the Feast Day of 16th Century Carmelite mystic & theologian Saint John of the Cross.
Friday, December 3, 2010
A Postscript to Friday's Blog
I realized that, yes, there was an implied question in today's earlier blog that I didn't answer, something to the effect, whether, with many of my friends, brothers & sisters, I was ready to take the Gospel seriously, to the point of possibly risking my life. In the early 1980's, with all that was happening in the world -- especially continuation of the Cold War and a still-escalating nuclear weapons "race" between the US of North America & the Soviet Union, wars in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua) -- asking and discerning whether one were willing to risk one's life was not so far-fetched a consideration for many in the Liberation Theology movement. Because it meant taking seriously the Gospel of Liberation, which is the Gospel for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the despised.
It also wasn't that far-fetched because many of us at least knew of people who had risked their lives -- and LOST their lives -- in the struggle for justice and peace, including a number of religious folks. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was obvious, but we also knew of Violetta Luizzo,Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was murdered in January 1965, and Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963. We knew as well of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who died of self-immolation to protest the corrupt Vietnamese government; several people in the US of North America took them as models and chose the same death in opposition to the War in Vietnam. More than that, though, we had begun to learn of priests in several Central American countries who had been targeted for assassination by their governments and who had subsequently been murdered. A popular right-wing slogan in El Salvador in the early 1980's was "Be a patriot: Kill a priest." And right-wing paramilitary members had done just that. The Wikipedia entry on Archbishop Oscar Romero has a list, although I am quite certain it is not comprehensive, that is, that more priests in El Salvador were assassinated than just those listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero . We knew that, in addition to priests, monks, deacons, nuns, church catechists (teachers) and others had been kidnapped, tortured, "disappeared," and murdered in throughout Latin America throughout the 20th century.
So, for many of us, trying to live a Gospel of Liberation meant taking these kinds of considerations seriously, something that was especially true for men & women in religious orders, particularly if the order was a missionary order, such as Maryknoll and the Columban Sisters and Fathers. It was also true for many US North American members of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits -- who could choose to be involved in ministry in places outside the US, such as Nepal, East Timor, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru. Even if we ourselves didn't have any intention of doing ministry in places that were dangerous, we still felt called to support those among our friends who did experience that call. We often knew, even during seminary, that they would say "yes" to that call from G-D.
As many of you know, my life took a different direction. Seeing my call as more in the direction of scholarship & academia, with the encouragement of my mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, and many friends, in the Fall of 1981, I began working toward my PhD in Systematic Theology. In the Spring of 1984, I took a leave of absence to discern my future direction, as I had, by that time, made one of the most questionable decisions of my entire life & had left the Catholic Church. There were many reasons behind that decision; it is now one of the decisions I most regret. But I won't write about that here; it's too long a story.
The result of my decision to leave the Church, however, led to my decision to withdraw from the PhD program. Instead, I finished my Masters degree, writing my thesis on the book that had led to my thorough-going critique of the Church, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Wonderful book, wonderful story, it shook the foundations of my world, for a few years at least. When the dust settled, I was living in Boston where I had moved in late August of 1987. Then, six Jesuit priests & their 2 women co-workers had been murdered by El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in November 1989. About 2 years later, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV+ & was retiring from pro-basketball. The murders of the Jesuits at the University & Johnson's announcement conspired to cause me to wonder just what my life-foundation was, in what I believed, & in what direction my life was heading. And I found myself heading back to and back into the Catholic Church -- another story too long for this blog.
A number of my colleagues from the GTU continued and continue to live the Gospel in ways that awe and humble me, and I am most grateful for their witness to Christ. I thank G-D for their witness; I thank G-D that, at least thus far, such a call has not come my way. I'm not good with pain, fear, or anxiety; I'm not sure I'd do really well in jail for more than a couple of days.
I am very, very aware of my privilege as a white-skinned US North American, while at the same time recognizing that, as I age, I'm falling closer & closer to that line that puts people over into poverty in this "richest country in the world." I'm also very aware that there is an element in the US right now that lives & acts politically on the very far right-wing edge; it is an element that would be happy to silence lots of us, including me -- a left-wing radical, a Feminist (still), a Catholic, a person of Jewish origin, & a lesbian, as well as someone who has never learned to be silent in the face of stupidity, offensiveness, & / or oppression. So far, the group(s) with these attitudes & politics have not come to power in the US of North American. I pray that they don't, especially in the face of an increasingly dire economic situation. If they do come to power, I could be among the people in a heap lot of trouble, not because I'm anybody important, but simply because of who I am -- radical, Feminist, Catholic, Jewish, lesbian, outspoken. And I always remember the warning of Sister Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you."
