Contemplative Prayer & The Politics of Holiness

It's been a very long while since it felt so good to be finished with a year!

As we count down the days before it's officially 2021, one of the deepest thoughts I've had concerns the importance of prayer. And when I use the word "prayer" I'm by no means confining myself to any particular brand or version.

As it happens, Fr, Richard Rohr's message for today (from his daily web page) is very apropos. He heads up the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, and is a proponent of Centering Prayer. (And to be clear, although I practice this form of prayer, I'm not intending it to be the only variety that works).

Here is how Rohr describes contemplative prayer (a form of Centering Prayer): "Contemplative prayer allows us to build our own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within our house and to recognize that it is not our house at all. To keeping praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is Everybody’s Home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different world. I like to say it’s a Christ-soaked world, a world where matter is inspirited and spirit is embodied. In this world, everything is sacred; and the word “Real” takes on a new meaning. The world is wary of such house builders, for our loyalties will lie in very different directions. We will be very different kinds of citizens, and the state will not so easily depend on our salute. That is the politics of prayer. And that is probably why truly spiritual people are always a threat to politicians of any sort. They want our allegiance, and we can no longer give it. Our house is too big."

My understanding of the point that Rohr is making is that, contemplative prayer expands our world. It allows us to see the bigger picture. It dissolves artificial boundaries. It washes away fear and sets the table for love. And it ushers in a sense of grounded-ness and peace. 

As with most spiritual practices, this is a gradual process. And the process is seen as a threat to those who demand allegiance  to political or nationalistic agendas.

Rohr explains: "If religion and religious people are to have any moral credibility in the face of the massive death-dealing and denial of this era, we need to move with great haste toward lives of political holiness. This is my theology and my politics:

It appears that God loves life—the creating never stops.

We will love and create and maintain life.

It appears that God is love—an enduring, patient kind.

We will seek and trust love in all its humanizing (and therefore divinizing forms.

It appears that God loves the variety of multiple features, faces, and forms.

We will not be afraid of the other, the not-me, the stranger at the gate.

It appears that God loves—is—beauty: Look at this world!

Those who pray already know this. Their passion will be for beauty."

Especially given the deep-seated division currently across the world, and the tumultuous nativism it spawns, Rohr's words bring me hope and healing.

This isn't to say that Rohr sets out an easy path for us.

He already alludes to the pushback we'll receive from those who are firmly reliant only on human-made systems. Those who see difference as a threat. Those who are perfectly content to rely on dualistic thinking, where either-or is always seen as better than both-and.

But in the end, it is the ability to be creative, flexible, generous and kind that foster the love we'll need to begin to see a better way.

Photos taken by Dan Salerno at Kalamazoo Nature Center and KNC's Delano Homestead, and Nature Conservancy's Bow in the Clouds Preserve.

A Conversation With Eric Atcheson, Author of ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

Eric Atcheson

Rev. Eric Atcheson is an ordained pastor in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the author of two books: Oregon Trail Theology: The Frontier Millennial Christians Face; and On Earth as It Is In Heaven: A Faith-Based Toolkit for Economic Justice (Church Publishing, 2018). Eric is a parish minister by training who has dedicated himself through his preaching, speaking and writing to his calling as a prophetic and pastoral voice rooted in Scriptures. He is a descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors. Eric’s identity is woven into his passion for social justice and human rights.

Fairly early on in your book ON EARTH AS IT IS INHEAVEN, A Faith-Based Toolkit for Economic Justice, you write about the issue of homelessness in America. “It was heartbreaking to watch many of the local politicians talk about the lack of compassion even as they attempted to rezone the area to functionally eliminate homeless shelters… It was also heartbreaking to see much of that viciousness emanate from within the wider church. We worship an itinerant Messiah who once said, ‘Foxes have dens, and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Human One has no place to lay his head.’ That should call into question any of our manufactured moral objections to homelessness. Such attitudes are a testament to the extent to which we are willing to revise Christianity to justify our comfort with injustice. Our willingness to reshape our faith for comfort’s sake lies at the heart of what needs to change within the church… We no longer worship God as revealed through the scriptures so much as we worship the scriptures.”

That’s quite a statement! I’m wondering if you could talk a little more about the whole idea of bending scripture to suit our viewpoint, and especially about worshipping scriptures instead of God?

