Letters of Connectedness

 Dear Friends,

Last week, Americans, indeed, people around the world received a letter from prison, written by Kayla Mueller. Her words arose from the truth and conviction of her life and her decisions that brought her to be where she would prefer not to be. Her letter had an undercurrent of freedom that would not be denied.  The human community has a treasure trove of letters written during incarcerations – imprisonments in true, cruel prisons, or in other places where freedom of movement is impossible:  long  or  short periods of time which give rise to  new  thoughts, clarification, reiterated conviction, instruction for the reader and perhaps an evolving sense of who God is and what faith is. Letters of explanation, remorse, connectedness, and innocence proclaimed fill out the letters from prison for all to read.

Four of the Apostle Paul’s letters (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon) are called Paul’s prison letters, and are said to be written from Rome.  In the years between 1530 and 1700, some 3000 letters from prison were circulated in England to express political resistance and to articulate the reasons for that resistance that resided in people’s consciences. Among the letters from this period, are some from St. Thomas More. World War II produced some remarkable letters from the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Blessed Franz  Jagerstatter and Blessed Titus  Brandsma. The Letters from Birmingham Jail are Martin Luther King’s contribution to this genre. We also know Nelson Mandela’s stirring letters from prison. Ordinary people like John Brown, for example, captured by the Confederates at the beginning of the Civil War, wrote from prison. Through letters from inmates, social justice groups attempt to tap the power for insight and for good that is in the prisons of our day. In June of 2014, Pope Francis responded to 500 of the letters he had received from prison. And then there are people who were never really imprisoned behind bars, but who were caught, trapped and put to death. Who can forget young Anne Frank, and the Trappist monks of Tibherine, Algeria, who were assassinated in March of 1996, and who left an eloquent community letter forgiving their still-unknown killers.

Now we have a letter from Kayla to be read, studied and committed to our hearts. In it, she sounds like a totally normal American girl, imbued with a burning need to help alleviate pain wherever she was. She went from place to troubled place until the doors closed. That is the common thing about these letters: the doors close. People are alone with themselves and their God.  We may never know exactly how she died. As believers, we know that God held her close when no one else did. And we are left with sadness, stunned by the continuing brutality of ISIS which does not value young life, generous life, life at any age.

We ask: what can we do? As Lent begin and we become absorbed in the journey though Lent and Holy Week to Easter, we might embark on a new way to take this journey. Lent is not about self-improvement. It is about accompanying others to Easter – to witness to the Risen Jesus and His gift of  fullness of life. What if we centered our energy, focused our prayer daily at 11 am on the people who are near the breaking point in Syria and Iraq? Give a few moments to this prayer….every day. Hurl it to the satellite clouds or the natural clouds and target it back to earth just where it’s needed.  We can’t physically go to these places of pain and destruction, but we can be there. It would make a difference.

Below is the link to the letter Kayla Mueller wrote her loved ones while in captivity. 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/10/world/middleeast/document-kayla-muellers-letter-from-captivity.html?_r=0

Stories Are Life in Words.

Dear Friends,

Much of winter is still ahead of us. On cold, snowy nights, shut off the telly, put away social media devices and tell stories: each other’s, well-loved stories, stories with surprise endings, stories that helped shape us  Enjoy and treasure your stories of life, faith, adventure.

We live a life-long story, and yet, if asked, we would not be sure that our own stories are interesting at all. It’s only in the telling of our stories, we begin to see their value and worth.

We also have a wealth of family stories. My four-foot eight Polish peasant 

grandfather, conscripted into the Russian army, deserted, and somehow made his way to Lackawanna, New York. How did that happen? I had no idea, before hearing this story as a child, that  my little Grandpa had such courage!