I pray that a call to live at such risk for the Gospel never comes to me but, if it does, I pray that I may take these friends and the martyrs of El Salvador as my models. In the meantime, to recall the words of Mother Jones, I / we need to "...pray for the dead, & fight like hell for the living."
It also wasn't that far-fetched because many of us at least knew of people who had risked their lives -- and LOST their lives -- in the struggle for justice and peace, including a number of religious folks. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was obvious, but we also knew of Violetta Luizzo,Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was murdered in January 1965, and Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963. We knew as well of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who died of self-immolation to protest the corrupt Vietnamese government; several people in the US of North America took them as models and chose the same death in opposition to the War in Vietnam. More than that, though, we had begun to learn of priests in several Central American countries who had been targeted for assassination by their governments and who had subsequently been murdered. A popular right-wing slogan in El Salvador in the early 1980's was "Be a patriot: Kill a priest." And right-wing paramilitary members had done just that. The Wikipedia entry on Archbishop Oscar Romero has a list, although I am quite certain it is not comprehensive, that is, that more priests in El Salvador were assassinated than just those listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero . We knew that, in addition to priests, monks, deacons, nuns, church catechists (teachers) and others had been kidnapped, tortured, "disappeared," and murdered in throughout Latin America throughout the 20th century.
So, for many of us, trying to live a Gospel of Liberation meant taking these kinds of considerations seriously, something that was especially true for men & women in religious orders, particularly if the order was a missionary order, such as Maryknoll and the Columban Sisters and Fathers. It was also true for many US North American members of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits -- who could choose to be involved in ministry in places outside the US, such as Nepal, East Timor, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru. Even if we ourselves didn't have any intention of doing ministry in places that were dangerous, we still felt called to support those among our friends who did experience that call. We often knew, even during seminary, that they would say "yes" to that call from G-D.
As many of you know, my life took a different direction. Seeing my call as more in the direction of scholarship & academia, with the encouragement of my mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, and many friends, in the Fall of 1981, I began working toward my PhD in Systematic Theology. In the Spring of 1984, I took a leave of absence to discern my future direction, as I had, by that time, made one of the most questionable decisions of my entire life & had left the Catholic Church. There were many reasons behind that decision; it is now one of the decisions I most regret. But I won't write about that here; it's too long a story.
The result of my decision to leave the Church, however, led to my decision to withdraw from the PhD program. Instead, I finished my Masters degree, writing my thesis on the book that had led to my thorough-going critique of the Church, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Wonderful book, wonderful story, it shook the foundations of my world, for a few years at least. When the dust settled, I was living in Boston where I had moved in late August of 1987. Then, six Jesuit priests & their 2 women co-workers had been murdered by El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in November 1989. About 2 years later, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV+ & was retiring from pro-basketball. The murders of the Jesuits at the University & Johnson's announcement conspired to cause me to wonder just what my life-foundation was, in what I believed, & in what direction my life was heading. And I found myself heading back to and back into the Catholic Church -- another story too long for this blog.
A number of my colleagues from the GTU continued and continue to live the Gospel in ways that awe and humble me, and I am most grateful for their witness to Christ. I thank G-D for their witness; I thank G-D that, at least thus far, such a call has not come my way. I'm not good with pain, fear, or anxiety; I'm not sure I'd do really well in jail for more than a couple of days.
I am very, very aware of my privilege as a white-skinned US North American, while at the same time recognizing that, as I age, I'm falling closer & closer to that line that puts people over into poverty in this "richest country in the world." I'm also very aware that there is an element in the US right now that lives & acts politically on the very far right-wing edge; it is an element that would be happy to silence lots of us, including me -- a left-wing radical, a Feminist (still), a Catholic, a person of Jewish origin, & a lesbian, as well as someone who has never learned to be silent in the face of stupidity, offensiveness, & / or oppression. So far, the group(s) with these attitudes & politics have not come to power in the US of North American. I pray that they don't, especially in the face of an increasingly dire economic situation. If they do come to power, I could be among the people in a heap lot of trouble, not because I'm anybody important, but simply because of who I am -- radical, Feminist, Catholic, Jewish, lesbian, outspoken. And I always remember the warning of Sister Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you."
I pray that a call to live at such risk for the Gospel never comes to me but, if it does, I pray that I may take these friends and the martyrs of El Salvador as my models. In the meantime, to recall the words of Mother Jones, I / we need to "...pray for the dead, & fight like hell for the living."