Forgive me the tangent, but I recently finished a two-year stint ministering with a Presbyterian congregation, so a lot of Reformed theology is still fresh in my mind. I think we (the historically white Protestant denominations) are guilty of taking the notion of sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible itself is the authority rather than our interpretations of it, and made it into one of those interpretations that has supplanted the Scriptures. Maybe that sounds a bit circular. What I mean is that instead of treating the Bible for what it is—a holy and sacred text, inspired by God and our relationship with God—we have interpreted the Bible into something that it isn’t, and I don’t think was ever meant to be: an object to be venerated, sometimes seemingly on a par with God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit.

And that was never meant to be the Bible’s purpose! The Bible does not even have a singular purpose—it was composed and compiled over the course of hundreds of years by people who, though guided by God, sometimes disagreed with each other, and you see those disagreements throughout the Bible! I have found it much easier to respect and honor the Bible as an eternal conversation rather than as an object for me to venerate.

 

You bring up the same subject a few chapters later, where you write “In my experience, though, Christians who say they believe that the Bible is either without error or the literal Word of God are just as eager to do hermeneutical somersaults to get out of Jesus’s command to the rich man to sell all he owns and give the proceeds to the poor.”  Is It fair to say that believing the Bible is literally the Word of God is itself an interpretation?

Yes. Biblical inerrancy is an interpretation like any other, but paradoxically, it is an interpretation that is mutually exclusive with the fundamental tenet behind sola scriptura: that the Bible is a superior authority to the interpretations of it. The Bible itself never, ever claims inerrancy. Ever. So, we can treat it as the final word on the matter and jettison inerrancy, or we can choose to prefer the interpretation of inerrancy over the Bible’s lack of claim. We cannot do both.

 

Writing about economic justice, you note that “The United States possesses an abundance of both pride and food, even after accounting for the crops left to rot in the fields. Prosperity for the wealthiest among us abounds. But where we consistently come up short is in our solidarity with the poor, in no small part because we have manufactured a great many myths about the work ethic of the poor that brand them undeserving of our help.” I wonder how much of these myths come from human nature itself, or from our own society/culture? And to what extent is the American church complicit in propagating such myths?

All of the above, I suppose, because we have been very good at evolving our justifications for exorbitant wealth as those means for generating and obtaining exorbitant wealth have evolved. To give one example, consider the decoupling of wealth from land. This is something that began in the transition from feudalism to mercantilism and has continued to impact our economy as vast sums of wealth get generated for men like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg on the basis of technological, rather than agricultural, pursuits. A claim to land—and the wealth it provided—might have been taken historically as a sign of God’s favor (and in some contexts still is); now it is the amount of one’s stock. That doesn’t mean that land suddenly isn’t prominent in conversations of wealth and identity—it undeniably is. But it does mean that our acceptance—if not celebration—of what that level of wealth looks like has proven adaptable and enduring over the centuries. And the church has certainly been a willing participant in that.

 

I really appreciate the point you make that “[W]hile we Protestants especially might look toward scripture at the expense of historical and/or contemporary experience, it is critical not to force scripture to exist in a vacuum. The writers of scripture penned what they did in direct response to the events and divine experiences around them, and as timeless as many of their lessons may be, we must not ignore that our biblical authors are also products of their time.” What do you see as the chief benefit of combining scripture with an understanding of current events?

You ask a little later about what the introduction of moral and spiritual language to economic matters might look like, and I think that it represents the chief benefit you ask about here. Employees seeking just and fair compensation or working conditions who are in the pews on Sundays would feel supported by their churches and ministers. Workers stressed about how their contract negotiations are going may see a church engaging with them and believe that they are not alone in their worries. My thesis data overwhelmingly told me that the experience of striking was a deeply stressful one for employees, and not only financially—it was emotionally, mentally, spiritually stressful as well. It is in crisis points like that where the church can do some genuinely life-changing work. That is the benefit—peoples’ lives will be changed for the better precisely because of the church’s engagement. That is how the kingdom of God gets built.

 

You write about European and American colonialism and state “The expansion of slavery and the extermination of the indigenous people were economic actions as well as militaristic and supremacist ones, and the Christian theologies formed to justify them left profoundly harmful economic legacies. To take a peoples’ land or freedom is deeply sinful. But such theft of home and liberty was not an end in itself; it also served as a means of vast economic enrichment for a select few.” In your view, where did the Church go wrong?

