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August 30th
We praise and bless God Who calls us to live and to be in the world,
and to share this mission of love and peace with all men and women of
every color, race and belief. Spirit and Lifestyle - the end.
Once again we have read through Spirit and Lifestyle. Each time it is
as new, as pertinent. Really a "spirit" and "lifestyle" to guide us.
Last week we mourned Jack Layton who surprised - and elated - some of
us by winning for his New Democratic Party an unprecedented number of
seats in the federal elections of May 2, 2011, achieving for the NDP
for the first time the role of leader of the opposition.
Unfortunately, cancer claimed his life. When he knew he had a few
days left he wrote a 1000-page letter to be released after his death.
Here are a few of these words:
To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better.
Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to
be hopeful and optimistic about Canada.... I want to share with you
my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There
are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of
climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many
from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more
inclusive and generous Canada. Your energy, your vision, your passion
for justice are exactly what this country needs today. ...
To all Canadians,.. We can be a better country, a country of greater
equality, justice and opportunity... We can look after our seniors.
We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to
save the world's environment... Don't let them tell you it can't be
done.
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear.
Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and
optimistic. And we'll change the world.
All my very best,
Jack Layton
August 23rd
VMM missionaries are followers of Jesus, engaged fully in sharing the
Good News of the Gospel - Spirit and Lifestyle
Friday morning, there was no Edmonton Journal at my door. Friday's is
a heavy issue with lots of inserts and with the week's TV Guide.
Usually it is delivered around 4 am. Just before 8:30, I heard papers
thrown at the door of three of the units on my floor and then my
door. The carrier was just opening the door to the staircase ... "Had
I heard about the traffic accident just after 3 am?" Yes, I had;
the road was still closed to traffic. Our Journal carrier, Art, was
killed. Only the next day did I read that Art was broadsided by a
vehicle that failed to make the curve of the traffic circle. Art died
at the scene. Police arrested the driver of the other vehicle -
charges pending against the driver in his 40s, and alcohol and speed
being investigated as factors in the crash.
I never officially met Art. Only once over the six or seven years
we've had him as our delivery person, I found him sorting the papers
in front of the elevators on the main floor one morning I had to
leave very early for the airport and asked him for my paper. He wrote
in a big script the apartment number on each paper. When I came back
from holidays, the first paper always carried the message: Welcome
Back! Art. Before Christmas, he left a card and I was always
reassured he had found his money because he wrote in the same large
print his thank you on that morning's paper. I had noted his courtesy
in slipping the newspaper quietly under the door and not slamming the
door to the stairs. The only sound was the slight rustle of paper on
the floor.
It seems that such courtesy was part of Art's life. Saturday's
Edmonton Journal, mentioned that Art took only one day off after
being assaulted on the job about a year ago, that the 64-year-old was
a mild-mannered man who took his work seriously and loved his dog. He
was a very kind-hearted gentleman, said his employer. Art also worked
at Save-On-Foods, had received his 20-year service award and was
respected by colleagues and customers , some of whom would only go
through Art's till. And, he enjoyed his backyard and garden.
Sunday morning, as I waited for the train I noted the station's
caretaker carefully checking the cleaning he'd done. His standards
seemed as high as my mother's! And I thought of Art; of Ilona,the
caretaker in my building; of all the caretakers in the schools where
I taught.
Our life is too short not to do our share; not to appreciate and
acknowledge all those who make our lives possible; not to be kind-
hearted, mild-mannered, courteous; not to take time to smell the
roses, if not grow them. Thank you, Art.
August 16th
We see the Spirit at work in those to whom we go, as well as within
ourselves; We are channels of the spirit, called forth to renew and
strengthen in return. VMM missionaries are open to this dynamic and
free action of the Spirit who first inspired and called us to the
services of God and all God's people. - Spirit and Lifestyle
This week is the Fringe in Edmonton. The first play I say was
entitled Pieces, a very well done story of a daughter visiting her
mother who has just been placed into a home because her Alzheimer
disease has progressed to the stage where she cannot live on her own.
The pieces the mother remembers are of her past, memories her
daughter cannot understand or relate to.
All the members of the drama company were moved to list the memories
they hope to retain. Some list the ocean, the mountains, the cottage,
summers spent with grandparents, the grass, the smell of homemade
bread, the warm rain in Hawaii, the birth of children, sunsets.
I think those memories are calls from the Spirit. They remind us of
what is really important. They also remind us of how we are linked to
each other. I could relate to most of the memories of the eight
persons listed on the program. They are the Spirit at work.
August 9th
It is never static, it is ever moving, ever growing and ever calling
forth the gifts and life in the other. We recognize the fire and the
dynamic power of the Holy Spirit in mission which cannot be contained
by, or monopolized within, any human institution, but which is at
work wherever God wills. - Spirit and Lifestyle
Five years after Roger Schroeder gave me a copy of his book
Constants in Context: A theology of Mission for Today (with Stephen
B. Bevans, Orbis Books, 2004), I have finally taken off the shelf and
opened it. Roger was on the VMM board at the same time I was and
usually picked me up at O'Hare for the drive to Greendale. Here's a
short passage from this 488 page book:
As the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism expressed it in its
1963 meeting in Mexico City, mission is now on "six continents." In
other words, it is not to be understood as certain well-established
Christian countries sending women and men to particular "non-
Christian" or "underdeveloped" parts of the world. Every country is a
sending country, and every country is a receiving country.
..... Mission happens wherever the church is; it is how the church
exists. Mission is the church preaching Christ for the first time; it
is the act of Christians struggling against injustice and oppression;
it is the binding of wounds in reconciliation; it is the church
learning from other religious ways and being challenged by the
world's cultures. "Missions" exist in urban multicultural
neighborhoods, rural Ghanaian villages, Brazilian favelas, European
universities, in the world's cyberspace. Mission is the local church
"focusing not on its own, internal problems, but on other human
beings, focusing elsewhere, in a world that calls and challenges it."
Last week I was at the funeral of a man who lived mission every day
of his life. Jose Garcia came to Canada with his wife and four
children as a refugee from El Salvador in 1984. He brought with him
the Christian base community that put him and his family in danger:
CEBES - Comunidad eclesial de base El Salvador. Its founder Father
Rogelio Ponseele was in Edmonton last November and I interpreted for
him.
Of all the testimonials in the Celebration of Jose Garcia's life and
in the funeral mass what struck me the most was that in the hospital
on the day before Jose's 12-year bone cancer claimed his life, he
asked his eldest daughter to read an article by Central American
Liberation theologian José Comblin. When she complained that she had
no idea what she was reading - something about indignidad, indignado
(indignity, to be indignant). He urged her to keep reading. I'll
explain it to you later. And he did!
José Garcia vive! A true missionary!
August 2nd
We, see, therefore, that mission is not a one-way process, and the
monopoly of one church or religion. But is is a cyclical process,
going from one church to another church in continuous, mutual
sharing. This is the dynamic of mission. - Spirit and Lifestyle
For months now I have been reading Elizabeth A. Johnson's Quest for
the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, a book I
highly recommend.
In the epilogue, Johnson writes: The quest continues. It will do so
long as the unfathomable mystery of the living God calls human beings
into the future, promised but unknown, which is to say, as long as
people exist. Toward the end of the play A Sleep of Prisoners, a
soldier declaims a beautiful soliloquy, every word of which became
truer and truer in my own mind as this book took shape. With thanks
to the artist, I offer it as a stirring conclusion that keeps the
subject open:
The human heart can go to the lengths of God,
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move,
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men [and women] ever took.
Affairs are now soul size
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.*
*Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1951, 47-48; insert Johnson's
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