Anniversary of El Salvador Martyrs, Memories, Events, & Reality
On my stove this morning sits a single dark red rose, in memory of all who have died from HIV / AIDS and also in memory of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel, who were murdered in El Salvador 30 years ago yesterday. Jean herself spoke of El Salvador as beautiful, with roses blooming in December, and the film autobiography of her is named "Roses in December." So the rose, which came from my community's World AIDS Day Mass on Wednesday evening, 1 December, feels especially appropriate now.
Much of yesterday, as I thought about and prayed for Jean, Ita, Maura & Dorothy, I thought back to 30 years earlier. At that time, I lived in Berkeley & had recently begun my second year in seminary at Pacific School of Religion (PSR). The previous Spring, I'd been invited to join a House Church: An intentional base community, modeled on the base communities in Latin America, in which a small group of us met to pray, reflect upon Scripture in light of current reality, share our ministry work, support one another, and share a pot-luck meal once each week or once every other week. Our House Church was small & comprised mostly of Jesuit seminarians & other students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JSTB), including several dynamic women who were members of different religious orders. Founded by an ordained Jesuit, the House Church was egalitarian, challenging, a source of deep faith, and often provided the best meal any of us ate all week. For three years, it served as the most authentic and faith-filled community in my life, calling me to an always-renewed and always-renewing understanding of how I was called to serve G-D and G-D's people.
We had learned on Wednesday, 3 December, that 4 US women church workers had not returned from the airport the previous evening; they had been expected at the coastal city of La Libertad that night. Since at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU -- the consortium of seminaries to which both PSR & JSTB belonged) there were 3 Catholic seminaries -- Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican -- in classrooms & along the streets of Northside, as well as in refectories & at daily Mass, we talked quietly, wondering what had happened. There was little news that night.
Late the following afternoon, I waited in Downtown Berkeley for the bus that would take me up to Northside for House Church when Garland, another House Church member (and our only Quaker) came up from out of the Berkeley BART Station. "Pat, I just heard. They've been found, or, their bodies have been. They're dead. They were all shot to death."
I was not the only person who cried that evening, as we talked, prayed, comforted one another, and reflected upon the Gospel in light of this new reality. What did it mean for El Salvador, especially for the poor? What did it mean for US policy -- would this help to change it? And what did this mean for us?
The following morning, the group of us -- Garland, Kenny, Sheila, Steve, Mary Lou, Millie, Donna, JD, Kevin, and myself -- went into San Francisco to the memorial Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop John Quinn. The Archbishop had long been an advocate for the poor of Latin America and had attended Archbishop Romero's funeral just a few months before, in March of the same year. As I listened, and prayed, and reflected upon the deaths of these four women, I realized that something significant had shifted and changed. I realized and understood, probably for the first time in my Catholic Christian life, that people I knew and loved, people who took their faith with the radical seriousness of the Gospel of Liberation, could risk and even lose their lives for the sake of that Gospel. I looked at my friends and realized that, if we did, indeed, take the Gospel seriously, we could die. And over the next days and weeks, I grappled with that new understanding, wondering if I were truly prepared to say that kind of "yes" to G-D.
Thirty years on, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel continue to call people to follow the Gospel, to serve the poor, to make a radical commitment to G-D's preferential option for the poor. One doesn't need to belong to a religious order to make such a commitment; I see it every week in my parish community in Downtown Hartford, as members make and serve sandwiches to folks who come to our door; prepare, cook, & serve dinner to the women in our transitional women's shelter; serve meals at The House of Bread; travel to our Sister Parish in Haiti; nurses in our parish take blood pressures & help refer people without health coverage to health care options in the Hartford area. And I know that these ministries are repeated in hundreds of parishes across the US. This coming Thursday, 9 December, my parish will commemorate the lives and deaths of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel with dinner and a performance about these modern women martyrs.
In the interim... what else is new? This past Wednesday afternoon, I began an eight-week training program in the Pastoral Care Department at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford. At the end of the training, if I still feel called & don't bomb out, I will be approved to serve as a pastoral visitor with patients at St. Francis, both in the hospital & in the Emergency Room. After years away from the classroom & formal ministry training, it is a challenge! Please keep me in your prayers. My long-term hope is, if I do indeed continue to feel called, to be able to do more formal training (Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE) that would qualify me as a hospital chaplain, thus bringing together two parts of my life that have long seemed to be moving toward one another: My health care experience, including acute care experience in San Francisco in the 1970's & '80's, and my theology & ministry experience over the past 35 years.
Tomorrow & Sunday, I'll be spending time in Chapters 40-55 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah with class at St. Patrick-St. Anthony. I love these particular chapters of Isaiah which begin: Comfort, Oh give comfort to my people, says Your G-D...