It is hard to point to one landmark event and say, “this is it.” The Treaty of Tordesillas represented the church’s approval of all those sins in the name of Christian expansionism, but the treaty was led up to by a series of papal bulls by the pope who preceded the one responsible for the treaty. You can even go back further—the Crusades represented, if not colonialism in the sense we understand it now, certainly a violent expression of religious hegemony. And those began over 900 years ago. So, at a minimum, we have close to a millennium of this to deprogram from ourselves. That takes time and work. I do not think I initially set out for On Earth as it is in Heaven to be a part of that work, but it eventually did, and I tried to embrace where the Holy Spirit led it.

 

A few pages later in ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, you make a solid point that, for your doctoral thesis, you interviewed people in a community that was dealing with two major strikes. You asked them what they thought the role of the church should be.  You found that “people want the church to be active in tackling points of contention, facilitating constructive discussions, and spiritually preparing people. However, most of the Bible studies and faith formation tools I have seen in my decade of parish ministry offer little of the sort to the church. The data tells me that there is a definite need, and we should be paying attention to – and trying to meet- that need.” You go on to mention within the framework of labor troubles, “introducing the language of morality is a vital aspect of tis work that is fundamentally economic, but cannot be framed only in economics.” What would introducing the language of morality, of spirituality, to economics, look like?

I think it could look all sorts of ways in all sorts of communities, depending on their history and demographics. One lesson of some of organized labor’s failures to unionize in some communities is that there is no one-size-fits-all faith language when it comes to economic matters that religious allies can simply reach for and use. I think what this introduction of moral and spiritual language to economics could look like is almost a polyglot culture, in which various dialects are spoken, but they revolve around the common human concern of financial security.

 

Underlying this call to infuse economics with morality, is a call to honesty. “Being honest about our history teaches us to defer to the narratives of those who have been harmed, repair credibility and relationships both inside and outside the church, learn from our past to help shape our future, and, most of all, uphold the innate value taught by Jesus that the truth can set us free.” From you point of view what would this infusion of morality/spirituality into the American economic system look like? 

This is a great and especially timely question, because I think the bill for white Christianity’s adherence to partisan identity over all else is starting to come due. Our most visible “leaders” increasingly look hypocritical or worse as they aid and abet peoples’ disconnections from reality through conspiracy theories, End Times babble, and more. Part of this disconnection from reality is a fundamental denial of the nature of American history, including American economics. Much of the white American church has, in so many ways, doubled down on a sort of Christian nationalism that minimizes or dismisses the economic dimension of racism, as well as sexism and xenophobia. We cannot have an honest reckoning of our history because we have chosen to be dishonest about that history. Which is simultaneously painful and ironic to me—I was raised in a mostly conservative Christian area, and the vital importance of capital-T Truth was impressed upon me at a young age. Yet the full scope and truth of American history is continually and repeatedly denied by much of white Christianity, and that we have a theological word for that: sin. And as sin, it needs to be repented for.

 

I think you hit the proverbial nail-on-the-head when, a few pages later, you write: “To dismantle racism is to dismantle the primary justification for centuries of economic exploitation. Would you like to add a bit more to that observation?

I think it is impossible to understate the impact that chattel slavery had on the economy of the United States. And I think it is impossible to understate the impact it continues to have on the current economic disparities between Black and white Americans. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, all sorts of means were devised almost immediately to ensure that as many newly-liberated Black Americans as possible remained economically destitute. All of that has not been undone in just a few decades—especially when almost every attempt at undoing any of racism’s economic effects (public school integration, affirmative action, and incentivizing home ownership, just to name a few) has been met with profound resistance and white backlash. As long as that pattern endures, racism will endure and because of that reality alone, the problem of economic hardship will never be fully fixable or solvable.

Sarah Van Gelder's The Revolution Where You Live: A Review

Sarah Van Gelder

In the summer of 2015, Sarah Van Gelder began a 12,000-mile journey in a 12-year-old pick-up with a camper to find examples of local efforts to change the American system.

Her book, THE REVOLUTION WHERE YOU LIVE, chronicles her travels and her findings.

Among the places that Van Gelder visited were the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, the Growing Power Garden in Chicago, the New Era Window Cooperative in Brighton Park, IL., the Black Community Food Network in Detroit, the Apple Street Cooperative in Cincinnati, La Minga Farm Cooperative in Prospect, KY., Appalshop in Pine Mountain, KY., the Eastern Mennonite University Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (in Harrisonburg, VA.) and Greensboro, NC.

Van Gelder’s journalistic instincts shine through (she is co-founder of YES! Magazine, a publication focused on social justice). She is quick to follow up on tips for who to visit and she seems to gain access and trust easily.

