Cherith Brook Advent 2014

Our Advent 2014 paper is now online. Be sure to read it and let us know what you think.

Cherith Brook Catholic Worker Advent 2014  Newspaper.

Pregnant Time

By Eric Garbison

While in a dank Birmingham jail cell, Martin Luther King received a letter from a group of white, mainline clergy snug in their sanctuaries. “We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized” they wrote, “But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.”

King was quick to reply (on toilet paper from his cell), “I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well-timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly…For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ …this ‘Wait!’ has almost meant ‘Never.’  We must come and see…that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

“Wait” is often the language and logic of injustice.  

The body of Michael Brown was left in the streets for 4 hours.  What were they waiting for?  And as of this writing, we are still waiting to see if St. Louis County Grand Jury or the Federal Government will indict the officer.  Will the case be tried?  If so, will it be moved out of the county to an impartial court room? Folks in Ferguson and the African American Community more broadly are tired of waiting for the end of racial profiling and fear of abuses by uniformed power.  

They’ve just built a new Taco Bell in our neighborhood, a fourth auto parts store, and a new McDonalds is almost completed.  Resources can be had for a Sprint Center, Kauffman Center, the Power and Light District, even for large centralized soup kitchen to feed hundreds of meals daily (and redirect the homeless away the downtown).  But Mike, Rick, Sandy and others, who all have regular incomes, are homeless, waiting for safe affordable housing; housing that is dignified is hard to get at $640 a month.  When will affordable housing be built? And not just in Kansas City neighborhoods but in neighborhoods but also in Liberty and Lee Summit, Olathe and Leawood.  

Greg Boertje-Obed is waiting in a Ft. Leavenworth prison cell.  He, Sr. Megan Rice and Mike Wallie made their way into the heart of the nuclear weapons at Oakridge TN, the “Fort Knox of uranium.”  As they waited there for the guards to come, they hammered on the walls of one of the greatest idols of our time.  “Repent! God’s kingdom is at hand!” was burned into the handle of their small sledge hammer.  These prophets are tired of waiting.  Would their symbolic action channel the end for which we wait?  (Their work was a confession of sin, of our own complicity in the illegal, immoral, yes, sinful us of nuclear weapons; and of our practical atheism—that we trust more in our technology than in the Creator of the Universe.) Unless his appeal is successful, Greg will be behind bars for four more years, waiting for justice.

One of the first Advent passages of this year comes from 2 Peter 3:8-13 “The Lord isn’t slow to keep the Lord’s promise as some think of slowness…” It seems that, in the face of challenges and persecution, the first century Christians were getting impatient.  The promise was “new heaven AND a new earth where justice is at home.” And they were anxious for it to become a reality.  We too are weary as we wait for a new heaven AND new earth where nuclear weapons have been abolished, where safe affordable housing is available to the poor as well as the non-poor, where young black men will not only be safe and equal, but loved and welcomed for who they are and what they bring…a world where “justice is at home.”  

I wonder how the early Christians heard this.  Did it frustrate or disappoint them?  Or perhaps it sounded unjust? There is painful irony in reading these in a world where waiting is the polite speech of injustice.

We are not only frustrated by the Powers-That-Be, we are not only frustrated with our own collusion, we even get upset with God.  The psalmist knew this complaint, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (13:1-2)

We have no choice but to be honest about this. (Doesn’t God prefer our honesty over piety?) We must wonder if Advent, the “season of waiting” is outmoded church language meant to keep us hanging on? Like the Market’s consumption of Christmas, is it meant to pacify us? Is it simply another form of dodging justice? Like the white clergy writing King, how often have we in the church masked our foot-dragging.  How often have we been custodians maintaining the status quo with a message of “Wait!”?   