Later today, I hope I will finally get the cast off my right ankle & leg & begin rehab of my fractured ankle. It's been 6 weeks (I think) since I fractured it in a freak accident. It will be nice to shower without covering one leg in plastic sheeting!
I'd intended to write this yesterday, however, by the time I arrived home after daily Mass & a trek to the main library in Hartford, my lack of sleep following my days of too much sleep finally caught up with me, & I slept from about 4:30 pm - 7:15 pm & then again from 10 pm until 6 this morning, all of which feels terrific. Over the weekend, I'll write about Advent and why it is my favorite liturgical season.
For now, Happy Chanukah, Blessed Advent, and best wishes for a most enjoyable weekend!!
Much of yesterday, as I thought about and prayed for Jean, Ita, Maura & Dorothy, I thought back to 30 years earlier. At that time, I lived in Berkeley & had recently begun my second year in seminary at Pacific School of Religion (PSR). The previous Spring, I'd been invited to join a House Church: An intentional base community, modeled on the base communities in Latin America, in which a small group of us met to pray, reflect upon Scripture in light of current reality, share our ministry work, support one another, and share a pot-luck meal once each week or once every other week. Our House Church was small & comprised mostly of Jesuit seminarians & other students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JSTB), including several dynamic women who were members of different religious orders. Founded by an ordained Jesuit, the House Church was egalitarian, challenging, a source of deep faith, and often provided the best meal any of us ate all week. For three years, it served as the most authentic and faith-filled community in my life, calling me to an always-renewed and always-renewing understanding of how I was called to serve G-D and G-D's people.
We had learned on Wednesday, 3 December, that 4 US women church workers had not returned from the airport the previous evening; they had been expected at the coastal city of La Libertad that night. Since at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU -- the consortium of seminaries to which both PSR & JSTB belonged) there were 3 Catholic seminaries -- Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican -- in classrooms & along the streets of Northside, as well as in refectories & at daily Mass, we talked quietly, wondering what had happened. There was little news that night.
Late the following afternoon, I waited in Downtown Berkeley for the bus that would take me up to Northside for House Church when Garland, another House Church member (and our only Quaker) came up from out of the Berkeley BART Station. "Pat, I just heard. They've been found, or, their bodies have been. They're dead. They were all shot to death."
I was not the only person who cried that evening, as we talked, prayed, comforted one another, and reflected upon the Gospel in light of this new reality. What did it mean for El Salvador, especially for the poor? What did it mean for US policy -- would this help to change it? And what did this mean for us?
The following morning, the group of us -- Garland, Kenny, Sheila, Steve, Mary Lou, Millie, Donna, JD, Kevin, and myself -- went into San Francisco to the memorial Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop John Quinn. The Archbishop had long been an advocate for the poor of Latin America and had attended Archbishop Romero's funeral just a few months before, in March of the same year. As I listened, and prayed, and reflected upon the deaths of these four women, I realized that something significant had shifted and changed. I realized and understood, probably for the first time in my Catholic Christian life, that people I knew and loved, people who took their faith with the radical seriousness of the Gospel of Liberation, could risk and even lose their lives for the sake of that Gospel. I looked at my friends and realized that, if we did, indeed, take the Gospel seriously, we could die. And over the next days and weeks, I grappled with that new understanding, wondering if I were truly prepared to say that kind of "yes" to G-D.
Thirty years on, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel continue to call people to follow the Gospel, to serve the poor, to make a radical commitment to G-D's preferential option for the poor. One doesn't need to belong to a religious order to make such a commitment; I see it every week in my parish community in Downtown Hartford, as members make and serve sandwiches to folks who come to our door; prepare, cook, & serve dinner to the women in our transitional women's shelter; serve meals at The House of Bread; travel to our Sister Parish in Haiti; nurses in our parish take blood pressures & help refer people without health coverage to health care options in the Hartford area. And I know that these ministries are repeated in hundreds of parishes across the US. This coming Thursday, 9 December, my parish will commemorate the lives and deaths of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel with dinner and a performance about these modern women martyrs.
In the interim... what else is new? This past Wednesday afternoon, I began an eight-week training program in the Pastoral Care Department at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford. At the end of the training, if I still feel called & don't bomb out, I will be approved to serve as a pastoral visitor with patients at St. Francis, both in the hospital & in the Emergency Room. After years away from the classroom & formal ministry training, it is a challenge! Please keep me in your prayers. My long-term hope is, if I do indeed continue to feel called, to be able to do more formal training (Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE) that would qualify me as a hospital chaplain, thus bringing together two parts of my life that have long seemed to be moving toward one another: My health care experience, including acute care experience in San Francisco in the 1970's & '80's, and my theology & ministry experience over the past 35 years.