And she has a deep heart for her topic.

While the list of grass-roots organizations she spent time with during her 18-month journey is impressive, so is Van Gelder’s love of humanity.

While reading THE REVOLUTION WHERE YOU LIVE, curiosity got the better of me. I began to wonder how many of the organizations that she visited were still in business. Five years after her journey, a quick Internet search found that a few of them aren’t. But some are still active and thriving. That’s to be expected, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of all new business start-ups fail within the first year; 50 percent fail within five years.

Then I got to wondering, maybe the point of Van Gelder’s book wasn’t so much to give a series of business templates, but to encourage us to look beyond national politics and national solutions to things.

As part of that process, at the half-way point of her book, Van Gelder charts out the difference between a Culture of Connection and An Economy of Extraction.

In the Connection column, she writes real wealth is grounded in humanity, community, and ecological well-being; while extraction views wealth as money “that can be extracted and concentrated in a few hands.”

Within a Culture of Connection “societies flourish when wealth is widely distributed and circulates locally,” while An Economy of Extraction “rewards merit, and the concentration of wealth allows investment.”

Perhaps the most tangible difference is found in what these two types of cultures prize. In a Culture of Connection, “relationships come first: self, family, community, place, environment.” In the Extraction Economy, “money comes first, which, managed well, offers a small group of people a good life.”

Van Gelder incorporates a definition of restorative justice within her visit to the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. “Restorative justice, which has its roots in indigenous circle processes, is a way of dealing with conflict and violations of trust. The practice is designed to restore relationships broken by a crime or other discord. In classic cases, a victim of a crime and the offender meet in a circle with others who have a stake in the outcome – the victim gets to ask questions about the crime, and the perpetrator offers an apology and may add context to the event, and together they work out terms of reparation. Advocates say this approach, compared to that of the criminal justice system, is more likely to result in healing for the victim, real accountability from the offender, and a less divided community.”

“Revolutionaries of the past have looked for something grand, something more important that community-level change. And there are good reasons, today, for wanting change to come quickly and to come big. But change that starts from the bottom up is more like evolution, drawing on the full complexity of who we are. That complexity is possible in the rich networks of interaction with people that happens at the local level. Face-to-face, we are less likely to stereotype each other or resort to oversimplified ideologies…”

“Our work, then, involves creating both inclusive, life-sustaining communities and the systems change that will allow them to thrive.”

Sarah Van Gelder’s THE REVOLUTION WHERE YOU LIVE may not be full of business tips for success, but it is full of human wisdom and hope. (Sidenote: And Gelder does include 101 Ways to Reclaim Local Power as an appendix!)

A Review: Eric Atcheson's ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: A Faith-Based Toolkit For Economic Justice

Eric Atcheson

“Each generation sees themselves living in a moment of unparalleled importance in world history, whether or not they are… However, I do believe in each generation rising to meet the challenges unique to its particular epoch of time.”

So Eric Atcheson begins ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: A Faith-Based Toolkit For Economic Justice.

For (mostly white) Christians living in America, he makes the point that when “we are willing to revise Christianity to justify our comfort with injustice… We no longer worship God as revealed through the scriptures so much as we worship the scriptures. We do not learn from history so much as we revise and reframe history to see what we want to see.”

Misinterpretation of scripture helps contribute to the propagation of myths. “We have manufactured a great many myths about the work ethic of the poor that brand them as undeserving of our help.”

And so, it should come as no surprise that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, a combined total of 7.4 million full and part-time workers were classified as being the “working poor.” Atcheson points out this figure doesn’t include children or any people recently laid off. This was before the recent Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the world’s economy, including those in America.

Atcheson refers to scripture for a standard of social justice, citing the examples of Hannah (mother of the prophet Samuel) and Mary (the mother of Jesus). “Both women lived in lowly social stations… Both women sang of a God whose justice involved the reversal of circumstance, but Mary specifically applied that reversal to economic fortunes: the hungry were filled and the rich made empty-handed.”

After offering this comparison, he asks the question: “What if that were the church’s Christmas message? What if the church were to take seriously the economic reversal of which Mary sang?”

As Atcheson sees it, one major obstacle to this happening is the church itself. He cites Jesus’ interaction with the rich young man who asks what he must do to get into heaven, and Jesus’ answer to sell everything and give it to the poor. “Christians who say they believe that the Bible is either without error or the literal Word of God are just as eager to do hermeneutical somersaults to get out of Jesus’ command to the rich man… As a result, we end up looking to scripture to affirm our preconceived ideas.”