Perhaps there is another angle to this?  Doug Harink suggests another way to understand what feels like God lingering needlessly: “The present time is never simply dead time or metered time, as a historicist would have it; it is time pregnant with the patience of God…We live not in a time of empty waiting.  We live in the fullness of time of God’s gracious patience—a time given to us in which to repent.  This is the time for the church…and the whole world… to wake up to the reality of the destruction that we bring upon ourselves, even seek out, through our sin and submission to the rebellious powers…”  

Christ’s birth reminds us that Christian waiting is not stagnant; it is pregnant. Time is pregnant with patience as Mary is pregnant with God’s Hope Incarnate.  Mary must see her pregnancy through the discomfort, the social shame, the poverty, the pain.  In all the limits of her youthfulness, low status and human body, Mary must wait.  She must wait through her social and personal reality, not bypass it.  Likewise, God will not beam Jesus down instantly from the heavens. Like Mary who trusts that God, “has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” (Luke 1:46-55) we too must trust that God’s favor rests on us. God will use our smallness for divine change.  Faith is not having all the facts or answers but trusting in spite of what on the surface looks hopeless.

If this is true, authentic waiting will not only contain the joy of the expectation, but also the heaviness of the child, the discomfort of a full pregnancy, the anxiety of responsibility, the fear of the unknown, the anger of deferred hope—we must never be comfortable in our waiting.

And there is another twist:  According to this early Christian, we deceive ourselves if we think it is largely we who are waiting! “The Lord isn’t slow to keep his promise as some think of slowness,” we read, “but God is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish but all to change their hearts and lives.”  Are we not testing God’s patience as well?  If God is exercising extreme patience toward us, mercy and not indifference or impotence is the reason for the delay. If we believe in human freedom and in the call to justice, we must affirm human agency for problems and solutions alike.

So, if God is waiting on us, the author follows up, “What sort of people ought we to be? We must live holy and godly lives, waiting for AND hastening the coming day of God.”  It is never waiting alone; it is always “waiting, and…”  For the author the time of “waiting” is simultaneously the time of “hastening” its arrival by “leading lives of holiness and godliness.”

This is why a life of nonviolence must be an life committed to prayer; and a life of prayer is shallow piety without active nonviolence, especially in a world of Racism, on the brink of mutual assured destruction and growing homelessness.  Waiting and hastening…they are one posture.  

Mark Bartholomew

   

 

Cherith Brook Ordinary Time 2014 Newspaper

Our Ordinary Time 2014 Newspaper is now online. Be sure to read it and let us know what you think.