Tomorrow & Sunday, I'll be spending time in Chapters 40-55 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah with class at St. Patrick-St. Anthony. I love these particular chapters of Isaiah which begin: Comfort, Oh give comfort to my people, says Your G-D...
Later today, I hope I will finally get the cast off my right ankle & leg & begin rehab of my fractured ankle. It's been 6 weeks (I think) since I fractured it in a freak accident. It will be nice to shower without covering one leg in plastic sheeting!
I'd intended to write this yesterday, however, by the time I arrived home after daily Mass & a trek to the main library in Hartford, my lack of sleep following my days of too much sleep finally caught up with me, & I slept from about 4:30 pm - 7:15 pm & then again from 10 pm until 6 this morning, all of which feels terrific. Over the weekend, I'll write about Advent and why it is my favorite liturgical season.
For now, Happy Chanukah, Blessed Advent, and best wishes for a most enjoyable weekend!!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
World AIDS Day & Other Calendar Events Today
It has struck me today how very strangely calendar events converge; a number of significant ones converge today. First, today marks the 55th Anniversary of the courage of Ms. Rosa Parks, who refused, after a hard day of working, to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man, although the law at the time required she do so. Her action sparked a boycott of the city buses in Montgomery, AL, that lasted for over a year. Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on the boycott: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott . In the end, the African American citizens of Montgomery won their battle & ushered in the beginnings of a Freedom Movement that lasted through the following decade and then some. I'd like to think that this movement still going on today, in ever newer & different forms...
The Jewish festival of Chanukah began this evening, a holiday lasting 8 days that commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been ritually violated by the troops of King Antiochus of Syria. I see it as a celebration of religious freedom & the refusal to be forced to worship a way not of one's own choosing -- WHATEVER THAT WAY of WORSHIP MAY BE, EVEN IF IT IS NO WAY AT ALL. In other words, I view freedom of religion as absolute. My choice to be a Roman Catholic Christian, which was for me, answering a call I heard as a young teenager from the Holy One, is inviolable, just as is my sister's choice to name no religious tradition for her life. Likewise, our mother's choice to be proudly & happily Jewish, too, is inviolable. If I extend that out, as I must do as a US North American & someone born Jewish who became Catholic, I believe that to be true for everyone. No one should ever be forced to adopt a religion that she / he would not freely choose -- ever. That hasn't always been the case; witness the long history of "forced conversions" of Jews by the Roman Catholic Church prior & during the Inquisition. As a Catholic Christian, I welcome sisters & brothers who feel called to explore the Catholic faith; I rejoice with them if / when they choose it as their own. At the same time, I also rejoice when anyone finds, on her / his spiritual / religious journey, that she / he feels called to stay exactly where she / he has been, or, after prayer & discernment, freely chooses a tradition I would never dream of choosing for myself (& I won't name any here -- my friends will be able to figure out which ones I mean). Mostly, I do not believe, as do some right-wing Christians, that everyone -- meaning especially Jews & Muslims -- must become Christians to be "saved." Nor do I feel comfortable with some of what I read from highly extremist Muslims that we all must become Muslims.
I'm thinking of this today, especially, because it is also the Feast Day in the Catholic Church of Jesuit priest & martyr St. Edmund Campion. He, along with so many others, died during the horrific years of the religious conflict in England when, depending upon the identity of the monarch, Catholics killed Anglicans or Anglicans killed Catholics. It was more than bloody awful. I won't go into detail; those can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Campion) & on the Jesuit site, Jesuit Saints and Blesseds (http://www.sjweb.info/Jesuits/saints.cfm). St. Edmund Campion was martyred at age 41 in 1581. Hundreds died on both sides, all because Henry VIII took over being head of the Church from the Pope who refused to allow him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. They all forgot the warning found in Psalm 146:3: "Put not your trust in princes, Nor in mortals, in whom there is no help." But then again, St. Edmund Campion & his companions believed, as did all of the other martyrs on each side during these times, that their side was the side which the Holy One favored, & that thus they were following the Holy One, not a prince (Edward), a king (Henry VIII), or a queen or two (Mary & then Elizabeth I).
It's not that I do not honor St. Edmund Campion, S.J.; I do honor his sacrifice & martyrdom. I just find it inestimably sad that the Christian Church(es) was / were so split and remain so to this day. And, with the current Bishop of Rome (Pope Benedict XVI), I don't see any chance for church unity or, even more radical, church re-unification any time soon. Benedict is taking the Catholic Church in an increasingly conservative direction, encouraging Anglicans who oppose women as priests, women becoming bishops, & true equality (ordination &, at least, blessings of relationships, if not yet church-blessed marriages) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgender persons, to "come on down" to the Catholic Church. These former-yet-still Anglican Catholics will further heighten the conservative ideology & direction of the Catholic Church; I'm not sure what else they bring or do, & I don't see any of it very helpful. It simply seems like one big jump into the increasingly large intolerance pool.
