From June 24: Action Steps to End Homelessness

Tonight, Christ Church will be the host for the "Interfaith Collaborations to End Homelessness: Next Steps for the Boston Region." Building on the work of the March 25 Forum, which welcomed State Senator Byron Rushing, tonight's meeting will bring us together to look at some action steps for ending homelessness. There are several important bills before the legislature, and the state's affordable housing law will be on the ballot in November.

In his address at the first meeting, Byron Rushing (one of "ours"--he's an Episcopalian) talked about how his family was poor as a child. "Why are we poor," he asked his mother. "Because we don't have any money." "Why are the homeless homeless? Because they have no homes." People of my generation don't realize that it hasn't always been this way, that homelessness as an accepted fact of life is a fairly recent phenomenon. Rushing reminded us: "I want to make clear to young people: It's something that doesn't have to be, because it's not something that always was," Rushing said.

Instead, people like me are inclined to rush to services; day centers so people don't have to be outside, storage lockers, PO Boxes, voicemail, shelter beds. But if you have a home, that's not necessary. The state spends thousands of dollars to put people in temporary housing in hotels when our shelters are filled; it's astonishingly poor logic to say that society can't get organized enough to create affordable housing, but we can use more than twice the money that that would take to give (inadequate) temporary shelter.

My first church job, ten years ago, was with the homeless work at St John's, Bowdoin Street in Boston and Ecclesia Ministries. At 21, I had never met anyone who was homeless, nevermind actually shared a meal or a prayer. I soon learned that being homeless is kind of like a full time job. Though many homeless people also have paid employment, in addition to that they spend time going from shelter to shelter, fulfilling requirements for public assistance. They find a shelter with a bed available, and have to arrive at a certain time and leave at a certain time, and figure out the schedule of available meals around the city. Fighting addiction or mental illness, everything becomes even more complicated. There are health costs, too--to society and to individuals. According to the Boston's Health Care for the Homeless, "119 street dwellers accounted for an astounding 18,384 emergency room visits and 871 medical hospitalizations over a five year period. The average annual health care cost for individuals living on the street was $28,436, compared to $6,056 for individuals in the cohort who obtained housing."

Meeting the direct needs of people, with food and a bed to sleep in, is a start, but it's not the final answer. I'm reminded of a story often told by former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond:

Two men are sitting by a river and see, to their great surprise, a helpless baby floating by. They rescue the child, and to their horror, another baby soon comes floating down the stream. When that child is pulled to safety, another baby comes along. As one man plunges into the river a third time, the other rushes upstream.

"Come back!" yells the man in the water. "We must save this baby!"

"You save it," the other yells back. "I'm going to find out who is throwing babies in the river and I'm going to make them stop!"

That's the challenge of justice work; don't just pull the baby out of the water; find out why so many of them are getting thrown in. The move of charity is to pull out the babies--we have to do that, too--have to give them diapers, and give their grandparents food--but that's not the whole of our task. Tonight's meeting, in whatever small way, invites us to see how we can accomplish the justice work that is set before us as well.

Blessings,
Sara+

Mission Statement

As you know, the "GPS" (God's People Serving) Committee has been meeting for some time now at crafting a mission statement. Working from the surveys we received, we attempted to gather all the different threads of what we are about as a congregation. Here's what we have:

Christ Church Waltham is a welcoming Episcopal community brought together in our common worship of God and united in our desire to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
At the parish meeting on Sunday, June 6, about 25 people met after the service to review our draft and talk in small groups. What about the Holy Spirit? Why say "persons," and not "people?" Is it too self-congratulatory to say that we are welcoming? Is it redundant to say "brought together" in one clause and "united" in another? What's with all of those verbs? And shouldn't it be about Waltham, since that's where we are?

These ideas in hand, we returned to the drawing board.

In our group, we tended toward the old joke of four people and five opinions. For some of us, changing to "people" made sense. After all, "persons" sounds a little strange, and you want the reader's emphasis to be on "all," not on wondering about the word choice. For others, though, the emphasis of "persons" helped to stress that we seek and serve Christ in each individual soul; not some generalized mass of humanity. We all liked that "seek and serve Christ in all persons" is the phrasing in the baptismal covenant in the Book of Common Prayer, and we liked the emphasis on remembering our baptism. (loving your neighbor as yourself also follows in the BCP)

Could we make it shorter? We tried! We also wrote some versions with mention of the Holy Spirit. We have a reference to Christ, and to "God" (which isn't specific, but might be read as God the Father or God the Creator). Paradoxically, though, adding in the Holy Spirit could have the unintended result of making "God" mean only God the Father/Creator (since it would be juxtaposed with the other two parts of the Trinity). But our worship is about all three, so we were back to having God just be "God," to signify the Trinity as a whole. The notion of being brought together (from different places) and united (in our differences) really resonated with us, so ended up keeping all of the verbs, too. Initially, our draft just said "We are a welcoming Episcopal Community..." but then people at the Sunday meeting suggested adding "Waltham," so we changed the first sentence to "Christ Church Waltham is..."