Cherith Brook Ordinary Time 2014 Newspaper 

Have Salt In Yourselves

By  Theo Kayser

As we stood vigil outside of Whiteman Air Force Base on the final day of this years Trifecta Resista my mind kept returning to one thing, salt. “Nearly 70% of Afghan children face iodine deficiency. With iodine deficiency comes functional and developmental abnormalities. The solution is simple, iodized salt. And the cost? Only 5 cents per child per year. That’s compared to the 2.1 million it costs to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year.” This was the message of the talk given the night before by long time peace activist Kathy Kelly. She could have just as easily compared the cost of iodized salt to the 16.9 million dollars it costs to build a new MQ-9 Reaper drone or the 2,500-3,500 dollars it costs per hour to fly one. Just to be clear, the money spent on one flight hour could cover the cost of a year’s supply of iodized salt for fifty to seventy thousand Afghan children. Later that morning Kelly was arrested with one other as she entered Whiteman in protest of US drone warfare controlled from that base.
    Salt. I thought about it more and more. Jesus told us to perform the works of mercy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick etc. As Catholic Workers, we try to make those works the center of our every day lives. I guess there are some we take for granted, like giving salt to the saltless. Iodine isn’t something that people in wealthier nations think about very often but according to a UNICEF report on the lack of Iodine in Afghanistan, “Iodine deficiency is common in women, resulting in low birth weight, deafness, and cretinism in new-borns - lack of iodine is believed to contribute to a reduced IQ level of up to 15 points in some parts of Afghanistan.”
    That morning at Whiteman my musings on salt lead me beyond the plight of Afghan children. It reminded me of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the subsequent resulting treaties. They are most referred to by their acronyms, SALT 1 and SALT 2.  These 1970s era treaties were the first bilateral agreements between the United States and Soviet Union on the issue of nuclear arms control and the predecessors to the New START treaty in effect today. The terms of the New START treaty concern the reduction of nuclear capable launch facilities by half. This reduction in nuclear capabilities would seem to be a step in the direction of eliminating the threat of nuclear war but other actions taken by those in power would suggest that these weapons are here to stay.
    Just the day before, on the second stop of our Trifecta Resista we gathered outside the Banister Federal Complex, the home to the old Kansas City Plant. We were there to bear witness to the toxic mess being left by this factory that produced 85% of the non-nuclear materials for the United States nuclear bomb arsenal. The National Nuclear Security Administration has relocated the Kansas City Plant to a new location leaving behind contamination of chlorinated solvents, petroleum hydrocarbons, PCBs, and beryllium. The cost of the new plant is estimated at $673 million. For a country with a president who claims to desire a “world without nuclear weapons” that is a lot of money spent on the improvement of our nuclear weapons infrastructure, a lot of money that could buy a whole lot of salt.
    The other stop of our Trifecta was a visit to Ft. Levenworth, KS. It is there that Chelsea Manning and Greg Boertje-Obed are imprisoned. Anyone who has ever been in jail or prison will tell you that even salt is a treat when it comes to the food served there. These are two people who, as Jesus commanded, refused to lose their saltiness, even at great cost. Both have been imprisoned for revealing the lies we have been told about the way our military works.
    I knew that Jesus talked of being the “salt of the earth” and that he commanded us to “have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another” but didn’t realize until I looked it up that salt is mentioned 35 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and 6 more in the Christian. Salt was a symbol of the covenant with YHWH. It is a fitting parallel that our reliance on military prowess rather than on God is manifest in money spent on weapons rather than human needs such as iodized salt.
      Paul, writing to the Colossians from prison, mentions salt. He says, “pray for us, too, that God may open a door to us for the word, to speak of the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, as I must speak… Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt.”
      When acts of war are orchestrated in your hometown but perpetrated half a world away the phrase “think globally and act locally” carries a whole new meaning. As the use of drones proliferates more and more bases are being converted to drone piloting centers. Thankfully, it seems that with every base that starts piloting drones there comes resistance. From Syracuse, NY and Las Vegas, NV to Des Moines, IA and Knob Noster, MO people are finding that they, like Paul, “must speak.” There are many that have even been arrested delivering copies of international law to and blocking the entrances of military bases as they attempt to (though they may not use the exact language) “make it clear” that the word of God (that is Love) does not permit the likes of drones. They are dedicated to non-violence but their message is certainly seasoned with salt.
    If we lose our saltiness, if we allow ourselves to just blend in with the mass of people and be complacent in war making we will, as the gospel says, only be “thrown out and trampled underfoot.” I pray for the sake of the children of Afghanistan and for the entire world that we may all learn to be salty.

 

Georgia Walker, Tamara  Severns & Kathy Kelly at  Whiteman AFB. Georgia & Kathy presented bread to the arresting officers

John Dear Public Lecture

April 3, 2014 at 6:00pm Simple Supper and John Dear & Panel of Local Activists
Challenging Us to Get Involved, Take Action, and Join Campaign Nonviolence KC!
Community Christian Church 4601 Main Street, KC MO  64112
Limited to 300 participants  RSVP to gkw.journeytonewlife@hotmail.com
FREE! 

John Dear is traveling the nation February through May 2014 promoting his new book The Nonviolent Life  and encouraging everyone to take part in Pace e Bene’s powerful new movement for nonviolent change—Campaign Nonviolence.
John’s new book The Nonviolent Life  focuses on three important aspects on the path toward becoming people of nonviolence: being nonviolent toward ourselves; being nonviolent to all others (including creation and creatures); and joining the global grassroots movement of nonviolence.  According to John, “most people pick one or two of these dimensions, but few do all three.  To become a fully rounded, three dimensional person of nonviolence we need to do all three simultaneously.”
In conjunction with his book tour, John will be promoting Pace e Bene’s Campaign Nonviolence which seeks to help everyone become three dimensional nonviolent practitioners.  Through a movement of education, action and networking, Campaign Nonviolence hopes to inspire others to continue the way of active nonviolence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. toward a world that works for all.
Co-Sponsored by:  Journey To New Life, Peace Works KC, MORE2: Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, Holy Family Catholic Worker House, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet-St Louis Province, American Friends Service Committee-KC, Loretto KC Peace & Justice Committee.