Today also marks World AIDS Day. I've been around long enough to remember the first time I heard anyone mention "some strange new illness" that seemed to be striking young gay men in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in particular. I was in a car on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, driving from the East Bay to San Francisco for an event, most likely an event with Dignity San Francisco (see just below). In those early days -- this was 1982 into 1983 -- we didn't even have a name for this emerging disease. During those years, I was living in Berkeley, CA, working on my doctorate in theology at the Graduate Theological Union, & frequently worshipping (& partying with) the wonderful congregation of Dignity San Francisco. (Dignity is an organization of Catholic gay men, lesbian women, bisexual & transgender person, our families, friends, & allies -- that's the rap I like the best.) Suddenly, it seemed & felt like our world was on fire. As a student and lover of poetry, I thought of the first lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
The Jewish festival of Chanukah began this evening, a holiday lasting 8 days that commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been ritually violated by the troops of King Antiochus of Syria. I see it as a celebration of religious freedom & the refusal to be forced to worship a way not of one's own choosing -- WHATEVER THAT WAY of WORSHIP MAY BE, EVEN IF IT IS NO WAY AT ALL. In other words, I view freedom of religion as absolute. My choice to be a Roman Catholic Christian, which was for me, answering a call I heard as a young teenager from the Holy One, is inviolable, just as is my sister's choice to name no religious tradition for her life. Likewise, our mother's choice to be proudly & happily Jewish, too, is inviolable. If I extend that out, as I must do as a US North American & someone born Jewish who became Catholic, I believe that to be true for everyone. No one should ever be forced to adopt a religion that she / he would not freely choose -- ever. That hasn't always been the case; witness the long history of "forced conversions" of Jews by the Roman Catholic Church prior & during the Inquisition. As a Catholic Christian, I welcome sisters & brothers who feel called to explore the Catholic faith; I rejoice with them if / when they choose it as their own. At the same time, I also rejoice when anyone finds, on her / his spiritual / religious journey, that she / he feels called to stay exactly where she / he has been, or, after prayer & discernment, freely chooses a tradition I would never dream of choosing for myself (& I won't name any here -- my friends will be able to figure out which ones I mean). Mostly, I do not believe, as do some right-wing Christians, that everyone -- meaning especially Jews & Muslims -- must become Christians to be "saved." Nor do I feel comfortable with some of what I read from highly extremist Muslims that we all must become Muslims.
I'm thinking of this today, especially, because it is also the Feast Day in the Catholic Church of Jesuit priest & martyr St. Edmund Campion. He, along with so many others, died during the horrific years of the religious conflict in England when, depending upon the identity of the monarch, Catholics killed Anglicans or Anglicans killed Catholics. It was more than bloody awful. I won't go into detail; those can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Campion) & on the Jesuit site, Jesuit Saints and Blesseds (http://www.sjweb.info/Jesuits/saints.cfm). St. Edmund Campion was martyred at age 41 in 1581. Hundreds died on both sides, all because Henry VIII took over being head of the Church from the Pope who refused to allow him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. They all forgot the warning found in Psalm 146:3: "Put not your trust in princes, Nor in mortals, in whom there is no help." But then again, St. Edmund Campion & his companions believed, as did all of the other martyrs on each side during these times, that their side was the side which the Holy One favored, & that thus they were following the Holy One, not a prince (Edward), a king (Henry VIII), or a queen or two (Mary & then Elizabeth I).
It's not that I do not honor St. Edmund Campion, S.J.; I do honor his sacrifice & martyrdom. I just find it inestimably sad that the Christian Church(es) was / were so split and remain so to this day. And, with the current Bishop of Rome (Pope Benedict XVI), I don't see any chance for church unity or, even more radical, church re-unification any time soon. Benedict is taking the Catholic Church in an increasingly conservative direction, encouraging Anglicans who oppose women as priests, women becoming bishops, & true equality (ordination &, at least, blessings of relationships, if not yet church-blessed marriages) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgender persons, to "come on down" to the Catholic Church. These former-yet-still Anglican Catholics will further heighten the conservative ideology & direction of the Catholic Church; I'm not sure what else they bring or do, & I don't see any of it very helpful. It simply seems like one big jump into the increasingly large intolerance pool.