In a nutshell, “One Bible lesson that gets cited over and over may not add to the totality of the Bible’s overarching message while another, less frequently cited passage, does.”

The [White] Protestant Christian church in America, in particular, “might look toward scripture at the expense of historical and/or contemporary experience, it is critical not to force scripture to exist in a vacuum.”

Part of this misinterpretation of meaning (especially among white evangelicals) leads to the strong focus in the American Christian church, on individual sin, but not systemic sin.

From here ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN incorporates a historic overview of the American [mostly white] Christian church’s complicity in fostering enormous economic inequity. Atcheson traces this complicity’s roots as far back as the Middle Ages, when Feudalism, Imperialism and religious exceptionalism fostered the church-approved doctrine that became known as Manifest Destiny.

For Atcheson, this historical chain-of-events led to dire consequences in America. “The expansion of slavery and the extermination of indigenous people were economic actions as well as militaristic and supremacist ones, and the Christian theologies formed to justify them left profoundly harmful legacies.”

“To take a peoples’ land or freedom is deeply sinful,” he points out. “But such theft of home and liberty was not an end in itself; it also served as a means of vast economic enrichment for a select few.”

Hence the seeds of inequity bore their bitter fruit into the 21st Century, most especially in the marriage of right-wing politics/nationalism with white, protestant, evangelicals. Atcheson observes: “No matter how much Christians claim to the contrary, we are not immune to the winds of popular belief, and the emphasis on individualism at the expense of the common good…”

His own experience with the labor movement led Atcheson to believe that “If you are able to hear from lower-wage workers and poor – and perhaps count yourself among them – in your context, there are important ways in which the presence of faith-based allies can help. Specifically introducing the language of morality is a vital aspect of this work that is fundamentally economic, but cannot be framed only in economics.”

In making his argument for a faith-infused focus on economic justice, Atcheson writes: “Being honest about our history teaches us to defer to the narratives of those who have been harmed, repair credibility and relationships both inside and outside of the church, learn from our past to help shape our future, and most of all, uphold the innate value taught by Jesus that the truth can set us free.”

In the final chapters of his book, Atcheson solidifies the link between racism and economic inequality. “To dismantle racism is to dismantle the primary justification for centuries of economic exploitation.”

Atcheson writes: “[T]he history of white American Christianity is deeply interwoven with efforts to resist the integration of schools, and the advancement of civil rights and economic opportunities for non-whites more generally.”

Eric Atcheson’s ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN is a clarion call for the American church to become a critical part of the move for social and economic justice.

SIDENOTE: As a bonus, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN contains questions related to each chapter to facilitate group discussion.

A Visit to Bow in the Clouds/Spring Valley Nature Preserve

It was a gorgeous early December day here in southwest Michigan!

So I put on my hiking shoes and headed for the closest nature preserve to where I live. Bow in the Clouds Preserve. Not even a five minute drive away! 

Bow in the Clouds sets in back of the Sisters of St. Joseph campus here in Kalamazoo. And it's an absolutely beautiful piece of land that the sisters donated to the Nature Conservancy in Michigan.

There's a fairly large wetlands in this area. With spring-fed creeks running throughout. 

Fortunately, a series of sturdy walkways make the path easy at the bottom of the land which has the consistency of marsh.

The path winds up with fairly steep hills that led to the backside of the Sisters of St. Joseph Campus that sets along Nazareth Road. From there you'll get a spectacular view of the entire wetlands before heading back down.

And, along the way back, you'll be rewarded with more views of the spring-fed creek. Like the one above!

Although the trail has several twists and turns, it is clearly marked. Even with the leaves that have settled along the floor of the woods.

Most of the Bow in the Clouds preserve trail is narrow. I moved aside at a few points to let other walkers go through. There isn't much wiggle room at these points. But, as the trail gets closer to the backside of Spring Valley Elementary School, it widens out quite a bit.

All in all an exceptionally pleasant walk, towards the end of a gorgeous early December day!

 

A Visit to Kalamazoo Nature Center's Tallgrass Prairie Trail

Today was another beautiful day in southwest Michigan! A golden opportunity to visit the Kalamazoo Nature Center.

This time I focused on the Tallgrass Prairie Trail. Which is located just south of the main entrance to the Kalamazoo Nature Center, along North Westnedge Ave.

