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¡Romero Vive! This shout echoes from the voices and lives of Salvadorans as we march through the streets of San Salvador. 30 years ago the country lost its archbishop to an assassin’s bullet. Oscar Romero was targeted because he proclaimed that Christianity was good news for the poor, that Christian life demands standing for freedom from oppression. Just three years into his arch-episcopate the bishop was silenced. His people continue to shout.
Jaime and Alex, two Salvadoran friends, March for Romero
Our group of 10 came from the Virginia Theological Seminary and from the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the University of California, San Diego. Like the pilgrims who journey to Jerusalem or Canterbury, we came to walk in the way of martyrs. Romero was not alone. During the war right-wing leaflets proclaimed, “be a patriot, kill a priest,” and several dozen priests and nuns fell. At the University of Central America, in San Salvador’s South West Suburbs, we visited the memorial to the 6 Jesuit priests who were murdered 9 years after Romero. The memorial displayed eyeglasses, photos of family, toothbrushes: simple daily possessions. In a case at the center of the room hung the clothes the men wore as they died. The bloodstains reminded us that this was not a simple museum, but a massive reliquary.
UCA Martyr's Memorial
From the UCA, after strawberry liquados and discussion, we headed to Divina Providencia. The little cancer hospital where Romero had his house became the site of his martyrdom. Sr. Bernadette told us stories of his life, and about the thousands of Salvadorans who come to the hospital to give thanks for Romero’s intercession since his death. The resultant miracles are necessary proof for Catholics of Romero’s sainthood. The official case continues to build as lobbyists push Rome for his recognition. In El Salvador the question is closed. He is called, “San Romero de las Americas” (Saint Romero of the Americas).
After the hospital we headed on to the Cathedral crypt and Romero’s tomb. We came to witness an “ecumenical act,” convened in the crypt by Anglicans and Lutherans. A Muslim leader talked about Romero’s example for all Salvadorans, and a Jewish rabbi sang the final prayer for a martyr. Later in the week we would hear Bishop Barahona talk about the establishing of a “new spirituality” recognizing that all of these religions approach the same God. “This is hard for some to accept, but it is where we are headed.”
We spent the next days in a small village, built by the Episcopal Church’s relief and development agency. We were there to help with the construction of a cistern. The community is cut off from the local water supply for all but a couple of days a month. Indeed we spent much of our time hauling water uphill to mix cement. On March 24, the actual anniversary of Romero’s death, we sat down to talk with the people of San Marcos. We listened as they described their community as struggling yet hopeful. A number in our group remarked that it seemed fitting to spend Romero’s day out among the people for whom he died.
Romero said before his death, “if they kill me I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.” As we spent the rest of the week with the Anglican Church I couldn’t help but notice amazing signs of life. We talked with the growing LGBT fellowship at the Cathedral San Juan with over 20 young people about struggle against homophobia. In El Maizal we walked with Ingeniero Cabezas as he described the agricultural projects before seeing some incredibly articulate teenage girls, Cabezas’ students, graduate from the local 4H program. All over El Salvador we saw signs of new life. It was apt preparation for Holy Week. ¡Que Viva Romero!
Walking by the Memorial to the 85,000 War Dead
I just went and saw Invictus. It made me miss South Africa. Thought I’d share a video from my friend Ryan who is living there for now.
I wrote this for class, but thought it might make for some conversation…Jason…
At Convention last Spring, the Diocese of San Diego heard Phyllis Tickle talk about “The Emergent Church” and cite one of my seminary professors, Bishop Mark Dyer, to say that every 500 years or so the church has “a rummage sale.” What exactly is emerging? The answer is up for grabs. As we shift from the “Modern” to the “Post-Modern” era some argue that we need a leader like Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western Monasticism. They say we need someone who can draw us into small communities which preserve Christianity as the world crumbles. I want to briefly examine this call for a renewed Church through a “new monasticism,” arguing not for a new Benedict but for a new Ignatius of Loyola.
The call for a “new Benedict” came perhaps most famously in the finals words of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, who argues that Western ethics is crumbling, but the idea is older. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism.” Wilson-Hartgrove has founded a “new monastic community,” a small group of people who share common property and a rule of life. Some are married, some not. All are working for justice and sharing a Christian journey together. Such communities exist all over our country. The question is: how will these communities relate to the wider Church? Most are led and populated by pioneering young adults not attached to any denomination or structural body. If the Church to emerge anew, to be “restored” in the words of Bonhoeffer, the relationship of these communities to the wider body of Christ must be considered.