Today also marks World AIDS Day. I've been around long enough to remember the first time I heard anyone mention "some strange new illness" that seemed to be striking young gay men in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in particular. I was in a car on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, driving from the East Bay to San Francisco for an event, most likely an event with Dignity San Francisco (see just below). In those early days -- this was 1982 into 1983 -- we didn't even have a name for this emerging disease. During those years, I was living in Berkeley, CA, working on my doctorate in theology at the Graduate Theological Union, & frequently worshipping (& partying with) the wonderful congregation of Dignity San Francisco. (Dignity is an organization of Catholic gay men, lesbian women, bisexual & transgender person, our families, friends, & allies -- that's the rap I like the best.) Suddenly, it seemed & felt like our world was on fire. As a student and lover of poetry, I thought of the first lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
So tonight, I remember & honor a number of people, most of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't know. I remember & honor Richard Cotton, a young seminarian & former Dominican brother from the Southern Province Dominicans; Rick & I, along with several other folks in Spirit Affinity Group, did Civil Disobedience together in late January 1983 in opposition to US intervention in El Salvador. Rick left the Dominicans & went to work for the San Francisco Archdiocese in its HIV/AIDS service & support network. He returned to his native home of San Antonio, TX, & died in the late 1980's, after I moved from Berkeley to Boston. I remember & honor Kevin Caligari, President of Dignity USA & close friend of mine in Dignity SF. After the homophobic & infamous "Ratzinger letter" was published in the mid-1980's, basically condoning violence against GLBT people, Kevin, who was in Europe, got a copy of it, got some nails & a hammer, & nailed it to one of the doors of the Vatican in Rome. This news was broadcast on the BBC World Service broadcasts, & I had friends in Africa who heard about it that way! Kevin died of complications from HIV / AIDS in the early 1990's. I remember & honor the many, many men I knew in Dignity SF, with such energy, wonderful talent, wonderful gifts, wonderful minds, who were killed by this disease. I also remember & honor John Burns, my friend Roberta's brother; I never got to know John, although he lived in San Francisco. In a movement & moment of tremendous grace, my friend Rick was able to help Roberta's brother John when John was quite sick; it was the only way I could help Roberta & her brother in a time of such pain for her. She had traveled with her husband from CT to CA because of her love for John, & by helping John, Rick knew he was helping me. (He had stayed with me when he had become ill, before we knew he was HIV+. Isn't this what is meant by "Pay It Forward"?) John, too, died from HIV / AIDS.
Finally, I want to remember & honor three men I did not know--three men whose fight against HIV / AIDS inspired me profoundly. First, Arthur Ashe, who I loved to watch when he played tennis. The dignity & grace he brought to the tennis court was the same dignity & grace he brought to his battle against HIV / AIDS. Second, Randy Shilts, San Francisco journalist & one of the first to report on the disease from within the gay community. His book, And the Band Played On, is the best piece of writing I've ever read on the epidemic. Finally, Dr. Jonathan Mann, an HIV / AIDS researcher & Public Health & Human Rights pioneer. Jonathan Mann worked & taught at Harvard School of Public Health for several years when I, too, worked there. Then he moved on. Shortly after he left Harvard, he died in the crash of SwissAir flight 111 in September 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mann ).
We have all been so privileged & gifted to have known people who have lived with & died from HIV / AIDS. The fight isn't over; the epidemic continues. More young gay men are having unprotected sex these days because of the availability of antiretroviral drugs which have made HIV / AIDS the chronic disease it has become, rather than the rapid-fire killer it was 25 years ago. That unsafe behavior frightens me. What happens if the virus mutates yet again? What happens if it becomes resistant to the ARVs now available? And, with the current state of the US economy, what will happen as more & more HIV+ women & men lose their jobs, lose their Unemployment Compensation, & lose their health care coverage, thus losing their ability to pay for their drugs? The Republicans have now vowed to hold the Congress hostage until they (the Republicans) get what they want -- continued tax cuts for the richest of the richest of the rich. (Am I the only one who is becoming disgusted & nauseated over their behavior?)
What to do when faced with such frustration? We each have our own response. Tonight, my response is to think of & remember Rick Cotton & other members of our affinity group as we prepared to engage in non-violent direct action (Civil Disobedience) at the Concord Naval Weapons Station / Port Chicago in Concord, CA. While we knew we wouldn't stop the flow of weapons from the US to El Salvador, perhaps we could delay them by a few hours, or even a few minutes. Perhaps we could raise the consciousness of folks who hadn't thought much about what the naval base was doing & the destination of the weapons it was sending out. We didn't know what we would accomplish. We felt, however, called to respond, called to say no to death & yes to life. We felt called to respond to G-D's preferential option for the poor, & that was one way in which we felt called to make that response.