This stone wall is along the Kalamazoo Valley Trail, bordering the Tallgrass Prairie.

Trees line either side of the tail towards the end of the Tallgrass Trail.

This stately farmhouse sets along the Tallgrass Prairie Trail, close to North Westnedge Ave. It's not too difficult to imagine the past generations who lived here.

Wide-open acres have allowed the wind to curve this section of grass!

This weather station is along the beginning of the Trail, accentuating the Nature Center's on-going commitment to science and learning.

There are several bird homes within the Tallgrass Prairie. 

The Kalamazoo Nature Center's Tallgrass Prairie Trail is about two miles long. (At least the way that I walk it!) There are a few moderate hills to give your calves a workout. And ample opportunity to view the Kalamazoo River valley from hawk-soaring heights!

It features an exceptional way-past-the-tree line view of the Kalamazoo Valley that is guaranteed to take your breath away! 

There are also a few other trails that cross along the Tallgrass Prairie route.

All-in-all it's a great way to spend an hour, or two outside!

Many thanks to the Kalamazoo Nature Center for preserving such a wonderful, calm antidote to stressful times!

An Advent Meditation: Mary, Hannah & Cesar Chavez - Empire Falling...

Sunday marked the beginning of the season of Advent which is also the beginning of the liturgical calendar for Christians.

As happenstance would have it, I'm reading ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN by Eric Atchenson.

On page 41 of this thought-provoking book, Atchenson pairs together Mary's (the mother of Jesus) Magnificat with a similar song of praise given by Hannah (the mother of the prophet Samuel). 

Here's what Mary, a teenager, sang, in response to her older cousin Elizabeth's greeting.

Mary sang:

"My soul magnifies the Lord

And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior

For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

For He who is mighty has done great things for me,

And holy is His name.

And His mercy is on those who fear Him

From generation to generation.

He has shown strength with His arm;

He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

And exalted the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

And the rich He has sent away empty..."

As a young person, growing up attending a Catholic school, I remember being taught that Mary was Jesus' mother. She was patient and kind and loving. 

All these things were probably true.

But Mary's own song paints a picture of a very bold pregnant teenager singing out to the heavens.

The Mary who is singing this song is unabashedly rejoicing in God who is not only her savior, but her liberator. 

She sings about a God who is merciful, but also strong. Scattering the proud, pulling down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with food while sending away the rich.

Atchenson pairs Mary's song with Hannah's song when she brought her son, Samuel to the temple to begin his life of service.

Hannah prayed:

"My heart rejoices in the Lord!

The Lord has made me strong.

Now I have an answer for my enemies;

I rejoice because you rescued me...

Stop acting so proud and haughty!

Don't speak with such arrogance!

For the Lord is a God who knows what you have done;

he will judge your actions.

The bow of the mighty is now broken,

and those who stumbled are now strong.

Those who were well fed are now starving,

and those who were starving are now full...

He [the Lord] lifts the poor from the dust

and the needy from the garbage dump.

He sets them among princes,

placing them in seats of honor.."

Again, the themes of praise and liberation hold true.

Hannah prays out, rejoicing in God's lifting up the lowly, the poor, the hungry, the downtrodden. She also sends a direct warning to the proud, the haughty, the arrogant to watch out. The day is coming when the powerful (according to society's standards) will no longer rule.

Both Hannah and Mary then, urge us to focus on the God who sees the oppressed and raises them up.

Atchenson writes: "Both women lived in lowly social stations as either a married-yet-childless wife (Hannah) or as a divinely pregnant unwed fiancee (Mary). Both women sang of a God whose justice involved the reversal of circumstances, but Mary specifically applied that reversal to economic fortunes; the hungry were filled and the rich made empty-handed."

Then Atchenson asks the $10,000 question: "What if that were the church's Christmas message?" 

Wow! 

In twelve years of religion classes taught by the good sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I don't remember them mentioning this message.

Advent was a time of inward preparation. Silence. Anticipation. Longing. For baby Jesus.

But Mary was shout-out-loud rejoicing in the falling down of Empire.

She may have been a teenager, but she had some divinely inspired wisdom deep inside, motivating her joy at seeing the world turned upside down by her son.

Not just spiritually, but practically.

People were going to be fed. The forgotten, those living on the margins were going to be lifted up. And the rich, the powerful, were going to be sent away, empty-handed.

This is nothing more than heaven coming to earth. Now. Not in the bye and bye.