New Online Collection of Dorothy Day’s Writings

The Dorothy Day Collection at dorothyday.catholicworker.org is a new online collection of her writings.

Included are all 721 columns and articles from The Catholic Worker newspaper, written from 1933 until her death in 1980. In addition, there are the texts of four books and selected articles from other publications.

A new format makes it easy to browse, search, and download the documents as PDF and Word files. There are also themed groupings of articles available in PDF and ePub formats.

The Dorothy Day Collection is equally readable on a computer screen, tablet, or smart phone.

The Catholic Worker Movement website began in 1996 and is the collaborative effort of many people affiliated with the movement: workers, scholars, archivists, writers, editors, and webmasters. Over sixty volunteers collaborated to digitize Dorothy Day’s writings.

Cherith Brook Advent 2013 Newspaper

Our Advent 2013 Newspaper is now online. Be sure to read it and let us know what you think.

Cherith Brook Advent 2013 Newpaper

Ode to Joy

By Eric Garbison

     In Luke’s account of Christmas, the angel tells the dusty, tired shepherds not to be afraid.  Our news is good and it will bring you “joy.”  Matthew says that when the star stops above the stable “joy” overcomes the sages from the East.  The coming of the Christ child elicits joy, one that the entire world could recognize.

     The word “joy” has caught my attention lately; it’s not in my vocabulary.  I wonder if I’m alone in this?  There’s lots of talk about “happiness”—“Do what makes you happy!” or  “Why am so I unhappy?” Perhaps we have all been socialized by the utilitarian credo: “avoid suffering and maximize your happiness”?  And then we chase after it in a tired, anxious and depressed fashion.  But when was the last time someone described their day as joyful? 

     If there is a New Testament equivalent to our word “happy” I have yet to find it.  Perhaps because what we mean today by happiness is not part of the  

vision of God’s New Creation.  I suspect it’s because  the joy coming about through God’s new order is something entirely different. 

     Paul is very clear that joy is a fruit planted, tended and grown in us by the Spirit of God.  Indeed, he calls it a spiritual attribute second only to love and the preface to peacemaking.  Perhaps part of its spiritual quality includes the fact that when Paul writes, “count it all joy” he doesn’t leave out the suffering bit.  It was “for the sake of joy,” after all, that Christ endured the cross (Hebrews 12:1-2).

     It’s curious, however, that Paul doesn’t list joy as one of the spiritual gifts. If it describes the feeling born from the Christ-child’s coming, and if it belongs to those who live now by the freedom of God’s Spirit, then shouldn’t it be recognized as a gift God gives to some that benefits the rest of us?

     I am convinced there is such a charism because I’ve experience it.  When you meet someone like Nate Licktieg, one is immediately stunned by his sparkle.  There is so much about him that oozes joy.  How many first-time guest at our house have not been able to hold back a smile, chuckle or full-blown laughter when encountering Nate.  Some are so caught off guard by his quirky cheer that they try to dismiss him, but it doesn’t last long.  Eventually all are drawn in by his magnatism. 

     When our rooster starts crowing in the middle of the day, I suspect Nate is somewhere close by.  He mimics our rooster so masterfully he can get an almost instant reply.  I’ll come outside to find Nate propped against the fence, head thrown back, red curls dangling and throat thrust forward in full boast that seems to make our rooster jealous.  Then he turns to me with a side-ways grin and a “Hey!” 

     Sometimes I puzzle at the nature of his enjoyment of life.  I want to uncover the secret.  So I enlist him in service:  Can you help me bring over some food from the café?  Sure!  Can you set the tables, “Sure!”  Can you feed the scraps to the chickens?  Sure!  Sweep the floor? “Sure!” turn of the light?  Sure!...Sure!...Sure!   