Being part of this process has been both fascinating (in an intellectual way) and a spiritual gift. The openness of each person to the voice of the others in the group is so moving, and to be part of a process of dialogue where consensus takes shape is just plain cool. It's not so much that we convinced each other of our opinions, but that the result just emerged.

We had planned to have GPS and Vestry meet together this Saturday for a retreat to talk more about vision and strategic plans for the coming years, but that has been postponed so that more members have a chance to participate. We're hoping for late August, so you'll hear more about the work then. As always, please feel free to talk with me or any vestry or GPS member if you have further thoughts.

Blessings,
Sara+ writing for the GPS Committee:
Mike, Sarah, Gene, Jonathan, Christie, Kristin, Cindy, and Marcia

Growth and The Great Commission

On Sunday, we were sad to share the news that Mary Bonnyman passed away last Thursday afternoon at Epoch, where she'd been staying for some time. Her granddaughter, Chrissie, was with her, and she'd had a good day. She was 95. The service for Mary will be this Saturday at 11 AM. She'll be buried later this summer in her family's plot in her native Nova Scotia.

In our "GPS" meetings, we've been talking about growth; what does it mean to grow? Do we want to? It feels like we're supposed to want to, but it can also feel good to be in a church where you know everyone. Is it OK to just want to be sustainable, with enough people and money to accomplish the things we want to do? Of course, there aren't really simple answers to any of these things. It's hard when things change--even positive changes. The Great Commission, which ends the Gospel of Matthew, tells us we have to. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (28:19-20).

Unfortunately, a lot of terrible things in Christian history have happened in the name of the Great Commission. In her excellent Pentecost letter, our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, talks about how, "in their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity," giving examples of the suppression of Native American cultural practices which, theologically, are congruent with Christian orthodoxy but made missionaries personally uncomfortable. Too often, that kind of missionary work ends up being a dividing line, with "Good Christian" on one side of the line, and "Condemned Heathen" on the other. And almost always in that scheme, the "Good Christians" are all supposed to think and act the same.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to be old-style missionaries who travel the world (or stand with sandwich board signs on the street corner) telling people to repent. But we are still called to share our faith. I was talking with Noah about this the other day and he put it rather starkly: "If my faith is important to me, and I don't share it with others, then I'm saying 'this wonderful thing is MINE, and you can't have it."

Instead, we can share our faith out of the example of our lives--how we are changed, how we learn generosity, and peace, and kindness and justice--and how we are fed, forgiven, and loved.

But what happens when people actually take us up on it? If everyone invited a friend to church, and our sleepy summer services ended up with as many people as Easter Sunday? What would that feel like? Are we ready to open our arms to just anybody? I hope so, and I also hope that when we do talk about growth, that we can get out from under the financial imperative. Yes we need more pledges. Yes we need to grow to support our building and our staff. But we also need to grow because it's part of our faith. Spiritually, I believe we are called to a kind of "holy instability" when it comes to our communities, because they don't just belong to us. We need to always be facing outward toward the world to welcome in that world. It needs what we have!

We need to take care of ourselves, too--but the good news is that we can do both at the same time. We can take care of ourselves by having a potluck supper and games night at the same time as we make that event Bring a Friend to Church party. It's not a zero-sum game, where being open to others means not taking care of ourselves. There's enough grace, and space, for everyone when we realize that it's not our job to provide it--it's God's. And God can always come up with enough for everyone.

Blessings,
Sara+

For Bishop Katharine's Pentecost letter, click here.
Her letter is a response to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, whose own Pentecost letter was a sort of reprimand of the American Church--For Diana Butler Bass' very good analysis of the conflict, "The REAL Reason for the Anglican-Episcopal Divide" click here. She points out that recent disagreements over sexuality are actually disagreements about how Anglicanism works--and what kind of church we want to be.

Giving with open hands

This Sunday, we'll observe our regular first Sunday of the month Children's Service, and also meet after the service to talk about the results of the "GPS" (God's People Serving) Committee's work on our mission statement. I hope you'll plan to stay after the service to give your input on the mission statement the group has drawn up. I love it!

This Sunday's Gospel has the story of the Prophet Elijah being sent to a widow in Sidon. It's in the middle of a drought, which sent to punish king Ahab for worshipping his wife's pagan God, Baal (Jezebel, who happens to be from Sidon herself). Elijah goes in order to be fed; God doesn't tell him why he's going, or what he's supposed to do when he gets there. Just go, God tells him. She'll feed you. And so he goes. Elijah's mission unfolds as he arrives--as it turns out, he winds up with something to give the widow as well, but at first, it's not clear whether she'll "get" anything out of the deal. He goes to receive.