And, finally, here's an example of such revelation of kingdom coming, from Cesar Chavez, a deeply spiritual Roman Catholic, who led the United Farm Workers in difficult strikes during the 1960s. This is his Prayer of the Farm Workers Struggle:

"Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people’s plight.

Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.

Help me take responsibility for my own life;
So that I can be free at last.

Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.

Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.

Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.

Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.

Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.

Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world. Amen."

In the middle of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are already used to life being interrupted. We are already used to the kingdom of normality falling.

This Advent season Hannah and Mary and Cesar are inviting us to listen to the sound of social justice coming.

Meet Anna Rodell, Editorial Director, The Immigration Coalition

Anna Rodell

Anna Rodell considers herself a career academic who is currently working towards her Ph.D. in education. She has earned a M.A. in Latin American Studies. As an undergraduate student, Anna worked for three years in immigration legal aid in Memphis, Tennessee. That was her first real exposure to justice work, and it continues to guide her academic, professional, and spiritual practice. Serving as Editorial Director for The ImmigrationCoalition has given Anna a space to help other followers of Jesus engage with important cultural, political, and faith-related questions while meeting the immediate needs of immigrants at the border.

What do you see as the mission and the vision of The Immigration Coalition?

The immigration Coalition provides biblically-balanced resources on immigration that show compassion to immigrants and respect for the rule of law. Showing compassion to immigrants doesn’t require us to eliminate all immigration policy or throw safety out the window (especially because crime rates are lower among immigrants than native-born Americans[1]). Compassion does require us to reframe the way we think about immigration issues. As TiC often shares, immigrants are people to love, not problems to solve. This means that our first line of thought regarding immigration issues should be “How does God call me to act towards immigrants?” – and our political response should emerge from the answers to that question. Here’s the beauty of living in a democracy: if our government’s response to immigrants doesn’t align with God’s ethic of love, welcome, shelter, and provision for foreigners and travelers, then we have the political power, and I would argue the obligation, to use our voices and votes to change that.

 

Could you talk a bit about the importance of TIC’s Water for Immigrants project? (Water for Immigrants serves 500 migrant families living in a tent-city near the border in Matamoros, Mexico, as well as another 3,000 individuals living in slums around the same city).

When Jesus ministered to people, He started by meeting their immediate needs. He fed the hungry (Matthew 14-Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6-Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9-Luke 9:12-17; John 6-John 6:1-14), healed the sick (Matthew 9:20-22, Matthew 9:35, Mark 2:9-12, Luke 17:12-16, John 9:6-7, ), befriended the outcast (Luke 5: 12-16, Luke 5:27-32, Luke 7:36-50, Luke 19:1-10, John 4:4-42), and protected those in danger (John 8:1-11). He cared for their bodies as well as their souls.

The families in the tent city and the Matamoros slums have been disregarded by governments on both sides of the border and left vulnerable and thirsty. Without clean water, people suffer from dehydration and disease, and this is particularly dangerous in a pandemic. If we’re going to minister to people as Jesus did, we have to care about their physical safety and wellbeing.

 

In late October The Immigration Coalition held its first national conference. Can you tell us why TIC decided to hold a conference at this time? What did you hope to accomplish?

Particularly in a time of such extreme political and social polarization, followers of Jesus should be leading efforts at justice, compassion, and understanding. There’s an amazing range of Jesus-followers doing this work across the United States and around the world, and the conference allowed us to bring a handful of these leaders together to share their experiences and their perspectives on immigration with hundreds of people seeking to develop a Biblically-balanced, Jesus-centered outlook. It’s entirely possible to respect law and democracy while doing justice and showing compassion to immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and that’s what we wanted to share.

 

How about the Conference speakers involved? How did you choose them?

TiC has actually worked with many of our speakers before and connected with others through their social media platforms and organizations. Our conference topics ranged from ministry to political engagement to immigrant experiences to Biblical ethics, and the strongest through-line of all our speakers was their commitment to a Jesus-centered, Biblically-based approach to issues of faith, culture, and politics related to immigration.

 

In your estimation, did the TIC’s conference fulfill its goals? Looking back on it, what lessons did you learn? What would you change or improve upon for next year?

We’re humbled that nearly 1,000 people tuned in to watch the conference! We saw beautiful and fruitful conversations take place in the breakout sessions and afterwards on social media, and that tells me that we met our goal to develop renewed perspectives on immigration issues. Moving forward, we’re planning to host smaller, more frequent conferences and workshops in the hopes that people with restrictive schedules can more easily attend. Smaller speaker lineups will also allow us to highlight more specific topics within immigration. We also hope to open the annual conference to in-person attendance, public health circumstances permitting!