     Certain days I’m inclined to doubt Nate’s sincerity.  So I make a game of it. Is there something I can come up with that Nate will complain about? (why do we want to douse the joy of others?)  I don’t mean to be cruel, just skeptical.  But born from Nate’s natural playfulness is a little teasing out of me.  His authenticity makes it contagious.

     On a bad day I become annoyed with Nate, I confess. How can he always be so damn cheerful?  Doesn’t he know what’s going on around here? Doesn’t he know how hard life is? How hard HIS life is?  I prowl about in the shadows waiting for some sign of irritation, some flaw in his joy so that I can catch him and shout, “I knew it!”  But as I peek around the corner Nate jumps out, “gotcha!” and giggles at the game.  Of course Nate gets irritated at times and in his own ways, but our humanity does not undermine a charism, it only clarifies its source.

     In reality, Nate’s life is filled with the struggles of poverty.  He lives from check to check, eking out his meals where he can.  But his joy is also a real, authentic.  Perhaps Nate’s gift is to help us be hopeful in spite of all the facts.  Perhaps equal to his bleak material needs is his ability to find and inject joy into life and behalf of the community.  His presence is a force and it is infectious.  Standing somewhere between a St. Francis and “Holy Fools” (the silly saints of history) Nate is carefree amidst the chaos of poverty. I mean, there is something divine going on here that’s impossible to create with our human effort.   

     Activists are often stereotyped as naysayers, dooms-dayers and gadflies.  And as Catholic Workers we have more than our share of them all.  Our daily exposure to poverty, abuse, addiction, violence of street life can feel weighty.  Going up against the growing leviathan of Nukes and Drones can suck the joy right out of you, with despair quick to fill the void.  After years of the dirt of poverty, the mundane chores of hospitality and the incessant knocking, more than a few of us have gotten the grumpy bug or become too serious for our own good.  The Nates of our lives are God’s gift to us.  They are Christ’s joy incarnate, reminding us that without delight we will likely drowned in our despair.  

     From the stories I’ve heard, I doubt the first impression Dorothy Day left those who met her was cheery. But from her writings she clearly knew the call to joy.   Reflecting back on their Christmas celebration in 1955 she wrote, “All this merry making lightens the heart, and makes one realize how necessary it is to cultivate a spirit of joy.  It is psychological truth that the physical acts of reverence and devotion make one feel devout, the courteous gesture increases one’s respect for others, to act loving is to begin to feel loving, and certainly to act joyful brings joy to others, which in turn makes one feel joyful.”  In her devotion to the Christ of Joy she called others to “the duty of delight.”  

     This duty is not shallow escapism; we do not desire joy in spite of the tragedies of the human experience, but amidst them.  And perhaps this is one of the most important gifts we can bring to the suffering, violence and poverty of our world.  In Christ’s New Age the tables have turned: my poverty of spirit is exposed by the power of joy which then overflows into my life and sweeps me away in its abundance. 

     We have made so much pageantry out of Christmas that we have forgotten it’s tragic poverty—Jesus born in a stable.  And yet, the story reveals  that the human response to this is not dullness or depression, anger or anxiety—its joy to the World, a joy that overcomes.  This is the Christmas story. Thanks, Nate, for the reminder.

Festival of Shelters Event Cancelled

We are presently going through significant changes at Cherith Brook and we are still trying to find our grounding and a healthy stride.  As a result we regret to inform you that we have decided to cancel our annual Festival of Shelters event.  We hope that in some way during that Jewish Holy time you will remember that we were all at one time homeless wanderers and that you will remember the homeless woman, man and child in some act of solidarity. And please keep us in your prayers during this new season in our lives.  

Blessings, 

Eric, Jodi, Allison and Lonnie

Cherith Brook Ordinary Time 2013 Newspaper

Our Ordinary Time 2013 paper is now online. Be sure to read it and let us know what you think.