I don’t believe the Church is really looking for a new Benedict to draw up a plan to safeguard culture and faith in the storm. The search is for a new Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatius was a contemporary of Martin Luther and lived in the midst of the great fights of the Reformation. The antithesis of Luther, Ignatius advocated total allegiance to the Church. He famously said, “I will believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it.” Such a suspension of reason rightfully bothers members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but it is a spirit of absolute commitment to the ongoing life of the Church which animates the statement. Ignatius founded an order, the Jesuits, whose members like Karl Rahner and Jon Sobrino have famously helped reshape the Roman Church. Francis Xavier, one of the first seven Jesuits, set a pattern for missionary service in the order that continues to this day. The ongoing commitment to the hierarchical life of the Church comes with a drive out into the world.
The principle difference I see between Benedict, as understood and called for by some in the discussion around “emergence,” and Ignatius, is directional. Those who argue for a “new Benedict” envision a Church behind monastic walls, guarding the valuable faith from the stormy future. A new Ignatius would call us out to engage in the world, with a strong commitment to the apostolic Church (hopefully with more room for independent thought.) An article in The Christian Century describes the new monastics saying “Each of the communities I visited seeks also to serve the wider church—and even to convert it.” If the goal of “the emergence” is to convert, reform, and engage the present Church, to help it to engage missionally in the world around it, we need not a new Benedict, but a new Ignatius.
The recent events in Honduras have gotten me re-mincing about my year there.
A late evening in November of 2005 my friends Lyra, Linda, and I drove back to San Pedro Sula from Tela, winding through banana plantations and the aftermath of tropical storm Gamma. The main bridge was out, so the trip took an extra hour. We listened to Maná as we passed by wooden shacks where a single light bulb glowed blue green in that distinctly Latin American way. We’d come to Tela to pass the day as the country voted for the next president. We were upset when we discovered that the elections meant that no beer was for sale, but contented ourselves with some great seafood and an incredible sunset.
The run up to the elections had been loud and fascinating. Every morning around 6:30am the trucks began driving outside my windows at El Hogar orphanage in Tegucigalpa, where I was serving as a year-long volunteer. The trucks were mounted with loudspeakers which played a short jingle and then urged voters to select either Mel or Pepe for president. There seemed to be very few formal debates, but every imaginable surface was covered with political posters, and the air was thick with campaign promises. The choice seemed to be between a corrupt socio-path (Pepe wanted to enforce the death penalty for seemingly any suspected gang member) and a corrupt mafia boss (Mel supposedly had ties to crime rings and covered up murders). Hondurans figured that whichever president was elected, they would embezzle a large portion of the aid that flows to the Western Hemisphere’s second poorest nation.
Honduras is not a left wing country. I remember my surprise at the incredible words of praise that Hondurans spoke about Presidente Bush. The US Military operates a huge military base in the center of the country which was used to manipulate wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1970s and 80s. Before that Honduras had largely been run by US banana companies, giving rise to the terminology “banana republic.” The power of the US military and business influence has made a small portion of the population very wealthy, and meant that many Hondurans uphold a strong capitalist, pro-US political voice.
Lyra and I used to joke that Hondurans were a people in need of a revolution. Compared to our travels in El Salvador, where there was a sense that the poor could rise up from their situation through education and working to change the governmental and social systems, Hondurans were downtrodden. They lacked a sense of drive and commitment to change. “Yes We Can” were not commonly chanted words in a culture that had constantly been subject to someone else’s military business.
This is partly why I find this week’s events so puzzling and sad. It seems that so few Hondurans are in support of President Mel Zelaya’s supposed swing leftward toward empowering the masses. I suspect this is because Hondurans do not trust their elected leadership. They figured the president would rob the people, and it seems from the reports of embezzling that he has been.
Even more puzzling to me is the international response. As we continue to hear calls from the US, UN, Organization of American States, and Chavez to reinstate the democratically elected president I wonder about the sincerity of the desire to help the Honduran people. Realistically the livelihood of the average Honduran took its most drastic downturn when the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements and the subsidized prices of US agricultural products came together in a perfect storm that drove thousands of campesinos away from farming. Over 50% of Hondurans are unemployed and 1 out of every 6 Honduran citizens live in the United States legally or illegally sending money home to their families.
If we really wanted to help the Honduran people we would do more than try to reinstate a questionable leader. We would work to create a market situation in Central America where the family farmers could earn enough to provide housing, food, health care, and education for their families. We would force our companies who employ thousands of Hondurans in maquilas (assembly factories) to pay a living wage.