 

Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

When I was working in immigration aid, I had the opportunity to provide legal services for women and children at a detention center who were seeking asylum from Central America. I met with more than 20 women who told me about the horrible suffering they’d escaped from and endured on their journeys to the United States, but so many of them told me that their faith in God sustained them and gave them hope. They were desperately clinging to that faith as they waited for justice from a prison they should never have been sent to in the first place. I grow more certain every day that one of the greatest failings of U.S. Christianity is its narrow vision of who holds the truth about God and who can evangelize whom. When we imprison or turn away our brothers and sisters from outside of the U.S., we are closing our eyes to the image of God that they embody and shutting out the voice of God that speaks through them.

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[1] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irpb-4-updated.pdf

https://items.ssrc.org/border-battles/the-myth-of-immigrant-criminality/

https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-crime-assessing-evidence

https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Appendix-D_0.pdf

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/topics/immigration-and-crime

A Review: One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle was a beautiful, whimsical, wise writer.

ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike, is a batch of his essays, published posthumously. (He passed away at only 61 years of age in 2017).

Here’s something he wrote about silence: “I contemplate snippets of silence in mine existence and find them few but I find that this delights rather than dismays me, for the chaos and hubbub in my life, most of sea of sound, are my children, who are small quicksilver russet testy touchy tempestuous mammals always underfoot in the understory…”

Or how about this?: “You either walk towards love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love.”

And he writes about his then-young daughter Lily, composing notes to the daoine sidhe, the small people, to find outside their home. “I think that mostly what people think is supernatural isn’t. I think there is much more going on than we are aware of and sensitive to and perceptive about, and the more we think we know what is possible and impossible the more we are foolish and arrogant and imprisoning ourselves in an idea.”

In another essay, he goes on to say: “I am fascinated by how language is a verb and not a noun. I am riveted by how language is a process and not a preserve. I am also absorbed by the way that we all speak one language but use different tones and shades and volumes and timbres and pronunciations and emphases in order to bend the language in as many ways as there are speakers of the language.”

About a boy and his young father going to see a gigantic sturgeon named Herman, Doyle writes: “…Herman slowly filled the window like a zeppelin. The boy leaped away from the window and his hat fell off. No one said a word. Herman kept sliding past for a long time. Finally, his tail exited stage left and the boy said, awed, clear as a bell, Holy Shit, Dad. The father didn’t say anything and they stood there another couple of minutes, both of them speechless, staring at where Herman used to be, and then they walked up the stairs holding hands.”

Quite often, Doyle slips in a slice of wisdom so delicious you have to stop and savor it. Like when he’s writing about some of the reasons people give for divorcing: “The instant there is no chance of death is the moment of death.”

ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG has essays on the U.S. munitions industry, and meeting two firefighters in a New York City bar post-9/11, and meeting God at the Post Office.

Here’s another example of Doyle at his best: “…Humor has something crucially to do with humility, and that humility is very probably the one inarguable mark of maturity, and whatever it is we mean when we use the word wisdom.”

Towards the end of ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG, is Doyle’s longest essay, about the trial of the poet William Blake. It took Doyle five years to research and complete it. And in trying to answer why he took all that time, he attempts to answer why he writes in the first place. “I don’t know why I write, exactly. Catharsis, the itch to make something shapely and permanent, the attempt to stare God in the eye, the attempt to connect deeply to other men and women, because I can’t help myself, because there is something elevating in art, because I feel myself at my best when I am writing.”

And Doyle writes about missing how his father used to listen. “His listening is now largely a thing of the past; he and his ears have achieved a great and venerable age, and his hearing is a shadow of what it once was. His mind is as sharp or even more so that it ever was; his generosity and grace remain oceanic; and you could search whole galaxies, to no avail, for a gentler, wittier man. But this morning I find that I very much miss that one little thing he did so well, that was not little – the way he stared at your face as you spoke, with all his soul open and alert for your story...”

A lot of ONE BEAUTIFUL RIVER OF SONG is really an ode to Doyle’s dad, siblings, wife and children – his family. There’s a lot of tale telling. And it’s not surprising that the last two lines of the last essay are this: “Time stutters and reverses and it is always yesterday and today. Maybe the greatest miracle is memory. Think about that this morning, quietly, as you watch the world flitter and tremble and beam.”