We tell stories that have impacted others in the world, stories about what happened at school or work. Travelling, seated next to strangers, we often exchange stories. Sometimes, we reveal to strangers whom we will never see again parts of ourselves we don’t easily share with people closer to us:  incidents, near-misses, day dreams. “I remember once… I had an experience something like that…”

Beyond those of our own lives, we like to hear other stories, see stories unfold on TV or in books, or at the movies.  Stories make meaning the way that analysis or synthesis can’t. Where did the world come from? Why are there people? Who don’t snakes have legs? Why do the living die? As we read the lives of others in biographies, we clarify our own convictions, and have new tools to examine our own lives. Here’s a thought: Go where you can hear the stories of migrants and refugees and be awed.  To be human is to have a story to tell.

The much admired writer, Elie Weisel, once remarked “God created people because he loves stories.” We know that Jesus was a remarkable storyteller. He used the stuff of ordinary life, introduced strangers into the story who became unexpectedly central to the meaning of the story and, as we know when we study them, these parables say more than they seemed to intend, to this very day.

God is not captured for once and for all in our human stories, but God is surely revealed in our stories, if our eyes and hearts are open.

The philosopher Kierkegaard went even further to say “the only real answers to religious questions are in the telling of a story.” So dare to explore religious questions in this seemingly simple way. Tell and enjoy the power of stories in your life.

Loss Of Intimacy with Christ

Dear Friends,

                In a craft store a few weeks ago, I ran into a woman who had been an active parishioner in one of the churches where I worked at one time. During the wide-ranging conversation, I casually asked if she was still at the church. “No,” she said. “We’re good people, but we don’t go to Mass anymore.”

                 I can’t get this conversation out of my mind. I don’t doubt they are good people, but there’s more at stake.

                It’s the loss of intimacy with Christ through Eucharist that catches me up short in this conversation.. Other versions of this absence have been told to me this way:” I believe in Jesus, but don’t like coming to Mass… I prefer to pray at home, at the lake or in the woods…It’s enough… the pastor has changed and I can’t pray with the new one.”

                Actually, followers of Christ – Jesus himself- have had times, maybe even long periods of solitude and separateness, but in the end, followers of Christ follow him together.  Followers of Christ belong to a community of believers, from Biblical times, to this day. The author of Hebrews says “We should not stay away from our assembly (that is to say Mass) as is the custom of some, but encourage one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10.25)

                 We are not solitary in our belief. We may have to find a different  faith community, receptive to our spirit, but the search is not optional in the life of a follower of Christ.

                Sunday Eucharist is a unique time of expressing our solidarity with the Lord and with one another.

                We come to Sunday Eucharist with a continually changing inner landscape. Perhaps one of us is 15, and exploring what it means to be a human being, a sexual being, growing and changing in so many ways. The 15 year old looks across the aisle and sees an old married couple (you know, in their 50’s) –worshipping together. At the same time the youth draws encouragement from them, they draw encouragement from the fact that youth are there – sharing the table of the Lord, searching out the meaning of life with God.

                On some given Sunday, or perhaps for weeks, we can’t pray. We go to Mass but that’s as far as it goes. No affect. No singing. A lump. On that day, we depend on others to pray in a way we can’t.

                Yet another time, we are attuned. We sing and pray with energy. The readings and homily speak to our hearts, and at communion, we am awash in the presence of Christ.

                We need each other to fill in what the other cannot be or do. We can stay away, bit when one of us isn’t present, there  is a hole, a gap, a sadness. We are not spectators watching a scenario unfold.  Each of us in important to the Eucharistic  celebration. We are members of the Body of Christ and sustain one another. Become who you are.

Do We Need Another Selma?

Dear Friends,

                The film Selma is now playing in our local theaters. As the fiftieth anniversary of the march, March 7,  approaches, this is a film worth seeing for its historical content as well as for understanding the religious convictions that under-girded the whole civil rights movement.

                In the film as in reality, John Lewis and Hosea Williams led the marchers up the left side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Barely over the bridge, they were attacked and beaten by the police and deputies. The world watched the brutality on television. Two weeks later, the world watched again as the marchers, swelled in great numbers by people of faith from all over the country, escorted by the national  guard, crossed the bridge again and made it safely to Montgomery, some fifty-five miles to the north.