As Lyra, Linda, and I tumbled down the winding back roads on the way back to San Pedro the night of the election I was amazed by the stark beauty and stark poverty of Honduras. I remember a great feeling of gratitude to have the opportunity to get to know these people and this place. I gave thanks to God for the joys and challenges I was facing. Today my prayer is that the people I got to know in Honduras come forward from these challenging times with a chance to dream for a better future.
Context: I’ve been enrolled in a course this January looking at the Theology and Practice of Ministry. Part of the coursework involves Service Learning, basically working with a local non-profit and reflecting on the experience like any of the other text books. I’ve been assigned to the group at Martha’s Table, a major non-profit in DC focusing on education and poverty. Our particular ministry, McKenna’s Wagon, involves vans that head out into DC 365 days a year to serve dinner to the homeless.
While I’ve not experienced too much depth while filling bowls of soup, I can say the experience has caused me to think about the context of ministry, really the context of all we do. Our location social, cultural, geographic, economic and otherwise greatly shapes how we interact with the world. Back at UCSD a good 1/5 of my ministry occured online on facebook. Students regularly posed questions, organized meetings, even requested prayer online. Social networking happens in an entirely different way on the streets. The homeless of DC have different ways of communicating, different codes, different expectations of those who come among them as “ministers.”
Awareness of our own context, listening to our own lenses and the realities that shape our worldview helps us to understand the diverse perspectives from which humans interact. What would be considered effective and important ministry at UCSD would be useless to the men on the corner of New York Avenue. How much do we miss of one anothers communication because we are listening with ears attuned to another worldview?
At the same time, if action is to be called “ministry” it must be directional. It must point toward the Kingdom of God. While we begin with different tools and start from different places, we are all learning to walk in the same direction. The great unifier across great socio-cultural divides is the hope of Christ. That hope harmonizes with all of the different possible rhythms of human life. Still, we must be aware whether we are dancing the Mambo or Tango. We must not be tone-deaf to the needs of those around us. Expecting my model of service or ministry to function in any context is arrogance. If we are to serve others, we best ask what they need and truly listen.
The dynamic attention of living in the particularity of human life with a bend toward the ultimate reality of God has been lived in its completeness in the incarnation. Jesus was both incredibly contextual and completely subversive. Learning to both and, to live out of our human particularness and celebrate that particularness in others while doing our best to bend the world in the direction of God’s Reign is the art of Christian ministry, it belongs to each and every follower.
July 15-6
We began the trip with an 18 hour plane ride and arrived in Johannesburg pretty jet-lagged. We started our adventure with a trip to the mall to pick up necessities like power converters and a cell phone sim card. It was amazing to both Sam and I the impressive amount of globalization in Johannesburg. Joburg is an incredibly metropolitan city, with some of the biggest security fences I’ve seen in my entire life. The population lives divided one from another by huge walls. Some have access to the mall which has everything from Prada to the Apple Store, but 80% of the population lives in the Townships and is fenced out. We stayed with a good friend from USD, the incomparable Ms. Juana Purchase. She was an incredible hostess and it was wonderful to reconnect and see her life in South Africa.
July 17-19 Safari Time!
We went with a small company to the Kruger National Park on Safari for 3 days. We had a blast and saw too many animals to count.
The highlights were definitely the elephant and lions. Our guide William was entertaining. Afrikaaner to the core, he listened to Rugby on the radio and told us stories of when he was a riot police officer in the Soweto Township during the Apartheid era. The physical beauty of South Africa was an important part of our trip, and the Kruger and surrounding area were a good introduction to this.
July 20-21 Joburg part 2
We had another two days in Johannesburg. We spent the first touring Pretoria and the capital, seeing the beautiful government buildings. We also visited a neighborhood that looked like it dropped right out of Ranch Santa Fe in San Diego, golf resort style with incredible houses. The division between haves and have nots is more extreme than anywhere I’ve ever seen. The next day we headed to the “Cradle of Humanity” where we saw the fossilized remains of ancient humans, some impressive caves, and an even more impressive Small World-style water ride through the elements of creation.