Ordinary Time 2013

Life on the Margins

by Amy Hansen-Malek

When I was 19 years old, I moved from rural IL to the urban core of Milwaukee, WI with the vision of “giving to the poor” and “helping to save the lost.” I had my hero’s cape tied snug around my neck as I came to teach, feed, and clothe those on the margins of society. I’m now 36 and still live in the urban core, near Cherith Brook, where the sights of economic oppression can’t be missed. It’s not uncommon for me to see a man walking by my house carrying his home on his back or for me to pass someone holding a sign asking for money. Piles of trash seem endless next to the run down buildings in my neighborhood.

Through these years, I’ve wrestled with what it means to truly love those cast to the margins. Some days I still put on my hero’s cape, wanting to offer my advice to the poor on how to turn their lives around, as if my riches and way of life are better. Offering acts of compassion by giving food, clothing, or other resources comes easy to most of us and God does ask us to give to those in need. However, I’ve come to understand how these good intentions can be hurtful. The resources often come with strings attached, like insisting “they” listen to “us” describe how to fix “their” problems or having “them” commit to “our” programs. These good intentions also can be hurtful because they often fall very short of addressing or even acknowledging the injustices that often cause persons to be in need of resources in the first place. There are other days, when instead of wearing my cape, I carry stones in my pocket. I get frustrated by the signs of poverty and crime around me and find myself wanting to cast stones of judgment at those living on the margins, for surely it is they who are responsible for the endless trash I see and the daily crime I read about, right?

When I find myself wearing my cape or casting stones, I try to remember what James tells us in Chapter 2: 1-10. In my own words, the story goes something like this:

A poor man enters a community and is asked to sit at the feet of others in the community. He is preached to, fed, and clothed but not viewed as having any value to offer the community. A rich man enters a community and is invited to sit “with” the community. The community thinks the rich man has great resources and knowledge to share. He can use his wealth to help the poor man sitting at their feet better his life, so the poor man’s life can look more like the successful rich man’s life. However, the community has it all wrong. The poor man has the real riches because he has faith and he has inherited the Kingdom. The rich man is really poor because he lacks faith and has not inherited the Kingdom. The rich man is actually responsible for injustices that exist in the community. If you see more value in the rich man than the poor man, you have sinned. To commit one sin is the same as committing all the sins.

When I first moved into the city, I mainly saw poverty and problems around me, but I now try to remember and “see” that I live among great wealth. The person walking by my house carrying his belongings on his back may know more about the riches of the Kingdom than I’ll ever know. He may be rich in faith, faith that I lack in my life.

Throughout scripture, God reveals God’s self to and through those viewed as outcasts. Perhaps we see this because they were the ones ready to receive the Kingdom. The world they lived in didn’t allow them to be valued because they were unclean, uneducated, sinners, or half-breeds, as the Samaritans were called. They weren’t invited to sit “with” the community. When the world they lived in didn’t value them, they were ready for a new community, the Kingdom community. In the Kingdom community, which Jesus offered, they were accepted instead of kept out and discriminated against.

If we really want to become like Jesus, we can’t ignore that he walked “with” those on the margins and became a marginalized man. As Jesus showed the in breaking of the Kingdom among those on the margins of society, he showed how the Kingdom community differed from the culture around him. Walter Brueggmann, a well-known theologian, writes in Prophetic Imagination, “The compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. “ Compared to many, I am a rich person. I can’t deny my place as the rich person in James’ story. I have, even if unknowingly, participated in injustices toward the poor since many injustices are systemic in nature and perpetuated by those with wealth. At times, I become numb to the painful experiences of those around me living as outcasts and find myself walking by as the Levite did in the story of the Good Samaritan (Note that it was the outcast who stopped for the man in need in this story). As I have tried to shed my cape and empty my pockets, as I have come to know more persons living on the margins, I have experienced more of the riches of the Kingdom.

Instead of wearing a cape or throwing stones, maybe at least part of what it means to love those on the margins is simply to sit at their feet and learn about the Kingdom. In doing this, we might learn about our own needs and their real needs. What’s more, we might be able to erase the “us and them” language, and instead, we could value one another and be together in community.