                Since the march, a memorial has been built just to the left side of the bridge where the attack on the marchers took place. I stood before it, awash in awe, in 2000, at the thirty-fifth anniversary march and was vastly moved by the connection made between two events which took place in different parts of the world some three thousand years apart. This simple monument - twelve pitched stones in flowing water-  was inspired by  the Book of Joshua where  the crossing of the Jordan by the Israelites into the Promised Land is described. There, the waters parted, “as the priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord remained motionless on dry ground in the bed of the Jordan until the whole nation had completed the passage.” ( Joshua  3.17) Afterwards, one man from each tribe of Israel was commissioned to go into the water and take up a stone from the spot in the Jordan where the priests with the ark had been standing motionless. At Gilgal, on the east side of Jericho, Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been taken from the Jordan.

"In the future,” Joshua said, “when people ask you the meaning of these stones,

you shall tell  them, Israel crossed the Jordan here. (Joshua 4.20-21.)”

                 

President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act some time later that year, 1965. It has stood as a living record of the victory of the non- violent pursuit of human rights.  Last year, 2014, the Supreme Court rejected the most substantial first part of that law, leaving states to reframe the prerequisites for voting, largely in states in the  deep south. 

                Do we need another Selma?  What will you and I do? 

~Sister Joan Sobala

Martin Luther King’s Birthday, A Family Birthday

Dear Friends,

                John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia, was eleven years old when he heard the Word of God, coming across the radio air waves. The Word of God spoke in the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was, at that time, already preaching at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The Word stirred in John Lewis then, and continues to move him to this day. John Lewis  was a youth, like John and Andrew in Chapter 2 of the Gospel of John, which we heard this last weekend. Now, sixty four years later, the unshaken foundation of his efforts on behalf of justice, equality and acceptance for people of all races is still biblical faith. Lewis writes of his realizations, shared and honed by MLKing, his  other  colleagues on freedom rides,  at sit-ins and marches:

                

“We realized that the violence around us offered an uncommon opportunity to perform a great spiritual work. We began as outcasts reserved for condemnation and scorn, but we were transformed into a shining army of peace moving in the center of God’s love. We were rescued from the outer limits of human existence to become philosophers and priests, leaders and advocates, shepherds and witnesses to the way of truth. And in these roles, we cut a path to a new America. We discovered that our dignity, and in fact all human dignity, was not tied to the way we looked or dressed. Our dignity was not related to the size of our wallet or the digits of our zip code. We discovered that it didn’t  matter  how we were judged by mankind, our own souls were imbued with the power to work miracles to change water into wine, the meek into the mighty, to change base metal into pure gold.” (Across That Bridge)

              

  Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, a brutal year. Thanks to people like John Lewis, the call for sustaining what King called the Beloved Community goes on today in the face of extremist and racial violence, in Ferguson, New York and abroad. With John Lewis, let us celebrate MLKing’s  birthday  as a family birthday, because he and John Lewis and every woman and man who  work for justice and peace are family to us. Their mantle is over our shoulders as well.

               

  Near the end of Across the Bridge, John Lewis, encourages us in a way of living we may not want, but are called to:

             

   “You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone – any person or any force – dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart… Choose confrontation wisely, but when it’s your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up and speak out against injustice. .. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.”

              

  I invite you to join me. Let’s drink in the Spirit of God found in these American visionaries, MLKing Jr. and John Lewis and do our part in upbuilding the Beloved Community, now and tomorrow.

"We Are Free to Speak"

Dear Friends,

Last week, we were caught by the brutality of the murders at Charlie Hebdo and the Hypermarket in Paris. Much talk has accompanied these events: facts shared, analysis put forth.