It's a counter-intuitive mission. This week, I started re-reading a book I first encountered a long time ago, called Poustinia, by Catherine Doherty. I picked it up again because Doherty is mentioned in Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain, which we just finished at our daytime book group. Doherty, an immigrant from Russia, started the Madonna House Apostolate, an intentional Christian community where Thomas Merton stayed briefly in Harlem before entering the monastery.

Doherty's unique insights are the combination of a life formed in the Orthodox spirituality of Russia, but oriented outward through the influence of Roman Catholic social justice teaching. In her book, she talks about the Russian tradition of the urodivoi, the fool for Christ: the one who gives away everything--really, everything--and begs for alms. Like Elijah, the fool goes out in order to be fed. The fool is able to support him or herself, but instead throws their life on the mercy of others, spending the day in prayer and pleading. She tells the story of one such person her father knew, who went to the slums and personally gave away all his money (which he'd dramatically just converted to bags of gold and silver). The father met the man years later, begging outside a church, still there, still praying, still with nothing. Why have you done this, the father asks, "I am atoning for the men who have called Christ a fool during his lifetime, and during all the centuries thereafter."

This is a challenging notion for us--it cuts at the heart of American notions of accomplishment and worth--not to mention practicality. Doherty writes, "If you want to see what a 'contribution' really is, look at the Man on the cross. That's a contribution. When you are hanging on a cross you can't do anything because you are crucified." The fool for Christ goes to be crucified with him; Elijah's mission was similar. Was he sent to the woman to be a burden? God miraculously gave her the food to give Elijah, but neither knew in advance what the outcome would be. Their mutual faith created the gift. What if we gave with such open hands? What would we receive, even if we gave all we had?

Presiding Bishop Schori's article on the Gulf oil spill

I'm passing on an article I read online by our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. Before becoming ordained, she was an oceanographer, and was elected the head of the Episcopal Church, in 2006. --Sara+


A Lesson from the Gulf Oil Spill: We Are All Connected
By The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

The original peoples of the North American continent understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also charge human beings with care for the whole of creation, because it is God's good gift to humanity. Another way of saying this is that we are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call "our own." We breathe the same air, our food comes from the same ground and seas, and the water we have to share cycles through the same airshed, watershed, and terra firma.

The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole. It has its origins in this nation's addiction to oil, uninhibited growth, and consumerism, as well as old-fashioned greed and what my tradition calls hubris and idolatry. Our collective sins are being visited on those who have had little or no part in them: birds, marine mammals, the tiny plants and animals that constitute the base of the vast food chain in the Gulf, and on which a major part of the seafood production of the United States depends. Our sins are being visited on the fishers of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, who seek to feed their families with the proceeds of what they catch each day. Our sins will expose New Orleans and other coastal cities to the increased likelihood of devastating floods, as the marshes that constitute the shrinking margin of storm protection continue to disappear, fouled and killed by oil.

The oil that continues to vent from the sea floor has spread through hundreds of cubic miles of ocean, poisoning creatures of all sizes and forms, from birds, turtles, and whales to the shrimp, fish, oysters, and crabs that human beings so value, and the plankton, whose life supports the whole biological system -- the very kind of creatures whose dead and decomposed tissues began the process of producing that oil so many millions of years ago. . .

The reality is that this disaster just may show us as a nation how interconnected we really are. The waste of this oil -- both its unusability and the mess it is making -- will be visited on all of us, for years and even generations to come. The hydrocarbons in those coastal marshes and at the base of the food chain leading to marketable seafood resources will taint us all, eventually. That oil is already frightening away vacationers who form the economic base for countless coastal communities, whose livelihoods have something to do with the economic health of this nation. The workers in those communities, even when they have employment, are some of the poorest among us. That oil will move beyond the immediate environs of a broken wellhead, spreading around the coasts of Florida and northward along the east coast of the U.S. That oil will foul the coastal marshes that also constitute a major nursery for coastal fauna, again a vital part of the food chain. That oil will further stress and poison the coral reefs of Florida, already much endangered from warming and ocean acidification. Those reefs have historically provided significant storm protection to the coastal communities behind them. . .

There is no place to go "away" from these consequences; there is no ultimate escape on this planet. The effects at a distance may seem minor or tolerable, but the cumulative effect is not. We are all connected, we will all suffer the consequences of this tragic disaster in the Gulf, and we must wake up and put a stop to the kind of robber baron behavior we supposedly regulated out of existence a hundred years ago. Our lives, and the liveliness of the entire planet, depend on it.

To see the entire text on Huffington Post, click here.