June 22-24 Cape Town Part 1
Next we headed to Cape Town to meet up with Ryan DeCook, a friend from USD who was one of my residents when I was an RA. Ryan is working with Africa Jam, and evangelical group that runs camps and afterschool programs for youth in the Townships. Ryan is particularly working in the township of Kayelitsha, and we spent a couple of afternoons in “the mansion” where they hold their meetings listening to the incredible choir (video to come later) and helping to teach some guitar lessons. Sadly Ryan was pretty sick while we were in CapeTown, so we spent a lot of the time lazing around and hoping he would feel well enough to accompany us to Grahamstown as planned, but his flu just got worse.June 25-26 Grahamstown
We drove what we thought was a seven hour drive to Grahamstown through the Garden Route, an incredibly beautiful collection of villages and cliffs on the sea. The trip ended up taking 10 hours, and we spent most
The Grahamstown Monks, order of The Holy Cross
of it reading “The Horizontal World: Growing Up in the Middle of Nowhere,” a book Sam was required to read so he can discuss it with the incoming freshmen at his college. The book was a disaster of a thing, but we barreled through and finished before we arrived at the monastery late that night. We spent the next day touring the Cathedral and town of Grahamstown with Cortney Dale, a new YASC volunteer in Grahamstown. It was fun to compare notes based on my YASC year in Honduras. We had a good time with the monks and even got to meet some of my new seminary classmates who were in town for a contextual theology class at the College of the Transformation, South Africa’s only residential seminary.
June 27-28 Queenstown
One drive over the mountains, a loss of several degrees Celsius in temperature, and one spare tire later we arrived in Bolotwa to stay with Monica a
nd Heidi to Episcopalian/Roman Catholic missionary members of the association of Charles DeFoucalt. I went through the Christian Vacation edition of missionary training with Monica and Heidi several years ago and it was fun to reconnect and see the work they are doing which can be described as nothing short of miraculous. In three short years they have established parks and programs in three communities which have been devastated by AIDS. They employ an army of women who go to surrounding houses in the early morning to care for orphans and aging parents and generally build community. We were greeted with song in Ilinge, invited into several homes, and generally loved on by hundreds of people in the two townships we visited. It was amazing to see such incredible Kingdom-Community being generated.
nd Heidi to Episcopalian/Roman Catholic missionary members of the association of Charles DeFoucalt. I went through the Christian Vacation edition of missionary training with Monica and Heidi several years ago and it was fun to reconnect and see the work they are doing which can be described as nothing short of miraculous. In three short years they have established parks and programs in three communities which have been devastated by AIDS. They employ an army of women who go to surrounding houses in the early morning to care for orphans and aging parents and generally build community. We were greeted with song in Ilinge, invited into several homes, and generally loved on by hundreds of people in the two townships we visited. It was amazing to see such incredible Kingdom-Community being generated.July 29-30 Itipini, Mthatha
We drove on to Mthatha, the former capital of the Black Homeland. During Apartheid the White Government thought they might try and get 80% of the nations people to live in 14% of the land if they promised them self government. Mthatha grew exponentially as a city as a result and has a dramatically different feel than any other metropolitan area we visited. Basically, it feels more African. You hardly see a non-Black person, the roads in town are dangerously full of pedestrians, everything possible is for sale. We visited the poorest
Jesse just after playing for the kids
of the poor communities where Jesse Zink, another YASC volunteer has been serving at the Itipini clinic. Itipini is Xhosa for “on the garbage dump,” and this is very descriptive. The people live in, under, on and around trash. For 20+ years Episcopalian missionaries have provided medical care to this community. It was impressive to see the infrastructure they have built with no water, no power, and surrounded by a dump. Every morning people receive food, children go to pre-school, people receive TB drugs and are treated for injuries. In the afternoon teens lift weights, sing in a choir, receive tutoring, and generally are kept occupied. Watching Jesse play “Johnny be good” while a room full of 3 year old danced around was a definite highlight. Jesse has a phenomenal blog here.
July 31-Aug 1 The Garden Route revisited
Rocks near the Knysna Heads
We began our slow trip back to Cape Town and stayed with the Monks in Grahamstown again. Monica and Heidi were there. It was a nice relaxing day before driving back down the garden route. We stopped in Knysna and saw the incredible coastline. The town is stunning, situated on a beautful bay, and we stayed in a hip little hostel. Unfortunately that night I had some bad seafood (never eat at the Greek Restaurant in Knysna). Sam was amazing and drove the rest of the way back to Cape Town the next day and then holed up with me and watched movies on TV as I groaned.
Aug 2-3 Cape Town part 2
I began to feel better Saturday morning and we were able to finish our time in Africa in style. We visited Desmond Tutu’s former cathedral in the morning and shopped for souvenirs. I got a sweet Djimbe and Sam a saxaphone made out of coke bottles. Then we headed to Robben Island to see where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life in prison. The museum is run by former political prisoners. It was incredible to see the tiny facility and to hear first hand
St. George's Cathedral, Capetown
what was endured by so many for the hope of freedom. The next morning we met up with two of my former residents, Ryan again and his freshmen roommate Anderson who happened to be visiting at the same time. We finished our time in South Africa with Eucharist at the Cathedral in Capetown before getting back on the plane to head home to Colorado.