 The French have roared back, holding their pencils high, proclaiming ”Je Suis Charlie.”  i.e “.You will not overcome us with your terrorist-inspired violence. We are free to speak.” And of course, they are, and we are. The French have a long history of producing and relishing satire as a way of critiquing political figures and movements and alerting the public to potential dangers in the world. 

Ken Paulson, writing in the D&C on Sunday, lists courageous people in the US and Europe who have withstood  evil in their writing, song-writing, film production, and reporting from the world’s hot spots.Paulson says 

“Free speech can lead to threats. And imprisonment. And death. “

Jesus practiced free speech too, and we know what happened. Yet his free speech and action called for acceptance of human dignity, showed the non- partiality of God for all people and called for a kingdom where all would live in peace. When asked by his disciples to teach them to pray, Jesus gave them the “Our Father.” Here is one possible new translation of this prayer from the Aramaic. I offer it here because the vision of Jesus and the nuances in the text apply very much to shaping our minds and hearts as we ourselves consider how to think about the French tragedy and how, following Christ, we can create a culture of encounter rather than a culture of divisiveness and death.

          

  O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

                Focus your light within us-make it useful:

                Create your reign of unity now –

                Your one desire then acts with ours,

                as in all light, so in all forms.

                Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

                Loosen the cords of mistakes binding us,

                As we release the strands we hold

                Of each other’s guilt.

                Don’t let surface things delude us,

                But free us from what holds us back.

                From you  is born all ruling will,

                The power and the life to do,

                The song that beautifies all,

                From age to age it renews.

                Truly – power to these statements –

                May they be the ground from which all

                My actions grow.    Amen.

Fresh wind in Our Sails ,Wednesday, January 14: Father Jim Schwartz offers us a pastoral perspective on Suicide.  We can say we are not interested but maybe we should be in this time when so many people choose this option for their lives. 7 to 8.30 pm at the SSJ Motherhouse, 150 French Road.

Tips for Our Journeys in Life

Dear Friends,

                Since 1969, when Neil Armstrong took one small step on the moon, people worldwide have had a love affair with space travel – amid the stars. Who, if anyone, is out there? Is the water anywhere? What happens in the life cycle of a comet? Will space travel be available to the public in the 21^st century?

                Far distant places have an allure for people, especially if there are signs along the way to help us get to our destination. Though our reasons may differ, we are the kin of the Magi and they have given us tips for our journeys  in life. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind as we navigate our way through this unmapped year.

1.        Keep your eye on the big picture. Details can confound us. Look up, look out to the horizon. Don’t watch your feet. They will know where to go. Watch the star. The star is a symbol of important realities beyond expectation.  God is beyond expectation . We will find God as we recognize signs of divine presence, and interpret them together. Together, we’ll find clues to serving the larger community and in the process, become more authentically ourselves.

2.       Travel with no more than a backpack, at least figuratively. If we have a camel to bear us on our way, how much can it carry? What’s more, how much do we need? Rinse your clothes at night, if you must. But don’t take more than you need. Leave behind your smart  phones, sin, daily antagonisms and self-centered expectations. Let God dispose of them. Go empty handed, except for gifts to give others.

3.       Go together. It’s doubtful that the magi knew each other. Somehow, they met, dared to trust each other, pooled their expertise, shared the messages God spoke to them about the dangers along the way, and got to their destination. The magi were strangers to one another until the journey made them companions.

4.       Be risk-takers together. The magi left behind what their cultures valued. They found in themselves a  confidence  to seek the Lord  with little except for the gifts they bore.  The  magi  were examples of hope for us. They hoped they would get to their destination and that it would mean something life-giving for them.

This year, who will be the magi for you – unexpected companions whose hearts burn within them, whose desires to see God  are akin to yours? Will you recognize them? Trust them? Honor their gifts? Trust that they have your back? Will you treasure the lessons you learned from traveling together and pass them on? Will you let go of them, when the time is right?  Will you be a magus for others this year?

~Sister Joan Sobala