So tonight, I remember & honor a number of people, most of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't know. I remember & honor Richard Cotton, a young seminarian & former Dominican brother from the Southern Province Dominicans; Rick & I, along with several other folks in Spirit Affinity Group, did Civil Disobedience together in late January 1983 in opposition to US intervention in El Salvador. Rick left the Dominicans & went to work for the San Francisco Archdiocese in its HIV/AIDS service & support network. He returned to his native home of San Antonio, TX, & died in the late 1980's, after I moved from Berkeley to Boston. I remember & honor Kevin Caligari, President of Dignity USA & close friend of mine in Dignity SF. After the homophobic & infamous "Ratzinger letter" was published in the mid-1980's, basically condoning violence against GLBT people, Kevin, who was in Europe, got a copy of it, got some nails & a hammer, & nailed it to one of the doors of the Vatican in Rome. This news was broadcast on the BBC World Service broadcasts, & I had friends in Africa who heard about it that way! Kevin died of complications from HIV / AIDS in the early 1990's. I remember & honor the many, many men I knew in Dignity SF, with such energy, wonderful talent, wonderful gifts, wonderful minds, who were killed by this disease. I also remember & honor John Burns, my friend Roberta's brother; I never got to know John, although he lived in San Francisco. In a movement & moment of tremendous grace, my friend Rick was able to help Roberta's brother John when John was quite sick; it was the only way I could help Roberta & her brother in a time of such pain for her. She had traveled with her husband from CT to CA because of her love for John, & by helping John, Rick knew he was helping me. (He had stayed with me when he had become ill, before we knew he was HIV+. Isn't this what is meant by "Pay It Forward"?) John, too, died from HIV / AIDS.
Finally, I want to remember & honor three men I did not know--three men whose fight against HIV / AIDS inspired me profoundly. First, Arthur Ashe, who I loved to watch when he played tennis. The dignity & grace he brought to the tennis court was the same dignity & grace he brought to his battle against HIV / AIDS. Second, Randy Shilts, San Francisco journalist & one of the first to report on the disease from within the gay community. His book, And the Band Played On, is the best piece of writing I've ever read on the epidemic. Finally, Dr. Jonathan Mann, an HIV / AIDS researcher & Public Health & Human Rights pioneer. Jonathan Mann worked & taught at Harvard School of Public Health for several years when I, too, worked there. Then he moved on. Shortly after he left Harvard, he died in the crash of SwissAir flight 111 in September 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mann ).
We have all been so privileged & gifted to have known people who have lived with & died from HIV / AIDS. The fight isn't over; the epidemic continues. More young gay men are having unprotected sex these days because of the availability of antiretroviral drugs which have made HIV / AIDS the chronic disease it has become, rather than the rapid-fire killer it was 25 years ago. That unsafe behavior frightens me. What happens if the virus mutates yet again? What happens if it becomes resistant to the ARVs now available? And, with the current state of the US economy, what will happen as more & more HIV+ women & men lose their jobs, lose their Unemployment Compensation, & lose their health care coverage, thus losing their ability to pay for their drugs? The Republicans have now vowed to hold the Congress hostage until they (the Republicans) get what they want -- continued tax cuts for the richest of the richest of the rich. (Am I the only one who is becoming disgusted & nauseated over their behavior?)
What to do when faced with such frustration? We each have our own response. Tonight, my response is to think of & remember Rick Cotton & other members of our affinity group as we prepared to engage in non-violent direct action (Civil Disobedience) at the Concord Naval Weapons Station / Port Chicago in Concord, CA. While we knew we wouldn't stop the flow of weapons from the US to El Salvador, perhaps we could delay them by a few hours, or even a few minutes. Perhaps we could raise the consciousness of folks who hadn't thought much about what the naval base was doing & the destination of the weapons it was sending out. We didn't know what we would accomplish. We felt, however, called to respond, called to say no to death & yes to life. We felt called to respond to G-D's preferential option for the poor, & that was one way in which we felt called to make that response.
I feel that same call now & know that I / we need to respond -- to the continuing HIV / AIDS epidemic & to the broken-down politics afoot in Washington, DC, right now. What does that mean? I don't know, in part because it's too late for me to think too terribly creatively.
And tomorrow marks the 30th Anniversary of the murders of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, & Maura Clark in El Salvador. That will be the subject of my blog post tomorrow. I do, indeed, believe in the Communion of Saints.
Good night, everyone, & thank you. Blessings of much Shalom & Love.
Good night, everyone, & thank you. Blessings of much Shalom & Love.
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